The Pear Field Read online

  meike ziervogel

  peirene press

  Ekvtimishvili is a writer with the ability to bring out the great in the small and give voice to the many children who have been denied one. This is a powerful but unsentimental portrayal of a group of young people who stand up for one another against the cruelty of the adult world.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Author

  Translators

  Copyright

  1

  On the outskirts of Tbilisi, where most of the streets have no names and where whole neighbourhoods consist of nothing but Soviet high-rises grouped into blocks, grouped in turn into microdistricts, lies Kerch Street. There’s nothing worth seeing here, no historic buildings, no fountains, no monuments to society’s greatest accomplishments, just tower blocks lining both sides of the street and, now and then, another building tucked between them: the College of Light Industry, up on the plateau surrounded by spruce trees; the kindergarten; the municipal middle school; the offices of the housing management committee; a small shopping centre; and, at the very end of the street, the Residential School for Intellectually Disabled Children or, as the locals call it, the School for Idiots.

  Nobody can remember whose idea it was, back in 1974, to name a street in Soviet Georgia after a town on the Crimean peninsula; a town where, one sunny day in October 1942, as the summer breeze carried the warmth of the Black Sea waters inland, the Nazi army stormed the quarry and took several thousand prisoners. There are no ships here. There’s no breeze coming in off the sea. It is late spring and the sun is oppressively hot, drawing up steam from the tarmac and wilting the tall maples. Occasionally a car rolls by and a dog might haul itself up from where it is sprawled on the road and bark, until the car turns off and the dog has nothing to do but gaze after it, disconsolate, before going back to rolling in the dust.

  Kerch Street boasts no heroes, unlike its namesake. As Nazi forces rounded up the citizens of Kerch, Jews and non-Jews, ten thousand besieged Soviet fighters mounted a brave and selfless defence. In the end they were defeated. Maybe that is why, after the war, the Soviet authorities chose not to make Kerch a ‘Hero City’. Their decision meant the city would receive no state aid; instead, it would have to rebuild under its own steam. Only in 1973 was Kerch awarded the title ‘Hero City’. A year later, the first section of road from Tbilisi to Tianeti was renamed Kerch Street. One by one, the local men who had lived through the Great Patriotic War passed on: men who had strolled out on public holidays with their medals pinned to their jackets; slow, dignified men, puffing out their thin chests as they walked up and down in the sunshine; men who hung Stalin’s photo on their living-room walls. When their time came, they entrusted the fatherland to their children and grandchildren, who still live on or around Kerch Street today, going back and forth between their homes, kindergartens, schools, shops and jobs, their whole lives contained in this neighbourhood. When the Soviet Union fell, their lives were blown apart. Some residents took refuge within the four walls of home. Others came out of their houses and passed their time on the street corners instead, or spent hour after hour at rallies or on picket lines. Some took down those photos of Stalin from their living-room walls. Some simply gave up the ghost.

  On a sunny day in late spring, in the wash block of the School for Idiots, stands Lela, head bowed under a stream of hot water, thinking.

  I have to kill Vano…

  Lela, who turned eighteen a month ago, lives at the school.

  I’m going to kill Vano, and then they can do what they want with me.

  Lela turns off the tap. Steam rises from her thin, flushed body. Her spine is clearly visible in the middle of her back, running like twisted cord from her narrow waist to her shoulders.

  I’m going to kill him, she thinks, threading her arms through the sleeves of her khaki-coloured shirt and buttoning it up. Next to her stands a classroom chair, its yellow wood split and softened by the humid air. There are slivers of laundry soap and a half-toothless comb on the seat, and clothes hanging over the back. Lela pushes her legs into her trousers, tucks her shirt in and pulls her belt tight.

  They won’t lock me up though, will they? They’ll just say I’m crazy. Or backward… Worst-case scenario, they send me to the madhouse. That’s what they did with Tariel’s lad and look at him now, walking around as free as a bird… She runs her fingers through dripping hair and shakes her head like a wet dog. Just then the door of the wash block opens with a bang and Lela sees a small, hazy silhouette appear through the steam.

