Holy War

A novel by

Keith Collins

“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Ephesians 6:12

“The meek shall inherit the earth.”

Psalm 37:11

GEORGIAN SSR

Chapter 1

Her brother stood before her, holding a bunch of tulips, his big ears like two pink flowers. “They’re from Kazakhstan,” he said, beaming. “I thought you’d like them.”

“Oh, I do, Dima!” Tamar took the flowers and pecked his cheek, and he followed her into the kitchen, where she laid them on the counter. She pulled a small knife out of a drawer and turned on the faucet and, holding the stems under the water, began slicing off the ends at an angle, preparing the flowers to find nourishment in their new home.

“Be careful,” said a small, scowling woman, as she laid pieces of freshly cut oranges across the top of a cake. “It’s sharp.”

“Deda, really, do you think I’m still a little girl?”

Her brother’s hand appeared on top of hers. “Let me do it, Tamuna,” he said. “It’s your day.” He took the knife out of her hand and finished cutting the flowers, and she got their grandmother’s purple vase out of the sideboard and began inserting the flowers one by one and arranging them; the pink and purple complemented each other strikingly. Her brother smiled at her determination to make life beautiful despite the collapsing world around them. Then he noticed her pout.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“They’re lovely. Thank you, Dima.”

“I didn’t get you another gift, I know. It’s hard to shop when I’m always working.”

She forced a smile. “No, that’s not it. I love them, really. It’s just that, well, I mean, it’s my birthday and all. I was hoping I could go with you tonight!”

Their mother whipped her head around and opened her mouth, but Dima spoke first. “Tamuna, come on,” he said. “Aren’t you getting together with Nini and Maia or something?”

She squirmed with impatience. “No, Dima, I want to be with you! I can see my friends anytime.”

“I know, but I can skip one night. Nothing much happens at these things, anyway. Let’s stay here. Invite your friends. Deda’s cake –”

Tamar broke in. “Really, it would be the best birthday present ever, Dima. I’m twenty-one now!” She breathed a few times to calm herself. “I’ve never been to a demonstration. It’s an important time for our country, right? Maybe I can even practice my English! The girl would go with her brother to the rally. See? Perfect for when the Americans come. The Soviet Union is going down the drain!” She made a loud sucking sound with her mouth.

“What’s gotten into you?’ he said, laughing. “What Americans? Nobody’s coming.” Then he sighed. “Anyway, it’s, ‘The girl would like to go with her brother to the rally.’ That’s how the Americans would say it. But come on, Tamuna, who do you think is going to speak English at a rally in Tbilisi? Nobody cares about the Americans.”

She shrugged. “I do,” she said. Then took a sharp breath. “Is Goga going to be there?”

“Probably.”

She shook her head. “I don’t like him.”

He gave her a doubtful look. “He’s too old for you, anyway.” Then he smiled. “And you’re too beautiful for him.”

She gave a whimper of pleasure and tried to make her eyes stern. “Forget what I said,” she said. “I don’t want to go. Let’s stay home.” Out of the corner of her eye she could see their mother nodding.

Dima laughed. “Don’t let him intimidate you, Tamuna. Maybe someday you can teach him how to smile.”

“Listen to your sister, Dima,” their mother said, still placing orange slices on the cake. “She doesn’t want to go.”

Tamar walked to the window and stared out, breathing hard through her nose. Dima exhaled his own exasperated breath, thinking, thinking, then came and stood next to her, a smile across his face. “Okay.” Her eyes went wide with delight and fear. “Why not? It’s your birthday. Half the city will be there, anyway.”

Their mother put both hands on the counter and let her shoulders slump. “What about the cake?”

But Tamar just squealed and hugged her brother. “Oh, thank you, thank you!”

Dima thought for a moment. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Remember how you always wanted to be a newspaper reporter? Take your notebook and make notes. Then you don’t have to talk with Goga if you don’t want to.”

Without a word she spun around and ran to her bedroom and brought a notebook with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the cover, the one her Uncle Nika had sent her from his new home in America. She wrapped her arms around the notebook and hugged it to her chest.

“Let’s bring some zephyrs too,” he said. “We’ll make it a real party.” He went to the kitchen and took an unopened package of marshmallow treats and slipped them into the large shoulder satchel he always carried with him. “They’ll get smashed, but who cares, right?” It looked oddly soothing to her, the delicate confections dropping into the worn olive satchel. It made her think of the pediatric hospital where he was a doctor, the disheveled and exhausted families in the emergency room and Dima talking softly to each one before leading them back to the examining room. She would watch him walk away, his pink ears like flowers but also like flags. She loved that he was so gentle with these people, especially the children, that there was nothing more important in the world to him than kindness.

He disappeared for a moment into his bedroom and emerged with a small leather pouch, which he placed around his neck and tucked inside his shirt. She looked puzzled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I like to have my supplies with me. People are always needing a doctor for something.” Her face didn’t soften, though. “Oh, come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun!” He whispered something to their mother and went into his bedroom and emerged holding an envelope and a small white box tied with a red ribbon and a tiny blue bow. “We were going to give it to you later,” Dima said, “but why don’t you open it now.”

She tore the envelope and read the card inside. “Dear Tamar, Happy Birthday from Washington, DC,” it said. “We hope you like these. We think they’re perfect for you. Love, Uncle Nika and Aunt Rosa.” She opened the box, and inside was a shiny pair of earrings in the shape of American flags. Her mother gasped and so did she, as she turned them over carefully. “I love them,” she whispered. She went to the small mirror by the front door and held them up to her ears and turned her head from side to side. “They’re perfect.” She removed the studs from her ears and slid the earrings into the holes.

“Are you sure you should be wearing those?” her mother asked. “I mean –“

“Yes,” Tamar cut her off. She was sure. Then she caught sight again of the pouch peeking out of her brother’s shirt and turned around, looking anxious. He put his arm around her. “I told you, don’t be concerned,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen. I’ll be with you.”

Their mother scowled. “She’s never been to one of these before, Dima,” she said. “What if they decide to do something?” She didn’t have to say who they were. Tanks from the Soviet army, Gorbachev’s army, had been seen in the city that morning.

Tamar looked at her brother for reassurance, and he looked at their mother, questioning her with his eyes. She nodded. “Wait,” she said. She walked to the sideboard and opened a drawer and pulled out a small wooden St. Nino’s cross, the symbol of the Georgian Orthodox Church, attached to a leather cord. She squeezed the cross into Tamar’s palm and closed her fingers around it. “Go with God.” 

Tamar nodded her thanks and fastened the cross around her neck.

“I’ll keep the cake till later,” their mother sighed.

Dima laughed. “We’re going to have a good night.”

