Gradually, though, the ground split open. Time was combed the wrong way, the sequence of events shifted; misfortune was like a black bird’s beating wing that momentarily brushed them all as it descended.
Christine knelt before him, pleaded with him, clasped his hands in hers, but he didn’t want to stay, he didn’t want to have to save or preserve anything any more. He went home, to his strong schnapps and the busts of Lenin. It was so good to be able to replace the present with the past.
Why hadn’t she told him? Why hadn’t she written to him? Why hadn’t he known anything about her pregnancy?
He drank, and punched holes in the wall with his aching fists.
The nights carved bloody images on his chest.
He couldn’t breathe.
He reached for a hammer and smashed it down on the big head of Lenin that the administration building had rejected three years earlier on the grounds that Lenin’s nose was insufficiently distinguished.
He went on drinking.
The neighbours came running, knocked, and called out to him. He bolted the doors. He entrenched himself, and put his life on rewind.
We won our peace,
Clear days and dear.
You’re weeping? — I’m
not worth a tear.
ANNA AKHMATOVA
In another world, in another country, in another life, a woman woke from an uneasy sleep and sat up in bed. There was no getting back to sleep now, so she padded, barefoot, to the living room, took from her drinks cabinet the most expensive bottle of whisky she could find, and poured herself a glass. She didn’t turn on the light. She was alone. She stood there staring into a darkness pierced by light from the streetlamps.
She felt a constriction in her chest, as if someone were holding her heart in their fist and squeezing it continuously. She watched as her pale, bare skin was illuminated by the play of light and shadow from the few cars driving past, their headlights sweeping across her windows.
She felt so tired all of a sudden. And then she remembered the dream that had woken her. She had dreamed of a young boy with curly blond hair. She saw Andro’s face, an Andro as yet unscarred by the war, who carved wonderful angels out of wood. Andro, who had counted her eyelashes and smothered the palms of her hands with kisses, who had brushed locks of hair off her face and promised her that he would never change.
She knocked back the oily brown liquid in one gulp. For precisely seven nights now her mind had only been able to formulate one single thought: I want to go home. It was the only wish she had. The only one she was left with. I want to go home pulsed inside her like a gaping cut in her skin; I want to go home screamed inside her, scratched at her entrails, wanted to be shouted out, wanted to be fulfilled.
She had had so much happiness. She had been showered with such an outrageous amount of happiness, after unhappiness had smashed her into a thousand little pieces. Had she put herself back together again? Did she have a face again when she looked in the mirror?
All the cheering and applause, and all the songs, all the people who had believed in and supported her. She felt such gratitude — and incredulity, even now, after all the years of recognition. Incredulity that she had been given this chance, after the world had initially presented itself to her as a black and bottomless pit.
Was it her own life she was living? Were they really her songs? Or had she left her real life behind, surrendered it when she departed for a new world? She had snuck like a thief into someone else’s life — the woman from Luxembourg, yes, the woman from Luxembourg, perhaps. I want to go home!
Or was another thought there, too? Was there something else? Yes: lurking behind every pulsating I want to go home were those four letters: Fred.
Fred, who had breathed new life into her, who had kissed her loins, had made her hips swing, who had wrapped her arms around her. Fred, who had promised to go with her to find old Vienna — ‘I think it makes no sense whatsoever to go back to that Nazi stronghold, but fine, if you’re absolutely set on it, we will.’
How nice it had been, making plans for a new beginning in the supposed certainty that she and Fred had been through hell and survived.
Leafing through property brochures. A lovely new apartment with a spacious studio for her friend. Fred telling her which of Vienna’s districts were most attractive, and Kitty falling in love with them. How right it had felt, back then, this idea of a return to the future.
And then her American tour! Oh God, that had been good! Kitty smiled, poured herself some more whisky. The quiet grace with which Amy had come back into her life. That reception in New York! What a high they’d been on, after her first American concert, in that trendy factory loft in Brooklyn. Was it Brooklyn? What did it matter now?
