David's Revenge Read online

  And the book’s antiquated illustrations, where knights sit with their ladies behind portières and on cushions, remind me, I am ashamed to say, of the pornographic interiors depicted by Chinese and Japanese artists, although Rustaveli’s ladies wear high-necked gowns and the knights’ private parts are not on display.

  Do I lack moral seriousness because I can’t understand this cult of courtly love? Have I been, unknowingly, a guest in a country where women are still put on a pedestal just as they were eight hundred years ago, to be defended against all attacks—defended, perhaps, with the murderous tools so famously manufactured by the Georgians over the ages?

  I found a macabre tale illustrating the efficacy of this renowned Georgian craft in Pushkin’s travel journal. He writes that weapons from Tbilisi “are highly prized all over the Orient”, and continues, “Count Samoilov and W., who were known here for their physical strength, generally tried out their new swords by chopping a ram in half or beheading an ox with a single stroke.” Heaven help us. Disgusting!

  Why am I doing this? Well, my study of Georgian literature does offer more than just sensations of tedium and horror. In a novel published in 1937, I have come upon an idea which helps to explain the uneasiness that Ninoshvili’s letter aroused in me without the need for any outlandish fantasies.

  Grigol Robakidze, the author of this novel, describes a banquet to which writers, actors and painters from Tbilisi are invited. It is held in a castle not far from the city. The guests sit down at a long table on the veranda, and the leaves of an old walnut tree with many branches allow dappled sunlight to fall on the table. As they are drinking their first glasses of Maglari, a wine made from a grape variety that grows wild on date palms, they choose the Tamada, the master of ceremonies, who will now be in charge of the banquet and whose orders are to be obeyed to the letter, whether he tells the guests to drain their glasses or commands one of his companions at table to sing a song or perform a folk dance.

  Robakidze was well advised to let his readers know first that a banquet was essentially a religious celebration in ancient times, and remains so in Georgia to this day. Without supernatural assistance, the guests at that 1937 banquet could hardly have consumed the full menu served to them under the walnut tree.

  First they eat young green beans mixed with ground paprika leaves and walnuts, accompanied by two kinds of cheese and hot maize cakes. After the Tamada has struck up a hymn in praise of the Upper Imerians, an ancient Georgian tribe, this first course is followed by boiled chicken and baked trout. When the fish bones and chicken bones have been taken away, the Tamada calls for the recitation of a poem. One of the literary men composes, extempore, a sonnet in honour of a beautiful woman. His companions applaud him and the lady, and they all rise to dance.

  After they have given their digestions a little help in this way, they are served roast mutton on twelve long spits, sprinkled with barberries and with a pomegranate-juice sauce poured over it. They get to work on the mutton until the spits are bare, and then pause once more to recruit their forces by listening, much moved, to a discourse on the incomparable virtues of the Georgian language. Then another course is brought in: a whole boiled shoulder of beef in a sauce of wild plum juice, highly seasoned with pepper and other spices.

  Finally the guests applaud the Tamada in approximately the tenth or maybe even the twentieth toast of the day, once again draining their glasses. “With that the banquet came to an end, but only the ritual part of it. Thereafter everyone could eat (sic!) and drink, sing and dance just as he liked.”

  I would have thought this account of gluttony with musical accompaniment a mere amusing exaggeration on the author’s part, like Queen Tamar’s crystal teeth or the flawless skin of Princess Vis, which glowed at her birth so that it illuminated the night like moonlight, if I hadn’t been to a similar banquet myself seven years ago. It was not, to be sure, held in a castle, but on a sovkhoz, a state-owned property not far from Tbilisi.

  We sat at a long table in the manager’s office. Choice specimens of the fine apples and bunches of grapes supplied by the sovkhoz to the capital stood on the table; on the wall hung pictures of Lenin and Stalin, the former Josef W. Dzhugashvili, who at this time had been anathematized by the Communist Party for three decades, although obviously that hadn’t ruined his reputation in his native land as Georgia’s greatest son.

