Black Stork - White Shadow E-Book

Liselotte Pottetz

• Herausgeber: EDITION digital
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 134

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A pair of storks, plagued by dark premonitions, migrates from the south to their homeland in belarus, the country of forests, lakes, and marshes. A few days after their arrival, on April 26th 1986, the Chernobyl disaster, disrupts their lives, threatening the existence of animals and humans alike.

Leseprobe

Imprint

Liselotte Pottetz, Anatol Barowski

Black Stork — White Shadow

ISBN 978-3-95655-749-1 (E-Book)

Cover: maxglauer

Translate German - English (reduced): Andreas Eulitz, Software Engineer, Seattle, USA

Print Edition: 2016 „Mirwal ART“, Walbrzych.

© 2016 EDITION digital®Pekrul & Sohn GbR Godern Alte Dorfstraße 2 b 19065 Pinnow Tel.: [phone] E-Mail: [email protected] Internet: http://www.edition-digital.de

Storks in Belarus

Belarus is a country of forests, lakes and marshes. Here, white storks are symbolic creatures. They are revered among Belarus’ citizens. Due to the color of their eyes, reminiscent of the country’s lakes, they’re affectionately called ’’blue eyes”. To kill a white stork is considered a sin. Villagers almost treat them like pets, considering them the smartest of all birds as well as mascots. To encourage them to breed, people create nesting platforms by affixing wooden spoked wheels to the gables of houses and other elevated spots. They play pivotal role in the mythology and prominently feature in the country’s century-old legends and fairytales.

Contrary to white storks, which seem to enjoy human proximity and benefit from civilization, black storks prefer quietness and solitude and often retreat into dense, deciduous oak and alder forests or, less commonly, into pine groves. Threatened by extinction, black storks traditionally live in southern Belarus and, to a lesser extent, in the other regions of the country. Their numbers have been declining year over year. In 1953 in the forests of Polesia, every square mile had about 4 nesting sites. In 1972 in the Pripyat conservation area, 16 pairs of birds were counted. Unlike the white stork who lives off of rodents and terrestrial insects, the black stork’s diet consists of fish, newts, water beetles and their larvae, sometimes lizards. They grow to about a meter in height. Their heads, necks and backs are black with a green and violet iridescence. Their legs, beaks and featherless parts around their eyes are red. The nests, continuously used for up to 14 years, are made of twigs grouted with clay and blades of grass. In late April, the females lay 3-5 large, white eggs. The young birds hatch end of May and start to fly during the last days of July. The mother bird will throw the weakest of its fledglings out of the nest as it wont be able to make the fall migration which begins at the start of September and leads the birds to Africa.

After the Chernobyl disaster, the people in the Pripyat region began to tell stories of how the white storks had turned black, projecting white crosses from their bellies when flying over the land. The strontium isotope emitted from the nuclear power plant caused a glow the people called ’’white shadow”. The white storks have vanished from the exclusion zone together with the people their lives were entwined with for so many centuries.

Aiwa and Aij

Long before and thousands of miles away, the storks were preparing their arduous return from northern Africa. The young female Aiwa felt an inexplicable unrest she had never experienced before. She wasn’t used to ponder the next day, let alone the creeping worries coinciding with the beginning of their migration. Yet the further she flew with Aij from the warm shores of Africa to the distant forests of the north, the doubts grew stronger over whether the journey would be worth the risks. But the ancient instincts propelled her forwards with irresistible force, and soon she turned to comforting thoughts of the nest she’d grown up in, and in which she together with Aij had raised 2 new generations of their own. This is how it has been for centuries and, she convinced herself, this is how it will continue into the future.

Flapping their wings in silence they were heading towards the serene, lush forests of Belarus. Soon a pleasant updraft allowed them to soar effortlessly, conserving their energy for the long way ahead. Aiwa looked down at the sky-blue sea and the green islets within when she was again overcome with the foreboding feeling that this year would not be a lucky one for her chicks. She had to resist the urge to beg Aij to return to their African refuge and to remain there for the years they had left. Knowing that he would reject such thoughts she remained silent. And so she kept on flying until they’d reach the forests near the village Kozhushky where, on a sandy hill near the cemetery, the copper-colored trunk of a pine tree would rise into the sky. Many years ago the good villagers had hoisted an old harrow into its crown and covered it with twigs, thus creating an eyrie. Aiwa’s parents took to it, padding the nest with down feathers to keep their chicks comfortable and warm. When Aiwa had grown up and met Aij, they settled into her parental nest. They re-padded it with moss they collected in the dried-out marshes nearby. Once the work had been completed, they raised their heads skywards and started clacking their beaks to signal their readiness to start a family - and their gratitude to the villagers.

