He produced divine gateaux and cakes of every description. Truffles, bitter chocolate, milk chocolate with apricot jelly, with walnuts, or raisins, and more exotic items like chocolate tarts with black pepper, cherry liqueur centres coated with mint chocolate, chocolate biscuits filled with fig cream, or chocolate nougat with watermelon jelly. The Chocolaterie managed to unite the French art of patisserie and traditional Austrian baking with Eastern European opulence.
At six o’clock every morning he went to the shop and added his own ingredients to the huge mixtures of chocolate prepared by his employees for each product in his range, giving them their special flavour. Nobody could work out the formula, and it was this that made his chocolate so irresistible.
So far, he had added only a very small amount of the special mixture to all his chocolate products — a finishing touch to the flavour, as it were — but it was in the hot chocolate that its magic was at its most potent.
Encouraged by the tremendous success of his magic formula, which made him flirt with ambitious plans for expansion, he planned to unveil the crème de la crème of his creation — the hot chocolate — only at the very pinnacle of his fame and success, in Tbilisi, Moscow, or St Petersburg. It would make everybody swoon. In spite, or perhaps because of his success, the chocolate-maker, who was hoping for an heir, had sworn to keep his recipe in the family, and to keep it secret for the time being.
According to Stasia, this decision saved our family, if not our whole country, from total ruin.
Alongside his work, my great-great-grandfather was a freeman of the town, and took part in its social and cultural life, moving in elevated circles in local politics, founding the town’s only gentlemen’s club (in the European style), and becoming the patron of several literature, theatre, and philosophy circles. He sat on the committee of the ‘Society for Tradition and Honour’ and was also, incidentally, one of the richest inhabitants of the little town, which he wanted to transform into the ‘Nice of the Caucasus’, since Tbilisi already enjoyed a reputation as the Caucasian Paris.
His wife cared little for these outward appearances, preferring to occupy her time with Bible study and the strict upbringing of their two daughters. She had to be persuaded to take part in any kind of social event, and was not particularly keen on travelling, either, which didn’t please the chocolate-maker at all. Her exaggerated piety also vexed him. He sensed that, because of it, he had lost all connection with his children, who were also, under the strict eye of their mother and a religious governess, growing into pious, timid, un-European girls.
The battle on the female front in his own house seemed to be one he was losing, with grave consequences.
He had to have a son! The female majority in his house had simply become too threatening. He needed an heir, a man to fight by his side in the battle against the opposite sex. It was a long time since the couple had shared a marital bed, and he knew it would require a lot of time and all his powers of persuasion. The two births had been very difficult for Ketevan, and she wasn’t in the best of health. It wouldn’t be easy to convince her to go through another pregnancy.
Several times he explained to his wife that it was purely a matter of inheritance because, after all, the chocolate factory needed a male heir — but she remained unimpressed, and consoled him with the thought that his two daughters would marry, and a shrewd son-in-law was a good alternative solution to the problem.
He therefore had to employ other means to convince his wife to bear him a successor. And so he decided to make his finest creation for her — the hot chocolate — because the more concentrated the ingredients, the greater the effect of the recipe.
He arranged for a little string quartet to play, just for her, in the chocolate factory, which was already closed to visitors; and, by candlelight, enveloped in the intoxicating aroma of his own concoction, he set in front of her the most beautiful porcelain cup he had been able to find in his shop. As she spooned up the chocolate, he spoke honeyed words to her, convincing her of how essential it was for him to have a male heir.
Like so many people after her, Ketevan was overcome by an unbridled craving for more, and, in the days that followed, she begged her husband to make the hot chocolate for her again. And so my great-great-grandfather was finally able to give her an ultimatum: if she would undergo another pregnancy, he would prepare the hot chocolate for her every day for the following nine months. Her resistance was broken, and her longing for the most delicious taste in the world gave her no choice but reluctantly to give in and agree to his offer.
And so it was that, nine months later, she found herself in labour in her bedroom once again, attended by a country doctor and two midwives. It was several hours before they got a healthy, well-formed girl out of her (the mother just gave a disappointed sigh). She thought she had come through it all successfully, until the worried doctor called out that the labour was still progressing. A second one was on the way. After more pushing and screaming, another girl finally saw the light of day.
But the second child refused to cry. Something wasn’t right with her lungs, the doctor declared; the child was turning blue, she wasn’t getting any air, and he slapped her hard on the back. A few minutes after the birth, the second baby had to be pronounced dead (they had been identical twins).
But the first, who was baptised Anastasia, seemed healthy and cheerful and screamed lustily for her mother’s milk.
A short while later, Ketevan died of pneumonia contracted during her confinement. She went quickly, without any great torment, after giving Anastasia the breast for the last time.
These two tragedies were the first in my great-great-grandfather’s life: they came in such quick succession, and were so definitive, so immense, that for months afterwards he handed the whole of the business over to his chief secretary, as he was in no condition to leave the house. Only in the mornings did he walk to the shop, with sluggish, shuffling steps, to prepare the mixture that went into every batch of chocolate.
