Creating the idea of an enemy for oneself releases a destructive power.

Because it is not the enemy who creates mistrust, but mistrust that
creates the enemy.

MERAB MAMARDASHVILI

When Daria asked Stasia why her eyes were different colours, Stasia answered her as follows: ‘That, my sunshine, is because there are two animals who live inside you: a husky, the sled-dog with the piercing blue eyes, from whom you get your blue eye, and a hedgehog, small, shy, and prickly — you get your brown eye from him. Your husky is the brave part of you that’s always running, that doggedly follows its path, on and on and on, that never shies away from any adventure, and the hedgehog is the part of you that needs protection and calm, security and lots of love, that fears the wide world of the husky and so is always trying to retreat.’ Daria stuck to this story all her life, and would tell it whenever people commented, in amazement and wonder, on her eyes.

*

When I picture Daria as a little girl, I always see her dressed in her smart clothes, for which my grandmother was primarily responsible. She looked like a child from a pattern magazine, with stylish little patent-leather shoes and white socks, her curly blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. I see her purse her lips, holding sway over everyone and everything. A princess, whom our family was only sheltering temporarily, and who was therefore allowed to do anything, was entitled to anything she wanted.

Daria really did have the strangest, most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. And everything about her was beautiful and well-proportioned, practically perfect; only her deep voice, like that of a sulky boy, didn’t really go with her angelic appearance. I can still hear the whispering whenever I think back to when we used to walk along the street holding Mother’s hands: people speaking to one another in low voices, their glances lingering on her, circling her like wasps around a jam jar. Of course, I would be lying if I claimed I didn’t suffer torments back then; I would be lying if I claimed I hadn’t, some nights, wished a plague upon her. However, these torments were caused not so much by Daria or her beauty, but by our grandfather’s idolisation of her. In his eyes, she had everything she needed to lead a brilliant life, everything he valued in the female sex: unparalleled beauty; the innate ability to smilingly, trippingly, get her own way; the sleepwalker’s confidence that accompanies such beauty; and the obedience of a well-trained circus horse.

I’ve already said, Brilka, that despite all the many fights we had throughout our childhood, for me she was always the big sister I looked up to and wanted to emulate, in the certain knowledge that I would never succeed.

It seemed to be an unwritten law that Daria made everything she touched shine brightly, so it was no wonder that, later on, when the tables turned and the hedgehog inside her disappeared for ever, she also demonstrated the power to bring everything crashing down.

But I don’t even exist yet; I haven’t yet been born into our story. So I mustn’t rely on my own memories; I must content myself with those of others that tally with my impression of how things were.

Before I let Daria’s progenitor, whom our mother had helped to flee abroad, walk out of our story forever, I should perhaps mention that he really did get to America. Elene never talked about him. But one day, when the country we all came from had long since vanished from the maps of the world, she told me as she sat cracking walnuts that she’d always believed Vaso would make it. And indeed his criminal brother, who had gone on to become a ‘businessman’, had contacted her and told her that Vaso had died in Davenport, Iowa. At the time of his death, he was a gas-station attendant on his third marriage. An untreated obstruction of the bowel killed him; he hadn’t been able to afford health insurance, and so hadn’t gone to the doctor, despite the pain.

Even though his life had been anything but a classic example of the American dream, Elene — rather bitter and disappointed that her plan had come to so little and Vaso hadn’t even made it to New York or LA but had fetched up as a lowly provincial gas-station attendant — said at the time that she didn’t think it impossible that perhaps he had been able to wrest a bit more happiness from his life in the West. As far as I’m aware, his three American marriages were childless. He died without ever having seen or spoken to his only daughter.

