The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischwili

  It was buckwheat and meatballs. Rose jam. Indian instant coffee. Imitation jeans made by Mavin or Lae. Blue and beige school satchels; tooth powder; plastic dip pens; Kremlin-patterned vases; thin green exercise books with ‘Exercise Book’ written on them; Metro tokens stamped with an ‘M’; table tennis and badminton in summer; bad haircuts; the Electronica 302 tape-recorder.

  Astra brand cigarettes, which Stasia smoked, and Georgian Cosmos cigarettes (the first drag Daria and I took in the school toilets was on a Cosmos); electric clocks, for those who wanted to show off; abacuses in shops and at the market, at school and at work; dominoes in beautiful, slim boxes inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

  It was plane tickets to Moscow for 36.50 roubles. (We did not avail ourselves of these.) It was Illusion, a programme shown every Saturday on the First Channel of the Georgian Public Broadcaster, which featured foreign films, sometimes censored, sometimes abridged. Classics like Kind Hearts and Coronets, at which Stasia always grew dewy-eyed, and Some Like It Hot, at which Kostya laughed wholeheartedly, but also The Stunt Man with Peter O’Toole and Barbara Hershey, who was a great favourite of Daria’s and mine. It was the Bus Cinemas, busses that drove around the city’s neighbourhoods, ringing bells like ice-cream vans; they would gather up an audience of mainly young people and show romantic films. The Angélique series from the 1960s was of course right at the top of the Bus Cinemas’ top ten. Daria and I were always arguing about which was best, Untameable Angélique or Angélique and the Sultan. Next on the list came The Count of Monte Cristo and all the Bollywood movies.

  It was cinemas, like the Apollo and the Kazbegi. It was Ogonyok magazine; it was illegally pedalled photos of foreign actors, which you could usually buy from gypsies in subways and outside Metro entrances. It was the musical-comedy films that came in patriotic, romantic, and pro-worker varieties, and were an insult to any level of intelligence. The polyester tracksuits and delicious Glace milkshakes: my favourite flavour — strawberry, Daria’s — vanilla.

  Later, it was Café Franzia, the Budapest restaurant, and the tea house opposite the university. It was secretly listening to Voice of America. It was the vending machines that looked like fridges, had ‘Sparkling Water’ written on them, and almost never worked. It was Burda magazine, which came from Germany and had to be bought on the black market, with its highly sought-after sewing patterns. It was the trolley buses, the hostile militsiya men, and the manuscripts of novels by dissidents and traitors, printed and distributed in secret.

  We read the Russian and Georgian classics; Alexandre Dumas, of course; the French Romantics. Romain Rolland was very popular — he had sympathised with the communists, after all, and visited the Soviet Union. People could never agree on how to classify Joyce and Faulkner, but they weren’t banned. The existentialists were difficult to get hold of. You could find plenty of Gorky though, and Krylov’s fables. And Tolstoy, Henry James, Thackeray, and Twain, of course. Lermontov and Pushkin led the field. And, of course, The Knight in the Panther’s Skin — Rustaveli’s great Georgian epic — stood above them all.

  The poets people read were mostly dead. But thanks to the Literaturnaya Gazeta, you might get lucky from time to time and find something by a living one.

  Later still, for us, the Soviet Union meant saving up for black-market records, books, and videos. We bought the Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and later Queen, too. In the 1980s it was Russian rock bands, Kino and DDT, who seemed not to give a damn whether or not the state approved of men having long hair.

  It was the subversive poetry evenings in back courtyards, attics, basements. You had to be sufficiently ‘anti’ already to penetrate these illustrious circles. Your best bet was to be in trouble with the militsiya. In these back courtyards, attics, basements you’d find bottle-blondes with dark rings under their eyes who frequently jotted things down in notebooks decorated with dried flowers, and devoted most of their energy to looking pensive and unworldly. Boys who read out subversive poetry with great enthusiasm and spittle in the corners of their mouths, though nobody could say precisely what level of subversion you had to attain to become king of these courtyards, attics, basements. And bearded men over forty, who were also to be found in these courtyards, attics, basements — sometimes, albeit rarely, accompanied by women also over forty, who generally didn’t colour their hair, who liked to talk about spirituality and believed the prophecies of Nostradamus; who had managed, in their youth, to hitchhike across the Northern Caucasus and still went camping in Svaneti.

  It was the gypsy women who offered Marlboro Reds from a wicker basket, if you put enough money in the basket first. It was the lengths you had to go to in order to obtain a ticket for a private screening at the House of Film.

  For me, the Soviet Union was the childhood I shared with my sister.

