Hearts of fire creates love desire

High and higher to your place on the throne.

EARTH, WIND & FIRE

Kitty was holding her breath. She couldn’t believe it. She had done it. At last his voice was going to acquire a face. She could already hear him approaching. No, she wasn’t ready to turn round just yet. Breathe, breathe calmly, don’t look, she reminded herself. The footsteps came closer and closer, approaching the bench in Hyde Park where they’d agreed to have their first meeting — yes, it was unbelievable, their first meeting, after all these years!

She hadn’t been able to breathe calmly all morning. Ever since she had tracked him down she’d been incapable of thinking about anything else. The possibility of putting a face to his voice had stopped her sleeping, thrown her thoughts into confusion, had even taken away her ability just to breathe quietly.

Even when — punctual as ever — he sat down beside her on the bench, she went on staring straight ahead; but out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of his diminutive stature. She’d always imagined him to be tall — taller than her, anyway. A grey pinstripe suit — yes, this was more or less how she had pictured his taste in clothes — his glasses — had she imagined him wearing glasses? — his bald head — it had never even occurred to her that he might be bald.

‘Kitty?’

Yes, it was his voice. Except that now it was right beside her. She felt cold sweat break out on her forehead. She must control herself. Turn her face towards him slowly, carefully. Nothing hasty or loud; nothing that would attract attention.

‘Hello, Giorgi.’

Her voice let her down. She turned to him, taking great pains to conceal her excitement behind a smile. His face … his round, unprepossessing face seemed familiar. How could that be? Was his physical presence being coloured by his voice? This voice that had now acquired a body? Impossible! She was definitely seeing him for the first time.

‘So, what now?’

He gave her a gentle, protective smile. A smile that matched the countless telephone conversations she had had with him over so many years. That soft, velvety baritone, its deep, soothing pitch, no scratches, no scars. And so familiar it sent shivers down her spine.

He smelled of aftershave lotion: citrus. It would take time for his real face to replace the phantoms of her imagination. She must imprint him on her memory now. Every single feature.

When she didn’t reply he asked again, more seriously this time: ‘How did you find me?’

‘I hired a private detective. Yes — it was that simple, like in a film noir. That’s exactly the kind of guy he was. He didn’t have a raincoat, but he did wear a hat. And he assured me that anyone could be found, unless they didn’t exist or were already dead. And I assured him that you existed. That you even lived in the same city as me. Yes, I knew that, Giorgi. I knew that right from the start. But it took him a long time. He said you were a pro.’

Now at last she was able to laugh, and the pressure, that terrible pressure in her chest, eased. ‘And the last time, do you remember, Giorgi — oh God, I have to get used to that name. I’d never have guessed that name. There’s still so much I have to get used to. And — well, I asked you to write me a letter, like in the good old days. Different phone box every time, he told me. So I had to ask you for this letter. And you didn’t refuse. Luckily. And then my film noir hero somehow traced the letter back. And found you. I didn’t want to know any more details. The only thing that mattered to me was your name. Then two days ago the call came: “I’ve found your man.” That’s what he said: your man. At first I thought he must have got mixed up. But then he said: “His name is Giorgi Alania. He works in the Soviet embassy in London, in the culture section.” And suddenly it all made sense. The trip to Prague, and … I knew then that it was you. And you know the rest. I just called up the embassy. I went to a phone box, incidentally, and called from there; I didn’t dare call your number from my flat. And there really was an Alania in the culture section. And before you even said, “Can I help you?” I knew I’d found you. I’ve found you.’

‘It’s extremely dangerous, Kitty, what you did.’

‘You have to understand! My life … I had to find you. And I have to go home.’

It was only now that she noticed his hands were trembling. He was also avoiding looking at her directly. She shot him a casual, fleeting glance. He was wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, an unusual frame with ivory-coloured ornamentation. Behind the lenses, those sad-looking eyes. She wanted to touch him. The receding chin. The pallid skin. For a fraction of a second, he seemed to have no control over the situation, something that in all those years had never happened to him; it was as if he were somehow in need of protection. He, too, seemed to be longing for physical contact, for something that would push him to the limit, tear him out of his world.

‘No one must find out that we’ve been in contact. It would put people in danger. Including people who are important to you.’

There was something about the way he was trying to maintain his image as her protector that made her sad.

‘Visit me. Come to my flat. I want to see you. I want to get to know you!’

