Combat rootless cosmopolitanism!

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Kostya became what he would never have become at Ida’s side: my grandfather and your great-grandfather, Brilka.

That summer, he returned to his homeland, and travelled on from there to Abkhazia for his paid, state-prescribed holiday on the Black Sea. This was where he met my grandmother, Nana. Sensible, gentle, bright Nana. Nana, whose grandparents — both linguists at the University of Tbilisi — had been victims of the purges. Her father, an archaeologist, was imprisoned in Ortachala city prison, the son of supposed spies and counter-revolutionaries; he died there at the age of just forty-two, of untreated pneumonia. Nana was raised — and pampered — by her mother, and her father’s two unmarried sisters. The women tried to compensate for the misfortune that had befallen the family by taking excessive care of little Nana and showering her with love.

Nana — straightforward, open, not remotely mysterious, not even elegant — should never have appealed to Kostya. Nana was healthy. In every sense of the word. Too healthy for Kostya. She wouldn’t infect him; she wouldn’t ruin him. And that was precisely the reason for his sudden interest in her. As if his hopeless, indifferent eyes had spotted the healthiest woman on the whole Black Sea coast, and he had taken her by the hand, wanting her to heal his sickness.

Perhaps he also hoped he could break the old patterns, step out of the shadow of the dead and make a completely new, completely different, start.

When I look at Nana in old family photos, she looks to me like someone who has never doubted herself or the world. Someone who has never encountered failure. A tall young woman, not as youthful and reckless as she should have been at that age, but clearer and more confident as a result, as if she knew precisely how her life, which still lay before her, was going to unfold. Blonde and strapping, with a thick plait that she wound round her head, and smart, well-tailored, but modest clothes. Not conspicuous, but not unremarkable, either. As if everything about her aspired towards solid normality and clear structures. There was something attractive, but never vulgar, about the way she pouted, or gesticulated wildly with her hands; the way she wrinkled her forehead as she pondered a question, or demonstratively crossed her legs when she was excited about something. She was conservative, believed in clear value systems, and until she met Kostya she dreamed of the things most girls dreamed of in her day: social recognition, a conventional path — in her case, a respected university career — a family, children; all of which should be romantic, if possible, but not too dramatic; a little exciting, but not too wild. That summer, Nana had just completed her degree in Georgian language and literature and, following in her grandparents’ footsteps, had developed a passion for linguistics. She wanted to do a doctorate, and that summer on the Black Sea, where she was holidaying with friends to celebrate her graduation, she was trying to decide the subject of her thesis.

Until then, she had never really been in love. She had had a few flirtations with fellow students, but had ended each one after just a few weeks. She focused on her studies, enjoyed spending time with her female friends, cooked with her mother and aunts, and made plans for the future. She had never wanted for anything, and she’d never really missed the much-vaunted ideal of love, either. She wasn’t a dreamer, and if a book she was reading got too dramatic and passionate for her liking, she would set it aside without compunction. She didn’t want to dream of something she would never experience the way it was described; nor did she want to experience it.

Naturally, it was coincidence that brought these two utterly different people, Nana and Kostya, together. In the cafeteria of the spa hotel where they were both staying, Nana and her friends were having breakfast at the table with the best view when Kostya asked, with a polite smile, whether he might join them, as there didn’t seem to be any tables free. He quickly fell into conversation with Nana’s friends, who were just as quickly impressed by his charm and his skill as a raconteur. Nana stayed in the background; she said little, and concentrated on eating her breakfast. She was therefore astonished when, on leaving the cafeteria, he kissed her friends’ hands in farewell, but asked her, of all people, whether he might take her out to dinner.

She agreed, more out of curiosity than interest.

That same evening, they went to a fish restaurant right on the promenade that Nana would never have been able to afford. There, they were served chilled white wine and fine sea bream. Kostya treated her to a long lecture about the sea in general and fish in particular, and afterwards there was Armenian cognac. Nana, who didn’t want to appear in any way inferior to Kostya, demonstrated her expertise on the subject of regional cultures and their customs. On their first rendezvous, they both showed off their knowledge and didn’t get close at all. They didn’t even really get to know each other. But at the end of the evening, they both decided that they wanted to rectify this at a second meeting.

In the days that followed, Kostya accompanied the girls to the beach, played cards with them, entertained them with all sorts of anecdotes, bought them coffee and ice cream, and never left their side. Three days later, he took Nana to a dance club on her own and proved to be a good dance partner. After several dances and a few glasses of Crimean champagne, Nana found herself willing to believe in something as irrational as being in love. On the way back to the hotel, she indicated that she would not be averse to his continuing to court her.

