He hesitated, turned to me. ‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s very young, and at that age, people are just very … emotional.’
‘But it’s not right.’
‘What isn’t right?’
‘That you made her wait. Is it true you have other girlfriends besides her?’
‘Did she tell you that, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘I … no, I was just … I had to work.’
‘Until now?’
It was all too much for him. He wanted to comfort me, he wanted to play the grandfather, and he didn’t want to be taken to task by a schoolgirl. He wasn’t prepared for that. (Kostya Jashi was accountable to no one; that was the life he had constructed for himself, starting, perhaps, on the day he went into the water to mourn the woman whose death had taken his conscience along with it.)
‘You often hurt other people.’
I didn’t know why I said it. I wasn’t thinking. Usually, I always thought before saying a word to Kostya. I was sobbing. I felt undone. I wanted Rusa to live, to take her exams and become a judge. I wanted her to go on playing backgammon with me. He put his arms around me. I couldn’t let myself go, my body was too tense. I had so many questions for him. And so many fears. I knew that the intimacy of recent days was not built on firm ground.
‘Is that what you think?’ he asked tentatively.
‘Yes. You hurt Mama, too. She often cries because of you. And Stasia, though she never says anything. And … and me.’
He looked at me, and I didn’t know if he was horrified or just surprised. I didn’t care now whether he would ever love me again. I just wanted her to live.
‘I love your mother,’ he said suddenly, and leant back in his chair. In the reception area, a few paramedics and nurses were huddled around a little television set; something exciting was happening on it. They seemed upset. One of the nurses was making coffee on a little electric hotplate while staring spellbound at the screen.
‘Some things just don’t turn out the way we want them to,’ he said.
I waited for him to go on, but then he got up and went over to the reception desk to see what was happening — and froze.
How could he watch television now! Even if the world was ending, how could he walk away without giving me an answer? The answer I needed. The honesty I needed so that Rusa would live.
He beckoned to me. I hesitated. I walked slowly over to the television. The head of state, Chernenko, had died. It didn’t interest me, it left me cold. I didn’t care if a Mr Chernenko was alive or dead, I just wanted Rusa to live.
I lowered my eyes and stared at my sandals and the dirty tiled floor. It was so bleak, this place. Someone as beautiful and clever as Rusa didn’t deserve to die in a place like this.
Chernenko died. Rusa survived, but something inside her died as well.
Kostya and I drove home at daybreak. In silence. He didn’t say anything else. We took the coast road. It was getting light. Less than a decade later this town would be destroyed by tanks, bombs, fire and thousands of bullets, but fortunately I didn’t know that yet.
When we arrived, Daria was still fast asleep, unaware of all that had happened.
That night, I learned that heads of state are always more important than everyone else.
I learned that ghosts aren’t necessarily dead people.
I learned that the sea doesn’t accept anything that hasn’t already been washed clean.
I learned that love, however light and hopeful it might once have been, can end with unexpected suddenness in a bleak hospital.
*
After seven decades, the Soviet Union had served its time. It was already devouring itself from within, using up all its energy and resources; it had swallowed itself, but was not yet able to vomit. For this, it needed a new Party leader, who at the unprecedentedly young age of fifty-four was a regular whippersnapper in Party terms, and who — against all expectations — did in fact come to power in 1985. Comrade Gorbachev was to inherit the world of ‘socialist peace’, which encompassed thirty-four per cent of the global population. And in the cause of spreading this peace, on taking office he received the gift of wars in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Afghanistan.
I became an adult in 1985, in a single moment, the night Chernenko died and Rusa survived.
It was a palace:
pink as the blush of a winter morning
large as the world, old as the wind.
We were daughters almost of a tsar,
almost a tsar’s daughters …
MARINA TSVETAEVA
Giorgi Alania was able spend precisely two days with Kitty Jashi without getting into difficulties.
Over the past few years, since he’d returned to Moscow, he had been working for the ministry as an ‘escort’ for international cultural and sporting exchanges, meaning that every few months he accompanied Cossack choirs or ballet companies on their tours, or took young chess players to their competitions abroad, and observed them. He now answered directly to the Lubyanka.
One such trip had taken him to London, with a gymnastics team from the Youth Sports Palace in Moscow, whom he was accompanying to an international junior gymnastics competition. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that he would be sent to London again after his transfer request. And he had dreamed about it over the last few years, manically, constantly, cursing himself, unable to believe he had so callously abandoned the only girlfriend — the only woman — whom he hadn’t paid for a kiss.
His decision had resulted from an impulse, a cruel mood, which was ultimately the consequence of his meeting with Christine. He had fled blindly. He’d believed he was protecting Kitty, but after a few months back in Moscow he had begun to reflect on his decision, had begun to harbour doubts, and had come to the conclusion that he’d made a terrible mistake and destroyed the only glimmer of light in his life.
