After Rostov, he said, he had started roaming across the country, and was repeatedly arrested for refusing to work. He despised all forms of possession and lived by doing casual summer jobs in the countryside, because in Tbilisi a man like him would quickly become too conspicuous and wouldn’t find any disciples for his ideology. And indeed, in the years of his peregrinations he did make a name for himself as a miracle healer (such things have always found fertile ground in the Caucasus), and away from the kolkhozes and tea plantations he found plenty of people to listen to the teachings he had cobbled together. It wasn’t long before Elene, too, was counted among his followers.
He preached a life without possessions, a stateless system; he quoted the Bible and Tolstoy, and kept supplying her with the right books.
Everything he said sounded so simple and so clever. As if all you had to do was follow his commandments and life would just be an endless orgy of happiness. But his commandments seemed impossible to put into practice. However hard Elene tried to forgive her parents, to not get annoyed with Daria, to never get worked up about her annoying family members, to be loving and forgiving, she would always come up against her own limits, run to Miqail, confess her ‘sins’ to him, and vent her frustration over the enforced harmony of daily life in the Green House.
‘I can’t stand it any more! And when I’m sitting on the terrace in the evening, I hear my father saying to my mother: “Look at the way she just wanders about, why doesn’t she make something of herself, she’s completely letting herself go, she has no interest in anything, it’s just not normal, and then that stupid music, that music all the time, it’s not healthy, what has she done to her hair, why doesn’t she socialise with people her own age, why doesn’t she come to Tbilisi with us, why’s she always down in the village, where does she go there?” And so on. And Mother tries to calm him down, feeds him some lie or other, but she’s just as disappointed in me. Sure, it’d be great for her if I were one of her students, then she could show off, she could say: “Look, this is my child, she may have been jilted by a deserter but she’s got back on her feet, got her energy back, and now she’s studying, and soon she’ll find a strong Georgian guy who can be relied on not to walk out on her and will look after her properly. She’ll be a good housewife to him, a sociable girl dancing through life, accompanying him on lovely summer holidays to Borjomi and skiing in Bakuriani in winter!” Honestly, it makes me want to throw up. What on earth should I do, Miqail? At night, when they’re all asleep and Daria doesn’t need feeding any more, I sneak up to the attic. It’s the only place in the house where I can have my peace and quiet, where no one can find me. The extension isn’t finished’ — (it never would be, Brilka!) — ‘and there’s a balcony up there with no railing. I sit there, reading, smoking, thinking, and I can’t come to a conclusion. No solution. Isn’t that awful?’
But she didn’t have the courage to speak of what she really wanted to confess. How she would have liked to confess to Miqail about that terrible afternoon; to admit that, ever since, all her actions, memories, and thoughts ended in this vague sense of deficiency, failure, and hopelessness. How much she would have liked to have told him about her squeaking bed, Miqa’s confused, fearful expression, the terrible panic and destructive fury she had felt, which had so overwhelmed her, filling her with such fear, and which at times she still sensed in herself today. That although she felt remorse, there had also been a certain gratification, something deeply satisfying, because she had succeeded in driving him out and reconquering her rightful place, the throne she craved; except that this throne had turned out to be nothing like as desirable and comfortable as she had imagined.
She would have liked to ask Miqail what it was, this ball of emotions that time had failed to unravel, that still moved in her veins, in her blood vessels. Would so have liked to have known whether, beyond her anger, her jealousy of Miqa, there had been some other thing back then that had pierced her so deeply, so sharply, some thing capable of unleashing such destructive fury in her, a feeling that made everything else appear secondary. Why it was that, to this day, she became frantic with rage whenever she thought of how he hadn’t defended himself, hadn’t held her back.
*
Meanwhile, Brilka, your mother was learning to crawl, then walk. John Lennon released Imagine; Stasia gave up her trips to the city and any attempts to overcome the distance and contempt between herself and her sister; Kitty Jashi released her best and most popular album yet, Replacement, with the now-famous photo from Prague emblazoned on the cover. Bored by the New Testament, Elene read Madame Bovary, Swann’s Way, Scarlet and Black, Albert Savarus, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (this last, of course, covertly); and some western journalist compiled a statistic according to which the average Soviet citizen spent around five-hundred and fifty-two hours a year queuing for food. He also claimed that one-third of the goods manufactured in the Soviet Union existed only on paper.
*
Withdrawal took precisely thirty-four days. Kitty left the flat only to buy necessities. The delirium and hallucinations, the outbursts of aggression, the vile insults, the pathetic begging and whimpering were followed by two fainting fits, during which Kitty had to call an ambulance, and utter hysteria that forced her to tie Fred’s emaciated body to the bed. After many, many sleepless nights — and after Kitty had written five new songs — Fred Lieblich got out of bed at three o’clock one morning, showered, put on a clean shirt, came into Kitty’s study, and looked at her friend, smiling as if nothing had happened.
When she saw Fred standing in front of her, wet-haired, smelling fresh, the feverish light of those recent days gone from her catlike eyes, Kitty’s guitar slid to the floor; she put her hands over her mouth and started crying silently. Fred stood and smiled at her; neither woman trusted herself to go to the other. As if there were an invisible wall between them: impossible to transition straight from the role of nurse, or patient, to lover.
