The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischwili

  The last to leave was Ramas Iosebidze, who kissed Christine’s hand in parting.

  *

  Three days later, she received a huge bunch of red roses, with a scented card tucked into them: These flowers are not worthy of your beauty, Christine. But I think it is worth an attempt to pay tribute to you. Count me as one of your admirers, of which, I assume, there are a great many. I will try to find ways to express the depth of my admiration. Ramas Iosebidze of Tbilisi.

  Christine hadn’t shown her parents the many cards and letters she had been sent over the previous few years. She laughed at the young men from the neighbourhood; she and her school friends would make fun of their clumsy declarations of love, and eventually she would tear all the letters up.

  But the flowers, which had been sent to her father’s address, could not be overlooked. And so Christine had to show her father the card. He merely smiled — which was the last thing she had expected. She had been prepared for him to curse and throw the card away in exasperation. But no. He even gave her a kiss on the forehead.

  Flowers and other gifts arrived with increasing frequency over the months that followed. Christine, who was preparing for her school-leaving exams, was often interrupted during her studies by a courier bearing bouquets of lilacs or bottles of French champagne, exotic perfumes, an Italian feather boa, cashmere shawls, a necklace of black pearls, or silk for petticoats.

  Christine barely recalled this man — all she could remember was that he was tall and old. Like her mother, she loved luxury; she didn’t share her older sisters’ modesty. She loved parties and high society, and she loved people paying her the right amount of attention. She loved everything that brought joy and levity; she was choosy, and didn’t worry too much about her future. She had neither grand dreams nor a rebellious streak. She had been raised as the sun-kissed child, universally adored, admired, and idolised, and she wanted nothing more than to continue to receive this treatment. Her favourite pictures were watercolours; she hated apple cake and cinnamon rolls, took long baths in rose water or peach-blossom bubble bath, rubbed honey into her hands, and spent hours looking at herself in the mirror. She pored over fashion magazines — which were becoming ever rarer, and ever less fashionable — and thought about all the beautiful dresses she could wear.

  And she had another passion: she loved children more than anything, and in particular her nephew, Kostya. And he seemed to return her love. Whenever he saw her, he fell silent and stared at her unblinkingly for a long time. They could spend hours playing, laughing, and messing about together. Christine hated the narrow confines of her house now that the rough, uncouth workers and their families had moved in upstairs; leafing through magazines like The Fashionable Woman, or at her beloved cinema, watching foreign films in which the women were so elegant, well-dressed, and grand, she became exasperated by Lida’s piety and her requests that Christine dress less conspicuously, by her mother’s exaggerated care and watchfulness, and, above all, by Lara’s growing small-mindedness and parochialism. Yet, nonetheless, Christine was very happy at home.

  In June 1923, once she had her school-leaving certificate in the bag, the decisive letter arrived: an invitation for the whole family to attend Ramas’ birthday celebrations in Tbilisi. He was planning a grand party for his thirty-sixth birthday. After much discussion, Christine, her father, mother, and Lida travelled to Tbilisi. They stayed in a pretty guesthouse close to the ‘holy mountain’ of Mtatsminda, where they were treated like royalty.

  The party took place the following evening at Ramas’ house on the right bank of the river, in the old-town quarter of Vera. The majestic villa from the previous century, covered in ivy and surrounded by a lush flower garden, the illustrious guests, Ramas’ generous hosting, his élan, his humour and apparent popularity, his wealth, and the impressive party left the required impression on the family. Ramas was now free to woo the youngest daughter.

  A ‘big cheese’ like Ramas guaranteed his daughter an untroubled future, thought the chocolate-maker. After his disappointing experience with Simon and Stasia and their over-hasty wedding, and the failure of Meri’s marriage, this was an excellent opportunity for Christine and the whole family. (Meri, who had for long enough felt humiliated and embittered by her unhappy marriage, kept writing her father despairing letters from Kutaisi, begging him to help her and give his consent to a divorce.) Such husbands were not what the chocolate-maker had wished for his daughters. He was particularly pained by Stasia’s lustreless eyes, her hands, rough from farm work, and her taciturn manner.

