What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?

RICHARD NIXON

For Elene’s sixteenth birthday, Kostya surprised his daughter with a brief visit and real French perfume, which was meant to show her that she could finally consider herself an adult. But the night before the big party Kostya wanted to throw in his daughter’s honour, Elene disappeared and was nowhere to be found. Eventually they discovered a note, written in her pretty, girlish handwriting: I’ve gone and I don’t want you to look for me. I’ve permitted myself — and I apologise for that — to take two necklaces from Mama’s jewellery box and a little money from Stasia’s handbag. I am going to seek God. So don’t worry and don’t look for me. Your Elene.

It took them almost a week to find her. Kostya made use of all his contacts and influence; she had indeed gone to a convent, near Kazbegi. Getting her out of there must have resembled a scene from a film: Nana told me later that Kostya threw his daughter over his shoulder like a rolled-up carpet, and she thrashed and screamed like a banshee. On the drive home, she prayed non-stop, threatening her parents with Hell and the Devil if they didn’t take her back and leave her in peace.

Kostya was lenient and made allowances; he didn’t reproach her, and he tried his very best to understand his child’s dramatic transformation from supposedly model daughter to a God-seeking young woman uninterested in human society. He took a leave of absence, booked two rooms in a luxury sanatorium by the healing springs in Sochi, and flew there with Elene. He took her for meals in high-class restaurants and even allowed her to drink Crimean champagne; in the mornings, before the beaches got crowded, he went swimming with her in the violet-tinted sea; he took her on evening walks along the white promenades, and tried to guess what reasons for her rebellion could lie behind her silence. And it took days for the sea, the unasked questions, the reproaches not made, her father’s undivided attention, the tranquillity, and the sense of security at his side finally to coax a smile out of Elene after all. Her stony expression softened; she even started telling him what she wanted to see or do on a particular day; and when she seemed to have forgotten her worries for a few moments (which wasn’t often, but still), she was like the old Moscow Elene again, that cheerful soul bursting with energy, Kostya’s disciplined, ambitious daughter. In moments like these, Kostya believed that what his wife had got wrong with his daughter could still be put right — by him, by his patience and devotion.

*

At that time, towards the end of summer, Vasili, whom all the Caucasian guests addressed in the Georgian manner as Vaso, was working as a lifeguard on the upmarket end of Sochi beach. He had just turned twenty, and dreamed of one day climbing into the hold of one of the passing ships, fleeing his origins and his Soviet predestination, for a western, preferably American, future. He had grown up fatherless; he had a mother who had worked all her life as a chambermaid in the spa sanatoriums, and an elder brother, a petty criminal currently serving five years imprisonment for car theft, from which, judging by his letters, he was highly likely to emerge a criminal mastermind.

But Vaso, who in addition to his Russian mother tongue also spoke Georgian, Armenian, Abkhazian, even a little German and Turkish, dreamed of something else: something big.

Ever since he was a little boy, he had watched guests going in and out of the sanatoriums, people who had better lives than he and his family did, who could afford to be served by people like him. He had always dreamed of being allowed, one day, to swap places with the guests. He could already see himself in those fluffy bathrobes, sipping Crimean champagne, his melancholy gaze fixed happily on the horizon, dressing up every evening for the various dances, accompanied by a beautiful woman with sparkling jewels dangling from her earlobes.

But all that his social standing, his opportunities, and his paternity as stated in his passport (‘unknown’) permitted him to do was to take a badly paid job as a waiter in one of the town’s spa hotels, or to sign up aboard one of the filthy freighters that ploughed up and down the Black Sea and work transporting oranges and lemons on ships that never even went near the Atlantic. At best, he might secure a permanent position as a smart, slick-haired receptionist in one of the sanatoriums. None of this particularly appealed to Vaso. None of these prospects left any room for his dreams.