*

They met again in Tbilisi. He invited her for meals, took her dancing, went with her to the cinema and for walks in the park. Nothing out of the ordinary; nothing demanding. Gallant and patient, Kostya wooed her as he thought she wanted to be wooed. They didn’t touch each other, they made no plans, and they didn’t talk about the future. A few days before Kostya’s summer holiday came to an end and he had to leave for Baltiysk, he asked soft, blonde Nana if she would be his wife. They had just come out of the cinema, where they had been to see an upbeat rural film — or that’s what I imagine, anyway — and were strolling up the cobbled street of Varazi Hill. As if he had asked some trivial question about the film they had just seen, Nana’s expression didn’t change; she went on slowly walking, without saying a word.

‘I won’t expect anything from you. If you want to stay in Tbilisi, that would be fine, too,’ Kostya added to his proposal.

‘I hardly know you.’

‘You know me well enough.’

‘We haven’t even kissed.’

‘Would you like us to?’

Kostya took her head in his hands and gave her a tentative kiss on the lips.

‘Now we’ve kissed each other,’ he said, satisfied, and gave her another kiss, more daring this time, and a lot more moist.

But this kiss didn’t taste of St Petersburg, it didn’t taste of white nights, of the hours of abandonment there, didn’t taste of a woman with rings on all ten fingers; it didn’t taste of death.

‘Just say yes,’ Kostya insisted, still holding her chin in his hand; and Nana, who felt very uncomfortable about allowing herself to be kissed by a man in the middle of the street, and wanted to put an end to the awkward situation as quickly as possible, said yes.

*

Kostya wrote to Baltiysk and asked for another two weeks’ leave to prepare for his wedding, which he was granted. And so they had a modest wedding in Christine’s house. There was spinach with pomegranate seeds, suckling pig marinated on wood, lamb in mint, and fresh Kakhetian wine. Stasia made a big wedding cake laden with condensed-milk crème pâtissière, and the table was decorated with mountains of grapes, pears, persimmons, figs, melons, and pomegranates. The newlyweds spent their wedding night, which Nana of course came to as a virgin, in Nana’s mother’s apartment, which she generously surrendered to the couple.

After Kostya’s departure, Nana moved into the big house on Vera Hill. She was accustomed to the company of older women. She had made it clear that she did not want to move to the cold north to live with her husband, and reminded him that he had told her she could stay in Tbilisi. She wanted to apply for a university place and start work on her PhD thesis.

*

Kitty was living on the outskirts of Prague in a small room barely three metres square. She received no letters, no instructions. All she had was one suitcase and her guitar. And a new passport, with a different name. At the start of each week, an envelope was pushed under her door; so far, all her attempts to catch the person delivering it had failed. The envelope contained a few banknotes — always the same amount. The money was sufficient for her to buy food. She never went into the city centre, she never left the area where she was living, she spoke to no one. She greeted the old lady who lived next door with a nod of her head.

Her new passport identified her as a Luxembourger with the name Adrienne Hinrichs.

She felt as if her real self had been amputated.

Three times, she had contemplated handing herself in by going to the station or the airport and approaching the nearest security or border guard. The isolation she was living in sometimes made her doubt her own sanity. She listened to the Voice of America, turned down low, on the old radio she found in the room. Including the programmes in English. She didn’t understand the language, but its melody seemed reassuringly foreign to her, reassuringly benign. It was only after she had been living in the city for three months that she received, in her weekly envelope, an unsigned note. It told her to go to her local post office the following day at precisely three o’clock to receive a long-distance call.

On the other end of the line was an unfamiliar male voice. Kitty had squeezed herself into the small, stuffy telephone box.

‘I will get you out of the city. You’ve been keeping a low profile. That’s good, very good. I understand your situation, but you have to trust me and be patient for a while. As soon as it becomes possible, we will get you out of the city. As soon as the danger has passed. I promise you.’ The man spoke with a soft voice that inspired confidence.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m your friend. Your closest friend.’

‘But —’

‘I can’t tell you any more at the moment.’

‘How can I trust you? How do I know that you —’

‘You don’t have a choice. You’ll just have to. From now on, I’ll call you on this number at the same time every week. We’ll stay in regular contact. Can you get by on the money?’

‘Yes, of course, I don’t need much, but —’

‘Just trust me.’

