The Scoville Suicides

Detective Inspector Jane Rhys out-stared Marvin ‘Blando’ Jones for the best part of ten minutes - then clicked her pen.
‘So, Mr Jones, how long have you been manufacturing poisonous chillies?’ The interview room went silent. Blando stared at the desk and scratched his beard. He felt choked, short of breath and dizzy. How did this happen? Why had he listened to that young fool-grandson, Rhodri?
‘You’ve become a bit of a celebrity, Mr Jones - in a record-breaking, senator killing sort-of-way.’ Jane Rhys was like a cat pawing at her mouse across the desk. Blando was panicking. He didn’t like cats.
‘It went too far. I didn’t know any of this would happen.’ A tear leaked down the side of Blando’s face as he rubbed his temples. He wasn’t a killer, he was a farmer. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was a mistake. He didn’t mean to run. He was scared.
Senator Gregory Rosemont’s body had been resting at Clearwater City morgue for just under a week before the ‘suspects’ were apprehended. In the minds of the public, generously aided by the media, the death of a prominent US Senator would normally prompt images of religious assassins, election fever or even bizarre conspiracy theories. Nobody imagined it would be the work of a craggy Welsh hill-farmer and his profitable hobby. Marvin ‘Blando’ Jones was having a bad week.
‘My client is not obliged to answer that question Detective Inspector; it is far too suggestive and, of course, self incriminating,’ piped in Mr Duty Solicitor. Jane Rhys bit her tongue and screwed her eyes.
‘Ok, let me put it another way Mr Jones. Capsaicin acid is a toxin, correct? Your chilli peppers contain more of this than any other in the world, and they’ve just killed a US Senator. Toxin = poison, divided by dead Senator, = heap of shite, Mr Jones. Is that any clearer?’
‘Erm… is this recording?’ asked the duty solicitor, raising an eyebrow.
‘No, it isn’t. Tape please, Sergeant.’
‘Ma’am’
‘Now then, Mr Jones, this interview is being recorded. I am Detective Inspector Jane Rhys of South Wales Police, also present...,’ - and so it went on. It was a polished interview procedure but Blando wasn’t listening.
He shook his head. The whole idea was barking from the start; chilli farming in Wales? It was an absurd idea. ‘Blando Jolokia’ (Capsicum chinense 'Blando Jolokia') was now officially the hottest chilli plant in the world (1,501,027 Scoville units, to be precise, as officiated by Guinness World Records) and the key component in ‘Marvin Blando’s Volcanic Chilli Sauce; the sauce that killed a senator. It was the sort of shite-heap that no pitchfork would shift. He was beginning to miss being a simple sheep farmer. They were poor but a lot happier. At least that’s how he remembered it. Perhaps it just seemed that way now that they were in trouble. What had Rhodri got him into?

