The Lack of Light, page 11
I felt miserable. On our short walk home, Dina was in high spirits again, dancing down the street ahead of me, adamant that she was going to show me how to make a cake later on. But for all my anticipation, I couldn’t shake off the sensation that had come over me as I read the notebook. I felt like a traitor. I couldn’t stop thinking about the serious, sad girl with the thick eyebrows and clever eyes, and how she must have felt as that stupid Tatishvili and her retinue were revealing her most private thoughts to the whole world.
“What’s up with you?” Dina asked, registering my glum expression and my silence.
“It’s terrible, what they did to poor Ira,” I muttered.
To my surprise, I realized that Dina hadn’t heard anything about it, although half the school had been involved. She just looked nonplussed. “The one from our courtyard? The clever one?”
“Yes, that’s her.”
She made me stop walking and give her all the details. “Come with me,” she said resolutely, once I had relayed the whole thing several times over. That was typical of her, too: she would make a decision without telling you what she had decided, and then expect you to blindly trust her, blindly follow. And I did. Most of the time, that’s exactly what I did.
“What are you planning now? What are you going to do?” I didn’t get any answers to my incessant questioning on the way home. She just dragged me into the stairwell and rang the Tatishvilis’ doorbell. The ever-welcoming Natela opened the door and invited us in.
“Aniko is studying just now, but I’ll call her. Would you like some of this pear cake? It’s fresh out of the oven.”
It did smell delicious, and I was on the point of nodding, but Dina didn’t let me get that far. “No, thanks,” she replied gruffly, and stayed where she was, in the hallway.
Anna came out of her room with a towel wrapped around her wet hair, and looked at us impassively. “What do you want?” She had never bothered to hide the fact that she considered us unworthy.
“Hey, you’ve still got that diary, haven’t you?” Dina asked her, in a surprisingly friendly tone.
“Yes. So?”
“Well, Keto’s really good at drawing, and I thought it would be funny if she added a few illustrations.” I had no idea what her plan was, and did my best to conceal my surprise.
“If you like. But I want it back this evening,” said Anna, with her usual air of indifference. She didn’t for a second suspect that we were tricking her; she didn’t doubt her superiority.
She disappeared briefly, and I hissed at Dina, “What are you doing?” But before she could answer, Anna returned with the thick, battered notebook. She handed it over without hesitation, and Dina passed it straight to me.
“Thanks, this is going to be hilarious!” she said, opening the front door. She let me go out ahead of her, then suddenly turned back and pushed Anna hard, shoving her up against the shoe cupboard. “You fucking bitch!” she hissed. Anna’s face twisted into a grimace of pain, though the shock at what Dina had dared to do was clearly greater than any physical hurt she had caused her. Anna was outraged and offended.
“Everything alright, girls?” we heard Natela call from the kitchen, and Dina put a finger to her lips. Something in her expression made Anna keep quiet.
“Yes, Deda, we’re fine,” she called back, getting to her feet and turning hate-filled eyes on us. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, you loser? You two are finished!”
“HAVE YOU GONE completely mad?” I asked Dina, when we were back in the courtyard. “You hit her!” Part of me was horrified, and at the same time I was immensely proud of this new friend who was so full of surprises.
“All I did was push her. She deserved worse. Sometimes you have to give people a smack if that’s all they understand,” Dina said, and I knew any argument was powerless against her conviction.
“Are we going to give Ira her diary back now?” I asked.
