Chapter Ten
Several years later, when Garnet had been presented with incontrovertible evidence that Viktor Yershov had indeed been one of the unfortunate thousands who had succumbed to radiation sickness as a result of the fallout from the Chernobyl reactor disaster, it was from memories of the evening they spent together after the bomb attack on the Kiev restaurant, that he most fondly recalled him.
The night time streets appeared unnaturally deserted after the chaotic activity of the restaurant, and the only sound was the rush of the strong gusting wind outside the window and the occasional misfiring note from the small car’s engine. Yershov remained silent, his attention fully focussed on the dark road ahead, the car’s headlights barely serving to illuminate a safe passage. Garnet, in the back seat, his wheelchair folded up and uncomfortably pressed against him, still felt too stunned to speak, and Sasha, amazingly, appeared to have fallen asleep, her head nodding in rhythm with each movement of the car. The apartment block to which Yershov drove was on the outskirts of the city, a nondescript, Soviet-style, concrete eyesore; an unlikely refuge for such a high-up figure in the machinations of government. Conscious of his passenger’s likely thought patterns, Yershov explained, “Do not worry. This is... how you say... my bolt hole? My wife, she does not know. You understand?”
Garnet nodded and, in the car’s mirror, he saw a smile pass across Yershov’s face for the first time since they had begun their nocturnal journey.
“We will be safe here,” Yershov continued. Garnet noticed his gaze drop to the wheelchair, as he said, “I just hope the lift is working today.
“So these Crimean...”
Yershov supplied the word that Garnet was searching for, “Tatars.”
“Thank you. Tatars. Have they done anything like this before? What is it they want?”
“Their’s is a long grievance. Like so much in my country. There is too much history.”
“And you are sure they are responsible for the bomb? You don’t think it was meant for...?”
“For us?” Yershov interrupted, laughing. “Why should it be? You overestimate your importance here. Mine too. No, my friend. Today, we are just the innocent bystanders caught up in somebody else’s dispute.” Yershov stood up, crossing the small room to retrieve another bottle of vodka from a wooden sideboard. His capacity for consuming the fiery spirit seemed limitless. “You will drink?”
Garnet had already discovered that it was impossible to refuse Yershov’s invitations: his glass was automatically refilled regardless of any negative response on his part. This time, though, he acquiesced gladly. His hands had finally stopped shaking, but it would require a numbing quantity of alcohol in order to dispel from his mind some of the terrifying images he had witnessed, albeit only briefly, earlier that evening.
“Thank you.” Garnet accepted the offered glass, raising it again in imitation of his earlier gesture, “We never did complete our toast.”
Yershov looked momentarily blank before catching Garnet’s meaning and then taking the initiative, “Of course.” He raised his own glass aloft, ostentatiously, “To success.”
“Success.”
Sasha had long since excused herself and retired to the bedroom with an ease born of familiarity, and Garnet and Yershov spent the remaining hours before sunrise happily engaged in finishing the bottle of spirit and seeing where their increasingly alcohol-fueled discussion took them. Yershov spoke briefly of his bedroom companion after she had left.
“Hers is a tragic story, like so many of my countrymen. She longs to be a mother, you understand, but she has had two... what you say?” Garnet was unable to supply a guess at a suitable word, and so Yershov continued, “The babies they die.”
“Miscarriages.”
“Precisely. Now she can not have children. Her insides they are all mixed up. And so her husband, he beats her and then leaves. Gone. And her still so young. It is very sad for her, no?” The big Russian’s sober mood changed, like an electric switch being turned on and off, he laughed suddenly and uproariously, “But it is very good for me, no?”
Garnet could not but help be affected by his companion’s high spirits, but the serious subject of the earlier attack was seldom far from his mind.
“You never finished telling me about the Crimean Tatars,” Garnet said, “Why would they attack an innocent restaurant?”
Yershov was typically ambiguous, “What is innocent, and what is not, these days, my friend? It depends upon your point of view. Take you,” Yershov stretched his hand out towards Garnet, “You would probably consider yourself... what you say... an upstanding citizen, yes?”
Garnet nodded.
“To some of my colleagues in Moscow, though, you are a capitalist enemy of the state, and to some of my fellow countrymen in Chechnya and Crimea, you are worse, you are an infidel.”
“And what about you. How do you see me?”
