Chernobyl

by Frederik Pohl

  "Then you're leaving Kiev?" Oksana ventured.

  The old lady smiled at her. "Wouldn't you? I don't think that anyone named Smin will be popular in Kiev just now."

  But, popular or not, Aftasia Smin still had friends. As she demonstrated to the Didchuks. They set off for the railroad station in good time, Aftasia Smin up front with the driver to give orders, the elder Didchuks in back with their daughter, and their daughter's boxes, bags, and paper-wrapped food parcels, squeezed between them.

  The last hundred meters were the slowest, because the militiamen had roped off the square in front of the train station. The approaches were jammed. Oksana Didchuk made a faint worried sound as she saw the red numbers on the digital clock above the station. "But the train is to leave in an hour," she said.

  Aftasia turned to her; she was so tiny she had to lift herself to peer over the back of the seat. "It won't leave in an hour," she said. "Look, the trains are just coming in now." So they were; the Didchuks could see the long trains snaking slowly in to the platforms beside the station.

  Oksana made another worried sound, but she muffled it. The regular night trains between Kiev and Moscow were streamlined, modern cars built in East Germany, proudly lettered with the names of the cities they connected. The ones now creeping in were something quite different. These extra trains to Moscow were made up in a hurry, of cars taken from repair shops and sidings, hard class and soft, dilapidated and spanking new, and for every space on the trains there were two people who wanted to hoard them.

  The special trains were meant to carry children under ten away from the radioactive cloud that threatened Kiev, but every ten-year-old child had parents, older siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts. Nearly every one of them wished they, too, could get on that train for Moscow and air that did not threaten lingering death. Some tried.

  Some, on that Wednesday in Kiev, were trying all sorts of strange things. It was said that potassium iodide capsules saturate the thyroid gland with the element, and so would prevent the radioactive iodine from entering into the body and breeding a cancer in the throat. It was said that Georgian wine immunized one against radiation, or that vodka did; or that a cocktail of equal parts of vodka and turpentine did, or the white of egg, or even more repulsive substances. The first of those rumors happened to be quite true, and, as in Poland, potassium iodide vanished from the apothecaries overnight. The others were not, but that didn't keep people from trying them.

  Many of the people in the terminal were all but reeling drunk, there were even one or two glassy-eyed children, and a few wound up in hospitals with assorted poisonings. Everyone was wearing a hat. Many of the children were sweating in winter clothes on this hot May morning, because everyone had been advised to stay bundled up whenever they were out in the open. Those near the doors of the station were constantly shouting at the people milling in and out to close them, shut them tight, keep them closed, to keep the outside air with its secret burden of sickness from poisoning the hot, sweaty, unwell air of the terminal.

  When the driver had found a place to put the car, Aftasia ordered the Didchuks: "Wait here." She was gone nearly an hour, but when she came back she was triumphantly waving a boarding pass that let the Didchuk child into one of the newest cars on the train. Such passes were not for everyone. But not everyone had a Party card originally issued in 1916, and even an old woman had friends of friends who could do a favor. Even now.

  When the child was settled, surrounded by her boxes and neat little traveling bag and sausage and bread for the long ride, the Didchuks thanked Aftasia. Businesslike, she brushed their thanks aside. "You can do me a favor in return if you will," she said. "I must take my American relatives to the airport. If you will come with me to translate, Didchuk, I am sure your wife can stay here with the child until the train leaves."

  "To translate?" Didchuk asked. "But surely at the airport people will speak English—"

  "I want to show my cousins something first," said Aftasia harshly. "If it is not too much of a bother?"

  Of course it was not too much of a bother, though it was certainly not no bother at all, either; Didchuk would really have preferred to stay with his wife on the platform, waving and smiling at their daughter as needed until at last the train pulled out. Aftasia would not be denied. So the two of them got back in the car, its windows shut tight (as all windows were ordered to be) against the outside air, and the driver took them through the crowded streets to the hotel.

