AUTOMOTIVE HORROR
— Do you even have a boyfriend?
— I do, I do! Well… I did…
— from a chat in a Carpathian village.
Well, that’s that — he’s unlikely to call me now.
Not after I gave him a proper kick under the knee. I had to! Otherwise his frozen leg would never have lifted off the brake. And not after I pried his numb hands off the handbrake lever, clenched in a death grip. I was prying and murmuring soothingly:
“Okay, okay… easy, calm down, let go. There! We’re going now.”
And I had to do that twice…
Some highlander he is! Afraid of a cliff. The same guy who jumps from trees into ice-cold water!
All right, in order.
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Besides my day job — rally — I’ve got a hobby. I jokingly call it “auto-cliffing.” You know, by analogy with all those divings and surfings and other extremes.
I simply like to drive my car along the very edge of a drop. Literally: half the tyre tread hanging over the void! I’ve got the knack now. If there’s nowhere to turn, I nose up right to the brink so the front wheels stand on the edge. A blitz, I call it. Bit of adrenaline, I tell you!.. Clears the head no worse than Russian roulette.
One day I’ll earn money with it… I’ll live — nothing’s going to happen to me! I said I’ve got the knack. Haven’t wrecked a single car in five years. Well — “not a single”? Only two… maybe three. Kidding! Those I smashed at rallies. And who hasn’t? Cost of the profession.
No one knows about my hobby — especially the official bodies! I’m not insane. They wouldn’t be making quips about me “walking the edge,” they’d just take my licence and the car — and that’s that. Goodbye rallying.
Anyway. Here’s what happened.
Between rallies I came to my grandad’s for a fortnight, to my native Carpathian village where I grew up. Not in the race car, of course — I came in my X-sixth. That’s a BMW. A jeep. People call it a beha. And, of course, the circus began: a celebrity’s come! And a local girl at that! Everyone flocked — kids, classmates… After the first hugs — with everyone — and autographs, I politely but firmly tried to explain I was here to rest a bit, not to be a walking museum piece. By day three — after a reception at the village council and discos at the club — I think I’d succeeded.
Especially after I half-joking, half-serious hinted: “I’ll start charging for looking!”— everyone vanished like a cow had licked them clean. Or a wild boar had scattered the herd…
I had a nostalgic moment over Grandad’s old kopiyka — a first-model Zhiguli — in the yard. On that machine I drove into a gully for the first time at age ten… Now that “rover” doesn’t move; it’s a winter (and summer) flowerbed. I once gave Grandad a little jeep… a Land Rover.
Yeah… But one neighbour I never managed to “turn away.” And why would I? Hrynko — my mate since we were one. Houses side by side, grew up together. He used to shove me off the bank into the icy mountain river when I was five and laugh from the shore… Not for long — until I climbed out. And how many years we hadn’t seen each other!
And how he’s filled out! A proper vuyko, near one-eighty tall, with a moustache… Handsome! And, it seemed, seriously smitten with me. Women see that at once. He didn’t hide it much either. So we hung out. Jumped — like in childhood — from the swing he’d slung on a higher tree into the Stryi. He’d once rehung it and lengthened the ropes; now you can fly out almost to mid-river. Diving into water twenty–twenty-five degrees colder than the air — that’s an extreme. Bracing. Almost the only attraction here. Club not counting. With its eighties hits… I’m joking: they’re not that ancient. They listen to Rammstein, Lady Gaga, gothic metal… when Father doesn’t hear. He listens to it too when no one sees him…
Anyway, we finally kissed. With Hrynko, I mean. Right in the river. Must’ve got cold. And then I say:
“Wanna try real adrenaline?..”
That’s where it all began.
He kept needling me: “So where’s your little window on the dashboard?” He knows how I feel about that! I’m my own “window,” thanks.
We took my X-sixth and drove the old, disused road to our school on the hill over the village. There’s a spot on that road — unfenced, right over a precipice. Actually, several — which is why the road’s unused; people go to the school by a newer one now.
They even put a sign up: “CAUTION! Risk of sel slide!”
They only forgot to write that this sel sometimes starts with the, ahem, excrement that flows from the school’s so-called sewage… Whatever: there’s little pleasant in a mudflow — sewage or not.
The point was: a storm was rolling in! That’s what I treated lightly. I figured: “Bah! How long will it take? I’ll show him a blitz to start with — and done. It won’t even drip.” But the lightning was already flashing in the clouds rushing towards the mountain…
I was just as casual about the fuel level. Same reason: blitz! And that bit of road by the drop is flat. No incline. And back we’d roll down anyway. Plus I had a spare canister in the boot…
Short version.
I nose up to the cliff. Front wheels over the edge…
Who could have guessed the ground right at the edge would be weak! I had tested it with my feet. Must’ve been washed out by that “sel,” as they call it… I slot reverse — the bastard just spins! The front undercarriage is sagging into the void. I press the gas, press — and the fuel gauge is already on zero!
After I remembered a very specific mother and all connected to her, I yank the handbrake towards me and toss to Hrynko in the passenger seat:
“Hold this! I’ll go pour in some petrol. And the brake — foot brake — press it!”
I hadn’t even looked at him. Then I do — white as a sheet, eyes bulging, hair and moustache standing on end…
Well, of course. The drop isn’t small — about four hundred metres. Enough to turn not only us but the whole jeep into a thin burnt biscuit. He grabbed that handbrake like a vice… and stamped the pedal so hard I barely pulled my foot out from under it.
“Well,” I think, “there goes the cavalier.”
