Afterwards, as they stood there in the darkened yard, Lana, hugging herself tightly, looked up at the sky. Millions of stars had suddenly appeared up there; they seemed so close, as if trying to form a diadem above their heads. As if the night were trying to bend a little lower over the Earth and listen to it.
‘They’re not here,’ said Lana tonelessly.
‘What aren’t here?’ asked Elene.
‘I’ve turned the whole house upside down. Oh God, I have to find them. We have to find them!’
Elene stared at her incredulously. Then it dawned on her.
‘Don’t tell me the reels have been here all this time! Don’t tell me you’ve known all along where they are!’
‘They were —’ Lana corrected her ‘— in a black box with “Miqa toys” on it. A black wooden box! Look for it!’
They crawled around the floor, looked under furniture, pushed wardrobes aside, inspected drawers. It was only after midnight that Elene heard a cry in the room next door and hurried in. Lana stood in the middle of the room with her back to her, gripping a small black box in both hands and trembling from head to foot; at first Elene couldn’t tell whether it was with joy or despair. Lana turned to her and she saw her tear-streaked face.
And Elene couldn’t help it: all of a sudden she felt incredibly close to this woman towards whom she had always felt a certain antipathy. She understood so well her despair, her guilt, her hatred, and her sense of rejection, too. Suddenly she felt compassion for this brusque woman who happened to have become pregnant by the man who had once made her, Elene, pregnant, as well. Seeing her like this, standing in the middle of the half-dark room with the box of film in her hand, trembling and crying, brought Elene an unimagined sense of relief. She had witnessed a dangerous disclosure, and any other vaguely clear-thinking person might have reproached Lana, said that she had acted selfishly, that she hadn’t thought of saving her husband, that she had ruined his future. But Elene was incapable of putting even one such sentence to her.
Seeing Elene, Lana became aware of the shameful position she was in. She awoke from her trance, put the box down on the floor, and the two of them sat beside it.
‘You won’t be able to change anything now. It’ll only make things worse. You won’t be doing him a favour. And when it gets out that you knew where the film was, they’ll treat you like a traitor. I don’t know for sure what your reasons were for withholding this box, but I do know for sure that it won’t make the slightest difference if you bring the film back now.’ Elene spoke slowly and carefully, weighing every word.
‘What are you talking about? He’s being beaten. He’s being subjected to harassment. He’s suffering. He … First it was just the film, this bloody film, this ridiculous belief it could change something. Then it was the baby; I thought, our baby needs parents who are special. Then he was the one telling me I should stand firm. He’d fallen in love with this ridiculous idea. And I was so stupid — so intolerably stupid.’
Lana drew her arm right back and slapped herself, hard. But the slap didn’t make anything right; it couldn’t undo anything now.
‘You have no idea …’ Lana sobbed. She slapped her face over and over again. Elene didn’t try to stop her. She wouldn’t deprive her fellow sufferer of at least the illusion of relief.
There were countless versions of the truth, and as soon as you put them in your mouth they distorted themselves, crumbled like stale bread, leaving only an insipid taste on the tongue. In the end, Elene opted for what was probably the most incontestable truth when she told Lana, ‘He doesn’t love you. And he won’t love you, no matter what you do.’
The next day they forced Andro into the car, still stupefied, and drove back to the city. The black box also went with them, though after that night Elene wasn’t sure what Lana was planning to do with it.
It was a conundrum they were not given time to resolve. In Christine’s apartment they found a note addressed to Elene. Miqa had been hospitalised in prison again; he needed to be transferred to a safer wing immediately; Elene must drive home and talk to her father. Everything was at stake.
Soviet Union — Staggering Success!
