Chornobyl. Especially the remote villages in the Exclusion Zone where outsiders rarely put a foot. I saw it in a new & very unusual light because my Stalker1 was Lina Kostenko, a celebrated Ukrainian poet who had explored every village, seemed to know everybody, saying it was only here she had been able to breathe freely in the past ten years or so.

Lina Kostenko, a brilliant Ukrainian poet, was born on March 19, 1930. A graduate of Moscow's Gorky Institute of Literature, she cuts an extraordinary figure. Her collections of verse are allocated a place of honour in the private collections of every devotee of Ukrainian literature. She was conferred the Taras Shevchenko State Prize of the Ukr. SSR for the historical novel in verse Marusia Churai (1987). She is a laureate of the Petrarch Prize, one of Italy's most prestigious literary awards.

Her private life, however, remains wrapped in mystery. Few know that she withdrew from the Writers' Union of Ukraine eight years ago because she could not accept ... the absence of a clear-cut civil and moral stand. Two years ago, Yuri Mushketyk, former Chairman of the Writers' Union, together with colleagues, nominated her for the Nobel Prize for Literature. She indignantly declined the nomination as she considered they had no such authority.

She declines interviews and has attended public events only three times during the past years: a soiree commemorating her husband at the House of Cinema, and those in memory of poet Stanislav Bondarenko, at the Actor's House, and Viacheslav Chornovil, at the Teacher's House (this year).

Day One. Easter in the Zone

She had called the night before the trip, asking if I was on the list of those cleared to visit the Exclusion Zone and, if so, whether I had informed them of my sizes so that the protective clothing (popularly known as fatigues) would fit me when the time came to change.

Lina Kostenko has been constantly in and out of this forbidding Zone, visiting as a member of an historical-cultural expedition. Here she is just an ordinary archive clerk and researcher. Usually an expedition is a team of some 20 persons, mostly physicians and people holding Candidate of Science degrees in the humanities. Now the number of specialists has been limited. The driver and cameramen was Les Zotsenko and to his right in fatigues was the stalker marshal Lina Kostenko. Myself, I was in the back amongst packages of paska Easter bread and sweets (it was Easter Sunday that day). Near me was Oleh Byima, director and manager of the Ukrtelefilm Studios.

We were on our way to visit a remote rural area and its residents. The producer and cameraman Zotsenko wanted to a make a TV series, with Lina Kostenko acting as the principal consultant because of her profound knowledge of the populace.

Our jeep stopped in the village of Kupovate, in front of the house of an old woman named Ustyna Reznychenko. She sat on a bench accompanied by two goats (we could see a third in the barn, banished, as it later transpired, for attacking her sisters).

"People living in the Zone are proud, so don't just approach them with your camera and tape running like that," we were advised by the Stalker Lina Kostenko, "and please take your time dispensing the presents."

We struck up a conversation with the old woman and after a while she was talking freely.

"I was born here and have always lived here. But, not in my old home; now, it's my nephew's. My home burned down in the fire, back in 1996. First I moved to Makarivka district, but I didn't like it there, so I left the new home and returned... They deliver bread twice a week and there is a bus once a month to take us to Ivankiv for shopping."

Nearly every village we visited that day (e.g., Kupuvate, Opachychy, Ladyzhychy, Yampil, Paryshev) were in the "thirty" Zone (i.e., a 30 km low radiation area, safe to live in). Here radiation levels are the same as in Kyiv, sometimes even lower: 12-22 microroentgens. Plenty of blooming lilacs with nightingales singing and cuckoos cuckooing, and the air so clean it is almost heady. Nastia, an old woman (b. 1917) from Ladyzhychy, told us that a young Japanese gentleman had visited recently and said that if he found a fiancee he would get married and never leave the place; he had become bewitched by the environs. Just now her old man was "visiting the girls" (other women roughly Nastia's age) and would return in the evening. After the nuclear explosion he had never left; when the authorities came to evacuate the populace he had hid in the woods with the family cow. Nastia had returned shortly thereafter and was now perfectly happy to live out the rest of her days in her forefathers' land.

"Those that have moved die considerably quicker than we do, staying here," she mused. "It's all because they become so stressed; living here is great, just like we did before the disaster on an advanced collective farm."

