The question in his mind now was, what had she been doing while he was away? And with whom?
They spent the afternoon on the beach. Even in May the water was still a little cool for Sheranchuk's taste, but he gladly lay in the warm sun that filtered through the palm leaves overhead, Tamara solicitously replenishing the sunburn cream on his back. When they went back to the airy, clean room in their sanitorium, they made love in the daylight, hardly even speaking as they fell into each other's arms. Not speaking at all of anything important, in fact, because afterward, when Tamara got a serious look on her face and cleared her throat as though about to say some weighty thing, Sheranchuk jumped up and proclaimed that he was starving for dinner.
It was a good dinner, at a seaside restaurant. They took their time over it, talking about Smin's funeral, and their plans for their son, and what was likely to happen at the Chernobyl plant. It was quite late by the time they got back to the sanitorium. 'Come, let's enjoy the air a bit,' said Sheranchuk, and they found a rocker for two in a quiet part of the broad veranda, looking down a hill and out over the distant water. Sheranchuk had his arm around his wife.
'You are very quiet, my dear,' he said at last.
'I've been thinking,' she said slowly, hesitantly, and in the dim light he could see that she had that look of being about to speak seriously on her face again.
'If,' he said quickly, 'what you are thinking about is the future, let me tell you some good news. There is a new personnel man at the plant, his name is Ivanov, and he stopped at the hospital before I was discharged. He promises a job will be waiting for me, actually with more money. He also talked about what sort of place we will have to live in for the next six months or year.'
She turned to look at him with a spark of interest. 'In Pripyat?'
'Not in Pripyat, no. No one is going to live in Pripyat for a long time. But in the town of Chernobyl. You remember it's beyond the thirty-kilometer perimeter and it is now quite safe. And then there will be a new town that will be built, with good construction. It will be called 'Green Peninsula,' after the place where it is being built. We will have a flat even nicer than our old one, once the new buildings are finished. Ivanov has promised we will be at the top of the list for new housing, and the foundations have already been begun.'
He waited for a response. 'That sounds good,' she said at last, her voice colorless.
'Of course,' he said, 'without Smin to keep an eye on things, who knows how soon the walls will crack and the doors will come off their hinges? But there is also good news. Ivanov says they will put you on the medical staff at the plant.'
'Oh, wonderful,' she said, her face lighting up for the first time. But then she withdrew again.
'Are you cold?' Sheranchuk asked solicitously. 'Maybe we should go in and get a good night's sleep. And tomorrow morning we will go to see our son.'
She was silent for a long moment. Then she turned to him and said, her voice rapid and almost harsh, 'There is something we must discuss. Did Dr. Akhsmentova speak to you?'
He was quite calm. 'The bloodsucker? Oh, yes. She was full of some nonsense about blood types; I could not understand such things.'
'Leonid,' she said sadly, 'I don't believe that. You are quite capable of understanding what that bitch had to say.'
Sheranchuk shook his head. 'What I understand, my dear, is much more important than any blood tests. I understand that we have a fine son who has always been mine. Have you forgotten? I rubbed your back for you when he was still inside your belly, and I walked through every store in Moscow to find rubber pants to put on him, and I fed him and burped him and changed him — not as often as I might have,' he admitted justly. 'Certainly not as often as you. But often enough to know' who is my own dear child, born from my very dear wife. So what is there to say about blood types? And now, my dear, since it seems these mosquitoes are also interested in sampling my blood, perhaps we should go inside and to bed.'
Chapter 36
The KGB are always thorough, but sometimes they are also meticulously correct. When they are merely thorough in the task of, say, searching a flat, a tornado would be more welcome. Every closet and box and drawer is opened, the contents ransacked and thrown on the floor; pillows and mattresses are ripped open, canisters of flour and salt poured out, the seams of curtains and sheets torn apart; and what the KGB leaves with is always as much as they can carry of papers, books, and whatever else they deem important. When they are being meticulously correct, the process takes longer but leaves less havoc. Then they probe with long needles instead of ripping things apart, they have a city militiaman standing by as required by law, they generally replace what they have taken out of drawers and boxes — well, of course, sometimes not very neatly, perhaps. Sometimes they even present an official search warrant.
They had presented a warrant to Selena, Aftasia, and Vassili Smin before they began on the little flat on the outskirts of Kiev, and the city militiaman, abashed in the presence of so old an Old Bolshevik, was glad to accept a cup of tea while the searchers did their work. But there were so many of them! There were six industrious workers in each room, one of them present only to take notes, one in authority to point to this place or that for special care, the other four to do the actual work, quietly and with great skill.
All the while the Smin family, or what remained of it, chatted politely with the militiaman. 'And there is the matter of our water supply,' said Selena Smin, rising courteously so that one of the kitchen detail could turn her chair over to examine the bottom of the seat. 'One hears that we will soon be getting it from the Desna River as well as from the new wells.' For radionuclides had been found not only in the Pripyat River but in the underground aquifers all around Chernobyl, even at Bragin, seventy kilometers to the north.
'They've capped seven thousand old wells,' the militiaman confirmed, and then, glancing at the searchers, 'or so people say, at least.'
'Yes, that is true,' Selena nodded, taking her seat again. 'Mother Aftasia? When you were at the market this morning, were they taking care about the vegetables from the farms?'
'Oh, indeed they were,' said Aftasia enthusiastically. 'They were running those what-you-call-them things over all the tomatoes and fruit, and if there was the slightest peep out of the machines, then, snap, into the disposal bin, and no certificate to sell that batch! Our Socialist state is taking excellent care of its citizens! More tea, then?' she asked the uneasy militiaman. He shook his head, frowning. 'Ah, but the worst thing,' she went on, 'was the people. Can you imagine? You could see them walking from stall to stall, looking for farmers with Oriental faces before they would buy. From the eastern provinces! Hoping, no doubt, to get cabbages grown two thousand kilometers away! But I bought only from honest Ukrainians,' she finished virtuously.
'Not that our Tatar and Kalmuk brothers aren't honest, of course,' Selena supplemented.
'Of course not,' Aftasia agreed, and then smiled blandly at the man in charge. 'What, are you finished already? And we were having such a nice chat with the citizen militiaman here.'
The KGB man eyed her thoughtfully. For one moment it almost seemed he would return her smile. Then he shook his head. 'We are removing certain books and documents for study,' he said. 'Sign the receipt, please.'
'If it is a receipt, then you should sign it and give me a copy,' Aftasia Smin pointed out. 'However, let me see. These letters? Yes, of course you may have them; they are only from my older grandson, who is now back serving his country in Afghanistan. This book? It is written by Solzhenitsyn, yes, but don't you see? It is
The Chekist folded the paper slowly, regarding her. He was no more than thirty, a pale-haired, plump man with a pleasant face, and very young to be in charge of such a detail. 'Comrade Smin,' he said, 'you are a remarkable woman. A Party member since 1916. Heroine of the October Revolution. And, at your age, so alert and active!'
'Now I am, yes,' Aftasia smiled. 'Would you believe me, Comrade? Even at my age I feel I have just begun to live.'
