Fracture

by Andres Neuman

  Who will be able to understand

  among the generations to come

  that we fell once more into darkness,

  after seeing the light?

  He closes the book and reviews his plan. He is flying tomorrow morning to Sendai, the nearest operational airport to Fukushima. And when he arrives he’ll hire a car. He still doesn’t know where he’ll stay, he prefers to improvise. He wants to travel blind. Or rather, by traveling there, he will be opening his eyes at last.

  Watanabe rearranges his papers, which are already compulsively neat. Then he packs a sparse suitcase. He places Ōe’s book on top of his clothes, as he might a hat.

  The last flowers he bought have started to wilt. He has the impression that they took less time than usual to wither, as if spring had made them hurry. One of the flowers seems about to crawl toward the window. Mr. Watanabe observes it without trying to straighten it. Drooping like that, it has a familiar air. Like a deaf creature that nonetheless insists on continuing to listen to the light.

  * * *

  After dinner, Watanabe turns on the television in his living room to watch a documentary about the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. With some minutes left before it starts, he idly channel surfs.

  All of a sudden, on a British sports channel, there’s a jockey speaking in Japanese. The gallop of his mother tongue captures his attention, and he concentrates once more on the flat screen. It is a documentary about an Olympic horse rider called Hiroshi, whose aim is to become the oldest competitor at the London Olympics. When you see him mounted, the announcer declares excitedly, he doesn’t look seventy. That’s no compliment, protests Mr. Watanabe.

  He learns that Hiroshi was born during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He is a descendant of medieval pirates. Studied economics. Lived in the United States. Worked in the orthopedics industry. After retiring, he returned to his youthful passion: horses. In Europe, Hiroshi saw the dancing horses, his wife explains, and fell in love. He eats only seafood. Hasn’t gained a pound in forty years. Every night he does stretching exercises. If you have goals, the rider says, you will always feel young. Watanabe rubs his eyes. The presenter’s last comment is: Hiroshi goes like a bomb. He gets up to take an aspirin.

  Then he checks the time and hurriedly changes channels. Right on cue he catches the brief introduction to the documentary and the Chernobyl plant. Better known during the Soviet era, the announcer reminds the audience, as the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Station. Mr. Watanabe had completely forgotten that fact, which seems as much of a revelation to him as his own forgetfulness.

  His face professionally twisted in a mournful expression, the announcer adds a last-minute comment, comparing the case to that of Fukushima, the only ones in history, he points out, to have reached a seven on the nuclear scale. Watanabe is alarmed to hear that the Chernobyl authorities consider Fukushima a sister, and have decided to put up a simple plaque twinning the two towns.

  The nuclear installations, begins the voice-over, were located twenty kilometers north of Chernobyl, which derives its name from a local plant, the meaning of which, some linguists claim, is “black pasture.” Again, twenty kilometers, Watanabe thinks. The radius that conceals the worst silences. The blackest pastures.

  He gets up and pours himself a glass of wine, possibly to counteract the mental clarity the aspirin has given him.

  Apart from the emission of a lethal form of energy, the voice-over continues, the accident at Chernobyl can be linked to the atomic bombs by three factors. The first of these is political. The nuclear race between the two great powers began with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then the paranoid obsession with military defense systems became official. The second factor is statistical. The number of casualties in one case and of evacuees in the other are remarkably similar. The illnesses discovered over the long term are also comparable.

  Watanabe feels the film of alcohol gnawing at his gums.

  The third factor is perhaps less well known, says the voice-over. The size of the Chernobyl plant was directly related to the requirements of a defense complex, secret at the time, named Chernobyl-2 or Duga-3. This vast radar, consisting of a low-frequency antenna that measured a hundred and fifty meters tall and half a kilometer long, together with a second high-frequency radar measuring a hundred (Watanabe becomes distracted as he tries to visualize these aerials, which he imagines as giant, hypertrophied insects) and consumed a third of the plant’s total energy output.

