Mathematics and the life journey
Subtract 4 from 44. You get 40. Divide 40 by two. You get 20. This is the arithmetic of my life, because I am 44, cannot remember the first four years of my life, and those I do remember, in other words the 40 years of which I am aware, are divided into two equal parts: the first 20 years spent in the Soviet Union, the next 20 years spent in an independent Georgia. And both of these 20-year periods have been spent in one city: Tbilisi. This symmetry may seem enchanting, but it terrifies me. Already it requires absolute symmetry of me. It requires me to leave behind this current state and seek out a completely different sphere of existence. Just as I lived the first 4 years of my life in a kind of unreality, unfamiliarity, so I must live out my final 4 years in a totally different way, and then die. That will be true geometry: two long sections, of equal length, equally tiresome and tortuous, enclosed within two short, beautiful end-sections.
But that is probably utopia. It is not within my power. I will have to stay in the section which takes place in independent Georgia, and gradually extend it. I will have to disturb the ratio. Transform it into disproportionality.
But we could suddenly be invaded, conquered, turned into a different state, and if I then live in this new state for 20 years, a new symmetry will have been established. Three 20-year periods spent in three different countries and yet all in one city – Tbilisi.
This fantasy of mine, this unpleasant fantasy, is supported by objective reality. However, the subjective reality, in other words the 44-4, is likewise rather unpleasant. Unpleasant, even though during my life in the Soviet period I kept hearing that I was living in paradise, and now I keep hearing that I am living in a free and democratic country. But, for some reason, this unpleasant existence is sweet nonetheless.
Very sweet.
This
44 – 4 = 40.
40 ÷ 2 = 20
is sweet.
Monologue of an allergy-ridden poet
For several years this allergy has gripped me.
In the morning I wake, and rub furiously at my eyes.
My face, its constant itching, tortures me unbearably...
I struggle to my feet.
Mole-like, eyes screwed up, I go from room to room and,
groping, seek out my clothes.
Breakfast — with my fingertips
I read Braille letters to find out what we have to eat...
I read, I eat and
try to bit by bit feel better,
so that I can go outside,
close the door behind...
Yes, this is how it is:
for several years it's gripped me,
an allergy to my city.
When travelling to other cities I feel happy,
and know that for a week at least,
this allergy will let me be,
will vanish without trace from my tired body.
And the more that time goes by,
the more I am convinced this allergy
is something that can only have
one cause — your city.
The allergy is the city, and your city is
your every sickness,
consolidated, made everlasting in the way that,
nervously, you scratch your face ...
Oh Tbilisi,
why did you curse me with this allergy,
this black death that pretends to
only have been born in me
because of lime trees lining city streets,
or exhaust fumes from these cars?
Why do I walk your streets with eyes screwed up,
and when somebody goes to greet me
why can I not see?
Why, pray tell,
do my eyes fail to properly see
them putting up new houses,
or painting the old houses
in crassly cheerful colours?
When visitors come,
why is it I cannot think where I,
the allergy-ridden mole,
should take them, and with what I should astonish
and astound them?..
‘They thought it an illness, my boy,
poems, breaking out all over your body’
Niko Samadashvili once said.
Perhaps I would do better to take his lines and paraphrase,
to tell myself:
‘You thought it an illness, my boy,
the city, breaking out all over your body...’
The garden cemetery
I have lived in Vera for as long as I can remember,
and in Vera Gardens spent my childhood.
Vera Gardens was once a cemetery
in the 19th century and then,
when all the relatives of those laid there had themselves passed on,
they took the tombstones down and built a little park.
They left some people's graves there though,
amongst them that belonging to
a Georgian writer, killed aged 30 by TB...
Daniel Chonkadze —
a granite slab
placed among boys, girls, ants and leaves.
His dates: 1830-1860.
The air is full of earth and the earth full of birds,
An ashen Daniel Chonkadze coughs yet smiles regardless.
We touch our palms together
and each feels the warmth of May, of life, of the other.
We rise as one,
me from my wooden chair, he from his granite slab
and wander
amongst the children, pensioners, ants and leaves.
