The UnAmericans

by Michael Carter

  He attended mass over the Christmas and New Year period simply for the singing. Got a present from Gia, but nothing from Masha, which he thought was graceless; there was no need for such a lack of subtlety. He played the piano most of New Year’s day, wished the neighbours well, paced his room, and reread passages of books from his shelves.

  Just after New Year Gia picked him up, and they set off towards the Black Sea. En route Max suffered bouts of travel sickness and Gia had to stop to let the nausea settle. “Jesus, this is getting a bit of a habit, Max.”

  “It’s not drink, I don’t know what it can be… Probably something I ate.”

  Perched on the van’s bumper feeling the winter wind lance his lungs, while Gia froze the weeds with pee, Max groped for some comforting thought, but found nothing. The landscape reflected his state. Rolling hills and valleys that in summer were soft with grasses and purple shadows, undulated hard and dun coloured to the horizon. Gia scrolled through white noise on the van radio. Tinny music and local ads bled into the wind. Christmas was a new celebration, and it had been miserable.

  The little white house was cold but Max felt good to be back. Books would arrive; work would distract him. From nowhere had come a translation commission. Hunter S. Thompson was about to be set on the reading public of Georgia through Max’s linguistic skills. The money was a welcome padding to the pensions and guaranteed as much as anything could be in this country. Shota had replaced the dead bulbs in his magnolia tree for the New Year. But up the shore sat Masha’s house, shut away from him, a border fort keeping him in his place.

  He toyed with the idea of selling the house by the sea. Masha was wound in its fabric and to return there reeked of self-punishment. But the house and village were part of him, the little measure to which his life had shrunk perhaps, but where he wished to shrink the rest of it. His affair with Masha had straddled the best years of his life and he couldn’t just dismiss that. And Gia had most of what passed in him for fondness. Who would he take his problems to if Max were not there?

  Gia had stocked the fridge with food. Max made a plate of cold meats. On the radio they were analyzing the peace talks between the Kosovars and Milosovic in Paris and he permitted himself an old hand’s snigger at the presumption that there could be any other conclusion than failure: it was after all, what the parties had gone there to get. He switched off and dissolved into the sound of the sea.

  It had quietly resonated through the house for two hundred years, God’s time signature vibrating in wooden window frames and floorboards, fading on the white walls every few seconds. The house was one of the sea’s harmonics. Everything happened to its rhythm and reassuring permanence. Outside, the walnut and thuja trees aged to its soft beat. On its huge surface Max could see the raft a kilometre out in the cold. No one remembered when the raft appeared or why, but he felt it belonged to him, and he to it, and both of them to the great sea, his rocking wilderness where he found a stretch of peace. But now the swim out was beyond him. Another thing was stroked off the list. Life shrank a little more.

  He took the padded covers off the old Bosendorfer piano. Sea air should have ruined it but its tone stubbornly survived. He dug out his tools, struck the tuning fork and stood it on the case. It hummed into the room.

  He had noticed how the church was slowly taking Masha. However, her painting of the Madonna and Child Jesus was the work of a heretic who in the old days would have been flogged to the execution pyre. Her Holy Pair were like heroin addicts twisting up from some dungeon of horrors, encrusted in thick layers of paint on an iron square hacked from a wreck in Batumi dry dock. Oxide rust and barnacles disfigured them with pustules of marine acne. They were strung from the beams of her studio roof on corroded hawsers and shackles, a shipyard Divinity, brittle with pain and starvation.

  “Its very…”

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Startling. Striking. Very…”

  “What?”

  “Disturbing.”

  “So?”

  He swerved away from the conflict and invited her to join him and Gia for supper at Shota’s. She declined with a bluntness that left him with no option but to excuse himself and leave. He had hoped she had softened in the months they had been apart, but if anything, her disinterest had hardened into hatred, and it bewildered him. Had he disappointed her so badly over the years? Wasn’t there so much that he had provided? Emotionally? Materially? Set her on a road to success and wealth? What was it, apart from a child that he had failed to provide? He was hardly alone in that respect; she had offered opportunities for impregnation to any presentable passer by, and all had failed.

  On the road home he barely noticed the storm howling in from the sea as he reflected on the devastation this final farewell was wreaking on him and how it differed in no way from the first dear john he received from his first girl friend over fifty years earlier. It offered the same sensation of having been examined minutely then deemed not interesting enough, as if his entire life had been inspected and failed quality control. He was a creature of consistent reaction if nothing else, but such an experience in the teenage years is a rite of passage, whereas in someone his age it was a tragedy for the bearer and a farce for the observer.

  A dip in the squall filled with the noise of brakes and he looked up at a black Mercedes bucking inches in front of him, engine running. Its lights were off; the wind had baffled its approach. He was about to give these idiots the benefit of his views about driving in a black Mercedes in a dark night with no lights when something about the four shadows inside checked him. From the rear seat, small, dead eyes above Slavic cheekbones scrutinised and chilled him, then the car revved up and disappeared.

  “Jesus, Gia, that needs stitching.”

