Chernobyl Murders (4 page)

“But we like it here,” said Mihaly. “If there were a nuclear war, we’d be in the best possible place.”

“Not a nuclear war,” said Nina. “An explosion in your stomachs. You two in the wine cellar is like putting wolves in the chicken coop. We’re eating in the yard tonight. After you move the table into the shade, you can build a fire in the pit to roast the chickens your hard-working cousin so graciously provided.”

“Healthy Andrew and his wife have returned with healthy American chickens?”

“Not Andrew and his wife. Their visa allowed only one visit.

Now come out of there.”

“Ah,” said Mihaly, after Nina had gone from the entrance. “The sound of my sweet, innocent bride.”

“Do I detect sarcasm?” asked Lazlo.

“Well, Nina isn’t exactly an innocent bride anymore. We have two daughters to prove it.”

As if prompted by Mihaly’s mention of his two daughters, Lazlo could hear Anna and Ilonka calling to their mother, their high-pitched screams to “Mommychka!” coming into the dark wine cellar like the chirping of crickets.

Lazlo thought about Nina, how she looked before she became

“Mommychka” to Anna and Ilonka, how she looked when he stood up at the wedding. Nina, the girl become woman, the white flow-ing dress cinched in at her slender waist, her hips and bosom giving the wedding dress a shape he could not forget. Her voice, pure and feminine, repeating the vows. And he, Lazlo, the older brother, the bachelor brother, standing to the side and, though he never told Mihaly, becoming infatuated, falling in love with Mihaly’s bride.

Lazlo closed his eyes to form an image of Nina in the yard in a thin cotton dress, a hot breeze rippling the dress about her thighs.

Nina reaching up to brush her dark brown hair from her eyes. And what was it Mihaly had said? Not innocent anymore?

“Mihaly?”

“What is it?”

“Shall we have another glass before we go out into the sun?”

“Yes, another glass.”

While Mihaly took their glasses and began filling them at today’s newly tapped keg, Lazlo vowed he would ask Mihaly if everything was well between him and Nina. Tonight, when they were alone again, he would, like a proper big brother, provide an ear for his younger brother. And perhaps he would finally tell Mihaly his secret from the army. Being put in the situation of having to kill another boy his age simply because he could speak Hungarian. He and Viktor assigned in 1963 to arrest deserters near the Hungarian and Romanian borders. Boys assigned to hunt down boys who deserted their ground-forces draft obligation. Boys killing boys because their officers were still angry with Khrushchev and his Cuban missile fiasco.

Mihaly handed him a full glass of wine and stood near the entrance to the cellar, holding his glass high in the shaft of light from above. “To our holiday, may it last forever.”

They drank.

Mihaly continued standing, held his glass up again. “To this hole in the ground. It hid our parents from the Germans so we could be here today.”

After drinking again, Lazlo stood and gave his own toast. “To you and your beautiful girls. Nina, Anna, and little Ilonka.”

By standing, Lazlo had positioned himself with Mihaly between him and the entrance to the cellar. He could see Mihaly’s face profiled against the shaft of light, and it reminded him of a wedding photograph of their father—sharp nose, small chin, sloping forehead. A stern face pausing, waiting before drinking the toast, not knowing his profile was so revealing.

“Ah,” said Mihaly, finally taking a drink. “The nectar of our homeland. The best wine in the world. Shall we go up into the heat of the world?”

Lazlo had not finished his entire glass, so he took it with him.

While climbing the ladder into the white heat of day, his thoughts returned to Nina and how she would move about the table in the yard, serving dinner beneath the shade trees. If he could watch her movements without concern for what she or others might think, if he could be alone with her beneath the stars through the night, then this would be Eden.

Unfortunately it was not true. He was a forty-three-year-old detective in the Kiev militia who, having been unsuccessful in his relationships with women, lusted after his brother’s young wife each year while on holiday. Perhaps it would have been better if he had married years ago. Perhaps he should marry now. But who would have him? Tamara Petrov, perhaps? He tried to imagine Tamara as a bride, her long black hair showing through the veil, bracelets and earrings jingling as she walks up a church aisle. If anything, Tamara would demand a church ceremony, not because she is religious, but because it would go against the mandated state ceremony.

But enough—neither he nor Tamara were interested in marriage.

