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"Take your clothes off."
She didn't ask me why. She looked at the child, checked that he was asleep, and immediately began to remove her sweater.
"No, really, you don't have to," I said. "I don't know why I asked that."
But she continued to undress, first her blouse, then her jeans, then her bra. I noticed her breasts, which were the most beautiful I'd ever seen. Finally she removed her knickers. And there she was, offering me her nakedness.
"Bless me," said Athena.
Bless my "teacher"? But I'd already taken the first step and couldn't stop now, so I dipped my fingers in the cup and sprinkled a little tea over her body.
"Just as this plant was transformed into tea, just as the water mingled with the plant, I bless you and ask the Great Mother that the spring from which this water came will never cease flowing, and that the earth from which this plant came will always be fertile and generous."
I was surprised at my own words. They had come neither from inside me nor outside. It was as if I'd always known them and had done this countless times before.
"You have been blessed. You can get dressed now."
But she didn't move, she merely smiled. What did she want? If Hagia Sofia was capable of seeing auras, she would know that I hadn't the slightest desire to have sex with another woman.
"One moment."
She picked up the boy, carried him to his room, and returned at once.
"You take your clothes off too."
Who was asking this? Hagia Sofia, who spoke of my potential and for whom I was the perfect disciple? Or Athena, whom I hardly knew, and who seemed capable of anything, a woman whom life had taught to go beyond her limits and to satisfy any curiosity?
We had started a kind of confrontation from which there was no retreat. I got undressed with the same nonchalance, the same smile, and the same look in my eyes.
She took my hand, and we sat down on the sofa.
During the next half hour, both Athena and Hagia Sofia were present; they wanted to know what my next steps would be. As they asked me this question, I saw that everything really was written there before me, and that the doors had only been closed before because I hadn't realized that I was the one person in the world with the authority to open them.
HERON RYAN, JOURNALIST
The deputy editor hands me a video and we go into the projection room to watch it.
The video was made on the morning of April 26, 1986, and shows normal life in a normal town. A man is sitting, drinking a cup of coffee. A mother is taking her baby for a walk. P
eople in a hurry are going to work. A few people are waiting at a bus stop. A man on a bench in a square is reading a newspaper.
But there's a problem with the video. There are various horizontal lines on the screen, as if the tracking button needed to be adjusted. I get up to do this but the deputy editor stops me.
"That's just the way it is. Keep watching."
Images of the small provincial town continue to appear, showing nothing of interest apart from these scenes from ordinary everyday life.
"It's possible that some people may know that there's been an accident two kilometers from there," says my boss. "It's possible that they know there have been thirty deaths--a large number, but not enough to change the routine of the town's inhabitants."
Now the film shows school buses parking. They will stay there for many days. The images are getting worse and worse.
"It isn't the tracking, it's radiation. The video was made by the KGB. On the night of April 26, at twenty-three minutes past one in the morning, the worst ever man-made disaster occurred at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. When a nuclear reactor exploded, the people in the area were exposed to ninety times more radiation than that given out by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The whole region should have been evacuated at once, but no one said anything--after all, the government doesn't make mistakes. Only a week later, on page thirty-two of the local newspaper, a five-line article appeared, mentioning the deaths of workers, but giving no further explanation. Meanwhile, Workers Day was celebrated throughout the former Soviet Union, and in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, people paraded down the street unaware of the invisible death in the air."
And he concludes, "I want you to go and see what Chernobyl is like now. You've just been promoted to special correspondent. You'll get a twenty percent increase in your salary and be able to suggest the kind of article you think we should be publishing."
I should be jumping for joy, but instead I'm gripped by a feeling of intense sadness, which I have to hide. It's impossible to argue with him, to say that there are two women in my life at the moment, that I don't want to leave London, that my life and my mental equilibrium are at stake. I ask when I should leave. As soon as possible, he says, because there are rumors that other countries are significantly increasing their production of nuclear energy.
I manage to negotiate an honorable way out, saying that, first, I need to talk to experts and really get a grip on the subject, and that I'll set off once I've collected the necessary material.
