David Turashvili
American Fairy Tales A novella
Translated by Lado and Giorgi Gachechiladze
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Preface I CAME up with the idea of writing this book a long time ago, when I realized that the various compilations of fairy tales from around the world simply did not contain a collection of American fairy tales. There was, however, a plethora of books in Georgian containing folktales from around the world which I remember from my childhood—tales from near Abkhazia to those from distant Japanese. Since 1960 those various collections of fairy tales were published annually in Georgia, and they grew in number and in variety with us. Until I became an adult I believed that Americans didn’t have any fairy tales simply because their country was only two hundred years old. After arriving in the U.S.A., however, I discovered that America is the only country on earth where there is no dividing line between dream and reality, and perhaps this is why I had never read any American fairy tales in my childhood. Maybe the writing of this book represents an attempt to fill the void that I still feel, a void that reminds me of past sorrow; and so my deepest thanks go to all the American Embassy employees, who gave me the chance to chase after something I had greatly missed in my childhood.
I also want to thank Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Sofia Coppola, James Douglas Morrison. And everyone, for all the help they gave me, even from afar.
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Albert Camus’s Heat The Tragedy of America is that everyone who goes there thinks they have discovered it. —Nodar Dumbadze
IT was July in Tbilisi and it was so hot that I recalled Camus while approaching the American Embassy. In those days the American Embassy was in front of Alexander Square. In the nineteenth century the Georgians inexplicably named that yard after the Russian Emperor, and, in the summer of 2001, I was invited by the Americans to a so-called interview. Of course the place was air-conditioned, which helped me relax right away, and I was soon impassively answering my hosts’ routine questions. The Americans, it turned out, were eager to know (before making their decision) the nature of my attitude to their country. Earlier the Embassy had phoned to tell me about their plan to send one Georgian writer to the States, and so their choice necessarily depended on how my answers sounded. I was well aware that the program lasted one hundred days, and it was so diverse, with writers coming from across the world, that the first thing they asked was whether I knew English. After I said “yes” they fired off a string of questions—when, where and how I happened to learn English—whereupon I answered confidently, “If English is not difficult for Americans to learn, then why would it be difficult for me?” Near the office in which we were having our conversation was a large common room where all the staff had their respective offices. With all the doors open everyone could hear my voice clearly, even from the hall. And suddenly several curious heads popped into the office simultaneously; I guess they had heard me trying to makes jokes and they now looked upon me with such pity that I knew I wouldn’t have to lie about my English any more.
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I didn’t even try to answer the rest of the questions, though it probably would have increased my chances of getting a visa. But I said exactly what I thought about their country at that moment in time, an opinion which was anything but positive. When I was about to leave they said they would give me a call, but I already knew their answer would in no way be positive. As I went outside I thought of the person who was the reason why I wanted to go to the States—Keti Charashvili. Of course I had other reasons to want to travel to America, for example, I really wanted to find the flying carpet that was whisked away from Tbilisi in 1912 by the Irishman Patrick O’Leary. But in the end I put down only one wish in the form I filled out at the Embassy. In a way I could say that it was a modest request. I really wanted to have the chance to meet Tom Waits in person, and besides, I couldn’t very well write that I wanted to go to America because I longed to find the first love of my life. I guess Keti really was my first and true love, at least until her mother got married for the second time to an American, who, as far as I’m concerned, came to the Soviet Union with his friend, art collector and businessman Armand Hammer, and took my Love away with him. My God was she beautiful! No wonder the school seemed so empty after her departure. I can hardly remember the artists whose masterpieces were carried off by Hammer, but I surely remember how they took my treasure and left me alone with Vladimir Lenin. So I stayed with Lenin while Keti was leaving for the country where John Lennon lived—my one and only childhood icon. The way I saw it, Keti could meet him, get his autograph and possibly become acquainted with him. Lennon was waiting for her, while all I got was Lenin.
