The Pear Field Read online

  She goes back out to where Levan, Vaska and Irakli are waiting in the corridor, passing round a cigarette. They leave the last few drags for Lela.

  When they reach the floor below they say goodnight and the boys go back to their dormitory. Lela goes downstairs and over to the gatehouse. She collapses onto her bed fully dressed.

  *

  The next day the sweet taste of Tariel’s cherries quickly sours when they hear that Tariel has shot Bandit with his hunting rifle. Stella starts to cry. Tariel emerges with a spade and Bandit’s corpse in a wheelbarrow. Lela intercepts him and offers to bury Bandit. Tariel, who seems to have aged overnight, eyes Lela suspiciously, then sets down the wheelbarrow and says, ‘Bring it back to my yard. And don’t lose my spade.’

  Bandit’s nocturnal companions dig him a grave on the little mound between the wash block and the playground. The other children stand close by and watch as they bury him. While the boys tread down the earth covering poor Bandit’s grave, Stella picks dandelions and buttercups, then lays them on the ground. Teary-eyed, distraught, she also seems suddenly wiser, like someone party to a new and terrible truth.

  Lela rolls the wheelbarrow back to Tariel’s as promised. She takes Stella along. When they reach the road, she scoops Stella up and sits her in the wheelbarrow, gives her the spade and takes off fast as if Stella’s just slammed her foot on the gas pedal. The force throws Stella backwards but she somehow stays upright and laughs giddily. She sits up in the wheelbarrow wielding the spade like a canoeist navigating rapids. She plunges her spade-paddle into the waves, her expression a mixture of fear and exhilaration.

  It’s tougher going upstream. When they reach Kerch Street, Stella jumps out of her boat and the two of them struggle together against the flow. The air feels thick and heavy, as if the sky and clouds are pressing down, driving the birds out of the heavens.

  ‘It’s gonna rain,’ says Lela, watching the sparrows flying just above the asphalt, circling conspiratorially before coming briefly to rest and then, sensing danger, soaring up as one into the air and speeding away.

  Narcissa meets them at the gate. She takes the boat and paddle back without a word and offers Lela a two-lari coin.

  ‘We don’t want any money, but thank you,’ says Lela.

  ‘We don’t want money,’ echoes Stella.

  As they’re walking back to the school the heavens open. They make a dash for it. Stella instinctively grabs Lela’s hand, but Lela breaks free, preferring to run side by side without touching, like sparrows flying in their murmur.

  They run in to the school, soaked to the skin. The other children are nowhere to be seen.

  Stella exclaims crossly, ‘I bet they’re on the trampolines!’

  They run upstairs, Stella struggling to keep up, breathless but determined, proud to be helping Lela.

  They reach the trampoline room. The door is unlocked. There’s no one in the corridor but they can hear the squeak of the bed frames inside. Stella raises her eyebrows high and looks sternly at Lela, as if she can’t believe anyone has this much temerity. Lela puts her finger to her lips and peeks inside: water is dripping heavily from the ceiling and there in the middle of the room, jumping up and down on one of the beds, panting, sweating, oblivious to everything, is Irakli. Lela catches brief snippets of English, phrases from his lessons with Marika: I am fine! My name is Irakli! Tucked out of sight in the doorway, Lela and Stella stare. On the other side of the non-existent balcony door the rain comes down in a solid curtain.

  ‘I am fine!’ Irakli shouts again.

  Lela quietly pulls the door to. She shakes her head to tell Stella to stay quiet. They go back downstairs.

  ‘Stella, just because I didn’t say anything to Irakli doesn’t mean you can go up there, OK?’ says Lela.

  ‘I know, I know,’ answers Stella, and runs towards the dormitory to change her clothes. ‘I mean, he won’t be able to jump around like that in America, will he?’

  ‘No,’ says Lela. ‘He won’t.’

  Irakli doesn’t have English class the next day. Marika sends one of her neighbour’s kids over to tell Lela she’s got a bad stomach ache.

  Irakli is delighted.

  ‘Must be her time of the month,’ he says.

  Lela gives him a swift clip round the ear.

  ‘You don’t have to repeat everything you hear, you know!’

