ასინქრონი
Novel
Bakur Sulakauri Publishing 2013
13X19.5
160 pages
ISBN: 9789941230455

ASYNCHRONY

TOGONIDZE EKATERINE
Siamese twins Lina and Diana die in mysterious circumstances. In this tragic story, their absent father Rostom learns of their existence first through the terrible fact of their death, then, page by page, from their poignant diary entries. Although they are conjoined, the girls are two very different individuals with well-defined and separate personalities. Easy-going, happy Lina is capable of falling in love, an optimistic and romantic soul who writes poetry in her diary and finds joy in the smallest details of her life. Diana, tougher and more down-to-earth, is less accepting of their situation, and angrier. Like most siblings they argue and envy each other; unlike most they cannot act in isolation except through this one outlet, their diaries. The two contrasting voices chronicle their extraordinary experience as two separate individuals who from the waist down share one body. Until they are teenagers, the vulnerable twins are hidden from the outside world and cared for by their grandmother, who struggles to protect them in impoverished post-Soviet Georgia, a society with little compassion for the disabled. After her death they are defenceless and fall victim to every type of ill-treatment. They are abused sexually and psychologically, and forced to work as freaks in a circus.


‘Ekaterine Togonidze has a niche of her own in literature: hitherto, the themes she elaborates have been virtually entirely ignored by Georgian literature.’
Lasha Bugadze, author, playwright, 2013

EXTRACT
Translated into English by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Charlotte Marsden


So now no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 7:17

Part One

The postman was ringing the doorbell when Rostom arrived home.
‘Oh, you’re back, are you? I was about to leave,’ he said as Rostom came out of the lift. He asked him to sign for a letter and went down the stairs.
The letter was from the hospital. He glanced through it. “Concerning expenses incurred by your children… Payment is compulsory…’
He stopped reading. He didn’t have any children. He turned the paper over and read the last sentence: “Our sincere condolences…”
‘What the hell’s this about?’ he muttered, looking down the stairwell. The postman was nowhere to be seen.
Indoors, clothes lay on the chairs in dusty heaps. His shelves were stuffed with tatty books; in the squalid kitchen, dirty cups without handles and chipped plates were piled high. A large black-and-white photo of his mother hung on the wall. Rostom went to put the letter down on a shelf, but instead chucked it in the bin. He switched on the TV and put a pan of leftover fried potatoes from the day before on the cooker. On the news there was something about a circus that was closing down.
He took a bottle of sauce out of the fridge and poured some vodka into a glass. The words ‘funeral expenses for your children’ drifted back to him from the letter. He looked up at his mother’s photo and shook his head. She gazed down at him with her sad eyes... or so it seemed to Rostom. Whenever the thought of selling the house crossed his mind, he avoided meeting her eye. He didn’t dare take it down. He was ashamed even to think of taking her picture down.... (See PDF)


In case of using the information, please, indicate the source.