The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischwili

  Stasia told him about her journey to Russia, all those years ago, and her attempt to trace him. Why is she telling me this now? he asked himself, not knowing whether to be pleased or angry.

  Was Kostya sorry? Did he feel any pangs of conscience? Did he question what had happened? Did he waste even a single thought on how Kitty was faring? I don’t believe he did: he forbade himself to think about such things. Because here, too, he didn’t believe in answers. The only possible definitive answer was the life that they were living.

  His mother, this shadow trapped in a world of her own — no fairy, as Christine had once been — stood before him, weeping, her hand clamped round his wrist. He couldn’t cope with her tears. He didn’t want to have power over her: for what was perhaps the first time since the pursuit of power had become his main aim in life, Kostya felt it as a burden. He didn’t want to sit in judgement over her tears. He wanted nothing to do with her suffering. But it was impossible: they were all far too tightly bound to one another, whether they liked it or not. They would never be able to disentangle themselves; nothing in their story was ever truly over, not as long as they lived. There were always other outcomes, twists and possibilities that revealed themselves after every supposed end.

  He lowered his head; he raised her hand to his lips; he touched her cool, soft skin; it felt good to sense the possibility of forgiveness, the possibility of considering a different possibility, for himself and for their story together. Even if they wouldn’t rewrite it, not now, even if it was impossible to preserve this peace, to believe in a new beginning, the illusion was nonetheless soothing, calming, reconciling.

  When her speech got as far as his birth and its associated torments, he was cursing himself for letting himself get caught up in this mawkishness, this emotional indulgence, for not stemming this flood of words at the outset and setting about the profane activity of sorting out the food. But it was too late: for a moment he had been weak, for a moment he had allowed himself to be carried away by his feelings, and now he had to bear the consequences and listen to this sentimental mother-son claptrap.

  ‘Yes — nine hours, nine whole hours the contractions lasted. You were big, even then; you weighed more than four kilos, I didn’t have much strength left to push —’

  ‘Stasia, please.’ He didn’t want to hear any more, didn’t want to have to listen to the bloody details.

  ‘And the midwife shouted —’

  ‘Stasia!’

  ‘— push, push, and I thought: I’m going to faint!’

  ‘All right, that’s enough! I’ll think about it. I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll think about it.’

  *

  When the telephone rang, Kitty was standing in the middle of her living room, locked in a tight embrace with Fred, feeling for a moment as if she had overcome everything that separated her from happiness. She had been dancing with Fred, laughing as her red-haired friend floated dreamily across the dark wooden floor, twisting her body into peculiar shapes, while Kitty’s own voice sang out of the big speakers.

  They had fought the previous night. Perhaps for the first time it had been as fierce as the fights Amy had with this woman who was lover to them both. Kitty had never intended to let that tone creep into her voice, that contempt, which was really only an admission of her own dependency and powerlessness. She had been ashamed of her loss of control, the pointless reproaches, all aimed at Fred’s ideas about life and morality. Kitty felt she had behaved shabbily in her desperation. The cross-examination she had inflicted on her beloved, the cheap, repulsive, almost vulgar insults and threats. Unlike Amy, she had never hoped she would be able to change Fred. Perhaps she had never wanted to, either, but equally she did not want to make her happiness, her contentment dependent on this woman. On the tiny morsel of clandestine love she threw her way. And Fred, as if she didn’t take herself seriously in the role of cruel heartbreaker and thoughtless egomaniac, had waited for Kitty’s anger to subside, only to sweet-talk and bewitch her again, to soften her up and explain to her once more that this lack of commitment, this unreliability, this freedom actually constituted the greatest fidelity of which she was capable.

  Kitty hated it, and it seemed she would never get used to the idea that Fred didn’t have a romantic bone in her body and had to reduce everything to sex. But perhaps it was easier to describe their relationship as a liaison with no commitment; perhaps it was easier to persuade herself that they shared nothing more than a bed and the traumas of their pasts.

  As dawn was breaking, Kitty, hoarse and exhausted, had admitted defeat, after which Fred had coaxed her into going for a long walk, then had bought fresh fish with her at the weekly market and made her a delicious meal. Kitty would never have believed Fred’s hands were capable of such a thing had she not been present and seen it with her own eyes: Fred, over-excited and giggling like a little girl, preparing the food in Kitty’s kitchen with such patience, such attention to detail; the time she took over the cooking, the many spices weighed and tasted like a medicinal remedy.

  After the meal, Fred put on Summer of Broken Tears and held forth about every song on the album. And once they had finished a bottle of wine, and Fred had rolled a joint, they were sufficiently uninhibited to dance to Star Collector, too, whirling around the room, singing over and over again: ‘Let’s pretend we are lovers and start to collect the stars.’

  How many people there are in this one person, thought Kitty. She was constantly amazed by how deceptive and changeable Fred’s body was. How transparent, defenceless, insubstantial as breath, weak, and devoid of all eroticism; how possessive. She could have danced with this woman for ever and a day.

