Chernobyl Murders

3

Morning dew weighed heavily on late-summer foliage along the Pripyat to Chernobyl Road. At the gate of the nuclear facility operated by the Ministry of Energy, a guard inspected a car waiting to get in.

The few employees who commuted by car had to stop at the main gate for identification and sometimes a look into the luggage compartment. Buses passed more quickly because a guard assigned to each bus checked identification and inspected briefcases and lunch containers while the bus was in transit.

When entering the main gate, the first buildings one saw were laboratory buildings, including the low-level counting laboratory operated by the Department of Industrial Safety. Incoming buses stopped here first. The building, set back from the road, was inside another fence and inspection gate. This inner fence was not capped with barbed wire like the main fence. Its purpose was to keep out stray animals or ignorant maintenance workers who might bring unwanted radiation into the building. If there were a “spill” of nuclear material at Chernobyl, however small, and if some of it were to contaminate the low-level laboratory, it would put them out of business. Recently, the head of safety at the plant had ordered low-level laboratory personnel to take their pocket dosimeters home with them in the unlikely event they picked up radiation on the bus or elsewhere. Along with the written order was a strongly worded message saying the measure was experimental and anyone generating unfounded rumors would be dealt with severely.

The low-level laboratory housed a monitoring system to analyze samples from numerous locations surrounding Chernobyl, as well as samples from all over the Ukraine. The equipment here could detect radiation levels so small, background radiation caused by cosmic rays from outer space had to be shielded out using steel vaults. Within the vaults, samples were analyzed by counting ionizing particles of radiation through the use of ionization chambers commonly called Geiger counters.

The building had two upper floors, a basement, and a sub-basement. The upper floors contained offices for engineers and scientists, laboratories for converting samples into gases to be put into Geiger tubes, and computer equipment to analyze data. The electronic counting equipment and the vaults, referred to as “tombs” by technicians, were below ground in the windowless basement and sub-basement. The technicians called themselves “moles.”

Juli Popovics was a mole. Like many technicians who worked in the sub-basement, she was well acquainted with radioactivity and its terminology. Strontium, half-lives, and the characteristics of radionuclides such as krypton-85 and cesium-137 were second nature to her. Although the advertised reason for the low-level counting lab was safety, she knew it had another purpose. Scrubbers were installed on site to camouflage the extent to which reactor fuel was reprocessed before dangerous fission products had a chance to decay.

Few technicians at Chernobyl were aware the Americans and British had developed a way to measure radionuclide off-gassing and use the measurements to estimate weapons-grade fuel reprocessing.

The only reason Juli knew of these techniques was because of another technician named Aleksandra Yasinsky.

Juli and Aleksandra graduated university together and came to work at Chernobyl and live in Pripyat the same year. Aleksandra was a dear friend, but she was also an activist. Aleksandra kept charts in her desk showing ongoing increases of radioactive noble gases based on air samples taken outside the plant. Aleksandra said scientists throughout the world would someday have to answer for increases caused by nuclear production. Aleksandra thought she was helping by keeping the charts. The plant manager, notified by plant security, felt differently. One day Aleksandra was at work; the next day she was gone. According to the fabricated story, Aleksandra had transferred to the Balakovsky power plant. But Juli knew Aleksandra no longer worked for the Ministry of Energy because on a visit to Moscow, she had met with Aleksandra’s mother, who broke down in tears when asked about her daughter.

Each morning, before going downstairs where she once worked side by side with her friend Aleksandra, Juli paused at the windows inside the building entrance near the dosimeter rack. After dropping off her dosimeter and picking up a recharged one, she looked back outside to memorize weather conditions before descending into her hole. At lunchtime, when she came out of her hole, she immediately looked out the window again to see how the weather might have changed. After lunch she repeated the process, looking forward to the end of the shift. In winter, however, after being in the fluorescent-lit basement all day, the darkness outside became an even deeper hole, a hole into which she, like Aleksandra, would someday disappear.

Last winter had been terrible. Sergey broke off their year-long engagement. Then, a week later, her father died, and she took the train to Moscow on funeral leave. Her mother, to whom she had never been close except when she was a very small Muscovite, was especially cold. It was during this trip she discovered Aleksandra was missing. It was during this trip she felt closer to Aleksandra’s mother than to her own mother. After the trip to Moscow last winter, Juli returned to the loneliest time in her life. Each night, as she left the building, the demon darkness drained her, emptied her of purpose the way the gurgling vacuum pumps in the main-floor labs sucked air from the Geiger tubes.

But spring came as it always does, and darkness no longer awaited her after work. In spring she moved in with Marina. Having Marina for a roommate was like having the sister she’d always wanted. On days off they shopped together, waiting in lines, giggling like schoolgirls. Evenings they’d lie awake late into the night, talking about the future, which of course always included wealthy men who would give them the lives they deserved. The lonely nights were when Marina was out with her boyfriend, Vasily. This was how spring went. Then in summer, Juli met Mihaly.

