The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischwili

  I thought I saw these images in Kostya’s eyes; I searched for them there, followed them, late, very late in his life, too late perhaps, but then I understood. There may have been nothing more to forgive; it was far too late for that, for him and for me, but this helped me understand a lot of things — this experience, this anteroom of the Inferno where he sat for so long, awaiting death. Differently, and with a different finality from that at Lake Ladoga; at the mercy of a different fate, of which he was differently, much more explicitly aware.

  But perhaps Ida was in his thoughts, too; not as clear and personified as the dead who appeared to his mother, but clear enough. In his head. Holding on to her image, clinging to it, to a dead woman who promised him life, until he heard the men roar, their joyful shouts that the reactor had finally cooled and the worst was over — they had survived. Yes, that’s what they were thinking at that moment: the immediate joy of having cheated death by a whisker, little suspecting that death, once it was aware of them, once it had got so close to them, would not release them from its clutches so easily, that the worst, for them, was still to come. I also believe that disaster wasn’t averted back then, that it was only delayed. Perhaps just because Ida wanted to give her beloved another chance to lose his heart.

  I don’t know. Perhaps that was how it happened, perhaps it wasn’t; all I can say with certainty, Brilka, is that the horror that branded itself in Kostya’s eyes that day remained there for the rest of his life. You just had to look deep enough. Very deep.

  A distress signal was eventually picked up by a nearby submarine, and the crew were evacuated, after twenty-four hours.

  When they arrived in Moscow, all the crew had to sign a statement that said they were not permitted to speak of their own experiences in any form whatsoever from that day forward. The eight men who had cooled the reactor all died within six weeks of being rescued.

  My grandfather, Kostya Jashi, was lucky. Along with other survivors, he was subsequently flown to Vienna and treated in a specialist private clinic. He lost all the hair on his head and body. Before the signs of his sickness became apparent to little Elene, too, he telephoned his wife and informed her that he had been posted on a six-month training manoeuvre in the Baltic Sea and she had to come to Moscow to take care of her daughter. Elene liked her blinis best with raspberry varenye, he added.

  Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics

  Great Russia has welded forever to stand.

  Created in struggle by will of the people,

  United and mighty, our Soviet land!

  SOVIET NATIONAL ANTHEM

  While the German Democratic Republic went on claiming that it knew nothing about the building of a wall, on one side of which people would celebrate socialist happiness and Marxist brotherhood; and while the United States was stationing medium-range ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, armed with nuclear warheads pointing at the Soviet Union, the Kremlin launched Operation Anadyr. More than 200,000 tonnes of military equipment was shipped to Cuba. Half of the entire Soviet Navy was needed for the mission. The freighter Omsk, with medium-range missiles on board, docked in Havana on 8 September 1962. American spy planes took aerial photographs of the armaments the Soviets were installing on Cuba, which indicated the presence of missile sites: more than twenty rockets, all of which, if fired from Cuba, were capable of hitting large industrial cities in America. On 22 October, America declared a naval blockade of Cuba. Kennedy addressed the nation and put the US military on Defense Condition 2, the second-highest level of alert, threatening to launch a nuclear attack if Khrushchev didn’t withdraw the missiles immediately. The world held its breath. Thekla and Sopio went on calmly playing Patience in Christine and Stasia’s garden. Stasia watched the ghosts silently laying their cards and no longer knew whether she was losing her mind or whether reality wasn’t, in the end, more flexible than she had previously assumed.

  She smoked one of her filterless cigarettes and felt for the gold watch she always carried with her. No missiles in the world would stop her looking for her daughter, no matter where, no matter how, she thought, trying to catch a glimpse of the ghosts’ cards. As far as the CIA was concerned, there was every indication that Khrushchev and Castro had agreed to attack the US base at Guantánamo (yes, the same one that, decades later, did such damage to America’s image).

  Christine had picked Miqa up from school, and they were strolling through the narrow alleyways of Sololaki. He was eating a little tub of ice cream, which he loved, and excitedly telling her about his day. They walked down the wide road of Kirov Street and continued along Rustaveli Avenue. When they reached the Hotel Tbilisi, Christine stopped and stared at the imposing building.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Miqa.

  ‘My husband used to dine here a lot. Back then, the hotel was called the Majestic, and only rich and beautiful people from all over the world used to stay here. It was a beautiful place in those days.’

  ‘Do you miss him very much?’ asked Miqa. He took Christine’s hand.

  ‘Let’s walk on. We don’t want to linger over sad things, do we?’ She didn’t answer the question.

  In his bed in a private clinic in Vienna, Kostya turned over onto his left side, seeing his daughter’s cheerful, beaming face in his mind’s eye. He wanted to go back to Moscow, he didn’t want her to grow up without a father, she didn’t deserve that, he wanted to live, he wanted to survive, for her, for Elene. He couldn’t die without seeing her again.

  Little Big Men continued to toy with the globe, laughing gleefully all the while. The world escaped nuclear war by the skin of its teeth when the American Navy dropped depth charges on a Soviet submarine armed with nuclear missiles. The seconds that followed took the planet to the brink. A secret meeting took place in Washington. Bobby Kennedy agreed to Khrushchev’s demand about removing US missiles from Turkey and Italy, and that night Khrushchev ordered that missiles be withdrawn from Cuba.

