In bed, he told me his story. He told me that his mother now lived in Israel, that his father had left them when he was three and had broken off contact. He told me that he had dropped out of school and had passed the music-school entrance exam at seventeen and then quit that, too, that he didn’t have anywhere to live right now, that he hadn’t been able to fall in love for many years. And so on and so on.
The next day, he disappeared again. I woke up and he simply wasn’t there. But that was fine by me. The best thing about him was that he didn’t expect anything. That he came and went. That he made no demands. That he was content with a cup of tea, a shot of whisky, some chicken soup. That he was free. Free of wishes.
It went on like this for almost a year. We never went out, never went to the cinema, we did none of the things that people who like each other do. We didn’t arrange anything, we made no plans. Sometimes when I came home he would be sitting on the staircase. I never knew what he did when he wasn’t spending the night in my apartment, and he knew just as little about me.
*
After Aman fell asleep, I got up, went to the bathroom, sat on the edge of the bath, and started to cry. I wept a century’s worth of tears over the feigning of love, the longing to believe in words that once defined my life. I went into the kitchen, smoked a cigarette, stared out of the window. It had stopped raining, and somehow I knew that it was happening, something had been set in motion, something beyond this apartment with the high ceilings and the orphaned books; with the many lamps I had collected so eagerly, a substitute for the sky, an illusion of true light.
*
The following evening, I received a call from my mother, who was always threatening to die if I didn’t return soon to the homeland I had fled all those years ago. Her voice trembled as she informed me that ‘the child’ had disappeared. It took me a while to work out which child she was talking about, and what it all had to do with me.
‘So tell me again: where exactly was she?’
‘In Amsterdam, for goodness’ sake, what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you listening to me? She ran away yesterday and left a message. I got a call from the group leader. They’ve looked everywhere for her, and —’
‘Wait, wait, wait. How can an eleven-year-old girl disappear from a hotel, especially if she —’
‘She’s twelve. She turned twelve in November. You forgot, of course. But that was only to be expected.’
I took a deep drag on my cigarette and prepared myself for the impending disaster. Because if my mother’s voice was anything to go by, it would be no easy matter just to wash my hands of this and disappear: my favourite pastime in recent years. I armed myself for the obligatory reproaches, all of them intended to make clear to me what a bad daughter and failed human being I was. Things I was only too well aware of without my mother’s intervention.
‘Okay, she turned twelve, and I forgot, but that won’t get us anywhere right now. Have they informed the police?’
‘Yes, what do you think? They’re looking for her.’
‘Then they’ll find her. She’s a spoilt little girl with a tourist visa, I presume, and she —’
‘Do you have even a spark of humanity left in you?’
‘Sorry. I’m just trying to think aloud.’
‘So much the worse, if those are your thoughts.’
‘Mama!’
‘They’re going to call me. In an hour at most, they said, and I’m praying that they find her, and find her fast. And then I want you to go to wherever she is — she won’t have got all that far — and I want you to fetch her.’
‘I —’
‘She’s your sister’s daughter. And you will fetch her. Promise me!’
‘But —’
‘Do it!’
‘Oh god. All right, fine.’
‘And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’
‘Aren’t I even allowed to say “Oh god” now?’
‘You’re going to fetch her and bring her back with you. And then you’ll put her on the plane.’
They found her that same night, in a small town just outside Vienna, waiting for a connecting train. She was picked up by the Austrian police and taken to the police station. My mother woke me and told me I had to go to Mödling.
As I threw on some clothes, Aman stared at me wide-eyed, not understanding the world around him any more. Perhaps he never had understood it.
‘What niece, and where the hell is Mödling?’
‘I’ll be on the first plane at six o’clock. I’ll pick her up. Then I’ll get the flight back from Vienna at four and be here in the evening. The day after tomorrow I’ll put her on a plane to Tbilisi, and then we can talk properly, okay?
‘I could come with you, I could —’
‘No. I have to sort this out on my own. Please don’t be cross, it really isn’t a big deal. She’s just an adolescent runaway. I need to make sure I bring her to her senses.’
*
By midday, I had reached the little railway station in the provincial Austrian town. She was sitting there in the empty waiting room with a police officer and a station employee. I signed some form or other, apologised several times for the situation, and took charge of my niece.
I hadn’t seen a recent photo of her and was amazed at how tall she was. She didn’t look like any of us. She had a buzz cut and John Lennon glasses, and was wearing an oversized lumberjack shirt and ripped jeans. The only thing I recognised about her straight away were the black-on-black eyes that were still just as they had been when she was born. She had long, thick lashes, a very light complexion that reminded me of Daria, and rosy cheeks. Her face had a highly focused, serious look, as if she had never smiled in her life. Her drooping shoulders, awkward body language, and the restlessness in her limbs were the only things that gave away her age.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked me as we left the station building and I lit a cigarette.
‘What do you think? If I don’t put you on a plane soon and send you home, your grandmother is going to kill me.’
‘I’m not getting on a plane. I’m scared of flying.’
