The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischwili

(a very underappreciated skill: the ability to curse well in times when the world around you is falling apart).

There are some things about which all people should feel the same. And see in the same way.’ ‘And what would those things be?’ ‘For example, that the sun is wonderful, and that spring can work miracles; that the sea is deep, and water soft. That music is magical when it is well played. That toothache is a dreadful business, and ballet the most beautiful thing in the world.’

‘Someone who needs a veil, an object, even one made of silk, between themselves and the world is afraid of life. They’re afraid to experience things, to really feel them. And I think life is far too short and far too wonderful not to really look at it, not to really grab it, not to really live it.’

And since these were troubled times, and one never knew which way the wind would blow, one had to act quickly. Even in matters of the heart. *

‘Men always want to be in charge of you. What kind of life is that? I may as well have been born a dog; even as a dog I would have more freedom,’ she complained to Lida, who just shook her head in horror and accused her younger sister of blasphemy.

When somebody was facing the firing squad, their life could be bought for around four litres of sunflower oil and three litres of vodka.

Alone, she was at least able to carry on dreaming of the life she had once wanted to lead, which had nothing in common with the one she was leading now.

He wasn’t yet interested in knowing how very alike the score of life and the score of death can be.

They lent each other happiness. They lent each other the present, and gave each other memories for the future.

She asked herself why every attempt she made to unite her family ended in war.

earth, tasted it on her tongue. If she could swallow the bitterness, she would taste the essential thing: this love for her son, fragile, almost painful, physically present yet at the same time soft as butter — this love that eclipsed all other feelings. A love they would never have been able to cut out of her. A love that ripped her apart from inside, that pinched her with every move she made, a thousand times worse than the stitches.

The war had beaten, shot, obliterated the dreams from his body, from his head.

Hunched over the lines his friend had written, Kostya Jashi understood what it was to lose. He had lost. He was fatally wounded, but his death throes would last a lifetime. For this war was not a war against enemies; it was a war he had waged against the people he loved.

Kitty knew nothing of the path this woman had travelled, and she didn’t think she wanted to know, but there had certainly been a landslide in her life, a colossal, brutal landslide that had torn the ground from beneath her feet and taught her to fly. Of this, Kitty was convinced.

And he remembered the war. He remembered the gulag. He remembered the dehumanisation he had experienced, which was apparently so easy to accept, as if the true nature of mankind were to be inhuman.

what would happen if the world’s collective memory had retained different things and lost others. If we had forgotten all the wars and all those countless kings, rulers, leaders, and mercenaries, and the only people to be read about in books were those who had built a house with their own hands, planted a garden, discovered a giraffe, described a cloud, praised the nape of a woman’s neck.

And the more I think about it, the less I understand you, Kostya, the less I’m able to grasp how someone who grew up surrounded by so many women can understand so little about them.

we do things with a specific aim in mind and sometimes we achieve something completely different,

‘I tried to prevent it.’ ‘And you didn’t! And do you know why? Because we’re not all-powerful, and we can’t save anyone! When are you going to understand?’

Creating the idea of an enemy for oneself releases a destructive power. Because it is not the enemy who creates mistrust, but mistrust that creates the enemy. MERAB MAMARDASHVILI

In Russia, people believed in the power of the authorities, so they had never learned anything other than to live in constant fear of them. In Georgia, though, this fear was merely feigned: people here assumed on principle that those in power were dishonest and corrupt, and so would think in advance of ways to cheat, trick, or bribe them. They didn’t believe in a system, or in any ideology; apart from, perhaps, the ideology of their own hedonism.

I’m sure I would have been a wanted child, conceived in love, if Thekla had survived the era that was no longer hers, if Stasia had been allowed to follow Peter Vasilyev, if Ramas Iosebidze had prevented his wife from removing her mask at the New Year’s ball, if Ida had conquered hope, if my grandfather had found the door between sea and horizon and opened it, if operating tables had not been used in schoolrooms, if Andro Eristavi had learned that, as a consequence of his mistaken beliefs, a child was ripped from Kitty’s womb, if Kitty had kept Death at bay, if she had stayed, if the world had castrated the Little Big Men before they could sow their seed, if the ghosts had been allowed to finish singing their songs, and if hunger had not been stronger than love.

But don’t hurt anybody just because they’ve hurt you: it’ll come back like a boomerang. It won’t lessen your own suffering. You need to understand that people don’t hurt you because you’re stupid or ugly; they hurt you because they’re envious of you.’

And without realising what was happening to me as I eavesdropped on these strange stories through the crack in the door, I was certainly aware that this moment would have consequences for me, too. Perhaps that was the day I realised that so many other stories were already written into that of my own short, ordinary life, and had their place alongside the thoughts and memories I was gathering for myself, which helped me to grow.

naive as I was, I believed that words could be a substitute for love and remembering could make amends for the past. I was wrong. Of course I was wrong.

The panic that now broke out seemed to me like an uncontrollable virus, airborne and infecting everyone, but giving each of them different symptoms. It crippled me.

‘And if you don’t know who you are, then look at all the possible versions of you, find the most impossible one, and become that,’

‘When times are bad, business is good for confectioners — that’s what my father always said.’

I ran. I cycled. I walked. I fled. I had no time to miss anyone or anything; I had no time to grieve, no time to laugh, no time for regret, remorse, reflection. No time to be lovesick, no time to live. I functioned, and I did that splendidly.

Without my self-hatred, what would I have had left? What could I then have used to keep hold of the past? With what emotions could I then have faced the world, and, above all, what motivation would I have had to go on living?

Once again, time stood still for me. Once again, I had to go back — but this time, it was in order to move forward.