Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Georgian entrance examination, Rost!"
Life with Leist was casual. He made no special efforts to host Konrad; he gave him the
guestroom and generally left him to himself.
Often his host disappeared at night, only to resurface, rumpled and worn out in the
morning, from some overnight exploit, which Leist did not elaborate on and Konrad never
asked about. After these disappearances Leist slept through much of the day.
Konrad ate out or prepared his own food in the kitchen, unless Leist scrambled up the
hill carrying sacks of vegetables, walnuts, a chicken or some lamb, bottles of wine, and fruit for
desert.
"Rost, tonight we have a feast," he announced and busied himself in the kitchen. He
was an excellent cook, and these dinners were true occasions. Leist could easily empty two
bottles of wine but never appeared drunk. They got pleasantly relaxed, and after dinner Leist
would tell of his many adventures in the Orient. Whether they were all true was of no concern,
they were always well told.
One morning, made curious by the tales he had heard in St. Petersburg, Konrad
ventured into town. He scrambled down the steep cobblestone lanes to Golovinsky Boulevard,
the main thoroughfare of the Russian quarter. Passing the turreted new opera house, the treeshaded
but dusty Alexander Garden, and the ostentatious columns of the Palace of the
Russian Viceroy he reached Yerevan Square, the center of the modern town.
Unsure of where to continue, he chose a narrow street in the direction of the river and
found himself in the crowded streets of the bazaar. Throngs of colorful, woolly people jammed
the narrow lanes. The entire Orient was present, a bewildering Babel of races, faiths, and
languages.
Soon Konrad was trailed by an aggressive horde of street urchins who, barefoot and
ragged, pulled at his clothes and begged for money. He stopped and tried to shoo them off, but
they only laughed. The angrier he got, the worse they taunted him in languages he could not
understand.
Obviously this was the wrong method to rid himself of his tormentors. As he stood
beleaguered by the children, a kinto, a hawker carrying a fruit basket on his head, rescued him
by telling the children to back off. As the man came closer he whispered with a sweetish leer,
"Mister, gogonebi ginda?" and repeating in Russian, because Konrad did not understand, "You
want girls, mister? Beautiful girls!"
Konrad went purple and tried to shake off the pimp, at which the joker shouted at the top
of his voice, "Look people, a virgin, he doesn’t know where to put his cock!"
The kinto paused and surveyed the people who had assembled in expectation of good
entertainment, and in a low, poisonous voice continued, "Or is he a pederast? He looks so
elegant." And raising his voice: "Little boys, mister? We have those too, fat little boys, very
willing and experienced suckers. Only a ruble an hour!"
The crowd laughed uproariously, and Konrad would have liked to vanish into the
ground.
Fortunately, a troop of walking bushes came galloping down the narrow lane, donkeys
hidden under huge loads of green branches. Everybody scrambled for safety in the nearest
doorways. At the very last moment Konrad squeezed into a rug merchant’s stall and found
himself face-to-face with the elegant gentleman from their trip across the mountains. The man,
with whom he had not spoken a word on their journey, looked like his savior. With clear
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