The Lack of Light, page 16
THAT NIGHT, I knocked on my father’s door and sat on the edge of his creaky, prehistoric wooden bed, which he refused point-blank to replace. He was lying with his back to me, absorbed in a book.
“I’ll get the film for you,” I told him.
“Don’t worry about it. None of this should be your concern. You’re a good girl,” he murmured, without looking at me, and for a moment I hated him for that casual remark, which sounded like a hollow platitude. I didn’t want to be a good girl anymore, and I hadn’t for a long time: I wanted to be me, to be allowed to be me. What would be on the film that my father hadn’t wanted to see for so many years? A foolhardy but happy group of mountaineers in the Great Caucasus, before they were hit by an avalanche—or a woman who went in search of herself and ended up in the arms of another man?
“I’ll get you the film, but I’m leaving the camera with Dina. For Rati’s sake. It’s important to him,” I said. “I’ll get it, but only on one condition,” I added hastily, plucking up all my courage.
“What’s this? You’re setting a condition?”
“You throw it away.”
“I can’t do that. The final memento of your mother . . .”
“And yet you don’t dare look at the photos. All these years you haven’t dared. Maybe it isn’t that important to you, after all.”
“I’ll do it when the time is right.”
“It’s never going to be right. You need to decide how you want to remember her, and whatever’s on those photos won’t make any difference to that. If it did, you would have had the film developed long ago.”
He stayed silent. Finally, he sat up and looked at me. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know why I haven’t, in all these years.”
“You must have had your reasons, but they aren’t important now, Papa. And promise me Rati won’t get to hear about any of this.”
He seemed impressed by my determination, as if he wished he could be so decisive; it would have made reconciling himself with his past so much easier. Instead, he was condemned to live with his anger and doubts.
AND NOW I’M standing here in front of this photograph, contemplating our jump, an image captured with my mother’s camera. It ended up keeping her secrets forever, and helped its new owner to snatch so many magical moments from life as it rushed by. I see us all—apart from Ira—laughing, still ignorant of the future we will land in when our feet hit the ground. I look at this jump and think of the crowds that filled the streets at that time, armed with banners and so many dreams. I hear Gorbachev speaking to us on the news, announcing his plans for “restructuring.” It must have been just before this jump that Nene confessed to us that she was in love. A love that would never die, she told us, with the wisdom of a hundred-year-old woman—for Saba Iashvili. And I remember Ira getting up and leaving the playground where Nene had made her confession. “What’s wrong with you!” Nene shouted after her, indignantly.
I focus on Ira’s serious expression in the photo, and recall the day she told us that she was going to stop her chess lessons, that she would never play chess again. “What? Why?” Nene asked. “I thought you were going to be the next Nona Gaprindashvili?”
And Ira said, “From now on, I only want to do something where I can really win. Not just some silly certificates and stupid trophies.” Not long afterward, she announced that she wanted to study law. We three others were still holding the doors to the future closed, believing we could shut out the present and avoid seeing the sea of tulips on the bloodied streets after April 9, the Russian soldiers, the swelling fear of the new Mkhedrioni gangs and their guns. We were still clinging to the last summer days of our childhood. And so we stood in the factory yard and posed for Dina’s Leica, as if resuming something interrupted long ago in the snow-covered Caucasus mountains.
“My uncle’s going to kill me if he finds out!” Nene started whimpering, once we were back on the street and realized how frighteningly silent and empty it was. The curfew had begun.
“I did warn you all,” Ira commented, rather haughtily.
“We’ll be home soon, don’t be such scaredy-cats.” But Dina was a little scared, too; I could tell by the tension in her body, the angular, mechanical way she moved. “We’ll take the back alleys, I know my way around here. We’ll just stay off the main streets and be home in twenty, twenty-five minutes max, alright?” she called out, with all the fake bonhomie of a Pioneer troop leader.
“They really will kill me,” Nene moaned. There were moments when all her bravery vanished, and she transformed into the fearful little girl who was lost without her male relatives watching over her.