  Blood dripped onto Gia’s shishlik. He put down his fork and pulled fresh dressings and antiseptic from a tooled leather shoulder bag. “I’m sorry if I’m making you squeamish.”

  “You’re not making me squeamish. I’m just saying that’s a bad cut.”

  “An occupational... What’s the word?”

  “Hazard.”

  That afternoon a chisel had slipped and left him with triangular wound on the back of his left hand below the thumb and the first finger. He took himself to the bathroom to apply a fresh dressing.

  “He needs to watch that” said Shota across the constellation of table candles. Apart from Max and Gia, the restaurant was empty, but Shota always lit the candles. He liked atmosphere. “Infection, you know?”

  “He’s got more antiseptic in that bag than Batumi Hospital.”

  “I’ve got more antiseptic up my arse than Batumi hospital.”

  Shota returned to his paper. The contradictions of Gia’s fastidiousness and carelessness, his life of neatness and sexual disorder amused or annoyed Max, depending on his mood. But he did not want an evening of fractiousness. He would have to draw heavily on patience.

  Outside, the wind bounced the coloured lights around the magnolia. Winters were fierce on the Black Sea. This was the last to be completed in the twentieth century and it was not going quietly.

  Gia returned with a pristine dressing and pushed the lamb with his blood to the side of his plate. Something was niggling him; Max sensed a point was about to be made, but when Gia spoke the question was unexpected.

  “When you were a spy did you kill anyone?”

  Under Gia’s doe eyes he tried to assess what prompted this one.

  “I don’t mean shoot or... I mean, were you responsible for anyone’s death?”

  “Why are you asking this now?”

  “Just…”

  “Gia, all that’s a long time ago.”

  “I know, but did you?”

  “I gave information. Policy decisions. That’s all.” Gia dipped his head and ate. His hair had lightened as he had grown older. Th
e bewildered child was visible in the big, strong man.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “You seem a bit preoccupied.”

  Max waited.

  “Masha and I sent your daughter wedding presents.”

  “That was very kind of you.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shota flick a glance, then drop back to the paper.

  “I sent a chest of drawers.”

  “That really was generous.”

  A second stretched by and Max fell prey to a sudden anger. “It’s nice of you to feel guilty for me.”

  “I don’t feel guilty for you Max. Please don’t start. I just thought you should know.”

  “And what did Masha send?”

  “The rough of that painting she’s done. The little version.”

  “Of the Christ and Madonna?”

  ‘Yes.”

  “That’ll go down well in Christian America.”

  “I might go to America. For a look.”

  He blushed. Max knew something had gone on between him and Lucy, something that would not be disclosed.

  “Good idea.” They ate silently for a while.

  “I thought it might upset you.”

  “The gifts or your trip?”

  “Both. I don’t want to upset you.”

  Max was touched but saddened. The pack was breaking up.

  “You should get out of here, Gia. Travel. You’ll find nothing here. You’re a young man; you can make your furniture anywhere. In Paris, London, anywhere. You’d thrive. What is this place for you? Empty winters and fucking the tourists in the summer. And Masha…” The meat stalled slightly on Gia’s lips. It was finally out on Shota’s tablecloth between them. “It doesn’t matter. There’s more to life than all that nonsense, Gia.”

  “I know.”

  There was no need to mention it again. Another silence swaddled them.

  “So you never killed anybody?”

  “Does that disappoint you?”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me?”

  “No, I wouldn’t Gia.” And Gia’s gaze held him for a few more seconds.

  Max paused against the battering wind and looked for Gia’s figure struggling up the hill to his house, but he, the hill, his house, workshop and the whole landscape beyond the thin reeds of streetlights standing along the shore path were consumed by the darkness. With all his youth and strength Gia would be buffeted like a tethered balloon on that exposed hillside. Below in the relative shelter under the woods Max reeled like a drunk against the violent gusts. He turned his back to the wind so he could breathe. It jostled and slapped him like a rioting crowd, stinging his coat collar against his cheek and he listened to the groans and wails of the battle above him between the wind and the thrashing branches. “Jesus!” called Max but his voice was whipped away before he could hear it. Boat’s lights suddenly winked in the blackness at sea, and as suddenly were eclipsed by invisible waves. An engine bleated through the squalls and was cut dead.

  In bed the sound of a boat engine fighting the waves briefly woke him. It faded behind the sea, then snapped at him again. Banshees wailed through the woods above the house.

  Next morning

  Max kept journals down the years. Fading and curling notebooks spattered with intermittent notes on things that happened, things that hadn’t happened, people, memories, things that made him laugh, his moods and reflections, even the occasional joke, a rag-bag of Max’s world committed to posterity in an illegible scrawl. Some journals were thick with entries, some practically empty, but the scribbles fixed events, reactions and opinions, episodes that had faded from his natural recall. They were his Proustian Madeleines, bringing back forgotten scenes from the comedy of high office to the pain of personal disappointments, and sometimes just everyday banalities, the stage backdrop to living. A journal always lay open on the desk, where it could wait months for a scribble.

