Somewhere East of Life Read online

  To come on such a large town in these remote parts was in itself an astonishment. It had grown because of its bridge over the Tskavani. And to the bridge had been added, much later in history, a station on the Poti-Tbilisi railway mentioned as being under construction in Freshfield’s book. From then on, Bogdanakhi had prospered. So it could boast wide streets and modest palazzi of Italianate design. Most palazzi were intact, if somewhat dilapidated. The main avenues were lined with trees. Shops and restaurants were open for business. The population, having heard of Kaginovich’s earlier victories, came from their homes to greet the West Georgian force. Flags were waved.

  As the force entered town, with Kaginovich marching at its head, his flag-bearer beside him, a town band struck up. It marched ahead as guide, its brass uncertain of the tempo, but leading surely to the main square. The road was lined by Kaginovich’s armored column, which had arrived ahead of him. There was much cheering.

  The way was long from the outskirts. The sun was hot. Many of the people who came to stand in their doorways to watch the procession were old. The young had left to join the armed struggle. Of those remaining behind, some wore soiled bandages. An old woman walked alongside the column, trying to sell plums. A blind man came forward haltingly. His head and face were bandaged, and he held out an old saucepan for alms.

  Irving and Burnell were walking at the rear of the parade. Irving touched Burnell’s arm, gesturing to him to wait, and turned back to the blind man. The beggar had a notice written on cardboard and hung about his neck by a string. Irving read out the convoluted Georgian script to Burnell.

  “It says, ‘My eyes were removed by Azeri torturers. I must support my children, my wife being dead. Please help me.’ ”

  “The local pastime eh? Well, it’s terrible, but we’d better not get left behind, Jim.”

  Irving showed no sign of haste. He exchanged a few words with the beggar, which led to a diatribe from the man, the bandaged head tilted to heaven. Later, Irving said the man complained of his fellow-citizens, that they had lost any sense of compassion and put no money in his pot. He claimed the world had gone mad.

  “Did you agree?” Burnell asked. “Or did you tell him blindness was part of God’s plan?”

  Jim Irving had heard the man out. He then made a suggestion. The beggar allowed Irving to remove the notice from his neck, turn it over, and with some labor write something on the other side. The man then draped this new notice round his neck.

  Greatly impressed, Burnell asked how well Irving knew Georgia. Irving replied merely that he knew Georgia well. “And for your information, the Georgians don’t call themselves that. They call themselves kartvel-ebi. What we call Georgia they call Sakartvel-o.”

  “You told me that when we met in Tbilisi.”

  “Well now, Roy, I’m reminding you now.”

  The procession had left the two foreigners behind. They ran to catch up with the rear, and did so as Kaginovich’s men were entering the main square. The unit formed up bravely while the tinpot band changed from Meyerbeer to something with a military air.

  The Mayor of Bogdanakhi marched out on to a platform flanked by flags. Lazar Kaginovich marched forward to meet him. The two shook hands, embraced, kissed. Kaginovich stood rigidly at attention while the Mayor gave a brief address.

  The Mayor was a grand-looking man of some corpulence, by name Tenguiz Sigua, his great head of hair barely suppressed under a military peaked cap. He welcomed the Army of the West Georgian Republic to his town with a flow of Georgian rhetoric, gesturing with both hands outwards as he did so, as if to demonstrate, over and over, the dimensions of a vast Christmas pudding.

  According to Irving’s rough and ready interpretation, Mayor Sigua had an especial word of welcome for the heroic Lazar Kaginovich. He also spoke of hardship and changing times.

  “Our people are always poor and have become more poor. Many have no houses. Those who have a house welcome in a hundred others. We are a hospitable people. Those who have a room welcome in twenty others. We are a hospitable people. Those who have a corner of a room have no possessions. Our poor country is a house without possessions, forgotten by the world at large. Yet we are a generous people. We give our hearts to the Army of Liberation.”

  The crowd cheered wildly. The army, who stood to benefit from this official declaration of hospitality, gave three cheers. The band blasted away, this time with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The newcomers, for all their muddy condition, were then embraced by most of the populace.

