Down at the far end of the park, where it bordered on Tbilisi Zoo, I eventually found a small track and a crowd of adolescent boys in leather jackets and lumberjack shirts, standing around smoking cigarettes and cheering on the drivers. I sensed their eyes appraising me as I marched through the group, asking for Miro. Eventually I spotted him sitting on a folding chair, sorting out some slips of paper with another boy. When I appeared in front of him, he leaped up from the chair in surprise and alarm.
‘What are you doing here?’ he cried.
‘I was at Christine’s, and she told me I’d find you here. I thought I’d stop by.’
‘Yes, great, that’s really good of you. But you can’t tell anyone about this, okay? You have to be sixteen to drive. They make an exception for me,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Can you drive, then?’
‘Yup. But right now I’m taking the bets.’
‘Bets?’
He took me to one side, laid an arm meaningfully around my shoulders, and whispered in my ear that this was technically an illegal activity, but the boys were just making a bit of pocket money, and it was no big deal. To be on the safe side, he added that I mustn’t tell anyone.
‘But if I just caught you here with these bits of paper, how easy do you think it’s going to be for the militsiya to cotton on to you and your bets?’ I pressed him.
He scratched his ear, giving the question some thought. This didn’t seem to have crossed his mind before.
‘You need to organise this whole thing better, be smarter about it. That’s what I think, anyway,’ I explained.
‘You think? How?’ He bent his head down to me; a curl dropped over his forehead and tickled my cheek.
‘Well, I could always do it for you.’
I didn’t know the first thing about go-kart racing, and I was intimidated by all the boys. But the idea came to me as I was thinking how nice it would be to see Miro more often.
‘You? But you don’t have a clue what you’re doing.’
‘I’ve got lots of free time after school. My mother doesn’t really check up on me, and I’m a fast learner.’
He thought for a minute, then hurried over to the others and conferred with them. He came back to me looking very pleased.
‘They think it’s a clever idea. We’ll explain everything to you; nobody’ll suspect a girl. You need to be here at two tomorrow, The Shark’ll be here then, he’s the boss.’
‘The Shark?’
‘Yeah, The Shark. He’s nineteen,’ he said reverentially, as if there were some great merit in being nineteen.
I would have to skip the last period of geography the following day to get to the park on time, but that was doable.
*
It was simple: just after sunset, when everyone had left the park, the little go-kart track opened for the teenagers and their adult leader. They bribed the attendants to turn a blind eye. Officially, these were training sessions; unofficially, a pastime for cool kids and a way of making some fast pocket money. The races took place in the dark. Before the race, you could write the name of your favourite on a slip of paper and drop it into a bucket, like a tombola. You had to give your money to The Shark beforehand — there was a different rate for each race — and afterwards it was shared out among the winners. From now on, I was to manage the finances.
The Shark — a skinny chain-smoker with bad skin and greasy hair, who wore genuine Levis that seemed permanently moulded to his body — was sceptical at first, but I convinced him. I calculated quickly, refused to enter into discussions, and kept the money in my tights — a very safe hiding-place. The only challenge consisted in telling my mother that I was taking a course in ‘Literary Appreciation’ at the Youth Palace and so would be late home three nights a week. But she soon acquiesced, and sometimes I even managed to avoid trekking all the way home first by going to Christine’s and eating there, before walking to the track with Miro. Christine had discussed it with Elene; it made no difference to her whether she was feeding one mouth or two, and most of the time Lana wasn’t there — she was always working, or away at architecture conventions in various Soviet cities.
Despite my initial shyness, I soon found it easy to spend time in the company of the go-karting boys; I actually felt more comfortable around them than with the girls at school. I didn’t have to be pretty, I didn’t have to think about my clothes, I just had to sip from a beer bottle from time to time, then belch, or take a drag on a cigarette — that was enough for them to accept me as part of their community.
During the races, in which I took little interest, I read my books. The boys sometimes made idiotic jokes about my love stories, but I hit back by saying that it was a good job at least one of us could read and write. These kinds of remarks gradually earned me respect. The Shark’s initial fear that I was too much of a girl for the job proved unfounded. I quickly learned to laugh at dirty jokes, and not to immediately class lewd comments as a sign of intellectual backwardness. I learned to spit a long way, and to run as fast as I could when someone told us the ‘pigs’ were about.
At that time, Miro was precisely at the interface between Wuthering Heights and ‘Fuck your mum’, and it was still unclear which side he would eventually come down on. His need for everyone to like him, and to make everyone laugh, sometimes got on my nerves, but he always managed to overcome my annoyance by taking things one step further, carrying on until I was forced to laugh. But when he no longer needed to clown around, in those quiet moments when he would sit down beside me and I would read aloud to him, I felt needed and right, in this place with this permanently grinning boy at my side.
*
I knew it was getting late. I was already thinking up excuses for Elene. There had been an argument between The Shark and the other boys over the outcome of a race, which had remained unresolved, so I’d had to hang on to the money. I was tired, and it was already after ten, and I would probably have had to wait ages for the trolleybus, so Miro and I trudged back to Christine’s on foot, and Christine called my mother. Then she gave me the phone.
