The Mingrelian (15 page)

“I didn’t ask. She called last night and wanted to know our plans for tonight. I told her. Dinner here with Grandfather and Niko and then, well, television or something.”

“I vote for the ‘or something.’ ”

“You’re getting the ‘or something,’ and it’s these,” she said, placing his hand on her breast.

****

“My mother has instructed me to examine your sexual organs,” she said a week later. They were finishing the dishes, and Grandfather and Niko had just left for the movies.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, stopping his drying and looking at her.

“No, I’m not. We talked two days ago.”

“Did she instruct you when you dated David?”

“Of course, and that courtship lasted a year,” she said, placing her grandfather’s coffee cup back in the cupboard. Then she laughed.

“Poor David. He was two years younger. It was an arranged marriage, you know. He was just 18, a cadet at the military academy. When I asked to see his sexual organs, he was embarrassed. It didn’t, uh, erect,” she giggled, like an embarrassed schoolgirl.

“Well, that can be a problem,” Boyd said.

“He was so embarrassed. My mother wasn’t worried, though. She said to try again the next time we were together. I kissed him and found it myself without asking.”

“Oh, one of those fast girls,” he said, going back to the drying.

“This is serious business,” she said, bumping him with her hip. “How else are we to find out if a marriage would be appropriate, unless we ask? By the way, the priest wants to talk with you.”

“I’m not a Catholic.”

“Really?” she asked, incredulous.

“Not anything, really. I was baptized at the First Baptist Church in Kennett, but my mother died right after that, and Dad never went back. I read the Bible to him on the porch at night. That’s about it.”

She was silent for several minutes. They finished the dishes and returned to the parlor.

“I’m wasting my effort with this courtship ritual, aren’t I? I understand, you have a job to do, and I’ve agreed to be a part of it. My family has reasons to be a part of it.”

She looked down at the floor as he sat on the couch.

“It’s for appearance only,” she said.

There was a long, awkward silence.

“No,” Boyd said. “It’s not for appearance only.”

It surprised him, but he’d seen what it was like to be a man in full like Lado Chikovani, surrounded by family and loved and cared for by a life partner. That wouldn’t be so bad. And, Ekaterina was the most intoxicating woman he’d ever met.

“No,” he repeated, “it’s not for appearance only.”

*****

“You’re gonna get us all killed,” Boyd said as Ekaterina accelerated around a van in a no-passing zone with cattle grazing on the side of the roadway and an old man on a bicycle on the opposite shoulder. A hill was ahead blocking vision of oncoming traffic. Just as Boyd finished his exclamation, a truck crested the hill.

“It takes five hours to get to Zugdidi if we creep along like that van,” she said, foot holding the accelerator down, unconcerned about the truck.

Boyd wondered whether the air bags worked.

The Toyota achieved 110 km per hour, and the truck slowed slightly. Ekaterina occupied the center of the road, right over the solid white line. At the last moment, she flicked in front of the van.

“I’ve driven this road many times,” she said calmly as she crested the hill, 20 km per hour over the speed limit.

She’d picked him up on a Friday afternoon at a prearranged spot away from the embassy and the rug shop. With her son Niko, they were headed to Zugdidi for the weekend. The first time Boyd had driven this road, he’d crept along with the map spread out on the seat of his rental car. All he remembered from that trip were the towering Caucasus Mountains on
both sides and the clear streams he crossed. Now he was able to see the people and the countryside.

“During the days of the Soviet occupation, these were all collective farms,” she said, slowing down for another van. “The first thing they did when Georgia became independent was to give farm families their own land, about a hectare . Then, if they could show they really intended to farm it and not just subsist, they could get 6 hectares.”

“Can’t do much with 15 acres,” Boyd said, remembering the 160 acres of cotton that was barely sufficient to support him and his father.

“The really energetic farmers can lease more from the government, which still owns most of this land,” Ekaterina said.

