The meeting that never took place

Still sobs round the corner

ANNA AKHMATOVA

There was a hunger strike outside the Central Committee’s main building; the people’s most important demand seemed to be a change to the constitution that would allow the SSR states to ask to leave the USSR. Tents were erected in the middle of Rustaveli Boulevard, an unheard-of, unprecedented occurrence.

The escalation in the clashes between the Communist and National Parties, and the constant unrest in the city, meant that school-leaving exams were brought forward to March.

School was finally over. At the leavers’ ball, I sat on the steps of the great hall, smoked a cigarette, and waited for Miro, who was supposed to be coming to pick me up. For the first time in my life I was wearing a smart dress (I think it might have been the first time I’d worn a dress at all); it was one of Daria’s that my mother had taken in for me, and I felt like a scarecrow.

I was planning to apply to the university’s history faculty. Actually, though, I had no idea what to do with my life. I was interested in so many things that it was agony having to decide on a particular direction, and I would have liked just to carry on with things the way they were: with Miro and the other boys from Mziuri Park, holding our races, hanging around and living aimlessly, living in the moment.

Miro didn’t know what he wanted, either. His mother was urging him to study architecture, as he was good at drawing, but he greeted her suggestions with cold indifference. Lana had tried everything she could to keep him away from the go-kart track, but in the end she had failed.

‘And now?’ Miro had arrived in a shabby denim jacket and white trousers, and sat down beside me on the steps. Loud music was coming from the hall, and everyone was dancing. I snuggled up to him. ‘Don’t you want to go in?’

‘No.’

‘Is there really no one in there you want to see, Einstein?’

‘No. Now let’s get out of here.’

‘But you look interesting, in your dress.’

‘Stop lying, I look stupid. But at least I’ve got it over with.’

‘So where do you want to go?’

‘Let’s just go for a walk.’

And I slipped my arm through his and we went down the steps three at a time, putting our old life behind us as quickly as possible and careening into the new one.

On the river bank we saw the street lamps reflected in the river. We walked past brightly coloured houses, across the hill, past the sulphur baths, and carried on up the cobbled streets through the Armenian and the Jewish quarters which, people said, were growing emptier and emptier now that so many people were emigrating. We strolled into Lenin Square and both of us felt the strange silence there, the windswept disquiet, the unfamiliar darkness surrounding us. Although it was the weekend and not yet all that late, the streets were almost deserted. Most of the restaurants along the river promenade were closed. Most of the windows were shut. I pressed myself closer to him. Hardly anyone coming towards us. Hardly any cars passing by. Darkness, the dim light of the streetlamps, and a menacing silence.

Of course, we were too young for reality that night. Of course, dreams tasted better than the past and the future. Of course, hope was more attractive than the present. Of course, we were infatuated with each other and with revelling in our idea of love. Of course, we were the first and last lovers on the planet. Of course, the threat that hung in the air was a mere trifle compared to the turmoil we felt inside. Of course, that night we were wiser and more cunning than life itself.

*

The Abkhazians started demanding constitutional changes for the Abkhazian SSR, too. Among other things, they wanted to restore the 1921 constitution, which designated Abkhazia a republic of the Union rather than a constituent part of the Georgian republic. The Abkhazian elite were angered by the undertone of nationalism prevalent in the Georgian media at the time.

As I travelled around the city, I kept hearing people call out, ‘Down with the Russian Empire!’

I spent the days that followed my leavers’ ball in a delirium. I stopped going to the go-kart track and asked Miro to run my ‘book’ for me. I went to the Green House and shut myself up in the room that used to be mine and Daria’s.

There was a Queen poster on the wall, which Daria had torn out of a foreign pop magazine. Our beds were perfectly made; Nana still kept the house in good order. I could hear the television in the living room; Kostya was sitting there, unshaven, in a stained dressing gown, and didn’t even bother to greet me as I walked past him. Stasia was having problems with her blood pressure and spent a lot of time in bed.