She jumped up from the bench, breathless. She couldn’t bear his physical presence, this voice made flesh, any longer; she turned and walked away. Over the years she had stored up so many words for him, but was no longer capable of speaking a single one. She was sure, though, that now he had finally dared to emerge from his hiding place he wouldn’t just disappear back into the darkness of anonymity. He would come to her. He had to!

She would ask him once, one last time, for a favour — no — for his help. She would convince him. Somehow. By any means at her disposal. What exactly those means were she didn’t yet know; but he would not be able to deny her this one wish.

And when, five days later — it was late, already dark outside — there was a ring at her front door, she knew it was him. She hadn’t left her flat since their meeting in Hyde Park. His helplessness when she had jumped up from the bench, his inability to stop her leaving, were sufficient indication to her that he would not be able to turn back. Just by agreeing to their meeting he had broken all of his rules. Now it was time to make new ones.

She took his coat. He polished his glasses nervously on his handkerchief. She fussed about, laid the little magazine table in the living room, rolled out the drinks trolley, forgot something, went to the kitchen, came back, sat down, jumped up again. He looked at the concert photos Amy had had framed and hung on the wall, despite Kitty’s objections; he tapped on the glass with his fingertips, smoothed his trousers.

He declined the good whisky and asked for something non-alcoholic. She brought him elderflower cordial; he seemed pleased.

‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said, finally sitting down opposite him on a low plush stool.

‘Nor do I,’ he said, and tried to smile. The familiar sound of his voice was reassuring, but it also worried her, because Kitty was all too aware that the person sitting before her was a stranger. She touched her lips to the whisky glass and fixed her gaze on Giorgi Alania.

*

At this point, Brilka, I have to jump back to the past, to the year 1942, after the Wehrmacht had invaded the Soviet Union and Giorgi Alania, a graduate of the Frunze Higher Naval School specialising in shipbuilding and engineering, was posted to the Amur Shipbuilding Plant at the farthest eastern tip of Russia, near the Sea of Japan. Thus Alania was lucky enough to avoid the war; he remained in the sub-zero temperatures of that inhospitable industrial town, surrounded by haggard, silent workers with furrowed faces who couldn’t think of anything better to do with themselves at the end of the working day than to hurry back to their barracks to drink their home-brew.

He remained an outsider among his comrades. They were all either much older, or had different temperaments, different lives, and wanted different things to young Alania, who spent his free time keeping a close eye on news of the war, going for long walks beside stormy rivers, writing long, emotional letters to his best friend Kostya Jashi — in the first few years, at least — and, in the evenings, reading Jules Verne or Mayne Reid in his barracks by candlelight.

The work wasn’t difficult for him. He had a quick and efficient mind. He always had a ready solution for every problem, and over time this won him a certain reputation. People didn’t especially like him, but they treated him with respect. In addition to his daily tasks, he constantly occupied himself with new technical challenges, physical activity, reading, and cooking; nonetheless, here at the end of the world he felt cut off from everything, and alien. These feelings had been all too familiar to him as a child, but the intervening Leningrad years at Kostya’s side had made him forget them. Now he had to get used to this sad state of affairs again, and his whole being rebelled against it.

He had always been an introvert, but the years in the shipyard, where communication with the outside world was reduced to a minimum and there were no like-minded people, made him an irascible, mistrustful man. He was aware of this insidious regression because he had been so different in Leningrad, with none of the doubts and complexes he’d thought he had overcome. In Leningrad he had felt that Kostya’s energy and confidence, his social ease, had rubbed off on him, encouraging him to be more audacious, to enjoy life, to trust people more. He really missed this friendship, which was perhaps the only effortless one in his life so far.

But in Komsomolsk-on-Amur Alania’s self-doubt grew exponentially. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he was not worth loving. And the result of this assumption was disastrous failure in his dealings with the opposite sex.

Women seemed to look right through him. He had the most refined manners, could make the most elegant compliments, give the most beautiful presents — nothing helped. At best they rewarded him with a smile, thanked him coquettishly, and went on their way. A solitary date at the town’s only ‘Pioneer’ cinema, with a schoolteacher he had struck up a conversation with on the harbour promenade, ended unhappily. When he put his hand on her shoulder at the climax of the film, the woman brushed it away so abruptly and with such revulsion that he couldn’t help feeling disgust at himself.

After this rejection he never made any further attempt to win a woman’s heart. But he was unlucky with prostitutes, too. He invited a notorious middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair, bad teeth, darned stockings, and a strong Siberian accent to his house, and opened one of the better sparkling wines he saved for New Year. The woman got drunk, took off her clothes with absolutely no warning, then, with an expression of vacant indifference, grabbed him between the legs so hard that it hurt and he felt compelled to ask her to leave.