*

Daria was destined to grow up fatherless. It was this that prompted my grandfather to bid farewell to the Moscow military arena and request a transfer to his homeland, even though for Kostya Jashi this relocation was tantamount to a demotion, as the Black Sea fleet had no military significance and was responsible solely for trade. A life without the sea, though, would only have been half a life for him. So he tested the waters at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and asked a few of his confidants in Georgia to enquire about a suitable position for him, because he knew that in Georgia — if he wanted it — all doors were open to him. After all, he had managed to survive in Russia, so he was more than good enough for Georgia. He could boast some triumphant successes on the secret council of the submarine fleet. Under the leadership of Admiral Gorshkov, his committee had managed, in a very short space of time, to build the best submarines in the world. With these, the Soviet fleet was not just numerically superior to the Americans’, it had also broken all their records: for speed, for depth, for size. Kostya could look back on his career with pride. Certainly, many sacrifices had had to be made to achieve this rapid growth; certainly, they had had to suffer losses; but what Great Work was ever achieved without sacrifice?

Yes, he had found it hard to write the report on K-129, which sank in the middle of the Pacific. It had been no fun with K-8, either, in the Bay of Biscay, and as for K-19 — well, Kostya didn’t even want to think about that.

The sea: yes, he had married the sea, and now he was thinking of exchanging his companion of many years for a small, soft girl with two different-coloured eyes.

He didn’t want to go to Batumi or Poti to keep an eye on civilian merchant convoys, but the Black Sea offered him no alternative. Was it time to go ashore now? For good? To take care of his family; to care for Daria in a way that would make up for his failings with Elene? Would they manage to be a normal family at last?

Kostya felt the burden of age on his shoulders, its leaden weight like a heavy suit of armour. He was constantly checking himself in the mirror, counting the new wrinkles, cursing every annoying new nasal hair or little roll of fat around his waist. Although he still did callisthenics every morning like clockwork, placed great importance on looking elegant, and made considerable efforts to keep up with the fashion, he knew that soon he would no longer find it so easy to persuade these young, blonde, lavender-and-honey-scented women to be his companions. He knew the time would come when he would have to make do with the second- and third-eldest, fourth- and fifth-prettiest. And he feared it.

*

Then he was approached by an old friend from Tbilisi, who suggested that he might like to apply to sit as one of the thirty-two members of the National Council. They would welcome such an eminent, deserving man with open arms. And although it was hard for him to exchange the sea for the tedium of a desk job, he could see that this post was the best alternative for him in this situation. A council member was not inferior to a naval captain in terms either of remuneration or status. There, too, he would report to the MVD — familiar territory for Kostya. As a National Council member, he could ask for control of the harbour authority. They wouldn’t be able to deny his request.

He contacted the relevant people and made his wishes known, which, as anticipated, were very warmly received. Yes, Kostya decided, he should indeed head home, even though Tbilisi had stopped being his home long ago. Yes, he must take command of the doomed ship that was his family and steer it into a safe harbour.

*

At the time of Kostya’s return, people were already talking about a ‘thaw’. Brezhnev’s rise to power had marked the beginning of the era of the eminences grises. Fortunately, no one yet knew that he would remain in office for another eleven years, during more than half of which he would be seriously ill, and would lead the country into a state of stagnation. Brezhnev’s greatest ‘achievement’ — along with the crushing of the Prague Spring — was the reintroduction of compulsory silence. Public criticism of the Generalissimus was strictly prohibited, and in that great empire, extending across eleven time zones, calm was maintained so scrupulously that the country imperceptibly fell into a coma.

Brezhnev’s chest was decorated with an absurd number of medals; he was made a marshal, and declared, with satisfaction: ‘The country is stable, peaceful, and in good condition. I am glad that everything here is proceeding normally.’

Yes, everything was normal. Because under his government there were no alcoholics, no sadists, no informers, and no creatures corroded by mistrust. After all, there was condensed milk, there was milk powder; there was even caviar, if you moved in the right circles, and complimentary dachas for the higher-ups; kommunalkas too, of course, infested with cockroaches; there was the right idea, for everyone to promote; there were fertile women; there were cheap cigarettes and comfortable Volgas, there was a lot of vodka and, in extremis, samogon, which never failed to do the trick — a few sips resulted in total blackout; and there were prisons for bad people, meaning those who didn’t know how to appreciate this wonderful system. There were proper, state-approved methods for dealing with such vermin; and there were other means of repression.

