‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, and a smile lit up her face before she shut the door again.
Three days later, Kitty Jashi saw Andro Eristavi. She was in a taxi on her way to an interview in town, and as she looked out of the car window, she saw him with a striking clarity and alive, standing on the other side of the street. She yelled at the taxi driver to stop immediately. Leaped out of the car and ran across the road without looking left or right. But he had already disappeared, and she knew there was no sense in looking for him. He would come back when it was time: of that she was certain.
*
‘Excuse me. I don’t mean to bother you, I just …’
An older man in corduroy trousers and a flowery shirt had stopped Daria and me on the street. We had just left school; in a minute, Daria would have to get the trolleybus to her acrobatics class, and I had to take the Metro to David’s studio. So the last thing we needed was old men in corduroy trousers wanting to admire my sister’s different-coloured eyes.
‘I’m sorry, we’re in a bit of a rush …’ I cut in.
‘Just two minutes, I beg you. I’m a screenwriter. I work for Kote Latsabidze. He’s working on a new film at the moment, and he’s still looking for an actress who … Please come to a casting at the studio tomorrow.’
He hastily wrote an address on a page of his notebook and pressed it into my sister’s hand.
‘You’re exactly what he’s looking for!’ he said in parting, and disappeared.
We stopped on the street and stared at the note. Kote Latsabidze was well known; Aleko and his friends mentioned his name a lot. He was a very promising director who had made two short films and one feature, which had been the subject of much discussion, as it had somehow managed to evade the censors and had gained considerable recognition abroad. But at that point, I still hadn’t seen any of his films.
Daria’s face lit up with curiosity, while I regarded the slip of paper with a degree of mistrust. Why approach someone on the street? There were enough actresses in the country, weren’t there? Daria put the note in her school bag with a shrug of her shoulders; it was impossible to tell if she was pleased with the offer or indifferent to it. At the bus stop, I tried to talk to her about it again, but still she just shrugged, so I let it drop.
The next day, when Kostya’s driver came to collect us and Daria was nowhere to be found, it all came back to me. Had she really gone to the casting on her own?
Of course, I kept quiet about this at home, and gave them some excuse about her making a last-minute decision to go over to a friend’s house and cram for her controlled assessments.
That evening, she phoned and said it was already late; she was going to stay with Elene and Aleko and go to school from there in the morning. Kostya’s displeasure permeated the whole house. Daria had started her periods, and small breasts had become apparent under her tops, so Kostya’s surveillance had increased significantly. After all, everyone knew that almost all her male classmates were in love with her. After the phone call, I was certain she had been to the studio. The next morning at school, I dragged her into the girls’ toilets and demanded information.
‘I covered for you, so you owe me an explanation!’ I hissed at her.
‘Yes, I went. And guess what — they’ve asked me to go back this afternoon. Latsabidze was there, too, and he was smiling at me all the way through. But this time they want me to bring a parent with me.’
She looked at me expectantly. Even now I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely excited by this business, or if she was just going through with it out of curiosity, to see how far she would get. She’d shown no desire to be an actress before. Well — my sister was full of surprises.
‘What exactly did you have to do?’ I asked.
‘Read some lines. Look at the camera and imagine something.’
‘Imagine what?’
‘That my boyfriend had been put in jail.’
‘What’s the film about, then?’
‘It’s about this guy who wants to make a film, but he’s not allowed; some political thing.’
‘Uh huh. And what does Mama say?’
‘She thinks it’s not entirely kosher; she wants to visit the studio herself first, without me, to see what it’s all about. But this guy’s a genius, everyone says so, and Aleko said that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’
‘And Kostya?’
‘What about Kostya?’
The bell rang shrilly in the playground; she was already heading for the door.
‘Don’t act so naive. “What about Kostya?”’ I mimicked her.
‘Oh my God, don’t be such a spoilsport — I’ll win him over somehow. I’m going to wear beautiful clothes; they’ll do my make-up, shoot me in a nice light, I’ll get my own dressing room, and I might even have to kiss a boy,’ she giggled, already imagining her friends’ faces pale with envy, before rushing out of the toilets.
*
After school, I went to Mother’s, where I found Elene agitated and Aleko no less ruffled. She didn’t want to have to pick a quarrel with her father again, and he was trying to convince her at least to give the thing a chance.
Finally, the two of them set off for the studio together. I was gripped by a strange excitement, too, and waited impatiently for their return.
Latsabidze explained to our mother that his film was set in the Tbilisi Film Institute; it contained a degree of criticism of the system, but that was all packaged in such a way that it wasn’t going to be banned. He’d been inspired by a former film student there, who had made a film, and had disappeared, and had died in prison for his ideals. The screenplay would be far enough removed from the real story, but those in the know would pick up enough references to understand what it was about. Officially, his film was a story about a filmmaker going through an artistic crisis. His family and friends played a large role. And his muse. That was the part he had in mind for Daria.
Elene crumpled. ‘The student … do you mean Miqa Eristavi?’
