Caviar
What do you think of when you think of caviar? Granted, not a subject most people meditate upon but still. If I had to guess, I’d say to the average westerner caviar means two things: wealth and privilege. For me the meaning behind the wobbly little fish eggs is rather different. My first thought? Chornobyl. Yes, really. In my mind palace, this delicacy is filed away in the same box as the worst nuclear disaster in history. But why? If you aren’t Eastern European, allow me to explain.
Everyone is vaguely aware of the Chornobyl disaster, whether through books, video games or that HBO series we all watched in summer 2019. Then there are the dark tourists (or as I call them ahuyevshiye). Twice in my life I’ve been invited to visit Chornobyl (“It’s in Ukraine, I thought you’d like it”) by westerners who unwittingly earned themselves a lecture on nuclear safety. “Have you suffered a recent blow to the head?” I’d enquire charitably, as my eyes completed a rotation, then narrowed in judgement. “No? What about drugs?”. My idea of a holiday involves a cocktail in each hand, but one person’s gin sour is another’s Geiger counter. In the words of my favourite philosopher Olivia Rodrigo: fuck it, it’s fine.
I was born into a radioactive cloud soon after Chornobyl made history. The Muscovites shielded their capital by using cloud seeding. Of course, they did. Fuck the environment. The fallout blanketed northern Ukraine and Belarus instead, settling in the soil, water, and air. My grandfather and my great-grandmother died not long after. Cancer. I spent the first decade of my life hearing about a mysterious, invisible enemy called radiation. It was officially and unofficially responsible for every misfortune that befell us, from animals dying (true) to my night terrors (false). In a child’s imagination, radiation took on the amorphous shape of a curse. While I blamed supernatural higher powers, my mother blamed the communist ones. Special ire was reserved for Gorbachev. When the man dubbed ‘the peacemaker’ by westerners died in summer 2022, the mood across Eastern Europe was jubilant. “I would bury him in ten graves and then spit on each one” offered one celebrant. I cackled and clicked ‘share’. Oddly, western followers did not share in my soju-laced mirth. “Chornobyl was a tragic accident, and anyway, you shouldn’t laugh at someone’s death!” chided one. “He poisoned me ”I countered flatly, then retreated to Ukrainian Twitter for more schadenfreude. The clock was now ticking for Putin’s death. Ten graves would not be enough.
In my early years I had a lot of nosebleeds. The slightest bump was enough to unleash a scarlet torrent, which to a child seemed to run forever and was enough to convince me that one day I would simply bleed to death. Aged seven, I learned about blood transfusions from a telenovela and felt elated, until the television declared an AIDS epidemic and people became too afraid to donate. Had I known back then how rare my type is, I might have died of a heart attack. Still, the telenovela struck a chord. Ten years later I lined up outside an NHS blood mobile, later emerging with a sticker, a biscuit and a lightness brought on by altruism or blood loss. For my seven year old self, this would have been impossible. With blood transfusions out of the question, new ways had to be found to stem the bleeding. Enter caviar.
The catalogue of folk remedies and magic cures expanded faster than the universe itself in post-Chornobyl Eastern Europe. Of course, it’s never really been post-Chornobyl as the radiation is still sitting pretty, albeit under a concrete sarcophagus. Holy water. Wild herbs. A visit to someone’s grandma in a village that took an age to get to without a car. And the fanciest of all: caviar. The proposition of feeding fish eggs to a four-year-old is a wildly ambitious one, but when your foremothers have survived war and famine, they have an arsenal of guilt the Vatican would envy. Why caviar? Iodine. It shielded my thyroid from the ever-present danger (or so I was told). The memory of being targeted with a spoonful of squidgy, salty red bubbles while squirming indignantly in my chair is kinder than the one of red rivulets running down my chin. Still, the two remain inextricably linked in my mind. Blood and fish eggs don’t taste so different, both salty and slippery at the back of your throat.
I last had caviar in February, when I was lured to a fancy party with promises of real champagne and seeing the inside of a hotel I could not afford. “Oooooh! I’ll come!” I chirped, turning up later with muddy boots and a healthy disregard for the dress code. They let me in anyway. Turning away invited guests is an awkward affair, and if there’s one thing fancy people hate, it’s social discomfort. Now, where’s the champagne? I bounced around from stranger to stranger, joining conversations no-one invited me to. One, two, three glasses. Hunger struck me like a lightning bolt. I cursed myself for eating my snacks early. My eyes darted around, seeking anything that looked edible and catching sight of the hors d’oeuvres trays. Fish eggs or snails? I chose the one I knew I could keep down. Earlier that day, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost connection to its backup power line. My grandma’s voice resonated in my head: “Eat! Against the radiation!”
No-one at the party seemed aware of what happened in Zaporizhzhia, but the fourth glass of champagne inspired me to educate them. “So you see, we could have another Chornobyl at any moment” I stressed between sips, adding “I grew up with radiation” for extra-extra emphasis. Suddenly, my hostages appeared impressed. I had successfully deployed my God-given talent: always being the first to bring up death. “So, what are your superpowers?” quipped one hostage. Huh? “From the radiation” he clarified. My impromptu lecture hadn’t had the intended fear-of-God effect after all. I sighed. It’s extremely difficult to put the fear of God into people who have never been under direct attack or even moderate repression. It might be a task for God himself. When dictatorships and wars are abstract concepts, blood does not run cold. And caviar is just for parties.