“Listen to me—I will take it on my soul,” Marusia said. “You did nothing but good in this life. You’ve helped the sick and dying ones. Now, let me help you. I take it on my soul. Let me end your suffering like I promised. Let me help you face God.”
Marusia waited until Lazorska finished her silent prayers, and then she kissed her friend’s thin face that always reminded her of spun linen—smooth and cool and imprinted with the faint marks of fine lines woven into her flesh for strength.
Chapter 23
ON THE MORNING of Marusia’s last day in life, the air was dry and the sun’s scorching rays beat hammers on the top of everyone’s head. Even the farm animals’ tongues hung out of their mouths like dowsing sticks in the grass, twitching for invisible water.
The air steamed. Marusia was unable to thoroughly drench her garden because her well was running dry. She took her watering can and sprinkled the browning plants, but the water wasn’t enough for their thirst. “Even my tears are dried up,” she moaned.
She had to get out of the garden. Her head was soaked beneath her babushka, and she was dizzy. The last few weeks she had been unusually light-headed and in constant pain—every joint ached, and the insides of her eyelids felt like sandpaper scraping the last bit of moisture from her sore red eyes. Her body felt hot and inflamed, not only from the heat, but from some internal source that fired every pore in her skin, worse than a rash that wouldn’t heal.
She needed to feel better and took out a bottle of samohon from the kitchen cabinet. She sat at her table, where she filled a fifty-gram shot glass full. The strong drink burned a glow in her chest and made her feel hotter. She wiped the sweat from off her eyebrows and above her upper lip and tried to finish the drink, but her hands trembled and she felt nauseated from its gasoline smell.
She sat down and took from her pocket a wad of her black hemp gum and slowly chewed it soft with the nubs of the few teeth she had left in front. Lately, so many of her back teeth, even the silver ones, had fallen out, and her gums had swelled and turned dark, thick, red and fleshy, like the inside of a plum. The drug made her feel calmer and not quite as hot.
Two days earlier she had started to clean her house. She found the old suitcase she had taken to Kyiv. It stood dormant, wedged between large round bottles of fruit compote made and sealed years ago. In her solitary grief, she had not been able to unpack the suitcase since her return to Starylis.
Now she had an enormous desire to open it. She wheezed and coughed her way to the pantry, knelt on the dusty floor, and dragged it loose from its hiding place. She sprang open the lock and looked inside. One by one, she took out the bulky items she had wrapped so long ago in inky newspaper—the few clothes that she had taken to Kyiv: a flannel nightgown, a pair of woolen stockings. Inside a sock, she found Yurko’s wedding ring, the plain gold band she’d been given by the nurses after he died. In the matching sock, she found his watch. It read 2:30. She put it on her wrist. The last item was a striped shirt of Yurko’s that he had never had a chance to wear. She sighed and put all of the things, except for the watch, back inside the suitcase.
Marusia dipped into the deep blue satin pouch that hung inside the suitcase. She was surprised when she found the white lace hair ribbon Katia wore. In that awful hospital basement in Kyiv, Katia had thrown it down after she caught Tarasyk putting it on his head.
And then, in her dizziness, she found Tarasyk’s blond curls—fine strands, gentle as clouds, she thought. She feverishly kissed the ribbon and the hair. Marusia wove the ribbon through a buttonhole of her dress and kept the curls inside one of her fists.
“Oy! Okh! Too much,” she groaned. She stood up and thought that she should water her garden, or at least hoe and weed the crops. No time to cry. So overgrown, she thought. Han’ba! Shameful! I’ll starve if I don’t save the garden.
The weeds ruled, crowding out the good crops faster than she had the strength to chop them back. She went out again into the garden and thought that the cow must need water, too, but… had the pitiful animal died a week ago, or was it grazing on the kolhosp land? She couldn’t remember.
Marusia sat down on the step outside. She shaded her eyes from the harsh glare and tried to make out the figure in the garden, near the empty cowshed. A golden figure—an angel—was sprinkling her garden with her watering can. The angel’s back was toward Marusia, but she saw its shoulder-length golden hair lift away from its head when a cool breeze picked up—little tufts of hair floating away like dandelion seeds. The hair swirled on the ground around Marusia’s feet. It glowed and shimmered on the earth, and she thought of the gold painted on icons.