  “But he didn’t say anything about support for Kaginovich,” Irving said. Burnell barely caught the remark. Both of them were being swept away by the crowd. Burnell, for the first time since arriving in this corner of the world, found himself regarded as a person of importance.

  “Is Englishman! Is Englishman!” went up the cry, almost as if the impoverished multitude remembered Douglas Freshfield.

  Although Burnell liked to think himself invulnerable to rhetoric, he was no more immune than the next man. Sigua’s talk was more to his taste than Kaginovich’s; it said something about the traditional hospitality of Georgia. And it was by this hospitality that Burnell and the others were now inundated. It broke over them suddenly, like a wave. Despite or because of its troubles, Bogdanakhi celebrated.

  A banquet had been arranged in a public building used long ago by the Youth Arm of the KGB. Celebrities and others crowded in. The amiable Sigua acted as tamadar. He was seated at the head of the table with Lazar Kaginovich at his right hand. He called for toast after toast as a gluttonous meal was served with glutinous leisure, platter after platter. An air of hedonism prevailed. Sturdy waitresses often slipped tidbits on to the plates of their most favored guests. Huge meat dishes were humped in, innards on skewers, gigantic ebullient breads and little blinis covered with caviar, sour cream, and various grasses.

  Amid cheers, a whole roast lamb couched in lentils was set before the diners. They fell to with patriotic determination, swabbing up gravy with fists full of bap. Even after that encounter there was no time for truce. In came, as a bonne bouche, great bowls of a turkey dish called chakhokhbili, cunningly composted with garlic, onions, and tomato, which elevated poultry to a mythic level—all issuing forth from steaming regions unknown. Profusion, confusion—course after course, course before course. While others gobbled, roared, quaffed, Kaginovich pingled with his plate, his bone-white face shining down the long table like a memento mori, like an Angel of Death as well-plucked as the turkey before him. When the Angel’s eye once caught Burnell’s, it was if a gray sea pebble had been flung in his direction. Still the sturdy waitresses pressed on, sweating with football-team eagerness, distributing food and favors, Rubens-like Goddesses of Plenty. The wine was an equally sturdy Akhasheni. It came bravishing out of its bottles, washed down with fizzy lemonade, Borzhomi mineral water and pear water; later with a local cognac. Orpishurda, sitting next to Burnell, was assiduous in filling their glasses till a meniscus twinkled. A waistcoated band played lively airs, coaxing ever onward the rhythm of military jaws. As the hour and the nutrition wore on, the guests became more and more familiar with each other, and more and more jocular with the waitresses, and the waitresses with them. Clothing and behaviour were becoming unbuttoned. After the shoulder-slapping, the buttock-patting. After Rubens, Rabelais.

  A kind of bioluminescence infused the scene, reinforced by noise. Madness was intrinsic to the situation. The feast was a raft isolated on the dread ocean of time, as Bogdanakhi was isolated in space. Rich vineyards and orchards, only partly despoiled by war, surrounded the city, to stretch all the way to the coast, to celebrated Poti; but the influence of the contingent’s approach along the Tskavani valley left Burnell with the impression of a destination in jungle, out of touch, embedded in wilderness, lost. The romance of this illusion excited him. He fell to greedily, as the tastes and the toasts went up and down the table, in a manner alien to his usual asceticism. One other person besides Kaginovich was not drinking: J
im Irving sat with a composed smile on his face as the flagons passed by his nose.

  Amid the uproar, the kindly tamadar announced it was Burnell’s turn to give a toast. Cries of “English! English!” Burnell pushed back his chair and rose, clutching his glass. Raising the glass high above his head until its contents sparkled under the chandeliers, he announced, shouting to make himself heard, that he wished to toast the courage, the beauty, and above all the hospitality of the city, this pearly urbs in ruse—he stumbled over that one—hidden from the outside world, called Bogdanakhi. As his friend Jim Irving believe in astronomy, so he believed in gastronomy. He rambled on, concluding by saying he would express his happiness by quoting from the greatest poem of last century, “The Waste Land,” by England’s greatest poet since Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot—who, he was certain, had written these words with Bogdanakhi in mind. And probably did. And, moreover, had.