"Most of these villages did not have to be evacuated, even though situated close to Chornobyl, noticed Lina Kostenko. "But they did, someone gave the order upstairs without thinking and that was that. You see, the place is clear of radiation so that the people could have continued to live on the land normally. But the villages in Norodytsky district are a different matter; they should have been evacuated earlier. The worst thing is that we still don't have a clearly formulated and reasonable concept of developing the Exclusion Zone. What will happen to this land once inhabited by the glorious Polishchuky tribe? Is it doomed or will it spring back to life in the long run? What will happen after the last of the Chornobyl station specialists leave Ukraine? And if something happens at the Rivne, Khmelnytsky or Zaporizhzhia nuclear plants, God forbid? Where will all the people run? Towards each other? Will this Zone become the size of this country? God forbid!..."

An old women gratefully accepted our paskas at Ladyzhychy. There were tears in her bright blue eyes and an expression of grief she did her best to conceal. In return, she gave us a huge cluster of dried bream and mushrooms to which we knew we couldn't say no as it would be a mortal insult and a grave sin. She knew Lina Kostenko well and had obviously missed her company (although, like most people of the Zone, she had no idea that her friend was a celebrated poet, a "symbol of Ukraine"). Other things matter here, like feeling close to each other deep in one's heart, reaching out for a fellow human and being responded to in kind. It was as though Lina Kostenko regarded these locals as the most important and sincerest representatives of the human race. In fact, she would be quite happy to settle here, but for her daughter Oksana Pachliowska, a teacher at the University of Rome, who adamantly rejects the idea.

Pained at heart, we listened to the old woman's life story. She had lost her husband during WW II when she was 18 and with a small daughter. She had recently buried her daughter. Now what was there to live for? Her second husband, a war veteran, stood by listening but saying nothing while stealing tender and guilty glances at her.

"There is a village not far from here and there are just fifteen old women and an old man," Lina Kostenko tried to comfort her. "And you know what? They get together and start singing and keep at it for hours. Now look at you, you've got a home and your man. You shouldn't complain, really."

It was time to leave, but we spent another half hour embracing the old woman and wishing her all the very best.

"Unlike others, these people are scared to die without anyone knowing," Lina Kostenko explained sagely. "When you visit here all your Kyiv worries suddenly seem so trifle and ridiculous compared to these people's world outlook. It gets so you don't want to return to the big city."

The jeep crossed the Chornobyl bridge and we entered Starosillia, an ancient settlement located close to the Belarusian border. A notice read: "Dangerous Radiation! Stay out!" Meaning a "ten" (10 km danger area) was near. The place was deserted, but its architecture was very interesting due to its authenticity, some of the homes boasting all four walls of their refined wickerwork. One was strongly tempted to touch them.

Alive and Kicking. Quoting from Poets

That evening in Chornobyl, sharing red wine with the other travellers, I was surprised to remember that the Exclusion Zone was 16 years old, precisely the same period of Lina Kostenko's estrangement from literature (from the early 1960s till 1977) when her brilliant collection "Over the Banks of the Eternal River" had finally come off the presses. At first, the Communist authorities had wanted to ban the publication, but she had gone on a no liquid strike and by the end of the week the party bosses had given up the struggle. I looked at the woman sitting next to me. She was a zone within the Zone, with her tested integrity and harmony as its inner cosmos.

Suddenly Lina Kostenko remarked casually, "You know, I was first searched while still in the cradle." We all realized, of course, that it's impossible to search and interrogate a baby. In fact, her father had first been interrogated by the NKVD beside his daughter's cradle. The man had received 10 years in the GULAG before WW II. Why? He taught every subject at the grade school of his native Rzhyshchev and spoke 12 languages. Perhaps just because he was a blinking know-it-all.

How could this woman with such a wilful face and bestowed with such beauty, vigour and diversified talent, have never stepped off from the only right path of life, not once? And she had not, unlike the shestydesiatnyky2 men (except Vasyl Stus and several others). She even looked younger than them with girlish curls. Aleksandr Pushkin only wrote one novel in verse. She is the author of two: Marusia Churai and Berestechko, in addition to countless other epic lyrical works. All this from just one woman with sparkling blue eyes who continued to give a firm no to interviews with or without a camera?

Cautiously I inquired if she had anyone or anything left in Rzhyshchev.

"Practically nothing. Not even my grandfather's home where I'd lived the first six years before moving to Kyiv. And no relatives on my father's or mother's side. Also, the town has changed. At that time riverboats would sail to the old landing-stage but then they built a dam, the water level went up and all the charm disappeared."