Chapter 2

When Tamar and Dima arrived in downtown Tbilisi, they found thousands of people standing shoulder to shoulder, chanting slogans and singing patriotic songs. A man with a baby face and several days’ growth of scraggly beard waved when he saw Dima coming.

“To victory!” Goga shouted, as if toasting the Tbilisi football team. Then he noticed Dima’s companion, and his eyes opened wide in surprise, a look Tamar interpreted as horror. She stopped, and Dima stopped with her.

“What’s wrong?” Dima asked.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

His face fell. “I told you,” he grumbled.

She let out an exasperated breath. “I mean, you know,” she said, vaguely, and turned her back. Dima noticed Goga looking at her and understood. He put his arm around her shoulders. “Hey, you don’t have to talk to him. I’ll stay with you.” Somewhere in the distance a man spoke into a microphone. “That’s Gamsakhurdia,” Dima said. “He’s going to be president when Georgia is free.”

“I know that,” she scoffed. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

He smiled. “Okay, so do you want to start making notes? You know, a reporter?” She shook her head. Something didn’t feel right. She had been in crowds before at concerts and football games and rather liked them, but this one was different, excited and hopeful but also anxious. She moved closer to Dima. He took out the zephyrs and started sharing them with the group, then offered one to Tamar. She declined; it didn’t seem like a time for sweets. A woman in the group offered her hazelnuts, and she took a palmful and ate them one by one. A man handed her a candle, and she lit it and sang patriotic songs with the others. She had never seen Georgians so united and yet, somehow, so fraught.

She peeked at Goga and saw that he was totally ignoring her. Which was fine with her. What did she see in him, anyway? She wanted to leave, but Dima was leading the singing now. She looked around and found an opening in the crowd and walked over to a tree and sat down, laying her head against the trunk. She wished she were home with Nini and Maia, singing and dancing to Michael Jackson. That would be a real celebration.

***

She felt the tree vibrating, as if it held a motor. What? She sat up straight. People she didn’t know were running past, disappearing into the trees. Had she fallen asleep? Where was Dima?

“Tamuna!” She looked up as Dima reached his hand down and pulled her to her feet. She grabbed his arm and hugged it tightly. Beyond the trees shadows darted. A shout pierced the air, then three or four together. A woman screamed, and a dark, monstrous shape, two of them, rolled into view. The shapes stopped, and black-clad figures in hooded masks emerged and started pushing through the crowd, shovels in their hands. The Soviet army! She’d heard their special forces used shovels in crowds when they couldn’t get away with guns. She hid behind her brother and began shaking uncontrollably. When she heard the thud of metal against a tree trunk, then a softer thud and another scream, she buried her face in his back and let loose a deluge of tears.

“We’ve got to get you out of here!” Dima said firmly. He tried to guide her away, but she was transfixed by the horror, the figures beyond the trees, scrambling, running, the men faster, the women caught in the stampede and falling over each other, the attackers beating the women. Sirens cut the air, ambulances began arriving, and the hooded figures began attacking the ambulances.

“Tamuna! Really! We’ve got to go!”

Dima was shouting in her ear now and pulling her by the arm. She finally let him drag her farther away to a bigger tree, where he sat her carefully on the ground, her back to the trunk, the trunk between her and the mayhem. She didn’t feel safer, although she was grateful for his efforts and didn’t say anything. But instead of sitting down with her as she expected, or standing over her protectively, he started running toward the noise. She shouted, “Dima!” Then she screamed. But he kept running, and she lost sight of him. She curled up and cried, crazy with fear.

The sounds moved away. In the distance she heard retching and soft weeping. The woman who had given her the hazelnuts walked up. “Tamar,” she said, gravely. The woman stretched out her hand, and Tamar took it. She started to rise, then fell back. She knew what was coming. The woman stuck out her hand again, and Tamar took it and this time strengthened her grip. They walked toward a strip of grass along Rustaveli Avenue. Tamar’s eyes and skin were beginning to burn. She looked at the woman in panic, but the woman pulled her forward.

And then she saw it, there on the ground, her brother’s body, a woman’s body at his side, a bandage half taped to her temple. His pouch lay on the ground, its contents scattered. Tamar didn’t say anything, just dropped to her knees and grabbed Dima’s head and started madly kissing his ears.

Chapter 3

“Nooooooooooo!” Tamar screamed. “I hate the Soviet Union! I hate Russians! I hate everything about this terrible life!”

The funeral was over, and Nini and Maia sat on the sofa on either side of her, their arms around her trembling back. The earrings still lay under the dining table where she had thrown them earlier. Her mother sat on the other side of the room, weeping softly, turning her cross over and over in her fingers.

Maia reached up and stroked Tamar’s hair, then took the flowers off the coffee table and offered them again to her. “They’re from –”

Nini shook her head, and Maia put the flowers back on the table. Tamar let out another wail. “I hate tulips!” she screamed.

Maia said, “I’m sorry, I thought –”

Nini, her frilly blouse buttoned to her neck in an attempt to show respect, stroked Tamar’s knee. It was unnerving, seeing her best friend, the girl who was always in command of her life and the world around her, so distraught. Nini wanted badly to say something helpful, but everything she could think of seemed trite.

But then a thought rose in her, a memory from years before. It seemed silly to voice it, maybe even disrespectful, but she felt an overwhelming urge now to speak. “Hey, Tamuna,” she said, “do you remember when Mrs. Ratishvili wanted to give you a four in math and you fought back? What were we, like, twelve or something? And you wouldn’t give in? Remember that? Dima was so proud of you when he heard about it. You’re tough. You’re the toughest person I know. Don’t let them win.” She made a little pump with her fist.

The silence in the room told Nini she had indeed said the wrong thing. She started to flush. Then she noticed that Tamar had stopped crying and was touching one of the tulips with her index finger. “Yes, I remember,” she said.

***

The class had ended, and the students were filing out. Mrs. Ratishvili sat at her desk, her gaze fixed on her papers, afraid to look up. She knew Tamar was staring at her from the front row. Nini and Maia were waiting outside the classroom; they had received fives on the math test, the highest grades. Tamar, however, had received a four. She had studied and practiced until the textbook pages were burned into her eyes. She knew she had written a perfect test. This was unfair!

Not that grading was ever fair in Mrs. Ratishvili’s class. Maia couldn’t solve the simplest problems when Tamar tried to help her with her homework, and Nini preferred reading novels to opening a math book, yet they both usually got fives. The reason was no mystery. Maia’s father was the chief doctor at the largest hospital in Tbilisi. Nini’s father was a famous actor. The fathers were always happy to express their gratitude to Mrs. Smetannikova for her patience and kind assistance by bestowing gifts whenever needed. And she, in turn, was always happy to express her gratitude by giving their daughters mostly fives on their math exams. Five was such a little number. What was the harm?

