“Oh,” said Natalya, gathering her bags about her. “There’s a fire in one of the reactors. I talked to a man who was there. He said it exploded, and it’s still burning. He said to stay indoors, seal yourself up. But I needed food. My apartment’s to the left up here.”
“Did this man say anything about injuries?”
“He thinks several may have been injured. The explosion blew the roof off.”
“Did he tell you names of victims?”
“No names. But he said there were many ambulances. People walking around in some streets like nothing’s happened, and at the market there were all these rumors. One man said they were evacuating Kopachi. Another said since Kopachi is the closest village to the plant, there might not be anyone to evacuate. Someone said they saw the Pripyat Party boss driving out of town in his white Volga.
Another said a man who was fishing at the river returned home with his face turned beet red. Slavs… we are of the same mind.
We believe in death.”
Natalya looked out the window and shouted. “Stop here!”
Before she got out of the car, Natalya placed two cans of beans on the back seat. “Thanks for the ride.”
Juli looked out the back window at Natalya scurrying up the walk to her building. Then she looked into the dosimeter.
“What does it say now?” asked Marina.
“Almost sixty,” said Juli.
No matter what Juli or Marina said, there was no way to stop Vasily from leaving the apartment and driving closer to the burning reactor in order to retrieve his mother and sister.
“Won’t they be safer in the house?” asked Marina.
“The house leaks like a sieve,” said Vasily. “I should have brought them with me earlier.”
Vasily tied a scarf about his head, another over his mouth and nose. “Do I look like an old babushka?”
“Be careful,” said Marina.
“I will,” said Vasily. “When I get back, I’ll rip out the seat covers before I come inside. Find some clothes for my sister and Mama.
Have a full tub of water in case there’s no pressure. Gather up food for the trip. We’ll head for Kiev as soon as I get back.”
Vasily paused before opening the door. “Don’t worry, we’ll all go to Kiev for Thursday’s May Day parade and be back here the following week after things have cooled down.”
Marina sat next to Juli on her bed. “It’s the only thing we can do, Juli.
You said yourself we must leave. Especially your little passenger.”
“But I wish I knew what’s become of Mihaly,” said Juli. “And his wife going there, taking her little girls and going there…”
“The old woman said they left when it was dark. Nobody knew about the radiation yet. Maybe Mihaly called and they went to meet him. They could be in Kiev by now.”
Juli and Marina hugged, and Juli stared at the curtains over the balcony door through which she had first heard the explosion, then voices, early in the morning. Not even a full day had gone by, yet it seemed like weeks. When Vasily returned and they left for Kiev, more time would have gone by, and Juli wondered if, somehow, she might be able to forget Mihaly. But even as she thought this, she knew it would be impossible, especially because of the baby. Her baby.
12
Tamara Petrov spent all of Saturday at Lazlo’s apartment. They made love, ate, danced to Hungarian records, made love again. They went to a nearby market, bought ingredients for paprikas chicken, went back to the apartment, and prepared the meal together. They did not watch television or listen to the radio. The phone rang once during the afternoon, but when Lazlo answered, there was simply a hum, the phones broken again.
After they finished dinner, Tamara got up and put on one of Lazlo’s Lakatos Gypsy Orchestra records. The melancholy violin seemed especially sad this night, and Lazlo wondered why. The evening was only beginning, Tamara was wearing nothing but a silk robe, and already the Gypsy was foreseeing its end. Tamara came back to the table, poured more wine. Her eyes were aglow from the candle between them on the table.
“I can’t tell if you’re melancholy from the music or simply relaxed,” said Tamara.
“Relaxed,” said Lazlo.
“The last time we were together you acted this way. Initially you measure our time together with a stopwatch. This morning I expected Olympic judges to rush in and tell us we were late for the gold-medal ceremony.”
“It’s my bachelor life,” said Lazlo. “Our first time together after so long makes me act like a boy on his first encounter.”
Tamara touched her chest above her breasts. “Some boy. Last night you seemed a dozen boys making up for lost time.”
“How do you put up with me?”
“I know you,” said Tamara. “I enjoy our seasonal visits. But you should see other women, Lazlo. Life is too short to wait for what you want.”
“What do I want?”
Tamara laughed. “Like me, you don’t know what you want. We are urban Gypsies, you and I. Instead of traveling from one place to another, we stay in one place. But we still have the need to roam. So we let our desires roam. What do you think, Laz? Is it a good theory?”
“The best I’ve heard.”
“Did you ever come close to marriage?”
The candle on the table reminded Lazlo of church, of candlelight glowing on perspiring faces, of the wedding of Mihaly and Nina. “The closest I ever came to marriage was when I was best man for my brother’s wedding.”
Tamara laughed. “You are a strange man. You fill your life with melancholy. Militia work is like many of our ministries. Gloomy places. The gloominess overflows even into the streets and parks where babushkas sweep sidewalks and watch for unjustified laughter.
But here in your home, you are supposed to shed your gloominess.”
“There must be times when I’m cheerful. I simply don’t show it.”
“Are there times you are able to forget the boy on the Romanian border?”
Lazlo stared into Tamara’s dark eyes. “When I’m with you, of course.”
“I’m serious. Think about it. When are you truly happy?”
He stared into Tamara’s eyes and thought about it.
“Listen to Lakatos on the violin. The way each note stretches to its limit as if he’s reluctant to let go and face silence. Call it melancholy, or blame the incident on the Romanian border. But it’s more complicated. Tonight, for some reason, the silence at the end of the song seems closer.”
Tamara’s eyes glistened in the light of the candle as she stared at him. They stayed this way for several minutes, holding hands and staring as if they could read one another’s thoughts.
Then Tamara blew out the candle and led Lazlo past the phonograph where the violin of Lakatos cried in the darkness. They danced, swayed in one another’s arms until the record was over.
They went into the bedroom where the breeze from the south made the sheets cool and moist and fragrant.
After dark, with windows and even the space beneath the door sealed with damp towels, it was impossible to tell what the weather was like outside. The apartment was warm and stuffy. From her bed Juli saw Marina outlined against the faint glow of night light from the patio door.
“Are candles still lit in windows?” asked Juli.
“Yes,” said Marina. “It reminds me of Christmas.”
