Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

"Well," he sighed, "there is more she wants me to say to you. Later, when the heroic Soviet armies counterattacked and were in the process of driving the Hitlerites out of our land, the Germans got scared. They did not want all those bodies found. So they captured some more prisoners, and forced them to dig up as many of the bodies as they could." He wrinkled his nose unhappily. "They had been buried for several years, you understand. They were quite decayed, of course. Often, they fell apart. Then the Germans made their prisoners take down the headstones from a Jewish cemetery that was here-it was where the television station is now, Mrs. Smin says-and put the stones together to make big ovens. And in those ovens they burned the bodies. With wood they cut from the forests that were around here then. A layer of logs, a layer of Jews, and they burned them all."

As he paused, Aftasia said something in a somber tone. "Yes, yes," Didchuk said impatiently. "She wants me to be sure to tell you this part, although it is not a pleasant subject. She says to tell you that after the burning, the Germans took the ashes and the bones. They crushed them, and spread them on the farms. She says that this made the cabbages grow very well. She says that since then she does not care to eat cabbage."

They were all silent for a moment, even Aftasia. The Garfields peered down the length of the green park toward the distant monument, but there was nothing for them to say. The cars humming by on the roadway, the handsome apartment buildings, the tall television tower on the horizon, seemed to contradict the horror of the story of Babi Yar.

Finally Candace ventured, "I don't see why she didn't want us to stop at the monument."

"One moment," Didchuk said politely, and exchanged a few words with Aftasia. "She says the monument is all very well, but it comes a bit late. It was erected only eight years ago, and the plaque does not even mention Jews. That is what she says," he finished, his voice reedy with strain. "May I tell Mrs. Smin that you have understood what I have been telling you?"

"Damn right we have," said Garfield, shaking his head.

Aftasia rattled another sentence, and Didchuk translated. "In that way, Mrs. Smin says, we Soviet people learned not to trust foreigners. We discovered that the Germans were not interested in-she says, in 'liberating' us. They did not come to do us good. They were thieves, brigands, rapists; they were murderers."

Aftasia nodded and added a sentence more. Didchuk hung his head as he translated. "And we Jews, she says-I am speaking as Mrs. Smin says, you understand; I am not myself Jewish-we Jews learned not to trust even our neighbors."

Thursday, May 8

Giving bone marrow is not an enjoyable process. A sort of hypodermic the length of a pencil is stabbed into one of the donor's largest bones-the hipbone is usually the easiest to reach. Marrow, which looks like blood, is sucked out, a teaspoonful at a time, until a pint or so has been accumulated. This is actually about a tenth of all the bone marrow an adult human has, but if he is reasonably healthy, he will regenerate it in a few weeks. The process of extraction takes an hour or more. Then the extracted marrow is centrifuged-whirled at high speed-to separate the lighter cells from the larger, older, useless ones. The light ones are then transfused into the patient from a bag hanging beside his bed, through a needle taped into the veins of his arm.

This procedure is not new. The first researches into curing radiation disease through bone-marrow transplants began in the United States in 1945, when the American nuclear bombs dropped on Japan caused some researchers to wonder what would happen if someone dropped similar bombs on America.

Thirteen years later the procedure was tried for the first time on human beings, when five Yugoslavs, exposed to radiation in a nuclear accident, were given marrow from the bones of relatives. Four of them survived, in spite of the fact that the odds against a successful transplant of unmatched marrow are around ten thousand to one, and at that time no one knew how to perform the special typing (it is called "HLA matching") necessary. There are really only two possibilities to account for the survival of the four Yugoslavs. Either they were not really all that sick to begin with and would have recovered anyway. Or they were miraculously, unbelievably lucky.

Whether Leonid Sheranchuk was going to have to test his luck or not was a very open question. Although his blood count was low, it was not critical. His estimated radiation intake was only marginal, so it was not certain that he was going to need a bone-marrow transplant. It was a lot less certain, even, that he would be able to get one if he did. His only near blood relative was his son and Boris's cells did not match.

The fact of the matter was that Sheranchuk did not think much about his own survival. If it happened, it happened. There were others a lot closer to death than he. Some had died already. A second Ponomorenko, the fireman Vassili, the one known as Summer-they had had to take off that leg after all, and he had been too weak to survive the operation. The third of the Four Seasons, his own pipefitter, Arkady Ponomorenko, seemed to be sinking fast. The doctors hadn't been able to find any bone marrow that was good for him, not even his cousin's, and so they had given him a fetal liver transplant. Whether that would save Spring's life was very doubtful. What was certain was that it had put him into a state of half-waking delirium, so that he raged at his cousin, Autumn, for ten minutes at a time with Sheranchuk sitting wordless beside them; and then, collecting himself, cracked jokes and chided poor Autumn for looking so depressed.

What worried Sheranchuk most was that he had been the one who had ordered-at least, permitted-Arkady Ponomorenko to expose himself to the radiation that was killing him. Sheranchuk could not forgive himself for that. It would have been just as effective for him to have sent the pipefitter safely to explore the ruptured pipes under the turbine room while he himself took on the more dangerous task of shutting off the hydrogen flare. He was older. He was more experienced. He could have done the job faster, he had no doubt of that, and got away with only a little radiation…

Or he, too, could have been dying now.

But, Sheranchuk asked himself, what did that matter? If you did your job, you took the risks involved. If the dice fell against you, you had no right to complain.

What mattered most of all to Sheranchuk was Deputy Director Simyon Smin, and it seemed very clear to him that Smin was dying.

For Sheranchuk this was an acute and always present pain, far worse than the bruises where the bitch Akhsmentova insisted on stabbing him for more blood six times a day. He did not want the old man to die. Sheranchuk didn't think of Simyon Smin as a father-he was not so presumptuous as that-but no filial feeling could have been stronger. He owed Smin for giving him the chance at the Chernobyl plant. He admired Smin for the way in which he got his job done, no matter what obstacles were put in his way. His throat closed up with pity and respect as he saw how courageously Smin accepted his own responsibility and the nastiness of his physical state. It did not occur to Sheranchuk to add all these feelings together, but if he had, he would have been forced to give them a name: what he felt for the old man was simply love.

And every day Smin grew weaker.

When Sheranchuk ate his lunch that day he barely noticed what it was-borscht, the good Ukrainian kind, with garlic, specially made because so many of the patients were Ukrainian, with lamb to follow. He ate quickly, talking to no one. There were in truth not very many fellow patients left to talk to, since a few had been released and a good many were now too sick to come to the dining room. Then he skipped the fruit compote that was meant to be their dessert and hurried back to the room he shared with Smin, hoping to tempt the old man to eat, spoonful by spoonful.