XV. DURAK
Emi and Sophie moved to their room and decided to take a half-hour nap. Fleya had also been sweetly sleeping and snoring softly the entire day. Sophie suddenly jerked up from the couch in a nervous way, waking Emi.
— Damn, my throat’s so dry… How long did we sleep? — Sophie asked.
— Four hours, — Emi answered after checking the time.
— Must be almost dawn?
— It’s five to ten.
— Twenty-one o’clock? I seriously can’t think straight after these mountains anymore… Let’s go get dinner before the restaurant closes! We should call Mariam.
— We still have some stuff left from the supermarket, maybe we should stay in?
— Fine… okay.
They opened yogurts and cookies and started eating in silence; Mariam and Elvin’s moans could be heard through the wall. Sophie seemed to grow more and more nervous. Then they drifted back to their beds and now lay there aimlessly. Sophie’s head was splitting apart, whether from pain, thoughts, or maybe both at once.
— Do you really still love Mariam? — she asked, breaking the silence. — I mean… your feelings for her aren’t just friendly, right?
Emi instantly turned away and started fidgeting with her fingers.
— Why would you think that?
— Do you remember how you admitted it yourself when we were sitting in the restaurant?
— I remember… Sorry, I didn’t mean… you misunderstood everything, I love you, and she’s just my friend… I can’t forget things because we used to be closer and lived together, you know, — Emi sounded as if she were trying to defend herself.
— Please don’t lie to me. I understand everything perfectly well.
— What do you understand?
— That you found a replacement for your unfulfilled love in me. I don’t blame you for it. Just tell me “yes,” admit that it’s true, sober-minded this time. Let’s finally talk about our feelings. What even are we to each other? Don’t you think we put completely different meanings into this relationship? I’ve been thinking about it ever since that day, I just can’t forget those words. Emi, please…
— You mean since the first day of the trip?
— Yes.
— I did love her, yes… Maybe it’s true that at first I wanted to distract myself, but then I fell in love with you too, and it’s completely sincere.
Sophie listened to the moans coming from the neighboring room. Elvin was in a state of ecstatic bliss. He had already been inside Mariam for over an hour, and it seemed like just a little more, just a few more cyclic movements of lips and body, and he would merge into one being with her. But suddenly he noticed that Mariam had switched her attention: she stopped screaming, turned her head toward the wall, and listened intently to something, continuing to bounce on him mechanically, barely aware of herself.
— What happened? Everything okay? — Elvin asked.
— I can’t anymore, sorry. They’re arguing in there. Because of me, because Emi loves me.
Elvin listened too and then went to the bathroom.
That evening, nothing between Sophie and Emi was truly resolved.
— Let’s break up, if that’s really how you see it! — Sophie suggested.
— No, let’s stay together. I don’t want to break up, we just need to work things out! — Emi replied.
They kept painfully and exhaustingly sorting through their relationship for a long time.
— If you really don’t want this, then let’s break up… — this time Emi herself said it.
Sophie answered:
— Let’s stay together at least because of Fleya. She wouldn’t want to lose any of us, right? I love you. I love Fleya, and you love her too. All of this is nonsense — the important thing is that we’re together.
— Nonsense, — Emi repeated calmly, — the important thing is that we’re together.
They hugged, wished each other good night, and went to sleep.
Emi had a dream. It was spring or summer, very sunny and warm. She was in her room, which looked similar to the real one, but with a few changes: instead of dirty purple wallpaper there were neatly painted pastel-colored walls, the facade was made not of rotten wooden boards but of solid stone, and most interesting of all — by the window stood a stage exactly like the one in one of the nightclubs where “ANGELIC KISS” performed. In the rest of the room stood many people, all watching Emi with excitement and admiration. At first she took the microphone into her hands and began singing confidently, dancing and losing herself in the music. Then she stopped to make an announcement:
— We all gathered here to admire me, right? I’m very happy to have brought together such a crowd, and now I can assure you: yes, I am beautiful! I love myself endlessly. I love my soul and my body, and I want to show everyone the beauty I’m filled with — that is the meaning of our art. I hereby open the “Society of Free, Happy People.” People who adore themselves!
She finished her speech and saw burning delight in the eyes of the audience, heard loud applause. Emi was speaking in her native language. She spoke confidently, without doubting a single word she said. Only afterward did doubts begin creeping into her mind: “Can I really be like this? Mariam can be like this, maybe Sophie can too, but not me…” Her vision blurred. She rubbed her eyes and discovered blood pouring from them, and at eight in the morning she jolted awake in horror.