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Words can scarcely do justice to our last meeting. It was like a funeral where words don’t make any sense and people quietly offer condolences to someone who has lost the person dearest to them in the world. Perhaps it weighed heavily on her that she was leaving for America the next day, whereas I had to stay in that infernal Soviet Union, where I would no longer get to see my junior classmate with a ribbon in her hair and freckles on her face. It seemed, however, that she still couldn’t understand exactly why my eyes were on the brink of tears. But I didn’t cry in front of her then. I somehow, amazingly, managed to muster every ounce of my strength and even smiled as I returned her book, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. She smiled back and said, “If I get to meet Lennon I’ll have him sign this book, and then I’ll send it back to you.” And then her face became serious. She said good-bye, and left. I have never seen Keti Charashvili since. So it should come as no surprise why I wanted to visit America to find her in that distant country; but the chance to go wasn’t entirely up to me. In the early twentieth century the Irish poet Patrick O’Leary left Georgia with a flying carpet which was pretty much legendary in ancient Georgia, and throughout the Caucasus and the East. I can hardly claim that the way the kindly poet exported the carpet was illegal; therefore, I most certainly do not wish to find the flying carpet on account of such motives. Nor do I harbor the illusion of bringing the carpet back were I to find it. It is hard to think about bringing it back when you’re not even sure whether the carpet made it to the States in the first place, because the ship on which the Irish poet was traveling sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1912, a ship otherwise known as the Titanic. Three weeks later, I got a telephone call from the American Embassy and was asked to meet them the next day. They informed me of their decision: I was to be chosen to go to America. They said they believed that only America could change my strange and wrong (as
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they put it) attitude to the country. It was not only useful and proper to do away with that somewhat faulty stereotype, they said, it was also essential. I didn’t argue, of course. In fact I thanked them kindly, just as I did the next month, when they granted me a visa, handed me plane tickets with a warm smile and wished me a safe flight. I had only to pack my bags and go. The final days in Tbilisi were so hot that Camus would probably have had a hard time describing it, and I had a long and exhausting flight ahead of me all the way to Iowa. It was a good thing that I didn’t have much baggage. Going to America doesn’t require much baggage. But my American adventure began long before Iowa: it commenced on the first flight, over the City, Istanbul, during which I recalled the passionate Ahmed Çelebi. Many years ago, as the story goes, the young Çelebi flew from the Galata Tower to the Bosphorus strait in order to see the girl whom he adored. Actually, he didn’t intend to see so much as to behold the girl, who in fact was not a girl any more, because in the Ottoman Empire girls of her age weren’t considered as girls but as women, and Çelebi’s beloved was a member of the Sultan’s harem. The infatuated hero feared that he would lose the chance to see his beloved again. And when on one winter evening he found out that the castle was to be relocated, he rejoiced. Part of the Topkapi treasure had already been taken to the Dolmabahçe Palace, and the next day the ladies of the Sultan’s harem were to be moved using small Ottoman ships. Poor Çelebi couldn’t sleep a wink. He worked on preparing his wings until sunrise, wings which would help him fly over the Bosphorus the next day while the galleons were sailing from Topkapi up the strait to Dolmabahçe.
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He couldn’t be sure whether his letter made it to his sweetheart, for any royal courtier who would dare to deliver even the most innocent of letters to the harem would most likely be put to death. The energetic young Çelebi wanted only to tell his lover to remove her veil as soon as she saw him flying in the sky, if only for a moment, so that he could distinguish her from among the three hundred other women. Though the Sultan had about three hundred women in his harem, Çelebi’s sweetheart was truly one of a kind. No one really knows whether or not he saw her, but he flew over the Bosphorus, that’s for sure. . . . And I, too, flew over the Bosphorus, and many other straits and seas, cities and villages, mountains and oceans, and so on, before arriving at my destination. I had to change planes twice, and the last one turned out to be so small that when the flight came to an end, the passengers had a hard time saying good-bye to one another. Christopher Merrill, the director of the program, was waiting for me at the airport. It was then, as he shook my hand, that I felt the warmth which made me realize that he was one of the most decent men I had ever met in my life. On the way to Iowa my first question was about life there; I really wanted to know how this State was different from the rest. Chris explained with a smile that Iowa is known for its blizzards. He supposed that I might have seen it on the television before. After this conversation I became a bit worried and looked up at the sky. But the director explained (with the same smile) that tornados blight this lovely State only in spring, and it was now August, the heat searing the land, so I stopped worrying. He told me that Iowa wasn’t known only for the tornados, but for the cornfields, too, and when Nikita Khrushchev saw them he ordered that corn be planted throughout the Soviet Union.