Since then he had felt only shame and mortification when the shipyard workers boasted of their amorous adventures. Over time, he realised that it was impossible for him to desire someone without at least the illusion of being desired and needed himself. That his longing was not for a woman’s body, but for that body to need his. As the fatherless child of a single mother, he had been bullied in his village to the point of humiliation. At family gatherings his grandparents had treated him with contempt — no matter how good he was, in spite of all his achievements there was a perennial air of worthlessness, inadequacy, like bad breath, that he simply couldn’t shake off. And he knew that this malady had its root in his dishonourable conception.

He became obsessed with this idea.

Perhaps he really was inferior — perhaps he owed his existence merely to an unfortunate accident — perhaps his mother really had acted disreputably? Why else was she so stubbornly silent about his progenitor? Why had she refused to pass on this knowledge to him, when it was surely the most natural thing in the world?

He wrote her a letter, formulating his question directly. He had a right to this knowledge, he said; she could not withhold it from him. He was old enough now to learn the truth of his conception. He didn’t want to live with the stigma of father unknown any longer. He didn’t want it branded on his face for all to see.

Months later, the answer reached him. Next time they saw each other, his mother promised, she would tell him everything, face to face; but not in writing, please, she mustn’t do that. She promised him.

*

As is usual in stories like these, Brilka, in our story, too — or, in this case, to be precise, in Alania’s — it all turned out quite differently. Shortly before the capture of Berlin, Alania received a visit from an elegantly dressed, pipe-smoking gentleman with a gold hammer-and-sickle insignia on the lapel of his black jacket. He had driven up to the shipyard building in a conspicuously large automobile — a rarity in the town — and asked for Giorgi Alania. They sat down in armchairs in the shipyard boss’ office, facing each other. The distinguished gentleman introduced himself as an employee of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD. He talked for a while in a non-committal way about the importance of domestic political cooperation in these difficult times, the intensification of fighting on the counter-revolutionary fronts, the danger now posed by the capitalist region, and how important it was — more important than ever — to continue the socialist struggle. How watchful one now had to be in all respects — and here he gave Alania a searching look.

He asked questions: the gentleman wanted to know everything, from extremely personal matters to Alania’s attitude towards his duty to the Motherland.

‘Both the Frunze Higher Naval School and the Comrade Shipyard Director have given you outstanding recommendations. You were also, if I’ve ascertained this correctly, active in the Sokhumi Komsomol in your youth. Exemplary, really exemplary, Comrade Alania.’

Puffing on his pipe, the man nodded his bull-like head in approval.

‘Excuse me, I don’t quite understand … What can I do for you, if I might ask?’ Alania was disconcerted.

‘Well, the Party, of course, Comrade, the Party. Now, more than ever, the country needs good men, loyal to their homeland. Now that the war is won, the work begins in earnest. To think that the war is the end of everything would be a disastrous mistake. You’re not in the union, which might be looked upon with disapproval in some quarters, but perhaps a good word can be put in for you nonetheless.’

Giorgi was baffled. How was it, then, that they had come looking for him, of all people? He was confused. He had been drifting; for the last four years, he had abandoned himself to his fate. He hadn’t allowed himself to make any sort of plan. As the world went to rack and ruin, the only thing he wanted to understand was who he actually was. He had no time for the world any more; he was enough of a puzzle to himself. But why on earth had they specifically come looking for him?

He had no influential friends. The fulfilment of his duty to the Motherland consisted, to date, in his work for the shipyard. He might be a good learner, and quicker than many of his comrades, but he was certainly the last person anyone would think of when it came to bold adventures and daring secret operations. This man was not about to disclose anything, though, if indeed he knew. Far more likely that he was just carrying out an order, assessing and evaluating Alania on someone else’s behalf.

In the half-hour he spent with the mysterious gentleman in the shipyard director’s room, Alania mulled over a few things. Did this visit represent an opportunity to get out of this swamp? Regardless of what awaited him, regardless of where this visit might lead, it would certainly mean getting away from here, and back to the Giorgi he had wanted to be when he’d stood and saluted next to Kostya in their graduation parade.

‘I’m at your service!’ said Alania, uncertainly, but with visible relief; and he asked the NKVD man to explain his business in more detail.

