If we do not stay in control of the literature process, it will look like there was not a single bright day in the 70 years of Soviet power.

VIKTOR CHEBRIKOV

We always went to the circus. Whether on a school trip, as a kind of fulfilment of cultural duty, or for fun with the family. Although Kostya had little time for acrobatics and performing animals, for some inexplicable reason he thought it important to induct us children into the circus world.

I was not a particular fan of this world of illusion. I may have been impressed by a few of the trapeze artists, or by some of the ladies with feathers who rode their horses so skilfully. But the clowns saddened me, as did the tigers that had to jump through a burning tyre. These performances seemed so unnatural. I didn’t understand why old men in make-up and red noses were pretending to be stupider than they were, or what was so great about wild animals wearing humiliating little bow-ties and skirts and doing things that went against their nature. What saddened me most of all was the ostentatiously funny dwarves — perhaps because I myself was very short, and there was no way I wanted to be exhibited and stared at like that.

Daria loved the circus more than anything. When we went to see a show at the state circus, she would run like the wind up the endless steps we had to climb to get into the building, looking back again and again to make absolutely sure we were still behind her. Each time we went, she would beg for a lolly or a homemade toy from the gypsy women who stood in the grounds with their budgies on their shoulders, touting their cheap wares. It was part of the ritual for Daria, and that, to her, was sacred.

But on this particular Sunday — it must have been in 1985 — something special happened. Something I would never have expected.

It was the long-awaited performance by Moscow’s most famous circus. Daria had talked of nothing else for days. I had armed myself for the long afternoon with a book covered in white paper — I wasn’t officially allowed to read grown-up books yet, though they were what I loved most, and what I usually read in order to spare myself a few hours of torment at school. Stasia’s years as a librarian had taught her some useful things about illegal literature, and she knew all the techniques for smuggling and disguising it. The neutral book-cover idea was one of hers; they were usually plain white wrappers, which I then covered with drawings. Happy stick-men and brightly coloured butterflies aroused the least suspicion.

While the others laughed at the Russian clowns and applauded the animals’ tricks, I turned the pages of my book. It was dark in the auditorium, something I hadn’t considered. (The last time, when our class had watched Red Riding Hood in the Theatre for Children and Young People, there had been more light.) But just the texture of the pages reassured me. And then suddenly a young girl in a blue jersey and white tights stepped into the ring. Daria sighed with disappointment: the girl looked too normal, as if she’d come from a local gymnastics club. Then she was hoisted up to a tightrope at a dizzying height, and the audience fell silent.

I put the book back in my bag and started watching the acrobat. I was spellbound. She could fly. As if on invisible wings that carried her up to tremendous heights. She spun and tumbled, fell and caught herself, danced on the tightrope as if weightless. I had never seen anyone with such elegance, grace, and physical perfection. Her long plait, which flew along with her, looked like a third arm for her to hold on with.

When I glanced over at Daria, her mouth was hanging open and her eyes shone like two glow-worms in the dark. She was as incredulous at the sight as I was. How could this girl make all the people here hold their breath? How could she be so unafraid? How did you learn to fly?

Daria’s hand left the armrest of her seat and made its way over to me. She gripped my wrist and squeezed. Then she leaned over in her seat and pressed herself against me. Why me? Why wasn’t she sharing her fascination with the grandfather she idolised? I craned my neck, looked at Kostya, and understood: he was leaning back, his body showing none of the excitement that had gripped Daria and me. Kostya was seeing things differently to Daria. For the first time. And this realisation had probably frightened her and made her reach for my hand.

‘Isn’t it incredible?’ my beautiful sister whispered in my ear, clutching my hand more tightly.

I nodded enthusiastically, caught between confusion and gratitude.

‘I want to do that, too,’ she decided, at that moment, with complete conviction.

‘You’d have to train an awful lot, though.’

I thought my objection would disappoint her, but instead she asked eagerly where you could do that.

‘I don’t know, but they must do acrobatics courses at the Palace of Sport. Mustn’t they?’

‘Can you find out for me, please?’

