Chernobyl Murders

10

Juli sat up, threw back the blanket, and turned on the lamp, expecting to see Marina’s bed empty beside hers, expecting Marina to be in the bathroom or the kitchenette because it would account for the sound. But Marina was in bed, her hair fanned out on the pillow.

The clock on the lamp table showed it was after one in the morning.

“Marina. Are you asleep?”

Marina stirred, turned her face away from the light. “Hmm?”

“Marina?”

“Time to get up already?”

“No. It’s only 1:30.”

“Good. I need my beauty sleep.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

Marina turned to Juli, shaded her eyes with her hand. “Was it the neighbors again?”

“It sounded like an explosion,” said Juli. “I was asleep, and it woke me.”

“Maybe the baby kicked.”

Juli held her stomach with both hands. “So soon?”

“I’m joking,” said Marina. “It’s probably Mihaly tossing stones at the window. Wants to know what was bothering you after work today… I mean yesterday. Go to sleep. It’s the middle of the night and I have to work at the store early. They’re probably already in line to complain to me, as if I can do anything about the idiotic sizes the supplier ships.”

Marina turned away from the light, wrapped the pillow about her head. All was silent except… except what? Juli stopped breathing and listened. The balcony. There was someone on the balcony!

She could hear voices through the glass door and curtains.

“Marina. Listen.”

Marina sat up with her eyes closed, opened her eyes, stared at the closed curtains. “Who could be out there this time of night?”

Marina got out of bed and walked to the window. “Shut off the light so I can look out.”

After Juli turned out the light, Marina parted the curtains.

“People are down in the courtyard.”

“Who?”

“From ground-floor apartments, I guess. They’ve got coats on over their bedclothes.”

“What are they doing?”

“Looking at the sky. Looking at something orange in the sky.”

Outside, a steady breeze blew out of the south. Neighbors in the courtyard resembled plump birds standing about nodding to one another. Everyone wore coats. Showing below the coats were pa-jamas, nightshirts, nightgowns, and, in some cases, bare legs and bony white ankles. The neighbors stood looking south between Juli’s building and the next building.

“It’s the atomic plant,” said one man. “My brother works there.

Thank God he’s not there now.”

“Maybe it’s a grass fire,” said another.

“They’re burning palms for Palm Sunday,” slurred a man who was obviously drunk.

“It’s something for May Day,” said yet another man, this one not drunk. “They’re clearing a field for the parade.”

“Idiots!” said a woman. “They don’t burn palms until later, for the next Ash Wednesday. Who would purposely start a fire in the middle of the night?”

“Today is the Saturday of Lazarus,” said a woman in a soft voice.

“At our church they ran short of palms and they’ll use pussy willows this Sunday. A man who lives on Lesya Ukrainka Street was running home when I came out. He said the fir and pine forests are on fire.”

“Not a forest fire,” said a heavy woman in furry slippers, an overcoat, and a babushka. “Didn’t you hear the explosion? It knocked me out of bed.”

Two teenaged boys behind the woman laughed, and she turned about to scowl at them. The boys’ faces were lit orange by the glow from the sky.

“Look,” said one of the men. “Sparks flying. And smoke.”

“It’s poisonous,” said the heavy woman. “It probably has atoms in it.”

Another man who had been standing silently to the side said,

“Of course it has atoms in it. Everything is made of atoms.”

Juli stood with Marina, watching the sky.

“Is it dangerous?” whispered Marina.

The glow in the sky became more sinister as a column of black smoke leaned to the north and merged with the clouds.

Marina held Juli’s arm. “You said Mihaly was working tonight.

Can’t you call him and find out about this? I’m sure he’s all right.”

“Hey,” said one of the men. “You work at the plant. What do you think this is?”

“Juli, he’s talking to you. They want to know if you know anything.” Marina turned to the group of people gathering slowly like penguins. “She doesn’t know anything. We heard you out here and came to see what was going on.”

“But she works there in a laboratory. A technician should know what’s happening.”

“Juli,” whispered Marina, “say something.”

“I don’t know anything,” said Juli. “Some of you must also work at the plant.”

“Even so, you are a technician,” said one of the men. “Therefore, you must have special knowledge of what’s going on. You must know if there’s danger for us.”

“Why us?” said the large woman.

“Radiation,” said the man. “If a reactor explodes, it releases radioactive fallout like a bomb.”

Several heads turned to look at the glow in the sky. At the far end of the courtyard, a woman sobbed loudly as she ran outside.

