The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers (15 page)

“I said silence!”

The students lower their chins and quiet themselves. Soso and his friends pull their chairs closer to the table. “Hey,” Kapanadze whispers to Vano, “I heard something this morning about your brother leaving Kiev.”

Vano adjusts his round glasses and raises his bushy eyebrows. “Where’d you hear that?”

“From Parkadze and Devdariani. They said he’s coming back to Georgia. Is it true?”

“What do those two idiots know about it?” says Soso.

Vano glances from side to side to ensure that no priests are listening. He hunches closer to the table, drawing in
the others with the prospect of new information about his famous brother. Lado Ketskhoveli is perhaps the most famous of the student revolutionaries, having once organized a protest so effective that it shut the seminary down for several weeks. Under orders from the Okhrana, the Tsar’s secret police—who know all too well how violent students mature into cold-blooded opponents of the Russian Empire—Lado was expelled and forced into exile at the Kiev Seminary. While finishing his studies there, he met and paired up with another legendary ex-Tiflis seminarian, Silva Jibladze, who was in hiding from the Okhrana in Kiev. Jibladze was even more radical than Lado. He’d killed a rector at the Tiflis Seminary with his Georgian sword and then had to escape in the middle of the night. It was said that Lado and the young killer were agitating for revolution with the socialists in Kiev.

“It’s true I got a letter from him, yes,” whispers Vano Ketskhoveli.

Soso clenches his fists beneath the table, pained that Ilya Parkadze, Seid Devdariani, and Vano all know more about Lado’s plans than he does. It doesn’t make any sense. Lado always seemed to like and admire Soso, ever since their early days in Gori, when Soso was a child and Lado nothing more than the local priest’s eldest son. Why would he convey his secret intentions to cowards like Ilya and Seid, or to his thick and myopic brother—a boy who hasn’t even read the most basic Marxist writers like Plekhanov—instead of to the brilliant Soso Djugashvili? Surely Lado trusts him more than he could ever trust Vano or the others. Didn’t he once take Soso to the Gori bookshop, pay his lending fee, and
even insist on him reading
On the Origin of Species
? Why would he do that unless he understood Soso’s potential as a comrade—unless he trusted him? Biological brotherhood means less to a hero like Lado than the camaraderie of like-minded revolutionaries.

“He writes in secret code,” whispers Vano to his friends. “For everyone’s security. So only I can read it. And I burn his letters straight away.”

That’s why
, thinks Soso, his knuckles turning white under the table. Lado hasn’t yet had the chance to teach his other comrades the code. But then how did Parkadze and Devdariani know everything?

“The movement’s building in Kiev,” says Vano. “He says he’s done with his work there. So yes, it’s true, he wants to return. As soon as the Okhrana forget his expulsion, he’ll sneak into Georgia. In the spring, or maybe sooner. You never know with him. Lado’s not one to avoid a risk.”

“That’s for sure,” says Kapanadze.

“He’d come back though it’s forbidden?” asks Iremashvili.

“Don’t be stupid,” grumbles Soso. “Banishment is nothing for a revolutionary. I’d defy the order myself.”

“Me too,” says Kapanadze.

“Me too,” adds Vano, but with less enthusiasm.

“I doubt that,” says Soso, glaring hard across the table at the great Lado’s inferior younger brother.

“I guess I’d defy it too,” adds Iremashvili, although everybody knows he doesn’t mean it.

“Lado’s not afraid of the Okhrana,” says Soso. “He’d spit in their faces, even in jail.”

“He’d spit into the eyes of a bear.”

“A mother bear,” laughs Iremashvili. “And her cub!”

“I’ll bet when he comes back, he’ll kill Serafim or Abashidze,” says Kapanadze. “Just like Jibladze did. Did he say anything about it?”

“Nothing,” says Vano, shrugging.

“He’s probably planning it.”

“Let him take out Serafim,” mutters Soso. “But we should be the ones to take out Black Spot. That’ll show Lado our solidarity.”

“And for revenge,” says Kapanadze.

“We should do it.”

“We should.”

“They’ve got it coming.”

The big bell clangs in the hall, ending the time allotted for their meal. The priest Alexandre, standing by the samovar, announces that the front gates will soon be opened for the students’ weekly free time in Tiflis. The boys clean up their places, rinsing their glasses in a bowl of lukewarm water on the serving table and returning them to the shelf. They trot out of the refectory and approach the doors to the portico, where they wait with a growing congregation of seminarians hopping excitedly from foot to foot. Two attending monks slide the metal gate aside and pry the door open.