She was begging me. She, Daria, was begging me! I couldn’t believe it.

Daria didn’t have the patience to really get to grips with anything. If things didn’t reveal themselves to her in the blink of an eye, she lost interest. This impatience had even made her give up riding, which she had loved so much as a little girl; she lacked the endurance for the stud-farm horses, which were difficult to control, and instead she had turned her attention to her friends. So I was all the more amazed at her enthusiasm for such a physically demanding activity.

All Kostya’s attempts to get her to stick with one of the usual extra-curricular groups had failed. Be it Georgian folk-dance, piano lessons, or craft courses, Daria would attend them for a few weeks, then come home one day in floods of tears, saying that the other children there were stupid, or the teacher wasn’t treating her well and — horror of horrors — wasn’t paying her any attention. The next day, Kostya would go with her and, following a formal complaint to the management, Daria would be removed from the group and would return home content and beaming from ear to ear. Her feverish determination that afternoon was something completely new and unexpected.

‘I’d give anything to be able to do that.’

Daria wouldn’t let it go. Then Kostya leant over to us and asked what all this excited chatter was about. Daria’s succinct answer was no less astounding to me than her determination.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

This nothing was the first secret my sister decided to share with me alone.

And, just two weeks after the trip to the circus, Elene signed her eldest daughter up for a gymnastics course at the Sport Institute. David had told me about the Sport Institute, and I had passed the tip on to my mother. As if Daria already suspected that our grandfather wouldn’t necessarily approve of her newfound passion, she kept the news a secret from him, and the day Elene took her to the course for the first time she just told Kostya that she wanted to stay in the city and spend two or three days with her mother.

*

The sea at the Seven Sisters was furious. The waves bashed their heads against the rough cliffs with impressive force, as if they had been battling each other for years. The sky was grey, shot through with a yellowish glow. The beach was damp, cold, and deserted. She looked at her footprints in the wet sand; she smelled the salt; she closed her eyes and wrapped the oversized woollen shawl around her shoulders. She was always amazed at the synchronicity with which the sea and the air composed their own unique music.

She relished the solitude after the tour. The peace. The phone off the hook. The unopened post. The anonymity she enjoyed in this place. The ever-busy Amy had departed just a few days ago and left her to her thoughts. Amy made such an effort not to surrender to the ageing process. All the creams she had laid out in the bathroom; all the bright clothes, their garish colours designed to mask her body’s flaws. How moved Kitty was by these attempts to resist the inevitable: the headbands, the turbans, the diets, the refusal to wear reading glasses.

Her gaze travelled to the rim of the horizon, where the sea cut across the sky. She breathed deeply.

*

‘Look, look, the sea!’

I gave a loud cry and leapt out of the car. We had left the winding roads behind us, traversed the jagged hills, and now the great, endless blue stretched out before us. Kostya was driving himself — a rare sight — and Daria and I were in the back of his official car. He had stopped especially for us, so we could give proper voice to our excitement over the sea, and we bounded exuberantly across the field beside the road, squealing with delight. My joy had less to do with the sea than with the fact that, this time, our grandfather had brought me along on the trip, not just Daria. We were driving to Gagra, in Abkhazia, where we would stay for a week. A lovely long week in March, a trip for which we were even being allowed to miss school. The previous evening, he had come back to the Green House thoroughly merry, and had instructed Nana to pack our things as well as his: he was going to Abkhazia the next day and would take the girls with him. He didn’t say Daria, or Daro, but the girls.

I lay awake half the night, glancing over at Daria every couple of hours, afraid that it had just been a joke and he and Daria would already have left without me; but Daria was sleeping peacefully in her bed.

I knew that Kostya’s invitation to accompany him on his trip was first and foremost a peace offering for Daria. He had found her out, and her acrobatic dreams had caused the first real argument between grandfather and favourite grandchild. However, when he saw that she was absolutely serious about it, he tried to turn the situation to his advantage, and quickly found out all he could about the course and the other opportunities Daria could take advantage of as she made her way into the top league of acrobats.

