Читать книгу Voices from Chernobyl - Светлана Алексиевич - Страница 8

We are air, we are not earth . . .

—M. Mamardashvili

I don’t know what I should talk about—about death or about love? Or are they the same? Which one should I talk about?

We were newlyweds. We still walked around holding hands, even if we were just going to the store. I would say to him, “I love you.” But I didn’t know then how much. I had no idea . . . We lived in the dormitory of the fire station where he worked. On the second floor. There were three other young couples, we all shared a kitchen. On the first floor they kept the trucks. The red fire trucks. That was his job. I always knew what was happening—where he was, how he was.

One night I heard a noise. I looked out the window. He saw me. “Close the window and go back to sleep. There’s a fire at the reactor. I’ll be back soon.”

I didn’t see the explosion itself. Just the flames. Everything was radiant. The whole sky. A tall flame. And smoke. The heat was awful. And he’s still not back.

The smoke was from the burning bitumen, which had covered the roof. He said later it was like walking on tar. They tried to beat down the flames. They kicked at the burning graphite with their feet. . . . They weren’t wearing their canvas gear. They went off just as they were, in their shirt sleeves. No one told them. They had been called for a fire, that was it.

Four o’clock. Five. Six. At six we were supposed to go to his parents’ house. To plant potatoes. It’s forty kilometers from Pripyat to Sperizhye, where his parents live. Sowing, plowing—he loved to do that. His mother always told me how they didn’t want him to move to the city, they’d even built a new house for him. He was drafted into the army. He served in the fire brigade in Moscow and when he came out, he wanted to be a fireman. And nothing else! [Silence.]

Sometimes it’s as though I hear his voice. Alive. Even photographs don’t have the same effect on me as that voice. But he never calls to me . . . not even in my dreams. I’m the one who calls to him.

Seven o’clock. At seven I was told he was in the hospital. I ran there, but the police had already encircled it, and they weren’t letting anyone through. Only ambulances. The policemen shouted: the ambulances are radioactive, stay away! I wasn’t the only one there, all the wives whose husbands were at the reactor that night had come. I started looking for a friend, she was a doctor at that hospital. I grabbed her white coat when she came out of an ambulance. “Get me inside!” “I can’t. He’s bad. They all are.” I held on to her. “Just to see him!” “All right,” she said. “Come with me. Just for fifteen or twenty minutes.”

I saw him. He was all swollen and puffed up. You could barely see his eyes.

“He needs milk. Lots of milk,” my friend said. “They should drink at least three liters each.” “But he doesn’t like milk.” “He’ll drink it now.” Many of the doctors and nurses in that hospital, and especially the orderlies, would get sick themselves and die. But we didn’t know that then.

At ten in the morning, the cameraman Shishenok died. He was the first. On the first day. We learned that another one was left under the debris—Valera Khodemchuk. They never did reach him. They buried him under the concrete. And we didn’t know then that they were just the first ones.

I said, “Vasya, what should I do?” “Get out of here! Go! You have our child.” But how can I leave him? He’s telling me: “Go! Leave! Save the baby.” “First I need to bring you some milk, then we’ll decide what to do.” My friend Tanya Kibenok comes running in—her husband’s in the same room. Her father’s with her, he has a car. We get in and drive to the nearest village for some milk. It’s about three kilometers from the town. We buy a bunch of three-liter bottles, six, so it’s enough for everyone. But they started throwing up from the milk. They kept passing out, they got put on IVs. The doctors kept telling them they’d been poisoned by gas. No one said anything about radiation. And the town was inundated right away with military vehicles, they closed off all the roads. The trolleys stopped running, and the trains. They were washing the streets with some white powder. I worried about how I’d get to the village the next day to buy some more fresh milk. No one talked about the radiation. Only the military people wore surgical masks. The people in town were carrying bread from the stores, just open sacks with the loaves in them. People were eating cupcakes on plates.

