Submissive to you? You’re out of your mind!

I submit only to the will of the Lord.

I want neither thrills nor pain,

My husband — is a hangman, and his home — prison.

ANNA AKHMATOVA

Andro Eristavi returned to Tbilisi in the autumn of 1946. He was released without further explanation and put on a goods train to Moscow. There he was met by a couple of men from the NKVD — now the MVD — and taken to a police station, where it was made clear to him in no uncertain terms that he could hope for neither proper employment nor any kind of social integration. He was a parasite, and in future would be treated as such. He was to keep his mouth shut, live inconspicuously, think inconspicuously, never draw attention to himself, and content himself with employment in a kolchoz somewhere in the mountains. There was no chance of him obtaining the necessary registration certificate to live in Tbilisi. He should consider himself lucky to be alive; if he hadn’t had influential friends, he would have been hanged in a few months’ time — even a bullet was too good for scum like him.

Right up to the last minute, Christine didn’t say a word about Andro’s release and return. She was also the one who picked him up from the bus station and took him to a little apartment in the new town. The house it was in was still under construction, meaning that it was completely empty; it belonged to one of Christine’s doctor friends, who had said she could use it for a few weeks.

Andro looked worse than she had expected. Like a haggard old man, with cheekbones that stood out so sharply you could cut yourself on them.

She disinfected his clothes, brought him new ones, washed him, shaved his lice-infested head and his beard, cooked him light, non-fatty meals. He didn’t speak much, but thanked her for every little thing, which drove Christine crazy. She asked him what he would like. He requested a few books, which she brought from home, and a little schnapps, which she also obtained for him. He spent his time reading or listening to the little radio she had bought him, waiting for her to come back and bring him something to eat.

It was only when she judged that Andro was stable enough to cope with the impending meeting that she picked Kitty up from university and took her to the new town. Buildings were being constructed on every street corner now, mostly by prisoners-of-war.

‘Where are you taking me?’ asked Kitty suspiciously when they were in the tram.

‘I have a little surprise for you. But I must ask you to control yourself as best you can,’ came the unexpected reply.

After they had battled through the jungle of apartment blocks, all of which looked the same, Christine knocked at a rough wooden door on a half-finished staircase. There were no tears, no screaming: in fact, there was nothing, at all. There were two people — a young woman with dark, bobbed hair, in a green raincoat and knee-length boots, and a haggard, prematurely aged young man, stooped and short-sighted, staring into space, whose hands shook as if he had Parkinson’s disease. They stood there in front of one another. They didn’t touch. Eventually Christine’s voice wrenched them out of their daze and called them to the table she had just laid.

‘I’ve made chicken stew. I took a lot of trouble over it. So come, eat something. And there’s cherry liqueur.’

Christine tried all evening to cheer them up a little. She chatted about the weather, about her work at the hospital and her unruly patients, but neither of them laughed, not even once, or said a word. Late that evening she picked up her handbag and left them alone together.

*

Kitty stayed in this apartment for the next fourteen days. What exactly she did during those days, I don’t know. Perhaps she nursed him, as Christine had before her, cooked for and washed him. Perhaps they just drank cherry liqueur in silence, or read each other the poems of Lord Byron, of which Andro is said to have been particularly fond. Perhaps Kitty tried to cheer him up, telling him all sorts of anecdotes, or perhaps she just lay beside him and held his trembling hand in hers. She brought him his old things, which she had kept safe: a whole tool-bag full, so that he could start woodcarving again.

After these two weeks, Kitty went back home and took out her old guitar, which she had scarcely used before then and could only play badly. At first there was no music, no harmony, in the chords. She kept on trying until a simple but clear melody emerged from beneath her fingers. The next day she got herself a couple of music books and started to practise every day.

*

During that first meeting with Andro, it was immediately, searingly clear to Kitty that the days when wishes were flexible, pliable, were gone for good — buried on all the countless battlefields in the west and the east, the south and the north. She looked at Andro and saw a shadow who was unable to speak of the horror. In the first few days she had so hoped, had so wished, that he would ask her; that he would feel his way towards the unspeakable, towards her burning wound; but he didn’t, and she didn’t succeed in putting everything she had saved up, accumulated, into words. Like the rest of the family, the two of them were swallowed up by silence: silence consumed them, like a great whale in whose belly all of them, one after the other, had landed.

