Once Upon a Time

MEMOIR

by Dato Turashvili

1
         This book begins as a fairytale, because this story began as a fairytale, and it is called a romance because this story, truthfully, is a tale of love.
         And love can be hysterical, if this love were taken away two hundred years ago, but you still want to find it again now, just the way you wanted it back then when you first discovered they had lied to you. They’d been lying to you continuously, ever since they first lied to you two hundred years ago, telling you that there’s no other way, because even in cloudy weather the only thing you could see from Georgia is Moscow. In our Soviet childhood, our fathers had a strange joke, which now sounds unbelievable, but back then fathers would actually say to their children, “I’m going to show you Moscow!” and would unexpectedly grab the little ones by their ears and lift them up high.
         Not only was this strange, it was also a fairly painful joke, but the point here is not the pain of having your ears pulled. The saddest thing was the consciousness we had of being an occupied nation. Never did a single Soviet Georgian father ever say to his child, “I’ll show you London or Paris,” because for a Soviet citizen the world began and ended in Moscow. For Georgians, Moscow and the Soviet Empire were the strongest in the world, a superpower taking on the cosmos, and those who didn’t think so had been shot long ago, or were in jail, or inside their kitchens sipping Georgian tea—which that hero of socialist labor, Tamar Q’upunia, had picked from tea plants with record-breaking speed. There were some skeptics, who would drink wine instead of tea every day as a sign of protest. They would hang out on the birzha, or street corners of Tbilisi, until police approached them with the inevitable command, “Disperse immediately, you bums.” They would scatter immediately.
         On April 12, 1961, in the Vera neighborhood of Tbilisi, on the corner of Petr Melikishvili and Iakob Nikoladze Streets, several young citizens were standing proudly in front of the former pub Dance-Geurka shortly before the police appeared. They were shooting the breeze: loud, relaxed, and carefree. Robizona Jamaspishvili, a local resident of the neighborhood, who had partied all night, had now sobered up and was walking very slowly toward his native birzha as if he were going to work. On exactly that morning, as mankind well knows, for the first time in the history of that same mankind, the human cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin managed to fly into outer space. When the friends shared this information with the hungover Georgian youth just arriving in the birzha, he answered with a phrase that has gone down in history:
         “Do you think that I, Robizona Jamaspishvili, am going to believe that?!”
         It didn’t matter how unbelievable the success of the Soviet space program was for Robizona Jamaspishvili. Yuri Gagarin still flew into space, whence he passionately greeted all of mankind—and especially Anna Magnani—and then returned peacefully to earth. To propagandize the superiority of the Soviet Union, lucky Yuri Gagarin was paraded throughout the world with balloons and flowers, and he was the first Soviet person who smiled not only at citizens of socialist countries, but at the entire world. Possibly he later became a casualty of his own smile, when he started to drink from sorrow, and became completely uncontrollable—and correspondingly undesirable for the Soviet government. He disappeared as if into the sky, as did millions of other people in the Soviet homeland.
         Yuri Gagarin no longer existed and therefore, neither did the problem that he caused the Soviet government after he returned from abroad, which was that he would always talk openly about everything he liked in the West. He was especially crazy about real American jeans, and dreamed about producing real jeans in his native Soviet Union, so that Soviet workers would have good jeans and they, just like American workers, would fly proudly through the streets of their Soviet cities.

         If anyone else had doubts, Gagarin at least knew for a fact that in the world at that time the Soviet Union had no peer in the conquest of space, and so producing jeans shouldn’t be difficult. However, Yuri Gagarin did not know that in order to sew jeans, you needed something more than a needle and thread, something that simply did not exist in the Soviet Union. But the desire to defeat capitalist superiority was so great that in Soviet Georgia, and to be specific, in the men’s clothing factory in the town of Khashuri, they began sewing jeans. The location was not an accident, because in nearby Surami, Georgian Jews were selling real jeans under the table. Thus, this historic program of the Georgian Soviet government, a landmark event for its Central Committee, was called “Jeans Defeated by Jeans!” in the corridors of power.