Jane Rhys of South Wales Police, and her sergeant, sat opposite Blando Jones and the duty solicitor, and continued staring. She was a female version of a young Sylvester Stallone with a better hair-do. There was a glib air about the place, amongst the smell of stale perfume, coffee and doughnuts. Her face cracked an unwelcome smile. This made Blando even more nervous.
‘Do you have anything to say, Mr Jones?’
‘I need my tablets’
‘Do you know what I think, Mr Jones?’ she said, clicking her pen several times in succession. It was an irritating habit.
‘I dread to think. Something about promotion I suppose?’
‘I think you’re hiding something.’ she said, pointing the pen at Blando’s eye like she’d seen something moving behind the glazed expression.
‘Look, we were only trying to make some extra cash, isn’t it? The farm wasn’t doing so well, subsidies were no bloody good. That last outbreak of scrapie nearly finished us and I’m too old to be running after sheep, Inspector.’ Blando dabbed his forehead with a grubby handkerchief, and coughed. ‘You’ve no idea what I’ve had to go through; losing the wife, losing the business, no family except my grandson. Rhodri is the chilli expert. They’re hot, yes, but they’re not poisonous’ Jane Rhys again clicked her pen several times - then stabbed her desk.
‘That grandson of yours likes travelling doesn’t he? He’s had a lot of trips to South America, hasn’t he? I’m sure you’ll understand that the Americans are far from happy at this moment, even less so after discovering your grandson had met with rebel forces there. Care to explain?’ Blando could see where this was leading.
‘He’s not a bad lad, maybe once, but he did his time as you know.’ Blando sighed. ‘Rhodri has some large ideas, certainly, but his heart’s there. I wanted to help and, you know, help myself as well. He was looking for special chilli plants, you see, some rebels helped him get to the remote villages through jungle, but that’s all it was. He’s quite clever sometimes our Rhodri, does a lot of studying on the internet-thingy you know.’ A smile crossed his face but rapidly disappeared as he caught the Inspectors‘s eye.
It was the germ of an idea seeded in prison by Rhodri. Growing chillies became a speciality. They studied them with a passion reserved only for fanatics, mad scientists or both. Rhodri had an idea, and it was an idea that was going to make both of then rich; rich, famous and now under-arrest. It wasn’t going to plan.
Jane Rhys raised her eyes and sighed. This was nothing compared to the ensuing press-statements, reports, paperwork, diplomatic meetings. Not to mention the impending arrival of the District Commander. It would be worse if this didn’t go her way.
‘I’m sure he is very clever, Mr Jones. Not as clever as he would like to be. We found some emails on his laptop. He was corresponding with the Senator. Did you know about this?’
‘Erm…yes I did. Senator Rosemont was very interested in our chillies’
‘Did you know anything about The American Brotherhood of Scoville’?
‘Ah TABOSCO, yes, they’re a group of fans that like hot chilli products. We had our first order from them last week,’ said Blando, like a true entrepreneur.
‘They’re a suicide obsessed chilli-cult Mr Jones.’
‘Oh God, I had no idea.’ Blando put his head in his hands. The shite-heap was getting bigger. He was broke, ill, stressed and wishing he had run a bit further. He wasn’t cut out to be a mogul or a criminal mastermind. Sheep was his speciality, even though most had died in the second wave of scrapie outbreak. Rhodri was the one that studied agriculture, the chillies, and the markets. The only market Blando was familiar with smelled of livestock and muck, and even they seemed to belong to a different world and a different time; a time when chilli sauce didn’t kill American Senators that bought your produce over the internet.
Just as Blando was giving in to the possibility of incarceration, further shame and a deeper sense of hopelessness, there was a hammering behind him. He turned to see Rhodri, accompanied by the desk-sergeant, flinging open the door and waving a sheet of paper. Rhodri, his flame-haired grandson with the Oxfam dress-sense, was beaming. He was like Chamberlain bearing the promise of ‘peace in our time’.
‘They’ve found a note Gramps, the Americans; they’ve found a suicide note. They’ve just faxed us this copy’ Jane Rhys snatched up the facsimile and bore through it with her eyes, before handing it to her sergeant. She looked into Blando’s leathery face as his heart continued to crash into his chest.
‘Looks like you may be off the hook Mr Jones,’ she said, switching her gaze to the tape controls. ‘For the benefit of the tape and those present could you please read the note Sergeant.’
‘Ma’am,’ He cleared his throat. ‘From the desk of Senator Gregory Rosemont, 1st May;’

‘My dearly beloved friends and associates, as you read this I have all but transcended the Golden Pathway to Heaven and into the arms of Our Lord. No blame shall be laid at the feet of those innocents across the water that helped me on the path of righteousness, for they were without knowledge of my condition or my intentions. I wish to state for the record that Mr Marvin Jones, and his grandson, famous chilli growers of Llan Builth Farm are innocent, and should not be considered suspects for what will inevitably happened. I alone, and without persuasion, have made this decision as part of my own personal battle with my cancerous invaders and it is the cancer that has killed me. I have merely taken an eye for an eye, as the Good Book says, and have taken the cancer with me. Do not weep at my passing; only spare a thought for those who are suffering still. God bless y’ all.
G. Rosemont. (Senator),’