She soon felt more miserable around him than without him. She could bear his forlornness, but not his absence, the fact that he no longer had anything to communicate to the world. Even his eyes seemed to have lost their radiance; their blue seemed dull and watery now, and his dreamy gaze was gone for good. The war had beaten, shot, obliterated the dreams from his body, from his head.

She sensed the way he avoided the sight of her firm, well-rounded body, how he looked away whenever she drew near, how he resisted being touched by her, as if she contained explosives and he feared that her very first caress would blow him to pieces.

Only once, in the depths of her despair, did she touch his forehead with her hand and press her lips firmly to his, leaving him no chance to evade her — but he did not return her kiss. He remained cold; his body betrayed no sign of desire. Ashamed, he rose and went into the kitchen, and Kitty tried to force herself to smile through her tears so he wouldn’t feel she thought him weak and incapable. Incapable of loving.

Lying awake at night on the mattress, with him on the sofa just a few feet away, she sometimes felt an insatiable desire to leap up, throw water in his face, scream at him to wake up and help her; to tell him of the price she had paid for his dreams. But she knew that if she did she would pull the ground from under his feet once and for all.

*

When Kitty returned home, Stasia happily took over Andro’s care, and from then on Kitty stopped visiting him. Neither Stasia nor Christine questioned her about it. It was only weeks later, as she was returning home from a play, that she decided to pay him a spontaneous visit. She was wearing an elegant dark-blue dress with a plunging neckline.

She regretted her decision the minute she entered the apartment. Andro greeted her more sullenly than usual, and when she took off her coat he abruptly turned his back, muttering to himself. She followed him into the cramped kitchenette, where he put some water on to boil.

‘I’ve brought you some of those sour barberry sweets you like so much,’ she said, trying too hard to sound friendly.

‘Will you stop it!’ he shouted suddenly, banging his fist on the edge of the table. ‘You can see that …’

‘What have I done? Why are you yelling at me?’

‘You come here, you pretend everything’s all fine and dandy, and every time you come your clothes get more outlandish, and the sweets get sweeter, and you expect me to —’

‘What, what do I expect? I don’t expect anything, I just want you to be all right.’

‘I can’t do it. Stop deceiving yourself. You’re so beautiful; I look at you, and it makes me want to weep. But I can’t bear this any more. Your being here makes it so blindingly obvious to me that I’ve fallen apart; I can’t stand it. I don’t have any strength left, I don’t even know how I’m supposed to get through the next day, let alone —’

‘But I don’t expect anything of you.’

‘Yes, you do. You expect me to give you hope. Sometimes I even ask myself whether it was the right thing to get me released.’

‘You are so ungrateful. That is so bloody unfair — I could kill you right now.’

‘So do it! Maybe then we’ll both be free.’

Kitty froze. She staggered backwards. The bag of sweets slipped from her hand, and the contents rolled across the floor. They both looked down at the little sweets in their colourful wrappers, and the sight made them even more dejected. Everything about this felt wrong.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘Me too.’

‘Don’t you love me any more?’

‘How am I supposed to still love you, how am I supposed to feel anything at all, when I’m not even a man any more?’

‘It was terrible for everyone. You should be happy that you’re alive.’

‘To be happy you must first be able to feel something.’

‘We all want you to —’

‘I don’t care what you all want. I’ve lost everything I had, can’t you understand that!’

‘So have I, you ungrateful man! Guess what — I’ve lost everything, too!’

And just as Kitty was ready to shout out the unspeakable, Andro brushed past her and left the kitchen, saying, ‘I’m not a man any more. I’m not man enough to love you any more, Kitty. I don’t feel anything any more.’

Kitty stood there, still staring at the brightly wrapped sweets, and suddenly felt the urge to laugh. She didn’t know why, but she had to keep her mouth pressed firmly shut so as not to burst out laughing. Well, don’t we just make a perfect couple, she thought. It seems he can no longer father children — and I can no longer have any. What a perfect, perfect couple, in a perfect, perfect world!

But she had misunderstood him.

And that night, as she sat alone on her bed and lit herself a cigarette cadged from her mother, words started running through her head, followed — accompanied — by a melody: What a perfect, perfect couple, in a perfect, perfect world, look at us, wouldn’t you say we’re perfect?

By daybreak Kitty had composed her first song.