Tamar’s mother worked in the city government, and their family never had much money. They could have a lot more, Tamar knew, but her mother refused to join in the ritual back scratching, where the workers under you gave you gifts, and you gave gifts to your boss, and he to his boss, until the top boss was well compensated and everyone secure. But Tamar’s mother wouldn’t give gifts, and she wouldn’t take them. It’s not honest, she said. So Tamar worked hard for her grades, usually studying until well past midnight, and she always knew the math cold.

But Mrs. Ratishvili was invariably picking at something, like a smudged erasure or a calculation she couldn’t follow, more often than not giving Tamar fours. After all, a five indicated perfection, and who’s perfect? Even she, Mrs. Ratishvili, who had taught at the school for thirty-four years, even she was not perfect and would not give herself a five. How could she give a student a five?

Tamara cleared her throat ostentatiously. Mrs. Ratishvili knew what was coming and looked up slowly. “You gave me a four, and you gave Nini and Maia fives,” Tamar said. “Were their tests better than mine?”

Mrs. Ratishvili switched her gaze to the wall at the end of the room. “Never you mind about them,” she said. “They need the help, so I help them a little, to encourage them. You, you are smart enough not to need help. I’m giving you the benefit of earning your grades. You will thank me later.” She stood up, hoping Tamar would get the message that the discussion was over.

Tamar refused to move. “I don’t care about later,” she said. “What do I have to do to get a five on this test?”

Mrs. Ratishvili looked down at her, as if deciding how much to tell her about the facts of life. She knew getting something out of Tamar’s mother was impossible. Finally, she said, “If I changed your grade to a five at this point, it would not look good. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“But I want to get a gold medal when I finish school, and gold medals only go to students with perfect grades. I have never gotten a four as a final grade in any other class, and you’re making it so I might get one in math. I know I got everything right. This is not fair.” Tamar refused to beg. She should get a perfect score on the merits.

“Sometimes, Tamar, life just isn’t fair.”

Tamar looked down to keep from lashing out. Then, when she had calmed down, she looked up again. “What about this?” she said. “You give me one more problem, right now, and if I solve it, I will get a five, and if I don’t, I will get a four. I’ll sit right here in front of you and do it. Or we can go some place more private, if you want. No, a three. You can give me a three if I get it wrong.”

Tamar expected Mrs. Ratishvili to reject the proposal outright, but to her surprise, the teacher started biting her lip and thinking. Tamar could tell she was feeling guilty and looking for a way out. “What problem would I give you?” she agonized. “I would have to consult my books.”

Tamar folded her hands on top of the desk. “I’ll wait,” she said. She was trying to put on a bold face, but her hands were shaking.

Mrs. Ratishvili sighed. She lifted a book off the desk and paged through it until she found something she liked, then stepped to the chalkboard. She wrote out a complicated problem, then consulted the book and erased part of what she had just written and rewrote the problem. She handed Tamar several sheets of paper and told her she had twenty minutes to solve the problem.

While Tamar was working, Mrs. Ratishvili sat at her desk and examined her nails, then reached into her purse and pulled out a magazine and looked at a few pictures. She combed her fingers through her hair, the color of overripe fruit. She glanced up occasionally to check on Tamar, who was working carefully, showing all her work, determined not to erase anything. When she finished, she went through her calculations line by line. Then she stood up and handed the paper to the teacher.

Mrs. Ratishvili checked Tamar’s answer with the book. It was correct. Then she looked through the paper carefully, searching for mistakes, cross-outs, anything that was not perfect. Finding nothing, she was about to yield, because really, who could fight with this girl? She was exhausting.

Then, amazingly, Mrs. Ratishvili spotted something. The answer to the problem was 4,356, but the comma was so small it could be mistaken for a period. 

“Tamar, the answer is not four point three five six. It’s four thousand, three hundred fifty-six.”

“That’s what I have.”

“No, it’s not. It looks like a decimal point to me.”

“A decimal point? What are you talking about? Look at my calculation. You know I have the right answer.”

“If the answer is wrong, the problem is wrong. I’m sorry. But I will be generous. You will receive a four.” She smiled inside. Once again, she had proved herself smarter than even the brightest student in the school.

Tamar got up without a word and walked out of the classroom, past Nini and Maia, who had been listening all this time, down the hall, out the front door and into the park next to the school. She sat down on a bench, defeated. The sun was still high in the sky, but for her, night had come. She hated this woman so much, this petty, insecure, self-loathing . . .

She felt the bench shake and looked up. Nini and Maia had sat down on either side of her. “That was amazing,” Nini said.

“What?” Tamar said. “She wouldn’t change anything.”

“I mean, what you did,” Nini said. “You were so brave.”

“Who cares,” Tamar said.

“You stood up to her. That’s what was amazing.”

Maia motioned for Nini to lean behind Tamar’s head, and they whispered for a few seconds. Then Nini said to Tamar, “You know what? I’m going to talk to my father. Maybe he can give her free tickets to his play next weekend, with some, you know, subtle conditions.”

Tamar looked at her, surprised. “Like what?”

“You know.”

Tamar frowned. “That wouldn’t be honest, Nini. I couldn’t accept that. I made the comma too small.”

“But you had the right answer,” Nini said. “She’s the one who’s not honest. Believe me, it would make me happy if I could help you. I don’t know if it will work, but I do know you’re the bravest girl ever.”

Tamar was silent, loathe to accept the favor. Then she said, “Do what you want. But why does she hate me so much?”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Nini said. “She just doesn’t understand you. She never will. You live in another world.”

***

Tamar got up from the sofa and went to the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water. When she returned, she picked up the American flag earrings and put them back on.

“I still don’t understand how you had the guts,” Nini said, her face full of wonder at the memory. “She could have given you a problem you couldn’t solve.”

“I know,” Tamar said. “But it wasn’t right, what she did. And it’s not right what’s happening now.” She gestured vaguely at the world. “Any of this.”

Chapter 4

It was one of those entryways where cats lurked and the stench of urine lingered. Tamar walked with Nini and Maia to the far end of the lobby and pushed the button for the elevator. She could hear the rumble of the motor, then footsteps approaching behind them. The elevator arrived, and they slipped inside and closed both doors quickly. A hand rattled the outer door, but they were already rising.

Goga answered Tamar’s knock. A small patch of chest hair peeked over a yellowed, v-neck undershirt.

“Can we come in?” Tamar asked. “These are my friends.” Tamar didn’t feel she had to introduce them or explain her reasons for bringing friends to the apartment of a man she still barely knew. She half expected him to slam the door in their faces, but he opened it and motioned for them to move ahead of him into the kitchen.

