On the other hand, there were things about Aftasia Smin that were troubling to her neighbors from the floor below. It was not simply that Aftasia appeared to be, in some sense, Jewish. There was nothing really wrong with being Jewish, provided you didn't actually become religious about it. Aftasia had never shown any signs of observing the Saturday Sabbath or of creeping off to Kiev's only functioning synagogue. (Though it was true that the Didchuks had been quite shocked to find that the meal she had invited them to on April 25th had been taken by the Americans to have some ritual significance in the yid faith.)
It was certainly not disturbing that Aftasia was an Old Bolshevik. Actually, it was quite an honor to know such a person. She had personally known some of the great heroes of the Revolution! She still knew some of their sons and grandsons, it seemed. But really, the Didchuks had often asked each other, if she is what she is, why does she live as she does?
To that the Didchuks had no answer. But when she asked them for any sort of favor, to use their telephone (but why didn't the woman have one of her own?), or to translate for those fascinating American cousins, the Didchuks were happy to oblige. And when she knocked on their door this worrying May morning, with all of Kiev in an uproar, they were downcast to be unable to agree at once. "But, you see," Oksana
Didchuk said sadly, "today they are sending all the children away from Kiev for a bit — purely as a precaution, of course. We would certainly be glad to help you get your American cousins to the airport, but we must get our own daughter to the train station. Also I must go to the market to buy some food for her to take on the train. Also there is some mixup with her papers for the trip, so really my husband and I should go to the station now to straighten it out."
But Aftasia Smin said crisply, "Leave that to me, please. My cousins don't leave until this afternoon. There's plenty of time to get to the station. To buy food first? Why not? If you will let me use your telephone, I'll simply have the car come a bit early and we'll go to the Rye Market together."
And so Oksana Didchuk found herself in the backseat of a handsome new Volga, with Aftasia Smin perched in front, next to the driver, ordering him to take them to the market and wait while they made their purchases. It was certainly a great improvement over standing in line for a bus, especially on this particular Wednesday, when everybody in Kiev seemed to be trying to get somewhere else. The radio and television broadcasts had been very specific. The city was not being evacuated; only foolish people and rumormongers would say such things. It was only that on the very remote chance that the levels of radiation might rise, it would be better for the young children, who were most at risk from such things, to be somewhere else. So there was no reason for anyone to be afraid.
It was astonishing, however, to see how many of the people on the street looked that way anyway.
Even the old Rye Market looked strange that morning. Ordinarily the vendors would not only fill the hall but overflow into the streets outside, on so beautiful a spring day, with all the fruits and vegetables coming in from all the private plots around Kiev. Not today.
Looking down on the trading floor from the balcony, Oksana Didchuk saw gaps in the usually shoulder-to-shoulder line of white-capped farm women standing before their wares. In the aisles were plenty of shoppers, but they didn't seem to be buying much. More than once Oksana saw a customer pick up a couple of tomatoes or a clump of beets, peer closely at them, even sniff them and then reluctantly put them back.
"Well, then," said Aftasia Smin. "What is it you wish to buy?" She listened courteously while the mother explained what she wanted, and then corrected her plans. "Cheese, yes, but an old one — from milk taken before the accident. And, all right, a sausage, and bread, of course. And a herring, I think. There is nothing wrong with the oceans yet, at least!"
And when Oksana tarried before the slabs of snow-white pork fat and the naked-looking skinned rabbits, thinking of the supper she would have to make for her husband and parents that night, Aftasia vetoed those too. "Sausage again, if you please — and again an old one. Inspected? Yes, of course they are inspected— " For they could not have missed the long lines of vendors waiting their turns to put their strawberries and fresh hams under the radiation detectors so they could get a permit to sell them if they passed. "But if I were to stay in Kiev, I would not buy fresh meat just yet. Let the situation settle down a little."
"Then you're leaving Kiev?" Oksana ventured.
The old lady smiled at her. "Wouldn't you? I don't think that anyone named Smin will be popular in Kiev just now."
But, popular or not, Aftasia Smin still had friends. As she demonstrated to the Didchuks. They set off for the railroad station in good time, Aftasia Smin up front with the driver to give orders, the elder Didchuks in back with their daughter, and their daughter's boxes, bags, and paper-wrapped food parcels, squeezed between them.
The last hundred meters were the slowest, because the militiamen had roped off the square in front of the train station. The approaches were jammed. Oksana Didchuk made a faint worried sound as she saw the red numbers on the digital clock above the station. "But the train is to leave in an hour," she said.
Aftasia turned to her; she was so tiny she had to lift herself to peer over the back of the seat. "It won't leave in an hour," she said. "Look, the trains are just coming in now." So they were; the Didchuks could see the long trains snaking slowly in to the platforms beside the station.
Oksana made another worried sound, but she muffled it. The regular night trains between Kiev and Moscow were streamlined, modern cars built in East Germany, proudly lettered with the names of the cities they connected. The ones now creeping in were something quite different. These extra trains to Moscow were made up in a hurry, of cars taken from repair shops and sidings, hard class and soft, dilapidated and spanking new, and for every space on the trains there were two people who wanted to hoard them.
The special trains were meant to carry children under ten away from the radioactive cloud that threatened Kiev, but every ten-year-old child had parents, older siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts. Nearly every one of them wished they, too, could get on that train for Moscow and air that did not threaten lingering death. Some tried.
Some, on that Wednesday in Kiev, were trying all sorts of strange things. It was said that potassium iodide capsules saturate the thyroid gland with the element, and so would prevent the radioactive iodine from entering into the body and breeding a cancer in the throat. It was said that Georgian wine immunized one against radiation, or that vodka did; or that a cocktail of equal parts of vodka and turpentine did, or the white of egg, or even more repulsive substances. The first of those rumors happened to be quite true, and, as in Poland, potassium iodide vanished from the apothecaries overnight. The others were not, but that didn't keep people from trying them.
Many of the people in the terminal were all but reeling drunk, there were even one or two glassy-eyed children, and a few wound up in hospitals with assorted poisonings. Everyone was wearing a hat. Many of the children were sweating in winter clothes on this hot May morning, because everyone had been advised to stay bundled up whenever they were out in the open. Those near the doors of the station were constantly shouting at the people milling in and out to close them, shut them tight, keep them closed, to keep the outside air with its secret burden of sickness from poisoning the hot, sweaty, unwell air of the terminal.