Kitty saw the knife slip from Mariam’s hand; she saw the glint of the blade, and heard it hit the floor.
Alla whipped round in a flash, letting go of Mariam; the curlers flew through the air and her magnificent blonde hair slapped Kitty’s face, then Kitty felt her long fingernails on her face, felt the talons pushing her away; the sweetish smell of her skin reached Kitty’s nose and made her feel dizzy. The woman twisted her whole body round to face her and punched Kitty in the stomach. In the very place where her son had struggled with his fear, as if he’d already known that being born always means that you must also die.
Kitty was winded; she hung on to the arm of the sofa to stop herself falling over backwards. She felt another heavy blow, a little higher, to her diaphragm: this time, the woman had kicked her. Kitty gasped for breath.
Mariam leaped on Alla from behind and clung on, and for a moment the scene was like a children’s game that had got out of hand, one child whirling another around the room for fun, an improvised carousel. Until finally one of the children sank to her knees, because the other was holding a knife to her throat. And the third child saw the sharp blade against that delicate throat, pressing more and more firmly. Then Alla turned her head sharply, stretched out her arm — she looked like an acrobat, her arm so unnaturally flexible — and stuck her middle and index fingers into Mariam’s eye-sockets, and the blood spurted, pattering like summer rain, it smelled of iron, it spurted lukewarm and heavy onto Kitty’s face, her neck, her breast.
And Alla fell backwards as if in slow motion, with a rattling breath, and the bloody knife slipped from Mariam’s hand and hit the floor with a loud, metallic clack, followed by a horrified scream, although Kitty wasn’t sure whether it came from Mariam or the angel of death. Then silence. Nothing moved. Kitty tasted the iron on her tongue, and once more suppressed an urge to retch. And then she heard Mariam say quietly:
‘Arteria carotis communis … We had it in a lecture recently.’
Her voice seemed to come from a distant planet.
Like a beast in a pen, I’m cut off
From my friends, freedom, the sun,
But the hunters are gaining ground.
I’ve nowhere else to run.
BORIS PASTERNAK
Alla’s time of death was later established as between ten o’clock and midnight. The cause of death was given as the severing of the carotid artery, the arteria carotis communis. The death certificate did not, however, state that she had died at the hands of a virgin raised in the Orthodox faith. One who wanted to marry a naval officer, complete her medical training, and work in an outpatient clinic or, if all went well, in a city hospital; who wanted to bear children, bring them up, love them, spoil them, and raise a glass of sparkling Crimean wine in a toast with her husband.
*
Mariam had initially refused to leave the house, to wash the blood off her hands; she refused to flee at once, refused to contemplate the possibility that perhaps it had, after all, been an accident, or at least self-defence, and that perhaps she wouldn’t have used the knife if Alla hadn’t stuck her fingers in Mariam’s eyes. Dazed and covered in blood, Kitty went to the dead woman’s bedroom, picked out some clean clothes, stuffed her own things into her handbag, and left the house.
‘You go to Kostya and tell him what’s happened, tell him everything, everything he needs to know — tell him our story, yours and mine. I’ll stay here. Then tell him to fetch the militsiya. I’m going to stay here and wait,’ Mariam had said to her.
*
Kostya didn’t look at his sister. He kept repeating the same questions in a monotone, sitting on his bed, still half asleep, in the growing light of dawn. Kitty reeled off the words once more, like a poem she had memorised that didn’t rhyme. The house on the Holy Mountain. The woman. Mariam. The lion’s head knocking on the door. The screams. The struggle. The knife. Mariam. Blood.
‘You have to tell the militsiya, Kostya. Mariam’s still there. I’ll make a statement, I’ll tell them everything they want to know. Right now I just want to sleep.’
Kitty couldn’t stay on her feet any longer. She slid to the floor; her head smacked against the side of the bed, and the skin on her forehead split. She didn’t move, just hung her head, clinging to the mattress with one hand.
‘I will do everything I can to make you sorry you’re alive!’ he said suddenly, and forced his sister to her feet. Her knees kept buckling, but he held her up and looked her in the eye. ‘You will now do exactly what I tell you! To the letter. Do you understand?’
Kitty nodded mechanically.
Kostya started punching the wall with his fists, pacing up and down; he was talking to himself, searching for a way out. He was desperate, and scared.
Her face buried in the blanket, Kitty began to speak. She felt nothing. Her eyes blind and her limbs like rubber, she told him about a baby in her belly, about a classroom with bare walls, about endless interrogations, about her fears, about the cold words and gentle looks of a beautiful blonde woman, told him about the straps and the torture, about Mariam and her soft hands, about the syringe and the stillbirth, about her womb, which Mariam had removed, about the half-dead days in the barn, the buzzing of flies, about touching the child’s little corpse beneath the earth. She told him all this, and yet they were only words, which seemed so cruel it was impossible to imagine what they meant.
