Solo (23 page)

Khatuna was impressed. She knew how undependable the world had become, and she admired her father for knowing what to do.

He began to think only about foodstuffs. He read the ingredients on packets and talked about how different things were made, and where, and by whom. He was going to buy more factories: a vegetable canning facility and a plant for bottling water.

There were armed guards at the house, and everywhere they went. The stories Khatuna heard took on a wild edge. Communism had collapsed, and people were selling off the government’s chemical weapons on the street. There was a wave of suicides and murders. The electricity started to go off for days at a time, and there was no water.

Her father unveiled his new company, which was named after himself. It was a
diversified foods conglomerate
. He carried business cards with his own logo. He invited astonishing men to the house, who seemed no better than thugs, and whose speech he was forced to censor,
Not in front of my family
. He looked at maps and reports like an anxious general.

But he did not live to see the fulfilment of his plans. Unwittingly, he carried a congenital tissue disease, and he died one afternoon while climbing up to the roof of a building he hoped to acquire; his wasting heart burst from the exertions. His death certificate explained:
Aortic
rupture arising from Marfan’s Syndrome
.

Khatuna’s box of secrets began to look bankrupt. Though she had always kept it locked, the essential had slipped out, and she no longer understood why she saved these things. Why this doubling up? – she had hair on her head, and had no need to hoard it in a box. The
beautiful woman from the magazine now looked like a prostitute. The marbles reminded her of dead fish eyes.

She threw everything out – except the crucifix, which belonged to her mother.

She began to keep a diary. Whenever she felt something out of the ordinary, she wrote it down: an account of her eyes in the mirror, a description of a mad old woman shitting proudly in the street, a poem about an uncle she found particularly handsome.

Her periods came, one morning. Her mother inspected the situation and marched out of her room proclaiming balefully,
Welcome to the
world of women!
Khatuna lay in bed, sticky between her legs, helplessly indignant that her mother might understand her in ways she did not yet herself.

In his own room, Irakli was also lying in bed. He was awakened by his mother’s epochal chant, and, though he did not know what it meant, he felt an icy pain in his throat, and the foreboding that his sister would never again belong to him as she had before.

Khatuna’s mother tried to keep control of the freeze-drying plant and all her husband’s other ventures, but she was outmanoeuvred by his rivals, who sent a band of nineteen-year-olds with AK-47s to surround the plant.

Her savings vanished rapidly in the inflation. She began to sell things. She had a house full of heirlooms, and though the prices she obtained were derisory, this store of wealth saw her a reasonable way. An antique dealer with international connections had set up in town especially to provide for people like her. She came every week with a ruby necklace, or an ancient icon, and he paid her in the new currency.

Then one night, five men broke into the house and stole everything she had left. They did not even bother to cover their faces, so she knew who they were. They had come from that same antique shop, whose owner had no doubt grown impatient with buying up her treasure one item at a time.

They herded the family into the corner of the room; they began to
remove paintings and ornaments and stack them in a van outside. Khatuna’s mother was delirious with rage and impotence: she shrieked at them, and spat and flailed.

‘Where’s the jewellery?’ the guard said to Khatuna, ignoring her mother.

‘Find it yourself.’

He looked at her, sitting there on the sofa.

‘You’re not so young, you know. I can do you right now in front of your mother and brother. So just tell me what I need to know.’

‘You don’t frighten me.’

He punched her in the face, and her mother screamed.

‘Shall I show your little brother how he came into the world? Then I’ll send him out of it again with a bullet in his head.’

She glared at him.

‘The chest under my mother’s bed.’

Her mother let out an infernal howl while they brought out the chest. The house was violated. The men prepared to leave.

Khatuna said,

‘One day you’ll regret you ever came here.’

The man looked at her.

‘And what? And what?’ He put his hand up her nightshirt. ‘Shall I take this too?’

She looked defiantly into his eyes, his hand still between her legs, and he took it away.

