VIII.
How Yakov aged in
seventeen years patrolling the Biran forests could be telescoped in his summer
of 1986. Chernobyl had blown its top and from May Day onward the state mounted
a clandestine scramble to contain the catastrophe. A half million ‘liquidators’
were gradually trucked into Pripyet, even as the residents of that small city
had been evacuated with just a few hours notice, naïve to the problem, never
ever to return. One wonders how many Pripyat young men volunteered to come back
for the emergency duty, or whether their presence would add fuel to the fire.
Soldiers on the Afghan front likely viewed their new call-up as a reprieve;
miners from Tula were more staid about the job at hand, not used to this kind
of heat or the mandate to keep their facemasks on, which they largely ignored.
Geiger counters were in the hands of every commander, and recommendations of
roentgens per time of exposure were muttered about, then adjusted, then
reported in myriad ways. There had to be a public campaign to engender the
heroism of Soviet peoples everywhere, and there had to be a conveyor belt of
‘biorobots’ to sustain what the confused machinery could only start. There had
to be minds in this mindless mess, and dutiful servants to enact unintuitive
orders.
Like killing dogs and cats.
Yakov had fired tranquilizers into
countless wild cats, had trained to defend himself from animal ambushes, but he
had never aimed to kill any creature, and those that died on his watch received
his utmost veterinarian care. He still had the status and encumbrances of being
a prisoner, but the job compelled some chance to roam the wilderness and use
his own judgment. Now, in the forests and fields west of Pripyat, he had to
adopt a posse demeanor and hunt against his better judgment.
There had been some choice in the
matter. The Birobidzhan delegation interviewing select prisoners gave no hint
that any sentences would be curtailed, but that service in the national
interest would be noted. Conversely, they warned, sabotage or attempted escape
would result in execution. In this cognizance—even without the warning of
radioactive dangers—some of the qualified prisoners in Yakov’s ward declined
the offer, preferring instead their acclimated lives. Yakov sensed, however,
that after the scurry of rounding up volunteers, the Birobidzhan delegation
would be back with new orders to crush rocks and kill unpatriotic spirits.
Yakov blissfully left those doubts
behind. The train rolled through Chita and Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk before any
awakening dawned: he would never return to the Evrey Autonomous Oblast and the
Amur tigers he had come to appreciate, if not love. Humans he loved, though
more in the abstract and with circumspection. Yulia’s letters had ceased coming
years ago, well before Harel wrote him last, also long ago. Yakov would triple
and quadruple his correspondence to them, but knew that his lack of anything to
say would render these letters, and him, pathetic. It was far easier to write
to released or transferred prisoners who could envision an anecdote in the wild
and empathize. Oleg would have been in these ranks, had Yakov the unction to
reach back to him, if just to express gratitude for early packages of newspaper
clippings and books.
Yakov opened one of them for the
first time in fifteen years. Written in the cover Oleg reminded him, “Bulgakov
was my first recommendation, and maybe, as I fear from your silence, my last. I
could in maudlin strains repeat Sharik’s sentiment (as I dog-eared the page):
‘Beat me, do what you like, but don’t throw me out.’ But I’d rather you simply
enjoy the allegory, and be well.” The daylight of July provided much time to
read on the train, and Yakov perused the novel twice more: once for where he
had been, again for the prescience of what he would do. “Kindness,” he read, “
is the only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You’ll get
nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of
development may be.” Dog-earing this page, Yakov studied his fellow passengers
and decided to give the book to a young Evenk who had said little to anyone the
whole trip. They were just passing over the Dnieper and Yakov looked outside
for anything he could recognize. Trukhaniv Island was in the distance, obscured
by a misty horizon.
“We’re almost at the exclusion
zone,” the Evenk said, “I won’t be able to finish before we may part company.”
“Then pass it on to someone else.”
Yakov smiled, “I know this book by heart!”
