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While here with her, we can’t utter a single word, so we just
move, we move and breathe.
Don’t ask me why or what for, just close your eyes and tell
me, like you used to write me. Tell me again about the
Pripyat River, about its waters. I know they’re brown
because those waters flow from
Geography
, from peat-bogs.
And if you want to swim, you'd better be strong because the
current will sweep you away. After swimming, a coating like
chocolate covers your skin, it tightens, dries out and bakes
in the air – if you pick at it with your fingers it squeaks. Like
a festive Misha the Olympian, one of those marzipan bears
sold as an Olympic souvenir. Of course, you know that it's
because of the swamp acids, which are surely good for you -
fish even swim in and breathe them. But
after the disaster
they will turn into coagulating agents, as the nuclear
physicists call them, since they are excellent conveyors of
radioactive particles, the leftovers from the breakdown of
the spilled nuclear fuel, God damn it, as the nuclear
physicists, or "nukies," swore through their teeth. You are
probably the child of a nukie, my dear little unknown
comrade – otherwise what would you be doing in that city
built in the middle of nowhere? In the middle of the Pale,
there and where else in that emptiness would you be born,
at that unremarkable age, the same age as the fourth
reactor, the pride of the golden five-year-plans for energy
construction.