Chernobyl Murders lh-1 Read online

  I still love Nina. Nothing… no, I can’t say nothing has changed.”

  Mihaly looked up. There were tears in his eyes. “Everything has changed, Laz. It’s tearing me apart. All I can think about is Nina finding out. Sometimes I think she’s already found out because of the way she acts. But it can’t be. She must be reacting to the way I act

  …”

  “Next time you’re with this lover of yours… what was her name?”

  “Juli.”

  “Next time you’re with this Juli, you think of me! Think of your old brother because he’s going to tell you something he never thought he’d tell anyone. It’s about Nina. It’s about my feelings. It’s about sibling jealousy and envy and unfulfilled desire. When you’re at the market with Nina, don’t you see other men and even women looking at her? What the hell do you think it means, Mihaly? She doesn’t have a deformity, does she? I guess not! Perhaps it’s beauty.

  And not just a pretty face or a slender figure. It’s the way she carries herself, the way she acts around those she loves. I’ve seen it, Mihaly.

  I’ve seen the way she acts when she’s with you. You should look in a mirror when you’re with her!”

  “Am I looking in a mirror now, Laz? Are you my reflection?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nina. If you wanted her so much, why didn’t you marry her?”

  Lazlo reached out, saw his gloved hand open before Mihaly’s neck.

  “Are you going to choke me, Laz?”

  “I’ve killed before!” As soon as he said it, Lazlo wished he could take it back. His hand, inches from Mihaly’s neck, was shaking.

  “What did you say?”

  Lazlo pulled his hand back. “It would be better to use my belt on you because you’re still a boy.”

  Mihaly stood up. “I deserve it. But you don’t know her, Laz.

  You can’t know how it is. Just like with me and Nina, you see everything from the outside.”

  They started walking again, Mihaly kicking snow up in front of him.

  “She’s Hungarian,” said Mihaly. “In a lot of ways, she’s like Nina. I know. Don’t say it. Let me finish. It started last summer after she broke up with her boyfriend and her father died. She was alone when we met on the bus and realized we both spoke Hungarian. For a long time it’s what we did, speaking to one another in Hungarian on the bus. But then I walked her home.”

  “I have one question I’d like you to answer truthfully, Mihaly.

  And when you do… even if you don’t tell me the truth… when you answer this question honestly to yourself, you’ll know about guilt. You’ll know whose fault it was.”

  “What’s the question?” asked Mihaly quietly.

  “When did you tell her you had a family? Think about it, Mihaly. Not when you might have hinted it. When did you actually say, ‘Look, babycakes, I forgot to tell you, I’ve got this good-looking wife and two little girls to bring up?’”

  They walked in silence for a while. Then Mihaly stopped.

  “It was afterward. It was after I went to her apartment the first time.”

  “And,” said Lazlo, “I don’t suppose she had a rope around your neck.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Did she wear an evening gown on the bus so your hormones got the best of you?”

  Mihaly began looking angry. “She’s not that kind of woman.

  She’s attractive, yes. But it was a combination of things… her being Hungarian, her loneliness, both of us wanting to talk with someone after work about something other than work. I should have tape-recorded the entire affair to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “Perhaps you should have, Mihaly. But would you have been able to afford all the tapes and batteries?”

  Mihaly sighed, and they walked back to the apartment in silence.

  During the remainder of the visit, Lazlo and Mihaly played with Anna and little Ilonka. Lazlo fought to remain cheerful. But each time he looked at Nina, he felt his anger grow. He was angry with Mihaly for being able to put on the act of faithful and loving husband. He was angry with himself for not being able to put on a cheerful act.

  Nina must have sensed his anger because, while Mihaly gave horseback rides on the floor, Nina sat beside Lazlo on the sofa and asked if something was wrong.

  “Nothing is wrong, Nina. You know how it is, these moods I get into…”

  She sat close to him, placed her hand on his. “I know. Mihaly is sometimes like this. He says it’s in his blood. One minute he’s joking

  … the next minute he’s brooding. I ask him what he thinks about when he broods, and he says it’s nothing. Are you the same, Laz?”