“Not yet.” We went to Dina’s permanently dark basement flat and sat at the large round wooden table in the dining room, which doubled as a kitchen. The flat smelled of damp clay, wood, paint, and varnish. It was full of old pieces of furniture that people had thrown away, into which Lika had breathed a second life, transforming them into works of art. I loved every one of these pieces. The heavy oak cupboard decorated in bright colors, where they kept the crockery. The white painted dresser with the gold handles on its drawers. The curtains, hand-embroidered with little dogs and lions. The bunk beds where the sisters slept, which Lika had painted with red spots, as if they had measles. With an air of secrecy, Dina laid the large book on the kitchen table and opened it up. Then she began to read. She skimmed the notes, not reading anything in full, as if she felt uncomfortable being part of this intimate process. Then all at once she got up, took a pencil case from her school bag, pulled out a sharp pencil and scribbled something beside Ira’s handwriting with its neat loops. Next to the entry on Gagarin’s birthday, about Iago’s bad stomach and Father’s complaining, she wrote: “I looked very beautiful today.” On International Workers’ Day, alongside the note about moving house, she wrote: “Everything will change. I will find new friends. And they will be friends for life.” On Ira’s birthday, where she had written, “I got the book I wanted: The Count of Monte Cristo. But nothing else special happened,” Dina added, “I am a year older and even cleverer.” Eventually she stopped, stood up and poured herself some water.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well what?”
“Will she?”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“Will she find new friends? For life?”
“Yes. We’re going to be her friends.”
WHENEVER DINA DECIDED things for me, I would feel a brief pang of discontent. But usually I went along with it and didn’t express my annoyance. This time, too, I basically agreed with her: from now on, I did want to be Ira’s friend.
That evening, we knocked on Ira’s door. She appeared, still in her school uniform, and instinctively recoiled when she saw us.
“Yes?” she stammered, in alarm.
“Who’s that? Who on earth is hammering on our door at this hour?” we heard Gyuli call.
“It’s for me, Deda,” Ira replied, with the usual hesitancy in her voice; but her eyes were fixed on us.
“I’ve got something for you—something that belongs to you,” said Dina, lowering her head and holding out the notebook.
“Thanks,” said Ira, and before we could say anything else, she shut the door in our faces.
For the next three days, she didn’t come to school. Offi-cially, it was because of her fall; unofficially, it was probably the shame. When she came back to class, she seemed even more insecure than usual; you sensed that, if she could, she would have made herself invisible. Anna Tatishvili and her servants left Ira alone. But their scornful looks in our direction told us that they were plotting their next act of revenge. On the way home, Ira caught up with Dina and whispered a timid “Thank you.” Then she hurried past us.
“Wait!” Dina called out, and ran after her. Ira glanced back fearfully; she stood before us with drooping shoulders, burrowing the toe of her shoe into the ground.
“Want to come to Mushtaidi Park with us?” Dina asked, grinning at her. I hadn’t known anything about this plan, which probably hadn’t even existed until just then.
“I can’t, I need to get home, and I’ve got chess later,” Ira murmured awkwardly.
“Nonsense, you’ve got time, come with us, it’ll be fun. They’ve got the best cotton candy in the city there!” Dina was already marching purposefully ahead, like a general who expects wordless obedience from his army. Ira shot me a look of consternation, and I shrugged.
“I’m going to get in trouble, too” was the best I could come up with. I could already see the hesitation and mistrust in her eyes, and her fear of the consequences that such an unannounced outing would bring.
That was the day of the brightly colored chairoplane, which Dina managed to smuggle us onto for free; it was a day of much laughter, and a competition for who could pull the ugliest face; a day of giggles and fingers sticky from cotton candy. It was the day we felt a pride in ourselves, a sense of having surpassed ourselves, and only because we suddenly had someone to show us that life could be so easy. Suddenly, there was a we.
Nene
She isn’t here. My doubts have been confirmed. I can feel Ira growing increasingly nervous, and trying to mask it with overly loud laughter and exaggerated nonchalance.
The doors are opened, and the museum’s staff smile politely as they let the crowd stream into the exhibition. The air smells of face powder, expensive fragrances, fancy restaurants, airport boutiques, lunchtime prosecco, and exotic aftershaves. The waiters in their white shirts and black vests maneuver their trays skillfully through the crowd. Ladies swathed in expensive fabrics kiss art-savvy gentlemen on the cheeks; people from the embassy dispense enthusiastic handshakes; EU cultural attachés put in an appearance, seeking out potential partners for other projects in the throng; sponsors bask in praise. The show must go on.
