‘Indeed! And stew, in fact,’ agreed Gor. ‘Georgian cuisine is most satisfying!’ He bit into the sandwich, the coriander seeds on the crust adding a sweet lemony aroma to the sourness of the dark rye. He was suddenly ravenous, and chewed quickly.
‘I don’t know about that, to be honest. I don’t eat out much. Home cooking does for us. We like cutlets and stewed cabbage – you can’t go wrong with that.’
‘Oh yes, nothing wrong with that. Cutlets are a fine food. I didn’t mean to—’ Gor took another bite of the sandwich and started to chew. It was at this point that he noticed something odd, and it slowed his mastication. He felt something that was neither cheese, nor parsley, nor bread. Something with a strange texture – a crunch, slightly papery, slightly hairy, and slightly mushy, all at the same time. His jaw stopped moving and his teeth rested together, the food un-swallowed. Some sense was preventing his tongue from pushing the bolus to the back of his throat for the next stage. He gagged, and looked down at the sandwich.
‘Albina here likes ukha fish soup,’ carried on Sveta.
‘I like the heads,’ the girl agreed.
Gor nudged the two leaves of rye bread apart to view the filling more closely.
‘Oh yes, the fish heads, you do, don’t you?’
‘The eyes and brains are the tastiest bits,’ smiled Albina.
He squinted, and frowned. There, squashed between the cheese and the parsley, lay the partial remains of a huge, hairy brown moth. Its wings were spread wide, and covered most of the area of the bread. Only half its mottled, brown body remained.
‘They are full of vitamins, aren’t they?’ laughed Sveta, catching Gor’s eye as he looked up, his face pale, his twisted mouth still full of chewed up cheese-moth-parsley. Albina was watching him closely, her face twitching.
‘Is something wrong?’ Sveta’s face still curved with a smile, but her brow was creased with concern. Gor’s great eyes watered as they swiftly searched the room for any opportunity to get rid of the unwelcome food. There was none: no napkins, no plant pots. And still the women stared. There was nothing else for it. He manoeuvred his tongue underneath the mothy mouthful and swallowed, with steely determination.
‘No,’ he squeaked when he was sure it was not coming back up, and he cleared his throat before taking a thankful gulp of the hot, sweet tea, ‘Well, yes, actually. I must go.’ He shuddered at the thought of the moth flushing into his stomach, struggled out of the chair and hurried from the room, placing the unwanted tray back in the darkened kitchen on his way out.
‘Oh no, tell us what is wrong, please!’ implored Sveta, a note of genuine concern in her voice.
Gor sat on the bench to turf off the navy slippers and shove on his own comfortable brown boots.
‘I … well, I don’t know Sveta, maybe it’s all nonsense, but things keep … I don’t know, it’s just so strange … I must admit, I’m a little bit frightened.’ He looked up into her face.
‘But why?’ Her hand was on his shoulder.
‘There was a huge moth in my sandwich just now.’
‘A moth? Oh … dear!’ cried Sveta. ‘But that’s nothing to be scared of, Gor—’
‘It’s not the first odd thing, I assure you! There was the rabbit—’
‘Oh yes, the rabbit was dreadful!’
‘What rabbit?’ cried Albina.
‘And phone calls … at all hours of the day and night. Endless, silent phone calls! Knocks at the door too, when there’s nobody there. And then this morning, an egg disappeared from the pan, as it was boiling—’
‘Disappeared? Well, that’s magic! That’s … supernatural!’
‘Yes! No! And that’s not all. You won’t believe me but … there was a face at the window – a face!’
‘But you’re on the fourth floor!’ cried Sveta.
‘Exactly!’
‘Creepy!’ chimed Albina.
‘Yes,’ agreed Gor. ‘I find it quite … quite creepy, as you say.’ He frowned.
‘Who was it?’
‘No one,’ said Gor at last, the words pushed out through gritted teeth. ‘There was no one there. I looked … there was just thin air.’
‘We should look at the sandwich, Mama,’ directed Albina, ‘I think we should … be sure.’ The girl trotted into the kitchen and returned moments later with the dishevelled plate held out in front of her at arm’s length. The three looked down on the remains of the meal.
‘But it was there. I saw it!’ Gor’s long, thin index finger prodded into the bread, cheese and parsley, spreading out the food, probing for the winged intruder. There was nothing there.
‘It was there!’ His voice wavered as he looked into Sveta’s reassuring blue eyes. ‘What is happening to me? Do you think … I’m sick?’
She pursed her lips. ‘How long has this been going on?’
‘Two weeks, approximately. Since around the time we met, in fact.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Ooh Mama, what can that mean?’
‘Shush, Albina. I think I can help you, Gor. I have a friend, well – an acquaintance. She may be able to assist in … resolving all this.’
‘You have?’ Gor asked, surprised and relieved. ‘Is she a doctor, perhaps?’
‘No,’ said Sveta, ‘much more useful. She is a psychic.’
‘Ah,’ said Gor quietly, and his eyes dropped to the floor.
‘Fu kyu!’ screeched Kopek from his perch in the kitchen.
The yellow ball of the sun hung like an egg yolk in the milky sky, spreading no warmth, exuding no glow – simply suspended. Anatoly Borisovich, or Tolya for short, swallowed a rich blob of saliva. Egg in milk, like his baba made on special mornings long ago, when he had been small and blond, able to charm the crows from the trees, the snails from the buckets. When he had been young. He whisked his thoughts, scrambling the sun-egg, hankering after – something edible, something nurturing, something good. He realised, with a grunt, that he was very hungry.
How many pairs of eyes along his corridor were resting on that sun, he wondered, how many of his fellow patients – is that what they were? – were still breathing, waiting for pancakes and milk, porridge and death. He knew there were other patients. He heard them sometimes. He hadn’t been out of his room, couldn’t remember how he’d got there or what lay beyond the