  ‘Are you in here?’ Irakli calls, standing at the door. Lela carries on getting dressed, forcing her wet feet into her socks. ‘Dali’s been looking for you everywhere!’

  ‘What does she want?’ Lela puts on her trainer and pulls the laces tight. The breeze coming through the open door has cleared the steam and she can see Irakli now, even his pointy ears and wide eyes. He sighs.

  ‘Just hurry up, will you? Dali wants you… They’re on the trampolines again, and they won’t come down.’

  Lela laces her other trainer and hurries after him.

  It’s sunny and warm outside. They run across the deserted playground that connects the long, single-storey wash block and the dormitory building.

  Lela dresses like a boy and at first glance she looks like one too, especially when she’s running flat out. Up close, though, you can see her fine, fair eyebrows, her dark eyes, slim face and cracked red lips, and under her shirt the swell of her breasts.

  ‘Dali can’t get them out. They’re on the bed bases,’ Irakli says, panting heavily.

  They clear the wide steps outside the entrance in one leap and run in through the door.

  The air in the large tiled foyer is cool, as always. There are empty display cabinets on the walls and a red fire extinguisher fixed alongside.

  Lela runs up to the top floor and down the long corridor. She can hear Dali’s whining voice coming from the room at the end. She runs in to find a large group of children darting around and jumping on the mesh bed bases. There’s a deafening squeak-squeak-squeak. In the middle is a short, plump woman who at first glance seems to be playing tag with the children but failing to catch anyone. This is Dali, the school’s Head of Discipline, who is also acting as supervisor today. She has dyed red hair so thin you can see her scalp. It sticks out in every direction, framing her head like the halo on a saint’s icon and in fact, with the suffering she goes through chasing these children all day, she could be the school’s patron martyr-saint.

  It’s only a few months since the Ministry gave the school ‘humanitarian aid’ in the form of new wooden beds. The heavy, decades-old iron beds they replaced were dismantled and carried up to a room on the top floor. The ceiling leaked even when children used to sleep there. Builders repaired the ceiling, but it started leaking again. They fixed it a second time, and a third… but every time it rained, the rain leaked through until everyone came to accept that that’s just how things were. Now, whenever it rains, the children run up to the room to watch. There are buckets and jugs placed all over the floor to catch the water so it can be thrown back out of the windows. The room is now known as the trampoline room and no matter what Dali does she can’t keep the children out: nothing in that school comes close to the sheer joy of jumping on bedsprings, especially in the rain.

  The room has recently gained one more attraction: without warning, its little balcony collapsed, sending lumps of concrete crashing down into a pile on the ground and taking with it the iron guard rail and a number of roofing slates. Now there is just a length
of supporting beam sticking out of the wall. No one was hurt, even though the playground was full of children playing football at the time. Needless to say, the school authorities were so relieved they barely had time to be annoyed that the balcony had collapsed in the first place. But a few days later the door leading out to the balcony vanished too, as did its frame. Whoever took it probably reasoned that, as the balcony no longer existed, nobody would need the door leading onto it. So now there’s a door-sized void in one wall of the trampoline room through which, on days like today, you can see a cloudless blue sky, poplar trees and the block of flats next door.

  ‘Get out! Out, or I’ll put you over my knee!’ screams Dali as the children chase each other around, laughing. She notices Lela. ‘You see? I tied the doors shut with wire and they still got in and now look. Total bedlam!’

