So, it was the early morning. A morning chill. Lara and I were on the route. She was in a very short summer sun-dress. In vain, as the further events have shown.
- Wave down, - I said.
- Me? No, you are the man, so you wave down.
- All right, - I answered, - but we shall just be standing here till the evening and then we shall return back to our nice heated, as coal in the open-hearth furnace, Krasnodar. Do you agree? So, I shall go away a little, and you just wave your hand. You will be a hand' waver as they say. And look there is a jeep rushing. Wave, wave!!!
And really, the grand jeep "Cherokee" was coming nearer, so black and brilliant, not a jeep, but simply a fairy tale on the wheels. I do not know why, but usually that kind of cars do not pull over. Either the passengers of those cars always hasten somewhere; or they just spare their brake. To my great surprise when that huge thing stopped with a wild whizz, a man in a cassock fell out of its door..?
"Well, you just look at that", - I thought at that moment.
- Where to, beauty?
- To Ar-hippp-ko-Osi-ppp-ovka, - said Lara stammering from unexpectedness or maybe from horror. At the same time trying in vain to pull her immoderately short sun-dress on her knees.
- Get in, I'll give you a lift, it's on my way, - Father Vasily answered. - I'm alone...
- Thanks a lot, -I shouted, running out from my ambush and chasing away the thought of a strange Caucasian accent just sounded. - You can take us to Dzhubga. It is very close from there and we shall reach Arhipka by ourselves.
Father Vasily (as he introduced himself later), obviously did not expect such growth of the script, nevertheless he turned to be a man of word and did not crawfish, and the three of us started on our journey. A journey that later turned into a road to hell...
Now it is necessary to note, that our driver was very much proud of his iron horse and tried to show all its speed and brake resources as far as possible. During the whole trip I had a steady feeling that his driver's licence was presented to him as a duty by the representative of local police patrol, maybe just a week ago. That is why such notions as the complete line or 90km speed limitation, were alien to the sacred father. Moreover he tried to show us what a great car he had and how dashingly he drove, but also the coming (unlucky) and passing cars perfectly and constantly made sure of it. And the nervous signals of their klaxons were other proofs of that.
Everything began right after the Krasnodar police patrol post. There is such part of the road where only last cretins do not exceed the speed. And the local police officers of course perfectly know that. As our Father Vasily was not the last cretin he has dashingly pressed on a gas pedal to the stop. So we were rushing 130-140Ð≥Л/Ð’. The Holy Father, sprawling about a driver's chair, narrated to us about that day's morning mass, with a cigar in his left hand and a can of beer in the right. Don't even ask me in which one was the wheel! In a word, we were going slowly, in front - two hands were holding beer and a cigar, on the back four hands were squeezing the iron hand-rail. And then I saw, the police officers were standing not far off with the speedometer device. "Well, - I thought, - thanks God, maybe these will stop us. While they will be talking we can leave and catch another car, more-slower". But our Father Vasily speeded up so much that the peak-caps were blown away from the heads of those points men.
- Lie down! - I shouted. - They will shoot now!!!
Lara and I fell down on a floor.
- These? - answered our benefactor somewhere from above. - No, these won't shoot. We shall be in Adyghea in couple of minutes, and it is not their territory. They won't even pass the information to their colleagues by the portable radio. So, you can rise from a floor...
When we made sure, that the sirens and tommy-guns were silent, we got up slowly.
You better listen to this, - the Holy Father continued to calm us, - on the both sides of our church truck we have written simple words "GOD SAVE YOU" and also have drawn a cross? So now nobody comes closer 50 meters to us. What speed does the truck go at? Well, as usual. Below 100 km I forbid...
Little by little, we went further. We safely passed the police post of Adygheysk. Nobody has stopped us. Fortunately Father had enough reason to lower the speed and not to call the arms of the law donkeys by megaphone. He still didn't recollect about the complete lines. Besides, Father Vasily deeply believed that if he drove a jeep the road had only one direction, to the sea. There shouldn't be any oncoming traffic there! That is why we were often moving on the wrong side of the road, overtaking every car we could. The reaction of the drivers of coming cars was very interesting. Half of them just silently pressed the brakes and moved down to a deep roadside, the other half did a typical head rotation aside, speaking: "You should've better get the f...". Sometimes we had to stop just on a wrong side of the road because ours was occupied with a continuous cars line which we always tried to overtake, and there in front of the road a car was flying right into our forehead. And so we were standing, till there was a gleam between the cars or at last the coming driver understood who was at the wheel of our jeep.
In other words the cloud of adrenaline was moving around us. Those who got inside it, experienced various and wild reaction. If we got into both car flows we began to overtake from the right, on the roadside! At that moment I was calming Lara, reminding her, that we were still going by jeep. And what a jeep was that if it didn't ride on a gravel road. And it didn't matter that it rode uphill and in the speed of 100 km! The main thing was that our jeep was driven by Father Vasily! And as it was known to all Kuban patrol officers he was the best driver!