Yershov stood up and grinned, placing a large arm around Garnet’s shoulders in fair imitation of a bear’s embrace, “To me, you are a brother.”
As the level in the bottle of vodka sank lower, Yershov went on to tell Garnet something of the plight of the Tatar people.
“I have much sympathy for them,” he said, “We are so many of us dispossessed, in one way or other. The Tatars, perhaps, most of all. Their entire population was deported by Stalin, towards the end of the Great Patriotic War. They were seen to be... I do not know your word for it.”
“Collaborators?” Garnet offered.
“Precisely so. All traces of their culture were expunged, their language banned, their homeland was handed over to other nationalities, even Germans.” Yershov shook his head, as if in disbelief. “Some of my family moved there. Even today, I still own a dacha close to Yalta.” Yershov digressed, “You must stay. It is very beautiful.”
“Thank you. And now the Tatars are reclaiming what they believe is their birthright?”
“That is so. They were forced to settle in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, some even in Siberia, but little by little, they have been returning. They come looking for a homeland that no longer exists. I sympathise. They are not the only ones who dream of a different Russia.”
“So these bombings are common?”
“No, not at all. This is a very safe country. We have no crime like in your country. There are not bombs like in say... Great Britain.”
Garnet, despite feeling slightly light-headed as a result of the vodka, was not sufficiently inebriated to forget his reason for being in this country, “I only ask because of the project,” he said, “I do not want anything to jeopardise the construction, and if there is any element of insurrection, my building could prove an easy target.”
Yershov waved away Garnet’s anxieties, dismissively, “There is nothing to fear. The Tatars are more generally a danger to themselves than they are to anyone else. I do not know if you saw the demonstration in the city centre this afternoon?”
“I did notice a crowd,” Garnet agreed, “Your driver said that it was a political rally.”
“He is well trained,” smiled Yershov, “A diplomat, no? No, it was a group of Crimean Tatars. One of them was threatening to set himself on fire as a... I don’t know... a protest? I do not know how it ended. It is not uncommon. No one is so interested anymore.”
“But the bomb...?”
“That was nothing. A firework, no? Lots of glass and a few broken heads. There is nothing for you to worry about. The Tatars, they are not so well resourced that they can upset our plans. Your plans,” Yershov corrected himself, seeing the questioning look that passed across Garnet’s face. “Besides, their real argument is with Moscow. Tonight, this was just local high spirits. I tell you, if you are still worried, I will provide men, guards. You tell me, and Yershov will provide. There will be no problems.”
••••••••••
The problem that was irrevocably to halt construction of
what would have been not only the tallest building in the Ukraine, but also in the rest of the world, was one that even the resourceful Yershov could neither have foreseen, or indeed have prevented.
On 26th April 1986 reactor number four at Chernobyl nuclear power station blew up, not as the result of a terrorist attack, but during the routine testing of a generator. The blast compressed the reactor floor twelve feet into the ground as temperatures within the plant reached 3,000 degrees Centigrade. Almost one hundred times the amount of radioactive material that was released from the Hiroshima atomic bomb was released into the area surrounding the reactor, and during the days following the explosion, fallout affected 23% of Belarus, 7% of the Ukraine, plus areas in Russia, Poland and the Baltic States. Thirty-one people were killed instantly, as a result of the initial blast; the number of people who died in the subsequent years, as a result of acute radiation sickness and fatal diseases directly linked to exposure can only be estimated, but certainly ran into the hundreds of thousands, and this despite mass evacuations of people within a thirty kilometre radius of the plant. Overall, it was estimated that close on five million inhabitants of southern Belarus and northern Ukraine were directly affected, in some way, by the events of that fateful spring day, and this figure would be amplified, too, if you factored in the economic affect on the whole country’s population of the continuing cleanup operation of the contaminated territory, the loss of revenue from now deserted towns and agricultural land, and the maintenance of the power station to ensure that a similar disaster did not happen again.
The town of Pripyat had been Garnet’s proposed site for the location of the world’s tallest building. It was also the town closest to the Chernobyl reactor and the first to be evacuated after the catastrophic meltdown. His decision to turn to Russia had not been entirely random; it was a very public thumbing of his nose to the homeland that he still considered had rejected him. International relations, pre-glasnost, between the United States and the Soviet Union were still frosty, and many Americans still viewed the Communist superpower with the same suspicions that had been responsible for almost bringing the two countries to the brink of war over the Cuban Missile Crisis, over two decades before. Brinkmanship and diplomatic posturing had been the main dialogue between the two countries during the Cold War years, and economic and technological achievements, particularly in the Space Race, but in all aspects of building and manufacturing as well, were areas of intense competition between the two rival colossuses. To have the title of world’s tallest building taken from them, and not only that, handed over to their greatest adversary, would have struck a hard blow, not only at the American government, but at the patriotic heart of the American people.
