Boots

December 3, 1991

The Aeroflot crew argues at the hatch with mannerisms and emphases possible only in a foreign language. They have a problem with paperwork. The plane sits dockside for an hour. Half a dozen gringos and I, all "UN Experts" bound for St. Petersburg to shoot the breeze on Free Economic Zones, sit elbow-to-elbow in seven seats until we figure out that the rest of Beezneez Class is all but empty. We're it.

The stewardesses are just what you'd expect in a joke about a Russian airline: hulking, crudely made up — babushkas of the future. The plane takes off with a ferocious roar, shuddering with effort as it rises into the night and tilts to the east. The cabin fills with the scream of heavy wind and a persistent whine like high-speed gears. I'm scared.

Three hours later, we land. Ireland already? The fellow next to me, an Indian chap named Rao, says, "It's not as far as you'd think." Maybe so. But it sure doesn't look like Ireland out there. Sidewinders of snow writhe across the ice-patched runway. It's too dark to read the letters on the side of the terminal. Rao gives me a look that either confirms or doubts that it snows in Ireland.

As we clomp down the aluminum stairs into the baggage compartment, the stewardess hands us each a chit for a "Free Beverage." Then we clomp down to the icy runway and the frostbit night. It's a crisp, quick hustle to the terminal building. The snow crunches under our shoes. Everybody but me is in street shoes. I'm glad my hiking boots didn't fit in my suitcases. We all wish we'd worn overcoats. Still walking, we look back to see what an IL-86 looks like. Despite the dramatic runway spotlights and the opaque black of the sky behind, it's your basic jet: huge, squat, stubby, serious, with four basic cast-iron engines on the wings, no frills attached. It was obviously not built with miles per gallon in mind. That's why we're still in North America and walking across a runway in the middle of the night.

It turns out we're in Gander, Newfoundland. The free beverage is a can of Pepsi. Everybody trades in his chits, then heads for the Duty Free shop or hangs around the lobby joking about Russia. The terminal is a cross between a Quonset hut and a woodsy lodge. On one vast wall, clocks show the hours in all the Canadian time zones. Everywhere from Vancouver to Quebec it's half-past the hour. In Gander it's 10:15.

Back on the plane, we knock down some vodka with a midnight breakfast. It beats the mineral water, which tastes of sewage and seawater. There is also a cloudy brown wine which tastes sweet and homemade. Lunch: pale, mushy peas from a can, slices of old, old beets, crunchy noodles, obvious leftovers. For dessert, lacerated apples dented with bruises, served by a woman who looks as if she lives on whatever we don't eat. She isn't a regular stewardess. I think she just comes up out of the baggage compartment to serve us apples from a tray. It's her job.

Rao warns me about the bathroom. I haven't been in there yet because I don't feel like putting my boots on. I figure I can hold it till Ireland.

* * *

The Pribaltiskaya Hotel is a special economic zone in which only hard currency is good. With it you can buy anything from Russian women to Miller Lite. The hookers, strictly nocturnal, are well behaved, even shy. They sit in the bars in tight jeans or short skirts, avoiding eye contact. As employees of the Russian mafia, they're let in on a bribe and allowed to stay on good behavior. Somebody told me they charge — or maybe it was "probably charge" — a hundred dollars for the night. A lot of that is baksheesh that gets distributed to everyone from the doorman, I assume, to the hotel manager. Just as in the land of the free and the home of the brave, it's the middle-pimp who makes the most. Somebody else told me that out there in the real world — if you can call Russia real — you can get a "nice one" for five smackeroos, about one-third what a university professor makes in a month.

The food in the hotel restaurant isn't bad, but it has a rustled-up look to it, like maybe it's all that was available. A lot of it came out of cans. One doesn't serve Spam for breakfast unless one has to, not in a place that charges as much as a prostitute who speaks a little English. I'm sure there's no special name for the soups of gristle and fat, tasty though they may be. One feels a bit guilty for not finishing what's on one's plate or for helping oneself to an extra half-glass of grapefruit juice when a waiter isn't looking. In fact one feels guilty eating when the waiter is looking. Don't they feed these guys? Do they get the leftovers? Or is that what's in the soup?

We UN Experts eat at large circular tables set for eight. When I tell the other Experts I'm going to Kiev to look into Chernobyl, they crack the same did-you-bring-your-lead-lined-jock jokes I had heard several hundred times before I left home. When they finish with that, they ask more soberly what I've done to protect myself and if I fully understand what I'm getting into. I confess I've done nothing and know little. I was living in Brazil when Chernobyl blew up on April 26, 1986. The newspapers there reported the fact briefly, then got back to the comings and goings of the Pope, Princess Diana, Gorbachev, Boy George and whoever else was glittering at the time.

So I don't know what to expect. It wouldn't surprise me to find hospitals full of mutated babies, overflowing cancer wards, forests that glow in the dark, death all around. A Ukrainian I happened to meet in New York heard from his mother in Kiev that all the streets are littered with the flowers that are traditionally tossed at funeral processions. The funerals are constant, she said.

I have two contradictory suspicions. From anyone who claims to know something about the results of Chernobyl, I've heard that the situation is horrifically worse than anyone knows. From the press, I've heard nothing in years. Is it possible that massive slaughter has gone unnoticed or fallen by history's wayside?

By chance I meet a Russian in the hotel who was director of security at Chernobyl. To prove it he shows me his photo identification — with some difficulty, because he's holding a short leash with a Great Dane on the other end, a very cool dog, calm and thoughtful. His master tells me the dog saved seventy-four people after the earthquake in Georgia. I pat the dog's head and say, "Good dog!" Then the director says it is possible for me to take a tour of the Chernobyl plant. Despite the many warnings I've heard, this sounds like a great idea. But then he says I'll have to pay a little money.

It strikes me as rather uncivil to come right out and ask for a bribe from a journalist who's just trying to report on what is arguably the world's biggest problem. I pat his dog again and walk away without a word or a handshake.

Kiev may be dying, but here...