table at a street market.
Bread, cheese, two tomatoes, a large cucumber, cookies, cake. Besides speaking in a loud voice, Natalya spoke with her mouth full, which resulted in the occasional flight of a crumb of food across the table.
“I’m so hungry,” said Natalya. “Even if my work is not strenu-ous, I still get hungry as a bear. You have so little, Juli. A simple sandwich, and look at my lunch. I went across the Belorussian border to shop at farm markets and bought too much. One of these days, for sure, I’m going on a strict diet before I explode.” Natalya swung her arms outward to portray the great explosion. “Perhaps I should try one of those American movie-star diets. Did I tell you the Odessa Bookstore on the north side of town has a stock of American magazines?”
“No,” said Juli. “What kinds of magazines?”
“Celebrity magazines,” said Natalya. “I can’t bring them to work anymore. The chief technician says they’re distracting. She caught me looking at Bruce Springsteen. The Frank Sinatra of the eighties. Am I right?”
“Each generation has its idols.”
“So, who is your idol, dear Juli?”
“I don’t have an idol.”
“What about your boyfriend? Couldn’t he be considered your idol?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“No? A pretty girl like you with no boyfriend? It’s shameful we have boys around here instead of men. The real men are married.
Here, when the boys aren’t drinking vodka, they hover over their books and calculators. I prefer older men. I’m waiting for a widower who needs a helpmate to cook meals and send him off to work so I can relax.” Natalya sighed. “But if I’m home all day watching television and reading magazines, I’ll eat myself into an early grave.
You’re lucky to have been born thin, Juli. All the women in my family are heavy. None of the diets I’ve tried do any good. So I might as well enjoy it while I can.”
They ate, silent except for explosive crunches as Natalya munched her cucumber. After she finished that, Natalya polished off the cookies and cake. Then she leaned across the table and whispered.
“Did you hear the latest joke circulating up here?”
“Here” meant the main floor, as opposed to the basement or sub-basement. Gossip from the facility entered the building by way of the main floor, where workers had contact with drivers who brought in samples and reactor personnel who sometimes visited.
Juli leaned close to Natalya, hoping the joke would not be overheard.
Even Natalya’s whispering was loud.
“Is it the one,” asked Juli, “about the reactor inspector who wears gloves even in the summer?”
“This joke is much better,” said Natalya. “The head of the SSNI in Moscow receives an invitation for delegations of Soviet reactor safety engineers to visit U.S. facilities and study reactor safety principles. The U.S. official says they can visit any reactor they like in the United States. The SSNI head makes his selections and, a few days later, hands his list to the U.S. official. ‘Everything looks fine except for one thing,’ says the U.S. official. ‘What?’ asks the SSNI head. ‘You’ve said you wish to send your Chernobyl engineering staff to Three Mile Island. Don’t you realize,’ asks the U.S. official, ‘we had an accident there in the seventies?’ ‘Of course,’ says the SSNI head. ‘But Three Mile Island is more than adequate for Chernobyl engineers, because at Three Mile Island you had only one accident!’”
Natalya laughed so hard Juli thought she would tip over backward in her chair. Several people at other tables turned and smiled.
At one table, a man Juli had never seen before took out a notebook, wrote something in it, then put the notebook back in the pocket of his lab coat.
For a moment Juli considered warning Natalya about the recent memo condemning “malicious gossipmongering.” But Natalya would probably say something worse. Besides, the joke would spread throughout the facility by quitting time. Better to let the matter rest despite the man in the lab coat.
“Funny, yes?” said Natalya.
“Yes,” said Juli. “But now I’ve got to get back to work.”
As she left the cafeteria, Juli noticed the man in the lab coat tug at his earlobe. And while going down the stairs to the basement, she wondered if Natalya might be part of the head office’s underground network. If the joke was a test, it wouldn’t work because, since Aleksandra’s disappearance, Juli never repeated these jokes to anyone, except Mihaly.
All afternoon, while inserting Geiger tubes of various sizes into the tombs, Juli imagined each symbolized a night she and Mihaly would spend together. By the time she finished work, she had accumulated over fifty nights with Mihaly, fifty nights she wished might come true.
Juli rushed from the locker room in the basement so she could be first at the bus stop. She stood alone in the sun while others waited in the shade of the building. Being first in line guaranteed entry into the first bus for Pripyat, the bus she and Mihaly always took.
As the bus approached in a shimmer of heat, she wondered if it was full, if it would pass by like it once had with Mihaly onboard. No.
Mihaly would make up an excuse, tell the driver he had business at the low-level laboratory, and get off. But what if Mihaly was not on the first bus?
When the bus wheezed to a stop, Juli got on, walked slowly down the aisle, but did not see Mihaly. For an instant she imagined what had happened. Mihaly on holiday with his family at his boyhood home near the Czech border, reminders of his duties as father and husband everywhere. Mihaly taking another bus so he would not have to face her. Then a newspaper lowered at the back of the bus, and Mihaly, looking like a boy who has done something deli-ciously evil, grinned at her. She closed her lips tightly to keep from laughing, walked to the back of the bus, and sat next to Mihaly so abruptly he barely had time to remove his briefcase.
A few seats ahead, Juli saw a woman turn to look at her. The seat next to the woman was empty. Juli took a section of Mihaly’s newspaper, and they both held newspapers up before them. When the bus was through the gate, moving along on the road to Pripyat, the noise of the rear engine allowed them to speak without being overhead. They spoke softly in Hungarian.
“How are things on the farm?” asked Juli.
“Fine,” said Mihaly. “How are things here?”
“The usual. No radiation releases.”
“Good. How about the weather?”
“Hot and dry.”
“Same as the farm, hot and dry except for all the wine my brother and I drank.”
“Is your family well?”
“Yes. How about yours?”
“Don’t be cute. You know I have no family here.”
“What about the grass, then? Has it taken over?”
“The other day in the courtyard, it grabbed my ankles and dragged me into the bushes.”
Mihaly rattled his newspaper section and made an evil smile.
“And what did the naughty grass do to you in the bushes?”
“I can’t tell you. There’s a crackdown on gossipmongering.”
“If you don’t tell, I’ll brood like my bachelor brother.”
After making sure her newspaper section shielded them, Juli turned and softly bit Mihaly’s ear. They kissed, and her arms grew tired holding up the newspaper.
Before the bus entered Pripyat, the guard finally made his way to the back. After checking their identity cards, the guard returned to the front of the bus, and Juli and Mihaly left the newspapers in their laps. Beneath the newspapers they touched one another gently. Because Juli had changed into shorts, Mihaly was able to caress her intimately.
“Will you get off at my stop tonight, Mihaly?”
“I can’t, not on my first day back. Is your roommate still working at the department store Wednesday evenings?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I missed you, Juli. I’m not joking.”