‘I’m sorry, Deda. I was chatting to Miro and I lost track of time.’
‘I can’t come and collect you now; Aleko’s taken the car. You can stay at Christine’s tonight. And tomorrow you need to come straight home after school. Kostya’s going to pick you both up after Daria’s gymnastics class, is that clear?’
We played cards and giggled over what had happened that day. Miro did impressions of the boys from the track. Lana was at a week-long conference in Rostov, and we had his room to ourselves. There was a camp bed set up for me beside his bed. After the light had been turned out, he switched on a torch, hopped in beside me, and pressed a book into my hands.
‘What’s that?’ I whispered.
‘Amphibian Man by Belyaev. I’m on page one-hundred and nineteen already. Would you go on reading?’
I refrained from making any comment and started reading the science fiction novel to him.
‘Can you smell that?’ I asked him after a while. The digital alarm clock Miro was so proud of, a gift his mother had brought back from Dresden, read 02:45. The smell was so intense that for a moment I felt quite peculiar. Miro sat up and sniffed as well, picking up the scent like a hungry animal.
‘What is it?’ I asked. I had never smelled anything so delicious in my life.
‘It smells like chocolate. Christine must be baking a chocolate cake. Right?’
‘Yes, let’s go and look …’
We both leapt up at the same time, I shoved my feet into his slippers, which were at least four sizes too big, and we ran into the next room.
Christine was sitting in front of the television — there was no picture, just the coloured stripes signalling that programmes had finished — spooning a black liquid out of a teacup. She didn’t notice us at first, and went on eating in slow motion.<
br />
Puzzled, we stared first at her, then the television, then her again. Miro crept over and hugged her from behind. She gave a start, as if someone had jolted her out of a dream, then planted a kiss on his forehead.
‘What are you two doing out here? Why aren’t you asleep?’
‘What is that crazy stuff you’re eating?’
He stared at her cup. She put a hand over it.
‘Nothing. I mean: it’s not for children.’
‘But we’re not children any more,’ Miro retorted cheekily.
‘Oh yes you are. Go away. You’ve got school tomorrow, had you forgotten?’
‘But Christy’ — he called her Christy, affectionately — ‘we want to try it too. It smells so delicious. What is it?’
‘No!’
She almost shouted the word, and leapt up from her chair. For a moment, we stood facing each other, like big cats circling their territory. Then Miro ran into the kitchen and came back carrying a little metal jug, which looked like a Turkish coffee pot. He was already dipping his forefinger into the jug and licking it. He closed his eyes appreciatively and made a strange movement with his head.
‘No!’ Christine cried out again, before falling back into her armchair in front of the television.
But now Miro was putting his forefinger, covered in thick, gooey chocolate, into my mouth. I felt goosebumps on my arms, and something tightened inside me. It was a little piece of paradise on earth. It was the most wonderful flavour I had ever tasted. We scraped out what little remained, our fingers reaching into the pot, into our mouths, and back again. Christine sat rigid in her chair, neither looking at us nor making any further attempt to stop us.
‘Oh my God, Christy!’ Miro lowered himself onto the arm of her chair and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Why have you never made that for us? It’s so delicious.’
‘My sister was right. She was always right,’ she whispered.
With the heavenly flavour of the chocolate still in my mouth, I sensed an aftertaste of sadness. Something about this flavour had made me fearful. It left so many questions on my tongue.
*
The next morning at school, we heard that there had been an explosion in a Ukrainian nuclear power plant called Chernobyl, and we were probably all now going to mutate and ultimately die a painful death.
‘But the Ukraine is miles away,’ a boy in the eighth class said in the playground.
‘Not far enough, though. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how far away you are. We won’t be able to eat or drink anything: everything’s contaminated, and we’ll all get hydrocephaly,’ a particularly bright boy in the top form retorted.
‘And will the trees turn pink, and the earth go blue? I read that’s what happened in Hiroshima.’
‘This is much worse than Hiroshima. The whole world will be contaminated now. Even America,’ insisted the older boy, who seemed to be a follower of conspiracy theories.
‘Maybe the Yanks provoked it? On purpose, so that —’
‘They must have. People here would never allow such a thing to happen, they’re more careful than that,’ said a shocked girl in John Lennon glasses.
‘We’re all going to turn into zombies,’ another girl was wailing as I hurried out of the playground.
That evening, on the way home with Daria in Kostya’s car, I asked what it would really mean. Kostya asked the driver to pull over. He got into the back with us and put his arms around Daria and me. I flinched, not having touched him since our afternoon on his bed.
‘Everything will be all right. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Not to you.’
*
Kostya hardly left his bedroom any more. When he sat down in front of the television, unshaven, in his dressing gown, he did nothing but rant about ‘weaklings’, ‘thieves’, and ‘enemies of the state’, and insist that this country needed an iron hand to get it back on its feet. Some days, he drank wine straight after breakfast.