  The sound of the telephone roused Kitty from her stupor. She reeled back to the sofa, flopped onto it, and picked up the receiver. Even before he had said hello she recognised his even breathing. He had never called outside their prearranged times. What had happened? Her body tensed. No, please no, not bad news, not now, she thought.

  ‘I’ve been asked to make you an offer.’ He sounded particularly matter-of-fact.

  Kitty took a deep breath and signalled to Fred to turn the music down.

  ‘I thought something awful must have happened.’

  ‘No, no. It’s a good offer, in my opinion.’

  ‘I’m happy to hear your voice.’

  Fred eyed her with curiosity. It was the first time she had heard Kitty speak in her mother tongue. She watched her, fascinated, as if she were performing a work of art.

  There was a crackle at the other end of the line.

  ‘The Komsomol Club in Prague is interested in a performance.’

  ‘Prague? Did I hear that correctly?’

  ‘Yes, precisely.’

  ‘That can’t be right, that’s —’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is. In a few days’ time your manager will receive an official request. And if I were you, I would accept the offer, because there, you might …’

  He fell silent. Kitty’s heart was racing. Prague. The city was full of scars; the memory of that city was full of bruises. She felt all her courage draining away. What she really wanted to do was ask him to go with her. Only now did she realise that he hadn’t finished his sentence.

  ‘I might — what?’

  ‘You might meet someone; someone who …’

  Kitty put her hand over her mouth to hold back the scream. Did he mean Kostya, her mother, Christine? Andro, perhaps? No, that wasn’t possible, they would never give him permission to travel abroad. Most likely her brother. Never mind who, the main thing was that it would be someone from her family, someone from home, someone from her old life.

  ‘Who?’ she cried, overwhelmed by the joy filling her heart.

  ‘You know the rules.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know the rules. Yes, I’ll accept the offer, of course I will.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

&
nbsp; ‘Do you know that I really like you?’ Kitty could no longer suppress her laughter.

  ‘I’m very glad. Because the feeling is mutual.’

  After she hung up, she threw open both windows in her room and let the cool air flow into her lungs. Fred, who had gone into the kitchen, returned with a glass of whisky in her hand. Normally Kitty would have been cross and warned her that she drank too much, that she constantly needed some kind of stimulant to act as a crutch for her life, but this time she didn’t care, she wanted to get drunk, too, wanted to celebrate this incredible news. She turned and flung her arms around Fred’s neck.

  What is needed is work; everything else can go to the devil.

  ANTON CHEKHOV

  Kostya knew he should not have made Elene his accomplice: firstly, because she was still far too young to be able to interpret the subtle signs of a broken marriage correctly; and secondly, because she was herself a woman. He should not have let her in on his secrets. He blamed himself for the fact that he now had to let her go, walking on the sad, broken shards of his marriage, even though the return of his cautious, disciplined girl to the emotionally unbalanced, chaotic, unstructured regime of the women, dictated by moods and whims, was not without danger. What Kostya did not foresee was that Elene’s anger would blossom into a beautiful and poisonous flower.

  He promised Elene that he would call at every opportunity, promised her the same pocket money she got in Moscow, promised her he would take advantage of every holiday and every opportunity to go on spending time with his ‘best friend’, as he sometimes called her. He even promised that he would make her the blinis she loved so much, according to Lyuda’s recipe. And although Elene didn’t protest, didn’t make any hysterical scenes, didn’t even cry in front of him, he knew that her heart was broken, that he had not protected her from a sense of being superfluous and unloved.

  He had no say in the decision as to whether Elene should attend tenth grade in a Russian or a Georgian school. Nana had had enough of Elene’s affected upper-class accent, she told him on the phone; those elitist mannerisms had to stop once and for all. She would go to a perfectly ordinary Georgian school in Vera, and she could walk there; a chauffeur was completely over the top for a fourteen-year-old girl.

  Elene maintained a mild, polite demeanour, kissed all of her female relatives cheerfully upon her return, accepted, for her mother’s sake, her demotion from an elite school to a normal one, even though it seemed impossible to her at first to change the language in which she was educated, and swore to herself that the minute she turned eighteen she would never do anything the adults expected of her ever again.

  Her unknown aunt’s old room was repainted in a hurry; a new writing desk was installed, rails were bought specially for Elene’s many clothes, and the soft toys Elene had brought with her from Moscow were arranged on the freshly made bed.

  In the first weeks after her return, everyone in the house seemed to vie for her favour. They only prepared meals she liked; whichever programme she expressed an interest in was the one they would watch; they made a fuss about ensuring Christine’s arias didn’t disturb her when she was doing her homework; and Miqa was warned not to keep her from her work and her daily routine any more than necessary. Elene sensed all this and cynically took it for granted. For her, their behaviour was confirmation — proof — that her family felt guilty about replacing their daughter, granddaughter, with an overly sensitive country bumpkin.

