What puzzled Elene most was the realisation that almost all of these young men described themselves as religious, and that they considered the Orthodox faith a rebellion against the state. Elene had never really taken any interest in politics or the state. She was, of course, aware that she had been a privileged child, that certain things were open to her because her father’s name was Kostya Jashi, but she had never agonised over class distinctions or Marxist doctrine. Politics was the preserve of men; her father was in politics, and that in itself was reason enough for her not to want anything to do with it.
To her, until now, being rebellious had primarily meant: doing her utmost not to fulfil her parents’ expectations, listening to her aunt’s records, sitting on the unfinished roof terrace staring dolefully at the sky, and perhaps reading de Sade, a heavily annotated edition that had passed through countless hands, a forbidden curio she had discovered in one of the old boxes in Christine’s cellar. Although these rebels had a rather different understanding of their rebellion and thought of themselves as politically minded, God-fearing people, Elene soon realised from their conversations that both their rebellion and her own were about one thing and one thing only: dreaming of a world where rock music wasn’t banned, where people wore blue jeans and went on demonstrations with home-made banners, a world where books and films — even really graphic ones — weren’t censored; ultimately, the world where her vanished, taboo aunt was living. A world from which no one who fled to it ever returned. Yes: a perfect, perfect world. She soon felt at home in this society on the fringes of society, which fought its greatest battles in a fourteen-square-metre kitchen. It must feel so good — she thought initially, as she sat in the corner and listened, fascinated, to these leather-jackets — to have so many important reasons to oppose something. Of course, she was surprised by certain contradictions in their worldview; she couldn’t make the connection between piety and hedonism, and she also found the chauvinistic and strictly regulated nature of their value system disconcerting. She found it hard to understand, for example, why it didn’t seem contradictory to them, and above all to Miqail, their spiritual leader, that the majority of them had committed theft, got into a fight, or threatened someone with a knife, even though they considered themselves devout Christians. They justified this by saying that political violence against the wrong people was allowed, and that as a Soviet leftist you had to express yourself more brutally and convey your discontent more violently than, for example, in the West.
At that time, of course, she was still too naive. She didn’t have the necessary distance or knowledge, or the awareness that, unlike the Russian underground, this profoundly Georgian form of revolt was limited to kitchen conversations, excessive alcohol consumption, and self-stylisation; or that, in rejecting the imperialist Slavic oppressor, it idealised all that was pre-Soviet — and therefore all that was bourgeois. And that, in doing this, they were not altogether averse to twisting historical facts and presenting things in whatever way best suited their own ideology.
All these boys, one after another, kissed Elene out of her long enchanted sleep. She let the warm sunbeams dance on her face. Where was she, who was she, where was she heading? How did this all fit together, and what was God’s part in it? Was He even interested in earthly matters any more? With aching thoughts and painful, bright-eyed longing she gradually came back to life.
She had her thick chestnut hair bobbed again. She painted her fingernails. She used her mother’s rouge. She went to a dressmaker and ordered some colourful summer clothes. She bought white high-heeled sandals in the Jewish Quarter, and used the French perfume her father had given her. She gave Daria noisy, smacking kisses on her plump pink cheeks, stepped on the gas, and whirled up clouds of dust on the unpaved country roads. She turned up the music. She giggled to herself. She even — albeit hesitantly — started to join in the heated discussions in the kitchen. Drank malt beer, and sometimes the bitter, homemade schnapps. She enjoyed the taste of pickled cabbage and gherkins. There was usually no shortage of female company, but they were mostly neighbourhood girls or friends who just wanted to smoke some hash, snog the boys and listen to the only Pink Floyd or Stones album for miles around.
Unlike these girls, Elene took an interest in the discussions: she debated and argued with the others. She earned their respect. She chewed gum and blew enormous bubbles. She danced to The Who with one of the boys in the kommunalka’s tiny kitchen. She kept puffing on a joint and enjoyed it when time slowed down around her.
During one such dance, in one of these slow-motion moments, she let Beqa kiss her. Beqa had the best leather jacket, was often the loudest in discussion, never seemed to sleep, and had the best taste in music of them all. She knew that he was twenty-four, and had spent two years in a juvenile detention colony for breaking into a government official’s dacha. Although she wouldn’t admit it to herself, she was impressed by this. She also knew that he had dropped out of his architecture degree, and that his jeans were — outrageously! — ripped at the knee, which was reason enough for the militsiya to stop him on the street and accuse him of wearing antisocial clothing.
And he’s a fantastic kisser, too, thought Elene, snuggling even closer to him.
Two days later he asked her if she wanted to go to the House of Film with him to see a private screening of some horror flick called The Exorcist. He knew someone at the cinema, he could get his hands on tickets, and she didn’t have to be afraid, because he would be there (this last sentence was what really captivated Elene).
They started going out together. Spring seduced them into holding hands and perfecting the art of kissing. They went to the cinema, again and again, because Beqa could get tickets for special screenings.