She was humming it during one of her theatre company’s rehearsals when the director asked her to sing him her ‘little ditty’, as he called it. He found it enchanting, and immediately worked it into the play, in a kitsch love scene where Kitty, with her guitar around her neck and a sorrowful expression on her face, sang it with feeling while gazing adoringly at her leading man.

And it’s true, Brilka: soon every happy, lovestruck couple in the city was singing her song; then all the unhappy ones, and the forsaken lovers. And when Kostya returned to wed Mariam after months away from home, he heard his sister’s voice on the radio.

*

Kostya had stayed in Moscow longer than planned. He appeared to be waiting for something big, something important, but he kept his worries and his hopes to himself. Not even Christine had any idea about the scheme her nephew was hatching.

*

Kitty’s song, so captivating in its artlessness, so memorable in its clarity, gained her national popularity overnight. People stopped to talk to her on the street; one of the theatres offered to schedule an evening of her songs. Kitty was overwhelmed by her unexpected success. She used the holidays to practise the guitar and write more songs, because it was embarrassing to admit in public that ‘A Perfect, Perfect World’ was her only song, born of her inability to say what she wanted to say. Now, though, she found the words she had spent so long searching for. They only came to her through the music. As if her language needed crutches to lean on. And again I find myself thinking of you, Brilka; you played me those songs on our car journey, and sang along. How your eyes sparkled when you sang for me! It was a real struggle for me not to show how moved I was, how deeply moved, not to let you see the emotion those lines of yours, sung with such enthusiasm, evoked in me. But there were so many other little marvels you revealed to me on our journey, Brilka, so many that if I were to start talking about them I would never stop, and our story would probably never end. But I have to share you with all the other people, because our story is also theirs, and theirs is also ours. And we haven’t got as far as us yet …

*

With Kostya’s return late that autumn, happiness came back to Christine’s house. Mariam, who had tended to avoid Kitty these past few months, also appeared unannounced every evening. The whole family gathered in the kitchen or the garden for extended dinners, although Kitty never stayed at the table any longer than necessary. This relaxed mood didn’t last long, though. After the time he had spent in Moscow, Kostya’s hometown seemed to him too small, too constrained, too provincial. And when his mother and Christine spoke to him late one evening and confessed that Andro had come back, he openly expressed his displeasure and incomprehension at their support for a man who had betrayed his country. He grew bad-tempered, accused his mother and aunt of trampling Soviet values underfoot and abandoning all sense of morality and responsibility. Christine denied it, but of course Kostya knew that Andro’s unexpected release would never have been possible without intervention from above. He shouted at the two women and forbade them ever to let that traitor into the house.

His bad mood didn’t lift, and soon not even Mariam was spared. Kostya kept leaving her at home on her own. He no longer took her out, no longer went with her to the cinema, was uncouth and hurtful, responded to her excessive care and kind, affectionate nature with irritation. He virtually fled the house, stayed away for nights on end, looked up old school friends, made fleeting acquaintances, went to parties, sought diversion. As if he were trying to wring a new taste from life, to reinvent himself, but was constantly being thwarted by what had gone before.

He needed the body of one particular woman; he needed to lose control at night in order to stay in control during the day.

He needed to see admiration in a woman’s eyes; he needed game playing, flirtation. Not this orderliness. The security, the clear prospects Mariam offered weren’t enough for him. He was too sure of her, and it began to bore him. Security was not enough of a challenge. At the same time, he was aware that if he broke off the engagement, Mariam would never recover from the shame; for her, it would be the end of the world. Her honour would be violated, her faith shattered.

Kostya was about to head out on another of his nocturnal excursions when Kitty, all dressed up and perfumed, planted herself in his way.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Kostya irritably. He had changed out of his uniform and was wearing an elegant suit.

‘I’m coming with you. I feel like going out. We haven’t done that for ages.’

‘I thought you had to work on your successful musical career?’

‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that outrageous remark. I’m going to carry on being nice. I’m going to link arms with you now, and I expect you to take me out.’

‘Alright, but behave yourself and please keep your judgements to yourself. It’s a high-class place we’re going to; I don’t want you embarrassing me there.’