Mihaly was slender with dark hair and eyes. He reminded Juli of her father when she was a little girl. Small chin, thin nose, forehead sloping back to his hairline. Like her father, Mihaly was Hungarian. Although they simply rode the bus home from work together during June, Juli knew she had fallen in love the very first day when they sat together and spoke in Hungarian, keeping their voices low so others would not overhear them. Russian was the official language at the facility. Ukrainian was looked down upon.

Hungarian was barbaric.

On a warm July day, Mihaly got off at Juli’s stop so he could walk her home. On a hot August day, he came to her apartment.

They sipped wine and made love. The next time Mihaly came to her apartment, he told her he was married and had two daughters.

Juli didn’t want to hurt Mihaly or his wife and daughters. She kept trying to convince herself she needed Mihaly only for the moment.

Another man would appear, and Mihaly would remain a good friend. But now, after he’d been gone three weeks on summer holiday, she knew differently.

When Juli paused at the entrance to the laboratory building before going down the stairs, she looked out to the southeast where the red and white reactor stacks pierced the sky. Today was Monday, and she knew Mihaly was back to work, had taken the earlier bus as usual. Tonight, after a three-week absence, he would catch her bus and she would see him again.

By applying herself to her work, Juli made the morning go by quickly. She turned off the overnight counters, did her calcula-tions, removed the counting tubes from the tombs, and sent them up the dumbwaiter to be refilled with fresh samples. After lunch, she would busy herself again-new samples into the tombs, voltages set, samples logged, tombs closed, overnight counts started. But for now, the moles were out of their hole for lunch.

Juli sat alone at a table near the windows until a lab technician who worked on the main floor joined her. The technician’s name was Natalya, a plump girl with a loud voice. Juli might have gotten up to leave, but it was obvious she had just started eating.

Natalya placed a large brown bag on the table and began empty-ing out food, making their table look like a table at a street market.

Bread, cheese, two tomatoes, a large cucumber, cookies, cake. Besides speaking in a loud voice, Natalya spoke with her mouth full, which resulted in the occasional flight of a crumb of food across the table.

“I’m so hungry,” said Natalya. “Even if my work is not strenu-ous, I still get hungry as a bear. You have so little, Juli. A simple sandwich, and look at my lunch. I went across the Belorussian border to shop at farm markets and bought too much. One of these days, for sure, I’m going on a strict diet before I explode.” Natalya swung her arms outward to portray the great explosion. “Perhaps I should try one of those American movie-star diets. Did I tell you the Odessa Bookstore on the north side of town has a stock of American magazines?”

“No,” said Juli. “What kinds of magazines?”

“Celebrity magazines,” said Natalya. “I can’t bring them to work anymore. The chief technician says they’re distracting. She caught me looking at Bruce Springsteen. The Frank Sinatra of the eighties. Am I right?”

“Each generation has its idols.”

“So, who is your idol, dear Juli?”

“I don’t have an idol.”

“What about your boyfriend? Couldn’t he be considered your idol?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“No? A pretty girl like you with no boyfriend? It’s shameful we have boys around here instead of men. The real men are married.

Here, when the boys aren’t drinking vodka, they hover over their books and calculators. I prefer older men. I’m waiting for a widower who needs a helpmate to cook meals and send him off to work so I can relax.” Natalya sighed. “But if I’m home all day watching television and reading magazines, I’ll eat myself into an early grave.

You’re lucky to have been born thin, Juli. All the women in my family are heavy. None of the diets I’ve tried do any good. So I might as well enjoy it while I can.”

They ate, silent except for explosive crunches as Natalya munched her cucumber. After she finished that, Natalya polished off the cookies and cake. Then she leaned across the table and whispered.

“Did you hear the latest joke circulating up here?”

“Here” meant the main floor, as opposed to the basement or sub-basement. Gossip from the facility entered the building by way of the main floor, where workers had contact with drivers who brought in samples and reactor personnel who sometimes visited.

Juli leaned close to Natalya, hoping the joke would not be overheard.

Even Natalya’s whispering was loud.

“Is it the one,” asked Juli, “about the reactor inspector who wears gloves even in the summer?”

“This joke is much better,” said Natalya. “The head of the SSNI in Moscow receives an invitation for delegations of Soviet reactor safety engineers to visit U.S. facilities and study reactor safety principles. The U.S. official says they can visit any reactor they like in the United States. The SSNI head makes his selections and, a few days later, hands his list to the U.S. official. ‘Everything looks fine except for one thing,’ says the U.S. official. ‘What?’ asks the SSNI head. ‘You’ve said you wish to send your Chernobyl engineering staff to Three Mile Island. Don’t you realize,’ asks the U.S. official, ‘we had an accident there in the seventies?’ ‘Of course,’ says the SSNI head. ‘But Three Mile Island is more than adequate for Chernobyl engineers, because at Three Mile Island you had only one accident!’”