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Just as Chris was saying something about there being too many hawks in Iowa, a whole town suddenly emerged, full of university buildings, and our conversation came to an end. Iowa City is to those who worship literature as Mecca is to Muslims: a holy place, albeit without the Kaaba. The university’s literature department is among the best in the Unites States, a status it enjoyed even before Unesco designated Iowa City as the world’s third City of Literature, and thereafter the glory of Iowa has been known throughout the world. Each year writers from across the globe are invited to Iowa City, where they have all the resources they need to write. But it doesn’t end there. The program is diverse and involves much more than writing. In 2001 about thirty writers from different countries were invited to the university to lead a couple of seminars and hold conferences for lovers of literature. On our first day we learned the gritty details of the program, and it was then that I took the opportunity to mention a not insignificant problem which occurred during my first days in America. You know, this problem seemed very simple at first. There was this terrible heat outside. But it was so cold inside that I was compelled to ask the principal for help. “Yes,” was his immediate response, “it’s certainly hot outside and I feel cold in here too. But I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do, because we definitely can’t control the weather, and the temperature in the building is set automatically according to university policy.” I couldn’t help but wonder: Why would it be so difficult to turn the air-conditioning off? But I definitely didn’t want to argue with my nice friends on the first day. Next morning I found myself sitting alone in the shadow of a tree near the building. Apparently I had dozed off, perhaps owing to the lack of sleep the night before. Awakened, I found to my surprise that my frustration changed into awe.
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For the first time in my life I awoke like Snow White surrounded by animals, who, unlike me, didn’t look the least bit surprised. Instead the proud fauna around me (from deer to rabbits) examined me with looks of such serenity that, perhaps, if not for my terror-stricken face, they might have come near and sniffed me. But I managed to compose myself quickly enough and, later, got used to seeing the same animals strolling here and there, not only in the forest but also downtown. Eventually I came to realize that this eminent literary city could hardly have been more inspiring. . . .
The City Of Literature This is a persimmon light. —Natia Menabde
THE FIRST writer I met in Iowa was Rocco—an Italian, Rocco Carbone—who was standing in front of the hotel where we were all staying and was talking to the Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan. From the moment I laid eyes on them I was almost positive that at least one would be Italian. After we got to know each other Rocco, who reminded me of one of those sentimental heroes of Italian cinema, told me that we were about to be given computers that same day. He asked me in the elevator whether I really needed the computer for doing the job, and I joked that there was no electricity in my country. In fact it wasn’t really a joke. In 2001 Georgia was suffering from intolerable power outages. Most of the time there was no electricity, and people got only a few hours of light a day. It was during this time, before leaving for the U.S., that I saw the “persimmon light” in Guria. I remembered the dim light bulbs struggling to cast their glow on us, the color of which looked like a yellow persimmon (a light so dim that the
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Gurians could barely see each other). But I wasn’t sure whether the fruit grows in Italy and so did not mention any of this to Rocco. Rocco and I quickly became friends. He was also my neighbor: his room was in the same hotel, on the same floor, on the left side across the hall. The Italian poet’s door was always open, and all could see him seated at the table working. He always had his laptop and an open bottle of wine on the table before him. He would sip the wine slowly and smoke cigarettes while writing, but if someone called on him, he would immediately stop writing. I have never been to Rome, nor have I ever been able to determine from others whether the city itself has the air of openness which Mr. Carbone always displayed. Granted, he was originally not from Rome but from Calabria. Regardless of the fact that the rest of us were from entirely different backgrounds, we all followed Rocco’s example and shortly began to leave our doors wide open too. It then became easier to see what we were all working on or getting up to, especially for me, because my room was located at the end of the hallway, and so I had to pass by, and salute, almost every one of the writers until I came to it. We had lectures and seminars until midday, after which we had some time to write, and in the evenings we usually headed out to the city. On the fourth or fifth evening, after we had had some drinks, Rocco read Petrarch so beautifully that I was suddenly inspired to let the cat out of the bag. I told him that the real reason I was visiting America was to look for my first girlfriend. He was immediately roused, and in astonishment and an Italian accent asked me whether I was really a writer. Of course I could have answered that question easily, but instead, when we got back to the hotel, I showed him the manuscript of the book I was working on. Although he was unable to recognize any letter in it, he sighed with relief. I decided not to say anything about the flying carpet.