  Our Tamada, the manager of the sovkhoz, was called Viktor. He gave us permission to ask him questions, and for a long time he didn’t fail to give answers, but then, all of a sudden, the feasting which was to leave us unfit for our study programme for the rest of the day began. When asked a question about the ratio of wages to expenses on the state-owned property, he rose to his feet, leaned his hands on the table, let his eyes, under their thick brows, wander, and explained, “The only answer to that is one hundred grams.”

  The interpreter translated, explaining that by order of the Tamada everyone had to knock back a shot of the amber spirit distilled from the grapes of the sovkhoz before he could answer the question. And so it went merrily on. Viktor kept finding new reasons to demand the consumption of another shot.

  At one point he got us to drink to Dautzenbacher, who, on being commanded by the master of ceremonies to perform a German folk song, had immediately complied with a rendering of ‘At the Well in Front of the Gate’ during which tears actually came to his eyes. Another shot was necessary to atone for the offence committed by the librarian Heinrich Weinzierl from Passau, who had gone looking for the men’s room without asking the Tamada’s permission. When he returned, relieved but visibly swaying already, Viktor wagged a forefinger at him and delivered judgement. “Cheinrich! Forfeit!”

  My female colleague Dr Bender was not present when the Tamada proposed a toast to friendly German-Soviet relations that would teach President Ronald Reagan some manners. Later, when I had asked and received Viktor’s permission to leave the table for a pressing reason, I found her in the back yard. She was sitting on an upturned wooden cask, her head in her hands, and shook her head mutely when I asked if there was anything I could do for her.

  I walked a little way further, took a deep breath, and looked at the plain, pale-yellow prefabricated buildings in which the sovkhoz workers and their families lived, and the green hills behind them. I saw the bright-blue sky resting on the distant, glittering mountain ridge to the north. I looked for the pass over which the Russians had once entered the country, a winding, icy path skirting steep ravines.

  Unexpectedly, I felt abandoned, lost in a part of the world from which I would never find my way back. The voices of the birds enveloped me like a flickering net dropping on me out of the air, growing denser and denser. An aroma I could not identify wafted towards me from the estate’s warehouses, the strong aroma of exotic vintages that I had never drunk and didn’t want to. Fear came over me, and melancholy too.

  It can’t have been the effect of the spirit distilled by Viktor from his grapes, although at that time I wasn’t far from the limits of my capacity. And now and then on that trip, sometimes when I was stone-cold sober, I had the same sense of having lost my bearings, of being suddenly adrift in a dream world without any shore. It came over me when Ninoshvili was leading me through the streets of the Old Town of Tbilisi, and when I saw the double white peak of Mount Ararat rising above the Armenian plain for the first time. I felt it again on the shores of Lake Sevan, that huge, still expanse of water where the conquerors from Asia watered their horses before going on to Tbilisi, to leave the ruined city in dust and ashes.

  So if the Georgian’s visit makes me uneasy, the reason could be those half-forgotten experiences. Ninoshvili an agent? David the Avenger? Nonsense. The plain truth is that he brings back the strange sense of alienation that has all too often cast its spell over me in the same alarming way. I’ve had enough trouble shaking it off already.

  If I remember correctly, I didn’t manage it on the sovkhoz until the banquet had to be cut short, because one of our party dr
opped right out of it. It wasn’t until I was helping Viktor to heave Heinrich Weinzierl, now looking pale as a corpse, onto the bus that I felt I was standing on solid ground again.

  Chapter 7

  Ralf has indulged in a piece of incredible impertinence that I discovered only by chance. When I glanced into the spare room yesterday afternoon, to make sure it was fit to offer to Ninoshvili as accommodation at any time, I found a large map of the Caucasus fixed to the inside of the door with drawing pins. There were several stickers on the map, carefully cut out of thin card, with writing on them.

  The sticker at the top, made of red card, bore the neatly printed words: Operation Edelweiss, 1942. Beneath it a broader red arrow shape, split into two, pointed south from Rostov on the Don. On the shaft of the arrow there was lettering reading Army Group A (Gen. F.M. List). The western part of the arrowhead, stuck over the oil city of Maykop and pointing to the coast of the Black Sea, bore the legend 17th German and 3rd Romanian Army (Col. Gen Ruoff); the eastern part, stuck across Stavropol and ending at the mountain river of Terek, was inscribed 1st Tank Army (Gen. F.M. von Kleist).

