Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster Read Online Free PDF

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." And I grabbed his arm. I don’t remember what happened next. I came to in the hospital. But I grabbed him so hard that the doctors were barely able to pry my fingers open. His arm was blue for a long time. Now we walk out of the house, he says, “Mommie, just don't grab my arm. I won't go anywhere." He's also sick: two weeks in school, two weeks at home with a doctor. That's how we live.
    [She stands up, goes over to the window .]
    There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called—Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don’t leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In an instant. They just drop—someone will be walking, he falls down, goes to sleep, never wakes up. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one’s asked what we’ve been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them.
    But I was telling you about love. About my love . . .
    Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman Vasily Ignatenko

    ____

PART ONE

THE LAND OF THE DEAD

MONOLOGUE ABOUT WHAT CAN BE TALKED ABOUT WITH THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

    The wolf came into the yard at night. I look out the window and there he is, eyes shining like headlights. Now I'm used to everything. I've been living alone for seven years, seven years since the people left. Sometimes at night I’ll just be sitting here thinking, thinking, until it’s lights out again. So on this day I was up all night, sitting on my bed, and then I went out to look at how the sun was. What should I tell you? Death is more just than anything else in the world: no one can escape it. The earth takes everyone—the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no justice on earth. I worked hard and honestly my whole life. But I didn’t get any justice. God was dividing things up somewhere, and by the time the line came to me there was nothing left. A young person can die, an old person has to die ... At first, I waited for people to come—I thought they’d come back. No one said they