I drink the grief of sunset

— The deep red wine.

No shame — what I knew, I forget

what’s forgotten is buried in time.

ANDREI BELY

No, it couldn’t go on like this, not one more day! For days on end, or was it weeks, the same record had been playing on repeat — and who was that singer, anyway? For days on end, the same refusal to go to school; for days on end, no eating breakfast or dinner together; for days on end, she had just lain in bed snapping at anyone who came to bring her something to eat. No, it couldn’t go on like this. Either her daughter was in love or she had some other problem, which must have something to do with those boys at school and her bad marks, because Elene didn’t have a fever, she didn’t look ill, she even had a good appetite.

Nana considered how she might persuade her daughter to talk. At least she had succeeded in sending her to school that morning, despite her abject protests. Hopefully she really had gone. Nana couldn’t go on lying to her teachers forever, telling them Elene had the flu. Her head already hurt from all the thinking and making of plans, and she absolutely did not want to call Kostya again and admit that she couldn’t cope. The power struggle between them was enough of a strain on Nana’s nerves, as was the fact that Elene discussed all her secrets with her father on the telephone, falling silent and looking irritated whenever her mother entered the room. Under no circumstances could Kostya be called upon for advice this time.

There was no counting on Stasia, who ever since she had got back from Prague a few days ago had been wandering around like a deer in the headlights, preoccupied with vague thoughts, which of course she didn’t share with anyone. So Nana asked Christine for help, relying on her neutrality; perhaps she would manage to squeeze out of Elene whatever was causing her bad mood.

Christine agreed, and asked Elene, who had just got back from school, to sit with her at the garden table. It was a beautiful day, full of glorious, shimmering colours, as if dressed for a carnival. Christine was intoxicated by the sight of her wild garden. Wearing a black dress embroidered with red carnations, in which she looked like an old angel cautiously hiding its wings, she cut an overripe watermelon into little pieces for her great-niece, and Elene began stuffing them greedily into her mouth.

‘Your mother says you’re worried about something.’

Elene shook her head and wolfed down another piece of watermelon.

‘Is something upsetting you?’ Christine asked insistently. She lowered her face to Elene’s.

‘Miqa’s a pig!’ blurted Elene suddenly, and gulped down the fleshy red fruit.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Miqa’s a pig.’

‘Now what’s the matter?’ Christine groaned softly, and pushed the plate of watermelon aside. ‘Look at me, please. You can go on eating later. Have you two had a fight?’

‘No. He did bad things to me, and I want him to move out.’

‘Bad things?’

Christine didn’t buy her great-niece’s feigned naivety.

‘Yes.’

‘Such as?’

‘Ask him yourself. You two have a good relationship.’

There was something Christine didn’t like about the way she had said ‘a good relationship’, but she didn’t object, focusing instead on Elene’s words.

‘Well, you’ve got a sharp tongue; I’m sure you didn’t let him get away unscathed,’ said Christine tartly, surprised by how affronted she was. Elene’s words were full of malice, and disproportionately hostile for her age.

‘I want some more watermelon now.’

Truculently, Elene pulled the plate back towards her.

‘Elene,’ Christine began, aiming for a more pedagogical tone of voice this time, ‘you’re not little children any more. He may be very different from you, but you still have to respect him and be polite to him; he’s part of our family.’

‘Family don’t do things like that.’

‘Excuse me?’

Christine’s blood ran cold. How could the little girl she had watched grow up, that lively, loving child, suddenly have such a mean look in her eyes, such a cruel tone of voice? What was she getting at?

‘Yes — ask him, ask him, why don’t you!’ Suddenly Elene was screaming. Bright red watermelon juice spurted from her lips; her eyes burned as if they were on fire; she was completely beside herself. Christine shrank away. ‘He shouldn’t have done it, I told him not to, I asked him to stop but he didn’t listen to me — he hurt me.’

She had reverted to a childish vocabulary that jarred with the winged Fury she was currently impersonating. Christine couldn’t believe her ears. You could have accused Miqa of anything in the world, but the idea that he had hurt someone, that he had used violence against someone … It was something Christine didn’t want to voice even in her thoughts. It was a barefaced lie! It was impossible! Never!