It was rainy, cold, and damp. I wanted to cry. The room looked so deserted without Daria, without our shared past. I stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Nana had folded the clothes that Daria hadn’t taken with her neatly and piled them on a chair. Everything was so clean and so tidy, and that made it so dead, and so much sadder. The life had gone out of the room, out of the whole house.

My brain felt sore. I was making no progress. I didn’t know what to do with myself and my life. I could feel fissures and fractures around me; I sensed that the ground I trod on was made of glass; I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know where to start. I was looking for a place where I belonged, and this house was no longer that place. I felt like a third wheel at Elene and Aleko’s. Miro and I had nowhere to escape the watchful eye of Lana or Christine, and Mziuri Park, with the boys I called my friends, was starting to bore me. I felt as if I were made up of a random collection of clichés. My head was one big ragbag of uselessness and distraction.

‘They’ll shed blood yet, you’ll see. Those pigs! Those Nazis! They’ll trample the people underfoot! And this dunderheaded opportunist in charge of the CP is going to let them massacre us!’

Kostya was ranting in the living room again. I crept over to him cautiously and shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, hoping he would speak to me — but, as if I were one of Stasia’s translucent ghosts, he didn’t. On the screen I could see angry people talking to the camera, bellowing, spitting.

‘What’s happened?’ I finally ventured to ask.

‘Our Central Committee must have sent some kind of telegram to Moscow asking for help, because they can’t handle the demonstrations here. They’re panicking because of the nationalists and they’re already showing that they’re helpless and overwhelmed by the situation. And now, of course, Moscow will come marching in; finally they have a perfectly good, official reason to come and give us a good smack in the chops. And the Georgian Central Committee will come out of it looking good, because they won’t be the ones who got their hands dirty and brought the wrath of the Russians down on their own people.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Think about it! What’s that prodigious brain of yours for, eh? You can still use it, can’t you?’

‘Will it —’

‘Yes, if the government doesn’t take the right steps, there will be bloodshed. They say, “Yes, but look at the Poles or the Czechs, look at the Baltic” — but they’re too stupid to understand that we’re not the Poles or the Baltic. They’re practically in the West — they’re just a stone’s throw from West Germany or Finland — but we’re here at the feet of the giant, miles away from anyone, and for all those years we enjoyed being the giant’s favourite child. Now those idiots are saying they want to stand on their own two feet. But they’ve never stood on their own two feet. Not for two hundred years. And this gang of dissidents, people who’ve been shut out and spat on, who are trying to take advantage of all this — well, you’ve got all sorts in that mob: fanatical nationalists, the red intelligentsia, the esoteric fanatics, fatalistic mystics, criminals and cutthroats. A right old mixture. They’re all looking for their pot of gold. But it was a good thing, it was a good thing that the giant was holding them in his fist.’

‘But every person —’

‘Every person, every person! Most people are bloodsuckers; they’re like ticks. They want to do nothing and fill their bellies just the same. They don’t want to work, but they want to be rich. Most of them want a roof over their heads, sausage in the fridge, a woman’s warm arse in their bed to cuddle up to, and children who are no better than them.’

‘And what do you want? What did you want for Elene? What do you want for Daria?’

Then he did look at me again, with that look that was reserved just for me. As if he despised and pitied me at the same time.

‘You can’t let it go, can you? Have you made it your life’s work to make my life difficult?’

‘I just want to understand you.’

‘Ah, you want to understand me? If you’d understood me, you wouldn’t have driven your sister to this disgrace, single-handedly sent her off into this depraved world. You would have made an effort at school and done well in your exams.’ (How did he know about my poor grades?) ‘If you’d understood me, you wouldn’t have started hanging around with that Eristavi bastard, and —’ (How did he know about Miro and me?) ‘And … Oh, never mind.’

‘All people are bastards to you. Everyone is weak and stupid. Everyone who doesn’t live like you.’

‘Be quiet. Watch television if you want to, and be grateful I still tolerate your presence here at all.’

‘All those people out there want a different life; they want to be treated like human beings. All those students demonstrating and starving out there aren’t going to be content with sausage in the fridge, a warm arse in bed, and holding their tongues about everything else. They want to decide for themselves what they have in the fridge, whose arse they have next to them, and what they think and say.’

