Miro had been invited to a birthday party that he had been talking about for days. I was supposed to be going with him. Lana had been out of the house all day; I’d come over early, and we had spent the whole morning in bed. When the time came to get ready, when he got up and started to put his clothes on, I turned over and curled up like a tired old cat. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to leave this bed. I wanted him to stay with me. Just to hold me, without saying anything. That was all I wanted. The idea of being among people, of relaxing and chatting and drinking, laughing at jokes and singing along to songs, even having to dance, was abhorrent to me. It caused me physical discomfort.
He tried to persuade me, threw my clothes onto the blanket. Then he lost his patience and started talking, louder and louder, increasingly uncertain and helpless, until his despair turned into blind rage and he pulled the covers off me, grabbed my wrists, yanked me upright, twisted my hand, and I began to scream.
He let go. But I didn’t stop screaming. I screamed like a banshee, distraught, flailing my arms around, fending him off, preventing him from getting close to me. Then I stopped screaming and began to cry. The tears ran down my cheeks without a sound. I slid along the wall and flopped onto the bed. Half naked, I hugged myself with both arms and rocked back and forth. He sat down beside me, but made no attempt to touch me.
‘I want to go, and if you don’t want to come with me, that’s up to you.’
It seemed his stock of sympathy was just as exhausted as my will to explain. He got up and started combing his hair in front of the mirror. I wanted him to leave me in peace, but at the same time I couldn’t bear the idea that he was about to go and leave me to myself.
I went over to him. I clung to him. I tried to keep hold of him. He released himself from my arms and went on with his preparations. I was so desperate to tell him everything, to explain it all, describe it all. But I didn’t know how. I wanted so badly to keep hold of him; it felt like a matter of life and death that he should stay with me, that he was there for me that night. Yes, I wanted him to save me from myself. Was that too much to ask? Was that so impossible?
‘You always want everything at once. And the minute someone can’t offer you that, you turn away from them. Do you think I’m happy? Do you think I like things the way they are? Do you think this shitty country doesn’t get on my nerves? Rezo — you know, from my course — he offered to get me a job at his father’s construction company,’ he added quietly. He pulled on a black suit over a white shirt carefully ironed by Lana. I could never iron anything so perfectly.
‘A new company — only got its licence this year. His father has brought in investors, and once it’s up and running he wants to leave things to Rezo and me. The investors are Turks, but we’re hoping to get into the European market as well in a few years. When the situation here has stabilised, the property business is going to boom. Like it has in lots of post-Soviet countries. I’m going to start with building permits, and then later I can do something more creative —’
‘Building permits?’
The words jolted me out of my spiral of thoughts. I stopped in front of him and gave him a puzzled look.
‘Yes, building permits. What’s so strange about that?’
‘I don’t know. You and building permits. That is strange.’
‘Jesus — I thought you’d be pleased if I didn’t have to tart up cars for fat cats in that filthy garage any more. It’s a proper job, something fun, something that’s more me, professionally, and —’
‘Building permits? Oh, right, they’re much more you.’
‘Don’t get sarcastic with me. I’m not going to let you spoil my evening, or my future. Today’s already been demanding enough.’
‘I didn’t know being intimate with me was demanding for you.’
‘It’s not intimacy, Niza. This isn’t intimacy any more. At least be honest with yourself.’
Christine’s old television set was on in the next room, and I could hear a bad Mexican actress in a bad Mexican soap, underscored with bad, kitschy Mexican music, telling a bad Mexican actor that she would love him forever and wait for him forever on their favourite hacienda, but she had to marry José Gilberto, because she had no other choice.
‘What about the film?’
I knew that asking that question just then would make him angrier still, but I had to ask it all the same.
‘The film, the film! Who’s going to be interested in a film right now? Take a look around you, Niza — wake up!’
‘But we were going to —’
‘Come on, get your shoes on. I have to go. Everyone’s waiting for me.’
I was angry at him. At the compromise he was about to enter into, at his way of adapting and accepting everything, but above all I was angry with him because he had not managed to change me. To make me normal. To tame me. I cursed my earlier loyalty to myself and my irrationality, my stupidity, my contradictions, my hopes, and the idea that I could make a difference. An idea that had been taken from me in the space of a few minutes by a sadist, with my trousers down, pressed up against an old printing machine, hands twisted behind my back.
How could it be that the person I loved so obsessively, the person who occupied most of my thoughts, hopes, and ideas, had not been able to do what a cruel stranger had managed so effortlessly? To break me. To drive all hope out of my body. All sense of resistance. All sense of stubbornness. And how could it be that, despite the assumption I would be better off without these hopes, I was skating through life without them as if on sheet ice, as if tied to a sled that I couldn’t steer — and now Miro couldn’t stop this bloody sled, either? How could it be that I was drowning in my own depths and he was unable to reach out the hand that could pull me up?
