“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Really. I wanted this to be different.”
“You’ve been drinking,” she said.
“Yes, a little.”
She turned away from him again and wrapped her arms over her stomach. David took his hand from her hair. He glanced around the lounge and thought what an ugly place it was that they’d come to: the tacky furnishings, the cheap bamboo lattice hiding the kitchenette, the coin-operated lighting. It was perfunctory, seedy, like a roadside motel in a degenerate part of town. He wished they were somewhere else.
“I asked about the old building on the island,” he said, because he could think of nothing else. “It used to be a paint factory.”
“I don’t care, David.”
“No,” he replied. “Nor me.”
She reached out then and took his hand and placed it against her belly.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
“Everything I see reminds me.”
“Yes.”
“When you looked at that little girl today I thought I would be sick. I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit that woman and take her child and run away.”
David nodded his head and did not resist as she pushed his hand hard against her stomach, digging her nails into his flesh.
“And then, in my mind, I was back there again. Standing there in the middle of the bank with it running down my leg. Into my shoes. On the floor. Everyone staring at me. Pointing. Putting their hands over their mouths while it all ran away like goddamn piss down my legs.”
“Don’t, Rebecca,” he said, feeling far away from her. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
She pushed his hand away and sat up, her eyes dry and angry now. She shook her head and laughed.
“To myself, David?” she said. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
Rebecca got up from the sofa and crossed the little room and stood on the hearth. She looked down at the electric fire, its bars black and cold.
David went to her, put his arms around her from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder.
“It’ll be fine,” he said, close to her ear, her hair moving under his breath. “Everything will be okay again. We’ll be okay again.”
“No, David.” She stiffened under his touch. “No, David,” she said again. “No, I don’t think we will.”
IOSIF IN LOVE
ALEXANDER SVANIDZE LOOKED ACROSS the table at Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Even now, with three glasses of vodka drunk and the fourth ready to be tasted, he could not imagine this man a priest. It wasn’t so much his friend’s scruffy appearance: the patchy unkempt beard that struggled to hide his pallid complexion, the startling shock of raven hair, the rough threadbare coat or thin checkered scarf. It wasn’t even the fierce black eyes that caught the faint flame of the gaslight burning on the wall opposite; the devil Rasputin himself has ferocious eyes, Alexander thought, and still he is a cleric, of sorts. This man, Iosif Vissarionovich, had been one short step removed from the ecclesiastic life: five years at the Tiflis seminary and just a single examination away from ordination. And yet Alexander simply could not envision him in the intricately embroidered cassock and absurd conical headdress of the church.
“Tell me, Koba,” Alexander asked Iosif, “what was it like? The religious life?”
“Alyosha.” The faint smile that had moments before curled Iosif’s lips disappeared and his mouth became no more than a pencil line etched below his moustache. His voice had gone cold, like a lump of coal pulled from the earth, thought Alexander, feeling its chill.
“Alyosha,” Iosif said again, his tone lighter this time, and his smile returning. “I have told you, Alyosha, that I do not wish to speak of the church. It is a hideout of deceivers and hypocrites, backward-thinking old men who pollute the minds of the workers with their hypothetical God. All of them hand in pocket with the Tsar and his sycophantic ministers, intent on keeping the proletariat pinioned to the stinking earth with their pig-fattened thumbs.” As he spoke, Iosif’s eyes grew darker still, even as his smile widened, stretching the whiskers on his chin and accentuating the randomness of his beard. “But do not worry, Alyosha, my friend. In time they will be called to answer for their liars’ deeds. Then we shall see about this saviour of theirs.”
Iosif began to laugh as if he’d just divined the humour of an elaborate joke, and Alexander watched in strange wonder at the paradox that was his friend’s face. In repose it had a sternness that was frightening; it was not so much that it was cruel, as simply, and disconcertingly, devoid of emotion. But when Iosif laughed, his entire face crinkled; even his thick-bridged Georgian nose scrunched up, giving him an almost pixieish quality.