Men in white chokhas and women in headdresses
greet us left and right,
We talk, impassioned,
about writing, writers,
Georgia, sickness, death and
other non-existent phenomena.
The sun prepares to set,
gradually darkness, dust and tiredness beset our legs,
Daniel Chonkadze coughs more and more and
we go back.
I sit on my chair,
whilst he closes his eyes and,
close at hand, among the grasses
or somewhere just below
he carries on his sleep...
Vera, as it happens,
has another cemetery,
still in use to this day.
Go up along Belinski Street, climb up the hill,
one step at a time,
and in half an hour you'll reach
Vera's present-day cemetery,
the most tranquil and beautiful in the whole city...
In other words, I, the allergy-ridden mole,
live in between these two cemeteries.
I go back and forth, to and fro,
I write like I eat bread, cannot support my family,
drag my life out,
slowly I die...
Of course, as soon as it gets warmer in the city,
I often sit
in one of Vera Gardens' outdoor cafés!
Once a waiter gave me the menu
and as an answer
I gave him this text:
`With your hands stretched out before you,
you brought us spring's cool melodies,
its fragrances,
its vivid dreams.
With your hands stretched out before you,
you catered to our needs,
and calmed us.
With your hands stretched out before you,
you told us ‘Everything is beautiful and vain’.
Your hands stretched out before you
speak the truth and move
with melancholy
towards a small piece of this earth.
Your hands stretched out before you
are an equals sign
placed between life and death.
And I ask you
to throw those hands stretched out before you up,
to show us
who is there,
who really sends us all of this,
my friend and me,
seated here this evening
in the Vera Gardens café
at our small table,
today, 30 July, 1998.
Recollections of a chess player
The most marvellous thing about Vera Gardens was the people sitting silently, heads bowed, at their chess boards.
I used to see, and sometimes even play, the best chess players in the world, and even the world champions themselves.
The Chess Palace, built in honour of Nona Gaprindashvili when she became champion.
Nona, with her hard face and manly gait, walking round her true domain.
Then Maia Chiburdanidze, the small, chubby girl who defeated that powerful, ruthless champion.
Maia settled in Vake after moving here from Kutaisi, and the people of Tbilisi jokingly referred to title matches between Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze as 'Vake Championships', because Gaprindashvili was from Vake too.
And the men?
Even Mikheil Botvinik himself. Grey-haired, head bowed, people swarming round him, all holding his book translated into Georgian. They pass him their books, endlessly pass him their books, he sits on the stage, signs autographs and pleads for people to move back a bit, to give him some air. I am here too, a young boy, ten or twelve years old, with Botvinik's book in my hand, trying to squeeze in between the men. The book has no autograph in it now; it seems I never made it to the legendary champion.
Petrosian. Tigran, son of a Tbilisi yard-keeper, who learned to play chess here and then went on to defeat Botvinik himself in a championship match. We are studying on the third floor, by the balcony, analysing games. A dandy enters with several colleagues from the Chess Palace following behind. In his hand a cane, a top hat on his head. He looks down at the chess board, then turns his warm gaze upon us, strokes some of us on the head, speaks briefly with our coach... Finally he moves off towards the balcony. The others go with him. ‘Do you know who that was?’ asks our teacher. ‘No,’ we shake our heads. ‘That was Tigran Petrosian!’
Short, shrill Anatoly Karpov. I played him, and still have the photo of him standing in front of me, looking down at the board. My sister is sitting next to me, and to this day I remember with bitterness that she lost to the champion later in the game than me. His eyes were deep, amazingly blue and amazingly clear...
Finally: Gary Kasparov, that fiery young lad. He hadn't yet become champion, though, when we saw him come breezing through the corridors of the Chess Palace. Everything about him was elegant: his actions, his speech, his playing style.
For decades all these people gathered in Vera Gardens as if actual long-term Vera residents themselves. Now I sit at my computer, and play chess on Facebook with Serbs, Swedes, Greeks, Filipinos and Americans, but in my mind I am taking those others on instead, my champions from Vera Gardens.
