poisons from the roofs, the walls, the windowsills?) Konov started to call to Miklas, who was no doubt smoking a cigarette with his hood off as he loitered in the factory building across the way. . and then he stopped, listening.
Someone had very quietly closed a door somewhere not far above him.
If it was a looter, it was a very small one. Konov stood out of sight behind the elevator door, listening to tiny, secretive footsteps and the occasional rustle of clothing and panting breath as the person came down. When the intruder was on the last flight of stairs, he stepped out and confronted the person.
'In God's name,' he said, staring in astonishment. 'What are you doing here, Grandmother?'
The woman was at least eighty, and even tinier than he could have guessed. Her hair, slate and silver, was pulled into a bun, so tighdy (and the hair so sparse) that her scalp showed on the top of her head. She wore a grandmother's black blouse and long black skirt, and she carried a gardening trowel in her hand.
She thrust it suddenly toward him, threateningly, almost as though it were a weapon. 'Where else should I be, stupid?' she shrilled. 'It is my home!'
'Oh, Grandmother,' Konov said reproachfully. 'Weren't you evacuated with the rest? How did you get back? Don't you know that it is dangerous to be here?'
She asked reasonably, 'How can my own home be a danger to me? My name is Irina Barisovna, and I live here. Go away, please. I am very well here; simply leave me alone.'
But, of course, Konov could not leave her alone, and, of course, after a spirited ten minutes of argument the old woman accepted the inevitable. Her only other options were either to kill Konov and hide his body, which would only cause a search, or to have him whisde for the rest of the detachment to carry her off. 'But please, dear young man,' she bargained. 'One favor? A small one? And then, I promise, I will go with you…'
When he had delivered her, with her little bag of treasures, to the control post, she kissed his gloved hand. Grinning, Konov went back to his officer to report. Lieutenant Osipev listened with resignation. 'These old people!' he sighed. 'What can one do with them? They have been told they risk death here. They know that this is true, in one part of their heads they know.it — but they come back. What was that she was carrying?'
Konov hesitated, then admitted. 'Some things from her. apartment. And, yes, also some other things: a religious medal, her wedding ring, a few small things; she had buried them in the ground and I helped her dig them up.'
The officer shrugged. Lieutenant Osipev was a reasonably compassionate man but, after all, it was not his concern. 'Your pen, then, Konov,' he ordered, and when Konov handed over the dosimeter pen, the officer glanced casually through it, then stiffened. 'What have you done, you fool?' he demanded. 'Get away from me! Have yourself scanned at once!' And twenty minutes later, after the special radiation crew with their counters had run the snouts of the instruments over his entire naked body, Konov stared at the grime under his fingernails.
It did not seem that he would be going back to the 416th Guards Rifle Division barracks in Mtintsin very quickly, after all. He had heard the chatter of the counter shrill loudly as it reached the fingers of his right hand, the hand from which he had taken off the glove in order to help the old babushka scrabble in the ground under the rainspout for her precious oilskin packet of valuables. And when the medical officer looked at Konov's hand, he swore angrily. 'If you wouldn't cut your hair, at least you should have cut your fingernails! How long has that stuff been under there?' 'I don't know. An hour, maybe.'
'An hour! Well,' the medical officer said sorrowfully, reaching for his bag, 'those nails will have to come off, at least. If we're lucky, perhaps we can save the fingers.'
Chapter 35
The Black Sea coast is the Florida of the Soviet Union. It is the only place where the water is warm and the beaches are sunny. The coast is lined with holiday hotels, sanito-ria, youth camps, and campgrounds, and they are all filled all the time. Foreign tourists spend hard currency there, but most of the vacationers are Soviet citizens who have deserved so well of their country or their factory that they are given a week or two of luxury. Swimming, snorkeling, windsurfing, fishing, mountain-climbing, strolling, sunbathing — there is so much to do along the Black Sea! And each community has its own special attractions — at Yalta, the place where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met in World War II, the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, the old house where Chekhov lived and wrote nearly a century ago. Near Sochi, the mineral springs, and the caves at Novy Afon. Sukhumi, Matsesta, Simferopol, and a hundred other communities vie for the tourist, and no one is disappointed.
As Sheranchuk stepped off the IL-86, he saw his wife waiting for him in a knot of people just outside the door of the terminal. He kissed her tenderly, exclaiming, 'What do you think of that? A real jumbo jet, three hundred and fifty passengers! When Boris comes back, let us make sure he gets to ride in one like it, shall we?'
'Of course,' Tamara said, looking at him anxiously. He returned the look. His wife had been at the resort only a week before him, but already she looked — well,
'Never!' he proclaimed. 'Complete release! I have even been given permission to go back to work at Chernobyl after our little vacation here — it is all in the medical records, and you can read them for yourself. But not now. Now I want to enjoy this recreational paradise of the workers' state!'
He found his bag quickly and slung it over his shoulder. 'How wonderfully hot it is,' he exclaimed as they went out of the terminal into the Black Sea sun. 'You made a good choice, my dear.'
'Are you sure?' she asked anxiously. 'It is so hard to know where to go. If we had gone to Sochi instead, there would be the Agur waterfalls and the caves—'
'But isn't it nice,' he grinned, 'to be so lucky as to be able to choose what we want? And anyway, here we are nearer to Boris at his camp, so tomorrow we will drive over and see him. But today is ours, my dear Tamara, because we have a great deal to celebrate.'
Tamara surrendered. 'As you wish, my dear,' she murmured. 'Only, please, you are just out of the hospital. Don't tire yourself.'
It could have been, Sheranchuk said to himself, that she was worried about his health. That would account for the slight reserve, the occasional abstraction, the hesitant way she spoke now and then.
It could also be that what was on Tamara's mind was the same thing that was on Sheranchuk's own, specifically, what Dr. Akhsmentova had told him at Smin's funeral.
Although he had had four days to think about it, he had spoken to no one about it, not even his wife — especially not his wife. But for four days he had thought about very little else. He rehearsed every moment of his married life. In particular he cudgeled his memory to try to recall each incident and detail around the time his wife became pregnant. Yes, it was true, he recalled dismally, they had gone through something of a stormy period in their marriage at that time. They had had a number of quarrels. Foolish ones! He had been astonished to learn that she was, of all things,
And foolishly he had tried to make a joke of it. 'Oh, yes,' he cried with savage humor, 'all the girls are after me. It is my steel teeth that make them wild with desire!'
She had said icily, 'I don't care what girls are after you. I care that you are interested in the girls.'
'But it isn't true!' he groaned. 'You're simply being stupid.' And that night she had slept in a chair on the other side of their single room, while Sheranchuk tossed sleepless and alone in their bed.
The difficulty was that her jealousy had not been entirely stupid.
There was a woman who interested him. She worked in the personnel department of the peat-fired power plant near Moscow. Sheranchuk had never touched the woman, but he admitted to himself that he had had feelings about her. There was worse than that. Since the two of them worked in the same power plant, they had had their vacations at the same time, in the same place. Nothing had happened — mostly, Sheranchuk conceded, because she had at once taken up with another man — but he had been prepared for an explosion when he came back.
To his surprise, his wife had welcomed him back. In fact, she had been exceptionally loving — it was almost another honeymoon.