Jane Rhys watched Blando’s face relax. She turned to the portly desk-sergeant standing next to Rhodri.
‘He overdosed on chillies to commit suicide, sergeant?’
‘It would appear so, Ma’am. I’ve just spoken to a representative from the Senators office. Apparently he had prostate cancer. Too far gone they said. Their autopsy revealed he had consumed approximately one litre of very hot chilli sauce with an average Scoville rating of 1.5 million units. Then they gave me some gobbledygook about the senator’s believing that the acid in chillies would cause his cancerous cells to die. Barmy if you ask me.’
‘Suicide actually,’ interrupted Rhodri. ‘I read it on the internet. Study in America had shown that capsaicin acid, that’s the acid responsible for the ‘heat’ in a chilli, actually caused cancer cells to commit suicide in mice. Not humans though, we had no idea he was planning this.’
Jane Rhys switched off the interview tape and handed the copy to her sergeant. Apprehending two potential killers on the run seemed to have lost its shine.
‘You can go, Mr Jones, for now. Don’t go to far though eh? We may need to speak to you again. Take your grandson with you. Sergeant, see them out.’
Blando was escorted out of the interview room by the desk-sergeant to collect his belongings, fill in the paperwork and be sent on his way. Sales of Volcanic Sauce were suspended due to the absence of a licence to produce food products fit for human consumption. It was back to sheep farming and a re-think about the future, if there was one.
About an hour after Blando and Rhodri left the building the portly desk-sergeant made his way to the DI’s office. He knocked the door and entered. He was puzzled.
‘Ma’am, it seems our Mr Jones has left without his tablets.’
‘Well, post them on sergeant. I’ve washed my hands of Mr Jones.’ The sergeant shifted his feet and cleared his throat.’
‘What is it now?’
‘Erm, it’s the tablets Ma’am. We did a check on them.’ Jane Rhys looked up. ‘They’re Bicalutamide tablets. The lab says they’re for cancer,’
‘Mr Jones has cancer?’
‘It’s prostate cancer, to be exact, Ma’am.’ Jane Rhys dropped her pen.
‘Oh God, did he say where he was going?’
‘No Ma’am, but we’ve received this fax.’ She snatched up the paper and read aloud.

‘My dear Inspector Rhys and beloved friends at South Wales Police, I thank you for showing me the light. The true value of my continued existence has never been so greatly illuminated as it has been today, and I know now what I must do to look after my grandson and secure his future. As you read this I have all but transcended the Golden Pathway to Heaven and into the arms of Our Lord…

Jane Rhys could read no more. She stabbed the desk with her pen.

A Year of Pickled Tomatoes

I felt the warm chestnut-flower breeze lift my fringe as I faced her, my arms raised in adoration. She was my newly-adopted 100-foot-high titanium mother and her sword pierced the ozone as I sang and swayed below. This new matriarch that gave me the gift of re-birth and nurtured me against her metallic bosom was a thousand miles from my native Wales and, since landing at 12:30pm, I paid homage to her in the only way I knew best. I was stumbling like Bambi - steaming drunk on a mixture of 15-year-old Scotch and Slavutych in the sunny city of Kiev, Ukraine. It was the 15th of August 2004 and, from standing in front of this magnificent irradiating statue, my real journey began. Visiting days were over.
The swaying intensified as I closed my eyes, absorbing the sun’s radiance and photosynthesising like a newly opened leaf; here I was poetic even when drunk. David shook me back to reality. Damn it. He had a nasty habit of doing that. He didn’t do subtle or gentle at all; he’d majored in wrestling at his former college in California. It figured.
‘Come on man’, he slurred with a thick drawl. ‘Let’s get to Zhitomir before it gets dark. It’s gonna take us, like, 2 hours to get there - longer if we crash, heh heh heh’ He slapped me on the shoulder. ‘I’m gonna call Uri, let’s get our asses down to the road’
It was only 4pm in the afternoon.

David Neisingh - unashamedly clichéd all-American entrepreneur with a hideous taste in Hawaiian shirts - was my friend and business partner.
He’d spent the past ten years living in this country trying to build the Neisingh Empire which, at that point, consisted of around thirty thousand square foot of ex-Soviet factory in Zhitomir, a reasonably skilled but unreliable workforce, a nuclear bunker, and a half dozen press machines dating back to about 1950. Still, it was a lot more than I had. My total possessions consisted of suitcases (two), briefcase (one), shirt-on-back (one), shoes (pair) ... you get the picture. My role was to change things, and both his and my fortunes in the process, as the new Manufacturing Director of Synergy Ltd. It was to be an undulating journey of change, revolution and revelation. None of this was known at the time. At that moment all I could think about was getting to my new apartment and lying down for a bit, or a week. There would be plenty of time for change later.
Uri, our simian driver, who had been waiting patiently around the corner, was immediately summoned by David’s mobile and he screeched up outside the military museum like The Sweeney, although he’d probably never seen an episode. We stumbled into the back of the Zhiguli, laughing and patting Uri on the back as we tore away past the monastery, scattering babushkas and limping pigeons. There was a choking cloak of dangerous exhaust fumes left behind as we raced into the unknown, and I was about to be sick over Uri’s shoulder.