  Nina’s hand was soft and warm. He could smell the sweetness escaping from the V-neck of her dress. The sofa sagged, and Nina’s hip pressed against his. He held her hand with both his hands, looked into her eyes, and said, “We Horvaths are very moody.” But as he said it, he felt his breath quicken because what he’d wanted to say, what he’d imagined saying in a different place, in a different time, was that he loved Nina and wanted to hold her, smother her with kisses, protect her from ever being hurt by anyone or anything.

  As if she could read his mind, as if she wanted him as much as he wanted her, as if Mihaly was not whinnying and the girls not giggling on the floor, Nina smiled at him.

  “You’re blushing, Lazlo. I’ve said something to make you blush.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes. Is brooding a private thing? A secret between you and your brother, the horse?”

  “Perhaps it is. We want to be morose until someone points it out. Then we deny it. Father was the same way.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She was kind and gentle and cheerful. A lot like you.”

  Nina smiled and slowly withdrew her hand. She touched his cheek.

  “You’re a good brother-in-law, Laz. And now I’m blushing.”

  She stood, stepped over little Ilonka, who had just rolled from her father’s back, and went to the kitchenette.

  “Who wants cake?” called Nina.

  The girls screamed, “Me! Me!”

  Mihaly whinnied.

  Lazlo nodded, staring at Nina who glanced back to him and seemed, for an instant, to brood as she went to the refrigerator.

  “The cake is fresh, but the milk’s sour again,” said Nina behind the open refrigerator door. “Not like on the farm where they have their own cow.”

  Mihaly mooed, and the girls laughed.

  “All right,” said Nina, “I’ll make tea.”

  After dark Nina looked outside, saying the lights on the Chernobyl towers in the distance were almost invisible because of the snow. She asked Lazlo if he wanted to stay overnight. He thought about how it would be to sleep in the same apartment with the sounds of Nina and Mihaly turning discreetly beneath the blankets.

  He thought about how depressed he would be early in the morning, driving back to Kiev. He said no, and Nina, the perfect woman, smiled at him, made strong tea for his drive back to Kiev, kissed him good-bye gently when it was time to go, linked arms with her husband, and waved to Lazlo from the doorway.

  The long drive in the dark back to Kiev was filled with images of Nina, the woman who, if she belonged to Lazlo instead of Mihaly, would never have to worry about his fidelity. Halfway to Kiev, snow danced in the headlights like millions of shooting stars whose wishes were doomed to failure. When the snowflakes turned into blurred streaks of light, he realized he was weeping. Was he weeping for Nina and the girls and what Mihaly had done? Or was he weeping because he was going back to his lonely apartment in Kiev?

  Perhaps he was weeping for the Gypsy who had hidden a pistol in his violin case should the boys recruited to arrest deserters come for him.

  A snowy day in the eastern Carpathian foothills along the Romanian border. Lazlo and Viktor leave the army truck with their rifles and trudge through the snow to the farm village while the driver waits for them on the main road. H
e and Viktor are only nineteen; the driver, twenty-one. All three have undergone hazing together, Ukrainian recruits shipped to the Russian camp where Russian soldiers had their way with them. One nightmarish session consisted of putting a wig backwards on Viktor, painting a face on the back of his shaved head, painting breasts on his bony shoulder blades, and forcing Lazlo down onto Viktor.

  A snowy day in the eastern Carpathian foothills in 1963. Russian officers are angry because of Khrushchev’s 1962 Cuban missile fiasco. Sometimes they take out their anger on Ukrainian recruits.

  Lazlo and Viktor are chosen for deserter duty because they both speak Hungarian and the area in which the deserter’s family lives is Hungarian speaking.

  A snowy day in the eastern Carpathian foothills. He and Viktor hear a violin playing as they approach the farmhouse, a sad solo not badly done. The deserter’s file back in the truck indicates he comes from a family of violinists. He and Viktor hope the deserter is not there. He has hidden and will come out later so he can stay the winter and help with spring planting. Deserters are common. Many are forgotten. When Viktor knocks, the violin stops playing. But instead of a parent or grandparent answering, the deserter himself, with violin in hand, answers the door.

