The Pear Field Page 6

  ‘When are you coming home?’ asks Irakli.

  ‘I’ve just started a new job. I need to save up a bit and then I’ll come back…’

  Silence.

  ‘Irakli, you know I love you, right? Don’t be cross. It’s better this way…’

  Irakli’s eyes fill with tears. He rubs his eyes vigorously to try and stem the flow. He goes bright red and screws up his face, but no sound comes out. He just sits there in silence on the stool.

  Lela snatches the phone out of his hand and shouts into the receiver, ‘It’s better this way, is it? You bitch, dumping your kid and swanning off like that! What kind of a mother are you? You fucking waste of space! Stop promising him you’ll come back! Stop promising things, you miserable cow!’

  Irakli stares at Lela in disbelief. Lela is leaning forward, receiver in one hand, the other hand braced against her knee, sitting just like Irakli does.

  A voice comes from the receiver: ‘Hello? Hello? Who is this?’

  ‘None of your fucking business! Listen, either you stop lying to him or I will come to Greece and I’ll fucking well stop you myself!’

  She slams the receiver down.

  ‘Come on, we’re going. Hurry up!’ she says, as if she’s expecting Irakli’s mother to come after them. ‘Thank you!’ Lela calls out as they leave.

  They go back in silence. Irakli is crying.

  ‘What are you crying for, you big baby?’ Lela says, walking faster. ‘Don’t you get it? She’s not coming. She just can’t bring herself to tell you! I told you she wasn’t coming and you wouldn’t listen! What do you need a mother for anyway? You know how to walk and talk, how to eat! You’re all grown up, for God’s sake!’

  The minute they walk into the yard all thoughts of Irakli’s mother are forgotten. The school has a visitor: a woman called Madonna, who is taking photos of the children with a small silver camera. Dali is shouting instructions: ‘Stand up straight! Smile!’ Lela notices that Madonna is only photographing three children: Pako, a girl called Jilda and a boy called Lasha. All three are about six years old and have been scrubbed and dressed smartly. The children take turns to stand against the wall Madonna has chosen as a backdrop.

  Madonna has bleach-blonde hair and an unusually ample rear end which she hauls around like a foreign body. Pako stands against the wall, hair wet-combed to one side, and when Dali tells him to stand up straight he pulls himself up so tall Lela thinks he might snap in the middle. Lasha is next. He stands by the wall with his big, sad eyes. Dali goes to straighten his hair and shirt. Madonna tries to get his attention, clicking her fingers above her head. Lasha just looks bewildered.

  ‘Will you please just smile, boy?’ Dali says crossly. Lasha attempts a smile and bares his teeth, but with his brow still furrowed he looks even more wretched. The other children start laughing.

  ‘Christ, who’d pick him? I mean, look at him!’ Levan says gleefully.

  ‘Uffff,’ sighs Tiniko suddenly. ‘We had such a nice little girl – Nona. Her family took her back, though. She was so much better than this lot – one look at her and they’d have snapped her up, I tell you. She was so pretty, so bright…’

  ‘You’re right,’ says Dali sadly. ‘We don’t get kids like Nona every day.’

  It’s Jilda’s turn, but Tiniko’s not convinced. Jilda is seven, a slight girl with straight black hair and a squint in one eye, and is a Yazidi, which in Tiniko’s opinion makes her an unsuitable candidate for international adoption.

  Madonna sits down for a quick rest. She lights a cigarette and fiddles with her camera. The whole school is there watching the three children closely.

  Madonna, it transpires, has spent several years working for an American couple as a carer and is now helping them find a child to adopt. The compassion and self-sacrifice she demonstrated while caring for the wife’s elderly mother led the couple to develop a deep respect for her country, Georgia. Having cared for and lost a disabled child themselves, they decided to adopt from a residential school, so Madonna is visiting schools in Tbilisi to take photos of children aged around six. There are other children that age in the school, but Tiniko has chosen the three she considers the most attractive and whose parents – significantly – have formally relinquished responsibility, leaving the children’s fate entirely in the hands of the school and the Ministry.

  ‘You’ll need to write their full names down for me and a bit of background,’ says Madonna. ‘They want some idea about who they’re bringing into their family.’

