I spend a lot of the year on roads that are mostly a suggestion, and one winter on a strip cut into the side of a mountain. At some point it seemed reasonable to turn them into the kind of game I played on a borrowed 386 in a cold room: four colours of horizon and a car that was really just three rectangles.Elara S. Novikova
МАРШРУТ 01НИВАBreaking her inOut of Bishkek before the light goes. A red Niva I had owned for nine days, a road that is mostly a suggestion, and every intersection wider than it needs to be.LASTneverTOPnothing
МАРШРУТ 02АННУШКАTouch and goA biplane older than the airfield, a shelf cut into a mountain with room for exactly one runway, and weather that arrives before you do. You climb the whole way or you do not arrive.LASTneverTOPnothing
МАРШРУТ 03ВЫПИСКАOne night in Ward 3The ward where the novel begins. Moldova, October 1998: find the passages, keep out of the corridors when they are not empty, and be on the first bus.LASTneverTOPnothing
МАРШРУТ 04ШИШИГАThe long pullOver the Pamir on an army truck older than I am. Four thousand metres, gravel, meltwater across the track, and livestock with absolute right of way.LASTneverTOPnothingFour of them now, all places I have actually been. Out of Bishkek in the red Niva, over the Pamir in an army truck older than I am, up the winter Caucasus in a borrowed An-2 — and one night in a Moldovan ward that is still standing. Two you drive, one you fly, one you have to walk out of. Everything else is weather.Elara S. Novikova
The book games
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