Chapter 1

I'll let the writing speak for itself.

Hope and forgiveness

 

-1-

  This is the story of a nineteen year old boy by the name of Michael Leon Axlashvili, or Malxas Levan Axlashvili as his birth certificate says. He lives in Tbilisi, the capitol city of the republic of Georgia, which used to be part of the former Soviet Union. The year is 2008, February, and another Georgian winter lies behind him. It hasn’t been particularly cold this year, although there is something in the air that always gives a particular chill to the skin temperature this time of year. No snow again of course, that only rarely happens in Tbilisi itself, sheltered in the mountains as it is. There’s always plenty of snow in Borjomi, where his uncle Roland has a winter cottage, and in other mountainous areas. But somehow, winter never quite gets to sink its teeth into Michael’s home city.

  The wind whistles as it blows straight at the thin windows of his apartment building, one of the many apartment buildings lining the Tbilisi skyline, such as it is. Skyline may not even be the right word for it, considering this generally implies one can see a line where the ground touches the sky. Not so in Tbilisi, where mountains, hills, slopes and inclines obscure large parts of the city and the sky from view. To many foreigners, walking up and down those steeply inclined streets and driving on the busy, chaotic streets of Tbilisi must not be easy. It takes real effort to walk up the neigh-vertical streets and one must possess a truly fit constitution to be able to take long walks in this city. Good calf muscles anyway. And traffic, well, as Mike’s friend Alexander once jokingly remarked: “Rules? What traffic rules? The only traffic rule we have here is not to hit anything or get hit by anything.” Sadly, that includes not only other traffic and pedestrians but also the many potholes in the roads. The Saakashvili government has been working over the past years to improve matters, but sadly, things are still far from ideal and they probably will remain far from ideal for a long time to come. And that’s not just talking about the roads.

After the Rose Revolution, which trumpeted Mikheil Saakashvili’s rise to power in November 2003, some heads did indeed roll, like Saakashvili had promised. For a while it seemed that with the coming of this new president, the filth would be washed from the Georgian government and the Georgian streets. The government was indeed reformed, the beggars were removed from the streets and so were the street merchants who didn’t have stands. Mike’s still regretful about that to this day, as the street sellers often had great deals, and life in Tbilisi was already hard enough as it was. It’s a terrible thing to know that in one’s own city people starve... to death, if Mike is to believe what he’s been told.  But then again, he doesn’t really hang out in the poorest circles, so he doesn’t have first hand information about that. His mother Diana always took great care to make sure he hung out with ‘the right people’, as she called them, so he wouldn’t get caught up in any of the more seedy practises throughout the city... of which there were plenty.

Now though, everything is different. Convicted murderers are released with governmental pardons, nepotism and favouritism are still rampant everywhere and despite the best efforts of any government, many fear it will take years, if not decades, to rid the country of this crippling corruption that has crept in during Mike’s youth and early teenage years. It is how everyone perceives the world to work, so that is how it must be. Sometimes Michael silently wonders if there isn’t a better way, but then he remembers the people whose lives have been ruined by speaking out against the government and decides to stay away from politics as best he can. Almost three years ago to this day, Zurab Zhvania, at the time Prime Minister of Georgia, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. The official story was that he died from gas emanating from an inadequately ventilated gas heater while staying in the house of Raul Usupov, deputy-governor of the region Kvemo Kartli, who also died in the incident. The president said he’d lost a friend and ally with the death of Zhvania, but it is well known that Zurab had political ambitions himself and opposed many of the presidents plans and ideas. And when even former president Shevardnadze says he believes Zhvania to have been murdered, it does give pause for thought.

The beggars also returned to the streets not too much later, probably because the government didn’t quite know what to do with them either. It may not be in accordance with the rules to beg for money, but charity is a Georgian value, strongly supported by many in the orthodox Georgian church, so it is not easy to tell people not to give money to beggars. Apart from that, it seems the government simply got tired of feeding all the ungrateful mouths... and understandably so.  

