Into the Forbidden Zone by William T. Vollmann Page B

sleeves; beneath this was an optional sweater of polyester fleece, for the tsunami zone had been chilly; then came my fifteen-year-old long-sleeved shirt (just broken in; a shame to lose it, but anyhow I had worn it before for chemical experiments), and in the breast pocket of this lived my dosimeter; beneath this shirt I wore another lighter one. The idea was to pull on my yellow kitchen gloves at the last moment, taping them around the cuffs with masking tape; then came my old blue jeans and underpants, my grubby socks still soggy with tsunami scum, my late father’s old shoes, disposable shoe covers at the ready—and, of course, my respirator, guaranteed to filter out 99.97 percent of all particulate matter, although, since I had bought it at an American hardware store, the label advised me that misuse might cause injury or death.
    I had brought a second set of all the exotic items for the interpreter (who in due course would inherit the dosimeter). Needless to say, the poncho, gloves, masking tape, and shoe covers had not graced my person so far on this adventure; all the other clothes I had been wearing unstintingly, day after day, since I had to suppose that everything I did not store in Tokyo might become contaminated, so why throw away more than I had to? Although I succeeded in showering every day except in Oshima, I doubt that I made a very professional show. The notebook I carried, a scarlet-spined yellow affair emblazoned with a pink-tutued ballerina who curtseyed from beneath a cloud of multicolored butterflies, might have been what tipped the scales, causing policemen to snicker softly the instant my back was turned. Never mind; even in former years, when I had been younger and slimmer and needed to dress up for interviews in my one and only business suit, my best achievement was a look of mild surprise on the interpreter’s face, accompanied by this encomium: “You look almost handsome!”
    On last night’s drive to Miyako Oji we had brought with us our yellow kitchen gloves, respirators, et cetera, but the dosimeter persuaded us not to use them. Moreover, we both would have felt ashamed to protect ourselves so ostentatiously without doing likewise for the driver. In my American imaginings of this final visit to the hot zone I had envisioned a walk of some sort, probably on my own; any taxi driver would have stayed inside the vehicle, with the windows cranked up against beta particles. Just in case someone accompanied me, I brought double everything.
    Now of course this does not excuse me from having forgotten the safety of any hypothetical third party; never mind the fact that a sane person might well decline to drive anywhere that such accoutrements were advisable; in short, last-minute logic (and decency) prohibited the interpreter and me from setting forth in any such dress, although we did bring them with us just in case.
    And so we each wore a medium-quality surgical mask, purchased at a nursing supply store in San Francisco; we offered our new driver, whom I will introduce in a moment, a fresh mask of his own, but he was satisfied with the one he had. I wore my hat, raincoat (unzipped as long as we were in the car), heavy shirt, light shirt, underwear, jeans, socks, and shoes. Upon our return to Koriyama the yellow gloves would go on, the shoes would get wiped down with a damp cloth before permanent removal to a plastic bag, and then pretty much the rest of that day’s clothing, as well as the gloves, also got disposed of in a suitable place—contaminated presents for a contaminated town. The fancy respirators, the backpacks, and all the other usable items we gave away to an evacuee at Big Palette that night, before proceeding to the gymnasium for our radiation screening.
    As it turned out, this day’s accrued dose would be no higher than the previous two Koriyama days: 0.4 millirems in twenty-four hours. 35 I flatter myself that prudence played a part in this result; I paid attention to wind