‘Keep playing. Don’t stop.’
Fred sat at Kitty’s feet. Kitty took her guitar, played, and began to sing along with the chords.
As dawn was breaking, with Fred trailing her forefinger across Kitty’s thigh, Kitty made her a proposition.
‘I want to move to Vienna with you. I want you to go back there. I want us to make a home there for ourselves. There was a time when I wanted to go there with someone else. We never made it, and now he never will. But you and I could go. And I’d really like to. I’d really like to go back, too, but I can’t. You can, and you should try. All of this here, all these people, they’re not good for you. They don’t see you, they don’t know you, they don’t understand you. Let’s try it, you and I.’
If man creates so much suffering, what right has he then
to complain when he himself suffers?
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Christine, wrapped in a spinach-green woollen coat, her face veiled in black tulle, strode along Rustaveli Boulevard. She had alighted from the tram at the opera house and was heading purposefully north.
People were walking up and down the boulevard. How strange it was, mused Christine, that you could rarely tell by looking at them what their stories were. Whether they had ever informed on someone to get a bigger apartment; whether their grandfather or grandmother had met their death in one of the many labour camps far away in the cold, white lands, or in a muddy ditch on the outskirts of the city; whether they had deceived others, cheated them, had believed in monsters; whether they had loved the wrong person; whether they had deserted someone, or would do so some day.
She stopped in front of the ochre-brick building and watched the students streaming out. She saw these loud young people laughing, pushing each other, or engaged in excited discussion; but she was looking for one particular student who, as usual, was taking his time.
She sat down on a bench diagonally across from the entrance and took out her crotchet work. It could be quite a while before the person she w
as waiting for appeared. She had a lot of things on her mind. How long would she be able to keep her house? Offended by her retreat, would Kostya continue to oppose it being turned into a residential community? After all, she was now all alone in that impressively large residence.
She turned her attention back to the present. Perhaps today she would manage it. Summon all her courage and speak to him. Perhaps today he would see her, notice her. Perhaps, though — as on so many other occasions — she would wait for him to come walking down the street, alone, head bowed, a tattered briefcase under his arm, only to pass her by, not even suspecting she was there. In fact, this was the likelier scenario.
She waited, listening to the heartbeat of this city in which she had spent almost her whole life — her whole, fractured life. Ramas had brought her here (her face lit up with an almost imperceptible smile at the thought) and talked to her for hours about Cézanne and Renoir. He’d taken her to Mushtaidi Park to see Buster Keaton’s The General in the city’s first open-air cinema. Was it really the acid that had killed her beauty, or the bullet with which he had shot himself in the Kojori forest? It seemed to her that a piece of the sky had broken off a long, long time ago, a thick blanket of clouds had dropped, and now it was raining splintered dreams. Perhaps Stasia was right, and one day the ghosts would crawl out from their hiding places. The false past had left its undead behind, and they all had last words to say. They couldn’t accuse anyone else, only the living.
A snowflake landed on her coat. A couple of students started squealing and stretched out their palms to greet the first flakes. Why did he never laugh with these girls — why didn’t he run out of the building as they did? The building that housed the State Institute for Film and Theatre, where Miqa had passed his entrance exam the previous year. He was always alone, so thoughtful, so morose.
She saw him coming down the steps. Past the old watchman, sitting absorbed in his Pravda; past the cafeteria, and the crowds of boys and girls who took no notice of him. She rose; he walked past her, didn’t look at her, didn’t look around, didn’t raise his eyes from the pavement, as if a secret path were traced upon it that he was following unswervingly. She took a step back. Should she sit down again, or follow him? Then what? What would she say to him? He hadn’t answered any of her letters, not one in eighteen months, until in the end she had stopped writing. Hastily, she stuffed her crotcheting into her handbag and took another step. He was hurrying down the road towards Lenin Square. Another step; and another. She walked behind him, maintaining a few metres’ distance. But as they were passing the National Gallery, she couldn’t stand it any more, and called his name. Miqa turned, startled, as if surprised that anyone should call him, that anyone knew him at all.
‘May I invite you for coffee? Or tea? I don’t even know whether you like coffee.’
She attempted a smile. He looked serious, far too serious for his age; a little neglected, but desperately touching in his efforts to conceal this neglect.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t you have time? Do you need to be somewhere?’
‘I don’t like cafés.’
‘As you wish. A little walk, perhaps? Or something to eat? I could do with some food, I can hear my stomach rumbling. There’s a new restaurant in the Bath Quarter, apparently.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s a yes, then?’
They walked along the boulevard slowly, hesitantly, until Christine took his arm and matched her pace to his. At first she thought he would pull away, but he let her hold his elbow and started to walk faster.
‘My mother died three months ago,’ he said suddenly, pressing Christine’s arm more firmly to his side. She didn’t know what to say: for the first time it occurred to her that she didn’t know much about his mother. She had always declined to go with Andro whenever he came to collect Miqa.
‘She had a heart condition. They should have put her on sick leave. She shouldn’t have had to work so hard.’
