Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

Eliso listened with increasing fascination. "You must be right. Alexandra once told me that Konrad had been carried to hisgrave by his Halveji brethren. And, finally, I own a diary of Konrad’s journey to China with beautiful drawings by Konrad.In one of his letters he asked Alexandra whether, one day, she would accompany him to Central Asia. On his China triphe searched for connections between the Sufi and China. Now I begin to understand these references."Excited, I interrupted her. "My father told me of this diary. Otto and Konrad put it together in 1913. I did not know that itsurvived their flight from St. Petersburg. I must see it!"She smiled about my excitement. "I will bring it to you. The people who took over their apartment in St. Petersburg savedit and finally returned it to me."And Sophia, Alexandra’s Georgian child? I looked at her photograph. Visually she had nothing in common with eitherEliso or Alexandra. "What was Sophia like? To Otto she was his little sister. Alexandra only made a few comments abouther in her letters. I have no feeling who she was. Was she the Chavchavadze woman? The granddaughter who inheritedTamunia-Deda’s softer, conformist side?"Eliso turned serious. "My mother was an unhappy person. After Otto had left and Alexandra realized that she hadneglected him for years, Alexandra cared for Sophia with great devotion. But they never enjoyed an exceptionally closemother-daughter relationship. Of course, this is all before my time. My father’s death was a great loss for Sophia. Shehad bloomed under his kind guidance, and suddenly he was gone. My mother was thirty-six when he died."Eliso replaced the smoking candle, which had burnt down. Pensively she touched her lips. "Since you know of DatoOrtaladze—he married Sophia in 1946. Against all odds they had a very happy marriage."Eliso looked into space and then smiled. "Dato was touching in the way he loved me. By then I looked very much likeyoung Alexandra."I shook my head. What an archetypal confusion. Dato who—at least according to Persephone’s prophesy—was destinedto seek his death in Alexandra’s arms, and whose return Alexandra feared for a long time—married Sophia, Alexandra’sGeorgian daughter. Soft, pliant, Chavchavadze-Sophia had to carry the burden of Alexandra’s and Dato’s karmicentanglement. And growing Eliso had become the spitting image of the young Alexandra he had once loved!Eliso was observing me. I looked at her. "How much do you know about the relationship between Dato and Alexandra?"She lowered her eyes. "You mean the story of her abduction?""Yes, and about Persephone’s prophesy after the abduction?"Startled, she frowned. "You know about that? How could you have heard about it-from Otto?""In a weak moment, on a ride to Shuamta, Konrad told Otto about Alexandra’s fear of Dato’s return. Otto was too youngto understand the deeper meaning of Persephone’s prophesy, but he remembered the ominous undertone in Konrad’svoice."She lowered her glance. "They are all dead now. They have fulfilled their destinies. I thought I was the only person whoknew about that disturbing story. Alexandra described her meeting with Persephone to me shortly before she died andmade me swear not to tell anyone as long as Dato or Sophia, who knew nothing about it, were alive. It was like a secretbond between Alexandra and me."The clock of the village church struck twelve.Elisso handed me the third photo and watched my stunned surprise. Moved, I stared at the picture for a long time,reading in the lines of her face "This is a portrait of Alexandra," said Eliso eventually, "which was painted in 1963, twoyears before her death."My thoughts wandered to Alexandra’s dying. "How did the Greek inscription on Alexandra’s gravestone come about? Ittook me a year to find who had written this riddle. Herakleitos is not exactly a popular poet.""She chose it in her final months," said Eliso in deep thought, "when she knew that her end was near. She was never a‘good’ Christian and by that time had become an embarrassingly outspoken critic of Christian teachings andorganizations. She searched for weeks among the obscurer Greek writers for a sentence to her liking. ‘I don’t want any ofthat religious kitsch on my grave stone,’ she would say.... Alexandra’s view of life was circular, a never ending repeat ofbirth and death. Half in jest and to the perplexity of my mother, she would threaten, ‘Watch out, I will return reincarnated.’When we called her a Buddhist, she would fiercely object. ‘I am not a Buddhist and never will be one. My ego is much toostrong.’" She looked at me trying to find out whether I understood. I nodded, and she continued. "When she had finallyfound the Herakleitos fragment, she said to me,‘It is not the perfect epigraph, but it will do. Now I can die. The circle of my life has come back to its beginning.’"Eliso touched Konrad’s necklace. "She also connected her life with this necklace—her magic circle for sixty years, and toKonrad’s turning, an allusion I only understood tonight.... I was with her when she died. It was a very deep experience forme, which I cannot describe. She was in a state of serene absence, yet completely lucid and conscious to her lastmoment. I think, she finally willed her death by letting go of life. I have often thought of her dying, and wished I couldlearn her self-control, to die as she did."We went to sleep around three. When I woke late next morning I found a note from Eliso telling me where to findbreakfast. She had gone to a rehearsal and would be back by noon. "Stay another night. We can go for a walk in theafternoon."217