A man, a people — without an ideal — is born blind.

MAXIM GORKY

They were sitting on the bed, fully clothed. She was moaning softly and digging her red-painted fingernails into his back; his face was buried in her neck, and I couldn’t see what he was feeling. I didn’t know if he was whispering something in her ear or if it was his hand, which had disappeared under her dress, that was making her moan. Her lips parted, she opened her eyes wide, raised her right hand as if she wanted to stop him touching her, but then thought better of it and pulled his head down towards her. I pressed myself against the wall, unable to tear myself away from the scene. I held my breath.

Daria was asleep in the next room. We were staying in a large house belonging to one of Kostya’s colleagues, who had let him have it as a favour for the whole week of our holiday. We were occupying the second floor. We had a sea view. The sound of the waves had woken me. I’d got up to take a look at the sea, to make sure it was still there.

I’d even briefly considered waking Daria, but she was exhausted from our games on the shingle beach. The water was still too cold for swimming, but we’d paddled, collected stones and mussels, and romped about until we fell into bed, dog-tired.

Kostya had been cheerful that day as well, even giving me a kiss on the forehead.

I’d been so happy I would have liked to stay on this beach forever. With my sister and my grandfather, who I’d discovered could be so easy-going and so kind-hearted. And with this witty, charming Rusa, who was staying in the house with us, who cooked for us and made us laugh, who looked after us when Kostya went about his business, and with whom I so loved to play backgammon.

Daria eyed her mistrustfully, and didn’t seem to appreciate having to vie with a grown woman for Kostya’s favour, but I was delighted with her and wanted her as my friend.

She had the guest room on the top floor. Kostya was in the room next to ours. And I was about to go out onto the balcony, to look at the sea, when a soft moan made me pause. Rusa’s beautiful, inviting voice. I padded back into the hall, to Kostya’s room, since that was clearly where her voice was coming from. The door was slightly ajar, and a little table lamp was burning on the chest of drawers by the bed.

What I saw made me freeze.

I was ashamed. It was the sea’s fault. This sight was not meant for my eyes. The forbidden nature of the image was clear to me, even though I’d never laid eyes on such a scene before. But still it was strange, and illogical: Kostya was much too old for such a young woman — wasn’t he too old to be doing that sort of thing at all? And Rusa was clearly too young; or was I mistaken? Now I was standing stock still, fascinated by this forbidden sight, and I was afraid for her. The power he seemed to have over her frightened me. To me, it felt dangerous, seeing her at his mercy like that. As she fell back onto the bed, I prised myself away from the wall and hurried back to the room I shared with Daria.

Kostya left for Sukhumi in the car early the next morning, and Daria, Rusa, and I went to the beach and paddled.

She made us omelettes for breakfast, and gave us some bread and jam. We took a rubber dinghy out to a remote dam and collected the mussels that clung to the dam walls. For lunch she cooked the mussels in tomato sauce, and I couldn’t get enough of them, though Daria wrinkled her nose in disgust. Together we drew brightly coloured landscapes in chalk on the asphalt outside the house. She made funny hats for us out of the Komsomolskaya Pravda. We ate Bird’s Milk chocolates until we felt sick. She had slender ankles and soft hips. She let me plait her hair. I liked myself as I was in her eyes, the way she looked at me when she combed my hair. So kind, so affectionate. We talked about books, and I told her the secret of the fake book covers. She laughed and clapped her hands in delight. We sunbathed, and in the evening we went out for a trout dinner with Kostya. On the way there he let me sit on his shoulders. I was beside myself with happiness. He laughed a lot when she told him stories. I didn’t know he could laugh so much.

I wanted time to stand still. I was fearful of the journey home. I was already pained by the very idea of having to go back to school. I was pained by the thought of Rusa being gone, and with her Kostya’s good mood and his leniency with me. I tried to cling tight to every single moment, and I thought of her face, contorted with the frightening, painful knowledge that soon she would have to let him go.

*

The next evening, he didn’t come back at seven, as he’d promised. We were supposed to be having dinner together. Rusa had made rissoles, at Daria’s request. She’d gone to a lot of trouble, even putting on an apron that had been hanging up in the kitchen. She had uncorked a bottle of wine. Had laid the table with great care, and bought cut flowers, which she’d arranged in vases on the table. She had put on make-up and stuck a flower in her hair.