That day, the final day of their mountain voyage, passed slowly and lazily until evening as everyone waited for departure. They all wanted to leave and go their separate ways as soon as possible.
— So what should we do today? — Emi asked while leaving breakfast. — Do you maybe have any ideas?
— Unless we can somehow get the car sooner, — Mariam answered. — We’ve already done everything there is to do here, and after that hike I don’t want anything anymore.
Sophie had a chat with the guide open on her phone.
— Georgiy said the earliest we can leave is seven in the evening, — she informed them. — He has some business in the banquet hall before that.
— That’s really depressing. I already really, really want to get back to warmth.
— At least today isn’t as cold as the other days. Minus eight, I checked this morning.
— And how warm is it in the city?
— Hold on, let me see… Plus ten.
— Well, not exactly a resort, but compared to this it already sounds pretty good.
— Then maybe let’s take one last walk around the village? Oh, I just got a notification: “Rate the travel company…” We should give “Five-Pointed Star” five stars. With a minus sign, haha!
— Wait, — Mariam added, — we still haven’t made it back yet. Maybe right now he’ll drive us not to Tbilisi, but back to his beloved Kazbek again.
Dusk was gradually turning into night. Georgiy drove the car up to the guest house and politely invited everyone inside the cabin, which smelled of antifreeze and gasoline. Sophie sat in the front passenger seat to the right of the driver; Emi, Mariam, Elvin, and Fleya squeezed together in the back row.
“The Tiger,” as Georgiy himself called it, jerked away from the parking spot with a lively growl. Music started playing again, just like last time, and the foreign car sped onto the road. Darkness once more, poor visibility. Heavy snowfall began. Those sitting by the windows lifted their heads to watch the blizzard outside.
— So, tell me, how did you spend the rest of your time? — the guide asked. — Any headaches? Did you enjoy the trip overall?
— We ate, slept… — Sophie answered. — Tried to recover our strength, walked around the area sometimes. I had a slight headache, but I think everyone else was fine.
They had already driven some thirty or forty kilometers, but during that time the snowfall had intensified, approaching the state of a full storm whose howling winds swept everything away and wrapped the world in a firework explosion of snow blasting in every direction.
— That’s good. The important thing is that mountains, — Georgiy said with abrupt pauses and changes in intonation while jerking the wheel left and right, — harden a person. After this jour… ney, you’ll never be the same again. You’ll become… stro… nger, tougher, harder… to break.
The elements, harsh and merciless, grew even more violent, taking the tourists completely under their control. The car skidded and shook from side to side, tracing zigzags across the road. Snow piled beneath the wheels and compressed into denser and denser layers; Georgiy had to make sudden jerks, sharply accelerating to force the car through them, making the vehicle sway even more violently.
— Why are we shaking so badly? — Elvin asked anxiously.
— Don’t worry. Everything’s fine, we just skidded a little. That happens on the road all the time.
Georgiy had barely finished his reassuring words before steering the car straight into a solid snowbank the size of a one-story house.
A ringing silence followed. Chaos set in. Everyone except one person remained conscious, but nobody understood what had happened. Darkness… bodies piled onto one another… sudden stillness. Most of the impact had struck the front right side, where Sophie had been sitting. The window shattered into pieces, and the body of the car was covered in deep dents. The rear of the vehicle remained jutting out onto the highway, while a few desperate drivers foolish enough to travel through such a blizzard swerved around them.
— Fuck! — Georgiy screamed at the top of his lungs when he realized what had happened. He tried to steer the car back out, but couldn’t: the engine had died completely.
The impact had thrown Sophie across the cabin. Her head was pressed against the wall, one leg stretched toward the gearshift, while the other remained twisted where it had originally been. Sophie blacked out. Everyone else escaped with scrapes and, at worst, minor bruises.
— Sophie! — Mariam screamed as she came to her senses. — Sophieiie! Can you hear me? Answer me!
Mariam began shaking Sophie. Everyone else started shaking her too.
— Call an ambulance right now! — Emi shouted in panic.
Georgiy touched Sophie’s neck.
— She’s alive. Probably a broken leg. I’ll call now. The fucked-up thing is that nobody’s going to make it out here anytime soon! Half the car’s sticking into the road — we need a tow truck urgently before someone crashes into us!
Panic spread through the cabin. Everyone who was conscious started shouting:
— Call faster!
— Where the hell even are we?!
— Why did we drive out in weather like this?!
