The Way the Future Blogs

Mtskheta, Georgia.

A Christmas Story, sort of

To begin with, that’s “Prince Mtskheta,” all right. Mtskheta is a place in what was the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic at that time, and is now the independent, as long as they can keep it that way, nation of Georgia. The spelling is right. I can’t guarantee the word prince, though. It could have been count or baron, or even something like arch-bishop, but my opinion is that Prince is the term I once gleaned from an immigrant Georgian nurse in my hospital’s intensive-care unit. But my Georgian is poor — no, it is somewhere between lousy and non-existent — and her English was just enough to sustain a green card.

Now get on with the story.

 
At one time the Soviet Writers Union loved me — other times not so much, as once when I had just written a piece describing the USSR as a “police state.” But at this particular time it was all roses, and they offered to show their affection by comping me to a week’s vacation at any one I chose of a dozen or so Soviet cities. I skipped Leningrad and Kiev because I’d seen enough of them, had no particular interest in the western-state cities or Stalingrad, and settled on Tbilisi, once called Tiflis, the capital of Soviet Georgia.

It turned out to be a good choice, since I wasn’t particularly worried about dying of alcohol poisoning. Those Georgians sure did drink. They met me at their ratty little airport with a congratulations-on-your-safe-arrival stirrup cup and took me to a delicious, and alcoholic, luncheon in a beautiful dining room, and then escorted me to the afternoon’s entertainment.

This was drinking.

When Georgians set out to drink they don’t fool around. They take you to a specified drinking place, and the servitors start coming to refill your glasses. You can’t just toss a shot down when you feel like it, though. You only drink when you are offering or responding to a toast. You can’t even pick your own toast. That is the privilege of — well, of a Georgian word I don’t remember, but it means something like “toastmaster.” He picks, or accepts, a subject for the next toast. It can be something like “To all of our fathers!” or maybe “To the deathless heroism of the Red Army and American Army troops who met along the Elbe River and dealt the death blow to the forces of Adolf Hitler’s Germany!” Then those of us who want to do so go ahead and endorse that toast as flowerily as convenient and everybody drains his glass. Then we refill and celebrate, maybe, the beauty of Georgian women.

We did this on three successive warm, beautiful, chestnut-scented afternoons, in what may have been the prettiest little grove I had ever seen. Then we wobbled our way to a very tasty, I think, dinner, and then one by one collapsed into bed.

For three days.

By the fourth day, I was beginning to worry. Our toastmaster was the executive secretary of the Tbilisi Union of Soviet Writers, and a polished well-spoken man. As the leader of the drinking, I was pretty sure his refills went into a previously empty glass, and when he then emptied it, it was well and truly emptied into his one and only stomach.

Yet every day on beginning the ceremonies he was clear-eyed and articulate, and every evening upon ending them he bid us all a good evening without hint of stammer or slur. I didn’t think I could keep up with him much longer….

But then came the fourth day; the executive secretary did not appear. He had a small indisposition, one of his helpers explained.

I drew a breath of pure joy. “I hope he’ll be well enough tomorrow to go for a drive with me,” I said, “because I’d really like to see something of the area. Meanwhile, do you think I could have a cup of coffee instead of the brandy?”

Continue reading ‘A Visit to Prince Mtskheta’ »

There were four other books that I rescued from the Ryndam’s library. My interest in two of them was generated by the Ryndam’s unexpectedly lavish store of American classic films. I had had no warning such a treat was in store.

But while I changed for dinner one evening, the stateroom TV stopped me cold. A young man was standing his ground against a powerful older one. I didn’t know either man by name, but I was pretty sure that the young one was a struggling composer desirous of being taken on by the Maestro di tutti di maestri di balletto. And in just a moment — wait for it — yes, there was Moira Shearer to apply to that same company as a dancer, looking as dewy and darling as any human female had ever been.

There was no doubt. We were right at the beginning of that greatest of ballet films ever made, The Red Shoes. Of course I was a little late for dinner that night, as I was on more than one other night that month because the classics didn’t stop coming. Patton. The Wizard of Oz. The African Queen. Fantasia. Cleopatra.

And then the one that turned me to the Ryndam’s bookshelves, On Golden Pond, starring Jane Fonda, playing the estranged daughter of Henry as well on the screen as she did in real life, with Katharine Hepburn playing the totally loved mom — but that was only casting. The first time I had seen the movie, I had been interested in some newspaper chat about Hepburn being critical of Jane for politics, Fonda disapproving of Kate for switching her own career to black so she could devote every minute of her time to loving and caring for Spencer Tracy, the man who meant her life to her, but couldn’t divorce his Catholic wife to give her a ring.

These are two of the greatest film actresses of any century. One would like to know what drives them. This one would anyway, so I checked out Kate by William J. Mann and My Life So Far by the Fonda woman herself and began to read. The first couple of chapters of My Life went well enough, not least because they covered the Barbarella period of Jane’s career, and it is quite rewarding to even an aging man to help Roger Vadim calculate how many centimeters of fabric can be removed from his wife’s costume to produce the maximum of pink-skinned gorgeousness.

Kate, on the other hand, offers no such rolls in the hay. Kate is dying. The roles, the lovers, the headlines, are all over now. All the roaring fireplaces in her house are shut down because there is oxygen in the house. The end is approaching.

Well, you say, why not? Could not a great book be written about the death of a loved person? Of course it could. Just not by Mann. Too bad. This could have been a good book, but perhaps better with a different author.

There remain two books, both pretty much picked up by chance, and both highly recommended by me. I had had no idea such a volume as Elizabeth’s London existed, therefore couldn’t go looking for it as I might otherwise have done before watching Shakespeare in Love. It tells you all there is to know about how Elizabethan London filled its shops, emptied its latrines, and dealt with its criminals.

I should on the other hand have expected the existence of a book like Paris 1919 if I had thought to look for it, because surely someone would have tried to express all those complex interactions of victors and vanquished that did so much to assure that there would be a second World War worse than the first.

It is easy to point out areas where the victorious Allies made mistakes, harder to know how they might have avoided them. Take Woodrow Wilson’s bargaining position. When the American navy first landed in France after the Armistice, he was The Man, and his word was law. A little later — when American Republicans were tired of being ignored; when secret deals that removed chunks of populations from one state to another could no longer be kept secret; when wartime promises had to be repudiated (catastrophic! Or kept, even worse), that worldwide writ was running thin. Unfortunately, Wilson didn’t seem to know.

Even worse was one other thing he didn’t seem to know. Georges Clemenceau and Lloyd George did: In November, the German high command had pled for a truce not because they were bored with fighting but because they were being crushed by huge, fresh Allied forces. Total defeat was about to happen at any day. With the Armistice, though, everything changed. The Germans had time to lick their wounds, while the victorious Allies began sending their troops home.

Before long, the numbers favored the Germans. If fighting had resumed and those German troops had returned to the assault on Paris, there would have been very little to keep them out.

Related post:
The Book Place