Fifteenth
June 11, 2025 at 8:30 AM
The sword gleamed monotonously in a sheath thrown over her bag. The jacket glowed proudly with its owner's surname embroidered on the back in bright blue threads. Her sneakers looked less confident: they were stuffed in a corner, under the bench, as if they were ashamed of how worn and sloppy they were, and as if they were not on parade at all.
Zhenya, hopping on one leg, pulled on her gaiters. While jumping, apparently, she managed to step on someone's foot: there was a yelp behind her, which was polite enough for a sports changing room.
She instantly turned round and met the gaze with stern and already familiar green eyes.
– I'm sorry, please, I didn't notice you by accident! Oh, and hello, you remember me, don't you? - she looked into this important, regal face with proud, sharp features and incredibly deep and piercing eyes.
Their owner smiled:
– Kravtseva? Moscow? I remember the semi-final. I still remember Kostroma and Kazan as well.
– Yes, that's me, – she smiled awkwardly again, as if trying to drown in a smile all the immodesty of the incident. She was answered warmly enough, especially for someone who was the woman she had had the misfortune to kick in the cramped locker room.
In fencing, and in sports in general, it is not customary to wish good luck: neither to friends nor to opponents. Fools wish good luck to fools, but here it is customary, almost like in firefighting, to wish a steady hand and a clear head. No fluff or feathers. Fencing isn't a matter of luck, it's a matter of stubbornly working on yourself, so wishing good luck is almost humiliating.
She knows this, but she almost doesn't say it anyway: she just bites her tongue in time. The awkward wish does get out before she can catch it:
– Good luck to you, though I'm sure you're the strongest one here already.
She gets no reply, but she doesn't turn round, already slamming the locker room door - so she doesn't see the legendary fencer pressing a second smile into her cheeks.
The hall smells of sweat and the metallic tang of the track, wiped away by the hundreds of trainers that, invisible to the eye, had slid across it all day. She loved even that smell of sweat, even the way the tight glove began to chafe her hand at the end of the day. She lived this smell, lived it, breathed it, loved it more than life – or rather, it had become such an important part of her life that it was simply impossible to imagine it outside of it.
Zhenya rubbed her eyes with her unarmed right hand. Her semi-final had just ended, now only the final remained ahead – and she was eager to find out who her opponent would be. Next to the rolled-up mat on which she had made herself comfortable in the corner, there was a lonely bottle of water and lay her favourite sword – her own friend, the key to her victory and confidence.
Zhenya took a greedy sip of water leisurely, savouring the cool moisture on her heated tongue after a hard fight. Unnoticeably for her, who was staring at the track, the coach came to the mat. They were both silent, watching the fencers desperately fighting for the right to go to the finals.
The coach bent down and whispered in her ear:
– I bet on Efremova. Today she is miraculously good.
Zhenya thoughtfully shifted her gaze to the figure on the right. How could she not have noticed the familiar name on the scoreboard? She looked at it with a unfocussed gaze and didn't realise what she was seeing.
Of course.
Ekaterina Efremova. The second number of the All-Russian rating. Master of Sport International Class. Bronze medallist at the European Championships in the individual event. Silver medallist at the World Championships in team event in Montreal. Participant of the Olympics-20 in Tokyo. Golden Girl of the Russian women's epee – still a girl, although she has not been a girl for a long time. A woman. A white eagle, as she was nicknamed by the media. Twenty-seven-year-old Efremova, whom Zhenya had crushed in the semifinals of her first adult national championship.
The one she'd bumped into in the locker room and stepped on.
Zhenya felt the traitorous tears rising in her throat again. She was going to lose to her, to Efremova, and she would win, and she would be absolutely right: she was better than her, many times better.
And older, and more experienced, and just longer fencing. And who is Zhenya Kravtseva? She shone a couple of times in juniors and took bronze at the Moscow Championship – that's all her achievements. In general, it is not clear how she ended up in the final at the National Championship, but that is the beauty and wonder of fencing – you never know how the wind blows.
But Zhenya already knows how it will be today – before she even steps on the track. Now Efremova has a difficult fight, but, without a doubt, she will win. It can't be otherwise. This is Efremova, after all. She's about to accept her fate of losing to her again.
The fate gets closer and closer to Zhenya with each hit. And then she gives the final one and shouts joyfully. Zhenya wrinkles her nose – not from anger, just from the loud sound and from helplessness. Fate takes off her mask and smiles happily, shaking hands with her losing opponent.
