The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischwili

  ‘They’re students, they have nothing to do with the school, they don’t know us, they don’t know who our father and mother are, let alone our grandfather. He’ll say he’s your dad. And he’ll drive out to where the coach is. As soon as you see him, throw your arms around his neck, or whatever, and that’ll be that.

  ‘You go off and do the film. Every now and then, you call Kostya and go on about how much you’re enjoying Bakuriani. And if he should decide to call the camp himself, I’ll think of something. You’re out skiing, or asleep, or whatever. And when we come back, we just give Kostya the wrong arrival time. So Latsabidze can come to collect me, with you in tow; then later on we call Kostya or Mama and say whoops, we got back a bit earlier than expected.’

  Daria was listening very closely. Her whole body seemed to vibrate with tension. We hadn’t switched the light on, and the moonlight falling through the open curtains gave our faces a blueish hue. Slowly, my words filtered through to her. She seemed already to be seeing the images of my plan in her mind’s eye. All at once, her face lit up, her eyebrows returned to their normal position, her lips parted, and she giggled to herself.

  ‘You’re completely bonkers, do you know that? Why are you so keen to help me all of a sudden, when you’re the one who told on me?’

  ‘I just want you to believe me. I didn’t see any of this coming. It’s not what I wanted.’

  ‘Do you really think we can pull this off?’

  ‘If you stick to the plan, and above all don’t breathe a word to anyone, then yes.’

  ‘All right, all right, I can do that. Oh God, does he really not have anyone? He still hasn’t cast the role?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve been saying.’

  ‘I can’t believe it … But you hate sports! How will you cope with three weeks up there?’

  ‘Well, I made a mess of things, so it’s up to me to pay for it. I hope you realise you’ll owe me, though, if I survive three weeks of exercise in Bakuriani.’

  ‘It’s the craziest plan I’ve ever heard, but it might just work.’

  *

  And the plan did work. Kostya agreed. Fresh air, sport, the Komsomol Youth — it all sounded good to him. Not long after the New Year celebrations, we took the coach to Bakuriani. As I’d suspected, the staff were a bunch of students who liked to drink and party, and who didn’t have the slightest suspicion when Daria was fished off the coach by a film director ham-acting the role of our father.

  For me, though, it was a difficult time: sharing a room in the spartan, unrenovated facilities of the Youth and Sport House with four other chattering girls was absolutely unbearable, as were the tasteless porridge for breakfast and the burnt hamburgers for supper, and being constantly harried out into the cold by eager sports students, particularly as I could find no pleasure at all in hurtling through the snow on skis that were much too long and much too old. I would rather have spent my time with Wuthering Heights, the book I was reading just then. But I offered up my sacrifice patiently, constantly reminding myself why I was doing it. Twice I had to save the day, when Kostya phoned unannounced, demanding to speak to Daria, and tried to send me up from the camp’s filthy lobby to fetch her from her room. Both times I managed to give him convincing excuses, and he allowed himself to be fobbed off. Both times I reached Daria on Latsabidze’s private number, which he had given me for emergencies like these, and she called Kostya back with only a slight delay. He didn’t suspect a thing.

  At the end of the second week, I was delivered from a circle of screeching, spotty, crude boys with their latent hysteria and their constant stream of obscene jokes. For there, unexpectedly coming towards me across the piste, was Miro. He was in Bakuriani with another sports group; an enthusiastic skier ever since he was little, he was training for some upcoming junior competition. At first, he didn’t recognise me; he was in the company of other spotty, crude boys telling obscene jokes. When he finally realised who I was, a smile as bright as the snow surrounding us spread over his dark face.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘The same as you, I imagine,’ I replied, and the boys standing round him sniggered.

  Miro flashed them a warning glance, and they instantly fell silent. It looked like he held some sway with them. He was staying in the other block, where girls weren’t allowed, but he and a few of his buddies still managed to sneak into our block every evening. There was a real holiday camp atmosphere. Although I didn’t find his buddies even remotely entertaining, I joined their group, took part in the nightly fun and the pyjama parties, tried to appear as nonchalant and carefree as them, and was as daring as I could manage to be.

  Once, we peeled off from the rest of the group during training and stomped through the blinding white on our skis. At his side — he was always pulling faces and telling me silly anecdotes — I felt both light and safe. Not long after this, there was a communal lunch in a mountain cabin for both our camps, and he caught me reading Emily Brontë. He swiped a leftover bowl of stewed peaches for us, sat down beside me, and asked what I was reading.

  ‘I can’t be bothered with reading; I always look at the end of the book first,’ he said shyly, as I put the book down. ‘But I love it when someone reads to me. I’m a good listener. Christine reads to me a lot, but she always chooses such boring stuff.’

  ‘So what sort of books do you like?’

  ‘Well, I thought The Three Musketeers was great.’

  I nodded. ‘Shall I read you something?’

  ‘Yes, oh yes.’

  I hadn’t expected such enthusiasm — I’d thought he would agree just to be polite. We arranged to meet that evening: I would leave the ground-floor window open and he would climb in.

