Chernobyl

Chapter 30

What a Soviet Army soldier looks like is easy to see, for there are posters of him all over the USSR. He is blond and young. His face peers eagerly into the future, with his chin thrust forward just like Lenin's. His forage cap is cocked precisely over his left ear; his blouse is neatly buttoned, and, although you cannot see his boots in the picture, you know that they are brilliantly shined. That is the ideal Soviet Army soldier.

There is also Private Sergei Konov. Konov does not look that way at all, especially after returning from a day of shoveling clay to close a culvert or squatting in a muddy ditch on perimeter guard. . and yet there is something about Konov that is not like the Konov of only one week before. He has surprised his comrades. Most of all, he has surprised his lieutenant, who had never considered the possibility that Private Konov would ever volunteer for anything.

"You understand," the lieutenant said warily, "that this duty is

a bit dangerous."

"I do, Senior Lieutenant Osipev."

"Of course, if you follow orders exactly, you'll be all right.

Only you must be quick."

"I will, Senior Lieutenant Osipev."

"And then you get the rest of the day off. Well," the

lieutenant sighed, "you have my permission to volunteer, so get on with you then, Konov. The armored car is waiting to take the cleanup squad to the plant."

Konov wasn't the only volunteer. There were fifty others standing uneasily about in the top floor of the plant, just under the roof. It was the first time most of them had been inside the actual buildings of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station itself, and they were wary about touching anything, even about being there at all. When they were all gathered, the sergeant looked them over dispassionately. "We don't have any use for loafers," he told them. "You've got to move quick, do your job, jump back inside, and that's it. Otherwise you'll be as dead as the lad that's still inside there. And we don't have suits to fit freaks. If you're over a hundred kilos or under sixty-five, drop out now."

Six or seven of the soldiers fell out, most of them scowling— though some of them, Konov thought, were frowning more with relief than disappointment. The promise of a whole day off had sounded attractive, especially after a week of shoveling rubble, but up here it all began to sound a lot more serious.

The training was as simple as the requirements. When they had made their way to the last stairway to the roof— walking briskly all the time, sometimes running as the sergeant warned them past points of high radioactivity — a major looked them over, shook his head, and turned them over to a different sergeant. "Line up!" the noncom commanded. "Count off by fours! All right, you first four! Find a suit that fits you, put it on, make sure it's tightly closed or you'll never do your mothers again."

The suits were clammy, like rubber diving suits, and heavy with the lead they contained. "Don't fart in your suits, lads, think of the next man who'll wear it," the sergeant cautioned the first group. "Now the boots — lace 'em up all the way! The helmets. . The respirators — sure, a hundred other soldiers have been sucking the same masks, but just think of it as kissing your girl!" And then, before he had time to think, it was the turn of Konov's four.

Up the stairs to the roof on the double—"Go!" the major shouted — burst out the door, grab a lump of graphite the size of a woman's ass (hot, too! Thank God for the lead-lined gloves) — heave it over the side of the roof — another — another— another — and all the time the major yelling off the seconds, forty, fifty, sixty—

When Konov's four were inside again the major grinned. "Sixty-one seconds for the last man. You've done well. Now, off with you, and the brave ones can come back tomorrow and do it again."

And actually Konov thought he might. His dosimeter said that he'd picked up less than half a roentgen, and it was certainly more interesting than shoveling the dirt the bulldozers had missed.

It was also more useful. When the armored car had taken Konov's group back to the abandoned collective farm that was their headquarters, Konov wheedled a cup of tea from the cook sergeant and wondered what to do with this day off he did not particularly want.

To throw lumps of hot radioactive graphite off the roof of the plant so the bulldozers could scoop them up and cart them safely away — that was useful. Exciting, even, for those lumps had once been part of the very core that had exploded and caused the whole disaster. Frightening, a little, too, but it was as the lieutenant had said: if you were quick and followed orders, you would be all right — unless, of course, you stumbled and fell, or unless you left a seam open in your rubber-lead suit, or unless something else went wrong.