  The Garfields were waiting just inside the door, guarding their pretty pale blue matched luggage from California. "A moment," said Aftasia, and got out to explain to the hotel porter that (if he would not mind) he should send the Gar-fields' luggage to the airport on the Intourist bus, since there was no room in the car for all of it. He, too, agreed not to mind, or not to mind much, and Aftasia ordered the Americans politely to hurry into the car. "But can't we have the windows open, at least?" Candace Garfield asked, and when Didchuk translated the driver exploded:

  "Of course not! We have been told to keep out the air as much as possible and it is, after all, only May! We will be quite comfortable in here if no one smokes. If," he added, glancing at Aftasia Smin, "it is really necessary to make this side trip instead of going directly to the airport."

  "It is necessary," Aftasia said flatly. When the driver had surrendered, the old woman began to engage her American cousins in a polite conversation through the teacher. It was wonderful, she said, that they had had a chance to meet, after all. She hoped that they had not been too frightened with this difficulty of her son's power plant. They would be all right, she was sure, because they had been exposed to whatever it was for no more than a few days. It was perhaps more dangerous for those who must remain in the Ukraine, but in just a few hours they would be in Moscow, and then the next day on their way to — where were they going first? Paris? Ah, how wonderful! She had always dreamed of seeing Paris — and, oh yes, especially of California, which (she said) she had always thought of as a sort of combination of Yalta, Kiev, and heaven.

  With the snail pace of polite conversation relayed through an interpreter, it took half an hour for all these pleasantries to be exchanged, while the car crossed the Dnieper bridge, snaked through the traffic, and drove along the streets of the suburbs.

  Aftasia fell silent, watching the streets they passed, and Didchuk took up the burden of conversation for himself. "This part of Kiev," he said proudly, "was only open countryside as recently as the war — did you manage to see our Museum of the Great Patriotic War while you were in Kiev? Yes? Then you know that there was much fighting around here. Now it is all very nice homes, as you see. The people who live here have the bus or the Metro, and in the morning it's twenty minutes and they're at work." He glanced ahead, and frowned slightly. "This particular area," he mentioned diffidently, "was in fact quite famous, in a way.. . Excuse me," he said abruptly, and leaned forward to talk to Aftasia.

  Candace Garfield looked around. They were passing a tall television tower, surrounded by nine-story apartment buildings. "I don't see anything that looks famous," she told her husband. "Unless it's that little park up there on the right."

  Her husband was dabbing sweat off his brow. "What I'd like to see," he said, "is an airplane."

  "Think of Paris," his wife said good-naturedly. "Paris in the springtime? The sidewalk cafes?"

  "Those long, romantic evenings," Garfield said, perking up. "Dinner in our room, with plenty of wine—"

  "Down, boy," his wife commanded, as Didchuk sank back and smiled nervously at them.

  "This is the place," he said. "Mrs. Smin asks me to ask you if you have ever heard of Babi Yar?"

  "Well, of course we've heard of Babi Yar," said Garfield, and his wife, concentrating, added, "I think so. During the war, wasn't it?"

  "Yes, exactly. During the war. Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote a very famous poem about it, and there has been music, books, all sorts of things about Babi Yar," Didchuk confirmed. He seemed ill-at-ease,
but waved toward the park. "Do you see the monument there? It is quite beautiful, don't you think? Many people come here to pay their respects, even leaving flowers— but," he added sadly, "Mrs. Smin does not wish to stop here. Still, you can get quite a good look at it as we go by."

  By craning their necks, the Garfields could see a statuary group on a heroic scale. From directly in front it was only a crowd of stone figures, packed tighdy together like subway riders, with a mother holding her child despairingly aloft. Then, as the car moved slowly along, Candace said, "What are they doing? It looks like the ones in back are falling into the valley there."

  "That's it," Didchuk agreed. "They are falling into that ravine. I thought we would stop there, by the scientific institute, so that we, too, could pay our respects. But Mrs. Smin wants to go just a little farther — ah, yes, we are stopping here. She says this is the real Babi Yar. She says she does not care much for the monument," he finished unhappily.