“You know, Koba,” Alexander said, laying a hand across Iosif’s forearm, “it would not do to have Kato hear you talk such.”
Alexander knew that the mention of his sister would quiet Iosif, and quiet now was how he wanted him. Though revolutionary talk was rife in Tiflis, it was best kept behind closed doors—especially now that the gendarmerie had circulated their photographs. While he wouldn’t admit it to Iosif, even being in this tavern unnerved him. That this quarter was sympathetic to the cause did not seem to help the matter. There were many ears about, not all of which, Alexander was certain, were so friendly that he and Iosif were safe from being turned over to the authorities for a fistful of kopecks.
Iosif, despite his best efforts, now wore the face of a fool, and looking at his friend, Alexander could tell that he was angry. Yet the buffoon that took up residence in Iosif’s cheeks, adding to them traces of scarlet that not even the frigid winds of Irkutsk had been able to muster, would not allow this spleen to gain purchase.
“How is Yekaterina?” Iosif asked, an idiot-like shyness descending upon him.
Alexander lifted his glass to his mouth and as the vodka slid warmly over his tongue, offered a mockingly noncommittal shrug.
“Has she,” Iosif said quietly, leaning forward, “asked about me?”
“My dear Koba,” Alexander said, finding it was now his turn to smile, “you know how little our sweet Kato asks for.”
Iosif could see he was being toyed with but refused to rise to the bait. “But me?” he whispered. “Has she anything to say about me?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Alexander replied, pushing his empty glass into the middle of the table. “Come eat with us this evening.”
For the briefest of moments, so fleeting that he thought he may have imagined it, Alexander saw worry flicker through his friend’s black eyes. But Iosif was quick to recover himself, and with a cough he chased the anxiety away.
“I do not believe your mother would welcome my company,” he said coolly. “She does not think highly of me, I am afraid.”
“Koba,” Alexander said as delicately as he could. “You, of all people, should know how little it matters what a mother thinks, if you will forgive my saying.”
“True,” Iosif replied. “Though I did not wish to say as much.”
“I would have thought by now,” Alexander said, laying his hand again on the other man’s arm, “you would have realized that to me you can say anything. Besides,” he continued, lowering his voice, “you must come. We need to talk about Erevan Square. If we’re not careful, that Kamo will blow a hole in the middle of Tiflis. But this,” he said, looking warily about, “is not the place to talk.”
Iosif nodded. “You are right, of course,” he replied, casting a glance at the men sitting at the surrounding tables. “No one is to be trusted.”
“He is a pig,” Alexander Svanidze’s mother said to him as she lifted the heavy kettle from the iron stove-top. “Do you see him? The way he eats? Sucking the walnuts from his salad and leaving them on the side of his plate. Does he know the trouble it was to get those walnuts? Is he a squirrel collecting them for winter?”
Alexander looked back down the darkened corridor toward the sitting room; he could hear Iosif
’s annoyed voice. Things were not going well. He had not expected to see David Suliashvili sitting before the hearth with Yekaterina’s hand in his own when he arrived home from the tavern. He was only thankful that Iosif had had errands to run and did not accompany him.
“Please, Mama,” Alexander said in a hushed tone. “Please keep your voice down.”
“Why?” she mocked. “Is the terrible Koba liable to silence me in my own home?”