  Following the accident, physicists calculated that there was a ten percent risk that a nuclear explosion on an unimaginable scale would take place within a fortnight. Such an explosion (Watanabe hears without reacting, as if he were watching science fiction) would have been equivalent to forty Hiroshima bombs going off at the same time, and would have rendered Europe uninhabitable.

  When, the voice predicts, our species becomes extinct in thousands of years’ time (if, Watanabe thinks with a cough, we’re being wildly optimistic) the radioactive isotopes from Chernobyl will still be alive in the air (if alive is the word! he specifies, raising the glass to his lips). This is why experts agree that we have entered a new geological age, the Anthropocene. An era in which human activity has left its scars, which are clear from the strata of cliffs and caves (you have to be incredibly old, he tells himself, swallowing, to have lived in two geological ages). The residues from nuclear testing are our indelible marks on the entire planet.

  However, the voice explains, Chernobyl released very different types of radiation (the wine corroding his gums, enveloping his titanium implants), more harmful at a short distance. The authorities permitted cattle to continue grazing in areas where the wind had scattered the radioactive particles, and potentially contaminated crops were not destroyed.

  A good part of the surrounding countryside, the voice insists, will never be inhabited again. The people of Kopachi (while the screen shows aerial views, Watanabe lowers his head to refill his glass) were assured that they could soon return to their homes (the liquid spills out of the glass and several drops redden the table). Their houses were demolished and buried. All that remains of the village today are those bushy knolls, on top of which have been stuck the famous yellow symbols (amarillo, kiiro, jaune). Curiously enough, the voice observes with a somewhat inappropriate trace of irony, in the ancient Slavic language, kopachi meant “gravedigger.”

  In the wake of the disaster, the voice concludes, recovering its solemnity, the Chernobyl plant continued to be operational for another fifteen years, approximately. Only the construction of a fifth reactor was halted, and its structure surrounded by cranes currently welcomes visitors. Shortly before it was shut down, a fire broke out in reactor number two. The possibility of replacing it was explored. But by that time, Ukraine was an independent republic, and its young members of Parliament were questioning its energy future.

  Mr. Watanabe stretches out his arm, and—as he does frequently when watching porn—mutes the sound. Activists, politicians, and intellectuals file across the screen. He wonders whether, before the republic became independent, there were fewer nuclear objectors or just fewer possibilities of broadcasting them. He drains his glass. He turns up the volume again. His attention to the voice-over alternates with the flow of his own thoughts.

  Chernobyl is a realm divided into nuclear provinces, administered according to their levels of toxicity. The currency has long since changed from the ruble to the roentgen, the voice explains, the traditional measurement of radioactivity that (radioactivity is already a tradition). To travel from one province to another, you have to go through passport control. To enter the exclusion zone, which extends over a thirty (twenty, thirty, yes), military authorization is required. The customs posts are equipped with Geiger counters and power showers that can eliminate any (exclusion, military, showers, eliminate: the combination couldn’t sound worse).

  The nuclear realm of Chernobyl also has its heroes. The firefighters who, on that night, prevented the flames from spreadi
ng. All of them accomplished their mission without knowing what was really going on, and without the necessary protection to (if they’d they been told, how many of them would have gone?). None of those strong, healthy young men, the voice recounts, survived more than two weeks. Their remains are stored in sealed and reinforced concrete caskets. Even at some distance from their graves, the radiation levels are so high that no one is allowed to approach to pay their respects. (Few heroes resemble their country so much.)

  Although the accident took place on what is now Ukrainian soil, it was Belorussia that received most of the fallout. And, the voice explains, it is still suffering the worst effects. Mental impairment and disabilities, genetic mutations. Cases of cancer have increased seventy (did he hear that figure correctly?). Less than one percent of Russian soil was badly contaminated. In Belorussia, it rose to twenty-three. This is why (the irony is there wasn’t a single nuclear power station in Belorussia. The disaster simply crossed the border).

