Voices from Chernobyl

MONOLOGUE ABOUT MEMORIES

I don’t want to talk about this. I won’t. I know just one thing: that I’ll never be happy again.

He came back from there. He was there for a few years, like in a nightmare. “Nina,” he said, “it’s good we have two kids. They’ll remain.”

He told me stories. In the middle of a village there’s a red puddle. The geese and ducks walk around it. The soldiers, they’re just boys, are lying on the grass, their shirts off, their shoes off, tanning themselves. “Get up! Get up, you idiots, or you’ll all die!” They say: ah, don’t worry about it.

Death is already everywhere, but no one takes it seriously.

The evacuation: this old woman is on her knees with an icon in front of her old house. She says, “Boys, boys, I won’t go. I won’t leave this. You can take the little bit of money they gave me. For my house, for my cow, they gave it. But who’ll pay me for my life? My life is a dark night. They killed my two sons during the war, they’re in a little grave here. You call this a war? This is a war? There are white clouds in the sky, the apple trees are blooming. No one attacked us. No one’s shooting. It’s just us here. This is a war?” And no one can answer her: the colonel is standing there, the one who’s running the evacuation, someone from the regional Party committee. The local bosses. No one knows that this is a war, and that it’s called Chernobyl.

I never asked him myself. I understood him with my soul, we felt each other on a much deeper level. Our knowledge and our loneliness. That loneliness . . .

He knew he would die. That he was dying. He gave himself his word that he would live only through kindness and love. I worked two jobs, just one salary and his pension weren’t enough. He said, “Let’s sell the car. It’s not new, but we’ll get something from it. You’ll stay home more, I’ll look at you.” He’d invite his friends over. His parents came to stay with us for a long time. He understood something. He understood something about life over there that he hadn’t understood before. He found a different language.

“Nina,” he’d say, “it’s good that we have our two kids. They’ll remain here.”

I’d ask him, “Did you think of us? What did you think of there?”

“I saw a boy—he’d been born two months after the explosion. They named him Anton, but everyone called him Atomchik.”

“You thought . . .”

“You felt sorry for everyone there. Even the flies, even the pigeons. Everyone should be able to live. The flies should be able to fly, and the wasps, the cockroaches should be able to crawl. You don’t even want to hurt a cockroach.”

“You . . .”

“The kids draw Chernobyl. The trees in the pictures grow upside-down. The water in the rivers is red or yellow. They’ll draw it and then cry.”

I want to understand . . . what? I don’t know myself. [Smiles.] His friend proposed to me. He’d been in love with me long ago, back when we were in school. Then he married my friend, and then they got divorced. He made me an offer, “You’ll live like a queen.” He owns a store, he has a huge apartment in the city, he has a dacha. I thought and thought about it. But then one day he came in drunk: “You’re not going to forget your hero, is that it? He went to Chernobyl, and I refused. I’m alive, and he’s a memorial.”

Ha-ha. I threw him out! I threw him right out! Sometimes I get strange thoughts, sometimes I think Chernobyl saved me, forced me to think. My soul expanded.

He told me about it and told me, and I remembered.

The clouds of dust, the tractors in the fields, the women with their pitchforks, the dosimeter clicking. Everything behind barbed wire. The Zone: no people, but time moves on anyway. The days are so long. Just like when you’re a kid.

Entertainers came to visit them. Poets read their poems. Alla Pugacheva gave a concert in a field. “If you don’t fall asleep, boys, I’ll sing to you all night.” She called them heroes.

Everyone called them heroes. [Cries.] It’s impossible to suffer like this without any meaning. Without any of the old words. Even without the medal that they gave him. It’s there at home. He gave it to our son. I know just one thing: I’ll never be happy again.

Nina Prohorovna Kovaleva, wife of a liquidator