Voices from Chernobyl

THREE MONOLOGUES ABOUT A SINGLE BULLET

Speakers: Viktor Iosifovich Verzhikovskiy, chairman of the Khoyniki Society of Volunteer Hunters and Fishermen, and two hunters, Andrei and Vladimir, who did not want their full names used.

The first time I killed a fox, I was a kid. The next time I killed a doe, and then I swore never to kill another one. They have such expressive eyes.

It’s us, people, who understand things. Animals just live. So do birds.

During the fall the wild goat is very sharp. If there’s the slightest wind from humans, that’s it, she won’t let you near. Whereas the fox is very clever . . .

They say there used to be this guy, he’d walk around. If he got drunk, he’d start reading everyone lectures. He’d studied philosophy at the university, then he’d been in prison. You meet someone in the Zone, they’ll never tell you the truth about themselves. Or very rarely. But this one was intelligent. “Chernobyl,” he’d say, “happened so that philosophers could be made.” He called animals “walking ashes,” and people, “talking earth.” The earth talked because we eat earth, that is, we are built from earth.

The Zone pulls you in. You miss it, I tell you. Once you’ve been there, you’ll miss it.

All right, boys, but let’s do this in order.

Right, right, chairman. You tell it, we’ll smoke a bit.

So, it was like this. They call me into the regional executive. “Listen, chairman hunter. There are still many household pets in the Zone—cats, dogs. In order to avoid an epidemic, we need to exterminate them. Go to it!” On the next day I called everyone together, all the hunters. I explained the situation. No one wants to go because they haven’t given us any protective gear. I asked the civil defense people, and they didn’t have anything. Not a single respirator. I ended up having to go to the cement factory and get masks from them. Just a thin little bit of film, to protect against cement dust. But no respirators.

We met soldiers there. They had masks, gloves, they had armored personnel carriers. And we’re in shirts, and a handkerchief over our noses. And we came home in those shirts and those boots, to our families.

I got together two brigades, twenty men each. Each brigade had a veterinarian with it and someone from the epidemic center. We also had a tractor with a scooper and a dump truck. It’s too bad they didn’t give us any protection, didn’t think about the people.

On the other hand they gave us rewards—thirty rubles apiece. A bottle of vodka cost three rubles then. And when we got deactivated, people came up with these recipes: a spoonful of goose shit onto a bottle of vodka. Drink this for two days. So that, you know—so that you could, as a man . . . We had that little chastushka, remember? There were tons of them. “The Zaporozhets can’t keep it up; the man from Kiev can’t get it up. If you want to be a father, wrap your nuts in a lead nut-warmer.” Ha-ha.

We rode around the Zone for two months. Half the villages in our region were evacuated, dozens of them: Babchin, Tulgovichi . . . The first time we came, the dogs were running around near their houses, guarding them. Waiting for the people to come back. They were happy to see us, they ran toward our voices. We shot them in the houses, and the barns, in the yards. We’d drag them out onto the street and load them onto the dump truck. It wasn’t very nice. They couldn’t understand: why are we killing them? They were easy to kill. They were household pets. They didn’t fear guns or people. They ran toward our voices.

There was this turtle crawling . . . God! Past an empty house. There were aquariums in the houses, with fish in them.

We didn’t kill the turtles. If you ran over a turtle with your jeep, the shell held up. It didn’t crack. Of course we only did this when we were drunk. There were cages open in the yards. Rabbits running around. The otters were shut in, we let them out, if there was water nearby, a lake or a river, they’d swim away. Everything was abandoned. For a time. Because what was the order? “Three days.” They’d trick the little kids: “We’re going to the circus.” They’d cry. And people thought they’d come back. I’ll tell you, it was a war zone. The cats looked people in the eye, the dogs howled, trying to get on the buses. The mutts and the shepherds both. The soldiers pushed them out. Kicked them. They ran a long way after the cars. An evacuation—it’s a terrible thing.

So here’s how it is. The Japanese had Hiroshima, and now they’re ahead of everyone. They’re at the top. So that means . . .