  On the day of the accident, raised levels of radiation were recorded in Germany, Austria, Poland, and Romania. Four days after that, in Switzerland and Italy. Two days after that, in France, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, and Greece. A day later in Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey. Lofted high into the atmosphere, these substances spread across the globe, and were even detected in China, India, the United States, and Japan. Nearness and remoteness therefore lost all meaning for the (and that’s why he has always thought that economics cannot be separated from the ecumenical. He doesn’t believe this out of a sense of solidarity: it is what he sees as an observer of business throughout the world).

  In any event, he wonders, as he considers turning off the television, if it weren’t for the bombs and the promotion of nuclear energy, would plants like Chernobyl and Fukushima have existed at all?

  One witness recalls: He was swollen all over. His eyes had practically disappeared, recalls another. He kept asking me for water and more water, recalls another; the doctors gave him milk. They didn’t tell us what was wrong with him, recalls another. The doctors died as well, recalls another. When they moved their head, recalls another, their hair stuck to the pillow. I haven’t been able to sleep properly since, another says. Our reactors were the safest, says another. Bad energy brings death, says another, good energy brings light. I thought the worst was over, another says. What hurts most isn’t the past, says another, it’s the future. (All so familiar, so remote, so close.) Belarus, the voice-over suddenly announces, is to go ahead with the construction of its first nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency supports the initiative. The current director, who is Japanese, will advise the country at each.

  The bottle is finished. The documentary isn’t. At the center of this imbalance, Mr. Watanabe’s body resists getting up.

  The documentary is now focusing on the task of submerging the remains of the plant, which linger like a hot coal no one knows how to extinguish. In the months following the catastrophe (and now he has the impression that a different voice is telling the story, or possibly the same voice on a day that is more humid and liable to cause colds, what do announcers think about when they report tragedies? Are they distracted? Do they get involved? Do they distance themselves in self-defense?), to a huge temporary patch, the steel and concrete sarcophagus we can see in this aerial shot.

  The sarcophagus, the voice goes on (this other voice), no guarantees. It was designed to last only thirty years. In other words, until 2016. By now, it is covered in cracks. It has been estimated (by whom? How?) defective area already measures more than two hundred square meters, and through it, radioactive aerosols are seeping out. When the north wind blows, uranium, plutonium, and cesium emissions are detected in the south (the wind, even the wind shows that what comes from the north is harmful to the south). Sarcophagus, a breathing corpse.

  The ongoing efforts, the voice resumes after a dramatic pause (rising in pitch, he notes, as though coming to life), solution to these flaws, is the work of a prominent French consortium which (or as though the documentary itself was sponsored by a prominent French consortium) largest mobile structure ever made. In the words of its creators, it will be the mother of all domes. Due to its unprecedented complexity, the European Commission, the G-7, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (watch out, here we go!) the unavoidable rise in the cost of this historical feat of engineering. The two rings will be ingeniously assembled until (the official cost overrun, Watanabe checks on his phone, already stands at six hundred and fifteen million euros).

  Impossibility of building it on top of the damaged reactor, he listens to the voice again, the dome is being constructed in this adjacent area, which has been decontaminated using the (how can they be so sure? And why aren’t they interviewing the construction workers?) of the place. Once the parts are completed, they will slide on rails. The structure, designed to withstand earthquakes, will be large enough to house two Boeing 747s, one next to (paranoid, he searches in vain for a hypothetical connection between the French production company of the documentary, the U.S. company Boeing, and the energy multinationals). Because of its texture, explains one of the engineers, it will look something like the Eiffel Tower.