Aij was flying ahead. He had been chosen to lead the flock which made Aiwa proud. She was flying behind him, at the left edge of the triangular formation, helping to guide the air parted by his beak and chest. She knew of his enormous strength, and that, for the entire flight, he would not ask to be relieved of his leading position. ”How are you doing? Are you getting tired?” she felt his thoughts. ”1 am fine, my love” she answered, glad of his attention. ”How are the others doing?” ’’They are following you, relying on

your guidance.” ”1 can sense unrest in you. Are you afraid of something, my dear?” ’’Female superstitions, don’t worry about it. I trust in you and know that there’s nothing to fear.” ’’Things will be fine. Think of the forests ahead, their cool, soothing air and the catch they’ll afford. There’s no other place like this in the world, a godsend. Let’s hope the marshes haven’t been drained so that our chicks can easily find food once they’re out of the nest”.

It’s the third year that she and Aij are returning here. She had dreamt of this place in Africa, felt its pull. Every spring she was returning with joy and anticipation. She would lay her eggs and start to hatch them, patiently waiting for the sound of little beaks knocking against the inside of the shells. She would sit through leaden clouds bursting and drenching the earth; she would sit through angry winds tearing at the nest and threatening to knock it to the ground. It wouldn’t be any easier for Aij, either. He would fly from marsh to marsh, from one drench to another; carrying home rodents and reptiles in his long beak, frogs and snakes. He would notice that Aiwa was losing weight and feed her with great care and tenderness. She would suffer through this time without protest, trusting that she will regain her strength. She would spend more than a month in the nest hatching her eggs. And her patience would be rewarded when the chicks would finally emerge. What joy this moment will bring! The little ones would almost immediately open their beaks, squawking to be fed. With a renewed sense of urgency Aij would carry home food for the chicks. After a week of regaining her strength, Aiwa herself would fly out to the marshes to forage. By then, both would tirelessly provide their young with the food of which the area was so abundant. It was of those happy days they were thinking as they journeyed north, and those thoughts gave them the strength to fly on.

And finally there was the village. Tall chimneys were looming at the horizon which, oddly, weren’t smoking. Here was one of the marshes, and there a familiar field and - finally - the tall pine with their nest. It appeared that no one had beat them to it. In the shaded valleys still lay snow, gray and granulated. ’’Are we here a bit early?” But with the sun shining, the valleys would soon be filled with the rush of melt water. Anticipating spring and its abundance of food, the storks rose their beaks to the sky and, clacking, announced their arrival. For the villagers, raised in the belief of storks as the harbingers of spring, the sound was a welcome signal to start sowing the summer crops. The joyful harmony with nature spread from the storks to the humans. Their hearts, weighed down by the gloom of winter, began to lighten by the prospect of the happy days of summer.

In the first year of Aiwa’s and Aij’s courtship two children - a boy and a girl - played in the sandy soil beneath the nest. After hearing the clacking of their beaks, the girl, Olesja, fell in love with the pretty birds. She said to Andrej, the boy, ”1 thought of names for them”. Andrej looked up from playing in the sand ”How do you want to call them?”. Olesja, who had knelt in the sand, rose and looked up to the birds and announced ’’The male I’m going to call ’Aij’, the female ’Aiwa”. Andrej, following the girl’s gaze upwards, responded ’’These are pretty names, Olesja”. They sat down and continued to play with their sand castles when they both thought of modeling the newly christened storks with sand. ’’Andrej”, Olesja asked, ”How old do storks grow?”. ”Dad says more than 30 years” he replied. ”How long are we going to live?” ”1 don’t know. I do know that I would like to live a long life - with you.” What the boy had just said wasn’t lost on Olesja, she knew that he had opened up to her and offered his feelings, that this wasn’t to be taken lightly, that she needed to think about her response. ’’Why a long life?” she asked. ”I’d like to live like they do” he pointed to the birds above. ”I’d like to return here, to this tree and this nest, year after year”. From this day on, they regularly went to the tree, bringing food for the storks and calling out their names which, they thought, the birds liked. Upon hearing the voices of the two children, the storks would lift their beaks to the sky and start clacking.

This year though, the children weren’t there. ”1 wonder why they aren’t coming” mused Aiwa, distractedly. She fended off another wave of doubt, telling herself that the children hadn’t noticed the arrival of the birds yet, or were busy with something important. She didn’t tell Aij anything about her thoughts. It occurred to her that the warmer the days became, the heavier her heart felt. It was the same kind of pain as when last year she threw three of her five fledglings out of the nest. She was heartbroken then, but knew that she had to do it for only two of the young birds would be fit for the long flight to Africa. The boy and the girl had come to the pine tree and carefully picked up the rejects, still alive at that point. They looked up in disbelief, unable to fathom the cruelty of the birds. The girl stood there, pressing one of the chicks against her chest, crying. And Aiwa, too, cried on the inside, for she couldn’t explain to the girl why she had to be so heartless.