Strolling down Rustaveli
My parents' generation was the generation that strolled down Rustaveli Avenue. Everyone would go to Rustaveli to meet up, make new friends, eye each other up, find out what was new and talk out about the latest goings-on. In Soviet Tbilisi, of course, clubs, cafés, restaurants and discos didn't really exist. In practice, restaurants were only for men and even then only for special occasions, you could probably count proper cafés and ice cream parlours on the fingers of one hand, nightclubs didn't even exist as a concept, discos were only really found at seaside resorts and even then only in season...
And so instead, men and women, people young and old, manual and clerical workers, scientists and poets, would get dressed up, leave the house with 'I'm off for a stroll down Rustaveli' and close the door behind them... And it wasn't just individuals: whole families used to go strolling down Rustaveli together. My sister and I were introduced to this sacred Tbilisi ritual when we were still very small, by our parents, although of the two my father was considerably more devoted to the ritual and so quite often he alone would walk my sister and me down Rustaveli. On one of these walks he bought us an ice cream, as usual. When we had finished eating he suddenly asked: 'Do you want another one?' 'Yes!' we shouted, overjoyed. He took us to our favourite café, a place that served French-style glacé, and got us each a large scoop of ice cream. He followed it up with some glacé. It was really delicious! 'More?' 'Yes!' And he ordered two more large scoops. We finished those off too. 'Shall I get you another small scoop each?' he asked us. Dumbfounded, we agreed. We gulped them down and left the café. Just outside they were selling choc-ices. 'If I buy you one will you eat it?' He turned to us and moved his hand towards his pocket. 'Yes!' we told him, and my sister, with remarkable tenacity, managed to keep her side of the bargain, whereas half way down I stopped, and in some discomfort said 'I don't want any more'. 'Throw it away then,' my father said, and pointed to the bin. I threw the rest of my choc-ice away without a word. As soon as we got home we told our mother excitedly how many ice creams we had eaten. 'What were you thinking? Do you want them to get a sore throat?' she said to my father anxiously. But dad just gave a strange smile and said, 'Just once, children should be able to eat as much as they want, shouldn't they...'
Standing on Rustaveli
Secondhand booksellers
We stand and we sell,
we stand on Rustaveli and we sell
our favourite books, our old friends,
brought out from our houses in the snow and freezing weather.
We do not feel the cold;
behind our stands
we always have some bottles of cheap vodka.
And when the customers leave
we drink some,
quickly take a shot,
and straight away the blood feels fiery in our veins.
But these books, brought out like slaves from our houses,
they feel the cold —
the wind beats against their binding,
their spines turn white with snow.
How can I help you?
How can I warm you?
I spray the last few drops of drink over
the drunk Fitzgerald's 'Tender is the Night'
and wish him 'Francis, bon appétit!'...
Next to it stand Paul Verlaine's collected works.
They too want a drink.
What should I do?
I rummage through my pockets,
where I find enough to buy one bottle,
I leave my dear slaves
with my friends the booksellers
and run off to the shop.
Five minutes later I return,
`Hey, Paul! I won't be able to find you any absinthe here,'
I say, 'but come on, let's drink what we have!'
But he does not appear.
At Francis' side, Burroughs has risen, shaking. 'He needs a fix.'
I look around,
`Paul, where are you?'
`We sold him!' one says,
'and for a good price, too!'
and hands the money to me.
Something shatters in my soul,
`Who?
Who did you sell it to?'
They point the person out to me.
And there, a young girl takes his arm and
happily strolls with him down Rustaveli.
Paul is clearly
fiercely gripped by cold
and yet I do not feel that he should be
displeased with his new owner.
I felt somewhat relieved and looked down at the money.
`Lads, today the drinks are on Verlaine!'
`Why just Verlaine? Edgar Allen too!' says Dato.
`Galaktion!' adds Gela.
`And Byron!' says Ushangi.
`You see what a strange day it's been,
we've just sold poets,' Omar notes.
`Who did you sell?'
`Me? Myself...' he laughed, 'I sold myself...
Someone bought me,
and I never would have thought he'd read me...'