         The program worked out nicely, and the first Georgian jeans made in the Khashuri clothing factory carried the fine brand name of the Bakuriani Ski Resort. But it turned out that it was still very difficult to realize this program without high-grade goods, unobtainable because of reasons that were well-known to everyone. Those Georgian jean-like pants would last only for a single wearing, from Khashuri to Bakuriani, and then you could throw them away on the outskirts of Bakuriani without any regrets. So, Yuri Gagarin passed away without becoming worthy of wearing Soviet jeans, and his joke, which was also a prediction, came true: the Soviet Union fell apart precisely because the superpower that conquered the cosmos simply couldn’t sew a pair of jeans . . .

2
         It was written in Soviet history textbooks that Yuri Gagarin cut a window into the cosmos, and was the first ever to do so. It was also written in a similar fashion that Peter the Great had cut a window too, but his window was into Europe. We did not know exactly what it meant to cut a window into Europe, but we suspected that it was more or less the same thing that Gozala was doing on Chavchavadze Avenue.
         Gozala was a Kurd or Yazidi, or both, and she would sit on Chavchavadze bedecked in a vast number of the most beautiful dresses, like a colorful bridge between Tbilisi and Europe and the rest of humanity. She was as old as our city, counted from the day it came into existence, because Gozala had lived in Tbilisi since the day she had come into existence.
         She lived with her relatives somewhere on Ateni Street, in the Vera River Gorge, before they built skyscrapers there; and the sound of their songs would rise even higher than skyscrapers when they held a wedding or a holiday celebration to glorify one of their gods. For the most part they would pray basically to the sun and worship the sun, which we, unlike them, had abandoned a long time ago. We had kept for ourselves only fire worship, and that only for the young. Even then, in childhood, the little children would remember, with the help of some kind of genetic memory, the exact day when in every village in Georgia, and in every neighborhood of Tbilisi, they should light crackling bonfires and perform centuries-old rituals around them. And the adults, our Soviet parents, forgot not only our Zoroastrian and pagan past, but they even forgot our Christian present, at least temporarily: they thought the fires burning in the Tbilisi streets and courtyards were to honor the soul and memory of Giordano Bruno, the sixteenth-century freethinking martyr.
         Gozala herself was not a fire-worshipper; she worshipped the sun, just like her ancestors had for thirty centuries. She would warm herself in that same sun on Chavchavadze Avenue, and under the scorching Tbilisi sun she would guard us—the Soviet children of atheist parents. We would eagerly save the money they sent with us from home, sometimes skipping our meals and not eating at lunch break, because after our classes Gozala would be waiting for us—our only window from Georgia to Europe, the only proof that Georgia existed on the same planet as the rest of humanity. Gozala carried the three signs of the rest of civilization: “Pedro,” “Donaldo,” and “Super Bazooka.”
         “Pedro” cost 50 kopeks, “Donaldo,” a ruble, and the price of “Super Bazooka” fluctuated according to demand. She kept the “Pedro” under her twelfth dress, and when Gozala would search for that hidden bit of civilization, we would tremble with anticipation of contact with that civilization; and when Gozala would finally extract the desired “Pedro” from under that twelfth dress, we would chew it like forbidden fruit from the garden of Eden and were even ready to get kicked out of heaven for the sake of this pleasure . . . But the Soviet police thought otherwise. The militia was fighting black marketeers and dealers (a black-marketeer on Soviet TV screens was extremely terrifying), but the black marketeers knew very well that those poised to arrest Gozala on Ateni Street were themselves in need of “Pedro” and jeans, just like the rest of the Soviet Georgian citizens, and for that reason Gozala continued to sit on Chavchavadze Avenue with her 1,500 colorful, gorgeous dresses floating and unfurled.
         Gozala was more plump than fat, and when she sat on Chavchavadze like a well-groomed but tired peacock, perhaps she herself didn’t know that she was a descendent of the oldest Assyrian civilization, and not simply an “Aisori,” or “Assyrian,” as she and they were called in Tbilisi.