The state informed its people which sanatorium they should recover in, gave them a profession, a place to live, and a purpose in life. Yes: everything was normal.

*

Kostya packed the expensive porcelain into cardboard boxes, gave away most of his furniture, sent the valuable tapestries and carpets to Tbilisi, and had everything transported to his hometown, along with his beloved cream-coloured GAZ-13 Chaika, the model known as ‘The Seagull’.

He was received in Tbilisi in a manner befitting his status; endless tables were laid for him in a demonstration of sunny Georgia’s excessive, manic hospitality. There was even an article about him in The Communist. A great hero had returned to his homeland. He was given an office in the Ministry of Internal Affairs on Chitadze Street, and a new driver.

And when he was offered the supervision of harbour dues along the Black Sea coast of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, he accepted without discussion. In future he would commute between Tbilisi, Poti, Sokhumi, and Batumi, and the travelling suited him very well; it gave him the opportunity to live out his ‘private life’ undisturbed. For, despite his fear of ageing, at this point in time my grandfather had no intention whatsoever of completely renouncing his old way of life.

Corruption had long been rife in all areas of administration and government, but Kostya trusted that he would be able to cope with it. His years of working in the Soviet Union’s toughest institutions had given him the necessary confidence for that. He had swum long enough in the immeasurable vastness of Russian seas; these Georgian ponds didn’t scare him. What he did not consider, however, was that he had been living far away from Caucasian reality for too long, and was unable to muster sufficient understanding for his compatriots’ fluid mentality. He was familiar with the strict rules of the game among the Russian elite; he was familiar with the authorities’ covert corruption, which had been experiencing a veritable heyday since Brezhnev’s inauguration, but he didn’t see that Georgian corruption, Georgian greed, far exceeded that to which he was able to turn a blind eye. He failed to appreciate what a comfortable life the Georgian elite — including the intelligentsia — had established for themselves in their little piece of paradise during the decades of Bolshevik rule. How they had perfected the art of delusion. How good things were for them in their Russian trauma. How easy it actually was to live with the northern oppression that, off the record, they always professed to hate. In Russia, people believed in the power of the authorities, so they had never learned anything other than to live in constant fear of them. In Georgia, though, this fear was merely feigned: people here assumed on principle that those in power were dishonest and corrupt, and so would think in advance of ways to cheat, trick, or bribe them. They didn’t believe in a system, or in any ideology; apart from, perhaps, the ideology of their own hedonism.

Once the initial fuss had died down, people had realised that the position their northern neighbour had assigned to them really wasn’t all that bad. That it might well prove a mistake not to take advantage of this position. They could actually live in these conditions: one could be cultured, creative, musical, fond of drink, a little anarchic, yes, that, too, but only a little; beautiful and talkative, lazy and hot-tempered. What was wrong with that? These, after all, are the characteristics we Georgians are proud to cite as part of our national identity. Or were these actually Russian dreams that people had internalised to such a degree they had come to believe they were their own? So what? What was so bad about that? Yes, it could have been far worse. The whole vast empire was gazing enviously at this small, sunny piece of paradise! How many Soviet republics, how many autonomous regions, how many sister states would have liked to swap places with us, let alone all those oppressed, resettled minorities? Because as long as the shadow of our great countryman, the Generalissimus, kept watch over the people of Georgia, nothing could happen to us. Because nobody got past him. Not Russia, not the world.

It really was an impressively smart move by Mother Russia, Brilka: she decided always to encourage her small, rebellious, rather too unruly son Georgia in all his weaknesses, and to proclaim these weaknesses strengths, until the son began to delight in his role and believe he had tricked his mother, disempowered her, thereby failing to see the extent to which, in his eagerness to be loved and praised by his parent, he was prostituting himself for her love.