Michael Beres: Chernobyl Murders

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.

Nina and Mariska went to the market while Cousin Bela fulfilled his duties on the collective.

When Lazlo awoke from his nap he watched his nieces, Anna and Ilonka, playing with Bela and Mariska’s baby girl. His nieces took the baby’s chair and stools for themselves to the closed wine-cellar entrance and placed sticks and stones on it in patterns, making the elevated trapdoor into an imaginary dining-room table.

With its lid closed, the entry to the wine cellar looked simply like a box placed in the yard. Or like one of the mock coffins used as markers in the nearby cemetery. Perhaps this was what the German troops thought when they marched through. Lazlo recalled the story. How his mother feared the Germans would discover her husband’s Gypsy heritage and take him away. How his parents had gone into the wine cellar just as the helmets of the troops became visible, advancing up the hill.

But there was no war now, no need to concern himself with the outside world. The children were at play, and all was peaceful. Here, on the farm, there were no cars or trucks or scooters, no Aeroflot jets climbing overhead, no questioning of paranoid citizens who would deny the existence of their parents, so great was their fear of the militia. No Chief Investigator Chkalov or Deputy Chief Investigator Lysenko. The only place he missed being in Kiev was Club Ukrainka, where he would go to see Tamara, the woman who helped him forget age and unfulfilled desire.

The make-believe table being set by his nieces reminded Lazlo of his plan to ask Tamara to his apartment, where he would prepare a Hungarian dish for her, one like his mother cooked here on the farm when he was a boy full of anticipation for the future.

Lazlo and Mihaly did not go into the wine cellar again until late afternoon. After Nina and Mariska returned from the market and the girls were napping, they decided their systems were properly recovered and they could enjoy a glass or two before dinner. Because they had slept, and afterward others were about, Lazlo saved the question concerning Chernobyl for the seclusion of the wine cellar.

“What’s wrong at Chernobyl, Mihaly?”

When Mihaly did not answer, Lazlo pressed him. “Something’s wrong, Mihaly. Something’s been on your mind this entire holiday.

I’m your brother, and we’re in the wine cellar. No one will hear.

Yesterday I told you about my bastard chief. Today you’ll tell me what’s wrong at Chernobyl.”

Mihaly took a gulp of wine. “The situation is out of control.

Fucked because of an insane policy.”

“What kind of policy?”

“It’s hard to discuss without getting technical, or emotional.”

“So, don’t get technical or emotional. But tell me about it before I bust one of these kegs over your head.”

Mihaly laughed, sipped his wine, bent forward with his elbows on his knees. “Okay, Laz. I’ll cut through the technical shit. During the past year, I’ve gotten bits of information, not from a single source, but from many sources. From engineers and safety inspectors at other plants. Many believe the power plants at Chernobyl are being put through unnecessary experiments. Tests to find out how far the system can be pushed.”

“Who’s doing these experiments?”

“The chief engineers and the plant manager. They’re playing with fire. It’s like prodding a sleeping demon. You never know when she might turn on you.”

“How dangerous is it? Could people be killed?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mihaly. “If there were an accident like the one they had at Three Mile Island in America, there would definitely be casualties. Our reactors are naked. We don’t have the containment vessels they had at Three Mile Island.”

“But if this is true, why haven’t higher authorities stopped it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the distance from Moscow. Or maybe, somewhere in Moscow, there’s an official perfectly willing to let the experiments go on.”

“Why would an official in Moscow want to endanger lives?”

“By pushing for testing at Chernobyl, Moscow officials might learn the limits of their designs without putting their own lives at risk. Citizens of the Ukraine are more expendable than the citizens to the north and east. The power from our plant stays mostly in the Ukraine, with some going to Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania. None of the power from our RBMK-1000s goes to the Russian Republic.”

“But to risk lives…”

“Consider the perspective of a Moscow official,” said Mihaly.

“Or even the Party secretary at our plant. He’s a transplanted Russian. He hasn’t ordered something wrong to be done. He’s simply turned his back on the enthusiasm of managers and chief engineers to meet higher quotas. In the bureaucratic mind, there could be benefits from an accident.”