After quick mock-solemn bows, signs of the cross, and words of praise for their priests and masters, the four teenagers hurry out of Tiflis Theological Seminary into the brightness of Yerevan Square. Standing on the marble steps, they squint in the midday light. The brightness stabs
their eyes after so many days in the gloomy and oppressive seminary. They have exactly two hours before they have to return.

They climb the narrow and steep road into the Armenian Bazaar, chatting boisterously. The tiny street is lined with wine merchants and bakers, their fragrant shops laden with swollen sheep skins hanging from nails, and flatbreads roasting in huge clay ovens so powerful that their heat is felt in the street. The boys laugh and joke as they weave past a couple of itinerant vegetable dealers with wooden trays balanced on their heads, a Tartar mullah in a white turban, and an old, ruined prince with a staggering gait and bloodshot eyes, struggling with the fingering for a common tune on his
duduki
pipe. Kapanadze skips over a mound of camel dung and stumbles against a burly mountain peasant, knocking his shaggy hat off. He apologizes, picks up the grumbling Chechen’s cap, and returns it to him.

The group enters a Persian neighbourhood, full of steaming bathhouses that stink of rotten eggs from the sulphuric hot springs. They climb a steep hill, which rises up to Holy Mountain and the ancient, prison-like Metekhi fortress. Vano and Iremashvili scoop rocks from the road and challenge each other to a skipping contest on the cobblestones. Soso lets his friends pull ahead. A little distance is important—essential, even—if he’s going to clear his head and prepare himself for Lado’s arrival. Soso lowers his eyes and tries to give the upcoming event proper consideration.

He imagines Lado Ketskhoveli—an image in earthy tones, the muted oranges and browns of cheap icons nailed to the
chapel walls. Lado’s a handsome man, taller than the average Georgian, with a reticent but mirthful stare beneath his high forehead. His beard is thick and full, his moustache wide and curled. He has neither the thick brow nor the burly mien of Vano, his inferior brother. Soso allows himself to imagine a gold-leafed halo painted above Lado’s head. The priests may have commanded Soso to revere the living Jesus, even to taste his flesh and blood, but Lado is the only saint whose material being cannot be denied.

Soso recalls some of the parables circulating through the seminary about their exemplary leader. It has been said that Lado, at loose in the city one evening, enchanted, seduced, and deflowered an otherwise chaste Armenian girl in less than an hour. The students still laugh about it. Another tells of how the great Lado, having orchestrated a public debate between himself and a pompous priest, conned the priest into making an illogical and paradoxical statement about morality. It was a trap that proved God did not exist. The priest was so embarrassed by his utterance that he gave Lado the wolf’s ticket for three days. And of course there’s the well-known parable that Soso first heard back in Gori, the one about Lado’s bravery during the student revolt at the end of ’93, which resulted in the seminary’s temporary shutdown. Lado stood on his chair in the refectory, calling out for other students to boycott their classes until all their demands were met. He insisted that the monks end their constant spying, that the rector fire the seminary’s worst offenders, and that the school immediately establish a Department of Georgian Studies with classes offered in their native language. Lado
emphasized these points by dumping his entire bowl of beans onto the recently mopped floor. The Sermon of the Beans is what the students call it, and it’s far holier to them than Jesus’s talk on the Mount.

Lado may be the hero and commander, but every successful movement must be led by more than just one man. He will need a prized disciple upon his return to Tiflis, someone patient and strong, with a firm grasp on the classic literature—a second-in-command who can be trusted and relied upon. Silva Jibladze, the killer of the former rector, is certainly a committed soldier, but he’s said to be a lunatic, without the cool head needed for any position of authority.

Lado’s disciple. That’s what Soso will be. He is sure of it. As he scales the steep street on Holy Mountain, Soso remembers that afternoon last April when he was called into Archimandrite Serafim’s office. It was the first time he proved his worth as a revolutionary in Lado’s mould. When Soso entered the room, he faced the iron-latticed window framing the greenery of Pushkin Gardens, the austere wooden desk, the Byzantine cross with its top crossbar and bottom slanted bar engraved
INBI
, and the redundant bookshelf, stocked with Scripture ad nauseam. Old Black Spot stood, while the white-faced, white-haired Archimandrite Serafim sat at his desk. Two dour and severe inquisitors.