*

In May 1945, Alania was summoned to Moscow and, at a secret session of the interior ministry, assigned to the newly established ‘Repatriation’ group. At that time there were almost five million Soviet citizens in Europe — primarily in western Europe. The group’s job was to bring them home and protect them against enemy propaganda. The majority were prisoners-of-war and forced labourers; the Generalissimus himself had commanded that they be returned as a matter of urgency. After the war ended, the British and the Americans opened the camps and handed over around sixty thousand Soviet citizens. But there were still plenty more on western soil who had to be tracked down, lured with false promises, and brought back to the Soviet Union — by force, if necessary.

In many secret meetings at the NKVD, and in the Lubyanka, the talk was of the threat posed to exiled Soviet citizens in Europe. They were all being recruited by the capitalists, or by the Mensheviks, whose ‘democratisation campaigns’ were being financed by the Americans. The influential National Alliance of Russian Solidarists, or NTS for short — which was indeed financed by the Americans and collaborated with the exiled Mensheviks of the post-revolutionary era — was demonised incessantly.

In the post-war years, fighting these ‘vermin’ and repatriating ‘endangered’ Soviet citizens who fell victim to western propaganda became a top priority.

Now, Giorgi Alania was also to perform these tasks. In addition to his personal attributes and qualities, which had been so highly praised by someone or other, he needed special training, too: this would last three years, and would take place in Moscow.

He was shipped off to the capital of socialism, allocated an apartment on Tverskoy Boulevard that was reserved for the nomenklatura, and began his secret, specialist training. In addition to methods (with which I am unfortunately, or fortunately, not acquainted) for luring people back to the Soviet promised land, or abducting them and taking them there by force, this training also included learning the English language.

Everything changed for Alania in Moscow. He still wasn’t all that popular with his co-workers, but he was serving a higher purpose; he was one of the chosen ones. People respected and valued him and, above all, his impressive aptitude for learning. He was living in a metropolis, even if it hadn’t yet recovered from the apocalyptic war; and it was possible to find certain women here who were prepared, for a fee, or in return for other services, to simulate the passion he longed for and the desire he craved.

Alania no longer had time to spend on gloomy thoughts. He needed to become the best of the best. And his growing power — which until then he would never have dared to imagine, not even in his wildest dreams, and which had been granted so suddenly, so unexpectedly — meant he was able to do some good as well. He managed to track down his best friend, who had thankfully survived, and bring him to Moscow; he would heal his friend’s wounds and help him become the man he surely would have become, had this terrible war not intervened.

*

In 1946, before Alania was able to undertake the journey home — he had repeatedly postponed it, as his comprehensive training left him no time — his mother died of a stroke. The news sent Alania into a state of shock that lasted for quite some time. He had missed his chance to hold his mother to her promise. The burning curiosity about his origins took possession of him once again, with unimagined intensity. He requested a leave of absence, and travelled back to the remote Abkhazian-Megrelian countryside.

After the funeral, he started to make determined enquiries. He questioned neighbours, his few detested relatives, his mother’s colleagues; he was open, almost provocative, as his mother had nothing left to lose and he — well, he was not intending ever to come back.

Whether out of fear or ignorance, nobody had anything to tell him. Some swore by all that was holy that his mother had maintained a deathly silence all her life about the conception of her illegitimate child. Alania, however, was patient, he was meticulous, and his understanding of people was almost as good as his memory. His KGB identity card gained him access to the university archive in Kutaisi, where, among the countless files, he found the one bearing the name of the woman who had once had an entirely different future ahead of her, because she was the first and, for a long time, the only woman to be admitted to the faculty — a minor sensation. Until the only affair she had ever had in her life put an end to this prospective career before it could even begin.

According to his calculations, he must have been conceived while she was in Kutaisi, and so he persisted. He went through everything in his head once more. Then he examined it again. And suddenly it no longer seemed quite so logical to him that he had been conceived in this town. It was so unlike Gulo — his beloved Gulo, his ‘little heart’, whose heart they had torn out, whom they had forced to live like a leper — to let someone get her pregnant just days after taking up the university place she’d coveted for so long. It made so little sense that, on the one hand, she had decided that higher mathematics was her future, yet, on the other, she had chosen to bring him into the world. All her life she’d had nothing but contempt for the opposite sex, and if he stopped to think about it, he, her beloved son, had been the sole exception.

