I turned my head away, not wanting him to be infected with my images, because he was so close to me, closer than ever before.
My dirty denim jacket from the previous day was lying on the floor, and out of the pocket stuck the tip of Christine’s black shoe.
72 years — on the road to nowhere!
DEMONSTRATION PLACARD
The military took control of the whole city centre.
The search for Christine took a long time; it was only at the end of the following day that her body was identified in one of the city hospitals. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest. Engulfed by the crowd, she had fallen to the ground. Hadn’t got up again. Unofficially, though, it was the return of the past and her inability to halt it.
The military’s attack on the demonstration, which had seemed like an eternity to me, had apparently lasted just thirty minutes. Thirty minutes that had cost twenty-one people their lives, among them my great-great-aunt Christine. Thirty minutes, twenty-one dead, and hundreds injured. My family assumed that Christine had lost her veil in the mêlée, and I didn’t disillusion them.
We were sitting in the cold hallway of the hospital basement, outside the pathology department. The waiting room was full. People sat there, some crying, others letting out a laugh of relief when the body was not that of the person they were looking for. Stasia went first; she went in alone. She didn’t want any of us there. Kostya was sitting apart from us, at the other end of the room. When Stasia came back and nodded to us all, letting us know that it really was Christine, he just shook his head. Stasia’s face gave nothing away: no horror, no pain, just a heavy emptiness. One hand was pressed to her side — she seemed to have an ache there.
*
Unfortunately, Kostya was right: nothing much changed after 9 April. There was a general sense of helplessness, and the population was split by the realisation of how powerless it was. One half felt spurred on to more radical action by the military’s brutal attack; the other half felt resigned. Even the anticipated protests from the West against Gorbachev’s bloodthirsty politics proved to be a false hope: everyone soon realised that the West wanted to go on seeing Gorbachev as a reformer and liberator. Even Le Monde described the events of 9 April as ‘a Georgian coup, and an act of provocation’.
The First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party was hastily voted out of office and Moscow’s candidate, Shevardnadze, was placed at its head. When a Moscow news team asked him whether there was a general anti-Russian feeling in Georgia at the time, he replied: ‘We have no evidence to support this conclusion.’ Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister and, at that moment, the most powerful Georgian in the Kremlin, flew to Tbilisi and spoke of a wound that should be healed as quickly as possible. The Red intelligentsia tried not to burn any more bridges with Moscow and started openly criticising the nationalists, calling them fanatics.
Kostya was to meddle in his beloved granddaughter’s life one last time. He accosted the lovely Lasha on the street and issued him with an ultimatum: either he swiftly separate from his wife and marry Daria, if he couldn’t leave her alone; or else he should see to it that within forty-eight hours he had not only vanished from her life, but preferably from the city as well. It was only when I discovered that the lovely Lasha came from a respected Tbilisi family of doctors, and that his grandfather had been a Party functionary, that I understood why Kostya had done it. He would never have looked favourably on the match otherwise.
And the unexpected actually happened: the following week, the lovely Lasha filed for divorce. The paperwork was rushed through, and everything was arranged for his civil wedding to Daria.
Now that nothing stood in the way of her marrying the man she had chosen, her happiness seemed complete. Daria was already talking about the challenge of juggling her career and married life, while Miro and I stumbled through those months with no orientation, searching for a foothold. We got into the works of Machiavelli, which were enjoying a resurgence in popularity at the time; we anaesthetised ourselves with kissing and sex and cheap schnapps; we accepted the constant clashes with Lana and Elene, who had now formed a close alliance based on the conviction that we were no good for each other; we hung around the now practically deserted go-kart track and tried to keep the dismal present at bay.
Miro had suddenly started dreaming of a career as a filmmaker (he wanted to finish what his father had started — though he had never used the word ‘father’ before in all the time I’d known him).
‘You’ll write, I’ll direct. Isn’t it a brilliant idea?’
‘But I don’t write.’
‘No, but you will.’
‘I don’t know, Miro. I don’t think I’m good enough.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. You just have to do it. Just make a start.’
When I sat beside him, lay, laughed, or talked with him, I wasn’t afraid of the aggressive voices on the radio or television. I had the confidence, the illusion, that no one could hurt us if we just stuck together. We were always able to comfort each other by making love. We perfected the art of banishing the images from our heads while clinging to one another like two wild little animals. We wanted to intoxicate each other, hold back tomorrow, and outwit the present. We made love in dark stairwells, at night, behind the go-kart track, on the back seats and bonnets of various cars, in his childhood bed when Lana was out, and once even in the attic of the Green House. When I slept with him, I was thoughtless, I was free. Freed from the crippling expectations I placed on myself; freed of my own inadequacies.
But as the end of May approached and Miro still hadn’t submitted his application to the Film Institute, I pressed him to tell me why. For my part, I had finally started making a few sketches and notes to start work on my first novel. Irritated, he replied that he couldn’t get the necessary documents together this year, and, for that reason, largely at his mother’s behest, he had applied for the Polytechnic Institute, where he would sit the entrance exam for the engineering course.
