Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

"From the soldiers whom I took care of at the hospital during the last years. They would scream like this when they werein pain. Only they would curse the Emperor. Once in a while these curses come in handy, as you see. Konrad was right,you don’t need a gun to scare off these yokels."The going was steep, they were still at the bottom of the Terek gorge. Sophia and Rusudan had invented a game, andSophia was fast learning Georgian from her new friend. Rusudan’s parents stuck anxiously close to their possessions onthe cart. Alexandra involved the man from Kobi in a long conversation. Otto and Konrad brought up the rear.As they emerged from the canyon and Mount Kazbeg came into view, Konrad's dark mood lifted. The sun and themountains swept his fears away. He told Otto of his first journey across the pass with Leist, and his adventures withAlexandra in Tusheti.Exhausted, they reached Kobi by evening. Alexandra’s devoting her attention on the owner of the cart brought them aninvitation to his house. In true Georgian hospitality he gave them a room and heavy carpets to sleep on. He even invitedthem to supper.Alexandra paid him and quietly added a liberal amount for the room. She knew how to handle such matters in thevillages. Later she doctored an abscess from which one of his children was suffering with a sterilized kitchen knife. Thegood man was highly grateful. She thoughtfully avoided asking him to take them to Mleti on that warm and comfortableevening.Over a cup of hot tea and fried eggs in the morning he opened the negotiations on his own. He could not take them anyfurther than Mleti, he said, because he had to be back for a wedding in Kobi on the weekend. He invited them to stay athis house for the wedding, he would take them early next week. The pass road had been cleared by the army, but onlyGod knew whether this unseasonably warm weather would hold.They discussed the reliability of the weather, the problem of having to find another vehicle in Mleti, and the temptation ofstaying for the wedding. The good man finally helped them come to a decision by suggesting that they were not dressedto brave a snowstorm in these mountains.They left after breakfast. Alexandra got a very favorable price, because, he said, she had cured the child’s abscess.The man was not willing to take their companions along, the road was very bad, washed out from the sudden snow melt,and steep. He had only one horse. Their companions would have no trouble finding another vehicle. He laughed,everyone in the village was in the transportation business these days.The road up the bare mountains beyond Kobi was indeed like a riverbed. Huge boulders lay strewn in their wayalternating with deeply eroded sections. A landslide had carried part of the road away. Snow patches still covered otherstretches. Several times Sophia had to walk. The horse could barely pull the cart, which often listed so much that Sophiawas in danger of falling off. On the pass itself the snow was still so high that they passed through a deep channel whichthe soldiers had dug.They had a brief rest at the hospice in Gudauri where Konrad and Leist had spent the night. Alexandra wept when shesaw the hills of Georgia in the distance. By nightfall they wound down the last serpentine to the bridge across the Aragviat Mleti.In Mleti the Kobi man introduced them to a friend who offered them a room for the night and promised to take them toAnanuri in the morning, an easy hike of six hours.They reached Tbilisi two days later, exhausted but glad to be home. Tamunia-Deda, who had received no warning oftheir coming, took them into her arms crying and laughing. Frail, white-haired Irakli was shaking with excitement.Alexandra and Deda in a flurry of hectic activity prepared two rooms. Later Alexandra took over in the familiar kitchenand prepared dinner. Deda cried, "You were forced to walk across Djvari Pass! At this time of the year, and they nearlytook Otto away! I am so happy to see you all safe and healthy in my house."Nobody in Tbilisi had seen Vladimir. Alexandra called Etzeri and left Tamara in tears. He had not arrived there either.Alexandra feared the worst.A few days later, in the first week of May, a blinding blizzard swept the mountains. All passes were closed again foranother two weeks. Svaneti would remain cut off from the outside world well into June.All through May and June Tamara did not give up hope that Vladimir had taken refuge somewhere, or that he had beenheld for a while by the Chechens in the northern Caucasus.One morning two villagers from Betcho appeared at her father’s house with a sled-like contraption, pulled by two oxen,which the Svaneti peasants use summers and winters to negotiate the bad mountain tracks.They carried a long bundle wrapped in a tarpaulin. A short distance below the house they halted.Tamara went to greet them."Where are you going, and what are you carrying?"The older of the two men answered in a tragic, sing-song voice:"The body of your Russian lover…"Stone-faced and dry-eyed, Tamara glared at the men with such crazed wildness that the two dumped the corpse and fledin mortal fright.199