They watched Bruce Lee; Beqa gave her a bootleg album by Deep Purple, and they listened to Made in Japan together. Even the fact that other girls were after Beqa seemed to Elene to speak in his favour. Becoming a couple felt simple, easy, natural. No heart-rending declarations of love and that tiresome rigmarole. He took her hand in his, and that was it.
They didn’t talk about their parents or home. They talked about Deep Purple and the films they saw. They felt weightless, like two cosmonauts in space. They didn’t follow any rules. They didn’t talk about an engagement, a wedding, children, a future together. They kissed openly on the street, in the car, in parks. And when their desire could no longer be satisfied with kisses and casual caresses, they drove up one evening to the Tbilisi Sea, waited for the café to close and the beach to empty, looked for some dense bushes, and laid down a blanket. They both felt that they were old enough, in their youth.
The nights by the lake were balmy; the stars were close. They didn’t love each other. They just made love. And beckoned to me to come into the world.
We were first in line,
but those behind us are eating already!
VLADIMIR VYSOTSKY
With her patience, tenacity, and single-mindedness, Lana too had succeeded in translating Miqa’s ethereal, intellectualised yearning and fervour into the language of the body. She accepted what he offered her without a hint of reproach, hoping that beneath his unhappy reticence, his mute fatalism, there was much more to be found, much more to be had. After months of waiting and methodical preparation, Lana achieved her ultimate victory. The last of his defences fell. And even though his hands still didn’t know quite what to do with her body, even though she was still slightly disappointed by his lack of passion, Lana was happy. She was also well aware that he was rewarding her: thanks to her ingenuity and the cleverly packaged half-truths in the second script, written for the commission, the screenplay had been approved. Miqa could make his film!
She knew, then, that for him this act of love was a sign of gratitude. But that didn’t mean anything; soon this gratitude would become inevitability, then necessity, and he would find her body as indispensable as her survival strategies, her cleverness and support.
It was one of those dimly lit roadside restaurants in Mtskheta — wooden bungalows and booths with provisional-looking décor, and tired, drunken musicians always tootling the same tunes — that, contrary to expectations, serve the best Georgian food. Miqail and his Plekhanov Street friends, along with Beqa and Elene, had just enjoyed an excellent meal and were sitting outside, a little drunk now, making sentimental toasts, constantly hugging each other, and not thinking about politics for once.
The sixth-term film directing students from the State Institute for Film and Theatre were celebrating in the same restaurant. Naturally, Lana was also at this table. And the two parties would probably never have noticed each other, and the evening would have passed off without incident, if some of the students hadn’t started singing.
The singing attracted the attention of Miqail’s boys, and they sent the waiter over to the ‘singing table’ with a bottle of sparkling wine and a plate piled high with fruit. Whereupon a tipsy student came over, thanked them, and invited the group to join them. Tables were pushed together and they began switching seats. It was only when she had reached the other end of the terrace that Elene noticed Miqa. Concealing her agitation, she attempted a friendly smile, even venturing to greet him with a tentative kiss on the cheek. Everyone introduced themselves, shook hands, and clapped each other euphorically on the back or shoulder. Fresh jugs of wine were ordered; epic toasts were made.
The tension in Miqa’s body, and Elene’s frequent glances in his direction, did not escape Lana’s notice, and she kept asking questions, wanting to know who this girl was. Christine’s great-niece, he informed her, under duress. He excused himself, rose from the table, and marched over to the men’s toilets. A few seconds later, Elene followed him. The door was half open and she peered in. Miqa was standing in front of the mirror, washing his hands.
‘I’m happy to see you, even though it’s strange … Oh God, I don’t know what I’m saying. How are you? Studying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Yes, I do. And what are you doing now?’
He soaped his hands again, despite having just washed them, as if he were afraid of turning round, of having to look at Elene. She stared at his reflection.
‘I feel so bad about the business with my father. I didn’t mean —’
‘Just forget it, okay?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Let’s go back. I expect they’re waiting.’
‘Why didn’t you stop me? Why?’
She walked up to him. He left the water running and it dripped off his hands. He shook his wrists like an epileptic. Then, slowly, he turned round, avoiding her eyes, perhaps hoping to get past her. But she blocked his path, summoned all her courage, and stepped right up to him so that he had to look at her. And what she saw made her shudder. His eyes were filled with incandescent poison. Never had she seen a look of such corrosive, devastating hatred. She felt utterly disarmed. Utterly ignoble and worthless.
‘What do you want from me? Huh?’ he barked at her. ‘Just get out of my life, will you. Stay out of it! Do you understand?’
His eyes had contracted to two small, dark dots, his mouth was twisted in an ugly, contemptuous line, the veins on his neck protruded in scarlet indignation.
‘Why did you sleep with me?’ There was a knot of iron stuck in her throat. Another second and she would start sobbing at the top of her voice, and she would never be able to stop, she would be stuck here, in this toilet that stank of urine, an appropriate location for the whole of her miserable existence.