He kept his promise. He called every week. Assured her that she would soon be leaving the city for the West. That everything was all right, she was safe, no one was going to hurt her, he was watching over her, he was thinking of her, he was her friend. Because she had no choice, she accepted him as her friend. Her only friend. But as soon as she tried to find out his name, or where he was, he would fall silent, always repeating that he wasn’t allowed to tell her. She cursed her brother, her life, her country, the past, the present, the future, but her interlocutor remained unruffled. He listened to her, and went on talking in his soothing tone.

He told her about Georgia. Banal, unimportant news that Kitty, nonetheless, absorbed with the greatest attention. He also told her that her mother and aunt had bravely withstood questioning by the secret police, and that her brother was happily married.

But Kitty no longer knew what day it was, or what she was doing in the city.

‘I don’t know a single person here. I don’t speak the language. I never go out. I’m dying,’ she confided to the telephone receiver after six months. She was distraught.

‘You’re strong. You can do this. We can do this together. I need you. I’m not just saying that to comfort you. I really do need you. You’ll leave the city soon. You’ll be able to live a free life. I promise you that. But you have to believe in it, too. I can’t do this on my own. You have to help me. I’ve promised your brother that nothing will happen to you. And I keep my promises. I believe you’ll get through this because you’re strong, because you’ve already got through worse.’

‘What do you know about me?’

‘Enough.’

‘Say my name.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You never call me by my name. You never say it. We’re two nameless people. Faceless people. Say it!’

There was a short pause, and she thought he would deny her request, but then he said what she wanted to hear.

‘Yes, Kitty. I’ll say it. Kitty. Kitty. Kitty.’

The name felt foreign, as if she were hearing it for the first time, as if she had left behind all the stories attached to this name. But she clung to those five letters; she wanted to remember again, she wanted her past back, regardless of how much she hated it, because her past was the only thing that gave her the right to her real name. And she wanted it back. More than anything, she wanted it back.

He went on talking, and his quiet, velvety voice calmed her, cradled her in its arms. She wiped away the tears with her sleeve and pressed her face to the wall, clutching the receiver with all her might.

*

Her isolation was to last many more months. Kitty stayed in Prague for almost two years. But from that day onward, after he spoke her name, she was able to deal with it better. She learned a few words of Czech, and sometimes talked to the neighbours’ children or the elderly lady next door. The lady spoke hardly any Russian, so she couldn’t ask her any unwelcome questions.

She cooked for herself regularly, went for a walk three times a week in nearby Malešický Park, listened to her radio, bought herself an English dictionary to help her understand the programmes on Voice of America, and practised the guitar. Although she was not in the right frame of mind for composition, she tried to perfect her technique. She didn’t think of home any more, of the people she was close to; above all, she banished all thoughts of the blonde woman with the red lips, of Mariam’s blazing eyes, of her friend’s death.

Each time Tuesday came around and she hurried to the post office, she felt quite euphoric. The thought of hearing his voice filled her with a childlike glee.

Sometimes she looked at her passport and imaged what Luxembourg was like, what she had done there, whom she might have loved there. Imagined a different life for herself, a different biography. In the beginning, she would jump out of her skin if someone knocked on her door or spoke to her on the street, if someone asked her for the time, but she grew accustomed to it and would give the required information in her still halting Czech. She met a Polish student in the park who wanted to take her for a beer, but she rebuffed him, saying that she was married and her husband wouldn’t approve.

She stuck to his rules. She avoided places where there were a lot of people, avoided trams and buses. She lived as inconspicuously as possible. Sometimes there were days when her life even started to seem normal to her. As if she had never led any other; as if it had always been like this, and even the fact that she was otherwise silent for months on end, scarcely speaking to another human being, no longer seemed so terrible to her.

The envelopes still arrived regularly. Her only friend must have plenty of helpers in the city, and apparently he was taking steps to ensure that none of the property managers and no one from the foreign nationals’ office knocked on her door.

It was a time of social, emotional, and artistic abstinence; a sort of righteous punishment for what lay behind her. But when she said this to her anonymous friend in one of their phone calls, he got quite worked up. This period was tragically unavoidable, he told her; it was not a punishment.

Exile grew to be part of her very skin. And the perpetual fight against memory became the defining trait of Kitty’s character; the fear of dreams in which Mariam might haunt her became her constant companion.