Latsabidze nodded. ‘Yes, Miqa Eristavi; do you know the story? The whole of Tbilisi heard about it at the time. And everyone kept quiet instead of running out onto the streets. That’s the way we always are, the communists and the conformists.’
‘And why my daughter? Why not an actress? Daria’s too young, and she has no experience at all,’ she asked Latsabidze, trying to pull herself together.
‘Believe me, I’ve looked at a lot of actresses; we’ve done talent searches in various cities. All of the main parts will of course be played by professionals’ — he reeled off a few famous names — ‘but for the role of Anna I need someone very special. A young woman who looks like she’s stepped out of a dream. My colleague alerted me to your daughter; he said her beauty would render me speechless, and I thought, well, we’ll see about that, but when she walked in, everyone in the room was convinced she was the one we were looking for. And after working with her for two hours, I have to tell you, she’s not just very beautiful, she’s also extraordinarily gifted. And incredibly photogenic.’
And he carried on persuading Elene, assuring her that they would only need Daria on set during the winter holidays, and that of course they would always have a chaperone for her.
‘We’ll make sure your daughter is well prepared. I’ll rehearse the lines with her, there’ll be no great demands on you. You know, I have a daughter myself, and I know what girls Daria’s age are like: they need a lot of attention.’
Elene was struck dumb. Her knees gave way, and Aleko had to support her as they left the studio. They found a bench on the street. Aleko looked at her in bewilderment, tried to comfort her, asked what was going on, why she had reacted so strangely. But she just shook her head in disbelief and put her hands over her mouth, as if she were trying to stop herself from screaming. She asked Aleko to leave her alone; she would come home later. She took a bu
s to the New Town. She got out at the Institute of Engineering and Planning, entered the large building, and took the lift to the tenth floor.
Lana was sitting with three other women, leaning over a huge architectural plan and chewing on a pencil. Her big glasses dangled on her chest at the end of a chain, and her face was red with tension. It took a moment for her to notice Elene.
‘Well, well, what a surprise. To what do I owe this honour?’ She turned to Elene with the usual note of irony in her voice and gave her colleagues a ten-minute break. She put on her glasses, tidied her hair, opened the window, and started making coffee.
‘What’s up? You look kind of … pale?’ she said.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘I’m all ears.’
And Elene told her what had just happened, talked — she was still upset — about Latsabidze, his film, and Daria, how she and Aleko had gone there without a clue and only then discovered what the film was actually about: Miqa, his film, the scandal. And now the absurd coincidence of them wanting her teenage daughter to play the muse!
There was no reaction from Lana. She didn’t interrupt, didn’t contradict her, didn’t nod, just went on calmly making the coffee.
‘I remember now: Latsabidze contacted me a few months ago as well, wanting to interview me, wanting my “personal recollections of Miqa” — that was how he put it. At that point, I didn’t think anything would come of it. But it looks as if the boy got his way. I’d never have thought it!’
She started pouring the coffee into two small cups.
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘Yes; why, did you think I’d be against it? Would that change anything? If they want to remember my husband, let them. I hope it doesn’t land them behind bars as well. It’s all the same to me. Do you think it’s over just because I buried him? You weren’t his wife, Elene. You didn’t have a child with him. And he deserves to be talked about, to be remembered …’
Now Elene regretted having come here. What had she been hoping for? What did Lana mean by that: You weren’t his wife? What exactly did she want? Revenge? Some kind of reparation? To see justice done? Sometimes she managed to go for weeks without thinking about him; about the scenes from their childhood that often appeared out of nowhere in her mind’s eye, about the fight in Mtskheta, his funeral. The trip to the mountains with Lana, the miserable ending. Sometimes, though, the memories came back, marching through her head like immense armies, stamping their feet, accompanied by an ominous hum that almost always turned into a headache.
‘My mother is seriously ill. I have to go to the hospital,’ said Lana, jolting her out of her thoughts.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know — why didn’t you … I can look after Miro, if you …’
‘Christine’s helping out. He spends most of his time at hers, anyway. He idolises her. And you should eat more fruit — you really do look very pale, you need more vitamins and some sun,’ Lana called after her as Elene left her office.
*
Daria begged, Daria cried, Daria hugged Elene, implored her, Daria promised to work harder at school, Daria was desperate to do this film. Aleko backed her up, tried to persuade Elene. Latsabidze was a good guy, he said; he knew plenty of people in the film business, and Daria would be looked after. Even with everything that had happened, this was an important undertaking that they had to support; it had nothing to do with Eristavi, the man she remembered; it was art, not a documentary. This back-and-forth went on for two days. Aleko promised her that, if necessary, he would speak to Kostya, so that Kostya’s rage wouldn’t fall on Elene alone. Through all of this, I sat in a corner, spooning up the rice pudding I hated, marvelling at Daria’s powers of persuasion.
*
No one had ever heard Kitty Jashi sing like that. As if she were caressing the blood in her own veins, delighting in death, revelling in the fact she no longer had to accept frontiers of any kind.