         In Tbilisi, they settled in other places as well, but on Ateni Street, on the banks of the Vera River, Gozala’s relatives, having once settled there, were the noisiest, because gypsies also lived there—gypsies, who had lingered behind in Georgia on their way from India to Europe, and were no longer in a hurry to get to Europe. Here, on the banks of the Vera River, at the end of Ateni Street, was everything for which the gypsies had left India. A gypsy can find gypsy happiness everywhere he’s searching for freedom. Throughout the entire Soviet empire, indeed, only the gypsies were free, and only the gypsies lived just as they desired and even how they pleased. For them alone, the border did not exist, the border that fenced off the Soviet peoples from the rest of civilization. No one knew how the gypsies dismantled and dissolved borders in places where even birds would have had difficulty crossing. But gypsies were free, like birds, and what’s more, although they were unable to fly, like the birds, they did not have passports. And no one knew where the gypsies got everything Soviet children were missing; no one knew where Gozala got the “Pedro” and “Donaldo” we so desired. Though Gozala was not a gypsy, but was a descendent of an ancient Sumerian-Assyrian civilization in Tbilisi, on Ateni Street, on the forsaken banks of the Vera River.

         How could it be such trouble for us to go to the Ateni Gorge for “Pedro” (when high-schoolers would travel from Tbilisi to Surami to obtain jeans), but there was simply no need for this. Although she hadn’t graduated from either “GIPA” or “ESME,” institutions of higher learning in Tbilisi, Gozala understood the questions of marketing and management quite well without a diploma, and definitely knew that sitting there on crowded Chavchavadze Avenue in front of the largest school, after classes let out, would be most profitable for developing her business, and for the well-being of her much-tortured people.
         Gozala was our primary window onto Europe, but Georgia at that time was connected via several other (small) skylights with the rest of civilization, and along with jeans, other kinds of chewing gum would reach Tbilisi as well. In Georgia, for understandable reasons, chewing gum had many different names, and was called “zhuvachki,” as well as “zhivachki,” “zhuachki,” and even “zivachki,” variations on the Russian words for chewing gum. There were people in Soviet Georgia who called chewing gum “kevi” (probably influenced by the Georgian word for pine trees), and in the end, this term won out. But within the Soviet government the desire to produce local Soviet chewing gum, to protect the people from pernicious Western influences, gained strength, and for the first time (since the 1917 Revolution) the Kremlin made a historic decision during a special session of the Politburo. The session was lengthy and difficult, because the speakers conversed for a long time about the capitalists’ treacherous and perfidious plans to corrupt Soviet youth, and finally, when Leonid Brezhnev asked who would save the future of Soviet youth, a deathly silence fell over the session.
         The silence was broken when a representative of Soviet Armenia cautiously cleared his throat, and, with equal caution, expressed his supposition (viewed in this way) about Armenia’s future messianic mission, should the Armenians be given permission to produce chewing gum.
         In a very short time, the first Soviet chewing gum factory actually opened quite close to Yerevan, and very soon the chewing gum produced in that factory was sold throughout the entire Soviet empire, as well as in stores everywhere in Tbilisi. This was a truly difficult innovation for Soviet children to believe, but those are truly blessed who have not chewed Yerevan gum, because in reality, it was a rock, and not gum, but the all-enduring Soviet Pioneers survived these new pains as well.
         The pain-resistant Pioneer organization was both strong, and old, because it appeared around the same time the Bolsheviks brought about armed revolution in Russia and took control of political power. There was not much to invent, because the Boy Scouts already existed, and the Soviet government simply added Soviet attributes and ideology to the British experience. The difference, however, was precisely that you became a scout (for example, in England) by choice, but for every free child in the Soviet Union, it was obligatory to be a Pioneer, and you would be known as such, without fail, by a red tie around your neck. You could also hang yourself by this red tie, but the Bolsheviks’ treachery was precisely that when you started to think about hanging yourself, you were no longer a Pioneer—and the Komsomol pin was waiting for you. It was no longer obligatory to join the Komsomol (although it was popular), but it had an advantage in that they no longer required you to wear the red tie, and most importantly, the pin was very small. It’s true that, officially, the Komsomol pin had to be with you at all times, but the school uniform was such (during the Soviet period) that you became indifferent to everything, including the Komsomol.
