Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

Alexandra felt that she could handle Gocha. "Let me ride up to Adishi and talk to her, she did not seem unreasonable tome, and she sure understands what a boost to her reputation this clinic could provide. I would anyway like to find outmore about her pharmacology and her life with that khevisberi."Alexandra discussed the issue with the natsvali. He nodded and agreed that as long as Alexandra diagnosed the patientsand dispensed Gocha’s medicines, nobody should have cause to fear Gocha’s ‘spells’ or ‘evil eye.’He struck the pose of an enlightened, modern man who is in control of his community. "You go up to Adishi tomorrowand I will take care of the matter. After all, you are providing us with a much needed service free of charge. We should beable to resolve our own problems and superstitions. There is no problem in your spending another few days at myhouse."The dinner feast became a grand affair, bread baked in their own tandori or tonne-oven, aubergines and carrots filledwith nut-meat, chicken served with hot sauce, and as the pièce-de-résistance a fabulously crisp suckling pig with cherryeyes and an apple in its mouth. Only the wine was poor, but grapes did not grow up here. Instead they were offered adangerous, clear raki. They slept on large rugs with the entire family in the living room, covered by furs, warm andcomfortable.Gocha received Alexandra and Claudia with a chuckle. She had, of course, already heard the entire story. ShalvaMgeliani, Son-of-a-Wolf, her husband, a taciturn, old, weathered man with one, single, yellowed tooth, rummaged in thebackground. 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 aride exploring the old churches in the valley—joined Shalva, who took him outside to show him the raki still he operatedand the implements for brewing barley beer, which was used at the local festivals. A dozen sheep cheeses sown intoskins 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 stonefireplace, a long inclined tube in running cold water, and a cooled copper bucket into which the raki dripped. Shalvaexplained 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 mash containers for the barley and a kettle toferment 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. Itis like ‘holy water’ and ‘wine’ in church—only there is always enough and everybody gets drunk." He snapped his fingerat his conjugal vein and giggled.Niko could hardly understand him, but his gestures were unmistakable. Shalva pulled his flat hand across his throat. "Ialso kill the sacrificial rams. When the priest is not looking." He made an obscene sign with his fingers. "I burn an oldsecret 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 thespecial foods he needs to stay pure. During the winter, when I cannot find any herbs up here I go down to my village nearLentekhi, 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 fromtheir houses—as long as they pay me for it. You know, there are many evil spirits up here who can make people sick oreven kill them."She pouted her small round mouth and opened her beautiful Byzantine eyes wide. She must have been a beguilingbeauty as a young girl."Last year," said Gocha, "a young girl came home from school in Tbilisi. She had walked up and was exhausted whenshe arrived. Her mother angrily screamed at her because of her foreign looks. You know, lipstick, perfume, and a reallyoutrageous hairdo. Overheated, the girl drank from the brook at her mother’s house and got very sick. She died a fewdays later with terrible cramps. They should have called me to purify the water. The water spirits were badly offended bythat fight between mother and daughter, which destroyed the harmony of the house."She crossed herself from right to left. "The priest could not do anything, he knows nothing, and we don’t have a doctorlike you up here. Shalva tried to drive out the evil spirits, but she was already too weak for that. All that Shalva could dowas to call the spirit of the dead girl before the priest buried her, Christian fashion. Later Shalva called her soul back topacify her. It was very sad, the girl came from a rich family."Claudia’s eyes grew large when Alexandra translated the story. "So she is a real Hexe, a witch?""Well, it depends on what kind of theory you use to explain illness. We suspect bacteria in the water, and they see thespiritual damage done by that fight between mother and daughter. In the end both may have contributed to the girl’s148