by Stefan Gates
I wonder if I'm becoming irresponsibly relaxed about spending time in dangerous environments. It's not big or clever. I've done my hostile environments training course, faced The Fear in Afghanistan, and stumbled through war-torn northern Uganda, so is it possible that I've become numbed to the danger? I need to be wary of this creeping sense of immortality, not to mention the self-importance that comes with being a journalist investigating stories of pain and suffering. I mustn't forget that I'm just a speccy little food writer.
Pripyat
Later I visit the cooling lakes opposite the reactor and see the extraordinary monster catfish that live in it – the most radioactive fish on the planet. They are the size of small whales, but also terrifyingly prehistoric. With no natural predators (would you eat a fish from the Chernobyl cooling lakes?) these fellas just keep on growing. I throw huge loaves of bread into the water and the largest one lazily rises to the surface and slurps them down.
I head for Pripyat, the town that lies in the shadow of the power plant (Chernobyl itself is actually 15 km from the reactor) where old buildings are being consumed by trees and bushes, and flourishing woodlands and wildlife. The exclusion zone has been reclaimed by nature, and nature is doing very well without mankind thanks very much. The populations of deer, boar, elk and beaver are expanding fast, and even extremely rare lynx have been spotted. The fact that the area is polluted with radioactive isotopes bothers them not a jot.
It wasn't until two days after the Chernobyl accident that Pripyat was evacuated, and 50,000 people were hurried onto buses. They were told that they'd be away for three days, and they were allowed to take only a single suitcase of possessions. But they never came back.
It's a ghostly, tragic place that looks like a set from Planet of the Apes, abandoned in a hurry 20 years ago: fairground rides swinging in the wind; shop hoardings crumbling away from buildings; bushes growing inside houses; and trees bursting through the concrete. Nature is re-invading everywhere.
In the apartment blocks, books and pictures flutter in the wind. In the 1990s, looters began to sneak in and ransack the place, taking everything they could find, from personal possessions to toilet seats. Everywhere there are reminders of the young families that used to live here – bits of old dolls lying around, abandoned toys rotting in car parks – I find this especially distressing. No one knows how long it will be before humans can return, but most agree that it will take at least 300 years for the worst radioactive isotope (caesium-137) to decay to 1000th of its current potency.
I wander around in a daze and discover a building full of old Soviet posters and props, presumably used for propaganda plays and marches. Outside I stumble across an inexplicable radiation hot spot above an eviscerated doll, its arms stretched out to the sky. You couldn't think of a more gruesome symbol.
One of the radiation inspectors used to live here in Pripyat, and it's only his job that's brought him back. Andri was 18 when the accident happened, and he says, 'When I first got the job it was very difficult. But I've been working here for 13 years and I'm used to the fact that the town is no longer here. I used to dream at night that the town still existed. Everything was nice and clean, new, beautiful . . . it's all ruined.'
This whole place could have been thought up by a cheap thriller writer, especially the ghostly fairground that was due to open a week after the accident. There's a Ferris wheel, dodgems and toddlers' rides, but the children who were meant to enjoy all this have instead had to deal with thyroid cancer.
As we're about to leave, our inspectors, Denis and the driver stop for a quick picnic of smoked pork fat on dry bread. They offer some to me, saying that this is the best food you can eat – like Ukrainian drugs. It might not sound like high gastronomy, but I love smoked meats and I haven't eaten all day and it looks and smells heavenly. However, I have been warned that I'm not allowed to eat it, otherwise I'll get in trouble with BBC Health and Safety. So I sit and watch as they laugh at how pathetic I am. These guys ought to know what's safe for them – they're nuclear inspectors for crying out loud – but the trouble is that Ukraine is such a butch, macho culture that they would probably eat plutonium if they were egged on and fuelled by enough vodka.