The actual decision to build in Pripyat had been Yershov’s. He knew the town well: he had a brother living there, plus, someone he described as, ‘another young friend who my wife has not met’. It was a prosperous town, he had said, with good transport and communication links, built originally for the power station, but equally useful for bringing in raw materials to the proposed building site. There was cheap labour too: the border with Belarus was very close, and unemployment there was high; it would be easy to employ the many thousands of workers that Garnet envisaged would be needed to work on the project. Yes, Pripyat was the ideal location. Yershov had restated again, ‘there will be no problems’.
Garnet presumed that it was the ‘young friend who my wife has not met’ who proved Yershov’s eventual downfall. There was no other reason for Yershov having been in the ill-fated town on the day of the reactor explosion. Garnet himself was many hundreds of miles away at the time, enjoying the spectacular views and rapidly improving climate in Yershov’s dacha on the coast of the Black Sea. Yershov had been with him only two days beforehand, the two men having formed a strong friendship during the six months of their collaboration on the building project which was intended to make one man’s fortune and one man’s fame. Yershov had been pushing Garnet’s wheelchair along the vehicle-free, waterfront promenade naberezhna Lenina, both silently admiring the view across the still waters of Yalta Bay, the shingle beach on their left hand side, a line of green cypress and ragged-leaf palm trees to their right, slowly heading towards Prymorsky Park, when the big Russian had asked, “Will you never walk, my friend? Do you wish to be a cripple all your life?”
“It is not a choice that is mine to decide,” said Garnet.
“Are you sure?” Yershov, effortlessly spun the four-wheeled conveyance around in an arc so that Garnet was facing him, the two men’s knees almost touching. “I have seen you. When you get into bed. When you leave this...” He pointed to the wheelchair, a look of disgust on his face. “You have some movement. With help, perhaps... We have doctors in the Soviet Union...”
Garnet interrupted him, abruptly, “No. I have seen doctors. I have seen physiotherapists. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Yershov persisted, “But surely if there was some chance... You can not want to be like this all your life.”
“I have been like this all my life,” Garnet replied, sharply. “You talk of doctors. All they do is give you hope. And what use is hope to me? I have no time for hope. Faith, hope and charity. They are a seductive trinity, you would probably agree?”
Yershov nodded, mumbling, “Corinthians 13:13.”
Garnet looked surprised as Yershov went on to quote, “And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Just because I am Russian, do not think that I do not know the Bible.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Not that I altogether agree with it,” Yershov confessed, more truthfully.
“Nor entirely abide by it,” said Garnet, his previous dark mood momentarily lifted, amused at his friend’s embarrassment. “That passage always makes me think that it sounds like it should have come from the Koran and not the Bible.”
Yershov raised a bushy eyebrow, questioningly, “Why?”
“The emphasis on charity. Under Islamic law a Muslim is supposed to donate a percentage of his income to charity. Zakah, I understand that it is called. It is the same with any interest that they make on bank accounts, for example. I have seldom come across a Christian who was similarly generous.”
“You know a lot about these matters?”
“It is what a good education does for you,” said Garnet.
“Faith, hope and charity, you were saying?” Yershov prompted.
Garnet smiled. The sky was a perfect, clear blue, and the sun was shining warmer than on any other day so far that year. On the distant peaks of the Crimean Mountains, though, the winter snow was still visible, glistening and reflecting the bright light, like a mirror. One of the things he had missed most since leaving New York was the opportunity to hold forth on a topic of conversation, usually on the occasion of a dinner party at his apartment, surrounded by friends and acquaintances, who, if not actually respectful of his opinions, were at least polite enough usually to listen in pretence of attentive concentration. In Yershov he had finally found someone who was not only prepared to listen, but who, when he spoke himself, Garnet genuinely found interesting and informative. He knew that he could trust the Russian to absorb his words silently, only ultimately to shoot them down in flames with a deft rejoinder. He was not to be disappointed on this occasion.