  Another arrow, this time cut out of yellow card and starting at the Terek, led the eye past the slopes of Mount Kasbek and down to Tbilisi. Neatly written on this arrow were the words: Operational aim not achieved because of sabotage to supplies, 1942/43.

  I was beside myself with anger. I stormed into Ralf’s room to ask him to explain himself. The wretched lad had gone, leaving his books and notebooks scattered all over the floor and the table. The cupboard door was open, with a pair of socks lying in front of it. I took the map and drove off to young Herr Gero Schumann’s summer house.

  It was the first time I’d seen the place. It lies behind a grand turn-of-the-century villa. Tall elms grow on both sides of the road, casting dappled sunlight and shade on the villa’s two wide bow windows. There are several nameplates fitted beside the entrance porch, among them one for a firm of industrial consultants. Herr Schumann’s grandmother obviously knows how to make money out of her property.

  I found Herr Schumann’s own nameplate, with an intercom beside it, close to a gate leading into the garden, which was more like a park. The gate wasn’t locked. I tried the bell push twice; the intercom remained silent.

  I hesitated. Surely Herr Schumann and his friends couldn’t already be tipsy at this time of day.

  After glancing around, I went in, and pulled the gate to behind me but didn’t shut it. With my shoes crunching on the whitish gravel of the path, I walked past the flower beds to the back garden. There was no one to be seen behind the windows of the villa. The summer house, a single-storey but spacious building with French windows, lay quietly in the shade of gnarled old trees at the end of the garden.

  I reached the terrace in front of it and tapped at one of the windows. No reply. I tried to peer in. The living room, obviously: a big sofa, armchairs. Given the dim light, I may have been wrong, but I thought that what I saw draped on the back wall, next to a bookshelf, was the fag of the Third Reich.

  I knew I had already gone too far, but anger drove me on. After glancing back over my shoulder, I walked around the summer house, and started down the narrow paved path leading past the back of the building and a dense shrubbery to the garden fence. The curtains were drawn over the back windows. I found a massive wooden door, knocked at it, listened. No one answered my knock. Birds twittered. I breathed in the smell of damp earth and dense foliage.

  When I straightened up and turned back, a youth of Ralf’s age was standing three steps or so away from me in trainers, T-shirt and jeans, carrying a cardboard box in both hands. He put the box on the ground, never taking his eyes off me as he bent down and straightened up, then came a step closer. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’d like to see Herr Schumann.”

  “Then why are you lurking in the bushes?”

  “I’m not lurking in the bushes. I’m looking for my son Ralf Kestner.”

  “Ralf’s not here.” A second youth, also carrying a cardboard box, came around the corner of the house and stared at me. The first sniffed and spat into the shrubbery. “And anyone could say he was his dad. Can you prove it?”

  “Don’t make yourself ridiculous! Are you policing this place or what?”

  “I can call the cops, if you want. How do I know you’re not planning to break in?”

  The second youth put his box down too. The first glanced at him and then back at me. “Well, can you prove it?”

  I swallowed the insult. I still don’t know what else I could have done without risking a brawl in which more than my dignity would have suffered. I produced my ID and held it under the youth’s nose. He took it from my hand and studied it thoroughly before giving it back. “I’ll tell Gero Schumann you’ve been snooping around here. I’m sure that will interest him.”

  “You can keep your stupid suspicions.” I put my ID away and left. The pair of them didn’t step aside; I had to push my way past the prickly branches of the bushes.

  It took me some time to calm down. It was already getting dark when I pinned Ralf’s Caucasian map to the inside of his bedroom door. And I stuck two strips of paper over the red and yellow attacking wedge formations. I had printed lettering on them first. The wording said:

  And we fear that we have gone too far

  Ever to see our own homes again.