I couldn’t get into the hospital that evening. There was a sea of people. I stood under his window, he came over and yelled something to me. It was so desperate! Someone in the crowd heard him—they were being taken to Moscow that night. All the wives got together in one group. We decided we’d go with them. Let us go with our husbands! You have no right! We punched and clawed. The soldiers—there were already soldiers—they pushed us back. Then the doctor came out and said, yes, they were flying to Moscow, but we needed to bring them their clothes. The clothes they’d worn at the station had been burned. The buses had stopped running already and we ran across the city. We came running back with their bags, but the plane was already gone. They tricked us. So that we wouldn’t be there yelling and crying.

It’s night. On one side of the street there are buses, hundreds of buses, they’re already preparing the town for evacuation, and on the other side, hundreds of fire trucks. They came from all over. And the whole street covered in white foam. We’re walking on it, just cursing and crying. Over the radio they tell us they might evacuate the city for three to five days, take your warm clothes with you, you’ll be living in the forest. In tents. People were even glad—a camping trip! We’ll celebrate May Day like that, a break from routine. People got barbeques ready. They took their guitars with them, their radios. Only the women whose husbands had been at the reactor were crying.

I can’t remember the trip out to my parents’ village. It was like I woke up when I saw my mother. “Mama. Vasya’s in Moscow. They flew him out on a special plane!” But we finished planting the garden. [A week later the village was evacuated.] Who knew? Who knew that then? Later in the day I started throwing up. I was six months pregnant. I felt awful. That night I dreamed he was calling out to me in his sleep: “Lyusya! Lyusenka!” But after he died, he didn’t call out in my dreams anymore. Not once. [She starts crying.] I got up in the morning thinking I have to get to Moscow. By myself. My mother’s crying: “Where are you going, the way you are?” So I took my father with me. He went to the bank and took out all the money they had.

I can’t remember the trip. The trip just isn’t in my memory. In Moscow we asked the first police officer we saw, Where did they put the Chernobyl firemen, and he told us. We were surprised, too, everyone was scaring us that it was top secret. “Hospital number 6. At the Shchukinskaya stop.”

It was a special hospital, for radiology, and you couldn’t get in without a pass. I gave some money to the woman at the door, and she said, “Go ahead.” Then I had to ask someone else, beg. Finally I’m sitting in the office of the head radiologist, Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova. But I didn’t know that yet, what her name was, I didn’t remember anything. I just knew I had to see him. Right away she asked: “Do you have kids?”

What should I tell her? I can see already I need to hide that I’m pregnant. They won’t let me see him! It’s good I’m thin, you can’t really tell anything.

“Yes,” I say.

“How many?”

I’m thinking, “I need to tell her two. If it’s just one, she won’t let me in.”

“A boy and a girl.”

“So you don’t need to have anymore. All right, listen: his central nervous system is completely compromised, his skull is completely compromised.”

Okay, I’m thinking, so he’ll be a little fidgety.

“And listen: if you start crying, I’ll kick you out right away. No hugging or kissing. Don’t even get near him. You have half an hour.”

But I knew already that I wasn’t leaving. If I leave, then it’ll be with him. I swore to myself! I come in, they’re sitting on the bed, playing cards and laughing.

“Vasya!” they call out.

He turns around:

“Oh, well, now it’s over! Even here she found me!”

He looks so funny, he’s got pajamas on for a size 48, and he’s a size 52. The sleeves are too short, the pants are too short. But his face isn’t swollen anymore. They were given some sort of fluid.

I say, “Where’d you run off to?”

He wants to hug me.

The doctor won’t let him. “Sit, sit,” she says. “No hugging in here.”

We turned it into a joke somehow. And then everyone comes over, from the other rooms too, everyone from Pripyat. There were twenty-eight of them on the plane. What’s going on? How are things in town? I tell them they’ve begun evacuating everyone, the whole town is being cleared out for three or five days. None of the guys says anything, and then one of the women, there were two women, she was on duty at the factory the day of the accident, she starts crying.

“Oh God! My kids are there. What’s happening with them?”

I wanted to be with him alone, if only for a minute. The guys felt it, and each of them thought of some excuse, and they all went out into the hall. Then I hugged and kissed him. He moved away.

“Don’t sit near me. Get a chair.”

“That’s just silly,” I said, waving it away. “Did you see the explosion? Did you see what happened? You were the first ones there.”