‘What are you talking about, Elene?’

Christine’s voice was quiet, careful, as if she were still trying to find the right tone.

‘What, don’t you believe me? Of course not — you think I’m the guilty one, that I …’

Oh God! She plays the part well, thought Christine. Elene was certainly a good actress, and indignation and outrage were what she did best.

‘Stop this immediately!’ Christine could no longer contain herself.

‘You’re telling me to stop? Me? I haven’t done anything. He — he’s the one who hurt me, he …’

Elene started crying. Crocodile tears, thought Christine with revulsion: she was bewailing her lack of love, while claiming to shed tears over the injustice, the violence that she alleged had been done to her. Faced with Elene’s audacity, her willingness to go this far, Christine was lost for words.

Quaking, she rose from her chair and hurried upstairs to Miqa’s room. She had been completely focused on her sister, who had had some kind of experience in Prague that she didn’t want to discuss. That made Christine insanely curious, so she hadn’t given much thought as to why Miqa had recently taken to spending so much time in Ramas’ room, why he came back so late from school, why he didn’t come to her bedroom any more and ask whether he should brush her hair. Perhaps now, though, it all made sense.

He opened the door just a tiny crack. She saw his pale face, the dark rings under his eyes. Of course his extreme mood swings, his hollow gaze, couldn’t simply be ascribed to puberty; she should have realised, because humiliation was written all over his face.

‘Shall we go for a walk? I thought a little stroll might do us both good.’

‘I have to go to bed, Christine.’

‘Come on, like we used to before — we’d walk all over the place. We can stroll along the river. Come on, don’t be a spoilsport, Kotik.’

Christine would often tease him with this Russian pet name: Kitten. He looked at her hesitantly.

‘Get dressed and come with me, Miqa!’ she requested, more firmly now. For a moment he seemed to be about to shut the door in her face; then he nodded, closed the door, and quickly started to get dressed. Before, he would have let her wait in his room, not outside; but this was no longer ‘before’. There had been some kind of dramatic change, she could feel it; something had happened, here, in her house, under her nose, and she had missed it.

Soon they were walking along Barnov Street towards the opera house, to sit in the little park behind it. He loved this place; when he was little, he always used to beg her to sit on a bench there and eat ice cream. This time, too, they sat on a bench. Without ice cream, though. Christine was forced to acknowledge, with a crushing sense of melancholy, that the time of eating ice creams on empty benches was well and truly over, and with it Miqa’s childhood.

‘I think you know what I want to talk to you about. I would like to know what happened between you and Elene, and you know I’ll be able to tell if you lie to me. If you tell me the truth, I promise you that, for my part, I won’t judge either of you, and I will do the best I can to try to find a solution for your problem.’ Christine took a fan from her handbag and started fanning herself. The air was stifling; it was muggy, and the sky above the city was heavily blanketed with cloud. The weather would probably break soon and a rain would chase away the heat.

Without looking at Miqa, she could sense his body relax beside her, his legs loosen, his hands emerge from his trouser pockets where he had hidden them. He began to shake his head in a sort of disbelief. Christine placed her hand over his, but he withdrew it, ashamed.

‘She hates me,’ he murmured, stirring up reddish dust with the tip of his shoe.

And suddenly it all came pouring out. He talked without drawing breath, waving his arms, shaking his head repeatedly. Beneath his bushy eyebrows, tears of indignation shone in his eyes. He told her about Elene’s jealousy, which he had always sensed; about her caustic animosity, the way she cold-shouldered him at school, her condescending manner, and the more he tried to describe Elene as mean and spiteful, the more clearly his words painted a picture of a deeply insecure, lonely girl in desperate need of love, who had lost her way and was groping in the dark while lashing out around her, unaware of the damage she was doing. He told Christine about that afternoon, when he had knocked on her door, attracted by the music; ashamed and agitated, red-faced, he kept rubbing his sweaty hands on his trousers, unable to find the right words to describe what had happened next.