So he had decided to take the unusual but not unpleasant step of getting closer to those dreams and, in doing so, enjoying the advantages of a life Fate had not ordained for him. He was very good-looking; he had heard this ever since he was five years old, when he used to ride along the corridors of the sanatorium on his mother’s cleaning trolley to cries of ‘What a beautiful boy!’ ‘Look at those eyes!’ ‘What a pretty mouth, what a gorgeous head of hair!’, from the female hotel guests in particular; until at some point, when he reached a certain age, these cries fell silent and he became aware instead of reddened cheeks, meaningful looks, and excited whispering whenever he appeared, equipped with gloves and hedge clippers, and started snipping away at the bushes around the sanatorium. His initial shyness and natural deference towards the hotel guests, which his mother had painstakingly inculcated into him, were quickly discarded. And as soon as it became clear to him that he was in no way worse or more stupid than the many guests lounging around or playing badminton, he grew bolder, permitted himself to exchange a few words with the female guests, became increasingly confident — and from there it was but a small step to win the ladies’ favour for himself. He quickly realised that there was less in it for him with the young, shapely, sweet-smelling girls than with the older, less firm-skinned but more bored and daring women. Apart from their beautiful bodies, the girls had little to offer. They were entirely dependent on their fathers and mothers, fiancés and husbands. They, like him, were filled with longing; they too felt as if they were trapped in cages, albeit golden ones. It was quite different with the ladies over forty. Their dreams — fulfilled or unfulfilled — lay behind them; they had married, worked, had children, carried out their duties, experienced disappointments, and now, on reaching the high point of their lives, they felt drained and unloved. It was astonishing how many women spent their holidays alone because their husbands were either too busy or spending their time with younger, more attractive women.

Above all, though, these women were more generous. They had something to give in exchange for what he offered them. And since his initial seduction, at the age of fourteen, by a rich widow from Odessa who had introduced him to the art of love, Vaso had managed to amass quite a bit of money and other things of value. He had decided that one day he would buy himself a place on one of the international freighters. Then — Vaso was convinced of it — nothing would stand in the way of his American dream. But he never had enough money. It made no difference how long or how hard he worked or how many women he pleased, something always got in the way. Either it was his mother, whose health had suffered greatly with her advancing years; or his brother, who needed money to bribe people into reducing his sentence; or himself, having to invest in his career and needing new clothes. Easy come, easy go: he kept having to start all over again, but his American dream was stronger than any disappointment or hurdle he had to overcome.

With this dream at the back of his mind, he never tired of praising the supposed or actual beauty of all these lonely women, taking them to secret bays and remote beaches, singing them a few bawdy sailors’ songs, and pleasuring them at night in their sanatorium and hotel beds. Tanned, with an athletic physique, his blond hair always waxed, perfumed perhaps a little too extravagantly, he was too obvious in his desperate desire to please, but attractive enough to rescue them, at least for the duration of their holiday, from their oppressive marriages, their boredom, and their fear of old age.

Vaso had adapted himself so superbly to older women, their desires and longings, that the attentions of a suntanned young girl late that summer must have rather taken him by surprise and been somewhat confusing.

My mother had noticed him on her very first day at the beach, where he was in charge of renting out wicker beach chairs and loungers, and from then on had not let him out of her sight. Again and again, she had used the time when Kostya was making work phone calls in his room to go to the beach alone and rent a beach chair; and Vaso, obligingly, and with rather more enthusiasm than strictly necessary, had led her to her selected spot, and had even fetched ice cubes for her drink.

Nor could Kostya fail to notice, to his disappointment, that Elene’s smile possibly had less to do with him and his attentions than with the beau from the beach who glanced in Elene’s direction more often than was proper and grinned from ear to ear whenever she walked past. At first, he considered suggesting to Elene that they change beaches, but then he decided to seize the opportunity and use the boy’s infatuation for his own ends: because, unlike his wife, Kostya was convinced that he had everything under control. He started to leave the radiant couple alone from time to time, and stayed in the cafeteria or in his room more often. Then one evening, by which time the situation could not have been more obvious, he waited for Vaso after his shift and suggested that the boy take his daughter out to an exclusive restaurant. He, Kostya, would pick up the bill, so that his daughter’s culinary requirements didn’t prove an embarrassment. Yes — Kostya’s plan was to let this lad play a not unimportant role in stabilising their father-daughter relationship. He would be the understanding, loving, open-minded father, would regain Elene’s favour in doing so, and would then convince her that the two of them deserved another chance, that the doors of all the faculties in Moscow would be open to her if she should consider returning after all.

But Elene was very far from the infatuated, highly strung, easily stressed girl her father thought he saw in her. Something inside her had broken off, like the handle from a pitcher, and, caught between self-loathing and the contempt she felt for her environment and her family, she was searching for other ways to smash the pitcher completely until it crumbled into dust and there was no longer any chance it would ever be mended.

Elene had done something terrible, of that she had no doubt; but the punishment had not come. On the contrary: the wrong person had been punished. She had wanted to seek God because if neither her family nor the state thought it necessary to punish her, God at least would have to. But God had not appeared to her. The fasting, the praying — none of it had worked. God was silent and elusive. In order for justice to prevail, she would have to inflict a suitable punishment on herself. She would keep searching until the punishment felt suitable.