  When he rose the next morning he crossed to his desk with his coffee and wrote an opening paragraph:

  To shave or not to shave? That is the question. Maybe a change is needed; the commission to translate Hunter S Thompson makes me a writer of sorts, so a hint of Hemingway might not be amiss. I should surrender to the stereotype. More work will come my way; if you look the part you get the job. The world thrives on cliché.

  There was nothing more added, but he would remember the rest of that day second by second.

  The storm was still strong in the morning; the sea thrashed the beach, grasses switched and flattened in the wind and the sky streamed over the first cracks of light. He loved the long limbed summer days, but he also loved the winter rages. The elements enticed him to layer himself in thermals, woolly sweater, woollen hat, and his big all-weather coat, and step out.

  Screens of sea spray hid the village. Waves dashing along the harbour wall really looked like running horses, a phrase he would never use, as he was sure Hunter S Thompson would not deal in waves like running horses, on or off amyl nitrate. The wind cuffed him but he felt invigorated. Despite the great loss around Masha, this was his home, his stretch of earth. He was a cell in this place, part of its fabric, and after his death there would be some shadow of him left in memory. For a while. In three generations everyone is forgotten.

  He padded as close to the thundering water’s edge as he dare. A dark shape rolled in the tide, a tarpaulin he thought; something torn from a desperate fisher braving nature at her worst to keep up with inflation. Max hoped that the fisher made it back to wherever it was going; when the Black Sea turns rough man has no place on it. The tide rushed the thing over the swell, and a loose edge flipped like an arm beckoning, and it chilled him. Then a wave spewed it back into the shallows, fell away and momentarily beached it. This moment nailed itself into Max and would remain in him for the rest of his life.

  The thing was not a fisher’s tarpaulin but a naked male, his skin shot through with purples, raw whites and yellows; all the hideous colours death and a cold sea create. His face and genitals were missing; teeth grimaced through a butcher’s pulp, the legs flayed around a cave of a wound. Max looked round desperately for help knowing there was none. The village was still asleep, ignorant of the nightmare that would start its day. It was impossible to comprehend this carcass; it was like something from hell’s abattoir. There was one other wound, a small one on the back of the left hand in the fleshy part below the thumb and the forefinger. That was how Max realized this dehumanized mess swilling about the shallows was Gia.

  The sea scooped him up, and sucked him away till he rose in a wave twenty metres out, hanging like an exhibit behind milky glass, his jaw open and the lower teeth dropped in a demonic wail stretching a terrible accusation from the eternal lodgings of death. Then the wave broke, and battered him towards the shore.

  The sea had stripped him of enough dignity. Max was calling don’t worry as he waded out. He caught a flailing arm and Gia spun round him in the currents like he did through the air when Max swung him as a kid. A wave hit Max’s back and he fell with Gia under the water and was caught in his thrashing limbs as the sea tried to drag him away, but Max held on and found his feet. The water seethed round his legs but he was blessed by some reserve of strength and got Gia up the beach, all the time trying to keep where his face had once been out of sight. He laid his big coat over him and wanted to run up the hill to his house and find him there, waking in a bad mood.

  “I won’t be long. I’ll be back.’”

  Shota was in the kitchen, half asleep, hair tufted up like a brush, feeding the baby. Max vomited against the window and Shota shouted. He assumed Max had been drinking.

  When Masha opened her eyes, Max was soaking wet. Shota stood behind him like a scared kid.

  “Masha, I have some terrible news.”

  His jaw
muscle bunched. He was such a drama queen.

  “Gia’s dead.”

  She heard the bougainvillea scratching the glass roof and thought he can’t be because he promised to cut it back.

  What could they tell the cops? Gia had no enemies – apart from jealous husbands and discarded women. He had no connections to the hoods in the big dachas lining the roads into Tbilisi apart from selling them a few pieces of furniture. He wasn’t involved in any kind of racket or favour trading, was never asked for protection, did nothing that could offend anyone. There was a Mercedes, four shadows and a pair of Slavic cheekbones and eyes. That was the mystery.

  The cops dragged on their cigarettes. Gia wasn’t to be moved until forensics arrived, so he stayed on the beach that except for trips to Tbilisi and one break in Paris, had been the circle of his life. Everyone stood vigil; he was part of everyone, they had murdered the village. Two men set off to Batumi to Gia’s senile father, sister and drunken brother in law.

  The wind fanned the black soutane as the priest crossed the beach. Kids desperate to see the corpse were driven back. Max lifted an edge of the tarpaulin and heard the priest mutter “Bastards.” The grisly image obliterated memories of the living man and boy; his vivid awkwardness and good looks were reduced to a butcher’s mess. Father Gregory knelt to administer the blessing and Max saw him take Gia’s cold hand from under the tarpaulin and hold it.

  Gia had lain on the beach for five hours before a police photographer arrived; a prime time drunk shuffling behind a vodka nose marked in the livery of a thousand bars. The camera trembled. His hat trembled. The lens trembled around the mount on the camera before it snapped into place. Max delivered another tirade about how they were letting poor Gia rot on the beach and where was this mythical ambulance? The cops lit cigarettes, made another trip to the radio in the car, and came back with the same thing. “It’s on its way.” So’s peace in Chechnya, someone shouted.