Vassili Smin untangled himself from the table and got up. There were too many worries. Even a sixteen- year-old couldn't sleep with his brother in prison and his father dying a few meters away. He peered into his father's room. The engineer Sheranchuk was snoring lustily, one hand thrown over his face. Behind the screens Vassili could see his father, also asleep. The boy thought of quietly taking a chair there, next to his father's bed. He rejected the thought — because he might wake his father; more than that, he was beginning to feel stifled in the hospital atmosphere. It was not merely that people were sick— well, what were hospitals for but to hold sick people? It was not even that his father was among them. What was hard to bear was how young these dying people were — boys, some of them; younger than his brother, but bald and bright-eyed, almost like babies. They didn't even have eyebrows anymore!
He slipped down the stairs, nodded to the sleepy guard at the door and stepped out into the mild spring night. Why, cars were driving along the streets! There were even people standing at the corner, shouting to try to stop a taxicab, just as though the price for the Chernobyl disaster were not being paid by so many, so horribly, only a building-wall away! Yet it was almost comforting to be on a street with people who were not involved in the tragedy; Vassili could almost feel himself free and safe among them. He walked easily down the block, toward the old church with its white and gold towers, turned left, kept going around the corners. It was a good long walk. It should have tired him out. It didn't. The sudden wave of weariness didn't hit him until he was back at the entrance, climbing the stairs again to his father's floor.
When Vassili peered into his father's room, Smin's eyes were open. He put a finger to his lips and beckoned Vassili inside.
When Aftasia Smin came to the dining room, angry and triumphant, pushing the limping and sullen Senior Lieutenant Nikolai Smin before her, she woke everyone up. Vassili rubbed his eyes, staring at his brother, as Aftasia demanded: 'Your father, how is he? Why won't they let us in his room?'
The two wives of patients sitting side by side at one table whispered to each other, and the sister of the fireman with the Lithuanian name looked up at the man in the Air Force uniform with some interest. Vassili said, 'They sent me away too, Grandmother. They said he must sleep.'
Aftasia lowered her voice. 'Then we will stay until he wakes so that he can see that this criminal son of his has been spared the penalty for his crimes.'
She glanced around the room with eyes that told the other women to mind their business as the lieutenant sat himself carefully down next to his brother, wincing at the hard wood of the chair.
'But what happened?' Vassili asked plaintively.
His grandmother's expression was grim. 'I got him out,' she said. She didn't detail what old Party comrades she had called, or what luck it was that the prosecutor was the son of someone who had served under her dead husband. She only said, 'At least they did not find any of his disgusting filth, which he says he did not have.'
Nikolai said stubbornly, 'My ass hurt where they studc that sewer pipe into me. I merely took some pain relievers.'
'Ah, yes,' Aftasia nodded, 'so you told the organs, and of course they laughed in your face. Dr. Akhsmentova is so foolish that she mistook aspirin for hashish — not to mention that the blood test was taken before you donated bone marrow.' Nikolai shrugged. 'At any rate,' she went on, 'if you will be intelligent enough to go to the place where you have hidden that stuff which you do not have, and throw it down a sewer before you are caught with it, then perhaps all of this will be forgotten. Otherwise, it will not be the flimsy evidence of a blood test that they arrest you on.'
Nikolai ignored her and turned to his brother. 'And our father, is he any better?'
Vassili hesitated, then said unwillingly, 'A little worse, I think. They've put plastic drapes all around him now, and it is hard even to see him. We talked for a while, though.'
'About what?' Aftasia Smin demanded.
Vassili puffed out his cheeks for a second, then made a clean breast of it. 'We talked about political things, Grandmother. I–I'm afraid he got quite excited, and it wasn't good for him. And it was all my fault.'
'Little idiot!' his brother scolded.
Vassili hung his head. 'I know I was wrong,' he apologized. 'You are right. I was an idiot for troubling him when he was so sick, but at least—' He swallowed the rest of the sentence. It would have ended,
'And he asked me to do something for him, but at first I could not understand what it was he wanted. It was to mail a letter.'
'A letter?' his grandmother demanded. 'What kind of a letter?'
'How should I know? It was quite thick. And it was addressed to himself, at your house, Grandmother. And then when I came back—' He hesitated. 'Well, he talked quite a lot, but I think he was delirious. He looked at me, but he addressed me as 'Comrade Central Committee member.' '
Aftasia Smin frowned and looked around. When she spoke her voice was much lower. 'Oh? And what did your father have to say to a member of the Central Committee?'
Vassili was near to tears. 'He was saying really strange things, Grandmother. I couldn't really understand him. But he was telling me — or telling this member of the Central Committee that he thought I was — that he approved the suggestion of free elections to the Supreme Soviet. He said he agreed it would be excellent to have more than one candidate for each office, even perhaps running under the designation of another political party or two!'
'Ah,' said Aftasia sadly, 'I see. You are right, then. He was quite delirious.'
Chapter 32
It is eighteen days after the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant. Every television set in the Soviet Union is turned on for an important address, and Mikhail Gorbachev appears on the screen. His face is grave but his bearing assured. He begins to speak.
'Good evening, comrades,' he said. 'As you all know, a misfortune has befallen us — the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It has painfully affected Soviet people and caused anxiety in the international public. For the first time ever we have had to deal in reality with a force as sinister as nuclear energy that has escaped control.
'So what did happen?
'As specialists report, the reactor's capacity suddenly increased during a scheduled shutdown of the fourth unit. The considerable emission of steam and subsequent reaction resulted in the formation of hydrogen, its explosion, damage to the reactor, and the resulting radioactive discharge.
'It is still too early to pass final judgment on the causes of the accident. All aspects of the problem — design, construction, operational, and technical — are under the close scrutiny of the Government Commission.
'It goes without saying that when the investigation of the accident is completed, all the necessary conclusions will be drawn and measures will be taken to rule out a repetition of anything of this sort.'
Thirty kilometers from the reactor, Private Konov was bent over his meal, but his eyes were fixed on the little television screen. He hardly knew what he was eating. A pity; it was a chicken, bought from a local farmer, and pronounced fit by the technicians after they had run their detectors over its feathers and even up into its opened belly. 'He sounds like we'll be here a long time,' the soldier beside him grumbled.
'We'll be here until the job is done, Miklas,' Konov snapped. 'Please be still! I want to hear this.' And Gorbachev's voice went on.
'The seriousness of the situation was obvious. It was necessary to evaluate it urgently and competently. And as soon as we received reliable initial information, it was made available to the Soviet people and sent through diplomatic channels to the governments of foreign countries.
'In the situation that had taken shape, we considered it our top priority duty, a duty of special importance, to insure the safety of the population and provide effective assistance to those who had been affected by the accident.
