Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

Blushing like a young girl, she gave him three kisses, took hold of his hand, and presented him first to her husbandsaying with a trembling voice: "Be this thy father," and then to Alexandra, "and this thy faithful wife for ever and ever."Crying and laughing Alexandra buried her head on Konrad’s chest. He gently kissed her hair. Confounded by his wife’sunexpected ministrations, Irakli Dadiani looked on speechlessly. Finally Tamara took him into her arms.Tamara led her bewildered family onto the verandah where lunch had been laid. A servant brought champagne andfather Dadiani raised his glass with a toast to their future.Abashed, Tamara smiled over her glass at Konrad. "Do call me Tamunia-Deda, and you know, the Georgian word forfather: mama!"Konrad said a few improvised words to thank his newly found parents.As they sat down, Alexandra rummaged in her purse and pulled out the necklace. Konrad raised his eyebrows. He hadnot expected this surprise. She handed it to him, and with a smile he fastened it around Alexandra's neck.Alexandra was glowing. "Look what Konrad made for me."Her mother asked to see the necklace up close. She held it by its ends in an arc and, as if weighing it, let the links flowbetween her hands. Alexandra had to tell the story of the necklace, and her father toasted the unexpected goldsmith intheir midst.Tying it around Alexandra’s neck, new tears came to Deda’s eyes. She kissed her daughter."How did you find this man? A foreigner who speaks Georgian and makes Sufi necklaces?" She shook her head. "Thisgold chain is a serious declaration of love. It has the power to protect you and your marriage as long as you live. Give itto your daughter before you die."Konrad returned to Henri’s shop. He felt a need to think about Alexandra in the quiet solitude of working precious metalinto new life. He wanted to compose himself, to renew and find the love she needed. He had put it into his head to maketheir rings himself.Marriage seemed to him both sacred and mundane, unadorned, simple, and precious. Only two quite ordinary goldbands hammered wide to please her slender, tapered fingers, and bare of any adornments or precious stones, woulddescribe his vision of their union. To soften these austere wedding bands he wanted to make a second ring for her thatwould carry a single, beautiful, softly shimmering pearl to reflect the woman that he hoped she would grow into—if heloved her well.Henri suggested casting the rings, but this idea, in which he would model the rings in wax, appeared entirely tooprofessional, fast, and easy. He would be deprived of the pleasure of beating the malleable gold to conform to his vision.He labored for several days with the task of slowly rolling, annealing, bending, and soldering two thick gold rods into thedesired shapes. And as with the necklace, careful planishing with a polished hammer gave them the sparkle and life heenvisioned.Content, he looked at his work.The design of the pearl ring proved more difficult. Because of its vulnerability, the pearl had to be protected as much aspossible by the ring’s construction. Even then, Konrad realized, Alexandra would be able to wear the ring only on specialoccasions. A precious piece indeed.At first he tried to hide the pearl inside a cage of baroque forms: the pearl the secret symbol of their relationship. But hislove for simplicity made him discard all those trial sketches.Finally he thought of a hammered gold bowl that would mirror the backside of the pearl. He would mount it in the mirror’sfocus. Smiling he remembered his physics teacher in Berlin who had demanded that his students memorize the variousoptical images of spherical mirrors. In the end he added a thin flat ring around the edge of the bowl that surrounded pearland mirror like a halo.Henri took him to a dealer of precious stones. The beauty of dark opals, a large diamond with a soft, milky suspension,the likes of which he would never see again, and the profusion of pearls in all shades from a mysterious black to pinks,proved a great temptation to abandon his idea and start anew. Confused, he procrastinated for an hour during which theydrank one cup of Turkish coffee after another.Eventually, his heart beating double from excitement and the coffee, Konrad bought a large, mysterious, black pearl.Following Henri’s suggestion Konrad fastened the pearl in the middle of the bowl on a short stem made from gold tubing.Henri, who had never heard of optical physics, was much impressed by the visual effect of the hammered mirror. A fairlylarge ring, it was equally beautiful from close up and from far away, exactly what Konrad had hoped for.27