‘Well then, go out there, sit down and starve with them. You’ll be a student yourself soon: be like them, and when someone points a Kalashnikov at you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘A lot of Union republics have just been through all this, and so far —’

‘None of those poxy Union republics is Georgia!’ He sounded almost desperate.

I didn’t know how to respond, and marched out of the room indignantly.

And Russia did come, first in the guise of General Kochetov, who was the representative of the Soviet defence minister at the time, and had previously served in the Caucasus. He hadn’t even left the airport before he was asking the Georgian Communist Party representatives what the government was planning to do to normalise the situation. But this so-called government was already so divided, its members so at odds with each other, so disunited on what they wanted, that they just stood around looking bewildered and babbling vaguely. On April 5th, Daria returned from the shoot. Beaming, beautiful, her eyes sparkling. She brought presents and souvenirs for everyone. She was wearing a brown leather jacket, which made her look like a real film star and most certainly did not come from a Moscow department store. Elene, Aleko, and I went to pick her up. Several people stopped her on her way out and asked for her autograph. She handled the scene with impressive ease.

The lovely Lasha’s wife was also waiting at the airport. She ran to him and covered him in kisses. I saw how Daria turned away from their meeting with raised eyebrows and put on her enchanting smile for us.

We wanted to go straight from the airport to the Green House together, to give Kostya, Nana, and Stasia a nice surprise. We bought fresh fruit and vegetables at the market, and meat to make shashlik, and drove out to the house.

Kostya’s bottom lip began to tremble when he caught sight of Daria, and even though he tried to maintain the iron countenance of a man who would not be moved, he still folded her in his arms and hugged her with all his might. I could see that something in her had changed, something was happening to her. She chattered incessantly about the exciting shoot, the fantastic screenplay, her helpful colleagues, and despite her best efforts she couldn’t stop herself mentioning Lasha, too. His name cropped up in every second sentence.

‘Daria, please tell me it’s not true. Please tell me you haven’t got yourself involved with that conceited prig!’ I whispered to her as we went into the kitchen to slice tomatoes for the salad.

‘Yes!’ she breathed, almost with relief. ‘We’re together. He loves me, and he’s going to leave his wife.’

*

On 7 April, I went back to the city to meet Miro. We wanted to watch The Evil Dead; The Shark had got hold of a VHS copy and commended it to us as a real hair-raiser. When I met Miro at the bus stop, I could see the dejection on his face from a long way off. The Russians were on their way into the city, he told me in a whisper. Order was to be restored and the right to demonstrate and assemble might be revoked completely for weeks to come.

The Shark was ill, and cancelled our video evening. We wandered aimlessly around the streets. Miro suggested going to the park and taking a couple of karts round the track. I didn’t want to drive, so we found a quiet spot and lay down in the cool grass. He spread his denim jacket out under my bottom. I’d brought Moby-Dick with me and I read to him for a while, but he seemed distracted and wasn’t really listening. I, too, found it hard to concentrate. A lot of things were going through my head.

I ran my fingers through his hair. He stroked my belly. I knew he wanted to find something in my body that would indicate the future, but I denied him his wish. I knew he was mistaken; for today, at least, he was mistaken. Perhaps it would be different tomorrow. I wanted to spend always and forever in this twilight, in this silence, lying on the damp grass with him. But at the same time I couldn’t suppress the turmoil inside me any longer. I ran my hand over the old edition of Melville and closed my eyes.

‘I’m going to write, too. I’m going to write books,’ I told him, expecting him to question me or at least express his surprise. But he didn’t; he just nodded, as if he’d been expecting me to say those words all this time, and gave me a kiss.

‘Yes, you should. You should do that — write books, I mean,’ he said later, after he had walked me back to Elene’s flat. ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow evening,’ he promised as he left.

When I phoned Christine’s apartment on 8 April, nobody answered. Usually, Christine was always there. Miro didn’t turn up. Aleko wasn’t home. Mother said she was going to her tutorial and wouldn’t be back until late. She told me to stay at home: unrest was expected.