‘Oh God, Miqa, I’m so sorry …’
They walked on in silence for a while. Little by little he started answering her questions: told her that his studies made him very happy, that he’d been very lucky because the group leader had put in a word for him, he wouldn’t have had much chance otherwise; after all, it was a prestigious school for prestigious children from prestigious families, but he’d been lucky. Christine didn’t interrupt the stream of words, nor did she tell him that this ‘luck’ was due to a great deal of lobbying on her part and the extra roubles she had slipped to the head of the examining board. He was living in a boarding house up in the Bagebi quarter, he told her. He didn’t socialise much with his fellow students. One of them was the son of a famous Mosfilm actor, another the nephew of a well-known Tbilisi surgeon, this girl was the fiancée of the son of so-and-so, and so on and so forth.
He didn’t often see his father; sometimes he would call the village post office or the neighbours and speak to him, but he hadn’t been doing well since Miqa’s mother’s death.
They went into one of the restaurants along the river that served Georgian food. He looked so hungry; of course he was hungry, she’d known it the minute she set eyes on him. She ordered, ignoring his loud protests, happy that food provided the opportunity to keep him near her, at least for an hour. First, they brought bread, warm from the oven, with plum sauce, tomato sauce, pomegranate sauce. This was followed by a starter of bean soup, with warm corn bread and lots of coriander, just the way he liked it. Then she asked the waiter to serve spinach and aubergine dips with extra garlic. Greedily he fell on the food. When at last they brought bazhe to the table his eyes sparkled. He dunked the bread in the various sauces, glancing at her gratefully as he did so.
‘Forgive me, Miqa.’
She looked him straight in the eye. She reached for his hand. He still felt so familiar, so in need of protection. He glanced around, and seemed visibly uncomfortable to be touched by her in this way. But she didn’t let go of him; she even moved her chair a little closer. He smelled her unmistakable scent: powder, and something he could never have put into words. He moved his face towards hers.
‘What exactly should I forgive you for?’
‘I left you on your own.’
He tensed, stared fixedly at his plate. Two women at a neighbouring table were looking over at them curiously.
‘I’ve been coming to the Institute since September, hoping to speak to you. I’ve made a decision. I’ve chosen you. I took you into my home all those years ago, I swore that I’d be there for you, and it’s unforgivable that, when it mattered, I wasn’t able to fulfil my promise. I left you on your own. Give me a chance to make amends.’
Suddenly he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. She turned her face away sharply: he tasted of tarragon and a broken childhood.
‘I didn’t mean it like that, Miqa,’ she stammered.
‘But I did.’
‘I know this isn’t how you see me, but I’m old, Miqa, I’m really old. Too old.’
‘You’re so beautiful.’
‘You can live with me, move in with me; the house is empty, I’ll be there for you and look after you.’
‘Will you do me a favour?’
‘Yes, of course, just say.’
‘Show me your face. Show me the whole of your face. Please.’
She called for the bill.
*
The old house in the Vera quarter, in whose garden the dead loved to play their games of Patience, greeted the returnee with a familiarity that immediately made both of them sentimental, and therefore more conciliatory. Christine made coffee; they sat in the unlit kitchen until the whole house had been requisitioned by darkness.
Then she began to take the pins out of her hair, the fastenings of her protective shield; she let down her long, dyed tresses, she lined up the pins on the table like a miniature army, she to
ok off the veil, laid it gently on the table, she turned her face towards him in the half-dark. She refused to turn on the light.
That night — this is how I always imagine it, Brilka — her age drained from her body; she brushed it from her skin like foam, so lightly, with a single sweep of her hand. Perhaps this was the last night in which Time permitted her to reclaim her place as undisputed beauty queen. Before age, which exacts an even higher price from the most beautiful among us, finally began to take its toll. He ran his fingers tentatively over her face, afraid that she might be made of glass, might shatter in his hands at any moment.
Hand in hand, they walked up the old, creaking, wooden staircase and down the narrow corridor to Christine’s bedroom, which had once seemed to Miqa like the gateway to his one true home. She lay down, leaving the left side of the bed for him, as she used to when he was a little boy who would come creeping to her room during thunderstorms and climb into bed beside her. The boy she had always wanted to protect, and whom she’d had to abandon. He lay down beside her, straining to make out her features in the dark. She stroked his head and lent him her eyes, her images from the past, so he could see her as she had once been, as a nineteen-year-old girl of unearthly beauty, and happy — yes, she had been happy, she had managed to squeeze so much happiness out of life, and she wanted so much for him to understand that every happiness in life must be fought for, with all your might, by every means possible. She held him in her arms and felt the years fall away from her, felt herself grow younger at his side. She reached out and touched him through the darkness. He lay quietly on his side of the bed, and she stayed on hers; like two good schoolchildren they lay there, young and safe, in a cloak of timelessness, in a limitless world where anything seemed possible. There was just his hand that never tired of running over her skin. She smiled in the dark, and hoped that she would be able to banish Miqa’s fear. That he would succeed in escaping the clutches of the day he was betrayed. She went on speaking quietly to him. The night was rough and overcast, the sky as if someone had poured milk over the clouds.
The Eighth Life Page 63