KGB.
Juli put her hand on his hand. “I’m sorry, Lazlo. I’ve done nothing but add sadness to your life.” Tears came to her eyes. “Your brother is gone, and I’m…”
“You haven’t created sadness, Juli. It’s always there, a part of life. Please go on. We need to talk about Mihaly.”
Juli took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “So much of Mihaly is gone. He was always joking. It was part of him. He joked when he didn’t want to talk about something. He joked when I brought up his family. It was because the effect of our relationship on his family overwhelmed him.”
“How would he have reacted to the baby?”
Juli looked down. “I’ve imagined it a thousand different ways, selfish ways with Mihaly deserting me, or blaming me.”
“Do you think he would have blamed you?”
“No. I imagined it because I thought it would be easier to say good-bye. I was going to tell him about the baby Friday on the bus.
But he was worried about the reactor. Instead of telling him, I kept it from him and… we argued. The same argument. One of us saying we must end it. The other softening. Back and forth…”
Juli folded her hands in her lap and looked up at him. “Technology rules our lives. We act like the machines. All this damned logic when nothing is really logical. Bringing children into the world, keeping them healthy, giving them moments of happiness along the way. And after they’ve grown up, happiness disappears.”
When Aunt Magda brought plum brandy, Juli went into the kitchen for water instead. Back on the sofa, when Juli looked at him above her water glass, Lazlo saw the emotions of a woman. He was reminded of Nina sipping wine at dinner last winter in Pripyat. He was reminded of Tamara’s eyes glowing in candlelight at Club Ukrainka. He saw in Juli’s eyes a sadness he had seen in his mother’s eyes when she was alive.
“I wonder,” said Juli, “if the KGB knows what Mihaly told me.”
“You mean the test on the reactor?”
“Yes. What if the chief engineer was knowingly doing something dangerous? Mihaly said the plant might be a guinea pig. The chief engineer wasn’t there. Why wouldn’t he be there when the experiment was his idea?”
Lazlo did not answer. An experiment; Mihaly, the scapegoat.
Would they blame it on error or laziness? Would they accuse Juli of seducing Mihaly, causing emotional upset in his life? And what about Cousin Zukor last summer at the farm? Lazlo mistrusted Zukor and had the feeling his questioning of Mihaly about Chernobyl might turn up again.
Juli’s eyes, reflecting light from the front window, did not blink.
Lazlo wondered if he was performing an experiment. Staring into this woman’s eyes to see how it would affect her, or him. His chest felt suddenly smaller in size, breathless, his thoughts veering away from the logical path of investigation.
Before considering the consequences, Lazlo leaned forward and kissed her. And she kissed him. They did not embrace. They did not close their eyes. When he withdrew, he expected a reaction, a comment. Instead, Juli sipped her water and began speaking again as if nothing had happened.
“When I was a girl, my father took me skating in Gorky Park.
His friends were there, and he’d tell them about my schoolwork. I remember being embarrassed. When I was older, he wanted me to go to medical school. ‘A career based on compassion, perfect for a woman,’ he said. I should have followed his advice. If I’d become a doctor, none of this would have happened. I would have been in Moscow. And at Chernobyl, Mihaly’s boss, compassionate and aware of Mihaly’s family, would not have put him in charge during the experiment.”
When Aunt Magda returned with brandy to refill Lazlo’s glass, he declined because soon he was due back at the roadblock. Juli had turned, her knees pressing against his leg. The house was warm.
The brandy made him even warmer. And now this woman carrying his brother’s child immersed him in womblike warmth. He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to hold her. He wanted the rest of the world to go away for at least this brief time before the devil named duty called him back to the cold world.
Although Lazlo reminded her of Mihaly, he was not Mihaly. Lazlo was a man of his own making, sensitive and honorable, but with a mysterious past. A man filled with melancholy. She felt it deep inside when he kissed her. A man so alone, so wanting to encompass her life. How could he do this? How could he fall in love with her now? And why did she want so much to embrace him? Insane! Mihaly dead, and now his brother sits so close, so close.
Juli recalled the photograph she’d seen in Mihaly’s apartment.
Lazlo in the wedding party, smiling with pride. Lazlo looking so much like Mihaly, but also looking like her father. A man brought to her by fate, speaking about a wine cellar on the farm where he and Mihaly grew up.
“We spent a lot of time in the wine cellar last summer. Down there we could go back in time. If we stuck our heads up out of the hole, we’d see our mother in the yard hanging laundry. When the wine began to flow, we confessed our sins. Because we were brothers, because we trusted one another, the confessions were more revealing than those to a priest.”
Lazlo turned to the window, the resemblance of his profile to Mihaly’s profile making her shudder. He turned back to her. “What Mihaly told me in the wine cellar might account for both of us being followed. He said there were serious problems at Chernobyl. He worked in the control room. He was around the reactor all the time.
He saw what went on.”
“So did others,” said Juli. “The so-called ‘disregard for safety’ at the plant generated jokes. It was a way of coping. Officials disciplined anyone who spoke openly. Some were sent away to psychiatric hospitals.”
“Initially Mihaly said he would resign because of the probability of an accident. Later he said he’d mentioned problems at Chernobyl to avoid telling me about you.”
“But he did tell you about me.”
“He told me. I hadn’t even met you and I hated you.”
“Do you hate me now?”
Lazlo put his hand on her knee, leaned close, and whispered,
“How could I?”
The KGB had more aggressive methods than monitoring correspondence and telephone conversations when it came to keeping track of suspected anti-Soviets. Most common was direct observation, noting movements and contacts.
Pavel and Nikolai discussed the ramifications of KGB methods as they sat in a shiny black Volga parked up the street from Aunt Magda’s house.
“So,” said Nikolai, “you’re saying there’s no point placing microphones or even reading the mail because guilty people won’t say anything to begin with?”
“Right,” said Pavel. “Our work in the Pripyat post office was a waste of time.”
“Then there’s no point to any of this.” Nikolai motioned with his hand at the dashboard of the Volga and at his new suit of clothes.
“What we’re doing here is as useless as reading those idiot peasants’ letters.”
“Would you rather be back in the post office?” asked Pavel. “Or worse yet, getting a fatal dose of radiation hunting down idiots stu-pid enough to stay in Pripyat?”
“No,” said Nikolai. “I’m simply bored. And I’m really hungry.
I think the iodine we took increases appetite. Do you smell food?
Someone’s cooking somewhere.”
“My sister-in-law’s probably cooking an elaborate dinner for my wife right now,” said Pavel.
“How far away is your sister-in-law’s place?” asked Nikolai. “If we get a break, we could go for a bite, and you and your wife…”
Pavel waved dismissively. “Not a chance. Anyway, I don’t smell food. All I smell is the newness of the car and perhaps your foul breath.”
“Careful,” said Nikolai. “We carry pistols now. In the post office all we did was throw crumpled letters at one another.”
“I wonder if anyone will ever be allowed back in Pripyat,” said Pavel.
“A tragedy,” said Nikolai. “Banners for May Day prepared, and no one to use them. Maybe the whole thing was a conspiracy planned in Moscow. A big distillery hidden among the reactors at Chernobyl to keep employees
