Chernobyl Murders

6

On Wednesday nights Juli’s roommate, Marina, worked late, allowing Mihaly to visit. Every week, as Wednesday approached, Juli’s guilt increased, making her think of it as their last rendezvous. But as soon as Mihaly left her apartment, she would begin looking forward to the following Wednesday. Sometimes she imagined she had gone to medical school as her father wished instead of becoming a Chernobyl technician and meeting Mihaly.

While waiting for the bus to Pripyat, Juli recalled the previous winter. Her father had died, Sergey had broken off their engagement, and it had been miserably cold. This winter, while waiting at the stop outside the low-level laboratory building, it seemed much milder. She stared at the stars visible above the Chernobyl towers, wishing they could provide an answer.

Mihaly’s birthday had been on the weekend. The previous Wednesday he wondered aloud what kind of gift she could possibly give him. Not something from a shop. Not something he would need to hide. In the locker room before leaving the building, she had stuffed her blouse and brassiere into her purse and worn only slacks beneath her fur coat. She could feel fingers of air slipping beneath the coat. The sound of the bus coming over the hill excited her, and she wondered if this was how a prostitute felt. For a moment she thought she might have made a mistake. The bus was coming, and it was too late to run back to the building. But if she made a fool of herself, so what? Her father was dead. Life was short.

When she sat next to Mihaly and the bus lurched forward, he decided to warm his hands beneath her coat. Her surprise for him caused a quick intake of breath. Then, during the bus ride, he whispered a description of what would happen when they arrived at the apartment.

“We’ll go onto the snow-covered balcony in the dark. I’ll kneel in the snow, and you’ll wrap your coat around me. If anyone watches from the ground or another apartment, you’ll appear alone, a woman looking up to the stars. The balcony railing will conceal me, allowing me to work. Afterward I’ll carry you inside, where we’ll travel to another world.”

When the plan whispered on the bus was finished, they rested in bed, Mihaly’s arm cradling her head on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat finally slowing to normal rhythm.

“I almost didn’t make it tonight,” said Mihaly.

Juli kissed his chest. “You did fine.”

Mihaly laughed. “I meant, something happened, and I almost missed the bus. A valve solenoid had to be replaced.”

Juli lifted her head from Mihaly’s chest. “Was the fix done before you left?”

“I stayed to watch the electrician install and test the new solenoid. Not part of normal procedure, but necessary. All the engineers agreed to take up the slack when they cut the number of safety inspectors.”

“Isn’t that risky?” asked Juli. “Depending on the loyalty of the engineers to plug holes in the safety program?”

“Of course,” said Mihaly. “But in the bureaucratic mind, transferring personnel to new units so they can be brought on-line sooner outweighs the risk.”

“Do you still think the risky tests are being done at Chernobyl rather than the other reactors?”

“I don’t know what to think. The maintenance shutdown and low power test wasn’t supposed to be until summer on our unit, but now they want it done before May Day. They’ll invite visitors from all over the union so the chief can show off. A piece of cake, as they say in America. During the test, he’ll give his speech to visitors in the control room about how the plant is simply a giant steam bath, nothing but hot water. During his speech, the informants among us will watch to be certain everyone in the control room laughs appropriately, and if someone doesn’t laugh…”

Juli touched Mihaly’s lips with her fingertip. “If someone doesn’t laugh, will the KGB be informed?”

“Who knows?” said Mihaly. “There are more strangers snooping around. Maybe the KGB is waiting for something to happen so they can cover it up.”

“Do you still wonder about your cousin possibly being an agent?”

“Yes, he kept asking about Chernobyl. He tried to get me alone.

He implied there might be something in it for me if I spoke openly.

He said the KGB followed him when he visited Budapest. Luckily Laz was at the farm, and our cousin only spent the day.”

“What is your cousin’s name?”

“Zukor, Andrew.”

“And you really think he was after something?”

“At the time I thought so. He alluded to the 1982 accident on unit one, and it’s supposed to be secret. He asked about the bunker beneath the administration building like he already knew about it. He even discussed fuel reprocessing, which both of us know is strictly off-limits.”

Juli thought for a moment. “Aleksandra talked about reprocessing and scrubbers.”

“Or lack of scrubbers,” said Mihaly. “Rather than being worried about her opinions concerning scrubbers, I think ministry officials had bigger fish.”

“Her radionuclide charts?”

“Yes,” said Mihaly. “The possibility of her telling someone about ongoing background radiation increases pissed them off.”

“Who could she tell? The Ukrainian Writers’ Union? Aleksandra had nothing to do with the stories in their journal.”

“I know. If she had, she would have disappeared sooner.” Mihaly placed his hand on Juli’s head. “She was your friend, and they treated her like shit.”

Juli thought about Aleksandra and wondered what Mihaly was thinking. Insane, the system ignores possible problems while heroes like Aleksandra are made to disappear.

Finally, Juli said, “The energy ministries have been degrading the environment to produce energy for years. And for what? So they can make cheap, ill-fitting shoes.”

