It was early evening before they were through with the mail. Lazorska was not in sight. Yulia stood up and stretched. “I’m going over to help Lazorska.”
Evdokia walked with her, but Marusia lingered in the post office. She wanted to be alone for a few minutes. She had to open the letter. The envelope was made of faint pink linen paper. She liked the way it felt, elegant and rich. The handwriting looked practiced and large, almost like Katia’s but less childish. She had to open the letter. The letter was written on typical graph paper stationery. Here, the ink strokes were larger and angrier. In Russian it said:
Stay away from my husband or I will have to tell the authorities. I will also tell your husband. Forget about trying to make him to marry you. He’s only using you, and will never leave me. He said that to me himself. For your own good, and his and mine, leave him. He has a wife and his own children. Leave him alone.
She couldn’t make out the scribbled signature. It looked like Liena, or Genya, maybe Nina. Who is that? she wondered.
She thought about it and then was glad she didn’t know. She was relieved that Yurko didn’t know about this. Or did he? She thought about Zosia and Yurko and their lives together. Why couldn’t they have been happy? He was like me, she thought, unlucky in the people he loved.
She tore up the letter and hid the pieces in her dress pocket. It was too stupid—all of that, so unnecessary. Life passes too quickly for such nonsense. Marusia was surprised to suddenly feel a bolt of remorse for Zosia. Zosia was unlucky, too, and Marusia felt tremendous grief for all of the lost chances she might have taken to try for an understanding, an alliance of respect with her strong-willed daughter-in-law. And it was too late for that as well.
She would burn the pieces in her stove later. Now she hurried to see what damage was left to be cleared from Paraskevia Volodymyrivna’s house before it was time to ring the bells.
Chapter 20
MARUSIA AND EVDOKIA planned to leave early in the morning for their walk to Chornobyl, but even before daylight they were awakened by shouts of obscenities and a rumbling motor shattering the still night.
“Oh, no—not another explosion.” Marusia sat up and searched in the dark for her slippers. She lit a candle and hurried to her window. The sky was a soft dark blue. There were several hours before the first tentacles of morning light. She couldn’t see anything unusual, so she put on a shawl, grabbed her crowbar from the woodstove, and went outside. The air was cool and smelled of springtime. She didn’t see any stars through the hazy clouds, but could make out the outer scythelike rim of the half-moon poking through. She followed the noise down the path to the church.
“Marusia, is that you?” hissed Evdokia from her open window. “Hey!” she yelled, tapping the pane a few times, but Marusia didn’t hear her over the din. “Wait for me!” She ran and caught Marusia passing her gate. Marusia hardly recognized her friend, who had her gray hair plaited into two braids that bounced over her plump breasts. “What is that noise?” Evdokia asked, breathless.
“I don’t know. A tractor?” They stopped at Lazorska’s yard, where she stood rigid in the middle of the road, her arms crossed. She was dressed in her usual black dress and scarf.
“Woch! Lazorska, it’s you,” Evdokia gasped. “I thought you were a night spirit. Some kind of mean Lisovi ghost come to take me away. Yoy!”
Yulia had also been awakened and came out to join the other women. She carried an ax. “Good idea,” Evdokia whispered. She searched the misty ground for a thick stick for herself in case they had to defend themselves. The women walked down past the churchyard and onto the path that led to the kolhosp. In the thin slice of moonlight, they could see the outlines of two people and half a car.
“Be careful,” Lazorska cautioned. “We don’t know what they’re doing or who they are.”
Marusia blew out her candle. The two figures seemed unaware of the women who crept along behind the bushes and beneath the canopies of shadowy trees in the dark. When they were close enough to hear one of them, a young man, swear loudly, they realized he was working beneath the hood of a car. He lifted up his face in clear view to the group. A large case of tools, a pickax and two shovels were on the ground.
“Hold it, Oles!” he yelled to his friend who was in the car revving the engine. “Who are you?” the young boy demanded of the stunned women. “Are you gorsoviet agents? Listen, we weren’t doing anything.”
