Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Chernobyl Prayer > Status Update

‘I got home. Went to a dance. There was a girl I liked. ‘Let’s go out together.’
‘What for? You’re a Chernobyl guy now. Who’d want to marry you?’
I met another girl. We were kissing and cuddling, things were getting serious. ‘Let’s get married,’ I said. And she asked something like: ‘You mean you can do that? It’s all in working order?’’

‘We got to our destination. Changed uniforms.
The question was: what were we in for? ‘An accident, it happened a while back,’ our captain reassured us. ‘Three months ago. Nothing to worry about now.’ The sergeant said: ‘Everything’s fine, just wash your hands before eating.’

The more I read the more disgusted I am. They knew perfectly well that it wasn’t safe.

‘The robots couldn’t take it, the equipment was going crazy. But we did our work. We sometimes got blood coming out of our ears, our noses. A tickling in the throat, your eyes stinging. There was this constant drone in your ears. You felt thirsty, but lost all appetite. We weren’t allowed to do our morning exercises, to keep us from breathing in extra radiation. Though we travelled to work in open-top trucks.’

‘I want to testify: my daughter died from Chernobyl. But they want us to keep quiet. ‘It hasn’t been scientifically proved,’ they say. ‘There isn’t enough data. We’ll need to wait hundreds of years.’ But my human life, it’s too short. I can’t wait that long. Write it down. You record it at least. My daughter’s name was Katya. My little Katya. She was seven years old when she died.’

‘I killed her. I … she … saved … My little girl saved me, she took the whole brunt of the radiation herself, like she was a buffer. So small. Such a teeny little thing.’

This will sound harsh but I am always so conflicted when I hear this. It is awful but on the other hand they kept warning her what would happen if she continued to sneak into her husband’s room. Just tragic, shouldn’t have happened.