‘Sleep? I didn’t sleep with you! I screwed, banged, fucked you!’ He spat the words in her face. They burned. They were little blades slicing open her skin.
‘Why would you say something like that?’
‘You were the horny one. Totally driven by your urge to procreate! You had a real itch between your legs! That’s how it was, wasn’t it? The little whore who found her true vocation!’
Where were these words coming from? They sounded like a foreign language in his mouth. He’d never raised his voice, never contradicted anyone. Where was he finding such venom now, such blind, destructive fury? Had she turned him into this person who glared at her now with such malice in his eyes? Did he know the price she was paying? Did it show?
‘What do you want from me? Shall I crawl to you on my knees? Can’t you see I haven’t forgiven myself? Is that what you need? Is it? Is that what you want, Miqa?’
She pressed her hand over her mouth to stop herself howling like a wolf.
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I want!’ he retorted, and stepped to one side. He was going to leave; he was going to run away right then and leave her there in her misery. Yes, that was what would happen. No — she couldn’t let it happen. She grabbed his wrist; he looked down, as if he couldn’t believe she was daring to touch him, but he didn’t wrench himself free, not yet. His eyes were unreadable. They frightened her. She didn’t know whether it was pain or remorse, anger or disgust that gathered there. She hadn’t known how to interpret his expression before, either.
She moved closer and flung her arms around him, clung to him, tried to capture his breath; perhaps his smell would make him seem familiar to her again.
‘You enjoyed it. I know you enjoyed it, I looked into your eyes, I watched you the whole time; it gave you pleasure to see me lying underneath you. It gave you pleasure to see me suffer. Please tell me; say it and I’ll kneel in front of you for all I care, I’ll do whatever you tell me. Please, just admit it. I’ll take all the blame, I’ll beg my father to ask for your forgiveness, but do it, please!’
‘You want me to do you a favour? Why? So you can feel less dirty, less bad? When it was you who couldn’t keep your legs together!’
‘Why won’t you just admit it? Why can’t we be honest with each other? Do you think I forgot it just like that, drew a line under it, that I simply moved on? Please!’
‘Elene, that’s not how it works. You can’t expect me to absolve you so you can go on playing Miss Cheerful. You forced me into it, and no matter how you try to twist the facts, that’s the way it’ll always be!’
‘Why don’t you just say it? Why don’t you say that you hate me?’
‘Hate’s far too big a word. That’s another emotion you have to earn. What I feel for you is indifference, and how you deal with your pangs of conscience is your own affair. You should have thought about that before pulling up your dress.’
‘You did it because you thought it was a way of denouncing me, exposing me in Christine’s eyes. You slept with me so you could be alone with her. You hoped everything would be decided in your favour; you bet everything on that. It’s true, isn’t it? Are you surprised that I can see it?’
He didn’t answer; instead, he tried to get away from her. Incapable of saying anything else, trapped inside her fear that he might escape her, abandon her to herself again, to the emptiness that held her so tightly in its arms, she stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and push her away, but someone else got there first. Someone grabbed his shoulders and flung him to the damp floor of the toilet; already he could feel something connecting with his coccyx. Beqa had come looking for his girlfriend and found her kissing a strange man in the gents’. According to the male codex, when Georgian honour is violated, the only possible course of action is to punch one’s rival to the ground.
Elene’s screams brought everyone running from table to toilet, and the Plekhanov boys and the film students fell on each other in a savage brawl. Within seconds, a great scrum of male bodies had formed. They held their opponents’ heads under their armpits, pressed them against the cold tiles, or slammed their fists into backs and knees, stomachs and faces.
Elene stood looking dumbly on, as if paralysed. She saw Lana throw herself between th
e men, in an attempt to shield Miqa, and get punched. Perhaps it was Elene’s instinct that protected her, prevented her from joining in this orgy of flailing arms and legs; for although she didn’t know it, at this point my mother was already pregnant with me, and perhaps I would not be here today if she had intervened in that fight.
Eventually the waiters, three other customers, and the burly restaurant owner pulled the men off each other and ended the punch-up. Elene was sitting on the pavement crying, her face in her hands, sobbing like her two-year-old daughter when she jerked awake in the night and cried out for her mother. Lana appeared beside her out of nowhere, with a torn blouse and a bloody scratch on her cheek, and glared down at her with loathing.
‘Leave him alone.’
‘It’s not my fault. This time it’s not my fault; I didn’t want —’
‘Just stay away from him, okay?’
Elene was surprised by the velvety voice of this woman who, just moments ago, had been defending Miqa without a thought for herself. Despite the harshness of her words, she sounded as if she sucked caramels every day to give her voice its soft and unctuous timbre.
‘He didn’t defend himself, again,’ Elene murmured absently.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He didn’t defend himself!’ Elene screamed.
*
Two weeks later, my mother found out about me, and accepted the news with calmness and equanimity, matter-of-factly, as if there were an inevitability to her getting pregnant, as if she existed only to offer up her body as a portal to all unborn children with an insatiable desire to enter the world.
The Eighth Life Page 66