‘How did you get to Amsterdam? On a horse?’ This was going to be fun.
‘I can only fly if I have at least three people I know with me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That’s just how it is. If I don’t stick to the rule, we’ll crash,’ she said, as if it were an undisputed fact.
‘Are you taking the mickey? Because if so, you’ve chosen the wrong person. I don’t like it when people take the mickey.’
‘I’m telling you how it is. I always stick to the rules.’
‘Fine, but your rules are not my rules, and since I’m in loco parentis right now, I make the rules.’
‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said suddenly, in a soft voice, turning her eyes away.
I looked at her, disconcerted. She had a very particular way of speaking that I found slightly unnerving. I was already feeling overwhelmed and I wondered how I was going to deal with the next few hours in her company.
‘First, we’re going to fly to Berlin, and then —’
‘But I’ve already said I don’t fly. Not unless there are at least three people with me who know me.’
‘And I said this isn’t up for debate.’
‘You’re even more awful than I thought,’ she yelled at me, looking me in the eye with a piercing gaze. She started drawing invisible circles on the paving stones with the tip of her dirty trainer.
‘And you’re an ill-mannered, troublesome little girl who is really getting on my nerves right now.’
She shrugged and turned her back on me.
‘I’m hungry,’ she announced, and started rummaging in her rucksack.
‘You’ll get everything you want if you get on that plane.’
/> ‘No.’
‘But I can’t possibly take you to Berlin by train, it’ll take forever and I have to … I’ve got things to do.’
‘You fly, and I’ll follow on the train. I got here by myself, didn’t I, so I can get back as well. By myself!’
I decided to change tack and be a little more sympathetic. I tried to persuade her, to convince her of the advantages of flying, promised to keep her in Berlin for two or three days, to explore the city with her. But she remained stubborn, gave me the cold shoulder, and wouldn’t hear another word about planes. Should I call Elene and ask her about the best way to deal with her? I could hardly drag her onto a plane; she was almost two heads taller than me.
I left her alone for a moment, took a few steps away, and fished out my mobile, which I hardly used. The battery symbol was always flashing because I never thought to charge it. I called my mother.
‘What is wrong with this child?’ I complained to her. ‘She’s crazy. She refuses to fly. I don’t have time to pander to her whims. I’m going to hand her the phone, and you need to make it clear to her that she’s getting on a plane to Berlin with me and —’
‘Oh, thank the Lord, I’m so glad you found her.’ I heard Elene exhale. ‘Yes, she can be very peculiar, Niza. She has her methods, and —’
‘Methods? What methods? I don’t have time for methods. I have to work. I have to get back to Berlin, and if she doesn’t do as I say right now I’m going to tie her up and —’
‘Oh, Niza, come on — think of yourself; what do you think you were like at her age? You drove me to distraction. In some ways, she’s very like you.’
‘She is not like me. She’s spoilt!’ I snapped at Elene, but before she could reply I heard a beep and the phone gave up the ghost. I swore and walked back over to my niece.
I decided to outwit her. At least she wasn’t refusing to get on a train.
We travelled to Vienna.
On the train, she bit her fingernails constantly, shuffled about in her seat, walked up and down the aisle, sat down again, then pulled a large notebook and an old Walkman out of her rucksack, put the headphones on, and started writing. I didn’t even make the effort to start a conversation. My brain was working overtime, planning how I could trick her into getting on the plane. In Vienna I found the closest café to the station and we had a meal. And there was another surprise in store for me. She proved to be a fussy eater, and explained that she only ate food by colour, and certain colours weren’t part of her diet. I bit my lip to stop myself screaming at her to shut up and eat what was put in front of her.
I steered her into a taxi, on the pretext of taking a look around the city, but she quickly cottoned on to my intention of going to the airport, screamed blue murder, and shouted at me and the taxi driver in such a way that he pulled over. She jumped out and stormed off, taking great, angry strides, bent forward under the weight of her large rucksack. After I had paid the taxi fare I had to run to catch up and make sure I didn’t lose her; then I placated her and gave her my solemn promise that we would take the train.
The sleeper from Vienna to Berlin didn’t leave until ten o’clock that night, so we had a few hours to kill. We went and sat in a station café. She drank three Fantas, one after another.
‘That’s terrible stuff — don’t you want a proper juice?’
She scorned my suggestion with a black look. After that, I decided to spare my nerves and leave her in peace. When I had got her safely back to Tbilisi, I would confront my mother and ask her what she was thinking, letting the girl turn into such a brat.
I bought some newspapers and immersed myself in them. When I glanced up, she wasn’t at the table any more. I panicked. The sleeper was leaving in half an hour. I searched the crowd for her gangly figure, her round glasses, her drooping shoulders. I called her name and swore like a trooper.
Finally, I found her in the ladies’ toilets. I went mad, screamed at her, what was she thinking, what did she think she was doing there — she could forget about playing her little games with me. She regarded me with indifference and went to the sink to wash her hands, entirely ignoring my rage. I stood behind her and stared at her in the mirror.
