The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischwili

  She was wearing a tight, knee-length dress, which looked colourless in the bluish light of the streetlamps, and high heels. From a distance, she could have passed for thirty; you couldn’t see her veil, just her coal-black hair contrasting sharply with the white of her face. Her posture was faultless, her shoulders straight, her lovely, slender ankles encased in sheer black stockings. She was wearing a little hat with a feather on it. I hurriedly climbed down again. Pushed people aside, barged my way through the panicking crowd. I snaked my way around hundreds of bodies, hiding behind them as I went. I tried to keep Christine in view; she mustn’t get away, I had to reach her. I crept down the steps, made my way through a corridor of people, and left the grounds of the government building. Then I was able to run. I reached the comparatively empty playground in seconds. Its wide expanse offered little protection, so not many people had sought refuge there. Christine was standing in the middle of it, staring at something. By the time I reached the playground, the military had enclosed the whole avenue from all sides. There was no escape. Here and there, a few Georgian militsiya officers were dotted among the people, but they were completely overwhelmed, and instead of creating order, their frightening shouts were just driving people together even more.

  Someone fell over in front of me, but I didn’t stop; I kept running towards this woman who seemed to have stepped out of a different reality, and I fled towards this reality, because the one surrounding me was terrible and frightened me.

  She suddenly turned, about to head towards the House of Government, and at that very moment I touched her shoulder. She gave a start, and immediately backed off a little, but then she recognised me and let out a sigh of relief. And then it was my turn to stumble backwards. She really wasn’t wearing a veil, and an awful, grotesque visage stared out at me from the left half of her face. I didn’t know how I could bear it without showing my horror, so I looked at the ground. At that, she took a step forward and was about to walk away again when I called out: ‘It’s me, Christine — Niza! What are you doing here? We have to get out, we have to get out of here fast!’

  My cry was hysterical. I didn’t dare look at the street now. I could hear a sound that was muffled and at the same time very sharp, and I didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to prepare myself for might happen next or was already happening. And she smiled. This smile was no less frightening to me than the massive military presence. I tried to concentrate on the right side of her face to stop myself from screaming. Then Christine turned to me and said, resolutely: ‘We have to stop them. The Bolsheviks can’t be allowed to march in here again. We have to stop the Red Army. Otherwise it’ll start all over again, and he’ll come back. He’ll take charge again, and Ramas —’

  ‘Who? Who are you talking about? That’s not the Red Army, Christine.’

  She gave me a baffled look, then waved a hand in front of my face as if trying to dispel my doubts, and shook her head.

  ‘You don’t understand, little one …’

  ‘It’s 1989, Christine.’

  ‘But we have to stop them. Otherwise he’ll be back. And Ramas can’t go through all that again. You have to tell your friends that they’re coming back, and what that means; you have to explain to them that it’s starting all over again. But you’ll help me, won’t you? You’re a clever girl! I have to stop them. I never tried before. I have to try now. Do you understand?’

  ‘Christine, you’re confused, we have to get you home. Where’s Miro?’

  The yelling behind me was now deafeningly loud. I felt my knees go weak. I heard someone screaming that they had spades. I didn’t understand what he meant. What spades? I had to get this confused woman out of here, to say nothing of myself. I took her by the elbow and pulled her after me. Without turning round, without looking towards the avenue, I made for the school building.

  Of course: I should have thought of it earlier. The school! My old school — never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined being so pleased to see it. I just had to get inside the building somehow, and then out to the playground at the back — and from there we could get to the Mtatsminda, the Holy Mountain, and escape. The school doors were locked. The only option was to break a window on the ground floor, climb in, and open one of the doors from the inside for Christine. She wouldn’t be able to climb into the building in her current state. I could see a small group of people rushing into the front yard. I quickened my pace, but Christine was stubborn; she kept stopping, shouting, trying to make me stand still. I was pulling her by the arm with all my strength, but her feet kept turning over: her shoes weren’t exactly designed for fleeing armed conflict.

  She slipped away from me a number of times, and I had to stop, collect her, urge her on. The crowd was steadily growing around us, retreating, moving towards the school building, looking for an escape route. There were soldiers in the school grounds as well. They were running and shouting, holding their guns in front of them like shields. Suddenly I heard a dull thud and something sprayed across my cheek. Sickened, I looked around and saw a body slump to the ground. A soldier was hitting a young man with a spade, and he was doubled up with pain.

  I wanted to vomit, but fear drove me on; I summoned all my strength, grabbed Christine, and dragged her after me. We managed to escape the crowd, which was rolling towards us like an unstoppable wave. There was no one outside the west wing of the school, though; no people or soldiers had reached the dark alleyway. I ducked down and made Christine take off her shoe, then smashed a windowpane with the heel.

  ‘Wait here. I’ll come and get you, okay?’

  I yelled the words in her ear several times, then set about removing shards of glass from the frame. Christine, however, insisted on going back to the demonstration.

  ‘Christine, it’s not the Red Army,’ I kept repeating.

  ‘Of course it is, little one! Who else would it be? Of course it’s the Bolsheviks!’