  ‘Aren’t you taking pictures of the others?’ Lela says, coming towards them.

  Before Tiniko can answer, Levan sticks his head out of the crowd and scoffs, ‘They want the little ones, don’t they, not big lugs like us!’

  ‘Oh, Levan, if only your wit had a chance to sparkle somewhere else for a change,’ says Tiniko pityingly, only too aware that nobody will be coming to save him from the hardships of life in Georgia.

  Madonna says she would like photos of the children playing. Pako wants them to be playing football but the ball’s half deflated. Jilda runs off to do some skipping, but Pako and Lasha just stand there stiffly. Their neatly combed hair and scrubbed faces seem to be putting them off their game.

  ‘Fine, never mind. Hopscotch, then. Pretend you’re playing hopscotch.’

  Tiniko feels someone’s hand on her elbow. She turns around to find Lela standing there.

  ‘Tiniko, I really need to talk to you.’

  She eyes Lela suspiciously, asks Madonna to excuse her and takes her to one side.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Tiniko,’ says Lela, ‘can you ask her to take pictures of the others too? The little ones, I mean.’

  Tiniko sighs. She whispers, ‘OK, tell me which ones. You know I value your opinion.’

  ‘Well… all of them. Just the little ones, I mean. But tell her not to just take the photos. She needs to show them to the Americans too. You never know, they might like Stella. Or even Levan.’

  ‘No, no. Even if they do like Levan they can’t have him. His mum’s still around, so we wouldn’t be allowed to send him. But all right, let’s do Stella, and some of the others…’ They go back to Madonna and Tiniko lowers her voice. ‘It’s the paperwork, you see. If they’ve still got parents I can’t send them anywhere. I don’t want to end up in prison. We’ll do the kids who’ve got no family.’

  The other children are neither dressed smartly nor particularly clean, but they line up against the wall and do what Dali and Madonna tell them. Madonna takes photos of practically every child under ten who has no family or whose relatives have given them up. Stella wets her hands in the drinking fountain, tries to flatten her hair, runs over to the wall and stands stock-still, a smile on her face, waiting for her photo.

  ‘Where’s Irakli?’ asks Tiniko, looking around.

  Lela thinks she must have misheard. But no, it appears that Irakli’s mother has chosen Greece over her son and given him up for good. Lela steels herself and walks back to the school, determined to find Irakli and tell him the truth. She wishes she’d said even worse things to his mother. All she can think now is that Irakli needs to know. He needs to know that his bitch of a mother abandoned him and that he had no fucking idea.

  She finds Irakli by himself, lying on a bed. He’s not crying. He’s just lying on his back and hiding his face with his arm. As soon as Lela sees him she changes her mind.

  ‘Come on, Tiniko’s looking for you. You need to have your photo taken. You might even get lucky.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  Lela pulls Irakli’s arm away from his face and tickles him. ‘Come on, it’ll be fun. They won’t really send you to America. They want someone little and cute, not some big lump like you! Come on, shift your bum!’

  Irakli says nothing.

  ‘Are you upset cos I swore at your mum?’

  Irakli closes his eyes and presses himself even harder against the wall.

  ‘You’re scared she’ll be angry and w
on’t come back, right?’ Lela thinks for a minute. ‘You don’t need to worry. We’ll give her a ring and you can tell her it was just some psycho who grabbed the phone… Someone who’s not quite right in the head. One of the others. Tell her they swear at everyone like that.’

  Irakli starts to cry.

  ‘Ika, come on. We’ll call her back and you can tell her someone grabbed the phone off you! Tell her they got thrown out of school, or even better, tell her they’re dead! Tell her they got hit by a car!’

  Lela tries to roll Irakli over towards her.

  ‘Come on, don’t be a baby. She had it coming. She was lying to you! Stop being silly!’

  Lela grabs Irakli by the arm and yanks him across the bed.

  ‘What do you want from me? I’ll take you over tomorrow!’ she says angrily, shaking him by the arms. ‘I’ll take you right now if you want, but tell her it was some random mad person cos I’m not going to apologize, OK? And if she doesn’t believe you she can fuck right off!’

  Lela grabs Irakli by the wrist and drags him into the corridor.

