Kiev, late summer 2005
The smell of unburnt petrol fumes filled the grimy-white BMW. In the back seat, feeling queasy, Zhenya was on the verge of sharing the observation that she could hardly have guessed, when she’d phoned for a cab that morning, that they were willing to throw in a fairground ride as well.
“Mind if I smoke?” said the driver as they juddered over some tramlines. He reached confidently for a carton of cigarettes in the front pocket of his checkered shirt, anticipating no objection.
“Mind if I smoke?” said the driver as they juddered over some tramlines. He reached confidently for a carton of cigarettes in the front pocket of his checkered shirt, anticipating no objection.
“But the car,” spluttered Zhenya, genuinely afraid, “won’t it explode?”
In the rear-view mirror, she saw the driver pull a down-in-the-mouth expression of disappointed resignation, and he hunched his shoulders as if to say “suit yourself”. Since then, he’d been zipping in and out of the lanes of heavy traffic on the long, straight road to Borispil, swerving ever more wildly, ever more recklessly from side to side, coming up short behind a convoy of slow-moving Kamaz trucks, or belting down the wrong side of the road, slipping back into lane just ahead of an oncoming school bus, so that the young woman's hangover, which she'd acquired during an evening spent on a stool at the bar of the Ukraine Hotel, was rocking about in her head like a bag of stones. Then, just before the airport, without saying a word, he'd pulled in to a siding next to a row of silver poplars and Zhenya had tensed up, ready for the worst. But the hollow-faced driver just hopped out of the car and removed the magnetic taxi light from the car roof, got back in and restarted the engine.