“No need to panic.” Ira remained calm, as always. She was guided by logic, and now she, too, was looking for the safest route home. “We don’t have a choice, and calling our parents would be even more dangerous. The patrols only cover the main streets. Dina’s right, we’ll just take back streets and alleyways.”
Dina didn’t wait to hear anyone else’s thoughts; she set off, and we had no option but to follow her. This part of town wasn’t completely unfamiliar to me, either, and with Dina and me navigating we were sure to get home safely.
“What do they want, anyway? I mean, what’s this stupid curfew for?” Nene groaned, as we walked down a narrow, unlit side street toward Vorontsov Square.
“Are you really going to play this dumb?” Ira hissed. Ever since Nene had started telling us how Saba Iashvili made her “weak at the knees,” Ira had been in a foul mood, and nothing and no one could cheer her up.
“Why are you snarling at me like that? Maybe concentrate on where we’re going instead?”
“So you seriously don’t know what the Russians are doing here?”
“Dina, Keto, say something—she’s being really horrible to me!” Nene tried to overtake Ira and leave her behind.
“They don’t want us to become independent, it’s as simple as that!” Ira called after her. “April 9 just legitimized their invasion. They killed people, and they’re making out like it was unavoidable.”
It was the first time I’d heard such rage in Ira’s voice. I didn’t know who it was directed at, Saba Iashvili or the Russian troops holding our city hostage. I remember stopping for a moment and turning to face her, surprised by the forcefulness of her words. She raised her eyebrows at me.
“I didn’t know you were so . . . I don’t know—so involved.” I couldn’t think of a better way to put it. Our voices echoed strangely in the narrow street, making the atmosphere even more uncanny, as if we had wandered into a ghost town.
“Involved? Involved?” Ira’s frustration seemed to grow by the minute. “Unlike you lot, I’m interested in the kind of country I’m living in, and whether I’m free or enslaved,” she cried dramatically.
Before I could say anything else, Nene turned and ran back. She planted herself in front of Ira and hissed in her face: “Have you completely lost your mind? You never stop insulting us, you think you’re the cleverest and you’ve got everything under control. But it’s total bullshit!”
This argument was between the two of them, and I wanted to stay out of it, but there was no time to stay out of it, and no time for an argument, either. Something had shifted, and it couldn’t be bent back into shape. Dina, still striding ahead, didn’t hear them, or didn’t want to hear them; her footsteps were our orientation in the darkness. What was up with the streetlights? Were they scared of the Russians, too?
“Hey, we need to keep going, we can’t stand around here,” I said, in an attempt to intervene, but they were like two dogs baring their teeth, preparing to attack.
“At least I’m aware of what’s going on. You don’t take in anything beyond your own whims and moods. The whole world has to revolve around you and your Saba, who’s off in a world of his own!” Ira was beside herself, her despair so unbearable that it was making her lose her head.
“You’re just jealous! Keto, tell her I’m right!” Nene said, turning to me. She always needed accomplices, always needed people to back her up, as if only others had the power to make her truth become the truth.
“Jealous? Me? Jealous of what? Of you mooning from afar over some meathead who doesn’t even look at you?”
“He knows exactly who I am, you stupid bitch!” said Nene, outraged. “And if you can’t accept it—then sorry, but maybe you should just stay out of my life!”
“Hey, you two, we’ve really got to keep going . . . And please will you quiet down!” I whispered urgently, but they didn’t seem to hear my pleas.
“Your life? Right now, I’m trying to help you have a life, not hook yourself a guy who’s going to tell you what to do and what to think!”
“That’s how you see me, is it? Oh, great, thanks a lot! What do you want from me? You’re the best, aren’t you? Why are you even still friends with me?”
“I . . .” Ira faltered. I stood on the sidelines, not knowing what to do. I could hear Dina calling to us in the distance.
“You see, you don’t even know. I don’t need a friend like you.”
Nene’s trump card was her famous pride, and she played it now, acting aloof and looking deeply offended. Ira turned on her heel and ran in the opposite direction. I panicked. I couldn’t go after her; it would mean splitting up the group, and that was too dangerous. I decided to find Dina first, then the three of us could go looking for Ira. Nene followed me without a word, and we turned into the entrance of a courtyard that seemed completely lifeless. Dina was leaning against a concrete wall.