People at rallies and cinema-lovers
There were several fixed rallying points in Tbilisi. The area around the House of Cinema was one such place. The stretch between the steps in front of the House of Cinema and Rustaveli's monument was often rammed full of people. Loud-hailers in their hands, party leaders and speakers would come and get the rallies going. We would be there too, listening to the speakers, slowly navigating a path through the rally crowds with their fists raised high. Our hearts bled for Georgia's fate, we clapped, sometimes we even cried ‘Victory!’, but we really loved the film, too. The film which was about to start, right behind the backs of the speakers standing on the steps. Ears pricked up, we would creep between the patriotic crowds, hearts pounding, contemplating the fate of our motherland and glancing at our watches: 15 minutes left till Bunuel's Viridiana, 10 minutes left till Pasolini's Pigsty, 5 minutes till Bergman's Persona, Ioseliani's And Then There Was Light was just starting, Bertolluci's 1900 had already started, and if we didn't go in straight away there'd be no point going at all for Godard's A bout de souffle...
'Shall we go in?'
'I don't know. Maybe we should stay. Can't you see what's happening here?'
'Yeah, but I've wanted to see this film for ages.'
'Yeah, me too...'
'What time is it?'
'It's just started.'
'Come on, come on, let's go in!'
'Let's listen to Kostava and then go in.'
'It'll be too late then. Come on, let's go in...'
'Yeah, ok... Go on, then, off you go. Go that way, that way's better, there are fewer people.'
And in we'd go. Or, to be more precise, over we'd go: from one world to another. But some of us would stay to take part in the rally, to listen to the leaders of the National-Liberation movement and at the same time drift into a twilight dream of Cocteau's Blood of a Poet, its posters creeping like plants over the walls of the House of Cinema...
Fighting on Rustaveli
We were glad
they handed weapons out to us.
We felt strong
and, feeling strong,
attacked each other once again.
We thought
that we were firing automatic guns and mortars,
whereas in fact
it was the automatic guns and mortars firing us —
we flew about all over Rustaveli,
crashed one into another,
we killed people,
destroyed houses,
did so rowdily, and were glad.
Yes, they were firing us
firing us like stones thrown from a river bank,
firing us like balls into a distant goal,
firing us like rubbish into a bin,
firing us like the blessed into heaven,
firing us like sinners into hell...
This was their cruel little war,
and in this war we were the ammunition.
We realised this too late,
when we were already exhausted,
when we were spent,
when we turned up like useless empty cartridges
strewn throughout the city.
Visions of a mathematician
Sometimes for me Tbilisi is not a city but the illusion of a city, an imaginary city. This possibility is not good, but it is not bad either. It is simply an imaginary city, with just as much right to exist as real cities. We can add together imaginary and real cities in the same way as imaginary and real numbers. Every city has its coordinates (x, y, z), which satisfy the equation х2+у2+z2=d2, where d is the radius of the earth, and point (x, y, z) equates to the hyper-complex number x + yi + zj. If y or z do not equal zero, the number denoting the city is imaginary. But if y and z equal zero then х2=d2, from where it follows that x = d or x =-d, in other words that all the cities on earth are imaginary and only two are real! But which are these two? Rio de Janeiro and London? Beijing and Mexico City? Or Melbourne and Montreal? How can we find them? And is it really possible for only two cities on earth to be real and the rest imaginary? Maybe for every person his own city is real and its antipodes also real, but every other city is imaginary? Or maybe one of them is a person's city of birth and the second the city he most desires! As New York and Paris were to Henry Miller, for example. Although I think that for a mathematician such subjectivism is inappropriate. If real and imaginary cities do indeed exist, they need to exist objectively and not in our fantasies. And if that is the case, it follows that this present concept of mine is inexact. At worst it is an inexact metaphor... And this all happens because we cannot perceive dreams and reality together. We try, but ultimately we cannot place an equals sign between life and death with arms stretched out before us, we cannot simultaneously exist in the paradise of the Soviet Union and the hell of an independent Georgia, in Vera Gardens and in Vera Cemetery, we cannot be at a rally outside the House of Cinema and at the same time sit inside, we cannot sell those books like slaves, when we ourselves are slaves to those books, we cannot shoot and, to the end, believe that they, in fact, are shooting us. We cannot...