Heading out of the city that day I remember looking in hazy awe at the dazzling countryside as we travelled 200 kilometres west from Kiev to the city of Zhitomir. It was a tourist-board film of a journey with sweeping blankets of yellow wheat fields, interspersed with odd-shaped houses, gathered like poker chips into little offset communities. There were scatterings of randomly built white-bricked houses of any size or shape that the winnings or earnings allowed. I studied this through my newly acquired Russian ex-army, night-vision, camouflaged, binoculars (with no case), only $5 at the Andreyivsky touristy-trap market of souvenirs. All I remember of that remaining afternoon and evening was the binoculars frequently going out of focus.

16th August 2004
Not feeling well this morning; may have been something I ate. Landed at Boryspil Airport at the usual time, David met me; we drank some whisky I’d brought with me, Glenfiddich sherry-cask conditioned 15-year- old, excellent stuff which he drank like pop, the heathen. Switched to lager after that. Feels like coming home here. Bought this diary in Amsterdam. Thought I’d keep a record of events. I’m crap at keeping diaries. Jean-Luc called earlier; meeting on Monday morning 18th. Can’t wait to start. It’s about 34 degrees today! Woot woot!!

I stared at the mosquitoes clinging to the ceiling. They looked hungry; so was I. As I lay in the recovery position, the words of my former Operations Director, Ian Barnes, rang in my ears; and not for the first time since I’d resigned as the Operations Manager of Expamet Building Products, (Metpost Division).
‘You’re a very brave man, I’ll give you that.’ He said, shaking his ginger head and gurning.
Brave or stupid bastard he’d wanted to say, I could tell. There was no going back now. I was like the Spanish conquistador, Cortez, who had burned his ships to stop any possibility of retreat after landing near the site of Veracruz in the heart of the Aztec empire, except I was a bit further east. From an early age I liked to travel and explore different cultures and civilizations. It was my father’s influence. Or rather it wasn’t, it was the ‘travelling’ holidays we had when my sister and I were young.

The binoculars reminded me. It was 1976. We were in the back of our yellow Volkswagen Beetle, registration SGH 810L, heading for Llangorse Lake, Mid Wales. There was a feeling of car-sickness, trying to read my I-Spy book of birds in between scanning the scenery. I was hoping there wasn’t going to be another emergency stop at a lay-by to throw up the recently eaten egg and salad cream sandwich.
‘Mum, I’m gonna be sick.’
‘Oh gawd, try to hold it in.’
‘Can’t’, I groaned. I wasn’t a good traveller, always sick. Some things would never change, except the reasons behind them.
‘Christ, we’ve only just bloody stopped.’ Dad shouted, indicating for the nearest lay-by. It didn’t take a lot to make him grizzly. He’d be fine later when we were sat outside the pub, in the beer garden. Some memories are best left behind.
Day tripping is what we did best on our holidays. It was all we ever did on our holidays. Castle hunting, bird watching and exploring were my passions though. The scrapbook was full of postcards, the odd sick stain, and entrance tickets to grand ruins and symbols of mediaeval power. Who lived here? What did they do? How did they speak? Where did they go to the toilet? I suppose this fascination for travel and different cultures and even historical events started here. It didn’t end. Later I would become part of an historical event that would bring me even closer to the bosom of my newly adopted country. Yes, there would be plenty of time for changes yet, or would there?

It was midday-ish when I finally summoned enough strength to swing my legs over the side of the bed, weak as a kitten. Not like the cheetah I was earlier when racing to the bathroom to gag. Perhaps that’s where all the energy went.
I loved that apartment; unrivalled in the area, apparently. It was on the ground floor, with ‘tasteful’ décor, bars on every window and ten locks on the door. Poetry again, see? There was bugger all in the fridge. The cupboards were as empty as Cortez’s matchbox and smelled of lard and dried herbs. In fact the only food I discovered were the numerous jars of pickles that looked like they’d come from a laboratory, neatly lined on shelves in a murderous-looking cellar. Call me fussy, but anything that looked green and acid-soaked in a jar covered in cobwebs wasn’t going on my plate, no matter how hungry I felt. I let the cellar trap-door crash shut, narrowly missing the ends of my toes, and I dragged a desk over it for good measure. That meant I had to go out and shop in this strange new world. Great.