Evdokia spoke up. “Hey, is that you, Mykola Hnatsenko?” His friend stumbled out of the car. They both stared stupidly at the women. “Don’t you know me, you little fool? I’m Hanna’s grandmother.” Evdokia turned to the other women. “You should all know this crazy child. Let me introduce you to Mykola. ‘Mykola- shkoda’ we called him because he wasted his life. One of Hanna’s old boyfriends from the plant. What are you doing here? I thought you left to live in Chornobyl a few years back.”
The young man smiled, showing a mouthful of steel teeth. He had deep pockmarks on his hairless young cheeks, and his blond hair fell over his dull green eyes. “Oh, sure. Evdokia Zenoviivna. How are you?”
“Never mind that. What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”
His friend Oles, a taller boy with darker hair, cut in. “We could ask you that. What are you doing here? This is a dead zone. No one is supposed to be here.”
“Well, how about that, because as you can see, we’re here in the flesh and blood shivering in our nighties. We live here,” retorted Evdokia.
“We came back from the evacuation,” Marusia put in.
“So, there’s people here now?” asked Mykola.
“Just us,” Evdokia said.
“Just the four of you?” Oles laughed. He poked Mykola in the ribs with his elbow. “So, you’re not really supposed to be here? Great! Just old ladies! That’s great! Nothing to worry about, Kolya.”
“Wait one minute,” Marusia said. She didn’t like their disrespectful tone, especially from that puppy Oles. “We came back. This is our home. I don’t know either of you boys. You’re not here to live with us, are you? It doesn’t look like you’re moving in anywhere. So, what are you doing here in the middle of God’s immortal night?”
“Look,” Oles said, “why don’t you go back to sleep and forget you saw us. We’ll be out of here soon and you lovely beauties can all live here happily ever after.” The boys laughed.
In low voices, the women murmured among themselves. Then Marusia stepped closer to the car. “How do you know that we’re not supposed to be here? We babysi are everywhere, in every government office, on every hotel floor, on every street corner cleaning, working night and day. We are the eyes and ears of the government. Now suppose I tell my boss, whose name you would know quicker than your own fathers’, about what you bad little boys are doing here in the middle of a dead zone.” Marusia walked around the car and tapped the hood with her crowbar. “Whose car is this?”
“Yes, whose car?” Evdokia played along. She had never liked Mykola anyway. “I don’t remember you ever making enough money to have a car. They kept giving you the lousiest jobs and firing you because you were no good. No wonder my Hanna married someone else—a top Communist official. So, let’s see some proof that it belongs to you and not to the people!”
Lazorska feebly kicked the back tires that were half mired in the dirt. A mound of earth was piled next to the automobile. “I see what’s going on here,” she declared. “After everyone left, you buried someone else’s car. Now you’re stealing it.”
“Oh boys, that’s thirty years in Perm for you,” said Yulia. “Believe me, I know. Next stop… Siberia.”
“That’s an official deputy’s car for sure,” said Evdokia.
“Then it’s fifty years, and after that ten more just to prove that you can’t get away with it,” Yulia said.
The boys looked nervous. Oles lit a cigarette and Mykola scratched his face. “So,” Marusia said, “does this monster work?”
“We got it out as far as it wo
uld go,” Mykola said in a respectful tone. “But it still needs work. We’ve got to dig it out some more.”
“I’m sure you can do that, you’re such strong boys,” said Marusia with more confidence. “Then you will take us to the gorsoviet in Chornobyl. We have an important document to deliver—something to the magister.”
“Look, babo, I’m not taking you anywhere,” Oles shouted. “This is my car. Prove that it isn’t. I don’t care if you call the authorities on me, but I’m getting out of this area. I’m not going to Chornobyl.”