  After dinner, Irakli and Lela walk over to the pear field. The air smells fresh and clean after the night’s rain. Apart from the chatter of the birds in the trees there’s not a sound to be heard. The grass is a lush, vibrant green. Lela walks along the path around the field, smoking. Irakli walks by her side.

  ‘Lela,’ he says suddenly, ‘I think Vaska likes you.’

  ‘Pack it in, will you?’

  ‘I’m not just saying it to wind you up.’

  ‘You know what?’ says Lela quietly, taking one last drag, ‘I think it’s you Vaska likes, not me, and if you’re not careful I’m going to marry you off to him. You can have Stella as your dowry. Actually, no, she’s too good for you. You can have Dali or Tiniko instead.’

  Irakli sighs. ‘There’s just no talking to you sometimes.’

  Lela throws the cigarette butt away and stares across the field at the pear trees. Their gnarled, twisting branches are hanging low after the heavy rain.

  ‘Fine, you don’t believe me. Look how much crap he takes from you, though. I wouldn’t put up with it, that’s for sure.’

  ‘He puts up with it cos he’s scared of me, isn’t he, little gypsy chickenshit.’

  ‘He’s not scared of you, Lela. Vaska’s not scared of anyone. Remember when that boy came to play football, that big lad, and was calling us retards and then he told Vaska to go fuck himself… Remember what Vaska did to him?’

  Lela thinks for a moment.

  ‘Go and get me a pear, will you?’

  ‘I can bring you one, but you’re not gonna eat it, are you?’

  ‘Just get me one anyway.’

  Irakli takes off his shoes and socks and rolls up his trouser legs. When he gets to the middle of the field he calls back to Lela, ‘Which tree shall I get it from? If I fall over and drown out here it’ll be your fault, you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to drown.’

  ‘What about this one?’ he asks, pointing to a branch heavy with fruit.

  ‘Fine.’

  Irakli looks at the large, round, green pears. He grabs hold of one and pulls it off. Holding his arms out to the side, he walks back across the field and onto dry land, carrying Lela’s pear. His legs are caked in mud up to his knees. Irakli tosses Lela the pear. She catches it, wipes it on her trousers and sinks her teeth in.

  ‘Nope, no good,’ she says, and offers it to Irakli.

  ‘If they were any good there’d be none left on the tree!’ says Irakli, taking a tiny bite anyway. He shudders, leans back and then throws the pear back into the field as hard as he can.

  7

  In mid-July, the heat is so stifling that it drives the residents indoors to hide from the sun. The neighbourhood rumour mill threatens to grind to a halt. Nevertheless, word trickles through from the flats next door that Manana has left Goderdzi. Everyone has their own theory. Some claim that in fact he threw her out when certain rumours got back to him. Some doubt Manana was a virgin when they married. Others are sure it’s because Goderdzi is impotent. Whatever the reason, the lovely Manana packs her two suitcases and prepares to leave Kerch Street for ever.

  Her father arrives to collect her. He wedges his daughter’s suitcases into the back of his Lada and calmly shuts the boot. Manana’s wavy black hair hangs loose and the proud smile she wore on her wedding day has disappeared without a trace. She is pale, but the neighbours can’t help noticing how beautiful she is nonetheless. Goderdzi is hiding indoors. Venera pokes her head out of a groundfloor window and passes Manana the fur coat she’d left in the wardrobe. It seems there’s no chance she’ll be back for the winter. Th
ings appear amicable enough: Manana’s father and Venera are behaving so sensitively, so affably, that anyone passing would assume the young woman was just off on a short trip.

  Manana gets into the car without saying goodbye to her mother-in-law. Her father goes over to the window.

  ‘Goodbye, then, Venera. Take care,’ he says softly.

  Venera doesn’t reply. She looks sadly at the man taking her beautiful Manana away for ever. Nobody knows better than Venera that you don’t let a girl like Manana walk out of your life, but what can she do? Manana winds down the window to get some air as the car pulls out of the yard. She doesn’t look back at Venera standing there forlornly.

  A month later Venera hires the dinner hall again. Goderdzi is getting remarried, this time through a matchmaker, to a refugee from Abkhazia.