“Do you want some tea?” he asked from behind.

“No, thank you,” Tamar answered for all of them.

In the kitchen, strings of onions hung from cupboard knobs. Ivy plants in faded orange plastic buckets looped over a metal rod stretched between cabinets.

“Can we sit down?” she asked.

“Sure.” He cleared newspapers and a plastic CD case from one chair and pulled up three more. On the table was a ceramic cereal bowl full of ashes. He sat down opposite the young women.

“I know you think I hate you,” Tamar said to Goga. “I don’t. I’ve done a lot of thinking.” Nini and Maia nodded in agreement.

He looked down at the table. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About your brother.”

“So am I, but I’ve come to say I want to help you.” She looked him straight in the eye, showing him she’d grown up since he had last seen her. “I want to help Georgia be free.”

His fingers tapped the table. “We don’t have girls anymore.”

“I’m not mad at you, Goga. Don’t you need help?”

He lit a cigarette. With his young features, it was a gesture that seemed as unnatural as if he were to smear strawberry jam on his face. “You don’t smoke, do you?” he asked, knowing the answer.

She shook her head. So did Nini and Maia, even though Maia smoked incessantly now. It was how she planned to lose weight.

He got up and opened a window, and the rustle of leaves filled the room. He turned and exhaled into the night.

“What can I do?” Tamar asked. “Just tell me, Goga.” Maia had already lost interest in the conversation and was examining the onion strings. Nini folded her hands tightly in her lap and focused on Tamar.

“Okay, I appreciate the offer,” he said, “but I think we have enough people now. We’re not giving up. It looks like Gamsakhurdia’s going to be president.”

Tamar wouldn’t be misdirected. “Everybody knows that. You can’t tell me you don’t need more people. Gorbachev’s not giving up, either.”

He blew out an exasperated stream of smoke. “Why do you want to do this, Tamar? If it’s just to, like, live in Dima’s shoes, we don’t need that.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to live in anyone’s shoes.” She sounded impressively mature to herself and looked at Nini, who caught her eye and nodded vigorously.

Goga rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “Whatever.” He turned to Nini and Maia. “I suppose they want to help too?”

“No,” Tamar said, as if the answer should have been obvious. “They’re just my friends.” Nini opened her mouth to speak and then shut it again.

Goga’s cigarette was only partially smoked, but he ground it into the cereal bowl. “Alright,” he said. “Come tomorrow. We’ll find something.” He rocked his chair back onto two legs, then let it fall onto all four again with a thud. He stood up and fidgeted with a loose spindle in the back, then lit another cigarette and took a long drag and held the smoke until Tamar thought maybe he had already exhaled when she wasn’t looking. Then he walked to the window again and breathed into the trees. “It’s tough work,” he said. “And dangerous.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Tamar said. Maia had stopped her distractedness and was looking at her with the admiration of a friend who knew she had been through unimaginable heartache.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “You know that.” He balanced the cigarette on the edge of the cereal bowl and walked toward the door. “Come about four.”

Chapter 5

The next day Tamar arrived alone at three forty-five. Goga’s sleeves were wet. A sponge lay on the kitchen sink. Four other men were also busy cleaning.

“You need a woman around here,” Tamar said.

Goga looked at her and smiled. She had never seen him smile. It was not a good look for him. His crooked teeth made him seem both sinister and goofy.

“Introduce me to the others,” Tamar said. She had never been so forward around men. Being without her brother had made her realize how inexperienced she really was. She had to learn to do things on her own.

He introduced her to Irakli, two Nikas and Misha. Irakli made a fist of solidarity.

“Just you guys now?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Irakli said. “We’re all friends. We don’t want anybody else.”

She took off her jacket and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair. “What are we doing?” she asked. Misha was bent over the stove, scrubbing. The other men stared at her. She realized the cleaning was for her. “Hey,” she said. “Come on. This place is good enough. What are we working on?”

“We’re planning a rally a week from Sunday,” Misha said.

“How many people?” she asked.

“We’re trying to get fifty.”

“Is that all?” She was genuinely surprised at how small their ambition was. “I’m sure you can double that, at least. Half this country is female, you know.”

Goga turned toward her and cocked his head. He was not smiling now.

Tamar asked to use Goga’s phone, and she called Nini and Maia, who showed up with their friend Anna, whose high-pitched voice made the boys giggle. Nini looked nervous, but Maia looked only puzzled as to why she was there again. One of the Nikas said they only wanted men for their rallies because they weren’t so easily distracted. Anna laughed at him like a leaking balloon. “I only speak the truth,” Nika insisted, unsure whether he should be embarrassed or angry for being laughed at.

Maia nervously pulled a Michael Jackson CD out of her purse. “Tamar said you guys need some life here, so I thought I should bring some music. Shall I play it?”

The room fell silent. Then they heard a door slam, and Goga was gone for cigarettes.

***

The next day Tamar came alone. She heard furniture moving inside and pushed the door open to see a man wearing a tie and directing Irakli to slide a desk into a corner under a hanging bookshelf. The man was pleasant-looking, with the kind of face that suggested agreeable possibilities for interaction but nothing memorable. There were no more books on the shelves; they had been packed neatly into open cardboard boxes along the wall. On the shelves now were notebooks, pencils, charts and lists, and what looked like a rolled-up map. The man was clearly older than anyone else in the group. He acted with assurance, and yet something about him made her wary.

“Hi, I’m Tamar,” she said, moving toward the man, like she imagined a woman in charge does in America. She kept her face serious.

“Ilya,” he said. He surprised her by breaking into a charming smile, then shook hands with her. “Garmarjoba.” She let out a small gasp. He had greeted her in Georgian, but his accent and name were clearly Russian. She hoped he hadn’t noticed her reaction.

“Are you a friend of Goga’s?” she asked, warily.

“Sort of.” No elaboration.

“What are you doing?” she asked. She surprised herself with the challenge that infused her voice.

“Getting organized.” He still had a smile, but it already seemed to take some effort for him to show it. His eyes shifted for a moment to her ears, and she knew he had spotted the earrings.

“For the rally?” she asked.

Before he could answer, Goga appeared in the doorway, holding a bottle of soda. “We’re making changes,” he said proudly. “This is Ilya Davidovich. He was in Cuba last year.”

“But I thought . . .” Tamar said, then stopped. She could see the “don’t go there” in Goga’s eyes, warning her not to question why he was bringing a stranger into their group, and a Russian at that. Her wariness jumped even higher, and she wanted to say something with an edge, if only to test how deep this man’s charm went.