“It was probably sabotage. Someone set it up. All the guys think so.”

That’s what people were saying then. That’s what they thought.

The next day, they were lying by themselves, each in his own room. They were banned from going in the hallway, from talking to each other. They knocked on the walls with their knuckles. Dash-dot, dash-dot. The doctors explained that everyone’s body reacts differently to radiation, and one person can handle what another can’t. They even measured the radiation of the walls where they had them. To the right, left, and the floor beneath. They moved out all the sick people from the floor below and the floor above. There was no one left in the place.

For three days I lived with my friends in Moscow. They kept saying: Take the pot, take the plate, take whatever you need. I made turkey soup for six. For six of our boys. Firemen. From the same shift. They were all on duty that night: Bashuk, Kibenok, Titenok, Pravik, Tischura. I went to the store and bought them toothpaste and toothbrushes and soap. They didn’t have any of that at the hospital. I bought them little towels. Looking back, I’m surprised by my friends: they were afraid, of course, how could they not be, there were rumors already, but still they kept saying: Take whatever you need, take it! How is he? How are they all? Will they live? Live. [She is silent.] I met a lot of good people then, I don’t remember all of them. I remember an old woman janitor, who taught me: “There are sicknesses that can’t be cured. You just have to sit and watch them.”

Early in the morning I go to the market, then to my friends’ place, where I make the soup. I have to grate everything and grind it. Someone said, “Bring me some apple juice.” So I come with six half-liter cans, always for six! I race to the hospital, then I sit there until evening. In the evening, I go back across the city. How much longer could I have kept that up? After three days they told me I could stay in the dorm for medical workers, it’s on hospital grounds. God, how wonderful!

“But there’s no kitchen. How am I going to cook?”

“You don’t need to cook anymore. They can’t digest the food.”

He started to change—every day I met a brand-new person. The burns started to come to the surface. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks—at first there were little lesions, and then they grew. It came off in layers—as white film . . . the color of his face . . . his body . . . blue . . . red . . . gray-brown. And it’s all so very mine! It’s impossible to describe! It’s impossible to write down! And even to get over. The only thing that saved me was it happened so fast; there wasn’t any time to think, there wasn’t any time to cry.

I loved him! I had no idea how much! We’d just gotten married. We’re walking down the street—he’d grab my hands and whirl me around. And kiss me, kiss me. People are walking by and smiling.

It was a hospital for people with serious radiation poisoning. Fourteen days. In fourteen days a person dies.

On the very first day in the dormitory they measured me with a dosimeter. My clothes, bag, purse, shoes—they were all “hot.” And they took that all away from me right there. Even my underthings. The only thing they left was my money. In exchange they gave me a hospital robe—a size 56—and some size 43 slippers. They said they’d return the clothes, maybe, or maybe they wouldn’t, since they might not be possible to “launder” at this point. That is how I looked when I came to visit him. I frightened him. “Woman, what’s wrong with you?” But I was still able to make him some soup. I boiled the water in a glass jar, and then I threw pieces of chicken in there—tiny, tiny pieces. Then someone gave me her pot, I think it was the cleaning woman or the guard. Someone else gave me a cutting board, for chopping my parsley. I couldn’t go to the market in my hospital robe, people would bring me the vegetables. But it was all useless, he couldn’t even drink anything. He couldn’t even swallow a raw egg. But I wanted to get something tasty! As if it mattered. I ran to the post office. “Girls,” I told them, “I need to call my parents in Ivano-Frankovsk right away! My husband is dying.” They understood right away where I was from and who my husband was, and they connected me. My father, sister, and brother flew out that very day to Moscow. They brought me my things. And money. It was the ninth of May. He always used to say to me: “You have no idea how beautiful Moscow is! Especially on V-Day, when they set off the fireworks. I want you to see it.”

I’m sitting with him in the room, he opens his eyes. “Is it day or night?”

“It’s nine at night.”

“Open the window! They’re going to set off the fireworks!”

I opened the window. We’re on the eighth floor, and the whole city’s there before us! There was a bouquet of fire exploding in the air.