There’s another huge whoosh as the wind rages by the window, bringing Mike back from his contemplations to the here and now. It’s still dark outside, but his wrist watch shows it’s 7:13, so it’s almost time to get up anyway. He turns off the alarm clock before it even goes off and swings his feet over the side of the bed. It creaks a bit under his weight as he sits there for a moment. But it’s an old bed, probably twenty years or more, so it’s no more than to be expected. Michael’s mother told him his uncle Ivan used to sleep in it when he was little, before he won a government grant and got to live, study and work in the United States. Nowadays Mike seldom sees uncle Ivan anymore. He’s always so busy. He barely has time to come by once a year. He does something in IT, teaching computers how to do our work more efficiently or something. Mike doesn’t know precisely and there are few here who do really. It’s all highly specialized and truthfully, computers never really got to fascinate him in such a way. He likes to play a game on them sometimes, use them to write his college papers and surf the internet every now and again, but that’s about it. Mike’s more interested in going to the movies, hanging out with his friends and his girlfriend Nadia, playing basketball and soccer and writing awfully bad poetry when the mood hits him.

He shivers. The cold morning air on his naked skin gives him goose bumps. He swings on his bathrobe, puts on his slippers and heads to the bathroom to wash up, careful to avoid the stacks of papers and books everywhere. His mother’s a teacher at one of the universities in town, as is her mother, Michael’s grandmother Khatuna. Both his grandmother and his grandfather Pjotir, who works as a mechanic in a nearby garage are still fully involved in the Georgian workforce, as is customary in Georgia, where things like retirement plans and social security do not exist.

The bathroom is a dark, dilapidated place. The tiles are cracked and dirty, a drain pipe comes down from the ceiling through a hole that has never been properly closed, let alone concealed. A power outlet has at some point been constructed by Pjotir from a bit of wood, a power plug and some power cables with only the bare minimum of insulation on them. Electrocutions due to faulty wiring and accidents are not uncommon in Georgia, as this is how many people provide what they need in their houses. Thank Russian budgeting efforts for that, Michael thinks to himself, As well as for drain pipes that are so thin toilet paper cannot be flushed, lest it clog up the pipes. Typical Russian miserliness, really. These are after all the same people who build Aeroflot jets with fifty rivets when the blueprint specifies four hundred, just to save on material expenditure.    

The water is still running in the grimy sink, as it is all day and most of the evening. If it gets turned off at some point, it doesn’t come back on again for almost a day. The city tries to charge people for water every now and then, but even they know they can’t force people to turn off their taps if the water won’t come back on again later.

How I wish we had more than one evening’s worth of warm water a week here, he thinks for the thousandth time, as his hands feel just how cold the water is. Once a week, on Wednesday evening, they get warm water in the shower, straight from the natural springs up in the mountains. The water always smells somewhat sulphury (or of rotten eggs), but is actually quite revitalising... provided you don’t stay in the shower too long, because then you can pass out.  

Normally, especially on cold mornings, like February has aplenty, Mike prefers to just go for a quick rinse and then get dressed. However, he didn’t sleep well last night, so today he instead sticks his whole head under the tap, letting the cold water run through his hair and down his cheeks and neck. He shivers as the cold pellets trickle down his skin. That’ll surely wake ya up in the morning! He quickly throws a towel over his head and heads back to his room, drying his hair as he goes. As he passes his mother’s room, he notices the light in her room is still off. She probably forgot to set her alarm again. She works too hard.

“Mom, wake up!” he yells into the room. No reply follows, so Mike pushes open the door to the bedroom a bit further and slowly saunters in, drying off his dripping hair in the process.

“Mom! It’s time to get up! Don’t want to be late- Ow!”

In the dusky bedroom, with a towel half coverings his eyes, the boy missed a stack of books and papers lining the wall and knocked into them with his foot. He hastily fumbles for the avalanche of papers and books that ensues, catching most, but not all. A thick, heavy book with an ornate cover falls on the floor with a heavy thud. Tolstoj, the boy notes absentmindedly as he bends to pick up the hefty novel.

Suddenly his mother sits up in the bed, still almost fully clothed from the night before. Her long, light brown hair is all tangled up and for a moment she doesn’t seem to realize where she is.

“Morning, mom, sleep well?”

Something that could’ve been the illegitimate love child of a yawn and a moan escapes his mother as she rubs her eyes and looks around.

