Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts into Air

Grigory sits and watches the landscape. Just distance out there. Unsorted thoughts, dim images running through him. Distance and sky and land. A horizon of no distinction.

It’s early evening when the cavalcade reaches Pripyat—the feeder town to the power plant—snaking along the road like a funeral cortege, exuding gloom. There’s nothing more serious than a procession of governmental cars, the vehicles seem coated with a patina of menace. They crest a small hill and can see the power plant in the distance. Grigory and Vasily press their faces to the glass, trying to get a decent view. A host of mottled colours still hangs over the plant, warping all perspective, so that the scene looks concave, the sky somehow curving around the facility, like a painted bowl. The smoke stretches in a clearly defined column, fusing itself with the upper reaches of the sky. This is a sight that commands respect, Grigory thinks, a hushed awe.

The town is still going about its business. Grigory and Vasily cannot believe this. They pass a school playground where a football game is in full flow, men gesturing to each other with stiffened limbs, mouths opened wide, issuing mute shouts. Kids are still on the streets. Boys stop their bicycles on the roadside and enact strongman poses for the visitors, pushing their elbows wide, curling their fists towards their bodies. The braver ones cycle alongside, standing on the pedals but taking care to keep an appropriate distance.

A girl in purple trousers stands in an alcove, eating a chocolate bar. She can be no more than six or seven, a thin chocolate moustache running along the contours of her upper lip.

“All these children still on the streets. They need immediate iodine prophylaxis. Why has no one seen to this?”

“Because no one sees to anything, Grigory. We’ll have to clean this up with our own bare hands.”

There are no more words. Grigory thinks of Oppenheimer, tinkering with the atom in the deserts of New Mexico during the time of the Great Patriotic War: I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds .

At Party headquarters, the room is large, but the delegation fills it. The groups are obviously more comfortable in this setting, speaking in clusters, renewing acquaintances, all of it so casual, suits at a conference. Grigory had expected that here, at least, under the shadow of this tragedy, the room would be filled with urgency. But it’s all the same: backslapping, clasped handshakes, introductions according to who attended what party, where one’s dacha is located, their children’s choice of university. Grigory hasn’t had many professional arguments in his life, something he supposes has to do with his quiet bearing. But he can feel anger rising up his neck, pinpricks on his skin.

Some pretty blond girls emerge from a back room carrying plates of food and glasses of vodka. Grigory grabs the nearest one by the elbow.

“Where did this come from?”

“Excuse me, comrade?”

“The food. Where did it come from?”

“The kitchen prepared it.”

“Did they? Where is your supervisor?”

She points to a balding man with a thin moustache standing at the back of the room, arms folded. Grigory drags the girl over, causing the conversation in the room to come to a staggered halt, a few lingering words in the silenced chatter.

Grigory snatches the tray of sandwiches from the girl’s hand and thrusts it in the man’s face.

“Where did you get this food?”

The supervisor is unnerved. He’s a man who goes about his life unseen, as innocuous as the tablecloths. A conversation like this is outside the narrow confines of his professional experience.

“Our kitchen staff prepared it.”

“And where did they get it?”

“That, comrade, is none of your concern. If you don’t like it, don’t eat it.”

Grigory releases his grip, and the tray drops horizontally to the floor, the neat triangles of bread bouncing upwards in shock, the clang of metal ringing around the room. He grabs the back of a nearby chair and turns it around to face him, then stands on it and addresses the gathering.

“For the rest of your time here, do not eat or drink anything unless it has been approved for consumption. Only prepackaged items are safe to eat.”

The officials try to rid themselves of their sandwiches as subtly as they can, placing them on windowsills or on the catering table; some, to avoid embarrassment, stuffing them in their pockets—any strategy they can think of to avoid the tainted items coming in contact with their skin.

Anxious faces look Grigory’s way, unsure if he is exaggerating. He faces them with a cold glare. Surely he can’t be the only one present with enough expertise to understand the implications of what they are faced with.

A plant manager takes to the stage and outlines the events leading up to the accident, careful to phrase his remarks in such a way as to emphasize his own professionalism in responding to the event.

After the presentation, Vygovskiy approaches Grigory, motioning him towards two plastic chairs under a tall window.

“Thank you, comrade. I’m angry too. Everyone in this room should be angry.”

“I think they’ve forgotten how.”

Vygovskiy leans in towards Grigory. They speak shoulder to shoulder, looking like two old men on a park bench talking about the weather.

“I see this man on the stage and I feel guilt lying on me in layers. Three Mile Island—you know of this plant?”

“No,” Grigory says.

“It’s a power station in America. They had an accident. Seven years ago, this was. Not a catastrophe, but a big problem, a serious incident. The Americans learned from it, though. After the accident they put in place a safety system, one that would anticipate problems instead of just fixing things when they were already broken. I read of these changes, I studied their developments. I said to myself we need to do something like that here. I brought my proposals to the committee, but before I could present them formally, there were conversations in corridors, I was pulled into doorways. There was much talk about me, they said. They might decide to downgrade me, they said. Not outright threats—you know the way—just talk. So I did the smart thing, I withdrew my recommendations. I reworded my critique. I did as the entire nation has done. I stayed silent. I backed away. Because I did this, they made me chief advisor to the ministry.”

“We are all guilty, comrade.”

“When I was put in a position of power, I could have dusted off my proposal again. I could have said, ‘Here’s an idea I’d forgotten about.’ But I didn’t. The only thing we’ve learned from the past is how not to do it. I don’t want people who’ll keep their mouth shut.”

Vygovskiy leans closer, pats Grigory on the neck.

“I want you to take charge of the medical operations. This has been a shameful day for the Union. We will make this right.”

Vygovskiy stands and is immediately surrounded by a circle of questions. He exits the room and the whole group follows, streaming into their separate offices.

AND SO THE paperwork begins, the assorting and allotting, the segmentation into regions, the color coding, the mountains of paperwork that spread exponentially from this point. They use the Party offices as an administrative headquarters and hang maps all over the walls, charting the affected regions, the anticipated radiation levels according to weather reports and probability analysis. Population estimates run vertically beside maps in various scales. They colour-code areas, they speculate upon water-table contamination and agricultural implications. They devise outrageous long-term solutions and then abandon these, or put them to the side, to be picked up at a later stage for reassessment. There are no definable models for this, no guidelines. There are only predictions and scant facts.