Читать книгу On The Couch - Fleur Britten - Страница 18

‘Hello Ravil! Just to say that we’re on board our train to Novosibirsk and are looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at midnight…could you just confirm that you’ve received this?’

This was the third unanswered text message that we’d sent our prospective couch. We were hoping Ravil would be our fourth host, but we’d had precisely no replies. The probability of something going wrong—given that the premise of couchsurfing was suspended on the very delicate bridge of altruism between strangers; and that Ravil was holding a Kalashnikov in his profile picture—was soaring. As novices, this seemed like an impending catastrophe. But first we had to exorcise the electrifying effects of Polly. Now at a safe distance, she amused me—surely better provocative and caffeinated than thumb-twiddlingly bland. The problem was that couchsurfing’s doses were either overdoses or none at all. Besides, she’d put us up, and in luxury—as our host, she was the sacred cow.

Ollie elevated his leg in a tea-towel sling—the compulsory walking tour hadn’t helped; it was obvious that he was hiding the pain.

‘You should seriously get your leg checked out, Ollie,’ I said. ‘You might be doing it permanent damage. Maybe we can ask Ravil to help.’ After all, Ravil was a 23-year-old medical student who worked nights at an ‘emergency station’ in a town renowned for science. Akademgorodok, meaning ’academy town’, was Novosibirsk’s ‘utopian science city’, purpose-built in 1957 and considered to be Siberia’s educational and scientific centre. Ravil lived, sometimes with his mother, in a one-room apartment. It was staggering that people were happy to share such a small space. It was also an indication of Novosibirsk’s limited couchsurfing choices.