“Levan? What time is it?”

“Seven twenty, give or take. Did you fall asleep while working again?”

“Never you mind that, boy. Go set the table for breakfast. I’ll be out in a minute.” 

“Let me get dressed first. I’m freezing my butt off here!”

“Well, hurry. We don’t have a lot of time before the bus comes.”

“Yeah yeah. And maybe you can clean up all those damn books and papers of yours one of these days huh, mom? That room of yours is a death trap! My foot still hurts.”

“Just go already!”

 

Hours later, at around two in the afternoon, Mike stumbles back into the living room, one hand on his stomach, the other holding on to his backpack, lest it slip off his shoulder and tumble onto the ground.

It’d been quite a morning. First, after he and his mother had had a hasty breakfast, they’d hurried to the bus stop, where they’d stood waiting for the bus for well over forty five minutes. It never showed up. What had turned up however, had been a short, balding, fat man in a rusty beige Lada, claiming to be from the bus company. Thick, black smoke billowed from the car’s exhaust as the man told them why the bus wasn’t coming. In Georgia, if a car was functional, it was allowed on the road, no matter the state it was in.

Apparently, as the fat man told it, the bus driver who normally had this route had been in a traffic accident on his way to work earlier that day and the bus company was having some trouble finding a replacement. So they’d sent him around along the bus route to tell everyone the bus wasn’t running for a while. This had meant that Michael and Diana had to walk to the nearest subway station, which was a good thirty minute walk away at least.

Michael didn’t like the subway. He’d been mugged there three times in his lifetime and had seen it happen more times than he’d like to remember. It wasn’t a safe place and if you valued your belongings, you kept them either close to you or didn’t take them on the metro to begin with. When you have no choice, you have no choice however.

Mike was just about two hours late to school that morning, missing his first two classes entirely. Fortunately, his mom had written him a little note, explaining his absence to his teachers, so he didn’t get into trouble for his tardiness.

Soon after, the morning had come to an end and Mike had found himself in the college cafeteria with a few class mates. They’d been joking about how bad the cafeteria food was, when Mike unwrapped his lunch: Georgian bread with cold, fried chicken, his favourite. Normally anyway, because what greeted him when he opened the packet smelled a bit sourly and upon closer inspection, the meat had a bit of a greenish tint. Probably four days old again, and the power had been out for most of the afternoon yesterday, as happened all too frequently in Tbilisi. A refrigerator doesn’t do much good when there’s no power to keep it going. Mike knew his mom was struggling to make ends meet however, even with the help of her parents, so he put aside his misgivings about the meal and gobbled it down, trying to ignore the funky taste it left in his mouth.  

About half an hour later though, he wished he hadn’t. It’d started out with a general queasiness and dizziness, but before too long Michael found himself running out of class and throwing up in one of the foul smelling holes that passed for a toilet in the college.  When he’d returned to class, his teacher had taken one look at him and said he looked greener than a spring leaf, then sending him home to recover.

At least he’d had the small bit of luck that the bus line was operating again when he got back, so he only had to walk the ten minutes from the bus stop to his house. He was relatively sure that if he’d had to walk home from the subway station, a good forty five minute walk, he might have collapsed on the way. As it was, he still ended up throwing up again on the walk from the bus stop to his home, but at least he made it there without any further ill effects, although his stomach had started to cramp something fierce on the way home. When he finally did make it into his apartment, all he had the strength left to do was to drop his backpack by the wall and collapse onto his bed, where he quickly drifted off into a deep, exhausted sleep.

 

It was hours later when Michael finally awoke again. His forehead felt a bit clammy and he had shivers running up and down his spine, but he didn’t feel sick to his stomach anymore, at least not as badly as before. He slowly sat up on the bed and rubbed his eyes, when suddenly he felt a vibration in his pants pocket. He pulled out his mobile and flipped it open. Three new voicemail messages, five missed calls. The first one was from his friend and classmate George Shedovice, calling to see how he was doing. The second message was from his girlfriend Nadia, who’d heard from George Mike’d been sent home sick and was naturally concerned and the last one was from his mother, who’d been informed by Mike’s teacher.