  A snowy day in the Carpathian foothills. Mother and sister are also in the house. The sister, perhaps sixteen, pleads as the deserter gives himself up. He asks to bring his violin. He retrieves the violin case, reaches inside, turns with a pistol, and shoots Viktor in the chest.

  A snowy day. Viktor falling back through the open door. The pistol turning toward Lazlo. The eyes of the deserter determined.

  Lazlo’s rifle already aimed. The struggle to release the safety and pull the trigger moves the rifle too high. The bullet explodes the deserter’s face, and the women scream. Blood streaks the snow as Lazlo and the driver drag Viktor and the deserter to the truck. Both are alive, but they die while the truck speeds to the nearest hospital.

  When Lazlo visits the farmhouse again with his captain, the deserter’s father is home. He gives them the violin to bury with his son, saying villagers called his son Gypsy. The mother is in another room, having wept for days. The daughter stares at Lazlo with dark eyes like those of her brother. Only sixteen, yet she has become a woman. Except for the visit with his captain to the village to confirm what happened, there is no further investigation. Back at camp, Lazlo’s comrades baptize him with the name Gypsy, insisting the name migrated from the deserter’s soul to his soul when he avenged the death of his friend Viktor.

  A snowy day much like this snowy night. But he is no longer a young man. It is too late for him. He had wanted to tell Mihaly this today. He had wanted to say to Mihaly he should be happy he has a wife in whose eyes he can gaze without seeing the eyes of the deserter’s sister.

  As Lazlo drove into Kiev and along Boulevard Shevchenko, streetlights on new fallen snow made it seem like daylight. Although the hour was late, he decided not to go to his apartment. Instead, he drove to the central city to visit Club Ukrainka, where he would drink wine with artists, composers, and writers. If he were fortunate, Tamara would be there. Tamara, the editor of the literary review, his true friend for so many of his years in Kiev, the last woman who had slept with him and comforted him in his loneliness and melancholy.

  A woman who did not remind him of the past.

  When he entered Club Ukrainka, he could hear a single saxophone playing a sad song in a minor key, a song which, if played on a violin, could have been one of the Gypsy primas played by Lakatos and his Gypsy Orchestra, a Gypsy violin crying in the night the way he had cried on his way back to Kiev.

  Layers of overcoats hung on the hooks near the entrance. He could smell wet wool along with disinfectant from the single washroom. Since his last visit to the club, someone had crossed out the sign “Men and Women” on the door and replaced it with a scrawled

  “Czars and Czarinas.” The smells in the club entrance reminded him of a farm. Yes, a farm in winter, coming in from the wet cold while his mother cleans walls and floors, while his mother washes his baby brother’s diapers in a tub in the kitchen.

  He entered the main room of the club where the shine of the saxophone pierced the smoky air. Tamara sat at a corner table with two bearded men. Her black hair gleamed in the light from the candle on the table. Long silver earrings glittered at the sides of her face. When she saw him, she raised her eyebrows and said something to the two bearded men, who immediately left the table.

  Lovely Tamara sat with her hands folded and mouthed the word

  “Gypsy” with her red, red lips as the saxophone cried. When Lazlo approached the table, he sensed the heat of the room and recalled the heat of Tamara’s body against his. For an instant he felt himself more of a betrayer than his brother.

  6

  On Wednesday nights Juli’s roommate, Marina, worked late, allowing Mihaly to visit. Every week, as Wednesday approached, Juli’s guilt increased, making her think of it as their last rendezvous. But as soon as Mihaly left her apartment, she would begin looking forward to the following Wednesday. Sometimes she imagined she had gone to medical school as her father wished instead of becoming a Chernobyl technician and meeting Mihaly.

  While waiting for the bus to Pripyat, Juli recalled the previous winter. Her father had died, Sergey had broken off their engagement, and it had been miserably cold. This winter, while waiting at the stop outside the low-level laboratory building, it seemed much milder. She stared at the stars visible above the Chernobyl towers, wishing they could provide an answer.