It’s a chance to shoot at something, and it’s moving and alive. It’s an instinct. It’s fun. We’d drink, and then go. We were getting paid at work, which is fair considering what we were doing. And then thirty rubles—back then—under the Communists—you could . . .

It was like this. At first the houses were sealed. We didn’t tear the seals off. If you could see a cat through the window, how were you going to get at it? We didn’t touch them. Then the robbers started coming through, breaking down the doors, windows, the window-guards. They stole everything. First they took the record players and televisions, the fur clothing. Then they took everything else. The floor would be littered with just aluminum spoons. And then the dogs that were still alive would move into the house. You come in, the dog comes at you. At this point they’d stopped trusting humans. I came in one time, and there’s a bitch lying in the middle of the room with her little puppies around her. Did I feel sorry for her? Sure, it wasn’t pleasant. But I compared it. In effect it was like we were at war, we were punishers. It was the same kind of scheme. A military operation. We also came, surrounded the village, and the dogs, once they hear the first shot, run away. Into the forest. The cats are smarter, and it’s easier for them to hide. One cat got into a clay pot. I shook him out of there. We pulled them out from beneath stoves. You got an unpleasant feeling. You walk into the house, and the cat zips by like a bullet past your foot, you run after it with your rifle. They’re thin, dirty. Their fur’s all in clumps. At first there were a lot of eggs, the chickens were still there hatching them. So the dogs and cats ate the eggs, and when the eggs were finished they ate the chickens. And the foxes also ate the chickens, the foxes were already living in the villages with the dogs. So then there were no more chickens and the dogs started eating the cats. There were times we’d find some pigs in a barn, and we’d let them out, and then in the cellars there’s all sorts of things: cucumbers, tomatoes. We open them up and throw them in the trough. We didn’t kill the pigs.

There was this old lady, in one of the villages, she shut herself up in her house. She had five cats and three dogs. She wouldn’t give them up. Cursed us. We took them by force. We left her one cat and one dog. She cursed. She called at us: “Bandits! Jailers!”

The empty villages, just the stoves. Then there’s Khatyni. In the middle of Khatyni there are these two old ladies. And they’re not afraid. Anyone else would have gone crazy.

Yeah, ha. “Next to the hill you’re on your tractor, across the way there’s the reactor. If the Swedes hadn’t’ve told, we’d be on the tractor, getting old.” Ha-ha.

So it was like this. The smells—I couldn’t understand where this smell was coming from in the village. Six kilometers from the reactor. The village of Masaly. It was like roentgen central. It smelled of iodine. Some kind of sourness. You had to shoot them point blank. This bitch is on the floor with her pups, she jumps right at me. I shoot her quick. The puppies lick their paws, fawning, playing around. I had to shoot them point blank. One dog—he was a little black poodle. I still feel sorry for him. We loaded a whole dump truck with them, even filled the top. We drive them over to our “cemetery.” To be honest it was just a deep hole in the ground, even though you’re supposed to dig it in such a way that you can’t reach any ground water, and you’re supposed to insulate it with cellophane. You’re supposed to find an elevated area. But of course those instructions were violated everywhere. There wasn’t any cellophane, and we didn’t spend a lot of time looking for the right spot. If they weren’t dead, if they were just wounded, they’d start howling, crying. We’re dumping them from the dump truck into the hole, and this one little poodle is trying to climb back out. No one has any bullets left. There’s nothing to finish him with. Not a single bullet. We pushed him back into the hole and just buried him like that. I still feel sorry for him.

But there were a lot fewer cats than dogs. Maybe they left after the people? Or they hid? It was a little household poodle, a spoiled poodle.

It’s better to kill from far away, so your eyes don’t meet.

You have to learn to shoot accurately, so you don’t have to finish them off later.

It’s us, people, who understand things, but they just live. “Walking ashes.”

Horses—when you took them to be shot, they’d cry.