Dancing with Amy in her dressing room. Amy — slightly annoyed — agreeing to Fred joining them on tour. The reunion at JFK; Fred’s laughter. How captivating her beloved barfly had looked in that sea of people at the airport: crazy woman, egocentric ignoramus. How delicious the beer had been that they drank, later, in Greenwich Village. The walks in Central Park; the skyscrapers.
Her concerts had been well attended; always those crowds of people in the darkness, strafed by bright spotlights, singing along, fervent, quiet, and melancholy, then loud again and full of anger, singing against everything in their lives for which they had no songs. Amy sold the song rights; radio and television stations queued up for Kitty’s sad Soviet story. ‘The icon of the Left, the protest singer of Wenceslas Square!’ Amy used to cry, guffawing with laughter, head thrown back, a silly plastic flower in her hair.
And as Kitty drained her second glass, she thought of the hotel rooms they had staggered back to, exhausted, after the concerts: Boston, Baltimore, Detroit, Miami, San Francisco, Las Vegas — yes, there too, in a little club that didn’t really look the part in that city flooded with light and madness. Atlanta, Michigan, cities whose names she no longer recalled (too western for her ears, which gave everything an eastern accent), and, again and again, New York.
She had wanted her Vienna, and she had come to America. Her own, personal, western happiness. Had this happiness been a stolen one, too? Oh yes, those hotel rooms. Kitty shook her head. Images of the countless hotel beds, and her red-haired tightrope walker in them with her. The two of them had provoked the world too much with their happiness, had laughed in its face too long! How could the memory of their bodies between those high ceilings and plump pillows still be so clear? As if it were yesterday. That body, made of air and sorcery; the tiny red hairs in her armpit, her sharp knees, her skilled hands. The memory of desire was worst of all. Kitty’s body seemed to have forgotten those caresses with such cruel ease, even as her mind still clung to them for all it was worth.
It was starting to grow light outside. A sunbeam cut like a dagger across the sky.
How could something feel so illicitly good, and then turn from one moment to the next into such unbearable pain? And how was it that now, when it was all over, when the only thought in her head was I want to go home, she recalled this happiness with such unflinching clarity? Without the woman who seemed to say to everyone, with unshakable confidence: I did it. I conquered death. Yes: I made it.
*
The pressure in her chest had eased. She looked out onto her balcony, which was crammed with plants. How often Amy had told her she should find herself a better flat, or even a townhouse; but this place was more than enough for her. The more space she had, the more rooms, the more she would have felt like a guest, a thief who had slipped into someone else’s life.
She was a little cold, but too lethargic to get up and fetch herself a blanket. She wanted to breathe. Just breathe quietly. Fred had never been faithful, she had just been loyal in her own way; and she’d known that, she had always known that. So why hadn’t she been able to cope when confronted with the facts? Fred was inconsistent, she was reckless, she n
ever walked on safe ground, she refused to justify her actions, she didn’t want to be either healed or saved, she needed the intoxication that was her medicine.
And why couldn’t all these countless postcards of happiness, filed away so neatly in her head, chase away the picture of that new-build flat in Camden? The flat she had spent more than four hours looking for because she hadn’t had the exact address, one week before she completed the purchase of an apartment right on Vienna’s Mariahilfer Strasse. Desire may not burn itself into the cells of the body, but the cells of her brain remembered every single second of the two or three minutes she had spent in that unfamiliar flat.
An unfurnished space, apparently still unoccupied, with a party in full swing; a place to which several phone calls had led her in search of Fred. She remembered — so precisely — every single line of the Stones’ ‘Hide Your Love’, which was playing in the background. The people squatting on the floor, the smell of fresh paint, and smoke, and something else that seemed to her both familiar and utterly alien. Grinning people in hippie gear, stuck in the past; a bunch of good-for-nothings, spongers, the kind to which Fred had always been magically drawn.
