The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers (16 page)

Soso stood and managed a smile for the two brazen, blackmailing dogs.

“Glory to Thee, O Christ our God and our hope,” the Archimandrite intoned, making a sign of the cross.

“Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages,” replied Soso, mirroring his master’s gesture.

“Continue making us proud.”

It was only Soso’s first tense encounter with the authorities, but already he had shown all the qualities necessary to become Lado’s disciple. He had prepared the priests accordingly with his excellent grades and exemplary performance in choir. He played the model seminarian, showing no apparent desire beyond that of remaining in the good graces of his dear Russian priests. And then, as he sat before them, Soso was meek and pious, angelic and articulate, seemingly willing to rat on his friends and companions if that’s what the priests required of him. He’d earned their trust, which showed great skill. Now, as he walks in the city, lost in thought, Soso is sure that Lado will come to appreciate and even rely upon his capacity for deceit.

The boys move into a less populated neighbourhood of houses with larger yards, pet goats chained and bleating, the occasional trellis overgrown with grapes. Iremashvili turns around and notices that Soso has slipped well behind the group. “Hey, Koba,” he calls. “Come on!”

Kapanadze spins around and walks backwards, smiling at Soso, tossing a rock up and down from one hand to the other. “Save me, Koba the avenger,” he cries in a false, girlish voice. He throws his rock into the street, clutches his breast, and blinks. “Please, Koba,
help
me—I’m Iago and he’s Nunu.” He whacks Vano on the chest with the back of his hand. “Hurry up and save your friends.”

Iremashvili and Vano laugh together. Vano kicks a stone.

“Are you or aren’t you Koba?”

Although the question stings Soso, his face remains vacant and placid, and his dull eyes regard the reedy boys marching a dozen paces before him. Koba is the hero of
The Patricide
, Alexander Kazbegi’s most famous novel, and Soso’s favourite. All Georgian boys pretend to be Koba the Avenger during their war games, especially the well-read nationalists like these seminarians, and so it’s always been vaguely comic that Soso has tried to monopolize the name of their collective hero.

The others turn and continue forward. Soso keeps his distance until they reach their destination.

Zakaria Chichinadze’s small, packed bookstore and unofficial lending library occupies several small rooms on the first floor of an old brick building. Sunday is not a day of business, but the owner knows these students have only a few free hours each week and so he waits for them by the entrance, propping the door open with his foot. Past a row of stacked bookshelves and through a narrow threshold is Chichinadze’s dark and windowless office. Its ceiling is far too low for any of the taller Russian Okhrana
agents to comfortably stand beneath, but it’s perfect for fellow Georgians. The office has a cracked brick floor and a constantly replenished jug of
napareuli
wine, and serves as the secret refuge for seminarians to read their forbidden books or discuss socialism’s progress with an eager and knowledgeable elder.

“Good seminarians!” Chichinadze cries, bowing his head in mock deference. He pats each boy on the back when they enter the shop and waits at the door as the shortest and slowest of them, Soso Djugashvili, lopes crookedly in silence.

“Hello, Soso,” says Chichinadze warmly, although one glance at the boy’s face informs the bookseller that he shouldn’t try to touch him.

Soso nods briskly and slips into the store.

With the front door closed so that passing Okhrana officers won’t suspect Chichinadze of operating on a Sunday, the boys make themselves at home. As Vano pleads for a copy of Plekhanov, Kapanadze searches the shelves of Russian works for Dostoevsky’s
Devils
, and Iremashvili tries to capture Chichinadze’s attention by exaggerating the story of Inspector Abashidze’s morning search, Soso hides between bookshelves and scans a recent edition of
Iveria
for the poem that he’s written. The editor, the famed Prince Chavchavadze, doyen of Georgian poetry, told Soso that he liked his poem, loved it even, but still Soso wonders if the old prince has lived up to his word and published it. Soso eagerly searches the paper and, to his surprise, finds “Morning” in the right-hand corner of the final page.

He rereads his work, his heart pounding with excitement.
The poem’s images of roses and larks, violets and nightingales are a Romantic celebration of the Georgian motherland, but they suddenly seem derivative and a bit embarrassing. Still, he can see that his poem has some virtues. The scan of its syllables and the rhymes he worked so hard to perfect hold up. It’s a decent poem, he decides.

