Tbilisi, 1987
The evening light was tangled in her hair. She was nearly there; at any moment she would overcome this barrier, too, would press her body against the railing with all her strength until, putting up only a feeble resistance to her weight, it succumbed with a soft groan. Yes—she would break down this barrier, not just for herself but for the three of us as well, clearing the path to adventure for her inseparable companions.
For a fraction of a second, I held my breath. Wide-eyed, we stared at our friend as she stood between two worlds. One of Dina’s feet still lingered on the pavement of Engels Street, while the other was already projecting into the dark courtyard of the Botanical Garden; she hovered between the permitted and the forbidden, between the thrill of the unknown and the monotony of the familiar, between the walk home and the daring exploit. She, the boldest of us four, opened up for us a secret world to which only she could gain access, because railings and fences had no meaning for her. She, whose life would end in the last year of this leaden, sick, suffocating century, in a noose improvised with the rope of a gymnastics ring.
That night, many unsuspecting years away from death, I was spellbound by an all-encompassing emotion I couldn’t quite identify. Nowadays I might describe it as exhilaration, a gift life gives us completely out of the blue, the tiny chink that opens up far too rarely in all the ugliness of the everyday, all the hard graft of life, leading you to suspect that, concealed behind all that is far too familiar, there is actually so much more if only one is prepared to let it in, to free oneself from constraints and predetermined patterns and take that crucial step. Because I sensed even then, without fully comprehending it, that this moment would engrave itself forever on my memory and would, with time, become a symbol of what it meant to be happy. I could tell that this was a magical moment, not because something special was happening, but because we, the bond between us, constituted an indestructible force, a fellowship that, from now on, would never shrink from a challenge.
*
I held my breath, and watched Dina break through the railing into the courtyard with that expression of exultation and triumph. And for an instant I too saw myself as the monarch of happiness and joy, the queen of the bold, because at that moment I was her, Dina, my daredevil friend. And not only me—the other two became her as well, sharing this sense of freedom that seemed to contain so many promises: after all, behind these rusty bars was a whole world just waiting for us to explore and conquer it, a world eager to lay itself at our feet.
We approached the old enclosure around the Botanical Garden, marveling at the miracle Dina had performed, and she observed us complacently, as if expecting applause and recognition for the fact that, despite our doubts, she had indeed been right: this rusty, corroded section of railing on Engels Street provided the ideal opening for us to embark on our great and long-awaited adventure.
“Well, are you coming?” she called from the other side, and one of us, I don’t remember who, pressed her forefinger against her pursed lips with a worried “Ssh!”
Dina’s face was illuminated by a single streetlamp on the opposite side of the road; she had streaks of rust on both cheeks. I took the first step. With a swing of my right leg I conquered the fear and the excitement—impossible to say which was greater. I pressed myself up against Dina, who held the railings apart for me as wide as she could; my hair caught on a needlessly protruding coil of wire, but I quickly freed myself, and stumbled into the courtyard. I was rewarded with an approving nod and Dina’s mischievous smile. Emboldened by having passed the test, I called to the two stragglers to hurry up. Now I was part of Dina’s world, the world of adventures and secrets; now I, too, could afford to look complacent.
I thought I could hear Nene’s heart pounding all the way to the tunnel. The entrance lay before us like a wide-open, gaping maw, as if to say: Oh yes, you think you’ve conquered all your fears and come a long way already, but the really terrifying part still lies ahead; you still have to face me, in my dark, concrete, rat-infested magnificence, with my dangerous currents and nightmarish sounds.
I tore my eyes away from the black concrete hole and concentrated on enticing Nene and Ira into the courtyard. It had begun to rain, and although I didn’t exactly find this encouraging, I brushed my worries aside, given how far we still had to go to reach our ultimate destination.
A car drove past. Nene instinctively ducked. Dina started laughing.
“I bet she thinks her uncle is looking for her already, and if he doesn’t find her right away, he’ll set his hyenas on her . . .”
“Don’t scare her even more!” begged Ira, the most sensible and pragmatic of us four, member of the Pioneer Palace chess club and winner of the penultimate Trans-Caucasian school youth teams’ What-When-Where quiz tournament.
“Come on, Nene, we can do this, together!” she said, in her gentle, firm, even voice, taking Nene’s damp and trembling hand in hers. Then she maneuvered Nene’s soft, lithe body past the railing, while Dina and I held it apart, and once Ira had successfully squeezed her through, she followed suit.
“We made it! Was it really that bad, you scaredy-cats?” cried Dina triumphantly. She let go of the railing, which snapped back with a dejected clatter, quivering for a while before coming to rest in its original position.
“I’m telling you, we’re going to be in so much trouble,” Ira replied, but she didn’t sound very convincing, because she too had been overcome with euphoria, suppressing her worries and the thoughts of all the problems our nocturnal adventure would inevitably incur. She turned her face pensively to the sky, as if searching there for a map to guide us on our walk, and a fat raindrop splashed onto her glasses.
That afternoon, I had arrived home late from the math tutorial that my father insisted I take from one of his professor friends (all his friends were either professors or scientists) to find Dina already waiting for me in our kitchen. We were using the pretext of having to do our homework together to run through our escape plan once more. Ira and Nene would join us later; Ira had a chess lesson, and Nene had to implement “security measures” of some sort if she was to be allowed to leave home in the evening.
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From The Lack of Light: A Novel of Georgia by Nino Haratischwili. Used with permission of the publisher, HarperVia. Copyright © 2025.