She had arrived at the gallery in a black dress, and spent a long time standing in silence in front of Fred’s new pictures. Then she got up onto the little stage that had been erected for her and took the microphone. The fact that she wasn’t wearing her usual uniform of white shirt and black trousers was taken by those in the know as a sign that they were going to hear a new interpretation of her songs.
She congratulated the painter, spoke of the hard-won strength that shone out of the paintings, and then started to sing songs from the Home album.
Kitty — and you know this better than I do, Brilka — was a rather reserved singer when she performed in public, for which she had often been criticised, particularly by musicians of the younger generation. She was too controlled on stage, they said, she never went into ecstasies, never forgot herself, her voice was too composed, she let her lyrics and melodies take precedence over her personality, hid herself behind the songs.
But that evening something wholly unexpected happened. (Best described in the interview Amy gave to Rolling Stone in 1988, the issue with Kitty Jashi on the cover and a seven-page feature on her inside.) According to Amy, the audience in the gallery were treated to a ‘strip show of the soul’. After a few minutes, the guests, reticent at first, then increasingly astonished, began to move as if joining in a wild circle dance, shaking their heads and limbs, while others, more than a few of them, sang along with tears in their eyes. How naked Kitty was before them; it made them want to undress as well, to shed their protection and their shells and absorb her songs in all their purity. Everyone in the room, Amy said, knew they were witnessing something unique.
The photographers, who had only come to see Miss Jashi, rather than for the once so promising and now forgotten Austrian painter, whipped out their cameras, and Kitty screamed into a lightning storm of flashes, uninhibited, revelling in the idolatry, as if the cameras were spurring her on to greater unpredictability.
When she stopped singing, according to Amy, the room fell silent for over a minute before a roar of applause broke over them all.
Bathed in sweat, she stumbled off the little stage, down the clapping, cheering aisle through her audience and out of the room. There, Amy caught her, and Kitty just smiled at her and said she had seen him; he had come back for her, and that evening she had sung for Fred and for him. Amy, of course, had no idea what she was talking about, but left it at that for the time being and let the champagne flow.
*
Daria had never been any good at lying, especially not to Kostya, so she decided to stay with Mother for a few days after they had signed the contract, even though she detested the little flat and was reluctant to give up the comfort she was used to at home. She told Kostya she had a particularly hard week of training coming up in her acrobatics course, and she wanted to spare herself the long car journeys and give herself time to prepare.
It was unusual for me to be the only child at the Green House. For a week it felt as if Daria and I had swapped roles. I was usually the one who stayed in Tbilisi, not the other way round. After I had overcome my initial uneasiness, though, I started to enjoy it. Now I was allowed to sit in front of the television with Kostya late into the evening, even choosing what we watched, and at breakfast my eggs were cooked for exactly three minutes, not five, which was how Daria preferred them.
Kostya, who had begun to suspect something was amiss, interrogated me. He started innocuously, with questions about Mother’s and Aleko’s daily routines, then moved on to how things were going at school, before asking about Daria’s friends. Since the incident that night in Gagra, since the morning he had collected Rusa from the hospital with her arms bandaged and taken her to the station, I hadn’t been alone with him. Our conversations had not strayed beyond banalities, and although I understood only too well why he hadn’t approached me again before that week, I was enjoying it. I enjoyed the attention he bestowed on me, the way he treated me like a grown-up, almost as an equal, and I enjoyed the
vague sense that he was dependent on me: on me and what I knew.
*
That morning, he had not been feeling well; he had a cold, and decided to stay at home. It was only after he had dismissed his driver that it occurred to him I still had to go to school — but before he could think about how I was going to get to Tbilisi, I offered to miss a day of school and stay there with him, saying I could look after him. Nana had already gone to work, and Stasia had disappeared into her barn.
Unexpectedly, he agreed and went back to bed, having listed all the things I was to bring him. I found the lemons and made some hot tea, got the thermometer from the medicine cabinet, and sat down beside him on his bed. He didn’t seem to object to that, either.
We watched Animal World on television. We drank strong tea, he wrapped in a blanket and me in my pyjamas. The programme was about sea mammals, and to my great surprise he started telling me about the ocean and the dolphins he had seen on his travels. From dolphins he moved on to ships, and from there he went on to talk about Leningrad and his student days. I listened, spellbound; I could have listened to his stories for hours, letting him lead me into unfamiliar worlds, if the telephone hadn’t kept ringing. I had to get up and bring it to him. Since he made no move to send me out of the room, I stayed there on his bed, watching the sea creatures.
He didn’t say much. He just asked a few questions, kept repeating ‘Hm, hm’ and ‘Yes, I understand’, before finally hanging up. The expression on his face was one of unease. He lay still for a moment, then heaved himself up and threw a dressing gown round his shoulders.
‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.
‘I take one day off, and they can’t manage without me.’
The Eighth Life Page 86