Marusia thought of Zosia and what she would have said if she were here. She wasn’t going to back down. She planted herself directly in front of the boys. “Listen you little ball of snot. I didn’t put up with all the catastrophes in my life—the war and then the explosion—for me in my old age to be yelled at by a piece of duck shit like you. You will take me to Chornobyl when you get this car working again! I don’t care if it takes six months. I will sit myself down like this—” She poked a hole in the ground with the crowbar. “—right on this same grass I myself drove a tractor over. And I will watch you day and night until I hear that car roar. I have to get a cow for us. Then you’ll bring me back here to the village. After that, you can run off in this junk heap and take the devil for a joyride for all I care.” She thought a second as to how the cow would fit in this car, but she let that pass for now because her mind was set on getting her way.
“Good for you, Marusia,” cheered Evdokia. Lazorska turned her head to the side and let out a cackle. Yulia raised her ax above her head and waved it in the air.
Mykola glanced at his friend. “Oh, take her, what the hell.”
“And besides,” coaxed Evdokia, “there’s six of us all together. We could help you push the car out of the pit.”
“All right,” said Oles. “Let’s just get on with it.”
It was another two hours before Oles could get the dead engine alive and sputtering into a reliable, steady hum. The women helped push, rock, and heave it out of the dirt. Before the boys could run off, Yulia, still clutching her ax, sat down in the backseat of the car with Lazorska, while Marusia and Evdokia returned to their homes to change their clothes and collect some food for the road.
“Do you have the ukase?” Lazorska asked as she and Yulia relinquished their seats.
“Yes, right here.” Marusia patted her chest.
“If you please, ladies, let’s go,” Oles said, holding the passenger-side door open. Marusia and Evdokia climbed into the back and held the ends of their babushkas over their noses to keep from sneezing. Luckily, the boys or whoever buried the car had thought to shut the windows before it was completely filled with dirt.
MARUSIA AND EVDOKIA were jostled during the short, bumpy ride, but held on to the short leather straps over the windows. The car slowed down near the plant’s gates. Oles stared at the rearview mirror. “Look, we have to let you off here. We can’t wait around.”
“Honest, we’re in deep trouble as it is,” pleaded Mykola.
“Shut up,” Oles said.
“I’m sorry, ladies,” Mykola said. “But someone’s looking for me. We’ve got to go. Otherwise, they’ll make me clean up the radiation….” Mykola turned to look at the old women. “Honest, I’m sorry. But please let us go. We kept our end. We just can’t wait for you or take you back.”
“That’s all right, son,” Marusia said. “Thank you and good luck.”
“Say hello to your mother for me,” said Evdokia to Mykola. She ignored the other one.
Once the women had gotten out of the car, it spun crazily around and sped out of sight.
“Well, at least we only have to walk one way,” said Evdokia. “We can lead the cow, if we get one. I’ve done that a million times in my life.”
The women stood in front of the high fence that surrounded the Chornobyl plant. They weren’t sure where to go, or even how to get inside.
They approached the main gate, where a Red Army guard stopped them.
“Halt!” he yelled. “This is restricted territory. You are not allowed to go further!” He stormed toward them with his rifle cocked and aimed.
“Please, tovaryshi,” Marusia said. “We come on business. We’re from Starylis.”
“You can’t be from there,” the guard said. He was young, with pimples on his broad babyface. “There are no residents in the zone areas, except for authorized personnel.”
“We’re from Starylis,” Marusia repeated, trying to sound calm. “There are two more women in our village besides us. We came to speak to the magister.”
“We want a cow,” Evdokia blurted out. “Please.”
“Are you spies?” he asked.
Evdokia giggled nervously. “Who wants to know?” she said.
“Ssh.” Marusia was frightened. He might be crazy enough to shoot them where they breathed. He made them lift up their arms in the air, and with one hand searched them, causing dust to puff out from their threadbare clothing each time he patted them.
“Look, son, we’re evacuees,” Marusia said after he was through. “Our sons and daughters worked here before the explosion. Now some of us old ones have come back. We’re here to tell someone official and to get a cow.”
