Дато Турашвили - Flight from the USSR

He didn’t know what had really happened at the airport, whether his luggage was checked or not, but when he returned home he found the jeans were still in his bag. What worried Soso’s father the most was that they might have spotted them and said nothing.

He said nothing to his wife or son about the incident. Instead, silently and proudly, he handed the genuine American jeans to his son. Soso simply smiled and thanked his father, but inside he kept thinking about how much worry it must have caused his father to cross the border with them.

Soso mother asked her son to try on the jeans for her to see if they fit but Soso only smiled, kissed his mother and locked himself in his room. He wasn’t a little boy anymore.

He spent the whole night painting and listening to Led Zeppelin. Once in a while he would glance over at his new jeans hanging on a chair below the Mick Jagger poster on the wall. When he became tired, he smoked a cigarette, but he still didn’t try the jeans on. It was dawn by the time he fell asleep.

He didn’t even have breakfast in the morning. He tucked the jeans under his arm and went to see his friend Irakli Kostava.

Irakli was the son of the well-known Georgian dissident, Merab Kostava. Merab, a man of amazing integrity and absolute resolve, was serving the fourth year of his sentence in some remote Siberian camp for his anti-Soviet activities. Soso knew that Irakli’s father would never be able to bring his son real American jeans and would not be coming back to Georgia for a long time. So it didn’t take Soso long to make his decision before he went off to see Irakli.

Irakli had been writing poetry, and had hardly slept. When he saw the jeans, he rubbed his sleepy eyes repeatedly before he finally believed that the jeans were really his. When he eventually realized what he was being given, he smiled, hugged Soso and quietly, but very convincingly, told him:

“I can’t take them.”

Soso had known this would happen, because of Irakli’s pride, and had an answer ready:

“If you don’t take them, I’m going to tear them up.”

“Are they real?” Irakli asked with a laugh.

“Authentic and American,” said Soso, with a trace of resentment in his voice.

“Then you can’t tear them up, real jeans don’t tear.”

“Then I’ll burn them!”

“They don’t burn either, and they’re waterproof,” said Irakli, laughing again.

For almost a year Irakli had worn some authentic jeans his friend had given him. When he wore them, people on the streets of Tbilisi followed him with their eyes, while teenagers came up to him to take a closer look.

Soso was surprised, so Iralki explained:

“I’m just extremely tired and very sick of it,” he said, apologizing to his friend.

Soso thought he was talking about the jeans, but when he heard about his suicide the next day, he understood what he had meant. When he heard the news, he initially thought Irakli had beaten them all, but then he grew angry with himself as he thought about the previous day and how he hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong. Then he cried like a child.

After Irakli Kostava’s funeral, Soso put on Irakli’s jeans and drew a shining sun above the left knee. He wore them up to his own death.

He was buried in those jeans, in secret. They would help Natia Megrelishvili identify his corpse fifteen years later…

Gega’s father was also a well-known and successful Georgian film director who had made wonderful films when he was still very young. He was one of the first Georgians (as far back as the 1960s) to win prestigious international film festivals prizes. But even back then, he was a real artist and his passion was the creative process. He didn’t relish the prizes and awards. For this reason, unlike many Georgian directors of the older generation, Gega’s father refused to conform with many Soviet intellectuals supporting the regime. He lived only through the cinema. But it wasn’t in the interests of the Soviet authorities to allow such a standard. They hated having no control over a film director and consequently solved the issue by banning Gega’s father from making films. Needless to say, there was no official decree from the Central Committee that forbade this, but it was explained unofficially that he wouldn’t be given the opportunity to make films any longer. The Soviet authorities relied on the conformity of the Georgian intelligentsia and utilized it. But Gega’s father was a very determined man. He learned the craft of carpentry and began making wooden floors. Much of Georgian society at the time regarded such a trade to be something unseemly and shameful. They looked on with indignation at a man who refused to conform or curry favour with the government and the Party. Gega’s father, on the other hand, was convinced that what was truly shameful was blindly conforming like so many in the Georgian intelligentsia. There was much gossip and chatter; nobody knew for certain whether Gega’s father was really working as a carpenter or if it was some kind of myth concocted by those looking for a true voice in the fight against the Soviet government.

It was his son Gega who was a true talent. Thanks to his gift for acting, and many successful roles, he was invited by Tengiz Abuladze to play the lead role in his new film. Then, a girl appeared in his life that was bigger than any film.

This was Tina. Though their first meeting was strange and their relationship began with a row, Gega was madly in love from the beginning. After they made up from their first fight, they went on their first real date. Tina asked that it take away from the rest of the city, just the two of them, and so they met at dawn, on Rustaveli Avenue. The street was completely deserted. Unlike Gega, who was a little miffed and very sleepy (he had never got up this early) at the early morning rendezvous, Tina seemed pleased. She sat next to Gega on a long bench and looked onat the solitary street-sweeper lazily moving down the street. He swept silently, with only the sound of the autumn leaves breaking the silence. Gega felt the morning stillness, and looked at Tina. With her head bent low, as if afraid to wake the whole city, she whispered:

“It’s just the two of us in this city right now—you and me. Nobody else.”

“Three of us,” Gega said with a smile as he looked at the street-sweeper.

Tina paid no attention to the joke and whispered again: “In this city, in the whole world, there’s only the two of us…”

It made Gega remember that the French film Two In Town was in every cinema in Tbilisi, but he didn’t dare make another joke. He understood that he could easily lose this girl with another joke, maybe forever.

So he pondered for a while and then asked, this time not in a whisper so that Tina could hear:

“Only the two of us?”

“Only two of us: you and me. Do you want it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see me tomorrow morning, but earlier than today?”

“Earlier? Earlier than this… It’s still dark.”

“Before dawn, let’s meet and go up to Mtatsminda.”

“Shall we walk?”

“Yes… and we’ll watch the sunrise. Do you want to?”

“Yes,” said Gega hesitatingly. Although he knew, for certain, that he didn’t really fancy walking up the steep slope to watch the sunrise.

The first car of the day passed down the street and its driver stared with surprise at the couple sitting on a bench so early in the morning.

“Let’s go,” said Tina as she stood up.

That afternoon, Dato came by Gega’s place and woke him up. Gega’s mother, Natela, was glad to see Dato, since her son had been sleeping the whole day and was supposed to go to the theatre in the evening.