His love for his wife may not have been as fresh and radiant over the preceding years as at the start of their marriage, but she had remained an important part of his life. The loss of the mother of his children weighed heavily upon him, and, left alone, he had no idea what to do with the three girls.
During this time, he began to be haunted by peculiar thoughts. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been responsible for his wife’s death. If he hadn’t coerced her into another pregnancy, she might have been alive, and he would also have been spared the tragedy of the baby’s death.
Could it be that there was a fatal aspect to his bewitching creation? Had the chocolate he had so enthusiastically prepared for her through all those months set the catastrophe in motion? Was it simply too delicious to be consumed without paying a high price? Did it make those who tasted it so happy and carefree that reality then had to avenge itself upon them all the more mercilessly? Could it even be cursed? Could he have discovered something that was too good for mankind? Was his plan to offer the hot chocolate for sale only at the pinnacle of his success not, in fact, a calculated strategy, as he had first thought, but a premonition that had made him mix the recipe into his products only in small amounts?
At the same time, there was a nagging doubt in his mind: he thought it childish to believe something so irrational. He wasn’t a God-fearing man: he even had his doubts about the Church, let alone superstitions, which he held to be a religion for the poor.
In an attempt to bring himself to his senses, he decided to bequeath the most valuable thing he possessed to Anastasia. Anastasia should inherit the recipe for his hot chocolate. And he swore to himself that he would pass on the recipe to her when she married, as the most precious dowry he was able to bestow.
Little by little, the chocolate-maker awoke from his stupor and employed a peasant woman, herself newly delivered of a baby, to nurse Anastasia. He finally dismissed the strict, religious
governess and found a young nanny, who cared for the girls with patience and a warm heart.
The oldest of the three girls, Lida, was already six, and was probably the one most affected by her mother’s death. She had been her mother’s favourite, and had always tried to please her. She was therefore excessively shy, taciturn, and God-fearing, more like a grown woman than a child. Her father was even a little afraid of her, with her stern gaze, her highly developed sense of morality, and her gloomy disposition.
The second child, five-year-old Meri, did not yet display any revealing characteristics, but she was often sickly, and had an innate dissatisfaction for which her father could find no remedy.
Both of them missed their mother, and their father was a stranger to them. Before their mother’s death he had always been at work, or fulfilling social duties. He smoked a pipe, talked loudly, liked to drink cognac with friends in his study, and spoke about things that didn’t interest little girls.
But the youngest, Anastasia, who quickly became known to everyone as Stasia, was influenced by none of this. She was much too young to be conscious of losing her mother; she had no memory of her. Despite the difficult circumstances of her birth, she was a cheerful child, with an impressive head of hair. Even when she was a baby, you could have plaited it — as I’ve said already — and she revealed a dominant disposition early on.
The chocolate-maker decided to do everything right with her. He wouldn’t allow her to become estranged from him like her sisters, and grow up far removed from his philosophy of life.
After the first and most oppressive year of mourning had elapsed, the chocolate-maker summoned his courage and decided to give his family a new start.
Over the following four years, my great-great-grandfather made a real effort to win his girls’ affection. He spoiled them, introducing them to the good things in life that their mother had denied them: they were permitted to stuff themselves with food and stay up late; they were permitted to go to the bazaar and the travelling circus; they were permitted to skip church on Sundays; they were permitted to get dirty and charge wildly around the house; they were permitted to go to The Chocolaterie and eat as much chocolate as they were able; they were permitted to do their homework after they had played games, and to ask him to bring them back pretty clothes and toys as souvenirs from his business trips.
It was a light-hearted, free atmosphere that reigned in the chocolate-maker’s home during those years, and the many little signs of neglect that began to appear in the once-immaculate house didn’t seem to bother anyone, either; on the contrary, they added to its cosiness.
Stasia always remembered her early childhood, and the period of ‘girl rule’ in the house, with great fondness. But when her father came back from a business trip to Kiev one day in the company of a tall woman with a somewhat cool, but very impressive, Slavic appearance, who understood not a word of Georgian, and introduced her as his new wife, everything changed in an instant. A house without a wife was no house at all, their father said, and he was sad to be going through life alone. He had no intention of replacing their mother, he told them, but he implored them to accept Larissa (or Lara) Mikhailovna as a new member of the family with respect and open hearts.
But Lara Mikhailovna, who was a member of the Moscow aristocracy and had previously been married to a (now deceased) Ukrainian merchant with alcoholic tendencies, proved not so easy to accept. She was an imperious woman, used to people flattering and paying court to her. She liked luxury, and regarded her move to the Georgian provinces as unworthy of her. Unlike the girls, their father seemed untroubled by Lara’s difficult character. Either she was delighting her new husband at night with her incredible talents, which made it worth his while to forget the hardship of spending the day at her side, or she possessed other intellectual qualities that were revealed only to the chocolate-maker. There was no other explanation for why he heaped expensive gifts on his new wife, subordinated everything else to her wishes and wants, and allowed her to treat him like a serf.
