Читать книгу Voices from Chernobyl - Светлана Алексиевич - Страница 12

The village of Bely Bereg, in the Narovlyansk region, in the Gomel oblast.

Speaking: Anna Pavlovna Artyushenko, Eva Adamovna Artyushenko, Vasily Nikolaevich Artyushenko, Sofya Nikolaevna Moroz, Nadezhda Borisovna Nikolaenko, Aleksandr Fedorosvich Nikolaenko, Mikhail Martynovich Lis.

“And we lived through everything, survived everything . . .”

“Oh, I don’t even want to remember it. It’s scary. They chased us out, the soldiers chased us. The big military machines rolled in. The all-terrain ones. One old man—he was already on the ground. Dying. Where was he going to go? ‘I’ll just get up,’ he was crying, ‘and walk to the cemetery. I’ll do it myself.’ What’d they pay us for our homes? What? Look at how pretty it is here! Who’s going to pay us for this beauty? It’s a resort zone!”

“Planes, helicopters—there was so much noise. The trucks with trailers. Soldiers. Well, I thought, the war’s begun. With the Chinese or the Americans.”

“My husband came home from the kolkhoz meeting, he says, ‘Tomorrow we get evacuated.’ And I say: ‘What about the potatoes? We didn’t dig them out yet. We didn’t get a chance.’ Our neighbor knocks on the door, and we sit down for a drink. We have a drink and they start cursing the kolkhoz chairman. ‘We’re not going, period. We lived through the war, now it’s radiation.’ Even if we have to bury ourselves, we’re not going!”

“At first we thought, we’re all going to die in two to three months. That’s what they told us. They propagandized us. Scared us. Thank God—we’re alive.”

“Thank God! Thank God!”

“No one knows what’s in the other world. It’s better here. More familiar.”

“We were leaving—I took some earth from my mother’s grave, put it in a little sack. Got down on my knees: ‘Forgive us for leaving you.’ I went there at night and I wasn’t scared. People were writing their names on the houses. On the wood. On the fences. On the asphalt.”

“The soldiers killed the dogs. Just shot them. Bakh-bakh! After that I can’t listen to something that’s alive and screaming.”

“I was a brigade leader at the kolkhoz. Forty-five years old. I felt sorry for people. We took our deer to Moscow for an exhibition, the kolkhoz sent us. We brought a pin back and a red certificate. People spoke to me with respect. ‘Vasily Nikolaevich. Nikoleavich.’ And who am I here? Just an old man in a little house. I’ll die here, the women will bring me water, they’ll heat the house. I felt sorry for people. I saw women walking from the fields at night singing, and I knew they wouldn’t get anything. Just some sticks on payday. But they’re singing . . .”

“Even if it’s poisoned with radiation, it’s still my home. There’s no place else they need us. Even a bird loves its nest . . .”

“I’ll say more: I lived at my son’s on the seventh floor. I’d come up to the window, look down, and cross myself. I thought I heard a horse. A rooster. I felt terrible. Sometimes I’d dream about my yard: I’d tie the cow up and milk it and milk it. I wake up. I don’t want to get up. I’m still there. Sometimes I’m here, sometimes there.”

“During the day we lived in the new place, and at night we lived at home—in our dreams.”

“The nights are very long here in the winter. We’ll sit, sometimes, and count: who’s died?”

“My husband was in bed for two months. He didn’t say anything, didn’t answer me. He was mad. I’d walk around the yard, come back: ‘Old man, how are you?’ He looks up at my voice, and that’s already better. As long as he was in the house. When a person’s dying, you can’t cry. You’ll interrupt his dying, he’ll have to keep struggling. I took a candle from the closet and put it in his hand. He took it and he was breathing. I can see his eyes are dull. I didn’t cry. I asked for just one thing: ‘Say hello to our daughter and to my dear mother.’ I prayed that we’d go together. Some gods would have done it, but He didn’t let me die. I’m alive . . .”

“Girls! Don’t cry. We were always on the front lines. We were Stakhanovites. We lived through Stalin, through the war! If I didn’t laugh and comfort myself, I’d have hanged myself long ago.”

“My mother taught me once—you take an icon and turn it upside-down, so that it hangs like that three days. No matter where you are, you’ll always come home. I had two cows and two calves, five pigs, geese, chicken. A dog. I’ll take my head in my hands and just walk around the yard. And apples, so many apples! Everything’s gone, all of it, like that, gone!”

“I washed the house, bleached the stove. You need to leave some bread on the table and some salt, a little plate and three spoons. As many spoons as there are souls in the house. All so we could come back.”

