We are, somewhere else, everything that we could have been down here.

AUGUSTE BLANQUI

Ramas had been visiting their little town on official business. A reception was held in his honour, and he was introduced to the town’s most presentable businesses. Finally, he and his delegation were invited to the chocolate factory for a piece of cake and a cup of Georgian tea (by this time, national production was taking priority). The chocolate-maker had been instructed to receive the delegation and entertain them personally, which he did, though with limited enthusiasm. The guests sang the praises of The Chocolaterie’s products, then fell upon them. Bellies full, they were preparing to set off — their train to Tbilisi was leaving late that evening — and a great shaking of hands was underway, when seventeen-year-old Christine came into her father’s shop.

She wanted to go to the races, and had come to ask her father’s permission. She was wearing a yellow summer dress and a black beret, which she had placed on her head at an angle, in the French style. She always changed her clothes after school; the drab uniform was an insult to her beauty. Floating daintily across the floor, paying no attention to any of the guests, she headed straight for her father and gave him her most beguiling smile (she wasn’t usually allowed to go to the races). The guests turned their heads in unison, some with open mouths, conversations interrupted, others unwittingly letting out a gasp of laughter. It was a reaction the chocolate-maker knew only too well: Christine’s God-given beauty took people aback every time. Her father looked at his daughter and couldn’t suppress a smile: she really was confoundedly pretty, he thought for the thousandth time.

She had delicate, flawless white skin, like porcelain (nobody in the family was that pale, the other girls were olive-skinned, like him), a bony, elegant figure, and supple limbs. Her features were almost perfectly symmetrical: a small, straight nose; high cheekbones; shapely, wine-red lips; a long swan neck; and, most notably, almond-shaped eyes, marsh-green and framed with thick lashes. Countless little devils seemed to have gathered in these eyes, and were kindling fires there.

But my great-great-grandfather noticed one reaction in particular: that of the big man, the head of the delegation, whom everyone had been so eager to please. He seemed to be devouring her with his eyes; his coarse face had even reddened a little, and he looked as if he was about to say something, then suddenly shut his mouth again.

Christine, who was accustomed to these reactions, ignored him, with her air of refined indifference, and linked arms with her father.

‘My daughter, Christine,’ said the chocolate-maker.

‘You’re not an actress, are you?’ one of the men whispered. She laughed, and shook her head.

‘She won’t even finish school for a few months yet,’ her father explained.

There followed a few comments regarding her beauty; she received them as if they were entirely self-evident and waited for the party to leave The Chocolaterie.

The last to leave was Ramas Iosebidze, who kissed Christine’s hand in parting.

*

Three days later, she received a huge bunch of red roses, with a scented card tucked into them: These flowers are not worthy of your beauty, Christine. But I think it is worth an attempt to pay tribute to you. Count me as one of your admirers, of which, I assume, there are a great many. I will try to find ways to express the depth of my admiration. Ramas Iosebidze of Tbilisi.

Christine hadn’t shown her parents the many cards and letters she had been sent over the previous few years. She laughed at the young men from the neighbourhood; she and her school friends would make fun of their clumsy declarations of love, and eventually she would tear all the letters up.

But the flowers, which had been sent to her father’s address, could not be overlooked. And so Christine had to show her father the card. He merely smiled — which was the last thing she had expected. She had been prepared for him to curse and throw the card away in exasperation. But no. He even gave her a kiss on the forehead.

Flowers and other gifts arrived with increasing frequency over the months that followed. Christine, who was preparing for her school-leaving exams, was often interrupted during her studies by a courier bearing bouquets of lilacs or bottles of French champagne, exotic perfumes, an Italian feather boa, cashmere shawls, a necklace of black pearls, or silk for petticoats.

Christine barely recalled this man — all she could remember was that he was tall and old. Like her mother, she loved luxury; she didn’t share her older sisters’ modesty. She loved parties and high society, and she loved people paying her the right amount of attention. She loved everything that brought joy and levity; she was choosy, and didn’t worry too much about her future. She had neither grand dreams nor a rebellious streak. She had been raised as the sun-kissed child, universally adored, admired, and idolised, and she wanted nothing more than to continue to receive this treatment. Her favourite pictures were watercolours; she hated apple cake and cinnamon rolls, took long baths in rose water or peach-blossom bubble bath, rubbed honey into her hands, and spent hours looking at herself in the mirror. She pored over fashion magazines — which were becoming ever rarer, and ever less fashionable — and thought about all the beautiful dresses she could wear.

