Another early morning, too early for the cafes, which meant we had to "drink" that powdered "coffee" men call Nescafe. It seemed a good way to celebrate the end of my jock itch. The night previous, I lay on my back with my legs up, Sara powdered me like a baby insect, and that was the end of it. Cheers!
I had, however, a new complaint. My head still hurt from the chacha. It was what the Georgians call a "nabakhusevi," which sounds like the name of a Babylonian king, but means "hangover."
The photograph of Sofia Loren watched me shower, we dressed quickly, then made our way breakfastward. The cheesy pizzas they call khachapuri was going to complete the cycle of recovery.
It's a marvelous thing, this khachapuri. Dough with cheese in the middle, often a baked egg, frequently a pat of butter on top of that. Medieval and delicious. Perfect nabakhusevi food.
There's a general, magical sense that the economy here is opening up and that everything is possible, that empires can be built by the first people to figure out some "basic" things. There's the sense that a teenager from California could become a highly compensated business consultant by making some privileged "Western" observations.
Of course, I'm speaking strictly of ways to cater to obnoxious tourists. For example, the only reason we chose the breakfast place we were going to was it was the single restaurant in the entire city that used "brunch" as a keyword on their social media.
Nice, long walk across that Dry Bridge again and through that marvelous market. Vendors were just then laying out their bolts on their blankets.
Note! The Dry Bridge is so-called on account if it being over a road and not a river. Noted!
Fun little ramble through quiet neighborhoods with those distinctive Georgian balconies, fascinating buttressed outcroppings that jut colorfully out of buildings. A women dropped ground beef from one to feed hungry kittens. It fell with an appetizing splat in the road and they came up mewing, forgetting their private battles.
A lively, lived-in seeming park featured some miraculously strange sculptures. One in particular captivated us, a Soviet-era statue of a bare-breasted woman dropping rifles and swords out of her cast-off cape. It was, of course, next to the children's climbing structures. Here, children, Mother Rifle is here to nurse and protect you.
The weapon-filled cape formed a kind of canopy you could shelter under from the rain. There was no plaque or explanation. She was absolutely fascinating with a marvelous profile. The pictures did not do it justice. It may have been the powdered coffee, but I found myself feeling like it was one of the most significantly beautiful pieces of martial art I've seen.
Different from the abstract emotions of the Vigeland Park sculptures in Oslo, I had a deep response to it. The picture doesn't do it justice.
Past the museum and down Rustaveli Street, past grand buildings and busy plazas. Past women selling seeds and men offering their taxis as tour buses. Past fountains and malls. Down to a subterranean walkway emerging at a soaring column of St. George clad in gold slaying a golden worm with a golden lance.
Another turn and there we were at the only hashtag-brunch place in Tbilisi. They served the khachapuri up hot, and we tore it apart, washing it down with a lavender tea. Thus fortified, we explored anew, winding our way to Prospero's Books, a delightful bookseller with a courtyard and a cafe. An excellent section on "regional interest" seemed made just for me. There was even a display of Bread and Ashes, the book I was currently reading!
I bought a tiny history of Georgia and a novel by Lermantov.
I fell in love with a tiny painting in a streetside flea market but I married an iced coffee at a chain place I trusted. We drank up and hauled our bread and ashes to the metro. Sara and I repeated the conversation Joe and I had the previous day. It's deep but not as deep as Kyiv! I know! I would have thought it deep otherwise, had I not been to Kyiv! Me too!
At the Marjanishvili station, we detrained and cobblestoned our way through a commercial district lined with shops and malls, a heavily billboarded and advertisement encrusted Anyeurope which soon melted into the more distinct jutting-balcony Tbilisi and soon further led to quiet avenues with large worn-seeming apartment buildings with gorgeous deco facades and curly concrete details.
Our destination was Fabrika, a hostel and art center put together by someone with vision and money. It was the most Berlin-like area we'd seen. A block-sized compound with rooms in the front and cafes and yoga spaces in the back. I have to imagine it's the place you would make an immediate beeline for if you were a young artist or adventurer come to check the city out.
We were there to meet with Joe, who had offered to give us a tour of the Old City and share with us some secret hallways and passages. He arrived shortly, along with another outlander. Australian, of course. Aren't they all?