“I have some, too,” she said, and released Tarasyk’s hair into the gentle cascade of soft wind that surrounded her head. It danced higher and higher until she had to shut her eyes because the sunlight dazzled and blinded her.
“Don’t leave me,” she murmured, then nodded her head as though in reply to something she heard, as though she understood everything that she had questioned all her life and felt satisfied in her wisdom. Now that all her prayers were answered, her knowledge complete, her last breath coupled with the still air.
PART III
Pure Sweet Air
Chapter 24
A NORMAL PERSON would have been nervous or more cautious, but Zosia no longer considered herself normal’na… not anymore. Normalcy belonged to others like the woman sitting across from her, the British journalist who spoke Russian so well. There was only a slight accent to the woman’s vowels, and the way she pronounced the telltale soft l sounded like a spoiled child’s pouty voice. Zosia tried not to notice the accent and to concentrate on making her own voice sound soft and serious on the tape. Still, the woman and her assistants—the ones bustling around with the microphones and tape recorders—were all very kind and sympathetic to her, and Zosia noticed how often they glanced at her with respect for what she had to tell them.
Zosia appreciated the attention but was still somewhat taken aback by the British woman’s appearance. Such a different-looking person, her first up close Westerner. But Zosia knew how much she herself had changed in the nearly three years since the explosion at the Chornobyl plant. She was certainly even dowdier and more disheveled compared with this Westerner. Zosia especially disliked the way her own coarse hair had grown out to reveal too many gray hairs between the dark roots. She’d had neither the time nor money to bother with her hair after their departure from that horrible hospital in Kyiv. How difficult it had been getting out of Ukraine! Mothers and children everywhere—rushing onto the trains, grabbing seats, piling on top of each other, camping out in the aisles where the rude conductors in their blue uniforms yelled at the passengers to get out of their way. Zosia hated the conductors for refusing to sell them tea and sugar wafers. Katia’s feelings were hurt by one conductress who ignored her request for a wafer that had fallen off a tray. No one would’ve gotten anything had Zosia not given in to a fit of frustration and anger. She raised a fuss by grabbing the smug conductress’s basket of treats and passing it around to all of the children in their car. “These children are ill!” Zosia shouted, crazed and defiant. “This is the least you can do to help, you svynia. Pig!” She threw a handful of kopeks at the conductress, who stumbled away from the frenzied, hungry children. After the ruckus, Zosia half expected to be thrown off the train, and at times during the interminable ride even welcomed the possibility. She and her children had had to sit in the aisles near the lavatory—an awful place considering the toilet was nothing more than a hole in the floor and the door was never properly closed. There was an overwhelming stench, and rivulets of liquid streamed out of the toilet directly into Zosia’s space.
It had been an agonizingly long train ride with many, many stops and a six-hour delay because the tracks were broken. “Too many people on board, that’s why,” a woman near Zosia declared to no one in particular. “The train can’t carry us all.”
Finally, Moscow. Zosia and her children were almost crus
hed in the mad rush out of the narrow exits, and she had to push away several big women who were suffocating Tarasyk and Katia. “Keep away!” Zosia shouted at everyone. “Idiots!” She was ready to hit some-one. Luckily, she kept her head and her temper until they were off the train and on the platform.
As quickly as Tarasyk could walk, the three of them made their way quickly toward the station’s vast crowded lobby. Zosia carried the bags of food and clothes so Katia had to half pull a listless Tarasyk who more than once refused to walk and sat down in the middle of the floor. Finally Katia wouldn’t take Tarasyk’s hand anymore. “We can’t stop now,” Zosia said. “Katia, take Tarasyk over there to that wall. Near Lenin’s picture. Just a few more steps, darlings. Come on, before we get trampled.” Zosia herself nearly fainted and dropped her bags the moment they reached Lenin’s stern gaze. “I can’t get sick,” she had told herself. To the children she said calmly, “Now, don’t move until I come back.”