PRAVDA
‘Hey, it’s me. I think you’ve overdone it a bit …? What do you mean, it’s no longer under your control? You’re with the militsiya, of course you have control. What do you mean, unconscious? You should have taken care who you locked him up with. What I wanted? Did I ask you to beat him like a piece of meat? You disappoint me, my friend. It seems I’ll have to deal with this personally. No, thank you. No, you’ve straightened out quite enough already. Why do I have to do all the thinking for everyone? What sort of rabble are you that you can’t even add two and two together? Of course he can’t defend himself; I mean, he didn’t come from the delinquents’ camp! You’ve got his file there in front of you. Fine; so tell your colleagues I don’t want any further proceedings. Tell them to forget the whole thing. I don’t want him to croak in there. When’s the trial? Fine, so we’ll wait out these three weeks and then … they’ll let him go.’
Elene, leaning against her father’s study door, overheard scraps of this phone conversation, but she couldn’t even cry any more, although the tears were choking her.
*
He went up to the guards, showed his pass, and entered the grey hospital building with its barred windows. The big guard stared indifferently into space; two others were playing cards and smoking cheap Astras. When Kostya finally came out again, the darkness masked his face and it was hard to read his expression. He stopped in front of Christine.
‘He’s in a coma,’ he said bluntly. ‘There was a fight.’
‘He was beaten into a coma?’ Her mind refused to process this information.
‘They … tried to strangle him.’
She hid her face in her hands.
‘The doctors say they don’t know how long his oxygen supply was cut off.’
‘I want to go to him.’
‘I don’t think that’s —’
‘You’re going to take me in there right now.’
‘It’ll take some time. I’ll have to make a few calls first. He is a prisoner, after all.’
‘A prisoner who was strangled without a single guard coming to his aid!’
*
Miqa spent five days in a coma before his ventilator was switched off. He looked as if he were asleep. The cuts and bruises had faded. Andro collapsed in the hospital corridor; Stasia rocked him back and forth as she had when he was little, as his mother had when she was still alive. Christine lay motionless, stretched over the dead body; she was admonished several times by the hospital staff, but no one dared forcibly drag her away from Miqa’s corpse.
Only Lana screamed and kept slapping her hands against her thighs.
And when Stasia looked up, Sopio Eristavi was standing in the blue light in the middle of the hospital corridor. She stood there as if she had just dropped by to say hello, for no particular reason. A brief, casual visit. Stasia began to walk, on frail, unsteady legs, towards her eternally young friend.
‘Now don’t act as if you didn’t expect to see me here,’ said Sopio.
‘I’ve made a mess of everything. Ever since you’ve been gone everything’s just gone down the drain.’ Stasia’s lips were moving silently. ‘He was only twenty-two, my God, just twenty-two. I haven’t been able to hold on to anything, everything’s trickled away, vanished, as if it fell through too coarse a sieve.’
‘Oh, Tasiko, you incorrigible fatalist.’
‘What should I have done? What?’
‘Dance, Taso. You should have danced.’
‘Who are you talking to, Deda?’
Kostya’s voice echoed down the corridor, interrupting the ghostly dialogue. Stasia looked around. The corridor was empty. But her son had called her Mother again.
Hearts
of fire creates love desire
High and higher to your place on the throne.
EARTH, WIND & FIRE
Kitty was holding her breath. She couldn’t believe it. She had done it. At last his voice was going to acquire a face. She could already hear him approaching. No, she wasn’t ready to turn round just yet. Breathe, breathe calmly, don’t look, she reminded herself. The footsteps came closer and closer, approaching the bench in Hyde Park where they’d agreed to have their first meeting — yes, it was unbelievable, their first meeting, after all these years!
She hadn’t been able to breathe calmly all morning. Ever since she had tracked him down she’d been incapable of thinking about anything else. The possibility of putting a face to his voice had stopped her sleeping, thrown her thoughts into confusion, had even taken away her ability just to breathe quietly.
Even when — punctual as ever — he sat down beside her on the bench, she went on staring straight ahead; but out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of his diminutive stature. She’d always imagined him to be tall — taller than her, anyway. A grey pinstripe suit — yes, this was more or less how she had pictured his taste in clothes — his glasses — had she imagined him wearing glasses? — his bald head — it had never even occurred to her that he might be bald.