“Cuba?” she asked, a note of sarcasm in her voice. “Vacation?”

Ilya’s smile was now thoroughly professional. He was not going to be rattled by this cheeky girl. “Castro is a master of revolutionary rhetoric and strategy,” he said. “He’s done miracles with his country.”

No, Tamar thought, something isn’t right. This man has an agenda, and it isn’t to help Goga. “So, you think he’s going to do miracles in Georgia?” she asked, turning to Goga but nodding toward Ilya. Sarcasm again. She knew she was courting danger, but she liked herself this way.

Ilya raised one eyebrow, then looked at Goga, who was chewing a fingernail. “I thought it would be good to have someone who knows what he’s doing,” Goga said. “Let’s face it, we’re all amateurs here.”

She could see his trepidation. “Goga, can I talk to you?” she asked, sliding into the kitchen. He followed her.

“What’s happening?” she whispered.

He seemed to shrink before her eyes. “I thought we could use someone who knows what he’s doing,” he said. “Like, tactics.”

“Tactics? Like what kinds of tactics?”

“I don’t know, tactics. And discipline.” They both looked up and saw Ilya standing in the doorway, listening like a father who doesn’t trust his teenage son. Goga straightened his shoulders. “This isn’t a tea party anymore, Tamar,” he said.

Swear words started coming to her that Dima would never have let her use. Then she stopped herself. “That’s sexist, Goga,” she said, using the English word. She wasn’t sure where she had heard it, but it seemed to fit. Ilya laughed and slid away. Tamar had the feeling he was suddenly impressed with her, and it scared her even more. 

“It’s just the way it is, Tamar,” Goga said. “You said you want Georgia to be free, right?” He glanced toward the doorway to make sure Ilya wasn’t listening, then lowered his voice. “Don’t you think Dima would have wanted this?”

She shook her head firmly. “No, I don’t,” she said, loudly enough to carry into the next room. “This is not Cuba. Anyway, I hear Cuba is a worse mess than Georgia will ever be.” She heard the shuffling stop in the other room. She raised her voice even more, so she was sure it carried. “And he’s no Fidel Castro.”

Goga raised himself as tall as he could. “Well, this is how we’re doing it now,” he said. “Anyway, what could you possibly know. You’re a –”  

She stared hard at him, but he just shrugged, then turned away and busied himself straightening chairs at the kitchen table. Tamar shut her mouth tightly and put her bag over her shoulder and walked toward the door, then turned and glanced at Goga, who quickly looked away. She walked toward him and grabbed his arm and pulled him into a corner. She had never grabbed a man before. He yielded. That, too, felt good.

“How did you meet him? What’s his last name?” He seemed to cower before her, as if getting ready for a spanking. She could feel Ilya lurking. “What makes you think he’s here to help you?”

“We met last night at a bar,” Goga said. “His name is Chestnov. He has way more experience than any of us.”

“Really? With what? Did he threaten you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?” she asked, incredulous.

“He seemed to know all about us. He says America is trying to take over the revolution. By the way, take off those stupid earrings.”

She forced herself to keep her hands at her sides and shook her head. “I may be a girl, Goga, but I’m not stupid. He’s Russian. This is going to end badly. The only miracle Russia can do is take away Georgia’s best chance for freedom in seventy years.”

Goga shrugged and started toward the front door. “Good luck, Tamar,” he said as he opened the door for her. He tried to make his voice heavy with sarcasm, but it only sounded desperate.

Sincerity felt like maturity, and Tamar took it. “Okay, I hope things work out,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Really.” The way he looked at her let her know she shouldn’t have touched him. She dropped her hand and rushed to the elevator. As she rode down, the words kept playing in her mind: “He says America is trying to take over the revolution.”

Yes, she said to herself when she reached the ground floor. That’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Chapter 6

At home, Tamar called Nini and Maia, who called Anna and others, and soon nine young women were sitting around her family’s tiny living room. If Goga and Ilya could do it, they could do it, too, and better.

Over the next few weeks, they organized small rallies for Georgian independence, just the women and their friends, in a small park outside the city center. Every time, someone brought a CD player, and they blasted Michael Jackson songs and danced. Tamar wore her American flag earrings every day.

The group grew, but it stayed mostly female, and who would take a bunch of dancing girls seriously? Tamar sometimes asked one of her friends to address the crowd about why they were meeting, but they always stumbled and faded. Tamar would have liked to have spoken herself, but she wasn’t sure yet what she wanted to say.

Around the city, angry men were getting louder and more dangerous. One night, an explosion near a government building shook the windows in Tamar’s apartment. The purple vase from her grandmother crashed to the floor and shattered. Maia called the next morning.

“My parents want me to stop seeing you,” she said, a tiny wail in her voice.

Tamar sighed. “Just because some people are willing to use bombs, it doesn’t mean they’re stronger,” she said. “We’ve got America.”

“No, Tamar, we’re just a bunch of stupid girls. And they’ve got bombs.”

“But we’ve got America. Do you hear me?”

Maia exploded. “What America, Tamar? The Americans aren’t coming. You know that. Everybody knows that. What is this obsession you have with America?”

Of course, Tamar knew the Americans weren’t coming to Georgia. They had much bigger concerns than a little country on the Black Sea. But for her, America wasn’t so much a country or an army as a dream.

To many Georgians, certainly to the news people on television, America was a hateful and dangerous place on the other side of the world, a place you would never want to visit. But Uncle Nika said America was nothing like that, that it was actually about freedom and equality and the pursuit of happiness, and he was determined one day to live there. Tamar was amazed. A nation dedicated to happiness? Could that be?

And so America became Tamar’s secret hope. She loved her family and friends, and she loved Georgia, but America represented a future she desperately wanted. Like almost everyone she knew, she was sick of communism. Communism was the opposite of hope. Communism was fantasy, ridiculous ideals of perfect societies, model citizens, omniscient governments. In communism, you were part of a collective, so even your own excellence was supposed to belong to everyone. If you flew too far ahead, you got shot down. She had experienced it many times when her accomplishments, her popularity, her perfect grades made her a target. She didn’t want fantasies, she wanted hope, that through honesty and hard work she could do something special. In America, she was sure, you could be great without threatening anyone. You could rise and keep rising without having to look over your shoulder or become someone you weren’t.

Then one day her mother quietly announced to the family that she had some news. They hadn’t seen Uncle Nika in a while, and she told Tamar and Dima that during the Olympics in Los Angeles, where he was a coach on the Soviet gymnastics team, he had left the team and stayed in America. Tamar’s mouth dropped open. He had done it! She wanted badly to join him, but she knew it was impossible, so she decided she would find ways to bring America to Georgia. Dancing to Michael Jackson and wearing special earrings were ways to do it now. They were silly, but they were something.