“The phone!” screamed the woman. “My husband! He’s there tonight, and the phone is dead! Something terrible has happened!”

The man who had mentioned radioactive fallout turned back to Juli. “I know you work in the radiation measurement laboratory. If one of the reactors exploded and there is radiation leaking out, tell us what we should do.”

The man walked directly in front of Juli. Marina stepped up to the man. “She doesn’t know anything. Because she works there doesn’t mean she had anything to do with this.”

“I didn’t mean it was her doing,” said the man. “I simply want to know if there’s anything we can do to protect ourselves.”

“Yes,” said Juli.

“Speak up!” shouted the heavy woman. “We can’t hear you!”

“Yes! If there was an explosion and if the explosion involved one of the reactors, the initial radiation will be airborne.” She looked to the sky, the dark column of smoke crawling upward. “The best thing to do is go to your apartments. Stay inside and close all the windows.

Keep the outside air from coming in as much as possible.”

“Then what?” asked the man.

Juli looked from one shadowed face to another. “If there is radiation, the authorities will tell us what to do. But it could be smoke from any fire. It could be nothing.”

The sound of a car traveling at high speed came from the main road at the front of the apartment complex. Tires squealed as the car drove through the curve in the road beyond the apartments.

After the car passed, a truck came, its lights flashing in the trees.

When the truck appeared for a moment between buildings, Juli saw figures in off-white uniforms hanging onto the back.

An hour later, Juli sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the curtains closed over the balcony door. Even if the curtains had been open, she wouldn’t have been able to see anything because the balcony faced north. After coming up the stairs, they had run to look out the south-facing window at the far end of the hallway. The fire was definitely at the Chernobyl plant. Flames leapt into the sky at the base of its towers, and Juli knew the glow in the sky meant death.

Marina sat cross-legged behind Juli on the bed, massaging Juli’s shoulders as she spoke. “There’s nothing you can do,” said Marina.

“Worrying about it won’t help. Even if it was the number four reactor, Mihaly would have been one of the first out of there because he would have known if something was going wrong. He’s home right now, sealed in his apartment.”

“Mihaly wouldn’t have left, Marina. There’s no answer at the plant switchboard. They were going to do a shutdown. And now there’s no answer…”

“How bad could it be?” asked Marina. “My Vasily lives closer to the plant than we do. I wish he had a phone so I could call him.

What about the dosimeter you put out on the balcony? Will the dosimeter tell us if it’s safe?”

Juli stood, walked to the balcony door, and opened the curtains.

She slid the door open a few centimeters, reached quickly outside, pulled the dosimeter inside, and slammed the door.

“You should have asked me to get it,” said Marina.

“Why? You said it’s probably nothing.”

Juli took the dosimeter into the bathroom, turned on the bright overhead light, and held the small lens to her eye. At first she thought she saw the hairline resting at zero. But it was only the zero marker line. Then she thought there was no hairline, and she had trouble keeping the markings in the dosimeter in focus. Her hand shook, so she held the dosimeter with both hands, steadying her knuckles against her forehead.

The hairline was where she had never seen it during her years at the laboratory. If turned in to the rack on Monday morning, it would bring a crew of safety technicians down into the sub-basement to remove her from the vicinity of the sensitive counting equipment.

Marina spoke from behind Juli. “What does it say?”

Juli turned and did her best to remain calm. “Thirty millirems.”

“Is that a lot?” asked Marina.

“Some workers are exposed to as much as a thousand millirems a year. Anything above five thousand a year is considered dangerous.”

“Then it’s okay, Juli. See? It’s fine. Everyone will be fine. Mihaly and Vasily… everyone.”

“How long did I leave it on the balcony?”

“I don’t know,” said Marina. “Maybe half an hour.”

Juli worked out the figures in her head. It was no use remaining calm. “At this rate, in a day outside on the balcony, the exposure would have been over a thousand. In five days it would have been beyond the danger level. We’re three kilometers from the explosion, and the worst of the radioactivity might not even be here yet!”

Juli turned, placed the dosimeter on the edge of the sink, and began washing her hands and arms vigorously, especially her right because it had reached out into the blackness to retrieve the dosimeter.

“But if something’s happened, where’s the militia?” asked Marina, looking worried.

The ceiling began shaking with a pounding vibration, rattling the balcony door. “What’s that?” screamed Marina.

Juli looked up as the pounding became louder before suddenly fading. “A helicopter heading to the plant.”

