Chernobyl

Vassili opened his mouth. Then he closed it, shaking his head, and abrupdy burst out, 'Why did you have me circum-sized, Father?'

Smin gazed at his son in astonishment. The boy went on rebelliously. 'Yes, it was done for health reasons, I know — but wasn't it performed on the eighth day after I was born, according to a Jewish religious custom?'

'How did you know it was on the eighth day?' Smin demanded, startled.

'I didn't know. They knew.'

'You were questioned?' Smin whispered, in shock.

'Yes, by the organs, for two hours! But I knew nothing to tell them, only— Well, there was that dinner at grandmother's flat; they said it was a religious rite too. They called it a 'seder.' Was it? And then they asked me about a ceremony on my thirteenth birthday.'

Smin waved a shaking hand. 'What did they do to you?'

Vassili tried to be reassuring. 'Nothing at all, Father. Really. They were only asking about these things and the difficulty was that I could not answer. But is it true? Did I have what they called a 'bar mitzvah' on my thirteenth birthday?'

Smin closed his eyes again. It was a mistake. He felt himself drifting off and he could not afford that. He forced himself to rouse and speak to his son. 'On your thirteenth birthday you had a birthday party, of course. Thirteen is a significant age, worth special attention. What you had was the best party your mother and I could give you, but it was certainly not a bar mitzvah. You know that. Do you remember any religious services connected with it?'

'No, Father, but—'

'But you couldn't possibly remember anything like that, because there were none. Not even in secret. Tell me, son. Have you ever been given any religious instruction? Of any kind? By me, or by your mother, or by anyone?'

Vassili hesitated. 'Grandmother sometimes tells me when it is Yom Kippur.'

'Your grandmother,' Smin sighed, 'eats pork and crabmeat and other things that would be forbidden if she were a religious Jew. She has never been in a synagogue since she was fourteen years old. She is not religious. But she has some old-fashioned ways; there is no secret about that.' He hesitated. 'To be sure,' he went on, 'she is defined as a Jew because she was born of a Jewish mother. As I was, Vassili. But not you. She did not decide to think of herself as a Jew, even, until she was fifty years old, when it became quite unfashionable.'

'Why unfashionable?'

'Why? Haven't you ever heard of the Doctors' Plot? No? Well, it was a bad time for Jews, when Stalin decided there was a Jewish conspiracy to destroy him.'

'Do you mean Grandmother was not serious about being a Jew?'

'Your grandmother is always serious,' Smin said heavily. The pain was coming back again. 'Still, you are not Jewish. Look at your passport. It says 'Russian.' '

Vassili looked sullen. 'Still, after they had questioned me,' he said, 'the GehBeh called me 'zhid.''

'Then report the man!' cried Smin. 'He had no right! You have done nothing wrong. You have nothing to fear.'

Vassili gazed at him with the eyes of someone older than sixteen. 'And do you have something to fear, Father?'

Smin considered that for a moment, then painfully shook his head. The proper answer would be 'not anymore,' because all of the scores he might have to face were obliterated by one central fact. He was beyond retribution. He was going to die and he did not fear that. He said, 'Are you asking if I will go to prison? No. I am sure I won't.'

The boy thought that over for a time, his face opaque.

Smin watched him, and then said gently, 'Vassa, there's more. What is it?'

'What is what, Father?' the boy asked politely.

Smin begged, 'Please. You still have something on your mind. Tell me what it is.'

'Father, you are very tired,' the boy explained. 'It isn't fair to you to worry you.' Then he took another look at his father's face and shrugged. 'Before Nikolai was — arrested — we were, well, talking.'

'About what?'

And then it all came out, the boy lecturing as though he were making a report to his Komsomol unit: the failings of leadership, the toleration of irregularities, the need for discipline. 'Ah,' said Smin, nodding, 'I see. Your brother said that he wished we had a Stalin again. Is that what you mean?'

'But what he said makes sense, Father. With Josef Vissarionovich we had strong leadership! He was a great force for discipline.'

'He was a murderer, Vassili!'

'Father!'

They were glaring at each other. Vassili looked away first. 'You should be resting,' he said penitently. 'Yes, I know what you mean, Comrade Stalin had some people shot.'

'Some people? Vassili, do you know how many?'

The boy shrugged. 'A few hundred, I suppose.'

'A few hundred? But there were millions, Vassili! Not Trotskyites and wreckers — half of the leadership of the Communist Party! Most of the high officers of the Army! I don't even speak of the peasants who starved in the forced collectivization of the land, or of the millions upon millions who were sent off to the camps to die there, or, maybe, a few, to come back with their health destroyed and their lives ruined!'

Vassili said, shocked, 'But you make him sound like a tyrant, and that is impossible.'

'Is it true. Don't you know anything? Have you never heard of Khrushchev's speech to the Party Congress in 1963?'

'In 1963 I wasn't born.'

'But you should have known! You should have made it your business to know these things!'

'How could I know?' Vassili demanded. 'If they are true, you should have told me!'

At ten o'clock Hospital No. 6 had quieted down for the night. Most of the patients were asleep. The vaulted corridors were empty. The nurses and the duty doctors spoke only in whispers as they made their rounds, checking temperatures, giving an injection of cyclosporine here and an antibiotic there, changing the dressing on a burn, providing a bedpan when needed, replacing the plastic sacks of plasma and whole blood and saline solution and glucose that trickled into the veins of the casualties. Even the dining room, where relatives were permitted to wait, was almost empty as Vassili curled up under a table and tried to sleep.

It wasn't easy. The boy berated himself for arguing with his father, just when his father needed all his strength and all the help he could get just to stay alive.

Vassili was also very hungry. The kitchen was long closed. The pale young woman with the Lithuanian name who was now asleep in a blanket on the floor had given him two slices of bread and half an apple out of her own store, hours before. But that was before she learned that he was merely a patient's son (proudly: 'But I'm a sister, and so it is more likely my bone marrow will match'), and, even worse, that he was only sixteen years old.

It began to seem probable to Vassili that his father was not going to come out of this hospital alive.

It was a hard thought to face. Vassili had never considered the possibility that his father would die. It did not match anything in his experience. For the whole of Vassili's life Simyon Smin had always been there, and very much alive. The boy could not imagine a world that did not have his father alive in it somewhere. Thirteen days ago the thought of his father's death would have been ignored as a ridiculous idea. Now it was no longer ridiculous, but still he could not accept it.

On the other hand, Vassili was not at all stupid. When the doctor had paused in the hallway to talk to Vassili, he had carefully marked her words and tone and the look on her face. 'His condition is very grave,' she had said, 'but we are doing everything we can.' One could interpret that as hopeful, could one not?

But then, a moment later, he had listened while the doctor was talking to the Lithuanian girl, and the doctor's tone was the same, expression was the same, even the words were almost exactly the same; but Vassili knew for certain that what the doctor was doing was preparing the young woman for the fact that her brother, the fireman, was dying.

There was a geometric theorem that could be used to show that the cases were the same, and therefore the hope Vassili had drawn from the doctor's words was without basis in reality.