— What do you mean “sticking out”?!
— Yeah, — Georgiy said, shaking his head, — we’re still lucky so far. The worst thing would be if someone slams into us from behind right now. Then the whole cabin would be blown to pieces. Better pray!
During those terrible hours, everyone inside that car was pierced by a wild, primitive fear of death. Those sitting in the back instinctively clung to the front seats, though it could not save them. They flinched at every sound of passing cars and sighed with relief whenever the noise faded — until the next one came.
— Maybe we should at least turn the radio back on? — Georgiy suggested. — We’re stuck here for a long time anyway.
He fiddled with the receiver, but nothing worked anymore.
— My Tiger’s gone, — the guide said sadly.
Then he began loudly reciting every prayer he knew, which somehow made everything even more horrifying.
— If there’s a risk of collision, maybe we should get out and stand along the roadside? — Elvin asked.
— Won’t work, — Georgiy assured him. — See where the road ends? There’s a snowbank right there. We’re trapped. No point. We’d just freeze, and in a blizzard like this we might not even stay standing.
— Then what chance do we even have of surviving? — Elvin panicked.
— I’d say there’s about a ten percent chance per hour that we’ll die from getting hit from behind. Multiply that by however many hours it takes help to arrive. But I think two or three hours at most.
Nobody screamed anymore, nobody even spoke. Everyone slowly simmered in anticipation of something — either impact or rescue.
“It all felt like some kind of terrible dream,” Emi would later remember, “where horrifying things happen, but they seem so absurd and unreal that your mind simply refuses to process them.”
— Well then, since we’ve got ourselves an unscheduled stop, I suggest we play Durak! — Georgiy suddenly announced. — I just so happen to have a deck of cards in the glove compartment.
Of course, everyone was thinking: “What kind of nonsense is this? Durak? Seriously?” — but only to themselves, never out loud. Out of sheer hopelessness, they decided to play a round anyway.
— Six, king, queen — defend yourself, Elvin!
— Fooled you! — Georgiy shouted cheerfully, throwing down three kings and becoming the first to finish the game.
Suddenly terrible screams and moans came from the front of the car. Sophie had awakened and was screaming from the pain in her leg and from terror.
— Are we going to die?! — she kept repeating as if in agony. — Are we going to die?!
— Why would we? Of course not, — Emi tried to calm her. — Look, you’re alive, we’re all okay, the ambulance will be here soon.
— No, we’re going to die! I heard that another car is going to crash into us, — Sophie muttered while still half-asleep, slowly emerging from unconsciousness. — Oh God… have mercy! Forgive me! Forgive me!
Her whole life flashed before her eyes then, and she saw her parents calling out to her.
— Ambulance! — Georgiy finally shouted. — It’s here!
An ambulance pulled up to the roadside, and medics immediately climbed out.
— You’ll have to leave the cabin, — one of the orderlies told the guide. — It’s the only way we can get her out. The other side is blocked.
Georgiy stepped out onto the highway while the team examined Sophie. The doctor clipped a pulse monitor onto her shoulder and felt her twisted leg.
— Pulse is slightly elevated but within normal range. The girl’s condition is stable, but she’ll need to be transported to a hospital.
Sophie screamed and cried loudly, and then they loaded her onto a stretcher and carried her into the ambulance.
It would take another hour before the others were finally rescued. And at last, the tow truck arrived…
— Fleya! Fleya, wake up! — Emi shouted. — Look out the window. That’s our house! We’re getting out!
Fleya opened her eyes and saw, in the darkness of the night, the silhouette of the house on Mtatsminda with its dark windows faintly illuminated by a yellow streetlamp. She brightened and smiled.
— Once again, I deeply apologize, — Georgiy said before driving off into the distance.
Emi and Fleya found themselves outside by the entrance to the house.
— Maybe we should sit outside for a little while? It feels so nice and fresh here…
They sat down on the swing and gently began rocking back and forth with their feet.
— Where is everyone? — Fleya asked. — Are we here alone now? Where’s Sophie?
— Sophie’s in the hospital. She’s okay, she’s alive. Mariam and Elvin already left. How can someone sleep that deeply, especially while moving? Do you remember anything?
— I remember us crashing into that mass of snow… I remember Sophie screaming. No… I don’t remember anything else.
— That’s probably for the best. Better that you don’t remember… It was absolute horror. Let’s not talk about it anymore. I don’t want to remember it. You know, Fleya, now I feel like I’ve become much closer to death. During this trip I played with it twice.
