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Her Georgian Treasure

       Tina stepped out of her father’s ransacked apartment and looked around cautiously. The elevator was a darkened twist of metal, defying gravity like a knot of space junk caught mid-flight, so she decided to take the stairs, passing quickly round seven darkened landing, past the darkened doors where neighbors hid. This was a modern block in the most expensive part of town, but now, unnaturally silent and broken, it seemed like a gagged hostage, murmuring and booby trapped in its own filth. She had just returned the day before from Moscow, where she had been living for the past 8 years, since 1985, and she had in fact found the entire city of Tbilisi shuttered and sealed, unwilling to let her back in, leaving her vulnerable and exposed on all sides. 

       She inhaled deeply as she reached the open concrete spaces of the ground floor. Here there were no walls to dress the supporting columns so that she felt the weight of countless dark and heavy apartments floating just above her head. She hurried out from under that concrete mass, through the stench of human feces and rotting garbage in the front yard, toward the sunlight of the open road. The stray dogs turned away, but listened to her hurried step, and turned back again when those steps stopped. She stood there on the first scrap of grass, breathing the refreshing air of early summer. Full-bodied air, pregnant with leafy scents and cooled by the waters of the Veghe River, running unseen and faithfully cold nearby in its own green gorge.

      Tina looked around at her Vakeh district, the silent buildings lined up against the expansive park, then across at the green hills way beyond the ugly road. She thought about the Tortoise Lake, the small liquid creature that lay nestled for eons in a high valley up there. She would love to go there now, but no one goes there now, she imagined, at least not alone.

      And she was alone, here to get her last things and take them back to Moscow. In these 12 hours in Tbilisi she hadn't spoken to a soul, except the taxi driver and the weeping Mrs. Didishvili across the hall. Everyone she knew, her friends, family and colleagues, all were unreachable. Some had vanished, and others had slipped beyond the chasms of factionalism, into the camps of opposing political parties. There was nothing to do but leave as soon as possible, before yet another interruption of air traffic out of the city.

      But there was one more thing, one more place that she had to see: the Museum of Fine Arts.

      She had always felt that this museum belonged to her in some very personal way. When she was a little girl her Aunt Nino had worked there in the archeological section, and Tina had often gone in to visit her. The whole staff knew her and greeted her with all the festive gestures that adults make for visiting children: as though a party had begun just for her. Then she would settle down for hours, listening to the discussions of those serious researchers: the history of Georgia and its arts, the modern political situation. And even in her childishness, she knew that the words were unique, that things were never discussed quite this way anywhere else. Then someone would always remember little Tina and turn to her with some happy story that had happened many years before, or with details of some intriguing find during the previous summer's archeological expeditions.

      Ah, and there was one memory that was more precious than the rest combined: her walks with Mr. Bakradze. He was one of Aunt Nino's best friends and he was very handsome, with a square face and a foreshortened forehead that made him look like a bas-relief come to life. He was clever, and full of knowledge, but also jolly and kind. Tina loved him so much, and hoped endlessly that he and Aunt Nino would marry. Tina had even told him of these hopes, as she told him so many of her secrets. He had simply laughed and hugged her tightly.

      Their walks were like a sacred ritual. Mr. Bakradze would see her coming down the hall and his eyes would turn as round as those of an ancient Persian statue. Then as he kissed her cheeks he would say,

      "Hello my princess, today we can see your dowry."

      They would then descend the great stairs, pass before the sleepy lady with the registry book. They never bothered to sign in, like ordinary people, but went right through the vault doors into the Golden Treasury. There, ancient pins, rings and gem encrusted necklaces lay on luxuriant velvet displays, as though just strewn there by beauty loving Georgians who had lived thousands of years ago right here in these Georgian lands. Tina had looked at those brilliant adornments with unreasoning fascination, pressing her nose against the heavy glass cases till the cartilage ached.

      "They're all yours, my princess, being kept here nice and safe until you need them."

      And she had believed him thoroughly.

    But nothing had been safe. The rumors had spread throughout the city and had reached even to Moscow: the treasures were gone, lost in the chaos of civil war. Could it be true? Were even the sacred bonds to the most ancient Georgians just an illusion? Or was this yet another wartime rumor, the ones that rose up and blew away like sewer vapors in the heat of summerday?