A terrible suspicion began to take shape in his mind, then suddenly came sharply into focus: absolutely logical, almost unavoidable, something that had been staring him in the face all along and which, for precisely this reason, he had failed to see. It wasn’t Gulo’s fault, as the whole village had claimed; it wasn’t her recklessness, her supposedly sluttish capitalist ideology, that had destroyed her life and made a bastard of him; it wasn’t her carelessness, it wasn’t even pleasure, a lapse — no, it must quite simply have been something that was done to her.

It must have been rape! At first, the thought brought Alania a kind of relief, but then he felt a knot of anger forming. And this loathsome deed, of which he was the consequence, must have occurred shortly before her move to this town. She had wanted to study in Kutaisi, to start a new life; she would never have moved there, would never have fought so fiercely for her place at the university, if she’d known that she was expecting. Gulo had been, first and foremost, a pragmatic woman; she would have known that she wouldn’t stand even the ghost of a chance with an illegitimate child. She must have already been pregnant when she came to the town and only found out once she was here. But if something so terrible had been done to her, why had she stayed so resolutely silent? Why hadn’t she saved her honour? Then, too, he wouldn’t have been regarded as just his stupid, reckless slut of a mother’s mistake.

He went back to his home village and visited his mother’s old school. He impressed the principal with his identity card, and finally received some useful information. The principal referred him to Gulo’s old teacher, who was still alive and living in a neighbouring village. Alania paid a kolkhoz worker a few roubles to drive him to the village in his droshky. There he found the old teacher, who was now almost blind, though her mind still seemed to be sharp. It didn’t take him long to explain whose son he was. She remembered Gulo quickly, and vividly. What a girl, what talent. She should have moved to the city, she hadn’t been able to find happiness in the countryside, such a shame, such a shame. What he needed, though, were facts.

‘Facts? What facts, my boy?’

The old woman pronounced the word as if something poisonous had just been put in her mouth. All of a sudden she seemed more alert, and started to shift in her seat.

‘Who she was friends with before she went to university, for example. Who were her good —’

‘Listen, I taught my pupils, I didn’t make friends with them. I don’t know about any of that, my son.’

But the manner, and the haste, with which the old lady blurted this out implied the opposite. Alania’s work with the NKVD had taught him a great deal, had honed his mind into a kind of antenna that picked up everything, even things that went unsaid. He showed the woman his identification; she looked at it, straining her eyes, seemingly unable to decipher the writing.

‘What’s this, my boy?’

‘You know exactly what this is.’

‘And what do you want from me?’

She had dropped the ‘my boy’ this time. Her reedy voice was coloured with fear.

‘You know something that I have to know. You remember something that means a great deal to me, and you don’t want to tell me what it is, and although I would find it most distasteful, you’re leaving me no choice but to —’

‘Yes, yes, yes … All right. I don’t want any problems. My son is an upstanding socialist, he works for the tea plantation …’

‘I didn’t threaten you. I just need some facts.’

‘Fine. Your mother wasn’t your typical sort of girl, even back then. Didn’t gossip, didn’t hang around with the shy village girls; she knew what she wanted, and she was very determined. I realised that early on, believe me. But funnily enough, she got on well with the Lezhava girl, although she was a blonde dolly-bird type, the opposite of Gulo. Pretty dresses and plunging necklines and driving the village boys crazy when she went out for her evening stroll. But she was the daughter of Comrade Lezhava, the militsiya commissar. The two of them got on well; the girl was good at reciting poems, and they became friends on the trip to Baku.’

‘Baku? My mother was in Baku?’

‘It was a trip for young Komosomol members. I remember it well; a nice trip, only the best students were allowed to go, and we took the Lezhava girl along because, well, because … Four days we were there, maybe five. And …’ The woman paused; she seemed to be trying to find the right words, to put her memories in order, to turn back the clock.

‘When — when exactly was that? When was this trip?’

‘After graduation, in the summer. Special trips like those were only for the gold-medal graduates, so it must have been after they finished school.’

‘What happened in Baku?’

‘I don’t know — my God, I’m an old woman, I wasn’t with the girls every second …’

Suddenly the woman’s face seemed to convulse, as if she were warding off an unpleasant memory. Giorgi sensed that he was getting close to the truth.

‘We met lots of people; they even put on a fancy reception for us.’ Her face lit up briefly with something like pride.

‘Who was at this reception?’

‘Senior commissars, Party men, very important ones; we were promoting friendship between peoples.’

‘Were they Azerbaijanis?’

‘Yes, and there were Georgians, too.’

‘And there was drinking?’

‘I didn’t let them drink.’