Now and again, gloomy-eyed men from the ministry pulled up at the Green House in their Volgas, Kostya would take them into his study, and we would hear indignant exclamations through the wall. The gentlemen often hurried out looking shocked and left the house. At the end of May, he finally went back to work. When he came home that evening, the first thing he did was smash every last piece of Nana’s Czech tea set against the wall. In a rage, he shouted that he was going to show those swine: he was the one responsible for getting them those posts in the first place, for them having any work at all; he would show them who it was they were dealing with.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Nana shouted. Kostya had smashed one of her special editions to smithereens.
Daria and I sat, petrified, on the swing seat, which was on the point of falling apart. Daria had met Latsabidze a few days previously. The film had been edited, but the premiere had been postponed for the time being because of Chernobyl. First, there would be a private screening in the House of Film, to which he had invited her. And Daria, flushed and excited, had asked me if I wanted to go with her. Since then, all she could think about was what she was going to wear. I realised with some discomfort that she had started mentioning one particular name a lot, and every time she did, she had this stupid, dreamy look on her face.
‘Who is this Lasha you keep talking about?’
‘Our head cameraman.’
‘What’s going on with him?’
‘What do you mean, going on?’
‘You’re always talking about him.’
‘He’s picked me up from school twice now.’
Kostya’s loud, distorted voice could still be heard from inside the house.
‘What do you mean, picked you up? Did you arrange to meet him?’
‘He asked me out to the cinema, on Friday.’
‘But what kind of guy is he?’ I asked.
‘He’s lovely. And so handsome. He always wears such great clothes, and he’s been to America: he’s seen New York, and he’s even met some of the stars.’
‘And how old is he?’
‘Thirty-three.’
‘That’s seriously old.’
‘Rubbish. Anyway, I prefer mature men.’
I was astonished: up to now, Daria hadn’t preferred any kind of men, or she simply hadn’t had the time to think about them, being too preoccupied with herself. But now she seemed to have come out of hibernation.
‘The devil take your old tea set — they’re trying to throw me out of the ministry, they want me to take up some crummy post in the MVD. They even had the cheek to tell me to my face that there were irregularities in the accounts — under my leadership! Brainless idiots!’
As background music to Kostya’s tirade, we could hear Mozart’s Magic Flute wafting from the barn. Stasia had been in there all day.
‘They’re trying to throw Grandfather out?’ Daria was suddenly all ears. I started listening as well.
‘These namby-pambies — I’ll show them. I’ll sack the lot of them, get them all out. You can’t trust anyone any more — anyone, do you hear me? No one has a single spark of humanity in them in this day and age, let alone decency or morality. They should open up their own accounts, then we’ll see who’s got a clean record!
‘But Kostya … Tell me that’s not true. Is it? Are there really irregularities in your accounts?’ Nana asked anxiously.
‘Irregularities? Irregularities? The whole country is one big irregularity. What do you think you live on, hmm? The summer health spas and your little tea parties with your friends. How do you think I paid for your best friend’s operation, with the best doctor in the country? What or who do you think gave us all this? Your salary, and mine? Do you honestly believe that?’
Daria’s bottom lip began to quiver. She grasped my hand.
‘They all steal and lie, they all want backhanders, no one lifts a finger otherwis
e. That’s what this rotten country is. But you wanted me to come back. To come back to this rat-hole. This would never have happened in the navy. Being a man means something there. Do you know what sort of lowlifes I’ve had to waste my time on all these years? Do you think I enjoyed it? I didn’t invent the system. I just ended up in this rat-hole, because of you and your oh-so-clever daughter. Who’s now settled for an alcoholic. The accounts — don’t make me laugh. The accounts. I’d like to see anyone in any state institution open up his accounts!’
‘Kostya!’ Nana sounded frightened, unnerved. ‘I’m asking you, are there any irregularities in your accounting?’
‘There is no accounting — you still don’t get it, do you? There’s nothing that’s still sacred to these people, and you want to know why? Because they let this weakling take power, this would-be revolutionary who’s afraid to stand up in front of his people. And how long has this been going on? And what about where you are? What’s it like in your sacred university? How much would I have to pay them to let me study law? How much would I have to shell out to become a doctor? How do things work there? Or is syntax so exciting that you’ve stopped paying attention to the world around you? You wanted to live like this. You all wanted to live like this.’
‘Kostya, for pity’s sake, what are you talking about?’
‘You wanted the health spas and the driver and you wanted crêpe de chine from Italy and Opium from France; you wanted to be the envy of your friends, to show them how good you had it, that you’d hit the jackpot, as it were. I had to play along, Nana, or I’d have been thrown out long ago,’ he shouted, then abruptly fell silent.
Daria had stood up and was looking at me wide-eyed. I didn’t know what to say; I didn’t dare move. Mozart, too, abruptly fell silent.
How this state has mocked us!
The Eighth Life Page 90