Fantasies born of sheer fear, no more.
Of course, if David Ninoshvili had really come to us to avenge himself on me, for whatever reason, he had achieved his aim. He could leave with his mission accomplished, a Georgian hero whose greatest courage is not in killing a defeated enemy but in showing mercy at the right moment. He defeated me, but he didn’t stab me with his flick knife, he let me live.
The mercy he showed me would then indeed resemble a terrible revenge. I must go on living in the ruins of the life I have built up over the years. I have wrecked it myself, for fear the Georgian might dispute it with me.
I don’t know whether my wife will ever really come back to me; I doubt it. Conversations between Julia and me are confined to the insignificant subjects essential to keep the household running. I am still sleeping in the spare room. So far Julia has not shown any sign of wanting to end our separation. I don’t get to feel her closeness any more, not even the “perfume of her countenance” that a merciful wind blew towards Shah Moabad’s brother Ramin when he despairingly followed his beloved Princess Vis in her litter. What the deserted man suffered I could read in the tale told in the Visramiani, and I felt it daily for myself. “When man and woman do not bring each other joy, what is there left in life?”
I have lost sight of my son. He is talking to me again, not so long ago he even challenged me to a game of chess (and beat me), but he leads his own dubious life as before, going in and out of Herr Schumann’s summer house. If I were to take him to task, he could ask, “What are you after? You don’t take what you preach seriously yourself. You covered up for me, didn’t you?” And he would be right to say so. I have stopped asking him questions to see if I can find out after all whether he is in league with Herr Schumann’s skinheads. I’d only be inviting the question, “Why don’t you stop going on at me like that?”
I haven’t just cheated on my wife with her best friend; I deceived her with Herr Hochgeschurz, going behind her back to spin a web with an agent to catch my rival, and in the end I was entangled in it myself.
I tried to deliver David Ninoshvili up to the knife just because I was afraid of him. I realized that danger threatened him as soon as Ralf told me to leave him to sort out the problem. But I delayed, instead of doing what I ought to have done about that at once. I stood by and saw a man, who had suffered humiliation after humiliation, and needed my help, a poor fellow who perhaps really does have friendly feelings for me, beaten to within an inch of his life.
So much for the indictment. Pater, peccavi? Over and out?
Yes. I won’t make excuses for myself. If I wanted to do that I’d begin going round in circles again. I’d replace one suspicion full of holes with another, coming up with more and more explanations for my fear, more and more self-justifications for my hatred.
For example I would, or could, ask whether it’s really just homesickness making Ninoshvili want to turn his back as soon as possible on the Federal Republic, that fine country where even in times of need you find out that life is worth living. I could give free rein again to my unloving suspicions of Julia. I have told her in confidence that Herr Hochgeschurz suspects the Georgian of being a KGB agent. But perhaps she has passed the information on to Ninoshvili.
I could suspect that our guest decided to go back not because he was homesick but on account of this information. No one told him to go; the doctors even warned him against travelling too soon. But perhaps it’s getting too hot for him in the Federal Republic.
And if, as Julia insinuates, I was not really concerned to protect her, then I could entertain an even uglier suspicion of my wife. Has she really spoken to Matassi on the phone, did Matassi really pick up the receiver in Ninoshvili’s apartment? If I were still going to distrust my wife, I could for good or ill try reviving my terrifying theory that Matassi was kept alive only so that there’d be a means of blackmail available, the accusation that I had tried to rape Ninoshvili’s wife.
Perhaps even I wouldn’t really believe that Julia’s understanding with the Georgian went so far as to deceive me in such a malicious way. But I could construct another and sounder reason why Julia told me about a telephone conversation that she never had.
In that case Matassi—so I would tell myself—is still only a phantom; perhaps she has separated from Ninoshvili, or perhaps she is dead. But Ninoshvili needs her to cover up his tracks. With Julia’s help, he lets everyone in this country who might be interested in his whereabouts know that he is going back to his loving wife in Tbilisi. But really he has a very different destination in mind. Julia books him a fight to Tbilisi by way of Vienna. In Vienna, however, he gets off the plane and goes underground, hoping that the Federal German Office for the Protection of the Constitution will not pursue him there.
Of course in that case I would have to suspect my wife of being in league with Ninoshvili. But if I wanted to lay myself open to my fears and suspicions again, then I would find my reasons for that too.