“And the chickens had black cockscombs, not red ones, because of the radiation. And you couldn’t make cheese. We lived a month without cheese and cottage cheese. The milk didn’t go sour—it curdled into powder, white powder. Because of the radiation.”

“I had that radiation in my garden. The whole garden went white, white as white can be, like it was covered with something. Chunks of something. I thought maybe someone brought it from the forest.”

“We didn’t want to leave. The men were all drunk, they were throwing themselves under cars. The big Party bosses were walking to all the houses and begging people to go. Orders: ‘Don’t take your belongings!’ ”

“The cattle hadn’t had water in three days. No feed. That’s it! A reporter came from the paper. The drunken milkmaids almost killed him.”

“The chief is walking around my house with the soldiers. Trying to scare me: ‘Come out or we’ll burn it down! Boys! Give me the gas can.’ I was running around—grabbing a blanket, grabbing a pillow.”

“During the war you hear the guns all night hammering, rattling. We dug a hole in the forest. They’d bomb and bomb. Burned everything—not just the houses, but the gardens, the cherry trees, everything. Just as long as there’s no war. That’s what I’m scared of.”

“They asked the Armenian broadcaster: ‘Maybe there are Chernobyl apples?’ ‘Sure, but you have to bury the core really deep.’ ”

“They gave us a new house. Made of stone. But, you know, we didn’t hammer in a single nail in seven years. It wasn’t ours. It was foreign. My husband cried and cried. All week he works on the kolkhoz on the tractor, waits for Sunday, then on Sunday he lies against the wall and wails away . . .”

“No one’s going to fool us anymore, we’re not moving anywhere. There’s no store, no hospital. No electricity. We sit next to a kerosene lamp and under the moonlight. And we like it! Because we’re home.”

“In town my daughter-in-law followed me around the apartment and wiped down the door handle, the chair. And it was all bought with my money, all the furniture and the Zhiguli, too, with the money the government gave me for the house and the cow. As soon as the money’s finished, Mom’s not needed anymore.”

“Our kids took the money. Inflation took the rest. You can buy a kilo of nice candy with the money they gave us for our homes, although maybe now it wouldn’t be enough.”

“I walked for two weeks. I had my cow with me. They wouldn’t let me in the house. I slept in the forest.”

“They’re afraid of us. They say we’re infectious. Why did God punish us? He’s mad? We don’t live like people, we don’t live according to His laws anymore. That’s why people are killing one another.”

“My nephews would come during the summer. The first summer they didn’t come, they were afraid. But now they come. They take food, too, whatever you give them. ‘Grandma,’ they say, ‘did you read the book about Robinson Crusoe?’ He lived alone like us. Without people around. I brought half a pack of matches with me. An axe and a shovel. And now I have lard, and eggs, and milk—it’s all mine. The only thing is sugar—can’t plant that. But we have all the land we want! You can plow 100 hectares if you want. And no government, no bosses. No one gets in your way.”

“The cats came back with us too. And the dogs. We all came back together. The soldiers didn’t want to let us in. The riot troops. So at night—through the forest—like the partisans.”

“We don’t need anything from the government. Just leave us alone, is all we want. We don’t need a store, we don’t need a bus. We walk to get our bread. Twenty kilometers. Just leave us alone. We’re all right by ourselves.”

“We came back all together, three families. And everything here is looted: the stove is smashed, the windows, they took the doors off. The lamps, light switches, outlets—they took everything. Nothing left. I put everything back together with these hands. How else!”

“When the wild geese scream, that means spring is here. Time to sow the fields. And we’re sitting in empty houses. At least the roofs are solid.”

“The police were yelling. They’d come in cars, and we’d run into the forest. Like we did from the Germans. One time they came with the prosecutor, he huffed and puffed, they were going to put us up on Article 10. I said: ‘Let them give me a year in jail. I’ll serve it and come back here.’ Their job is to yell, ours is to stay quiet. I have a medal—I was the best harvester on the kolkhoz. And he’s scaring me with Article 10.”

“Every day I’d dream of my house. I’m coming back to it: digging in the garden, or making my bed. And every time I find something: a shoe, or a little chick. And everything was for the best, it made me happy. I’d be home soon . . .”

“At night we pray to God, during the day to the police. If you ask me, ‘Why are you crying?’ I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m happy to be living in my own house.”

“We lived through everything, survived everything . . .”