She honked loudly and slowed quickly as a cow slowly ambled across the road. It seemed to realize that the signs along the road showing a silhouette of a cow meant that anyone running into one would have to settle with the farmer.

“So, the government owns most of this?” Boyd asked, indicating larger fields farther from the road.

“Probably. Anything bigger than a few hectares is usually government land.”

“They’re not doing much with it.”

“My father has bought 500 hectares. That was the land we rode across last month.”

“How was he able to do that, and these people are left with goats and a few scraggly cows?”

She laughed.

“You sound like a Marxist. First, he had the money from dealings we’ve had that I haven’t discussed with you yet. Then, he had the connections. The current government is eager to enable larger farms, but farming requires capital to buy equipment and seed, and knowledge to use it to best effect. That’s why he hired a farm manager.”

Boyd nodded but said nothing. The houses were similar but not exactly alike: two stories; covered porches all around; a ground floor that might double as barn for livestock storage or more rooms; a half-acre fenced yard planted with fruit trees and grapes; and some surrounding land grazing pigs and cattle. He’d never seen free-grazing pigs before, but here they were along the roadside, rooting away with the cattle, and dogs and chickens everywhere. Subsistence agriculture.

“Boy, what a guy could do with a few hundred acres of that land and a John Deere 6 Series with accessories,” Boyd said, craning to see around a house at a larger field of maintained hay spotted with black and white cattle.

“What’s a John Deere?” Niko piped up from the back seat, tired of being ignored.

“That’s a big, green tractor,” Boyd responded, looking around for some kind of farm machinery to compare it with. There was no farm machinery in sight; none, of any type.

“What’s a tractor?”

“City boy,” Boyd nodded at Niko and turned around. For the next 10 minutes, in simple sentences with frequent translations from his mother, Niko learned what a fine piece of machinery a John Deere tractor was and what it could do. Then he heard stories of Boyd driving one when he was Niko’s age – possibly an exaggeration – and how to pick cotton.”

“The Russians were here,” Ekaterina said, as they passed through Gori, 50 miles west of Tbilisi.

“Really, here in the center of Georgia?” Boyd said, looking around.

“They bombed those apartments over there,” she said as they sped along the divided highway through the small town, pointing at new apartment buildings. “We lived there. David was assigned to the training base here, before the war started.”

“Oh.”

“Our genius government decided we should take the province of South Ossetia back from the Russians, and the crazy Muslims who live there.”

“Big mistake.”

“Yes.”

“Were you here when it was bombed?”

“No, when the war started, Niko and I moved in with Grandfather. It all happened very fast.”

Tears filled her eyes.

“One week I was a young mother living with a soldier, the next I was a widow.”

Boyd glanced into the back seat to see tears in Niko’s eyes as well. He didn’t have any words to cope with this. Had they been alone, he would have reminded Ekaterina that she was being courted by a soldier, and one with a far more dangerous job than her first husband had.

They sped along in silence for a while, and he thought of his first flubbed relationship, where his determination to fly fast and free with his buddies in the wild blue yonder had scared off a fine, attractive woman. The fast and free in the wild blue yonder part was done now.

Perhaps the swaggering, bulletproof hero stuff should be, too. Would his demons permit that? Once you’ve been Superman, can you be Clark Kent again?

They entered a rocky, mountainous area with steep switchbacks. Trucks lumbered up hills, blocking traffic. Small hotels and signs of a resort industry, and people selling fruit and baskets, were along the road. Coming down from the hills, he could see the land flatten out again, only this time greener and
wetter. He began to see banana and orange trees. The porches of the houses along the road had rows of long brown hanging cylinders that looked like skinny sausages.

“What are those things?” Boyd asked as they whizzed by a roadside stand selling fruit and stacks of the dried brown things.

“We’ll stop,” Ekaterina said, slowing down. “Niko loves churchkhela.”

She continued driving, scrutinizing the stands. She found a promising one and pulled over.

