Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

Smin's mother, Aftasia Smin, is four feet ten inches tall and weighs less than ninety pounds. At one time she was taller, though not much. Then old hunger and later osteoporosis knocked a few inches off her height.

She is eighty-six years old-the same age as the century, she says. Aftasia celebrates her birthday on the first of the year. That is really only a guess, since it was not the custom in the shted at the turn of the century to pay much attention to recording the birth of Jewish female babies.

Although she was never very big, she carried a rifle in the Civil War from 1918 until, seven months pregnant with Simyon, she left her husband to pursue the last of the White forces in the Ukraine. Aftasia returned to the shtetl to give birth. She still has a puckered scar, very high on the inside of her right thigh, where a bullet from the Czech legion put her out of action for two cold, painful, hungry months. The fiery young revolutionary husband she had left the shtetl to marry was later captured by Kolchak's forces. He was executed, after some barbaric questioning, the week after Simyon was born. Simyon was a year old before Aftasia learned that her husband was dead. She never found out where his body was buried.

What Aftasia Smin represented to her downstairs neighbor, Oksana Didchuk, was hard to define. To Oksana, the frail old woman was a bit of a conundrum, and a rather worrying one sometimes. There were some very good and neighborly things about Aftasia Smin. She was a generous acquaintance who always had something for the Didchuks' little girl on New Year's Day, and not just a chocolate bar or a kerchief but even things like a pretty, flaxen-haired doll from the Children's World store in Moscow, or even wonderful sugared almonds that had come all the way from Paris. Nor was it only the daughter who benefited from Aftasia's largesse. Let Oksana happen to mention that she had been unable to find plastic hair curlers in the store, say, and old Aftasia was likely to turn up the next day with a box of them, saying that her son had brought them back from a trip to the West, like the sugared almonds, and after all what did an old woman like herself want with such things?

On the other hand, there were things about Aftasia Smin that were troubling to her neighbors from the floor below. It was not simply that Aftasia appeared to be, in some sense, Jewish. There was nothing really wrong with being Jewish, provided you didn't actually become religious about it. Aftasia had never shown any signs of observing the Saturday Sabbath or of creeping off to Kiev's only functioning synagogue. (Though it was true that the Didchuks had been quite shocked to find that the meal she had invited them to on April 25th had been taken by the Americans to have some ritual significance in the yid faith.)

It was certainly not disturbing that Aftasia was an Old Bolshevik. Actually, it was quite an honor to know such a person. She had personally known some of the great heroes of the Revolution! She still knew some of their sons and grandsons, it seemed. But really, the Didchuks had often asked each other, if she is what she is, why does she live as she does?

To that the Didchuks had no answer. But when she asked them for any sort of favor, to use their telephone (but why didn't the woman have one of her own?), or to translate for those fascinating American cousins, the Didchuks were happy to oblige. And when she knocked on their door this worrying May morning, with all of Kiev in an uproar, they were downcast to be unable to agree at once. "But, you see," Oksana

Didchuk said sadly, "today they are sending all the children away from Kiev for a bit-purely as a precaution, of course. We would certainly be glad to help you get your American cousins to the airport, but we must get our own daughter to the train station. Also I must go to the market to buy some food for her to take on the train. Also there is some mixup with her papers for the trip, so really my husband and I should go to the station now to straighten it out."

But Aftasia Smin said crisply, "Leave that to me, please. My cousins don't leave until this afternoon. There's plenty of time to get to the station. To buy food first? Why not? If you will let me use your telephone, I'll simply have the car come a bit early and we'll go to the Rye Market together."

And so Oksana Didchuk found herself in the backseat of a handsome new Volga, with Aftasia Smin perched in front, next to the driver, ordering him to take them to the market and wait while they made their purchases. It was certainly a great improvement over standing in line for a bus, especially on this particular Wednesday, when everybody in Kiev seemed to be trying to get somewhere else. The radio and television broadcasts had been very specific. The city was not being evacuated; only foolish people and rumormongers would say such things. It was only that on the very remote chance that the levels of radiation might rise, it would be better for the young children, who were most at risk from such things, to be somewhere else. So there was no reason for anyone to be afraid.

It was astonishing, however, to see how many of the people on the street looked that way anyway.

Even the old Rye Market looked strange that morning. Ordinarily the vendors would not only fill the hall but overflow into the streets outside, on so beautiful a spring day, with all the fruits and vegetables coming in from all the private plots around Kiev. Not today.

Looking down on the trading floor from the balcony, Oksana Didchuk saw gaps in the usually shoulder-to-shoulder line of white-capped farm women standing before their wares. In the aisles were plenty of shoppers, but they didn't seem to be buying much. More than once Oksana saw a customer pick up a couple of tomatoes or a clump of beets, peer closely at them, even sniff them and then reluctantly put them back.

"Well, then," said Aftasia Smin. "What is it you wish to buy?" She listened courteously while the mother explained what she wanted, and then corrected her plans. "Cheese, yes, but an old one-from milk taken before the accident. And, all right, a sausage, and bread, of course. And a herring, I think. There is nothing wrong with the oceans yet, at least!"

And when Oksana tarried before the slabs of snow-white pork fat and the naked-looking skinned rabbits, thinking of the supper she would have to make for her husband and parents that night, Aftasia vetoed those too. "Sausage again, if you please-and again an old one. Inspected? Yes, of course they are inspected- " For they could not have missed the long lines of vendors waiting their turns to put their strawberries and fresh hams under the radiation detectors so they could get a permit to sell them if they passed. "But if I were to stay in Kiev, I would not buy fresh meat just yet. Let the situation settle down a little."

"Then you're leaving Kiev?" Oksana ventured.

The old lady smiled at her. "Wouldn't you? I don't think that anyone named Smin will be popular in Kiev just now."

But, popular or not, Aftasia Smin still had friends. As she demonstrated to the Didchuks. They set off for the railroad station in good time, Aftasia Smin up front with the driver to give orders, the elder Didchuks in back with their daughter, and their daughter's boxes, bags, and paper-wrapped food parcels, squeezed between them.

The last hundred meters were the slowest, because the militiamen had roped off the square in front of the train station. The approaches were jammed. Oksana Didchuk made a faint worried sound as she saw the red numbers on the digital clock above the station. "But the train is to leave in an hour," she said.

Aftasia turned to her; she was so tiny she had to lift herself to peer over the back of the seat. "It won't leave in an hour," she said. "Look, the trains are just coming in now." So they were; the Didchuks could see the long trains snaking slowly in to the platforms beside the station.