Nene hasn’t come. Ira doesn’t want to acknowledge this yet, and I’m not giving up hope, either: far too early, far too late, I don’t know, but I don’t want to keep staring at the door every few seconds. The rooms are full, over-full, the illustrious viewers crackling with exclusivity and craving a spectacle. The curators move to a corner where a small podium has been set up. Microphones are put in place. A Babylonian cacophony of conversation fills the space.
The curators begin. Tedious speeches and thanks will follow, but we are all well-trained horses; we know the drill, and no one intends to disrupt them. We are patient, and the generously poured selection of wine sponsored by some Georgian vintner allows us to overlook this inconvenience. Glasses are pressed into guests’ hands, then topped up. Ira doesn’t leave my side, though she keeps saying hello to other people, greeting some of them with air-kisses. She has worked in so many places, and her professional spectrum spans so many fields and locations, that she has become a kind of figurehead, feared as much as she is admired. I sense her imaginary wing spread over me, and feel safe. I’ve already had some of the delicious white wine and loosened up a little. I have resolved to enjoy this evening, come what may. Anano flits around like a glowworm no longer in the first flush of youth; as ever, I am impressed by her girlish manner, her responsiveness, her unfeigned friendliness, her sincere pride in this event. The head of the Centre for Fine Arts, and thus the patron of the exhibition, declares this impressive retrospective open and talks to us about her dynamic, internationally renowned arts and cultural center, a principal artery in the heart of the Belgian cultural landscape, as she calls it; nor does she forget to mention that we are standing in an art deco masterpiece, one of the greatest architectural treasures in Brussels. And although the center has staged thousands of concerts, exhibitions, theater and dance performances, literature events, and film screenings in its more than four thousand square meters of space, she stresses how special this particular show is. She tells us it is close to her own heart, that she loves the Caucasus, and Georgia in particular, and explains exactly how Dina’s pictures served, for her, as a bridge to Georgian culture. She ends by saying, with an exaggerated grin, that they’ve made a great exception for Dina Pirveli’s art by allowing drinks to be served in the exhibition space, because you can’t have a retrospective like this without Georgian wine; nevertheless, she asks us to be careful, and not to get too close to the pictures with our glasses.
I have long since stopped listening, and am imagining Dina instead. What would she think if she were here today, being forced to listen to all this dithyrambic talk about her art and her skill? How would she take these paeans—would she be able to tell who was truly celebrating her, and who was just basking in her light? Would she eventually drag me away, giggling, pick up a glass, and drink a toast with me to none of this being what’s important in life, because we found what really matters a long time ago?
Ira tugs at my sleeve. I open my eyes and stare at the podium again. Now the curators are trying to fathom “the magic” of our dead friend’s artworks, to find words for something that needs no words. They explain the curation, the broad spectrum covered by this retrospective, the way they chose the pieces, the chronological arrangement that follows Dina’s life and career. The personal aspect of her work. They keep saying the word “radical,” and the British man keeps talking about how she “spares neither herself nor the viewer.” He mentions her habit of giving the photos titles that at first seem incomprehensible, but that have a deep meaning behind them. They take turns thanking the world-famous cultural center, the host city, various sponsors, the embassy, and, last but by no means least, the Georgian masterminds: the little country mustn’t be underrepresented here, when all the exhibits are related to it in one way or another. Then the museum director from Rotterdam puts forward some art-historical theses, not forgetting two quotes from Foucault and one from Helmut Newton. Thea, the Georgian art historian in the black overalls and leaf-green pumps, gets to give a short introduction to the history of Georgia over the last one hundred years, though the focus of her lecture is the perestroika and post-perestroika period, which she describes as the context for the oeuvre; she doesn’t want listeners to feel they lack important information and revealing insights.
