Chernobyl

Chapter 15

Although the Soviet Army soldier Sergei Konov was born in Tashkent, he is both Russian and Muscovite by ancestry and upbringing. He does not remember anything about Tashkent. He doesn't even remember coming to Moscow with his parents when he was two years old. He remembers very well leaving it when he was ordered up for his military service in June of 1984, when he was twenty, because he did not at all want to go. Konov has not been a good soldier. He did not want to be a soldier at all, since he didn't like any of the possibilities that suggested. You could be sent to Afghanistan and die there, you could go to Poland and have the Solidarity girls shun you; you could, at the very best, have to spend all your time doing dull and arduous things for a couple of years, with no chance to put on the beautiful Wrangler jeans and join friends in the Blue Bird nightclub off Pushkin Street, or listen to Beatles and Abba tapes in someone's flat until daylight.

But what Konov wanted had not mattered. There was no way to get out of it, though he had tried. The entire jar of American coffee powder he had forced himself to brew and drink just before his examination by the military doctor had certainly made his heart pound, but the doctor had not been impressed. All he had said was,

"Less coffee, please, Konov; you will serve your country better if you sleep at night."

Konov has a reputation in his unit as a sloppy soldier. He has deserved it. He doesn't get along very well with most of his comrades, few of whom are Slavs like himself (and none, of course, Byelorussians, since the Byelorussian Republic is where his 461st Guards Rifle Division is based.) He avoids all the details he can — pretty successfully now that he is a fourth class soldier, with his discharge not far away and thus in a position to make the juniors do his work for him.

He has one ambition, and that is to avoid being sent to a punishment battalion before his time is up. Since Konov was in the summer 1984 intake, his term of service will expire exactly two years later, on June 12, 1986. He knows that date well. He has been looking forward to his demobilization date for exactly 684 days so far, and as he bumps along in the Army truck to his new assignment, he calculates that that date is (he looks at his watch) now just 66,240 minutes away.

Konov didn't know that Chernobyl was the name of the place they were going to on that Sunday afternoon in April, the one day in the week that should have been their precious own. Konov didn't know anything at all about where they were going or what they were supposed to do. Neither did any of the other twenty-odd soldiers in his truck, bouncing along a country road at a hundred and thirty kilometers an hour, until they stopped at a crossroads and were ordered out of the trucks.

They straggled down from the truck to relieve themselves, lined up along the edge of a field of winter wheat, exchanging with the soldiers from the other trucks the same guesses and denials they had been exchanging with their truckmates for the past two hours. No one had any facts. None of the units was even complete. The 461st Guards Rifle Division had been put on alert at two o'clock that afternoon and the units that were in camp ordered to be on board the trucks with full gear at fifteen minutes before three. "It can't be the Americans attacking," said one, "because we'd be going east, not south."

And another said, "Americans your asshole. It's the fucking Ukrainians. They've found another Cossack bandit to lead them, so they're trying a revolt." And another still was certain it was the Chinese, sneaking over the border from Iran — or the Afghans, bored with shooting down Soviet troops in their own country and now invading — or the Martians; and it wasn't until the sergeant came trotting up to shout at them that they got any information at all. Then it wasn't immediately helpful.

"Assholes," he yelled. "You should all piss on the east side of the road — the west is where you're sleeping tonight!"

"Sleeping here, Sergeant?" called one. "You mean we're going to be staying in this place? What are we here for?"

And the sergeant waved a hand to the distant pillar of smoke on the southern horizon. "You see that? That is what we're here for, and you'll all be damned lucky if you ever live to see anything else."

It was just his way of talking, Konov's comrades reassured one another.

But an hour later, when they were in the town of Pripyat, Konov was no longer so sure. Some of the militiamen guarding the approaches had called to the soldiers, and the words they used were scary. Atomic explosion. Out of control. Worst of all, People are dying here! And no one seemed to think that was an exaggeration. And then they were all issued light little aluminum things that looked like fountain pens. The men turned them over curiously, and when they were told that these objects were called dosimeters and their purpose was to measure how much dangerous radiation each of them might receive, the mood of the soldiers became quite thoughtful.