  He really did arrive at the time we’d agreed, and we tiptoed into the television room, which was empty, as the television had long since given up the ghost. In the room’s cold, comfortless light we sat down on the battered sofa, and I started to read the novel to him. He listened attentively; his body tensed during particularly emotional scenes, he clenched his fists and even pinched my arm once because he couldn’t bear the tension. When he climbed out of the window in the dawn light, I inwardly thanked my sister for being so desperate to do that film.

  *

  I met her three days before our departure. She was standing by a lift in a red ski-suit, with two other young women in attractive outfits carrying skis and poles under their arms. I stopped in my tracks and concentrated on the red of her ski-suit. I could feel my heart beginning to thud louder and louder. I felt as if ten horses were galloping through my veins. I had so often pictured what it would be like to meet her. I had so much to say to her; I had secretly composed the sentences I would use. But I couldn’t move. I watched her from a distance before taking a few steps towards her. She saw me.

  Rusa! I wanted to shout, but my voice failed me. She took a step towards me, then stopped. We were both fearful. And when I finally managed to approach her, I could sense her shrinking back, as if afraid to be hugged by me. Her eyes were clouded. She wanted to say something, but seemed not to know what or how. I was so eager to know what she was doing, how she was. And now I was standing in front of her, not speaking, ashamed, as if I had a reason to be ashamed in front of her. Her face had changed. Her smile was no longer carefree; it was stoic, defying the world and all its obstacles, as if she found it an effort to smile at all.

  ‘Are you here with your grandfather?’ was the first thing she asked me.

  ‘No, with the Komsomol Youth. Are you well?’ I asked her tentatively.

  She shrugged. ‘I have to be, don’t I? I just have to work out how to get my life back on track, Niza. But I haven’t forgotten you.’

  She said this, and I felt nothing. I just wanted to get away. I nodded politely and turned around. I had taken a few steps when I heard her calling my name, but I didn’t look back. I just kept walking towards
a flushed, grinning Miro, who was speeding in my direction.

  *

  The last bit of the plan worked, too. Latsabidze came to meet me from the bus; waving and enfolding me in his arms, he acted the part of my father. I let him play his role. Later, we called Mother and lied to her that we had got the arrival time wrong and were already in the city.

  At home, my sister whispered to me that making films was the only thing she wanted to do from then on. Acrobatics was history; acting was her new passion. She spoke of the great talent that Latsabidze and his whole team had told her she possessed, of the praise from experienced colleagues, of the atmosphere on set, the interesting people, the way they all kept talking about her photogenic face. She told me that as soon as she finished school, she was going to study acting. Finally, she added a brief ‘Thank you’. I leaned back with a contented smile.

  Our magazines are practically vying as to who

  can spit at the Soviet Union the best.

  VIKTOR CHEBRIKOV

  She participated in fundraising galas and performed at various benefit concerts along with other rock and pop stars. She made a huge number of television appearances and gave countless interviews. She took up offers of various guest spots alongside famous colleagues. The Herald Tribune called her the British Patti Smith.

  Kitty transformed herself, rejected her age. Gave interviews, spoke about her past, criticised the Soviet Union, criticised her homeland, criticised the USA, criticised politics, made herself vulnerable. Her album sales soared; Amy rejoiced. Young people were rediscovering her old albums. But as much as she refused to acknowledge her age, her body was increasingly showing signs of it: tiredness and indifference had taken hold. She could blank them out as long as she surrounded herself with loud music, fun, crowds of people, and alcohol. With gratitude, she accepted all those things that had previously been distasteful to her. With ease, she opened up to everything that had been so foreign to her nature all these years. She could be joyful, euphoric, she could let herself go, leave herself behind, outsmart herself. A little more each time. Shifting a little further away from herself each time.

  Like a phoenix, she could rise from the ashes every evening and transform herself beneath the hot stage lights. She could be what she was not. For an hour, or two, or three, sometimes even seven hours, or the whole night, she could pretend to be a woman who had the world at her feet and knew how to deal with it. But she wasn’t writing any more. She hadn’t written a single new song. There was nothing more she wanted to say.

  And afterwards, at night, if she was left on her own, if she came home to her bed, she tried not to think about the man who had a drawn her a map for survival, and what he was doing now, or about the woman who had wanted so desperately to obliterate this map. She wished the man well, even though he was living in a world that had become foreign to him. Wished for the woman to survive, and for galleries to welcome her in.

  But Andro was coming more often; she saw him in the audience. When she looked down from the stage into the dark crowd, she would see him standing in the front row, with his shining curls. She saw him when she looked out onto the street in the morning, standing under her window, looking up at her. She saw him when she was hurrying across the road to Amy’s house, from where they would drive to the studio or to an interview. Or in one of the noisy, smoke-filled clubs she went to with friends and acquaintances, where she would sit and listen to people tell her again how ‘great’ or ‘cool’ or ‘epoch-making’ she was. She saw him smiling at her in the mirror when she retreated to the toilets and put her face under the running water. He stayed. He was there. He would never leave. He was waiting for her. Of that, she was certain. He didn’t press her; he had all the time in the world.

