If man creates so much suffering, what right has he then

to complain when he himself suffers?

ROMAIN ROLLAND

Christine, wrapped in a spinach-green woollen coat, her face veiled in black tulle, strode along Rustaveli Boulevard. She had alighted from the tram at the opera house and was heading purposefully north.

People were walking up and down the boulevard. How strange it was, mused Christine, that you could rarely tell by looking at them what their stories were. Whether they had ever informed on someone to get a bigger apartment; whether their grandfather or grandmother had met their death in one of the many labour camps far away in the cold, white lands, or in a muddy ditch on the outskirts of the city; whether they had deceived others, cheated them, had believed in monsters; whether they had loved the wrong person; whether they had deserted someone, or would do so some day.

She stopped in front of the ochre-brick building and watched the students streaming out. She saw these loud young people laughing, pushing each other, or engaged in excited discussion; but she was looking for one particular student who, as usual, was taking his time.

She sat down on a bench diagonally across from the entrance and took out her crotchet work. It could be quite a while before the person she was waiting for appeared. She had a lot of things on her mind. How long would she be able to keep her house? Offended by her retreat, would Kostya continue to oppose it being turned into a residential community? After all, she was now all alone in that impressively large residence.

She turned her attention back to the present. Perhaps today she would manage it. Summon all her courage and speak to him. Perhaps today he would see her, notice her. Perhaps, though — as on so many other occasions — she would wait for him to come walking down the street, alone, head bowed, a tattered briefcase under his arm, only to pass her by, not even suspecting she was there. In fact, this was the likelier scenario.

She waited, listening to the heartbeat of this city in which she had spent almost her whole life — her whole, fractured life. Ramas had brought her here (her face lit up with an almost imperceptible smile at the thought) and talked to her for hours about Cézanne and Renoir. He’d taken her to Mushtaidi Park to see Buster Keaton’s The General in the city’s first open-air cinema. Was it really the acid that had killed her beauty, or the bullet with which he had shot himself in the Kojori forest? It seemed to her that a piece of the sky had broken off a long, long time ago, a thick blanket of clouds had dropped, and now it was raining splintered dreams. Perhaps Stasia was right, and one day the ghosts would crawl out from their hiding places. The false past had left its undead behind, and they all had last words to say. They couldn’t accuse anyone else, only the living.

A snowflake landed on her coat. A couple of students started squealing and stretched out their palms to greet the first flakes. Why did he never laugh with these girls — why didn’t he run out of the building as they did? The building that housed the State Institute for Film and Theatre, where Miqa had passed his entrance exam the previous year. He was always alone, so thoughtful, so morose.

She saw him coming down the steps. Past the old watchman, sitting absorbed in his Pravda; past the cafeteria, and the crowds of boys and girls who took no notice of him. She rose; he walked past her, didn’t look at her, didn’t look around, didn’t raise his eyes from the pavement, as if a secret path were traced upon it that he was following unswervingly. She took a step back. Should she sit down again, or follow him? Then what? What would she say to him? He hadn’t answered any of her letters, not one in eighteen months, until in the end she had stopped writing. Hastily, she stuffed her crotcheting into her handbag and took another step. He was hurrying down the road towards Lenin Square. Another step; and another. She walked behind him, maintaining a few metres’ distance. But as they were passing the National Gallery, she couldn’t stand it any more, and called his name. Miqa turned, startled, as if surprised that anyone should call him, that anyone knew him at all.

‘May I invite you for coffee? Or tea? I don’t even know whether you like coffee.’

She attempted a smile. He looked serious, far too serious for his age; a little neglected, but desperately touching in his efforts to conceal this neglect.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t you have time? Do you need to be somewhere?’

‘I don’t like cafés.’

‘As you wish. A little walk, perhaps? Or something to eat? I could do with some food, I can hear my stomach rumbling. There’s a new restaurant in the Bath Quarter, apparently.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s a yes, then?’

They walked along the boulevard slowly, hesitantly, until Christine took his arm and matched her pace to his. At first she thought he would pull away, but he let her hold his elbow and started to walk faster.

‘My mother died three months ago,’ he said suddenly, pressing Christine’s arm more firmly to his side. She didn’t know what to say: for the first time it occurred to her that she didn’t know much about his mother. She had always declined to go with Andro whenever he came to collect Miqa.

‘She had a heart condition. They should have put her on sick leave. She shouldn’t have had to work so hard.’

