abundantly sprinkled on the pastries in the windowed case. Every few minutes the baker, who was the woman’s husband, came through a swinging door to replenish the supply in the case. He was skinny, his baker’s cap making him look as if it might tip him over on his head.
Tamara had pinned her hair atop her head and wore a sweater and short skirt, which attracted glances from the men who came into the bakery. Her earrings, with gold stars dangling from chains, swung from side to side as she chewed.
“I like the cheese filling best. Which is your favorite, Laz?”
“Poppy seed.”
“I don’t usually eat breakfast. Nothing but coffee when I get to the office. Most of the poets who contribute to the journal are skinny as hell. I should bring them here, fatten them up.”
“They’d write poems about pastry instead of politics,” said Lazlo.
Tamara licked cheese from her fingertip. “Ode to a strudel.
Much healthier than politics. Poets are a lot like you, constantly brooding. Sometimes I think they’d all like to go to a labor camp to die the way Vasyl Stus died.”
“How did he die?”
“He was typical of many poets who search for connections between the specifics of politics and the universals of life instead of simply enjoying the here and now.”
“I’m enjoying myself now.”
“And last night?” asked Tamara.
“Metaphorically, last night was like eating a thousand strudels.”
The number of carryout patrons increased, and the baker made more trips to keep the case full. The cheeks of the proprietress reddened despite her doughy complexion. A middle-aged man at the counter placed his order in Ukrainian instead of the usual Russian.
“Will your family be able to eat all this?” asked the proprietress.
“My family has doubled,” said the man. “My brother-in-law and his family came unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Woke me up saying they had to abandon their home.”
“What happened?”
“Some kind of accident at the nuclear plant where he works. He said many have abandoned the area because the air and water may be poisoned.”
“The air and water?” said the proprietress. “Where is this?”
“At Chernobyl, to the north. My brother-in-law lives in Pripyat.
He said there’s no problem here because of the distance. But up there he says people are panicking.”
Lazlo felt cold, as if he had been thrust back into the wine cellar with Mihaly last summer on the farm, Mihaly warning of danger at Chernobyl.
Lazlo left the table, stood behind the man at the counter.
The man continued with the proprietress. “My tiny apartment is like a metro station. My brother-in-law has two teenaged daughters. They have already taken over the bathroom.”
“Has there been anything on the news about this?” asked the proprietress.
“Nothing. We watched the early news and listened to the radio.
I was beginning to think my brother-in-law’s moving in with us was part of some clever scheme. But this morning a neighbor heard of another family on the next block whose relatives also arrived last night.”
The man picked up his packages. “I’ll probably see you again tomorrow. These relatives will eat me out of house and home.”
The man tried to leave, but Lazlo stepped sideways, blocking his path. He spoke in Ukrainian. “Excuse me, comrade. I couldn’t help overhearing you.”
“What do you want?” said the man, eyeing Lazlo suspiciously.
“My brother lives in Pripyat. Please tell me, did your brother-in-law give any details about the accident?”
“Nothing more. You overheard everything I know.”
“What about your brother-in-law? I’d like to speak with him.”
“I… I don’t know. It will surely be on the news. Watch the news.”
The man tried to step past, but Lazlo blocked him. “Please.”
“I must go,” said the man.
Lazlo stood his ground, sighed, took his wallet from his pocket, and showed the man his militia identification.
“I’ve done nothing wrong!” screeched the man.
“Please, my brother and his family live in Pripyat. My brother works at the Chernobyl plant. Perhaps your brother-in-law can tell me something. Perhaps he even knows my brother.”
Lazlo and Tamara and the man left the bakery, walked less than a block to an apartment building. Inside the apartment, two women eyed Tamara.
The brother-in-law and his wife were about the same age as Mihaly and Nina, but the daughters were older than Anna and Ilonka.
A little boy and a baby, apparently the resident children, were also in the room. It was so crowded the children sat on the floor.
The brother-in-law’s name was Yuri Tupolev. Despite Lazlo’s assurances, Tupolev worried he would get in trouble.
“I had days off coming. Maybe they need help, but nobody told me to stay. I wanted to turn back, but my family…”
“I understand,” said Lazlo. “Believe me, I’m also here because of family concern. You say you know Mihaly Horvath?”
“Not personally. I only know he’s an engineer. I’m on a maintenance crew. We travel from building to building. I know his name because he once directed work we were doing.”
“Were you at the plant when this accident occurred?”
“No. I was at home.”
“Tell me what you saw and heard. Start from the time of the accident.”
“It was some time after midnight Saturday… yesterday. One loses track of time after being awake so long. I was up late and couldn’t sleep. When I went outside, I saw smoke and what looked like fire in the sky. A while later, trucks sped past, one pulled up, and my neighbor jumped off the back end. He said one of the reactors exploded. He was there, at the station, and said radiation was released. We tried calling around to see what was up but couldn’t get through to anyone. By dawn there were all kinds of rumors. My neighbor had his dosimeter on. He got a small dose while escaping. Later in the morning, he comes over and says the exposure is going up. Right there in his apartment he’s getting exposed. So we brought our families to Kiev. He has a little shitbox of a car. We all packed into it, it kept running, and here we are.”
“When did you arrive?” asked Lazlo.
“About midnight.”
“When did you leave?”
“It was two or three in the afternoon by the time we got everyone together.”
“It took nine hours to drive the hundred kilometers from Pripyat to Kiev?”
“By the time we got going, the dosimeter was really going up.
We didn’t want to take the main road because it went back east past the plant before turning south. We drove southwest, away from the plant and the direction of the wind. The back roads were terrible, and we had to stop for directions several times. We finally followed the Uzh River all the way to Korosten and then took the highway back to Kiev.”
“Were there many others trying to escape?”
“No. We thought it odd, but there were only a few cars. It’s probably because there was no news.”
“Nothing on the local radio and television stations?”
“Nothing but music,” said Tupolev. “They even skipped the regular news broadcasts.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” asked Lazlo.
Tupolev looked down at his hands. “One more thing. Your brother might have been on duty during the accident. My neighbor said they were doing an experiment and several engineers were there. They were supposed