I flash out of the car and to the boot — and then the rain dumps. I’m soaked to the bone in seconds. Streams are running down the road. Well — rivulets. For now. No, I think, we’ve got to tie the car to a boulder before the water takes it. I’ve got a tow-rope too… One loop to the hook under the rear bumper, the other to a big boulder further uphill on the other side of the road. Water was already trickling under it, but that one won’t wash away — not with my jeep’s weight! I’ve known that rock since I was six — first year of school — when people still drove this road…
So I thought at the time.
And I, of course, remembered Jurassic Park III as I splashed through the water to tie the car… Same kind of scene with a trailer-lab. Only here we lacked a T-Rex. For full happiness.
While I was pouring petrol, I thought I should swap the engine for a hybrid: not to depend on petrol alone…
“You seen Jurassic Park Three?” I tossed casually as I slid back behind the wheel. Trying to cheer him up! But my “client” was in stupor: leg locked on the brake, hands glued to the handbrake. And, frankly, not the best pep-talk example: in that film the trailer does go over, dragging the jeep. And the jeep’s driver gets eaten… Anyway.
Short version again:
A kick under the knee of the leg stuck on the brake, and raps across the hands clenched on the handbrake. The ground under the front wheels had sunk almost into the drop. All the while I crooned gently:
“Okay, okay… easy, calm down, let go. There! We’re going now…”
I’m calming him, thinking: “This is for shoving me into the ice water all my conscious childhood…”
And even in stupor he still glances at my mobile… Yeah, right! Sure I’ll call EMERCOM with helicopters, and the police with the loony bin… We’ll get out ourselves. I’ve got out of worse.
I freed the car (at least the car!), floored it in reverse using “turbo” mode… The beha pulled off the brink — didn’t go anywhere!
I’d already turned, steered onto the road and was about to hop out and untie us from the boulder when… I fell into stupor myself. Well, there’s your T-Rex! In fossil form. The very rock I’d looped the rope around decided to set off — probably under the pressure of that sewage-sel undermining it. Urine wears the stone away…
And where do you think it headed? Right, children — to its most energetically favourable spatial position: into the abyss. With my car in its path.
Unlike some, my stupor lasts very little and turns quickly into the necessary actions, voiced with renewed memories of that same very specific mother and all parties concerned. I quickly (before the rope went tight) backed the car out of the stone’s path, set it in the most favourable defensive position — and braked hard. Then:
“Hold this! I’ll go cut the rope. And the brake — press!”
I flashed out again — time to “cut the ends” with my knife. How else! Not untying knots while the boulder drops. So I’ll lose another line — so what! The main thing is not the car. With Hrynko in it.
I cut it.
In time — the car stayed put… It did skid a couple of metres towards the drop. Another “blitz.” Reverse this time. All right, half-blitz: a whole boot still remained to the edge…
And while I’m sawing I’m thinking: please don’t let the blade draw lightning. The damn bolts are cracking right over my head, hammering into the ground! Sheet rain, thunder like a thousand tyrannosaurs belching fire.
But once I’d cut the rope, I burst out laughing. “Brilliant,” I think. “All set up just for me? Even that boulder, soaked in piss, was waiting for me! Till I arrived and tied my car to it. Twenty-six years it waited. Twenty-six thousand!” My homeland loves me, after all…
Back into the cab — and then by the old, well-worn scheme: a kick under the knee and raps across the hands. Kidding: no kick needed this time; the fist was enough. His shock wasn’t that bad anymore.
He’d got the hang.
We drove back in silence. I should’ve cheered him up somehow, pulled him out of that auto-cliffing state, but all that came to mind were dinosaurs. And when I pulled up to his gate, he suddenly said:
“What you need isn’t a little window on your dash… but a whole Father. On the bonnet.”
See? He’s even joking! Teeth chattering, as wet as me though he hadn’t run about in the downpour…
If I’d had a priest on my bonnet, he’d have been resting in a ravine long ago, explaining to his Boss what he was doing on my bonnet.
“Call me, okay,” I said uncertainly when he opened the door to get out.
“Mm-hmm,” he answered without turning, and sloshed through the puddles to his house. On legs that didn’t bend well.
Which, in this case, obviously meant: “Yeah, right.”
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So that’s what I’m saying… I wasn’t expecting a call from him anymore. Wrote off this cavalier too.
They just don’t pass my auto-cliffing — and that’s that.
But about half a year later, when I was at a rally in the Austrian Alps, my mobile rang. Hrynko’s cheerful voice:
“Hi! Miss me? Think you’d get rid of me that easily? I’m in Tyrol too. And I’ve found such a gorgeous little cliff…”
4 May 2016.
Vienna.
Translated in English and illustrated by Lit_Agency_Phoenix, 2025.
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Footnotes
- Rally – professional rally racing (the narrator’s main job).
- X-sixth / beha – colloquial Ukrainian for a BMW X6; beha is slang for BMW.
- Kopiyka – VAZ-2101 (first-model Lada/“Zhiguli”), a classic Soviet car.
- “Rover” – in western Ukrainian slang, rover means “bicycle”; here used jokingly about the old car turned flowerbed.
- Stryi – a fast, cold mountain river in western Ukraine.
- Club / village council – the local House of Culture and the local administration, standard in Ukrainian villages.
- Sel – a mud/debris flow or landslide; here also a running joke about the school’s dodgy “sewage.”
- Father / batyushka – colloquial for an Orthodox priest; Hrynko jokes she needs a priest statue on the bonnet, not a “window” (gauge) on the dash.
- EMERCOM – emergency services (the Russian/Ukrainian acronym often used colloquially).
- Auto-cliffing – the narrator’s playful coinage for edging a car right to a cliff brink.
