Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

will take on some reason now."They rode down to Telavi and Alexandra mailed a telegram from the post office: alive and well in Telavi, return tomorrow.A room for the three men was found and a separate one for Alexandra. She sank into an exhausted sleep.Alexandra woke late in the afternoon. She found the three men in a wine shop next door drinking and bragging abouttheir exploits in front of the locals. When Alexandra entered they dropped silent. She walked slowly and very erect acrossthe room, sat down at their table and ordered a glass of wine.Dato raised his glass and drank to the beautiful Georgian woman he had rescued from the red-bearded foreigner."You would be dead, if this Georgian woman had not saved you from shooting yourself," she said sarcastically,interrupting his boisterous toast.The local drunkards backed away and left the shop."Listen, Dato, you promised to behave yourself from now on. Stop boasting and stirring up trouble. What happenedbetween us is nobody’s business. You may yet end in prison."Dato, quite tipsy, dissolved into tears begging her forgiveness and swearing to abide by his promise. He emptied anotherglass and grew sullen.Suddenly they heard a commotion outside."They are here!" Konrad shouted as he came down the stairs followed by Ilia and Dato’s father.Dato went deathly pale when he recognized his father. He rose and swaying drunkenly pointed at Konrad. "This is thetraitor who is stealing our Georgian women. May he be cursed," and collapsed vomiting helplessly.Alexandra flew into Konrad’s arms crying. Ortaladze sen. bent down to his destroyed son, and Ilia, looking fiercely at theother two delinquents, shouted. "Stay, don’t move or you will be dead."He did not have to pull the gun from its holster. He was too well known to them, they would not have dared to provoketheir idol’s famed anger. Ilia took their daggers. "March, let’s get out of this dingy place. You are going to ride before meto Kvareli now, where we shall take care of you."Trembling, the two let themselves be herded off by Ilia without resisting. Ortaladze and Konrad tied the senseless Datoonto his horse, and Alexandra alternatingly crying and laughing followed Konrad and the others into the night.Reaching Kvareli, a good hour on horseback from Telavi, took them two that night. Ilia locked the two accomplices into aroom without windows. They poured a bucket of cold water over Dato’s head and settled him in a chair at the diningtable. Father Ortaladze sat next to Dato, Konrad and Alexandra across from them, and Ilia as the master of the houseand the local baron presided over the interrogation.Drowsily Dato followed Alexandra’s description of the abduction without interrupting her. When she had finished Iliaordered a strong coffee for Dato and addressing him in a stern voice asked him to give his version of the story and todefend his actions.Dato, ashen and resigned, said that he had nothing to add to Alexandra’s account of what happened. He whined that hewas deeply in love with her and had wanted to restore her honor as a Georgian woman. "When I tried to shoot myself,she promised to love me for the rest of her life," he offered meekly. Alexandra with a red face admitted that she had saidthat and that she meant it. Konrad grew pale but did not interrupt her.The three men quickly agreed to accept Ortaladze’s apologies and his offer to send Dato into exile to Jena, where hewas to stay until he had successfully finished his medical education.To avoid any further gossip in Tiflis, Ilia would keep the other two culprits locked up in Kvareli until their parents couldpick them up. They hoped that the affair would quietly die of its own accord without any further publicity or theinvolvement of the authorities. Dato took his banishment without a show of emotion; he was ready to fall off his chair.Early in the morning Alexandra and the three men, hapless Dato in tow, set out for the long ride home.Konrad, trailing the others next to Alexandra, was deep in thought."Would you tell me the whole story again?" he asked.She had expected his question and pained by the difficulty of explaining her complex, archaic role between two hercultures and the two men, she described the happening a second time.Konrad listened quietly. He was immensely relieved to have her back alive and was quite prepared to accept herexplanation.After the first emotional welcome Alexandra’s parents did not mention her abduction again. To them it was anembarrassing adolescent prank of a love-sick young man. Alexandra, however, was unusually quiet and withdrawn.She tried hard to unravel the events and her mixed emotions which the melodrama at Shuamta had put into such strongperspective: her separation from her parents and her Georgian childhood, the approach of her wedding, and the difficultobligations which marrying a foreigner would put on her.She longed for advice by an understanding person who was not connected to her as intimately as Olga or her mother.She finally decided to visit Persephone, not as a medium but as a woman.She found Persephone in her chaotic room under the tower at Shavnabada, very much Persephone the Queen of theUnderworld, an entirely different person from Brimo the sheikh. Alexandra thought to have seen a man disappear through36