And she had another passion: she loved children more than anything, and in particular her nephew, Kostya. And he seemed to return her love. Whenever he saw her, he fell silent and stared at her unblinkingly for a long time. They could spend hours playing, laughing, and messing about together. Christine hated the narrow confines of her house now that the rough, uncouth workers and their families had moved in upstairs; leafing through magazines like The Fashionable Woman, or at her beloved cinema, watching foreign films in which the women were so elegant, well-dressed, and grand, she became exasperated by Lida’s piety and her requests that Christine dress less conspicuously, by her mother’s exaggerated care and watchfulness, and, above all, by Lara’s growing small-mindedness and parochialism. Yet, nonetheless, Christine was very happy at home.

In June 1923, once she had her school-leaving certificate in the bag, the decisive letter arrived: an invitation for the whole family to attend Ramas’ birthday celebrations in Tbilisi. He was planning a grand party for his thirty-sixth birthday. After much discussion, Christine, her father, mother, and Lida travelled to Tbilisi. They stayed in a pretty guesthouse close to the ‘holy mountain’ of Mtatsminda, where they were treated like royalty.

The party took place the following evening at Ramas’ house on the right bank of the river, in the old-town quarter of Vera. The majestic villa from the previous century, covered in ivy and surrounded by a lush flower garden, the illustrious guests, Ramas’ generous hosting, his élan, his humour and apparent popularity, his wealth, and the impressive party left the required impression on the family. Ramas was now free to woo the youngest daughter.

A ‘big cheese’ like Ramas guaranteed his daughter an untroubled future, thought the chocolate-maker. After his disappointing experience with Simon and Stasia and their over-hasty wedding, and the failure of Meri’s marriage, this was an excellent opportunity for Christine and the whole family. (Meri, who had for long enough felt humiliated and embittered by her unhappy marriage, kept writing her father despairing letters from Kutaisi, begging him to help her and give his consent to a divorce.) Such husbands were not what the chocolate-maker had wished for his daughters. He was particularly pained by Stasia’s lustreless eyes, her hands, rough from farm work, and her taciturn manner.

Christine was his last hope, and this time he wouldn’t, and couldn’t, make a mistake.

Christine — I don’t think she ever found time to consider what all this meant for her. She didn’t even have time to fall in love, least of all with the much older Ramas Iosebidze. On the other hand, she was impressed by his splendid gifts, his generous invitations, his yearning gaze, his height, and the size of his properties. And in high summer, with the encouragement of her parents and the prospect of a move to the capital, she gave her consent when he asked for her hand.

The wedding the following spring was magnificent: at last, a celebration befitting the family’s status, with an immense train and a thousand white roses, countless guests and friends from the north and the south, from cities and villages, a long table laden with all kinds of delicacies, including, of course, the world’s best chocolate gateau. I’m told the likeness of the bridal pair was moulded in chocolate and placed on top of the cake — even if the real bridegroom didn’t quite match the chocolate version, with his full beard, the impressive circumference of his belly, and his balding head. The guests ate, drank, and danced; there was laughter and embracing and congratulations. The band played jaunty music. The night wore on and became stifling.

Stasia left the ballroom and went out into the dark garden, wanting some fresh air and a chance to look back over the events of the day. She sat down contentedly on a bench in the darkness and laid her hands on her belly.

It was already cold, and multi-coloured leaves covered the ground. She felt a light touch on her back and saw Christine, shining white, standing beside her.

‘I had to get out into the fresh air for a while as well. It’s so exhausting, getting married!’ she said in her precocious way, and sat down beside Stasia with a groan.

‘You don’t love him, do you?’ Stasia suddenly blurted out, and regretted the question even as she asked it. Christine straightened up and frowned at her sister, who, by comparison, looked like a boy who had grown too tall. Her long plait hung down her back and, despite the occasion, she wore no make-up and had on a simple blue and white spotted cotton dress.

‘But he loves me enough for two. And anyway, I already love the life I’m going to live,’ Christine replied with disarming honesty.