Natalya laughed so hard Juli thought she would tip over backward in her chair. Several people at other tables turned and smiled.

At one table, a man Juli had never seen before took out a notebook, wrote something in it, then put the notebook back in the pocket of his lab coat.

For a moment Juli considered warning Natalya about the recent memo condemning “malicious gossipmongering.” But Natalya would probably say something worse. Besides, the joke would spread throughout the facility by quitting time. Better to let the matter rest despite the man in the lab coat.

“Funny, yes?” said Natalya.

“Yes,” said Juli. “But now I’ve got to get back to work.”

As she left the cafeteria, Juli noticed the man in the lab coat tug at his earlobe. And while going down the stairs to the basement, she wondered if Natalya might be part of the head office’s underground network. If the joke was a test, it wouldn’t work because, since Aleksandra’s disappearance, Juli never repeated these jokes to anyone, except Mihaly.

All afternoon, while inserting Geiger tubes of various sizes into the tombs, Juli imagined each symbolized a night she and Mihaly would spend together. By the time she finished work, she had accumulated over fifty nights with Mihaly, fifty nights she wished might come true.

Juli rushed from the locker room in the basement so she could be first at the bus stop. She stood alone in the sun while others waited in the shade of the building. Being first in line guaranteed entry into the first bus for Pripyat, the bus she and Mihaly always took.

As the bus approached in a shimmer of heat, she wondered if it was full, if it would pass by like it once had with Mihaly onboard. No.

Mihaly would make up an excuse, tell the driver he had business at the low-level laboratory, and get off. But what if Mihaly was not on the first bus?

When the bus wheezed to a stop, Juli got on, walked slowly down the aisle, but did not see Mihaly. For an instant she imagined what had happened. Mihaly on holiday with his family at his boyhood home near the Czech border, reminders of his duties as father and husband everywhere. Mihaly taking another bus so he would not have to face her. Then a newspaper lowered at the back of the bus, and Mihaly, looking like a boy who has done something deli-ciously evil, grinned at her. She closed her lips tightly to keep from laughing, walked to the back of the bus, and sat next to Mihaly so abruptly he barely had time to remove his briefcase.

A few seats ahead, Juli saw a woman turn to look at her. The seat next to the woman was empty. Juli took a section of Mihaly’s newspaper, and they both held newspapers up before them. When the bus was through the gate, moving along on the road to Pripyat, the noise of the rear engine allowed them to speak without being overhead. They spoke softly in Hungarian.

“How are things on the farm?” asked Juli.

“Fine,” said Mihaly. “How are things here?”

“The usual. No radiation releases.”

“Good. How about the weather?”

“Hot and dry.”

“Same as the farm, hot and dry except for all the wine my brother and I drank.”

“Is your family well?”

“Yes. How about yours?”

“Don’t be cute. You know I have no family here.”

“What about the grass, then? Has it taken over?”

“The other day in the courtyard, it grabbed my ankles and dragged me into the bushes.”

Mihaly rattled his newspaper section and made an evil smile.

“And what did the naughty grass do to you in the bushes?”

“I can’t tell you. There’s a crackdown on gossipmongering.”

“If you don’t tell, I’ll brood like my bachelor brother.”

After making sure her newspaper section shielded them, Juli turned and softly bit Mihaly’s ear. They kissed, and her arms grew tired holding up the newspaper.

Before the bus entered Pripyat, the guard finally made his way to the back. After checking their identity cards, the guard returned to the front of the bus, and Juli and Mihaly left the newspapers in their laps. Beneath the newspapers they touched one another gently. Because Juli had changed into shorts, Mihaly was able to caress her intimately.

“Will you get off at my stop tonight, Mihaly?”

“I can’t, not on my first day back. Is your roommate still working at the department store Wednesday evenings?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I missed you, Juli. I’m not joking.”

“It’s hard to tell when you are and when you aren’t.”

“It’s my protection. I can make up the world as I go along.”

“Am I in this made-up world?”

“You and me and the wild grass.”

“Where is everyone else?”

“A parallel world. I’ve left a duplicate of myself there.”

Juli tickled Mihaly on his inner thigh, and he coughed to cover his laughter.

“Not tonight, then?” she asked. “Not even a walk?”

“Wednesday. I’ll arrange a late night Wednesday.”

Before the bus reached her stop, Juli told Mihaly the joke Natalya had screamed in her face at lunch. Mihaly nodded. “I heard it this afternoon, but I didn’t want to ruin it for you. It’s all over the facility.

The engineers added a new ending. After Chernobyl’s engineers leave for the United States, Pravda’s diplomacy page features the story. The headline reads, ‘Chernobyl Engineers Permitted Inside Three Mile Island Containment Building for Firsthand Look.’”

The bus was at Juli’s stop. When she got off and looked back, Mihaly grinned at her with his eyes crossed and his nose pressed to the bus window.