The Pear Field Page 2

  Tariel and Irakli touch Sergo gently.

  ‘Sergo!’ Irakli cries. ‘Serozha!’

  They roll Sergo onto his back. He is covered in blood.

  ‘Serozha!’ Lela touches him lightly on the shoulder.

  A man she doesn’t recognize pulls her roughly to one side, kneels down next to Sergo, presses two dirty fingers against his soft, delicate neck and stares into the distance, motionless. The man smells foul; his half-open shirt reveals a distended, florid belly, bloated from too much vodka. Lela imagines it’s a dagger he’s pressing against Sergo’s neck to prevent him divulging a secret. Sergo isn’t moving. He’s not scared of the dagger, nor of the people crowding around him. The man’s secret is safe with Sergo.

  Zaira comes running out of her kiosk, beating her fists against her head. Everyone has questions: ‘Who is he?… Who let this child go outside?… What happened?’

  Tiniko is standing by the school gates. Well dressed as always, she is wearing a short black skirt, shiny black high-heeled shoes and a green frilly blouse. She comes over as fast as her heavy legs can carry her, a black gemstone necklace swaying back and forth with her breasts as she runs. She is as white as a sheet. Lela catches isolated fragments of conversations: ‘… an ambulance… CPR… he came out of nowhere… I was driving along and he just ran out…’ Tiniko looks down at Sergo and the blood on the tarmac. Her face is wild, contorted. The pink dress lies crumpled on the road, pinned under someone’s foot, covered in blood.

  The men examine Sergo. One says that he’s breathing, and a breeze blows in from a nearby garden and somehow calms the crowd. Lela hears a man giving the ambulance driver directions over the phone.

  The pavement slowly fills with people, as if somewhere on the other side of this forgotten, sun-scorched street they had been hidden away, waiting for something just like this to lure them out. Suddenly a slim woman notices Zaira faint and calls for water. Zaira sinks to the pavement and sits, slumped, her legs spread immodestly in front of her. Avto, the PE teacher, supports her back with his shoulder. A man barks at the bystanders to give them some air. They lay Sergo on somebody’s jacket.

  Tariel tells Tiniko, ‘We’ve called an ambulance.’

  ‘Oh, sweet Lord…’ she says, ashen-faced. ‘How is he? Is it bad?’

  ‘It’s really bad,’ says Tariel, and walks back to join the men.

  ‘Don’t worry, miss,’ says a calm bald-headed man with no neck and red cheeks. ‘There’s no need to panic, they’re taking care of him. Let’s just stay back and give them some air. Do you want us to look after the child first or her?’ He jerks his head towards Zaira, who is starting to come round but is still slumped on the pavement like a drunk.

  Tiniko’s face and neck are so red and blotchy it looks as if she has measles. She takes a few steps forward, bends to pick up the dress and folds it quickly, making sure not to get blood on her hands. She notices Lela watching her and then hurries over.

  ‘Here,’ she says, holding Lela by the arm. ‘Take this – careful, though! Run over to my office and put it in my desk drawer. And don’t say a word to anyone, no matter what they ask you, OK?’

  Lela looks at Tiniko’s sweating face. She takes the dress and runs off, as if running might somehow save Sergo. She’s running through the spruce trees in the yard when she sees Dali come out of the dinner hall followed by a large crowd of children, all going as fast as they can. Dali looks like a priest leading his flock, until the children stream past her and she is swallowed up by the crowd.

  Lela goes into the admin block. Unlike the doors in the dormitory block, Tiniko’s office door is upholstered in soft leather with padded panels. Inside, Lela opens the desk drawer. She sees a large half-eaten bar of chocolate. Lela shoves the bloodied dress inside and closes the drawer. The only items on Tiniko’s desk are a small, laminated icon of St George propped against the pencil holder, a register and a plant cutting in a tumbler. The top of the desk is covered with a thick sheet of glass under which there’s a calendar, a black-and-white photo of Gregory Peck and passport photos of Tiniko’s two sons.