On the track where the final will take place, Zhenya goes like to an execution, almost dragging her feet and dragging her epee – literally. The coach tries to give some advice before the fight, but sees the complete emptiness in her ward's eyes – and irritably falls back. The first two hits, to her own surprise, come out absolutely clean - she herself does not understand to the end what she is doing and how she does it, but she moves, hits, leads in the score – and by the end of the first half Efremova is two hits behind.
Zhenya sits down tiredly on the track and reaches out to the coach for a bottle of life-giving water. He mumbles something about tactics and arm placement, but Zhenya doesn't even listen – she just drinks water and for some reason picks out the quiet voice of Efremova from the general noise in the background. Barely audible sighs and a quiet, tired, trembling voice reach her. A voice she would have recognised from a thousand.
‘I can't do anything, I can't, she does everything very competently, I just can't keep up! I need this gold badly, I haven't got any yet, none! Everybody has one – I'm the only one who doesn't! I need to win. I need to beat her, I can't do that, I can't! I can't lose to her.’
Zhenya pressed her lips together – she heard it and did not realise herself what she had heard. Efremova's voice is heard as another source of noise that she's already used to blocking out - her speech is just as habitually switched off in her head. She shrugs to herself and takes another sip. The one minute break ends.
The second half is much more difficult – Efremova concentrates and waits, she competently applies hits and quickly equalises the score.
When 14:14 comes, it seems to Zhenya that everything is floating in front of her eyes and she is about to faint from the height of her hundred and fifty-four centimeters.
She raises her hand and the referee allows her mask to come off. While she is tying the allegedly untied laces on her trainers, she tensely considers – what to do?
Efremova waits impatiently, and there is no more opportunity to pretend that she is tying the laces. Zhenya stands up and runs a trembling hand through her hair before lowering the mask over her face again.
She moves long, confidently, drawing Efremova towards her - at one point the latter is actually led and falls into a lunge. Zhenya confidently takes the defence and responds with a perfect counterattack. Both red and green lights are lit on the scoreboard. Efremova takes off her mask without the referee's permission and starts to defend her hit. Zhenya freezes.
If Efremova doesn't get her foot shot counted now, she's won. And she knows it won't count – she felt the blade scrape across her leg, and the tip landed just a few millimeters away from her foot, on the track. Surprisingly, it is true that the sword worked on the track, but Zhenya is sure that Efremova was not shot in the foot.
She argues furiously with the referee and even demonstratively pokes her epee in the lane – it doesn't work from her side, but Zhenya knows – it wasn't, it wasn't in the foot, she missed, the shot was on the track. She knows and still immediately jumps off the low platform:
– Dear judge, I ask that this hit be cancelled for both me and Ekaterina, because I am sure that the hit was there – I felt it. Ekaterina hit me in the edge of my shoe, but it is still an hit in the foot. Please reconsider your decision.
She knows no one will replay the hit, there's no way to see it. She knows she'll be believed – because no one in their right mind would lie about someone else's hit, not their own.
But she does it – she doesn't know why. But at that moment it seems to her for some reason the most correct axiom of the world, the most honest, logical, and fair – she needs that this hit was, so that the judge and Efremova herself would believe that it was.
Efremova looks at Zhenya with a strange mixture of incomprehension and respect in her gaze. In fencing they fight to the death over controversial shots, but nobody gives them to anyone.
But Zhenya does – a second chance. A necessary, important one. Unfair and not a bit unfair – but the right one.
She's sure it's right.
That the golden girl, the second epee ranking, the white eagle and European and World medallist deserves the gold – it will suit her big, insanely deep green eyes so beautifully and correctly.
She will finally exhale, calm down, heal her injuries a little and come back to conquer pedestals, to make people fall in love with her and to shake the crazy fencing world.
Zhenya needs her so much alive at that moment, as if without her she would die, die, that she doesn't need the gold medal at all: she needs Ekaterina Efremova, the second epee of the All-Russian rating and the golden girl.
She and the whole fencing world needs her. And if the golden girl needs a gold medal, she will have it: she deserves it.
By birthright.
Because Ekaterina Efremova is golden.
It seems to her that she is flying, that she is in love with the whole world, including Efemova, with the epee, with the track, with the strict judge and with fencing in general - and she has never felt so easy and good. And no gold is needed. All that is needed is this - one little, unbeknownst to anyone, necessary lie.
Wrong. But she wants it. For some reason she has to.
And she always listens stupidly to a stupid heart.
She shouldn't, but she wants to.
And she has to when she wants to.
When she wants it so badly.
And she happily exhales and puts her hand under Efremova's fifteenth hit.