Kitty, surprised that he had agreed so readily to her request, nodded obligingly. She was also surprised that her brother would be in high-class company on his dissolute nocturnal outings. She had assumed that he went to one of the bars by the river, ate smoked fish, drank beer and schnapps, and then disappeared into a guesthouse in Avlabari with some buxom lady, between the Tatar tea houses and the Armenian laundries.

Kostya hailed a taxi and they drove up the Mtatsminda, the ‘Holy Mountain’, along cobbled streets that led ever more steeply upwards, before finally turning into a cul-de-sac at the end of which a large new house was proudly enthroned on a little hill. There were cars parked in front of the high black gates; loud music emanated from the house, along with a hubbub of voices from the large crowd drinking and talking inside. The people who lived here clearly had money, which meant they were either of significance in the Party or the children of people who were. Kitty could already sense her reluctance as she crossed the threshold, and even considered turning round; she had seen enough, she knew Kostya wasn’t slipping into debauchery on his nights out, as they had all feared. But just then a small, rather plump, young man appeared and walked towards them, laughing.

He introduced Kitty to the assembled company, who greeted her effusively. She learned that the owner of the house, the plump boy’s father, was the director of the silk factory and currently on holiday in Karlovy Vary. The son and his sister were looking after the house, which was full of would-be sophisticates and the nouveau riche, spoiled daddy’s boys and girls whom Kostya, by his own standards, ought really to despise. Instead, he seemed to find them entertaining; he was playing the wit, the charmer, the dancer, the intellectual, and above all the ladies’ man. Kitty found herself surrounded by women with elaborate hairstyles and interesting skirts, all of whom found it incredibly exciting that she of all people, Kitty Jashi, whom they knew from the radio, was the sister of the best-looking bachelor in the city. Now Kitty understood what was going on. Of course he had had to distance himself from Mariam in these circles, to deny her existence, so that he could play this game. The short, dark-haired girl who laughed loudest, waving her hands with their scarlet fingernails in the air, was the host’s sister; she seemed exceedingly interested in Kostya.

Kitty found herself monopolised by some self-satisfied boys whom she found intensely irritating. They all wanted to know who the lucky man was who’d inspired her to write that fantastic song and whether she was still having an affair with him. The very word ‘affair’ made Kitty feel so out of place that she would have liked to have run straight back home again. She thought of Mariam and what she would have to say about all this; what then could she still find to love about Kostya?

‘Come on, I’ll show you something.’ Visibly intoxicated by the heavy red wine, Kostya smiled his captivating smile, dragged her away from the crowd, and led her out onto the terrace. From here they had a superb view of the glimmering city and the lush green hills with the lizard-coloured river winding among them. Sunk in the night, the city looked content. Seen from up here, everything shone so beautifully; and Kostya was such a natural part of this shining, standing here beside her, so broad-shouldered and proud, looking up at the sky, breathing in the fresh air.

‘Why are we here, Kostya?’

‘I thought you wanted to get drunk with me tonight.’

‘I mean, what are you doing here? With these people?’

Before he could answer, another group of clucking girls appeared, with the hostess at their head, and gathered around Kostya and his sister.

‘Please, please, sing the song! We’ve brought you a guitar specially; please, please sing “A Perfect, Perfect World”,’ they beseeched Kitty, champagne glasses in their hands.

Kitty stared at their faces and saw Andro before her, his little room, his slumped posture, his sunken cheeks and bald head. She thought of how much she missed his golden curls that would never grow back as luxuriantly as before. ‘What a perfect, perfect couple, in a perfect, perfect world, look at us, wouldn’t you say we’re perfect?’ And they all sang along; they all sang the same words, they all raised their voices when they got to the ‘perfect world’, and they all lowered their voices when she breathed, ‘… so how can it be, that, without you and me, the world is still so perfect?’

With her audience applauding rapturously, Kitty knocked back two glasses of champagne in quick succession, excused herself, and looked around for her brother, but he was no longer with the group outside on the terrace. She hurried back into the house; she wanted to let him know that she had to leave, that she couldn’t stand these people any longer. But Kostya was nowhere to be found. She crossed the big room with the dancing couples, ran up and down the brightly lit corridors, peeped into various rooms, asked after him again and again, but no one had seen him; no one knew where he was.

At last she gave up: she feared that he must have retired with the hostess to some quiet corner where no one would find them, and she ran to the door without taking her leave.