But I went out all the same, and headed towards Rustaveli Boulevard. I saw countless people on the streets, and militsiya cars going by. At that point I didn’t know that several divisions from Moscow and the Northern Caucasus had already arrived in Tbilisi. I didn’t know there were tanks rolling into the city, or that the 345th Regiment was on its way to Georgia, the soldiers who would later be deployed as ‘peacekeeping’ troops in the Caucasian civil wars.

I didn’t know that the nationalists, who by this point had been informed that the military was on its way, still weren’t telling people to go home. On the contrary: the crowd was growing from one minute to the next; people were swarming like ants in the streets, the whole city seemed to be on its feet.

I managed to get to Vake on an over-crowded trolleybus, but I didn’t find anyone at home. I spent several minutes knocking and ringing the bell. Then I walked back — there were no more trolleybuses. I called the Green House from a phone box. Stasia picked up.

‘Sunshine, where are you? Are you all right? Kostya says things are probably going to escalate if they don’t manage to send people home. Daria has gone into the city — we begged her to stay, but she was adamant that she was going to the demonstration with her friends. I hope you’re at your mother’s?’

‘Friends’ in this case was synonymous with the lovely Lasha. I hadn’t had him down as a patriot.

‘If Daria isn’t home soon, Kostya’s going to go into the city and look for her,’ she told me. I heard her dry lips touch the end of a cigarette.

‘It’s all right, I’ll find her, and we’ll come home together tonight. We’ll take a taxi. Tell Kostya to have some cash ready, I don’t have much on me. And tell Mama that Daria and I are coming out to yours tonight, so that she doesn’t worry.’

‘Niza, wait, listen, where are you …’

I hung up.

If Daria was already there, I could assume that Miro had gone to the demonstration as well. I started to walk quickly. I was walking alongside people waving the Georgian flag and shouting slogans. I didn’t pay much attention to their words. It was dark, and the streetlights were on. Sweating, I left Rustaveli station behind me, ran past the Filmmakers’ Union and on towards the Opera and the National Film School. I reached Qashveti Church, went through the underpass, caught sight of my school, and plunged into the crowd.

The secretary of the Georgian Central Committee appeared before the throng, supporting the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church. The Patriarch was supposed to tell people to return home, because the secretary knew that nobody would take any notice of what he said now. The nationalists called on the people to keep the peace, whatever that meant. I searched and searched. I called Daria’s name, I called Miro’s. I bumped into a few pupils from my school — the fact that so many young people were here came as a huge surprise to me.

‘They came to me and told me to expect danger. We have only a matter of minutes to avert this danger … Let us go into the Qashveti Church and pray,’ said the Patriarch.

Why wasn’t he telling people to go home, if the situation was really that serious? How was a church supposed to offer protection to so many people?

The Russian commander and his men were already on their way to the House of Government. And I went on looking for the people I loved. I was forced into the crush, people squeezed past me, and it took me forever to forge a path through the mass of demonstrators. Suddenly, I heard a murmur run through the crowd. I hopped up and down — I was too small, I couldn’t see what was happening, all the heads, backs, and necks blocked my view — but then I heard a strange, dull, heavy sound followed by the noise of several engines. My ears were well-schooled when it came to engines, and I didn’t need to crane my neck to know that a whole army of military vehicles was rolling towards us along the two parallel streets that passed the House of Government, followed by swamp-green tanks. I had never seen a tank before, and the sight — the crowd had begun to part — made me stop in my tracks, fascinated.

The panic that now broke out seemed to me like an uncontrollable virus, airborne and infecting everyone, but giving each of them different symptoms. It crippled me. I felt myself go cold, beads of cold sweat forming on my forehead. What was I doing here? What was I demonstrating for or against? What sort of country did I want to live in? I had never given these questions much thought before. Some of the demonstrators were running up the steps to the House of Government, others were falling back towards my old school, but the convoys were already there, no one could escape them.