Alexander glanced nervously at his mother. She had not seen Iosif Vissarionovich’s temper, had not witnessed its swift and astonishing brutality. He left her then and made his way back along the murky passageway to the sitting room. There he found David Suliashvili sitting before the hearth again, but Yekaterina no longer sat beside him. His sister had moved to the rocking chair, where she sat with her embroidery, stitching the elaborate design into a traditional shawl that she hoped to sell at the Tiflis market. Alexander noticed, however, that the needlework did not command the whole of his sister’s attention. Each time she drew the thread through the material she cast a glance across the room to where Iosif stood, one hand resting on the mantelshelf, the other gesticulating, using his newly affected ebony pipe to drive home the point he had just made about the Tsarists’ betrayal of the people. Looking at his friend, Alexander could not help but feel the twinge of sympathy. Iosif, after their meeting in the tavern, had returned to the safe house to change his clothes in preparation to see Yekaterina, and he stood before them now wearing shiny black trousers and an oversized peasant blouse that, for all its bagginess, only served to accentuate the withering deformity that knurled his left arm. He had also trimmed his beard, but had done such a poor job of it, in nervous haste, Alexander imagined, that it appeared even more erratic. On his head he wore a Turkish fez, which, whether out of forgetfulness or intent, he had not removed during the whole of dinner. It seemed to be causing him some discomfort, but he made no move to relieve himself of it. In all, he cut a rather foolish figure; he looked a poseur. Yet Alexander could see that to Yekaterina he appeared anything but; when she looked at him, she did so with eyes filled with warmth and reverence; it was as if she was seeing not a shabbily dressed and awkward suitor, but a dashing brigand.
David saw this in Yekaterina’s face as well and his own features in response became gloomy. Whereas a sulk on the face of some can make them strangely more attractive, it had the opposite effect on David. His petulance caused his bottom lip to fatten and his cheeks to sink into his skull; his eyes became hollow and his brow furrowed so that he looked a man much older than his twenty-five years: any semblance of his handsome dark-eyed, strong-jawed Georgian aspect vanished. He had turned himself out well in a sombre grey serge suit with a waistcoat and a white, buttoned shirt and black tie— the costume of the movement’s intelligentsia, fashioned carefully after the clothes worn by Comrades Lenin and Trotsky. But he might as well have been wearing a burlap sack for all Yekaterina noticed. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the floor.
From where he was standing in the doorway, Alexander could see that David was preparing to speak, and from the way he held his body, Alexander knew that what the other man had to say would be an incitement to Iosif. The two men had attended seminary together, and although they both eschewed the priesthood for the same cause, they had taken divergent paths: David now followed the path of thought, Iosif that of force. It had often put them at odds with one another. And there was, of course, the question of Yekaterina to consider.
So to avoid any confrontation—knowing full well that an exchange of words would benefit David, who in the eyes of his mother, if not in Yekaterina’s, was held in far higher esteem— Alexander stepped forward and made to speak himself. But before any words could pass his lips, his mother pushed by him carrying a tray of tea and kada. David was quick to get to his feet and relieve her of her burden. As he set it down on the table, she patted him gently on the cheek.
“You are such a good boy, David Suliashvili,” she said. “Your mother must be very proud of you.”
David offered a brief bow. “All sons should try to make their mothers proud,” he said and looked openly toward Iosif still standing propped against the mantelshelf. Then he took a pastry from the tray, popped it into his mouth, and chewing it said, “And I do not think I have ever tasted such wonderful kada. You must give me the recipe so I may pass it on to my own dear mama.”
In the corner of the sitting room Alexander’s father stirred in his chair. He had fallen asleep after dinner, but the commotion of tea and pastry had roused him. Seeing that his wife was pouring out strong black tea into tall samovars he grunted his dissent, then pulled himself from his deep chair and crossed to where his drinking horns hung from a peg on the wall beside an ikon of the Virgin. He took one down, found a bottle of wine on the sideboard and removed the cork.
“Koba,” he said, his voice still gruff with sleep, “have some wine with me and leave the tea and cakes for the women.”
Iosif offered his own semblance of a bow, an awkward and somewhat insufficient imitation of David’s, and replied, “I thank you, sir, but I must refuse. It muddles the senses.”
Again Alexander’s father grunted and proceeded to fill his horn with wine. He took a long drink, then wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. “I do not trust a man who refuses a drink,” he said, eyeing Iosif.
“Some people do not trust a man who takes one too easily.”
It was Yekaterina who spoke, and all turned to look at her in the rocking chair, where she continued to embroider as if nothing had been said.