After splashing water on my face, and shaking my head a few times, I hunted for the phrase book to practise some greetings to prepare me for the city waiting outside - or rather prepare the city waiting outside for me. ‘Zdrastvoytyah’ I pronounced, smiling confidently in the mirror. It was the moment I first realised I was alone.
Zhitomir market was a bees’ nest of erratic drones. The garbled language of market traders and buyers mixed and negotiated amidst the miasma of ready-cooked snacks, and varying degrees of body odour. It was fantastic. There were wondrous new things to eat and sample, together with fresh vegetables, complete with their own dirt. None of your Brussels-imposed, trigonometrically assessed, plastic-type vegetables here, oh no. It was all real. As real as the weather-beaten small-holders that sold them, and a great deal more satisfying, from a buying perspective. I could see freshness and I could see where my money was going. It was value for money indeed. Here you could buy a weeks’ worth of vegetables for the price of a prawn sandwich back home and still have change for a watery lager afterwards. I imagined myself living in that city for good, but the time for further change was almost upon me.

Poetry Pieces

Ysgyryd Fawr*

I left it late, I thought, the sun was there,

Just below nadir glimmering awake,

Erupting through the dense volcanic dark,

Dimming the celestial lamps above

I crunched and heaved my body through the rock.

Chasing the shadows on Holy Mountain,

With birch supporting creaking bones I chase,

And still the crimson light snapped at my heels.

With bursting lungs I push to claim my prize,

No worship or divinity embraced

Here was man versus mountain versus clock.

Startling nightjars crashing through the sedge,

As world stirs drunk on dreams and heavy sleep,

And strength sapping gradients take their toll.

The path is known, my eyes are closed with sweat

With pounding heart beat pushing at my chest,

Rattle and drum cling to my burdened back.

The way of pilgrims follows ages past,

St Michael’s chapel gone with key stones lain

And captive Hess* strolls through the Holy paths

The woodlands break into the gathering

Light and darkness meet in brief union,

To lead me on to my glittering prize

While Sat upon the Holy mountain throne

I watch the fire and orange sun to rise

Footnotes:*Ysgyryd Fawr is the Welsh name of a mountain commonly known in English as either The Skirrid or The Holy Mountain.** Rudolf Hess used to walk on this mountain when he was a captive at Maindiff Court Military Hospital from 1942 to 1945.

No Evil La Fling

The clocks have all stopped, and a window opens,
As though the air is fresh once more,
And life has breathed along the corridors.
As sun rays burst upon a heart that's broken,
Healing it with love and warm words spoken.


The earth has stood still, and the bird song stays silent,
As though the notes they cannot sing,
And time has ceased its ordered marching,
As warmth envelops this body embraced,
Healing it with love, gentle hands and touching face.


The world is alive with beating hearts singing,
As though one touch could emotions awake,
And life springs forth beneath the deepest swirling lake.
As blossoms burst open upon the orchard tree;
Healing it with love and loving you, loving me

The Importance of being Boris

The apartment kitchen was refrigerated. It was the middle of winter. In the absence of any sensible heating, naturally, it got a bit chilly, which explained the icicles inside the window. The country was in the strangling grip of a sub zero winter and I longed to be back in the milder misery of a rainy-grey London instead of this time-locked ‘city’ in the groin of Eastern Europe. I was miserable and sickly, living on the fourth floor of a crumbling concrete carbuncle that passed for an apartment. The heating was knackered, the water a mere trickle and it was depressing. I couldn’t stop thinking about Irina, the Barbie smile and her scent of freshly scrubbed melons, wait, that doesn’t sound right. Anyway, she hadn’t called over for almost a week, the last garbled message being something about Boris. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to my cat or whether there was another alpha male on the scene, not that I’d blame her. I was getting worried about her though, she promised to help me after all.
My ice-kitchen smelled of watery coffee, cat and laundry-basket scented sausage. My thoughts switched to food, I was starving. The gnarled chopping board in front of me probably had more nutrients wedged into the cracks than the sausage I was slicing on it, and the knife was cutting like a dog; I think the handle was sharper. Naturally one needed to eat and booter-brod, being the staple of the working classes around here, along with cigarettes and vodka, was all I could afford. What more could one want in life anyway, except for perhaps a better sausage?
Boris the cat eyed me suspiciously from the corner of the table and, in between an almost fixed-stare, surreptitiously licked his lips at the ceremonial sausage slicing. Do cats have lips? I’m never sure. I ask a lot of useless questions sometimes.
‘The days of fresh fish are over my friend’, I explained to Boris as I threw him a meaty slice. ‘Eat it slowly; there may not be any tomorrow.’ He understands every word, the scoundrel. All cats do. They don’t always acknowledge you of course due to their superiority complex. It’s like a genetic attitude instilled in all cats. They were once worshipped as gods by the Ancient Egyptians and they’ve never forgotten this, worse still, Bastet was the cat goddess and, as we men know, cats and women are nothing but trouble. Still, God or not, he was going to have to eat sausage like the rest of us poor mortals.