“Look at that!” I said.

“I told you I’d show you Moscow. And I told you I’d always give you flowers on holidays . . .”

I look over, and he’s getting three carnations from under his pillow. He gave the nurse money, and she bought them.

I run over to him and I kiss him.

“My love! My one and only!”

He starts growling. “What did the doctors tell you? No hugging me. And no kissing!”

They wouldn’t let me hug him. But I . . . I lifted him and sat him up. I made his bed. I placed the thermometer. I picked up and brought back the sanitation dish. I stayed up with him all night.

It’s a good thing that it was in the hallway, not the room, that my head started spinning, I grabbed onto the windowsill. A doctor was walking by, he took me by the arm. And then suddenly: “Are you pregnant?”

“No, no!” I was so scared someone would hear us.

“Don’t lie,” he sighed.

The next day I get called to the head doctor’s office.

“Why did you lie to me?” she says.

“There was no other way. If I’d told you, you’d send me home. It was a sacred lie!”

“What have you done?”

“But I was with him . . .”

I’ll be grateful to Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova my whole life. My whole life! Other wives also came, but they weren’t allowed in. Their mothers were with me. Volodya Pravik’s mother kept begging God: “Take me instead.” An American professor, Dr. Gale—he’s the one who did the bone marrow operation—tried to comfort me. There’s a tiny ray of hope, he said, not much, but a little. Such a powerful organism, such a strong guy! They called for all his relatives. Two of his sisters came from Belarus, his brother from Leningrad, he was in the army there. The younger one, Natasha, she was fourteen, she was very scared and cried a lot. But her bone marrow was the best fit. [Silent.] Now I can talk about this. Before I couldn’t. I didn’t talk about it for ten years. [Silent.]

When he found out they’d be taking the bone marrow from his little sister, he flat-out refused. “I’d rather die. She’s so small. Don’t touch her.” His older sister Lyuda was twenty-eight, she was a nurse herself, she knew what she was getting into. “As long as he lives,” she said. I watched the operation. They were lying next to each other on the tables. There was a big window onto the operating room. It took two hours. When they were done, Lyuda was worse off than he was, she had eighteen punctures in her chest, it was very difficult for her to come out from under the anesthesia. Now she’s sick, she’s an invalid. She was a strong, pretty girl. She never got married. So then I was running from one room to the other, from his room to hers. He wasn’t in an ordinary room anymore, he was in a special bio-chamber, behind a transparent curtain. No one was allowed inside.

They have instruments there, so that without going through the curtain they can give him shots, place the catheter. The curtains are held together by Velcro, and I’ve learned to use them. But I push them aside and go inside to him. There was a little chair next to his bed. He got so bad that I couldn’t leave him now even for a second. He was calling me constantly: “Lyusya, where are you? Lyusya!” He called and called. The other bio-chambers, where our boys were, were being tended to by soldiers, because the orderlies on staff refused, they demanded protective clothing. The soldiers carried the sanitary vessels. They wiped the floors down, changed the bedding. They did everything. Where did they get those soldiers? We didn’t ask. But he—he—every day I would hear: Dead. Dead. Tischura is dead. Titenok is dead. Dead. It was like a sledgehammer to my brain.

He was producing stool 25 to 30 times a day. With blood and mucous. His skin started cracking on his arms and legs. He became covered with boils. When he turned his head, there’d be a clump of hair left on the pillow. I tried joking: “It’s convenient, you don’t need a comb.” Soon they cut all their hair. I did it for him myself. I wanted to do everything for him myself. If it had been physically possible I would have stayed with him all twenty-four hours. I couldn’t spare a minute. [Long silence.] My brother came and he got scared. “I won’t let you in there!” But my father said to him: “You think you can stop her? She’ll go through the window! She’ll get up through the fire escape!”

