“I’ll come by tomorrow morning, and we’ll go for a walk,” David said.
It was a marvelous week. David was unemployed, and lived alone. Nora had never figured out exactly how he was able to make a living. He seemed to earn something from moonlighting as a gypsy cab driver in his old Toyota. In any case, he had long ago parted ways with the theater. On the first day, they went up Mount Mtatsminda, a de rigueur destination for tourists. They walked along its slopes, scattered with primroses, white and yellow. The buds on the trees were ripe to bursting, and on the highest sun-drenched spots the trees were already covered in a light-green lacy mist of newly opened leaves. A tree she couldn’t identify, which had taken the lead, was already shedding sweetly scented blossoms. David was the ideal guide for Nora. He hardly spoke, but when Nora asked him a question, the answer came, in words both spare and precise. They descended, not by the lift, but on foot, and then stopped by the ancient Church of Mamadaviti.
It was a wonder to behold—a clean, beautiful space, with old brickwork, perfect and even, and just as perfectly imperfect monuments and statues in the necropolis—Vazha-Pshavela, Sergo Zakariadze, and Ekaterina “Keke” Geladze Dzhugashvili, Stalin’s mother. The finest monument was the one dedicated to Kote Marjanishvili. His grave resembled a round, stagelike platform. If only they hadn’t added the sculpted bust … Her grandmother Marusya had worked in his theater troupe in Moscow for a time, if Nora remembered correctly. A nice little tie with the past. But it was remarkable—such a dynamic, theatrical, artistic people—and such dreary Socialist Realism, pathetic and simplistic, against the background of the ancient, impeccable architecture. But what a tender, somehow weightless land it was—the green veil of emerging leaves, the scent of living soil, currents of thick, wine-laden air ascending the slopes, everything growing clean and pure, dissolving in light. How good it must be for a Caucasian to be living in his own land, in a world of mountains and valleys …
For three days, they walked through the sparsely populated and silently hospitable city. Then David said that the next place they must visit was the David Gareja Monastery in the desert, but he had no money for gas.
“The gasoline is on me,” Nora said, and thought: Poor guy, it’s clear he’s hard up, or he never would have mentioned it.
Nora had never heard anything about a monastery in the desert, but in the morning, David came to pick her up, and they set off. They drove for quite a while. The view of the landscape from the window was captivating. Such a small and diverse country: mountains, foothills, vineyards, villages, but no desert that she could see. They left the car in a parking lot near the monastery. They walked a bit, then came upon scattered buildings, the monastery grounds. The monastery itself, built upon cliffs, had been founded in the sixth century by Syrian monks. Carved in the mountainside were dozens of caves that had been occupied by the early Christian hermit-monks who had arrived from the East, from Syria, in the sixth century. Here was one more page of a great culture that she had not yet come into contact with. And time was so short. It’s all because my life was lived entirely through the theater, Nora thought. I have missed so much. And that door does not allow you entry everywhere. A great deal remains sealed off.
First they stopped in the monastery shop—paper icons, crosses, tourist trappings and trinkets. David bought two bottles of local wine. They glanced into the monastery itself, then began walking up a path. A beautiful, somewhat circumscribed vista opened up to them. There was a valley that extended nearly to the horizon. A desert. But in April it was green, carpeted with tiny, nearly invisible blooms. Mountains loomed blue on the horizon. Strange, alien, tantalizing.
“This is the border with Azerbaijan. The desert is Azerbaijan. And those mountains are already Armenia,” David said, gesturing vaguely with his hand.
From this vantage point, one could see churches in varying states of disrepair, caves here and there …
When they were walking back from the monastery to the parking lot, they heard singing in the church. Nora stopped. The singing was different from what she was used to hearing in Russian churches. She recalled the folk ensemble that she had worked with long ago for a time. This was something absolutely different, completely different …
They returned to Tbilisi toward evening. She still had one more day left, and David said he planned to take her to a rather distant village, toward the region of South Ossetia. It was the site of a fairly recent border skirmish, a military confrontation between Russia and Georgia. But it also held a working monastery, with a school; and there was an auditorium in which theater productions were often staged. Tengiz was the director of the theater. Excellent! She had not made a single move toward him of her own volition. The matter had arranged itself. She nodded: We’re going!
The next morning, they set out again—and again she fell under the spell of the roads, the landscapes, the motion itself. They drove slowly. The road was uneven and pitted, and they were in no hurry to get to their destination. They had left early enough to have time to spare. Mountains, plains, vineyards. Half-ruined villages—signs of the recent war. David stopped the car and got out. Nora followed behind him. The road wound through a blackened vineyard, which had been burned down in the autumn, before the harvest. David broke off a cluster and placed it in Nora’s palm. When she touched the grapes, they crumbled into dust. A shadow of the wine that was not to be …
Will I really see Tengiz? How strange that we’re still alive, Nora thought, without the least bit of agitation or excitement. Perhaps it’s because I’ve outlived my own death and reached old age. How wonderful old age is, what freedom it holds! She smiled, recalling how her heart had beat in her throat at the sound of his voice, how she nearly fainted at his touch. It’s not his fault that I was so madly in love with him. Only now can I understand what an emotional burden this must have been for him. Poor Tengiz! But what unrelieved gloom I felt when he told me he was going to marry again! He was already getting on in years, and I believed the remainder of his life belonged to me … I was such a fool! Nora smiled to herself, because the cancer was a blessing from God, and had completely liberated her from the habit of possessiveness.
“We’re going to be a bit late, after all,” David said.
Again, a church, a courtyard, monastery buildings. Bright and clean—inside and out. A long stone structure. Old, but the period from which it dated was unclear. The masonry was crude, and the stones had not been smoothed or finished. They opened the door.
They entered a darkened room. The darkness was thick and palpable. They stood by the door, pressing themselves to the wall. They could just make out the soft sound of a high-pitched, insect-like droning. A screen—fairly long, not very tall—flickered with light. Vague, unidentifiable shadows passed over it in waves—perhaps water, perhaps grass, like an image under the lens of a microscope. Beautiful, incomprehensible—but no explanation was necessary. Then the shadows merged to form two figures, a male and a female. They moved together in mutual response and harmony. Suddenly they were not whole figures, but hands that approached each other, and touched; then the screen seemed to shatter in an explosion of shadows.