Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

any thought to.
A group of children had set up a game of hopscotch on the flagstones of the piazza,
their noisy laughter drove the ghosts away.
Clara had given her a copy of Rilke’s Elegies and Claudia a slim volume, Vereinigungen
by Musil. She read in both at random, drifting between Rilke’s religious visions, Musil’s
dissolute characters, the floating seascape, and her new vision of ever-present death.
As night descended, the islands dissolved in a haze of blues and purples. Somewhere
an orchestra played dance music. She had skipped dinner in favor of remaining on deck in her
chair, letting herself be spun into a cocoon by her books and the night.
A man’s voice interrupted her dreams. He spoke Georgian. "Alexandra, would you allow
me to dance with you?"
The familiar voice startled her. She looked up and closed her eyes. Dizziness overcame
her. Another apparition?
Dato Ortaladze.
He sat down in a chair next to her and silently waited for her to recover.
When she looked at him again, he was smiling.
"Forgive my disturbing you. I saw you already in Venice, and have watched you with
confused feelings ever since. But I could not bring myself to speak to you. You did not
recognize me. I finally told Christine, my wife, what happened in Shuamta. I had never dared
disturb our marriage with these old, adolescent tales. Christine urged me to talk to you and
bring you two together."
Silence befell them. Alexandra sighed. Persephone’s prophecy. Dato had come back to
her—with the only woman who could save him.
She tried to chase Venice from her mind. For the moment she needed a clear head.
Dato had no idea of Persephone’s curse and her expecting him. She looked at him and said
very slowly, "Yes, I will dance with you. I once promised to be there for you whenever you
needed me. And take me to Christine. Is she German?"
"Yes, she is from Hersfeld near Kassel. I met her in Jena and we got married five years
ago. Fourteen years is a long time. I could not wait for a Georgian girl to fall in love with me…."
During her morning meditation that day, the same inner voice she had heard in the
church spoke to her, this time in Georgian and with Konrad’s German accent.
"Alexandra, don’t fear, I am your most trustworthy friend and advisor. You can always
find me behind your left shoulder."
She looked at Dato,"Yes," she said in Georgian, "I will dance with you."
She danced with him once or twice, careful not to arouse his Georgian ardor, and then
Dato took her to meet Christine.
Clara von Bredow received Alexandra like a long-lost sister at the pier in
Constantinople. For a week they walked all over the many-layered city. Alexandra began to
appreciate Islamic architecture in Sinan’s exquisite mosques. For the first time she was able to
see beyond the painful, inherited memories of the loss of the Holy City of Eastern Christendom.
Only in the Hagia Sophia could she not completely relinquish her deep-seated resentments of
Islam.
Joachim, the skeptical, professional diplomat, was filled with ominous forebodings of
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