With time her independence had been reinforced by the student environment in Moscow. Their seminar at the Institute of Literature was conducted by Mikhail Svetlov and her diploma work (the manuscript of the first book "Beams of the Earth") was reviewed by the celebrated Russian author Vsevolod Ivanov. He wrote, "She is a very talented poet with a great future." Consider her student mates: Robert Rozhdestvensky, Fazil Iskander, Junna Moritz, Paruir Sevak, Naum Korzhavin, and Jerzy-Jan Pachliowski, the Polish writer, her first love and the father of her eldest daughter.

Careful not to pose any direct questions, I let it slip:

"Robert Rozhdestvensky would've been 70 soon. I used to think of him as optimistically Soviet."

"Yes, he was a decent man and we liked each other. Actually, the sixties represented an outstanding cultural, literary and social phenomenon. They were very different, each embarking on their own road, each moving this or that way, going to extremes. Even Junna Moritz, currently into naturalism with her portrayals of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, which I personally think is not a poetic subject."

After returning from Moscow, Lina Kostenko was so "self-willed, free, and young." Shortly afterwards, she began to attend the trials of human rights champions in Lviv, approaching the defendants and casting bouquets at their feet. Authorities threatened to arrest her several times but then had a much better idea; to ban her publications. But they could not bar her access to literature. Interestingly, after the 16-year blockade was lifted she spent only several years "in public" and then finally adopted a reclusive lifestyle. At the dawn of perestroika, she said, "The times are encouraging and interesting, but they aren't for me. Being allowed to be courageous is not for me." It was thus she distanced herself from her collaborationist colleagues performing moral tacking manoeuvres.

Later, she would put it in even harsher words, "Neocynicism is coming, no place for me to live," and denied herself a lot: high life in the capital, a very prestigious government award (gratefully accepted by Boris Yeltsin and Pavlo Lazarenko), explaining quietly, "I don't wear political imitation jewellery." She would adjust her creative and private life to the interests of the Exclusion Zone from which she imbibes moral purity.

"Mrs. Kostenko, you seem so fond of the Zone as if it were a human being."

"That's right. The feeling is there, it must have been inspired by Andrey Tarkovsky's film Stalker, except that here everything is for real, it is our Zone."

Day Two. Heading for a "Ten"

At nine the following morning we found ourselves at the sanitary checkpoint of Lelev. We were issued brand new fatigues, white caps and leaf-like scarves. All of us changed except Lina Kostenko, she had brought everything from Kyiv; she did not hide her girlish curls under the cap and nor did she wear the scarf, not even near the Sarcophagus.

There it was, Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station, towering before us like a ghostly structure in a desert under the piercing sun. Mykhailo, our driver, a local, stopped the jeep on the bridge spanning the cooling pond. In the water we saw the first living creatures, six feet catfish basking in the sun, surrounded by five-kilo carp and a multitude of smaller bullheads.

"The name of the largest catfish is Bor'ka," we were told by Rimma Kyslytsia, our guide from Chornobylinterform. "He responds like a pet; if you toss him a loaf he'll swallow it, just like that!"

The place was deserted, not a soul in sight, although we knew that a personnel of 4,000 (plus 700 at the Sarcophagus) still worked there. But it was Easter Sunday. There were security guards at the Sarcophagus and our papers were checked. Looking at the quiet ferroconcrete structure, it was hard to believe that it had caused so much trouble. But Rimma's monitor was clicking faster, reading 780 microroentgens.

Lina Kostenko recalled being secretly shown a film some ten years ago. It was from automatic cameras mounted inside the Sarcophagus. I had also watched it in a Ph.D.'s office. The interior is very beautiful, like a fairy-tale cave with stalactites and stalagmites.

"By the way," interjected Rimma, "the latest studies show that the power unit, although fully loaded with fuel (some 200 tons) released only 5 and not 30, let alone 50 percent, as generally believed earlier. Of course, even that five percent was enough..."

About a mile from the Sarcophagus, heading for the river Pripyat, the jeep stopped. To the left was a red forest or rather what was left of it. Mykhailo explained that most of the trees had been felled by a man with a chain saw, but without protective clothing. To the right was a low fence, within which was the famous pine with it's three scorched branches sticking upwards. Numerous journalists had used it as a symbol of Ukraine after Chornobyl in their features. Many had compared it to the tryzub trident, the national emblem. To Lina Kostenko, it had always been a lyre. The tree had fallen during a thunderstorm, but the symbol is alive, cast in metal.