But of course, not everyone saw what she saw in America, and she realized now that she was pushing her friends too hard. She had pushed her brother to take her to the demonstration, and look what happened. “Okay, you don’t have to come,” she told Maia. “We’ll do it for you.” She called others and asked if they were willing to come to her apartment that night, and two dozen, including Nini, showed up. Tamar suggested they give themselves a name, Hope for Georgia, and gather in front of the Justice Ministry and hold hands and sing, not Michael Jackson this time but Dideba, the Georgian national anthem, the one the country sang in the 1920s before they were absorbed by the Russian bear up north.

“Georgia is going to be free! Georgia is going to be happy!” they told passersby. By noon forty-nine more people had given their names to join the cause.

***

Misery, however, seemed to be overtaking the city, and Tamar began to understand that hope alone, even hope in America, could penetrate only so far into the gloom. As she lay in her bed one morning, a thought came to her. It felt odd at first, and she shoved it away like a squirmy bug. But something told her not to reject it but to hold it tighter, and when she had pushed everything from her mind but the thought, she felt its strangeness mutate into familiarity, as if the thought had been there all along and she was only now becoming aware of it.

She got up and went to the sideboard in the living room and pulled out her mother’s cross. She turned it over and over in her hand, feeling the warmth of the wood against her skin. She fastened the leather cord around her neck and went back to her bedroom and threw on some clothes.

Outside, she walked quickly through familiar neighborhoods, past her school, past the hospital where Dima had worked. As she walked, storm clouds began rolling in from the north. She continued walking until she saw cupolas.

Inside, the church smelled of burning wax. Tamar stood for several minutes and listened to a cluster of singers in tight harmony behind a stone column. She walked slowly to a queue to buy candles and watched a sad young man swing his hand from head to heart and shoulder to shoulder, then bow and back out of the doorway. A family of three generations passed through the queue, a little boy holding his grandfather’s hand and staring at the white-robed priest, who was now the only one singing.

She bought a candle and approached an icon with a circle of candle fires beneath it. She leaned her candle into a flame and lit it, then found an empty spot in the brass holder and placed it there. She stood for a long time, letting the soft colors and dark melodies wash over her. What struck her was the longing of these people for something more, something transcendent, something to lift them from their grief. Then another thought came to her, and she bought a second candle and stepped slowly past the priest and lit it, placing it at the front of the church. She closed her eyes and stayed that way for a long time. Then she walked to the doorway and back outside, into a day of cleansing rain and clarity.

Chapter 7

The next Saturday Tamar spoke for the first time at one of her rallies. She knew now what she wanted to say, and she was surprised how comfortable she felt. She spoke about the history she had learned in school, about the Georgian kings and queens and marvelous poets, the beauty of the country and the courage and faith of its people. Georgia has a bright future, she told her listeners, if we don’t forget who we are. Her voice was so strong and confident it surprised her. “To most people in the world, Georgia is not important,” she said. “We’re just a tiny country, with a difficult geography and a language no one else speaks, and neighbors who sometimes don’t like us very much. Sometimes our sun seems to rise from the north, and we let that fear of Russia paralyze us.” The observation prompted heads to nod. “But our eyes play tricks on us. The sun in Georgia, the Georgia that I know, doesn’t rise from the north. It rises from our hearts.”

She let her audience think about that phrase, and then she spoke from a heart that had been broken but was mending stronger than ever. “I lost someone who was dear to me because of the madness we are in,” she said. “But there is something I have learned from it all, and this is it: We make our own sun rise. Fellow kartveli, let us lift ourselves above geography and history and the people who try to scare and limit us, and let us love. Love each other, love our country, love the world. It’s not the size of our nation that matters, it’s the size of our hearts. For all the suffering we’ve faced and still face as Georgians, the solution is clear: We have to love bigger and better and deeper and stronger. We have to fight with every bone in our bodies against the tyranny we face, but we can’t do it out of hate or fear. We have to do it out of love. Love enlarges hearts, and it enlarges nations. It’s our secret weapon.”

The idea of love as a national force was intriguing in the minds of her listeners, but also puzzling as to what it meant in practice, and they squirmed with uncertainty. Truth be told, it was puzzling to Tamar as well. How do you love when the person you loved most in the world has been killed by your own government? But the idea of love had grabbed her hard in the church, and its grip was so strong now it pulled her along and almost lifted her as she talked. She couldn’t turn away from such a force, even if she didn’t completely understand it.

“When you love no matter what has been done to you, you’re free,” she told the people. “No one can dictate who you are or how you think. Love is the ultimate declaration of independence. Anger and fear may try to drag us into despair, but the sun will always shine in Georgia if we love.”

Tamar gave the same speech several times to small crowds over the next few weeks, and then she noticed something: When she spoke about love, people looked around at others in the crowd, or they ran their fingers through their hair or fished for something in their pockets. They wanted something to do, she thought, something that would make tangible the idea of Georgia as a country of love. And so, one evening, at the end of her speech, she raised her hand boldly, high and straight above the crowd, like a child who knows the answer. “Now, who is with me?” she asked. “Who is willing to raise their hand and help make this tiny nation strong? We can do it. Georgians have hearts of love and minds of steel.” Hands shot up, and soon the raised hand became their unofficial symbol, the tag by which people identified Tamar and her followers.

She changed a word in the name of her group, and it became Love for Georgia, and then, simply, Love, Georgia, like the closing of a letter to the world. Love, Georgia began to grow. The rallies were still filled mostly with women, but Tamar kept telling herself that it was a woman, after all, who was one of the most famous Georgian leaders in history, the great King Tamar of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Out of respect, Georgians had given her the title of mepé, king, but this ancient Tamar had been a woman through and through. She had divorced her first husband, a self-centered Russian prince who had been imposed on her, and married a military man named David Soslan, who remained devoted to her and guided the Georgian army to victory after victory, expanding the country’s borders farther than at any other time in history. In the popular imagination, then and now, she was a woman of beauty, strength and mercy. The people who listened now to Tamar began making the connection.

Tamar was becoming a phenomenon, a beautiful young woman with a gift for inspiring people, maybe even someone the nation could pin their hopes on. It made her nervous. When even her friends started treating her with awe, she lashed out. “Wake up, Nini,” she said, sternly, one day. “I’m still the same Tamar you’ve always known.”

Nini was hurt. “Don’t talk to me that way, Tamar. I’ve always thought you were going to be someone special. Are you going to disrespect your friends now just because everybody knows you?”

Tamar, embarrassed, sighed. “I’m sorry, Nini. I love you like a sister. But it seems like everybody wants a piece of me now. I hate it.”

