I had gone several times to a Georgian restaurant in New York and tasted their vegetarian specialties. I was ready to show off my Russian too. True, she said she was Georgian. But I figured Russian, Georgian, it was all the same. Stalin, a Georgian, spoke Russian. Hitler, an Austrian, spoke German. Dictators’ language was interchangeable. They all spoke the same tongue.
I asked her in Russian, How are you, my dear? “Kak pozhevyitese, moi dorogoi?”
“I don’t understand Russian.”
“But you don’t understand enough of it to realize it’s Russian.”
“True. But I still don’t understand it.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then how do you speak it?”
“I speak it but I don’t understand it.”
I thought she would laugh. Even I laughed at my own joke. But she only made a face.
“Do you know Georgian?” she asked.
“No, but”—and this was what I was waiting for—“but I love simiki with willy-nilly takashvilli.”
The girl in the blue beret looked at me blankly. I thought the mention of local Tbilisi delicacies like cottage cheese and raisin latkes would make her smile with joy. I thought she’d be overcome by a wave of nostalgia, her mouth watering. And pleased and impressed by my knowledge.
“Don’t you just love,” I pressed on, “zakuski and khachapouri?”
Now her blank stare had an overlay of concern. Her confusion matched my clarity. I closed my right eye slightly and looked at her.
“You’re not from Georgia, are you?” I said with a smile to take the edge off my accusation. “For if you were, you would melt with happiness, hearing a stranger recite your national dishes.”
But the girl in the blue beret, the girl from alleged Georgia, was not to be outdone. For she came back with:
“Really? Hot dogs. Coke. Big Mac. Rice Krispies,” she said. “I don’t see you melting with tears of joy.”
“Your point,” I conceded, marveling at her riposte. “Do you know the difference, Miss Atlanta, between blini and blinchki, between Petrouchka and petrushka?”
Now she smiled. But it wasn’t a loving smile. It wasn’t the welcoming smile I had seen before. It was the smile that preceded a sharp verbal thrust. I imagined her taking off her placard, grabbing a foil, stepping back and saying, En garde!
“If I were from Kabul, would you recite Afghani national dishes and try to trip me up in your pseudo-Swahili as to the difference between Stravinsky’s ballet and the Russian word for parsley, which we willy-nilly also use in Georgian. My mother tongue, you know, is part of the Slavic family of languages.”
That remark clinched it for me. Now I knew she was fibbing. Georgian is not part of the Slavic family. It is not related to any other family of languages.
I looked her in the eye. “You’re still not from Georgia.”
And she, instead of answering, looked over my shoulder and said through tight lips:
“My boss is coming toward me. Quick, buy a ticket or he’ll think I’m offing goof.”
Suppressing a bellow of laughter, I bought a ticket from her, even though I assumed it was a ruse.
“Is he still headed this way?” I also said through tight lips.
“No. Soon as he saw me making a sale, he turned.”
I examined tomorrow night’s ticket.
“Will you be there?”
“No. The tickets cost too much.”
“The management doesn’t give you guys free tickets?”
“No. There are too many of us advertising. That’s their policy.”
“Here,” I said in a sudden gesture that wasn’t planned. “Take it. You go. I can’t make it tomorrow anyway. I bought it just to save you a problem.”
“You did?” she said with regret in her voice. “I’m so sorry I made you buy a ticket. Here. Back your money take.”
“No no, it’s okay. Go. Enjoy.”
“Thank you so much.”
The girl in the blue beret looked at me admiringly. It’s not ego speaking. I can tell by that certain look in the eye, the tilt of the head. I was about to ask her what I really wanted to ask her but remained silent. Why? Why did I remain silent? Maybe I wouldn’t see her again. Why should I lose this opportunity when it was now within my grasp? Nevertheless, I sort of waved to her and turned to go.
“No one has ever given me a ticket before.”
Not even a traffic cop? I thought of saying but didn’t know if the word “ticket” was used here in that sense. But her words seemed like an opening. I considered them a gift.
Now I was about to say what I wanted to say before but some stupid masochism masquerading as a sense of propriety still paralyzed my will.
“Next time, we’ll…” I said, but she cut me off before I had a chance to add, go together to a concert.
“Now I really have to move about. The boss, he’s still somewhere on the square. He will let me go if he sees me talking too much to one customer.”
“I’ll let you go,” I said, letting go slowly, not wanting to go at all. I went around the bend and joined the crowd of tourists looking up at the clock tower.
About ten minutes later I bumped into her again in a different part of the square.
She saw me and said something that sounded like, “Kay.”
“What?”
“You look like Danny K.”
It had been years, and I mean years and years, since I had heard a girl say that.
And I couldn’t resist saying, “I knew him.”
“What?” Her eyes widened. “You did? Really?”
“Yes, I did. In fact, I saw him about a month ago, just two weeks before he died.”
She put her hand under the placard to her heart. “Oh no! He died? Danny K, dead? Oh my God! When?”
“A couple of weeks ago. Wasn’t it on the news here?”
“No. What’s the matter with this country?”
“It was front-page news all over America.”
“I’m so sorry. I loved his films. And you saw Danny K? In person?” She looked at me skeptically. “You really really knew him?”
“I sat right next him at a dinner party in New York. I was heartbroken when he died. It came so suddenly. He hadn’t even been ill. One morning I open the New York Times and there on page one is the sad news of his sudden passing.” I put my hand on my heart too. “I’ve been in love with Danny K since I was a kid.”
“He was my hero too,” said the girl in the blue beret. “He ran all over the world raising money to help poor children.”
I looked over my shoulder surreptiously. “Is your boss coming? Is this chat costing me another ticket?”
Came now a fetching smile, her eyes almost closed. With the opening she’d given me, I almost said I’ll buy another ticket. But I held back. I wanted to, but I couldn’t seem to crash through that barrier. A few minutes earlier I had started to say, Next time we’ll go together, before she interrupted me. Now I could have spoken but restraint — down, away with, false politesse — held my tongue. Although it needed only a few motions of lip and tongue to turn dream into reality, and just as she had given me that A Major Major Discovery message before, now she gave me another message. But I still couldn’t leap the gap from here to there.
Why?
Why why why?
I suppose I wanted to secure my reputation with her. Figured I’d go slow. I didn’t want her to think I was like every other male tourist on the square.
I walked away from the great plaza, frustration orbiting me like a quick moon. The missed opportunity gnawed at me. An empty feeling swirled in my stomach like a vague pain. I’ll see her again on the square, I consoled myself. Next time, I swore to myself, I will, I will, I will articulate what I wanted to say and drive that cavernous emptiness away.