  Once, during a party at the luxurious house of a patron of the arts overlooking Waterlow Park, she took her glass of champagne out into the garden to get some fresh air and have a moment alone. She saw him standing there under a sycamore tree. She froze, thinking he would quickly vanish again, but when he showed no signs of going, she strode confidently over and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, making no attempt to touch him.

  ‘I just wanted to live, to survive — is that really so terrible? Is that why you’re here? Why does everything keep starting over, Andro, like a merry-go-round, again and again? Perhaps that’s just how the world works. But when you stand there in silence, it makes me think you’re trying to tell me something — that I should have done things differently, perhaps. He would have been a grown man now. I think about him every day. I promised him I would keep him: here, here, everywhere in me.

  ‘But I’m talking nonsense. I know, I can’t believe I’m really asking you all this. I just want to sing, water my hydrangeas, and have a glass of good whisky now and then. Is that too much to ask? Please, do something; help me, Andro!’

  Suddenly, she collapsed; the glass fell onto the wet ground, she caught herself on the rough bark of the tree, scratched her hand to pieces, dirtied her black trousers, knelt on the slimy earth of the garden, then sat down, legs bent, her back against the tree. Andro had vanished. There was nobody there now. Only the distant lights from the house and a buzz of animated voices — but they had nothing more to say to her, nor she to them.

  She got up. Brushed the soil from her trousers, leaned against the tree. Life was flaking away from her, and she was what was left. She had never yet managed to come to terms with that, not since she had run away. Which was exactly thirty-five years ago.

  *

  Starting on 25 February 1986, the 27th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, under the leadership of their new General Secretary Gorbachev, passed radical reforms to stimulate the economy and extend freedom of speech and of the press, and called for glasnost.

  Later that year, Gorbachev allowed the nuclear physicist Sakharov to return from exile, which many people saw as the first step towards real reform. The new General Secretary pushed for an ‘acceleration of social and economic development’, even if those plans threatened to founder when they encountered reality. Within a mere six months of taking office, he had replaced seventy per cent of the Politburo.

  However, the economy had long been stagnating, and nepotism and corruption had reached unprecedented levels. The wave of privatisation, and the withdrawal of state control over companies, met with great resistance. And this resistance came in part from my grandfather, Konstantin Jashi, who was of the opinion that the country needed stricter controls, not another revolution: everything had been left to decay for long enough, and was now threatening to fall apart.

  In sunny Georgia, people were caught between euphoria over the upcoming reforms, and worry at the indecision of the reformer. Freedom of the press and publishers meant that many previously banned manuscripts, translations, essays, and articles finally saw the light of day. Increasingly, groups of people gathered in university and school buildings to debate the future, though they were still very cautious. You could read more and more criticism between the lines of poems and songs.

  ‘If you want changes, you can’t make them dependent on everyone being in favour of them,’ Kostya grumbled as he sat in front of the television in the evening, watching the news. ‘Otherwise they’re doomed to failure from the outset. But this would-be reformer wants everyone to love him. The communists and the capitalists. He’ll kill himself trying.’

  At the time, I paid no attention to his words or his concerns. I had no interest in watching Vremya, either. After our great falling-out, I had lost all interest in my grandfather, or at least I hoped I had. I didn’t want anything more to do with his problems.

  Instead, I enjoyed the sweet fruits my little revenge plot was bearing: Daria’s undivided attention and blind trust. She no longer avoided me in the playground — quite the opposite: she invited me into her clique and introduced me to all her friends, which filled me with pride. I had done more than just outsmart Kostya.
I had also managed to prove to my sister that my love for her was more steadfast than that of the grandfather she so admired. I had proved to her that it was worth sticking with me. It was entirely gratifying.

  Even Latsabidze shook my hand when I accompanied Daria to the studio on her last day for some pick-up shots, and thanked me for my support. The film was called The Way, he told me, and would be released soon. I wanted to share my triumph with someone, so one afternoon I took the trolleybus to Vake and rang Christine’s doorbell. I followed her into the shady sitting room, which smelled of freshly made jam. She didn’t ask what I was doing there; she just served me a delicious dumpling soup. After I’d eaten, she asked me if I was there to see Miro.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I said.

  ‘He told me about the lovely time you had in Bakuriani.’ She eyed me approvingly. ‘And Stasia says you’re a very clever girl.’

  She poured a small measure of liqueur from a carafe into a glass. I had already moved on to a piece of cake and was trying to eat it without dropping crumbs.

  ‘You used to live with us, didn’t you?’ Once again, I was having trouble reining in my curiosity.

  ‘No, that’s not strictly true. They all used to live with me. I had a big house then, a beautiful house. Your grandfather and your great-aunt grew up there. We had a lovely garden, with a fountain, and … well. Times have changed.’

  Then she told me that Miro had gone to a go-kart race at Mziuri Park with some friends. But she would let him know I had dropped by.

  ‘Come again, whenever you like,’ she said, as she saw me to the door. I was overjoyed at the offer.

  The atmosphere in Elene’s apartment had been sepulchral for some time. My mother was always complaining of headaches, so Aleko had moved his drinking sessions out of the house — which only ended up causing more arguments when he came home late and drunk. So I decided to go to Mziuri Park, which wasn’t far from Christine’s flat, and look for Miro.