  Now is the time of booting up and programming

  When the monitor screens of life brighten

  Between the controls

  And the final print-out

  Come alphabets from afar

  Strange fonts

  And the wind in the yews outside

  These last two lines struck him as so lyrical that he repeated them—twice. Vociferous if perplexed applause broke out. The Georgians were such great ones for poetry, however incomprehensible, that Mayor Sigua himself rushed round and embraced Burnell, kissing him on both greasy cheeks. Only later—next morning—did Burnell realize that the lines he had recited were dismal rather than joyous, and not part of “The Waste Land” in any case.

  At about the time that cakes and puff pastries—oozing, as though mortally wounded, their entrails of jam and chocolate—were being borne in on the scrum of waitresses, the Georgian sitting on Burnell’s left, who spoke no word of English, grasped Burnell’s arm. He was a compact man, his face purple as an over-written novel, his beard still entangled with fragments of the chakhokhbili and lamb, giving to the phrase “mutton-chop whiskers” a whole new savor. Grunting, he pushed back his chair and groped inside his blouse. From this nook he dragged up a leather bag containing a substance which, if inhaled, he showed by gesture and demonstration, could benefit a person immensely.

  “Kargi,” he said, emphatically, rolling his eyes. “Kargi.” He snorted a palm full of the substance up nostrils well adapted to the task. In passing over the bag to Burnell, he was perhaps seeking to make amends for splashing during the liquid aspect of the chakhokhbili.

  By this time, Burnell was too sunk in enjoyment to have refused even a bowl of hemlock, if courteously offered. He took the grainy stuff up right nostril, up left. It proved to be to his customary slap what nuclear fission is to gunpowder.

  He was floating above the littered table, winged like Satan in Milton’s poem, over the dark abyss, this abyss still flavored with turkey and puff pastries sprouting like mushrooms. He saw the table below him as a carpet about which heads were symmetrically arranged. Flight depended on the up-draught of body heat arising from the proto-historic feast. Jim Irving could be sighted, white of noddle like a webbed cactus. Burnell called, or thought he called. Irving continued to sip a glass of lemonade. The sight was infinitely amusing, viewed from Biblical heights, in security, above the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the gluttony that stalketh in the noonday.

  “I am the ghost of Charles de Gaulle,” he said, or thought he said, spreading his wings like a cloak, or vice versa. Mention of the great French general reminded him that he needed to visit what a friend from long ago had felicitously termed “the old W.”

  Events thereafter were confused. Had he, for instance, pushed a jam-laden puff in someone’s face as they sought to prevent him leaving the hall? Had he wandered down the Prospekt Konstitutii amid laughing crowds? Had he attempted another winged flight, under the impression he was immune to the laws of physics? Had a well-meaning stranger taken him into a family home, beseeching him to rest on a red ottoman? Had he made an amatory attempt on a daughter of the house—and then, when her mother had rushed to her rescue, on the mother as well? Had he found himself flung out into an alley? Had darkness fallen with the noise of a supermarket trolley crashing down a flight of marble stairs on a Monday morning? Had the turkey ultimately returned?

  Had he lain hour after hour, possibly for as long as a year, looking up at stars and broken guttering, laughing at something too profound for mere consciousness? The music raced round his head, violins, wild tempi—the plangent music which had first attracted him to Eastern Europe; the language of violins elicited by despised gypsies. It made the broken guttering look so—symbolic. He lay there turning the word over in his mind. Symbolic. Sinbolick. Sinbollicks. Maybe you could build a whole house out of broken guttering. In time he came to reject the notion as uncommercial, whispering to the alleyway, “All that gutters is not gold.” Did he? Had he? Could he?

  Beyond a surf of uncertainties lay a beach of fact. At some point, Burnell had raised himself to his feet. He had said aloud, “Chakhokhbili!” He then walked through the town seeking the mayor’s house. An urge to thank Mayor Sigua for the hospitality was strong in his breast, and other parts.

  He found himself before a stone house decorated in the baroque manner. How attractive everything—the town, the evening—looked in his eyes. Equally attractive was a lady standing on a balcony above his head, taking the evening air. She beckoned to him. He went through the “Me?” routine, pointing questioningly to his solar plexus. She beckoned again.