Disembarking at Ovrich, Yakov saw
the Evenk and most other sojourners load onto buses aimed east. He and a few others he knew (two from his
Bira facility) were told to stay put, then marshaled to a makeshift barracks
that would be their training station for the afternoon, harbor them for a night
and expel them as all liquidators had to expect—their jobs being technical,
dangerous, and fluid to the vagaries of the situation. The orders for Yakov’s
cohort were blunt: hunt all creatures in toward the river and then hunt them
out. Shoot arbitrarily, without thinking about their soft eyes or ability to
comprehend. Their owners, if they had them, were long since evacuated, and
beyond a desperate starvation through winter months, they’d carry radioactivity
in ripple effects, contact by contact, litter by litter. Wild boar and deer were
rife in the woods east of Ovrich, and since they had no such illusions about
winter keep, they’d be harder to track down and kill. At any rate, it was the
height of July, even though the russet leaves tricked the non-colorblind into
believing Babi Leto was sneaking in this year before a first frost. Culling the
cattle and sheep was like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak. Disposing of
them betrayed the outlandishness of the mission, that their mortality resided
somewhere between their absent tenders, the ionic charge in the air, and the
scrub units that showed up and shot, counting quickly the fallen on a clipboard
and slogging farther east, as if in chase of a front-line enemy. Yakov thought
of the Leningrad siege and imagined eclectic beasts organizing a resistance to
his squadron’s efforts. Nazis then didn’t have such an open walk of the place
and in fact dug in to the burrows that would represent the ultimate grave of
that operation. Three years of stalemate, even if pawns kept dying in rotation.
He interrupted such thoughts to pull the trigger on a gaggle of confused geese,
but then got back to wondering.
The road to Radcha was somber and
slow, thirty-five kilometers of flushing out animals from farmhouses mostly,
shooting them as precisely as possible—the chief rule was to fire away from
humans, some of whom were local squatters, daring arrest. There was a bus
creeping along at perambulatory pace for just such complications—insubordinates
who had to sit with officers and supplies as they wheeled farther into the
restricted zone, until an empty bus coming back from Pripyat would stop and
transfer them out. A fire truck also accompanied the walking posse, hosing down
houses and carcasses to cleanse them from the fallout. This method seemed
useless to Yakov, who fathomed a flood on the proportion of Noah’s would still
not wash away this strange poison. There was no prospect of rain today, and the
unmitigating sun quickly dried what the fire hoses drenched. Evaporation would
send radioactive elements back into the air, Yakov reasoned. Under his heavy
orange suit and surgical mask, Yakov sweat enough to imagine some purging
effect, but the grime was an insidious insular system, resonant of the whole
trap they were understanding themselves to be in.
There was a small hotel at Radcha
that provided a necessary respite by twilight of that first day. It would
provide the only shower and warm meal on schedule, as each liquidator picked
out camping supplies from the bus for their more serendipitous routes in days
to come. Vodka and songs poured out through the evening, despite orders that
work would resume at sunrise. Yakov participated enough to fish out a map from
one of the reveling commanders, touting his ability to detect tiger lairs from
the relief lines of land around the streams. “Comrade Buchner, there won’t be
any tigers tomorrow!” the commander roared. “Tell us instead where the Yeti
might be!”
“Who knows what monsters we’ll find
out there,” called out another, and, while Yakov committed a dozen villages and
valleys to memory, the drunken table conjured jokes of magic fish and salacious
bears and dim-witted Chukchi. Yakov slinked off to his room and slept soundly,
if vividly dreaming the night through.
They all hiked to Aleksandravka, on
the Belarus border, finding less farm animals but more wildlife. A delegation
of hunters brought in from Mazyr expanded their ranks, but only temporarily: it
was from Aleksandravka where groups of three would set off in specific measures
to carpet the forest, fifty kilometers east to the reactor zone, twenty
kilometers north to south. Each trio would have a sergeant, a local tracker
and, in most cases, a prisoner. Orders
were strict to remain within the vision of the other two, and routes were drawn
up to ensure flanking trios were staggered well behind, out of shooting range
yet still sealing the swath. Yakov was grouped with a sergeant from Khabarovsk
and an obese hunter, and, putting up his mask for the day’s trek, he was
pleased with this draw.
They started a northeasterly
trajectory towards a village named Davljady, the plan being to reach the swampy
swirls of the Pripyat River and follow it to the ghost city, or however close
they’d be allowed to walk with rifles in hand. No trio was assured whether this
journey would take two days or three, but they were forbidden to stay out a
fourth, no matter the circumstances. If anyone in the group were to fall ill,
they’d need to find the nearest clearing and call in a helicopter transport. If
anyone in the group were to get lost, all groups would be notified. If anyone,
free or imprisoned, were known to escape duties, sergeants had the authority to
fire on the individual. Nobody, when this final instruction was read out, asked
what would be the protocol if a sergeant escaped duty. At any rate, within this
vast red forest, there was really nowhere to escape to.
