The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers (13 page)

Tse-tung follows his father’s gesture to a pile of crumpled sheets, placed by the threshold to be taken into the courtyard and washed. Stains to be scrubbed by his own mother. Tse-tung tenses his fists.

Woman Luo returns, holding out a bowl of mashed grain. Her eyes meet Tse-tung’s for the first time since her initial unveiling. Tse-tung stops breathing, as her stare is no longer dead but as sharp as a tiger’s teeth, filled with accusation and disgust. Tse-tung looks at the floor, his cheeks crimson, and he kicks at the brushed dirt. He hears his mother’s piercing voice in his head:
Go to bed, you stupid boy
.

Tse-tung’s thoughts are lucid, hot, and certain. He understands all too well Confucian law and custom. He knows that he has ruined the life of another human being, that he
has dropped woman Luo from the high status of the eldest son’s wife to the lowliness of a concubine. She will never be a matriarch now. Any son of hers will forever inhabit a position inferior to Tse-min’s or even little Tse-tan’s. Her sons will have the low status of Tse-tung’s younger siblings and nothing more. He has destroyed her prospects out of cowardliness and indecision. He has ruined this woman by acting like a woman himself.

He is humiliated by his own behaviour, humiliated by the public knowledge of his failure, but at the same time Tse-tung no longer feels any regret or sympathy for his former wife’s suffering. The truth is that he never wanted to be pushed into this marriage by the stupid greed of his father or by the small world of Confucian beliefs. And does it really matter what the idiot peasants in Shaoshan think or say about him behind his back? He’s happy that it’s over. He’s thrilled he isn’t married. Although Tse-tung has done much worse violence to woman Luo than the pounding he would’ve given her in
yuan fang
, she’s still alive, isn’t she? Yes, alive, standing before him. She’ll survive. It’s just tough luck for her.

Unnamed woman Luo lowers her eyes and holds out the bowl of grain mash for Tse-tung.

Jen-sheng grins. “Take it,” he commands his son.

His father is eager for him to eat. It’s a new beginning today, and the boy must be strong to face it. Yes, he must eat. He has to work and face the world, no matter what obstacles he encounters. Although it has not been easy for Jen-sheng to deal with a boy as pigheaded as this Tse-tung, this difficult son who fights all the time and counters everything his father
says, Jen-sheng is certain that he must learn these lessons if he expects to grow into a real man. He must learn to accept his place if he expects to inherit the farm and keep it growing, keep it earning what it should. Jen-sheng knows this experience will hurt Tse-tung—yes, of course, it hurts right now—but the child will thank his father someday for the instruction, Jen-sheng is sure of that. He will learn what’s right and proper from what his father has done. Woman Luo could not be kept waiting any longer. It wasn’t right. And now the neighbours need to know it’s over. Tse-tung has to learn that he must fulfill his duties. Yes, and now he must take his proper place, and do what’s expected of him. And it’s not so bad, either, to be the eldest son. He can have his pick of brides, although of course not this pretty woman Luo anymore, but any of the other young jewels in the region. And next time, he won’t back down from his duties, because his father will have taught him what’s right. And he will stop being so lazy and finally be a man. And he’ll settle into his role and plant shoots and work the abacus as well as he should. Someday he will be the master of this farm. Master of all Shaoshan. He will have everything his heart desires.
Yes, you will have everything I have had
, Jen-sheng thinks, as he smiles proudly, waiting for his son to take his bowl of breakfast,
everything and even more, my eldest child, my Tse-tung, my beloved boy
.

Soso is lined up single
file with the other sleepy seminarians in an unadorned dormitory. Thirty-five miserable teenagers face the doorway, wearing black surplices and cassocks with heavy crosses around their necks. Silence is mandatory. Although the sun has yet to rise, it’s already been twenty minutes since the bell’s ominous clang woke them. With one plain crucifix on the wall, uniform cots, and wooden lockers, there’s nothing to look at while they wait. Soso’s thick dark hair is brushed to one side but, like the boy himself, it’s begun to rise in rebellion.

Every minute feels like thirty. Seid Devdariani, a sixth-year student with heavy cheeks and close-set eyes that twitch regularly due to his poor eyesight, stands at the end of the line, cursing the delay. He’s resting one of his weary feet on a nearby bed. Although Devdariani is the acknowledged leader of the secret socialist reading group, which all the students know is the real education offered at the seminary, he’s got a pathetic lack of endurance and no strength. Devdariani sighs as he waits. Soso chuckles and shakes his head at the boy’s poorly managed misery. He cannot understand why the other seminarians continue to revere that fool.

There’s yellow crust in Soso’s tear ducts and bags under his eyes, fuzz on his chin and across his cheeks. As beards are required of Orthodox priests, each of these young men has the beginnings of one. Beneath his cassock, Soso’s arm presses Darwin’s
Descent of Man
flat against his belly. At least half the seminarians have stashed clandestine books in their clothing—unholy subjects, strictly forbidden—tucked into armpits or balanced precariously on forearms.

At last the obese Inspector, Dimitry Abashidze, lumbers down the hallway to gather the students room by room and heel them into the chapel. He steps into the doorway, a dour frown pulling his lips. His nose is too sharp for so round a face. He has a Russian’s rat eyes, Soso has long thought, bulbous and pure black. With his long dark beard and cassock, he could easily be the villain of any anti-Russian novel. Soso has gone so far as to name the Inspector “Black Spot,” a dastardly moniker worthy of the scoundrel, but the name hasn’t yet caught on with the other students. Abashidze steps into the dormitory and counts seminarians, his lips moving. After confirming there are no fugitives, he nods at the first in line and leads the group into the hall. The students, heading towards the stairway, slip in beside another column of seminarians, occupants of dorms farther down the hall.