What followed was our first argument, during which it became clear to me that Miro was a dreamer, someone for whom having dreams was more important than realising them, and that, by contrast, I was a person for whom the dreams stopped at the precise moment when you decided they were just dreams and entrusted them to a distant, uncertain future or the vagaries of fate. Unexpectedly, this insight gave me the strength to put my own doubts aside and start writing. I overcame my inhibitions, retreated to the Green House, and wrote like a woman possessed for a whole week. I wanted to tell my — our — story. But I didn’t yet have a beginning or an end. I let myself be guided by disordered sentences and unfinished characters. I tried to sharpen my memory, to bring scenes and faces back to life. I wanted to prove to myself, but, above all, to Miro, that it could be done, that we could become what we wanted to become, slowly, one step at a time.
I sat in the attic and wrote until my fingers couldn’t take any more. I used a thick leather-bound notebook that had been a present from David, and which I had saved for a special occasion.
*
Finally, Kostya got the wedding he had once wanted for his daughter. Finally, everything was going according to his plan; it was just his country that wasn’t playing along any more.
Countless people were invited and came to the grand hall in Ortachala. Daria glittered and sparkled in her white dress. The managing director of the wine factory, the chief consultant in cardiac surgery, the singer (and recipient of the Order of Lenin), the former colleagues from the ministry, the trade union heads and the Komsomol leaders, along with numerous directors, actors, and musicians, all lent their lustre to the celebration. All the people to whom Kostya wanted to show what a pearl, what a rising star in the firmament of beauties he had raised. And even if his pearl had selected a very dubious line of work, even if the bridegroom was a few years older than her, they were still the model couple.
The
celebratory mood also meant people could quickly and easily forget what was happening on the streets, the shaky footing on which this country stood, the country most of those present had served with unwavering loyalty all their lives. With a few glasses of the best Kakheti wine they could forget the fear in their bones. The fear of the day when the system would chew them up and spit them out. You could forget a lot on such an evening.
The images of Daria’s wedding are so clear in my mind, Brilka, even now; it’s as if I have a photo album in my head that I can leaf through at will. My sister’s happy face, her shining eyes, the little bunch of white roses in her hand, the newlyweds’ tentative kiss, her euphoria, the knowledge that she was indestructible, beautiful — and the arrogance inherent in such beauty.
And I often think, when I see these images in my mind’s eye, of the moment I found Daria in the toilets, where she was reapplying her lipstick, and looked at her in the mirror. How she turned to me then and wrapped her arms around me. How she whispered in my ear that she loved me (‘I love you so much, you little weirdo’) and how she planted a red kiss on my cheek, which was sweaty from dancing with Miro. And how she then flew off like the wind and left me standing there, bewildered and overwhelmed; how I put my hand to my cheek to hold on to her kiss, in the hope its impression would stay there forever.
The old clock keeps good time.
JOSEPH BRODSKY
The following year, I took up my place in the history faculty at the university, and argued constantly with the professors and my fellow students. These long-winded debates wore me down. Final dissertations were often returned on the grounds that the work contained too much ‘Soviet propaganda’ and too little ‘nationalism’.
Outside, tanks rolled past. There were curfews, and incessant demonstrations. Young men suddenly started carrying weapons in public. It was frightening how quickly we got used to this martial sight, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to walk around the city in broad daylight with a rifle over your shoulder.
One by one, the statues of our socialist fathers were torn down. The largest, the statue of Lenin on Lenin Square, was the last to fall, amid a bombardment of eggs and tomatoes.
I had to get used to endless walking: the streets were blocked by people’s assemblies and rallies, and public transport was irregular.
The go-kart track was closed because The Shark and a few of the boys from his clique had joined the newly founded ‘Mkhedrioni’, a private army, and the others didn’t have time to drive around for fun now, either — everyone wanted to help write his country’s future! Now, with guns on their hips, they felt important, thought themselves untouchable, and met conspiratorially in the former Chess Palace to discuss the new national values and get drunk without anyone trying to stop them.
Daria and the lovely Lasha moved into a flat near Vake Park that his parents had bought for their son’s second marriage. Daria’s clothes had become strikingly fashionable, and now that she was married she was always busy. Since the wedding, she was like a different person. She seemed incredibly capable and was clearly making an effort to appear more grown-up and self-aware than she was. She accepted an offer to appear in a three-part historical television drama, this time in Leningrad. Lasha wasn’t involved in the production, but he went with her anyway; they were away all summer.
And at the Green House, unimaginable things were happening. One Saturday morning, woken by the noise, I discovered workmen in overalls in the living room, packing up our three-piece suite under Nana’s watchful eye. When I asked what was going to happen to our beautiful furniture — that was Kostya’s favourite sofa, after all — Nana said she was afraid we could no longer afford to have favourite pieces of furniture. That evening, I went into the kitchen and put two hundred and thirty roubles on the table in front of Nana: all the money I had earned at the go-kart track, which I had been planning to use to finally get myself a pair of genuine Levis and a number of banned books. She looked taken aback, and refused to accept the money. Things weren’t bad enough for us to start letting our children support us, she said. (‘Give it to your mother instead.’)