‘Kitty?’
Yes, it was his voice. Except that now it was right beside her. She felt cold sweat break out on her forehead. She must control herself. Turn her face towards him slowly, carefully. Nothing hasty or loud; nothing that would attract attention.
‘Hello, Giorgi.’
Her voice let her down. She turned to him, taking great pains to conceal her excitement behind a smile. His face … his round, unprepossessing face seemed familiar. How could that be? Was his physical presence being coloured by his voice? This voice that had now acquired a body? Impossible! She was definitely seeing him for the first time.
‘So, what now?’
He gave her a gentle, protective smile. A smile that matched the countless telephone conversations she had had with him over so many years. That soft, velvety baritone, its deep, soothing pitch, no scratches, no scars. And so familiar it sent shivers down her spine.
He smelled of aftershave lotion: citrus. It would take time for his real face to replace the phantoms of her imagination. She must imprint him on her memory now. Every single feature.
When she didn’t reply he asked again, more seriously this time: ‘How did you find me?’
‘I hired a private detective. Yes — it was that simple, like in a film noir. That’s exactly the kind of guy he was. He didn’t have a raincoat, but he did wear a hat. And he assured me that anyone could be found, unless they didn’t exist or were already dead. And I assured him that you existed. That you even lived in the same city as me. Yes, I knew that, Giorgi. I knew that right from the start. But it took him a long time. He said you were a pro.’
Now at last she was able to laugh, and the pressure, that terrible pressure in her chest, eased. ‘And the last time, do you remember, Giorgi — oh God, I have to get used to that name. I’d never have guessed that name. There’s still so much I have to get used to. And — well, I asked you to write me a letter, like in the good old days. Different phone box every time, he told me. So I had to ask you for this letter. And you didn’t refuse. Luckily. And then my film noir hero somehow traced the letter back. And found you. I didn’t want to know any more details. The only thing that mattered to me was your name. Then two days ago the call came: “I’ve found your man.” That’s what he said: your man. At first I thought he must have got mixed up. But then he said: “His name is Giorgi Alania. He works in the Soviet embassy in London, in the culture section.” And suddenly it all made sense. The trip to Prague, and … I knew then that it was you. And you know the rest. I just called up the embassy. I went to a phone box, incidentally, and called from there; I didn’t dare call your number from my flat. And there really was an Alania in the culture section. And before you even said, “Can I help you?” I knew I’d found you. I’ve found you.’
‘It’s extremely dangerous, Kitty, what you did.’
‘You have to understand! My life … I had to find you. And I have to go home.’
It was only now that she noticed his hands were trembling. He was also avoiding looking at her directly. She shot him a casual, fleeting glance. He was wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, an unusual frame with ivory-coloured ornamentation. Behind the lenses, those sad-looking eyes. She wanted to touch him. The receding chin. The pallid skin. For a fraction of a second, he seemed to have no control over the situation, something that in all those years had never happened to him; it was as if he were somehow in need of protection. He, too, seemed to be longing for physical contact, for something that would push him to the limit, tear him out of his world.
‘No one must find out that we’ve been in contact. It would put people in danger. Including people who are important to you.’
There was something about the way he was trying to maintain his image as her protector that made her sad.
‘Visit me. Come to my flat. I want to see you. I want to get to know you!’
She jumped up from the bench, breathless. She couldn’t bear his physical presence, this voice made flesh, any longer; she turned and walked away. Over the years she had stored up so many words for him, but was no longer capable of speaking a single one. She was sure, though, that now he had finally dared to emerge from his hiding place he wouldn’t just disappear back into the darkness of anonymity. He would come to her. He had to!
She would ask him once, one last time, for a favour — no — for his help. She would convince him. Somehow. By any means at her disposal. What exactly those means were she didn’t yet know; but he would not be able to deny her this one wish.