I spot a couple of huge wild boar – it's the first time I've ever seen them – and I'm properly excited at the sight. The problem with these animals is that they eat all the foods that absorb radiation, and are free to roam in all the most radioactive areas of the exclusion zone, so they are extremely unsafe to eat. This doesn't seem to bother one ancient but dapper old man whom we spot cycling nonchalantly through Pripyat without a care in the world, an axe strapped to his bicycle. I ask him what the axe is for and he says it's for walloping wild boar. 'I made it specially with this long handle.' I ask if he eats the ones he catches. 'Why not?' he says before wobbling off, narrowly missing a tree growing though the tarmac.
I return to the Hotel Chernobyl for more borscht, shredded cabbage and beetroot and a slab of sausage. I'm becoming oddly fond of the brutishly smoked sausage and pork fillet I get with every meal. It's strong enough to put hairs on your nipples.
Marc and I retire with an armful of beers and talk late into the night about radiation and social disintegration.
Anna and Michael
I rise early, nursing another vicious hangover – a beer one, which makes me feel particularly unpleasant and bloated – and I top it with a coffee and a fried egg, leaving all the cabbage, much to the annoyance of the kitchen staff.
I pick up another truckload of radiation inspectors and head for Iliana, a village to the east of Chernobyl. One of the most extraordinary things about the exclusion zone is that about 300 people have moved back here despite the contamination.
The returnees are mainly elderly, and mainly women, and they moved back a year after the disaster when the authorities hadn't really made up any rules to administer the exclusion zone. Returning is highly illegal but anyone who's been to rural Ukraine knows that it doesn't pay to mess with an elderly babushka. These old biddies are ferocious.
Anna (83) and Michael (82) are your classic, beautiful, noble, gnarled peasants straight out of Chekhov. They live in a romantic idyll of a cottage scattered with farmyard tools, a deep well in the front yard, flowers bursting from the garden, plum tree heavy with fruit – the works. They never stop talking and arguing, and make their presence felt by bellowing everything at the top of their voices (they claim to be deaf, but I don't believe a word of it). When I say that I can't get a word in edgeways, Anna says, 'That's just the way I am. I can't whisper. I have to talk a lot!' I fall in love with her instantly. If I have one ounce of her vigour and stubbornness when I'm 80, I'll be a happy old man.
The couple moved back to the exclusion zone when their temporary accommodation was damaged by storms. They live in their old house with a cow, pigs and chickens and a large plot of land for potatoes, beets and cabbages. They don't feel poor, they don't worry that the land is contaminated, but they mourn the loss of their community and friends. Anna bursts into tears when she talks about losing all her possessions back in 1986.
She begins cooking lunch so I join her in her filthy, flyblown, outdoor kitchen. She's boiling water with chopped potato and a couple of bay leaves, and fries some pork fat, a few little onions and salt, which she pours into the water. She adds a pack of noodles and we chat whilst it all simmers. Denis mentions to her that I'm not allowed to eat anything from inside the Zone of Alienation, and she cackles with scornful laughter.
'What's wrong with you?' she asks. 'There's nothing to fear from my food – God will protect you.' I ask her if she thinks it's crazy that I'm not allowed to eat anything and she says, 'If it were contaminated, we would have died long ago! But we've been eating it for 20 years already!'
Inside their cottage the flies are terrible. A couple of fly-stick rolls hang down forlornly from the ceiling, covered in a fuzz of corpses. The swarm of remaining live ones wanders over my hands and head, making me feel grubby and sticky
. Marc reminds me again that I'm not to eat anything. He's beginning to sound like a scratched record, bless him.
But with four burly Ukrainians egging me on, and the honour of a gorgeous 83-year-old babushka and her husband at stake, directives from west London seem a long way away. Anna's tactics turn to simple bullying: 'Why not? Why aren't you allowed? Eat! You have to eat it. You won't die, don't be afraid! Just eat it! You won't die! God will protect you! We eat it and we're alive – and you'll be all right too!'
It's lunchtime. I'm hungry. The most adorable little bully in the former Soviet Union has cooked lunch for me and a group of teasing radiation inspectors from the most radioactive place on the planet has said it's safe to eat. Marc's voice gets a little louder now he can see that I'm being tempted. 'You're not allowed to eat it.'