         In the beginning, the Soviet school uniform for boys was made of stone, which they’d flattened and sewn into pants and jackets, although not every kind of stone was used, naturally. The Russians preferred to attach importance to cobblestones, which water could no longer reach (for which reason, those rocks had a stable color). Even then it was difficult to say specifically what color the Soviet school uniform was, and now, it’s particularly difficult. It was completely unknown to humanity before then, an indescribable color, which was neither part of the rainbow, nor of any other stratum on earth. However, the Bolsheviks couldn’t tolerate uncertainty, and later they changed the school uniform and the parents sighed with relief, because earlier in the Soviet Union, a pen (the so-called “pasta”) appeared, and the students would carry an inkwell dangling from their bags to school. Naturally, the inkwell had to be filled with ink (to dip their pens into) and it’s easy to imagine how the Soviet students returned home, stained all over with ink. Of course, this was not the jet-black lake ink (from Berber territory, in Algeria), used by Shota Rustaveli, the medieval Georgian author of the classic Knight in the Tiger Skin. This Soviet ink would leave a blue stain on the student’s clothes (as well as on the brain). So, since the ink was dark blue (and the Soviet student would still get dirty), the Soviet government decided that the school uniform, too, had to be dark blue. This dark blue innovation was called a Moscow uniform.

3
         In reality, every uniform (school, army, and aviation) came only from Moscow, but those dark blue pants and jackets were called a “Moscow uniform” because in the beginning, only students who lived in Moscow wore this innovation. The capital of the empire was Moscow, and we were only a provincial, regional republic, and it would still take some time for the new uniforms to reach Georgia. Although there still were Georgian fathers (probably even more than in other Soviet republics) who couldn’t wait (they wanted so much to make their children happy) that they would fly to Moscow. There, in Moscow, somewhere close to the Kremlin, were two stores, two Georgian delights, where even Georgian women would patter around in their slippers (if they were staying in one of the nearby hotels), but Moscow uniforms were primarily bought by Georgian fathers. They would buy them from one of those two large stores, whose names every Georgian mother knew, although the meaning of these names was as misunderstood and inexplicable to them as the different kinds of slippers, such as open-toed plostebi and slip-on chustebi.
         In the two largest stores in Moscow and the Soviet Empire (where you could see Georgian women in both chustebi and plostebi), they sometimes sold imported shoes. Even then, the Georgians were particularly sensitive to shoes, and even then, there was a special demand for shoes in Georgia. Because of this, the news of the appearance of a new batch of shoes (so-called imported) in both GUM and TSUM would immediately reach Soviet Georgia more than a thousand kilometers away from Moscow. The information about the renewed work of GUM and TSUM would spread to Tbilisi (for well-known reasons) with particular rapidity, and the Georgians would fly to Moscow again. For the most part, these shoes were “Tsebo” (Czechoslovakian or some other socialist-made shoes) and rarely “Topman” or “Salamandra” (capitalist produced), but Georgians, from the start, didn’t like walking barefoot any more than they liked (for example) standing in line. However, they didn’t have to stand in line, because they would even buy the line (they’d write their number in line directly on the hands of the Soviet citizens standing outside the store) and for the Georgian men who had already acquired shoes, all they had left to do was to screw the women, local or otherwise, who had come to visit from the rest of Russia and stayed there in Moscow.
