Tengiz poured Genrikh some wine. They drank to Nora’s new automotive future. She hadn’t thought about cars at all before this, but after Genrikh’s suggestion, she suddenly realized that she wanted very, very much to shut the car door and step on the gas, to tear off down the road. And to steer! To steer!
The following Sunday, Genrikh stopped by to pick up Nora and fairly quickly taught her the essentials of driving. Much faster than she would have learned in driving school.
Two months later, Nora got her driver’s license, after passing the exam on her first try. Genrikh signed the car over to her as a gift, and it became officiaclass="underline" she was the driver of her own car. And it came in very handy indeed.
By spring, The Knight in the Panther’s Skin had ground to a halt. Tengiz had quarreled with the screenwriter; launching the film at the beginning of the following year was out of the question, so either the director or the screenwriter had to go. The film studio decided to get a new director. They invited someone else, also a Georgian, who lived in Moscow; but, as they later found out, that arrangement didn’t work out, either. Then the funding for the film was withdrawn, and it was never made.
While both of them were trying to cope with the fallout from this fiasco, all their money suddenly dried up: both Tengiz’s advance and Nora’s small savings. Without telling Tengiz, Nora first borrowed twenty rubles from Tusya, who had played the role of older friend her whole life. Nora didn’t want to ask Amalia—although the puppy business was thriving, and the “dog money” was constant—because Amalia would start to worry, to pity Nora and Yurik, and to bemoan Nora’s unfortunate life-choices. As for Taisia, who understood the complications of the situation, not only did she turn down her pay, but she spent her whole pension on food and considered going back to work at the polyclinic part-time.
Tengiz grew gloomier with every passing day. He had worked to support his family since childhood, had done all kinds of odd jobs in his college years … But he had forgotten, during this half a year of living with Nora, that a man is responsible for the upkeep of the family. He stayed in Nora’s home like a guest, bringing home food and drink, extras they didn’t really need, without thinking about providing sustenance day in and day out. Tengiz was already considering capitulation—going back to Tbilisi. Not only out of humiliating penury, but also out of fear, fear of losing his self-respect. Nora could understand this.
They were driving home after visiting friends on the outskirts of Moscow late one evening when a nicely dressed older man with a briefcase hailed them on a street in the Belyaevo-Bogorodskoe neighborhood. He asked whether they could give him a lift to Razgulyai. Nora was just about to tell him it was out of their way, when Tengiz intervened; he told her to take the passenger’s seat next to him, and he himself got behind the wheel. The passenger got into the back seat. They drove to Razgulyai in silence. When they arrived, Tengiz took the five-ruble note the passenger proffered to him. The passenger got out.
“Let me earn money this way, Nora. I used to moonlight using my uncle’s car when I was a kid. I can still do that, can’t I? Until some work comes our way.”
That night, while Zinaida’s bed was still sailing over to dry land, Tengiz asked Nora: “What do I mean to you, Nora? Who are you to me?”
“Do you really want me to put it into words, an exact description?” She was delighting in the protracted moment of blissful emptiness.
“Yes, tell me.”
Nora pondered for a minute, then said, “However shameful it is to admit, I’m prepared to be whatever you want me to be—an artist and set designer, a lover, a girlfriend, service personnel—even a floozy or a doormat, I guess. The fact is that you’re the largest and best part of my life.”
“But that’s terrible. I have no way to repay you. There’s not enough of me for that.”
“For the time being, what you are is enough,” Nora murmured. “Shh, shh…”
She was terrified that she would scare away the happiness that swept her up and held her afloat. And the better it was, the more terrified she felt.
The next day, Tengiz brought home a record that changed Yurik’s life. Tengiz called him over and turned on the record player in the living room. It was a single by the Beatles: “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” In those days, Beatles songs were still in the air, and although the group was already a thing of the past, Yurik was hearing their music for the first time. He sat with his eyes fixed to one spot, his fingers tightly clenched, swaying his head and shoulders back and forth like a Jew during prayer. Then Tengiz noticed that his feet were tapping out the rhythm. He said something, but Yurik didn’t seem to hear him. They listened to the song till the end.
“Tengiz, what was that?”
“The Beatles. You’ve never heard of the Beatles?”
Yurik shook his head and put the record on again. It was impossible to drag him away from the record player until evening. When Nora took the record away, Yurik asked Tengiz whether he would buy him more Beatles.
“It’s easier to get tapes. There are tons of them. The band doesn’t exist anymore, you know—John Lennon was killed some years ago.”
“What? Someone killed him? That’s impossible!” Yurik wailed.
“But the band broke up before his death. Some years before.”
Yurik began to cry.
“Why are you so upset? Only this morning, you didn’t even know this John Lennon existed.”
“Did they really kill him?” he sobbed. “I didn’t know they killed him! And the drummer? Did they kill him, too?”
“Come, now. The time for all those tears has passed. He managed to accomplish in his life what few people even dream of doing,” Tengiz said to Yurik, trying to comfort him. “But the drummer—his name is Ringo Starr—is alive and well, and plays with other people.”
“With other people? How could he! What a bastard!”
“Never mind, he wasn’t the best drummer in the world; they invited other musicians to take his place on their studio recordings.”
Yurik banged his fist on the table, so hard that the record player jumped slightly, and ran into the other room, howling. In a single day, he had experienced, both at the same time, unbearable love and unbearable loss. Nora, who only caught the second part of this rather protracted scene, couldn’t understand what had happened. Yurik had shut himself up in his room. Tengiz couldn’t quite grasp what had happened to the child, either, why he had dissolved in grief.
But for Yurik, it was all as clear as day: Someone killed John Lennon. It was a terrible misfortune, because now there was no one to write that sublime music, music he needed from the first moment he heard it, as he needed air to breathe; music he would need, it went without saying, for the rest of his life. But no one, no one, understood. Not even Tengiz.
22 From the Willow Chest
Letters from and to the Urals
(OCTOBER 1912–MAY 1913) ZLATOUST–KIEV 23 KUZNECHNAYA STREET, KIEV JACOB TO HIS PARENTS
OCTOBER 31, 1912
I’m now in the barracks. The journey here was supposed to take four days, but we were delayed in Penza for eighteen hours. In Kuznetsk, where I sent you the telegram, we were delayed for twenty-two hours because of drifting snow. So, instead of four days, it took us six to get here.
They assigned me to the barracks, and I won’t budge from here, since you aren’t allowed to live in an apartment. But this doesn’t pose any problem. In the training detachment I’ve been assigned to, the people seem to be nice enough, and everything will be fine. I’ll most likely have to spend very little money, and I’m extremely happy about that.
Zlatoust is not a large city, but it’s extremely spread out. It’s situated on tree-covered mountains. We live near the train station, which is about six versts from town. For the time being, I have plenty of books. I am eager to study as much as time will allow.