– And you say that you have never been in the Zone…
– I haven’t been in the Zone, I haven’t. This is the truth. You think I'm kidding you? I'm not kidding. I guess I should tell you, right?
– I haven't seen the Father… Very interesting! Legendary times.
– For now maybe they are legendary. But then, I did not make a step out of the Headquarters without a jar of bromine… When you are sitting in a meeting with the citizens on Thursdays and Fridays, only bromine can save you. No vodka. Straight to the grave. People would drink to death, die in a mouth. Because a day lasts for a year… The same in the Zone and outside… “A hundred meters – ten miles” Yeah…
(Drops the plastic glass. I get under the bed to take the glass.)
– Sorry, slipped out. Yes, so the Father… Even CATU201 did not exist at that time. Two years before CATU. And the Zone wasn't even registered as QZAI212 yet in Russian documents. Only locals called it the Trouble. The Trouble, they said, the Mother-Trouble. And outside it was “the emergency zone”, and that's it. The gas meteorite. There was an order to provide an exclusion zone, and strict one, at least for ten kilometers around.
– And ZONA, Z, O, N, A, – when is this?
– This is when Yeltsin and Clinton signed the Memorandum. But who's gonna call it like this here? The Zone is the Zone. Kapustin's quarantine. Blue houses!
– Oh, already then?
– Yes. When else? They are deeply Soviet, these Finnish trailers. They found a few at the warehouses in the Middle Akhtuba, dismantled, still lying there from the seventies. Helped a lot. Exactly two families, two entrances. I myself had been living in one with my wife for about four years.
(Pause)
– It was detected from the tower in the city. Do you know about the tower? Later it burned like a candle. It was built behind the highway, opposite Volgogradsky checkpoint, right in the middle of the Dog's village, where they demolished a residential complex. Almost on the “neutral”, oh God! That time the “neutral” did not get to the center of the Dog's village yet, only the first line existed… Didn't you hear about that tower? Really didn't? One hundred and fifty meters? By accord! Five hundred thousand rubles down the drain! I was absolutely amazed when they showed it to me. Ostankino