Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Konrad arrives in Georgia
1898
On a cold evening in May 1898, a tall, slender man in his thirties with dark-brown hair, a
copious, untrimmed, reddish beard, and gray eyes got off the Moscow train at the forlorn
station at Vladikavkas in the northern foothills of the Great Caucasus. For the first time Konrad
Rost traveled to Tiflis to teach for a year at the Gymnasium of the Georgian Nobility. He had
decided to exchange the dreary train ride via Baku for the Georgian Military Road across the
mountains. It would be a strenuous journey but much more beautiful and shorter than the
railway to Tiflis.
He had spent the night in the only guesthouse in the dusty garrison town and now
waited in the dark of a cold morning for the postal carriage to arrive. He could barely make out
the snow-capped mountains of the High Caucasus towards the south in the darkness. The
carriage, drawn by four horses, rolled up: a box covered with black oilcloth which swayed on
immense springs and high wheels. If the passengers squeezed, the carriage offered room for
six.
Luckily there were only four other passengers that morning: an Armenian matron with
her demure teenage daughter, a German professor who had introduced himself as Arthur Leist
the previous evening, and an elegantly dressed young man on his way to buy Caucasian
carpets in Tiflis .
The dashing rug dealer cut by far the most elegant figure. About Konrad’s age, he wore
a perfectly tailored white suit, a black kerchief in its breast pocket, matching spotless shoes,
and an English bowler hat. He twirled a patent umbrella nervously in the air, which he let pop
several times to frighten the young daughter of the Armenian lady, who giggling took cover
behind her mother.
The Armenian lady, in her thirties, had already
acquired a respectable figure. Dressed in the
conventional costume of the merchant middle class, a
long, black dress held together by an embroidered belt
under which she wore a white, high-collared blouse
with long sleeves and a flat cap on her high hairdo, she
constantly corrected her daughter’s manners. Although
she pretended to ignore her three male fellow travelers,
she stole curious glances from under long eyelashes at
Konrad and Leist, the two foreigners.
Konrad had met Leist over supper. An unpretentious
bachelor, Leist spoke, in addition to a charming
Silesian, German, Russian and Georgian fluently. In his
forties he stood a head shorter than Konrad. A welltrimmed,
graying beard fringed his face. Contradicting
his bourgeois appearance, he was vivacious, and loved to season his didactic remarks with
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