We stopped off in Batumi. He had been invited to dinner at the house of a good friend and colleague, and intended to combine business with pleasure. We would drive on the next morning, he said.

It was a small, neat house on Queen Tamar Promenade. Newly renovated and smelling of fresh paint, its large garden planted with slender apple trees. A wooden table was laid and waiting for us in the garden, and a lot of unfamiliar faces turned towards us with curiosity as we strolled through the black gate. The host, a stocky, well-fed, balding man whom I had often seen at dinner parties in the Green House, hurried up to Kostya, greeted him with a hearty handshake, and slapped him on the shoulder several times. Daria and I received moist kisses on both cheeks, and were shown to the table.

The eager hostess, who was constantly running back and forth between kitchen and garden, embraced us and filled our plates with all sorts of delicious food. Kostya instantly made himself the centre of attention and began to entertain the party with an array of affected, heavy-handed anecdotes about his work life, all of which were followed by gales of laughter.

Later the host, who was also the tamada, the toastmaster, took it in turns with Kostya to make speeches, and they gave increasingly hearty toasts, with increasingly glowing cheeks and increasingly hoarse voices, all of which bored me and most of which I already knew off by heart.

Just when I had given up hope of ever escaping this orgy of food and drink, a fine-boned young woman appeared out of nowhere, as if wafted into the garden by chance on an imperceptible evening breeze, and sat down next to the host. She leaned her head against his chest; she could only be his daughter. She was received warmly by the other guests, dispensed friendly greetings and hugs, and greeted Kostya, too, with a coy nod.

She was wearing a beautiful striped summer dress that exposed her shoulders — it was a little too light for the season — and her hair was tied back in a thick, high ponytail that hung down her back. I gathered from the conversation that she was studying law in Tbilisi. Her father called on her to make a toast to the guests, which she did in a slightly insincere and excessively friendly manner. However, a tremulous unease shimmered through her show of friendliness. She kept kneading her fingers, playing with her rings, and jiggling her feet in their pumps. When she had drained her wine glass, she stood up unexpectedly, excused herself, and disappeared as quickly as she had arrived.

Looking for the toilet, I strayed into the rear courtyard and saw the young woman sitting there at a little garden table, drinking wine. She was dropping dice onto the backgammon board, over and over again, as if the sound reassured her. The table stood in darkness, lit only by a small candle that had to contend with the draft.

‘Sorry!’ I muttered. ‘I’m looking for the toilet.’

She got up at once, flashed her insincere smile at me, and took me there. When I came out, she was leaning against the wall of the house, as if waiting for me.

‘You’re the younger one, aren’t you? So you must be Niza.’

I nodded, surprised that she knew my name. I had never seen her before.

‘I’m Rusa. I live in Tbilisi, too,’ she told me, looking at the sky. She had a soft, sugar-sweet voice that sounded as if it had been dipped in caramel.

‘Would you like a glass of grape juice?’ she asked me. And, without waiting for my reply, she went back to the little table and poured me a glass of dark red juice from a carafe. I took a seat opposite her on a low stool and, without really thinking about it, started placing the backgammon pieces on their starting positions.

‘You play backgammon? Not really a children’s game, is it?’

But then, as if rousing herself from a long absence, she suddenly gave me a look that was full of enthusiasm.

‘Well then — shall we?’ She rubbed her hands in eager expectation. ‘Did your grandfather teach you?’ She tried to make the question sound casual.

‘No, my stepfather,’ I answered, just as casually.

We began to play. She was wholly committed to the game, which I liked. She played with great concentration and — I noticed this at once — she didn’t pretend to be more stupid than she was. We threw the dice again and again.

‘Why are you here, why don’t you go back to the others?’ I asked, finally, because the question was nagging at me. She shrugged.

‘They’re not my friends. They’re Papa’s friends. I’m only here for a week, anyway. I ought to be preparing for my exams. I’ve got my finals very soon, but for some reason I’m so distracted this evening. I just can’t concentrate.’

She sighed.

‘We’re only away for a week as well. We’re driving on to Gagra tomorrow.’