Their job turned out to be getting the people out of the town of Pripyat. An endless creeping caterpillar of buses — city buses, highway buses, military buses; Konov had never seen so many buses in one place, eleven hundred of them someone said! — were snaking along the highway toward the town. The first task of the soldiers was to get the people out of their houses and onto the transport. Immediately. In pairs they were assigned blocks and buildings. And Konov found himself running up and down stairs, bawling to the occupants that the town of Pripyat was to be evacuated — simply temporarily, as a precaution — and everyone was to be ready to leave in half an hour. Meanwhile, were there any sick? Pregnant women? Old people, or people with a heart condition who would need special help?

It surprised Konov that the Pripyaters took his shouted orders so lightly. Of course, they had had ample warning that something was up. If somehow they had missed seeing that worrisome distant smoke cloud, then certainly the militia cars cruising every block with their loudspeakers blaring were letting them know. And yet there were people who didn't want to go, there were people who couldn't make up their minds to go and people — many, many people — who definitely wanted to be taken out of the threatened town as fast as possible, but first wanted to be given time to make decisions, help to pack up their food, their clothes, their pets, their children.

There was no time. "In thirty minutes," shouted Konov, "you will be out of this building, or we will be back to drag you out! You must take food and necessities for three days, do you understand? And in thirty minutes there will be a bus at your door to take you!"

When he first saw Pripyat, Konov felt almost jealous. The eight-story concrete buildings of flats on the outskirts were quite like those that had swallowed all the green fields around Moscow — like, in fact, the ones Konov's parents still lived in just off the Leningradskaya Prospekt. But the ones farther into the town were something quite different. They were, in a word, beautiful. They were well kept, too, and surrounded by trees and parks. It was not just that someone with a bulldozer had sculptured a greensward here, a circular flower bed there; Pripyat's trees were native firs as well as chestnuts and fruit trees, and some of them were already in blossom. How fine it would be to live in a place like this, Konov thought. The only things that reminded him of home were cars drawn up on the sidewalk, some of them on blocks, nearly half of them still covered with the canvas shrouds that had protected them through the Ukrainian winter. And inside the buildings it was even more like home, for, new as they were, the hallways held that omnipresent Russian aroma of old cabbage.

For the first time in his Army career Konov felt he was doing a job that was worth his while.

It was frightening, at first — a nuclear accident! But it was obvious that the important thing was to get all these people to safety. Konov moved faster than he had moved in the last year and ten and a half months, and yet it didn't seem to him that it was fast enough. By the time they had made their first pass through the two buildings assigned to them, Konov was itching to get on with the job. Pripyat was a town of young, healthy people, it seemed. Hardly any had needed special attention because of age or illness. The men of Konov's platoon hunkered down and smoked, waiting for the orders to finish the job.

"Miklas," Konov said to his partner, a dark-complected Armenian. "We can do this faster if we split up."

"Why do we want to do it faster?"

Konov hesitated. "To help these people?" It had turned into a question as he said the words.

Miklas looked at him with curiosity. "Seryozha," he said reasonably, "if we finish fast, they'll just find something else for us to do."

"Even so."

Miklas shook his head. "Well, why not? All right. You take the tall building, I'll take the other one."

Well, that served him right, Konov thought as he entered the second apartment house in the block. He had already figured out a new skill to meet the needs of the situation. It was better to start from the bottom of the building and to work his way up than to begin at the top. In his new system, he reasoned, you could double-check every flat on the way down because when the people were out of the top floor the ones lower down were already informed of what they had to do. Even, if you were lucky, many of them might already be in the street, trudging toward the loading zones on the sidewalks with their belongings in their arms and perhaps one child on their backs. He had to use threats at one of the first-floor apartments, but on the second floor he got unexpected help.

A tall, pale man with his arm in a sling was standing at the stairs, waiting for him.

Surprisingly, although the weather was warm in this late afternoon, the man was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a woolen cap. "Let me help you," he said, his tone oddly supplicatory. "My name is Kalychenko. I am an engineer. I worked at Chernobyl."

Konov frowned at him. "And how can you help now?" he demanded.

The man said apologetically, "At least I can explain to the people what they are facing! Many of them simply do not understand the danger of radiation."

"But you are hurt," Konov objected, eyeing the man's arm. It was not in a proper sling but a woman's shawl. "If you go down now, there may still be some ambulances for the sick people."