  The car stopped. The teacher looked at Aftasia Smin for instructions, then shrugged and opened the door. "Mrs. Smin would like us to get out and look around here."

  "I thought she was afraid of radiation or something," Garfield said doubtfully.

  "She is not," the teacher said, and trailed the old woman meekly up a grassy slope. Candace Garfield followed with her husband, perplexed. "I don't have much film left," Candace fretted, taking her camera off her shoulder.

  "Please," said Didchuk hastily, glancing back. "It would be better not to take any pictures. Because of the television tower. A transmission tower, after all, is a legitimate military objective in case of war, and such things may not be photographed."

  "Well, I'll just take a picture of the apartments, then."

  "Please," he said abjectly, looking at the cars whizzing by along the road as though he expected a troop of soldiers to leap out and arrest them.

  Aftasia stopped at the crest, looking out over the little valley. Then she turned and spoke rapidly to Didchuk, who translated. "In September of 1941," he said, "Hitler decided to put off taking Moscow for a few weeks while he conquered the Ukraine. He ordered his troops to take the city of Kiev. Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold it. Hitler won. His armies passed to the north and the south of the city, then they joined together. Four Soviet armies were surrounded, more than half a million men. Most of them were killed or captured, and the Germans entered Kiev."

  Aftasia was listening patiently to the English translation. When Didchuk paused and looked inquiringly at her, she thrust a hand out toward the city and spoke in rapid Russian. The teacher flinched and said something, but she shook her head firmly, gesturing him to go on.

  "Mrs. Smin says to tell you that when the Nazis occupied Kiev, many ill-informed Ukrainians welcomed them. They even—" He hesitated, then said miserably, "They said things like, well, like, forgive me, 'Thank God we are free of the Bolsheviks' and 'Now we can worship God again!' Well, it is true, though perhaps there were not as many people like that as Mrs. Smin suggests." Aftasia rattled on. Didchuk nodded and relayed the message: "So when the German officers arrived, some Kiev people, even leaders, even Party members, came out to greet them with the traditional gifts of bread and salt, to show they were welcome. The Germans only laughed. Then they got serious. They stole everything, Mrs. Garfield, even the pots and pans from the people's kitchens."

  He paused for the next installment. "Some Ukrainians even went to work for the Germans. Not simply as farmers or that sort of thing, you understand. As their allies against the Soviet Union. There were even Ukrainians who acted as police for the Germans. There were some — there was a man named Stepan Bandera, another named Melnik, others — some who led bands of guerrillas even before the Germans occupied the city, attacking the rear of the Red Army even while they were fighting against the invaders. They even wanted to join with the Germans to form a Vlasovite Army—"

  "A what?" Garfield asked, frowning.

  Didchuk seemed reluctant to answer. "Well, it was not only Ukrainians who became traitors; there was a Russian named Vlasov, a famous general; he was captured, and then he formed an army of Soviet soldiers who actually fought on the German side. But Mrs. Smin asks me to tell you about the Ukrainians. Some Ukrainians. When the Red Army liberated Kiev in 1944 they found posters — I'm sorry to say, Ukrainian posters — pictures of people tearing down the hammer and sickle, with slogans like 'Down with the Bolsheviks' and even, excuse me, 'None will cease to fight while our Ukraine is enslaved by the Communists.'" He was sweating now. He gave Aftasia an imploring glance, but she rattled on and doggedly he translated.

  "The Ukrainians, of course, were fools. The Germans starved them and enslaved them and shot them. But some of them still tried to lick the boots of the Nazis. Especially about the Jews, because — please, I am just saying what she tells me, it is not true. Altogether. Because the Ukrainians hated the Jews as much as Hitler did. (But only a few of them, believe me!) The Ukrainian Nazi-lovers helped the Germans round up the Jews in the Ukraine. They robbed them, they stripped them, they put them into the death cars that went to the concentration camps.