Poems of a traveller
***
By the time I was born the tram
had already stopped running in the centre.
A section remained along the road to Tbilisi Sea.
Last time I rode with Ucha and Gogi
we went out to Tbilisi Sea, and Ucha drowned.
After that I never went to Tbilisi Sea again.
And since then the tram has been dismantled...
Childhood is great: you love the tram,
and the people that you sit with on the tram
don't die...
***
I wanted it so badly, but my carriage
never once stopped inside the metro tunnel.
And power cuts were so frequent back then too!
The passengers would get out of the carriages and
walk towards the nearest station
through the tunnels!
And then would share with everyone
their harsh personal impressions.
I wanted it so badly, but not once...
***
Once I rode a double-decker bus.
I was going in a completely different direction,
but when it drew up to the stop,
I didn't even think, I just jumped on!
I'd seen it several times,
haughtily driving alongside ordinary buses.
I think it was the only one in the city.
Somebody had bought it, and smugly brought it in.
But then the ordinary buses got all bitter,
and they killed it.
***
Not once have I hovered like a bird
above Tbilisi in a free Georgia.
When the cable on the funicular snapped,
Parliament passed
a declaration of independence.
The performance artist
But now the soul of Theatre has begun to penetrate into me. I am standing in the centre of the stage making minimalist movements with my fingers, lips and eyes, making pseudo- quasi-movements; I become a ghost-made-flesh, I wail, tear my vocal cords, then suddenly start to whisper, and this whispering is more intelligible than the screaming was. And even if they cover their ears with their hands, the audience will still hear this terrible whispering. They'll hear it, but in the meantime I will switch from whispering to screaming once again, will run away and beat myself severely as I do, will crash against the wall and wait to hear my partner on the other side crash into the wall just as I did, which means that we must then both turn, look at each other and start to mutter whatever comes to mind. And then the dress-dance, a funny, representational dance in which it is not our bodies but our clothes which do the dancing, and during this time all our movements, shouts and whispers will take inspiration from the beat of a drum, monotone and yet elusively changeable, whilst glaring torches will begin to move around the auditorium in a random trajectory so that they collide with sheet iron hanging from the ceiling. At a certain point, though, silence will once again fall, and a group of little girls will start laughing loudly and obviously, so that with a tap of the hand they might at once fall silent, and make the audience listen to this silence for so long that finally both they and the actors fall asleep and in their dreams see something more authentic than this performance. And it is here we find the real nature of those performances we gave in the Old Tbilisi of the 90s, in the cold dark basement of a translation school on Leselidze Street. It is far more difficult to endure that than a real dream, and by its very existence it makes real dreams far more understandable and acceptable.
During that period theatre allowed us to create awful mutations; we would examine the nature of the merging of real and unreal and their coexistence in a particular non-Euclidian space. We would watch dreams-made-flesh and reality-as-dream and feel it was a metaphor for the whole of that life we were trying in vain to attain. It was the metaphor of the Möbius strip, where the edges of real and unreal meet and where tracing your finger along the strip in a complete circle leads you onto the other side, in such a way that you can't tell where one side ends and the other begins...
The allergy-ridden poet's postscript
First it was Metekhi Church.
Then it was Metekhi jail.
Then Metekhi Theatre and
then a church again.
Metekhi stands above the Mtkvari looking down onto the city.
Every tourist gets taken to Metekhi.
Some, not others, are probably told
that it was first a church, and then a jail, and then a theatre,
and that now it is a church again...
Next... I do not know what it will be...
This I know, that my Tbilisi is one big Metekhi -
a church, a prison and a theatre.
Here all its edges meet.
Translated from Georgian by Libby Heighway
Libby Heighway first became interested in Georgian whilst studying for a degree in Philosophy and French at Oxford University. She subsequently studied Georgian at the University of Chicago, holds the Diploma in Translation from Georgian to English, and is currently finishing her MA in Translation Studies at the University of Birmingham. She has a particular interest in contemporary fiction and poetry. She lives in Birmingham, UK with her two children and works as a freelance translator from French and Georgian.
Podcast read by Martijn Warnas