Zosia had spent another two hours waiting in more long lines to use the phone. She had her cache of kopeks ready in hand in case she had to call more than one friend. She was right. Nobody was expecting her, of course. No one answered. Nearly everyone was at work or standing in a line somewhere else in the city to buy food for the evening’s meal. Or at a bar. Typical, Zosia had fumed.
SHE RELATED MOST of this to the British woman whose name was Roberta and who was doing a radio documentary about Chornobyl. Zosia spent most of the day at the woman’s borrowed apartment, describing the explosion, the evacuation, the putrid hospital. The foreigner’s kind hazel eyes spurred her on, but Zosia still did not trust her enough to fully confess everything. She didn’t admit what a coward she felt for deserting Yurko and Marusia like that. Nor did she mention her pregnancy. Inside, Zosia reprimanded herself throughout the interview.
“Where did you stay in Moscow, dear?” the foreigner asked her.
“Wherever I could. With friends. One after another. Then with friends of friends and their relatives,” Zosia said. “I tried to register for an apartment in Mos-cow, but that was impossible. I was put on a waiting list for new housing the government was building for us Chernobyl workers near Kiev. But I missed an appointment with the housing officials. My son was sick.” Zosia bit her tongue so as not to reveal how ill she’d been by then. She had suffered a miscarriage and was so riddled with infections she was convinced that she would be forever sterile—a perfect punishment from God. What a sense of humor He has if He exists, she thought.
Zosia concentrated on the woman’s lilac silk scarf. So unusual. She could sell that on the black market in ten seconds and get real German marks or even American dollars for it. She had already sold the embroidered pillow Marusia had given her in Kyiv and the clothes she had gotten from humanitarian aid societies. The only item Zosia refused to sell was the gold necklace of the Virgin, the one Marusia had given her on that last night.
“YES, MARUSIA—IS it?” the journalist said. How very odd it felt to be called by her mother-in-law’s old fashioned name. “Marusia, please tell me, what exactly happened to your husband?” Zosia hadn’t given the Westerner her real identity. Before, back in the Brezhnev days, anyone could get arrested for even giving lost tourists directions to their hotel. Things had lightened up after Chornobyl, and Gorbachev was allowing a new openness—glasnost—after the world had criticized the Soviets for trying to hide the disaster. But Zosia did not trust this “openness” anymore than she did the lying, thieving bureaucrats who kept promising her they would locate her husband, or after slowly poisoning them, give her compensation money and a new home for herself and her children. Why should she trust the same devils who insisted they were doing all they could for her sick son?
Poor Tarasyk. He was so tiny and weak that he could hardly stand up by himself. Even so, not once did he ever complain about the moves from one cramped apartment to another. But during the awful times when he was paralyzed with stomach pains and the pneumonia he endured all the previous winter, his red eyes would well up with tears, and he would look at Zosia as though asking her, “Why?” No more, Zosia vowed. She had to get him out of here. Katia, too. The little girl was also complaining of unusual aches and pains. She had to get her children away. Not even Moscow was safe for them.
THE JOURNALIST OFFERED Zosia a foreign cigarette. Zosia shook her head. She studied the British woman’s well-polished fingernails and soft hands. And the wonderfully unusual haircut: a precision cut in the shape of a helmet that flattered the woman’s high forehead and long, thin face. When they first met, Zosia had known instantly that Roberta was foreign. Before Roberta had said a word, Zosia guessed she was from the West. The real leather shoes. The simple, well-tailored woolen skirt. The cotton blouse with fancy pearl buttons. The glasses: thin-rimmed, round ones. So different. Nothing like any of it even in the special stores for foreign tourists and high Party officials.
“Tea?” the foreigner asked, smiling at her. Even white teeth. No gold. “No? Now, you were about to tell me about your husband….”
