"It happened on April the 26th 1986. I remember the
date because it was my mother's birthday. We heard the
explosion early in the morning. We didn't worry, because there
had been explosions before from Chernobyl. But this one was
bigger. Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened.
Then we ran out into the garden. We could see a cloud of white
smoke coming from the nuclear reactor." Natasha Revenko
wiped her hands nervously on her apron. Tears came to the
corners of her eyes, and slid slowly down her pinched, pale
cheeks
It was a Saturday," she went on, still wiping her hands on
her apron. "It was a lovely warm day, and the children played outside
all weekend. Even when the dust began to fall, they still played
outside. They picked up handfuls of it and threw it at each other,
laughing. It was Wednesday before the loudspeaker van came to
the village, telling us to keep our children indoors and not to touch
the radioactive dust. They also told us to wash down our houses
and roads with water. A week later the children began to vomit.
Their hair fell out. They couldn't eat. They grew so thin, and sores appeared all
overtheir little bodies. Two weeks after that, all three died - all three on the same
day." She broke down now and cried quietly, as she had done so many times before.
"They're buried over there." She pointed to the church graveyard. "Lots of village
children are. And adults."
I touched her gently on the shoulder, leaving her to her bitter-sweet memories, and
walked on through the silence. It was a ghost town. No one lived there anymore. They had
either died or been forcibly evacuated. The fields were barren. Nothing grew. Nothing
ever would again. There was no bird-song. No rabbit peered at me. No cow endlessly
chewed. No horse neighed.
Natasha caught me up as we boarded the bus marked MOSCOW. "Thank you for
coming with me," She said. "I wanted to see the graves and the house again, before I
die."