‘And then?’

‘Then? How should I know … But nothing happened there; what are you getting at? I loved my girls and I protected them; and besides, they were honourable men, true communists, Party men, I told you!’

She was breathing heavily, and complained that she had high blood pressure. She called her son, told him to bring her her medicine. Alania got up. Of course she knew more, of course he could force her to tell him what she knew, but he suddenly felt despondent, he wanted to get out into the fresh air, out of this damp room that stank of medication.

‘I won’t trouble you any longer, but do you know what happened to the Lezhava girl? What was her first name, do you remember?’

‘What was her name … hmm … no, I can’t think of it. Ask in the village. Her family’s been gone for years but people remember her — the men in particular remember her, I can tell you. As far as I know, she went to live in Batumi.’

*

Giorgi Alania stood there for a while on the dusty country road. As so often when he was nervous, his palms were damp, and his head hurt. The KGB card in his breast pocket felt like a bulletproof vest; it felt good. It made him feel that he would never have to ask anyone for anything ever again.

Alania went to Batumi, visited the local commissariat, showed them his card without comment, and waited until they provided him with information about the girl, Comrade Lezhava. In the past few days he had found on several occasions that the effect his KGB card had on others saved him a great deal of time and effort.

‘Our Nelly?’

‘Our Nelly?’ asked Giorgi, perplexed. The man gave him a slightly crooked grin and raised his eyebrows meaningfully, as if to indicate to Alania that he was speaking of a particularly delightful person whom he could warmly recommend.

‘She’s a local character, you could say. A, er, very well-known lady. She lives in the big white house just behind the Archaeological Museum. And she can see into the future, too, so watch out, be on your guard …’ Now the official was smiling maliciously.

‘See into the future?’

‘Yes, yes; she reads coffee grounds. And how!’

Alania interrupted what seemed to be turning into an uncomfortable conversation, thanked the official, and took the bus to the Green Cape along the shoreline of the dark, oily sea. It suddenly made him feel sentimental, evoking memories of his childhood, and made him miss his mother with an overwhelming, physical sensation.

You could hardly miss the house. It had been built at a time that recalled the hopeful era when the Rothschilds and Nobels were flirting with the Caucasus, when the Grand Hotels were being planned and the white ships from Europe could anchor in the local harbour without customs offices or any major hindrance. The house’s old opulence had outlasted Bolshevik taste, but time had taken a serious toll on it. Slender-limbed bamboos shielded it from strangers’ eyes. Alania stepped warily through the tall, rusty garden gate. Some little children were chasing a ball. He stopped the eldest boy and asked for Comrade Lezhava. The boy, annoyed at being called away from the game, just pointed upstairs.

Alania went in through the open wooden door, entered a marble-tiled hallway, and climbed the stairs. The stairwell was dilapidated; rainwater dripped from the ceiling, forming greyish puddles in various corners. When he reached the top he came to a green wooden door covered in peeling paint, and stopped. Should he turn round? Should he raise his hand and knock? Did she know the truth about him? What if this woman had nothing new to say to him? He knocked.

It was a little while before he heard a deep female voice: ‘What the hell is it now? I haven’t got any flour! I don’t cook, and I don’t have any onions either; and besides, I don’t even live here, when are you finally going to understand that?’ He knocked again and heard hurried footsteps on the other side of the door, which flew open at last, accompanied by a long stream of curses.

In front of him stood a … well, a vision. A tall, fleshy woman with an impressive bosom and beautiful, thick blonde hair that she had wound into a perfect bun. She was dressed in a lettuce-green slip, and was barefoot.

Her face suggested a life lived at full tilt; she was wearing crimson lipstick and had concealed the heavy, dark rings under her eyes with powder, which gave her a peculiar, doll-like appearance.

She looked surprised; presumably a strange young man had been the last person she was expecting.

And for the first time in Alania’s life a miracle happened: her expression of irritation and surprise transformed into an irresistible smile. She plucked at her neckline, smoothed the slip over her hips, and in a catlike drawl breathed, ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I heard that you read coffee …’ murmured Giorgi Alania. He was now completely out of his depth and already breaking into a sweat. The woman opened the door a little more, peered down the stairs, then pulled him into the apartment by the sleeve of his jacket.

Like the rest of the house, the apartment had seen better days. What was left of the wallpaper clung to the wall rather than being glued there, and the tap, installed incongruously in the middle of the living room, dripped steadily. By contrast, the ceiling was adorned with an enormous chandelier that would have been more suited to a theatre than to this dark, damp abode, with its countless dusty souvenirs and the decorated hatboxes piled up in every corner.