Outside, she breathed a sigh of relief. The cul-de-sac was dark; the only light came from inside the house. She sat down on a ledge a few metres from the front door. Suddenly, she heard a noise. At first, she paid it no attention, but then she recognised her brother’s voice, low and persuasive. Hadn’t they managed to find a secluded part of the house in which to indulge their flirtation? Kitty felt uncomfortable about spying on her brother, but curiosity prevailed, and she followed his voice down the left-hand side of the house. She saw two shadows beneath a balcony, and recognised Kostya; he was propping himself against the wall with one hand and leaning over someone, dangerously close to this woman’s face, as if they had just kissed, or were about to. He was speaking to her insistently. But it wasn’t the little dark-haired girl, the hostess; this woman was tall and blonde.

Kitty squinted and craned her neck as far as it would go. Which of the squeaking, childishly over-made-up women was it? One of the ones who had been standing upstairs listening to her sing? The woman was pressing her breasts up against Kostya and looking attentively into his eyes. Then she ran a hand carefully down his cheek, and he glanced around warily; it seemed he didn’t want to be seen with her. Once Kitty’s eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, she focused on the woman’s profile. She was tall and elegant; her hair was pinned up and elaborately styled, and she wore a tight beige skirt that emphasised her waist, with a flattering slit up the side exposing a long, muscular leg. Above all, though, she was older; older than Kostya, and older than all the other guests in the house.

‘I want it, too … Of course, how can you doubt that?’ Kostya was whispering things Kitty could hardly hear, and the woman pulled him close and pressed her nose against his. Soon she would touch his lips, thought Kitty; Kostya’s body grew tense, he leaned in towards her, but she didn’t let him, she didn’t kiss him.

Then Kitty heard the blonde woman say, loud and clear, ‘You know I hate it when people keep me waiting, Kostya’ — and suddenly she was overcome by dizziness. She felt her legs turn to jelly and, leaning against the wall of the house, she slid to the ground.

The voice. She knew that voice! She would never forget that voice. She would never fail to recognise that soft, cajoling tone.

It was her. The woman from Hell.

Kitty got to her feet again, clinging to the wall of the house, and walked backwards until the two of them disappeared from view and she was at the front of the house again. From there she ran back inside, locked herself in the nearest bathroom, ran some water, and held her head under the tap until she was able to control her breathing. But her body refused to obey her: her knees were shaking, and she could hardly stand. She forced herself down onto the cold, tiled floor and counted to one hundred until she felt able to get up again.

Then she went back to the main salon, grabbed a glass of wine, and knocked it back in one draught. By the time Kostya reappeared, she was standing alone on the terrace and had downed about three more glasses.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Kostya. ‘Where the hell have you been hiding? You look sort of … Have you drunk too much?’ He was cheerful; his voice was bright. ‘I heard you sing. You seem to go down really well, with your funny song — really, I’m impressed.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Sorry, who do you mean?’

‘Who is that woman?’

‘Have you been spying on me?’

‘Who?’ She turned and looked at him. Her face was contorted; the expression in her eyes was somewhere between revulsion and physical pain. Kostya’s relaxed manner instantly switched to aggression.

‘That? It’s nothing serious. You needn’t be concerned on Mariam’s account.’

‘Does she know you’re getting married? Does she know her name? Does she know your real name? How well do you know her?’

As Kitty uttered these questions, she suddenly realised the full, irreversible, dark implications of the ancient sport the gods were playing with them.

‘Is this an interrogation? I’m a big boy, Kitty; pull yourself together. I don’t need a chaperone. Are you, of all people, going to talk to me about morals?’

‘I don’t give a shit where you choose to put your dick. I just want to know her name.’

‘Don’t you dare —’

Kitty was sure the blonde woman would not set foot inside the house. She had vanished into the night just as she had appeared, without a trace. Where had she come from? Where had he met her? Did he only come to this house in order to meet with her in secret? It made no sense. Kitty’s head ached. She narrowed her eyes, frowning ferociously.

‘Tell me who she is and I’ll leave you alone!’

The volume at which she made her demand surprised even Kitty herself. She seized her brother by the shoulders and began shaking him as hard as she could. Kostya was startled by the violence of her reaction; he staggered back, but didn’t defend himself.

‘Kitty, Kitty, please, calm down — come on, I’ll drive you home, it’s all right, calm down. I promise you I won’t hurt Mariam; what you saw is something else, come on now.’