  I couldn’t waste any more time on pointless explanations. I pulled a big shard of glass out of the window frame, and it sliced into my thumb. I cried out. The blood ran down my hand. Christine stared at my wound in fascination before starting all over again:

  ‘We have to do something. I’ve told Miqa we have to build barricades. He’s here somewhere — I know him, he won’t be able to sit still as long as I’m here.’

  I heaved myself up onto the windowsill and got one leg through the window. I could do it. The opening might be large enough for me, but I would never get this confused old woman through it and into the school. How was I going to look for a door and at the same time make sure she stayed put and waited for me?

  Once inside, I reached out to her, and suddenly she took my hand of her own accord. We stood there, holding hands, me inside and her outside, looking at each other. I looked her in the eye. I tried to imagine her face without the terrible chemical burns. To see how she had once looked. Before the Reds came. I impressed on her that she had to stay right there and not take a single step towards the main entrance, and suddenly her face lit up, as if something incredibly amusing had struck her, and she started to laugh. The carefree laugh of a child. I, meanwhile, was close to tears. I begged her; I told her again and again to calm down, to stay where she was, to stop laughing, but the more I tried to persuade her, the funnier she found it, and the louder and wilder her laughter became. Until, from one moment to the next, she calmed down and brought her face close to mine.

  And then she told me the most macabre joke I have ever heard: macabre not because of its content, but because of the context. I was paralysed, powerless, fascinated by her madness, and I stayed at the window and listened. I will tell you this joke in the course of our story, Brilka, but not now. I can’t tell it yet. That awful night isn’t over yet. I’m still standing there, in that dark school corridor, not knowing how I’m going to manage to save my own life and at the same time preserve hers.

  Because she was already vict
orious; she had outwitted time, separated herself from the laws of the world, but I have not. I still have to stick to the facts. To my memories, which are constantly playing nasty tricks on me. To the images that populate my head. I can’t repeat it to you yet, but soon — soon I will. I promise you. Once I’ve reached you, once I’ve got past all the things that stopped me coming to you, then I’ll do it.

  When she had told her joke and made sure I had understood the punchline, she let go of my hand, whipped round, and before I could grab her dress or her arm through the opening, she ran off.

  I tried to climb back out of the window, called her name over and over, but by the time I was halfway out again I could no longer see her and I knew it was pointless to go on looking. She had disappeared into the still-growing throng, become part of it, sunk into it, had sought and found refuge in the epicentre of the activity.

  An animal sound, completely alien to me, escaped my throat. For a few moments, I stood frozen in the dark corridor, not knowing what to do. As I crouched on the cold floor of my school, trembling all over, I heard screams outside, bodies hitting the ground, people crying for help, and again and again the dull sound of spades hitting a body, a head, a life.

  I was expecting shots to ring out at any second, but there were none. That made the whole thing even more unbearable: the fact that no shots had been fired left room for hope that we might get out of this alive, that we might escape this hell. Then I heard the strange word: ‘Gas!’ I couldn’t make sense of it at first, until I realised it was tear gas being used on the crowd. I struggled to my feet and walked slowly down the unlit corridor, creeping through the ghostly darkness of the empty school building I had hated for so many years, and which now was saving me from the sight of things I couldn’t bear. I climbed the stairs. My shoes made strange creaking sounds on the wood. Various poets and philosophers watched me from the walls, and in their midst was Uncle Lenin, beckoning to me still.

  Suddenly, I started to run: of course, there was a telephone in the staffroom, I should call Mother, or ask Kostya for help, so someone would come and get me out of there. At the same time, though, I knew it was impossible. It didn’t matter which member of my family it was, they would inevitably get caught up in this inhuman scenario. They would be threatened by spades and Kalashnikovs, tanks and gas. No, that was unthinkable. That option no longer existed.

  I went upstairs to my former classroom, the door of which was open, and sat down at the desk that had had to withstand years of my hatred for the school and for my fellow pupils. Into which I had carved numerous words and pictures. Cries for help, threats. Even in the dark I could decipher them, and for some reason they pleased me. They seemed like a fixed point to cling to, a sign that the world as I had known it had once existed and wasn’t just a product of my imagination. I clung to ‘Lenin + Marx = bullshit’, to, ‘The maths teacher is a dork’, and to ‘124 more days and I’m out of here’. I tried to recall the days and times when I had scratched these words into the solid wood of the desk. Some I could remember; others had vanished from my mind. I lay down on the bench, clutched it with both hands; I listened out for shots, or someone calling out the conclusive word ‘dead’, but I heard nothing. I could still hope.

  I had lost all sense of time. I concentrated on my own heartbeat. I can’t remember how long I lay there, waiting to be rescued or killed. Eventually, when the noise from outside was no longer quite so deafening, I got up and went back downstairs. I was surprised that nobody had hit on the idea of taking refuge in the school, and at the same time I felt guilty for not having thrown open the doors and beckoned people in.