Soso marches next to Ilya Parkadze, a fifth-year student nine inches taller, with a thicker beard and clearer skin. Scrawny Parkadze is Devdariani’s main supporter in the socialist reading group; he behaves with a lackey’s predictability and stupidity. As they march down the windowless
hallway, the students are required to keep their gazes forward, their minds meditating on the mysteries of resurrection and the blessed Trinity. The air is thick with soot from the Inspector’s kerosene lamp. They can barely see the grey walls beside them. When they reach the stairs, Parkadze shoots a disdainful glance at Soso’s left arm, which was damaged by a runaway phaeton when he was a child. His arm has never grown to full size and has limited use. Although Soso’s only sixteen, he clasps the railing like an old man, his elbow protruding above the banister.

“Hey,
Koba
,” Parkadze whispers, scoffing at the nickname Soso took from a Georgian nationalist novel. “Who’s going to fuck a pockmarked, crippled runt like you?”

“Your mother asked me the same thing,” Soso answers, without showing any agitation. “Then I fucked her with my cock.”

Parkadze open his mouth to fire back but closes it again. It’s too risky to respond. They descend three flights in silence. They enter the unadorned chapel and the columns split to left and right. The seminarians line up on either side of a central aisle in seven standing rows. Soso is chanting the entrance hymn in Church Slavonic and enjoying the sound of his own smooth tenor, which has garnered praise from his teachers. Abashidze and the other priests separate from the students, climbing two steps to the soleas and taking their positions before the iconostasis. The Archimandrite Serafim lingers in the sanctuary with the curtain closed while he finishes off the Proskomedia—the ritual of preparing the bread offering for the ceremony.

It seems as if the sole purpose of the slow and monotonous Orthodox service is to bore Soso and his friends. One by one, the seminarians slip forbidden books out of their surplices and crack them open, where they remain hovering unseen at their waists. Soso, who is chanting loudly, opens his Darwin to where he left off.
My object in this chapter
, he reads,
is to show that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties
.

Inspector Abashidze periodically searches the students’ faces to make sure they’re paying attention, but since they are accustomed to his surveillance, they anticipate each of his sweeps by glancing up from their texts, singing heartily, and performing their piety. The Inspector sees someone moving inappropriately out of the corner of his eye and grows more vigilant. His lingering suspicion forces him to watch the seminarians all through the little Litany and the recitation of Beatitudes. Soso gently closes his book and tucks it back beneath his cassock. The endless prayers to the Lord mix together and merge into an extended and dreary moan, exhausting Soso, but also strengthening his resolve. Abashidze’s surveillance feels like a personal challenge. Soso sings with real fervour, a few decibels louder than the others. The Inspector has no way of knowing if he is mocking him or just being especially pious.

Something pricks against Soso’s ear. He glances over his shoulder to see Parkadze snickering and, a row behind him, Devdariani staring ahead blankly, singing loudly and with too much conviction—an obvious imitation of Soso. Soso glances down at his feet and sees the crumpled piece of paper
that hit his ear. He grits his teeth. How dare they mock him! Don’t they understand he’s faking his performance for the Inspector? Don’t they know a trick when they see one?

The morning sunlight shimmers through the old barred window but doesn’t do much to light up the gloomy hall. Soso can barely discern the room’s corners in the darkness. The most sacred moment of the week is gradually overtaking the chapel—the transubstantiation of the wine into the true Blood of Christ and the bread into His true Flesh—but even that miraculous event can’t clear the air of all the dry and peppery frankincense, a scent that Soso will forever associate with unadulterated boredom. Inspector Abashidze no longer feels the need to watch over his charges; they are surely too overcome by the awesome mystery even to consider rebellion. A hymn fills the room. Soso snickers at the way he’s once again tricked the stupid priests. He removes his book from his surplice and hungrily devours Darwin.
Terror acts in the same manner on them as on us
, he reads,
causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. Suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals
.

Although it is technically still a seminary of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the priests in this institution are all imported Russians. The sole exception is Inspector Abashidze, an ethnic Georgian with a fervour for domination. The Georgian teenagers under instruction are all too aware of the hundred-year-long occupation of their homeland, the renaming of their capital city from Tbilisi to Tiflis, and the arrogant and patronizing behaviour of any Russian with
the slightest bit of power. Never is this general sense of oppression felt more sharply than during weekly Communion. Soso grumbles under his breath as he lines up behind pigeon-toed Nicholoz to approach the ambo, where he will have to submit himself to the haughtiest of masters, the Archimandrite Serafim. Soso crosses his hands over his chest and presses the Darwin text against his heart. He swallows the wine from a spoon and, by rote, kisses the base of the chalice. Beneath his dead, impenetrable stare, he thinks:
I am only thankful you Russian dogs have enough sense to use our good Georgian wine
.

When the service is at last finished, the weary seminarians march up the narrow stairway on their aching legs, their vitality temporarily subdued. Soso limps up the steps—another childhood accident. He eyes the back of Devdariani’s head and imagines crushing it with his heel. The boys will now have an opportunity to change before lunch and their single afternoon of freedom for the week, but rather than laughter and relief when they enter the dormitory, they erupt in grumbles and curses. Inspector Abashidze must have left the chapel during the final part of the service: the students’ lockers have been searched for political documents or other morally dubious texts.

“Look at this,” says one seminarian, kicking a mass of clothing piled on the floor.

“The cunt,” says another, riffling through his scattered letters.

Iremashvili, a tall and skinny boy from Soso’s hometown of Gori, is pale-faced and frantic, tipping over his mattress.
“Oh, thank God,” he whispers. He withdraws a ragged copy of his translated Zola novel and presses it to his forehead, sighing in relief. When he lowers his book, he notices Soso standing by the foot of his bed with his hands on his hips, grinning.