“What took you so long? Where’s . . .”
“They had a row and Ira ran off,” I stammered, out of breath.
“It’s her own fault—tell her, Keto, she was being horrible to me the whole time!” said Nene, attempting to justify herself.
“That really doesn’t matter now, Nene; she can’t be running around here on her own, we need to find her,” I said, before Dina could suggest otherwise.
“Yes, we do,” she agreed, without objection, and we went back. This time we didn’t run; we’d already got used to the fear, to the darkness and the oppressive silence. We walked slowly, back the way we had come in such a hurry just a few minutes earlier. We found her only three streets away. She was standing under a wooden balcony strung with fluttering laundry, flanked by two soldiers in swamp-green uniforms who were clearly closing in on her.
I stood rooted to the spot. I was so tense that I forgot to breathe. Nene put a hand over her mouth to stop herself crying out. A whole palette of emotions crossed Dina’s face in the space of a few seconds: first panic, then helplessness, then disgust, then the desire to turn around at once, then courage again, and finally the decision to act.
Without looking at us, she suddenly stepped forward to where the soldiers could see her. They didn’t have machine guns, but there were pistols in the holsters on their belts. Ira spotted us immediately, and, following her gaze, the two men turned their heads in our direction. We were standing on the other side of the street, frozen in fear. One of the soldiers, scarcely older than us, shouted something; but just then Dina took a few more steps toward them and lifted her plaid shirt, exposing her black bra and full breasts. Before I could say anything, Nene followed suit. Quickly, without hesitation, she unbuttoned her flowery dress and stood in the middle of the deserted street, in the feeble light of a streetlamp, like a mannequin presenting her beguiling body. I, too, lifted my shirt without stopping to think, though I squeezed my eyes shut as if trying to make myself invisible.
Ira’s mouth fell open as the soldiers, distracted and clearly overwhelmed by the sight of us, walked slowly in our direction. And as they roared and whistled in anticipation of this unexpected, sumptuous bounty, Ira broke away and ran off down the street. A second later the three of us raced after her, resolute and undaunted.
The Last Bell
I’ve been keeping an eye out for the two of them, but I can’t see them. People are crowding around the pictures. A tangle of languages lies over the hall like an outsize net. I’ve finished my wine, and am hoping that one of the waiters buzzing around will quickly offer me another glass. I try at least to spot Nene’s swallows in the throng, but to no avail. I move on, following the inflexible chronology of our past. One picture makes me pause, though I was intending to walk swiftly past this wall. It’s one of a series of smaller-format photographs in plain frames that form a kind of triptych. Blurry, cryptic photos. You think you see something familiar, and yet when you look closer, that assumption turns out to be false; the way they’ve been shot turns the familiar into something strange.
I recognize my city, its streets—I was in the car with her, after all, as she leaned out of the window with her camera, her upper body stuck right out into the onrushing air, in her beautiful, simple dress, squealing, on the way to a new life, to freedom, on the way to her prom with her now-official boyfriend. Levan and I are in the rear seat, with the baffled but happy Tarik.
Standing in front of these pictures, I have the feeling that I’ve missed something crucial, overlooked something important. At the same time, I’m filled with an unexpected pride at knowing more than all these people around me, who are looking so attentively at the black-and-white prints. On the right of one of these small photos I see the Narikala bridge; we were crossing it when she photographed the tattered election posters on the railings, fluttering in the draft from the passing cars. “Round Table”—“Free Georgia” they say, and on one scrap of poster I see fragments of the first president, his arm and shoulders, a section of his forehead and eyes. The shot is too blurred to read the campaign slogan. Although it was a warm day, you get the impression that it’s cold and windy, and that the two indistinct pedestrians on the bridge are fleeing from something.