“Faith,” Garnet said, “Is just an excuse for laziness. It is passing the responsibility for your own life on to someone, or something, else. You have faith that an event will happen, without being prepared to do the necessary graft to make the event happen for you. You have faith in a higher being, because you don’t want to accept responsibility for your own miserable existence. You agree?”
Yershov smiled noncommittally, “Continue.”
“Okay, hope. You talk to me of hope. Karl Marx said that hope is the opium of the people. Or perhaps he said religion? Who knows. Some things get lost in translation. You know Marx?” br />
“Not personally,” Yershov was quick to joke, “Similarly, just because I am Russian and am not supposed to read the Bible, do not think that my bedtime reading is Das Kapital.”
Garnet continued, “Hope is always for the future. For a future which never comes. It is pointless to hope. You hope for things you do not possess. Far more profitable to try to change your present to be the way you would like. I am a rich man. I do not need faith and I do not need hope. And as for charity? If I believed in charity, I would probably not be rich in the first place, and then where would I be?”
“In need of faith and hope?” asked Yershov, mischievously.
“I suggest a new trinity,” said Garnet, “Action, Endeavour and Achievement.”
“And have you lived by these... how you say... standards?” asked Yershov.
“No, of course not, “ said Garnet, “I pay someone else to do that for me.”
It was not quite the last ever conversation the two men had. Once they had reached Prymorsky Park, and were both seated beneath a gnarled and twisted cypress tree, looking across to the statue of Chekhov in the beautiful tropical gardens, Yershov teased Garnet that he had instructed the builders in Pripyat not to include an elevator in the new construction, so that the building’s benefactor would be beholden to someone else if he ever wished to make the ascent to the summit. Garnet closed his eyes, the image of the blue waters of the bay remaining so vivid in his mind it was as though it was etched on the inside of his eyelid. There was no need to reply.
It took several days before news of the reactor blast reached Garnet. By that time, over 100,000 people had been evacuated from the area immediately surrounding the nuclear power station effectively turning Pripyat into a ghost town. Teams of scientists and ‘liquidators’ from all over Russia had been transported to the site in order to aid the cleanup operation, and the 180 tonnes of radioactive material which were still smouldering beneath the generator had been encased in a steel and concrete sarcophagus, to prevent any further leakage of the lethal substances into the atmosphere. Needless to say, construction on the proposed world’s tallest building was halted overnight. Garnet took the news philosophically: he remembered back to a time in late 1984 when he had been trying to weigh up the merits between building in the Ukraine or in central India. It had been the Union Carbide disaster at Bhopal that had decided his mind then. He remembered thinking at the time how fortunate for him that the chemical release had happened when it had, and not a year later.
If there was any comfort that Garnet could draw from his Russian excursion, it would be to say that in his attainment of the skies, he was at least progressing in the right direction: where in New York his construction had foundered several fathoms below sea level, here at least he could point to a vast concrete foundation, and say that he had managed to ascend almost two feet closer to the heavens.
Interlude
The radiation levels that frequent flyers are exposed to are equivalent to that of workers in the atomic energy industry, and a single transatlantic journey subjects the body to the same amount of high-altitude radiation as a hospital chest x-ray.
The Church of the Higher We issues very strict guidelines aimed at protecting their members from all potential airborne illnesses and hazards. Not a Church known for the proselytising approach of its brethren, nevertheless ‘the hazards to healthy living of aeroplane travel’ is a soapbox subject, upon which a Higher We disciple can often be found holding forth, particularly in airport lounges or beside terminus check-in desks.
More than just a desire to educate, it is one of the acknowledged tenets of Higher We philosophy that its members should care for any victims of airborne-induced conditions, and it is the interpretation of this law that has led to the establishment of several slightly bizarre institutions worldwide. The Casey Strongbourg Institute for Nervous Flyers, based in Houston, has just recently appointed a professor to the Erica Jong Chair of Aviophobia Counselling, and its lecture series entitled Free To Fly: Release the Shackles that Bind you to the Planet is sold out for the next year. Casey Strongbourg, himself, is sadly not going as strong as the institute that bears his name, having died instantly when his helicopter crashed in trees in the grounds of his medical establishment in 1997, in full view of a horrified gathering of current patients, who had paid handsomely to hear him speak. The Safe Skies Co-operative dedicates itself to the distribution of a handy, pocket-sized leaflet which spells out the potential dangers of air travel in somewhat sensationalist terms, and lists the precautions that passengers can take in order to minimise the risks to themselves. With their kind permission the contents of the pamphlet are reproduced in their entirety below*.