About eighty meters apart,
communication among the riflemen was almost non-existent. Yakov tallied the
kills he was commissioned to make from Ovrich to this point, some four
kilometers out of Aleksandravka. There had been seven dogs and five cats (the
latter naturally more elusive); thirteen cows, a sow with her litter, nine
sheep; dozens of geese and chickens (they were rather a blur); two deer and two
boar. Foxes and owls he saw others shoot, and he grew numb to the hundreds they
tallied. An abandoned stable of horses was a dilemma for the squadron, and it
was decided by the chief officer to open their gates and fire through the roof,
‘missing’ the frightened animals as they galloped into the woods behind them.
In reflection of this, Yakov wondered why he hadn’t tried to miss some of the
meeker dogs. He was praised by the group for his good eye and steady sense of
purpose, though now was not the time to recognize virtues, least of all in
prisoners.
His thoughts went from listing
animals to recalling the features on the map, which—apparently more dangerous
than his issued rifle—he was not allowed to carry. The sergeant had reaffirmed
their coordinates and pace when they had rested for a rudimentary dinner, and
they had decided together that Davljady was possible by nightfall, alleviating
a need to set up camp. A light rain was falling now and things were getting
hard to see—even each other against the surreal orange glow of pines. Shots
were hardly heard now, making eerier the environment. And in this haze Yakov
nearly stumbled upon a decaying corpse, and a plan.
It was not a beast of the forest,
but a man, apparently dead for several days. He didn’t have any kind of uniform
or equipment—he looked more like a disoriented farmer than a liquidator. He
manifested no open wound or broken limb; Yakov surmised that the radiation must
have killed him. No scavenger had bothered with him yet nor had anyone else
patrolling these woods. In this recognition, Yakov calculated quickly. By
chance the man might have…ah, yes! His identification document, worn smooth to
the curve of his pants pocket, with a laminated portrait photo taken many years
before—the date of issue 1977—perhaps when he finished military service to
become whatever he would be. He looked reasonably like Yakov did in 1977, or
some such netheryear. The dead man was just thirty, and beneath his birthplace
of Poltava was a scribbled-in address of an apartment in Buhunsky district,
Zhitomir.
Looking around, Yakov realized he
couldn’t manipulate the site too much. He was reasonably sure, with fading
light, that a following trio wouldn’t encounter this corpse, especially without
the benefit of a sniffer dog, which ironically would have made the whole
operation easier. To cover the corpse with pine needles would indicate foul
play, complicating all things thereafter. Yakov kept the document and walked
on, noting as many landmarks as possible. A shot rang out in the distance to his
right, and Yakov ran that way, hearing excited howls from the obese hunter. “An
elk!” he panted. “It’s only wounded—let’s trail him!” The sergeant joined their
jog, conveniently leading them more rapidly to Davljady. They never caught up
with the elk, and Yakov tacitly exulted that something could survive the
carnage of the day, and that perhaps the victorious elk would auger good luck
for his midnight escapade.
Davljady had small homes that were
easy enough to claim for the night, and in fact several residents had not yet
been compelled to evacuate (or were escaping the mandate, which the sergeant
wasn’t in the mood to pursue). The trio asked around for beds and a stove, and
with them they received hospitality: they enjoyed omelets and pelmeni and vodka—the
obese hunter eating more than his fill, but also the sergeant and, for reasons
different, Yakov. Each had a room to themselves, a luxury heaven-ordained, and
Yakov took the initiative to ask the host for a clean change of clothes.
Rummaged up were some grandfather pants and a shirt, which fit well enough.
Yakov then packed his own clothes into his duffle and, fighting exhaustion, lay
down to rest and not sleep.
In a panic he awoke, feeling
instantly he’d lost his rare chance; the full moon, which might have lightened
his slumber, assured him that time was still on his side. Stealthily he exited
the house and hustled through the woods using memory, instinct and prayer. And
moonlight. The landmarks were difficult to discern in reverse, but they nevertheless
unfolded as if encouraging the gambit. He clutched his rifle in the anxiety
that he’d encounter anyone on night patrol; he knew he could never kill a
human, but then again, two days ago he knew he could never kill any creature.