  Lela goes back out to the street. The ambulance has already taken Sergo away, leaving only a handful of people standing around, immersed in conversation. The district police inspector, Piruz, who has deep-set, sorrowful eyes and a face far too kind for a policeman, is standing off to one side, talking to the car’s driver. Tiniko, Dali, Tariel and a few other locals are also there, along with a small group of young men. Among them is Koba, from the neighbouring tower block, who has a thin face, a long nose and an irritated expression. He spots Lela too, but they say nothing. Some of the school’s children are there and, for the first time in their lives, they’re doing exactly as Dali tells them, because she is crying. They follow her back over the road and disappear into the yard.

  The neighbours are speculating that Sergo got hit by the car when he sneaked out of school to buy an ice cream from Zaira’s kiosk and didn’t look before crossing the road. Vaska listens as a tearful Tiniko talks to the bystanders. His smile has gone.

  ‘We tell them not to come out here, we tell them again and again,’ Tiniko says, ‘but we just don’t have the staff, we’ve told the Ministry… How can Dali possibly watch them every second?… We need people! Everyone knows our situation, but they take no notice! Maybe now they’ll finally send us some staff…’

  That evening the news comes through that Sergo is dead.

  Next morning the whole school is unusually quiet. Lessons are cancelled.

  Sergo’s body comes back from the hospital and they lay him out in the gymnasium, a room with iron grilles on the windows on the lower ground floor of the admin block. It’s empty apart from a few wooden exercise bars fixed to the walls and some old sports equipment. Every word spreads through the gym like smoke and rolls into the empty corners. The children are seated on long, low benches against the walls, mouthing silently to each other and staring at where Sergo’s shrouded body is laid out on Avto’s desk.

  Outside, with four other men, stands the driver. He has a short neck, made shorter still by his large double chin, and a bulging vein in his forehead. It rather looks as though he might one day overinflate and explode, like an unfortunate toad blown up by a child with a straw.

  A small group of women from the neighbouring block are studying the men, trying to pick out the killer. One of them spots him and fixes him with a penetrating stare. The other women stare too, with a degree of respect for the fact that, despite hitting Sergo, he has enough integrity, enough courage, to stand here for all to see.

  ‘I heard it wasn’t really his fault,’ says one. ‘And he seems like a decent guy. They were going to go for cheap zinc for the coffin but he asked for wood! He’s taking care of the grave too. They were going to bury the lad in a pauper’s grave, no headstone, nothing. Anyone else might not even have bothered to find out how he was doing! I mean, it’s not as if the police or the boy’s parents are going to come after him.’

  There’s confusion among the school staff, who had assumed Sergo’s body would be taken from the hospital straight to the cemetery. Vano and Tiniko come into the gym. Tiniko is still on edge, shoving her hands into her skirt pockets and then pulling them out to gesture while talking to Vano. She glances nervously at Avto’s desk, as if there were a ticking bomb on it rather than Sergo’s body.

  Lela is sitting with the younger children. Stella presses her grubby, frightened face against Lela’s arm and mouths silent words at her.

  ‘Is Sergo dead?’ she asks, wide-eyed.

  Lela gently takes her hand and whispers, ‘Yes, he is.’

  Irakli, Vaska, Kolya and a couple of others are perched on the bench, trying as hard as they can to catch what Vano and Tiniko are saying on the other side of the gym. Tiniko glances at the children, mutters something to Vano and walks briskly from the hall. Vano tells Avto to get the children out. ‘The priest’s on his way. When he gets here we’re going to the cemetery,’ he says, and heads towards the
door.

  In his agitated state, Vano somehow gets a half-deflated basketball trapped between his feet. He tries to kick it aside but instead almost trips. Eleven-year-old Levan bursts out laughing. Vano kicks the ball angrily out of the way, glowers at the children and stalks off.

  Father Yakob arrives at the school in his long black cassock. He has a bushy black beard and dark steely eyes. The children start asking whether Sergo will be going to hell, to the fire and the demons with their whips and canes and red-hot irons. Dali does her best to reassure them, telling them that Father Yakob will perform the rituals needed to send Sergo’s soul to heaven.