  I went to the back exit and rattled the door. It was locked from inside. I went to the toilets and found a window in the boys’ that could be opened. Then I looked out — the back of the school was deserted. I could just hear some shouting from a side street. It was only when I was outside again, standing on the asphalt, that I noticed: all this time I’d been holding something in the hand I hadn’t cut, and my fingers were already cramped from gripping it. I looked down: it was Christine’s plain black shoe. To this day, something about this image still makes me seize up with fright. I pressed the shoe to my chest and started sobbing, hard, and at the same time I set off, running. I climbed a fence, got past two military vehicles, and finally escaped, up through the windswept streets of the Holy Mountain.

  It was only when I reached the hidden back alleys of Vera that I stood and caught my breath. I had run all the way there without stopping. I had fallen down, picked myself up, and carried on running. The hubbub and the screams had vanished. This sleepy old neighbourhood looked peaceful, as if a few kilometres away people weren’t laying into other people with spades. The houses were sunk in a deep sleep. Out of breath, I sat down on the kerb. My home city had never seemed so big, and so lonely. And so divided.

  With no strength left, I hammered on Christine’s door. I can’t remember how I got there; I just know that I avoided the main roads and kept walking, going slower and slower, but not stopping until I reached Christine’s apartment. It was the first place I thought of going. In my state of mind at the time I doubt I could have had other, more altruistic, reasons; I doubt I was worrying about Christine’s or Miro’s wellbeing. I just didn’t have the strength to walk any further.

  *

  Miro opened the door. He told me he’d been looking for me: they were all worried out of their minds, and Christine had disappeared without a trace. Elena and Aleko had been round. Everyone was half-dead with worry. When he noticed the blood on my clothes and face, he winced, but I let him know it was nothing serious with a little shake of my head — I didn’t have the energy to do more than that. Luckily, I didn’t need to ask him to call home, to give them the all clear, let them know I was still alive. ‘What about Daria?’ I asked. He reassured me that she had been on Rustaveli with the lovely Lasha in the early evening, but when the atmosphere got too tense for him he’d taken her back to the Green House, managing to leave just in time before things escalated. Without getting undressed or washing, I fell onto Miro’s bed and was asleep in seconds.

  It was already morning when I was woken by Miro’s hand on my cheek. He had buttered some slices of bread for me and made tea, which he held under my nose. I sat up and fell on the food — I’d had no idea I was so hungry.

  Lana was in Baku at a building design conference; she was calling regularly to check in. Elene would pick me up that afternoon, Miro told me cautiously. A state of emergency had been declared in the city and a curfew was in place.

  Christine was still missing, and I told him about our encounter the previous night. I didn’t mention her mental state, though: I didn’t know how he would react. I needed to stick to the facts, to rock-solid facts, normal things, familiar things. The time. Miro’s face. The smell of his bedsheets. The stains on my clothes. The eucalyptus on Miro’s windowsill. The poster of the racing car on the wall. These were things I could comprehend, things I knew; they didn’t overwhelm me. Everything else was too much, too huge, demanded too much strength from me.

  Miro watched me open-mouthed, murmuring to himself, rather shyly, asking what exactly I was doing. But I didn’t let him put me off as I carefully laid my clothes on the floor. Folded my shirt, my trousers. I didn’t wear a bra; with my flat chest, it would have been completely pointless. Finally, I took off my knickers as well and walked past him, as God had made me, to the tiny shower cubicle in the bathroom, which was right beside the front door.

  A few minutes later he came into the bathroom and stopped in front of the shower curtain.

  I opened the curtain. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to see everything. Everything that had written itself onto my body the previous night, and for which I had no words.

  I reached out to him as the hot, healing water rained down on me. He took my hand and stood there for a while, wordlessly, eyes on the floor, as if thinking about what to do next. Then
he stuck his head into the shower and gave me a kiss. I put my arms round his neck and pulled him in.

  Later, he carried me into his bedroom, wrapped in a towel and slung over his shoulder like a rolled-up carpet, threw me onto the unmade bed, and lay down beside me. We had already pulled off his wet clothes in the shower.

  For the first time, we were naked. For the first time, I didn’t care whether I was desirable or beautiful enough for him. For the first time, I wanted him to read my body like a story. I drew him down towards me. Folded him in my arms. His fingertips trembled, his lips were cold, his skin was rough and his muscles tense, his eyes shone. I could feel how reluctant, how unprepared he was to be with me like this, now of all times. Now, as our worlds were falling apart.

  There, in his childhood bed, in Christine’s abandoned apartment.

  I clung to him, my heart racing. As my hands explored his belly, touched his nipples, brushed his Adam’s apple, I could see the soldier swinging his spade, the body of the young man falling to the ground. I could see Christine’s chemical burns as Miro smelled my skin and kissed my breasts, as he lifted me up and laid me on top of him, all the while looking at me and brushing my unruly, wet hair out of my face. And I thought I was back in the dark, empty corridor in my school, hearing the screams of the people outside, trampling each other and calling for help. I clung to him, as if his body could undo these images, these sounds. If I just held on tight enough, if I loved him fiercely enough, if I dug my knees into the mattress, put my hands on his chest to support myself, if I took him inside me, could I offer him a refuge, even though I hadn’t managed to take Christine and all those other people into my hiding place?