Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

The dinner feast became a grand affair, bread baked in their own tandori or tonne-oven,
aubergines and carrots filled with nut-meat, chicken served with hot sauce, and as the piècede-résistance
a fabulously crisp suckling pig with cherry eyes and an apple in its mouth. Only
the wine was poor, but grapes did not grow up here. Instead they were offered a dangerous,
clear raki. They slept on large rugs with the entire family in the living room, covered by furs,
warm and comfortable.
Gocha received Alexandra and Claudia with a chuckle. She had, of course, already
heard the entire story. Shalva Mgeliani, Son-of-a-Wolf, her husband, a taciturn, old, weathered
man with one, single, yellowed tooth, rummaged in the background. This was women’s
business not his.
Niko whom Alexandra had asked to come along to satisfy local etiquette—Tamara,
Konrad, and Vladimir had gone on a ride exploring the old churches in the valley—joined
Shalva, who took him outside to show him the raki still he operated and the implements for
brewing barley beer, which was used at the local festivals. A dozen sheep cheeses sown into
skins were piled into the rear of the cellar.
The raki still was a quixotic apparatus, a simple copper bulb with a long snout, such as
the alchemists used, on a stone fireplace, a long inclined tube in running cold water, and a
cooled copper bucket into which the raki dripped. Shalva explained that he repeated the
distillation three times, between which the distillate was left sitting over charcoal for a day, "to
take out the poison."
He offered Niko a small glass who poured it down and shook himself, it was pure
firewater! Shalva was pleased.
The even more primitive beer "factory" consisted of several large, wooden mashcontainers
for the barley and a kettle to ferment the beer in, but it was not in operation.
Shalva mumbled and hissed in his rough dialect because of his missing teeth. "The beer
has to be fresh for the festival. It is like ‘holy water’ and ‘wine’ in church—only there is always
enough and everybody gets drunk." He snapped his finger at his conjugal vein and giggled.
Niko could hardly understand him, but his gestures were unmistakable. Shalva pulled
his flat hand across his throat. "I also kill the sacrificial rams. When the priest is not looking."
He made an obscene sign with his fingers. "I burn an old secret mark into the wool of the rams.
They are always the best when roasted. Roosters?" A dismissive gesture. "Oh, only the
poorest people sacrifice roosters. I get very little for blessing them."
Meanwhile Alexandra interrogated Gocha about the rules of her marriage.
"I am not married to Shalva," chortled Gocha, "certainly not in church. We live together. I
wash his laundry and cook the special foods he needs to stay pure. During the winter, when I
cannot find any herbs up here I go down to my village near Lentekhi, and he stays alone."
She squinted at Alexandra, her big, dark eyes nearly disappeared in the surrounding
folds and wrinkles.
"They say, you married a foreigner from a far away country. It is like that with me up
here, they will never accept me."
She cackled indignantly. "They say I am a witch who puts spells on them, where all I do
is keep the evil spirits away from their houses—as long as they pay me for it. You know, there
are many evil spirits up here who can make people sick or even kill them."
She pouted her small round mouth and opened her beautiful Byzantine eyes wide. She
268