“I got in to see a doctor. ‘Sweety,’ I say, ‘my legs don’t move. The joints hurt.’ ‘You need to give up your cow, grandma. The milk’s poisoned.’ ‘Oh, no,’ I say, ‘my legs hurt, my knees hurt, but I won’t give up the cow. She feeds me.’ ”

“I have seven children. They all live in cities. I’m alone here. I get lonely, I’ll sit under their photographs. I’ll talk a little. Just by myself. All by myself. I painted the house myself, it took six cans of paint. And that’s how I live. I raised four sons and three daughters. And my husband died young. Now I’m alone.”

“I met a wolf one time. He stood there, I stood there. We looked at each other. He went over to the side of the road, and I ran. My hat rose up I was so scared.”

“Any animal is afraid of a human. If you don’t touch him, he’ll walk around you. Used to be, you’d be in the forest and you’d hear human voices, you’d run toward them. Now people hide from one another. God save me from meeting a person in the forest!”

“Everything that’s written in the Bible comes to pass. It’s written there about our kolkhoz, too. And about Gorbachev. That there’ll be a big boss with a birthmark and that a great empire will crumble. And then the Day of Judgment will come. Everyone who lives in cities, they’ll die, and one person from the village will remain. This person will be happy to find a human footprint! Not the person himself, but just his footprints.”

“We have a lamp for light. A kerosene lamp. Ah-a. The women already told you. If we kill a wild boar, we take it to the basement or bury it ourselves. Meat can last for three days underground. The vodka we make ourselves.”

“I have two bags of salt. We’ll be all right without the government! Plenty of logs—there’s a whole forest around us. The house is warm. The lamp is burning. It’s nice! I have a goat, a kid, three pigs, fourteen chickens. Land—as much as I want; grass—as much as I want. There’s water in the well. And freedom! We’re happy. This isn’t a kolkhoz anymore, it’s a commune. We need to buy another horse. And then we won’t need anyone at all. Just one horsey.”

“This one reporter said, We didn’t just return home, we went back a hundred years. We use a hammer for reaping, and a sickle for mowing. We flail wheat right on the asphalt.”

“During the war they burned us, and we lived underground. In bunkers. They killed my brother and two nephews. All told, in my family we lost seventeen people. My mom was crying and crying. There was an old lady walking through the villages, scavenging. ‘You’re mourning?’ she asked my mom. ‘Don’t mourn. A person who gives his life for others, that person is holy.’ And I can do anything for my Motherland. Only killing I can’t do. I’m a teacher, and I taught my kids to love others. That’s how I taught them: ‘Good will always triumph.’ Kids are little, their souls are pure.”

“Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.”

“We turned off the radio right away. We don’t know any of the news, but life is peaceful. We don’t get upset. People come, they tell us the stories—there’s war everywhere. And like that socialism is finished and we live under capitalism. And the Tsar is coming back. Is that true?”

“Sometimes a wild boar will come into the garden, sometimes a fox. But people only rarely. Just police.”

“You should come see my house, too.”

“And mine. It’s been a while since I had guests.”

“I cross myself and pray: Dear God! Two times the police came and broke my stove. They took me away on a tractor. And me, I came back! They should let people in—they’d all come crawling back on their knees. They scattered our sorrow all over the globe. Only the dead come back now. The dead are allowed to. But the living can only come at night, through the forest.”

“Everyone’s rearing to get back for the harvest. That’s it. Everyone wants to have his own back. The police have lists of people they’ll let back, but kids under eighteen can’t come. People will come and they’re so glad just to stand next to their house. In their own yard next to the apple tree. At first they’ll go cry at the cemetery, then they go to their yards. And they cry there, too, and pray. They leave candles. They hang them on their fences. Like on the little fences at the cemetery. Sometimes they’ll even leave a wreath at the house. A white towel on the gate. The old woman reads a prayer: ‘Brothers and sisters! Have patience!’ ”

“People take eggs, and rolls, and whatever else, to the cemetery. Everyone sits with their families. They call them: ‘Sis, I’ve come to see you. Come have lunch.’ Or: ‘Mom, dear mom. Dad, dead dad.’ They call the souls down from heaven. Those who had people die this year cry, and those whose people died earlier, don’t. They talk, they remember. Everyone prays. And those who don’t know how to pray, also pray.”

“The only time I don’t cry is at night. You can’t cry about the dead at night. When the sun goes down, I stop crying. Remember their souls, oh Lord. And let their kingdom come.”

“If you don’t play, you lose. There was a Ukrainian woman at the market selling big red apples. ‘Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!’ Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. ‘Don’t worry!’ she says. ‘They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss.’ ”

“There was one guy, he came back here from jail. Under the amnesty. He lived in the next village. His mother died, the house was buried. He came over to us. ‘Lady, give me some bread and some lard. I’ll chop wood for you.’ He gets by.”

