I stroked her even more gently. And it crossed my mind that we were all part of the living world – tired-out grandfather and grandmother, my gloomy father, the cat which I held in my arms, our grey horse which had gone through that terrible experience with us and the soldiers who were rushing about the village to no particular purpose. I wanted to make sense of the thoughts, to put them into some kind of category, but whichever category I put them into, they fell apart.
„Put down the cat and wash your hands,“ my father said. I got up.
Ginger gratefully rubbed herself against my arm. „I think I’ll die soon, little boy. I have been THERE after all and everything inside me is on fire. Whoever was THERE will not survive, everyone says so.“
„Are you frightened?“
„Of course. The living are always afraid….“
‘Seventy-seven was my son’t first year at school. At that time we lived in Semipalatinsk. I remember it was Saturday. My son had gone off to school. My wife was reading a story to our little daughter and from early morning I had been busy at my desk.
It was quiet. Occasionally, a car drove past our window.
Suddenly, coming from our doorway, I could hear loud voices and the noise of hurrying feet. The doorbell rang and on the threshold stood my son, perspiring and panting!
„Mum, Mum, Dad! Markhaba! They’re going to explode a bomb. They’ve ordered everyone to leave the house. Quick!“
The neighbours from the upper floors were swiftly rushing down the stairway. We also began to get ready. I could imagine the anxiety my little boy had felt when he had heard that announcement. He knew that on Saturdays and Sundays when I worked at home, I would turn off both the radio and television and did not even read the papers, so that I could better concentrate. Saturday and Sunday, these were my days of seclusion. People had been given fifteen minutes to prepare themselves. He had taken about ten minutes to run from school. Consequently we had about five minutes left.
The tenants of our house were already in the street and in the yard. They stood together huddled in little groups and anxiously looked up at the sky… And then suddenly the earth trembled, pieces of glass rained down and the smell of gas immediately started to spread through the yard – obviously somewhere a pipe had burst. Broken glass shattered, and someone „went to call out the City Gas Emergency Service; the earth, which seemed to shake intermittently, gave out a muffled groan in obscure torment.