  And this will be the cage, the voice-over says dramatically, that will chain the beast resting beneath the sarcophagus, in the face of (Watanabe imagines he is listening to a story about zombies and vampires: the entertainment industry ends up cannibalizing everything). Tons of uranium melted into the piles of waste, sand, lead, and acid that were dropped from helicopters. The amalgam created this incredible incandescent mass, a highly toxic magma that no civilization had confronted before, not even (the alleged solution, then, is to gain time in order to find a solution) still being examined (not a solution: a cover-up). The new structure is designed to remain hermetically sealed for a hundred years. The air inside will be monitored and kept free of moisture to avoid the corrosion of (to make sure that inside this dome, as it were, the past doesn’t exist).

  And so our future, the voice declares decisively, will also remain sealed, finally laying to rest the tragedy that terrorized Europe twenty-five (the future sealed, the tragedy laid to rest).

  As the credits move up the screen and vanish, Mr. Watanabe is reminded once again of kintsugi. The art of mending cracks without secrecy. Of repairing while exposing the point of fracture.

  * * *

  After the commercials, the announcer appears once more on-screen, and staring into the eyes of the viewers, announces the crucial point of today’s special report: a series of aerial images of the exclusion zone, filmed by drones, shown here for the first time. The shot zooms in on the announcer’s face. His eyebrows seem to take off.

  Suddenly, Pripyat appears, the nearest town to the power plant, which since its evacuation has remained in a phantom state. Mr. Watanabe wonders about the hypnotic effect abandoned spaces have on him. What impossible anticipation they provide him with.

  Trying to blink, he recalls a trip he once made with Carmen to an abandoned hospital on the Lido, that citadel for consumptives, which became a temple to the strangest kind of hope. Many people with incurable illnesses traveled there in the belief they would be saved, surrounded by palaces and beauty. To him it had seemed like a very moving place. But she’d found it sinister. Experiencing such contrasting emotions somehow distanced them. Between the two of them, he now realizes, they’d spanned the arc of a single response: the place contained both extremes. As they walked through the stripped offices, Carmen wanted to take with her one of the typewriters. And he begged her not to touch anything.

  Empty places, observes Watanabe, are often filled with contradiction. For example, around Pripyat, nature is crowded and it spreads with vengeful force. Cattle graze along its avenues. Horses gallop in wild droves. Wolves, whose tracks abound, have made their lairs in houses. Eagles snatch impossibly large prey. Black storks outnumber white ones. Some of the soldiers who patrol the area allege sightings of bears that have been extinc
t for more than a century. And everywhere, the zoom shows, are millions of swarming ants, like a relentless calligraphy rewriting everything.

  Why life is so insistent, even in the most hostile of environments, continues to be a mystery that produces in Mr. Watanabe a perplexed gratitude. For the local fauna, Chernobyl has been transformed into a paradise. Paradise, he reflects, would be the absence of human beings.

  At the time of the explosion, he hears, the average age of the inhabitants was below thirty. They called it the city of the future.

  Pripyat is archaeologically pure. There is no need for excavations: the layers of memory are exposed. The building that strikes him most is the post office. Lying amid the moss and weeds are all the undelivered letters. If someone ran over to read them, he imagines, would time begin again?

  Watanabe glances at the time. He doesn’t feel tired, but he knows he will be tomorrow if he doesn’t go to bed straightaway. Just as his finger is touching the red OFF button, he is shocked by the Pripyat fairground. Childhood and graveyard seem to coincide in its attractions. Most disturbing is the way happiness and wretchedness have lost all distinction. A nuclear celebration.

  On the screen gleaming bumper cars jostle their own stillness. The empty carrousel, bewildered as a tree with no branches. The yellow Ferris wheel like a broken wheel of fortune.

  Beyond its random appearance, Watanabe thinks he can see some coherence, a sick sense of a museum: it is a monument to interruption. This isn’t death, but something more insidious, its sudden implantation.

  Minutes later, a finger presses a button, the screen goes dark and everything disappears.

  As he slips into bed, Mr. Watanabe forgets his earplugs. He is too lazy to sit up and turn on the light, and so he closes his eyes. He falls asleep more easily than he had imagined, thinking about how strange the sounds in his house seem, the breathing objects, the hum of reality.