  Lela spots Vaska standing in the corner. Vaska is a Lom, an Armenian gypsy, fifteen years old and small for his age. He’s lived here a long time. Lela remembers when he first arrived. He was eight, she was eleven. He was brought by his uncle, a dark-skinned man with green eyes and hairy, tattooed arms who was smoking a cigarette. The man never came back. At first Vaska hung around Lela, who took him under her wing and kept him safe from the other children, for whom newcomers were little more than fresh prey. Then, when they were slightly older, they had sex. Neither of them saw it coming. It happened outside the wash block, under the pear trees, at the edge of a waterlogged field. That night, Lela recalls, the playground suddenly emptied. Dali was watching some South American soap opera about a young woman’s tempestuous relationship with her mother-in-law. Having never missed an episode, she’d managed to get most of the children hooked too. That night they’d all gone inside to watch, leaving Lela and Vaska alone in the playground. Lela can’t remember exactly how it happened. She remembers them walking out to the pear trees. She remembers them taking their clothes off. It didn’t hurt like it had before. In fact, it felt tender and careful. He felt tender and careful… The only thing she didn’t like was the feel of the bones in his pelvis. They kissed on the lips. Vaska already knew how to use tongues. They didn’t say a word. Not the first time, nor later when they met again and again under the pear trees. Lela can’t quite remember when things changed. She can’t remember when or why she started to dislike Vaska or why she began putting him down. He never stood up to her. Even now he calmly takes whatever she throws at him. In fact, he smiles. Lela hates that smile. She’s itching to fly at him, to punch that rosy-lipped smile right off Vaska’s face. He’s always smiling. It was different when he first arrived at the school. He was more talkative then. He never stood apart from the others, never stared off into the distance like he does now. He didn’t have that smile permanently plastered on his face. It appeared out of nowhere, an ambiguous, slightly disdainful smile that leaves you wondering whether he’s smiling to himself, or mocking you, or not really smiling at all.

  ‘Why are you just standing there, idiot?’ Lela snaps. ‘Can’t you give Dali a hand?’

  Vaska looks at Lela with his light green eyes and that smile on his face and says something under his breath.

  Lela heads over to where the balcony used to be. Two children are standing right on the sill and one, six-year-old Pako, a daring new arrival in black shorts and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, has ventured out onto the iron beam like a tiny smiling tightrope walker.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Lela screams suddenly. ‘I told you not to come over here! Just wait till I get my hands on you!’

  The two children make a run for it. Pako teeters unsteadily, but manages to regain his balance by holding his arms out, then carefully inches back along the narrow beam towards the doorway. Lela grabs him by the back of the neck before he’s even in the room and lets him dangle. Pako’s face crumples and drains of colour. His legs thrash in mid-air.

  ‘Shall I let go? Shall I?’

  Lela gives him a shake. Pako reaches desperately towards her.

  ‘Shall I let you fall? Is that what you want? Splat on the ground with a broken neck?’

  Lela pulls him inside and lets go. Pako scuttles off like a wind-up toy beetle.

  ‘Wait till I get my hands on you lot!’ Lela shouts.

  Irakli herds the children out of the room. Vaska is nowhere to be seen. The last child, Stella, runs off on weak, bowed legs, bottom sticking out behind her, dressed in only thick woollen leggings with a turtleneck jumper tucked into her waistband. Lela, Irakli and Dali stay behind. Her halo in disarray, Dali sits down hard on one of the bed frames, buckling the iron mesh with her weight and almost falling through onto the floor. Irakli grabs her flailing hands and helps her back up to perch on the edge. She gives a deep sigh.

  ‘Irakli, find Tiniko and ask whether she could possibly lend me that padlock she’s been promising me for goodness knows how long so that we can put it on the damn door before one of them falls out, because a fat lot of good it’ll do then…’

  Irakli runs off. Dali wets her hands in a bucket of rainwater and wipes her brow.

  ‘I can’t take this any more,’ she groans, and then shouts after Irakli, ‘If you see any of the others, tell them to go straight to the dinner hall!’

  Lela stands in the empty doorway and looks down. She imagines herself shoving him out: Vano, the elderly history teacher and current deputy head. The shove takes him by surprise. He stumbles, trips backwards on the sill, feels the void beneath him… He stares up at Lela, eyes wide behind his glasses, and sees in her face not a hint of concern that he is plunging down from the top floor. And his own face crumples, just like Pako’s, and he stares, wild-eyed, as she spits out, ‘Die, you fucking bastard!’. He slams into the pile of concrete below and rasps his final breath.

