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‘I love this song,’ she said as they left. ‘You listen to this track at seven in the morning when you have no energy and you feel connected to the world. You can estimate the pleasure.’

Kakha’s Moscow apartment was not far away, and the journey took only a few minutes. Khatuna fell asleep in the car. Upstairs, Kakha pulled off her shoes and she said dreamily,

‘I’ll introduce you to my brother. He’s a lovely boy.’

He locked the door of the bedroom and turned off the light. She heard him undressing, and he lay down next to her.

‘I had the best evening,’ she said.

The wine was rushing in her ears.

He tried to kiss her, but she said, ‘You’re crazy,’ and turned away.

I
RAKLI REMEMBERED THE BABY SPARROW
he had found when he and Khatuna were children.

It fell out of a nest on to the pavement outside their house, and he picked it up and fed it. When Khatuna saw what he was doing, he said,

‘If I take care of it, it will grow feathers and sing like all the other sparrows.’

‘You can see red veins through its skin. It’s disgusting.’

When it was time for the evening meal, Irakli took the bird to show his mother. She said,

‘Leave that thing outside. And wash your hands!’

He tried to reason with her. It was getting cold, and the bird needed constant feeding. But she would not let him bring it in the house, and it was locked out for the night.

In the morning, the bird was stiff and dry. There was a drop of blood under its beak and, as Irakli watched, an ant scurried out from under a stubby wing.

Irakli might have blamed his mother for the bird’s death, but he realised she was only the instrument. His true resentment was reserved for the order of things, which made the divisions between sleep and wake, and human and animal, and inside and outside – divisions through which a defenceless bird might fall to its death.

Irakli never ceased to find it strange that he should be stuck in
this
place, with
these
people, when there were a million other ways it could have been. Why had he been born now, and not in another era? By what chance had he come to be poor and not rich, a man and not a woman? Life seemed nothing more than a series of improbable accidents, and yet everyone had a sense – didn’t they? – that there was something else, deeper and prior, to which they had to return.

Irakli chose for his associates other people who set no store by the way the world had fallen out. He sought a truer place, and he paid little attention to his body, or his food, or anything else that was merely accidental. He harboured an unhappiness about reality – and he wrote poetry, because straight talk could not capture what he meant.

Khatuna was returning from a meeting in Kakha’s Mercedes when she saw Irakli out of the window.

‘Stop the car!’ she said. ‘That’s my brother!’

The car stopped and her bodyguard jumped out warily. Khatuna opened the window and called to Irakli.

‘Let me give you a ride!’ she said. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere,’ he said. He didn’t get in the car. He looked thin and scruffy and had a newspaper under his arm.

The afternoon was warm – hot, even, for autumn – but Khatuna’s bare arm on the sill had goose pimples from the car’s air conditioning.

‘Get in!’ she said, and he did so. The car moved away. Irakli said,

‘Is that a new haircut?’

‘Do you like it?’

‘You look like a gangster’s girlfriend.’

Khatuna was irritated. They drove up Rustaveli Avenue, and she directed the driver to pull up in front of the old Marriott.

‘I’m not going in there,’ said Irakli. ‘We can go somewhere else. We can go for a walk if you like.’

He set off along the street.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ she called. ‘Why do you want to traipse around out here?’

‘I can’t afford to go into places like that.’

‘If you earned some money you wouldn’t have to worry.’

‘I have money. You give me enough money. What else do I need? All I need is to think and write my poetry. I don’t need to go to places where you pay a month’s salary for a coffee.’

‘
Poetry
.’ Khatuna scowled. ‘Where’s your self-respect? Look at your clothes. Look at the state of your hands. I feel sick looking at them.’

‘You and I are exactly the same, it’s just that you get handouts from a gangster.’

‘I work hard for my money. And he’s not a
gangster
.’

‘There are thousands of Georgian women in other countries who pay for your coffees with their legs in the air.’

‘Don’t be gross, Irakli. Have some respect. All your money comes from Kakha.’

‘He’s stolen everything he has. That money was never his in the first place. Do you think I should be grateful?’