‘I know,’ she said with a tired nod, and once again I wondered how she knew. I was growing to like her, though. Her delicate appearance was deceptive; the sugar-sweet mask hid great strength and energy, which, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, she was doing her utmost to restrain. She was talkative, too, with a quick wit, and during the game she kept making me laugh. She did impressions of some of the guests — Kostya’s colleagues, most of whom I also knew from the Green House — and usually she was spot on. She had a deep understanding of people, it seemed, and an impressive talent for mimicking them.

‘You’ve all made a hash of it again, can’t you do anything right, I’m telling you, you’d all be done for if I wasn’t here!’ I had joined in her game and was imitating Kostya’s voice. ‘Well, who am I?’ I cried delightedly.

Suddenly Rusa’s face darkened and she gripped the dice in her fist, lost in thought.

‘You do a good impression of him,’ she said at last, sounding more sad than amused, and dropped the dice loudly onto the board. At that moment we heard footsteps, and my grandfather appeared behind me. He was clearly a little intoxicated by the fresh sea air and the wine.

‘So this is where you are! You can’t just wander off like that, Niza, it’s rude.’

‘I talked her into playing with me. You can blame me,’ said Rusa, coming to my aid.

Kostya was forced to nod his assent. ‘Yes, she’s mad about that game. I’m almost afraid she’s going to get us into real trouble one day with her playing.’

I was annoyed at him for saying that. I hadn’t wanted to before, but at that moment I decided to become a professional player and get him into real trouble.

‘Really, she plays tremendously well,’ Rusa protested.

I didn’t like most of Kostya’s friends and colleagues. They were all loud, and liked to show off, and were terrifically busy. They liked to drink, and their bejewelled wives sparkled like Christmas trees and spoke to us children as if we had been lobotomised or were forever two years old. But Rusa was different. She was young, fresh, witty, curious. She didn’t ask me stupid questions, like did I prefer mummy or daddy, or which was my favourite subject at school, nor did she require some humiliating performance of me, like reciting a poem or doing the splits. And for some obscure reason I wanted her to like me.

Kostya suddenly went over to the other side of the table and laid an arm around Rusa’s bare shoulders. Her body tensed visibly; she sat up a little straighter and lowered her eyes.

‘Well then, you’ll have a pastime in common for the coming week,’ he said, and disappeared back into the darkness. We continued our game in silence. I mulled over his final words.

‘Are you going to Gagra, too?’ I finally dared to ask. She nodded, avoiding my eyes. ‘Then we can play tomorrow as well, in the car!’ I concluded enthusiastically.

‘I’m afraid we can’t do that; I’m taking the train. Besides, it’s our little secret, and we mustn’t tell the others, all right?’ she explained to me in a whisper.

I won the game. But I wasn’t happy about it at all.

*

Kitty stretched. She had been struggling with back pain for a while now. She bent forwards, let her arms dangle, raised them again, and stopped stiffly where she was. Instinctively, she took a step back, feeling for the key in her coat pocket. She was standing at the gate of her cottage, and she could see a figure pacing back and forth outside her front door.

The light from the streetlamp was too weak; she couldn’t make out who it was. Only that the visitor was male. Maybe it was one of the villagers — but why would he be waiting at her door, and what was that by his feet? Could it be a suitcase?

A persistent fan who had tracked her down? A dangerous madman? For a moment, she considered vanishing into the darkness again, heading for the village’s only pub, or contacting the police. She took a step forwards. Her eyes weren’t what they used to be, and reading glasses didn’t help much, either. All at once, she felt her knees go weak, felt a shudder run down her spine, felt the sweat on her palms. Yes, maybe her head was playing a nasty trick on her and she was seeing ghosts. Maybe it was time to go back to London; maybe she had simply spent too long alone with her memories.

But the figure went on standing there, it was alive, it was real, and the closer she looked, the more expectant joy prevailed over consternation, and she quickened her pace.

‘Giorgi!’

