Before the Evacuation

Abstract

L. Kovalevska: ‘I lived in the third microraion. I often had insomnia and took things to help me sleep. On 25 April, Friday, I had just finished my narrative poem “Paganini.” I had been working on it every night for three months. And that night I decided to take a rest. So I took something to help me sleep. And I slept the sleep of the dead. I didn’t hear the explosion. And yet where we live, if an exhaust backfires, you hear it. Even the windows rattle. In the morning my mother said: “Either there was something that made a noise like thunder at the power station last night, or jets were flying all night.” I didn’t ascribe any significance to this. It was Saturday. I began getting ready to go to our literary club. I once ran it, it’s called “Prometheus.” Power workers from the station and construction workers went to it … I went out and looked—all the roads were flooded with water and there was some white solution, everything was white, foaming, all the roadsides. And I know how it is when there is an accident with an accidental spill. I began somehow to feel uneasy. I walked on. I looked: policemen here and there, never had I seen so many policemen in the town before..