‘Kakha is a businessman. He loves this country, and he loves Georgians. He’s a role model. He has the best security forces: without him there’d be no law and order in this place. There would be pure chaos.’

‘You’d better be careful. People like Kakha kill each other for no reason at all. Think about what you’re doing. You’re becoming frantic: you go from one thing to the next, and you never stop to think.’

A girl approached them selling roses, and Irakli bought two for his sister. They crossed Freedom Square and headed down Leselidze Street. Khatuna mused,

‘One day I’d like to sit down and read lots of books. When I’ve lived this life and come back in another era I’ll teach myself a lot of things. I’ll learn about anthropology and economics. History, literature, philosophy, politics. Science. I’d like to know about those things. But how would that help me now?’

Irakli was studying her.

‘Your list,’ he said, ‘was in alphabetical order. Anthropology, economics, history … What are the chances of that? Every new word you added I was waiting for you to spoil it.’

Khatuna said,

‘Don’t you have a girlfriend to give roses to?’

He led her into a shop. A naked bulb hung down, illuminated for the late afternoon gloom.

‘No. A lot of girls like me, though.’

There was barely space to stand between the sacks of onions and potatoes on the floor. The shopkeeper was adding the last customer’s bill on an abacus. Irakli said,

‘Do you want some coffee?’

She shook her head, and he picked out a single sachet of Nescafé. She said,

‘Why can’t you buy a whole jar like everyone else?’

They passed a couple of collapsed buildings, the open interiors piled high with fallen roof tiles.

‘A jar is a long-term investment. You never know what will happen tomorrow.’

She looked sullen.

‘I wish you would live better.’

‘If I had ten million lari I would still live like this.’

He became inexplicably joyful, and Khatuna let herself relax. When he was happy he could make her laugh like no one else. They walked for a long time, crossing a bridge and coming down on the opposite bank of the river. She told him stories of Kakha, and people she had met. They passed a band of young men who were burning rubber to light up the encroaching evening. They had tied the tails of two dogs together, and were watching them for their entertainment.

Darkness came, and they walked on. Old people were begging in the shadowy doorways, or peeling sunflower seeds to sell. There were shops of second-hand clothes, old theatres converted into antique stores, and stalls for currency trading. They came to a freight depot where policemen inspected the contents of trucks, and men queued at the side of the highway waiting for night labour. There were stalls set up, lit by bulbs wired to car batteries, where people sold electrical components and construction materials, sinks, piping and cleaning fluids. Cabbages and potatoes were sold out of oil drums standing in the mud. A man gave his chickens water to drink out of a jam jar. Children chased each other around the stalls, and taxi drivers passed time by their line of Ladas, shaking their heads at the young man who was trying to
sell a Coke bottle full of diesel fuel. Families were leaving at the end of the day, parents and children, their possessions piled up in old baby carriages.

Irakli and Khatuna arrived at a damp huddle of apartment blocks. The children’s swings had lost their chains, and were just a skeleton of rusted poles where a group of teenagers were nevertheless gathered, burning polystyrene with bitter, lung-stopping smoke. It was dark now, and the green of the flame tinged their pale skin.

‘Where have you brought me?’ Khatuna asked.

‘I’ve come to see some friends,’ Irakli said.

Khatuna looked uneasy.

‘I left the driver outside the Marriott. I didn’t even tell him where I was going.’

‘You can call him later.’

They entered an apartment block and started up the stairs.

‘Can you see?’ asked Irakli.

It was pitch dark, and Khatuna didn’t like to touch the handrail.

‘Just stick behind me,’ said Irakli. He climbed quickly.

‘How much further?’ Khatuna asked.

‘They’re on the twelfth floor.’

They climbed until Khatuna was out of breath. Irakli stopped on a landing and lit a match.

‘Two more,’ he said, setting off again.

A door opened to a strip of candlelight, and a man threw his arms around Irakli, cigarette glowing in his mouth. Inside, the room was crowded, people sitting where they could.

‘This is my sister, Khatuna,’ announced Irakli.