‘Oh God, Miqa, I’m so sorry …’

They walked on in silence for a while. Little by little he started answering her questions: told her that his studies made him very happy, that he’d been very lucky because the group leader had put in a word for him, he wouldn’t have had much chance otherwise; after all, it was a prestigious school for prestigious children from prestigious families, but he’d been lucky. Christine didn’t interrupt the stream of words, nor did she tell him that this ‘luck’ was due to a great deal of lobbying on her part and the extra roubles she had slipped to the head of the examining board. He was living in a boarding house up in the Bagebi quarter, he told her. He didn’t socialise much with his fellow students. One of them was the son of a famous Mosfilm actor, another the nephew of a well-known Tbilisi surgeon, this girl was the fiancée of the son of so-and-so, and so on and so forth.

He didn’t often see his father; sometimes he would call the village post office or the neighbours and speak to him, but he hadn’t been doing well since Miqa’s mother’s death.

They went into one of the restaurants along the river that served Georgian food. He looked so hungry; of course he was hungry, she’d known it the minute she set eyes on him. She ordered, ignoring his loud protests, happy that food provided the opportunity to keep him near her, at least for an hour. First, they brought bread, warm from the oven, with plum sauce, tomato sauce, pomegranate sauce. This was followed by a starter of bean soup, with warm corn bread and lots of coriander, just the way he liked it. Then she asked the waiter to serve spinach and aubergine dips with extra garlic. Greedily he fell on the food. When at last they brought bazhe to the table his eyes sparkled. He dunked the bread in the various sauces, glancing at her gratefully as he did so.

‘Forgive me, Miqa.’

She looked him straight in the eye. She reached for his hand. He still felt so familiar, so in need of protection. He glanced around, and seemed visibly uncomfortable to be touched by her in this way. But she didn’t let go of him; she even moved her chair a little closer. He smelled her unmistakable scent: powder, and something he could never have put into words. He moved his face towards hers.

‘What exactly should I forgive you for?’

‘I left you on your own.’

He tensed, stared fixedly at his plate. Two women at a neighbouring table were looking over at them curiously.

‘I’ve been coming to the Institute since September, hoping to speak to you. I’ve made a decision. I’ve chosen you. I took you into my home all those years ago, I swore that I’d be there for you, and it’s unforgivable that, when it mattered, I wasn’t able to fulfil my promise. I left you on your own. Give me a chance to make amends.’

Suddenly he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. She turned her face away sharply: he tasted of tarragon and a broken childhood.

‘I didn’t mean it like that, Miqa,’ she stammered.

‘But I did.’

‘I know this isn’t how you see me, but I’m old, Miqa, I’m really old. Too old.’

‘You’re so beautiful.’

‘You can live with me, move in with me; the house is empty, I’ll be there for you and look after you.’

‘Will you do me a favour?’

‘Yes, of course, just say.’

‘Show me your face. Show me the whole of your face. Please.’

She called for the bill.

*

The old house in the Vera quarter, in whose garden the dead loved to play their games of Patience, greeted the returnee with a familiarity that immediately made both of them sentimental, and therefore more conciliatory. Christine made coffee; they sat in the unlit kitchen until the whole house had been requisitioned by darkness.

Then she began to take the pins out of her hair, the fastenings of her protective shield; she let down her long, dyed tresses, she lined up the pins on the table like a miniature army, she took off the veil, laid it gently on the table, she turned her face towards him in the half-dark. She refused to turn on the light.

That night — this is how I always imagine it, Brilka — her age drained from her body; she brushed it from her skin like foam, so lightly, with a single sweep of her hand. Perhaps this was the last night in which Time permitted her to reclaim her place as undisputed beauty queen. Before age, which exacts an even higher price from the most beautiful among us, finally began to take its toll. He ran his fingers tentatively over her face, afraid that she might be made of glass, might shatter in his hands at any moment.

Hand in hand, they walked up the old, creaking, wooden staircase and down the narrow corridor to Christine’s bedroom, which had once seemed to Miqa like the gateway to his one true home. She lay down, leaving the left side of the bed for him, as she used to when he was a little boy who would come creeping to her room during thunderstorms and climb into bed beside her. The boy she had always wanted to protect, and whom she’d had to abandon. He lay down beside her, straining to make out her features in the dark. She stroked his head and lent him her eyes, her images from the past, so he could see her as she had once been, as a nineteen-year-old girl of unearthly beauty, and happy — yes, she had been happy, she had managed to squeeze so much happiness out of life, and she wanted so much for him to understand that every happiness in life must be fought for, with all your might, by every means possible. She held him in her arms and felt the years fall away from her, felt herself grow younger at his side. She reached out and touched him through the darkness. He lay quietly on his side of the bed, and she stayed on hers; like two good schoolchildren they lay there, young and safe, in a cloak of timelessness, in a limitless world where anything seemed possible. There was just his hand that never tired of running over her skin. She smiled in the dark, and hoped that she would be able to banish Miqa’s fear. That he would succeed in escaping the clutches of the day he was betrayed. She went on speaking quietly to him. The night was rough and overcast, the sky as if someone had poured milk over the clouds.