I climbed onto a podium that had been constructed for the speeches, and from there up to the great pillars of the colonnade; then, suddenly, I saw her. I saw her standing in the front courtyard of the school, as if she had suddenly been abandoned by everyone on this planet, looking about her, helpless and confused.

‘Christine!’ I yelled at the top of my voice. But how was she supposed to hear me? Thousands of people were screaming and shouting to each other. Some were using megaphones. Luckily, I was able to keep sight of her. She stood there as if entranced, looking out for someone or something. At first I thought she had come because of Miro, and that gave me hope — it meant he was nearby, and I would find him — but when I looked closer it occurred to me that there was something very determined about the way she was standing there, straight and tall, as if she had her own aim, some purpose that had brought her here and which she was steadfastly pursuing.

She was wearing a tight, knee-length dress, which looked colourless in the bluish light of the streetlamps, and high heels. From a distance, she could have passed for thirty; you couldn’t see her veil, just her coal-black hair contrasting sharply with the white of her face. Her posture was faultless, her shoulders straight, her lovely, slender ankles encased in sheer black stockings. She was wearing a little hat with a feather on it. I hurriedly climbed down again. Pushed people aside, barged my way through the panicking crowd. I snaked my way around hundreds of bodies, hiding behind them as I went. I tried to keep Christine in view; she mustn’t get away, I had to reach her. I crept down the steps, made my way through a corridor of people, and left the grounds of the government building. Then I was able to run. I reached the comparatively empty playground in seconds. Its wide expanse offered little protection, so not many people had sought refuge there. Christine was standing in the middle of it, staring at something. By the time I reached the playground, the military had enclosed the whole avenue from all sides. There was no escape. Here and there, a few Georgian militsiya officers were dotted among the people, but they were completely overwhelmed, and instead of creating order, their frightening shouts were just driving people together even more.

Someone fell over in front of me, but I didn’t stop; I kept running towards this woman who seemed to have stepped out of a different reality, and I fled towards this reality, because the one surrounding me was terrible and frightened me.

She suddenly turned, about to head towards the House of Government, and at that very moment I touched her shoulder. She gave a start, and immediately backed off a little, but then she recognised me and let out a sigh of relief. And then it was my turn to stumble backwards. She really wasn’t wearing a veil, and an awful, grotesque visage stared out at me from the left half of her face. I didn’t know how I could bear it without showing my horror, so I looked at the ground. At that, she took a step forward and was about to walk away again when I called out: ‘It’s me, Christine — Niza! What are you doing here? We have to get out, we have to get out of here fast!’

My cry was hysterical. I didn’t dare look at the street now. I could hear a sound that was muffled and at the same time very sharp, and I didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to prepare myself for might happen next or was already happening. And she smiled. This smile was no less frightening to me than the massive military presence. I tried to concentrate on the right side of her face to stop myself from screaming. Then Christine turned to me and said, resolutely: ‘We have to stop them. The Bolsheviks can’t be allowed to march in here again. We have to stop the Red Army. Otherwise it’ll start all over again, and he’ll come back. He’ll take charge again, and Ramas —’

‘Who? Who are you talking about? That’s not the Red Army, Christine.’

She gave me a baffled look, then waved a hand in front of my face as if trying to dispel my doubts, and shook her head.

‘You don’t understand, little one …’

‘It’s 1989, Christine.’

‘But we have to stop them. Otherwise he’ll be back. And Ramas can’t go through all that again. You have to tell your friends that they’re coming back, and what that means; you have to explain to them that it’s starting all over again. But you’ll help me, won’t you? You’re a clever girl! I have to stop them. I never tried before. I have to try now. Do you understand?’

‘Christine, you’re confused, we have to get you home. Where’s Miro?’

The yelling behind me was now deafeningly loud. I felt my knees go weak. I heard someone screaming that they had spades. I didn’t understand what he meant. What spades? I had to get this confused woman out of here, to say nothing of myself. I took her by the elbow and pulled her after me. Without turning round, without looking towards the avenue, I made for the school building.