"I don't need an ambulance. I'll have it looked at later."

"Come on then," said Konov, turning away. He paused as the man tossed his own suitcase inside his apartment door. But he left the door open. "Aren't you afraid that will be stolen?" he asked.

The man laughed. "But that is impossible," he said. "There is not one person leaving Pripyat who can carry one more thing than he already has. Come on! The sooner we get these people moving, the sooner we all will be gone!"

Konov would not have believed it possible, but in less than ninety minutes from the time they entered Pripyat, a town of nearly fifty thousand people had become a wasteland.

The street Konov had been assigned to was almost the last to be evacuated. He patrolled the sidewalk with Miklas, always watching to see that none of the complaining citizens obeyed that impulse to go back for one more thing while they waited. "It would have been better," Miklas told him, observing the scene with a critic's eye, "to assemble everyone in the main squares and load from there."

"Nonsense," Konov said, equally critical. "They keep them at their houses because they don't want them to panic. Only they should have assigned each bus to a specific address at once, of course, so there would not be this long waiting."

"Nonsense to you too," said Miklas amiably, "and up your asshole. What would the Soviet Union be without long waiting? That is why you are not an officer, Sergei. You do not understand Soviet life."

"I will understand it perfectly when I am back in it," Konov said, and then, calling sharply, "You! Stay by the curb! Your bus will be here directly."

It wasn't, though. Konov could hear buses grinding their gears in the next block, but so far their own had not been reached. Only soldiers were moving on foot in any of the streets. Militia cars were all that roamed the avenues. Konov watched the knots of people on their block carefully for those who might change their minds, or remember something irreplaceable that they must certainly go back at once to retrieve. Some tried. None got through.

Now they could see the next block loading almost the last of Pripyat's people, as they were herded into the hundredth, or perhaps it was the thousandth, of the buses that patiently crawled through the emptying streets, loaded, and rolled away. The buses were of all kinds. Some had been making their runs in Pripyat itself, most seemed to be from the distant city of Kiev, others perhaps came from other communities nearby. There were even a few trucks with Army markings, perhaps the ones Konov and his comrades had come down in not two hours before. "So we walk back to our campground," grumbled Miklas, and Konov clapped him on the shoulder.

"You may be luckier than that," he said. "Look, they are putting one soldier on each bus; maybe you'll spend the night on the Black Sea!"

If that was where the buses were going, some of the people waiting to be evacuated had made bad guesses. Many wore sheepskin coats, even boots; one man even had a pair of skis. Another had a tennis racket; well, since they had been told the evacuation would be for only three days, no doubt they planned to have a little vacation to make up for the pains. (But where did the man with the skis think they were going?) And the things they carried! A live chicken, even; Konov saw it with his own eyes, under one old woman's arm. There were bird cages and rolled-up blankets, there were suitcases and duffel bags, paper sacks, cardboard cartons, table lamps with rosy pink shades, television sets, a stereo or two — there was nothing in any Soviet home small enough to carry, Konov thought, that he did not see on the backs or in the arms of some of the thousands. What possessions could there be that had been left behind? And yet, Konov knew, the answer was everything. Even the poorest owned much more than he alone could carry away, and the officers had been adamant: what a person could not lift aboard a bus in one trip stayed on the ground when the bus pulled away. There was already a mound of discarded, wept-over belongings stacked helter-skelter just inside the building door — to add to everything left in the flats, or at people's places of work — and the washing on the lines; and the food on the tables—

It must, Konov thought, have been like this nearly half a century ago, when the Germans finished their sweep around the Pripyat Marshes and overran all this land. But this was not Germans. This was not the work of any external enemy; it was, Konov thought uneasily, simply the result of what they had done to themselves.

He did not like that thought.

Konov pulled the unfamiliar dosimeter instrument off his cape and held it up to the light. When he peered through it he could see cryptic numbers and symbols, black on a white background; but what the symbols meant no one had told Konov.

At the end of the block the sergeant was in an altercation with a man who was shouting and pointing to a car, while the sergeant uninterestedly shook his head. "Look," said Miklas, "the poor man only wants to evacuate himself in his Zhiguli. Why won't the sergeant let him?"