And when, five days later — it was late, already dark outside — there was a ring at her front door, she knew it was him. She hadn’t left her flat since their meeting in Hyde Park. His helplessness when she had jumped up from the bench, his inability to stop her leaving, were sufficient indication to her that he would not be able to turn back. Just by agreeing to their meeting he had broken all of his rules. Now it was time to make new ones.
She took his coat. He polished his glasses nervously on his handkerchief. She fussed about, laid the little magazine table in the living room, rolled out the drinks trolley, forgot something, went to the kitchen, came back, sat down, jumped up again. He looked at the concert photos Amy had had framed and hung on the wall, despite Kitty’s objections; he tapped on the glass with his fingertips, smoothed his trousers.
He declined the good whisky and asked for something non-alcoholic. She brought him elderflower cordial; he seemed pleased.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said, finally sitting down opposite him on a low plush stool.
‘Nor do I,’ he said, and tried to smile. The familiar sound of his voice was reassuring, but it also worried her, because Kitty was all too aware that the person sitting before her was a stranger. She touched her lips to the whisky glass and fixed her gaze on Giorgi Alania.
*
At this point, Brilka, I have to jump back to the past, to the year 1942, after the Wehrmacht had invaded the Soviet Union and Giorgi Alania, a graduate of the Frunze Higher Naval School specialising in shipbuilding and engineering, was posted to the Amur Shipbuilding Plant at the farthest eastern tip of Russia, near the Sea of Japan. Thus Alania was lucky enough to avoid the war; he remained in the sub-zero temperatures of that inhospitable industrial town, surrounded by haggard, silent workers with furrowed faces who couldn’t think of anything better to do with themselves at the end of the working day than to hurry back to their barracks to drink their home-brew.
He remained an outsider among his comrades. They were all either much older, or had different temperaments, different lives, and wanted different things to young Alania, who sp
ent his free time keeping a close eye on news of the war, going for long walks beside stormy rivers, writing long, emotional letters to his best friend Kostya Jashi — in the first few years, at least — and, in the evenings, reading Jules Verne or Mayne Reid in his barracks by candlelight.
The work wasn’t difficult for him. He had a quick and efficient mind. He always had a ready solution for every problem, and over time this won him a certain reputation. People didn’t especially like him, but they treated him with respect. In addition to his daily tasks, he constantly occupied himself with new technical challenges, physical activity, reading, and cooking; nonetheless, here at the end of the world he felt cut off from everything, and alien. These feelings had been all too familiar to him as a child, but the intervening Leningrad years at Kostya’s side had made him forget them. Now he had to get used to this sad state of affairs again, and his whole being rebelled against it.
He had always been an introvert, but the years in the shipyard, where communication with the outside world was reduced to a minimum and there were no like-minded people, made him an irascible, mistrustful man. He was aware of this insidious regression because he had been so different in Leningrad, with none of the doubts and complexes he’d thought he had overcome. In Leningrad he had felt that Kostya’s energy and confidence, his social ease, had rubbed off on him, encouraging him to be more audacious, to enjoy life, to trust people more. He really missed this friendship, which was perhaps the only effortless one in his life so far.
But in Komsomolsk-on-Amur Alania’s self-doubt grew exponentially. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he was not worth loving. And the result of this assumption was disastrous failure in his dealings with the opposite sex.
Women seemed to look right through him. He had the most refined manners, could make the most elegant compliments, give the most beautiful presents — nothing helped. At best they rewarded him with a smile, thanked him coquettishly, and went on their way. A solitary date at the town’s only ‘Pioneer’ cinema, with a schoolteacher he had struck up a conversation with on the harbour promenade, ended unhappily. When he put his hand on her shoulder at the climax of the film, the woman brushed it away so abruptly and with such revulsion that he couldn’t help feeling disgust at himself.
The Eighth Life Page 72