  Christine was his last hope, and this time he wouldn’t, and couldn’t, make a mistake.

  Christine — I don’t think she ever found time to consider what all this meant for her. She didn’t even have time to fall in love, least of all with the much older Ramas Iosebidze. On the other hand, she was impressed by his splendid gifts, his generous invitations, his yearning gaze, his height, and the size of his properties. And in high summer, with the encouragement of her parents and the prospect of a move to the capital, she gave her consent when he asked for her hand.

  The wedding the following spring was magnificent: at last, a celebration befitting the family’s status, with an immense train and a thousand white roses, countless guests and friends from the north and the south, from cities and villages, a long table laden with all kinds of delicacies, including, of course, the world’s best chocolate gateau. I’m told the likeness of the bridal pair was moulded in chocolate and placed on top of the cake — even if the real bridegroom didn’t quite match the chocolate version, with his full beard, the impressive circumference of his belly, and his balding head. The guests ate, drank, and danced; there was laughter and embracing and congratulations. The band played jaunty music. The night wore on and became stifling.

  Stasia left the ballroom and went out into the dark garden, wanting some fresh air and a chance to look back over the events of the day. She sat down contentedly on a bench in the darkness and laid her hands on her belly.

  It was already cold, and multi-coloured leaves covered the ground. She felt a light touch on her back and saw Christine, shining white, standing beside her.

  ‘I had to get out into the fresh air for a while as well. It’s so exhausting, getting married!’ she said in her precocious way, and sat down beside Stasia with a groan.

  ‘You don’t love him, do you?’ Stasia suddenly blurted out, and regretted the question even as she asked it. Christine straightened up and frowned at her sister, who, by comparison, looked like a boy who had grown too tall. Her long plait hung down her back and, despite the occasion, she wore no make-up and had on a simple blue and white spotted cotton dress.

  ‘But he loves me enough for two. And anyway, I already love the life I’m going to live,’ Christine replied with disarming honesty.

  ‘You’re too young to talk like that.’

  ‘Oh, Stasia — still the old romantic. And I want to have children soon: preferably a boy first, just as pretty as your Kostya.’

  Christine laid a hand on Stasia’s belly.

  ‘I wish you a great deal of happiness, in any case, little sister,’ said Stasia, with a smile.

  ‘And what happiness did your great love bring you, sister dear?’

  The question took Stasia by surprise, and she shifted a few centimetres away from Christine. But, at that moment, someone called Christine’s name. As the band struck up the loudest chord of the evening, Stasia’s sister, in her beautiful dress, hurried back into the ballroom and into her new life, and Stasia remained behind. She looked sadly up at the stars and wondered what Peter Vasilyev was doing just then, and which girls he was teaching, and what would have become of her if she hadn’t allowed her head to be turned by Simon Jashi’s sweet enticements. Even her little sister seemed to be cleverer and more calculating than she, who would soon be a mother of two.

  And so Christine moved to her influential husband�
�s house in the capital, and Stasia and her children moved into Christine’s old, light-green room, while posters continued to appear all over their home town bearing slogans like ‘The spy aspires to Party membership’ and ‘The enemy behind the director’s mask’.

  Stasia lived in the house where she was born for another four years, forever waiting for her husband to be granted leave. He was released at the beginning of June every year, and allowed to return home for four weeks. He was admittedly more lively and talkative than before, but the old Simon, whom Stasia still loved and looked for, never came back.

  Her father went to the chocolate factory less and less since he had been demoted to second deputy director. Christine wrote rosewater-scented letters, in which she enthused about her splendid life and the wonderful trips she had taken, or complained about the housemaid. Now and then she would send a parcel full of rare and expensive items: an Armenian cognac for her father, good-quality wool for Lida, caramels and nice trouser material for Kostya, pretty earrings for her mother, and so on.