"Because they don't want traffic jams, of course," said Konov, but there was something he wanted to ask the sergeant for himself. He was beginning to be very hungry. He got up and walked toward the sergeant, almost bumping into the pale man with an arm in a sling who had helped him evacuate one of the buildings — the one with the Ukrainian name, Kaly-something-or-other — but Konov had more important things on his mind. He barely returned the man's greeting, though he noticed the young woman beside him in the line was good-looking. Konov approached the sergeant, who was standing by himself and sipping something that came out of a Fanta orange-drink bottle but looked and smelled like beer. "Sergeant," Konov said politely, "it is past time for us to eat, I think."

"You will eat when you are told to. There will be food at the bivouac area, probably."

"Yes, sergeant," said Konov, "but that, too, is a question: if our trucks are being used to take these people out of danger, how will we get to the bivouac area? It is at least ten kilometers from here."

The sergeant said thoughtfully, "It is nearer twenty." He looked at Konov, and then added cheerfully, "But you won't have to walk. I was about to select a man to board that bus to keep the refugees in order. You'll do. Get on it."

"Get on it to where?" Konov demanded, recoiling a step.

"To wherever it goes," said the sergeant, reaching to pluck the dosimeter from Konov's blouse pocket. "But first give me that; we will need it for the patrols that remain on duty here."

"But, Sergeant!" Konov yelped. "I don't know what it says! If it turns out I have already been exposed to too much radiation, how will we know?"

"Of course we will know," said the sergeant, jerking a thumb toward the bus, "because we will get a report from wherever you are going to tell us that you are dead."

The mood in the bus was cheerful enough at first; someone had an accordion, and a few people in the front were singing as though they were teenagers off to their Komsomol camp for the summer. Then the bus rolled out onto the highway. It had to squeeze past a long line of Army vehicles, ambulances and heavy machines rolling toward the plant.

Everyone in the bus craned to look at the convoy. The holiday mood evaporated at once.

The bus was filled with people and their belongings. There was no seat for Konov, only the stairwell by the bus door; but at least he was on what seemed to be an intercity bus, not one of those urban ones where even the stairwell was so cramped no one could sleep in it. Konov did sleep, leaning back, his head almost under the driver's seat.

So, after a while, did most of those on the bus, even Kalychenko. He and his fiancee, too, had been lucky. They had managed to get two seats together. They had even managed to get into the very back of the bus, where there was a little more room on the floor to set down Raia's straw suitcase, her cooking pots, her sack of flour, and already-melting half kilo of lard; a J every ten minutes for the first fifty kilometers she would jerk up straight in her seat with something else she had forgotten; "The wine, Bohdan! The champagne for our wedding, it's still in the kitchen cabinet, they gave me no time to think!"

And Kalychenko would hush her, his arm twitching with pins-and-needles as it rested around her shoulder where she had been leaning against him: "Shush, Raia, it's all right. We're not leaving forever, you know?"

But was that true? Kalychenko knew quite well that "three days" might indeed stretch to forever. The fact that the town had been evacuated so hurriedly and utterly was certain proof that the radiation level had been not only above warning levels but definitely very dangerous indeed. (And how much radiation had each of them received already? Not as much for Kalychenko himself as he would have if he had remained at his post of duty, of course — but that line of thought led him to worries almost worse than future leukemia.)

He performed calculations in his mind, trying to remember the half-lives of all the deadly radionuclides that were likely to be in the smoke from the explosion and fire. Suppose (he thought) the firefighters and the engineers managed (somehow) to put out the flames and control the fission reactions. Suppose they sealed it all off. Very well. There would still remain all the tiny radioactive particles that had already fallen from the sky. The soot from the fire, the morning dew, the air itself had already left invisible films of radioactive cesium, iodine, strontium, and a dozen others. And all of them were still there in Pripyat, emitting radiation. Well, but some of them had short half-lives, he reminded himself. In just a few days half of the iodine would have radiated itself into some other element, a harmless one; in a few months the same would be true of the cesium, the strontium. In just a year or less the radiation would be only a fraction of its current levels.. .

A year or less! He did not even think of the long-lived transuranics, like plutonium, with a half-life of a quarter of a million years. A year was already an eternity.

