The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischwili

  He threw off all his clothes. In seconds, he was standing on the beach in his underpants, plunging into the water as if rushing to the aid of a drowning man; but he was the one who was drowning.

  Not even the heavy sea could revive him. Not even the shock of the cold. To dive in and never come up again — what peace that would be, he must have thought. How was it possible to want someone so much, to need someone so much, to love someone so much, and for death to make no allowances for that?

  Ida! My grandfather roared into the cold and the waves, swimming further and further out to sea.

  A crowd had gathered on the shore; somebody shouted his name; he didn’t care. He didn’t want to go back. His trousers were on the beach and in the pocket that letter, the finality of it. He couldn’t go back there. The only thing he could do now was swim, swim, swim until he couldn’t go on, until he found the door. If he had held her, if she had survived, he would never have gone to Tbilisi, would never have met Mariam, would never have been at a party with insincere toasts, and would never have seen a beautiful blonde woman there who killed babies and yet was so hungry for his love; he would never have allowed her to unbutton his trousers in the bathroom, and her pent-up, uninhibited lust would never have broken over him. Then Mariam would still be alive. And his sister would never have met her son’s murderer.

  If Ida weren’t dead, he would still be alive.

  Infinity blurred before his eyes, and, even in the depths, Ida was nowhere to be found. Just like the door in the sky.

  Kostya swallowed water; his strength began to ebb.

  Then he heard shouts and saw a dinghy approaching. The next day, he gave a statement saying he had jumped into the water because he’d thought he had seen someone drowning.

  *

  Over the next three weeks, which Kostya spent in a clinic, seriously ill with pneumonia, he sloughed off everything that could ever put him in such a situation again, and anaesthetised his conscience.

  He read the letter one last time before burning it over a candle flame.

  My dear friend,

  I hate myself already because I know that with these lines I am going to cause you great pain, but I made you a promise and unfortunately it is not in my power to spare you this pain. And so I am writing to tell you what you wanted to know, what you’ve been waiting for for a long time, and yes, I think you’ve already guessed it. She is dead.

  She was in Leningrad throughout the blockade. She did not leave the city. In the final year of the blockade she was given an evacuation certificate, but for some inexplicable reason she swapped it with someone else, whom we cannot trace. She died in her apartment on Vasilievksy. Her grave, unfortunately, is unmarked.

  By the time you receive this letter I will no longer be in Moscow. I will write to you again as soon as possible, and will look forward to your replies. You know how much you mean to me, Kostya. I am so very, very sorry, my friend. I know you have not forgotten her, I know that you loved her, that you still do even now. I will take care of your other ‘problem child’.

  I embrace you and send my deepest sympathy,

  Giorgi

  *

  Giorgi Alania officially assumed the position of cultural attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London. Unofficially, he was to locate renegade Soviet citizens and ‘repatriate’ them, as it was called. With lies, with false promises, and, if necessary, by force.

  That summer, Kitty received the message she had been waiting for from her brother. Everything happened as he had foretold: it was as if all his words were coming true. She received an invitation to take her chanson evening to Prague, and she accepted, having realised now that she had no choice. She travelled in the company of a security serviceman, who was to keep an eye on her. After her performance in Prague, he handed her false papers, took her to a rented apartment on the outskirts of town, and ordered her to stay there and await further instructions. In Moscow, Kitty Jashi was declared a traitor; the authorities’ assumption was that she had been a western spy and had now fled to the West.

  Stasia knew why Kitty had left, and who had helped her do it. She knew that she would bear this burden with the same silent grandeur as she bore all the other unavoidable events in her life. That day, when the MVD men came calling and took her to be interrogated about her daughter’s disappearance, she finally realised that the ghosts were back: the road was open again, the road between times, between all possible, conceivable worlds.

  Combat rootless cosmopolitanism!

  POSTER SLOGAN

  Kostya became what he would never have become at Ida’s side: my grandfather and your great-grandfather, Brilka.

  That summer, he returned to his homeland, and travelled on from there to Abkhazia for his paid, state-prescribed holiday on the Black Sea. This was where he met my grandmother, Nana. Sensible, gentle, bright Nana. Nana, whose grandparents — both linguists at the University of Tbilisi — had been victims of the purges. Her father, an archaeologist, was imprisoned in Ortachala city prison, the son of supposed spies and counter-revolutionaries; he died there at the age of just forty-two, of untreated pneumonia. Nana was raised — and pampered — by her mother, and her father’s two unmarried sisters. The women tried to compensate for the misfortune that had befallen the family by taking excessive care of little Nana and showering her with love.

  Nana — straightforward, open, not remotely mysterious, not even elegant — should never have appealed to Kostya. Nana was healthy. In every sense of the word. Too healthy for Kostya. She wouldn’t infect him; she wouldn’t ruin him. And that was precisely the reason for his sudden interest in her. As if his hopeless, indifferent eyes had spotted the healthiest woman on the whole Black Sea coast, and he had taken her by the hand, wanting her to heal his sickness.

  Perhaps he also hoped he could break the old patterns, step out of the shadow of the dead and make a completely new, completely different, start.