But nothing had gone wrong, and the day, really, had just begun. Struck by a thought, Konov counted on his fingers and realized that it was a Saturday. That was the Soviet soldier's day of freedom — when you weren't called out for a surprise inspection, or a twenty-kilometer forced march, which you were once or twice every month, anyway. It was the day when the soldier could sleep, or play football on the parade ground, or even go into town and see what the local girls were up to — but what could you do with a day off here, anyway? You couldn't even leave the old cow barn that was their barracks without putting on the radiation garments, and who could play football in a breathing mask? Even if there had been anyone else to get up a game with!

Konov knocked on the door of his lieutenant's quarters.

"Private Konov reporting for duty, Senior Lieutenant Osipev," he said, standing at attention.

The lieutenant looked startled. "Didn't you understand me? You have the rest of the day off."

"Yes, Senior Lieutenant Osipev. I wish to return to duty."

"What, are you suddenly addicted to shoveling dirt? Most of the men are raising dikes today."

"As the lieutenant wishes," Konov said agreeably.

Osipev peered at him curiously for a moment, then shrugged. "Oh, well," he said, "There's a truck going to Pripyat with more oil for the sprayers. You can go there, but be quick about it. The truck's ready to leave."

"Thank you, Senior Lieutenant Osipev," Konov said. As he marched away, he could feel the lieutenant's wondering eyes on his back.

Actually, that was the detail Konov liked best, to go in among the high-rises of the ghost town of Pripyat. That was a task of trust and importance. The vanished inhabitants couldn't protect their belongings from looters or weather or radiation; it was Konov's duty, and Konov's pleasure, to do it for them.

Today's job was a little different. The orders were to take a spray tank into Pripyat, to oil down all the patches of exposed earth that the trucks might have missed. He didn't go alone; there was a buddy system enforced, so they could watch each other — after all, the temptation to pick up some abandoned treasure might be too much for even a soldier to resist.

His partner was Miklas the Armenian, short, dark, angry at the world and especially at the Army that had taken two years of his agreeable young life — the second worst soldier in the detachment until Konov had vacated the bottom spot for him. But as soon as they were by themselves, they flipped a three-kopeck coin to see who would carry the radiation counter— Miklas got it — and then, to get the job done with faster, walked in opposite directions.

It was hard work. Konov was sweating at once inside his coverall and hood, but he was meticulous. He sought out and poked his long-handled spray into every corner of the garden plots (dead tomato vines and grape) and floral plantings (wilted stalks with buds that would never blossom through their thick coating of oil).

Looked at in one way, what Konov was doing was destruction. Where he saw green life, he killed it with his spray. Where a missed corner of black earth showed through the greasy film, he covered it at once with deadly oil. He didn't look at it in that way. He was wielding the surgeon's knife, he reasoned. He killed here to prevent a worse death somewhere else, and so he was painstaking at poking his spray behind dead shrubs, under wooden steps, into every corner that might have been overlooked.

It took him an hour or more to finish the grounds around a single building, and there were half a hundred high-rise apartments in Pripyat, not to count the parks and school yards and open squares and offices and stores. No matter. Not one centimeter was going to get by Sergei Konov. Nor did he neglect his collateral duties. All the time he was spraying he was alert for the sounds or sights of unauthorized others in the town.

There were, of course, some who had a right to be there, for he and his partner were not alone. Two other teams were spraying in other areas, and there were the big orange trucks that rumbled through now and then to water down the roadways one more time. But when he turned a corner of a building and saw a smaller truck standing there with its motor running and its back flaps up and no one in sight, he had one sudden thought: Looters.

He had to investigate. He shrugged the tank off his shoulders and set it down, and cautiously approached the truck. It was full of things! Things taken from the empty apartments! So perhaps there really were looters at work, because Konov could see radio sets and tape machines stacked inside the truck.

Yet each one was tagged with the number of the apartment it had come from, and surely looters would not care about such a thing. And just inside the tailgate were things that a looter would hardly bother with: books, magazines, papers, also all carefully tagged: 115 Victory Drive, Flat 22; 112 Marx Prospekt, Flat 18.