But her fame only grew.

***

One day Tamar saw Ilya lurking on the edge of the crowd, watching her, his smile burning into her eyes. After the rally, she walked up to him and boldly asked, “Why are you here?”

“You’re pretty good,” he said. “I’m impressed.”

She started to smile at the flattery, but then she felt his eyes on her in a way that made her uncomfortable, and she realized he was the same toxic man he had always been. “Don’t you have a bomb to make or something?” she said.

He made a face like a hurt boy. “Why so unfriendly? We could work together, you know. Anyway, I don’t believe in violence.”

He looked so innocent she almost believed him, but she knew she should walk away. Still, her feet wouldn’t move. “You’re jealous,” she said. “This is Georgia, not Cuba. Go home.”

“I wouldn’t push me away if I were you,” he said. What she thought was a sneer appeared on his lips and then disappeared. “The world isn’t changing as much as you think.”

He put his hand on her arm and stroked it lightly, and she felt a sensation that was at once delicious and chilling. She moved her arm away. “You know what, Ilya Davidovich?” she said, using his patronymic in an attempt to keep some distance between them. But her resistance seemed futile. She put her hands on her hips in the only physical show of determination she could think of. “You can’t use your charm on me. The Soviet Union is dead. Go do your miracles somewhere else.”

He laughed and moved even closer, and she started sweating. He lowered his voice until it was almost intimate. “Do you really think America is going to save you? It’s a fantasy. They can’t even save themselves. You will see. Thinks are happening. We will win in the end.”

“And who is we, Ilya?” She mentally slapped herself. Why did she use his first name?

Ilya didn’t answer, just looked at her carefully. “Come with us,” he insisted softly. “You won’t regret it.” He touched one of her earrings lightly with his finger.

“No!” She looked into his eyes as a signal of resolve and kept looking until the resolve subsumed her fear. That’s it, she decided: To listen for another minute to this man was not only a waste of time, it was suicidal. She shook her head so violently she felt dizzy. “You’re a snake,” she said.

She expected him to take a step back or react in anger, but he just smiled. “A charming one, though, no?” He moved even closer, and she could feel his breath. Her knees almost collapsed beneath her. She wanted to slap him, and it took all the strength she could gather to just turn and walk away.

Chapter 8

Guns were still everywhere in Tbilisi, and it made Tamar more determined than ever to continue her rallies for love. She made sure the speeches people gave and the signs they held remained faithful to her message, and Love, Georgia grew steadily.

One morning between rallies, dashing out to the market to buy fruit for her mother to cook a batch of varenya, Tamar ran into Goga. The temperature was unseasonably high, and he unzipped his jacket. She caught sight of a gun.

“What’s going on, Goga?” she asked, suprised.

He noticed where she was looking and zipped up again, as if he had been giving her a peek at a cool new gadget. “We need a better leader,” he said. “Gamsakhurdia’s not the one.”

“You used to like him.”

“He won’t be a good president. He’s autocratic and clueless.” Then he began fidgeting, as if he wanted to say something more, and she suspected what had happened.

“Where’s Ilya?” she asked.

A look of fear came into his eyes and then quickly disappeared. “Oh, he’s not around anymore,” he said. “He’s doing, like, more important things.” She could see his shame at not being one of the important things, and she felt sorry for him. She imagined him always calculating what Ilya would want him to do.

“So, how are you, Tamar?” he finally asked, with exaggerated interest. “Does Hope for Georgia still exist?”

“You know what it’s called now,” she said. “Why are you undermining your own country?”

He didn’t seem to hear her. She was about to repeat what she had just said when he suddenly leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, holding the kiss a split second longer than necessary. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again,” he said and walked away quickly.

***

Crudely lettered signs began appearing at Tamar’s rallies with words like “Love Georgia, not Gamsakhurdia” and “Raise your hand if you don’t want Gamsakhurdia.” The signs were held by people Tamar had never seen before. There was no doubt Moscow was trying to create confusion and stop any movement toward a new regime.

Then another group with the same name, Love, Georgia, held a rally in downtown Tbilisi. But they had the opposite message, that people could only show love for Georgia by returning to the status quo. The crowd raised their hands when the speaker asked who was willing to support a stable and peaceful future with a Soviet Union that was not perfect but was at least familiar. As if to scare people away from change, another bomb went off, this one at a police station. Two policemen were killed.

And then Tamar saw what she dreaded most. In bright red letters, a sign at one of her rallies read, “Tamar for President.” It, too, was held by someone she had never seen before. The idea didn’t tempt her at all. She wanted to do something important for her country, but being head of the government wasn’t it. It just made her feel like a target.

That night she sat in her living room watching television, her mind in a daze. Her mother sat at the kitchen table, talking animatedly on the phone. Someone knocked at the door. When Tamar opened it, Goga stood there holding a little mesh bag of chocolates tied with a red ribbon. The romantic implications scared her, but she invited him in. Her mother was so busy talking she hadn’t heard him knock.

“I’ve decided I’d like to join you,” Goga said.

She cocked her head. Something didn’t feel right.  “Well, that’s nice, Goga,” she said. “But why now?”

He didn’t say anything, just held the chocolates out to her in the way a little boy might to someone he’s been told he has to be nice to. “Thanks,” she said and quickly put it on a table. “What’s going on?”

He stood, not moving, his hands at his sides, then suddenly leaned toward her. “Can I kiss you?” he asked.

She recoiled. “What? No!” she said. 

He bit his lip. “Okay,” he said. “I thought maybe –” He turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

He stopped and slammed the door hard with his open palm. The noise startled Tamar, and she backed away, hitting a table. The lamp on the table crashed to the floor, and the bulb exploded. Tamar’s mother burst into the living room.

“What’s going on here?” she shouted.

Goga was pressing his back against the door and sliding down slowly, his face twisting in pain. Tamar looked at her mother, telling her with her eyes to go back to the kitchen. Her mother rubbed her hands for a moment and left.

When Goga was sitting on the floor he burst into sobs and couldn’t stop. Tamar could feel all the pressure he had been living under pouring out, the confusion and manipulation and forced flattery and constant threat of violence. She stooped down but was careful not to touch him.

“What can I do for you, Goga?” she pleaded. “I can’t give you what you want, but is there anything else?”

He looked at her, his tears now those of a little boy struggling with a grown-up world he can’t quite understand. “Can I borrow your family’s car?” he said. “Just for a few hours?”

“What? Why?”

“I want to do something. For you.”

He wouldn’t look her in the eye, and this scared her. But she was desperate to find something besides herself to give him, so without asking her mother, she got the keys out of a small chest by the front door and handed them to him. “What about the curfew?” she whispered.