  When I look at Nana in old family photos, she looks to me like someone who has never doubted herself or the world. Someone who has never encountered failure. A tall young woman, not as youthful and reckless as she should have been at that age, but clearer and more confident as a result, as if she knew precisely how her life, which still lay before her, was going to unfold. Blonde and strapping, with a thick plait that she wound round her head, and smart, well-tailored, but modest clothes. Not conspicuous, but not unremarkable, either. As if everything about her aspired towards solid normality and clear structures. There was something attractive, but never vulgar, about the way she pouted, or gesticulated wildly with her hands; the way she wrinkled her forehead as she pondered a question, or demonstratively crossed her legs when she was excited about something. She was conservative, believed in clear value systems, and until she met Kostya she dreamed of the things most girls dreamed of in her day: social recognition, a conventional path — in her case, a respected university career — a family, children; all of which should be romantic, if possible, but not too dramatic; a little exciting, but not too wild. That summer, Nana had just completed her degree in Georgian language and literature and, following in her grandparents’ footsteps, had developed a passion for linguistics. She wanted to do a doctorate, and that summer on the Black Sea, where she was holidaying with friends to celebrate her graduation, she was trying to decide the subject of her thesis.

  Until then, she had never really been in love. She had had a few flirtations with fellow students, but had ended each one after just a few weeks. She focused on her studies, enjoyed spending time with her female friends, cooked with her mother and aunts, and made plans for the future. She had never wanted for anything, and she’d never really missed the much-vaunted ideal of love, either. She wasn’t a dreamer, and if a book she was reading got too dramatic and passionate for her liking, she would set it aside without compunction. She didn’t want to dream of something she would never experience the way it was descr
ibed; nor did she want to experience it.

  Naturally, it was coincidence that brought these two utterly different people, Nana and Kostya, together. In the cafeteria of the spa hotel where they were both staying, Nana and her friends were having breakfast at the table with the best view when Kostya asked, with a polite smile, whether he might join them, as there didn’t seem to be any tables free. He quickly fell into conversation with Nana’s friends, who were just as quickly impressed by his charm and his skill as a raconteur. Nana stayed in the background; she said little, and concentrated on eating her breakfast. She was therefore astonished when, on leaving the cafeteria, he kissed her friends’ hands in farewell, but asked her, of all people, whether he might take her out to dinner.

  She agreed, more out of curiosity than interest.

  That same evening, they went to a fish restaurant right on the promenade that Nana would never have been able to afford. There, they were served chilled white wine and fine sea bream. Kostya treated her to a long lecture about the sea in general and fish in particular, and afterwards there was Armenian cognac. Nana, who didn’t want to appear in any way inferior to Kostya, demonstrated her expertise on the subject of regional cultures and their customs. On their first rendezvous, they both showed off their knowledge and didn’t get close at all. They didn’t even really get to know each other. But at the end of the evening, they both decided that they wanted to rectify this at a second meeting.

  In the days that followed, Kostya accompanied the girls to the beach, played cards with them, entertained them with all sorts of anecdotes, bought them coffee and ice cream, and never left their side. Three days later, he took Nana to a dance club on her own and proved to be a good dance partner. After several dances and a few glasses of Crimean champagne, Nana found herself willing to believe in something as irrational as being in love. On the way back to the hotel, she indicated that she would not be averse to his continuing to court her.

  *

  They met again in Tbilisi. He invited her for meals, took her dancing, went with her to the cinema and for walks in the park. Nothing out of the ordinary; nothing demanding. Gallant and patient, Kostya wooed her as he thought she wanted to be wooed. They didn’t touch each other, they made no plans, and they didn’t talk about the future. A few days before Kostya’s summer holiday came to an end and he had to leave for Baltiysk, he asked soft, blonde Nana if she would be his wife. They had just come out of the cinema, where they had been to see an upbeat rural film — or that’s what I imagine, anyway — and were strolling up the cobbled street of Varazi Hill. As if he had asked some trivial question about the film they had just seen, Nana’s expression didn’t change; she went on slowly walking, without saying a word.

  ‘I won’t expect anything from you. If you want to stay in Tbilisi, that would be fine, too,’ Kostya added to his proposal.

  ‘I hardly know you.’

  ‘You know me well enough.’

  ‘We haven’t even kissed.’

  ‘Would you like us to?’

  Kostya took her head in his hands and gave her a tentative kiss on the lips.

  ‘Now we’ve kissed each other,’ he said, satisfied, and gave her another kiss, more daring this time, and a lot more moist.

  But this kiss didn’t taste of St Petersburg, it didn’t taste of white nights, of the hours of abandonment there, didn’t taste of a woman with rings on all ten fingers; it didn’t taste of death.

  ‘Just say yes,’ Kostya insisted, still holding her chin in his hand; and Nana, who felt very uncomfortable about allowing herself to be kissed by a man in the middle of the street, and wanted to put an end to the awkward situation as quickly as possible, said yes.