‘Who —?’ she screamed.

A few guests had started to come out onto the terrace, and Kostya was clearly finding the scene uncomfortable. He seized her wrists and dragged her into the house, and when she grabbed hold of the banisters and refused to go any further he picked her up, threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and carried her downstairs. He only put her down again on the wide road once they had left the Holy Mountain behind them. She slumped onto the pavement and started to weep.

She wept almost soundlessly, but it was a terrible weeping; a weeping like Christine’s, the silent weeping of the women of the chocolate house. Kostya stood beside his sister in bewilderment, looking down at her, incapable of comforting her and incapable of leaving her alone. Eventually he sat beside her and tried to put his arm around her, but she pushed him away.

‘I expect some sort of explanation from you, right now!’ he said, loudly, once she had calmed down a little and wiped away the tears with her sleeve.

‘I just want her name. I don’t want anything else from you. I won’t say anything to Mariam, I just want the name.’

‘But why, what for?’

‘I know her.’

‘Where do you know her from?’

‘Who is she?’

‘She’s just a beautiful woman I met at a banquet, and she’s married, which is why it wouldn’t be very advisable —’

‘Just a beautiful woman … just a beautiful woman.’ Kitty repeated her brother’s words in disbelief.

Just a beautiful woman, you say. It didn’t hurt, didn’t hurt, because she was a beautiful woman. Such beautiful lips, I thought, as she sang me the song of death. Just a beautiful woman. But look at me, look at me — I’m a woman too, not beautiful like her, dead and risen again, but a woman, like her.

I doubt, Brilka, that the people who were to sing this song in the years to come, and still sing it, know that it’s not a song about jealousy.

*

He didn’t relent. He didn’t reveal her name. Kitty wasn’t sure who exactly he was trying to protect, but she knew that she would not yield, that she would do everything in her power to find out the blonde woman’s name.

She tried using tenderness, deploying her acting talents to play the concerned and loving sister; she intimated that if he didn’t relent she would tell Mariam. But apparently there was much more at stake for him than just Mariam. She made his life difficult, persecuted him, gave him no peace. He was losing patience; eventually he would give in. He couldn’t stand this persecution, this curtailment of his freedom for long, thought Kitty. And she would dog his heels, would allow him no rest. She was tough, tougher than he could ever have dreamed.

At the end of the month, when the rain had been beating down on the roofs non-stop for days, stretching the nerves of everyone in the house to breaking point, Kitty made yet another nasty comment about Kostya’s nocturnal escapades, and he lost patience. He grabbed at her dress, dragged her into the mud-soaked garden, and flung her to the ground. The rain kept sluicing down. Within seconds, brother and sister were soaked to the skin.

‘Stop it — stop it! Do you hear me?’ he bellowed through the rain.

Full of hatred, he glared at his sister, who leaped back onto her feet and started circling him like a wildcat.

‘Tell me her name!’

‘You’re completely mad, insane, you should be locked up, you should be ashamed of yourself!’

‘Tell me her name and I’ll leave you in peace!’

‘She’s done nothing to you — leave her alone. I just had an affair with her, my God! Just a little affair. Her husband is very powerful. And if anything goes wrong, if you do something foolish, you’ll be in trouble and I don’t want to carry the can for you yet again — just let things lie!’

‘Fuck her senseless if you want — you think I’m interested in that? I just want her name!’

‘You’re talking like a cheap whore! Father would turn in his grave.’

‘He doesn’t have a grave! He doesn’t even have a grave!’

At that Kostya caught hold of his sister again and hit her hard in the face. She fell, and rolled in the mud; when she raised her head, blood was running down her chin. Her bottom lip had split. She didn’t cry; she didn’t even touch the wound, as if she were immune to the pain.

Just then Christine ran outside and stood between them, screaming at the top of her voice for them to stop. Dazed, Kostya paused, his hair stuck to his scalp, clothes dripping; he couldn’t quite believe what he had done. But Kitty’s face showed no remorse, no fear: she looked him dead in the eye, haughty and self-assured. The blood on her face mixed with the rainwater, creating the illusion of war paint.

Stasia, too, came out into the garden, stood in Kostya’s path, and grabbed him by the collar. ‘What have you done?’ she snarled at her son.

He looked her in the eyes, and said, ‘I hate you both!’