  Miqa had been in torment since her return. Things he had previously taken for granted were now forbidden him. Nobody had given him an instruction manual for Elene. He tiptoed past her room, where she was often playing western music, and blushed when she sat next to him at meals.

  She seemed so sure of herself, so sophisticated, so chic, with her white mother-of-pearl nail varnish, her absolutely symmetrical shoulder-length hair, and her constant cries of, ‘Of course I know that. Why? Don’t you have it here yet? In Moscow …’ He felt small and stupid around her, as if unworthy of her presence. Never the most popular pupil in his class, he envied the way friends started flocking to her soon after she arrived at the school. Everyone seemed to court the favour of this precocious, fashionable girl: from the teacher’s pet to the cool kids, class clown to school hearthrob, everyone wanted to be around her. She radiated an aura of grandeur and self-sufficiency; she’d come straight from Moscow, had seen the world, her father was an important man, she possessed the rarest records, she knew about pop music, she had a sharp tongue, she didn’t let anyone push her around, and above all she was very aware of the effect she had on people.

  Life in the house on Vera Hill gradually normalised. Stasia and Christine went about their work; the previous year, Nana had finally secured a long-coveted full-time job as a professor of linguistics and was immersing herself in the day-to-day life of the university. Elene’s return appeared to have been a success: she was integrating well into school life in Tbilisi, overcoming the language barrier thanks to the tutoring Kostya paid for, and seemed not to miss Moscow and her father at all, as Nana had initially feared.

  Elene and Miqa had agreed on a few unspoken rules so as to keep out of each other’s way as best they could. Although they both had the same walk to school, they never walked together. At breakfast and dinner, when the whole family gathered around the kitchen table, they sat as far away from each other as possible so they wouldn’t be tempted to chat or have to ask the other to pass something. When the weather was fine, Elene monopolised the garden; but she scarcely set foot on the first floor of the house, where Miqa’s bedroom was, along with Ramas’ study and library, where he loved to spend his time. That winter, when Andro collected his son as usual at the start of the school holidays, he sensed that, for the first time since he had gone to live in Tbilisi, Miqa was glad to leave the city and the house behind.

  *

  But after the winter holidays, which Kostya spent with his daughter as promised, even taking her to Bakuriani for a week-long skiing holiday, things changed. Nana was summoned to the school, where the class teacher informed her that her daughter was inciting other girls to play truant and engage in ‘lewd behaviour’. She was shown rude words that Elene — so the teacher had been told — had pencilled on the walls of the girls’ toilets for all to see. Nana defended her daughter: Elene was a model pupil, popular and hardworking, and so disciplined — this wasn’t the kind of thing her girl would do.

  However, the following week, when she found cigarette butts on Elene’s windowsill, she started to suspect that Elene’s rebellion might indeed have begun, and so she attempted to have an open conversation with her daughter. Elene denied everything, became very angry, and slammed her bedroom door in her mother’s face.

  Elene was grounded. Nana came home punctually from work and made sure that she did her homework. Her daughter’s favourite meals were off the menu for the next few weeks, and Stasia and Christine were also asked not to pay her any attention. Nana believed she was doing the right thing; true, Elene went around looking sulky, but she did as she was told.

  Until one day she didn’t come home from school. They called her girlfriends, but no one could say where she might be. The alarm was raised. Nana grabbed Miqa and spent all afternoon with him combing the streets, but Elene was nowhere to be found. One of her classmates mentioned that she got on well with the older boys; perhaps she was at a party somewhere with one of them. Sure enough, long after midnight, a drunken Elene staggered into the kitchen as if nothing had happened and calmly started frying an egg: she was hungry, she said.

  Nana exploded. Kostya was called in Moscow, and, after he had spoken to his daughter for an hour, Elene mumbled a half-hearted apology to her mother. Nana threatened not to let her out of the house for a month if she didn’t stop this unacceptable behaviour immediately; but Elene just climbed out of her window and stayed out all night. There was another long phone call to Moscow that culminated in a fight be
tween Nana and her husband, who accused her of ruining their daughter’s future.

  Elene was impossible to control. Sneaking out after dark became a habit. She would hang out all night with the rowdy boys from school on the field beneath the television tower, where they would drink wine or beer, play each other songs on the guitar, sing, dance, and — if they were especially daring — kiss.

  Nana had bars put on her daughter’s window, but the following night Elene escaped via the apple tree, which she reached from the window of the bathroom on the first floor, where Christine, Stasia, and Miqa’s bedrooms were. Nimble and athletic as a result of her Pioneer training in Moscow, she climbed through the branches until she reached a strong one — where she sat, holding her breath.

  A little bedside lamp was still on in Christine’s bedroom, and Elene could make out two figures on the bed. She saw Christine, with the white veil covering the left half of her face, wearing a white nightdress, her shoulders bared. And beside her great-aunt she recognised the broad shoulders and heavy features of Miqa.