  *

  Kostya wrote to Baltiysk and asked for another two weeks’ leave to prepare for his wedding, which he was granted. And so they had a modest wedding in Christine’s house. There was spinach with pomegranate seeds, suckling pig marinated on wood, lamb in mint, and fresh Kakhetian wine. Stasia made a big wedding cake laden with condensed-milk crème pâtissière, and the table was decorated with mountains of grapes, pears, persimmons, figs, melons, and pomegranates. The newlyweds spent their wedding night, which Nana of course came to as a virgin, in Nana’s mother’s apartment, which she generously surrendered to the couple.

  After Kostya’s departure, Nana moved into the big house on Vera Hill. She was accustomed to the company of older women. She had made it clear that she did not want to move to the cold north to live with her husband, and reminded him that he had told her she could stay in Tbilisi. She wanted to apply for a university place and start work on her PhD thesis.

  *

  Kitty was living on the outskirts of Prague in a small room barely three metres square. She received no letters, no instructions. All she had was one suitcase and her guitar. And a new passport, with a different name. At the start of each week, an envelope was pushed under her door; so far, all her attempts to catch the person delivering it had failed. The envelope contained a few banknotes — always the same amount. The money was sufficient for her to buy food. She never went into the city centre, she never left the area where she was living, she spoke to no one. She greeted the old lady who lived next door with a nod of her head.

  Her new passport identified her as a Luxembourger with the name Adrienne Hinrichs.

  She felt as if her real self had been amputated.

  Three times, she had contemplated handing herself in by going to the station or the airport and approaching the nearest security or border guard. The isolation she was living in sometimes made her doubt her own sanity. She listened to the Voice of America, turned down low, on the old radio she found in the room. Including the programmes in English. She didn’t understand the language, but its melody seemed reassuringly foreign to her, reassuringly benign. It was only after she had been living in the city for three months that she received, in her weekly envelope, an unsigned note. It told her to go to her local post office the following day at precisely three o’clock to receive a long-distance call.

  On the other end of the line was an unfamiliar male voice. Kitty had squeezed herself into the small, stuffy telephone box.

  ‘I will get you out of the city. You’ve been keeping a low profile. That’s good, very good. I understand your situation, but you have to trust me and be patient for a while. As soon as it becomes possible, we will get you out of the city. As soon as the danger has passed. I promise you.’ The man spoke with a soft voice that inspired confidence.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m your friend. Your closest friend.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘I can’t tell you any more at the moment.’

  ‘How can I trust you? How do I know that you —’

  ‘You don’t have a choice. You’ll just have to. From now on, I’ll call you on this number at the same time every week. We’ll stay in regular contact. Can you get by on the money?’

  ‘Yes, of course, I don’t need much, but —’

  ‘Just trust me.’

  He kept his promise. He called every week. Assured her that she would soon be leaving the city for the West. That everything was all right, she was safe, no one was going to hurt her, he was watching over her, he was thinking of her, he was her friend. Because she had no choice, she accepted him as her friend. Her only friend. But as soon as she tried to find out his name, or where he was, he would fall silent, always repeating that he wasn’t allowed to tell her. She cursed her brother, her life, her country, the past, the present, the future, but her interlocutor remained unruffled. He listened to her, and went on talking in his soothing tone.

  He told her about Georgia. Banal, unimportant news that Kitty, nonetheless, absorbed with the greatest attention. He also told her that her mother and aunt had bravely withstood questioning by the secret police, and that her brother was happily married.

  But Kitty no longer knew
what day it was, or what she was doing in the city.

  ‘I don’t know a single person here. I don’t speak the language. I never go out. I’m dying,’ she confided to the telephone receiver after six months. She was distraught.

  ‘You’re strong. You can do this. We can do this together. I need you. I’m not just saying that to comfort you. I really do need you. You’ll leave the city soon. You’ll be able to live a free life. I promise you that. But you have to believe in it, too. I can’t do this on my own. You have to help me. I’ve promised your brother that nothing will happen to you. And I keep my promises. I believe you’ll get through this because you’re strong, because you’ve already got through worse.’

  ‘What do you know about me?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Say my name.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You never call me by my name. You never say it. We’re two nameless people. Faceless people. Say it!’

  There was a short pause, and she thought he would deny her request, but then he said what she wanted to hear.

  ‘Yes, Kitty. I’ll say it. Kitty. Kitty. Kitty.’

  The name felt foreign, as if she were hearing it for the first time, as if she had left behind all the stories attached to this name. But she clung to those five letters; she wanted to remember again, she wanted her past back, regardless of how much she hated it, because her past was the only thing that gave her the right to her real name. And she wanted it back. More than anything, she wanted it back.

  He went on talking, and his quiet, velvety voice calmed her, cradled her in its arms. She wiped away the tears with her sleeve and pressed her face to the wall, clutching the receiver with all her might.

  *

  Her isolation was to last many more months. Kitty stayed in Prague for almost two years. But from that day onward, after he spoke her name, she was able to deal with it better. She learned a few words of Czech, and sometimes talked to the neighbours’ children or the elderly lady next door. The lady spoke hardly any Russian, so she couldn’t ask her any unwelcome questions.