‘And then I don’t know what I did. Then I just did what she wanted me to. I forgot myself, Christine, I just didn’t know what I was doing any more, but what was I supposed to do?’

‘This is not good, this is not good at all, Miqa,’ said Christine, when he abruptly stopped speaking. He flung his arms dramatically about her knees and buried his head in her lap, but Christine raised him up again and admonished him.

‘Pull yourself together and sit up. Never show such weakness to anyone, ever. Do you understand me?’

‘You don’t believe me,’ he began, sobbing, ‘you don’t believe me, do you?’

‘I believe you, yes, I believe you. Nonetheless, we have a big problem, you and I, Miqa, and right now it’s more important than anything else that we sort this problem out. You mustn’t let yourself be carried along like that; you’ve got to defend yourself, Miqa! Why didn’t you defend yourself?’

Christine sounded almost affronted. As if his behaviour could be attributed to a failure on her part.

‘I don’t know.’

He seemed to be thinking; he seemed to be asking himself the same question. It seemed to surprise him, too, but he couldn’t come up with an answer.

Christine couldn’t really gauge what the consequences might be — Elene seemed too unpredictable for that — but she knew that there would be consequences, in one form or another. Elene had taken her destructiveness too far; nonetheless, Kostya was still the head of this family, and if he should happen to find out about this incident he would, of course, protect his child. He would have no interest in hearing the other side; on the contrary, he would seize the opportunity finally to take action against the Eristavis. After having to restrain his hatred for Andro all these years, he would not pass up this opportunity: he would take out his anger on Andro’s son.

‘Will I be sent away? Will I have to go back to the village again?’

Miqa wiped away his tears with the pressed and folded handkerchief that she put in his breast pocket every other day. As if he had guessed what she was thinking.

‘We must do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.’

‘Do you believe me, Christine? Do you really believe me?’

‘Yes, Miqa, I believe you. I know you.’

On the way home she had already decided to protect Miqa, to vouch for him, because unlike Elene he didn’t have anyone else who would, and it seemed he could not do it for himself. Not yet, perhaps. Perhaps not ever.

She knew that this crazy, foolish incident would divide her family; even though it was inconceivable to her that she might wage war on her nephew, that other boy with whom she had eaten ice cream in the parks and gardens of the city, who had gazed at her with the same admiring, devoted eyes as Miqa did now. She had to remind herself that this little ice-cream-eating boy no longer existed in Kostya, had not existed for a long time, had disappeared forever; time and the war had killed this boy within him, whereas Miqa still had a chance of preserving and protecting the boy within, and thus, also, his childhood.

*

That night, Christine marched into Elene’s room and dragged her out of bed. Elene, half-asleep, still hadn’t quite worked out what was going on when Christine started firing words at her like a Kalashnikov.

‘We didn’t raise you to be such a monster! I want to know where this hatred has come from! I don’t recognise you any more — my own flesh and blood, the child I carried in my arms, the child who used to dig in the garden with me … No — I don’t know who you are, how it could come to this. And I’m ashamed of you.’

Elene didn’t say a word but clenched her fists in fury, pressed her lips firmly together, and looked away. There was just one thought crying out in her head: it’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair! It couldn’t be that she had lost, yet again, to this apathetic, passive intruder. It couldn’t be that they gave him everything, showered him with everything Elene had pined for so desperately in those lonely years in Moscow. It couldn’t be that his truth counted more than hers.

And at the same time another part of her was crying out for remorse, for a tearful confession, after which they would take her in their arms again and promise her that everything would be all right, would promise to love her for ever and ever — for who she was, and not for what she did.