Of course: I should have thought of it earlier. The school! My old school — never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined being so pleased to see it. I just had to get inside the building somehow, and then out to the playground at the back — and from there we could get to the Mtatsminda, the Holy Mountain, and escape. The school doors were locked. The only option was to break a window on the ground floor, climb in, and open one of the doors from the inside for Christine. She wouldn’t be able to climb into the building in her current state. I could see a small group of people rushing into the front yard. I quickened my pace, but Christine was stubborn; she kept stopping, shouting, trying to make me stand still. I was pulling her by the arm with all my strength, but her feet kept turning over: her shoes weren’t exactly designed for fleeing armed conflict.

She slipped away from me a number of times, and I had to stop, collect her, urge her on. The crowd was steadily growing around us, retreating, moving towards the school building, looking for an escape route. There were soldiers in the school grounds as well. They were running and shouting, holding their guns in front of them like shields. Suddenly I heard a dull thud and something sprayed across my cheek. Sickened, I looked around and saw a body slump to the ground. A soldier was hitting a young man with a spade, and he was doubled up with pain.

I wanted to vomit, but fear drove me on; I summoned all my strength, grabbed Christine, and dragged her after me. We managed to escape the crowd, which was rolling towards us like an unstoppable wave. There was no one outside the west wing of the school, though; no people or soldiers had reached the dark alleyway. I ducked down and made Christine take off her shoe, then smashed a windowpane with the heel.

‘Wait here. I’ll come and get you, okay?’

I yelled the words in her ear several times, then set about removing shards of glass from the frame. Christine, however, insisted on going back to the demonstration.

‘Christine, it’s not the Red Army,’ I kept repeating.

‘Of course it is, little one! Who else would it be? Of course it’s the Bolsheviks!’

I couldn’t waste any more time on pointless explanations. I pulled a big shard of glass out of the window frame, and it sliced into my thumb. I cried out. The blood ran down my hand. Christine stared at my wound in fascination before starting all over again:

‘We have to do something. I’ve told Miqa we have to build barricades. He’s here somewhere — I know him, he won’t be able to sit still as long as I’m here.’

I heaved myself up onto the windowsill and got one leg through the window. I could do it. The opening might be large enough for me, but I would never get this confused old woman through it and into the school. How was I going to look for a door and at the same time make sure she stayed put and waited for me?

Once inside, I reached out to her, and suddenly she took my hand of her own accord. We stood there, holding hands, me inside and her outside, looking at each other. I looked her in the eye. I tried to imagine her face without the terrible chemical burns. To see how she had once looked. Before the Reds came. I impressed on her that she had to stay right there and not take a single step towards the main entrance, and suddenly her face lit up, as if something incredibly amusing had struck her, and she started to laugh. The carefree laugh of a child. I, meanwhile, was close to tears. I begged her; I told her again and again to calm down, to stay where she was, to stop laughing, but the more I tried to persuade her, the funnier she found it, and the louder and wilder her laughter became. Until, from one moment to the next, she calmed down and brought her face close to mine.

And then she told me the most macabre joke I have ever heard: macabre not because of its content, but because of the context. I was paralysed, powerless, fascinated by her madness, and I stayed at the window and listened. I will tell you this joke in the course of our story, Brilka, but not now. I can’t tell it yet. That awful night isn’t over yet. I’m still standing there, in that dark school corridor, not knowing how I’m going to manage to save my own life and at the same time preserve hers.

Because she was already victorious; she had outwitted time, separated herself from the laws of the world, but I have not. I still have to stick to the facts. To my memories, which are constantly playing nasty tricks on me. To the images that populate my head. I can’t repeat it to you yet, but soon — soon I will. I promise you. Once I’ve reached you, once I’ve got past all the things that stopped me coming to you, then I’ll do it.

When she had told her joke and made sure I had understood the punchline, she let go of my hand, whipped round, and before I could grab her dress or her arm through the opening, she ran off.

I tried to climb back out of the window, called her name over and over, but by the time I was halfway out again I could no longer see her and I knew it was pointless to go on looking. She had disappeared into the still-growing throng, become part of it, sunk into it, had sought and found refuge in the epicentre of the activity.