She called his name, and he turned round. A moment later, she felt his arms around her. The familiarity was there, even without his voice: he hadn’t yet uttered a word; he didn’t even seem to have the strength to say her name. Without having taken a proper look at him, she reached for his hand and dragged him into the house. She didn’t want to lose a second. She wanted to be led by her joy.

‘Forgive me, please, forgive me, Kitty, forgive me …’ he murmured, over and over, but she didn’t want any questions, any answers, she wanted to stay in the here and now, without hurrying ahead or looking back. She helped him out of his coat and pressed him to her again and again, kissing his cheeks, his forehead, his mouth.

Outside, a man brushed past the fence. A man with curly hair, who stopped for a moment to catch his breath, and shot the pair of them a dark glance before going on his way towards the sea, towards the water’s edge. To the furthest edge, and much further. Searching for Vienna. But Kitty and Alania were standing where he could no longer see them, in the darkness of the cold hallway, like two supplicants. They didn’t let each other go. Kitty rested her forehead against his and stayed there.

‘I’m not worthy of you. I ruined everything. I ran away. I ran away from myself. You’re the only good deed of my life, Kitty. The hangman’s blood flows in me …’

He said the words as if he had practised them over and over for a long time. He was incoherent. Kitty didn’t understand, but it was all the same to her. She never would have dared to imagine that the sudden appearance of this tired, sad figure would make her so hungry for life. No, she didn’t want to be an old woman who took lonely walks on the beach. She wanted to live — even if the price for that was having to fling open the doors to all her ghosts and let them in.

‘Don’t go away again. I love you,’ she said, and was astonished at these words that burst out of her mouth with such apparent ease. He released himself from her arms, took hold of her elbows, and stared at her through the darkness, as if searching for confirmation of these words in her face. As if he had never heard these words before in his life. He kissed her, and Kitty was back in the little park with the green-painted benches, in a southern town that might once have become the Nice of the Caucasus.

She was astonished at the strength in his arms, those slender arms she had looked at so often, committing every part of his body to memory, after years of the disembodied voice on the telephone.

She followed him as he outran himself, left himself behind. She wanted to follow him to where she could be another person, too. But when he touched her, all the American hotel rooms came back to her. And the whirling figure of Fred Lieblich. He is not her, thought Kitty, as she helped him shed his clothes. How old must he be? Nearly sixty? Over sixty? Oh God, were they really so old already? Were there really so many years between them and the park, between them and Andro, between them and the classroom? No, no, no, not again, she told herself, and clutched his collar, buried her face in his neck.

The floor was cold, but they took pleasure in their youthful recklessness, their obliviousness to the world around them, the abandonment of all reason. She wanted to stay in the hallway, in this narrow, dark hallway on the cold floor. She wanted to let out a full-throated trill. She wanted to bake the world a welcome cake. He loved her like a hungry boy, and she wanted to love him like a hungry girl. And with every caress she wanted to cheat time, roll back a year, two, three, ten, more, be the Kitty she was before the ghosts started hammering at her door. Go back to the time when she didn’t want to roll back time because everything was still ahead of her. Including the possibilities there had been in that one brief meeting in a cheerless, deserted railway station.

She forgot her backache, forgot her bad eyes, forgot the eternal loneliness.

The idea of being with this man — not the boy with the blond curls and the wooden angels, not in Vienna, but perhaps in London or Moscow — was seductive and, at the same time, impossible. If there had been even the slightest possibility of that, if things had been ever so slightly different, would Andro still be alive, would she still have her womb? Would Mariam be her brother’s wife? And would she have children? One child, two, even three? Then she would have sung in secret under the shower, and thousands of people would never have sung along to all her songs — but would that be so terrible? So unimaginable? If she had never seen all those cities, never composed all those songs, never … met Fred?

She closed her eyes. She saw Andro’s face looming over her. She closed her eyes. She saw Fred smiling at her. She closed her eyes. She saw Mariam cradling her head in the sunny barn. She closed her eyes. She saw the blonde woman lit up by a naked bulb. She closed her eyes. No, it never stopped. She saw Giorgi Alania covering her body in kisses. And she held him tight with all her strength. She wanted to vanish. To shrink, to dissolve, become air.