  The whole school, needless to say, does what it can to support Venera, who seems to want to put her son’s first marriage behind her as quickly as possible and, more importantly, to ensure that her neighbours forget about it too.

  The next day in the courtyard, as Goderdzi lies flat on his back under his car surrounded by other young men, Lela walks past Koba and – quietly, so no one can hear – says, ‘I need to see you.’

  They meet at the end of Kerch Street. Lela opens the car door and gets in. Koba seems pleased; he drives off, heading out of town along the Tianeti Highway. Lela looks out of the window at the road, the houses, the dogs sprawled on the carriageway, at the handful of people walking along, strangers who have no idea that, at that very moment, Koba is taking Lela to the woods. The thought makes her happy.

  Koba turns off the main road onto a narrow dirt track. There are cornfields to the left and right, nothing but green as far as the eye can see, and up ahead an empty track which skirts a low mound, where a red-brown cow stands grazing, before rising in the distance and disappearing into the forest.

  Koba starts getting undressed. He’s not wearing the palm trees today but a blue-and-black checked shirt with a white T-shirt underneath. He’s thin and bony. He takes off his jeans and lays them on the back seat.

  ‘Take your clothes off,’ he tells Lela. She stubs her cigarette out carefully, tucks what’s left into the front pocket of her shirt and starts to undress.

  By now Koba is sitting in just his pants and socks. His pants are sticking up in the middle, as if they’re stretched taut over a cone. Koba pulls a condom out of his wallet. Lela’s half undressed, wearing only her T-shirt and knickers. She lowers the seat back. Koba tugs at her knickers, grunts at her to take them off. He takes off his pants and rolls the condom onto his cock. Skinned animal, thinks Lela. She’s still got one foot in her knickers when Koba shoves his cock in its little latex coat inside her and groans. Koba starts moving, then yanks Lela’s T-shirt up and kneads away at her left breast as if he’s trying to get dough off his fingers. He’s starting to sweat. Lela tries to match his rhythm so he’ll come quickly but Koba doesn’t like it. He wants to be the only one controlling the in-and-out, in-and-out. Lela’s got her legs up high in the air, the soles of her feet pressed against the roof fabric, and she’s taken by surprise when Koba lunges at her lips and presses his enormous mouth against hers. She feels his cold lips and his wet tongue flapping around in her mouth like a dying fish. She feels strange, her stomach tightens, she wraps her feet around Koba’s sweaty back and starts to rock her hips. Koba gets even more excited, but he still won’t let Lela move. He tears his lips away from hers and grabs a foot in each hand. His movements become more frenzied. Lela doesn’t resist. Any desire to move evaporates; the heat in her stomach fades away. With a couple of thrusts of his skinny rump Koba comes, gives a roar and collapses like a deadweight onto Lela.

  A few minutes later they’re dressed again and in the car, heading back down the road towards Tbilisi. The light’s fading. Outside, a handful of people stand with their bags, waiting for a bus, and in that moment Lela thinks this is probably how a husband and wife would sit in their car when they’re heading back in fading light to children waiting at home.

  Koba stops the car some distance from the school and gives Lela five lari.

  Lela walks away, smoking a cigarette. She goes into the gatehouse, lies down and is deeply asleep within minutes.

  Irakli has his next lesson in the gatehouse again. Lela seems out of sorts, sprawled on the bed, motionless and staring at the ceiling.

  Irakli’s eyes are bloodshot. At almost every English lesson recently he’s complained of a headache.

  ‘So, tell me again how you’d say that you want something to eat.’

  ‘You’d say, I’m hungry or I’m starvy.’

  ‘Starving.’

  ‘Yeah,’ replies Irakli.

  ‘Good. Now let’s practise some vocab,’ says Marika.

  Irakli sighs deeply and gives Lela a look that says he can’t take much more.

  ‘Hey, you know what?’ Lela sits bolt upright. ‘Can’t you teach him some proper vocab?’

  ‘What do you mean, “proper vocab”?’ Marika asks.

  Irakli perks up. ‘Swear words,’ he offers.

  ‘You know, the really useful stuff. Like… What’s the English for, er… manhood?’ Lela coughs pointedly.

  Irakli snorts. Lela lets it go. Marika blushes.

  ‘It’s dick,’ she says, sounding bemused.

