The Way Here [1:7]

Part 1: Chapter 7

When they had eaten Anna’s brother Ramazi got up from the table and sat on the bench beneath the windows and held the guitar that was leaning there. Jonathan cleared the table and Nunu and Anna both said no. He smiled and sat on the sofa there and stretched his leg and could feel the aching and tender place below his kneecap. Garonti, her gray haired father, sat with his elbows on the table, an empty bowl between and his hands clasped near his mouth. Anna said something to him and he responded through the hands. His hair was parted and his creased cheeks led to a flat and wide mouth.

Garonti Pilpani sat with his gray eyes staring over his hands, staring at the concrete wall with its coat of blue paint and the wood floors that met it at its base. Nunu Shukvani looked at her husband and said something. He answered with a shake of his eyes and a slow blink. He said something to Anna and Anna looked at Jonathan.

“My father wants to know if you know what’s happening.”

“Just what I have told.”

Garonti said something and Anna said, “He heard today that the Abkhaz were moving the fight.”

“There will be more before it goes back to normal,” Jonathan said.

“He wants to know if we should go.”

“Go where?”

“Away from here where we will be safe.”

“I am not the person to ask.”

“But you were there.”

“I was there,” he said. “But I cannot say.”

Anna started to say something else and Garonti interrupted.

“I cannot say if you should go,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know what the Abkhaz will do.”

Ramazi listened with the guitar in his lap and Nunu listened too.

“I would tell you to stay,” he said after a moment. “It will not be normal again”—whatever normal meant—“and the Georgians there are coming out but the Abkhaz will not advance.”

“My grandfather was with Stalin,” she said.

Garonti sat thinking.

“He was very brave,” she went on.

“I’m sure.”

“Will they come for them?”

“For the Stalinists? Why?” Jonathan asked.

Ramazi said something and Jonathan looked at him. “I will go fight if it comes,” he said again.

“I hope for you that it doesn’t,” Jonathan said.

Nunu said something and Anna translated.

“I don’t know that,” Jonathan said.

Anna translated again and Ramazi tuned the guitar that was on his lap, his hand plucking and his other turning the pegs. The peel of notes. The sound and sound again. Singular and then their lapping.

“I would like to see if something will happen,” Jonathan said. “But I do not want to see fighting here. I don’t expect it. Maybe south near the dam.”

Jonathan rubbed the thigh above his hurt knee and Anna looked at the hand there. She asked was it okay and he smiled and said it was fine. Nunu stood and grabbed the empty bowl between Garonti’s propped elbows and said something before taking it. The Stalinist’s son shook his head, no.

“Was your father?” he asked, nodding at the man with his elbows propped.

“What?”

“Stalinist.”

“No,” she said. “But Stalin was Georgian.”

“He was.”

Nunu rinsed dishes in a bin half-filled with the mountain water. The fire in the stove. The bulb light overhead. The guitar tuned and Ramazi strumming.

The sound of dishes being rinsed and the woman leaning over them was a reminder. A family meal a reminder. Silence between people a reminder. Jonathan thought of his home with its kitchen and the table there and the one in the dining room. The sink.

Ramazi was playing now and Garonti sat watching the wall and then looked at the boy playing and smiled. He looked back at the wall or at Nunu rinsing dishes or his eyes closed and reopened.

“Ramaz,” Anna said. She said something else and Ramazi fixed a chord and strummed with his thumb and fingers and he and Anna began to sing.

They sang for a time with Nunu sitting near the stove and adding wood to the dying fire. They sang for a time with Garonti watching and listening. They sang with Jonathan smiling where he sat and watching Ramazi first and then Anna. And they sang looking at each other and then Anna looking at Jonathan and smiling while she went on.

Jonathan woke, bath of perspiration and thump of heart beating. The ringing was in his ears and the fog of dream and memory were a heavy mix. The sounds of mourning were with him. Or the sounds of freedom were with him. Exultation and pain of liberty. The sight of banners and sound of shot. The falling snow and rain and the clamor, always the clamor, of so many feet and so many shouting. And he but one man in many but the one nonetheless—he dragged him before harm and left, the sacrificial lamb he left. Thomas he left. It was always where he woke.

They’ll wonder, he thought. They’ll be worried by now and I should get word out. Helen will worry and the kids will worry. How long’s it been? he thought. How much time between then and now?

He hadn’t sent word in some weeks. Just after getting to Zugdidi he’d got a line out to his editors and said he was going up but it had been some time. He hadn’t heard back before leaving but he was trusted. On assignment or not he was trusted. He’d earned that much.

Even so I should let them know that I’m here. Even so I should tell them where I am and that I’ll be here still. For a time I’ll be here. They’ll want to know by now, now that some time has passed and I’ve been here how long now? How long has it been?

“Is there a way to get a phone line or a cable?” he asked Anna.

“There is a phone in the village there,” she said, pointing down the mountain.

“Is it working?”

“It works.”

“Can you take me there?”

“When?”

“Today? Is it far? Tomorrow? I should get word to my editor and tell my family that I am okay here.”

“We can go tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow is fine.”

“What will you say.”

“That I am here and I am good. Safe. They’ll want to know I’m safe.”

“Can you walk?”

“I can walk. Is it far?”

“Not too far.”

When they went they went with the rain coming on lightly. The river valley with its villages stretching and its mountains on either side was filled with low-lying clouds like scattered fog. White smoke lingering. A heavy blanket where the rain started was an uneven gray above.

When they went it was with the road moist and puddling and the smells of earth and rain went with them. The smell of fresh rain was on them. The smell of leaf and earth was with them. Their feet were careful in the wet earth and sure on the damp pavement. They took short steps and walked together, alone on the road and quiet except for the sounds of their feet or the random drops heavy in a puddle or on their shoulders. The coolness of the day left his knee stiff and sore where the wound was. Once they were walking his body warmed and the knee loosened and he took smoother strides.

“Your leg?” she asked.

“It’s tender.”

“Tender?”

“Hurts a little,” he said.

When they reached the village the rain had stopped but their heads were wet and their faces rose-colored. The clouds were breaking in their move from west to east above and the low-lying white had lifted or disappeared into the forested mountainsides. When they reached the village they walked down a paved lane to a stucco-looking building with an opened door. Two men in gray brimless caps—caps of gray wool—were sitting on a bench in front of the building and they regarded the two coming at them.

Jonathan wrote the number to dial on a slip of paper and gave it to a woman in a small office with a rotary-dial and a desk and little else. The woman pointed to a smaller cubicle with another receiver and said something Jonathan didn’t understand.

“How many minutes would you like?” Anna translated.

“How many minutes?”

“How many minutes to speak?”

“Ramdeni lari?” he asked.

The woman told him and Jonathan made a show of four fingers and the woman wrote something on a slip of paper and checked a wristwatch that was next to the phone. She pointed at the booth again and began to dial. Anna stood with her arms crossed and watched the woman dialing or Jonathan sitting in the cubicle.

After some minutes the woman in the office rapped on a window and soon after she clicked the receiver home.