I’ve always suspected that what lay behind Elene’s unusually swift and confident decision to make Vaso her lover was a desire, whether conscious or unconscious, to give her womb a chance (yes, I know you’re smiling at my choice of words here, Brilka; I can see you grinning in my mind’s eye).

If I had asked her about it directly, she would, of course, have denied it, because all through our childhood she had tried to impress on my sister and me that we were the fruits of passionate love. But now I think that, for her, this summer affair was solely about proving to herself that her womb, and her whole body, was capable of conceiving a love child, not just a dreadful consequence or a fruit of the terrible incident.

As early as their second rendezvous (financed, again, by Kostya), she indicated to Vaso that she was definitely interested in other things as well, not just the tedious conversations that good form and appropriate, state-approved public etiquette permitted. Vaso was cautious. After all, he had long since realised whose daughter Elene Jashi was, and he didn’t want to make a mistake that could end up costing him dearly.

I never met him, Brilka, and so I can’t claim with any certainty that he was in love with your grandmother. A more likely assumption would, of course, be that he saw Elene as another opportunity to top up his savings. In any case, he feigned ignorance and naivety, and returned her punctually to the sanatorium after each meeting, at the time agreed with Kostya, conscientiously handing her over to her powerful father, who thanked him with a satisfied smile, shook his hand, and wished him a safe journey home.

But the will of a young, attractive woman — and, above all, of a certain Elene Jashi — can make an equally young, attractive man forget his principles. When they met for their third date, Elene persuaded Vaso that they shouldn’t go to the boring restaurant again, but that he should show her Sochi’s most beautiful hidden places instead.

First, they went for a walk along the quay, watched the ships in the distance, cast a great many stones into the sea, laughed and joked; then they went to a sailors’ bar off the beaten track and tried a few different kinds of strong schnapps, wrinkling their noses as they did so; they kissed, leaning over the sticky counter, and eventually left the bar hand in hand to whizz along the promenade on his clapped-out moped. When Vaso turned to head back to her hotel, Elene started badgering him, begging him not to take her home yet; there was no need to be afraid of her father, she would explain it away herself if they were a little late, and besides, he had to be nice to her at the moment. Vaso had no alternative but to drive my mother to the other side of town and lie down beside her in a cool, stony bay.

It must have given Elene immense satisfaction; and he took what he needed for himself, too. Gentle and tender, keen to give her pleasure, although I don’t know whether she was able to feel it (for my mother and sister’s sakes, I hope so).

Time was short. After they had made love, and Elene had dipped her body in the salty, dark water to wash away the evidence, they dressed hurriedly — happy, sated, and laughing — and rode back to the sanatorium.

Your mother always thought of her conception as humiliating, Brilka. I tried to make it clear to her that hers must have been much more romantic than mine, but I could never convince her. We were always trying to outdo each other over whose genesis was the more undignified, as if it were a trophy worth fighting for.

Their leavetaking at the end of the summer was more sentimental than they had anticipated; apparently there was even a glint of a tear in Vaso’s eyes when they embraced for the last time. Kostya, touched by the young man’s heartfelt emotion, promised his daughter that he would invite him to Tbilisi if their love survived the separation and continued, as they had promised one another, in epistolary form.

Whether or not he was in love, Vasili was definitely impressed. Despite his many amorous adventures, in the course of his conquests he had never met a woman, young or old, who was happy to do without oaths and promises, without false hopes and illusory plans for the future, who demanded nothing of the kind. Who sought pleasure with such abandon, as if there were something she was trying to overcome by every means possible, with every inch of her body. But although he remained suspicious of Elene’s permissiveness right till the last, at their parting he did whisper a few lover’s oaths in her ear, to be on the safe side.

*

The boy had done his duty in exemplary fashion: Kostya was triumphant. When he suggested that she should consider her future, take some time, and look at a few institutes in Moscow, Elene offered no resistance, but agreed and went with him. Upon their arrival in Moscow, Elene let Lyuda cook for her, ate her beloved blinis with honey, went to the cinema, and actually did — largely out of boredom, and for fun — write long, yearning letters to Vasili. The idea of being in love amused her, and rather shook her contemptuous indifference towards both the world and herself. Vasili didn’t lose much time, either: two weeks later, Elene received a reply. Perhaps their light-hearted summer affair really could turn into love, my mother must have thought; her reply was rather more passionate, more emotional than her first letter. But still it was a game, and because she wanted to escape her father’s plans for her future in Moscow, she went on playing, more out of curiosity than conviction.

