I ended part 1 with driving through what looked like nuclear disaster wasteland - a burnt forest with black and maroon leaves. Then we drove through some parts where there were no trees at all, and the trees just stood naked, like in December. Except that it was the beginning of May.
Eventually we got to some kind of a road block again, with soldiers guarding it. When we got out, they said they had to measure our radioactivity level. I watched with fascination out of the car window, because they were masked, and armed with automatic rifles. Now, this is before all the "Orange revolutions", this was still in the calm Soviet years, and it was at least shocking to see a machine gun live, and not in a film about WW2. When we got out, they measured us with "Geigers" and found that my mom had radioactivity in her neck, (in the first two weeks since the disaster it was essential to take iodine supplements, because the half-decay of radioactive iodine is 8 days. But we didn't know there was radioactive iodine in the air... In cases of iodine deficiencies, thyroid took the radioactive isotope from the air. As a result, 80-something % of my generation has thyroid problems, including thyroid cancer). My dad was clean, and I had radioactive hair, which they proceeded to chop off with scissors. I dread to imagine what would happen if it was my arm. Haha, they would probably just turn us back. I looked in the car mirror, and saw a poodle gone mad. They chopped it off randomly, and it was sticking up in all directions.
The car was radioactive, too, but not beyond repair. My mom washed it with a cloth from a bucket they provided, and we drove on. In the 30km zone around the reactor they had to bury whole "caterpillar" trucks, up to the roof of the cabin, after a few hours work. We were glad that we didn't have to bury our "Zaporozhetz"...
We drove through the marshes of Cherson, and got to the Black Sea. I remember sleeping in the car with the sea noise outside... the Bay of Taman. It's the place where Lermontov fought a duel and managed to stay alive, and now it's in the news, because Russia is building a bridge across the Bay. In my day it was somewhere between the poetic beauty of Lermontov's times, and the Sochi-themed industrial madness of today. The water was as clear and as calm as it would be in your teacup. It did not look like a sea at all. A sunshine-filled puddle 4 km wide. We stayed by my uncle for a month - I remember that Heaven-like place, with the calm see-through water and abundance of fruit. There was a dog who thought it was mine, and there was sun and sand and peace.
A month later we drove on to Georgia. The drive through the Caucasus mountains could be its own story. The serpentine twists and a wall of rock on one side, and a sheer drop on the other. Maybe 2000 m below there were gorgeous valleys with a silver string of a river, microscopic huts, and clouds of sheep above and below us. Because the road was so narrow, and there was no fence, we went very slowly. And still, at some point my dad didn't quite fit into the turn. Maybe there was one of those "ZIL" lorries speeding in the wrong lane, maybe he just got distracted. But at some point we found ourselves in a car with one wheel off into the 2000 meteres drop. If my dad would try getting out, the car would just roll all the way down. My mom couldn't get out - she was above the drop. I think we sat that way for a few hours, till a kind lorry driver attached a rope and pulled our car out. Thank God he did, or I wouldn't be writing this today.
Our car gave up the ghost at the door of the Writer's resort in Pitzunda. Some men pushed it all the way to the garage. And again, there was a month of the Southern sun, sea, palm trees, and fruit. Heaven...
We lived in some random places in the South for a few more months. I remember going to school there, remember my mom nearly dying of strep twice in August (radioactivity in her throat?) , eating watermelons for breakfast, lunch and supper, because they were cheaper than bread, playing with baby kittens and puppies and finding out the next day that the owner drowned them...
We came back to Odessa on a 9 story sea liner called "Georgia". We were in the 9th class - all the way at the bottom, and my parents slept in seats like today we have on airplanes, for 3 nights. The ship was the size of a small city, or so it seemed to me then...
When we got back to Kiev, the rain washed off some of the radioactivity, then the snow covered it. Everybody thought they knew which areas were affected, and when people bought vegetables in the market, they asked about the region, where they came from, and followed their rules like a Newest Testament. Truth is, nobody knew anything. To this day I don't know how much radioactivity I took then. It didn't do anything to me, so far.. Thank God. The next summer we spent in Leningrad, and Moscow, to avoid the radioactive dust. And then we got used to it. To living with precautions, of course.
For the rest of my life in Kiev, I was not allowed to play on the grass, eat berries off the bush (as if potatoes from the shop were less radioactive), roll in hay or walk around barefoot, suntan and eat the core of the cabbage, drink non-boiled water and pick flowers. All nature was contaminated. All contact with it was cut. Except the parts of it that we had to eat, of course. Now you know why I hug trees. Why I planted a garden full of them. Just missed them for so many years. Maybe next time I'll tell you about how I fell in love with medicinal herbs, it was about that time, too.
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