I linger and look. Anna brings out a plate of homemade smoked pork fat and homemade butter. Ahhhh. Our driver cracks a raw egg straight into his mouth and swallows it to a cheer from his compatriots. Anna lays the soup on the table. Mmmmmmm.
Suddenly, I can bear it no more and I reach out to snatch some butter, bread and pork fat. I scoff like a gastronaut possessed whilst Marc shouts from behind my back. It's too late now: I tuck into the soup and stuff hunks of bread into my mouth. It's like a blessed release, a riot of raw, rural flavours, and I pause only when Anna puts a glass of vicious, rocket fuel-strength plum brandy in my hands. I make the mistake of pausing for a second so she forcibly lifts the glass to my lips and upends its contents into my mouth. Oooooh.
The misery of Chernobyl, the lingering paranoia about radioactivity, the malignancy of nuclear power, the dark shadow cast by Denis – all of it evaporates for a few seconds. I sit down, spent. This must be what it feels like to cheat on your wife: a flash of orgasmic bliss followed by a slow-building sense of guilt and panic. I look shamefaced at Marc, but it's clear that he's washed his hands of my safety. He's imagining the inquest: 'I'm sorry, Georgia. I did everything I could to stop him.'
The inspectors and our driver all tuck into the plum brandy, and eventually we stagger out to take some soil and water samples. After pottering in the garden for a while I start to sober up and wonder if I've done something terribly, terribly stupid.
We take our soil samples back to the research lab to get them tested. The head of the lab says that paranoia about radioactivity had been fuelled by journalists looking for a panic story. Much of the land around Chernobyl has returned to safe levels. He also says that nuclear power will soon be the only option for us, seeing as fossil fuels will run out sooner or later. Although Chernobyl was a terrible disaster, nuclear reactor design is much safer now, and we'll have little choice but to embrace it when the oil runs out.
I'm in two minds about this: of course we have to come up with some solutions, but we still haven't worked out any safe or permanent ways of disposing of spent radioactive fuel, despite the fact that nuclear power has been around since 1938.
On the way back from Pripyat I spot the Chernobyl fire service helicopter and ask Denis if we can arrange a flight in it.
No.
I push him to try and finally he goes to ask his superior just to get me off his back.
'Maybe,' he says. 'Five hundred dollars, no guarantees.'
'Fine,' I say, 'but no flight, no $500.'
'Hmm,' he says.
Hanging Around
I'm missing my kids enormously. Perhaps it's the thought of all those devastated families from Pripyat broken up by evacuation. I phone home and tell Daisy that we're going up in a helicopter soon and she asks if she can come. Of course you can. 'Can I take my shoes off and are there lots of chairs?' Yes, sweets, or course there are.
Ukraine is a little like Norfolk, only more miserable. Endless stretches of flat or, at best, gently undulating landscape. Much of it is unfarmed scrubland – sheep would have a field day (literally), although Ukrainians, unlike Afghans, don't seem particularly fond of lamb. Other than that, there are miles and miles of forest, which are fine in mountainous regions where you can marvel at the beauty of nature from atop a craggy peak, but when the land is flat as a pancake, all you can see are the first few trees and nothing else; it's all a bit claustrophobic. Still, makes for simple driving tests. Start this car and drive straight for 30 km.
At last I am told to make my way to the helipad. Denis actually pulled it off! I'm staggered. When I get there, the ancient Sikorsky helicopter is waiting for me, looking like it was built to one of Da Vinci's original designs. I swear I can smell vodka in the cabin, but it may just be the gently rotting interior. The pilot says that he's very experienced and that the helicopter is quite reliable. Quite? I have to count out $500 in grubby notes before we go anywhere.
This whole shebang doesn't fit in very well with the BBC's safety policy, which clearly states that all helicopter firms must be checked for their safety record. But there's no time for that, and I'm wearing my immortal specs, so we press on. As a nod to health and safety, I ask the pilot for a quick safety briefing, but he looks at me like I'm mad. 'Don't touch anything, and don't be too scared,' he says, and flicks a switch. The vast hulk of rotting steel begins shaking like a washing machine full of logs. After an age, he steps on the gas and we rise miraculously from the ground. I'm sure I can hear a choir of angels singing, but then I realize it's the sound of a thousand rivets whining and straining.
