Todo esto existe

by Íñigo Redondo

So, where were you when the Chernobyl’s reactor no. 4 exploded? Why, I was busy studying and looking forward to a May Day break, blissfully unaware, together with 99.99% of the country’s population, of the events of the early hours of Saturday, 26 April 1986. Yes, we used to go to the uni on Saturdays. It wouldn’t be until Monday that we’d hear an official announcement on the telly. It lasted less than a minute.

Now this book has transported me back in time, perhaps against my will. Welcome to mid-1980s Pripyat, still pre-disaster and already as bleak as you’d think. This is how it looked:

Forget the nuclear plant for a moment — nothing happened yet. And life is not exactly hopeless, if you think about it. Gorby is in, ending the run of gensek funerals of diminishing pomposity; Kasparov finally beats Karpov; the USSR launches the Mir space station. The author sure did his homework.

But this is only the background. More important is the story of Alexei and Irina. The story that is both incredible and believable. The story that could have taken place anywhere else, in any of the millions of apartment blocks around the world. So why not in Pripyat then.

Alexéi, ¿a ti no te gustaría vivir en la estación espacial MIR? No sé, me parece un poco claustrofóbico. ¿Por qué? Porque no se puede salir. Pues igual que esta casa.

What actually made Irina to leave home? How come that a 16-year old girl does not know much about the WWII, never heard about Titanic and never have read Treasure Island but is familiar with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, I wondered as a reader — only to discover that this is also what Alexei asked himself. Many things are left unexplained, and I prefer that to the array of smoking Chekhov’s guns. Then there are what ifs you can ponder long after the reading is finished. Like: what if Irina became a world chess champion?

Íñigo Redondo (Bilbao, 1975) wrote his first novel in 2015; however, it did not see the light of day until 2020. He says that at least 60 publishers rejected the manuscript. If so, I applaud his tenacity. I’d give up after three “noes” and go for self-publish.