It went: “Levan, I heard you’d been sent home sick? Are you okay? Please give me a call when you get this and tell me everything! I love you!” 

So he did.

“Hey mom,” he said, his hand trembling as he held the phone to his ear, “Yeah, I’ve been sent home, but don’t worry about it too much okay? I’m feeling better already now.”

“Are you sure, my little Levaniko? Your teacher said you looked as green as grass.” He’d hated it when she called him that ever since he’d been eight years old and felt he’d outgrown that childhood pet name, but he just didn’t have the heart to tell her, so he let it slide, as he always did.

“Yeah, I think the chicken’s gone bad, mom,” he moaned as he felt his stomach contract, “Perhaps it’s best to throw the remainder away.”

“I’ll see when I get home, honey, you just rest up, okay? You don’t sound well.”

“Sure, mom,” he managed before hanging up, “Love you.”

 

His mother didn’t return for several more hours though. Work was always busy lately and the pay was dreadful, but that’s the way things were in Georgia, one did what what one had to to survive. Mike awoke in his dark room at the sound of the heavy metal front door slamming shut. All front doors in Georgia were heavy, especially in Tbilisi, where even apartment buildings had bars in front of the windows, to prevent people from climbing up the outside of the buildings and burgling your domicile that way. Mike didn’t think much of it though. It was simply the way things were.

“Levan?” he heard his mother call out to him, “Are you okay, sweetie? Why’s the house so dark?”

“I’m here mom,” he replied. His voice sounded a bit cracked, but that was probably because he hadn’t drank in hours. “I’ve been sleeping.”

The light in the hallway went on and in walked his mother, looking both tired and concerned. She took one look at him and frowned with concern.

“You don’t look well. In fact, you look pale and tired and you look like you might have a fever.”

“Mom, I don’t...” his voice trailed off as he realized his forehead and neck were wet with sweat and he might actually have a fever.

“I see sweat on your forehead and you sound like your uncle Roland’s lawn mower. Come, let me take care of you. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

The boy was rather powerless to resist and all in all, he liked it when his mom pampered him a bit. It happened all too rarely these days.

“That’d be nice, mom.”

“Just lay back and rest. I don’t think you’ll be going back to school tomorrow, looking the way you do now. I’ll get started on dinner soon, just give me a minute.”

“Sure, mom. Oh, and mom?”

“Hmm?”

“No chicken, please?”

She smiled.

“You must be sick indeed.” She said and patted him on the head. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up in the kitchen.” 

 

As it turned out, Michael didn’t go back to school the next day. His stomach was still restless and it seemed to him like he had to visit the toilet every ten minutes or so. He woke up numerous times during the night to do just that, which didn’t help him feel any more rested the next day. He also had a headache that just didn’t seem to want to go away and sometimes when he moved his head too fast, he saw flashes of colour that he knew shouldn’t be there.

Diana walked in, looked at him and shook her head.

“You still look like something the cat threw up.”

“My head hurts and I have to go to the bathroom like constantly.”

“You think I don’t know that? You woke me up a bunch of times last night, which means that you probably went at least a dozen times.”

“I guess.”

“Well, I guess you’re staying home today then.” She tilted her head slightly and looked at her son inquisitively. “You wouldn’t happen to be dodging any tests today, are you?”

“Mom!” he said in a hurt tone of voice, “My next test ain’t for another week at least.”

“Well fine, you just get well soon though.”

“I’ll take good care of myself mom. Hurry or you’ll miss the bus.”

“If it’s even running today.”   

“Yeah... stupid bus company.”

“Yes it is...”

 

He lay in bed for a while after his mother had left, trying to read, but the words seemed to shift in front of his eyes and because of the headache he couldn’t concentrate properly on what was written there, so he gave that up after a while. He tried playing a video game on his computer, thinking that the simple entertainment shouldn’t be too difficult to focus on, but the loudness of the explosions only seemed to aggravate his headache, so he quit that soon as well. Having to go to the bathroom every time things got exciting didn’t help his chances of completing a level either.

