Monday, May 19
The Black Sea coast is the Florida of the Soviet Union. It is the only place where the water is warm and the beaches are sunny. The coast is lined with holiday hotels, sanito-ria, youth camps, and campgrounds, and they are all filled all the time. Foreign tourists spend hard currency there, but most of the vacationers are Soviet citizens who have deserved so well of their country or their factory that they are given a week or two of luxury. Swimming, snorkeling, windsurfing, fishing, mountain-climbing, strolling, sunbathing-there is so much to do along the Black Sea! And each community has its own special attractions-at Yalta, the place where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met in World War II, the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, the old house where Chekhov lived and wrote nearly a century ago. Near Sochi, the mineral springs, and the caves at Novy Afon. Sukhumi, Matsesta, Simferopol, and a hundred other communities vie for the tourist, and no one is disappointed.
As Sheranchuk stepped off the IL-86, he saw his wife waiting for him in a knot of people just outside the door of the terminal. He kissed her tenderly, exclaiming, "What do you think of that? A real jumbo jet, three hundred and fifty passengers! When Boris comes back, let us make sure he gets to ride in one like it, shall we?"
"Of course," Tamara said, looking at him anxiously. He returned the look. His wife had been at the resort only a week before him, but already she looked-well, tropical. She was tanned. She wore dark glasses, with a gay green and white scarf over her head, and white shorts and a white blouse. She seemed at least ten years younger, except for the strained expression on her face. "Will you have to go back to the hospital?" she asked.
"Never!" he proclaimed. "Complete release! I have even been given permission to go back to work at Chernobyl after our little vacation here-it is all in the medical records, and you can read them for yourself. But not now. Now I want to enjoy this recreational paradise of the workers' state!"
He found his bag quickly and slung it over his shoulder. "How wonderfully hot it is," he exclaimed as they went out of the terminal into the Black Sea sun. "You made a good choice, my dear."
"Are you sure?" she asked anxiously. "It is so hard to know where to go. If we had gone to Sochi instead, there would be the Agur waterfalls and the caves-"
"But isn't it nice," he grinned, "to be so lucky as to be able to choose what we want? And anyway, here we are nearer to Boris at his camp, so tomorrow we will drive over and see him. But today is ours, my dear Tamara, because we have a great deal to celebrate."
Tamara surrendered. "As you wish, my dear," she murmured. "Only, please, you are just out of the hospital. Don't tire yourself."
It could have been, Sheranchuk said to himself, that she was worried about his health. That would account for the slight reserve, the occasional abstraction, the hesitant way she spoke now and then.
It could also be that what was on Tamara's mind was the same thing that was on Sheranchuk's own, specifically, what Dr. Akhsmentova had told him at Smin's funeral.
Although he had had four days to think about it, he had spoken to no one about it, not even his wife-especially not his wife. But for four days he had thought about very little else. He rehearsed every moment of his married life. In particular he cudgeled his memory to try to recall each incident and detail around the time his wife became pregnant. Yes, it was true, he recalled dismally, they had gone through something of a stormy period in their marriage at that time. They had had a number of quarrels. Foolish ones! He had been astonished to learn that she was, of all things, jealous.
And foolishly he had tried to make a joke of it. "Oh, yes," he cried with savage humor, "all the girls are after me. It is my steel teeth that make them wild with desire!"
She had said icily, "I don't care what girls are after you. I care that you are interested in the girls."
"But it isn't true!" he groaned. "You're simply being stupid." And that night she had slept in a chair on the other side of their single room, while Sheranchuk tossed sleepless and alone in their bed.
The difficulty was that her jealousy had not been entirely stupid.
There was a woman who interested him. She worked in the personnel department of the peat-fired power plant near Moscow. Sheranchuk had never touched the woman, but he admitted to himself that he had had feelings about her. There was worse than that. Since the two of them worked in the same power plant, they had had their vacations at the same time, in the same place. Nothing had happened-mostly, Sheranchuk conceded, because she had at once taken up with another man-but he had been prepared for an explosion when he came back.
To his surprise, his wife had welcomed him back. In fact, she had been exceptionally loving-it was almost another honeymoon.
The question in his mind now was, what had she been doing while he was away? And with whom?
They spent the afternoon on the beach. Even in May the water was still a little cool for Sheranchuk's taste, but he gladly lay in the warm sun that filtered through the palm leaves overhead, Tamara solicitously replenishing the sunburn cream on his back. When they went back to the airy, clean room in their sanitorium, they made love in the daylight, hardly even speaking as they fell into each other's arms. Not speaking at all of anything important, in fact, because afterward, when Tamara got a serious look on her face and cleared her throat as though about to say some weighty thing, Sheranchuk jumped up and proclaimed that he was starving for dinner.
It was a good dinner, at a seaside restaurant. They took their time over it, talking about Smin's funeral, and their plans for their son, and what was likely to happen at the Chernobyl plant. It was quite late by the time they got back to the sanitorium. "Come, let's enjoy the air a bit," said Sheranchuk, and they found a rocker for two in a quiet part of the broad veranda, looking down a hill and out over the distant water. Sheranchuk had his arm around his wife.
"You are very quiet, my dear," he said at last.
"I've been thinking," she said slowly, hesitantly, and in the dim light he could see that she had that look of being about to speak seriously on her face again.
"If," he said quickly, "what you are thinking about is the future, let me tell you some good news. There is a new personnel man at the plant, his name is Ivanov, and he stopped at the hospital before I was discharged. He promises a job will be waiting for me, actually with more money. He also talked about what sort of place we will have to live in for the next six months or year."
She turned to look at him with a spark of interest. "In Pripyat?"
"Not in Pripyat, no. No one is going to live in Pripyat for a long time. But in the town of Chernobyl. You remember it's beyond the thirty-kilometer perimeter and it is now quite safe. And then there will be a new town that will be built, with good construction. It will be called 'Green Peninsula,' after the place where it is being built. We will have a flat even nicer than our old one, once the new buildings are finished. Ivanov has promised we will be at the top of the list for new housing, and the foundations have already been begun."
He waited for a response. "That sounds good," she said at last, her voice colorless.
"Of course," he said, "without Smin to keep an eye on things, who knows how soon the walls will crack and the doors will come off their hinges? But there is also good news. Ivanov says they will put you on the medical staff at the plant."
"Oh, wonderful," she said, her face lighting up for the first time. But then she withdrew again.
"Are you cold?" Sheranchuk asked solicitously. "Maybe we should go in and get a good night's sleep. And tomorrow morning we will go to see our son."
She was silent for a long moment. Then she turned to him and said, her voice rapid and almost harsh, "There is something we must discuss. Did Dr. Akhsmentova speak to you?"
He was quite calm. "The bloodsucker? Oh, yes. She was full of some nonsense about blood types; I could not understand such things."
"Leonid," she said sadly, "I don't believe that. You are quite capable of understanding what that bitch had to say."
Sheranchuk shook his head. "What I understand, my dear, is much more important than any blood tests. I understand that we have a fine son who has always been mine. Have you forgotten? I rubbed your back for you when he was still inside your belly, and I walked through every store in Moscow to find rubber pants to put on him, and I fed him and burped him and changed him-not as often as I might have," he admitted justly. "Certainly not as often as you. But often enough to know' who is my own dear child, born from my very dear wife. So what is there to say about blood types? And now, my dear, since it seems these mosquitoes are also interested in sampling my blood, perhaps we should go inside and to bed."