Michael Beres - Chernobyl Murders

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. He 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.