An older lady bundled in sweaters stood hopefully by her stand, which was laden with oranges, apples, pears and fruits Boyd had never seen. Her stack of brown, knobby-looking items, each with string protruding from one end, attracted his attention first.

“This is churchkhela, which they make by cooking grape juice with some flour, then threading hazelnuts onto the string and dipping it in the grape must, then they dry it in the sun. It must be in the sun. You notice, all the racks drying are on the east or the south side of the houses. If you dry it in the shade it will spoil.”

The woman cut off the end of one, revealing a string, then cut a small section and slid it off the string and handed it to Boyd. It was nutty, chewy and slightly sweet, not enough to be considered candy, but pleasant. He nodded.

Ekaterina picked up a large stack and handed it to the woman to weigh.

“Niko takes them to school with his lunch. You can get them in Tbilisi, but they aren’t as good.”

“What’s that?” Boyd asked, pointing to a large, shiny, orange fruit with a crown of leaves at the top.

“Oh, those are karalioki. They grow wild here.”

“That,” Boyd said, picking one up and looking at it closely, “is a persimmon. They grow wild in Missouri, but they aren’t that big. You can’t eat those until they’re ripe,” he said, squeezing the fruit, which remained firm.

“They’re ripe. Get some, they’re delicious.”

They bought a big bag of fruit, including the persimmons, apples, pears, figs and smooth green fruits with a thick sour rind and a tasty sweet interior. The woman provided some fresh water from her well, and they washed the fruit and munched their way into Zugdidi.

*****

“The priest says a certain leeway from the usual prohibitions is permitted during the courting process,” she said, breathless, standing in the vineyard the next afternoon with her riding breeches down to her knees. They were dismounted, and Boyd knelt in front of her.

“You saw mine, I should get to see yours,” he said, giving her a brief kiss.

“And you have,” she said, shuddering as he touched her again.

“Shall I stop?”

“No.”

*****

“This is chacha,” Lado Chikovani said as he opened a cabinet in the parlor and brought out a bottle of clear liquid. They had just finished dinner with the whole family, and Ekaterina and her mother, Mariami, were clearing the dishes. He poured two small glasses, toasted to Boyd and downed his in one gulp. Boyd did the same.

“Whew,” Boyd said as he raised his eyebrows. It was about as strong as straight vodka but with a much fruitier taste.

“Not bad,” Boyd said. He’d downed shots of whisky, vodka, tequila and other distilled spirits, so this was not in any sense a chore. They had another.

“We make it here,” Lado said, pointing toward the vineyard above the house where Boyd and Ekaterina had had such a pleasant ride a few hours before. He poured them another and walked to his chair and indicated that Boyd should have a seat. Then, he sat there, saying nothing, an expectant look on his face.

“Ah ...” Boyd said. He was caught by surprise. This was no different than at home. At this point in a relationship, a man is supposed to communicate his level of interest to a girl’s father. Well, here they were. His heart began to pound. Part of him wanted to run, but he’d been the adolescent, swaggering fighter jock for too long. It was time to do something different.

“Ah, I think I love Ekaterina,” he said simply.

“I think she loves you,” Lado said, smiling and taking a sip of his estate chacha.

Lado’s English was not as good as Ekaterina’s, so their talk was brief. Soon they were joined by the ladies, and the conversation took a rather abrupt change of direction.

“Georgian law permits a much greater level of freedom in international-banking transactions than most countries,” Ekaterina explained, seated next to her mother on a large couch. “We have taken advantage of that freedom and our longstanding friendship with certain families and businesses in Iran to help them circumvent the American embargo on Iran’s oil.”

Boyd realized they were all watching him, gauging his reaction. They were taking some risk in revealing their business dealings, but they’d been taking these risks before he came along.

“You and a lot of others,” he said. This was his third adventure that had bankers at its core, and he knew a bit about laundering money.

“Without your relationships we wouldn’t have gotten the information we have,” Boyd said. “I have no problem with it.”