  —Bertolt Brecht

  No power in the world can wrest from the German soldier what he has.

  —Adolf Hitler, 9 November 1942

  I left what else had to be done to Julia. When I showed her our son’s handiwork, and told her where he had put it as a greeting to Ninoshvili, she reacted with obvious indignation, and I felt relieved. We were eating supper when Ralf came home. Julia rose to her feet, met him in the front hall, went to his room with him and closed the door. I even thought I heard her raise her voice, which she seldom does.

  Ralf didn’t reappear until I was sitting in front of the TV set with Julia, watching the news. I heard him go into the kitchen, and then a little later came the dull thud of the fridge door closing. I ignored him when he came into the living room and stood behind us, probably chewing and looking at the screen.

  The culminating point of that unpleasant day wasn’t long in coming. The TV news included a report from west Georgia, the once magical land of Colchis, a good minute’s worth of footage showing nothing but mud and blood, the latest massacre between the troops, or rather the down-at-heel vagabonds, supporting the rival presidents Gamsakhurdia and Shevardnadze. Sub-machine guns rattled, exploding grenades sent soil spurting up, the maimed were laid side by side in a tent in their blood soaked bandages. An old woman sat weeping outside a hut; only a few smoking rafters and the stump of the chimney were left. The body of a child lay on the bare earth beside the old woman.

  Julia stayed sitting in her armchair in silence, motionless. When the news item came to an end, Ralf drew in a clearly audible breath through his nose, turned and went to his room.

  Chapter 8

  Those German scholars of the nineteenth century who discovered Georgia, and acted as if it was their mission to civilize the barbarians there, were adept in thinking themselves better than foreigners and expressing abhorrence of other people’s bad habits and misdeeds, while conveniently forgetting their own. I found one of the most absurd examples in the person of a professor by the name of B. Dorn, who in 1841 considered himself qualified to deliver a lecture on the history of the Georgians.

  As far back as anyone could remember, said this historian, the Caucasus had been like “a hive inhabited by wild bees, with sharp stings designed to keep travellers in search of knowledge from penetrating into its interior”. Matters were only then improving, said Professor Dorn, “now that the Russian eagle hovers over that dividing line between Europe and Asia”, and “under the shelter of its pinions” interested tourists “are in a position to explore almost all corners of the Caucasus”.

  What this enlightene
d mind celebrated as the breakthrough of civilization was the bloody subjection of the Caucasus by the Tsarist empire. Under those same pinions, missionaries for German culture then came pouring into Georgia, so that in 1864 (when the Prussians were storming the Dybbøl Banker in the Second Schleswig War, and massacring Danes), the explorer Gustav Radde of Danzig was “commissioned by His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, governor of the Caucasus at this time, to carry out a biological and geographical study of that area”.

  We owe to Radde, for example, the discovery, so very illuminating for an understanding of Georgia, of how long Iris caucasica used to flower in the Botanical Gardens of Tbilisi at that time. He had this and about a hundred other flowers and plants observed daily “by Head Gardener Hinzenberg”, who drew up tables recording the exact dates when they began flowering and then faded.

  Similarly important discoveries about the nature of the Caucasian region were made for posterity by the zoologist Ernst Haeckel, who shrank from no expense of effort even on his journey there by the road over the pass. During the day he used every stop by the wayside, while the horses were being rested, in clambering about the mountain slopes, equipped with watercolour block and botanist’s vasculum, to record their interesting features. At night he counted the exorbitant number of bugs that crawled out of the Caucasian mattresses. In Tbilisi, he was much struck by the fact that it was considerably warmer there than at home in Jena.

  But undoubtedly they were all outdone by the writer and translator Friedrich von Bodenstedt from Peine, who was a senior school teacher in Tbilisi from 1843 to 1845, and in addition visited Armenia and Asia Minor. It may be that his dislike of his Georgian surroundings resulted from the fact that, on coming home from a tour of the Tbilisi taverns, he fell from the balcony of his house and was confined to a sickbed for a long time. But it’s very likely anyway that only the eye of a German teacher could find as much to deplore as Bodenstedt did.