  They go back down to the yard. Lela drags Irakli over to the wall, shunts the line of children to one side and shoves Irakli in, right in front of Madonna’s camera.

  ‘Who’s gonna want him!’ titters Levan. ‘Who’s gonna want him in their house with those head lice! You’ve got lice, right, Ika?’

  Lela rewards Levan with a crack on the back of the head.

  *

  It’s the day of the wedding. Mzia and one of her neighbours are holding a large red velvet sheet against the wall while Avto bangs nails into the corners. The woman who years ago had lowered that New Year’s feast down to the children starts pinning bunches of tiny white roses to the velvet.

  A long table is set up in front of the velvet and laid with decorated porcelain and fancy glasses. The children’s table is set up in the second, smaller hall, which runs the length of the main hall.

  One of the women waddles out of the kitchen and, looking up and down the children’s table, asks, ‘Should we give them the whole works too?’

  The organizer, a gaunt woman with a stern, pockmarked face, nods to the cook.

  ‘Even the wine?’ she asks.

  The woman hesitates, then looks over at Avto.

  ‘A glass each won’t kill them,’ he says, ‘and then they can join in with the toasts. Put some soft drinks out too. You know what kids like.’

  Lela hears the long celebratory blast of car horns. She opens the gates to let the cars drive in, shuts them again and walks in behind the cars. Dali shepherds the children away. She is already in her wedding outfit: a black blouse with green polka dots and green lace around the neckline. Goderdzi gets out of the bridal car wearing a suit and looking as clean as a whistle. He walks round to the other side for his bride, Manana. She steps out, a vision of unparalleled beauty in a long white dress, with long, plaited black hair and a wide, captivating smile. The neighbours look her up and down in astonishment, transfixed by her slow, elegant gait and the way her dress strains against her body as she breathes.

  ‘Looks like she’s done quite a bit of entertaining already,’ Lela hears one of the neighbours whisper. ‘I mean, why else would she settle for a man like Goderdzi?’

  ‘What do you know?’ replies another woman, staring at Manana’s narrow-waisted dress with the lacy trim and satin ribbons fixed just above her pert backside.

  ‘I just know,’ says the first.

  Manana stands with her back to a group of girls wearing sparkly dresses and craning their necks like hens. She throws her bouquet into the scrum. A chubby girl with red cheeks and a battle-ready look on her face emerges clutching it and breathing heavily. The other guests clap and everyone files into the dinner hall. The table is set for a banquet and piled high with food: plates of fresh herbs and pkhali, whole cucumbers and tomatoes nestled among bunches of enormous spring onions and radishes and dozens of other cold dishes. Avto signals to a thin man standing next to a Yamaha keyboard; a few seconds later, the nasal strains of a keyboard rendition of Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’ float across the room before being superseded by the diatonic melancholy of a Tushetian love song.

  The children take their seats. Everyone is there except Irakli, who has a temperature and can’t eat without bringing everything straight back up.

  The toastmaster raises his voice above the hubbub: ‘Dear friends, I would like to raise my glass to the bride and groom!’ He presses one fleshy hand against his chest and with the other raises his glass high in the air. He looks around at the assembled guests and begins: ‘Adam and Eve, my friends, were created for what? To love! To be fruitful and multiply! And as the children of Adam and Eve we too should be fruitful and multiply, as long as we do so with love! To Goderdzi and Manana – gaumarjos! To your union – gaumarjos! Bless you both. May your love for each other never fade as long as you live!’

  The children pile food onto their plates: hot khachapuri, fried chicken, liver with walnuts, vegetable pkhali, walnut sauce, clay-baked shotis puri flatbreads and everything else that’s on offer. Dali is sitting with the children, helping herself to large portions of mchadi cornbread and fish. Now and then she shoots a child a disapproving look, rolling her eyes and opening her grease-covered lips so wide that half-chewed mouthfuls of food almost fall out.

  Dali chooses some food for Lela to take to Irakli: light, boiled dishes, nothing too rich. Lela wakes him up, but Irakli says he doesn’t feel like eating. Lela touches his hot forehead, tucks him in, leaves the plate by his bed and goes back to the supra, where a few of the younger guests are already dancing, and fruit and cakes have been added to the table.