“Glory to Christ, the Lord and King,” said Serafim upon Soso’s entry.

“Glory to the Lord,” answered Soso, crossing himself and shutting the door behind him.

“Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili, sit down.”

Soso recalls how he inhaled the fresh spring air seeping through the window. The wind carried on it the faint sweetness of camomile. The high windows in his dormitory didn’t open at all. He craved that breeze. It was his first year in the seminary and he’d already been cooped up for months, longing for flowering season, which he’d loved since he was a little boy. As he sat before the Archimandrite, revived by that scent, Soso wanted nothing other than to go outside for an entire spring day, from dusk till dawn, as he did back in Gori, to climb the steep trails of Gorijvari, play in the intricate, linked caves of Uplis-Tsikhe, and swim the river Kura.

“Mmm,” said Archimandrite Serafim with approval as he rifled through reports from Soso’s teachers. The morose Inspector Abashidze stood unblinking behind the Archimandrite’s desk as if he were an Okhrana agent or, with all his girth, the Tsar’s own bodyguard. “You are proving to be a very good student, Djugashvili.”

“Thank you, Archimandrite,” whispered the scrawny fifteen-year-old.

“Your secular history, Holy Scripture, Church Slavonic—all satisfactory.”

“Thank you, Archimandrite,” repeated Soso.

Serafim, to Soso’s surprise, then clicked his tongue with disapproval. “I see your Greek could use some work.”

“Yes,” said Soso, fighting a grin. “I know it could.”

“All in all, very satisfactory,” concluded the Archimandrite as he put down the papers and nodded. “Well then, no doubt
you know about the problems we’ve had in recent years. The murder of our last Archimandrite. The unfortunate expulsions of last spring.”

“Yes,” said Soso. “I do.”

“Of the several students behind that most recent disturbance, there was one culprit in particular. Vladimir Ketskhoveli, the student leader.”

“Lado,” said Soso.

“A boy who won’t be giving us any more trouble,” said Serafim, half smiling. “But now we’ve got to contend with his brother, Vano, that one in your year. He’s a friend of yours, correct? You were at school together in Gori?”

“Yes,” said Soso.

“So you must have known Lado as well?”

“Not really, no. I saw him around. He was older.”

“Causing trouble at a young age?”

Soso shrugged and clasped his hands, but didn’t answer the question.

“I suspect these things run in the family.”

“I don’t know if they do,” said Soso. “Their father is a priest and very pious.”

“Yes,” continued the Archimandrite. “But our challenge today is to prevent a repetition of ’93. Some bold little Georgian uprising led by the younger brother.”

“I don’t have anything to do with that.”

Soso heard the deference and piety in his tone. It was a convincing performance, but the officials in this seminary never trusted students. The Archimandrite nodded at Soso
suspiciously. Inspector Abashidze, always eager to find a liar, chuckled and shook his large head.

“You’re a good pupil, Djugashvili,” continued Serafim. “We’re very impressed. You’re a pious and obedient young man, and your performance in the choir has been exemplary to say the least. We think the priesthood will benefit greatly from your service.”

“Thank you,” said Soso, forcing a smile, trying his best to look grateful for the praise.

“And so we know you’ll tell us if this Vano Ketskhoveli imagines himself a hero. If he thinks Lado’s rebellious blood flows in his veins as well. We’ve always trusted our best students to keep us informed. And we’re right to do so, aren’t we?”

Soso found himself unable to say anything.

“Especially when that student is a half-boarder who has already requested additional assistance with his dues.”

Soso lowered his head. He recalled the obsequious letter he had had to write to the Archimandrite the summer before. Even with the help of his mother’s wealthier friends and Gori’s police chief Davrishashvili he couldn’t raise enough money to pay the school’s fee. Unlike the other seminarians, with their princely parents and sophisticated backgrounds, he was indeed in debt.

“You should answer when addressed, Djugashvili.”

“Yes,” said Soso, forcing himself to speak. “You can trust me.”

“I’m sure I can.”

“That’s all, then,” said Inspector Abashidze, his flabby arm gesturing towards the door. He twitched his nose—a nervous habit that Soso had seen a thousand times.