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satellites can see you from invisible heights? Or so the
radioactive rain can fall on you?
We had no way of knowing, it wasn't marked on the map
and no dosimetric lines were drawn on the orienteering
stencil – a few days earlier, a thousand kilometers to the
north and east, Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl had exploded,
under the watch of the Fifth Shift.
The pioneer camp commander later summed it up with his
favorite saying: “Shit happens.”
Letter to an Unknown Comrade
I know, my dear little unknown Soviet and Ukrainian
comrade, I know, but please – don't finish yet, tell me
again. Tell me how it happened once more, tell me, even if
it means repeating yourself and wasting yet another whole
page of graph paper. For me it's important, it's so
important, you can't even begin to imagine.
I want to hear about the banks of the Pripyat River – I can
see its water boiling, I understand. But more about that
later, it's still too early, April hasn't arrived yet, nor the
beginning of May, the water is calm. Longer ago and further
back, before spring and before winter. Tell me about the