Kostya stood rigid, leaning wide-eyed against the wall. It was clear that he couldn’t deal with this and didn’t want to, didn’t know how he was supposed to live with this from now on. And if Kitty hadn’t told him, he certainly wouldn’t have taken the decision he took, and, as so often in our story, Brilka, everything would have been quite different — and you wouldn’t have taken the train to Vienna. (Yes, yes, Brilka, everything leads to that day and to its outcome!)
*
‘She wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. Mariam said it herself, her statement will confirm it.’ Kostya’s voice was hard.
‘But —’
‘You will let me deal with it. None of you will be summoned as a witness. I will not allow any more damage to be done than has been done already, I will not allow us to be sucked into this disaster — and all because she loved that traitor — I’ll kill him.’
‘But how is it Andro’s fault?’
‘How is it Andro’s fault, Deda! Just shut up. Just be quiet. Both of you. I don’t want to hear another word.’
‘But she keeps on saying that she wants to make a statement. When I brought her tea this morning —’
‘Who cares what she wants? She’ll keep her mouth shut, and you’ll make sure of it. It’s over. Mariam took her there, and the knife was from her institute canteen.’
‘But Kostya … There must be proof that Kitty was in the house, there must be proof that Mariam wasn’t alone at the — er — scene of the crime?’
‘There won’t be now — there already isn’t. I will not allow us all to perish because of her. No proof. That’s it: the end.’
Kitty didn’t understand the meaning of the things Kostya was drumming into his mother and aunt — loudly, furiously, even threatening them on occasion. They were talking about her, but she couldn’t make the connection; she didn’t feel like herself, didn’t feel any of this had anything to do with her. Only sometimes, in the days that followed, when Christine or Stasia came to her room and brought her something to eat, did she try to ask when she would be picked up and interrogated. But they never replied. They told her she should calm down, she should sleep, she shouldn’t ask any more questions.
Kitty was convinced that punishment awaited her: soon, very soon. Perhaps Kostya had been able to postpone it for his sister, but Kitty had no doubt that it would come. They would come and knock on her door no matter what Mariam said or claimed had happened, and she relied on that, she hoped for it. She heard Kostya coming and going several times a da
y; she heard Stasia and Christine hurry to meet him and speak to him urgently, in whispers. But nobody else came. No strangers, no militsiya. Every morning Kitty thought: This is it, it’ll be today for sure. And every time she was wrong.
*
‘I went to see her today. They let me speak to her. She’s being treated well. They’ll have to transfer her, though; they can’t keep her in the city forever, waiting to be sentenced, it might take a while. She agreed with me. She said that was how she wanted it, too. And if we are summoned, that’s the testimony we’ll stick to.’
Kitty heard her brother in the kitchen. For the first time since she had confessed to him in the early hours of the morning, she got up, put her feet on the ground, and tottered out of the room. She went down the stairs. The hallway seemed never-ending, but she managed to make it to the kitchen, where the whole family was gathered around the table. They all turned their heads towards her simultaneously in alarm, as if they had seen a ghost.
‘Go back upstairs!’ Kostya ordered.
‘Do you need something?’ asked Christine. Stasia said nothing; her eyes were swollen.
‘You have no right. I was there. I’m just as guilty. I know what you’re asking of Mariam, and it’s inhuman. I want to be held accountable, too. And stop calling Moscow all the time, stop protecting me. They have proof that I was there. They all know Mariam couldn’t have done it alone.’
Kitty spoke quietly but resolutely, summoning all of her strength.
‘I told you to just keep your mouth shut and let me deal with it. I don’t want to hear any more of these silly arguments. This isn’t just about your future; it’s about the whole family. You dragged us all into this disaster. Now you have to live with the consequences.’ Kostya looked at her with contempt.
‘But those are the wrong consequences. That’s what I’m talking about. I want the consequences; they’re all I do want.’
‘Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?’
‘Stop being such a monster. Have pity. She should have been your wife. How can you hand her over without a scruple? It’s all lies. What good does it do you if I go unpunished? And why don’t you two say anything, why are you just sitting there silently, why don’t you say what you think?’
Kitty tried to look her mother and aunt in the eye, but they avoided her gaze.
‘Kitty, just go back upstairs. My patience is exhausted. I’m trying my best. I’m trying to salvage the remains of our family honour.’
‘And for that you’re sending the woman who loves you to prison?’
‘The women who love me aren’t murderers. I didn’t pressure Mariam into doing anything. She said from the start that she alone committed the crime, and why.’
‘She’s saying it because she believes she’s doing you a favour. She’s doing it for you, you monster —’
Kitty’s voice failed her and she leaned against the kitchen wall, pressing her face against the cold tiles.
‘She killed her. That’s what counts. And you told her about it. You sent her there. Now you have to live with it, sister, like it or not!’
‘Kostya, please.’ Christine tried to put her arm around his shoulder, but he shrugged her off.
‘Then let me, let me live with it! I want to go there. Deda, say something, it’s not right, we can’t do this. I can’t sit here while Mariam … Deda, please.’
She was sobbing. Her whole body heaved. She scratched at the tiles with her fingernails.
‘You dragged us all into this with you, and believe me, that’s punishment enough, having to live with this!’ bellowed Kostya, slamming his palm down onto the table.
