Voices from Chernobyl. Светлана Алексиевич
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hear me. They were afraid to come up to me. Then I came to: I’ll see him one more time! Once more! I run down the stairs. He was still in his bio-chamber, they hadn’t taken him away yet. His last words were “Lyusya! Lyusenka!” “She’s just stepped away for a bit, she’ll be right back,” the nurse told him. He sighed and went quiet. I didn’t leave him anymore after that. I escorted him all the way to the grave site. Although the thing I remember isn’t the grave, it’s the plastic bag. That bag.
At the morgue they said, “Want to see what we’ll dress him in?” I do! They dressed him up in formal wear, with his service cap. They couldn’t get shoes on him because his feet had swelled up. They had to cut up the formal wear, too, because they couldn’t get it on him, there wasn’t a whole body to put it on. It was all—wounds. The last two days in the hospital—I’d lift his arm, and meanwhile the bone is shaking, just sort of dangling, the body has gone away from it. Pieces of his lungs, of his liver, were coming out of his mouth. He was choking on his internal organs. I’d wrap my hand in a bandage and put it in his mouth, take out all that stuff. It’s impossible to talk about. It’s impossible to write about. And even to live through. It was all mine. My love. They couldn’t get a single pair of shoes to fit him. They buried him barefoot.
Right before my eyes—in his formal wear—they just took him and put him in that cellophane bag of theirs and tied it up. And then they put this bag in the wooden coffin. And they tied the coffin with another bag. The plastic is transparent, but thick, like a tablecloth. And then they put all that into a zinc coffin. They squeezed it in. Only the cap didn’t fit.
Everyone came—his parents, my parents. They bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. The Extraordinary Commission met with us. They told everyone the same thing: it’s impossible for us to give you the bodies of your husbands, your sons, they are very radioactive and will be buried in a Moscow cemetery in a special way. In sealed zinc caskets, under cement tiles. And you need to sign this document here.
If anyone got indignant and wanted to take the coffin back home, they were told that the dead were now, you know, heroes, and that they no longer belonged to their families. They were heroes of the State. They belonged to the State.
We sat in the hearse. The relatives and some sort of military people. A colonel and his regiment. They tell the regiment: “Await your orders!” We drive around Moscow for two or three hours, around the beltway. We’re going back to Moscow again. They tell the regiment: “We’re not allowing anyone into the cemetery. The cemetery’s being attacked by foreign correspondents. Wait some more.” The parents don’t say anything. Mom has a black handkerchief. I sense I’m about to black out. “Why are they hiding my husband? He’s—what? A murderer? A criminal? Who are we burying?” My mom: “Quiet. Quiet, daughter.” She’s petting me on the head. The colonel calls in: “Let’s enter the cemetery. The wife is getting hysterical.” At the cemetery we were surrounded by soldiers. We had a convoy. And they were carrying the coffin. No one was allowed in. It was just us. They covered him with earth in a minute. “Faster! Faster!” the officer was yelling. They didn’t even let me hug the coffin. And—onto the bus. Everything on the sly.
Right away they bought us plane tickets back home. For the next day. The whole time there was someone with us in plainclothes with a military bearing. He wouldn’t even let us out of the dorm to buy some food for the trip. God forbid we might talk with someone—especially me. As if I could talk by then. I couldn’t even cry. When we were leaving, the woman on duty counted all the towels and all the sheets. She folded them right away and put them into a polyethylene bag. They probably burnt them. We paid for the dormitory ourselves. For fourteen nights. It was a hospital for radiation poisoning. Fourteen nights. That’s how long it takes a person to die.
At home I fell asleep. I walked into the place and just fell onto the bed. I slept for three days. An ambulance came. “No,” said the doctor, “she’ll wake up. It’s just a terrible sleep.”
I was twenty-three.
I remember the dream I had. My dead grandmother comes to me in the clothes that we buried her in. She’s dressing up the New Year’s tree. “Grandma, why do we have a New Year’s tree? It’s summertime.” “Because your Vasenka is going to join me soon.” And he grew up in the forest. I remember the dream—Vasya comes in a white robe and calls for Natasha. That’s our girl, who I haven’t given birth to yet. She’s already grown up. He throws her up to the ceiling, and they laugh. And I’m watching them and thinking that happiness—it’s so simple. I’m sleeping. We’re walking along the water. Walking and walking. He probably asked me not to cry. Gave me a sign. From up there.
[She is silent for a long time.]
Two months later I went to Moscow. From the train station straight to the cemetery. To him! And at the cemetery I start going into labor. Just as I started talking to him—they called the ambulance. It was at the same Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova’s that I gave birth. She’d said to me back then: “You need to come here to give birth.” It was two weeks before I was due.
They showed her to me—a girl. “Natashenka,” I called out. “Your father named you Natashenka.” She looked healthy. Arms, legs. But she had cirrhosis of the liver. Her liver had twenty-eight roentgen. Congenital heart disease. Four hours later they told me she was dead. And again: we won’t give her to you. What do you mean you won’t give her to me? It’s me who won’t give her to you! You want to take her for science. I hate your science! I hate it!
[She is silent.]
I keep saying the wrong thing to you. The wrong thing. I’m not supposed to yell after my stroke. And I’m not supposed to cry. That’s why the words are all wrong. But I’ll say this. No one knows this. When they brought me the little wooden box and said, “She’s in there,” I looked. She’d been cremated. She was ashes. And I started crying. “Put her at his feet,” I requested.
There, at the cemetery, it doesn’t say Natasha Ignatenko. There’s only his name. She didn’t have a name yet, she didn’t have anything. Just a soul. That’s what I buried there. I always go there with two bouquets: one for him, and the other I put in the corner for her. I crawl around the grave on my knees. Always on my knees. [She becomes incomprehensible.] I killed her. I. She. Saved. My little girl saved me, she took the whole radioactive shock into herself, she was like the lightning rod for it. She was so small. She was a little tiny thing. [She has trouble breathing.] She saved . . . But I loved them both. Because—because you can’t kill something with love, right? With such love! Why are these things together—love and death. Together. Who’s going to explain this to me? I crawl around the grave on my knees.
[She is silent for a long time.]
In Kiev they gave me an apartment. It was in a large building, where they put everyone from the atomic station. It’s a big apartment, with two rooms, the kind Vasya and I had dreamed of. And I was going crazy in it!
I found a husband eventually. I told him everything—the whole truth—that I have one love, for my whole life. I told him everything. We’d meet, but I’d never invite him to my home, that’s where Vasya was.
I worked in a candy shop. I’d be making cake, and tears would be rolling down my cheeks. I’m not crying, but there are tears rolling down.
I gave birth to a boy, Andrei. Andreika. My friends tried to stop me. “You can’t have a baby.” And the doctors tried to scare me: “Your body won’t be able to handle it.” Then, later—later they told me that he’d be missing an arm. His right arm. The instrument showed it. “Well, so what?” I thought. “I’ll teach him to write with his left hand.” But he came out fine. A beautiful boy. He’s in school now, he gets good grades. Now I have someone—I can live and breathe him. He’s the light in my life. He understands everything perfectly. “Mom, if I go visit grandma for two days, will you be able to breathe?” I won’t! I fear the day I’ll have to leave him. One day we’re walking down the street. And I feel that I’m falling. That’s when I had my first stroke. Right on the street. “Mom, do you need some water?” “No, just stand here next to me. Don’t go anywhere.”