Vaso had revealed his American dream to her as they sat on the pier: he had stretched out his hand, pointed at the distant lights of ships, and said, with a sigh, that one day he would be there, en route to other lands and continents. So she hoped he would be true enough to himself not to abandon his course, even when he found out about her pregnancy.

The Moscow frosts had just begun to bite when Elene knocked on the door of Kostya’s study, entered, and waited for him to set his work papers aside and look at her through his narrow reading glasses, before telling him that she was pregnant. According to her calculations, the child was due in May.

There was shouting; the papers on the desk flew through the air; there were threats, blunt insults, and coarse abuse, but at least there were no tears. It ended in dejected silence and a sort of resignation, and, later, rhetorical questions: how could it come to this, what has become of my wonderful girl, et cetera. At the end of the year, Kostya had no alternative but to invite the unsuspecting father to Moscow and inform him of his impending happiness.

*

The two men retired to Kostya’s study. After a few delicacies and a litre of good Kindzmarauli, Vasili suddenly found that the future Kostya was sketching out for him didn’t seem so bad after all. It would be a good and, above all, a solid alternative to his own risky, and as yet still unfinanced, American dream. He was even able to feign a degree of cheerfulness to Kostya regarding his role as a father.

He was told he would be able to study — ‘Engineering would be good for your lively intellect and skilled hands, my boy; besides, the country will always need good engineers!’ He and Elene would move into their own apartment in Moscow, would receive the greatest possible degree of support, and he would have a good time with the most generous and permissive girl he knew (naturally he didn’t breathe a word of this last to his future father-in-law). Yes, that all sounded sensible; a bit less exciting, perhaps, than the voyage to America aboard the cargo ship, but much more tangible, much more real. Vasili dreamed himself into a sweet and carefree future, into a prosperity represented by this serious, decisive man who spoke to him so persuasively. And who left Vasili in no doubt that he would brook no contradiction.

*

The engagement was hastily celebrated. Nana and Vasili’s mother were both flown to Moscow, and a small but suitable party was held. The guests smiled, toasted one another, and congratulated the young couple. Vasili was given a generous allowance so he could entertain his pregnant wife in the manner to which she was accustomed. He soon acquired a taste for his new life. Elene accepted all this with what was now her characteristic impenetrable indifference and turned all her attention to her belly, which was growing fuller and more prominent by the day. She was going to have a baby, she was going to be a mother, the best mother in the world, and she was going to do everything for her baby; she pictured how she would devote herself wholly to her new offspring to compensate for the other, dead, unwanted, unborn child.

One evening, the couple were leaving the Pushkin Museum hand in hand, talking excitedly about art, when Vasili stopped in the middle of the street, sat down on the pavement, and began to weep. Elene, overwhelmed by this unaccustomed sight and by her fiancé’s sudden sorrow, sat down beside him and tentatively put her head on his shoulder. She didn’t enquire about the reason for his sudden change of mood but waited until he had calmed down. Almost out of breath, gasping for air, he forced himself to describe to her his hatred of the country in which they lived; he told her about his childhood, the endless humiliations; he even gave her an unvarnished account of his romantic affairs. He talked about his mother, his brother; he bared his soul to her, as if all his life he had been waiting for this one confession. He spared her nothing, didn’t gloss over his feelings, revealed to her even the smallest of his longings for revenge, the most secret of his desires.

They found a bench in a secluded street and sat down. He had talked himself into a frenzy; saliva had gathered in the corners of his mouth and he looked exhausted and empty. She put her arm around his shoulders and thought about what he had said.

‘Aren’t you surprised?’ he asked, when he couldn’t bear her silence any longer. ‘Or disappointed?’

‘I’m not disappointed, Vaso. I understand you, even. I understand you very well, at least I hope so. Sometimes I feel guilty; I didn’t want it to be like this, and believe me, I didn’t want you to suddenly be here, with me; that wasn’t my plan. You shouldn’t give up something that’s so important to you for me, or for the baby.’

‘But I want to be with you. This isn’t because of you, Elene.’

‘But more than being with me, you want to be somewhere else, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Aha. Well, there’s one thing I definitely don’t want: for you to become one of those pompous bastards who are always cheating on their wives and think they’ve got everything under control. You only have to look at my father. All that posturing — it disgusts me. I have worries of my own, you know. Don’t think I don’t. I just don’t like talking about them.’