Konov's curiosity made him pick some of the printed materials up. Some of the papers were bound into volumes of their own, with blue cardboard covers on which someone had typed a title and a name. They were not real books, with illustrations on the jacket and printed pages. They were mimeographed, some of them hardly legible, carefully stitched together with cotton thread. When he read a few of the titles they were quite unfamiliar — authors with names like Vladimir Voinovich (who was Vladimir Voinovich? Konov often read books, but he had never heard of this author before), and Oksana Mechko (Mechko? another puzzle) and — what was this? — oh, Boris Pasternak, Andrei Amalryk — of course! All this was samizdat! Konov had seen samizdat before, but never so much, or so carefully collected.

It was not all samizdat, however. There were separate piles of brighdy colored magazines, all foreign. These were not tagged at all but simply stacked in heaps, and when Konov got a look at the covers his eyes popped.. though not as much as they did when he turned the pages and saw — women! Beautiful women! Naked women! And not merely naked, but displaying all of their most private of parts in brazenly alluring ways!

Konov had never seen such pictures. He had never dreamed they existed — and here were twelve or fourteen magazines, all filled with them! True, the writing was in English and German and what looked to Konov like Italian, and incomprehensible therefore; but who needed writing to say what these photographs represented?

A harsh voice from behind him snarled: "And what do you think you're doing, pig's scum?"

Konov turned guiltily to confront two men, gloved hands filled with more papers and books. Their insignia was hidden by the white coveralls, but he didn't need to see their flashes to know what branch of service they represented. "I am on duty here," he said doggedly. "Are you on official business?"

"We are always on official business," the other one said, his voice light and pleasant. The eyes behind the gauze mask, however, were bleak. "We were gathering evidence. What, do you want to take one of these filthy magazines? Why not?" And he took one from the top of the stack in his arms.

"Not that one," growled the other man, pointing to the magazine with the English title Hustler.

"Then this one. And this. And take them away quickly, little soldier, because we are very busy."

Konov did. It was always better to do what the organs wanted you to do. And then, for half an hour, he sat just inside the doorway of one of the tall apartment buildings, so that he could see outside, carefully turning over every page. He could feel himself harden as he turned back to gaze again at one of his favorites, this one of the little blonde in her underwear, standing with her back turned and her head cocked coyly toward him, one thumb beginning to lower the panties; or this other of the slim, almost boyish brunette, lying on her back and looking impassively at him through her spread knees.

"And what have you stolen now?" asked his partner, Miklas, coming up to the door.

Konov jumped. Then he handed one of the magazines to Miklas and watched the man's eyes pop as he leafed through the pages. "And there are more of them in the truck?" he asked.

"Dozens more. Also samizdat, all kinds."

"Konov," said Miklas sorrowfully, "do you know what those magazines are worth? We could get ten rubles each for them."

"We could get arrested as looters, you fool."

"Only if we are foolish enough to be caught. We aren't looters; the GehBehs have done that for us. Also, what do you think they are going to do with that samizdat, but make some poor man's life miserable? It is our duty," Miklas said virtuously, "to protect the interests of the people who were thrown out of their homes without notice. We should do what we can to save them from harm!"

When the GehBehs came back, their arms full of more papers and a shortwave radio, they saw Konov and Miklas at the tailgate of the truck, running the radiation detector over the stacks of papers. "Hey!" shouted one of them. "Assholes! Get away from there at once!"

Miklas turned to them apologetically, running the prod over the magazines. "With all regret, your honors," he said obsequiously, "just listen!" The detector was screaming.

"What is this?" the GehBeh demanded. "Is this material contaminated?"

"All of it, I'm afraid," said Miklas sorrowfully. "Was it near open windows? Perhaps exposed to dust? Radioactivity is so tricky, your honors, one can never tell what is safe and what may be deadly — but simply listen! The count is going right off the scale!"

Cursing, the GehBehs kicked the papers out of the back of the truck and drove away. As soon as they were out of sight, Miklas knocked the bit of radioactive mud off the end of his detector and Konov sprayed it lavishly with the oil. "Now," grinned Miklas, "our only problem is figuring out how to get the magazines back to the barracks."

They could not simply be carried. "Perhaps one or two at a time?" Konov offered. "We can hide them somewhere and just take a couple on each trip, tuck them inside our pants?"

But Miklas's expression had changed. He was idly running the now-clean detector over the magazines. "Not next to my balls, curse it," he groaned, for the instrument was squealing its warning of contamination as loud as ever.