‘It wouldn’t change anything if you were arrested. It wouldn’t change anything now. It would just make it worse. For all of us,’ murmured Stasia.
‘You haven’t the faintest idea! You don’t know what it was like then, or now. You simply had to go away and rescue your precious son!’ Kitty screamed, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘How can you condemn me to live with this?’ she asked her brother as she left the kitchen.
‘Go on then, do it — go to the nearest militsiya and make your confession. Confess what you’ve done! Confess how many people’s lives you’ve ruined! Confess, off you go!’ he shouted after her before he, too, left the room.
Christine laid her head on the table and sighed. Stasia was standing in the middle of the room with her palms turned up, as if waiting for the ceiling to burst open and an angel to appear: an avenging angel, or a redeemer.
‘He’s been offered some sort of important position, Stasia. I’ve seen the letters on the chest of drawers in his room. They’re all stamped by the MVD. The last time he received a letter he jumped up and down for joy, so I assume that he …’ Christine spoke without lifting her head from the edge of the table.
‘That he what?’
‘Think about it.’
‘What are you getting at? I don’t understand …’
Stasia emerged from her stupor and sat down at the table with her sister.
‘Which organisation would have the power to let a guilty party go unpunished, someone who was involved in the murder of an MVD officer?’
Christine slowly lifted her head and looked her sister straight in the eye. Stasia’s eyebrows lowered as though a storm were gathering in her face.
‘That’s not possible. Kostya’s in the Navy. He’s a sailor through and through, he loves the sea. He wouldn’t …’
‘You can work for them in various capacities.’
‘That can’t be right, no, that can’t be right.’
‘If it weren’t, Kitty would long since have been where Mariam is. When you look at it that way, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.’
‘A blessing in disguise?’ Stasia would have liked to slap her sister’s face.
‘Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. Which would you rather: your daughter in prison for the rest of her life, or being sent to a work camp somewhere at the end of the world, or a son who works for the MVD?’
*
Exactly three weeks before Alla’s death, thanks to Giorgi Alania’s enthusiastic recommendation, Kostya Jashi had indeed joined the all-powerful Ministry of Internal Affairs, or MVD, formerly known as the NKVD. Alla’s death and the associated scandal, which went down in Tbilisi legal and salon history as a ‘dreadful crime passionel’, obsessed people in the city for months, giving them plenty to talk about and prompting a great deal of speculation. All the files that could have attested to Kitty Jashi’s involvement were destroyed in the first few days of the investigation. True, there were a lot of rumours and gossip, but her name was not publicly associated with the trial.
Would anything really have changed if Kitty had made a statement and confessed her involvement in the murder? Who could she have saved? Who would people have believed? Her, or her brother’s powerful friends? Eventually, she let herself believe that her truth really could differ from Mariam’s. She let herself believe that she would not have used the knife, that she would not have left the house, that she could never have mustered the strength to do it; she let herself believe that she was not a murderer.
A few weeks later, Mariam was deported to a women’s camp in Sverdlovsk.
*
Kostya was posted to Baltiysk near Kaliningrad, soon to become the home port of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, which would be responsible for the shipment of goods, primarily for military use. Many of the Soviet Union’s battleships were stationed there, as were some of its cargo ships. Kostya, now a captain, was to supervise and support the expansion of the submarine network in the North Sea. The goal was to create a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
When he took up his post, Kostya Jashi, heart thumping, put his signature to the document in which he pledged to keep secret both his field of responsibility and all research results associated with it. When he came home
to visit, he seemed different: happy, relaxed, jocular. He spent a lot of time at home again, let the women cook for him, and talked a lot with Christine. The steely body, thrust-out chest, straight shoulders, upright walk — everything about him exuded a profound satisfaction, as well as his restored confidence and pride.
Next to her brother, Kitty seemed all the more miserable and depressed. When she laughed, deep lines appeared at the corners of her mouth, as if laughing were a huge effort for her. She had resumed her studies, but her eyes were still dead, and her guitar stayed in the corner. Her voice was thin and uncertain. Her brisk walk, her effortless, floating movements, had been replaced by a vague leadenness, a lethargy ill-befitting her age.
Brother and sister scarcely spoke any more. At breakfast and dinner, they chewed their food, didn’t talk to each other, didn’t look at each other; neither of them even asked the other to pass anything. They seemed to have sworn an oath to which they were blindly faithful.
It was only on the evening before his departure that Kostya turned to his sister and asked her to come to his room after dinner. When she entered, she saw him bent over the ironing board, ironing his uniform — something he would entrust to neither Stasia nor Christine. Kitty smoothed the curtains nervously, as if she were unable to speak and this action her only reason for being there.
‘It has been brought to my attention that it may be dangerous for you to remain in Georgia,’ Kostya began, concentrating on the iron as he ran it over his trousers.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘People don’t stay in the same posts forever. Sometimes they leave, new people come; it could happen at any time that a young, ambitious employee might suddenly look into Mariam’s file again, and because he wants to further his career, he … well, he might come to quite a different conclusion. And the case can be reopened at any time.’
The Eighth Life Page 38