And those words tore us all apart.

*

A few weeks later, Kitty called Mariam and asked to meet her in a café. Mariam, who found both the strained atmosphere between the siblings and her fiancé’s aloofness and irritability upsetting, was happy to receive the invitation and accepted with relief.

They met in a fashionable café that had just opened near the Technical University. Mariam had taken great pains not to seem in any way inferior to the rest of its clientele. She arrived wearing a chocolate-brown suit that didn’t really do her figure any favours, hugged Kitty, and ordered a Turkish coffee, although normally she only drank tea: one had to drink coffee in a place like this.

‘I simply have to tell you how happy I am you called. The last month hasn’t been that easy for any of us, has it? All this time I’ve been hoping we’d be able to find a way, be able to talk about everything again. I don’t want you to be cross with me.’ Mariam gushed at her friend like a waterfall.

‘I have to speak to you.’

‘No, listen to me. Please. I’ve hardly been able to sleep these last few weeks. I don’t want anything to come between us. It’ll all sort itself out. I’m sure of it. We’ll sort this out, the two of us. We’ve come through so much together, we just have to want it.’

Mariam was agitated; her cheeks were burning. She grabbed Kitty’s hand across the table and held on to it.

‘Mariam …’

‘We’ll make up for everything, won’t we? We can’t give up on our friendship just like that, that’s just not possible. I miss you, I miss you so much, and I don’t want to be without you. Yes, I love your brother. But that doesn’t mean you’re any less important to me.’

Tears welled up in Mariam’s eyes.

‘I don’t want to drive a wedge between the two of you, I don’t want you to quarrel, especially not because of me. I would never forgive myself. You’re such a wonderful brother and sister. Fascinating, talented, clever, beautiful. No — that can’t happen, Kitty. I’d never forgive myself.’

Mariam had turned away and was staring at the pigeons strutting up and down the pavement.

‘Mari, I have to tell you something important.’

‘I love you. But I love him, too. You’re two halves of a whole. That may sound strange, but I’ve thought about it a lot, and I know what I’m talking about. I —’

‘He’s cheating on you.’

‘Kitty!’

‘He’s having an affair. I’ve seen her, but I don’t know her name, and I will gladly help you if you find out who she is.’

‘Kitty.’

‘If you don’t want to believe me, that’s your decision. The quarrel wasn’t because of you, it was because of her. Check what I’ve told you, and if I’m wrong, just forget all this. If not …’

‘Yes — if not, what?’

‘Then think about whether you want to spend your life with a man who will never love you.’

‘Why are you trying to ruin everything?’

Tears were rolling down Mariam’s red cheeks.

‘I can’t ruin something that was ruined long ago.’

Kitty hated herself. But she hated that woman far more.

*

That night, Kitty persuaded her aunt to make her the hot chocolate. Kostya came home late, and when the smell of the chocolate reached his nose he hurried to the kitchen and demanded some of the magical drink. Kitty reluctantly divided her portion, shared it with her brother, and they fell on their cups like starving dogs. Wakened by the smell, Stasia too stumbled into the kitchen to see her children licking the last drops of chocolate from their cups. She screamed at her sister — how dare she, where had she got hold of the recipe — sank helplessly onto a chair, and howled. Even if Stasia still wasn’t sure what price her father’s hot chocolate exacted from those who tasted it, she was no longer in any doubt that there was certainly a price to be paid. She had wanted to protect her children from temptation, from becoming greedy for more, because she was sure that this was the danger her father had spoken of back then, the danger inherent in the chocolate: the fact that no one who had so far succumbed to the temptation of sampling it was able to do so just once.

Christine, still holding the tin bowl she had made the chocolate in, snarled back that he was her father, too, and she also had a right to the recipe, whereupon Stasia seized the bowl and threw it on the floor. For a moment they all glanced back and forth between the furious Stasia and the few drops of black liquid that had trickled out of the bowl.

Suddenly Kostya bent down, sank onto all fours as if hypnotised, and started wiping the residue off the floor with his fingers, sticking them eagerly into his mouth.

The women stared down at him, speechless. When he had wiped the last drops off the floor, he got up and calmly left the kitchen.

‘What was that?’ asked Christine. She looked at her sister, bemused.

‘His first chocolate, I imagine,’ Stasia answered reproachfully.