I was briefly contemplating a cat stew, complete with herby dumplings and soured cream when my thoughts were sharply interrupted by the door buzzer. ‘Who on earth can this be at six in the bloody morning?’ I growled, placing the knife carefully on the kitchen table and brushing the cat onto the floor. Sneaking, Boris-like, towards the front door I peered into the spy hole. You can never guess who might turn up at your door, especially when you owed people money. I breathed out with relief and excitement, it was Irina. What was she doing calling at this time in the morning? After quickly straightening my hair and checking how presentable I was, or not, in the hall mirror I clicked open the safe-like door and marvelled at how glamorous Irina looked in the feint yellow light of the hallway. Last time I saw her she looked like a cross between a frumpy school mistress and a cheap hooker, hard to imagine I know. This morning she looked like the Snow Queen from Narnia, only more agreeable. Irina beamed at me and the frost suddenly melted. She leapt on me like a white fluffy limpet mine, in an explosion of white fur and fluff. The seals were not so much harmed during the manufacture of her long fur coat, hat and matching hand warmer, as brutally murdered, but they scrubbed up beautifully.
‘William; my solnushka!’ she shrieked. This is the Russian equivalent of ‘sunshine’, ‘sweet cheeks’, ‘snuggle-bum’s or something equally as hideous. I responded, calling her ‘Galabushka’, which means ‘Little Pigeon’, well, she started it.
‘Irinka, how lovely to see you,’ I said with genuine affection. I did miss her. She works a lot, unlike me since my business collapsed, and she’s the one person that has helped me through it all. I still can’t help wondering where she’s been this last week. Irina squeezes me like a big white bear, though I know that underneath all the fluffy white mass of fur is a mere size eight. She pinches my cheeks.
‘I miss you, now maybe tea, yes?’ She said, kissing me on the forehead, carefully avoiding my snotty and flu-sweated face. In the kitchen she immediately threw open the fridge door and tutted, several times. ‘Why you don’t eat garlic?’ she demanded, stamping her foot.
‘Because it makes my breath smell, and I have few friends as it is.’ I replied, trying to be witty. She understood about seventy per cent of this. I knew this of course, and would often use the other thirty per cent on other occasions to throw her completely, if I thought it necessary. She looked pained.
‘But it good for you; make healthy, strong.’ It was sentences like this that warmed me to her and kept me amused for hours. I loved her really, in a funny sort of way. She was rummaging around in her fake Gucci bag, a little known design entitled ‘Crocodile with Eczema’; God knows how old it was, older than she perhaps.
Then I spotted it. Oh God, not raspberry syrup again! She’d also spotted that I’d spotted it and gave me one of her smugly nurse-teacher-type smiles. That’s the thing with teachers, they are never off duty, always ready to educate or lecture you whether you want it or not. She whipped the bottle out and banged it on the table for effect.
‘Ah, my mama sends for cold.’ She made a sniffing sound to ensure I understood. ‘You drink in tea and eat all, it good for you.’ I had a bad case of man-type flu (type A1, I believe, the very worse case) ‘mama’, however, had raspberry syrup. Why will women never understand the pain and suffering us men go through with flu? It often intrigued me as to how far the ‘mamas’ of this culture would go before offering or even considering real medicine whilst one is withering away. In some of these parts old babushka cures and herbal remedies are relied on as heavily as the well water in which to mix them up with.
‘How is this going to cure my cold exactly?’ I asked examining what was clearly a former smallish vodka bottle, curious as to whether there was any logic that came with it. Imagining what Irina understood of this question went something like this; ‘How this going, something cold, something?’ I could see her thinking about it. It wasn’t her fault of course, typically, as a British person; one naturally expects all foreigners to understand English. Here, however, it’s about one half of a percent of the population, and even less in this village. Her eyes expanded and flickered as she pointed a finger in the air. It was a ‘light bulb’ moment.
‘Ah, it healthy, make you strong.’ She explained, shaking her fist in the air. I was a little disappointed at what appeared to be the stock answer to anything that was obviously beyond her comprehension or which was merely information passed down through endless inbred generations. It was a strange city. Still, I was stuck with it, for now. Irina, on the other hand, looked like she was going to explode with happiness.
‘I am good news have’ she bubbled, jumping up and down. She was single-handedly destroying my beloved language and there was nothing I could do about it. Still, good news was indeed welcome, if it was indeed any good.
‘What is it? Have we shifted continents overnight? Or is this all a bad dream and you have come to wake me from it?’ I enquired, speaking as though to a mere child with a big grin on my face. This probably sounded acerbic but as she understood little of it, it was quite acceptable in my book. It was like talking and venting at the same time without any emotional damage to the recipient.
She pinched my cheeks again like they were giant zits. Ouch!
‘Silly, no dream, it real, I have money, many money!’ She leapt on me again and squeezed my neck like a boa constrictor. What on earth is this about? I wonder.
One tends to get rather suspicious after living so long in these parts. Money is often only obtained by foul means or charity, which on occasion is also gained by foul means. I raised an eyebrow. ‘Exactly how and where did you get the money from?’
She released her grip and fished out a catalogue from her bag, showing me the page; it was bilingual, which was useful. She pointed to a rather cute, rectangular gold brooch with a jewelled cat on it, ‘Boris’, she explained. The description read:
‘A brooch in the ‘Old Russian’ taste by Carl Fabergé of rectangular form, yellow gold repousséd and chased with a stylised cat figure and floral motifs in the 'Old Russian' taste, centred by an oval cabochon blue sapphire, Moscow, 1896-1908, inventory number 327178, fifty six zolotniks’ (that’s about fourteen carats to you and me). It didn’t sound a lot of carats and it wasn’t very big but I knew before she told me what it should be worth and I wasn’t disappointed.
It had just fetched $15, 000 at auction. Trust me, that’s a lot of many money around these parts. Even more importantly, it would be plenty enough to help get me home if I could persuade her to part with some of it, or at least enough for the air fare. In mutilated English I discover that the brooch was given to her by her grandmother… she didn’t understand its true value until she went on the internet one day. She’d been looking for ways to raise money for herself as well as to help me. What an angel.
‘Irina, it’s fantastic!’ I was genuinely pleased for her, teachers are not that well paid around here, but I couldn’t help but think about my own plight. ‘What will you do with the money? How will you spend it?’ I am hoping she understands most of this without the ulterior motive.
‘It for us, you, me, husband, wife, family,’ she gushed. Ah, now this I understood. I wanted to go home, she wanted to marry. I didn’t see that one coming.