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The tallest building in this literary State was the university, which was where the students lived and spent their mornings listening to lectures, their afternoons lying on the grass until evening came and their Friday evenings in the city’s night-haunts, drinking themselves silly. In this little city, covered in green, there were many cafés and clubs full of students and writers. This was a place where people from different places and cultures gathered in the mutual understanding that they would explore all things literary. The core group of writers who actively and eagerly enjoyed the nightlife were Ben Rice from England, Sitok Srengenge from Indonesia, Antonia Logue from Ireland, Mileta Prodanovic from Serbia, Torunn Borge from Norway, Marius Burokas from Lithuania and, of course, Rocco. There was a moderate group, too, who didn’t involve themselves in the nightly routine, but did join the core group with pleasure from time to time: Vince Ford from New Zealand, Marek Zaleski from Poland, Shashi Warrier from India, Aida Nasralla from Israel, Nicolay Grozdinski from Bulgaria, Andrey Bychkov from Russia and Rehman Rashid from Malaysia. As for the third group, there were some who occasionally partook of a beer, some wine or maybe a scotch. But none of us could hold a candle to U Thu Maung, aka U Bala, who happened to be as prodigious a drinker as he was an author (no fewer than thirty-two novels to his credit). He would usually stand in front of his room with the door wide open, a big smile for all who passed by. He uttered not a single word, just smiled. That smile probably hid his exhaustion from it all, and Khin Lay Nyo, U Bala’s lovely compatriot, seemed very worried about his condition, which was gradually deteriorating. Finally our hosts felt it was their duty to send U Bala—the most successful writer there—home. I remember the first day without him: the door to his room was still wide open, but the room looked so empty, and the smell of alcohol still emanated from it.
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I also remember a sad song coming through the open door of another room. That was the first time I started to think that, when the time came, I would probably have a hard time leaving Iowa. It was way too early for that, though. In fact, things were just about ready to begin in the City of Literature, and since we were later joined by some new writers, our program became quite diverse culturally, and you could tell by the different music heard in the hallway. We all had a television set in our rooms, of course, but nobody ever switched it on except me. As for the radio, it was clearly helping to determine the tastes of the writers. We did not have much in common, including music, but we somehow got on very well with one another. The only thing we had in common was literature, and indeed, I was eager to get acquainted with those writers whom I knew nothing about, as well as with those of whom I had already heard. The writer I wanted to meet the most was Su Tong, author of Rice, which I had already read, and Raise the Red Lantern, which later was made into a movie and nominated for an Academy Award that same year. Su’s room was next to mine. I was eager to thank him for bringing his work into this world. Su was friendly to everyone and kept smiling until the day we left. I had posed him some questions, but I couldn’t really understand his answers, because of language issues. The prominent Chinese writer also happened to play football, though his play was a little shaky. But because we couldn’t always get enough people to form two teams we often had to invite him to play. The idea of playing football came to us on the spur of the moment (as most great ideas do) right after we noticed from our windows a pitch in front of the building. We could also plainly see that football was more popular with the girls than with the boys. The men graduate students mostly played American football, which is much different from the football the rest of the world plays, and, of course, the Americans call our game soccer.