He was at home in his cubicle at Kiev Militia Headquarters, while Tamara was at home in her cluttered literary review office or at Club Ukrainka, somewhat of a wine cellar in its own way. A wine cellar in central Kiev where artists and composers and writers went to drink and talk, but mostly to drink. A cellar he often visited after a late shift in order to share part of his evening with Tamara.

Here, on holiday, there were no women for a lonely militia detective. Here there was only Nina. At the top of the ladder, the heat of the sun on his head was like hellfire. Even if Nina was in the yard, he could not see her because the sunlight, like a nuclear bomb, had momentarily blinded him.

That evening after dinner, everyone else watched television while Lazlo and Mihaly listened to music on Cousin Bela’s record player.

Some of the records were very old, from when Lazlo was a boy and Mihaly hadn’t yet been born. The scratchy sounds of the Lakatos Gypsy Orchestra filled the house, Lazlo and Mihaly sang, and the children promptly fell asleep. After they were chased from the house, Lazlo and Mihaly spread a blanket in the yard and reclined beneath the stars. It was a clear, moonless night, the trees in the yard forming grotesque shadows upon the blanket of stars. The lights had just gone off in the house, and now the only artificial light came from the village two kilometers away. Because the farmhouse sat atop a hill, only the tallest streetlights and a few lights in the upper windows of village houses were visible. A pair of dogs barked in the village. Otherwise it was silent and deathly still, like the graveyard up the road.

“Lights are all off,” said Mihaly. “But Bela hasn’t started yet.

Snores like his father. Remember Sunday dinners when we were kids? After we finished eating, Uncle Sandor would fall asleep beneath the chestnut tree.”

“We thought he’d shake the chestnuts down on himself,” said Lazlo.

“And when he awoke, he refused to believe he’d been so loud.

He thought everyone was playing a joke on him. Not funny, though, since asthma eventually killed him. I suppose Bela inherited his father’s snoring. I wonder why he hasn’t started yet.”

“Give him time,” said Lazlo.

“Did you think we’d ever come back here, Laz? I remember at Mother’s funeral thinking it would be the last time I ever saw the place. And now here we are, sleeping out back like boys. We sold Bela the house for a good price when Mother died.”

“If we hadn’t sold it to him, he’d still be living with his in-laws, and the collective would have taken it over.”

“What do you think of Mariska, Laz? One baby and she already looks old, especially in those dark dresses and farmer shoes. What a contrast to Cousin Andrew’s wife.”

“Shoes and dresses don’t make a woman, Mihaly. Perhaps in bed things are different.”

“It’s the reason Bela’s not snoring.” Mihaly began laughing. “He can’t because his mouth is full of breast.”

Lazlo tried to control himself, but Mihaly’s laughter was contagious.

“And later,” said Mihaly. “Later, when he is snoring … listen, stop laughing.” Mihaly whispered, “Later, she has Bela’s kielbasa in her mouth, and he really gets going.”

Lazlo and Mihaly both laughed, both began coughing while they tried to contain their laughter. Finally they climbed down into the wine cellar and laughed like a pair of crazy old women in their hole in the ground. When they finished laughing, they groped about in the dark until they found one-liter glass jars on a shelf. They wiped dust from the jars with their shirts.

“Enough to last the night,” said Mihaly as the wine gurgled into the first jar.

After filling both jars, they climbed out of the cellar and went back to their blanket. They spoke of Bela’s hard work keeping up the farm. They spoke of Mariska’s fortune-telling games with the children. They reminisced about the old days on the farm. Lazlo spoke of bedtime stories in which their father said he’d lived with Gypsies when he was a boy. Mihaly, who had not been born until Lazlo was eleven, said he couldn’t recall the stories, but he did recall their mother not wanting their father to ever mention Gypsies.

While Lazlo and Mihaly nostalgically recalled their reflections in their mother’s chicken soup, the sound of Bela’s snoring came from the house. As Bela snored louder, Lazlo and Mihaly laughed harder, Mihaly keeping the joke alive by describing moves on the part of Mariska to keep Bela snorting. Finally, a light went on and off in the house, Bela stopped snoring, and Lazlo and Mihaly quieted down, clearing their throats and sipping wine.

“How are things in Kiev?” asked Mihaly.

