Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

around, palm up. She laughed. "Sir, this consultation will be twenty rubles. You are not
indigent. To get off with a mere hand-kiss is far too cheap!"
He went purple, and she gently shoved him out the door.
"Be well and pull yourself together, old friend!"
A week later Alexandra and Helena prepared a charming, informal engagement party for
the pair and their friends.
Vladimir discussed his predicament with his father, who finally gave him the dressing
down he deserved. His father praised Alexandra’s suggestions and regretted that Vladimir had
never introduced him to this long-standing friend. "You were invited to her parent’s house in
Tiflis, why have you never brought her to our country house?"
Vladimir mumbled something about Alexandra being very busy as a physician, and
added reproachfully that since his mother’s death their home missed the hostess who could
have received this unusual woman. For the same reason he had never taken Tamara home
either. The conversation ended with Vladimir’s father inviting all his close friends to spend a
weekend with him in the country.
When Vladimir told Alexandra of the invitation, she called his father to thank him and
offered that she would feel honored and happy to act as Vladimir’s female protectress in the
forthcoming wedding proceedings.
At first Vladimir’s father was taken aback by her unusual suggestion, but then, the
practical politician he was, turned the matter around and teasing her most charmingly, offered
Alexandra the vacant place at his side. Would he be allowed to invite her for dinner at a
restaurant of her choice to make her acquaintance?
Alexandra was about to fulfil the role as lover, sister, and mother to Vladimir with which
Konrad had teased her. She dressed carefully, elegant but not seductively. Vladimir’s father, all
gentleman, picked her up in the big car. The familiar chauffeur did not blink an eyelash. A
séparée with a table for two awaited them at the restaurant.
Completely relaxed, they enjoyed the excellent food and a bottle of Premier Grand Cru
Pommard 1907. Since the horrid evening with Manovsky she had not eaten so elegantly.
M. Nomikoff apologized that Vladimir had spent weeks at her parent’s house, and he, for
lack of a wife and hostess, had never invited her and her husband. He tactfully inquired about
her Georgian background, her father’s profession, her mother. Alexandra described her
childhood, Uncle Ilia Chavchavadze, rides through the beautiful Georgian countryside.
Slowly and almost imperceptibly M. Nomikoff steered the conversation to Vladimir’s visit
to Svaneti. He had, of course, heard many tales of the beauty and wildness of this part of
Georgia. Alexandra teased him about his romantic notions, and then remarked that he was
about to acquire a daughter-in-law from one of the oldest Georgian families.
"You are right, Mrs. Dadiani-Rost, I do probably have a rather distorted concept of the
Dadeshkeliani. I am ashamed that I have never met Tamara, so many things have been
neglected since my wife died." He thoughtfully studied his large signet ring with the coat of
arms of his family. "Forgive me, but I had a notion of a rather wild and uncultured clan up there
in those mountains. But Vladimir assures me that Tamara is not only intelligent but also well
educated. I had the idea the people in the valleys of the Caucasus were all Mohammedans."
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