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To be honest it always made me wonder, Why would people call a sport that is played with the hands instead of the feet football? But that was not important to our Iowa experience. The most important thing was the idea that Ben Rice came up with during the first days of the program, which, I have to admit, was a very good one. It was in the evening when the renowned British author, apparently needing a break from literature, shared his simple but intriguing idea with us: We should get a group of the writers together to play football (soccer, that is) against the local girls. Basically it would afford us the opportunity to strike up conversations with the ladies, and anything but real conversation simply wouldn’t do, because, after all, in 2001, Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t created Facebook yet. Perhaps we put our full trust in Ben because of his first book, Poppy and Dingan, which was critically acclaimed and sold well not only in Great Britain but throughout the world, for, as they say, good books are written by those who understand women. Judging by the view from our windows, however, we saw that the women footballers looked so strong that competition between us wouldn’t be worth a damn unless we trained properly. And so Ben set aside time the next day for training after our lectures. As for Ben, he looked like a cross between Paul Gascoigne and Wayne Rooney on the field and, essentially, he wanted us to play the same. However, we only managed to form an average-level group thanks to the talents of Chris Keulemans, a young Dutchman, and Antonije Zalica, our Bosnian friend. They both saved the rest of us from mediocrity, or worse, and so Ben was able to breathe a sigh of relief and scheduled the first friendly for a week later. I had seen how the girls played and had heard their clamor coming through my window when they squared off against other college teams. The exclamations of the women footballers, indeed, were more attractive, softer and much different from women tennis players. Those exclamations, nevertheless, were quite enough
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to make us anxious before the match. I could not calm down during the match, either, and as my opponents raced by me time and again things got worse. The girls played well and they ran a lot. Consequently their perspiration-soaked shirts made their breasts plainly visible, and the shy Polish poet Dariusz Sosnicki had to cheer us on with his eyes closed toward the end of the second match. Other writers were also supporting us, including those who didn’t play on the team. Major encouragement came from Sergio Pujol of Argentina, who introduced himself upon first meeting with the following phrase: “I’m not a Latin lover.” He would go on to repeat this so many times—before every presentation—that we began to suspect that in fact the real reason he was there was not to give lectures about the history of tango but, contrary to his assertion, to put the Latin lover theme fully to the test in the U.S. Charming and humorous, Sergio could tell the story of the Argentine tango in such an interesting manner that I wanted to attend more of his lectures when I didn’t have mine to teach. According to the program, I had to give lectures not only at the university but also for other students and kids in other States. Clearly I wouldn’t become as popular as Sergio for one simple reason—I couldn’t dance the tango in the classes like he did. “Before I get too chatty,” he would say, “let me explain what the tango really means to Argentines. But for that, I am afraid, I am going to need one of you to volunteer.” Of course there would always be at least one girl to volunteer, who would then quickly learn how to master the secret tips of the Argentine tango under Sergio’s instruction. The rest of us also had to present our own cultures and literatures to the American students, and no one could do this better than Mileta Prodanovic, a Serbian writer, who was very much prepared for each lecture, visual aids and all. Mileta always wondered why there were no
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questions for him after the lectures. But, once, a brave American girl stood up and said with a smile that she was more interested in checking him out than in asking questions. And, it seemed, she spoke for the majority, because he really was the handsomest of the men writers in the program. We were to meet these bold and courageous American students almost everywhere, and once, when I was going on about Georgian history (using pictures and video), a chubby girl sitting in the first row who was fiddling with an apple asked me a question. She said it was nice and all that Georgia had once had a glorious history, but she rather wanted to know what our current glories were. I couldn’t say anything. The same night I was thinking about why, after what our country has endured for over three thousand years, we Georgians are standing still at the beginning of the twenty-first century. And then I thought about a connection between Georgia and America, the story of Ioseb Laghiashvili, the first Georgian to wear blue jeans made in America.
Blue Jeans
The word “jeans” comes from the phrase bleu de Gênes—“blue of Genoa.” Genoa, a city in north-western Italy, possesses a large port, and the water was said to be so turbulent that Genoese sailors needed heavy clothing which would be water, wind and sun resistant. Italian historians claim that the Genoese sailors used the cloth as sails, but only when the fair wind was blowing at sea. —Kakha Buachidze, historian
JEANS, the first durable clothes for Genoese sailors, resembled trousers. Sailors would wear them as they navigated gentle waves, when the winds and seas were calm. Genoese sailors used the
