Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts into Air

There were Saturdays, in his other life, when Maria would appear in the doorway carrying a bag of bread and a jar of chicken stock. Saturday lunches were a ritual for them, the time of the week when Grigory was at his most relaxed and they would relay news to each other, the small occurrences of the past days.

GRIGORY IMAGINES the scene if she were here, seeing it as she would. Walking through the door to find her husband sitting frozen on their bed with a hastily packed suitcase. Of course she would think he was leaving her. So often she had asked him the question, usually after their lovemaking, when they were wrapped in each other, glistening from each other, “You’ll never leave me, will you?,” and he would smile and reassure her, amused and astonished that this question could still be asked after all their time together, the infinite doubts in this woman’s mind.

She would stand in the doorway, cradling a bag of bread, her mouth slightly open, framing itself in a question, waiting for voice and breath to complete the process. Her face with that lost look it could take on, like that of a child when it encounters something utterly beyond its experience, when it eats a fistful of sand or crashes into a pane of glass, that momentary suspension before the weeping begins in earnest.

Grigory would approach her, place his hands on her cheeks, and kiss her, leaning in over the shopping.

“There’s been an accident. A plant in the Ukraine. I have to leave in a couple of minutes.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know. A few days. No more than a week.”

He would underestimate their time apart, attemping reassurance, but his voice would give him away, a vulnerabilty that only she could detect.

“It’s serious?”

“Yes. But I’ll be careful.”

She would step back and immerse herself in practicalities. She would instantly think through the clothes he would need and issue instructions for him to pick specific things out from the wardrobe and drawers as she grabbed toiletries from the bathroom shelves, towels from the airing cupboard. She’d lay them on the bed, folded and arranged, and he’d pack them with care.

A knock comes to the door.

He looks up, walks over. The driver stands there.

“Dr. Brovkin?”

“Yes. I’m just finishing up. I’ll meet you out front.”

“You must hurry. We can’t be late for the flight. I would be in great trouble.”

“I understand. Just let me pick up a final few things.”

The driver walks down the stairs, looking back to check that Grigory understands the urgency.

He walks into his bedroom, opening drawers, grabbing bundles of clothes and stuffing them into his case. Who cares what he brings? No one will notice if the surgeon is wearing a shirt that clashes with his jacket. He grabs his keys from the kitchen counter and walks into the stairwell, places a hand on the doorknob and looks over his apartment. His furniture. His pictures. He turns the key in the lock and walks down the stairs, and on the first landing he stops and knocks on the caretaker’s door. No answer. He’ll have Raisa give him a call, ask him to send on any post.

He hands his case to the driver, turns to his vacant window, and realizes that he won’t spend another night in that home. He’ll sell the furniture, get a different place. The past has extracted its price. Whoever he was in those rooms, he won’t be again.

At the airport, there are suitcases being loaded onto trolleys, some carpet bags. There are men standing, holding briefcases, looking for a connection, a familiar face. Grigory thinks he should have brought something to eat. He gets edgy, irritable, when he doesn’t eat. This is not something he recognized in himself as a single man; another characteristic that emerged from his time with her. An attendant asks people their names, ticking off a list on a clipboard. Grigory scans the area, just as the others are doing. He doesn’t see Vasily in the gathering. A man in a double-breasted grey suit approaches, offering his hand. Grigory shakes it.

“Dr. Brovkin, thank you for coming.”

Of course. It’s Vygovskiy, from the baths, the chief advisor to the Ministry of Fuel and Energy—Grigory can connect everything now. Zhykhov must be delighted to be close to the centre of such attention.

“I know very little of what’s happening. Comrade Zhykhov read the communiqué at our departmental meeting.”

“He speaks highly of you.”

“So it seems.”

“You’re wondering what you’re doing here.”

“I’m here to help, comrade. Whatever you wish me to do. However I can be of service.”

“I have been appointed as chairman of the advisory commission. I have overall responsibility for the cleanup operation.”

“A daunting task.”

“Yes. But one in which I will be successful. We will all be successful. This is a tragedy, no doubt, but we have all dealt with tragedies.”

“And Comrade Zhykhov suggested I may be useful.”

“No, actually. I requested for you to come.”

“You’re placing a lot of weight on one brief meeting.”

“Dima is a good judge of talent. He didn’t get to where he is without surrounding himself with people of great ability. And it’s not just one brief meeting. I said my wife speaks highly of you, of your calmness under pressure. That’s an instinct that never leaves. Look around this room, Grigory Ivanovich. I know only a few of these men. For most of them, I can’t guarantee how they will respond under pressure. I know you have talent, have calm. Most importantly, I know you have integrity. You are not someone who merely carries out instructions, you’ll bring a critical mind to the situation. I need people like you, Doctor.”

“I hope my opinion will be reliable.”

“It will. I have no doubt.”

They shake hands again. Vygovskiy looks him in the eye.

“We are the ones who must close the stable door.”

The aircraft is a troop carrier, all these suited men sitting in the slate-grey hulk of the plane. All of them thinking they could do with a drink. There is no insulation from the noise of the engine so they have to speak loudly to carry on a conversation.

Grigory boards with Vasily. There are no windows, just sloping walls. They could as easily be in an underground bunker.

When they settle, Vasily says, “You know what’s most surprising about this whole thing. That they’ve had nuclear power for this long without fucking it up.”

It was true. The same thought had struck Grigory. Any safety protocol he had tried to put in place in the hospital was always received as an implicit criticism of his predecessors. It had taken all his will and guile to set up a checklist of steps to make sure that standards of hygiene were up to scratch. Even three years previously, before the push for glasnost, such actions would have called into question his loyalty to the Party. If this was true for hospitals, why would a nuclear power plant be any different? They need to take a hose to the whole Union, wash out everything that came before. Fire those in power. Promote talent. Listen to ideas. They need to do these things but never will. The system could never allow it.

In Kiev, they’re met by every Ukrainian who has ever stamped a document. A long cavalcade of black governmental cars drapes itself outside the terminal, drivers standing to attention beside opened doors, indistinguishable from each other, same uniform, same stance, hands folded together in front, lined up along the stretch of concrete like an infinite mirror.

In the car Vasily chews on the arm of his glasses, a nervous habit that has resulted in the frames becoming puckered with toothmarks over time. A fact that is in keeping with his ragged appearance: hair receding, collar hanging limp, a button missing halfway down his shirt. Vasily has always been like this, the sharpest brain in the room with the most crumpled suit.