Unlike Khinalug John from the previous week who delighted in showing off cellphone pics of bilbies and quokkas, Tom was super chill after having spent the previous six months in Portugal and Spain. Affable and stoned, he proved a fine companion for our tour.
Joe's eyes flashed and his bright smile shone through his deep black beard. His thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and we were off.
Corkscrewing canyons of merchant's mansions, charming courtyards and "Italian gardens" showed the real Tbilisi. Children played while their nursemaids knit, men tore at walls with crowbars and painted walls with rollers dripping white. Men smoothed stone with grinding machines. Women hurried to market.
Joe wove tales as we wandered. Here, he said, was once a single home, built by a powerful merchant to show off his wealth. Here, he said, was once a park where lovers met in licentious liaison. How the leaves did rustle. How the branches did shake. Torn collars and greased lips. And here, here (here here here) was a muse of Edvard Munch murdered by her lover. Her grave lies not many yards distant!
I took great inspiration from this particular story. Her name was Dagny Juel, and she was an artist's model and Bohemian who married as she liked and posed for artists as she liked and slept with who she liked. A glamorous, independent spirit who swung with the wrong swinger. He got jealous and did her in.
You can't get any more Merchant and Ivory than that. It feels like "Munch's Muse" would get greenlit as a period biopic in any respectable Hollywood production house. I'm dying to write it. The tale seemed to fall out of Joe's cape like a rainstorm of rifles and into my mind.
We ducked into a construction site and marveled at a dark little hallway decorated with the ancient canvas of a clipper ship on a tormented sea. A spiraling staircase led up, up (up). At a little shop, we tried churchkela, a Georgian treat that looks exactly like a wax candle but tastes only mostly like a wax candle.
I hummed "Tequila" to myself but replaced the title with churchkela. A private laugh for a public gentleman. Tom stepped on a pop top and busted his flip flop, so we rested while he bought himself some new shoes. When he returned, well-shod and half-shy, Joe's coal black eyes shone like onyx from an ancient mine. His thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and we were off.
Off, off off to the Old City with its twisting streets and comfortable rugs. A pair of gypsy boys danced in the street, the oldest couldn't have been five, the youngest barely three, but they charmed and roared to the crowd's great delight. The baby danced with the ecstatic intensity of Anthony Quinn on some faraway beach. I offered him coins, and he expertly held them and grabbed for more with a practiced pinching gesture that frightened me.
Ancient places of worship and wine fermented in clay pots deep beneath the earth, down where the dwarven lords live in halls of stone. Brass pheasants wept over hot springs, blue-tiled bathhouses rose above them, and above the blue-tiled bathhouses rose a fortress. There's always a higher point in Tbilisi, each view offers an elevated glimpse of the last. You can climb and climb forever, quite naturally, almost unknowingly, and find yourself dazzled by the miniature nature of what, moments ago, seemed enormous.
Joe encouraged us to try "lemonade," a sweet, crisp refreshment made of grapes (and not lemons). I also tried some fresh-squeezed pomegranate. Tart and cleansing.
At a waterfall, not three yards from where a gypsy held a peacock captive by its ivory feet, we made our farewells. Joe and Tom had a castle to storm, but our hearts counseled rest. Embraces and pledges. Oaths and swearing. We headed back down. Climbing higher, yet higher, Joe's thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and disappeared.
We wrestled mightily with a cab driver, fought with him like renegade angels until understanding could be reached, and we were home.
At home, we rested, read, and wrote. We uploaded our pictures and cheered for the Storm. They had won another game! Out once more now, down the strange street of touts and models. We landed at a Pakistani place. A light rain began to fall, and they put a tent around us. Like we mattered. Like we were princelings. Sara opined that had it been hot, we would have been fanned with fronds of palm.
It was a strange night. Large groups of Persians pinched and bullied the restaurant hosts. A man in a pointy beard put his hands around the neck of a smaller man holding a menu. He, the vampire, did not wish to be asked what he wanted. It was not pleasant to see.
We paid (it was almost nothing) and retired. Under the string lights, we could have been anyone. At home, we slept. The Persian vampires hunted and howled until late.
In the morning, we would take a train to the sea.
I especially enjoyed the segue from jock itch to the wondrous khachapuri. I really must try one some time.
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