Georgian readers are already familiar with Irakli Javakhadze’s short stories. He attracted attention from the start thanks to his manner of telling stories in which readers can recognize themselves. The edition includes three stories: Kolya, The Completely Invented Story and A Zero Man. Anyone who approaches Irakli Javakhadze's literary texts can somehow discover oneself in them, identify with the pain, loss and victory, love and lovelessness. The author is a skillful narrator able to involve and impress his readers. The story Kolya was included in the anthology Contemporary Georgian Fiction published by Dalkey Archive Press in the US in 2012. Social rituals figure in the story  Kolya, when two young men, one from Tbilisi, the other from Murmansk, buddy up while on holiday at a Black Sea resort, drink and find female companionship. Cultural differences between the Georgian and the Russian add spice to the scenes where we see them bond. In spite of some quite sharp misunderstanding between two fellows, they make some tie, but soon Kolya throws himself out of a window and the question is Why? Seven years after Georgian narrator gets a long letter from Kolya’s thirteen year old daughter in which the answers can be found.


EXTRACT
Translated into English by Ekaterine Machitidze

KOLYA

“I met Nikolai Subotin on the fifth of August at a resort on the Black Sea coast. I knew him for two days. On the seventh of August, at midday, Kolya killed himself. He jumped from the roof of a twelve-story hotel with his arms outstretched, and smashed head- and chest-first into the marble steps that ran from the first floor of the hotel out into the courtyard and went up to the second floor of the restaurant. The same steps where I had met Kolya two days before and where, the previous night, Kolya had introduced me to Sveta. According to witnesses, Kolya stood on the roof for several min-utes, seemingly oblivious to the shouts of the people gathered in the hotel courtyard below. Then he shouted, ‘I’m through with it!’ and leaped off as if he was diving, and as he fell threw the air he called out . . .”
  I’d kept that entry in my drawer for several years. I can’t even remember why I started writing about Kolya, nor when I wrote that passage. Nor can I remember whether or not I planned to carry on writing that entry at some point; I would probably never have gone back to it had I not received a letter from Murmansk a couple of days ago . . .
It was on the fifth of August that I arrived at the coastal town. I caught a taxi from the railway station and went straight to the resort. The driver asked me for seven rubles and told me if I rounded it up to ten he’d carry my bags to my room. I gave him eight rubles and carried the bags up my- self. I had reserved the room from Tbilisi, but still had some trouble at re-ception: the hotel administrator tried to put me in a single room. I smiled as politely as I could and said, “My friend is arriving from Moscow tomor-row morning. And I can see you’ve got ‘room with twin beds’ written next to my name in the register.”
  “Everyone says that. They get a twin and then nobody else shows up: no friend, no wife, no cousin. It’s only ever temporary wives here, sometimes several in one day.”
  Still smiling, I answered, “As you’ll see for yourself tomorrow, my friend couldn’t really be anyone’s temporary wife, for the simple reason that he’s a man.”
  “Well, if he really does come we’ll transfer you to a twin room tomorrow.”
  “So you’re saying that what’s written in the register doesn’t matter?”
  “That’s right.”
  I sighed. “Okay, fine. But remember one thing: Georgian men never go on holiday alone.”
  “As I said,” replied the woman, slightly nervously, “if your friend does arrive we’ll transfer you to another room. That’s the best I can do.”... (See PDF)


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