Most importantly, it’s done. Soso is officially a published poet, not so different from the great Eristavi, and only sixteen years old. The thought of his precocious success does not penetrate Soso’s mask of equanimity. He stays sitting in the aisle, popping into his mouth the dried cherries and small grapes that Chichinadze keeps in a big bowl by the store’s entrance. Although his first poem has appeared in a prestigious newspaper published by the great nationalist prince himself, Soso resolves to keep it a secret. His life as a poet, he has decided, is no one’s business but his own.

Kapanadze, clutching Dostoevsky’s novel, crouches behind Soso and lays his arm around his chest. Soso is surprised by the firm squeeze. He shuts the newspaper and yanks his small body out of his friend’s grip.

“Hey, Koba, lighten up,” says Kapanadze, now laying a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I was only kidding back there in the street.”

“Get your hand off me before I bite it off your wrist,” Soso whispers through his tight teeth.

Kapanadze holds up the offending hand in obedience. “All right,” he says. “Right away. I’m sorry, my friend.”

While Soso tries to refocus his attention on the front page of
Iveria
, Kapanadze backs away, slips behind a nearby
bookcase, and moves into the back office to join Iremashvili, Vano, and Chichinadze. The air inside the store gradually turns blue as smoke from the pipes the owner has offered the students drifts out of the office. Soso remains in the aisle, pulling a variety of texts from the shelves and reading bits and pieces.

An hour slips by. Soso’s peers and the bookseller debate the future of Georgia—whether resistance to the Russian authorities should proceed by liberal reforms, as argued by Prince Chavchavadze in
Iveria
, or by revolution, as argued by the International Marxists. When the debate shifts to the status of Mesami Dasi, the Georgian socialist party, and whether Noe Jordania, the party’s charismatic leader, is more of a reformist or a revolutionary at heart, the students argue for the latter, using as proof the fact that Lado is planning on joining that secret organization when he returns from Kiev.

It’s an unbelievably stupid position, Soso decides. They have no idea what they’re talking about. At the mention of Lado Ketskhoveli, he has to cover his ears with his hands and try to focus all his attention on the Victor Hugo novel he’s laid in his lap. There is nothing more irritating to Soso than the pompous declamations of boys who will never make it with the great Lado.

Eventually, the seminarians’ idiotic banter becomes too much for Soso to bear. He grumbles and curses, slams his book shut, and moves into the doorway. “It’s nearly three,” he barks. “I’m going back to the Stone Sack.”

The air is so thick that the bodies in the back office are
almost silhouettes. Chichinadze, leaning on his desk, blows a puff of smoke through his rounded lips and checks the clock on the wall. “Nonsense,” he says. “You have at least half an hour.”

“Come join us,” says Vano, the long pipe in his mouth a ridiculous juxtaposition with his youthful features.

“No, I’m going,” says Soso.

“Wait a moment,” says Chichinadze. “Do you still have Darwin’s
Descent of Man
?”

“Yes, but I want another week with it.”

The bookseller nods. “I’ll mark it in my ledger. Take your time, Soso.”

“Koba,” Soso growls.

Chichinadze raises his brow and fights off a smile. “Right,” he says. “Sorry.”

Soso slips out of the store and marches down the hill towards Yerevan Square. Each step stirs a cloud of dust beneath his sole, as if it were afraid to touch his boot. The dirt rises and swirls in the thin mountain air, only settling on the weathered brick when it is certain the boy has moved on and will not turn back.
At least the dust has the good sense to understand who I am
, Soso thinks as he quickens his pace, stomping harder with each step.

Once returned to the Stone Sack—as all the students call the seminary—Soso lies in his bunk with his head propped on a pillow, reading Charles Darwin. The other seminarians are gradually returning from their free time and assembling in the dormitories. Soso buries his face in his book so he
doesn’t have to meet their curious glances. He has hidden his forbidden text inside a larger, tedious book on ecclesiastical history.

Abashidze stands in the doorway and scowls. “Absolute silence in study period!” he barks. “Punishable by solitary.” He closes the door and locks it from the outside.