     She walked past the deserted bus stop at the entrance to the park, past the long, terraced fountains that she loved; they were dry now and looked drastically shrunken. She turned onto the boulevard that led downtown. There was no electricity for the Metro and no gasoline for the buses, so she would have to walk. Anyone who could had already left the broken city to stay with relatives elsewhere in the country and the street was eerie in its silence. This made her uncomfortable, but walking under the canopy of trees along the path of the boulevard soon soothed her. With their twisted branches stretching longingly toward the sky, they looked so healthy; she knew them and she understood their intentions... unlike the cars that came careening along on the roadway, piloted by apparent madmen with mysterious sources of scarce fuel.

      As she approached the city center from the open spaces of Vakeh, after the rows of refugee barracks and the small market, the air got heavier and more difficult to breathe. For so long she had imagined how wonderful it would feel to return to Tbilisi after eight years of study at the Medical Institute in Moscow.... and especially now, to a free, democratic Georgia. How macabre all had turned out; freedom was yet another murderous tool in the hands of demagogues. And now Tbilisi lay in agony, coughing bombs and automatic fire, and bleeding human blood.

      Waves of guilt came over her as she thought about her happiness in Moscow. Somehow she was to blame: had she loved that city too much, that Russian city? The shops, the Arbat and Gorky Street, the Asian provincials in town for documents, gaping in the thrill of the metropolis, the foreigners with their fancy cameras and their hurried snippets of Business English. She had loved the crowds in Moscow, the diversity of their faces and minds, the power of ordinary people who could simply and proudly lead their lives independently of each other. Moscow had taught her to lead herself freely, and that was what she wanted now for Georgia.

      Yes, she and others had loved Moscow too much, and now Tbilisi had to pay.

      She was getting closer. She saw the beautiful theater, its doors padlocked. The Gastronom, the great, proud central delicatessen, looked amazingly shabby, next to the black and red and yellow private shops. And the people slipped in and out of the darkened doorways, unseeing the armed guards that obstructed their paths. There were still many hours of sunlight left, but people hurried anyway, huffing the unhealthiness of open air, even on this beautiful summer day. Moscow could never give her such a summer day, nor could Berlin, she was sure: that unknown enamel and steel German city where her sister and father had fled to await her.

      Rebel soldiers had taken over the city for a time during the war, and during weeklong lulls in the battles they amused and enriched themselves by harassing the city's wealthy. It wasn't long before they found Tina's father, the most famous art collector in Tbilisi. They started calling on the phone, but soon they were taunting at the windows, their shouts of "thief" and "elitist scum" sounding deceptively feeble seven floors up. Then, within a few days they were camped out in the hallway outside the apartment, drinking, shouting and pounding on the apartment door. They exacted tolls from tenants passing on the steps and exit fees at the elevator.

Tina's father didn't dare come out, so they eventually became impatient and broke the locks. They sold him his mail for fifty US Dollars. When Tina's sister unexpectedly fell into their hands they sold her to him for all the money in the house, and when she begged to leave, they sold her a transit pass for all of mother's jewelry.

      The paintings and carpets started disappearing. And when the soldiers saw how easy it was to sell these off cheaply at consignment shops, they started taking lamps, silverware and all the movable furniture. For the larger objects they needed to borrow the car, so they took the car keys as well. Within a few days they had carried away everything sellable. Now they became angry that Tina's father could produce no more money, and on the first night of poverty they beat him cruelly, and told him to go beg his friends for loans to pay them rent. He ran out to the street for the first time in more than three weeks, with just his passport and the clothes on his back, and the trickle of blood coming down from his nose. He didn’t stop till he got to Berlin.

      Tina arrived at Rustaveli Prospekt, the central boulevard of Tbilisi. If she looked in certain directions, and limited her vision, she could make everything look comfortingly normal. But it was useless: for the very first expansive view revealed some charred buildings, and even a cursory inspection showed up bullet holes on every surface.

      She couldn't bear to look at the damage to the lovely hotel right at the center of the boulevard, and she had to skip right over the rubble, all that was left of the great shops just beyond it. But that was not so difficult, because now she was able to train her eyes eagerly on her goal, as it came into view down the boulevard: the Georgian State Museum of Fine Arts. This old former seminary had been made into a grand museum after the communist revolution. Now war had come right to its doorstep: it had the unfortunate honor of being located directly across the street from the Government Palace, where the heaviest fighting of the civil war had taken place.

