Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  He shuffled off to a wormy old table standing in one of the side chapels. Although a few stone jars stood against the walls—once possibly the receptacles for flowers—the table formed the only furnishing in the entire church. From its drawer Kadredin brought vellum documents covered with the looped Georgian script. He rustled the waxy sheets before Burnell. A large seal, the seal of King Zrze, hung from one of the documents.

  “Go carefully! These must be valuable.”

  “Ha! They’d fetch something on the open market in Germany, wouldn’t they?” Burnell was offended by the crudity of this remark, though the same thought had occurred to him. It also occurred to him that Kadredin knew the church well.

  “You’d better preserve them, then. Put them back in the drawer.” He went on with his sketch, nodding toward the small female accompanying the king. “What of her, the woman? Queen Simonis?”

  Sniffing, Kadredin went and returned the documents to the table. He pushed them into the drawer and closed it. For a moment he stood there, his prominent eyes turned up toward the roof as if he was in contemplation.

  Bringing his sheep smell back to Burnell’s side, he remarked that where theft was concerned, the Communists in their turn had been worse than the Turks. In particular they had stripped the church of an elaborate iconostasis. He believed the iconostasis now reposed in a museum in Moscow, if it hadn’t been chopped up for firewood before getting that far. The Communists in Tbilisi had murdered a bishop on the steps of Ghvtismshobeli when he tried to deny them access. Kadredin chuckled as he told this story in dramatic detail, perhaps thinking that it would confirm the Englishman’s opinion of the Georgians as barbarians.

  “I asked about the woman, Father. Simonis. What do you know about her?”

  “Ah. A tragic figure, Queen Simonis.”

  “Queens usually are.”

  “You see she’s the small figure beside Zrze? You’ve drawn her too big.” He pointed up to the fresco. “She’s also in gold. Notice her wimple. It indicates her married status.”

  The priest went on to explain that Simonis was the visible sign of a dynastic treaty—what he called “a Byzantine package deal,” and part of Zrze’s scheme to form alliances with outside parties for the protection of his kingdom. Simonis made the difficult journey to Zrze’s capital with a small entourage from Kiev in the Ukraine. This took place before she was eleven years old, before her menarche. It was King Zrze’s intention that Ghvtismshobeli should later form Simonis’s mausoleum.

  What had been the girl’s inward nature? Burnell wondered, looking up at the blank oval of her face. Damp had given it a patina of acne. She had been a pawn in a cold-hearted dynastic deal, deflowered to lend flesh and blood to a treaty. Had she been happy? How had the fearsome Zrze, beset by troubles, tolerated her? Come to that, how had he treated Stephanie?

  “Strange how churches memorialize bloodshed, one way or another, from the Crucifixion onwards. Ever think of that, Kadredin? Bloodshed’s rather a prominent feature of Christianity. Buddhism is entirely different. I never heard of Buddha strung up on a Cross. Most statues of the Buddha show him looking relaxed in a decidedly post-coital manner… Christians prefer blood to semen. Perhaps it’s safer on the whole.” He laughed at the thought. “So was Simonis interred here when she died?”

  They walked by the lake, keeping a watchful eye for the possible approach of strangers. The whole great tumbled countryside was bereft of humanity. It could not have looked greatly different five centuries earlier.

  On the northern side of the church, the landscape changed, becoming more bland and watery. Willow-fringed Lake Tskavani was dull and still, like a large wet fingerprint. Burnell stood there, enjoying the melancholy, with the old church at his back.

  “It must have been easy to feel religious in such a situation.”

  “And still is, sir.”

  Poor Ghvtismshobeli! Nowhere so remote that WACH didn’t want a piece of it. Along with the desire for knowledge, and a laudable determination to preserve whatever was of artistic merit, went an undercurrent of greed.