Aiwa didn’t understand why she felt so strange and restless this year. She gazed over the tree tops and remained silent. Aij, too, seemed glum and taciturn. Perhaps also feeling something ominous, he hid his beak and eyes under his wing and stood on one foot, brooding. That night, neither of them fell asleep. They should have rested, recuperated after the long flight - but

they couldn’t get rid of the unease they felt. Dark shadows moved over the land as grey clouds began to gather, threatening to burst into a downpour. Half dreaming, Aiwa felt something pushing them out of the nest like she had pushed her chicks out of the nest last year. Shortly after one in the morning, she woke up with a cry and leaned onto Aij’s neck as if to burrow into his feathers, wishing that he could protect her from the shapeless evil she felt. He could feel it, too. They didn’t know yet what was about to happen to them, but were haunted by a fear that grew stronger by the minute.

Chernobyl, 04/26/1986

At 23 minutes and 40 seconds after 1 o’clock in the morning? shift supervisor Alexander Akimow pushed the button to activate the reactor protection system. This caused all control rods, including the ones meant for manual override, to get lowered into the reactor core. Eventually, insertion of the graphite control rods was to be followed by the introduction of neutron- absorbent boron. However, due to a reactor design flaw, the control rods were initially displacing neutron-absorbent coolant with the moderating graphite.

This caused a spike in the reaction rate in the upper half of the core where the tips displaced the water. The core began to overheat at a rapid rate.

An increase in reaction rate causes more heat to be released and the reactive material to expand. This allows a greater portion of the neutrons to escape which in turn slows the reaction rate and lowers the temperature of the reactor core. In turn, core density increases again which makes neutrons more effective in causing fission. All this constitutes a self-regulating process which, in the case of watermoderated reactors, is further enhanced by water beginning to evaporate, forming bubbles that allow neutrons to escape more easily. Operational security of nuclear reactors depends on self-regulation. However, accidents are possible and can cause significant damage to the reactor and — more importantly — the environment by emitting poisonous and radioactive substances. This is particularly relevant for the Russian RBMK-1000 series. During the Chernobyl disaster, a reactor of that type became unstable.

Michael Bockhorst, www. energieinfo.de

Due to their high radioactive emission rate even under normaloperatingconditions, reactors of the RBMK-1000 type (and, in case oflgnalina in Lithuania, RBMK- 1500), would never be legal outside of the Soviet Union. They are widely regarded as the most unsafe and dangerous reactor types in the world. To this day, reactors of that type are being operated in Ignalina, Sosnowy Bor (near St. Petersburg), Smolensk and Kursk. Closer to western Europe, the predominantly used reactors are of the WWER (Water-Water Energetic Reactor) type. They are comparable to the pressurized water reactors used in western countries in the 60s which make explosions like the one in Chernobyl virtually impossible. In those reactors, water is being used as a coolant, a moderator and to create steam for the turbines. Loss of coolant slows the nuclear reaction which significantly improves operational security. RBMK reactors, on the other hand, use graphite as a moderator which, when exposed to air, is flammable. On top of that, RBMK reactors do not have a pressurized container and are plagued by several security flaws and high fault susceptibility.

www.reyl.de/tschernobyl/unfall

Just as Aiwa was dozing off, an enormous shockwave gripped her and Aij and swept them out of their nest. She managed to unfurl her wings mere inches from the ground - too late, she slammed into the forest floor and a protruding root with enough force to hurt a leg and a wing. She was shaking with pain, and worried about Aij. Where was he? Was he alive? The blast had picked remaining snow patches off the ground, leaves and branches, even stones. It was impossible to see anything in the swirling debris. The storks didn’t know yet that the shockwave had ripped their nest from the tree and carried it away in a dark cloud. Miraculously, the pine remained upright, its roots gripping the ground. Aij, who had survived and found Aiwa, spread one wing over her, convinced now of the imminent danger. Both felt the earth shake and the skies tremble in fear. They saw something moving in the south, near the tall towers. Inside those buildings, a monster rose that could be controlled by neither man nor God. Through a haze of dust and tears, Aiwa saw a bleeding wound stretching horizontally across Aij’s chest. With his red beak in front of it, it looked like a cross, the white and red pattern a symbol of the country afflicted with the catastrophe. The monster spread its wings and opened its maw, spewing poison and spreading deadly ash. Through the red and black clouds, horses could be seen with their riders, stars and angels that offended the sun and the moon, day and night, life and death, hope and despair.