But even in my anger, I understood how stupid it was. How unfair. He could only perceive the invisible consequences of that night. The bruises had long since vanished. And everything else that had been given to me in the print works as a permanent reminder of that night was not just invisible but unspeakable. How could I expect him to see the invisible and speak the unspeakable for me? It was impossible. Of course he was failing me. Just as I was failing myself, my daily life, my stories, my non-existent future, my aspirations, my fellow human beings, my country, my time, and now him as well.
Why couldn’t he just see through me the way my sister’s little baby did? Why did he find it so difficult? This laughing, gentle, playful boy who, over the years, had taught me what it was to dream life, and who in his untroubled way had introduced me to love. Who had taken me up and given me a home within him. But now that he was about to finish his degree and would soon be occupied with boring building permits, now that he was dreaming dreams he could be sure would come true, now that he wanted to go to parties and drink toasts to levity, I had become too heavy, too intransigent, too black, and too bitter.
Why had he not revealed to me when we were first together that our love wasn’t meant to withstand wars, poverty, cold, electricity blackouts, disappointments, and above all a single night: a night in an empty print works that was now used for something very different from the spreading of news — yes, something very different. Why had he not shielded me from this love? When he constantly reproached me for not committing to him, how could I convince him that he was wrong? I committed to him all those years ago in the television room of the youth centre, where I read Wuthering Heights to him and travelled with him through time and worlds, and felt that anything that could be thought and described was possible. Yes, I had committed to him. It was my own self I had never committed to. It was my life, which I always kept at arm’s length, incapable of settling on one of the billions of versions of ME and standing by it, pursuing it. ‘Of all the possible versions of yourself, find the most impossible one,’ David had advised me, and maybe I had done just that. Maybe I myself was the impossibility.
I couldn’t let him go,
let him leave the room, but nor could I go with him. I clung to his neck, literally begged him to stay, tugged at his jacket. He was annoyed, thought I was being silly, refused to believe that staying could seem like such a life-and-death matter to me. First, he tried gently to convince me to pull myself together. When his persuasion had no effect, he kept shaking me off, pushing me back, and when that didn’t help, either, he took hold of me, lifted me up, and flung me away. I banged my head against the wall, slid down it, and sat on the floor. My head hurt, and I pressed my hand to where I had hit it. He looked down at me for a while, breathing heavily, not knowing what to think, then gave a reproachful shake of his head and stormed out of the room.
*
A month after Anastasia’s birth, Daria’s milk dried up. Daria started sleepwalking, getting up in the night and wandering around the house, sometimes even into the garden. She stomped through the snow barefoot, dressed only in a long, thin nightshirt, her shadow passing across the winter landscape with a striking elegance, like a wanton version of Ophelia on her way to the brook. Motherhood gave her back the beauty that had been crushed beneath the weight of her marriage; the baby lent her an alarming magnificence. Her straw-blonde hair had grown to waist-length again, covering her back. Her skin had regained its ivory colour. We had to lure her back into the house, carefully, cautiously. In the morning she would have no memory of the previous night. Elene and I started to take turns keeping watch. Daria had become a tightrope walker again.
Twice, Daria took her daughter into the city to show the baby to Lasha. She said that both times he cried when he held little Anastasia in his arms. She told me this with a degree of gratification in her voice. But after he heard that Daria had given his daughter her own surname, he refused any further contact. Daria stopped mentioning Lasha’s name. She stopped talking about him. Overnight, it was if this person had never existed for her. And we all played her game, too, banishing Lasha’s memory from the house.
One morning, a few days before New Year, Daria came into the kitchen — Elene and I were just packing up Stasia’s cakes — and said she wanted to come into town with us. She couldn’t stand being in this ‘palace’ a moment longer; she needed people around her. Mother was pleased, and agreed. Daria’s cheeks glowed as she gazed out at the snowy landscape from the back seat of the car. And I too was glad to see her showing some emotion again. I hoped the storm clouds had passed. We dropped Daria off somewhere on Lenin Square, which was now called Freedom Square. One of the rusty advertising hoardings displayed an old circus poster with a clown’s face grinning idiotically. It had gained a few bullet holes during the civil war. I felt sorry for the poor clown. They had taken out their frustration on his red nose. Then we delivered the cakes to the basement shop and I drove on to the university.
As I was leaving the university building, I spotted Lasha’s ex-wife at the bus stop, having an animated conversation with two other women. Luckily she didn’t recognise me, and my curiosity made me sidle closer to the little group. They were talking about Lasha. She was telling her friends about his physiotherapy, the progress he was making, and the hope that one day he would be able to walk again. She announced with evident pride that she was about to move him into her flat, so that she wouldn’t have to keep going to his parents’ house to look after him.
‘And what about his wife?’ one of the friends asked.
