The old clock keeps good time.

JOSEPH BRODSKY

The following year, I took up my place in the history faculty at the university, and argued constantly with the professors and my fellow students. These long-winded debates wore me down. Final dissertations were often returned on the grounds that the work contained too much ‘Soviet propaganda’ and too little ‘nationalism’.

Outside, tanks rolled past. There were curfews, and incessant demonstrations. Young men suddenly started carrying weapons in public. It was frightening how quickly we got used to this martial sight, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to walk around the city in broad daylight with a rifle over your shoulder.

One by one, the statues of our socialist fathers were torn down. The largest, the statue of Lenin on Lenin Square, was the last to fall, amid a bombardment of eggs and tomatoes.

I had to get used to endless walking: the streets were blocked by people’s assemblies and rallies, and public transport was irregular.

The go-kart track was closed because The Shark and a few of the boys from his clique had joined the newly founded ‘Mkhedrioni’, a private army, and the others didn’t have time to drive around for fun now, either — everyone wanted to help write his country’s future! Now, with guns on their hips, they felt important, thought themselves untouchable, and met conspiratorially in the former Chess Palace to discuss the new national values and get drunk without anyone trying to stop them.

Daria and the lovely Lasha moved into a flat near Vake Park that his parents had bought for their son’s second marriage. Daria’s clothes had become strikingly fashionable, and now that she was married she was always busy. Since the wedding, she was like a different person. She seemed incredibly capable and was clearly making an effort to appear more grown-up and self-aware than she was. She accepted an offer to appear in a three-part historical television drama, this time in Leningrad. Lasha wasn’t involved in the production, but he went with her anyway; they were away all summer.

And at the Green House, unimaginable things were happening. One Saturday morning, woken by the noise, I discovered workmen in overalls in the living room, packing up our three-piece suite under Nana’s watchful eye. When I asked what was going to happen to our beautiful furniture — that was Kostya’s favourite sofa, after all — Nana said she was afraid we could no longer afford to have favourite pieces of furniture. That evening, I went into the kitchen and put two hundred and thirty roubles on the table in front of Nana: all the money I had earned at the go-kart track, which I had been planning to use to finally get myself a pair of genuine Levis and a number of banned books. She looked taken aback, and refused to accept the money. Things weren’t bad enough for us to start letting our children support us, she said. (‘Give it to your mother instead.’)

My mother was always complaining that people no longer had the money to give their children private tuition. She would shout at Aleko that she didn’t know how she was supposed to earn anything now, and Aleko would take her in his arms and promise her it would be all right. I gave up my dream of genuine Levis and slipped the cash I’d saved up into my mother’s bag. Instead of thanks, I earned a scolding, and had to give an account of where the money had come from. I was then told I had been wasting my time with the wrong friends. Once again, I ran out of the flat and slammed the door behind me.

In all this time, my longing to see David hadn’t diminished in the least. Quite the opposite, in fact: it had transformed into a burning in my chest that made me think of him every day; and I realised that the burning wouldn’t stop until I found a replacement for him. But there could only be one replacement: David himself. I had been over to his studio a few times, and hung around on the street in the hope that he might appear around a corner. Day by day, I ventured closer to the door of his apartment building, but for a long time I didn’t dare ring the bell.

Then one afternoon, after a heated discussion with one of my professors that led nowhere, I couldn’t stand it any longer and rang his doorbell. It was a while before I heard his footsteps. When he opened the door, he was holding a ruler. His glasses dangled on a chain against his chest; he seemed smaller than I remembered him, but his deep-set eyes were just as alert as they had been when I was lucky enough to enjoy his company twice a week. He studied me for a while, unsure who it was standing in front of him, and then his face lit up.

‘Niza!’ he murmured, and I saw his marsh-green eyes grow moist. I took a tentative step towards him, opened my arms, and wrapped them around him with all my strength. He let himself be hugged — stiffly at first, then relaxing and relenting in my arms. At that moment, I realised that we had never touched. It was thoughts and words that had made us close, and this intimacy didn’t need to be proven by physical contact.

‘I hoped you would come back one day,’ he said, and, as usual, as if years had not passed since we’d last met, he started to heat up his samovar. The familiarity of the room took away all my fear and uncertainty.

I spoke in a chaotic flood of words; I couldn’t stop. As if I had to vomit everything out. As usual he didn’t interrupt; he listened with a look of concentration on his face and kept pouring us more tea.

‘I feel like I’m suffocating — I want to do so much and I’m so inhibited. I’m constantly disappointing people. I try to do everything right, but I don’t even know what right is. I don’t know why I’m studying what I’m studying. The only thing I know is that I want to write and to be with Miro. But it’s not enough. I’m not enough. Nothing is helping Miro to get on and do what he wants to do.’

Everything I had held back for so long had broken out of me in a torrent. David thought for a long time, with a searching look in his eyes.

‘You can’t live for anyone else, Niza, and nobody can live for you. And it would be terrible if you could. You become what you want to be, and leave other people alone.’

‘But I don’t know what I want to be, David, that’s the thing!’

‘Do what you’re best at. I can’t give you any answers. I never have answered a question for you. I always just listened and gave you time to find the answer for yourself.’

‘Can I … can I come and visit you?’

