Novel explores Chernobyl's ``Dead Zone'' villages

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - They are called the ``Dead Zone'' -- villages evacuated after the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine spewed a deadly radioactive cloud into the sky on April 26, 1986, changing the lives of millions.

Ukrainian American author Irene Zabytko's first novel, ``The Sky Unwashed,'' looks at the aftermath of the world's worst nuclear disaster through the eyes of some elderly women who defy government orders and return to their irradiated homes.

Zabytko, who now lives in Orlando, Florida, says she did not have a political agenda when she wrote the book and wanted to focus on the determination of a group of people often ignored: the babysi, or old women.

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``I grew up with these women. I have always been in awe of these indomitable, strong women. I see them around me and feel their strength and because of that I wanted to infuse that in my book,'' she told Reuters in an interview during a tour to promote her book. ``If anyone is going to survive Chernobyl, it will be these old women.''

Wednesday is the 14th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident that poisoned vast areas of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, republics of the then-Soviet Union. Despite official claims to the contrary, Zabytko said Chernobyl's radioactive fallout remained a persistent blight.

``This is just a horrible catastrophe. Kids are still suffering from it, from leukemia. It angers me that medical supplies don't get through because of corruption there. This country has still not gotten on its feet since independence. People are really, truly suffering,'' she said.

While teaching English in Ukrainian capital Kiev in the early 1990s, Zabytko traveled clandestinely to a Dead Zone in a taxi but did not see anyone to interview.

``I never met anyone, but every now and then I thought I saw a thin spiral of smoke floating from the chimney of a dilapidated house. There were a few souls alive there and I wondered whether they were the displaced elderly who had returned to their contaminated homes because they had nowhere else to live.''

The only living souls Zabytko saw that day were two geese waddling on a dirt road and a policeman who pulled her cab over and told her to leave quickly ``before you get cancer.''

Drew On Eyewitness Accounts

Zabytko said she used eyewitness accounts for her novel.

Many people buried their cars, television sets and other precious items when they were evacuated, thinking they would soon return. ``No one quite understood the impact of the radiation,'' said Zabytko, who is now working on another novel set in Ukraine.

To narrate the book, Zabytko chose a stubborn widow called Marusia Petrenko whose son dies from radiation poisoning.

The book opens with a traditional village scene -- a wedding to which everyone is invited. Marusia has prepared her famous nuptial bread -- a korovai -- and the wedding party continues late into the night.

After the party, her son Yurko joins many other villagers for what they think is the usual night shift at the plant. But many of the workers never go home. The air has a strange metallic taste the next morning and the priest does not show up for the Sunday service.

The official version is that there has been a fire at the plant but suspicions abound for many days about the real cause of the strange events. Soon tens of thousands of people are evacuated to unfamiliar cities where they struggle to survive.

Marusia, her son and his family are sent to Kiev, where the air is not much cleaner. After her son dies, she defies the evacuation order and returns to her contaminated hometown, Staryslis, thinking life cannot be worse there.

A Novel About Survival

Zabytko said her novel was about survival and the human spirit rather than a scientific book about Chernobyl.

``I am fascinated at how people are able to survive these catastrophes which are not of their making, what drives them to move forward. How did people survive the Holocaust, how did they survive Kosovo? What happens to them afterward and how do they get on with their lives?'' she said.

``That's what I wanted to look at in my book.''

Marusia is the first to return home and she valiantly climbs the steep steps of the church tower twice a day to ring the bells, just in case someone else has quietly slipped back.

Her first visitor is a mangy cat whose fur is gnarled by the radiation. Gradually five elderly women return and survive by eating food stockpiles left behind before the explosion.

They debate furiously over whether to raid the larders of friends who have not come back and finally decide to put the food in a warehouse where a strict inventory is kept.

Marusia replants her garden in radioactive soil even though she knows the vegetables will be bad for her, and the women win a moral victory, getting a contaminated cow from officials who give it to them only because ``the old women will die anyway.''

A lot has been written about Chernobyl but Zabytko said she had never read a novel on the subject.

``I think for many people it is too painful to write about but it is something that needs to be discovered,'' she said. ``I know people are proud of being Ukrainian but there is a lack of self-esteem. I think this book might help that and show that people have survived such a horrible situation.''

The book has been on sale for nearly a month and a major book chain selected Zabytko as one of the best new writers. ''I'm just so grateful the book is out and am still shocked when people tell me that they read it and enjoyed it,'' she said.

Reuters/Variety