‘For god’s sake, what is wrong with you? Your behaviour is outrageous. Why did you want to come here, anyway? What did you want to do in Vienna? What was this whole escapade about, and why are you testing my nerves?’
She looked at me in the mirror for a while, calmly washed her hands, and said, as she walked past me, ‘You have a real problem, you know that?’
On the sleeper, she tucked herself away on the top bunk with her Walkman. I couldn’t suppress a smile; it felt like an eternity since I had seen anyone with a Walkman. I woke up every two hours and checked that she was still there.
When we arrived in Berlin, we took a taxi back to my apartment. She missed out every second stair on the staircase; it seemed she had an irrational rule about that, too. I refrained from asking why. I was too tired from the trip and too worked up for any more surprises.
I was glad that we didn’t see Aman. That spared me any further explanations. I got everything I had out of the fridge and prepared breakfast for her. Again, she began to sort through the food. I paid closer attention this time: she seemed to love everything yellow or orange. Fanta. Egg yolk. Oranges. She rejected dark green entirely. White appeared to be acceptable. Red was not touched, so the packet of salami was pushed to the edge of the table.
Watching her eat, I tried desperately to recall everything my mother had told me about her. She adored dancing. She hated it when people called her Anastasia. She wasn’t particularly academic. But she liked to read. She loved animals. Had some kind of allergy, but I couldn’t remember to what. She loved cartoons. She liked horses, ‘Like her mother!’ She didn’t get on with girls her own age. She was scared of thunder and lightning. That was the limit of my knowledge; I had to admit that I didn’t know her, that I couldn’t connect these facts, that I had no insight into her thoughts and feelings. We were strangers, and it seemed she was trying to emphasise this with every word she spoke to me, with every look and every gesture.
But why hadn’t Elene told me about the neuroses and phobias she seemed to have so many of? They were enough to drive you to distraction!
‘So what do we do now?’ I asked her, once she had managed to sit opposite me for a full thirty minutes, chewing and sorting, without giving me any more unpleasant surprises. She shrugged again in her ignorant way, and again I felt the urge to shake her. I tried to follow my mother’s advice and remember what Daria and I were like at that age, but nothing comparable came to mind. This was a long way outside my experience.
‘Shrugging isn’t going to get us anywhere. We have to agree on something, and in any case your grandparents are waiting for you, and worrying.’
‘Why? I mean, you’re their daughter. They know I’m in good hands.’
She chopped up a cucumber and painstakingly cut off the skin.
‘Why do you do that?’
‘What?’
‘This thing with your food?’
‘If I mix red and green, I’ll die,’ she said nonchalantly.
‘What on earth would make you think that?’
‘And what on earth would make you never visit us, not even once?’
The question floored me. I didn’t know what to say.
I went into the living room and made up the sofa-bed for her. I put a clean towel in the bathroom and a new toothbrush on the edge of the basin. I opened the balcony door and sat down at the little table with a cigarette. I urgently needed to think of a solution. Cunning and false promises weren’t going to work. She would refuse point blank to come to the airport. And even if I could convince her to get on a plane with me, there was no way I could fly to Georgia. The semester in Berlin was not yet over, and then I still had some things to work up for the Eastern Eu
rope specialist, and thirdly, and fourthly, and so on. I wanted to pull the covers over my head and wait for things to sort themselves out.
Suddenly, she was standing barefoot in front of me on the balcony, complaining that there wasn’t even a television in the apartment.
‘There’s more to life than sitting in front of the box all day,’ I retorted, annoyed.
‘Such as?’
‘Going for walks. Reading. Thinking. Or working out how Madame is going to get home.’
‘I told you I don’t want to go home. At least, not right now.’
‘Okay, fine. So what do you want to do?’
‘I have to go to Vienna.’
‘Vienna. I see. And what does Madame intend to do in Vienna?’
‘I have to meet someone there.’
‘Who on earth do you want to meet in Vienna?’
‘A woman. You don’t know her.’
‘Listen, Brilka … Why such an odd name, anyway? Brilka. Why do you call yourself that? Your real name is so much prettier.’
‘I can call myself what I like. It’s nobody else’s business, least of all yours.’
Unfortunately, she was right. I hadn’t shown any interest in her for twelve years, and to demand any kind of rights now would be overstepping the mark.
‘Listen, Brilka. I have a life here, I have obligations. Your grandmother instructed me to get you back to Georgia as quickly as possible. As you may have noticed, this whole business has taken me rather by surprise, and just so you know, this isn’t particularly convenient for me, either. I can’t just drop everything and get on a plane with you. You’re not going to Vienna. At least, not now, and I won’t be able to look after you, either. So find another option.’
‘It wouldn’t be enough for you to get on a plane with me, in any case. There have to be at least three people I know. I’ve explained this to you.’
‘Now just stop this ridiculous nonsense.’
‘It’s not nonsense!’ She was suddenly shouting — then she turned her back on me and walked into the living room.
The Eighth Life Page 109