Voices from Chernobyl. Светлана Алексиевич

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