The men left the house and started the van, offensively loud in the silent night.

After the losses of that night, Khatuna’s mother had to sell the house, and they moved into a single room.

‘How do people survive?’ cried Khatuna’s mother. ‘How are they surviving? They should all be dead!’

She began to rely on drink.

Girls followed Khatuna at school, and admired her. She dressed outlandishly, with no respect for fashion, and she led bands of youths to
late-night bars where they ordered one mint water between them. She drank anaemic toasts to her own memories, and described the extravagant scenes of her future, and cackled, and mocked them for their meekness, and told them that everything was illusion.

They listened.

One time she looked at them all in dismay. She said to them,

‘You are all so fucking boring.’

Late one winter night, Khatuna walked home through the darkness of another night without power. Shapes clenched and tossed under street-side blankets, too cold for sleep, and occasional cars juddered over the cobbles, cutting brief swathes of rickety light. She pissed in a gutter before entering the building, for inside the toilets were frozen.

In their room a single candle was burning.

Her mother had passed out with vodka, and snored in her stupor. Her brother’s bed shook with agitation. She brought the candle close, and he was shiny with sweaty sleep; his lips looked blue. She shook him desperately awake and wrapped a blanket round him, she broke ice from the bucket and warmed it on the stove. He drank fitfully, and she wiped his face and neck. She gave him some bread. She wept.

‘Please get well. I’m sorry for leaving you. Please get well.’

He smiled at her wanly, and lay back under the blanket. She stroked his wet hair, and sobbed. Her mother was roused by the commotion.

‘What’s going on?’ she murmured.

‘What’s going on? What’s going on?’

Khatuna leapt up, beside herself.

‘Your son is delirious from fever! And look at you, knocked out with drink. He could die and you wouldn’t even know it!’

Khatuna took a swig from the vodka bottle and emptied the rest in the fireplace.

‘You’re a worthless woman,’ she said. ‘You should die.’

Her mother began to cry.

‘What can I do? There’s no money. I’ve sold everything. I’m miserable, Khatuna: be nice to me.’

Khatuna seized her box from the corner and unlocked it with the key she still kept around her neck. She took out the ivory crucifix and threw it at her mother.

‘Why don’t you sell this?’

Her mother fingered it, blankly.

‘I thought I had lost it.’

‘No. I took it from you. That’s why it isn’t sold yet.’

Her mother began moaning into the pillows.

‘Stop it!’ cried Khatuna. ‘This self-pity. Find yourself a man like everyone else. Someone to pay for your vodka and your son’s medicine.’

She looked at her deliberately.

‘Don’t worry yourself about us any more. I’ll take responsibility for Irakli and me. You just look after yourself. See if you can.’

After that, Khatuna burned all her diaries. She had written regularly, and had filled a large stack of notebooks. She put them listlessly on the fire, one by one, her mind becoming strangely void.

She got a promotional job with a foreign tobacco company. They gave her an outfit in the colours of a cigarette brand, and she stood by Philharmonia in the evenings offering free cigarettes to passers-by. She was attractive and flirtatious, and people liked to take her cigarettes: she promised ‘Best Brand in the World!’ as she exhaled gaily.

Men stopped to talk, and she moved them on. ‘Take another for your girlfriend!’ she shouted after them.

The job did not interfere with school, and gave her a little amount of money to stave off disasters. The company was satisfied with her performance.

Her mother sold her long, black hair to a wig maker. Khatuna thought it was a bid for sympathy, and offered no reaction when she saw her mother’s shaved head. Instead she asked,

‘Did you sell that crucifix?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much did you get?’

‘Three bottles of vodka.’

Khatuna spat in her mother’s face.

