“What do you want?” Soso asked, motioning that he wanted a cigarette.
“I need to talk to you, let’s smoke on the balcony.”
Soso felt too lazy to go out, but he still followed Gega and began to smoke on the balcony. As the noise of dancing and screaming drifted out from inside, Gega closed the door behind them.
“Did you see him?” he asked Soso as he lit a cigarette.
“Who?”
“Father Tevdore.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Did you talk?”
“We did.”
“What about?”
“Kant.”
“Did you go up there to talk about Kant?”
“I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, ok?”
“Knowing your hangovers, you’ll be dead tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is November 7th, every decent man should be dead like me.”
“Why?”
“To skip it.”
“Is that why you drank so much?”
“I had forgot. I wasn’t even going to drink, but then I saw red banners being hung on the way here.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
“Let’s go home, Tina and I will see you home.”
“I want to drink more.”
“You don’t need anymore, if you drink more you might skip the whole month of November…”
Soso smiled, and Gega understood that his friend had agreed to go home.
The three of them went down the stairs together, humming to themselves, but Soso still lost his step. Tina and Gega took hold of him from both sides and Soso asked with a smile:
“Am I that drunk?”
He put his arms around them both and was happy his friend was in love. They stopped a taxi and Soso hummed all the way to his house. When he was getting out of the car, he hugged the driver and asked him with a serious face:
“Want me to take a message on your behalf to the New York cabdrivers?”
The driver smiled and answered: “My regards…”
“I can manage myself,” Soso said to Tina and Gega at the door.
“We’re going to the sea for a week,” said Gega.
Soso was surprised. “Now? Try not to freeze.”
“How can we freeze if we’re together?” Gega put his arm around Tina and kissed her.
“You are too beautiful for this government, be careful,” said Soso.
“What?”
“You are too beautiful for the authorities, Soso repeated as he climbed the stairway of his place.
Tina and Gega didn’t take another taxi. They walked down the street, with both sides adorned with fluttering red Soviet flags. It was already late, and the lovers silently continued down the empty street. Suddenly, Gega stopped and looked up at a red flag with a smile. Tina knew right away what he intended to do. She smiled as Gega quickly climbed up one of the poles to tear down a flag. He took hold of it, tugged it lightly at first, and was about to try the second time when policemen riding a motorcycle suddenly stopped under the pole. Gega and Tina were surprised, and didn’t even understand how a patrol had suddenly and noiselessly appeared on an empty street. Whether it was fear or confusion, the couple was dumbfounded.
“Come down, boy!” barked the mustached policeman sitting at the wheel, switching off his engine. The second policeman was heavy to the point of being obese. Tina even wondered how someone so fat could fit into the seat, though it was the wrong time to think about that. The mustached cop beckoned Gega to come down with his finger, while the fat one pulled out a tin of pickles and bit one, noisily munching. Gega climbed down, gave a strained smile to the silent Tina and looked closely at the mustached policeman, who asked him severely:
“What were you doing up there?”
“I was kissing the flag, commander,” Gega said.
Suddenly it seemed possible that he could joke with these two.
“Are you laughing at us?” asked the mustached one sternly, looking over at his partner. The fat policeman was crunching on another pickle, but not taking his eyes off Gega. As if trying to place his face, he suddenly cried:
“You, boy, aren’t you an actor? I’ve seen you in the movies, the one when you wanted get married and your brothers won’t let you, isn’t that you?”
“Yes,” Gega nodded to the fat policeman, “it’s me, I’m an actor.”
“I was like that too when my older brother wouldn’t let me get married, saying he should be first. If I had listened to him, I would still be single.”
The fat policeman bit another pickle and looked at his partner, “Let him go, he’s a good boy.”
Before starting their motorcycles, the mustached policeman looked at Tina, then up at Gega:
“Don’t mess with that flag son, they don’t like such things and they won’t spare you.”
“Thank you,” said Tina. But the policemen didn’t hear. They were already off on their motorcycles, with the Soviet engines roaring in the empty streets.
The First
The Georgians have always liked saying that there’s nothing accidental in this world. With this in mind, it is important to mention the period when Soso rented a small cozy flat on Lvov Street. The place was basically a bedsit, accommodating a group of friends who regularly socialized at night. The living room on Lvov Street was meant to be Soso’s temporary studio, but with all the boarders living there, he could paint only half the day. With little time to work, Dato helped with the rent, sometimes paying for the whole month. Besides having money, Dato had a heart of gold.
One evening on Lvov Street, before they began to discuss the possibility of a hijack, the friends reminisced about the events of April 14th 1978. It was a day when the streets of Tbilisi were packed with people protesting the Kremlin’s decision to remove the constitutional status of the Georgian language in favour of Russian. The rally famously reached such a scale that it forced Moscow to reconsider their decision. As they talked about how to escape from the USSR, no one could later recall who mentioned the word ‘hijack’ first. They were unable to recollect this detail even when they were locked in KGB cells and had time to go over all the stages of their plan. They failed to answer the recurring question during long interrogations: “Who was the first to mention a hijack?” They weren’t asked to provide reasons for why they wanted to flee the USSR. Supposedly, every Soviet police officer knew that answer all too well.
That evening on Lvov Street, several nonviolent methods of fleeing the USSR were tossed around before a hijack was mentioned. Nothing was said about the reasons for escape. Everyone in the group agreed that it was impossible to stay in the country where their human rights were neglected, voices of opposition sat in prison and the media was tightly controlled. For young artists or innovators, any creative initiative was subject to harsh KGB censorship. All of these were reasons to want to escape from the USSR. Yet that evening, as they sat in that rented room heavy with cigarette smoke, none of the gathered friends mentioned them aloud.
Their memories of that evening were strange. They could all remember the discussion, and could recount every single detail to the investigators, except for that one detail.
They remembered listening to Dark Side of the Moon, which Gega had brought over. They recalled arguments about various alternative methods for fleeing. Eventually, they agreed that any method other than a hijacking was a waste of time and effort.
The argument seemed watertight; there was no other way. In Georgia, it was impossible to get travel visas to Western countries except in the rare cases where you had influential parents. It was more realistic to go to one of the East European countries but, they reasoned, what was to use of moving from one prison to another, even if the latter was slightly better? Back in the ’20s, up until 1929, the border between the USSR and Turkey was only partially controlled and hundreds of Georgians took advantage of the security slackness to cross the border. Inhabitants of the mountainous region of Achara were familiar with all the mountain paths and clandestine routes into northern Turkey and would help for the right price. Those who made it then moved on to Europe.