“To get my children out, I had to leave my husband at the hospital in Kiev,” Zosia told her. “After my arrival in Moscow, I contacted Kiev, but they told me that he was transferred to a Moscow hospital. Clinic Number Six. It’s a special hospital for the Chernobyl victims. He wasn’t there. Finally, they told me he died. They gave me some compensation money. And I’ve gotten a bit more while here, but now the money has been cut off. I can’t go back to Kiev either. They won’t give me permission anymore. They don’t want Chernobyl victims to come back and infect the rest of Kiev.”
The journalist bent forward in her chair. “And yourself? How are you doing these days?”
Zosia was disarmed by the woman’s concerned face. “I don’t know. I’m numb from worrying about everything. Worry will kill me in the end if the radiation doesn’t do it first.” She’d said too much. She hated to admit she was ill. Her throat itched, she coughed up blood, but she kept it to herself. She believed that if she did otherwise, they’d put her into another worthless hospital and send the children to an orphanage.
The Brit turned off the tape recorder. “Well, I think we have everything we need,” she told Zosia. “Thank you so much for your help. The world will know what happened….”
“Yes, the money, please. I need the money now,” Zosia cut in. “You promised me one hundred rubles if I spoke to you. I took a great risk by doing this. So now, I have to be paid.”
The foreigner handed her a business card. “My chief will pay you. Ask for…”
“I don’t have time. Pay me now. Please!”
The Westerner fumbled in her soft leather briefcase and took out a wallet. “Sorry, I only have English pounds….”
“Kharasho—fine. I know where to change them,” Zosia said, smiling openly at her for the first time and not caring that Roberta would see how many teeth were missing.
ZOSIA’S ONLY CONCERN the last evening she spent in Moscow was whether she would get her children out of Russia without being arrested for talking to the journalist. She had paid the doctor, the letter was in her purse along with her passport. Her hosts, good friends who had gladly allowed Zosia and the children to stay at their apartment during the past few weeks, were sound asleep in their own room. Tarasyk was also asleep on the divan in the living room. Zosia kissed the knit cap that covered his head, now nearly bald.
She was about to kiss Katia good night when the little girl sat up. “Mamo, I can’t sleep,” Katia said. “We are going away again without Baba.”
“But darling, we tried to call her in Kyiv lots of times, and we’ve written letters to the hospital, and Baba doesn’t answer,” Zosia said.
“Write to our house,” Katia said. “Tell her we’re going away, but we’ll see her someday. So she won’t worry.”
“Write to the house in the village?” Zosia brightened up and kissed the child’s tangled hair. “Good idea! Maybe she’s there. You’re such a smart girl.” Together, she and Katia sat
on the parquet floor while Zosia composed a letter which she read to the little girl, who listened as intently as though it were a story:
10 September 1989
Dear Mamuniu,
I’m hoping that by some miracle you get this letter—our last before we leave Moscow. We’ve had a rough time, and Tarasyk is very sick, so we are going to a sanatorium in Georgia.
Zosia read the next section to herself silently:
I contacted the hospital in Kyiv about Yurko. First, they told me he was transferred to Moscow. I searched everywhere and later was told that he’s not alive. But there’s no official record about his death. So, please tell me what really happened after we left you at the hospital and if he is still alive or not.
Out loud, Zosia continued:
I know that we never had a phone, but I tried calling the post office in Starylis to send you a message. The lines don’t work. So, I want you to please call this number as soon as you can. We are leaving Russia tomorrow but you can talk to my friends Stefan and Tatiana, and tell them where Yurko is and how you are. I will contact my friends when I get to Georgia. And then you can come live with us where it is warm and sunny and healthy!
Katia sends her love. She has headaches and is sick, but not as bad as Tarasyk. Poor boy, he cries to himself and doesn’t complain, but he doesn’t want to eat, and so all of our attention is on him right now.
Pray for us so that we’ll be together again someday, safe and well. I hope that you are alive, and healthy! I am taking a chance sending this to Starylis, but I don’t know where else to send it.
Call my friends at 095-032-45-89-21. We kiss you—yours always, Zosia
Mamo, please try to find a phone and tell the operator the number—I know this is hard for you, but after all that we’ve been through, this really is nothing.
The Sky Unwashed Page 18