  Elene dreamed about her father, and cried out for him. Nana slept in her daughter’s room to dispel her fears, but it didn’t help. When Kostya reached Giorgi Alania on the phone — their phone calls had become increasingly infrequent — his friend thought he sounded optimistic.

  ‘I’ve survived. I’m out of danger for now. I’ll be going home. To Elene. I’ve survived — no leukaemia, the doctors told me today.’

  Alania didn’t understand what this was about, but something told him it was serious, and the fact that the call came from a clinic in Vienna confirmed his assumption. These were not, however, subjects that could be discussed on the phone.

  ‘I had to tell someone. I just had to tell someone,’ repeated Kostya, euphoric.

  Alania couldn’t help thinking of Kostya’s sister, the woman whose voice had become the most reliable reference point of his life in recent years; the now-famous singer who had just put out her second album, entitled Summer of Broken Tears (her single was currently competing with another new song with the rather more profane title Love Me Do, by that new band — you know, Brilka, the ones with the silly haircuts).

  Sitting at the desk in his office at the embassy, Alania stretched. Kostya had his private number. Back then he’d told him: only in an emergency. Now he wished he hadn’t said it, and that his friend had called him more often. Back then, after Kitty’s escape, they had spoken more regularly — although it was usually he who had called his friend, always from different phone boxes. They were both all too familiar with the rules; they stuck to the regulations and to what they had agreed. Even if it was sometimes hard to reconcile these rules with their own needs.

  ‘Are you still there?’ Kostya’s voice roused him from his reverie.

  ‘Yes, sorry, I was just thinking about what you said. Whatever the reason for your stay there, I’m as happy as you are that you’ve made it. You were always a fighter, and you always will be.’

  *

  Kitty sat, naked, in t
he little wicker chair in her bedroom. She could hear the bathwater running in the bathroom: she would climb into the bath, lie there, and chase away the thoughts, the doubts, that haunted her. For four nights now, Fred hadn’t come round; presumably she was at this moment asleep in Amy’s lavender-scented bed. Or getting drunk with shifty characters in her new studio in Hackney, for which Amy was footing the bill. Kitty wondered whether she should ask Fred to go with her to Vienna. She was afraid of the look in Fred’s eyes as she flung a cold ‘no’ back in her face. After fleeing Mödling she had never returned to Austria, not since the night her mother had taken the belt in her hands. But Kitty hoped that, if they went there, Fred would finally be able to shake off the curse of that city. And perhaps the city would also stop being her own unlived dream with Andro.

  She dragged herself to the bathroom. Her steps were heavy. She tried to recall her mother’s face. She tried to imagine what time had done to her. The time that lay between them. What was this time like? Leaden, icy, metallic?

  She slipped into the foaming water; it was too hot, but she wanted to feel it scald her. It was always like this whenever Fred was absent, or her nameless friend didn’t call for a long time: nothing reminded her of life. Not her performances, not Amy’s euphoria, least of all the small, diligent success of her songs. Whenever she closed her eyes, the East came flooding back. How quickly the West deserts you as soon as you stop focusing on it, thought Kitty, silently enduring the hot water on her skin. Just as Fred was unable to scrub Mödling off her body, Kitty was unable to scrub away the East. The marks it had left on her were indelible. She looked down at her scars. Mariam was there, too. She would always be there. Mariam, and her son. Yes — once the East had embraced you and held you tight, once you had choked on the East, it never went away.

  And I stubbornly repeat

  Your name again and yet again

  Softly and with angry lips,

  Trying to wake my love again.

  SOPHIA PARNOK

  Kostya had been home less than a week when Nana stood listening at the door of his study, where her husband and some of his uniformed colleagues had gathered, and heard, again and again, the words ‘nuclear, dead, sanatorium’ and ‘medal for bravery’.

  Elene wasn’t home from school yet. Nana went into the kitchen and swallowed her cold fury with a very large glass of water. Nana, whose daughter had celebrated her father’s return with such squealing and cries of joy that she woke the entire household — Nana, who was dying of homesickness for Tbilisi, her university, her friends, even Stasia and Christine, quietly admitted defeat.

  Unlike the reunion of father and daughter, their greeting had been almost formal. A tentative kiss on the lips, a quick hug; no direct questions, of course. But naturally she had suspected — no, she knew — that this had had nothing to do with the Baltic Sea, that he had not handed over his beloved child to her all this time just because of a training manoeuvre.

  Nana heard Elene open the front door, drop her satchel on the floor, put on her slippers, and enter the kitchen. Usually the first thing she did was burst into her father’s study; she must have heard the unfamiliar voices, which had discouraged her from going in.