  It was our grandfather’s power. It was the innumerable compliments Daria received, like a rock star receiving the crowd’s screams of wild devotion. It was fatherlessness. It was giggling every night under the bedclothes in the Green House. It was Stasia’s ballet lessons in the barn, though for some reason I was the only one who did them; Daria didn’t have to go. It was our fascination with Christine’s veil, and the constant arguments between our mother and her father, or between me and Daria. It was shuttling back and forth between Mother’s one-and-a-half-room pre-fab apartment and the Green House. It was Kostya’s all-forgiving love for Daria, and Stasia’s grouchy but unconditional love for me. It was secretly tasting Stasia’s liqueurs in the pantry. Hiding in the woods. It was being shouted at and grounded, the two constant companions of my misdeeds. The carnival costumes for school parties: rabbit ears, wolf tails, Red Riding Hood pinafores, Karlsson-on-the-Roof propellers, witches’ talons, and even a skirt made of palm leaves (as Robinson Crusoe’s Man Friday). The continual playground brawls, in which Daria took no part.

  The Soviet Union was Vremya every evening, and the television announcer with the thick glasses who read all the news as if the world was going to end the following day. The Soviet Union was the red star atop the spruce that was put up on New Year’s Eve. The Soviet Union was where international friendships and folk dances happened, where everyone was welcome, except those from ‘abroad’. They were capitalists, and all over the world people were starving because other people were only interested in money, and let their fellow man sink into poverty so they could grow rich.

  Abroad, no matter where, was Sodom and Gomorrah. Everyone there took drugs, and the governments took no interest in their citizens and let them die miserable deaths. Abroad, everyone did it with everyone else, and made babies no one was interested in and for whom there were no nursery places. Abroad was an evil place from which no Soviet citizen had ever returned. Abroad was full of wicked spies and human traffickers. They still had slaves, and they didn’t know about things like friendship between nations and brotherliness. They were ruled entirely by the crude, brutal laws of money, or the illusion of a peaceful existence created by the lie of religion, which everyone knew was the opiate of the people.

  You had to stay alert and help the countries that wanted to free themselves from the evil clutches of capitalism. The countries that had already freed themselves were our sisters, our friends, and we were allowed to travel to them. We could visit the Soviet Union (where in principle, of course, we already were); we could go to Mongolia, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary; we could go to North Korea, China, Cuba, Guinea, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Madagascar, Cambodia, Laos, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Benin, Grenada, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe. And, just as I was starting school, we were also given permission to go to Vietnam. Soon after that we would also be allowed to go to Afghanistan.

  So we had plenty of friends. And the countries ruled by the evil of capitalism — well, we didn’t want to go to those places anyway. What did we want with decadent, warped western Europe, which was heading for
collapse, to say nothing of the ultimate evil of America? What did we want with France, where they ate snails; or Italy, which was crawling with mafiosi and where people prayed to an old man in a white dress? What did we want with Latin America (with the exception of Cuba), where there were bugs and rainforests? What did we want with Japan, where they made women wear shoes that were much too small for them so their feet would stay small? What did we want with Scandinavia, where you couldn’t even have a proper drinking session? What did we want with dangerous America, where drugs lay about on the street and everyone who wasn’t rich got depressed and jumped out of windows one after another for lack of a motherly state to take care of them?

  And yes, of course, people in the capitalist countries Abroad had some nice things, too: they had cool music and films; they didn’t have to get married before they were allowed to have sex or get an apartment together; they had much better clothes. And you didn’t have to spend weeks camping outside the Intourist office to get a visa for anywhere you wanted to go, and you didn’t have to spend years on a waiting list for a car. But what did that matter? Freedom was, after all, just a matter of definition. They weren’t allowed to go to Vietnam any more, and soon they wouldn’t be allowed into Afghanistan. But we were.

  For Daria and me, first and foremost the Soviet Union meant our family. Our family, and a famous aunt who lived abroad and who, as we believed for a long time, had been trafficked to the West by evil capitalists — why else would she have fled her homeland? The Soviet Union was our friends. Our streets. Our courtyards. Our parks. Our games. Our past. And, of course, the future. (What alternatives were there?)

  For us, the Soviet Union was a privilege that both Daria and I enjoyed for many years, because we had our grandfather’s surname.

  *

  Shortly after Kitty returned to London, Elene enrolled in the English language and literature preparatory course at the Institute of Foreign Languages and started studying for the entrance exam. Nana, beside herself with joy that her daughter had — hopefully — decided on a pedagogical career, advised, supported, and encouraged her. And Kostya, though he was suspicious of the English language, was also pleased that his daughter had finally come to her senses and wanted to make something of herself. Elene passed the entrance exam and embarked on her degree. It was too expensive to travel between the Green House and Tbilisi, and at first she stayed with a friend in Sololaki. She spent most of her time with Lana, though, who, after successfully submitting her diploma project, had found a position in the Centre for Engineering and Industrial Planning, which constructed large factories all over the Soviet Union. But Elene still avoided visiting Christine’s apartment, where Christine was selflessly caring for little Miro.

  Elene quickly grew bored with her fellow students, who were predominantly female and very conformist; instead, she made friends with people studying at the Academy of Art or the Institute of Film and Theatre, whom she had met through Lana. In doing so, Elene stayed true to form and followed her interests, or rather her lack of interest in the world: she mostly chose to be with young men who listened to rock music, smoked weed, attended those subversive poetry evenings, and talked a lot about spirituality. They weren’t actually brave enough to stand up to the law, as Miqail, Beqa, and his friends had been, but in comparison with the good little foreign-language girls they were regular Che Guevaras.