One spring evening, Khatuna was standing with her tray of cigarettes outside a bar on Perovskaya Street. The bar was named Beluga. Young playboys were out with Gucci sunglasses for the darkness, and models for each arm. There were man-hugs and back-slaps, and car keys rapped on glass when bouncers took too long to unlock doors. Eye make-up sparkled in the nightlights, and men dealt kisses on practised cheeks. A taxi clattered around the potholes, and three girls climbed out, singing together,

A black Mercedes drew up, spilling bodyguards. A man got out with velvety movements, lithe in a suit and T-shirt, and Khatuna was surprised to see that it was Kakha Sabadze, the footballer-turned-tycoon. He was unmistakable, for his face was disfigured by a wine-red birthmark in the shape of Australia.

‘What’s he doing in a place like this?’ she wondered.

Kakha Sabadze was one of Georgia’s richest men. Before Khatuna was born he had already been a famous footballer who had played for Dinamo Tbilisi, and for the USSR in the World Cup. They used to call him
legendary
, when the word still had a depth of meaning. When communism fell, Sabadze became Minister for Sports, and made himself rich selling Georgian football players to foreign clubs. He left behind politics for business. Now he owned an oil company, several mines and a chain of hotels, and he had a monopoly on the supply of Mercedes cars into Georgia. He was chairman of the national airline. His nephew ran a television company and his daughter was the country’s leading model.

Kakha Sabadze walked past Khatuna with his men all around and she held out a cigarette.

‘Would you like to improve your life, Mr Sabadze?’

He stopped.

‘My life is already perfect. What can you offer?’

‘Marlboro. Best cigarette in the world.’

‘I don’t smoke. I take care of my health.’

Khatuna looked at him patiently.

‘I know how rich you are. But at your age, youth must be more exciting than money. Every time you talk to a woman as young as me, you must think of what you can never buy.’

‘I’m not so old!’ He laughed for his men. ‘And I know a lot of women as young as you.’

‘Passing through your life, in and out of your bed. Do you remember it after it’s over, Mr Sabadze?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Look into my eyes. The moon is full tonight, and you have met a beautiful Georgian woman. Wouldn’t you like to remember how it feels? Smoke one of these world-famous cigarettes and you can inhale this moment so it will never go away. It will stay with you and keep you young.’

Kakha Sabadze laughed.

‘Do they tell you to say these things?’

He took a business card from his pocket.

‘I don’t want your world-famous cigarette. But here is my card. You can call me and we’ll talk.’

‘I’m very disappointed.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Khatuna.’

‘Khatuna. Call me.’

And he disappeared into Beluga with his bodyguards, while Khatuna stood on the sidewalk staring at his business card in her hand. A little paper miracle.

K
AKHA’S HOUSE WAS LARGE AND NEW
, and set back from the street. When Khatuna arrived there, she found him in the kitchen, talking on the phone.

His movements were easy, and his birthmark less ruddy up close. She appreciated the smooth economy of his kitchen, the steely surfaces opening on to dishwashers and ovens.

She wandered out into the hallway. A bodyguard was sitting there, reading a paperback. There was a giant framed photograph of Kakha Sabadze from the football days, standing with a trophy, a mass of tousled hair and a blue-eyed gleam of boyish achievement. Pairs of shoes were lined up neatly; in the corner stood a small tree planted in a yellow oil drum. A staircase wound up out of sight.

She heard the end of Kakha’s conversation.

‘Step outside your house in three minutes. A black Audi will come to pick you up.’

She went back into the kitchen and found him sitting at the table with two glasses of beer. She sat down with him.

‘You’re still selling cigarettes?’ he said.

‘World-famous. Yes.’

‘Are you going to do that all your life?’

‘I’m going to travel all over the world. I’ll have a big house, and another for my brother, too, so he doesn’t get into trouble. I’ll drive a Mercedes and wear big diamonds on my finger.’

‘How are you going to make all that money?’

‘Business. I’ll make loads of money in business. When I’m really rich I’ll study architecture and rebuild Tbilisi.’

‘What
is
this fabulous business of yours?’

Kakha spoke lightly, with a smile on his face.

Khatuna said,

‘I’m still working it out. I haven’t got all the answers yet.’