‘I’ll pull myself together. I promise I’ll be stronger — for us, for you. I’ll do better. It’s just … well, it’s hard. And it all happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly.’

‘I do understand. You know, I used to want to leave as well. I have an aunt in the West. She’s a famous singer there.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, but I’m not allowed to talk about her.’

‘We could go together …’

‘Don’t be childish. I don’t want to. Your dreams aren’t mine, Vaso. What would I do in the West? Where would I go? I belong here, with my family; it doesn’t matter how much I hate them, I still belong here. Perhaps I should have met you two years ago, in the summer. I was … different then. Do you have anyone who could help you?’

‘If I had enough money, yes. I know a couple of sailors who occasionally smuggle people onto the ships and —’

‘Good. Very good. Listen. Papa wants us to get married before the baby comes. That means spring at the latest; recently, he’s been talking about March. He’ll give us money. For the wedding, our new life, and, you know, all that nonsense. He wants us to stay in Moscow; he doesn’t want us to go to my mother’s in Tbilisi. He thinks it’s her fault. I used to think it was, too. That’s not true. But it doesn’t matter now. So we’ll get the money and we’ll act as if we’re planning our wedding. Look for a place to hold the reception, make sure everything’s stylish and expensive. That’s how he wants it, so he can invite all his colleagues. On balance, he actually thinks it’s good that you’re a Russian. And we have to make an appointment with the registry office; and we should really do all this, too, because he checks up on everything; but we’ll only ever pay people a deposit and say that the rest will follow on the day of the wedding. You’ll get the rest. Go to Sochi; settle everything you need to settle there. And just before the wedding, you’ll disappear. By the time they find out, you have to be gone. You have to be gone, Vaso, or you’ll be finished. They won’t spare you. My father least of all. It can’t go wrong, otherwise you’ll never see a window again without bars. Do you understand me?’

Vaso stared at his fiancée, wide-eyed, with a mixture of tremendous respect, fascination, and awe.

‘When you’re in Sochi, if you realise it’s not going to work, come back and we’ll have to get married. We can split up in a few years’ time if you like; that’s fine by me. If you doubt even for one second that you can make it — turn back.’

‘You’re talking like a pro.’

‘A pro?’

‘Yes; as if you had experience with this sort of thing.’

‘I used to imagine it sometimes. That’s all. The rest I know from my father. They all think I don’t pick up on anything, but I pick up on everything, even things they don’t pick up on themselves. I also know that my father covered for his sister when she left. But that doesn’t matter now, either.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t worry: the baby will have everything it needs. You know that. My father will do everything he can for us. And I’ll do everything I can for the baby. I think it’s going to be a girl.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘No idea. I’ll find a beautiful name for her. Haven’t decided yet, though.’

‘When I was little, there was a woman who lived in our neighbourhood. Some people said she was a witch. I think they were just jealous of her. Because she was different, and so special. She healed people with herbs, but no one trusted her an inch. She was a gypsy. Some people said she was a whore, but no one ever saw her with any men. Others said her family had been killed — deported, and so on — but no one really knew anything about her. She just turned up, overnight, in the place where we lived.

‘When I was a child I often went to play in her garden. She lived in a converted garage, in the middle of a field. That was so romantic; it seemed so romantic to me. She was so … different from everyone else I knew. I didn’t know anything about her, either. But she knew how to sing, cook, and love. She really knew. She was always there for me. For me, and lots of other children who wandered around the neighbourhood not knowing what to do with themselves. She played with us; she was like a child herself, and she was always telling us stories.

‘As I … well, as I got older, I started to lust after her. One day I plucked up all my courage and went to see her. I mean, people had always claimed she did it with anyone for money. So I raided Mother’s purse and went to see her. And when I explained to her what I wanted, she started to cry. It was so shocking to me that I just ran away. She just stood in front of me with the tears running down her cheeks. I couldn’t even have imagined her ever crying at all. I saw how much I’d disappointed her. And I was so ashamed.

‘Soon after that she was gone. From one day to the next — just as she had appeared. I never saw her again. She never came back. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I think she was the only woman I’ve ever really loved. And the only one who didn’t want to sleep with me. Ironic, isn’t it?’

‘What was her name?’

‘Daria.’

And so it was that my sister got her name from a gypsy witch whom some took for a whore, but who, as far as my sister’s unknown father was concerned, was the only saint he had ever met, back then, in his still-young life.