We head off over Chernobyl town, and I can see the reality of the devastation. It looks even more grim and desolate from above. We fly north towards the power station, and pass thousands of clumps of foliage where houses used to be. The way that nature has moved back in once again reminds me of the set of a cheap horror flick.
We circle the plant, a vast monolithic monstrosity that spreads across the land like a concrete rash, then Pripyat, which looks even more haunting and lifeless from overhead. Then over Anna's house and village (I wave but I can't spot her waving back) and back home via a ship graveyard – rotting steel ships and barges that were involved in the clean-up operation sit scuppered in a huge lake.
The pilot looks over at me. 'Enough?' We finally thump onto the landing spot with the elegance of an elephant ballerina, but it's a relief to get down in one piece, and I thank our pilot effusively.
Slavutych
At last I leave Chernobyl and head for Slavutych – the town that was hurriedly built to house the workers needed to keep Chernobyl going after the accident. I can't wait to go – I've felt weighed down by the tragedy of this place and the relentless symbols of loss and pain. Trouble is, the 20-minute route to the town cuts through Belarus, and they won't give us a visa, so we have to take the five-hour round journey via Kiev, still in the agonizingly stifling company of Denis.
The relief I feel when I arrive in Slavutych almost overwhelms me and to celebrate our escape from Denis, Marc and I go out to the nearest bar to ease our stress in a lake of cheap vodka.
Later I meet my new guide, llyena, who talks with a classic Bond-movie spy-villain Russian accent. She's fun, opinionated and eloquent – everything Denis wasn't. She takes me to the town market and although it's surprisingly small for a town of 25,000 people, it's lively. Most stallholders seem to be Anna-alikes: tiny, elderly babushkas with wizened faces and beautiful smiles, selling a few peppers, aubergines, lots of dill, parsley and basil, tomatoes and loads and loads of tiny sweet cucumbers for nibbling and pickling.
I get chatting to a woman who sells meat and wishes she could turn the clock back to Soviet times. She had been part of a collectivized state farm, and the collapse of communism had ruined agriculture and her lifestyle. I suggest that collectivized farming has been blamed for widespread misery and environmental damage, not to mention the death of millions under Stalin, but she angrily insists that she doesn't care about the others – her life was better before the fall of the USSR. I buy some of her pork to cheer her up a bit.
Because this market is so close to Chernobyl, every stall has to have its food checked at an on-site radiation-testing
lab. I take my pork along to be checked – I'm done with the devil-may-care approach. J chat with the friendly lab supervisor who sports startlingly yellow hair and thickly applied make-up in the traditional Ukrainian style. Her nails are like a baroque masterpiece. She says that she rarely, if ever, sees high radioactivity levels from food in the market – perhaps only five instances in the last year and ten the year before.
That evening we meet up with some of Hyena's friends for a riverside barbecue. Amongst others, there's Anatoly, a lovely but slightly ear-bending ex-'liquidator' (the name given to the people who worked as part of the clearing-up operation after the accident); Denis, a wild-living 20-year-old; and Denis's friend, who has a fashion-busting ponytail-through-baseball-cap thing going on at the back of his head.
Everyone's a little wary at first, but after I reveal the stash of beer and vodka I've brought to oil the wheels of love, they quickly become my best friends.
Denis's mother Natasha has banned him from drinking vodka in front of us as a way of keeping him on the straight and narrow – vodka does seem to be an enormous problem for Ukrainians, especially among young men like Denis who've had to live through extreme social upheavals and have few job opportunities. I feel ashamed for bringing the booze along, but Natasha says, 'It's fine, he has to learn to deal with it.' His desperation for vodka is manic and obsessive, and his mum follows him everywhere shouting and chastising him for constantly trying to get his hands on it.