  Mihaly’s birthday had been on the weekend. The previous Wednesday he wondered aloud what kind of gift she could possibly give him. Not something from a shop. Not something he would need to hide. In the locker room before leaving the building, she had stuffed her blouse and brassiere into her purse and worn only slacks beneath her fur coat. She could feel fingers of air slipping beneath the coat. The sound of the bus coming over the hill excited her, and she wondered if this was how a prostitute felt. For a moment she thought she might have made a mistake. The bus was coming, and it was too late to run back to the building. But if she made a fool of herself, so what? Her father was dead. Life was short.

  When she sat next to Mihaly and the bus lurched forward, he decided to warm his hands beneath her coat. Her surprise for him caused a quick intake of breath. Then, during the bus ride, he whispered a description of what would happen when they arrived at the apartment.

  “We’ll go onto the snow-covered balcony in the dark. I’ll kneel in the snow, and you’ll wrap your coat around me. If anyone watches from the ground or another apartment, you’ll appear alone, a woman looking up to the stars. The balcony railing will conceal me, allowing me to work. Afterward I’ll carry you inside, where we’ll travel to another world.”

  When the plan whispered on the bus was finished, they rested in bed, Mihaly’s arm cradling her head on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat finally slowing to normal rhythm.

  “I almost didn’t make it tonight,” said Mihaly.

  Juli kissed his chest. “You did fine.”

  Mihaly laughed. “I meant, something happened, and I almost missed the bus. A valve solenoid had to be replaced.”

  Juli lifted her head from Mihaly’s chest. “Was the fix done before you left?”

  “I stayed to watch the electrician install and test the new solenoid. Not part of normal procedure, but necessary. All the engineers agreed to take up the slack when they cut the number of safety inspectors.”

  “Isn’t that risky?” asked Juli. “Depending on the loyalty of the engineers to plug holes in the safety program?”

  “Of course,” said Mihaly. “But in the bureaucratic mind, transferring personnel to new units so they can be brought on-line sooner outweighs the risk.”

  “Do you still think the risky tests are being done at Chernobyl rather than the other reactors?”

  “I don’t know what to think. The maintenance shutdown and low power test wasn’t
supposed to be until summer on our unit, but now they want it done before May Day. They’ll invite visitors from all over the union so the chief can show off. A piece of cake, as they say in America. During the test, he’ll give his speech to visitors in the control room about how the plant is simply a giant steam bath, nothing but hot water. During his speech, the informants among us will watch to be certain everyone in the control room laughs appropriately, and if someone doesn’t laugh…”

  Juli touched Mihaly’s lips with her fingertip. “If someone doesn’t laugh, will the KGB be informed?”

  “Who knows?” said Mihaly. “There are more strangers snooping around. Maybe the KGB is waiting for something to happen so they can cover it up.”

  “Do you still wonder about your cousin possibly being an agent?”

  “Yes, he kept asking about Chernobyl. He tried to get me alone.

  He implied there might be something in it for me if I spoke openly.

  He said the KGB followed him when he visited Budapest. Luckily Laz was at the farm, and our cousin only spent the day.”

  “What is your cousin’s name?”

  “Zukor, Andrew.”

  “And you really think he was after something?”

  “At the time I thought so. He alluded to the 1982 accident on unit one, and it’s supposed to be secret. He asked about the bunker beneath the administration building like he already knew about it. He even discussed fuel reprocessing, which both of us know is strictly off-limits.”

  Juli thought for a moment. “Aleksandra talked about reprocessing and scrubbers.”

  “Or lack of scrubbers,” said Mihaly. “Rather than being worried about her opinions concerning scrubbers, I think ministry officials had bigger fish.”

  “Her radionuclide charts?”

  “Yes,” said Mihaly. “The possibility of her telling someone about ongoing background radiation increases pissed them off.”

  “Who could she tell? The Ukrainian Writers’ Union? Aleksandra had nothing to do with the stories in their journal.”

  “I know. If she had, she would have disappeared sooner.” Mihaly placed his hand on Juli’s head. “She was your friend, and they treated her like shit.”