The driver's home village with the Polissia-Belarusian name Rechytsia was deserted, for it was part of a "ten" danger area, except for a phenomenal old man by the name of Obrazhei. Lina Kostenko told us that he tied catfish to his boat the way a farmer ties up a pig. The Pripyat gave him all the food he needed but it was also the scene of the violent death of both his sons. One of them was said to have been killed by poachers when trying to prevent them from emptying his fishing net.

Mykhailo showed us into what had once been a neat brick home. His parents with four children had moved into a new house but lived there for only five years.

"They were seeing me of to the army on April 26, the day of the disaster," he recalls. "I learned about the tragedy on May 3 and for a long time I had no information about my family. They were evacuated the following day, they couldn't even finish baking the Easter bread." His parents and a twin brother were dead. Radiation levels at the place are now about the same as in Kyiv, but it rose sharply only a couple of homes further away.

The name of the village was Tovsty Lis or Thick Forest and the place turned out to be very interesting, and even mysterious. There was a 300-year-old church built without using a single nail. The services had been conducted by the Rev. Fedir, a 90-year-old war veteran with a chestful of combat decorations. He had been evacuated to Makarivsky district. The bureaucrat responsible for housing asked about his occupation. "I serve our Lord," Fedir said. "Great, than let Him give you a home," came the smart reply.

The church of Tovsty Lis had burned down in the great fire of 1996. Some said it was because of the candles lit for the dead, others blamed the militia trying this to discourage people from re-entering the high risk area. Several weeks prior to the tragedy, Lina Kostenko had asked some of the MPs she knew to protect the church, because that spring was very hot. The only possibility was to transfer the church to a new site. It would take a matter of hours in the West, but was practically unthinkable in Ukraine. At least, it could have been fenced off, with a protective moat dug and the ground saturated with a special fireproof solution. The MPs had shrugged it off, being too busy with the "constitutional process." Full of foreboding, she and several colleagues had measured the church and made architectural drawings several weeks before the fire.

"Actually, I visited the church when it was on fire," she told me. "I was in a stupor, then red spots appeared on my legs. I finally got rid of them with an alpine herbal potion my daughter had sent me."

Our next stop was the village of Lubianka.

"It's one of my favourite spots. There are more than twenty residents and my dacha is over there, but I'll never invite you over," she was dead serious, pointing to a log cabin almost completely overgrown with shrubs and hidden amongst the trees. "The local womenfolk gave it to me as a present after they'd read in the papers that Lina Kostenko had appropriated a summer cottage in the Zone."

"Did you and Vasyl Tsvirkunov (Kostenko's husband, manager of the Dovzhenko Studios, passed away a year and a half ago) ever have a dacha?"

"No, he thought it improper in his position; he wouldn't even spend weekends at the Studios' resort which had been built largely thanks to his dedication. But I never complained, we had all of Ukraine which we travelled all over in his hand-operated Zaporozhets car (he lost a leg in the war and almost died). We would stay the night at what served for motels, often without windows or doors, but we learned so many interesting things! He was a real friend, an intellectual to the core. I remember him raising his voice to me only once. He was my protection from importunate well-wishers and pen-happy morons (they still send heaps of manuscripts, convinced that I should read them all and express my appreciation).

At one of the monasteries we found the grave of the woman to whom Pushkin dedicated the largest number of his poems, maid of honour Olenina. Later, when I was in France, the Mayor of one of the cities kindly assisted me with studying the family archives of her surviving relatives. I wrote about it, I also wrote a story about that extraordinary woman. Perhaps I will have it published one of these days.

When in Berestechko, an ordinary woman told us an interesting story about a battle for the city long ago. That story was totally different from what we read in our history textbooks, and it was different from what I wrote in my novel."

"Was writing Berestechko easy?"

"You could put it that way, although I dumped the first version. It was easy at first, but then I saw that I was following Shevchenko's lines from his Dream: 'If that drunk Bohdan could see Ukraine today.' I realized I couldn't simplify everything or practice a superficial approach, even if doing so made the whole process smooth and easy. I started from scratch."

"I seem to remember you saying that the 30 km Zone is no poetic subject, that it is only for documentary prose. I know that you have written three stories about this place and its people."

"Yes, I have, but don't expect me to show you the manuscripts, I won't even tell you a single title, not now anyway. And I'm in no hurry to see them in print. All I can say at the moment is that my characters are remarkable people that actually existed. Some were heroes from the Soviet war years (although they accuse me of being anti-Soviet, but with some reason)."