‘Who sent you to me?’ she asked, and gestured to him to take a seat at a clothless round table heaped with objects.

‘An acquaintance.’

‘An acquaintance. Uh-huh. Normally I’d throw you out at once for that silly answer. But you don’t look like one of them. I know who I can trust and who I can’t. I can read faces like I read coffee grounds. But I hope you realise we could both get into a lot of trouble if you go around talking about my gifts. I’m here under a kind of house arrest; they keep an eye on me, they won’t leave me alone. What have I done to them? Whose side am I a thorn in?’

Her whole body, her eyes, her mouth were flirting with him, radiating affection, they didn’t recoil from his obvious lack of confidence, his shyness; no, they enticed him, encouraged him to look at them, to adore them. An unfamiliar sense of self-satisfaction warmed his belly. Inconceivable: his whole life until now without this affection, without this enchanting benevolence, this feeling.

She went over to a kitchen alcove, separated by a folding screen, and started to make coffee. The delicious scent filled the whole apartment, as if it were trying to accentuate Alania’s happiness. When she returned with the coffee she was wearing slippers embroidered with flowers, which for some unaccountable reason filled him with delight. (She had dressed for him, had clothed her bare feet for him!)

‘So what do you want to know?’ she asked, sticking a filterless cigarette in the corner of her mouth.

Who raped my mother and got her pregnant! In his confusion, he almost blurted this out, but he managed to restrain himself in the nick of time, murmuring instead, ‘About my professional career, and …’

‘Let’s have a look. What’s your name?’

‘Giorgi.’

‘All right, Giorgi, genacvale. Drink all the coffee, then tip the cup upside down onto the saucer and let it stand, then turn it anticlockwise with your finger and ask your question, but not out loud, just concentrate on what it is you want to know. I alone can’t do anything if your mind is blocked.’

‘All right, of course, I understand.’ Alania nodded like a first-grader being given his homework.

He tried to concentrate, but the only thing he could think of was the attention she was paying him, her sweet, rather weary scent that filled his nose. He brushed the coffee grounds with his finger, placed the cup on the saucer.

‘What did you mean by house arrest?’ he asked her, in an attempt to break the awkward silence that ensued, because the coffee grounds had to dry.

‘Ha! What does it mean? That I’ve been a naughty girl and there are some men who are angry with me. I’ve fallen out of favour, as they would have said in my youth. Where are you from, Giorgi?’ she asked, finally turning the cup over.

‘From Kutaisi,’ he lied.

‘So where did you leave your accent?’

Alania sensed her mistrust.

‘I live in Russia. I did my training in Leningrad, and now I work in Moscow.’

‘Ah, that’s excellent. An important man, then. What’s brought you back to your old homeland?’

‘My mother’s death,’ he blurted out.

‘How terrible. My deepest sympathies. Always hard, when your own mother … Even though mine was cross with me all her life.’

She stared into the smeared cup as if she were reading a map there, a coded map.

‘Well well, look at this! I see a lot of praise and recognition here. You’re on the right path, Giorgi, genacvale, oh yes, you’ll keep climbing your ladder; but rather desolate at heart, aren’t you? Empty and sad. How’s that, Giorgi? How can that be? So young — you should be enjoying life. Time never comes again; missed opportunities don’t come round a second time. Instead, you’re troubled. I see a long road here. You’ll be going on a journey. A long journey, but a fruitful one. You will get there — oh yes, you’ll get to where you want to be. But you must fill your heart, Giorgi, otherwise it will never be enough, no matter what comes, no matter what people say to you, no matter how many medals they pin to your breast; your heart is so terribly empty.’

‘And my mother …?’

‘No; the grief for your mother, may she rest in peace, is not the only reason for your emptiness, is it, Giorgi?’

The way she said his name, as if her voice had been laced with honey, made him want her to go on speaking like that for ever, to keep talking to him and never stop. And she told him about many things that were supposedly troubling him, things he longed for and felt the lack of; she remained vague, lost herself in hints and allusions, yet he had the sense that she knew him, saw through him, even, as no one ever had before. He could no longer contain himself; something came over him, something bigger than himself, bigger even than his eternal question, the thread running through his entire life, and he started to weep, and at the same time was ashamed of his tears: all of a sudden, with no warning, tears were spilling from his eyes. She put her hand on his shoulder, stroked his head and repeated soothing words in her healing voice.