  Perhaps it was inevitable that the technological culture of the West had spread to claim other cultures. Everything in the world was grist to the hungry mills of the West, of Europe and the United States of America. Ikons, haikus, reistaffels, saris, Kama Sutra, Tutankhamen, pandas, pineapples, idols, precious stones, ivory, agabati, Kabuki, opium, origami, Buddhism, bagels, gastarbeiten, algebra, the Elgin Marbles, squid, Bokhara carpets, jacarandas, geraniums, tobacco, turquoise, Turkish baths, Ming vases, Arabian Nights, nutmegs, netsuke, saffron, lapis lazuli, potatoes, poppies, roses, rhododendrons, turmeric, tomatoes, tangerines, yoga, yoghurt, Icelandic sagas, silk, bamboo furniture, baboons, kung fu, coffee, parrots, and many other items, all poured into the West. The world was hard up. The West was an acquisitive society.

  It was a curiosity of history that no Arab dhow, no Chinese junk, no daharbiya, had ever sailed up Thames or Tagus. Yet little cockleshell galleons had slipped out of London and Lisbon on the tide and sailed round the world. Why could the Portuguese navigate and the Papuans, say, not? What was it that had agitated European races and not others? Part of that particular dynamism had brought Burnell to the edge of Lake Tskavani, listening to a priest tell an ancient tale.

  “Queen Simonis died,” Kadredin said. “The Ottoman incursions were not the only problem. Plague returned in virulent form, ravaging the country. Rich and poor alike were overwhelmed. It was a judgment from on high. The ladies of Zrze’s court became stricken. Some fled, some died in bed. There was no escape from death. When Simonis died, she was pregnant with her lord’s child.”

  “How did the king feel about that?”

  Kadredin shrugged. “King Zrze made all arrangements for her funeral. It was to be held here, in the uncompleted church. Such ceremonies as could be managed were performed. Despite the fear of pestilence, the court assembled. Nobody from the Kiev court would visit, for fear. History relates that the masons bowed their heads and wept as the body of the child-bride was brought forth.

  “Mais il n’avait plus temps. Time had run out. It was the end of everything. We speak of the year of 1565, m’sieu. Even as this bell above us began to toll in the belfry—a newly-forged bell, also stolen since—the Turkish army arrived in Tskavani. Picture if you will the scene. A hot day like today. The court in its finery, the little coffin heavy with lilies. And suddenly cannonballs arrive… The Muslim invader was at the very door.”

  The priest squeezed his eyes tight shut. Deep feelings made him pause; or he was merely being dramatic. After his splendid singing, Burnell felt warmth toward Kadredin; he sympathized too with the way the man did not know his own mind. It was a malaise Burnell recognized.

  “So what happened? Was Zrze killed?” It was all so long ago—though apparently not to the priest. Through his eyes, Burnell could see that perilous afternoon four and a half centuries earlier, the sun leaden in the sky, the royal party in their stiff Byzantine finery, the body of the young queen half buried under flowers, priests in the church resonant with the epicedium, scents of incense and ribes drifting in the air, the Turks like a sour breath of history emerging from the throat of the valley. Perhaps there was truth in Croce’s epigram that “all history is contemporary history.”

  “Ah, how bravely the royal guard fought! They stood their ground while the king and his party made a gallant retreat. Thirty warriors fell beneath the scimitar that afternoon. They stood firm against an army.

  “King Zrze and his company escaped northwards with the coffin across the lake. They fled in two boats owned by Tskavani fishermen. It is said by local people that the lake trout assisted the progress of the boats, and helped speed them on their way.”

  “They were Christian trout then, not Muslim trout?”

  “It was a miracle, sir. We must assume the fish had no option

  but to help. Country people still speak of it. Unhappily, in all the confusion, the body of Queen Simonis—then fifteen and l
arge with child—tumbled from the boat into the water. Burdened down with her jewels and finery, not to mention a large iron cross, she sank at once. The king jumped in the lake to recapture the body, but he too got into trouble. Imagine the tragic scene, sir—for he could not swim.”

  “Didn’t the fish help him?”

  “The funeral party pulled the king into the other boat and rowed strongly for the northern shore. So they escaped certain death. The body of Queen Simonis was never recovered. It is said that her ghost still haunts these waters.” He gestured expansively toward the lake, looking blandly innocent of anything supernatural.

  How was it these events of so long ago had been passed down in story through the generations, to remain obstinately in mind? Burnell asked himself whom he had known in the ten missing years. Who had been his friends of whom he recalled nothing? What tragedies, what comedies, had there been? Who had died that he should be missing?