When he got out of the bathroom for the umpteenth time, which was directly opposite his mother’s bedroom, he noticed her door was still cracked. Inside, he could see that the pile of papers and books he’d knocked over the day before still mostly lay on its side and on the floor. Apparently Diana hadn’t had the time or the energy to straighten it up last night. Since he was feeling a little better by that time, Mike decided to help her out a little and started picking up the papers. He put the loose papers, which has slid all over the floor on the side of her bed, in a stack which he laid on the bed. The books  that’d been in the pile he decided to put at the bottom of the stack, since they were heavier and he didn’t want the whole contraption to tumble over again.

When he wanted to start stacking the books on top of one another however, he noticed the whole pile had previously been placed on top of an old shoe box, of which he must’ve knocked the lid off partly yesterday when he bumped into it. He began sliding the lid back onto the box, when he caught sight of an old picture of his mother. In it, she looked like she was ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty years younger than she was today. Curiously, he slid the lid back off the box and took the picture out.

She had been pretty back then, he thought, but then again she was pretty still, just a bit older. She’d been considerably chubbier back then though, from the looks of things. In the picture, she was half laying, half sitting on her bed, wearing a reddish sweater and red pants that looked a bit like sweat pants. They were straining to contain what had then been his mother’s considerable potbelly. Maybe she’s pregnant with me in this picture, Mike thought to himself and chuckled. He’d seen precious few pictures of his mother from those days. She’d once hinted to him she didn’t like the way she looked back then, so he’d dropped the subject then. Now though, he intended to grill her about the picture when she got back home. With a mischievous grin, he put the picture back in the box, coughing for a second when the picture disturbed old dust that must’ve laid there for the better part of two decades.

Then something else caught his eye. It appeared to be two stacks of postcards, with a combined size big enough to fill well over half the shoe box. The stacks were held together by a couple of rubber bands. When he picked one of them up to take a closer look, one of the old rubber bands snapped and launched itself halfway across the room, flying by only a centimetre or so from his cheek. He paid it no mind, as the first card at the top of the stack had a rather peculiar picture on it. It looked like dunes, next to a sea. But it wasn’t the Georgian sea front, he knew that for sure. He’d seen the Black Sea a few times. They had distant relatives living in Batumi, Ajara province, and they had taken him to see the beach and the sea for the first time when he was but a little boy. They looked different than the sea front on this card though. The beaches in Batumi were rockier, from what he recalled, and even the sea itself didn’t seem the same, darker, somehow. When he turned the card around he got another surprise: it was written in the Latin alphabet, not the curvy, windy alphabet of the Georgian language he was so familiar with. His mother had insisted he get the best education they could afford in Georgia though, so he’d already learned the Latin alphabet at an early age.

The card was written in English. For most Georgians, this would pose a problem, as there were two languages commonly spoken in Georgia: Georgian and Russian. But Michael was no common Georgian and again, his education proved to be worth the money his mother had paid for it. He wasn’t exactly fluent in English, primarily because he seldom had the opportunity to speak or practise it, but with the internet only a click away, he’d at least managed to develop quite a good understanding of the written language. Also, some of his favourite authors wrote in English, so he’d made it a point of pride to read them as they’d intended for their books to be read: in their native English. 

 The card read:

 

Dear Michael,

 

How are you today, my boy? Well, I hope? I’ve lost count of how many cards I’ve sent you over the years, but surely it has to be more than a hundred. Yet I never hear back from you. I wonder if that is because you don’t want to know your father or if your mom has instructed the mailman to throw my cards in the trash or something similar. I don’t even know if you still live where I last saw you, in that rundown apartment complex, next to the hills? Maybe she moved and I’m just writing these cards to no one but myself. Either way, I’ll keep sending these cards for as long as I live. Sooner or later, one has to reach you... I simply have to believe that one day one will.

 

I love you. Always.

 

Your father, Robin van Vlissem

([email protected])

 

 

Michael sat on the floor, motionless, for what seemed like an eternity. Then he read the card again. And again a third time, just to make sure. It said it right there: Robin van Vlissem. That, his mother had told him, had been the name of his father. Only, his mother had told him his father had died when he was just a baby.

The card was dated nine years ago.

   

Author's Note

Honest feedback welcome. Encouragement more so.