‘That little tramp? It was lucky he realised in time what it was he’d let himself in for. All those debts were down to her: he had to maintain her standard of living, because Madame Jashi was used to the best of the best. He told me how she shamed and made a fool of him in Moscow. That when he didn’t bring home any money she wouldn’t speak to him for days — can you imagine? The poor man had tears in his eyes when he told me that. I knew right from the start she would bring him nothing but misery. I mean, she doesn’t even know the meaning of love; she just wanted to prove that she could have him, prove she could make him leave me. But I knew he’d come to his senses one day. And in that respect, something good did come out of this tragedy that befell him …’
I wanted to run at her, wrap her hair round my hand, and throw her to the ground, to give her the loudest, hardest slap I was capable of, but I felt paralysed, unable even to summon up the strength to make myself known or give her a retort. Instead, ashamed and empty, I stood by and watched as the women got on the trolleybus and left.
*
We spent four days looking for Daria. For four days we phoned everyone she knew. My mother was trembling all over, and Kostya’s hands could barely hold the receiver. On the fourth day, one of her former friends finally gave me an address where she ‘might possibly be staying’. It was a building in the new town that housed some artists’ studios. A guy who looked like he’d just stepped out of a boxing ring opened the door. Without telling him who I was or what I was doing there I ran past him, through the tiny front courtyard and into a smoky room with a high ceiling supported by pillars. The boxer strode after me. There were a few unfinished sculptures standing about, Janis Joplin was blaring from the huge speakers, and it stank of marijuana.
Some girls in short skirts were lounging on a battered sofa, while a long-haired joker told some wisecrack to make them laugh. Daria was sitting on the arm of the sofa, leaning against the wall and laughing with them. She was drunk. I dragged her outside and bundled her into the car. But not before I had persuaded the boxer to lend me some money, as the search for Daria had emptied my petrol tank and I didn’t have a cent left to my name.
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand
In a desperate land
THE DOORS
‘Who do you think you are? Are you trying to set yourself up as my keeper again? Leave me alone! If I want to get drunk, I’ll get drunk. I can do whatever I want. And you — with your choice of friends, you can’t exactly turn your nose up at mine.’
‘And where do you think it’s going to get you, staying out, getting stoned out of your mind in that artists’ colony? Who are these people, anyway? Where on earth did you pick them up? You’re not like them.’
‘Oh yeah? What am I then? A great actress?’
‘Yes, you are, but you need to start doing something about that again. This country is going to the dogs; you’re not the only one having a hard time, Daro.’
‘You think you know better than me. You think you’ve hooked yourself a great guy who’s going to love you forever and have intellectual conversations with you, who’ll support you and fulfil your every wish. That’s what you think, isn’t it? Miro will cheat on you the first chance he gets. He’ll leave you lying on the floor, step over you, and carry right on walking. They’re all like that. Yeah, yeah — our poor gifted girl still thinks she has to change the world.’
‘I have no reason to assume Miro will leave me at the first opportunity. They’re not all like that, Daria.’
She laughed in my face.
‘Oh, the poor little gifted girl doesn’t believe me. She only sees the good in people, right? No, all your friends are noble. They’re all little heroes, just like you.’
‘Stop it, Daria. Stop being so horrible. You’re not like this.’
‘Oh yes, I forgot: you’re above everything and everyone. But a few more disappointments, a few heroic deeds that don’t work out, a few more wounds, and a real, deep insight into the mind of your sweet-natured boyfriend and you’ll stop seeing the good in people, Niza.’
‘Do you think I’ve never been disappointed in my life? Would it make you feel better if I told you what —’
‘Oh please, keep your suffering to yourself. I’ve got enough of my own.’
‘Your suffering! As if everything else were irrelevant compared to your unhappy marriage! Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, but not everyone is as much of a pig as your beloved husband.
’
‘Oh, you’re wrong; your saintly Miro is no better. Want to bet on it?’
Something about the way she said it, the devilish look on her face, the schadenfreude, shocked me and made me shudder. I left the room without saying another word. On the terrace, I could hear big Stasia singing little Anastasia a lullaby.
*
Even though I was so angry with her that I decided I would never go looking for her again, would never heave her, drunk and staggering, into the car and drive her home, I never held out for more than twenty-four hours. I would go to the studios or wherever else she was and pick her up. Even Stasia warned me to leave her be, and Aleko advised me to let her ‘get it out of her system’, get over her heartache, but I just couldn’t. It made me sick to think of her drinking herself into forgetfulness, into irresponsibility. But I now know that focusing entirely on Daria’s troubles wasn’t a selfless mission; it made it easier to distract myself from my own. The unfamiliar places I entered on my searches for her kept me from revisiting the place I didn’t want to return to. I could go for several hours at a time without thinking about the print works or the images that had invaded and occupied my head. When I was thinking about Daria, I didn’t have to think about the problems Miro and I were having. Since our last argument, it felt as if he had been deliberately avoiding me. He always pretended to be busy, was always inventing some excuse as to why he had no time for me.
*
One morning — when, at Kostya’s entreaty, Daria had spent three days in a row at the Green House — I found her on the roof terrace, wrapped in a blanket, staring glassy-eyed into the distance as the tears ran down her cheeks.
The Eighth Life Page 103