  Stasia darned socks, and was often to be seen sitting on the tiny wooden balcony of the shrunken house, which looked out over the fabric shops and the fruit market now managed by the municipality, gazing into uncertainty. Occasionally, and mostly out of habit, she wrote letters to her Red Lieutenant, mainly concerning the children and money matters. Every six months she went to the photographer and had the children’s pictures taken. She enclosed the brownish photographs, glued onto stiff cardboard, in the letters to her husband.

  *

  At this point, Brilka, I should give a more detailed introduction to the little man with the pince-nez, who was on his way to becoming big.

  This little man, born in an Abkhazian-Georgian village called Merkheuli, came from a poor background. He didn’t particularly excel at school, and, following his apprenticeship as a technical engineer in Baku on the Caspian Sea, he found a position in the oil business. These were early days for the industry, which, at that time, was still dominated by the Swedish Nobel family (yes, yes, that Nobel!).

  Rumour had it that he owed his appointment to the Azerbaijani government’s secret service, which reported to the British secret service and had its eye on Transcaucasia. He had joined the Party as a twenty-year-old, in 1919 — though he claimed to have been a first-wave communist who was already a Party member in 1917. But then, he had always had a rather idiosyncratic understanding of truth. Unlike his more famous countryman, he had no proven criminal past, and — this was the most surprising thing — hardly any political ambitions. Those who had known him as a young man said that, for him, it had always been about ‘making it’, compensating for his lack of education and his low social status, providing for his mother, who lived in poverty, and his deaf-mute sister, and being able to impress beautiful women from better social circles. Pretty banal ambitions, in retrospect.

  But he developed an almost pathological urge to join the upper classes, initially failing because he never appeared educated, sensitive, and charming enough to get a foot in the door of high society. But, one day, this little man with the love of opera and feminine beauty finally did make it: in 1922, he came to Tbilisi at the head of a secret operations unit of the Georgian Cheka, to conduct a highly effective campaign against counter-revolutionary scum. A year later, he had done such a thorough job that he was awarded the Red Banner. In the year that Kostya started school, this man had already become head of his organisation, and was working on securing a personal meeting with his countryman, who was no longer called Joseph, Soso, or Koba. After a dizzying rise to power, he had smashed the Party triumvirate and was on the way to placing himself alone at the apex of the vast empire: he was now the man of steel, soon to become the Leader and Generalissimus.

  CPSU is the brain, the honour, and the conscience of our epoch

  POSTER SLOGAN

  One morning, Stasia received a telegram from the capital: an invitation from her sister Christine to a New Year’s ball. Christine also informed her that Ramas had recently been promoted to become the little man’s deputy, and that she looked forward to celebrating this important development with her sister. She requested that Stasia wear an imaginative costume. Everything else was taken care of.

  Lida said she was prepared to look after the children, and Stasia decided to forget her day-to-day worries for a little while and travel to the capital city, which, so they said, was flourishing and prospering and receiving a record number of visitors, thanks to the Communist Party of Georgia.

  By train, the journey took just one night. Stasia had always wanted to go to Paris, and now here she was arriving in the Paris of the Caucasus. Well, that was something. The city with the spice markets, the new cafés and old houses, the long, paved, dusty boulevards. With the kosher butchers and Catholic churches, the magnificent carriages and lacquered automobiles that, between them, dominated the streets; with the pet shops, the wine and carpet merchants; with the literature, dance, and theatre circles; with the theatres and opera house; with the half-built apartment blocks and Bolshevik architecture; with the centuries-old fortresses and myriad church towers; with the winding alleys of the city’s Jewish and Armenian quarters; with the sulphur baths, the shabby rear courtyards, and the imposing villas in the east.

  Outside the railway station, people were scurrying around like ants. Sales girls in white aprons extolled the virtues of the warm bread from the clay ovens, and gypsies with budgerigars offered to tell your fortune. There Stasia stood, with the black suitcase she had brought back from St Petersburg, waiting for her sister. She had visited the capital once as a child, but that was many years ago, and this city was a different one.