‘It’s all right; poor, poor Giorgi, oh God, such an empty heart, we have to do something about that right away, you have to do something about it, so alone, so lost, we have to do something about that, Giorgi, genacvale.’

We! This simple word sounded like a magic spell to him. At last he looked at her; something in the way she was comforting him gave him courage, and he dared to kiss her hand, which was resting on his shoulder. She stroked his head; he rose to his feet; he was a little shorter than her, but that didn’t seem to bother her, either. Would she recoil if he went further? Broke through all his boundaries and gave her a kiss, right on her painted scarlet lips? Would she throw him out, would she curse him? She touched him; he had brought her hand to his lips; he simply had to finish what he had started. He laid his head on her collarbone; she did not recoil. He put his arms around her soft waist; she smiled at him, she was not ashamed of him. He kissed her and she returned his kiss.

Before long, they were lying on the wide bed with its sagging mattress, which was propped up on piles of heavy books. He pulled up her slip with a single movement of his hand, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if he had done it a thousand times before. No struggle, no agonies of embarrassment accompanied this attempt to disrobe, be close to, a woman’s body. And so it was, that afternoon, that Giorgi Alania crossed into happiness with slow, deliberate movements, entirely without shame, sure of himself, with the unprecedented feeling of being truly desired. Of being longed for, wanted. Perhaps even — although it wasn’t possible, he knew it, even at that moment — anticipated. He was so happy to let somebody catch him. He felt free, as if he were floating, as if not even the laws of gravity could touch him; as if he could fly.

When he rose from this bed, late that evening, he was a new man: it was as if he had been reborn, confident, radiant, a whole head taller. Nelly, already back in her slip, was sitting at the round table, placing the cards. He dressed carefully, not taking his eyes off his new lover, still stunned by his good fortune.

‘I just want to say, I’m under pretty close surveillance here. I’ve already had to give up the whole floor, apart from this room, to that pack of vermin. If they find me with a male visitor I’ll lose this dump as well. So I think you should probably go now, Giorgi, genacvale.’ She said it without raising her head from the cards.

‘Yes, of course. I’d like to see you again, though.’

‘I’m sure that can be arranged. It’s just that I have to be a bit careful, you understand.’

‘Yes, I understand. But if I can put in a good word for you at the commissariat …’

‘You’d do that?’

‘I would, if I might come again.’

‘Want to tell them how good I am at my job, eh?’

A bitter note had suddenly entered her voice. The honeyed sweetness was completely gone.

He didn’t approach her again, didn’t want to disturb her, even though he would have liked to have given her a kiss; he stood in the doorway, hesitating, dressed and ready to go, hoping she would see him out.

‘When may I come again?’

‘Next week, maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘But Giorgi, listen, I don’t want to be rude, but the thing with the coffee grounds … I have to live off something, you know. I like you, and there’s no way I’d ask if these were different times, but …’

He felt an icy cold take hold of his body. He would have given her everything, would have moved heaven and earth for her; he would have brought her to Moscow, yes, he’d even been thinking of it as she lay in his arms, but now … not this! She couldn’t ask him for money.

‘Yes, of course, of course, I forgot.’

And he put all the money he had in his wallet on the little chest of drawers by the door.

*

If Alania had known that Nelly, this woman who had once dreamed of a career in theatre, had already bestowed this happiness on countless men, that her youth and her once-proud beauty were the price she had paid for never having to work in state employment, that she had once possessed beautiful diamonds, hats, and dresses, had had her own box at the theatre and an automobile, and in return would always wait until her men decided to leave their families for an hour or two in order to visit her. If he’d known that she had forgone a family of her own, had sought out solitude as her most loyal companion, and had repeatedly allowed herself to be thrown away like rubbish as soon as a man grew tired of her; that she had already had to endure countless words of abuse, torrents of hatred, and scornful looks; if he had known that for the past five years, after the death of her most long-standing and influential benefactor, the public prosecutor, she had survived by reading coffee grounds and doing embroidery; if he had known how willingly she would have forgotten all these injuries, exchanged them for other memories. If he had known that it was Nelly’s drunkenness, her slipping and falling that night, that had led to his conception against his mother’s will. Yes, if he had known all this, would he nonetheless have claimed her attention, her passion, her feigned comfort, and would he have stayed, in the intoxicating hope of being waited for, perhaps even loved? It’s a question I will never be able to answer for us, Brilka.