— But we’re here again, and we’re okay!
— Yeah… now it’s just the two of us left, — Emi said, looking into Fleya’s eyes. She touched her warm shoulder and stroked her wings. — You’re so gentle… even your name sounds gentle, Fleya…
Emi hugged her tightly and kissed her on the cheek and neck. Then they went upstairs to their room and lay down together.
— I’m scared, — Emi admitted quietly. — Please warm me up.
Fleya turned toward her and embraced her.
Not everyone that night was destined to end up in a warm bed at home, feeling the warmth of a loved person — or creature. Sophie fell asleep during the ride in the uncomfortable medical transport van. When, upon arrival, they carried her inside on a stretcher, she felt the gusts of icy wind and snowflakes falling against her face. She opened her eyes and realized she was once again on the same street where Georgiy’s car had turned around while bringing them home from the trip.
“I’m here again…” she looked around. “I remember this place, these houses. Damn it, what am I doing back in Stepantsminda? I’m here alone! Everyone already left long ago!”
Her body woke gradually: first awareness returned, then sharp pain, and only afterward did she remember what had happened.
Then came the cold white light of the clinic, the sharp smell of antiseptic, doctors’ faces hidden behind blue masks, the treatment room, a blood test, a painfully burning injection of painkillers into her leg, an uncomfortable hospital bed, and only one thought repeating over and over again:
“I’m scared.”
The next morning Emi and Fleya woke up late in a room flooded with sunlight.
“I need to call Sophie,” Emi thought as soon as she woke up.
She picked up her phone and dialed Sophie’s number.
— Hi, Sophie. Where are you? How are you doing?
— You won’t believe it — I’m back where we all left from! — Sophie answered with a faint laugh. — My hospital window overlooks the same street where our guest house was.
— They brought you back to Stepantsminda? How are you feeling?
— Yeah… I’m okay. My leg hurts less now, but I still can’t move. They’re preparing me for surgery. They say they’ll transport me to the city tonight and operate tomorrow morning. I’m terrified — not even of the surgery itself, but of that cursed road, that place… What if it happens again?
— Don’t worry, everything will be fine. That crash happened because of the weather. Today the weather will be good — they’re not even predicting wind, let alone snow. I remember checking the forecast earlier. And if the weather were bad, they wouldn’t drive you at all. Ambulance workers aren’t insane like that Georgiy.
— Thank you, Emi.
— We’ll definitely come visit you.
— When?
— As soon as you’re able to see visitors. And call us after the surgery — promise.
On the third day after the operation, the doctor finally allowed visitors to see Sophie. She lay in a regular hospital room recovering. She had chills and aching bones, carefully trying to raise herself and make her first attempts to sit up, and at night she cried because of the thoughts tormenting her.
After hearing she was allowed visitors, Emi said to Fleya:
— Let’s go get Mariam and Elvin and all visit the clinic together?
— Okay… I miss Sophie so much, honestly. I’ve been feeling so sad lately.
Together they entered the room. It was a small bright ward on a high floor with a large window. Three beds stood inside, though two of them were empty. Sophie lay on the third one, closest to the window.
She couldn’t jump up and hug her friends even though she desperately wanted to. Her eyes seemed to light up, and an overjoyed smile appeared on her face. It felt as though, for the first time since the injury, she experienced something pleasant.
This time the friends came to her instead. Fleya hugged her, Emi kissed her hand, and Mariam stroked her hair, forehead, and cheeks.
— Sophie, we’re so happy to see you! — Mariam said.
— I’m so happy too, — Sophie answered. — So tell me, what’s new with you all these past few days? How’s the band doing?
— Great! We hit our first milestone on social media — a thousand followers — and things in real life are going great too. We’re performing at a club on Friday, and we even got pushed into a real concert at the beginning of February. Hopefully by then you’ll at least be able to roll onto the stage with us in a wheelchair!
Sophie looked from Mariam to the others standing beside her and smiled.
— What about you, Emi? — she asked.
— Nothing especially interesting with me. I went back to university after break. The professor who used to supervise me left, and now we have a new one. Everyone calls him “the Gnome” for some reason. He’s kind of like the previous professor too — short, old, but somehow lacking charisma or something… Our new module is about brutalism, and our project is going to be designing a building in that style.
— That sounds wonderful!
Sophie listened to everything they said — no matter what the subject was — with such interest and curiosity, like a child being read a fairy tale.
They left Sophie with a huge bag full of fruit and sweets, and once again she remained alone.