Yes, her brain cells had registered it all so precisely: wandering through rooms full of bodies in search of her renegade, fickle, endangered girlfriend; repeatedly asking people high on themselves whether they had seen Fred Lieblich — then finding her, her very own Marlene Dietrich from The Blue Angel, and seeing, on her lap, one of those girls who seek out the laps of others: draped in Indian jewellery, uncombed hair down to her waist, ripped jeans, shimmying her small breasts in Fred’s face.
Shrinking back; fighting her way through the throng, through the loud music that was suddenly a torment to her, and recognising in all those faces something far worse than the presence of the unknown girl, worse than Fred’s arm round her waist, her glazed expression. Her delayed movements. It had taken only seconds for Kitty to recognise her brutal defeat in the battle with the yellow-brown liquid that flowed through the veins of her angel and the Indian hippie.
The next day, with Amy’s help, she had packed Fred’s things, rented a room for her near Lea Bridge, put the key in an envelope for her, and left it with the caretaker of the block. Then she changed the lock on her front door.
She stopped answering Fred’s calls. Napkins covered in Fred’s illegible handwriting appeared in her letterbox; she threw them in the bin without even glancing at them, and once, when Fred lay in wait for her and followed her down the street, she flagged down a taxi to escape her.
That was six months ago. Since then, Fred had vanished from her life, and even the otherwise well-informed Amy had no news of her.
She did not, of course, complete the purchase of the apartment in Vienna. Several concerts and radio performances were cancelled, and since that time she had not written a single song.
On Amy’s advice, Kitty bought herself a cottage between Eastbourne and the magical Seven Sisters cliffs, and every day she planned to retreat there. But she couldn’t even rouse herself to do that. The only thought that preoccupied her was I want to go home.
Visit the Soviet Union, before it visits you.
SOVIET IDIOM
Christine witnessed Miqa growing more uncommunicative, more absent with every visit, as if he were indifferent to his own fate. And in October, when I could already say seven words and Mirian Eristavi — known from the start as Miro — first saw the light of day, weighing in at 3,900 grams and fit as a fiddle, with variegated eyes, as if he couldn’t decide on just one colour, Christine first saw on Miqa the marks of physical violence: a conspicuous blue-black bruise under his right eye and a leg he seemed to be dragging behind him. A stupid little fight with one of his cellmates, no more than that; she had nothing to fear, he told her. And with forced cheerfulness he asked after his son, wanting to know where Lana was going to live with the baby.
‘It’s very draughty in Lana’s mother’s apartment, and apparently there’s mould in the bathroom; they’ll stay with me for the time being, of course, until you get out. She has to finish her thesis this year, I’m sure she’s told you. Her mother and I will help her. Her mother has diabetes, did you know that?’
Christine kept chattering mindlessly, anything to fill the silence. Miqa nodded at her, but his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.
‘Oh, the little boy is so gorgeous; you’ll see him soon! He looks like you, but that might change, I’m telling you, you never really know with babies, they change from one hour to the next. The poor thing has colic at night, I’m afraid, and he cries a lot, but I —’
‘I would have so liked to have children with you,’ he said suddenly, with a glance at the guard, who was immersed in a newspaper. Since Christine had slipped him a few extra banknotes, he’d stopped being such a stickler about visiting times. Christine swallowed, breathed deeply, started nervously massaging her neck.
‘You’re talking nonsense, and I refuse to have such conversations.’
‘I took the wrong path, Christine. I took the wrong path, in everything. But I promise you I’m going to get out of here.’
There was no mistaking the anxiety in his voice, which he had hidden so well for so long.
‘Tell me where to look! Tell me, and we’ll get you out of here!’ she whispered. ‘I beg of you!’
But he just shook his head.
Two weeks later they were told that the prisoner was no longer in the cells: he’d been transferred to the adjoining prison hospital for a while because of ‘kidney problems’.