  The priest walks through the school with Tiniko and Vano, blessing the buildings by daubing a cross in holy oil above each doorway. The children trail after him. When they reach the wash block, the priest circumambulates the building, imbuing it with the grace of God and picking up burrs from the undergrowth on the skirt of his cassock as he goes, as if rescuing tiny, downy creatures desperate for salvation.

  After the consecration of the wash block the children congregate in the yard to be baptized. There’s a deep hush. Even the youngest know that this ceremony will save them from hellfire. In one fell swoop, Dali becomes godmother to every child there. She seems relieved, revived, happy to take on this new responsibility. Father Yakob hands out wooden crosses to the children and they set about looking for bits of string so they can hang them round their necks.

  Nobody comes to view Sergo’s body, unless you count a handful of neighbours.

  A car pulls up carrying a small wooden coffin. An even more sombre hush descends on the school. The children crowd around the gates. Outside, the man who hit Sergo is giving directions to the driver.

  ‘Those kids may be backward, but they know exactly what’s going on, see?’ says Venera, linking arms with her son. Goderdzi is forty and still single. He stares blankly at the children, then unhooks his arm and walks over to stand with the men.

  Every single child is there to see Sergo put into the coffin and carried away. Every child wants to be at the front, to catch a last glimpse of him. Koba comes out carrying two small classroom chairs to support Sergo’s coffin, allowing him a final few minutes in the courtyard of his childhood home. The silence is punctuated only by Dali’s stifled sobs. Sergo lies in his narrow casket in a suit sewn specially for the occasion, his arms crossed over his chest, a handkerchief tucked under his tiny lifeless hand, as if he might suddenly wish to wipe away a tear. Were Sergo alive, Levan would surely be cracking jokes about his suit or his unnatural pose, but even he is silent now.

  The police inspector carries a single wreath onto the bus. The men lift the coffin to their shoulders as if it weighed nothing. Koba kicks one chair over and then the other and for a moment the chairs on the ground look like sacrificial animals, slaughtered in atonement for Sergo’s death.

  The teachers and other adults start boarding the bus.

  Tiniko turns to Lela. ‘Are you coming?’

  Irakli is glued to Lela’s side.

  ‘I am,’ Lela replies, ‘but the little ones want to come too…’

  Tiniko thinks for a moment, then confers with Dali. Dali surveys the children and pulls some of the younger and less able ones out of the group. She points the rest of them towards the bus. ‘On you get then, but stay nice and quiet and behave yourselves.’

  The children head off, more like excited day trippers than grieving mourners.

  On the bus, Lela looks out of the rear window. Dali is standing by the gates with a small group of children: Kolya, Stella, Pako and a few others. Several are crying and clinging to her legs. The bus moves off slowly, belching black smoke, and falls in behind the car taking Sergo on his final journey. The car drives slowly, as if itself borne aloft by a man at each corner.

  The bus pulls up outside Avchala cemetery. The sun is beating down.

  Gulnara, the practical skills teacher, tells Lela to keep an eye on the children, who stand in a long line, swinging their arms back and forth like Soviet schoolchildren doing marching drills. They start to make their way up the steep path. Lela wonders whether only normal people end up here, or idiots too.

  The men set the coffin down beside the open grave. The priest mutters some prayers over Sergo’s body. The teachers look spent. The cemetery is scorched and dusty under the hot sun.

  Set slightly back from the path next to the cemetery is a long, nine-storey tower block. The right half has been almost completely destroyed. There are only outer walls left now, blackened hollowed shells. Lela can see right through the building and out the other side. At first glance it looks derelict, but then she sees people are still living in the other half: on the balconies she spots laundry, strings of onions, garlic bulbs and saffron crocuses, old pairs of tights full of unshelled hazelnuts stuffed in for storage. And the whole building seems to be listing, as if slowly sinking into the ground under the weight of its remaining inhabitants.

  Father Yakob is still praying. The gravedigger carefully peels back the shroud from the top half of Sergo’s body. There he lies in his ash-grey jacket, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed, face distended, his skin dark and mottled. The children stare.

  The priest finishes his prayers. The gravedigger pauses to let people say their last goodbyes, but Gulnara just gives a quick nod and then a visceral moan when the shroud is pulled back over Sergo’s face.