But he didn’t come. The three of us ate together. We ate quickly. Afterwards, Daria felt sick; the food hadn’t agreed with her, and Rusa had to look after her. She gave her some valerian and put her to bed. When Daria fell asleep at about ten, and Kostya still wasn’t there, Rusa took off her make-up and disappointment spread across her face. The two of us sat on the balcony. I offered to play a game with her, but she didn’t want to. She brought out the wine and drank it straight from the bottle.

‘He must have work to do. He’s always got a lot of work to do. He’ll be here soon,’ I said, and was glad that, contrary to my expectations and despite the disappointment mounting within her, she didn’t cry. She beckoned me over and clasped me tightly in her arms.

‘You’re such a great girl, Niza. Your mama must be incredibly proud of you,’ she said, kissing my parting.

‘I think you’re a great girl, too, and you shouldn’t be sad because of Kostya,’ I told her, sitting on the arm of her chair.

‘He’s never going to change,’ she murmured.

‘Do you want to be with him?’

‘Oh, Niza.’

‘But he’s much too old,’ I said, in the honest hope that she might rethink her love. In my heart of hearts, I thought she was far too great for him.

‘I’d like things to have been different. Believe me, if someone had told me three years ago that this would happen, I’d have laughed at them. My parents …’

‘What about them?’

‘They’d kill me if they knew that …’

‘But they’ll never know. I won’t tell anybody.’

She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. She drank and drank, as if the wine were juice, and told me about her life. I suddenly began to feel more grown-up than her, and I brought her some water, as Nana always did when Kostya drank too much.

Rusa told me about her father’s birthday party, when she had met Kostya for the first time. How charming he was, how different from all her father’s other friends, how sensitive and profound he had been. And then they had bumped into each other outside the university. She’d very nearly walked past him, but then she had stopped and allowed him to invite her for coffee. Afterwards, he had his driver take her back to her aunt’s house, where she was living while she studied in Tbilisi. She’d stood in the courtyard for a long time after he left. She knew she wanted to see him again, even if she sensed it was a terribly stupid idea.

After weeks of trying to get this man out of her head, she had phoned him at his office. It had been going on for a year now. The surreptitiousness, as she called it, was what she found hardest to bear. This game of hide-and-seek. The indignity of sneaking around. The secret places where they met. The lies. And, above all, the terrible suspicion that she wasn’t the only one he met in secret.

Her tongue grew steadily heavier, and the pauses between her words lengthened. Finally she added, in a chillingly cynical and pitiless tone, that she wanted to become a judge and pass judgement on injustices, yet here she was, doing such a monstrous injustice to herself.

I racked my brains, searching for a way out for Rusa. For a moment, I even considered pairing her off with David — he would be much more interesting for her, or so I thought at the time — and then I could have both of them around permanently, and everyone would be happy.

It was well after midnight, and Kostya still wasn’t back. I went up to her room with her, as she’d already started to sway. I helped her out of her clothes. She fell onto the bed in her underwear and lay there motionless. I left the room. I decided to summon all my courage, wait for Kostya, and explain to him how much she loved him, and how important it was that he never make her wait again. But then I heard water running in the bathroom. I remembered that Mother always knocked on the bathroom door when Aleko went into the bathroom drunk, and I decided to do the same. I felt responsible for her, at least until Kostya was back. I knocked tentatively, timidly, but there was no response. Then I leaned against the door and it fell open: she hadn’t locked it.

She was sitting on the floor, both arms in a bucket of water on her lap. The water was full of blood. There was no bathtub, so she’d had to improvise. Her eyes were closed. I didn’t know what you were supposed to do when someone had slit their wrists. I didn’t know if it was bad that the cuts were horizontal, if vertical ones would have been better, but I lunged towards her, overturning the bucket as I did so. The bloody water stained the floor red. I shook her, begged her to look at me. Her breathing was laboured. I didn’t know what number to dial, or if there was even a telephone in the house. I laid her on the floor and she let out a barely audible groan. I tried to focus. Biology lessons, my conversations with David. Useful knowledge. It occurred to me that with deep cuts the crucial thing was to stop the bleeding. I took some towels and a floor cloth and knotted them tightly round her arms. I thought about waking Daria, screaming at the top of my lungs until she woke up, but decided against it. Daria had a terrible fear of blood. Then I ran downstairs, searching for a telephone — and at that moment I saw headlights illuminating the garden.

I ran outside, thunderstruck.

‘Kostya, Kostya!’ I screamed at the top of my voice, running towards him. I wanted to hit him when I saw him frown, as if he were going to tell me off for being up so late, but before he could say anything I grabbed his sleeve and dragged him up the stairs.

