Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Alexandra's Abduction
One clear night Alexandra was riding home from Zaguramo, where she had visited Olga
Guramishvili to talk about Konrad and other female matters. The moon stood dimly over the hill
of Zedazeni. The road through the vineyards to Tiflis was empty except for a few revelers who,
singing drunkenly, staggered home through the night.
Suddenly three hooded riders appeared from the shadows and blocked her way. One
brandished a pistol. The other two had their hands on the daggers in their belts. Alexandra’s
horse reared. The man with the pistol grabbed its halter. The three riders surrounded her
closely. She could not move.
"Don’t scream," said the man with the pistol, "if you follow us quietly and without
resisting we will not hurt you."
She thought that she recognized his voice. Her heart was beating furiously. "What do
you want?" she asked hoarsely.
"We are defending the honor of Georgian women. This German professor wants to
marry you. We shall prevent him from stealing another of our beautiful Georgian women." The
speaker averted his face.
"Is this an abduction?" shouted Alexandra. "Let me go, you have no right or claim on
me!"
"Don’t shout!" the man waved the pistol in front of her face. "I do have a claim on you."
He pulled off his hood.
"Dato!" She cried struggling to regain her composure. "What do you want from me, you
know I am engaged to Konrad. This is a romantic game you are playing. Let me go!"
Dato raised himself in his stirrups. Proudly erect, looking very hurt, very beautiful, and
very Georgian he refused to move.
"Alexandra," his voice was trembling, "I love you and will always love you. I will not let
you go with this red-bearded German. I will either make you my wife, or shoot us both. If you
will not resist, we will take you to Shuamta, and there perform the holy marriage rites. These
two friends are my witnesses."
Alexandra calmed. She was able to think again. She discovered with a shudder that she
secretly took pleasure in this ancient drama. This was high-style, Georgian tragedy looking for
its invariably grand finale. Wild-eyed, the lover/hero/king struts on stage in short steps clicking
his heels, he dances before the queen/mother/priestess who glides across stage as if floating.
She has the right to choose her man. If she rejects him, he has no choice but to abduct and
rape her. But then he must die, and she had to attend to his "sacrifice." Like in the Greek
tragedies the Queen would not kill the King herself, overwhelmed by madness he would die by
his own hand.
She was not afraid of Dato. He would not shoot her, that part of Dato’s script, forbidden
by the most fearful taboos, he had borrowed from a fashionable French novel, but he would try
to shoot himself in her presence and make a horrible mess of it.
Konrad, the foreigner, would consider this an adolescent, romantic game. Only a
Georgian could understand these unwritten, timeless rules.
She had promised Konrad to always come back to him, but had not considered the
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