  Although Lela knows Sergo is dead, part of her still expects him to protest. But he says nothing, even when the lid is placed back on the coffin, even when the dry clods of earth patter down on the wooden lid. The teachers and children set off down the slope, leaving Sergo with two labourers and a gravedigger, strangers who commit his body to the ground, somewhere on a hill in Avchala.

  ‘Don’t look back!’ shouts Gulnara, clutching the fence around somebody’s grave to keep from losing her footing.

  ‘Why not, miss?’ asks Irakli.

  ‘Tradition,’ she replies, losing control and juddering down a steep incline. Avto stands at the bottom, holding out a strong, hairy arm for Gulnara to grab.

  ‘Did you hear? Don’t look back!’ Lela calls to the procession of children weaving their way between the tombstones.

  ‘Why not, Lela?’ Irakli asks again.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ says Lela, jogging down a small slope.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ confirms Levan, ‘you mustn’t look back. Once you’ve buried them you leave them in peace. No more crying either.’

  The bus driver sits in the shade of the half-collapsed tower block, quietly smoking a cigarette, waiting for the mourners to return.

  2

  Lela can’t remember when she first arrived at the school. She doesn’t know where she was born or to whom, who it was who gave her up or first brought her to Kerch Street. Tiniko knows nothing about Lela’s background either. There’s nothing she can tell Lela about her parents that might bring her some comfort. Tiniko must have pulled Lela’s file out a hundred times; all they know for sure is that Lela used to live at the children’s home near the old locomotive works and that when she was old enough for school they brought her here. That is the sum total of Lela’s biography.

  Sometimes Lela tries to remember the children’s home. She can just about recall a woman sitting at a piano, a New Year’s party, a cone-shaped hat on her head made from spotted paper with tinsel stuck on and held in place by a thick rubber band under her chin. Sometimes she wonders whether the woman at the piano and the hat with the spots ever existed.

  Every time Lela walks in through the school gates a familiar smell hits her. The closer she gets to the dormitory block, the stronger it becomes, and she can feel the school pulling her back into the fold.

  On every floor there are toilets at the end of the corridor. The wind blowing in through the broken windowpanes carries their stench deeper into the building, making the entire corridor smell like a station toilet. The bedrooms, TV room and playrooms have their own smell, and no amount of fr
esh air can flush it out. It’s the smell of dirty children, or sometimes of clothes scrubbed clean with laundry soap; the smell of musty linen and hand-me-down bedding; the smell of paraffin lamps and, in winter, wood stoves; the smell of old armchairs and sticky tape covering cracks in the windows and Chinese mallow plants lined up on the sill. Lela knows each and every smell, even though sometimes they all disappear behind the acrid stench of the toilets. When Lela walks in through the gates this same smell gives her an acute sense of sadness. It reminds her of their gatekeeper Tariel’s mother. The whole neighbourhood knew her. She stank of wet leather. A hard-working, resilient woman in her youth, she began to grow feeble in both body and mind the day she put on her widow’s weeds. With time she forgot her house, her son and her grandchildren, and spent the rest of her days wandering aimlessly along the school fence. Lela thinks of her the minute she sets foot on school grounds; then, gradually, she gets used to the smell and the woman’s ghost slips back out of her mind.

  There’s one place in the grounds that Lela loves precisely because of its smell. The dormitory block has a fire escape, an iron spiral staircase fixed to the outside wall facing the wash block. In summer the sun heats the rusty metal and releases a strange, sweet smell. Lela’s loved going up that staircase ever since she was little, even though its tight spiral makes her dizzy as she climbs and turns, climbs and turns, all the way to the top floor.

  Although it’s outside in the fresh air, the staircase always smells the same. Lela runs her hand along the rail as she climbs and, when she reaches the top, she puts her palm to her nose and finds the smell unchanged. The staircase ends in a small landing overlooking the playground. If Lela leans over the guard rail she can almost grab the branches of the tall spruce trees that grow alongside. She has spent many hours up there on this staircase. Whenever she goes up she pretends that the stairs lead somewhere else entirely, only to have the fantasy shattered upon coming face to face with the solid, doorless wall at the top.