An animal sound, completely alien to me, escaped my throat. For a few moments, I stood frozen in the dark corridor, not knowing what to do. As I crouched on the cold floor of my school, trembling all over, I heard screams outside, bodies hitting the ground, people crying for help, and again and again the dull sound of spades hitting a body, a head, a life.

I was expecting shots to ring out at any second, but there were none. That made the whole thing even more unbearable: the fact that no shots had been fired left room for hope that we might get out of this alive, that we might escape this hell. Then I heard the strange word: ‘Gas!’ I couldn’t make sense of it at first, until I realised it was tear gas being used on the crowd. I struggled to my feet and walked slowly down the unlit corridor, creeping through the ghostly darkness of the empty school building I had hated for so many years, and which now was saving me from the sight of things I couldn’t bear. I climbed the stairs. My shoes made strange creaking sounds on the wood. Various poets and philosophers watched me from the walls, and in their midst was Uncle Lenin, beckoning to me still.

Suddenly, I started to run: of course, there was a telephone in the staffroom, I should call Mother, or ask Kostya for help, so someone would come and get me out of there. At the same time, though, I knew it was impossible. It didn’t matter which member of my family it was, they would inevitably get caught up in this inhuman scenario. They would be threatened by spades and Kalashnikovs, tanks and gas. No, that was unthinkable. That option no longer existed.

I went upstairs to my former classroom, the door of which was open, and sat down at the desk that had had to withstand years of my hatred for the school and for my fellow pupils. Into which I had carved numerous words and pictures. Cries for help, threats. Even in the dark I could decipher them, and for some reason they pleased me. They seemed like a fixed point to cling to, a sign that the world as I had known it had once existed and wasn’t just a product of my imagination. I clung to ‘Lenin + Marx = bullshit’, to, ‘The maths teacher is a dork’, and to ‘124 more days and I’m out of here’. I tried to recall the days and times when I had scratched these words into the solid wood of the desk. Some I could remember; others had vanished from my mind. I lay down on the bench, clutched it with both hands; I listened out for shots, or someone calling out the conclusive word ‘dead’, but I heard nothing. I could still hope.

I had lost all sense of time. I concentrated on my own heartbeat. I can’t remember how long I lay there, waiting to be rescued or killed. Eventually, when the noise from outside was no longer quite so deafening, I got up and went back downstairs. I was surprised that nobody had hit on the idea of taking refuge in the school, and at the same time I felt guilty for not having thrown open the doors and beckoned people in.

I went to the back exit and rattled the door. It was locked from inside. I went to the toilets and found a window in the boys’ that could be opened. Then I looked out — the back of the school was deserted. I could just hear some shouting from a side street. It was only when I was outside again, standing on the asphalt, that I noticed: all this time I’d been holding something in the hand I hadn’t cut, and my fingers were already cramped from gripping it. I looked down: it was Christine’s plain black shoe. To this day, something about this image still makes me seize up with fright. I pressed the shoe to my chest and started sobbing, hard, and at the same time I set off, running. I climbed a fence, got past two military vehicles, and finally escaped, up through the windswept streets of the Holy Mountain.

It was only when I reached the hidden back alleys of Vera that I stood and caught my breath. I had run all the way there without stopping. I had fallen down, picked myself up, and carried on running. The hubbub and the screams had vanished. This sleepy old neighbourhood looked peaceful, as if a few kilometres away people weren’t laying into other people with spades. The houses were sunk in a deep sleep. Out of breath, I sat down on the kerb. My home city had never seemed so big, and so lonely. And so divided.

With no strength left, I hammered on Christine’s door. I can’t remember how I got there; I just know that I avoided the main roads and kept walking, going slower and slower, but not stopping until I reached Christine’s apartment. It was the first place I thought of going. In my state of mind at the time I doubt I could have had other, more altruistic, reasons; I doubt I was worrying about Christine’s or Miro’s wellbeing. I just didn’t have the strength to walk any further.