*

He slapped her a few times, then he took her in his arms and picked her up. He was trembling. He told me not to wake Daria, he told me to wait here for them, he told me everything was going to be fine, but I screamed and kept saying I wanted to go with them, I wouldn’t leave her alone. He didn’t have the time or the energy to discuss it, so he let me get in the back of the car with her and hold her head as he drove, cursing, trembling.

At the hospital, several people came running. She was put on a trolley and wheeled away. Kostya and I were left sitting in the cold light of an empty waiting room. He put his hands over his face and fell silent. I paced up and down, trying to swallow my tears. Then I sat down beside him, exhausted.

‘You were very brave, Niza,’ he said without looking at me. ‘You were very courageous. She’s lost a lot of blood, but the doctors will help her. It was unforgivable of me to leave you alone. You should never have had to go through something like that.’

He still wasn’t looking at me. Kept his face buried in his hands.

‘She wants you to be with her,’ I said.

He hesitated, turned to me. ‘Did she tell you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s very young, and at that age, people are just very … emotional.’

‘But it’s not right.’

‘What isn’t right?’

‘That you made her wait. Is it true you have other girlfriends besides her?’

‘Did she tell you that, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘I … no, I was just … I had to work.’

‘Until now?’

It was all too much for him. He wanted to comfort me, he wanted to play the grandfather, and he didn’t want to be taken to task by a schoolgirl. He wasn’t prepared for that. (Kostya Jashi was accountable to no one; that was the life he had constructed for himself, starting, perhaps, on the day he went into the water to mourn the woman whose death had taken his conscience along with it.)

‘You often hurt other people.’

I didn’t know why I said it. I wasn’t thinking. Usually, I always thought before saying a word to Kostya. I was sobbing. I felt undone. I wanted Rusa to live, to take her exams and become a judge. I wanted her to go on playing backgammon with me. He put his arms around me. I couldn’t let myself go, my body was too tense. I had so many questions for him. And so many fears. I knew that the intimacy of recent days was not built on firm ground.

‘Is that what you think?’ he asked tentatively.

‘Yes. You hurt Mama, too. She often cries because of you. And Stasia, though she never says anything. And … and me.’

He looked at me, and I didn’t know if he was horrified or just surprised. I didn’t care now whether he would ever love me again. I just wanted her to live.

‘I love your mother,’ he said suddenly, and leant back in his chair. In the reception area, a few paramedics and nurses were huddled around a little television set; something exciting was happening on it. They seemed upset. One of the nurses was making coffee on a little electric hotplate while staring spellbound at the screen.

‘Some things just don’t turn out the way we want them to,’ he said.

I waited for him to go on, but then he got up and went over to the reception desk to see what was happening — and froze.

How could he watch television now! Even if the world was ending, how could he walk away without giving me an answer? The answer I needed. The honesty I needed so that Rusa would live.

He beckoned to me. I hesitated. I walked slowly over to the television. The head of state, Chernenko, had died. It didn’t interest me, it left me cold. I didn’t care if a Mr Chernenko was alive or dead, I just wanted Rusa to live.

I lowered my eyes and stared at my sandals and the dirty tiled floor. It was so bleak, this place. Someone as beautiful and clever as Rusa didn’t deserve to die in a place like this.

Chernenko died. Rusa survived, but something inside her died as well.

Kostya and I drove home at daybreak. In silence. He didn’t say anything else. We took the coast road. It was getting light. Less than a decade later this town would be destroyed by tanks, bombs, fire and thousands of bullets, but fortunately I didn’t know that yet.

When we arrived, Daria was still fast asleep, unaware of all that had happened.

That night, I learned that heads of state are always more important than everyone else.

I learned that ghosts aren’t necessarily dead people.

I learned that the sea doesn’t accept anything that hasn’t already been washed clean.

I learned that love, however light and hopeful it might once have been, can end with unexpected suddenness in a bleak hospital.

*

After seven decades, the Soviet Union had served its time. It was already devouring itself from within, using up all its energy and resources; it had swallowed itself, but was not yet able to vomit. For this, it needed a new Party leader, who at the unprecedentedly young age of fifty-four was a regular whippersnapper in Party terms, and who — against all expectations — did in fact come to power in 1985. Comrade Gorbachev was to inherit the world of ‘socialist peace’, which encompassed thirty-four per cent of the global population. And in the cause of spreading this peace, on taking office he received the gift of wars in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Afghanistan.

I became an adult in 1985, in a single moment, the night Chernenko died and Rusa survived.