Winner of Socialist Competition and Honored Builder of the U.S.S.R., plus rows of military ribbons. Arkady was standing by them when Oleksander Katamay rolled into the room in a wheelchair. Though a pensioner in his late seventies, he still had a laborer's chest and shoulders, with a broad, pushed-in face and a mane of white hair. He gripped Arkady's hand firmly enough to squeeze the blood out.
'From Moscow?'
'That's right.'
'But Renko is a good Ukrainian name.' Katamay leaned close, as if to peer into Arkady's soul, then abruptly spun and shouted, 'Oksana!' He brought his gaze back to Arkady and the taxidermy in progress. 'You were admiring my hobby? Did you see the ribbons?' Katamay rolled to the plaque of medals and pointed out one with writing in Arabic. ' 'Friendship of the Afghan People.' The friendship of niggers, I guess that's worth my son's life. Oksana!'
The woman who had let Arkady into the apartment brought a tray of vodka and pickles, which she set on a coffee table. Although there was something negligent about her, her hair was a golden beehive. She sat on the floor by Katamay's wheelchair while he drew close a stand-up ashtray on the other side. Arkady settled on an ottoman and had the sense of being in a scene both posed and askew. It was the table with the two badgers, one in the stew, one out. It was Oksana. Her stiff hair was a wig. But it was more than that.
Katamay pointed to the stuffed animals and asked Arkady, 'Which do you like most?'
'Oh. They're all lifelike.' Which was the best Arkady could come up with, considering his first instinct had been to say, There's a dead cat on your shelf.
'The trick is suppleness.'
'Suppleness?'
'Getting off all the flesh and then shaving the inside of the skin until it's blue. Timing, temperature, the right glue are all important, too.'
'I wanted to ask about your grandson, Karel.'
'Karel is a good boy. Oksana, am I right?'
Oksana said nothing.
Katamay half-filled the glasses with vodka and passed one to Arkady.
'To Karel,' Katamay said. 'Wherever he is.' The old man put his head back, took the vodka in one continuous swallow and watched out of the corner of his eye to make sure Arkady and Oksana did the same. Maybe he was in a wheelchair, but he was still the man in charge. Arkady wondered what it was like to have been chief of construction of such a huge enterprise and now to be restricted to such a small arena. Katamay refilled the glasses. 'Renko, you came to the right part of the Ukraine. People of the western Ukraine say the hell with Russia. They pretend they can't speak Russian. They think they're Poles. People in the eastern Ukraine, we remember.' Katamay raised his glass. 'To-'
Arkady said, 'I'd like to ask some questions first.'
'To fucking Russians,' Katamay said and downed his glass.
Arkady opened the file he carried and passed around a photograph of a young man with half-finished, impatient features: a pinched nose, a thin mouth, a gaze that challenged the camera.
Oksana said, 'That's my brother.'
'Karel Oleksandrovich Katamay, twenty-six, born Pripyat, Ukrainian Republic.' Arkady skipped to the salient points. 'Two years' service in the army, trained as a sniper. He's a marksman?'
'He can shoot and leave something worth stuffing, if that's a marksman,' Katamay said.
'Twice demoted for physical abuse of newer recruits.'
'That's hazing. It's a tradition in the army.'
True enough, Arkady thought. Some kids were hazed enough that they hanged themselves. Karel must have stood out among the tormentors.
'Disciplinary action once for theft.'
'Suspicion of theft. If they had been able to prove anything, they would have put him in the brig. He has a wild side, but he's a good boy. He couldn't have joined the militia here without a clean record.'
'In the militia, Karel was frequently late or absent from his post.'
'Sometimes he was hunting for me. We always got things straightened out with his chief.'
'That would be Captain Marchenko?'
'Yes.'
'Hunting for what? Another fox or lynx? A wolf?'
'A wolf would be the best.' Katamay rubbed his hands at the thought. 'Do you know how much money a properly mounted wolf would bring?'
'Karel's father died in Afghanistan. Who taught Karel how to hunt?'
'I did. That was when I still had functioning legs.'
'Karel's mother?'
'Who knows? She believed all that propaganda about the accident. I've talked to the top scientists. The problem at Chornobyl isn't radiation, it's fear of radiation. There's a word for it: radio-phobia. Karel's mother was radiophobic. So she left. The fact of the matter is, these people are lucky. The state built them Pripyat and then Slavutych, gave them the best salary, the best living conditions, schools and medicine, but the Ukrainian people are all radiophobic. Anyway, Karel's mother disappeared years ago. I raised him.'
'Dressed him, fed him, sent him to school?'
'School was a waste of time. He was meant to be a hunter; he was wasted indoors.'
'When did you lose the use of your legs?'
'Two years ago, but it was a result of the explosion. I was operating a crane for the firemen when a piece of the roof came down. It came down like a meteor and crushed my back. The vertebra finally gave in. There's a citation on the wall; you can read all about it.'
'Had Karel ever been to Moscow?'
'He'd been to Kiev. That's enough.'
'You haven't seen him since he found that body in the Zone?'
'No.'
'Heard from him?'
Arkady noticed Oksana's glance at yet another hide lolling in a bucket of degreaser in a corner. For a man who hadn't seen or spoken to his marksman grandson in months, Katamay seemed to have no lack of fresh material for his craft.
Katamay said, 'Nothing, not a word.'
'You don't seem worried.'
'It's not like he did anything wrong. He resigned from the militia-so what? Karel's a big boy. He can take care of himself.'
'Did you ever hear of two physicists named Pasha Ivanov or Lev Timofeyev?'
'No.'
'They never visited Chernobyl?'
'How would I know?'
Arkady asked for the names of family or friends whom Karel might have visited or contacted, and Katamay dispatched Oksana to make up a list. While they waited, Katamay's gaze drifted back to the photographs on the wall. One had probably been taken on International Women's Day, because a younger version of Katamay was surrounded by women in hard hats. In another photograph he strode ahead of technicians in lab coats, who struggled to keep up.
'That must have been a great responsibility, being head of construction,' Arkady said.
Katamay said nothing while Oksana rustled through papers in the other room. Then he refilled his glass. 'It's all political, you know, shutting down the other reactors. Totally unnecessary. The other three could have run for another twenty years, and we could have built Five and Six, Seven and Eight. Chornobyl was and is the best power-plant site anywhere. The charities got in and blew up statistics. What's easier,