  ‘Here’s the lock,’ she hears Irakli say. She turns. Dali has gone.

  ‘She said Dali should lock it and give her the key. This one doesn’t work, though. She got it off the letter box…’

  Lela takes the tiny lock from Irakli.

  ‘This won’t keep anybody out,’ she says.

  But they leave the room. Lela closes the door, locks it with the little padlock and gives the key to Irakli. Then she tests the lock, giving the door a tug using about as much strength as she thinks Stella would.

  They walk down the corridor side by side. Irakli comes up to Lela’s shoulders. Lela lights a cigarette. Stella runs out of one of the rooms looking startled, with no idea where she’s supposed to be going.

  ‘Dinner hall, now!’ Irakli says, and Stella runs off.

  They make their way down the stairs.

  ‘Will you take me over to use the phone?’ Irakli asks.

  ‘You really are an idiot, you know that? Just let it go! Stop making a fool of yourself!’

  ‘She said this week, though. I swear to God!’

  They go out into the yard. In front of the building is a wide asphalt forecourt where, as usual, Avto, the PE teacher, has parked his light blue van. The rest of the yard is bare earth covered in spruce needles.

  They walk over to the dinner hall, cutting across the small open space between the main dormitory block and the administration building, where lessons take place and where Tiniko, the school’s director, has her office. A relatively well-maintained two-storey building, it has windows where there are supposed to be windows, and balconies to boot.

  Ten-year-old Sergo comes striding out with something pink and knitted tucked under his arm. Kolya emerges behind him, dragging his feet, bobbing his head. You’d be hard pushed to guess how old Kolya is; he could be ten, he could be fifteen.

  You can tell Kolya’s slow, thinks Lela. Sometimes you can tell, sometimes you can’t. You can’t tell with Sergo or Irakli.

  ‘Dinner hall, now!’ shouts Irakli. ‘Dali said! Sergo! Kolya!’

  Sergo ignores Irakli, but Kolya hesitates, then sets off back towards the dinner hall.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Lela asks Sergo.

  He walks straight past her and heads towards the main gates. �
��Kiosk!’ he says, without turning round.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Tiniko told me to take this dress back.’

  He pulls the pink knitted fabric from under his arm with a magician’s flourish, then turns round to show Lela. She eyes him mistrustfully. Sergo laughs.

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’ He holds the dress up against his body. ‘Looks great on me, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Watch no one kidnaps you!’ Lela says, laughing, and carries on towards the dinner hall.

  Sergo stands there for a minute patiently folding the dress and then runs out of the front gates to cross over to Zaira’s kiosk. It’s not the first time Tiniko has returned clothes like this. Zaira’s sister-in-law brings cheap clothing over from Turkey and Zaira sells it alongside other bits and bobs.

  The smell of fried potatoes and onion, mingled with an indeterminate rancid stench, reaches Irakli and Lela as they near the dinner hall. Lela takes a last drag of her cigarette and throws the butt to the ground, then spins round on hearing a muffled bang and the screech of car brakes out in the street. She peers through the spruce trees. Irakli is already running towards the gate. Tariel, a middle-aged man with a limp who wears an old sheepskin jacket whatever the weather, staggers out of the gatehouse, tries to run and falls over. Lela hears loud wailing. She runs outside.

  Emerging from the shade of the spruce-lined yard, Lela is hit by the street’s fierce heat. The midday sun casts slender, trembling shadows at the feet of the few who have ventured out. Nearby a car lies half on, half off the carriageway. A man gets out, dazed and unsteady, and hurries off, leaving the car door open. Tariel and Irakli run after him and Lela follows. She sees Sergo, thrown across the edge of the pavement, immobile. Another car pulls up, the door slams and someone walks quickly across the tarmac. Did Sergo just twitch? People are speaking at once: ‘I was driving along… He just ran out in front of me… I’m a doctor… Somebody call an ambulance…’