The seminarians glance at the door to make sure the Inspector is really gone. A dozen students rise from their bunks and desks to arrange a circle of chairs in the back of the large room. Seid Devdariani pulls his chair into the corner and commands with a sharp whisper that the younger students hurry up and assemble around him. He is stroking his almost full beard and reclining, trying very hard to look like an important revolutionary. Ilya Parkadze positions himself beside the group leader to the right, also stroking his beard thoughtfully. Kapanadze and Vano Ketskhoveli occupy seats to his immediate left. Soso drags his chair into the position directly opposite Devdariani and then sits with his elbows splayed out on the armrests as wide as he possibly can. He stretches his feet to the floor and grimaces. Iremashvili curls like a centipede in the chair beside Soso’s.

The students have to conduct their meeting in calculated and practised whispers, just loud enough to hear each other. The dormitory’s inner walls stop a foot short of the ceiling, so the priests patrolling in the hallway can eavesdrop on them if they speak too loudly. They have stashed dummy books under their seats in case their meeting is interrupted.

“I take it you’ve all had a chance to read the Plekhanov,” whispers Devdariani, still stroking his beard.

Vano lowers his eyes and murmurs his false affirmation along with the other seminarians.

Parkadze withdraws the forbidden book from inside a folded surplice and hands it to the leader. Devdariani palms the brand new edition with one hand, like the priests with their holy books, rubbing his fingertips on the leather cover and laying it on his lap.

“You have no idea how lucky we are. This text is only just out in Russia. Chichinadze had to send away for it on my request.”

Kapanadze can’t help but roll his eyes at the leader’s pretension.

“I know it must be difficult for some of you to follow Plekhanov’s argument,” continues Devdariani, “as you’re every bit as unfamiliar with subjective Russian Utopians as you are with German Utopians. But let me see if I can’t explain the situation in simpler terms.”

Soso grits his teeth at Devdariani across the circle. So the leader’s going to explain the basic arguments of Marxism in “simpler terms”? To think, last year, when Soso was new to the seminary and far more timid in all matters, that he befriended and even liked this sixth-year student, that he was impressed by Devdariani’s wide learning and past friendship with the great Lado Ketskhoveli. He’d even invited Devdariani to drop by his mother’s home in Gori during the first part of their Christmas break. What a naive error! Now Soso considers Devdariani just another pompous priest to endure.

Several of the sharper seminarians sigh and shift position.
Although their leader irritates them, it’s true that these younger students don’t really know anything about socialism. When Devdariani begins to explain Plekhanov’s arguments about Marxism in the Russian context, those willing to listen learn something. As the conversation grows more theoretical, more and more of the students wrinkle their brows and lean forward or pull back in their seats, tightening their lips in thought. Mikhail Semenov, a bright second-year student, asks for a brief clarification of human nature as understood by Marx.

“Human nature,” explains Devdariani, “is not a fixed and constant thing.” He rifles through the Plekhanov until he finds the quote he needs. “Here,” Devdariani says, looking at the text. “
He—
meaning Marx—
regarded man’s nature itself as the eternally changing result of historical progress, the cause of which lies
outside man. In other words,” continues Devdariani, “Marx has defined human nature as the
product
of our behaviour and not as its
cause
. Human nature is
variable
. It is conditioned by our economic situation and therefore always subject to change. It is not really a
nature
at all.”

“But that reverses everything,” says an excited Semenov. “That means the science of human development can only be truly understood from the opposite vantage point. From the external to the internal.”

“Precisely,” says Devdariani—rather too smugly, Soso thinks.

“So whereas generations have looked to human nature for ultimate answers, Marx has rightfully taken the historical
and material condition of man to be the defining factor in human development.”

“Yes,” Devdariani says, leaning back with satisfaction.

“Keep it down over there,” calls Konstanin Feokhari, a grim young seminarian with long hair and a pair of glasses that are too small for his wide face. Feokhari sits with Aleksander Novikov at Novikov’s single desk on the other side of the room. These two serious and hard-working students, both top performers in their class, study together, pray together, eat their bread and beans together, always without complaint. Both boys dream of a life in service to the Orthodox Church and neither would dream of joining Devdariani’s forbidden group. They are reading and discussing a glorified account of Tsar Alexander II from the seminary’s approved history of Russia.