“And some insolent daughters deserve to be punished when they speak,” said her father as he took a step toward her, his barrel chest thrust forth in indignation.
Iosif moved away from the mantelshelf, not so far as to bar the bigger man’s path, but enough just to catch his attention. The room went very quiet, and there appeared now in the aspect of Alexander’s father a pellicle of fear; it descended over his features like an early spring mist, growing thicker and more obscuring as Iosif spoke.
“I do not think Yekaterina meant you any disrespect,” he said, his voice taking on a wintry tone. “I believe she only spoke of imbibers in general. There are those who lose their reason when they are in their cups. Not you, of course, sir, but others. Is that not what you meant, Yekaterina?”
Alexander looked to his sister, to the warmly appreciative and satisfied smile that touched her lips.
“Why yes, Iosif Vissarionovich,” she said sweetly. “You have understood me well. As have you always.”
Not liking the confidence that had just passed between her daughter and her son’s shabby friend, Alexander’s mother spoke up in a harsh voice.
“Tell me, Soso,” she said, using the hated pet name that his own mother had called him by, “are we to understand that you are now an Ottoman?”
Iosif turned his dark eyes on her, but did not allow her taunt to upset the pleasure he had taken from Yekaterina’s obvious affection.
“You might say,” he replied, touching the top of his fez with his crooked left hand, “that this is my one concession to fashion. Besides, it is the headwear of our worker brothers to the west. When the revolution comes, it will spread well beyond Tsarist boundaries, and so we must be prepared with the foreknowledge of our comrades’ ways. And how better to understand them than to walk in their clothes?”
“That is utter foolishness,” said David, finding himself able now to release his frustration at being overlooked by Yekaterina.
“Really?” said Iosif with undisguised contempt. “I would have thought it the reason for your dressing like a bourgeois office clerk, so that you might know how better to cut them down when the time is ripe.”
His words hung in the air like an implicit threat. Alexander moved quickly to diffuse the tension. He set his samovar back down on the tray and kissed his mother on the cheek.
“It was a lovely supper, Mama,” he said. “But Koba and I must go now. We h
ave much still to do this evening.”
“More juvenile intrigue, I suppose,” David said, though his voice now lacked all authority.
Iosif stepped close to him.
“It is only by virtue of our juvenile intrigue,” he said through a hollow grin, “that thinkers like yourself, David Suliashvili, can claim any importance. You should not forget that.”
Then Iosif executed a second bow, this one far more graceful than his first, and said, “I thank you all for your very kind hospitality.”
Alexander waited in the shadows while Iosif spoke to the watchman in the guardhouse of the brickworks. After a moment his friend waved him over. The guard, drawing a large key from his ring, unlocked the gates and let them swing open for the two men. Iosif put a hand on Alexander’s shoulder and ushered him through, saying, “Kamo and the others are already inside waiting for us. The tools have arrived.”
They followed the watchman across the yard, past the brick kilns to the warehouse at the back of the works. There they saw light through the windows. Alexander noticed Iosif shaking his head at the sight of this, and then reaching out with his crooked hand to grab hold of the watchman’s sleeve.
“Did you not tell them to be secretive?” he said, his voice clipped. “Do they not know that the Tsarists are watching out for us?”
“I told them so, Comrade Koba,” the watchman said. He was a big man, thick through the shoulders with a great stone of a head, yet under Iosif’s questioning he seemed almost to shrink in on himself. “But Simon Ter-Petrosyan … I mean Comrade Kamo, told me to mind my own business and showed me his pistol.”
“Very well,” said Iosif. “Lead on.”
As they reached the door of the warehouse they could hear laughter coming from inside. The sound of the voices, along with the burning lights, served to worsen Iosif’s mood. And although Alexander could not clearly see his friend’s face in the darkness, he knew that it had hardened with fury. Iosif himself took hold of the door and flung it back on its rusting hinges. The light flooding out momentarily blinded Alexander, whose eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. But Iosif stepped into the glowing warehouse as if the new brightness had no effect on him.
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