On top of this came the fact that, after such a long time in London, Alania was no longer accustomed to life under socialism. The strict surveillance, the constant mistrust, the discontent among his colleagues, the dreariness of daily life soon started to weigh on him. His personality regained the familiar choleric tendency that Kitty Jashi had so effortlessly made him forget. He made himself unpopular with his subordinates. He was irritable, dissatisfied, hostile. He vehemently rejected any possibility of a personal relationship or any kind of intimacy with his colleagues. He might have been an outsider before, but now he was open about the fact, emphasising it with every word, every gesture.
The longing was the worst thing. The urge just to run away and go to Kitty’s flat that came over him so often and so suddenly, as if his desires refused to accept his reality. The sense of joyful anticipation he had known in London, when he was going to see Kitty that same evening, now started to take possession of him in Moscow — always followed by the painful realisation that it wasn’t going to happen. The dreams that all revolved around her, which so often woke him with a start in the night. To escape them, Alania started doing something he hadn’t done since he was a young man: drinking. Wine at first, in small quantities, to help him relax in the evening; then, later, harder drinks, to forget. The next morning, he wouldn’t remember going to sleep; sometimes he would wake up in the most unlikely places in his apartment: in the bathroom, on the rug, even on the little balcony that he usually only used for hanging out his washing.
And perhaps he really would have succeeded, would have drunk himself into an oblivion where there were no memories of Kitty and London, no father, and no hopes that only ever led to disappointment — but then Fate played into his hands and gave him the opportunity to travel to England.
*
Her effusive emotions, her heartfelt welcome, the caresses, and the intimacy, this incredible intimacy he was gra
nted once he had found her. He couldn’t believe it; he found it hard to accept her words, her joy at his arrival.
Even if, in the hours that remained to them, they didn’t fall into each other’s arms again, didn’t give themselves to each other with such abandon, even if there were no more kisses and passionate caresses, this one memory would be enough for a lifetime, and he would never complain, never expect anything again — but he could still hope, or maybe it was only now that he could start hoping. She had forgiven him even before he could beg her forgiveness, and this happiness was more than he had dared to expect: she didn’t want to hear any explanation or justification.
And when he tried to tell her his story anyway, in the kitchen the following morning, she interrupted him and asked him to let sleeping dogs lie. She knew him, she trusted him, and she assumed there had been pressing reasons for him to do what he had done, but she didn’t want to know; they were irrelevant now. She wanted to enjoy the present, she said, the limited time they had together, and she didn’t want to hurry into the future or be forced to look back.
His second attempt at this conversation, during a good long walk by the sea, was also unsuccessful. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to talk. Instead, she took his hand in hers and pulled him along the damp sand.
The evening before his return to London, he told her that she had given him the greatest, most wholehearted happiness he had ever felt. That he was afraid of his life in Moscow. That she had been the ground beneath his feet, all these years — all his life, it seemed to him, from the moment he first met her in the deserted station. But she didn’t respond to this confession, either. She poured him some more whisky, her face giving nothing away, and he couldn’t tell whether his words pleased or troubled her. She looked at him as if he were describing an entirely banal event, as if he were speaking of some very ordinary matter.
And he didn’t understand how it was possible for her to overwhelm him with her love one night, and the next day refuse to know or hear anything more about this love. As if her own behaviour had scared her, made her inhibited. But what more could he expect? Wasn’t that already far more than he had hoped for, before coming here?
Looking back, his whole life seemed to lead up to him coming here — having to come here — to say all that he had to say to her, to forget everything else. It had all led to them finding each other at last, in their old age, whatever label, whatever name they gave it. Driving out each other’s demons, making themselves a fresh pot of tea, going for walks. Or was it presumptuous to think there could be a new beginning for him?
Before they went to bed — he wished she would invite him into her bedroom, but she didn’t — as she pressed a tentative kiss onto his lips, he gathered all his courage, took hold of her wrist, and forced her to look at him. Then he said he would try to find a way never to leave her side again. She smiled, but the smile was weak, and she stroked his cheek gently, but without much feeling.
‘Go to bed now, Giorgi,’ she said.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to squander another minute. Stay with me, talk to me. I want to listen to you as long as necessary. If you don’t want to listen to me, then at least let me listen to you. Please.’ He was begging her.
‘We don’t need any more words, Giorgi, and that’s all right. There’s simply nothing more to say.’
‘But of course there is, there’s so much to say: so much that thinking about it sometimes makes me dizzy. It’s all the same to me whether I’m arrested or released; I don’t have anything to worry about any more. I’m more sure of myself now than I ever have been.’
‘What exactly do you want to discuss? Yes, I used to cling to the illusion that words could change things, that if everything was said, everything expressed, then it would be easier; but that was a fallacy. The reason you became so essential to me wasn’t because you kept me alive; it was the fact that you knew all about me, and still stayed with me. That with every phone call, every word, everything you did to help, you forgave me a little. And that was what enabled me to live, what made it all possible, the path I took, the songs, the people I met, the travel, the happiness — yes, that too. Even the happiness I found with other people.