“What the hell is going on here, Officer Rostov?” said a thick, dark voice. A man dressed in a suit and tan trench coat stepped out of a new-model Soviet-built black Volga and strode up to them. “Why are you attacking these women? Did you have another fight with your mother-in-law and are declaring war against all the babysi now?”
“Sir.” The guard saluted the man in the trench coat, then resumed pointing the rifle at the women. “They said they’re from the zone, sir. But no one’s there. They could be spies.”
“Oh, put that idiotic thing away,” said the man. His voice was coated with whiskey. “Damn Svejk. Ever read Good Soldier Svejk? No? Great book. This idiot is the adopted son. Now what is this all about? Please, ladies, put your arms down.”
“We came here to see the magister,” Marusia said.
The man laughed. “Damn if that isn’t precious! Damn!”
“Show him the ukase,” Evdokia nudged. Marusia modestly took the document from inside the front of her dress and handed it to the man in the trench coat.
He laughed harder. “Damn! And to Gorbachev, too. You old women are amazing. And this fool wanted to shoot you. Come with me! This is too good to miss!”
The women were humbled more by the man’s exuberance than by the guard’s rifle. And they were awed by the plant itself—a busy place with people in white and brown jumpsuits milling around, many saluting the man who walked briskly and a little ahead of the women.
Marusia and Evdokia glanced nervously out of the sides of their eyes at the red and white towers that loomed atop massive concrete buildings. Behind those stood a decrepit structure that looked as though a fire had gutted it. It was crowned with a black carapace. “A church painted black?” Marusia whispered to Evdokia, who shrugged. Marusia quickly crossed herself in tiny circular movements so as not to be noticed.
They were taken to a building farther away from the gate, and into an office where several pretty women were typing mysterious messages at large, bulbous computer terminals.
Then they were led into another office where a fat little man—Marusia thought he might be the ghost of Nikita Khrushchev—sat behind a small desk without anything on it except an ink stand and a magazine opened to pages with bright pictures of skiers on mountaintops. He was about to sip a steaming glass of tea when the man in the trench coat ushered the women in.
“Ladies, this is the magister. Tell him everything you told me.”
The women were asked to sit down.
“Please, tovarishch,” Marusia said. “If you don’t mind we’ll stand. We’re dirty from our journey.” She didn’t want to smudge the clean white plastic chairs.
The man in the trench coat gave the fat man the ukase. “Read this! It’s wonderful!”
The magiste
r shook his head. “Unbelievable.” Marusia could see he wasn’t as amused by it as the other man. “But why did you women come back? Who gave you permission?”
“We read in the newspaper that only thirty-one people died from the accident, and that now things were back to normal, and so we wanted to come home to die. We lost our families and we have no money. So, we want our homes….” Marusia’s voice trembled and faltered.
“And a cow,” Evdokia said.
“Well, we have to inspect this more closely,” the magister said, flustered. He cleared his throat. “Well, go on back now… wherever you are living. Where was it?”
“In Starylis, tovarishch,” Marusia said.
“Well, that’s not really allowed,” he said. His forehead suddenly burst with oily droplets of sweat. “Really, not allowed. I’ll have to take that up with the committee as well.”
“Excuse me please, but where are we supposed to live, then?” Marusia said. “We have nowhere to go.”
The magister thumped his thick hairy fist on his desk. “You can be arrested for inhabiting a forbidden zone,” he shouted.
“Sasha, Sashen’ko,” the trench coat cut in. “They have a point. Where would they go? Unless you and your lovely Masha put them up in your apartment. Now, that’s a good idea! What do you say? A couple of beauties here and the devil knows who else is lurking around under their beds in their village. They can cook for you, bake bread, comb your hair….”
“Not a funny joke, Dmitri Pavlovych,” the magister hissed at his crony.
“Well, then I’ll take them home with me. My place needs a good scrubbing since my wife left me. Do you ladies know how to make a good cheesecake? I haven’t had that in a long time. Maybe I need a cow, too, Sasha….”
“Enough!” the magister said. “You women—how many did you say are in the village there?” He was staring at Evdokia, who was openly smiling at him.
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