‘You’re too young to talk like that.’

‘Oh, Stasia — still the old romantic. And I want to have children soon: preferably a boy first, just as pretty as your Kostya.’

Christine laid a hand on Stasia’s belly.

‘I wish you a great deal of happiness, in any case, little sister,’ said Stasia, with a smile.

‘And what happiness did your great love bring you, sister dear?’

The question took Stasia by surprise, and she shifted a few centimetres away from Christine. But, at that moment, someone called Christine’s name. As the band struck up the loudest chord of the evening, Stasia’s sister, in her beautiful dress, hurried back into the ballroom and into her new life, and Stasia remained behind. She looked sadly up at the stars and wondered what Peter Vasilyev was doing just then, and which girls he was teaching, and what would have become of her if she hadn’t allowed her head to be turned by Simon Jashi’s sweet enticements. Even her little sister seemed to be cleverer and more calculating than she, who would soon be a mother of two.

And so Christine moved to her influential husband’s house in the capital, and Stasia and her children moved into Christine’s old, light-green room, while posters continued to appear all over their home town bearing slogans like ‘The spy aspires to Party membership’ and ‘The enemy behind the director’s mask’.

Stasia lived in the house where she was born for another four years, forever waiting for her husband to be granted leave. He was released at the beginning of June every year, and allowed to return home for four weeks. He was admittedly more lively and talkative than before, but the old Simon, whom Stasia still loved and looked for, never came back.

Her father went to the chocolate factory less and less since he had been demoted to second deputy director. Christine wrote rosewater-scented letters, in which she enthused about her splendid life and the wonderful trips she had taken, or complained about the housemaid. Now and then she would send a parcel full of rare and expensive items: an Armenian cognac for her father, good-quality wool for Lida, caramels and nice trouser material for Kostya, pretty earrings for her mother, and so on.

Stasia darned socks, and was often to be seen sitting on the tiny wooden balcony of the shrunken house, which looked out over the fabric shops and the fruit market now managed by the municipality, gazing into uncertainty. Occasionally, and mostly out of habit, she wrote letters to her Red Lieutenant, mainly concerning the children and money matters. Every six months she went to the photographer and had the children’s pictures taken. She enclosed the brownish photographs, glued onto stiff cardboard, in the letters to her husband.

*

At this point, Brilka, I should give a more detailed introduction to the little man with the pince-nez, who was on his way to becoming big.

This little man, born in an Abkhazian-Georgian village called Merkheuli, came from a poor background. He didn’t particularly excel at school, and, following his apprenticeship as a technical engineer in Baku on the Caspian Sea, he found a position in the oil business. These were early days for the industry, which, at that time, was still dominated by the Swedish Nobel family (yes, yes, that Nobel!).

Rumour had it that he owed his appointment to the Azerbaijani government’s secret service, which reported to the British secret service and had its eye on Transcaucasia. He had joined the Party as a twenty-year-old, in 1919 — though he claimed to have been a first-wave communist who was already a Party member in 1917. But then, he had always had a rather idiosyncratic understanding of truth. Unlike his more famous countryman, he had no proven criminal past, and — this was the most surprising thing — hardly any political ambitions. Those who had known him as a young man said that, for him, it had always been about ‘making it’, compensating for his lack of education and his low social status, providing for his mother, who lived in poverty, and his deaf-mute sister, and being able to impress beautiful women from better social circles. Pretty banal ambitions, in retrospect.

But he developed an almost pathological urge to join the upper classes, initially failing because he never appeared educated, sensitive, and charming enough to get a foot in the door of high society. But, one day, this little man with the love of opera and feminine beauty finally did make it: in 1922, he came to Tbilisi at the head of a secret operations unit of the Georgian Cheka, to conduct a highly effective campaign against counter-revolutionary scum. A year later, he had done such a thorough job that he was awarded the Red Banner. In the year that Kostya started school, this man had already become head of his organisation, and was working on securing a personal meeting with his countryman, who was no longer called Joseph, Soso, or Koba. After a dizzying rise to power, he had smashed the Party triumvirate and was on the way to placing himself alone at the apex of the vast empire: he was now the man of steel, soon to become the Leader and Generalissimus.