For a moment these two thoughts seemed to explode in her head; she was on the verge of howling, of throwing her arms around Christine and clinging to her until she had made a clean breast of it, had rid herself of her jealousy and fear. But what words would suffice? What sentences could give a vivid illustration of her ordeals? How much time would be required? Hours, days, weeks? No: she couldn’t do it. Perhaps she could have explained her discontent, listed her disappointments. But there was something else: ever since that afternoon there had been something else in her head, in her body, in her voice, a feeling she couldn’t grasp, couldn’t describe, a feeling worse than all her supposed hatred of Miqa. A feeling that frightened her, petrified her. But she couldn’t admit to herself — it just wasn’t possible — that what hurt her far more than his arrival in her kingdom and ascension to her throne was the memory that he had spurned her — that he had rejected her. And perhaps, if she had had a few more seconds, she really would have tried to make amends. But Christine’s slap prevented her from doing so: it caught her full in the face, intervened, and made what had happened irreversible.

Christine’s bony hand had hit Elene’s right cheek. Dazed, and burning from the blow, she slid from her bed to the floor and threw up on the little rug.

Christine stared at Elene, hunched on the floor, looking up at her, her face contorted and smudged with tears; she kept shaking her head, as if she could see a dark future in the remains of Elene’s food.

‘What is it you want from me?’ Elene was breathing heavily. ‘What is it all of you want from me? Go to him, go on, go and give him your sympathy.’

‘Have you had your period?’ Christine’s gaze was still fixed on the regurgitated food.

‘Yes, I’ve had it since I was thirteen. What are you asking me that for?’

‘I mean when was the last time you had it! My God!’

‘No idea. A while ago. Leave me alone!’

‘Please, no … No, no, please, no …’

Christine helped Elene to her feet, took her into the bathroom, and handed her a towel. Then she went to the kitchen and made herself the hot chocolate: she needed it now, before she decided what to do next. The situation was already cursed enough.

The next morning, after Miqa and Elene had left for school, Christine informed Nana that it was very likely her daughter was pregnant. This conjecture was to prove correct, and Elene was to stick to her version of the conception: she continued to accuse Miqa of using force and coercing her. Stasia was in a state of such distraction that she was not informed about the tragic events.

*

‘Now what?’ Christine asked Nana.

‘My God, Christine, she’s only fifteen; what are we supposed to do? My poor girl — how could he do that to her, how? And if Kostya finds out about it, I’ll never see my daughter again. No, no, he can’t; we can’t allow that to happen.’

Nana’s nerves were frayed. She hadn’t been able to leave the house for days.

‘He didn’t do it. He didn’t force her. Why won’t you listen to me?’

‘Because what you’re saying is absolutely outrageous, and I will never allow you to assume that my daughter could … No!’

‘Either way, he has to be told.’

‘You’re insane! The whole lot of you here in this house, you’re living in a parallel universe! Tell him? Him? The boy who brought this shame upon my child — I don’t even want to think about what he did to her.’ Nana started sobbing again. ‘I don’t want to see him again, I can’t stand the sight of him any more; I can’t guarantee anything, I feel like tearing him to pieces! Oh yes, he has to be told,’ she said, imitating Christine. ‘Don’t make me laugh!’

‘I don’t think it’s a decision for you or Kostya. The two of them must make a decision like that themselves. Elene and Miqa. Just them — no one else.’ Christine spoke in a monotone, as if she were no longer even trying to persuade Nana of a different truth, as if she were already prepared for no one to believe her.

‘That son of a bitch is going to leave this house — right now. And you can tell him I’d better not set eyes on him again, or else …’ Nana was rocking back and forth, distraught, like a mourner in a classical tragedy. ‘I, for one, am not going to let that little bastard destroy my daughter’s future.’

‘But Nana —’

‘I’ll talk to my doctor. She’s an excellent gynaecologist. She’ll do it, off the record.’

‘You can’t let that happen — you can’t make her do it. It’ll have disastrous consequences.’ Christine’s voice was quiet now, feeble, as if she no longer believed her words could change anything.

‘Disastrous consequences? We’ve got those already. Oh yes — serious, disastrous consequences. And we’re going to remedy them before it’s too late!’ Nana seemed more composed now. She wiped her tears away with the corner of the tablecloth.

