Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

hair and build. Cousin Tamara was the first fresh wind in the house.
Alexandra had not visited Zugdidi since she was six. In the interim George had enlarged
the house and redesigned it in the neo-gothic style: twenty-six rooms with a number of
attached bathrooms, a huge dining hall, a chapel, Gothic arches, heavy oak portals, turrets and
towers, a display of the riches George had reaped from his tea plantations. By comparison to
this chateau the comfortable houses of the Chavchavadze were quaint. But, she reminded
herself, her father’s and her own easy life was provided for by George’s business talent.
The neat, parallel rows of the dark-green tea bushes combed the low, rolling hills at the
foot of the mountains for miles. Peasant women with big baskets wandered through the
plantations picking the top leaves. Their voices, and the rustling of the bushes filled the air.
Two rainy seasons and plenty of fog during the rest of the year had proven favorable for
tea growing. The high mountains kept the cold wind from the Russian steppes at bay and the
Black Sea held the temperature constant. It rarely froze in winter. George had engaged a
Chinese tea master, had expanded the tea acreage every year, and had built a tea processing
plant in Zugdidi. But the quality of the final product was inferior to tea imported from China, not
to mention Indian or Ceylonese teas, which were grown in a warmer climate and at
considerably higher elevation.
Konrad and Uncle George had established such a good rapport, that George offered
him a trip to China. He wanted to study Chinese tea processing with the help of his Chinese
tea specialist. The trip would take three months. They would go by way of the new
Transsiberian railway and return by steamer from Shanghai through the Suez Canal. All
expenses would be paid.
Konrad was speechless. He accepted the offer without discussing it first with Alexandra,
and suggested that he would learn some Chinese and study China’s history and geography.
Alexandra smiled, she would be condemned to be a straw widow for a long time!
Alexandra grew bored in Zugdidi. If she had not brought the Benz, which impressed
Uncle George immensely, she would have taken a horse and eloped.
Otto disappeared among the many children of the house. He went riding with his
cousins, learned to climb trees and to swim in the millpond on the property, chased rabbits in
the tea plantations and went fishing in the clear brooks coming from the mountains. In the
evening he fell dead-tired into bed. Blissfully happy, he had finally found his castle. Alexandra
could leave him in Zugdidi for the length of their expedition to Svaneti without a second
thought. She knew little Sophia in Elisabeth’s loving care in Tiflis.
On the day of the Dahls departure Alexandra drove them to Batumi to see them off and
to say good-bye to the Bredows. Unexpectedly cordial, Dahl embraced Alexandra and kissed
her.
They waited for a spell of dry days. Tamara would take them to the high valley on a
short but strenuous path along the Inguri river gorge. Because stretches of this trail were too
exposed for horses, they would have to walk and needed dry weather. They would return by an
easier but much longer horse trail from the upper Svaneti to Lentekhi in the Tskhenitskhali river
valley, a hundred kilometers northeast of Zugdidi.
As their excitement grew so did the complications. Vladimir, smitten with Tamara, had
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