Balázs Pataki - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Northern Passage

The girls notice Nooria’s embarrassment with giggles. Larissa is the only one who remains quiet and studies Nooria’s face with curiosity. Without any excuse for not doing as asked, Nooria takes off her robe. With a female instinct, she knows that the four twenty-somethings not only study her body with eager eyes but also compare it to theirs, and the envy she sees on Nastya’s face doesn’t comfort her at all. Quickly, she steps into the pool and hides her nakedness under the water sitting next to Larissa. The pool is small and the closeness to another naked female body makes her embarrassment grow even further, although the blonde girl avoids touching her.

For a few minutes, the girls are silent. Nooria studies her faces: they are not the gorgeous female predators of the Shooter variety but still pretty, each in her own way of being a girl from the neighborhood. Black haired Irina appears the smartest of them until she sniffs on her nose in a disgusting manner, telling of her being pretty but lacking sophistication. Nastya has something written on her face that makes Nooria feel uneasy, despite the girl smiling at her. Larissa avoids any eye contact with her and only speaks up when Lili asks her a direct question.

“Didn’t you learn English, Larissa? Margarita doesn’t speak Russian. You’ll have to entertain her.”

“Is that so?” Larissa replies. Her voice sounds tired.

“Would you remove your hair from your face, please?” Lili asks Nooria.

Reluctantly, Nooria removes the strand of hair covering her scar. She feels worse as if she had to stand up in the middle, turn around and present herself to the critical female eyes once more. The girls say nothing, only Nastya’s fading smile tells of repugnance.

“Baystrukhi,” Larissa finally says and continues in English. “The man doing this to a girl should have his balls cut off and be killed!”

“Vsyo,” Nastya says and stays, revealing an overweight body with breasts big like melons. Forgetting about any decency, Nooria stares at her milky white skin.

“Poka, kofe s molkam,” Nastya tells Nooria with a strange smile. “Idu spat.”

“She likes you,” Larissa whispers. Unsure about this means good or bad, Nooria turns her eyes away from the plump girl.

“She also called you milk and coffee. Probably because of your skin color, my gypsy friend,” Lili says. While she speaks, her lips reveals teeth yellowed from nicotine. “You two have fun. We go to sleep. Just to remind you—work starts at ten in the morning!”

A sudden desire of getting out of the pool and running into the relative seclusion of her rooms comes to Nooria, but she feels Larissa patting her thigh in a friendly and reassuring way. With the pool now empty, the blonde slides farther from Nooria and watches the other girls leave. She stretches out in the water.

“At last Lili is gone,” Larissa says. “One cannot talk in her presence. She tells the boss everything we say.”

“What is this place?” Nooria asks her the question that was bothering her since she arrived with Sultan.

Larissa looks at her with eyes wide open. “You come from the moon, tsiganka? ”

“I don’t know what this place is.”

“Gospodi… ”

Gospodi . Tarasov’s pet cuss comes to Nooria’s mind with the impact of a sledgehammer. Suddenly, her strength leaves her. She buries her face into her hands, sobbing, with all the torment she had been through in the past two days overcoming her.

Larissa moves back to her and comfortingly puts her arm around Nooria’s neck.

“Come on, it’s not so bad here,” she says caressing Nooria’s head in a sisterly fashion. “Money is good and Sultan is not a bad boss.”

“He wants me to kill my man,” Nooria says crying. “I gave him my word of honor. I must do it. I—I don’t know what to do.”

“Was he bad to you?”

“Who?”

“Your husband or boyfriend or whoever you mean.”

“No. He is the best man in the world and now he is—”

“Heard that before,” Larissa says with a skeptical expression on her pretty, round face. “Let’s chat! I have some pertsovka in my room and a little anasha too, but Knuckles must not know that.”

“Wh—what is pertsovka?”

“Vodka with honey and pepper. You look like you could use a drink or two.”

“And anasha?”

“Something you could use even more. Come, let’s go… it’s almost midnight and we’re not supposed to use the Jacuzzi so long. Davai!”

Slipping into her bath robe and grabbing her clothes, Nooria lets Larissa drag her up the stairs by her hand, staring at the thick, wet pigtail reaching down to the blonde girl’s waist. Then she finds herself in the room from where the pleasant smell of fresh laundry had emanated when she arrived. Larissa lights up a candle and puts it on the table.

“Have a seat,” Larissa says taking a hairdryer from her cupboard. ”Will you help me dry my hair?”

“You have very beautiful hair, Larissa,” Nooria says while combing the girl’s long hair with her fingers in the warm jet of the hairdryer. “It has color of honey.”

“You want to know my secret recipe? I wash it with kvas twice a week. You know what kvas is?”

“Yes. It is like beer.”

Larissa leans over to the make-up table and takes a box of cigarettes that is lying there among a host of cosmetics. Using her long polished fingernails she opens a cigarette, puts the tobacco into a thin paper taken from a small blue pouch and adds something to it. Although Nooria can’t see it clearly, she immediately recognizes the scent.

“Marijuana?”

“Why, what did you think? I’m not crazy to use Krokodil and don’t want to spend all my money on cocaine like Lili does…”

“Why was she nervous?”

“Oh, you realized? She hadn’t see a cock for about… three hours,” Larissa says lighting up the joint. “Cocks are her second best drug.”

“Men?” Nooria asks switching off the hairdryer. Before she could smile upon the stupidity of her own question, Larissa cuddles to her on the bed and pulls the blanket over them.

“You think the girls are here because bad, bad gangsters dragged them by their hair? No, dorogaya. Not here.”

“And you?”

“And me? And you? Always the same stupid question,” Larissa says and takes a bottle from under her pillow. “You better try this.”

Nooria takes the bottle. It contains an amber liquid with a few small pods inside. She smells at it. Then, partly out of politeness to the girl who tried to comfort her and partly of curiosity, she takes a swig. The sweet-smelling vodka immediately turns into fire in her throat and makes her cough.

“Easy, easy. Wait, drink it with this.”

Larissa steps to the cupboard and returns to the bed with a small glass of pickles.

“Take one. Come on, take it,” she says putting one small cucumber into Nooria’s mouth. She laughs. “It looks like little cock but tastes much better.”

“It tastes—different,” Nooria replies and smiles. “It is very sour.”

“You’re so funny, Margarita. What brought you here? You don’t seem to be one like us.”

“Sultan brought me here.”

“The man himself? Bravo. But you are—” Larissa bites her tongue. “I like you and all, but—your face is a little—”

“Ugly,” Nooria says with a wide smile and shrugs. The liquor already makes its strength felt. “I know I am ugly. Everyone looks at me like I was an animal. It makes me sad but what can I do?”

“Maybe some men like that,” Larissa says drawing on her joint. “But wait—what was that story about killing your boyfriend?”