And he knew he would never kill himself. But in a way, that was precisely what
he was setting out to do.
Removing his clothes—those of
‘Maksim’ (rehearsing the name)—he contemplated the absurdity of exchanging all
guises of identity. ‘The clothes make the man,’ he mused, and though he
wouldn’t put on the dead man’s shirt and pants, he rolled them reeking into a
ball that he’d have to carry away, and then carefully dressed him with his own.
He gagged at the feeling of wearing his dank boots but had no choice, and
jamming his own boots onto the stiff feet of Maksim was just as ghastly. His
attempt to curl stiff fingers around the grip of the rifle was futile, so he
simply lay it on the ground. He did manage to loop the duffle around the
shoulder. And though he was absolutely certain he had placed his own identity
document and prisoner papers in the pants he had laboriously put on the
cadaver, he double-checked anyway and then bid himself adieu.
The moon was long since down by now,
and reconnoitering was nearly impossible. Yakov realized he could meet the same
fate as the old Maksim he’d left—then there would be no mystery about either
man. Someone might say, ‘oh, that isn’t the face of the man from Zhitomir’, but
no one would second-guess the body of an escaped prisoner. Nobody would call
that body ‘Yakov’, just as no one would ever again call this groping, still
living absconder ‘Jürgen’. It was always a shell game, he relented, and being
thrust around—even by his own machinations—was taking its toll. He could feel
the effects of radiation, too, coupled with the exhaustion of his enterprise,
and breathing through the mask only added to his lightheadedness.
He staggered toward Aleksandravka
and then south. Dawn had broken and Yakov was dehydrated; several streambeds he
had crossed were dried up in the summer, and maybe nuclear, heat. Biting his
lip would bring no relief, nor would thinking about other alternatives. He had
not been a fan of the characterizations Hemingway crafted, savaged by war and
dead-set not to think about things too much; oddly, thinking about them or
Sharik or Zhivago carried him through to a fadingly familiar structure that at
first seemed a mirage.
The approach was different than two
days ago, but now, unmistakably, Yakov cried with delight to see the barn where
the horses had fled. Three had come back and whinnied at this second-time
stranger. He looked around for a water tap and quenched his thirst, then
realized the animals were suffering just as much. He found a bucket and sacks
of grain in a storage closet, and trembling in fatigue, managed to fill the
bottoms of some troughs. The straw in the stables was rotting, but Yakov
flipped over what he could and collapsed in relief that here he might sleep,
and maybe not die.
Hours later, he awoke to the sounds
of a truck engine headed toward Aleksandravka. He eyed the horses as a way of
bidding them silence, and perhaps they read his mind. This wouldn’t be the only
passing vehicle today, though, and he decided to nourish the animals more
thoroughly, as well as himself, courtesy of an apple tree. He found a hat and
jacket, saddle and reigns, and approaching one horse after another, decided on
the Karabair, the most empathetic to all that had come to pass. Yakov had
ridden occasionally around the Biran wilderness, and he felt it peculiar at the
time, prisoner that he was, atop a stallion. Now, in the advent of his freedom,
he felt all the more an alien.
His recall of the map served him
well, and he rode south through the woods to the Noryn River, east just a ways
until it joined the Uzh, then west along its banks all the way to Korosten.
This city was well out of the exclusion zone, and his immediate worries were
over. Zhitomir, his new official address, was eighty kilometers due south and
perhaps that would be a wise destination. L’vyiv was inconceivably farther,
Ivano-Frankivsk farther still. Kiev was closer and maybe it would make most
sense to trot there and seek out Nadia and give her the Karabair.
The abundance of such choices
underscored how lonely he had suddenly become. He dismounted and spoke out each
destination to the tired eyes of the mare, bidding her please to choose. He
conscientiously reminded her of the way they had come, to factor that return for
justice’ sake. Evening was upon them and both only wanted to rest. Morning would
bring a gnawing hunger and no further insight, but again Yakov talked through
each option. He led the mare to the stream to drink deep, then released the
reigns to let her go. Decidedly, he went the opposite direction.
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