*
‘You two are going to drive there and fetch him. He doesn’t reply to my letters, he won’t answer the phone, he doesn’t leave the house and won’t open the door to anyone. I’ve got enough to worry about with Miqa: I have to try to get him transferred, I have to speak to the lawyer. He’s locked up in there with a bunch of hardened criminals, he doesn’t belong there, they know that, and they’re taking their anger out on him! Go and bring him back to Tbilisi. Otherwise he’s going to drink himself to death. I can’t take care of everything.’
Lana stared sulkily at the wall, and Elene poked at the wooden floor with the toe of her shoe.
‘Christine, I can drive there on my own …’ Lana tried to object.
‘Elene’s the one with the car, and you won’t get him away from there on your own!’ Christine’s tone slipped. ‘I’ll look after Miro.’
Elene wasn’t keen on spending six hours in a car with this woman in silence, but she didn’t dare defy Christine, so the next day at dawn she parked outside the entrance to Christine’s block and opened the car door for Lana, who settled herself in the passenger seat with a stony expression.
Autumn had already descended on the hills around Tbilisi, and they drove through thick fog as they left the city behind. Elene switched on the radio; it was tuned to some random station, and Lana tried to find something more suitable. Elene complained about the music until Lana was forced to make some comment about her own musical tastes. From favourite groups they moved on to favourite films; from favourite films they got onto childhood diseases and vaccinations; from vaccinations to their children and the challenges of being a new mother. By the time they got to Rekha the ice was broken, and when they stopped for a break and treated themselves to a meal in a rundown roadside café, at least Elene didn’t feel threatened any more.
The steep, winding, partially unpaved roads continued to crawl upwards. They reached the mountain village as darkness fell. The place was unfamiliar to Elene, but Lana seemed to know her way around. They soon reached the little stone house, part of Miqa’s late mother’s dowry, a simple one-storey building with a squeaky gate. They called out to Andro and knocked, but there was no reply. As the door was locked, they decided to go back to the inn they had just driven past and wait there.
Later, when they returned to the house, it was already pitch dark. Only the white mou
ntain peaks shone in the blackness, disguised as stars. No one answered this time, either. An old woman peered out of the house next door and asked what they wanted. Elene introduced Lana as Andro’s daughter-in-law.
They should go in round the back, through the kitchen door, the old woman advised them. The man of the house was probably sleeping off his drink.
As they stepped over the threshold and into the kitchen they were hit by an overpowering stench of unwashed plates, rotting leftovers, and alcohol. They groped about in the dark for a bit until they found a light switch that worked. Filth everywhere: the rubbish hadn’t been taken out for a long time, there were empty bottles in every corner, and dust lay over everything. Blocks of stone were piled up in the corridor, and broken stone noses and ears lay around on the floor; Lenin’s mouth and Marx’s distinctive beard were recognisable.
Mountains of clothes, more and more empty bottles, none of them labelled, piles of books, sacks of gypsum and metal. Suddenly Elene stopped. She was holding a small, framed picture in her hand.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Lana. Elene went on staring at the picture, spellbound. In the frame was a newspaper cutting, a black-and-white photograph.
‘Who’s that?’
Lana came and stood beside Elene.
‘That’s my aunt.’
‘Your aunt? I didn’t know you had an aunt.’
‘Yes. My aunt lives in the West. She’s a famous singer.’
Andro was lying in a room that looked as if it had once been a bedroom, snoring.
‘He needs to sleep off the drink first, Elene — though he doesn’t exactly look as if he’s sleeping easily. Tomorrow morning we’ll make him get in the car. Come on, help me! We’re going to clear up!’
Resolutely, Lana set to work. She closed the bedroom door behind her, pushed Elene into the kitchen, turned on all the lights, and found a broom, some cloths, a bucket, and a piece of soap. Soon all the useless and filthy objects started piling up in the yard.
The Eighth Life Page 71