The elections, yes, the elections, and the ridiculous cake Babuda made to mark the occasion. It was almost stormy that day, the wind whipping everything up: dust, leaves, hopes, fears, laundry blown off the clotheslines. For the first time since the Sovietization of Georgia, there was a multiparty election in the Supreme Soviet. Reactions were varied: triumph and joy for Babuda Two at the victory of the nationalists and Gamsakhurdia, the man she was pinning her hopes on; and for Eter, horror and anger at the election of this “radical esoteric,” a phrase that has stayed with me. Babuda Two ignored Eter’s objections and baked that cake, which she decorated with the Georgian flag in honor of the great occasion. And I think about the party I was invited to that same evening, which I’d been looking forward to for so long: Levan’s birthday, which a large group of us celebrated in the lovely apartment over in the brick building. Levan and the shadows of his long, thick eyelashes on my cheeks. Levan with the matchstick permanently between his teeth, which he chewed like a man possessed. The tapping of his sneakers on the wooden floor, the incessant nervous twitching, the impossibility of coming to rest. The curiosity in his shining eyes. His scent: pine trees, aftershave, cigarettes.
The Iashvilis’ living room is bathed in a dim orange light, and “Tom’s Diner” is playing in the background. I am sitting at the lavishly decked table, set so lovingly by Nina Iashvili, while pensive, melancholy Rostom carries heavy carafes of wine back and forth. The contentment I feel there. We no longer have to drink in secret; many of us are eighteen now, or soon will be. I see pretty Anna Tatishvili surrounded by her servants, giggling on the corner couch. She doesn’t speak to us, of course; she’s much too convinced of her own superiority.
I see Zotne Koridze sitting at the end of the table, and am amazed—was he really there, can it have been like this, or am I getting confused? But no, he was there, they all were: all three Koridze siblings. That was still possible then, because Tarik was still with us, as well. No sacrificial lambs had yet been slaughtered, no shots fired, and no one had pulled the trigger of a hunting rifle. We hadn’t been to the muddy zoo, and a human life was still worth more than five thousand dollars.
Zotne Koridze was talking to Anna Tatishvili, and her yearning, her admiration, her burning cheeks were all impossible to ignore. Saba was at the table, too, that eternally dreamy and distracted hero straight out of a novel, a pathologically shy Snow White. He looked slightly lost between my brother and his own, the cheerful, tipsy birthday boy. My brother’s wrong friend, but his best friend nonetheless, who had started studying architecture that year at the Academy of Arts. Unlike Rati, who refused to contemplate university or college, Saba was passionate about working toward his future career. His clique only forgave him this bourgeois step because Rati had made it very clear to everyone that he wouldn’t tolerate any stupid comments aimed at Saba. Among themselves, the others whispered that Rati Kipiani indulged Saba like a puppy.
I am trying to linger on this happy day, when beautiful Saba was rewarded with his first kiss, and not to think of his mother’s screams.
THE LIVING ROOM furniture had been pushed back, and Rati and Dina were the first to rush onto the floor. The time of covert phone calls and meetings was finally over. My brother had decided that Dina was now old enough to reveal the secret—which had not been a secret for some time—that they were together. That evening, both of them were drunk on their extraordinary happiness and wanted to shout it at the world.
Most people had left the table and were standing around with their glasses, or sitting in corners, talking in small groups. Hardened drinkers like Zotne Koridze had remained seated, and were drinking resolutely on. The music was turned up, a sign that the dance floor was open, and all eyes were on Rati and Dina. No one dared compete with them; we just looked on in wonder and admiration, as if they were two newlyweds having their first dance. They were beautiful, and danced with wild abandon, completely immersed in each other; everything around them fell away, as if this were a ritual of liberation, or a driving out of demons. Once the final notes of the song had faded away and their seemingly choreographed number was over, the other guests ventured onto the floor. Nene and I watched her brother Guga muster all his courage and approach Anna Tatishvili; he waddled more than walked over to her, and timidly asked her to dance, only to be met with scornful giggles from Anna’s subjects. Anna eyed him suspiciously, smirked, looked around in amusement, then slowly got to her feet—he was Zotne’s brother, after all, and she couldn’t reject him too harshly.