*

Miro opened the door. He told me he’d been looking for me: they were all worried out of their minds, and Christine had disappeared without a trace. Elena and Aleko had been round. Everyone was half-dead with worry. When he noticed the blood on my clothes and face, he winced, but I let him know it was nothing serious with a little shake of my head — I didn’t have the energy to do more than that. Luckily, I didn’t need to ask him to call home, to give them the all clear, let them know I was still alive. ‘What about Daria?’ I asked. He reassured me that she had been on Rustaveli with the lovely Lasha in the early evening, but when the atmosphere got too tense for him he’d taken her back to the Green House, managing to leave just in time before things escalated. Without getting undressed or washing, I fell onto Miro’s bed and was asleep in seconds.

It was already morning when I was woken by Miro’s hand on my cheek. He had buttered some slices of bread for me and made tea, which he held under my nose. I sat up and fell on the food — I’d had no idea I was so hungry.

Lana was in Baku at a building design conference; she was calling regularly to check in. Elene would pick me up that afternoon, Miro told me cautiously. A state of emergency had been declared in the city and a curfew was in place.

Christine was still missing, and I told him about our encounter the previous night. I didn’t mention her mental state, though: I didn’t know how he would react. I needed to stick to the facts, to rock-solid facts, normal things, familiar things. The time. Miro’s face. The smell of his bedsheets. The stains on my clothes. The eucalyptus on Miro’s windowsill. The poster of the racing car on the wall. These were things I could comprehend, things I knew; they didn’t overwhelm me. Everything else was too much, too huge, demanded too much strength from me.

Miro watched me open-mouthed, murmuring to himself, rather shyly, asking what exactly I was doing. But I didn’t let him put me off as I carefully laid my clothes on the floor. Folded my shirt, my trousers. I didn’t wear a bra; with my flat chest, it would have been completely pointless. Finally, I took off my knickers as well and walked past him, as God had made me, to the tiny shower cubicle in the bathroom, which was right beside the front door.

A few minutes later he came into the bathroom and stopped in front of the shower curtain.

I opened the curtain. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to see everything. Everything that had written itself onto my body the previous night, and for which I had no words.

I reached out to him as the hot, healing water rained down on me. He took my hand and stood there for a while, wordlessly, eyes on the floor, as if thinking about what to do next. Then he stuck his head into the shower and gave me a kiss. I put my arms round his neck and pulled him in.

Later, he carried me into his bedroom, wrapped in a towel and slung over his shoulder like a rolled-up carpet, threw me onto the unmade bed, and lay down beside me. We had already pulled off his wet clothes in the shower.

For the first time, we were naked. For the first time, I didn’t care whether I was desirable or beautiful enough for him. For the first time, I wanted him to read my body like a story. I drew him down towards me. Folded him in my arms. His fingertips trembled, his lips were cold, his skin was rough and his muscles tense, his eyes shone. I could feel how reluctant, how unprepared he was to be with me like this, now of all times. Now, as our worlds were falling apart.

There, in his childhood bed, in Christine’s abandoned apartment.

I clung to him, my heart racing. As my hands explored his belly, touched his nipples, brushed his Adam’s apple, I could see the soldier swinging his spade, the body of the young man falling to the ground. I could see Christine’s chemical burns as Miro smelled my skin and kissed my breasts, as he lifted me up and laid me on top of him, all the while looking at me and brushing my unruly, wet hair out of my face. And I thought I was back in the dark, empty corridor in my school, hearing the screams of the people outside, trampling each other and calling for help. I clung to him, as if his body could undo these images, these sounds. If I just held on tight enough, if I loved him fiercely enough, if I dug my knees into the mattress, put my hands on his chest to support myself, if I took him inside me, could I offer him a refuge, even though I hadn’t managed to take Christine and all those other people into my hiding place?

I turned my head away, not wanting him to be infected with my images, because he was so close to me, closer than ever before.

My dirty denim jacket from the previous day was lying on the floor, and out of the pocket stuck the tip of Christine’s black shoe.