      She looked fearfully at the facade of the museum, twisting and aching her neck. It was still standing, she noted with relief, and if she squinted quite a bit, she might even imagine that nothing was wrong. She could do that, just as one can live for many years, unseeing the blemishes and scars of a loved one. But Moscow had taught her to want to see, and she saw the bolted doors, the fire charred windows, the uncountable bullet hole desecration on the masonry and marbles. It looked derelict and abandoned. She turned away, but that did not help: there across the street, she saw workmen repairing the Government Palace. Of course, big offices behind strong walls, that's important, she scorned. But the museum, the useless museum, that must wait for ever another day.

      Things were missing everywhere: the empty pedestal in the square at the distant end of Rustaveli Prospekt. People, both stone and bronze and flesh and blood were gone. Aunt Nino had retired years ago, after suffering for many years from the tormenting skin rashes she had picked up annually on those archeological digs. She had never married, and now lived in seclusion far from the city. Mr. Bakradze disappeared when Tina was in her teens. He had been involved in some mysterious scandal and fired from his job. When Tina had asked, Aunt Nino would not explain, only saying it was not a topic for polite conversation. Even the eternal cast iron statue of Lenin was gone, torn down in a premature display of republican euphoria in early 1991.

      And now, according to the gossip, even the golden treasure itself, was gone.

      Tina's dowry, her Georgian treasure! Mrs. Didishvili had said that it had been stolen during the chaos of the fighting and the burning of the museum. No one knew who took it, though there was much speculation: the mafia, the rebels, the defenders, the communists, the Russians, Kitovani and Gamsakhurdia: in other words, The Enemy, whomever the speaker perceived that to be. Tina wondered, politicians? Perhaps the sleepy lady with the registry book took it, or even Mr. Bakradze himself, running off to South America and living in unheard of luxury. But in any case it was gone, melted down and sold for the squalid sum of its dry weight value. She despaired, sure it would never return.

      She walked up to the museum, but found the door locked. Better that way. When she turned away she noticed an old man standing by the side of the building, watching her.

      "Come back another day. Some other day," he said with irritation.

      "Do you work here?" she asked.

      "Yes, but you can't go in, you know. It's not open."

      "But please, sir, just tell me one thing. What about the golden treasures. Have they been touched by the war?"

      "No."

      "I was told that they had been stolen."

      He gave her a scornful look. "Just their beauty has been stolen. The objects are still exactly as they have always been."

      She understood that he was making fun of her, and in her emotional state, the weight of the whole urban scene crushing down on her just now; she had to fight to hold back the tears. The man seemed to notice the anxiousness in her face, and his voice softened a bit.

      "Don't worry. Even the beauty that’s been stripped away will grow back again. It takes time."

      "Are you sure that they are....?"

      "Yes, yes! They are intact!” he waved impatiently. “Silly rumors, stupid people! Come back another day, some other time if you want to see them. You should be thinking about your own problems, and not about a meaningless old museum."

      But she was not assured. Her relief at hearing the rumor denied, however ambiguously, was mixed with the sadness of the golden treasures she now saw so vividly in her mind. They looked like devalued trinkets amid the massive sorrow of Tbilisi. Yes,  their beauty had been savagely shorn from them, just as the old man had said. She turned back around to leave, mumbling goodbye.

            It was a long walk back to the breezier sorrow of Vakeh, and she had to get there before dark, to sift some more through the dirty, trodden artifacts strewn about the floor of the apartment, putting together a few papery mementos that would testify, for a time, that her Georgian family had existed.

She had loved her Georgia, her monuments and buildings, her enormous history, and she had loved her people, her intense, seething people. But now she realized that the love of flesh and the love of stone cannot thrive together in these lands, that the friction of past history and future ambition would leave but a trail of blood and a jumble of dead. Now Georgia’s treasures had been stripped of their beauty, just as Georgia’s people had been stripped of their dignity, of their lives, of their very flesh. Just as their national genius had been stripped of its intelligence, and their history stripped of its truth. She would leave for Moscow at dawn, but she would never love it again, nor Berlin, nor any place, ever again.