  ‘What?’ says Lela, not expecting an answer that quickly.

  ‘Yeah, it’s dick,’ says Marika confidently.

  ‘Can you call someone that too?’ Lela asks, laughing. ‘Like, Shut up, dick!’

  ‘Why would he want to?’ asks Marika.

  ‘He just would, all right? If he doesn’t need to, he won’t, but if he does need to he’s hardly going to phone us from the States to ask how, is he? Let’s just teach him now!’

  ‘I’m not really sure…’ Marika ponders. ‘Piss off, you dick… That might work, I guess. I dunno. I never learned to swear, never needed to. I only know that one because a guy in my class kept asking if I wanted to see his dick-tionary… I can ask around, if you really want to know. I know some people.’

  ‘We do want to know. He can learn dog and cat when he’s over there – we should be teaching him what to say so that nobody gives him a hard time!’

  ‘OK, fine. What else?’ says Marika, tearing a sheet from Irakli’s notebook and holding her pen at the ready.

  Irakli comes alive. Here, at last, is something to make it all worthwhile.

  ‘OK,’ says Lela, sitting cross-legged on the bed and staring out of the window. ‘Have you got Piss off, you dick down?’

  ‘Yeah, got that.’

  ‘Then how about something like, “Get your hands off me, you old tramp.”’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Marika says, laughing. ‘Do they even have tramps in America? I’ll have to see what I can do with that one.’

  ‘And find out how you’d threaten to tear someone a new arsehole if they don’t leave you alone.’

  Irakli giggles. Marika notes it down.

  ‘Oh, what about…’ says Irakli, desperate to contribute something to his emergency phrasebook but unable to think of anything rude enough. ‘How would I ask someone not to kidnap me or, er –’

  ‘Wait,’ Lela interrupts. ‘Make it something about breaking every bone in their body, one by one.’

  Marika writes it down.

  ‘I wouldn’t actually go round saying this stuff in America, though. Things are different over there. It’s not like Georgia.’

  ‘Just keep writing. He’ll use it if he needs it. Have you ever heard him swear?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘And you think that means he doesn’t know any swear words? He swears like a trooper when he needs to, and good for him! Or do you want people to push him around?’

  ‘OK, fine,’ says Marika, and carries on writing. ‘Break every bone… one by one…’

  ‘There you go!’ says Lela. ‘That’ll do for now. We’ll think of some more later.’

  Marika gets up to g
o. Lela gives her five lari. She still owes her ten for the last two weeks, but promises to pay her back soon.

  Madonna comes to visit. The children swarm around her like bees around a walking beehive.

  Dali rushes off to look for Lela and Irakli. She arrives at the door of the gatehouse completely out of breath, throws it open and exclaims, ‘Madonna’s here!’

  Standing in the doorway, her wild hair silhouetted against the sun, Dali looks like some outlandish pear-shaped fairy-tale character.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘The Americans have sent photos!’ Then she spins around and dashes off again. For just a moment, Dali looks like one of the children, running at full tilt to embrace a moment of joy amid the monotony of her daily existence.

  Lela throws her shoes on and she and Irakli race after Dali.

  In Tiniko’s office they find Tiniko, Madonna, Dali and a large group of children poring over the photos, which Madonna has arranged on her ample lap.

  ‘Look, Irakli, it’s your new parents! Your mum, there, and your dad,’ says Madonna.

  Dali starts crying. The photo shows a couple standing in front of a carefully manicured lawn: a tall man with greying hair, a large moustache and a sincere smile, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, and a broad-hipped woman with a wide smile and straight grey hair hanging loose on her shoulders, wearing a long, colourful skirt and a white shirt.

  ‘That’s them! That’s John and Deborah,’ says Madonna gleefully. ‘Such good people, you simply cannot imagine! I spoke to some journalists and they’re going to come and talk to you – they were ever so interested! And the Ministry are just beside themselves! They’re being ever so helpful…’

  ‘Well, Irakli? Do you like the look of Deborah and John, dear?’ asks Dali.

  ‘I guess.’

  Lela stares down at John and Deborah, at their faces, their clothes and their lawn. Right at the edge of the photo she can see the front end of a car.