“Should we go out and see?”

Juli went to Marina and held her shoulders. She spoke in a voice that did not seem her own. “We’ll stay here. Technically I should go to the plant because I’m a dosimetrist, and in the event of a spill, I should be monitoring the area. But this is no spill. This is a disaster.”

Not everyone in Pripyat was frightened. Many slept as moist air swept through open windows. Others, even though they knew of the explosion, did not believe radiation could be allowed to be let loose. Dawn would bring action. Weren’t there plenty of sirens now? Weren’t firemen being called to extra duty? Obviously the explosion, and the resulting fire, was something entirely controlla-ble? To some, even the metallic taste and smell in the air was a good sign. “Nothing but an ordinary industrial fire,” they said.

Lectures from Juli’s classes years earlier in Moscow haunted her. Strontium, krypton-85, cesium-137, and the concerns of her co-worker Aleksandra Yasinsky-all of these things from her years of training and working with radiation took on new meaning. Not because of concern for herself, but because of the vulnerability of the baby growing inside her.

And what about Mihaly? One second she imagined Mihaly and his co-workers safe inside the bunker beneath the administration building. The next second she imagined him at home with his wife, both of them looking out their balcony window facing the plant.

Yes, Mihaly either at home or in the bunker. In the bunker briefing the power plant Party secretary on the explosion and what could be done. Both of them tying up the phone lines calling in more helicopters. Mihaly and the Party secretary filling in KGB operatives on duty. Mihaly in charge to make sure no one was killed or injured, especially the young, especially the unborn, especially his child growing this very moment inside her.

While Juli watched Marina use the last of the cellophane tape on the side of the sliding door, reality returned. The world she had known was ended. Perhaps the world everyone had known was ended. The great environmental disaster had come, not slowly as Aleksandra had been predicted, but with great speed.

Juli and Marina stuffed rolled-up wet towels at the bottoms of the doors, taped the windows, even taped a plastic bag over the exhaust vent above the stove. There was nothing to do but seal themselves inside and wait. Sealed inside like babes in a womb.

With a shaking hand, Juli held the dosimeter up to the light again.

“What does it say now?” asked Marina.

“Still at thirty.”

“And it doesn’t mean it’s thirty now?”

“No. It’s a cumulative measure. Since it was recharged at the lab, it’s accumulated thirty millirems. As long as it doesn’t keep going up, we’re fine. Even if it goes up a little, we’ll be okay. At least in here.”

“How long will the radioactive dust or smoke or whatever it is stay in the air?”

“Until it blows away. But if the reactor keeps sending out more…”

Marina crossed the room, turned on the radio again, switched between the three stations they could receive. Beethoven on one, Prokofiev on another, some jazz on the third. Next she tried the television. Still too early, only snow.

“Why don’t they say anything?” asked Marina. “And Vasily lives so close to the plant. I hope he was out somewhere. At one of those men’s clubs in Pripyat, drinking himself silly. He’s such a joker. He’s…”

Juli and Marina looked to the ceiling as more helicopters flew over. They hugged until the helicopters passed.

“Why can’t Vasily go somewhere where there’s a phone and call me? Why is his mother so cheap she can’t have a phone?”

Juli looked to the balcony, where Mihaly had held her and kissed her last winter. Everything seemed so long ago. She picked up the phone, dialed the number at the plant, and, again, received a busy signal after a wait of several minutes.

A little past six in the morning, the electricity went out, and Marina brought out her portable radio. At six thirty, the curtains over the balcony door looked the way they did any other morning before work. The glow of day bringing life to the world. But there was not the yellow glow of sunrise on the edges of the curtains. The morning was overcast.

At seven o’clock, Juli tried the plant again, received a busy signal. Without knowing what she would say, she dialed Mihaly’s home number.

As the phone rang, Juli imagined Mihaly answering, pretending he was talking with someone else, telling her everything was fine. A small explosion, some release of radiation, and he was fine. But the phone kept ringing.

On the far side of the room, Marina picked up a glass egg she had transferred from a shelf to her bed when the helicopters began flying over. She held the egg in both hands. “No one answers,” she whispered. “In the legend, Easter eggs must be decorated every year, or the world will end. No one will answer because they are decorating eggs.”

When Juli hung up the phone, Marina came to her, and they hugged.

Meanwhile, several residents with apartments facing the street held curtains apart and watched as a tanker truck came from the center of town, rinsing the street. The water draining into the sewers was dark with a metallic luster.