  Confident that she was the mayor’s wife, he entered the house by double doors. Music was playing. He entered a small inner courtyard. Men and women were here, drinking. What fun Bogdanakhi was!

  Amazingly, he still had his pack with him; it had lain like a dog at his banqueting feet. As he settled himself upon it, a woman came and, after some linguistic misunderstanding, led him upstairs. On an upper landing, the young lady from the balcony greeted him. She was highly painted and powdered, and wore remarkably little for the time of day.

  “Madame Sigua?” Burnell enquired.

  She spoke no word of English. Another woman was summoned. She spoke a smattering of French. She told Burnell he could have a bath. His clothes would be brushed. And the lady he called “Madame Sigua” would bathe him. She assured him they were happy to entertain an Englishman. He was thrice welcome in the best house in town.

  The house could hardly have been more hospitable, or the substitute Madame Sigua more assiduous. She made Burnell welcome in every way, even to the extent of venturing into the bath with him. What though it was a tin bath with scarcely room for one? By her lying on top of him, she showed how both of them could be accommodated.

  Her touch was as soft as gypsophila.

  Burnell could not resist such a warm welcome. And how finely the house was furnished—though with a plethora of beds. When she had toweled him, she led him into a shuttered room. The bed was almost as narrow as the bath but, by adopting roughly the same ruse as previously, they both managed together. The lady was sumptuous in every particular, and Burnell examined most of them. It was his privilege to sample the renowned beauty of Georgian women at his leisure. They locked themselves so tightly together they squeaked. By slow sensuous movements, instinct mingling with practice, they came together.

  “Kargi?” she asked.

  “Immensely kargi. More please…” Recalling the other Georgian word he knew, he added, “Immensely chakhokhbili!”

  He slept. They were still interlocked, he in her, she round him.

  On the human inhabitants of Bogdanakhi, curfew had been imposed. Packs of dogs, having the town to themselves, raged about the streets till dawn, disrupting dreams, the good dreams, the bad dreams.

  Burnell woke as lights came through the shutters of the little room. Miss Butterbuttocks had gone. His head was abnormally large; other parts of his body were similarly engorged. He climbed out of bed and opened the window to let in some fresh air. He shivered.
r />   Outside, Bogdanakhi was woebegone. The golden city of yesterday had faded away. In its place were workaday streets and broken pavements. Most of the contents of Burnell’s pack had also faded away. In particular, his valuable cameras and the camcorder, brought along to record the Church of Ghvtismshobeli in detail—the ostensible reason for his mission—had disappeared.

  Late rising is the custom in whorehouses. The place was as silent as a cathedral; only the smells were different. Burnell knew better than to complain about the theft. Lies would be as thick on the ground as used condoms. He put on his tattered and still filthy jeans and went downstairs with the lightened pack. An old bouncer, roused to grumpiness, unlocked the door and let him into the street.

  He was thoroughly out of sorts with himself. It was strange how every shred of moral fiber blew away like dead leaves at the chance of getting a woman’s legs open. Where does it all end? he asked himself. His only duty was to get to the church by Lake Tskavani as soon as possible and then leave this benighted country before more fighting broke out. He didn’t need Jim Irving, he certainly didn’t need Kaginovich. All he needed was a guide, and that had been pre-arranged by signals from FAM and WACH offices. Or so he hoped.

  Any later wave of local violence would be more savage, after various arms dealers had seized on their opportunities.

  People were stirring, despite the early hour. Indeed, the dismal streets were busy with men—mainly men—going in this direction and that, looking worn.

  Three planes flew over. They circled. They flew low enough for the insignia of the Tbilisi government to be seen. Everyone ran for cover. Burnell ran with them. He sheltered in a stinking cellar. Three bombs fell somewhere outside. An old man nudged Burnell to get his attention. He pointed to his wrist where a watch had been, then to the sky. Burnell thought him to mean. “They always come over just when I’m about to have my breakfast.”

  But it was doubtful if the old man, or any of the other poor-arsed people trooping slowly from the refuge, enjoyed the luxury of breakfast. The ordinary citizen of Bogdanakhi was pale and tired and decidedly underfed. Such persons were not welcome at mayors’ banquets. You had to be fat or foreign to get an invitation to a banquet. It was a law universally observed.