Mihaly pulled her to him and kissed her. “You’re the one person I can discuss these things with.”

“How touching,” said Juli. “Chernobyl is part of our relationship.”

Mihaly tickled her tummy. “Aha. A reaction gone wild. Radiation levels increasing, but where’s it coming from?” Mihaly tickled lower. “The core! We need to put in the master control rod! What do you think, Comrade Technician Popovics?”

Juli got the upper hand by tickling Mihaly’s ribs. He rolled off the bed with a thud.

“Too late!” said Mihaly from the floor. “It’s a meltdown. In America they call it the China Syndrome.”

Juli looked over the edge of the bed. “Where would it melt down to from here? What’s on the other side of the world from us?”

“The South Pacific,” said Mihaly, folding his hands behind his head.

“How do you know?”

Mihaly lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. “I checked a globe for the hell of it.”

“So sad,” said Juli. “You’re thinking about our future again. It’s Wednesday evening. Soon you’ll be leaving, and it’s time to get depressed.”

“I was thinking of what I told my brother about Chernobyl.”

“Didn’t you explain when he visited last week?”

“I told Laz everything was in tip-top shape at the plant. I gave him a rosy picture because of his persistence about something else…”

Mihaly got up and sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her.

“I’ve been thinking of divorcing Nina.”

Juli pictured Nina in a flowered cotton dress. She’d met Nina and Mihaly’s two daughters at the fall picnic. A beautiful wife, two beautiful daughters.

Juli reached out and touched Mihaly’s shoulder. “Leave it be, Mihaly. We can see one another on Wednesdays.”

“You wouldn’t marry me?”

“If you were single, if we lived in one of your parallel worlds…”

Mihaly turned, smiled. “How about the South Pacific? How about an island where nobody knows us?”

Instead of answering, Juli put her hand on Mihaly’s shoulder.

“It’s an idiotic situation,” said Mihaly.

“And we’re the idiots,” said Juli.

Mihaly stood and went to the chair where his clothes lay. “I’d better go. Your roommate will be home soon.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Juli. “She knows about us.”

“You told her?”

“Marina is like a sister.”

Mihaly began dressing, turned to stare at Juli. “And I told my brother.”

“Did he scold you?”

“Severely.”

“We deserve it.”

After dressing, Mihaly helped Juli refold the sofa bed. They did not speak, and Juli thought how sad it was to fold the bed. Like folding a dead person’s clothing or closing a coffin. So sad. So final.

Juli put on her coat and stepped out on the balcony to watch Mihaly jog across the courtyard. His apartment was a few blocks away, and he waved before disappearing beyond the building across from hers.

The last thing he said before leaving her apartment was that the view from her balcony was better than the view from the balcony on his and Nina’s apartment. Their apartment faced the red lights of the Chernobyl towers, he’d said, while hers faced the dark horizon of the Belorussian Republic to the north.

Juli had not put on shoes, and the snow stung her feet. She was about to step back inside when she heard something, snow crunching underfoot. She turned abruptly, looked at her footprints and Mihaly’s footprints and the impressions his knees had made in the snow. She heard it again, snow crunching. She moved quietly to the railing, leaned out, looked right and left. On the floor of the balcony to the left, she saw boot prints in the snow. Was there a shadow? Had she seen the toe of a boot disappear behind the pri-vacy wall separating the balconies?

She ran inside, locked the sliding door, closed the curtains, turned out the light, and went to the left wall to place her ear against it. There was a gentle thud, a sliding door closing, perhaps the one next door. She kept listening but heard nothing more. Maybe a worker or the landlord had stepped out onto the balcony earlier in the day and made the boot prints. She wanted to believe this because she knew the apartment next door had been vacant several weeks. At least it had been vacant until now.

When the phone rang, she was so startled she backed away from the wall abruptly, fell backward over the hassock, and landed on her hip. She rubbed her hip, cursed the hassock, crawled to the end table, and picked up the phone.

“Hello.”

No answer, but someone there.

“Hello,” she said again somewhat louder, imagining whoever was in the apartment next door might be calling.

“Hello, I said!”

“Hello,” a woman’s voice. “This is Nina Horvath. Is my husband there?”

Cold night air seemed to have come into the apartment. She turned to look at the balcony door, but it was closed. The night again, the winter night threatening to swallow her.

“Nina Horvath?” Juli finally said.

“Yes. I asked if my husband was there.”

“Why would he be here?”

“Oh,” said Nina Horvath. “Then he’s not there?”

“No.”

“Very well. I presume you completed your business and I can expect him any time. Yes. I believe I hear him now. Good night.”

Earlier this evening, while waiting for the bus, she had justified her relationship with Mihaly by telling herself life was too short to worry about the future. Now the future was upon her like a thief in the night. This evening she had played the seductress. Now she felt nothing but emptiness.

Juli wrapped her coat tightly about her, curled up on the sofa, and prayed Marina would come home soon.