The pace of life has slowed considerably since my first frenetic days in Georgia. The honking and the English banter of Tbilisi have dissolved away into the soft murmuring of a mountain stream. The lights and airplanes have been pounded to dust beneath the hooves of horses and cows. Industrial exhaust has condensed and formed soft piles of manure on the rocky paths.
Kazbegi waits for me in the morning, patient as a sleeping cat. I wake and spread Nutella over stale chunks of crust. I walk the kilometer down the squat mountain, stepping to the side as one or two old Russian cars turn up dust. I cross the bridge over the river Tergi and pass the indifferent cafe workers; their eyes look as dusty as the roads.
I light a cigarette when I hit town center, standing in the shade. Taxis and marshutkas are parked around the central statue. A few of the Georgian drivers eventually wander up and ask questions. I don’t understand them, but the conversation finds its gravity around the statement: “Var mastavlebe inglisuri politzia. Me ak erti tve”–I’m the English teacher for the police, here for one month (in very poor Georgian). There are a few follow up questions that I cannot understand. I gesticulate my confusion. They begin to converse amongst themselves.
“Nakvamdis!” I say. Goodbye!
“Kargad,” they say. Bye.
I walk towards the police station. Pedestrians mill about with unmistakably strange, circuitous orbits. Small town days are longer than city days and there are fewer straight lines. Time is not adversarial, it’s friendly; it’s as plentiful as undeveloped real estate.
I continue on and breach the police station yard. Officers are beginning to gather for class. The more confident students give me a shy “hello,” followed by a bit of giggling, and the others say “gamarjoba” or else nod their heads. I respond in turn.
I set up my books and computer upstairs and write the day’s schedule on the small whiteboard. Class is scheduled to start at noon, and we start exactly at Georgian noon, which falls somewhere between 12:15 and 12:20.
In class, we are learning the uses of he/his and she/her. There are pictures of famous people people with fill in the blank sentences: His name is Tom Cruise. He’s an actor. We come to picture b) President Putin. The officers cross out his face. His first name is Snake.
Afterwards, I walk back into town and order some meat at a cafe. I unsheathe Hemingway or Kerouac from my pack and read while I’m waiting. A few tourists–Israelis, Germans, Czechs–claim or vacate the surrounding tables. I listen while I read, hungry for English conversation. I approach a table after I’ve polished off my chicken shish.
“It’s hard to ignore an English conversation around here,” I say. “Where are you guys from?”
“They are from Germany,” says a woman sitting across from a couple. “And I’m Georgian.”
She had an unmistakable American accent. “Georgia the state or Georgia the country?” I ask.
“I am from here, Sakartvelo” (the Georgian name for Georgia).
I wrap up the conversation so I don’t impose, but my appetite for conversation is far from slaked. I leave the cafe thinking about the “Dhakar Doldrums” and “Harlem Doldrums” of Carlo Marx in On the Road.
As I cross back over the river Tergi, I pop on my Ray Bans and pipe Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm” into my earbuds. I kick up the volume a notch and cast an American glance up the mountain. O lonely guesthouse on high, I will shake and boogie heavenward until we are one!
wehavearrived 