  “OK, so the church fell into Ottoman hands. What became of its contents? What became of this famous ikon, the Madonna of Futurity?”

  Kadredin fixed his bulbous gaze on Burnell and rubbed a long pale cheek. “As I told you, m’sieu, the curtains all, and the trappings, and the few ikons the church possessed, were looted. Many precious things. Perhaps you understand how this region has always been oppressed and poor and in bad health. Much has been robbed from us by foreigners. What last remained, the Russians took.”

  “I’m asking you about one particular ikon, Father.”

  Sighing, the priest turned to gaze across the lake, where a solitary cormorant was working. “No doubt your Madonna of Futurity reposes in a museum in Moscow or Sergeyev Posad, once known as Zagorsk.”

  “We understand otherwise. In Frankfurt WACH has a fairly comprehensive inventory of misappropriated works of art still held in Moscow or thereabouts. Records show that the Madonna of Futurity was last seen here in this church a couple of decades or so ago, in the time of the late President Gorbachev of the Soviet

  Union, as it then was. An Italian traveler was permitted to inspect the church. A man of probity, by name Carlo Morabito. He stated that the ikon was still here in Ghvtismshobeli.”

  “Yes, yes. It’s possible. If the Italian was connected with the Vatican, maybe he stole the ikon back. Almost certainly.”

  Burnell laughed. “Come on, Father. We’ve been frank with each other and even argued on religious matters, about which we disagree, without falling out. Why are you being evasive now about the trifle of an ikon?”

  “We could fish if you desired, this evening when the fish are rising. Unless you wish to return to Bogdanakhi immediately.”

  “Father Kadredin. The ikon. Come on, you know everything, don’t you?”

  Kadredin looked here and there on the ground, as if for a missing coin. “It was told me that Englishmen are suspicious… Sir, I will confess it to you, then. I was once appointed resident priest of the Church of the Mother of God. I lived here almost alone in the dormitory for two years.” He glanced up to judge the effect of his statement.

  “Well, the air is good. When was this?”

  The priest heaved a deep sigh and tugged at his hair. He said that there had been a time when all Georgia had been under a President Gamsakhurdia, an elected president. Ghvtismshobeli had been reconsecrated then, and Kadredin appointed its priest. For a short while, after he had cleaned out the church, services had been held in the ancient Orthodox style, with fine singing, led by Kadredin himself.

  Those days, Kadredin declared, had been happy ones. He had tended the church and buildings with pride, restoring them as best he could. Woodworking was one of his skills. One day, pulling out some worm-eaten paneling in a cupboard in the dormitory, he had found a place of concealment.

  He had fetched a candle. Reaching into the recess, he had laid hands on an ikon, wrapped in paper. Unwrapping it, he immediately recognized the missing Madonna of Futurity.

  Interrupting, Burnell said, “So you’ve actually handled this work of art? Where is it, then?”

  “Who knows?”

  “But you must know!”

  “With what reverence I held it! Painted by Master Evtihije in the twelfth century and unharmed! I can describe it, if you wish.”

  “I’ve seen reproductions of it. Very beautiful. So the Turks didn’t get it? You found it. Where is it?”

  “It was preserved by a miracle.”

  “Another miracle? You mean to say one of Zrze’s brighter priests was smart enough to conceal the item before the Turks topped him? So you found it? Where is it? What did you do? Break the news to the world’s press that the famous Madonna was back?”

  But Kadredin, simple priest, had simply reinstated the ikon—so he claimed—as the chief glory of the church, to attract larger congregations from the scattered peasantry.

  Kadredin represented himself as being reluctant to let the outside world know the ikon still existed. As far as he was concerned, the outside world meant Tbilisi. And in Tbilisi, President Gamsakhurdia was in trouble and civil war had broken out.

  As for the ikon itself… It was more than a mere work of art. Its significance was that it marked a link between the Vatican and Eastern Orthodoxy at a time when the Popes had officially interdicted the Eastern religions. This reinforced the local value of the Madonna ikon; for the conversion of Georgians to Christianity, generally dated from the fourth century ad, marked their turning away from Islam and toward Europe. The ikon was a blessed sign, arriving at a time when Islam was about to draw its veil across the region.

