We Are Not in Pakistan Read Online Free PDF Page A

Olena, “You can’t have another baby.”
    In a practical voice. As if she had decided this for Olena. Decided again for Olena.
    Galina is leaning over Matushka’s proudest possession: Victor’s old chess set. She advances a white pawn two paces, then a black one. Then another white one. She pulls up a low stool and sits down. Her brow furrows.
    Olena takes the Misha-bear to the spare room. She pulls her suitcase from the cupboard, thrusts it in, and locks it away.
    Ten days later, there’s a knock at Matushka’s apartment door. Olena wipes her hands and takes off her apron. Not Galina — she’s at her new school this afternoon. Not Viktor, not on a weekday. He must be at the station right now, answering more questions. It’s probably the woman in the flat below, asking to use Matushka’s telephone.
    But no, Matushka is showing Rivka into her small living room — as if Rivka were
her
friend, rather than Olena’s. She ordersOlena to serve poppy-seed cake and tea as if Olena wouldn’t have done so otherwise. She offers Rivka a seat on the sofa beside her, then a cigarette. She lights one for herself and slides her brass ashtray within Rivka’s reach.
    â€œTell me,” Matushka says to Rivka. “Have they found where the sabotage occurred?”
    â€œIt does not appear to be sabotage, comrade,” says Rivka.
    â€œBut surely it was a spy, a foreign hand,” says Matushka.
    Rivka glances at Olena and takes a slice of the poppy-seed cake.
    Olena pours tea for Matushka and Rivka as Rivka asks about Galina. Matushka regales her with Galina’s seven-year-old wisdom. Rivka listens and smiles as if she’s really interested.
    In the voice of a concerned friend, Rivka asks about Viktor’s exposure, his symptoms. What did he see from the helicopter? What recommendations are being made to the KGB and the Politburo? Can Units 1, 2 and 3 really be blocked off from Unit 4? The wind, she says, will carry radionuclides over a million square miles. Miners and metro workers are being trucked in from all over the country — is it just to dig new wells? Is it true what she’s heard, that water from the fire hoses has pooled beneath the reactor, and they have to tunnel under it, drain it out and make a refrigeration chamber, or else there will be a second explosion? Does Viktor believe families can ever go back to Pripyat to live? Is there danger to the rest of the Soviet Union? Could Europe become uninhabitable?
    Suddenly Olena does not want to tell Rivka anything. For once, she is grateful to Matushka for her expert and polite evasion of Rivka’s every question.
    â€œWhere are you living?” says Olena to change the subject.
    Rivka says the babushka who sold radishes in the central square in Pripyat happened to be one of the peasants choosing townspeople to take home. She chose Rivka and a few others tolive with her. But now Rivka has been allotted an apartment in Kyiv, so she can interview visiting dignitaries and reassure the foreign press. She came here because she remembered Olena, remembered promising her a job after May Day — can Olena work with her?
    â€œI didn’t know you had been offered a job after May Day,” says Matushka. She leans toward Rivka and taps her cigarette into the ashtray. “She forgets things,” she says in a conspiratorial tone. “I called Viktor the night before the accident, and Olena forgot to give him my message.”
    Olena knows what Matushka wants her to say. She hears herself using many words and a deeply apologetic tone to say what could be said in a single word: nyet.
    Disappointment passes over Rivka’s face, but there’s nothing to be done.
    She rises. Olena doesn’t want her to leave. Not without a smile.
    â€œI’m trying to imagine you,” she says, “such a Moscow sophisticate, living in a hut, eating white borsht and potato puddings.” It’s a