The cheerful, relaxed atmosphere of the preceding years gave way to an oppressive, hierarchical order, in which Lara set the tone.
She found the girls too wayward, and began to re-educate them at once. First, the two older children, Lida and Meri, were sent to a strict girls’ school for children of the elite. Then she engaged a piano teacher, who practised tirelessly with them every two days, followed by a private tutor to work on their Russian — their accent was abominable, or so Lara said.
She herself, however, enjoyed the advantages that her spouse and his status brought her. Spa trips were undertaken, celebratory dinners given, balls attended, materials ordered from France, hats sewn, two new housemaids employed, and jewellery purchased, along with several Chinese porcelain vases that Lara particularly liked.
My great-great-grandfather also blossomed; Lara seemed to be the wife he had always wanted at his side. The fact that his children laughed less and less, became ever quieter, and were always sticking out their tongues at Lara as soon as she turned her back were things he was happy to overlook. Lara was more than fit for good society, adept at using the advantages of money; she loved the attention, the travel, the jewels, the gossip, went to church only at Easter and Christmas, and knew how to impress people, above all the male sex.
Two years after the wedding, Christine, the late arrival, came into the world. Seven years after Stasia.
The chocolate-maker still wanted a son, and didn’t give up hope of an heir. But neither he nor Lara was as young as they once were, and there were no further pregnancies. And so — after several visits to health spas and a great deal of effort — Christine remained my great-great-grandfather’s final attempt to produce a male successor.
Christine was to become the classic baby of the family: pampered, spoilt, and arrogant. She was declared by her mother — as if it were the most obvious thing in the world — to be the only princess in the house, and was idolised by her father. Admittedly, Christine was an almost supernaturally beautiful child. Nobody who visited the family could stop talking about the little girl’s beauty, to the great pride of her parents. What a Madonna-like face, what grace, what perfect features, what fine limbs!
In fact, the girl embodied the ideal of Slavic-Caucasian collaboration. Particularly as, from a young age, Christine knew how to use her advantages, and was very good at getting what she wanted. For the older girls, life didn’t exactly get easier.
Perhaps it was this change in the household that made Stasia develop a kind of spirit of protest. Unlike the quiet Lida, who was flirting with the idea of entering a convent, and the rather superficial and exuberant Meri, Stasia had realised very early on that she had to assert herself in this family. Otherwise, she would probably remain unnoticed, in the shadow of a toddler with whom she just happened to share a father.
She quickly learned to voice her own opinion, to concentrate on her dreams and desires, to do things that Lara, and therefore also Christine, would never do, like, for example, riding astride on Kabardin horses, taking an interest in women’s rights, wearing no jewellery, caring little for luxury — and, above all, taking ballet lessons, dreaming of a ballet career, and planning her departure for Paris.
*
Time hurried by, and the political mood throughout the Russian Empire grew tenser by the day. The chocolate-maker had already started to worry about his own future and that of his children; the communists, who seemed to have been swarming all over the place for the past eight years, did not bode well for them. Like all members of the Georgian elite, my great-great-grandfather was afraid of the proletariat. He was happy to make charitable donations to them, but he still liked to keep them at arm’s length whenever possible.
My great-great-grandfather didn’t believe in socialism; he didn’t believe in the revolution, or radical reforms; and, although he followed the news from Russia with some concern, he apparently always said that, in his
country, the Bolsheviks would never prevail (the embryonic ‘Third Group’ was already hard at work in the Georgian capital and would declare Georgian independence barely a year after the October Revolution).
My great-great-grandfather viewed Simon Jashi’s well-balanced mixture of good old-fashioned values, a longing for stability, and a commitment to moderate liberalism as a kind of guarantee for the future of his business. Simon was also a military man: should the going get tough, he could be useful to the Reds as well, and would thus be able to assure the family’s future. With no male heir, the chocolate-maker wanted a man at his side: the future was already knocking at the door, and nobody knew what it would look like.
His first-born would never find a husband, monosyllabic, pious churchgoer that she was. And he started to come to terms with the idea of giving Lida over to God, whom she seemed to love above all other male beings — Does God actually have a sex? the chocolate-maker wondered on some evenings, as he sat in his study with a good glass of cognac, mulling over his thoughts.
The second eldest, who was by then already twenty-one — a good, marriageable age — proved to be no easier. At nineteen, she had become engaged to a hard-working banker’s son, and nothing seemed to stand in the way of this promising new family alliance, until one day she announced that she didn’t want to marry him after all: he was chasing after every skirt in the city, and that was hardly likely to change after the wedding.
‘But darling, Meriko, my sunshine, you have to allow the poor boy a little pleasure in life. We men are weak creatures; we need more affection than you women. Let him look to the left and right a little — who’s it going to hurt? There are many temptations along a man’s path, and resisting them is difficult. He loves and respects you, and after all, that’s the most important thing for a woman.’
The Eighth Life Page 5