And anyway, it all depended on how much there was to begin with. A quarter of a little bit was perhaps no more than the normal background, while a quarter of very much might still be enough to kill. And, worst of all, when could they start the patient clock that would tell them when they might return? For as the bus pulled out of Pripyat, Kalychenko had craned his neck to stare back. He could still see, in the waning light of that April day, the distant, uneven column of smoke. There seemed to be helicopters fluttering around it — sight-seers? Foolish ones, if they were, because if they flew through that plume, they would learn caution very thoroughly, if too late to do them any good.

The plume had been not one whit smaller or less frightening than it had been the day before.

So it could easily be a year before any of them saw Pripyat again. Kalychenko told himself. It could be much longer. It could be never. And what then of his precious stereo from East Germany, his magnetizdat tapes of Okudjava and the Beatles, his hopes for a car, his career? What of Raia's ten thousand forgotten treasures? What of their wedding? When she started up again—"My raincoat from Czechoslovakia! What if it rains where we're going?" — he patted her silently. It would rain, all right. It would rain many, many times before she saw that smart, new, black trench coat again.

When he woke from an uneasy sleep an hour later, it was because Raia was leaning across him. She was trying to help the woman in the seat ahead of them with her wailing baby. The infant had soiled itself, and the mother was trying to make a flat space on the clutter of bundles, bags, and personal possessions of all kinds that were piled in the aisle so she could change it. Under the circumstances, it was a major undertaking. The mother had not failed to bring everything she needed with her, especially including the rolls of gauze bandages that were used for diapers. Unfortunately, the child was in her lap and the bandages were in a bag buried somewhere along the aisle of the bus.

Kalychenko suffered his fiancee to climb over him, changing seats so that she could be more use to the woman ahead. Raia held the crying infant's shoulders securely while the mother dabbed him clean, then grumpily wound a head scarf around the baby boy's bottom.

Kalychenko averted his eyes. He could not avert his nose, and when the woman carefully rolled up the soiled diaper-bandages and deposited them at her feet, he complained to his fiancee, "She should throw them out the window! It's not fair, making us stand all that stink!"

Then it was Raia's turn to shush him. "And then what would she use when we got where we are going? It's all right, Bohdan. Here, let me make it smell better—" From her pock-etbook she pulled out a little flask of cologne and patted it on

Bohdan's cheek. "You don't mind about the scarf, do you?" she added shyly.

"The scarf? You mean you gave that woman my sling?" Kalychenko was suddenly outraged.

"But you don't seem to need it anymore, Bohdan dear. You lifted the bags with both hands. And, think, in just a few months, when we have our own little one—"

"I suppose it is all right," he grumbled. "Let us go back to sleep." Obediently Raia put her head on his shoulder again and presendy closed her eyes.

But for Kalychenko it was not so easy. Raia's last remark had reminded him of another problem of radiation. What about the baby she was carrying? Just how much radiation had Raia absorbed? He didn't know but had an uneasy feeling that pregnant women, or their babies anyway, were especially subject to radiation damage. In any case, he told himself, there was nothing he could do about it right now. But he remained wide awake, trying not to think.

He squirmed carefully in his seat, not wanting to disturb Raia. The woman ahead had politely opened her window a crack to try to dissipate the odor pervading her immediate area, but as a result a blast of damp, cold night air was striking Kalychenko just on the side of his head. His bladder was full. His future was murky. His mood was dour.

There was no doubt in Kalychenko's mind — well, no real doubt — that he wanted to go through with marrying Raia, even less that he wanted the child she was carrying. Of course, one should have a son! But his stomach churned with fear. Perhaps there was a way to have Raia checked for radiation. As for himself, the little bruises on his elbow, got when he fell as he fled the exploding reactor, no longer seemed very convincing even to him. Especially since Raia had given his sling away! The sling, of course, was no more than camouflage, simply circumstantial evidence to add credibility to the story he was planning to tell; but Kalychenko was aware he would need all the help he could get when questions were asked.

And, sooner or later, questions surely would be asked.

Kalychenko groaned — stifling it, so Raia would not hear— and tried to settle himself again for sleep. But the bus seemed to be slowing down, even stopping. It came to a dead halt, then lurched slowly forward again.

