"Go ahead," smiled his American cousin in his turn, and added something that made Didchuk stammer as he translated: "I hate the bastards, myself."
Smin was slightly startled, but he went on with his remembered facts. "In America," he said, "it is the human factor that causes nuclear accidents. I mention your Idaho Falls in 1961, where control rods were removed by mistake and three people were killed; in our reactor, the control rods are automatically inserted if anything begins to go wrong. In your Brown's Ferry in Alabama in 1975, a man looked for leaks in the shielding. To find them he used a lighted candle! He set fire to the insulation, and most of the safety systems failed because they lost power — almost that was a total catastrophe. In your Sequoia plant in Tennessee in 1981, more than a quarter of a million liters of radioactive liquid were allowed to leak out. Just a few months ago, at Gore, Oklahoma, someone heated a container of nuclear fuel and caused it to explode, killing a worker and injuring a hundred others. And Three Mile Island— well, everyone knows that at Three Mile Island it was nearly a complete meltdown. It was stopped with only minutes to spare."
"Yes, exactly," nodded Garfield. "It is frightening."
"But all of these are human errors, Cousin Dean. We do not allow human errors to occur. Our workers are not only very highly trained—" Smin swallowed, thinking of the Literaturna Ukraina report; but Dean Garfield would hardly have seen that—"they are also taught to maintain vigilance at all times. Nor are they allowed to work if they are not fit. It is true, Cousin Dean, that in America, sometimes the reactor workers use drugs on the job?"
"I've heard that, yes," Garfield conceded. "I think it was just security guards and maybe laborers, though, not technicians. You don't have grass here?"
The teacher had to have that explained, and translated it finally as "marijuana." Smin shook his head. "But," grinned the American, "I suppose now and then somebody does drink a little?"
"Never!" Smin declared. "No Soviet citizen drinks a little! We drink only very much — pass me your glass!"
Though Smin himself did not drink at all, not even the wine, there was plenty for everyone else, and even the two teachers were flushed and smiling. Smin's mother told over and over how the letter from America had reached her only that morning and she had at once telephoned the hotel and sent a car for the visitors. Vassili Smin explained in detail the great importance of his father's work, and how he himself might someday be a nuclear engineer — or perhaps a helicopter pilot, like his elder brother Nikolai, now already a senior lieutenant (though no one mentioned exactly what country Lieutenant Nikolai Smin was flying his helicopter in).
The Americans told how greatly they had been impressed by Moscow (immense city, like one huge monument) and Leningrad (yes, really, certainly properly called the Venice of the North), and how this evening was, all the same, definitely the high spot of their trip, and they all agreed that it was a great pity that contact had been established so late, since the Garfields were scheduled to leave for Tbilisi in the morning. In the relaxed and friendly atmosphere, Didchuk daringly told a couple of Soviet jokes, his eye on Smin to make sure he was not being indiscreet, including the Radio Armenia one about the definition of a string trio (a Soviet quartet that has just returned from a tour of the West), and Dean Garfield responded with one about Aeroflot stewardesses. (In America the hostesses said, "Coffee, tea or me?" and on Aeroflot they said, "White wine, cherry juice, or go off in a corner, Comrade, and do it to yourself.") But that one, apart from requiring much agitated consultation about the translation, made the woman teacher blush.
Smin stole a glance at his watch. After ten, and they were still sitting around the dinner table. At least, he thought comfortably, it had been, what? three or more hours now when he had not had to think about the problems of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. He thought, with amused sympathy — a little sympathy and a lot more amusement — of the Chief Engineer and the Personnel man, stuck with trying to get rid of the observers who had no experiment to observe. Not for the first time, he thought that his mother's old-fashioned ways were sometimes a convenience. If there had been a telephone in the house, he would have been tempted to call the plant. Since it was out of the question, he could simply relax.
It was not even difficult to keep up a conversation. Having explained America to his Soviet family, Dean Garfield was now explaining the Soviet Union to them. The)' had already done Leningrad and Moscow — had even, Smin was slightly startled to hear, managed to get tickets to the famous emigre
Vladimir Horowitz's once-in-a-lifetime piano recital in Moscow just a few days earlier. (And how many Soviet citizens would have given a month's pay for such tickets? But, of course, Intourist gave first priority to tourists — who could, after all, have heard him any number of times in America.) And in Kiev they had seen any number of tenth-century cathedrals, and the bones of the old monks in the Lavra catacombs, and the Great Golden Gate Moussorgsky had made famous with his Pictures at an Exhibition; in fact, they were staying at the brand-new Great Gate Hotel, just across from the Gate itself on the street called the Khreshchatik.
Garfield had funny stories about their pilgrimages: "So the guide showed us the footbridge to those beaches, you know? The ones across the river in Kiev? And I told her that in New York we had not only footbridges to islands in the river but cable cars. Then she showed us that Rainbow Arch that's supposed to commemorate, what is it, the joining of Russia and the Ukraine, and I told her that we had one that looked exactly like it in St. Louis — the Gateway Arch — only it's two hundred meters tall and it has little cars inside it that take you right up to the top."
"Yes, everything is bigger in America," Aftasia said dryly. "What, you're not eating the compote? Don't you like it?"
Then Smin's son, getting braver about practicing English, began telling his cousins about the four great football players on the team of the Chernobyl plant, the Four Seasons, and Dean Garfield responded with stories about his own team, something called the Los Angeles "goats," said Didchuk, although Smin could not quite believe that was the right name.
Smin yawned as his son went on explaining other things to the guests, until he saw the way the Americans were studying the glassy scars on his face and neck. From the expressions on their faces, distress and sympathy, he knew just what his son was saying.
Smin placed a gentle hand on his son's shoulder and addressed Didchuk. "Say for me, please," he said, "that Vassili, like all boys, is fascinated by stories about war. Especially he likes to boast about his father's heroic adventures, but in fact I was merely trapped in a tank when it burned. It was more than forty years ago."
"But you received four medals!" his son cried, distressed.
"And I hope for you nothing more than that you should never be in a position to earn such medals," Smin said firmly. "Now, whose glass is empty?"
It was turning into a long evening, and a wearing one after all, with this business of trying to carry on a friendly conversation with new-met relatives through translators. Smin was glad when the talk passed from him. The women were talking among themselves, the young teacher, Mrs. Didchuk, chatting in English with the glamorous American blonde woman, Mrs. Garfield. Aftasia Smin, on the fringes, asked. "So what are you telling her?"
"Why," said Mrs. Didchuk, flushing with remembered pleasure, "just that yesterday, when I went to the store, I saw that they had hundreds of rolls of bathroom paper. Imagine! All you could want! So I bought twelve, and the clerk scolded me, can you imagine, saying, 'There is no need to hoard, from now on there will always be plenty!' Do you think that is true?"