“The usual summer heat and traffic. The greenery helps. It must have been beautiful before humans arrived, a jungle river valley. What about you, Mihaly? How are things in Pripyat?”

“Flat and boring,” said Mihaly.

“When you got your job, you described the landscape as gently rolling grassland.”

Mihaly laughed. “Gently rolling. Another term for flat.”

“A good place for soccer,” said Lazlo.

“If one has time.”

“You said your team was as good as Kiev’s Dynamo.”

“No more soccer. Our work schedule is erratic, the hours too long. Sometimes, even in summer, I never see the light of day. On my way home on the bus at night, all I see out the window is darkness. Did I ever tell you how the Chernobyl area got its name?”

“Tell me again.”

“It’s named after a wild grass called wormwood. This wormwood, or Chernobyl grass, was originally named after a star mentioned in the Bible. In the Apocalypse, the Chernobyl star fell to earth and made the land foul. So there you have it, Laz. I live in a gently rolling landscape overrun by foul grass named after a fallen star. Luckily the grass hasn’t yet made it into our nine-square-meter-per-person apartment in scenic downtown Pripyat. A few rolling hills away from Chernobyl on one side, the Pripyat marshes on the other, the Belorussian border up the road, and illiterate farmers everywhere else. What I’d really like is a car to get away on trips.

I’ve been saving and I could probably get a Zaporozhets or Moskvich, but I’d prefer a Volga.”

“My turd-green militia Zhiguli isn’t bad,” said Lazlo.

“Italian design,” said Mihaly. “An old Fiat. Volgas are the only well-built Soviet cars. Everything else is junk, even Chaikas and Zils. We save our money to buy junk, and the KGB drives Volgas.

In my office at the plant, I have a photograph of a Chevrolet Impala

… gorgeous.”

The wine was beginning to have its effect. Lazlo could feel within him an intense desire to take his turn complaining about his fate. It was in their blood to be melancholy. Brother complaining to brother. Yesterday their American cousin had been here; now they were alone.

“Once you get your Volga, all will be complete, Mihaly. You have everything else … successful career, beautiful wife, children.

Not like me.”

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Mihaly. “You make it sound like you’re a failure.”

Lazlo took a gulp of wine. “Still a detective after twenty years.

Living in an apartment alone. It’s always needed a woman’s touch.

But there will be no woman by my side as I enter middle age, then old age. No children or grandchildren to visit me in the pensioner home or to decorate my grave.”

Mihaly rubbed Lazlo’s shoulder. “Goddamn, Laz. You’re only forty-three. You’ve got half your life ahead of you. And you’ve got us. We’re your family. I only wish we lived closer to Kiev so we could see you more often. Nina and the girls love you.”

Lazlo imagined Nina in bed, the nightgown caressing her hips and breasts, her hair spread on the pillow. Then he imagined his nieces, Anna and Ilonka, their faces content with the innocent dreams of youth.

“And I love them,” said Lazlo.

He and Mihaly toasted the stars, the old house, the lights of the village, their futures.

But something bothered Lazlo. Something about the way Mihaly did not seem as close to Nina on this trip. The more Lazlo drank, the more this disturbed him. Then, in the midst of a nostalgic conversation about the university in Kiev they each attended in their own time, Mihaly confessed he sometimes wished he had never married.

“Why?” asked Lazlo. “Why should you want anything different after all I’ve said about the goddamned life of a bachelor?”

“Being tied down, I suppose. My job, my family, the pressures from both sides.”

“Your job I can understand,” said Lazlo. “But what pressure could Nina and the girls cause?”

“I don’t know, Laz. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“Is it Nina? Is something wrong between you and Nina?” When Lazlo said this, he had a split-second thought, a flash in which Nina and he were bride and groom. And this made him feel foolish.

He had expected an immediate negative reply from Mihaly, but there was a long pause before Mihaly finally said, “No, nothing between me and Nina.”

As Lazlo and Mihaly finished their jars of wine, the conversation became disjointed. Before falling asleep, Lazlo remembered part of it, Mihaly muttering something about Chernobyl. In order to remember to ask Mihaly about it the next day, he repeated over and over to himself. What’s wrong at Chernobyl? What’s wrong at Chernobyl? Then the stars blinked out.

The following day, Lazlo and Mihaly ate a late breakfast, went for a walk into the village, came back for lunch, and napped in the yard.