Voices from Chernobyl. Светлана Алексиевич

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