I go back to the hospital and there’s an orange on the bedside table. A big one, and pink. He’s smiling: “I got a gift. Take it.” Meanwhile the nurse is gesturing through the film that I can’t eat it. It’s been near him a while, so not only can you not eat it, you shouldn’t even touch it. “Come on, eat it,” he says. “You like oranges.” I take the orange in my hand. Meanwhile he shuts his eyes and goes to sleep. They were always giving him shots to put him to sleep. The nurse is looking at me in horror. And me? I’m ready to do whatever it takes so that he doesn’t think about death. And about the fact that his death is horrible, that I’m afraid of him. There’s a fragment of some conversation, I’m remembering it. Someone is saying: “You have to understand: this is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You’re not suicidal. Get ahold of yourself.” And I’m like someone who’s lost her mind: “But I love him! I love him!” He’s sleeping, and I’m whispering: “I love you!” Walking in the hospital courtyard, “I love you.” Carrying his sanitary tray, “I love you.” I remembered how we used to live at home. He only fell asleep at night after he’d taken my hand. That was a habit of his—to hold my hand while he slept. All night. So in the hospital I take his hand and don’t let go.

One night, everything’s quiet. We’re all alone. He looked at me very, very carefully and suddenly he said:

“I want to see our child so much. How is he?”

“What are we going to name him?”

“You’ll decide that yourself.”

“Why myself, when there’s two of us?”

“In that case, if it’s a boy, he should be Vasya, and if it’s a girl, Natasha.”

I had no idea then how much I loved him! Him . . . just him. I was like a blind person! I couldn’t even feel the little pounding underneath my heart. Even though I was six months in. I thought that my little one was inside me, that he was protected.

None of the doctors knew I was staying with him at night in the bio-chamber. The nurses let me in. At first they pleaded with me, too: “You’re young. Why are you doing this? That’s not a person anymore, that’s a nuclear reactor. You’ll just burn together.” I was like a dog, running after them. I’d stand for hours at their doors, begging and pleading. And then they’d say: “All right! The hell with you! You’re not normal!” In the mornings, just before eight, when the doctors started their rounds, they’d be there on the other side of the film: “Run!” So I’d go to the dorm for an hour. Then from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. I have a pass to come in. My legs were blue below the knee, blue and swollen, that’s how tired I was.

While I was there with him, they wouldn’t, but when I left—they photographed him. Without any clothes. Naked. One thin little sheet on top of him. I changed that little sheet every day, and every day by evening it was covered in blood. I pick him up, and there are pieces of his skin on my hand, they stick to my hands. I ask him: “Love. Help me. Prop yourself up on your arm, your elbow, as much as you can, I’ll smooth out your bedding, get the knots and folds out.” Any little knot, that was already a wound on him. I clipped my nails down till they bled so I wouldn’t accidentally cut him. None of the nurses could approach him; if they needed anything they’d call me.

And they photographed him. For science, they said. I’d have pushed them all out of there! I’d have yelled! And hit them! How dare they? It’s all mine—it’s my love—if only I’d been able to keep them out of there.

I’m walking out of the room into the hallway. And I’m walking toward the couch, because I don’t see them. I tell the nurse on duty: “He’s dying.” And she says to me: “What did you expect? He got 1,600 roentgen. Four hundred is a lethal dose. You’re sitting next to a nuclear reactor.” It’s all mine . . . it’s my love. When they all died, they did a remont at the hospital. They scraped down the walls and dug up the parquet.

And then—the last thing. I remember it in flashes, all broken up.

I’m sitting on my little chair next to him at night. At eight I say: “Vasenka, I’m going to go for a little walk.” He opens his eyes and closes them, lets me go. I just walk to the dorm, go up to my room, lie down on the floor, I couldn’t lie on the bed, everything hurt too much, when already the cleaning lady is knocking on the door. “Go! Run to him! He’s calling for you like mad!” That morning Tanya Kibenok pleaded with me: “Come to the cemetery, I can’t go there alone.” They were burying Vitya Kibenok and Volodya Pravik. They were friends of my Vasya. Our families were friends. There’s a photo of us all in the building the day before the explosion. Our husbands are so handsome! And happy! It was the last day of that life. We were all so happy!