         It was pretty easy for Georgian males to enter into intimate relationships with the local inhabitants, because for the majority of Russian women, there was no sexual alternative. It was very easy to find this kind of women in Moscow, or in restaurants in any Russian city, and most importantly, they weren’t “prostitutes” in a classical or contemporary sense. They didn’t ask for money in exchange for sex, but would often be satisfied with an invitation to a restaurant. Those satisfied and happy women (as a rule) had foreign beehive hairdos, and were crazy about dancing. Given the influence of this hairstyle in the 1970s, the advertisements in Tbilisi beauty salon windows were pretty surreal: “We’re featuring Polish topknots . . .”
         Poland was a strong country and they fought the Russians to the end, but even back then, when they were shooting the Poles for their freedom, the Polish black marketeers would make their way to Soviet Georgia to meet their commercial goals. Moscow’s relationship towards Poland would change, and if the border with Poland was tightly closed from time to time, they would open it fairly often, and let thousands of Soviet tourists go to Poland. Among them were also Georgians (maybe even more than others), and they would bring back real chewing gum from Poland—the kinds Gozala had, or the kinds that were sold near the Tbilisi State Circus by various women from nomadic or wandering tribes.
         Around the Circus (which has recently been taken over by Georgian whores) they even sold magical “chewing gum,” but getting into the Circus was itself entirely problematic, if (for example) the famous Russian illusionist Igor Kio happened to be on tour in Tbilisi. Because there was no other show or entertainment, all Tbilisi and Georgia, young and old, would attend even Otar Ratiani’s performances, but especially when Kio’s circus showed up. The adults would go to the circus with as much pleasure and joy as the young ones, but unlike their children, Georgian fathers’ hearts (and eyes) were also drawn to the circus for other reasons. The circus was, at that time, the only place you could see naked women—although there were some older women among the acrobats, old enough that when they did somersaults and handstands, the audience worried about them. And, already worried, the people would be made even more tense by the live orchestra, which performed a strictly organized repertoire; but everything turned out peacefully in the end.
         The people would disperse, the mothers and children would go home with balloons, and the fathers would wait with flowers in their hands by the back exit of the circus for the self-sacrificing, daring acrobats. The female acrobats (Russians, or in general, Slavs) stayed in a hotel in Saburtalo, where they would celebrate the end of every successful show with champagne.
         In those times, drinking champagne in Tbilisi and all over Georgia, for that matter, was not only a kind of fashion, but was also logical, because in the 1970s, thanks to Soviet Socialist competition (while waiting for a prize-flag from Moscow), Georgian wine was simply ruined. In Georgia, the birthplace of wine, where good wine had existed for seven thousand years, it vanished in the 1970s because the Soviet government compelled Georgian winemakers to increase the production of wine rather than focusing on the quality, and a wine appeared in Georgia which had an unbelievably frightful and indescribable smell and taste.
         Among our country’s many ancient conquerors, the Assyrians were one of the strictest and most demanding, and accepted feudal tribute only in gold from their vassal countries, but (as an exception) they demanded of Georgia wine instead of gold. The Georgian communists (coveting those prize-flags) ruined this gold-wine in the 1970s so badly that the quality of the wine has not recovered to this day.
         By the way, the famous anecdote about Gareja, when we organized the first demonstrations in front of the university, is a true story and accurately depicts the changes in Georgia in the Shevardnadze era. At that time, we were protesting the destruction of the ancient Georgian monastery of Gareja by Soviet troops. During one of the very first protests, a taxi driver who drove by the university asked why the students were so upset, and when he was told that we were protesting the events at Gareja, he blessed us sincerely, and equally sincerely uttered that legendary phrase: “I’m crazy about you kids, and I’ll die for you, even though Gareja has been so ruined you can no longer drink it.” At that time, one of the vintage wines was called “Gareja,” and sometimes it was truly frightful, but as students, we still drank it because it was cheap. Georgians, who were accustomed to the best wines, categorically refused to partake of the inferior wine and started to tuck into champagne instead. Champagne (as you recall) is precisely the carbonated liquid that you need to sip slowly, but if Georgians were able to sip drinks we would be members of the European Union by now.

(translated from the Georgian by Mary Childs with Lia Shartava and Elizabeth Scott Tervo)