Kalychenko tried to raise himself to see ahead. There were lights in the road. Someone was shouting directions; the bus crept forward, then turned into a space on the side of the highway and came to a complete stop. The passengers began to stir.

The overhead lights on the bus came on and the door opened. Up ahead there was a muttered colloquy between the driver, the soldier who had gotten on with them, and someone from outside; then the soldier stood up: "Everybody is to get out here," he cried, his voice hoarse with sleep and fatigue. "Leave your belongings on the bus. Now, please, hurry up!"

It had not, after all, been altogether a good idea to sit at the back of the bus, for it took them forever to get out.

Emptying the bus was a complicated logistical problem. First the people in the front seats had to stand up and lift some of the things from the aisles onto the seats they had vacated before those in the next row could move into the aisle. The process had to be repeated, row by row, the whole length of the bus before it came to Kalychenko's and Raia's turn. There was no way to speed the process. All they could do was peer out the windows. They could see that they were in what seemed to be an agricultural station of some kind. There were other buses there, a dozen of them or more, and people milling around under bright lights. As they limped forward and stiffly disembarked, the soldier was calling, "Please, everybody! Listen. Remember your bus number, bus number eight two eight. Eight two eight, remember! When the bus number is called, follow instructions — and especially when it's time to go, make sure you get back on bus eight two eight, for it is my ass if you aren't!"

An old woman chided him: "Is that a way to speak, a Soviet Army soldier? Would your mother like to hear such talk?"

"I'm sorry," Konov said, abashed. "But please — bus eight two eight, don't forget!"

Men were drifting to the right, back down the road they had traveled, women to the left. Kalychenko went far enough to avoid the messes those before him had made and then relieved his bladder at the side of the road, stretching and shivering in the cold night air. One by one the buses were pulling up to a gasoline truck for refueling, then returning to their parking spaces while the drivers hurried to take care of their own needs. They closed the doors behind them. Soldiers— other soldiers, with the green flashes of the internal army— were keeping everyone but the drivers away. Still other soldiers were clustered around a pair of wooden tables, with people lined up before them, and from the back of a truck dirty, tired Komsomols were serving some kind of food.

Well, at least that was something. Kalychenko looked around for Raia, and when she returned from her own necessities along the southward stretch of the road, they lined up to get what was offered. The Komsomols looked both exhausted and keyed up as they dished out bread, sausages, and strong tea.

"I wonder where we are?" said Kalychenko as they found a low wall to sit on while they ate.

"A woman said it is a place called Sodolets," Raia told him, raising her voice to be heard. It was a noisy place to be, with bus motors grumbling and racing as new ones arrived and old ones left. "South of Kiev. We've come a long way." She was gazing at the mother from the bus who, her back modestly turned, was nursing her baby. "I hope we're nearly there," Raia fretted. "It's not good for the child, being up so late in this night air."

"It's not too good for me, either," Kalychenko grumbled, but softly. And then their bus number was called and they lined up one more time, under the bright lights, before the tables where an Army colonel was standing, scowling, smoking a cigarette while two lieutenants were, wonder of wonders! Giving away money! When he reached the head of the line, Kalychenko displayed his passport. The lieutenant painstakingly copied his name onto a long list and then carefully counted out twenty new ten-ruble notes into Kalychenko's hand. "For what?" Kalychenko asked, astonished.

"For you," said the lieutenant. "To help you get settled in your new home. A gift from the peoples of the Soviet Union. Now move along quickly, there are others behind you!"

Kalychenko counted over the notes, frowning. He followed Raia to where the passengers from bus number 828 were now ordered to assemble. The soldier from Pripyat was standing there at the closed bus door, a mug of tea in his hand. He looked more cheerful than before, and he nodded to Kalychenko. "Now all of you listen," he ordered. "When you get back on the bus, be sensible. The ones in the last rows go first. Take the same seats you had before. Otherwise it will simply be a disorderly mess, and—"

Then he fell silent as an Army captain came up with a clipboard. "Reboard now," he ordered in a weary voice, punching at the door until it opened. "Just a few more hours, Comrades, then you'll be in your new homes. Where?" He looked at the clipboard. "This is bus number eight two eight? Well, you've got a trip still ahead of you. It's a place called Yuzhevin."