I came back from the cemetery and called the nurse’s post right away. “How is he?” “He died fifteen minutes ago.” What? I was there all night. I was gone for three hours! I came up to the window and started shouting: “Why? Why?” I looked up at the sky and yelled. The whole building could hear me. They were afraid to come up to me. Then I came to: I’ll see him one more time! Once more! I run down the stairs. He was still in his bio-chamber, they hadn’t taken him away yet. His last words were “Lyusya! Lyusenka!” “She’s just stepped away for a bit, she’ll be right back,” the nurse told him. He sighed and went quiet. I didn’t leave him anymore after that. I escorted him all the way to the grave site. Although the thing I remember isn’t the grave, it’s the plastic bag. That bag.

At the morgue they said, “Want to see what we’ll dress him in?” I do! They dressed him up in formal wear, with his service cap. They couldn’t get shoes on him because his feet had swelled up. They had to cut up the formal wear, too, because they couldn’t get it on him, there wasn’t a whole body to put it on. It was all—wounds. The last two days in the hospital—I’d lift his arm, and meanwhile the bone is shaking, just sort of dangling, the body has gone away from it. Pieces of his lungs, of his liver, were coming out of his mouth. He was choking on his internal organs. I’d wrap my hand in a bandage and put it in his mouth, take out all that stuff. It’s impossible to talk about. It’s impossible to write about. And even to live through. It was all mine. My love. They couldn’t get a single pair of shoes to fit him. They buried him barefoot.

Right before my eyes—in his formal wear—they just took him and put him in that cellophane bag of theirs and tied it up. And then they put this bag in the wooden coffin. And they tied the coffin with another bag. The plastic is transparent, but thick, like a tablecloth. And then they put all that into a zinc coffin. They squeezed it in. Only the cap didn’t fit.

Everyone came—his parents, my parents. They bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. The Extraordinary Commission met with us. They told everyone the same thing: it’s impossible for us to give you the bodies of your husbands, your sons, they are very radioactive and will be buried in a Moscow cemetery in a special way. In sealed zinc caskets, under cement tiles. And you need to sign this document here.

If anyone got indignant and wanted to take the coffin back home, they were told that the dead were now, you know, heroes, and that they no longer belonged to their families. They were heroes of the State. They belonged to the State.

We sat in the hearse. The relatives and some sort of military people. A colonel and his regiment. They tell the regiment: “Await your orders!” We drive around Moscow for two or three hours, around the beltway. We’re going back to Moscow again. They tell the regiment: “We’re not allowing anyone into the cemetery. The cemetery’s being attacked by foreign correspondents. Wait some more.” The parents don’t say anything. Mom has a black handkerchief. I sense I’m about to black out. “Why are they hiding my husband? He’s—what? A murderer? A criminal? Who are we burying?” My mom: “Quiet. Quiet, daughter.” She’s petting me on the head. The colonel calls in: “Let’s enter the cemetery. The wife is getting hysterical.” At the cemetery we were surrounded by soldiers. We had a convoy. And they were carrying the coffin. No one was allowed in. It was just us. They covered him with earth in a minute. “Faster! Faster!” the officer was yelling. They didn’t even let me hug the coffin. And—onto the bus. Everything on the sly.

Right away they bought us plane tickets back home. For the next day. The whole time there was someone with us in plainclothes with a military bearing. He wouldn’t even let us out of the dorm to buy some food for the trip. God forbid we might talk with someone—especially me. As if I could talk by then. I couldn’t even cry. When we were leaving, the woman on duty counted all the towels and all the sheets. She folded them right away and put them into a polyethylene bag. They probably burnt them. We paid for the dormitory ourselves. For fourteen nights. It was a hospital for radiation poisoning. Fourteen nights. That’s how long it takes a person to die.

At home I fell asleep. I walked into the place and just fell onto the bed. I slept for three days. An ambulance came. “No,” said the doctor, “she’ll wake up. It’s just a terrible sleep.”

I was twenty-three.

I remember the dream I had. My dead grandmother comes to me in the clothes that we buried her in. She’s dressing up the New Year’s tree. “Grandma, why do we have a New Year’s tree? It’s summertime.” “Because your Vasenka is going to join me soon.” And he grew up in the forest. I remember the dream—Vasya comes in a white robe and calls for Natasha. That’s our girl, who I haven’t given birth to yet. She’s already grown up. He throws her up to the ceiling, and they laugh. And I’m watching them and thinking that happiness—it’s so simple. I’m sleeping. We’re walking along the water. Walking and walking. He probably asked me not to cry. Gave me a sign. From up there.