‘But a murderess is still a murderess, Giorgi, and no matter how often and how much I sing, no matter how many words I say, no matter how much happiness I am granted, I will never be able to forget that. No — quite the opposite: with each year of my life the memory grows clearer. Doubt, abhorrence — they’ll keep on growing, and I’m starting to understand that, to accept it, and I feel better for it; yes, it’s incredible but it’s true. I’m not afraid any more; I feel certain, clear. Because this way at least I can retain the good — and there has been so much good in my life, so much unforeseeable good, so many wonderful things along my path. This way, at least all the wonderful things that have happened to me aren’t instantly tainted by the horror. This way I don’t have to tell myself I haven’t earned it, this happiness, these people, these possibilities. I can accept them as well.’
These words surprised him so much that it took him a few minutes to compose an answer. Thoughts raced around his head, aimless, disorientated. He felt as if the world had been turned upside down.
‘Kitty, Kitty, wait, wait, what are you talking about? You mustn’t think like that. You’re not a …’ He couldn’t make the word pass his lips, not in connection with her. ‘You didn’t kill anyone. The reason I couldn’t talk to you, that I had to flee, was that I was the one who —’
But she interrupted him again: ‘I know who you are. I know what you might have done. I know what the price was for keeping me alive. I’m not blind, Giorgi. And I also know that only a murderer is in a position to forgive a murderess. Or a dead man. Nobody else. I know it, Giorgi.’
But where did these thoughts come from? Where had the fatal, monstrous finality of her self-analysis come from? How could she think such a thing? This woman who was so bright and kind, who was worshipped and desired by thousands of people, who was so modest and emphatic? This woman he had adored his whole life! A cold shudder ran down his spine. He wanted to seize her and hold her as tightly as she had held him in the first seconds of their reunion, drive all this gloom and horror out of her, but he felt paralysed. He was still gripping her by the elbow, but his grip loosened, his strength vanished. Her words, her frightening composure, her calm had left him frozen rigid.
He let go of her elbow and put both arms around her. She made no attempt to free herself from his embrace. She laid her head on his shoulder. They stayed like that, motionless.
‘I’ll come back. For good,’ he said quietly.
‘You can’t do that.’
‘You know I’m good at making the impossible possible,’ he said, trying to sound light-hearted.
‘Yes, you are.’
‘You mustn’t think like that.’ His words sounded ridiculous and impotent to him, but he didn’t know how else to say it.
‘Don’t worry. I told you already, things are good now, Giorgi. Things are really good.’
*
‘Do me a favour, Kitty, please,’ he said at dawn, before setting off for the station.
‘I’d gladly do you any favour in the world, if I only could. You know that.’
She seemed unusually cheerful that morning.
‘Don’t forget the words you said to me. Don’t do anything to invalidate them. Preserve them for me. Because I’m going to hold on tight to them. You love many people, and many people love you, but I … You’re all I have.’
He was amazed at how easy it was to speak these words, to formulate his plea, which sounded so self-evident, so logical to him.
She smiled and nodded.
*
She had felt a strange premonition all morning. As if this day would bring her something. Something new, con
fusing, and disturbing all at once. She had gone down to the kiosk to get a newspaper, and had come back up to the flat. The frenetic pace of London life felt unfamiliar. She missed the peace of the Seven Sisters, the seclusion. She had enjoyed being alone, and had asked Amy to give her a few days off before she had to think about studios and producers again.
In the paper, she had read that a Comrade Gorbachev had been made General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The news, which surprised everyone, left her cold. She was used to them coming and going without anything changing. She folded the newspaper again and sat down on the balcony with her plants.
Amy kept telling her to buy a bigger flat, or a house; after all, she had the money. But what for, she wondered. Why swap a flat that held such lovely memories for a new, empty one that had yet to be filled with life?
And when the doorbell rang, she knew her morning’s apprehension had not been unfounded.
‘I have a studio again. I’m working again. I’m even teaching a drawing class, can you imagine?’ she said, still standing in the doorway. She clearly had new teeth; she was still unhealthily gaunt, but there was some colour in her cheeks again, and the red hair, with a few white strands mixed in, had regained its shine.
Kitty didn’t invite her guest into the flat. And Fred didn’t seem to expect it.
‘I’ve got an exhibition coming up soon, and I want you to come to the opening,’ she added. And then, quietly: ‘Maybe you’d like to sing a couple of songs for me?’
‘Why should I?’ asked Kitty sceptically.
‘I’m clean,’ she replied, as if Kitty’s singing were a logical reward for completing rehab.
‘I’m too old for new beginnings,’ said Kitty, not knowing herself why she was saying it.
‘I don’t believe in new beginnings, have you forgotten? But I believe in you. And in your voice.’
She smiled. Her cat’s eyes shone. Yes, she was alive. Fred had survived, and now she was standing in front of Kitty, asking her to sing. To celebrate her survival. Yes, maybe she should do that, sing life’s praises. Life, as it was. Life, with its murderers, its classrooms, the cheated, the left-behind, the words that had no meaning any more, life with its miracles and coincidences, its kisses and revulsion. Oh, to hell with it, thought Kitty. Maybe Fred had been right all along when she said the heart was not a chamber that could be locked from the inside.
The Eighth Life Page 85