  Lela is starting to feel the effects of the wine. ‘Tiniko,’ she calls over the music, ‘could I have a quick word?’

  Tiniko looks annoyed. She abandons her cake, stands and squeezes past the other guests to get out. Lela leads her to a corner.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt your meal,’ she says. ‘I was just wondering why you took photos of Irakli. You said you’d only do the ones with no family… So I just wondered what’s happened to his mother.’

  ‘Couldn’t this have waited till tomorrow, girl? Why do you care whether Irakli’s got a mother or not?’

  ‘I know he’s got one. I’ve just sworn down the phone at her. She’s in Greece.’

  Tiniko’s face softens.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘she’s in Greece. She was really struggling here. Now she’s in Greece and she won’t be coming back. At least not for a long time. And once Irakli turns eighteen he can do what he pleases.’ Tiniko is practically shouting to make herself heard. ‘Now, I’m going back to my seat and you’re not to drink any more. And what I just told you goes no further.’

  The wedding party is in full swing. One of Goderdzi’s cousins, an off-duty policeman, is so fired up by the music that he jumps first onto a chair and then onto the table, pulls a handgun from his waistband and fires several shots into the ceiling.

  As if on cue, the music gets even louder and the children start scrabbling on the floor for the empty cartridges.

  Lela and Dali give each child a piece of honey cake before herding them out of the dinner hall. Meanwhile, Avto helps the servers to drag the now-empty table back against the wall, leaving in its place a large, open dance floor.

  5

  Vano hates missing lessons. Even if every child in the school falls ill but one, he’ll take that child into his classroom and teach them anyway. He spends his lessons pacing up and down in front of the blackboard, arms folded behind his back, a cane in one hand, recounting the lives of King David the Builder, Timur, Queen Tamar and – the children’s favourite – Tsotne Dadiani, bound at the feet of his Mongol overlords, naked under the scorching sun, smeared in honey, demanding to be put to death…

  Vano looks at the ground while he talks or sometimes stares into space. He never looks at the children. The teachers here are less strict than in other schools. The children find it hard to co
ncentrate and spend most of their time during lessons talking and arguing among themselves. If the class gets so noisy that Vano can’t make himself heard, he raises his cane. He used it more in the old days, back when Marcel and Ira were still at the school. Now he has neither the strength nor the inclination to threaten anyone.

  Lela comes into the classroom.

  ‘Levan, your mum’s here,’ she says.

  Levan looks confused. He goes to the door, careful not to look too eager to run to his mum like a little boy. Lela is about to leave too when Vano calls her over.

  ‘Take this to Gulnara, will you?’

  Lela follows Vano to his desk. As soon as Vano’s back is turned, the children rush to the windows to get a look at Levan’s mother. Some run down to the toilets for a better vantage point and some run after Levan to watch the encounter up close.

  Vano opens a drawer in his desk. Lela looks down at his long, thin hand and at the fine greying hairs on his wrist. She looks at his long fingers resting on the handle and then, in a flash, she sees herself a few years before, standing there in the history room with her knickers pulled down, her dress and jumper pushed out of the way, and Vano moving his skinny fingers down onto her hairless mound and then plunging them deeper and deeper inside her, quickly, clumsily, as if there’s something within that he needs to pull but which keeps on escaping his grasp. And then, suddenly she feels pain, burning, and she grimaces but doesn’t cry, not yet… Vano opens his trousers.

  ‘Touch it. Don’t be scared.’

  She looks at it swaying from side to side, erect, pointing skywards. It reminds her of a skinned animal. Vano pulls her towards him.

  ‘We’ll go into town after this and I’ll buy you an ice cream… You’re a good girl, aren’t you? Come on, you’ll like it. I know you will…’

  Lela puts her hand out to touch it. It feels thick in her hand, like a broom handle. She doesn’t remember the next bit, just Vano standing behind her as she faces the wall. The small stool beneath her feet. Pain, right through her body, pain so fierce it burns her throat. She screams, but Vano gets angry, covers her mouth with his clammy hand, tells her off for crying, and so she stops, abruptly, and tries to do what he says. Don’t say anything to anyone, he tells her, as he moves Lela’s little hands back to his broom handle…