  One day when Kadredin was pottering about his church, Muslim guerrillas from the province of Abkhazia had arrived from the north in an Antonev biplane and landed close to the lake. Kadredin went innocently to meet them. He had been tied up. The guerrillas had entered the church and stolen anything of value they could lay their hands on—some plates, and the Madonna of Futurity.

  “Did they nick the iconostasis and put that on the plane?”

  Kadredin looked pained. “As I told you, the iconostasis was taken by the Russians. How can I speak if you do not believe what I say?”

  Gullible though Burnell was, he could not believe in the flying guerrillas. He could see only marshy ground in the direction Kadredin vaguely indicated: nowhere was there what looked like a suitable landing strip. He made a note in his notebook; he was puzzled as to why Kadredin was so reluctant to tell this story.

  “Did anyone else see these Abkhazian guerrillas?”

  “I was alone at that time, as it happened. And it was dusk. You understand I mainly looked after myself in this remote spot. I had no protection.”

  “So they took you off in the dark, did they? And you freed yourself, I suppose?”

  Kadredin said he had freed himself and remained in the dormitory overnight. He was shaken. The experience convinced him that his life was in danger and that after this incident no congregation would make its way to his church. Of course he regretted the loss of the precious ikon. So he locked up the church and returned on his donkey to Bogdanakhi to report the situation to his bishop. He hoped the bishop would offer reinforcements so that the church could remain open. But then there had been political difficulties connected with the civil war. The account rambled here. The upshot of the matter was that the civil war ignited other uprisings. Gamsakhurdia had been thrown out of office and fled. There had been a riot in Bogdanakhi, and so on and so on. The bishop had done this and that. On his orders, the authorities had barricaded the church and surrounded it with wire, and Kadredin had never been able to return. Until now.

  The cormorant was still fishing. Arms folded, Burnell stood gazing across the lake.

  “So you volunteered to escort me here. Why was that?”

  Kadredin paused before replying. “You saw the trouble in Bogdanakhi.”

  “Yes, but why did you want to come back here?”

  “Sir, I am a sentimental man. I wished to be here once more before I died.”

  After a pause, Burnell a
sked why Muslims should steal a Christian ikon.

  The priest looked crafty. He tapped his high forehead. “Just think for yourself. It has market value, that Madonna. The Abkhazian rebels can sell her for money for arms, of course. Today, she would be worth…ah, well, let’s say you could take her to the auctions in München or Frankfurt. At today’s prices I estimate she would be worth approximately eleven point six million ecus… if she could be found.”

  “So the Abkhazians didn’t sell her? Is that it?”

  The hands widespread, the crafty look. “How can I say, sir, a poor dishonored priest?”

  “So what do you believe? That the Russians took the Madonna, or the Abkhazians, or maybe a wandering Italian? It can’t have been all three parties! I don’t understand your story.”

  “Not my story, sir. Other people say this or that. Many blame me. Who can tell where truth lies? I am sad in my heart, please believe me, for only in Truth is there any value.”

  Burnell smiled. “But maybe even truth isn’t worth—what was it exactly, now? Eleven point six million ecus in the salerooms of München? You seem to have done your calculations, Father.”

  11

  “The Madonna of Futurity”

  The dormitory was clean. The three men chose separate cells in which to sleep. Inspecting the ruined building, Burnell found there was indeed a cupboard downstairs, stacked with newspapers now yellow and crisp, at the back of which planks had recently been screwed into place. Doubtless there was room to conceal something behind them. That much of Kadredin’s story could have been true.

  Khachi cooked them up a meal of beans and a duck he had trapped in the marshes. Afterwards, he retired to sit in a corner of the courtyard, his radio pressed against his ear. Burnell sketched the exterior of the church, enjoying its increasing puissance as evening drew near.

  Unexpectedly, the sober-faced youth began to laugh. After a while, he came over to Kadredin, talking excitedly. Kadredin had no responding laughter. Burnell caught the name “Kuzloduy…” and began to worry.