At least Kitty was spared the paranoia of the Generalissimus’ final years, which afflicted the whole empire with undreamed-of ferocity. She didn’t have to see Party men disowning their wives because their smiles had aroused the Generalissimus’ mistrust. She didn’t have to see memories of the bloody thirties revived in the collective consciousness, the number of state security ministers increased from four to seven, the orchestration of hate campaigns. Didn’t see the Generalissimus reduce his entourage to clowns, pillory them, force them into public displays of remorse, like mangy dogs. She didn’t know that the man from the weather bureau who was responsible for reading the weather forecast on the radio had been summoned to the Kremlin and cautioned, because the Generalissimus had complained about a particular weather forecast and his entourage were afraid that they would have to pay for it with their lives. She didn’t hear that the Leader now ruled the empire entirely from his dacha, where he made his men dance and drink themselves into a stupor. Didn’t know what Khrushchev had said of these binges: ‘When the Leader says dance, a wise man dances.’

One morning, when she opened the usual white envelope containing the banknotes, she found a typed letter inside, again unsigned:

Read the following very carefully. Memorise it well, then destroy the message you are reading!

You will travel to London. In London you will be safe. Go to the telephone box next Tuesday at precisely the usual time. You will find an envelope with the necessary visas and papers. Take good care of your passport. The next day, Wednesday, take the 14:20 train to Dresden from the main station. A man will meet you directly on the platform; he will give you a bunch of roses and kiss you, and you must return the kiss. Officially he is your fiancé; his name is Jan and he works as an engineer in the Dresden printing press factory. He will talk to you in sign language; nod agreement or shake your head from time to time. If you want to improvise — which is something you are surely capable of — you too should improvise a conversation in sign language. As soon as you are in a safe place he will explain to you in detail what will happen next. He will accompany you over the border. You will be driven to Hamburg in a British military car, and from there you will take a flight to London. Until you arrive in London you are Adrienne Hinrichs, a deaf-mute from Luxembourg …

So many times Kitty had dreamed up a love life, a life story, for her other self, for Adrienne; but it had never occurred to her that she might be a deaf-mute, although the idea was such an obvious one. She read the letter again and again, and heard her faceless friend’s soft, confident voice in her head as she did so.

*

London. Kitty’s arrival. We’ll skip the obligatory rain, shall we, Brilka?

Trafalgar Square, and Kitty’s peach-coloured arms outstretched to greet the British air: air that was different here, that smelled different, tasted different.

Piccadilly, and the sudden thought of the knife, the blood flowing from the severed artery. Hyde Park, and the classroom. Tower Bridge, and the dim light of the room on the Holy Mountain. Whitehall, and Andro’s head on her breast. The green-painted benches of the little town that once held a promise of the future. Downing Street, and a hand exploring the scars on her abdomen. Past County Hall, and the images from the Botanical Garden; and Andro, always Andro.

The Thames. Kitty stopped, and gazed down at the stately river. Was this what freedom tasted like? Was this how it smelled? Ought she to be happy now? Had she survived? And what about all the days, weeks, years that lay before her? Back then, she had wanted to go to Vienna, to accompany her Andro with the introspective eyes, so that he wouldn’t get lost, so he would go on carving wooden angels, so he could excitedly explain the world to her, a world she had seen through long ago. But when her Vienna was beheaded, along with Andro’s dreams, she had decided she would seek no new worlds, no new continents, no cities of dreams, because castles in the air cannot withstand the storm.

On arrival, she had put a match to her passport and burned it to ashes. Adrienne Hinrichs was gone, incinerated, turned to dust; the way was now clear for Kitty Jashi. But as she walked around central London, Kitty Jashi couldn’t find herself anywhere; and now she felt as if, with Adrienne, she had turned the remnants of her self into ashes, too. Somewhere near Buckingham Palace, her tears began to fall. Silently: the weeping of the women in the tearless palace on Tbilisi’s Vera Hill. As if they wept not to shake off the sadness that oppressed them, but to grieve the loss of grief. Grief: the normal condition for the chocolate-maker’s heirs.

At St James’s Palace, she felt, for the first time, something like relief. Like the thought of something terrible coming to an end. She looked down at her patched autumn coat, her dirty, worn-out shoes, the shapeless, pleated skirt. Ran her hands through her dishevelled hair, which should have been cut long ago. Felt her own ugliness all the more painfully, surrounded by so much beauty. She wanted to hide: for a moment she wished herself back in Prague, back in her little room. Then she quickly dismissed her doubts and walked on, went on exploring the city. She was free.