  At the start of her degree, Elene made several more attempts to emancipate herself from her family and above all from her father, with the approval of her friends, who objected to people using their family privileges for their own advantage (yet secretly did so themselves). But because nobody wanted to employ a privileged creature like Elene Jashi as a cleaning lady or security guard, Elene had to accept money from her father after all.

  During the week, she stayed in the city. The weekends, she spent with us. Daria, the queen in Kostya’s kingdom, was sent to a Tbilisi kindergarten, while I was left to my own devices, and to Stasia. Clad in white tights, I got to have ballet lessons and practise my ungainly leaps alongside a few girls from the village, while every morning Kostya’s driver would take Daria into town and bring her and our grandparents home in the evening.

  The mornings were a frenetic burst of activity (my first childhood memories): Kostya and Nana getting ready for work, the rushed breakfast, the search for Daria’s clothes, and then the silence that descended when they had all gone off in the car and Stasia and I were left there alone. A wonderful, magical silence that harboured so many secrets. You just had to pay close attention and listen patiently for them. The crickets in summer, the doves in autumn, the forest in winter, the breeze that danced through the rocks in spring. The sweet melody of all these sounds was like an orchestra playing in perfect harmony, playing just for us, for Stasia and me.

  The first thing Stasia and I would do was the gardening. In dirty rubber boots, armed with tools, we marched out into the rain, the sun, the wind, and took care of the flowers, fruit, and vegetables. Now and then, I would hear Stasia talking to her flowers, but I found nothing strange in that — it was a lovely, familiar ritual that made me feel safe and protected.

  Later, we would gather up the leftovers from the previous day and put them in a tin bucket, which we took to the well in the middle of the village. We would distribute the contents of the bucket to the stray dogs there. Watching the lice-ridden creatures eating was one of my favourite pastimes in those days. Later still, Stasia would switch on the television, and we would watch Skilful Hands, with its tips for household chores and its grandmothers’ remedies, like bringing down a fever with vinegar-soaked socks or curing a headache with lime blossom.

  After lunch, we took our afternoon nap in Stasia’s room, on the hard daybed where she preferred to sleep, which to me seemed the cosiest place in the world. When I woke up, Stasia would already be busy with dinner in the kitchen, and I would hear her clattering pots and pans about. The aroma of the spices she so loved would draw me to the kitchen. I would come running in, barefoot, wanting to help out right away. The radio was always playing in the background; she loved to listen to schmaltzy old songs as she prepared meals, and would sway along to certain melodies.

  While dinner simmered in the pot or sizzled in the pan, we would go out onto the terrace and play a game of ‘I Spy’, during which I often accused her of pretending to be stupider than she was, because I always won. Some days, when she was especially pensive, she didn’t want to play with me and instructed me to listen to the silence. She had told me once that only stupid children couldn’t coax any sounds out of the silence, and because I didn’t want to be a stupid child, I sat beside her wearing the most serious expression I could muster, pretending I was learning the secrets of the world.

  Every Tuesday and Thursday, in the early evening, there was an activity I liked less: the ballet lessons. The farm girls would assemble promptly outside the barn. Stasia would begin to blossom, and I had to give it my all as well. In front of the makeshift mirrors, at the barre, which was too high for me, I had to pretend it was my greatest dream to become the next Maya Plisetskaya, the Bolshoi ballerina whom Stasia admired so much.

  How she came alive during those lessons; how her eyes sparkled as she corrected our posture, as she tirelessly stretched alongside us; how reverently she would listen to the music as she choreographed silly little dances for us. If I made a special effort, I would be richly rewarded after a successful ballet lesson with peeled pomegranates, sugared figs, and persimmons cut into tiny pieces. But for me the greatest reward was her stories. She started telling me tales from the past whenever she was pleased with my achievements. Stasia, who was otherwise so reticent, transformed into Scheherazade and introduced me to a hidden world painted in the most extraordinary colours. In flowery language, with dramatic climaxes and exciting twists, playing first one role and then another, putting on different voices, she brought the past into the present.

  She constructed the hous
e where she was born before my very eyes. Described her father, and the ever-present scent of chocolate that enveloped the house and attracted visitors. She spoke of the indomitable Kabardins and the steppe. She told me about the secret passages in the cave monastery. I could even feel the texture of her younger sister’s clothes. (Stasia always spoke of little Christine in a particular tone, quiet, almost reverent, her eyes aglow.) I could touch Simon’s uniform, could see her stepmother’s jewellery sparkling.

  She told me about the Ballets Russes and the grace of Anna Pavlova. She told me about the golden domes of the St Petersburg cathedrals. About the summer palace and Thekla’s cellar storeroom. Quoted Sopio’s poems to me, all of which she seemed to know by heart, and described her son’s wheat-blond curls.

  Her words were like magic spells, plunging me into another world, a world I didn’t know, which lay somewhere long, long ago, in a place to which Stasia had the only key.