  She was tall for her age; her cocoa-coloured eyes were very like her aunt’s, the aunt who’d been branded a traitor to her country. About whom they were all forbidden to ask. Elene’s legs in their white socks were long and strong, her posture erect, her gaze reflective, mistrustful. Her hair was cut in a pageboy bob that sat against her round head like a perfectly knitted cap. She washed her hands and peered into the saucepans to see what Lyuda had prepared for her today. Satisfied, she turned on the gas oven without asking her mother if she would like to eat with her.

  Observing her independent daughter, Nana couldn’t help finding her behaviour almost repellent. However hard she had tried with Elene these last few months, she could not penetrate the iron wall Elene had put up around herself, this personification of her father’s perfect daughter.

  Now that Kostya was back, Nana had become superfluous. It was the deciding factor in Nana’s final capitulation: the thorny truth that the long months she had spent on her own with Elene had all been wasted. Elene had not forgiven her. Had not taken her back into her heart. Would not leave the country with her mother and travel south now that her stay in Moscow was drawing to a close.

  She looked at her daughter and understood that this had not been an easy decision for Elene; that she had had to choose a side, choose one of her parents, and unfortunately she had chosen Kostya. But wasn’t it the case — though it was immeasurably hard for Nana to admit this — that the girl was more like her husband than her? Perhaps that was why Elene found it more desirable to emulate her father than the eccentric women in her family.

  And despite the tentative suspicions Nana had had during the years of her marriage, in the bitter battle for their daughter’s love and favour; despite her intuitions about Kostya’s secrets; despite her hurtful realisations in the time she spent alone with her daughter in her powerful husband’s realm — despite all this, the fact that she would have to return home alone again was surprisingly painful for her.

  Had Kostya come back two weeks earlier, perhaps she would have been spared the insight into the miserable state of her marriage. Now, though, as Nana sat passively, helplessly, in the kitchen, fighting back tears, she was still trying to persuade herself that it wasn’t Elene’s fault, that she hadn’t been taking revenge; that it was because of her childishness, her naivety, her innocence that she had inflicted such pain on her mother.

  Two weeks earlier, Elene had been talking incessantly about Kostya again. Nana had felt the anger welling up inside her; she had felt she was being treated unjustly, being manipulated by her own child. She had wanted to scream in her face that she should stop punishing her for something that wasn’t her fault; that Elene should show her mother more of the respect and love she deserved. That she should show her true face — candid, obstinate, quick-tempered, but so much more alive. Should go back to being unruly and loud, stubborn and emotionally needy. Should, should, should. Nana had held her tongue. One after another she stuffed chocolates into her mouth and stared at the bluish light of the television, which was showing the bedtime programme Elene loved to watch every evening.

  ‘Don’t eat so many sweets,’ Elene had said suddenly, without taking her eyes off the screen.

  Nana had just popped another sweet into her mouth; she froze, not daring to chew it. She felt ashamed, humiliated by her own daughter. As if that weren’t enough, Elene added, ‘Papa prefers women who are slimmer and wear lipstick, and perfume, too.’

  A cartoon dog with unusually long ears was racing across the screen singing a cheerful song.

  ‘And how do you know that?’ Nana asked icily.

  ‘I just know.’

  ‘How?’ Nana’s voice grew louder. She finally swallowed the chocolate.

  ‘He sometimes has visitors,’ Elene said calmly, as if telling her about her day at school. Her eyes were still fixed on the dog, which was waving its ears and emitting a contentedly melodious woof, woof.

  ‘Here? He has visitors here?’

  ‘Yes, where else? This is where he lives.’

  Elene reached for the bowl of sweets on the narrow coffee table.

  ‘And who are these slim women with red lipstick?’ Nana tried to control her tone. She felt like howling.

  ‘Well, like I said: slim women with red lips in fluffy coats. They smell so nice. And sometimes they bring me presents.’

  ‘Aha. They bring you presents, do they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Elene unwrapped a chocolate and stuffed it greedily into her mouth. The long-eared dog had now been joined by a waddling duck who also joined in the singing, adding its quack, quack to the woof, woof.

  ‘What sort of presents?’

  ‘Mama, I’m
watching television.’

  ‘What sort of presents?’ Nana was struggling to control her voice.

  ‘Toys. Or a scarf. I’ve had gloves, as well.’

  ‘And how long do they stay here?’

  ‘No idea. Not long. Some of them come again, some don’t. Look, that’s Gaston, the duck. He’s my favourite.’

  Elene squeaked with delight, her mouth full of chocolate.

  *

  The dignitaries finally left. Kostya shook them all by the hand as he said goodbye. The gentlemen looked very serious and important. Just the way Kostya liked to see himself. Nana put Elene to bed as usual. It was Lyuda’s day off. Kostya holed himself up in his study.

  He had changed. He seemed thinner, weaker. She could hardly look at him; since his return all she could think of was what Elene had said: Papa prefers women who are slimmer and wear lipstick, and perfume, too.

  Nana went into the bathroom. Took a long look at herself in the mirror. Her face betrayed none of her worries. The many pounds she’d put on in recent years hadn’t touched that open, friendly countenance. Her cheekbones were still sharp and high, her forehead smooth, her eyes clear. She didn’t look like a deeply unhappy woman. Over the course of her marriage her face had learned to lie.