And I’ll add this—any living creature has a soul, even insects. This wounded doe—she’s lying there. She wants you to feel sorry for her, but instead you finish her off. At the last moment she has an understanding, almost human look. She hates you. Or it’s a plea: I also want to live! I want to live!

Learn to shoot, I tell you! Beating them is much worse than killing them. Hunting is a sport, a kind of sport. For some reason no one bothers the fishermen, but everyone bothers the hunters. It’s unfair!

Hunting and war—these are the main activities for a man. For a real man.

I couldn’t tell my son about it. He’s a kid. Where was I? What was I doing? He still thinks his father was over there defending someone or something. That he was at his battle station! They showed it on television: military equipment, lots of soldiers. There were a lot of soldiers. My son asks me: “Papa, you were like a soldier?”

This cameraman came with us from the television. Remember? He cried. He was a man but he cried. He kept wanting to see a three-headed boar.

Yeah, ha. The fox sees how a gingerbread man is rolling through the forest. “Gingerbread man, where are you rolling to?” “I’m not a gingerbread man, I’m a hedgehog from Chernobyl.” Ha-ha. Like they say, let’s put the peaceful atom into every home!

I’ll tell you, every person dies just like an animal. I saw this many times in Afghanistan. I, myself, I was wounded there in the stomach, and I was lying in the sun. The heat was unbearable. I was thirsty! “Well,” I thought, “I’m going to die here, like a dog.” I’ll tell you, the blood flows the same way, just like theirs does, and the pain is the same.

The police officer that was with us—he went crazy. He felt sorry for the Siamese cats, they were so expensive on the market, he said. They were pretty. And he was a man . . .

A cow is walking with her calf. We don’t shoot. And we don’t shoot the horses either. They were afraid of wolves, but not of people. But a horse can defend itself. The wolves got the cows first. It was the law of the jungle.

They shipped the cattle to Russia from Belarus and sold it. Meanwhile the heifers were leukemic. But they gave discounts on those.

I feel worst for the old men. They’d come up to our cars: “Son, will you have a look at my house?” Giving me the keys. “Could you grab my suit? And my hat.” Giving me a few coins. “How is my dog doing?” The dog’s been shot, the house has been looted. And they’ll never return there. How do you tell them? I didn’t take the keys. I didn’t want to trick anyone. Others took them. “Where’d you put the vodka? Where’d you hide it?” And the old man would tell them. They’d find whole milk cans full of the stuff.

They asked us to kill a wild boar for a wedding. It was a request. The liver melted in your hands, but they wanted it anyway, for the wedding. For the christening.

We shoot for science, too. One time we shot two rabbits, two foxes, two wild goats. They’re all sick, but we still tenderize them and eat. At first we were afraid to, but now we’re used to it. You have to eat something, and we can’t all move to the moon, to another planet.

Someone bought a fox-fur hat at the market, and he went bald. An Armenian bought a cheap machine gun from a guy from the Zone—he died. People frighten one another.

As for me, nothing happened there to my soul or my mind. That’s all a lot of nonsense.

I talked to a driver who was transporting homes out of there. He was just driving them out. Of course these aren’t houses or schools or kindergartens anymore, they’re just numbered objects of deactivation. But they bring them out! I met him in the bathhouse, or maybe at a beer stand. I don’t remember exactly, but he was telling me: they bring the truck, in three hours they take apart the house and put it in there, and then at the edge of the Zone someone meets them. They just tear it apart. The Zone has been sold for dacha parts. The driver gets some money and they feed him and get him drunk.

Some of us are predators—hunter-predators. Others like to just walk in the forest, go after the small game. The birds.

I’ll tell you: So many people suffered, and no one ever answered for it. They put away the director of the station, but then they let him out again. In that system, it was hard to say who was guilty. They were trying something out there. I read in the paper that they were developing military plutonium. For atom bombs. That’s why it blew up. But if that’s why it happened, then why here? Why at Chernobyl? Why not in France or in Germany?

This one thing stuck in my memory. That one thing. No one had a single bullet, there was nothing to shoot that little poodle with. Twenty guys. Not a single bullet at the end of the day. Not a single one.