  Instead of Christine, an old man appeared and asked her to get into one of the motorcars that the horse-loving Stasia could never get used to.

  At the viceroy’s former residence, the driver turned into a side road and drove up a steep incline. Taking a series of little, winding one-way streets, they came to the top of a hill that afforded a wonderful view of the old town.

  There, outside one of the grandest villas, they stopped. A slender boy opened the gate, and Stasia entered a beautiful garden, at the centre of which stood a small fountain with a Cupid statue, water spouting from his little penis. Before Stasia had overcome her amazement, she heard a rustling sound, and her sister came hurrying towards her in an azure-blue dress that was only knee-length. And, as was presumably the norm in the capital, she pressed a little kiss onto each of Stasia’s cheeks.

  ‘Stasia, how wonderful that you’ve come! I’m so thrilled,’ Christine cried. She led her sister into the pastel-coloured, ornamented, two-storey house.

  There were sofas from Tehran, hand-knotted rugs, and a huge number of pictures on the walls. There were even bamboo rocking chairs and seventeenth-century sideboards. Dark green velvet drapes, a housemaid, a cook, two Persian cats, a wireless (Stasia had read about these in the newspaper), several gramophones, and gold-decorated vases.

  Stasia was given a spacious room with a glorious view and an ornate bedstead, made up with white sheets. A Chinese folding screen stood in front of it, and the walls were hung with silver-framed mirrors.

  *

  Christine and her husband proved to be superb hosts. It was a quality that the rich and beautiful people of Tbilisi society also appreciated.

  Ramas’ family originally came from a little village in the southwest. In the time of the tsars, they had enjoyed an excellent reputation as silk exporters, with two silk mills in the south that had been in the family for generations. Ramas, the family’s only son, was given a first-rate education and travelled all over Europe in his youth. He spoke four languages fluently. He came into contact with Marxist thought — much to his family’s horror — during the few months he spent in Germany, of all places, and, on returning to his homeland, he became an early member of the Communist Party. Shortly afterwards he was detained for anti-tsarist agitatio
n and sent into exile in Turukhansk, returning two years later with a pardon. His cellmate there, so people said, had been none other than his countryman Joseph, called Soso, or, affectionately, Koba, though this fact has not been proven. (Perhaps people only said it to explain his meteoric career, and the protective hand that hovered over Ramas, so successful, so favoured by life — because to many people it must have looked as though Ramas had a protective hand over him.)

  Ramas’ father, a man of the old school, hated the communists and belonged to the Georgian nationalist movement. They say he gave financial support to the ‘Third Group’ in its early days, and was therefore not entirely uninvolved in founding the Democratic Republic of Georgia.

  After the Bolsheviks took over the country and their factories were closed down, the family emigrated to Paris, following the example of many of the Democratic Republic of Georgia’s founding fathers. Ramas stayed in Georgia.

  As Ramas had put a large part of his inheritance into the Party, thereby enabling the Reds to carry out many of their plans in his homeland, they allowed him to keep the rest of what he had inherited, meaning he was able to continue his cultivated and hedonistic lifestyle — even as a dedicated Bolshevik and Chekist. He never spoke to anyone about his business, particularly not his wife, though she had no real interest in it, anyway. He was a fervent communist who believed that socialism was right and would soon be successful. Like Trotsky, he was a proponent of permanent revolution, believing that sooner or later the whole world must be revolutionised. The only thing Ramas retained from his imperialist upbringing was his passion for art. And not strictly Bolshevik or socialist art. No homages to the homeland, proletarian hero figures, or socialist realism, the art his Party called for artists to create.

  He loved and collected art, in particular the work of Impressionists, Symbolists, and young, unconventional painters. He stored the imperilled paintings in a small, secret room, accessed through a cupboard door in his study. He could spend hours there, admiring them.