People in line to identify their loved ones let each other go first

Standing in line to enter are people with pale, tear-stained faces. They have lost all hope, but still have a glimmer of faith in a miracle — perhaps their loved ones will not be in there. Ravaged dolls leave the building, walking on cottony legs, and their empty eyes have aged by decades. No miracle took place, and now the way before them leads to a morgue, the number of which has already been named.

Never in my life have I stood in line at such a terrible place. The Center for Psychological Rehabilitation, located at No. 2 Melnikov Street, has no less than three hundred people gathered there, searching for those whose names were not on the lists of the lucky – those who are now in hospital wards or even intensive care. On the door there is a sign, which reads “Prosecutor's office”, while below, written by hand: “photographs of dead individuals who have not yet been identified.” Entrance is by passport, after having already passed through two cordons of riot police. Those asking for ID require information about the missing person — name, surname, patronymic, place of birth, age, and physical description, including clothing.

I am ashamed to stand in this line, because I have no one who has died, but the living truth requires that I speak of those who will not live to see their loved ones come home from the musical ‘Nord-Ost’. I look into these detached faces and soon begin to feel a psychological effect that is strange, and very frightening. The emotions that people do not show on the surface are held deep inside, and for some reason they are transmitted to me. My head begins to ache sharply, a small shiver shakes me, and I begin to worry that I will now start to weep.

“I called all the hospitals," whispers a man in military uniform standing in front of me. “I was on the phone all night, you know, the receiver got so hot that in the morning my ear was completely numb… But my daughter was nowhere. What could I do? Early in the morning I went to Mortuary number 2 and talked them into letting me in. They showed me right away all these corpses, what a horror, it was awful to look it. The medics showed me one body after another, and I had but a single thought in my head: it’s her, it’s her… But it wasn’t, thank God. I started to hope, but the medics said that there are a lot of morgues and they said I should come here… What’ll I do if I find her photograph… I can’t even think about it.”

“There are a lot of unidentified bodies at Morgue Number 6." A very elderly woman, perhaps a grandmother, enters into the conversation. “I went there, but they aren’t letting people in, and so I couldn’t.”

“Today three people in intensive care said their names,” another old woman says timidly. “Maybe they are ours?”

People with but one question immediately surround her: in which hospital was it that these people came to their senses?

Near the entrance are several tables with psychologists. I take my place in line. Lord, why such a commonplace crowd, like used to line up twenty years ago in the grocery stores? Then I walk over to the bulletin boards where there are photographs of people being sought by their families: Margarita Yurievna Sokolova — a pretty, young, blonde woman, 32 years of age. Grigory Markovich Burban — a pleasant and serious-looking man in glasses. Then some psychologists jump up and walk over to me.

“Are you looking for somebody? Do you need any information or assistance?”

“I’d like to see a list of the dead.”

“This isn’t available right now.”

It takes two hours of endless standing in that sad line. People are on their last legs, and still have not seen that for which there are here — a thick, gray folder, in which both sides of the pages have a large photograph of a deceased hostage, followed by a brief caption at the bottom: male / female, approximate age, clothing description, distinguishing features, and the morgue where the body is located. Relatives of the victims are talking with each other, describing who has been where, and what they have been doing to find their loved ones.

A small room has been adapted for use as a first aid station. Doctors are at work, equipped with gear on up to resuscitation equipment, almost, and yelling out loud at the people — those who have seen the album of sorrow — and bringing them around with injections.

Now it is my turn. The room is lit only by daylight streaming from the large window, but it, alas, is sufficient to identify the corpse in the photo. Entering the room at the same time with each person is a psychologist and a detective. If you are looking for a very close relative — a child or a spouse — they do not leave you until the very end. If a person says they are looking for a more distant relative, they move to the side. They interrogate me, and then leave.

Before me a still-young investigator opens the album. He is very nervous. Since this morning he has probably seen enough grief to last a lifetime.

“Which is yours?”

I describe the person — a man for whom I was asked to look by his relatives, who are now standing near Hospital number 13, carrying a sign that reads: “Help find this man”. They are simply too afraid to come here, and have no strength left.

Slowly, as if in slow motion, he turns the pages before my eyes. People are naked to the waist, with sunken eyes and distorted faces. For some reason many of them have their mouths half-opened, apparently the result of suffocation. Their hair is slicked back, and in the background is the rail of a gurney. They are young, and old, and thin, and fat, and for some reason they all look like each other. Thank God there are no children. There is no picture of the man whose picture his relatives showed me.

“Look closely,” says the investigator. “Death dramatically changes a person.”

“No,” I shake my head. “Still not here.”

“Any chance the man you’re looking for looks Chechen?” the investigator asks thoughtfully.

“Actually, his hair is black,” I say.

“There is another morgue, and I’m telling you this unofficially. It’s under FSB jurisdiction, and there, as I know, they brought those who look like militants.”

Despite the fact that the person I was looking is in now way related to me, and I have never in my life seen him, I feel a great relief that I could not find his photograph in that gray folder. Others are not so lucky. More often than not, people are unable to leave that room on their own and must be led out, leaning on an arm, and brought to their senses with shots.

I see the same soldier who was standing in front of me in line for two hours, and I marvel at how one single second can break the life of a man. He cannot cry. He just looks around helplessly, and is gasping for breath. He is immediately gathered up and taken away. I did not ask him anything — everything is perfectly clear.

“Nicky, Nicky… He’s in Morgue number nine!” A young woman in a frozen voice repeats this. For some reason she is beating her fists on the shoulders of man her age.

“Your loved one?” I ask.

They do not hear me.

“Forgive me, my son, forgive me!” A man in an old woolen coat is crying out loud, and sliding down the wall he leans against.

He is picked up by the psychologists, but for some reason he addresses me. “That night I refused to buy him that CD player he asked me for,” he says through his tears. He gives me a very confused look.

The lobby is getting crowded as more and more people show up, but more chairs are brought in from somewhere. Somebody tries to cut in line.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” asks a very pale man in a terribly calm voice. “I'll let you go ahead of me.”

In ‘Moskovsky Komsomolets’, #43, October 29th, 2002
http://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/2002/10/29/202428-seraya-papka-smerti.html

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