My mother was always complaining that people no longer had the money to give their children private tuition. She would shout at Aleko that she didn’t know how she was supposed to earn anything now, and Aleko would take her in his arms and promise her it would be all right. I gave up my dream of genuine Levis and slipped the cash I’d saved up into my mother’s bag. Instead of thanks, I earned a scolding, and had to give an account of where the money had come from. I was then told I had been wasting my time with the wrong friends. Once again, I ran out of the flat and slammed the door behind me.
In all this time, my longing to see David hadn’t diminished in the least. Quite the opposite, in fact: it had transformed into a burning in my chest that made me think of him every day; and I realised that the burning wouldn’t stop until I found a replacement for him. But there could only be one replacement: David himself. I had been over to his studio a few times, and hung around on the street in the hope that he might appear around a corner. Day by day, I ventured closer to the door of his apartment building, but for a long time I didn’t dare ring the bell.
Then one afternoon, after a heated discussion with one of my professors that led nowhere, I couldn’t stand it any longer and rang his doorbell. It was a while before I heard his footsteps. When he opened the door, he was holding a ruler. His glasses dangled on a chain against his chest; he seemed smaller than I remembered him, but his deep-set eyes were just as alert as they had been when I was lucky enough to enjoy his company twice a week. He studied me for a while, unsure who it was standing in front of him, and then his face lit up.
‘Niza!’ he murmured, and I saw his marsh-green eyes grow moist. I took a tentative step towards him, opened my arms, and wrapped them around him with all my strength. He let himself be hugged — stiffly at first, then relaxing and relenting in my arms. At that moment, I realised that we had never touched. It was thoughts and words that had made us close, and this intimacy didn’t need to be proven by physical contact.
‘I hoped you would come back one day,’ he said, and, as usual, as if years had not passed since we’d last met, he started to heat up his samovar. The familiarity of the room took away all my fear and uncertainty.
I spoke in a chaotic flood of words; I couldn’t stop. As if I had to vomit everything out. As usual he didn’t interrupt; he listened with a look of concentration on his face and kept pouring us more tea.
‘I feel like I’m suffocating — I want to do so much and I’m so inhibited. I’m constantly disappointing people. I try to do everything right, but I don’t even know what right is. I don’t know why I’m studying what I’m studying. The only thing I know is that I want to write and to be with Miro. But it’s not enough. I’m not enough. Nothing is helping Miro to get on and do what he wants to do.’
Everything I had held back for so long had broken out of me in a torrent. David thought for a long time, with a searching look in his eyes.
‘You can’t live for anyone else, Niza, and nobody can live for you. And it would be terrible if you could. You become what you want to be, and leave other people alone.’
‘But I don’t know what I want to be, David, that’s the thing!’
‘Do what you’re best at. I can’t give you any answers. I never have answered a question for you. I always just listened and gave you time to find the answer for yourself.’
‘Can I … can I come and visit you?’
‘I take it nobody else is going to come round and threaten to have me locked up?’
‘I’m so ashamed. I hate my family. I hate him.’
‘It’s all right. It was nothing new for me. It just hurt to let you go. At the start of my career, I fell in love with a man, six years younger than me — he was my research assistant. I was married at the time and my wife was pregnant with our s
econd son. Rumours started going around, and a colleague denounced me to the head of the institute. But that’s all over now.’
‘That shouldn’t have happened to you.’
‘You’re old enough: come and visit me whenever you like. Besides, I can’t infect you now; you already like men!’
We both laughed. A tortured laugh, perhaps, but one that made everything that had happened disappear.
‘And if you don’t know who you are, then look at all the possible versions of you, find the most impossible one, and become that,’ he said, before giving me a goodbye hug. I walked home slowly, past the dwindling displays in the grocery shops, past the city’s new pawnbrokers.
*
Daria was laying the table. Luckily her husband was in the next room, watching a Dinamo game. I hadn’t visited my sister very often recently; the lovely Lasha never left her side, and he watched her like a guard dog. I don’t think we’d had a single conversation since the wedding without him there.
Daria was rehearsing Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew at the Marjanishvili — to the great chagrin of her fellow students, as it was virtually impossible for a student to bag a leading role at such a renowned theatre.
The telephone rang. She disappeared from the kitchen for a moment. When she came back, she was followed by Lasha, whom I was no longer allowed to call ‘the lovely Lasha’ because it annoyed Daria.
‘Who was that?’ he asked.
‘The assistant director. About rehearsals tomorrow. Please don’t start this again,’ she whispered, and turned her back to him. To my disappointment, however, he still sat down at the table with us.
‘And what did he want from you?’
‘What do you think he wanted? I’ve already told you: he wanted to discuss the timing of the rehearsals.’
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