‘I take it nobody else is going to come round and threaten to have me locked up?’

‘I’m so ashamed. I hate my family. I hate him.’

‘It’s all right. It was nothing new for me. It just hurt to let you go. At the start of my career, I fell in love with a man, six years younger than me — he was my research assistant. I was married at the time and my wife was pregnant with our second son. Rumours started going around, and a colleague denounced me to the head of the institute. But that’s all over now.’

‘That shouldn’t have happened to you.’

‘You’re old enough: come and visit me whenever you like. Besides, I can’t infect you now; you already like men!’

We both laughed. A tortured laugh, perhaps, but one that made everything that had happened disappear.

‘And if you don’t know who you are, then look at all the possible versions of you, find the most impossible one, and become that,’ he said, before giving me a goodbye hug. I walked home slowly, past the dwindling displays in the grocery shops, past the city’s new pawnbrokers.

*

Daria was laying the table. Luckily her husband was in the next room, watching a Dinamo game. I hadn’t visited my sister very often recently; the lovely Lasha never left her side, and he watched her like a guard dog. I don’t think we’d had a single conversation since the wedding without him there.

Daria was rehearsing Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew at the Marjanishvili — to the great chagrin of her fellow students, as it was virtually impossible for a student to bag a leading role at such a renowned theatre.

The telephone rang. She disappeared from the kitchen for a moment. When she came back, she was followed by Lasha, whom I was no longer allowed to call ‘the lovely Lasha’ because it annoyed Daria.

‘Who was that?’ he asked.

‘The assistant director. About rehearsals tomorrow. Please don’t start this again,’ she whispered, and turned her back to him. To my disappointment, however, he still sat down at the table with us.

‘And what did he want from you?’

‘What do you think he wanted? I’ve already told you: he wanted to discuss the timing of the rehearsals.’

‘What is there to discuss?’

‘Please, Lasha. Niza and I wanted a moment to ourselves …’

‘Perhaps he wanted to discuss how low your neckline should be?’

‘Seriously, Lasha, you’re being paranoid!’

‘Oh, I’m paranoid, am I?

‘Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?’ I intervened.

‘What does it mean? That’s exactly what I’m asking your sister, but she hasn’t given me an answer. I left my wife for her — and my wife idolised me! Idolised! And where’s my thanks? She flirts with all these losers, she’s forever wiggling her backside at them, and she thinks I’m an idiot.’

Suddenly I heard something shatter. Daria had broken a plate in the sink. She whirled round, her face streaming with tears.

‘Why are you doing this to me? She’s my little sister. Why are you doing this to me now? I can’t go on like this. I don’t understand what’s happened to you. Why you do this to me. You were never like this before, you weren’t like this, I know it.’

‘I’m doing it to you, am I? To you? I’m not doing anything to you! I just want a decent wife by my side. You only got where you are now because I shot you from the right angle. And now you’re playing the big star and I’m not good enough for you any more, huh? You think you’re better than me now because you get offers of work and I’m sitting around here unemployed? Do you know all the things I’ve done, all the people I’ve worked with, you ungrateful slut!’

That was too much for me. I leaped up and shouted at him to shut his filthy mouth.

Daria tried to come between us, clearly ashamed in front of me, and he snorted disdainfully, shouted something insulting in my face and left the kitchen.

*

Three days later, I intercepted Daria as she was leaving her rehearsal, and forced her to go for a walk with me.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Not you, too, Niza. I’ll deal with it. He’s just a bit jealous,’ she said in a subdued murmur, and stared rummaging for something in her bag.

‘A bit jealous? He called you an ungrateful slut — sorry, but —’

‘He’s a man; it’s hard for him to deal with this whole situation. Plus he has hardly any offers of work. The broadcasters are only interested in politics now; the film subsidies have been cut. We’re thinking about going to Russia. He has good contacts there. I love him, I love Lasha, and I don’t want him to feel like this because of me.’

‘Are you kidding? So now it’s your fault that he’s being an arsehole as well?’

‘No, I don’t mean it like that, but it’s difficult for him. I worry about him.’

‘Maybe you should be worrying about yourself.’

‘I do. But this is between me and him, Niza. I don’t expect you to understand, but please be charitable, okay? And I don’t want Mama or Kostya to hear about it. He just lost his temper and —’

‘Lost his temper. Seems like he loses his temper quite a lot.’

‘I’m not a maximalist like you, Niza.’

‘Maximalist? What are you talking about? It’s completely normal to object to being called a slut, especially when you’re practically drooling over the guy doing the name-calling.’

‘You’re a fine one to tell me what’s normal.’

‘Don’t start that again. Not like this. We’ve put all that behind us.’

‘Just take a look at yourself before you start hauling me over the coals. What kind of life are you living? What are you doing with all your talent? You’re always hanging around with those losers; you don’t even have any female friends. That’s not normal. A girl needs female friends.’

‘I thought you were my friend.’

She didn’t seem to have been expecting this response — her expression changed suddenly, she took a step towards me, and something like guilt flashed in her brown eye.

‘But I’m your sister, Niza,’ she said softly.

‘Yes, it sounds like you’re just my sister,’ I replied, turned and ran off. From one second to the next it had begun to pour with rain.