“The country is a mess—and people come back here. They run from the others. From the law. And they live alone. Even strangers. They’re tough, there’s no friendliness in their eyes. If they get drunk, they’re liable to burn something down. At night we sleep with axes and pitchforks under our beds. In the kitchen next to the door, there’s a hammer.”

“There was a rabid fox here during the spring—when they’re rabid they become tender, real tender. But they can’t look at water. Just put a bucket of water in your yard, and you’re fine. She’ll run away.”

“There’s no television. No movies. There’s one thing to do—look out the window. Well, and to pray, of course. There used to be Communism instead of God, but now there’s just God. So we pray.”

“We’re people who’ve served our time. I’m a partisan, I was with the partisans a year. And when we beat back the Germans, I was on the front. I wrote my name on the Reichstag: Artyushenko. I took off my overcoat to build Communism. And where is this Communism?”

“We have Communism here—we live like brothers and sisters . . .”

“The year the war started, there weren’t any mushrooms or any berries. Can you believe that? The earth itself felt the catastrophe. 1941. Oh, how I remember it! I’ve never forgotten the war. There was a rumor that they’d brought over all the POWs, if you recognized yours you could take him. All our women ran over! That night some brought home their men, and others brought home other men. But there was one scoundrel . . . He lived like everyone else, he was married, had two kids—he told the commandant that we’d taken in Ukrainians. Vasko, Sashko. The next day the Germans come on their motorcycles. We beg them, we get down on our knees. But they took them out of the village and shot them with their automatics. Nine men. And they were young, they were so good! Vasko, Sashko . . .”

“The boss-men come, they yell and yell, but we’re deaf and mute. And we’ve lived through everything, survived everything . . .”

“But I’m talking about something else—I think about it a lot. At the cemetery. Some people pray loudly, others quietly. And some people say: ‘Open up, yellow sand. Open up, dark night.’ The forest might do it, but the sand never will. I’ll ask gently: ‘Ivan. Ivan, how should I live?’ But he doesn’t answer me anything, one way or the other.”

“I don’t have my own to cry about, so I cry about everyone. For strangers. I’ll go to the graves, I’ll talk to them.”

“I’m not afraid of anyone—not the dead, not the animals, no one. My son comes in from the city, he gets mad at me. ‘Why are you sitting here! What if some looter tries to kill you?’ But what would he want from me? There’s some pillows. In a simple house, pillows are your main furniture. If a thief tries to come in, the minute he peaks his head through the window, I’ll chop it off with the axe. That’s how we do it here. Maybe there is no God, or maybe there’s someone else, but there’s someone up there. And I’m alive.”

“Why did that Chernobyl break down? Some people say, It was the scientists’ fault. They grabbed God by the beard, and now he’s laughing. But we’re the ones who pay for it.”

“We never did live well. Or in peace. We were always afraid. Just before the war they’d grab people. They came in black cars and took three of our men right off the fields, and they still haven’t returned. We were always afraid.”

“But now we’re free. The harvest is rich. We live like barons.”

“The only thing I have is a cow. I’d hand her in, if only they don’t make another war. How I hate war!”

“Here we have the war of wars—Chernobyl.”

“And the cuckoo is cuckooing, the magpies are chattering, roes are running. Will they reproduce—who knows? One morning I looked out in the garden, the boars were digging. They were wild. You can resettle people, but the elk and the boar, you can’t. And water doesn’t listen to borders, it goes along the earth, and under the earth.”

“It hurts, girls. Oh, it hurts! Let’s be quiet. They bring your coffin quietly. Careful. Don’t want to bang against the door or the bed, don’t want to touch anything or knock it over. Otherwise you have to wait for the next dead person. Remember their souls, oh Lord. May their kingdom come. And let prayers be said for them where they’re buried. We have everything here—graves. Graves everywhere. The dump trucks are working, and the bulldozers. The houses are falling. The gravediggers are toiling away. They buried the school, the headquarters, the baths. It’s the same world, but the people are different. One thing I don’t know is, Do people have souls? What kind? And how do they all fit in the next world? My grandpa took two days to die, I was hiding behind the stove and waiting: how’s it going to fly out of his body? I went to milk the cow—I come back in, call him, he’s lying there with his eyes open. His soul fled already. Or did nothing happen? And then how will we meet?”

“One old woman, she promises that we’re immortal. We pray. Oh Lord, give us the strength to survive the weariness of our lives.”