Safe Skies
Our dream: your due.
We, the Safe Skies Co-operative, wish to bring to the wider attention of the air-travelling public, the numerous hazards associated with frequent flying, and to suggest some simple remedies that can both alleviate these dangers and also make your airborne experience a more pleasurable one.
1) Cabin Pressure
FACT: Reduced cabin air pressure caused by high altitude flying results in less available oxygen, causing possible hypoxia.
SOLUTION: Hypoxia increases the effects of alcohol on the body. While you cannot practicably bring your own breathing apparatus on board, you can at least get drunk quicker so that you do not realise that you are slowly suffocating.
2) Excess Gas
FACT: Reduced cabin air pressure results in abdominal gas expansion as air expands inside the body, causing discomfort and excessive flatulence.
SOLUTION: Avoid carbonated drinks, such as champagne, and any beans, vegetables and pulses. Alternatively, just take a stroll down to First Class and let rip.
3) Dehydration
FACT: Low cabin humidity - typically less than 20% - can cause dehydration, dryness of the eyes, and skin irritations. Alcohol consumption can also contribute to dehydration.
SOLUTION: Since you are already drinking more alcohol (see Cabin Pressure) it is essential to drink at least equal volumes of uncarbonated water to combat dehydration. Contact lens wearers are recommended not to wear their lenses during the flight.
4) Circulatory Problems
FACT: Prolonged immobility leads to blood pooling, particularly in the legs, leading to stiffness, discomfort and in some cases the development of a venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and death.
SOLUTION: Remember to keep taking those trips to First Class (see Excess Gas), plus due to the vast quantities of liquid that you are now consuming (see Dehydration) the roundtrip between your seat and the onboard W.C. will be a regular part of your in-flight exercise regime.
5) Cosmic Radiation
FACT: Exposure to greater levels of ozone and cosmic radiation increase with altitude.
SOLUTION: Without specialist protective apparatus these are risks that are particularly difficult to guard against. As a word of reassurance though, just remember, that even on the ground the chances are that you are already exposed to a greater daily concentration of radiation than official International Commission on Radiological Protection guidelines recommend, just by going about your everyday business. What difference can an extra little blast have?
6) Airline food
FACT: Most airline food is pre-cooked and then kept warm for several hours before consumption, at temperatures insufficient to kill off potentially harmful bacteria.
SOLUTION: Avoid.
7) Aircraft Disinfection
FACT: Many countries require the interior cabin of an aircraft to be disinfected against vector-borne diseases, such as yellow fever and malaria, and also sprayed with insecticide to kill off non-indigenous pests that may prove harmful to local agriculture. There is anecdotal evidence of travellers feeling unwell after aircraft have been sprayed.
SOLUTION: There is no evidence of a causal link between exposure to pyrethroids and the symptoms of which many passengers complain. If you are th
is nervous, you should ask yourself why are you flying in the first place? It is the aircraft crashing that is going to kill you, not the flight attendant with the can of aerosol.
8) Jet Lag
FACT: Travel across multiple time zones can disrupt the body’s circadian rhythms leading to malaise, insomnia, and reduced mental and physical performance.
SOLUTION: Here you are left with a dilemma. To combat the effects of jet lag the advice is to rest as much as possible and not to drink alcohol, contrary to the advice given earlier (see Cabin Pressure and Circulatory Problems). It’s your choice: jet lag vs. deep vein thrombosis. We know which one we choose.
9) Smoking
FACT: Smoking is now almost universally banned by all airlines.
SOLUTION: Hey, they can hardly throw you overboard for doing it, can they? Nb. do not try this experiment on any flights originating from any cities in California.
10) Air Rage
FACT: Air rage is a term recently coined to describe the often violent behaviour of passengers affected by the various stresses associated with modern air travel.
SOLUTION: Since you are now beered up (see Cabin Pressure), starving (see Airline Food), dying for a fag (see Smoking), full of excess gas (see Excess Gas), and bursting for the loo (see Circulatory Problems), who wouldn’t be full of rage?
Remember, Safe Skies, aiding flyers across the miles.