  "But that was not fast enough for them. So then, on September twenty-eighth, the Germans posted orders all around Kiev to say that all Yids — excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Garfield, that is the word Mrs. Smin says was in the orders — must report the next day with warm clothing and all their valuables." There was a single sentence from Aftasia. "She says, 'I did not report.' "

  "Well, of course she didn't," Garfield put in, scowling. "By then everybody knew that when the Jews were ordered to report, it meant the concentration camps."

  Didchuk translated, then listened as Aftasia Smin, shaking her head vigorously, spoke in angry tones. "She says," he said uncertainly, "that they did not know what that meant. She says" — he glanced about apprehensively—"that because of the, ah, the — what can one call it? — because, that is, of the special relationship that existed at that time between the Soviet Union and the German nation — just before the invasion, that is—"

  "Ah," said Garfield, understanding. "The Hitler-Stalin pact."

  Didchuk flinched. "Yes, exactly," he said weakly. "The, ah, pact of nonaggression. At any rate, she says that for that reason nothing was known in the Soviet Union of German anti-Semitism. It had not been reported."

  "For Christ's sake! How could they not know?"

  Didchuk said obstinately, "I was not born then, Mr. Garfield. It is Mrs. Smin who says that even the Jews didn't know, and I suppose she is right. So all the Jews reported as they were told, almost all, and the Ukrainian Nazi police and the SS troops rounded them up and marched them out here. To this place. Babi Yar."

  Garfield glanced around with a puzzled expression. "I heard of Babi Yar, sure, who hasn't? But I thought it was, like, a valley, way out in the country."

  "At one time it was a valley, Mr. Garfield. It has been filled in so this road could be built, and then the city grew to take it in. But this is Babi Yar, yes, and they were all taken here. Men and women. Grandmothers. Little children. Even babies in arms. And they were made to strip naked, a few dozen at a time. And then the Germans shot them, and buried them, right here in this valley. You are looking, Mrs. Smin says, at one hundred thousand dead Jews." He stole a quick glance at Aftasia, and added, almost in a whisper, "I do not think it is quite that many, perhaps."

  "My God," said Candace, clutching her husband's arm. "That's unbelievable."

  "Yes, exactly," Didchuk said quickly. "It could not have been a hundred thousand of just Jews. Everyone knows there were also Party members, hostages, gypsies — oh, the gypsies were hunted quite as much as the Jews, though, of course, there weren't as many of them. And, as Mrs. Smin asks me to tell you, the Jews who failed to report were hunted down. Not just by the Germans. They were chased by Russians and Ukrainians as well because, you see, if someone reported a hidden Jew, he was granted the right to take what he liked from the Jew's belongings."

  He glanced at Aftasia Smin almost hopefu
lly, as though he thought his work over. His face fell as she went on.

  "Well," he sighed, "there is more she wants me to say to you. Later, when the heroic Soviet armies counterattacked and were in the process of driving the Hitlerites out of our land, the Germans got scared. They did not want all those bodies found. So they captured some more prisoners, and forced them to dig up as many of the bodies as they could." He wrinkled his nose unhappily. "They had been buried for several years, you understand. They were quite decayed, of course. Often, they fell apart. Then the Germans made their prisoners take down the headstones from a Jewish cemetery that was here — it was where the television station is now, Mrs. Smin says — and put the stones together to make big ovens. And in those ovens they burned the bodies. With wood they cut from the forests that were around here then. A layer of logs, a layer of Jews, and they burned them all."

  As he paused, Aftasia said something in a somber tone. "Yes, yes," Didchuk said impatiently. "She wants me to be sure to tell you this part, although it is not a pleasant subject. She says to tell you that after the burning, the Germans took the ashes and the bones. They crushed them, and spread them on the farms. She says that this made the cabbages grow very well. She says that since then she does not care to eat cabbage."

  They were all silent for a moment, even Aftasia. The Garfields peered down the length of the green park toward the distant monument, but there was nothing for them to say. The cars humming by on the roadway, the handsome apartment buildings, the tall television tower on the horizon, seemed to contradict the horror of the story of Babi Yar.