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largest oars around in those days, but when a storm would hit the sea, they would raise sails made of the cloth that would come to be used for the famed trousers, and which was resistant to the wind, sun and water. I’d like to think that during the days of Queen Tamar Georgians might have seen jeans for the first time. Queen Tamar worked hard to develop relations with Byzantium and the Latin world that conquered it, and perhaps she encouraged the Genoese in their expeditions in the Black Sea. Certainly the Genoese had other reasons to busy themselves with exploring Georgia, but unfortunately, our historiography remains rather vague as to what those reasons were. Sadly, although our historiography is generally rich in detail—some of the chroniclers were indeed talented writers—neither the Chronicles nor folklore says a word about those jeans. So Tamar’s contemporaries probably didn’t exactly take to the Genoese trousers. At any rate it’s doubtful that our non-seafaring ancestors would have had much use for a sailor’s digs given that back then the men of the Georgian world, like the Scots, preferred kilts. It seems that our ancestors let jeans pass them by, just as they let the first signs of parliamentary democracy slip past. Recently, parliamentary democracy in Georgia reemerged, but lasted for only three days in Tbilisi’s suburbs inside a tent set up in Isani (present-day Avlabari), and then this three-day-long “tent-democracy” disappeared from Georgia, as did the first jeans of the Genoese. But even though the land-lubbing Georgians didn’t take to jeans or democracy, perhaps the seafaring ones, i.e. the Laz, did. Maybe the Laz attempted to style themselves after the Genoese and used jeans as sails. And—who knows?—maybe Khuta Matua, a Laz hero, used exactly the same method to approach Easter Island. Now, indeed it is hard to prove all this true, but one thing known for sure is that the first time a Georgian ever wore real blue jeans was in the nineteenth century. According to my
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research, this Georgian was Ioseb Laghiashvili, who, before donning the famed trousers, had to endure dramatically hard and dangerous times. Everything began in 1886, when Laghiashvili, then a student at the Tbilisi Theological Seminary, murdered the rector, Pavl Chudetsky, with a Finnish dagger he had bought on the Vera bridge for three rubles. Laghiashvili later told the court that his actions were motivated by the unbridled cruelty of the Russian rector toward his students. (Incidentally, one year before the murder, another student, one Silibistro Jibladze, slapped the rector after he dubbed Georgian a “language for dogs.”) Revolutionaries had already gathered in the capital of the Russian empire, St. Petersburg, but what the Russians didn’t know was that in only a few years every second or third Georgian would become a revolutionary on account of fashion, ideas or injustice. What they also didn’t know was that the revolutionary fervor of tiny Georgia would easily match that of the biggest revolutions in the biggest countries. Many Georgian nationalists began to believe that Laghiashvili was entirely up to the task of leading protests against the bully from the north, which is probably why the local press published so many letters in his defense, the likes of which they never wrote even for more upstanding citizens. Perhaps when Laghiashvili read these letters he wanted desperately to cry out (like Kvarkvare) to prove that he was not the man that people were making him out to be. But no one let him. Shortly after, the trial was held, and Laghiashvili was given his sentence: he was to be exiled to the far east of the empire in Siberia. This might be why every Georgian nowadays recoils in fear whenever he hears the phrase “You’ll be sent to Siberia”; but Laghiashvili really was sentenced to katorga in the vast uninhabited stretches of Siberia.
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During those days the Russian Exarch of Georgia publicly anathematized all Georgians on account of Chudetsky’s murder. Because public protest against the exarch was dangerous, some members of Georgian society instead began quickly and enthusiastically raising money in an attempt to save Laghiashvili. (Indeed they raised funds for Ioseb even at the expense of those needed to build the university.) These same enthusiasts hid the money in a Bible and sent it to Siberia. Laghiashvili was astonished to receive the money, but didn’t hesitate to use it wisely: he bribed the guards and escaped together with his fellow-prisoners. Revolutionaries often have incredible endurance, and that might explain how Laghiashvili made it to Alaska via the Bering Strait. Perhaps, as the story goes, he was the first Georgian to make it to America. He was, however, still a Georgian man, and, regardless of his strength, he couldn’t have very well stayed in Alaska, and so he hit the road to California, humming to himself all the way. His first thankyou letter was received from California, immediately followed by a request to have vine roots sent to him so that he could plant them near San Francisco. With a concerted effort he managed to cultivate some grapevines, and thereafter, he produced a Californian wine called Tetri. The bottles of that wine, labeled in Georgian and English, are still housed in a small museum of local lore in San Francisco. They also have a photograph of Laghiashvili, though the date is unknown. We still don’t know how he died, but the photograph has the initials of his name written in English with the following epitaph: Died wearing jeans. Levi’s (which we pronounced LEH-vees when we were kids), first made in the late nineteenth century, were usually used by blue-collar workers, so it’s no surprise that a defender of Georgians and a revolutionary was last seen wearing them. After murdering Chudetsky, Laghiashvili had earned a huge following in Georgia, so much so that Ilia Chavchavadze,
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embarrassed by the growing support for the murderer, had to appeal to people for calm and to point out that the rector, though a Russian, was after all a human being. But no one really listened to Chavchavadze then, just as no one hears him now.