Orest Stelmach - The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

Hanna shrugged. “Again, what I’m giving you came from his guardian and I only spoke to him once. According to him Adam’s mother was an American woman who came to Russia to be a—how shall we say it—a professional hostess. The riches she was promised didn’t come to fruition. Instead she became addicted to drugs, moved to Kyiv, and ended up servicing the men who worked on building the shelter in the Zone. The shelter is what they call the sarcophagus built around the reactor that exploded. I’m told the pay was high because one never knew if a man had been exposed to too much radiation.”

“And my uncle was supposedly there at the time.”

“That’s what Adam’s guardian told me. Of course gossip spreads in school. It always does. Adam was born in a hospital, here, in Korosten. But the children spread rumors that he was actually born in Chornobyl. That his mother is the only person to give birth to a child within the Zone of Exclusion. Even worse, they said he was born inside the sarcophagus. Behind his back they called him ‘the boy from reactor four’.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Nadia remembered being bullied during grade school for having a Russian-sounding name. Kids didn’t care that she wasn’t Russian, and that her parents had escaped the Iron Curtain. “Where is his mother now?”

“She died during childbirth.”

That was consistent with what Nadia’s uncle had told her last year.

“Once, in seventh grade,” Hanna said, “a new student moved here from Zhytomyr. I was parking my car when I heard three boys telling him about Adam. They warned him not to get close to Adam, that he could get infected if he touched him, or even breathed the air surrounding him. They said no girl would come within three meters of him, and that he was destined to live and die alone. Right at that moment, Adam walked by with his military knapsack filled with rocks, as he always did. And the kids started chanting ‘Freak, freak, freak.’ When I ran out from behind the partition blocking the cars from stray footballs and made myself visible, the new boy was already chanting with them.”

“Wait. Why was his knapsack filled with rocks?”

“Training. To make his legs stronger. For hockey. The boy lived for hockey. It was his therapy. And his guardian—the brute. He had sadistic training methods.”

Which worked, Nadia thought to herself. “Did Adam have any friends?”

“Just Eva.”

“Eva?”

“His guardian’s niece. They lived under the same roof. Eva was two years older. She suffered from a thyroid affliction. It’s a common genetic disease among children whose mothers had radiation syndrome. He followed her like a puppy dog. She never seemed to mind. Another loner. Black hair and purple lipstick. She dressed like a witch every day. They were kindred spirits. They had only each other.”

This was the first Nadia had heard of a girl. “May I speak with her? Or did she graduate?”

“I’m afraid she passed away two years ago.”

“That’s awful.”

“It broke her uncle’s heart, too. Even brutes have feelings. He held on while Adam was still there, but once the boy disappeared loneliness got the better of him. He also died. About six months ago. Alcohol poisoning.”

Nadia’s spirits sank.

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Hanna said.

“I was planning to pay him a visit next.”

“At least I’ve saved you the trip.”

“Is there anyone else I can speak to? Was Adam close to one of the teachers?”

“Adam wasn’t close to anyone. He rarely said a word if he wasn’t asked a direct question in class. The teachers developed a phobia for him, too. It’s sad, but true. No one was confident there was no risk of contamination from touching him, breathing the same air as him, being in his vicinity. People understood it was nonsense intellectually but they had trouble accepting it psychologically. The truth is some of the teachers weren’t keen on having him in their classes.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about him? Anything at all?”

Hanna wet her lips and glanced at the door to her office, as though making sure it was closed. “Well there was that rumor about Eva and him.”

“What rumor?”

“That their guardian gambled and drank his pension away, and forced them to do something to supplement the family income.”

Nadia cringed. Prepared to hear something hideous. “What did he force them to do?”

“Steal from the dead.”

Nadia frowned. “What does that mean, steal from the dead? Rob graves?”

“That is what a teacher told me. She heard Eva utter the phrase to Adam in the hallway. Once. Only once. I demanded an explanation from Adam but he denied Eva ever said it.”

A wave of relief washed over Nadia. She’d feared the hockey coach—as Adam called him—had forced the kids to do something even more unsavory for money. Digging up a grave sounded illegal and immoral, but there were worse things.

“They must have been desperate,” Nadia said.

Hanna nodded. “People go to their graves with the craziest things. Rings, watches—I had an aunt who asked to be buried with her money in case the houses on the beach are cheaper on the other side.”

“Problem is,” Nadia said, “I’m not sure it’s a capitalist system on the other side. And even if it is there are no guarantees for anyone but the rich.”

Hanna smiled wearily. “Tell me about it.”

Nadia thanked her and left. She climbed into the car and asked the driver to take her back to Kyiv. Along the way she pictured Adam and a young witch with purple lipstick breaking into a casket in search of gold.

To open the casket, they used a screwdriver. To see inside it, they shined a flashlight.

AFTER SHE RETURNED to the hotel, Nadia walked to the Saint Sophia Cathedral and waited for Marko at an outdoor café. She’d convinced Marko to come straight to the café after he was done with his work at the Central State Historical Archives. No sightseeing. No pops at a bar that struck his fancy. No attempts to pick up the first Ukrainian temptress willing to talk to him.

In Kyiv, Nadia’s father was never far from her mind. He died when she was thirteen, when the thought of a free Ukraine was preposterous. If he could see her sitting outside Saint Sophia in his homeland, the country liberated, he would have died and gone right back to heaven. He’d taken an active role among Ukrainian-Americans, a community of immigrants that believed it was their responsibility to keep Ukrainian culture alive in the free world during Soviet oppression.

It was her father who took her on the Appalachian Trail at age twelve, to the precise spot where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York met. There, compass in hand, he pruned two branches to create a circle of light on a bed of pine needles. Told her to sit down in the light. Asked her if she understood she was the luckiest girl in the world to be living in the best place on Earth.

He explained what she already knew. That the Soviet Union was in the process of destroying all traces of Ukrainian culture. Its only sanctuary was the free world. Its only hope was the next generation. She was the future of Ukraine. To survive in America as an immigrant’s daughter, she would have to be strong. She would have to be resilient.

And so he handed her a sleeping bag and a knapsack with three matches, food and water for one day, a mess kit, some rope, a compass, a poncho, and her twelve inch Bowie knife. He told her he was proud of her and certain she wouldn’t disappoint him. He said he would return to pick her up in three days at that precise spot. Then he left.