Christine stood. She wanted to go out, to get away from the impossibility of putting this right; she didn’t want to see a sacrificial lamb slaughtered, she didn’t want to weep for the wrong thing, she didn’t want to go on participating in the sad power struggle Nana and Kostya’s marriage had become, the indirect consequence of which was now in Elene’s belly. But she didn’t move. Something was holding her back; her legs felt like lead.

The image of a dumbstruck Kitty arose in her mind’s eye. Kitty’s young face, drained of life, when she rang her doorbell after all those days of uncertainty. Without her belly. Without her son. She rubbed her eyes. Miqa! He was what counted; she had to save him — from the wrong decisions, above all. She had to do something. She couldn’t just watch and wait, again. She had to act.

The abortion was carried out one week later. One week was how long it took Nana to persuade her daughter that terminating the pregnancy was the only way for her to continue her carefree life and not become a social outcast, to finish school and hold on to the prospect of a secure future. One week, to impress upon her daughter that she could not breathe a word of this incident to her father. The first secret Nana was finally able to share with her daughter. Just her — mother and daughter, as she had always wanted it, without her husband muscling in.

*

Christine summoned Andro to Tbilisi. At the bus station, she took his arm, and instead of walking with him towards Vera Hill, as usual, she sat him down in the first snack bar they came to and explained the situation. Andro listened attentively, smoking his Kosmos cigarettes and scratching his head continually. His alcohol consumption had begun to show in his face: he looked puffy, and his cheeks were flecked with red.

Two years earlier, he had bribed the kolkhoz doctor to write him a certificate, and since then he had been categorised as unfit for the kolkhoz work he loathed; he now worked for a stonemason who made busts of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said. He scratched his beard and drew on his cigarette.

‘Then make a bit of an effort and help me resolve this situation to everyone’s advantage.’

‘To everyone’s advantage? Are you joking, Christine?’

‘They only have one more year of school ahead of them. It must be doable. But …’

‘He’ll find out, anyway. It’s like a bloody curse.’

‘Kostya? No — he won’t. Nobody wants that. Nana least of all, so she’ll do everything she can to ensure he doesn’t find out.’

‘Things like that can’t be kept secret.’

‘Miqa will soon be of age. We just have to bridge this period. Then he can be independent, move into a boarding house or something … Then he can take care of himself, stay here, study; I’ll go on looking after him. It’s just now, in this situation, it’s too dangerous for them to stay under the same roof.’

‘All my friends and relatives are dead, Christine. I’ll take him with me. There’s no alternative. He’ll just have to go back to the village school.’

‘I can’t let him go just like that — it’s only one year, for one year we’d have to —’

‘I have nothing. I can’t do anything. I’m grateful just to get these commissions and earn a few extra roubles when the master mason’s too drunk and they let me do Marx or Engels instead. You make the most money with Lenin these days. Busts of Lenin fetch the best price. Now do you understand what my life is like?’

*

My mother only just managed to get her school-leaving diploma. Nana was so afraid of provoking Kostya’s violent temper that she allowed him to believe Elene was doing marvellously well at school; he was delighted by his daughter’s supposed ambition and cleverness. He also announced to the family the happy news that he had been gifted a large plot of land by the state in gratitude for services rendered. Like any Soviet citizen who was anyone, he too could now build himself a dacha.

The plot of land was just under an hour away by car, in a picturesque village northwest of the city, not far from a stud farm and an abandoned monastery. The land included the remains of an old, traditional country house dating back to the previous century, which had fallen into ruin, and which Kostya now wished to revive according to his own taste.

‘My own home at last! I think we should all move there. It’s not too far from the city to drive to work, but far enough to have some peace and quiet! I’m thinking of making the house more than just a dacha.’

He tasked his mother with organising the conversion and procuring the building materials. Stasia, who had entered her dreaded retirement, gladly accepted, in the belief that healing and a new beginning might indeed be possible in such a wondrous place.

So in the same year that, unbeknownst to Kostya and Miqa, a life had been prevented in the eternal kingdom of the women, construction began on the ‘Green House’, as your mother and I would later dub it, because by the time we were born it was already almost entirely overgrown with ivy. The house where Daria and I grew up.