In the middle of the room were two low candles, which threw their glow over a cluster of empty beer cans and bottles.

‘She’s good looking, your sister. And well dressed.’

‘Are you sure she’s your sister?’

‘She’s a rich girl who pays Irakli for sex.’

‘She’ll never use him again after he’s brought her here.’

Someone got off the only chair and offered it to Khatuna, laughing.

‘So many of us are living here, and we only have two rooms. We take turns with the love room. Sometimes we have to wait all night.’

‘Have something to drink.’

‘We’re not used to chic people. We’re all bums.’

‘Give us more light! I want to see Irakli’s sister.’

They lit more candles. Above their heads was a clothes line, where underwear hung. Firewood was piled in the corner. There was a television on a plastic stool, and an Uzbek carpet hanging on the wall. In one corner, the ceiling had collapsed, and the beams were propped up by the wardrobe. Someone handed Khatuna a bottle.

‘Give her a glass, you bum.’

Khatuna sat down in her coat, her arms crossed defensively.

‘You must be proud of your brother,’ someone said. ‘He’s so talented.’

‘We all admire him.’

‘We carry his poetry around with us.’

‘Someone just gave me that poem with the long title.
The eloquence
of a drunkard’s hands when his mouth has stopped producing speech
. I read it yesterday. It’s beautiful.’

‘I like to read your poems at night, Irakli, so my mind subsides.’

‘At night you’re so drunk, my friend,’ said Irakli. ‘You could read Shevardnadze’s speeches and your mind would subside.’

‘I love Irakli’s poems. They remind me of feelings I’ve forgotten.’

‘Stop it,’ said Irakli. ‘I feel ashamed you’ve read those terrible old poems. I get a cold sweat when I think of them.’

They drank. They talked about the taxi driver who had just been caught trying to cross the border into Turkey with a lead box full of enriched uranium. The hospital doctors who made up their income by sleeping with their patients. The twenty-year-olds driving million-lari Maybach cars. The rise of prayer and miracles, now that everything else was exhausted.

‘How about you, Khatuna? Where do you steal clothes like that?’

‘I don’t steal. I work for Kakha Sabadze.’

There was a moment of silence.

‘What does that mean? Have you met him?’

‘Almost every day.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Is it true he never sleeps?’

Everyone was looking at Khatuna except for Irakli, who was lying on the floor with his eyes closed.

‘He’s the most wonderful man I’ve ever met.’

‘He’s the biggest criminal in Georgia. How can you work for him?’

Khatuna gave an exasperated sigh.

Someone said,

‘Half the Georgian women in foreign brothels, Kakha Sabadze has sold them. Don’t you feel ashamed?’

‘How can you go near a man like that?’

‘You should take advantage of your situation. Put poison in his drink.’

Khatuna retorted,

‘Look at you all, living in this cesspit! At least Kakha Sabadze can hold his head up. He’s a Georgian who works hard and doesn’t just sit all day playing video games in the arcades. You’re all losers, that’s why you hate him.’

‘Why is there nothing to do in our country except play video games? It’s because of criminals like Kakha Sabadze who suck everything out of this place and leave nothing for anyone else.’

Khatuna said,

‘There are some people who have to do a thing perfectly: it’s an obsession with them. They may do it five times, ten times, it doesn’t matter. In the end they set the standard so high that no one else can come close. Kakha Sabadze is like that.’

‘Does he line the people up against a wall? So he can kill them five times. Ten times?’

Khatuna snorted contemptuously.

‘If you’re ambitious you have to offend others. Sometimes you have to kill. That’s life. In Georgia, if you won’t fight for what you want, you won’t get anything.’

There was silence. Irakli still lay with his eyes closed, and a woman
tore her cigarette packet studiously into little squares. Breeze made the candles shiver, and someone quoted an old Russian poem:

Khatuna was frustrated. She said,

‘Where’s the bathroom?’

‘It’s there,’ someone said, pointing. ‘You can’t use the toilet because the plumbing doesn’t work. Use the bowl on the ground if you want.’

‘Every morning we have to carry that thing down twelve floors to empty it.’