5.

25 June, 2:30 PM, Czernograd International Airport

The sky over Czernograd was the colour of a dirty linen tablecloth when Jake finally made his way outside the airport terminal building. Here and there, where the clouds were at their thinnest, a few streaks of silvery glow indicated that maybe the sun shone somewhere out there after all, even over this God-forsaken never-never land. But Jake doubted it.

He stood outside the entrance, his bag slung over the left shoulder, the wheeled Samsonite, inelegantly stuffed back with all its contents bar the most important piece, in one hand and the official receipt for his grandfather’s ashes in another. He was blocking traffic, but he didn’t care. He was pissed off. At the Ruthenian and Galician Customs Service, at the RiG embassy back home, at his family for sending him on this fool’s errand, at his grandfather for not being there most of his life and then suddenly dying and leaving them with an inheritance –with a stupid catch. But mostly he was pissed off at himself. Just how stupid and naive was he, despite the embassy’s reassurances to the contrary, to believe that he would be able to waltz into another country with a container full of unidentified powder and no one would ask any questions? Now if you put it like that the answer was pretty unequivocal.

Instead of a quick trip in and out of the country, he was now facing a prospect of days – or maybe even weeks – of waiting, of uncertainty, of fruitless phone calls to try to speed up the process, of non-committal responses from the American embassy. He would have to call home as soon as he got to his hotel, let them know what mess this has all degenerated into, then try to put his life in the States on hold while-

“Excuse me!”

Somebody was tagging at his sleeve.

A young man, an inch or two shorter than Jake, with a darkish complexion and a mass of curly jet-black hair, was trying to attract his attention.

“You want taxi?”

His accent was as thick as his features were sharp; a distinctive brow, bird-like eyes, aquiline nose and fleshy lips balancing a pencil-thin mustache on top. He was dressed in an old brown leather jacket, white shirt with small black polka dots and a worn-out pair of jeans. A mixed aroma of cigarette smoke and an unidentified aftershave hung around him like a distinct signature. His index finger, adorned with a silver ring, was hooked inside Jake sleeve. And he wanted Jake’s business.

“Me taxi.”

You taxi, though Jake. I guess I can’t walk from here.

“Hotel Casino?” Jake asked.

“Yes, yes,” the taxi driver tagged on Jake’s sleeve again to express his enthusiasm for the venture.

“How much?”

“Hundred tallar.” Unblinking.

“Fifty,” said Jake, remembering something from the “Lonely Planet” guide about haggling being the favourite national sport, just after soccer, but before ice hockey.

“Ninety.”

“Sixty.”

“Eighty.”

“Seventy.”

“Seventy five.”

It was a deal. Jake had a vague suspicion that he was still getting ripped off, but after the run in with the local Customs even this seemed like a small victory.

The taxi driver let go of Jake’s hand and gestured to follow him. “Michal,” he said, pointing a thumb at himself and beaming a grand smile.

“Jake,” said Jake. “Nice to meet you... Michal.”

“Jake, Jake,” repeated Michal the taxi driver. His broken, hard English made Jake feel at home. Like catching a cab from JFK.

Michal’s taxi was parked about a hundred metres up the road from the terminal entrance. The old Mercedes had plenty of character, its body scarred by dents and scratches and rust poking through the paint. The car was painted yellow, Jake thought, to make it look like a New York taxi that Michal probably have seen in movies. More nostalgia. Other cabs, parked in front and behind Michal’s, were a motley crew of eras, marks and colours, their drivers smoking, exchanging gossip and reading sports pages. There did not seem to be a uniform industry code in Ruthenia and Galicia.

Michal put Jake’s luggage in the boot, which closed only with the third slam, and was now standing at the left rear passenger door. He was about to open it for Jake when suddenly his chatter died mid-sentence and his eyes widened. In the same fraction of a second Jake woke up to a noise coming from behind him; a roaring car engine, closing in fast.

He was half-way through a turn when he felt his feet leave the ground and then he was falling into a gap between the back of the Mercedes and the car behind, propelled by Michal uncoiling like a jack in a box. He saw a flash of a leather coat and sniffed the noseful of the tobacco and aftershave aroma before his body connected with the asphalt and a fraction of a second later Michal’s body connected with his. Excruciating pain shot through his right arm and the right side of the body which took the brunt of the impact.

Michal was off him in an instant, as fast back inside the box as he was out of it. When Jake rolled onto his back with a long grunt, the taxi driver was already standing in the middle of the road, waving his fist in the direction of the disappearing engine wail, screaming his lungs out with what Jake thought must be a pretty impressive stream of local expletives.

A few minutes later, however many it took for Jake to catch his breath and massage away the worst of the pain while sitting on the curb while Michal and fellow taxi drivers downloaded together, arms waving, voices raised, heads shaking, spittle hitting the tarmac, they were on their way to Hotel Casino. The closer to the city centre the traffic was becoming heavier and the journey slower, local scenery changing and becoming denser, Jake’s first real look at the country but he wasn’t paying attention.

He was sprawled on the back seat, his veins pounding and his right side throbbing with a dull pain. Michal was more agitated. He kept up his machine gun delivery, occasionally turning to Jake to underline a specific point. His English wasn’t just broken, it was repeatedly assaulted with an iron bar and pulverised into a pulp. The way Jake might have been had he continued to stand on the path of the speeding car. Had not Michal crash-tackled him out of the way. Please keep your eyes on the road, Jake thought, it would be too ironic to die now.

He couldn’t understand much of what Michal was saying. In his anger and excitement he was lapsing into his native Ruthenian, sprinkling it with an occasional familiar word: “Volvo” - though it sounded more like “vulva”, but Jake decided that “Volvo” made more sense - “blue”, “police” and “motherfucker”. Jake was feeling proud of the American linguistic imperialism.

To distract himself from the pain he started to engage in the conversation. Somehow, despite frequent interruptions, he managed to tell Michal the story so far: the United States, the grandfather, the will and the last wish, the ashes, the Customs service. He wasn’t quite sure how much of it all Michal understood, but he was pretty sure that his driver saviour got the gist of it – that Jake’s little overseas trip to the land of the ancestors hasn’t so far gone according to the plan.

“Sister,” Michal interrupted several times during the story.

It sounded like a “cistern”.

“Sister helps.”

Photo by Peter Kasprzyk on Unsplash