I am sure I’m not doing Julia an injustice by assuming that she also likes Ninoshvili as a man. Whether Ralf is right in thinking that she has slept with him of her own free will I don’t know. But if I still wanted to give my fantasies free rein, I could imagine Ninoshvili using gentle persuasion to get her into bed.
I would call to mind her remarkable reactions to my question about the man in Halle. And I would persuade myself that Ninoshvili knew the same as the Stasi officer did, thus having a strong means of blackmailing Julia to hand, and she succumbed to it.
I could get carried away into drawing the conclusion that my wife, once that had happened, was willing to help Ninoshvili escape and lay the false trail to Matassi, so as to deceive me yet again. I could even, if I were unable to quell my fear and my distrust, make an assumption with even farther-reaching consequences.
Ninoshvili doesn’t intend to leave the country at all. Julia has told him that I know he is planning to apply for political
asylum. They have worked out together how they can get a breathing space. For the moment they can rely on the doctors who so urgently advised him against travelling. And later they will manage to find more and more reasons to postpone his departure indefinitely.
Chapter 73
Ninoshvili left the Federal Republic of Germany this morning. An ambulance took him to the airport. Julia went in the ambulance with him, I followed in my car.
He isn’t flying by way of Vienna. Julia has booked him an Aeroflot fight to Moscow. He can stay on the plane in Moscow, and then it fies on to Tbilisi by way of Rostov on the Don.
Yesterday evening Matassi called us at home. Julia took the call. She told Matassi what the hospital doctors have prescribed and how to give the medical drugs that Ninoshvili is taking back with him. Then she handed me the receiver.
I heard a distant rushing sound, but I recognized Matassi’s deep-toned voice. She said, speaking English, “Hello, Christian. I want to thank you for everything which you have done for David. You have done so much for him. I’m very grateful, Christian. I send you my love. I hope we shall meet again. I send you my big love. And I send you a very big kiss.”
I was able to park my car just outside the airfield and followed the ambulance on foot as it slowly drove on. It stopped by the movable steps set up to the door of the plane. The paramedics lifted out the stretcher on which Ninoshvili had been lying during the drive, he sat up, they helped him to his feet and gave him two crutches.
Julia took one of the crutches from him and put his arm around her shoulders. With small, careful footsteps she guided him to the foot of the steps, where a sturdy man in civilian clothes and a handsome blonde stewardess were waiting.
They stopped there. Julia hugged Ninoshvili and kissed him. He held her close and buried his still-bandaged head in her shoulder. When he straightened up tears were pouring down his face.
I came up, he gave me his hand, clasped me to his chest and kissed me on both cheeks. He said, in a muffled voice, “My friend! Thank you. I ask you to forgi
ve me. I will always be your friend!”
The sturdy man picked up the leather suitcase that one of the stretcher-bearers had taken out of the ambulance. The stewardess took the crutch from Julia, placed her hand on Ninoshvili’s back and helped him up the steps.
He swung himself up from step to step, leaning on the other crutch and using his free hand to clutch the rail of the steps. Halfway up he stopped, with the leg in plaster stuck on one step, and began to sway dangerously, as if he might fall backwards any moment now. Julia’s hand few to her mouth. The stewardess took his arm and steadied him.
In the doorway of the plane he turned back, smiled, and was going to wave, but the stewardess made him go on. A steward appeared in the doorway. The steps were wheeled away, the ambulance engine started. The steward pulled the door back and shut it. Julia was craning her neck, but you couldn’t see anyone through the windows of the plane.
While the plane engines were turning over, we walked together to the airfield gate. Halfway there we met Herr Hochgeschurz. He nodded a greeting. Julia said, “I’ll wait at the car,” nodded back at the agent, and walked past him.
Herr Hochgeschurz offered me his hand, and I took it, but I went on walking. Hochgeschurz followed me. “Well, there we are,” he said.
I didn’t reply. The agent said, “He has courage, one can’t deny that.”
I looked askance at him. Hochgeschurz went on, “I imagine there’ll be certain people waiting for him in Tbilisi. People who have a bone to pick with him. Well, you know these Georgians better than I do. Revenge to the bitter end. He’ll hardly get off scot-free.”
I asked, “How do you know that?”
Hochgeschurz laughed. “Yes, you’re right. What do any of us know about it?”
David's Revenge Page 26