[She is silent for a long time.]

Two months later I went to Moscow. From the train station straight to the cemetery. To him! And at the cemetery I start going into labor. Just as I started talking to him—they called the ambulance. It was at the same Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova’s that I gave birth. She’d said to me back then: “You need to come here to give birth.” It was two weeks before I was due.

They showed her to me—a girl. “Natashenka,” I called out. “Your father named you Natashenka.” She looked healthy. Arms, legs. But she had cirrhosis of the liver. Her liver had twenty-eight roentgen. Congenital heart disease. Four hours later they told me she was dead. And again: we won’t give her to you. What do you mean you won’t give her to me? It’s me who won’t give her to you! You want to take her for science. I hate your science! I hate it!

[She is silent.]

I keep saying the wrong thing to you. The wrong thing. I’m not supposed to yell after my stroke. And I’m not supposed to cry. That’s why the words are all wrong. But I’ll say this. No one knows this. When they brought me the little wooden box and said, “She’s in there,” I looked. She’d been cremated. She was ashes. And I started crying. “Put her at his feet,” I requested.

There, at the cemetery, it doesn’t say Natasha Ignatenko. There’s only his name. She didn’t have a name yet, she didn’t have anything. Just a soul. That’s what I buried there. I always go there with two bouquets: one for him, and the other I put in the corner for her. I crawl around the grave on my knees. Always on my knees. [She becomes incomprehensible.] I killed her. I. She. Saved. My little girl saved me, she took the whole radioactive shock into herself, she was like the lightning rod for it. She was so small. She was a little tiny thing. [She has trouble breathing.] She saved . . . But I loved them both. Because—because you can’t kill something with love, right? With such love! Why are these things together—love and death. Together. Who’s going to explain this to me? I crawl around the grave on my knees.

[She is silent for a long time.]

In Kiev they gave me an apartment. It was in a large building, where they put everyone from the atomic station. It’s a big apartment, with two rooms, the kind Vasya and I had dreamed of. And I was going crazy in it!

I found a husband eventually. I told him everything—the whole truth—that I have one love, for my whole life. I told him everything. We’d meet, but I’d never invite him to my home, that’s where Vasya was.

I worked in a candy shop. I’d be making cake, and tears would be rolling down my cheeks. I’m not crying, but there are tears rolling down.

I gave birth to a boy, Andrei. Andreika. My friends tried to stop me. “You can’t have a baby.” And the doctors tried to scare me: “Your body won’t be able to handle it.” Then, later—later they told me that he’d be missing an arm. His right arm. The instrument showed it. “Well, so what?” I thought. “I’ll teach him to write with his left hand.” But he came out fine. A beautiful boy. He’s in school now, he gets good grades. Now I have someone—I can live and breathe him. He’s the light in my life. He understands everything perfectly. “Mom, if I go visit grandma for two days, will you be able to breathe?” I won’t! I fear the day I’ll have to leave him. One day we’re walking down the street. And I feel that I’m falling. That’s when I had my first stroke. Right on the street. “Mom, do you need some water?” “No, just stand here next to me. Don’t go anywhere.” And I grabbed his arm. I don’t remember what happened next. I came to in the hospital. But I grabbed him so hard that the doctors were barely able to pry my fingers open. His arm was blue for a long time. Now we walk out of the house, he says, “Mommie, just don’t grab my arm. I won’t go anywhere.” He’s also sick: two weeks in school, two weeks at home with a doctor. That’s how we live.

[She stands up, goes over to the window.]

There are many of us here. A whole street. That’s what it’s called—Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that’s how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they’re invalids, but they don’t leave their jobs, they’re scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In an instant. They just drop—someone will be walking, he falls down, goes to sleep, never wakes up. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one’s really asked us. No one’s asked what we’ve been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them.

But I was telling you about love. About my love . . .

Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman Vasily Ignatenko