Where the Crickets Sing

In Tbilisi, summer doesn’t arrive by calendar — it arrives by sound. More precisely, by a chorus. When crickets creep out from balconies, window sills, cracks in the asphalt and leaky basements — shimmering creatures made of copper and music. Their song is something between a bowless violin and a dusty memory — it becomes the city’s background hum, like an old record playing softly while life happens.

It was July, in the outskirts of Lomis Mta — one of those distant districts where the high-rises stand so close, you can hear your neighbor in the building across the street uncorking a bottle at night. Here lived a musician, Archi — a retired composer who once wrote strange scores for forgotten films. He didn’t play anymore, but every night he opened the window and listened. Not to the street, not to the cars — but to the crickets.

It always began with a single trill — like someone testing the silence. Then another. Then more. By midnight, the whole valley of Lomis Mta rang like a secret harp, its strings untouched by hands but still knowing exactly how to sound. The musician would sit in the dark, sipping thyme tea and recording the night’s song on an old cassette player.

And then — there was silence.

At first, he thought it was just a cooler night. Or someone had mowed the grass. But on the second, third, and fourth nights — still no crickets. Not a sound. Only the faint hum of a transformer box, as if the city itself had frozen to listen to its own heartbeat.

On the seventh night, Archi left his apartment. Tbilisi glowed yellow below — down there, it was still summer. Up here — something was wrong. He walked to the stone staircase leading to the gully behind the building, the place where crickets always gathered in the heat. Nothing. Just grass. He knelt down. The earth felt too quiet.

And then — he heard footsteps. Light, barefoot, behind him. He turned — no one. Only the air, thick with dust and warmth.

Who’s there?

No answer. Just a rustle — like someone turning a page. And then he heard:

Everything will turn out right. The world is built that way.

— The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

He went home without a word, not switching on the light. Sat by the window and stared into the dark. He knew now — beyond the buildings, beyond the hills where no construction had reached yet, where the ground still breathed like skin — they had taken the crickets. All of them. Someone, or something.

In the morning, he woke to a click. Then another. And another. A song. It was returning.

But now, it sounded different. Not high and bright, but deeper. As if the crickets weren’t outside, but inside the building. He opened a kitchen cabinet — and there was one. Sitting in a porcelain teacup he hadn’t used since the ’90s. Staring at Archi. Singing.

The musician laughed. He understood now: the song hadn’t vanished. The world had just changed instruments.

From that day on, he began composing a new symphony. Without notes. Without a violin. Just the hum of tiny voices. A song about how the city breathes, and how in its cracks live the sounds that disappear only to return — and remind you that you are not alone