We, the children of that time, let this rather dry treatise wash over us, as if phrases like “battles for independence,” “civil war,” “quashed demonstrations,” and “economic crisis” had nothing to do with us, as if we knew them only from hearsay, as if they had never touched our lives. The ambassador, a stocky man with a thick head of hair, says some words of thanks he has learned by heart, clears his throat several times, and invites us for drinks in the garden afterward.
Then Anano gets to say a few words as well. For some reason, a scattering of loyal acolytes start applauding the moment she steps onto the stage, and she smiles awkwardly. She blushes, and is so emotional that it takes her a while to tell us, in her charming, Georgian-accented English, about her sister. Ira and I hang on her every word. Her emotion is so heartrendingly sincere, and while she may be a mature woman about to enter the second half of her life, to us she’s still the young girl who is constantly vying for our attention, forever the little sister, forever young, suffused with such incredible lightheartedness. The idea that Nene, of all people, would abandon her, when she was the one Anano admired and liked most of all, suddenly seems unforgivable.
She speaks of the ruthless talent with which her sister was blessed, which would turn out to be a curse as well: this obsession with looking for so long, and with such precision, that your own self dissolves and blends into the subject in front of the lens. She says that Dina walked a tightrope through life, strung between I must and I want, that demanded everything of her. She tells us about the terrible price her sister paid for her own refusal to compromise. Anano tries not to ask too much of the visitors, carefully dosing out the information, an anecdote here, an anecdote there. The heavy, the unutterable, she leaves to her sister’s pictures. Unexpectedly, she then addresses us, introducing us as “Dina’s inspiration, and her rock,” and all eyes turn to search for us in the crowd. Ira is gracious, smiling, lets the whispers wash over her. I, meanwhile, could murder Anano—she has officially declared us exhibits, and I assume we will now be judged, just like the pictures on the walls. She thanks us, thanks us for coming, tells everyone that we have spared no effort to be here, Ira coming from America and me from Germany, and she speaks of Nene as if she were with us—she’s come straight from Tbilisi—before adding, “It means a lot to me that you’re here, I hope you know that.” She encourages the audience to join her in the garden afterward and “celebrate in style, just as Dina would have wanted,” then tells everyone to “enjoy,” and leaves the podium.
People begin to clap, and amid the surging applause I catch sight of her. Ira hasn’t seen her yet, and I’m glad that I don’t have to share this moment with her, to share my amusement—amusement and relief. I want to be the one to deliver this belated surprise to Ira. Really, I should have known: Nene is late, she’s always late, why would this time be any different?
All at once I am so moved that it’s a real effort to stop myself rushing over there and picking her up, this bird of paradise, this remarkable apparition, the soft, petite figure, the doll-like face plastered with makeup—such a deceptive exterior, because you would never, ever guess the elemental force that dwells in this extravagant little person. She is wearing an unusual, bright yellow wrap dress embroidered with black swallows, with a generous quantity of her impressive décolletage on display, and perilously high heels. She enters the room gracefully but hurriedly, as if the entire palace belonged to her alone. She is scanning the crowd, quite obviously searching for a familiar face—I would like to believe she’s looking for us—and then she dives into this deafening applause as if it’s meant for her. She has always had a knack for timing.
I give Ira a little nudge and nod in Nene’s direction. I see the fist that suddenly clutches Ira’s heart, squeezing it ever tighter, ever harder. She presses her lips together, trying not to cry; she can’t cry, tears are for short-term relief, but the relief she needs is for a whole century, a whole life. She needs a pardon, a release she has waited more than twenty years for, and only one person on the planet has the power to give it. That person has just walked into the room, in a scorching yellow dress, and a number of heads have turned toward her. Now I’m the one propping Ira up. I imagine I can hear her heart beating, and already the self-assured senior partner from Chicago with the steely biceps and designer suits has vanished completely. In her place, little Ira stands before me once more, the girl with the eternal longing, with the throbbing yet invisible need. Nene sees us. First she waves, then she smiles her gentle, flirtatious smile, and for a fraction of a second everything is fine again, everything is whole.