We spent the rest of the morning trying to discuss the best course of action and each others wants or needs. I needed to go home. She wanted me to stay. I needed work. She wanted a husband. I had no money. She did. Checkmate. There were tears in her eyes as I begged her to let me have the flight money, with the promise that I would return in better circumstances. I couldn’t help feeling the need to be cruel; after all, I had nothing to offer her. I offered her Boris, like a deposit, with the promise that I would come back for both of them. She seemed ok with this. I didn’t check with Boris tough but I sensed it would be ok. He would be living in relative luxury at Irina’s apartment, well fed and loved. It was as if cat worship had saved us both and, if there was a cat god or goddess they were surely worthy of a prayer.

Two days later a taxi was waiting outside the apartment block ready to take me to the airport. Boris had ignored me all morning. I guess he knew something was going on. Irina helped me to pack and now we were embracing in the doorway before I left. It was like being wounded in the heart with a rusty knife. She cried. I held back.
‘Telephone, yes?’
‘Of course I will, every day.’ I wasn’t sure if I could manage it but I would at least try. She deserved this much at least, in fact she deserved much more than I could give her.
On the way to the airport I pondered the position. What was I going back for? What was at home that wasn’t here? How much does someone have to love me before I give in? Why is Boris the one that’s going to be cosy, well fed and loved and not me? Why can’t I be Boris for a while? What the hell was I doing?
Twenty minutes later I made my way along the staircase and banged on the large safe-like door. The door flew open and Irina leapt on me.
‘I can’t do it, I can’t leave you’. There was a real tear in my eye as I tried to explain. It doesn’t happen often but some things require no translation at all…