“They’ll let me through.”

“Alright, please hurry. My mother will kill me if she finds out.” He moved quickly out the door. 

Chapter 9

A loud knock at the door jolted Tamar awake. Her mother had gone to bed, and Tamar had fallen asleep on the sofa. It didn’t sound like the kind of knock Goga would give.

“Who is it?” she called.

“Open the door. It’s the police.”

“Why?”

“Just open. Please. Your life is in danger.”

She didn’t move. Where was Goga?

“You can trust us,” another, quieter voice said. “Your friend Eka is my daughter.” Eka was one of the most active members of Love, Georgia, and Tamar knew her father, Demna, was a cop. She opened the door, and four men poured in. Only one was in uniform, which turned out to be Demna. They all had guns in their belts.

Tamar’s mother came out of the bedroom and slapped her hand to her mouth at the sight of the armed visitors. Tamar assured her everything was fine and introduced her to Eka’s father. They were just giving her some advice on security for the next rally, Tamar said. Her mother reluctantly went back to bed.

“Get your things, Tamar,” Demna whispered. “We need to get you out of here.”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I’ll explain later. Hurry.”

“What about my mother?”

“She’ll be fine. It’s you they’re after.”

Stunned, she said, “What do you mean? I’m waiting for someone.” He jerked his head toward what he assumed was her bedroom, and she decided this was no time to argue. She emerged from the room a few minutes later carrying a small cloth bag. The men were pacing the living room, idly inspecting the pictures on the wall and the stacks of neatly folded laundry that had been taken in from the drying rack on the balcony.

“Now, tell me what this is about,” she said to Demna. “I’m expecting someone any minute.”

“Goga Gelashvili. You know him, right?”

“Sure. He’s the one I’m waiting for.”

“He’s dead.”

She gasped and dropped to the sofa, the bag still in her hand. “What?”

“A guy named Chestnov, maybe you’ve heard of him, we think he’s KGB, apparently this Gelashvili guy tried to kill him. They threw him out a window, and they’re coming after you now.”

“Oh my god. But why me?”

“He said he was doing it for you.”

She stared. In the street a car door slammed.

“They’re here,” said a cop at the window. Tamar rushed over and saw a car with a blue light flashing from the top. Two men had emerged, and a third, Ilya himself, was holding a gun and waving it to direct the others where to go. He looked up, and when he saw Tamar standing in the window, the smile she had first seen moved across his face.

She broke into a cold sweat and turned to Demna. “I have to warn my mother,” she said.

Before she could move, her mother’s voice wailed from behind them. “What’s happening now?”

Tamar looked into her mother’s eyes, still full of the sadness that had filled their home since Dima had died, and an extraordinary calm surged through her. She knew what she had to do. “Sorry, Deda, you can’t go to sleep just yet,” she said. “I’ve decided to have a party.”

“You can’t –” her mother began, but Tamar pulled her to the window and pointed below at the car, its lights still flashing. The door to the apartment building slammed, and heavy footsteps began climbing the stairs. While her mother stared out the window, Tamar picked up the phone and called Nini. “Find Anna and anyone else you can and get to my place. Hurry. Ilya’s here.”

In what seemed only seconds, a rush of female voices sounded from the street, and a dozen young women came sprinting toward her building, shouting and screaming. The front door of the building banged open, and footsteps began pounding up the stairs.

Ilya and his men were outside the door now, but no knock came. The shouting, screaming, arguing voices of the women were rising from the stairwell. Tamar held her breath. She heard the hallway door burst open, and the voices sputtered as if hitting a wall. All became silent. She heard Ilya tell his men to put their guns away. There would be a better way, he said. Silence fell again, and in a voice low and steady and, she thought, a little sad, Ilya said through the door, “I’ll be back, Tamar.” She realized it was the first time he had ever said her name.

Tamar glanced at her mother, whose face was frozen with fear. The heavy footsteps moved away, and the stairwell door banged shut. Nini whispered, “Tamuna, are you there?” Demna opened the door, and her friends stood, smiling uncertainly, not knowing exactly what they had done but feeling more important than they had ever felt in their lives.

“Stop staring, you guys,” Tamar said. “Come in.” They ran to the window and watched as Ilya and his men drove away. Tamar thanked her friends and told them they could go home now. It didn’t seem like a time to party, with nervous policemen standing around. But the women, loud and excited with triumph, didn’t want to leave and said they would sleep on Tamar’s floor, to protect her. “It’s okay, you can leave,” Tamar said. “The men will stay outside the door.” Demna had the presence of mind not to contradict her, even though he had said no such thing.

“Okay, everybody,” Nini said, “let’s leave Tamar alone. She’s had a big night.” She started to usher everyone out, but still the women hesitated, and Nini looked at Tamar. “Listen to her, guys,” Tamar said. “She knows what to do. She’s my deputy.” Nini smiled proudly, and the women moved.

When they had gone, Tamar collapsed onto the sofa next to her mother and hugged her tightly. “You can’t stay here,” Demna said. He turned to her mother. “Your daughter is in danger, and the police can’t protect her. This is too big now. My advice is that she disappear for a while. Is there somewhere she can go?” He said he was sure Ilya’s men would return before long, but more of them, and neither the police nor Tamar’s friends would be able to stop them again. “Where do you want us to take her?”

Tamar understood now that this might be for a long time, and she felt suddenly scared and confused. How could all the energy and hope she had put into Love, Georgia, fail so miserably? How could all that love have gone for nothing? She curled further into her mother’s arms. “I can’t just disappear,” she pleaded. She had called so many people to raise their hands for Georgia. What kind of coward did that make her if she ran away now?

Her mother hugged her tightly, then gently pushed her daughter’s body upright. “Pack your suitcase, Tamuna,” she said. “He’s right. You did as much as you could, but it’s time now.”

“Time for what? What are you saying?”

But her mother just pointed, and Tamar, gaining a bit of confidence from her mother’s determination, stood and went back into her bedroom and took a suitcase down from her closet shelf. She emptied the contents of her little bag into the suitcase, then added more clothes. As she was about to zip it shut, she glanced at her dresser and paused, then walked over and removed Dima’s leather pouch from the bottom drawer and placed it in the suitcase, zipped it shut and continued to the living room.

“Nika,” her mother said.

Tamar did a double take. “What?”

“I’ve arranged for you to go to Uncle Nika,” her mother said. “You’ll be safe in America.” Her knuckles were white as she folded her hands tightly.  

“What do you mean, you’ve arranged?” Tamar said. “That’s crazy. How can I go to America?” Tamar said. “I don’t even have a passport. I can’t leave Georgia. I can’t leave you. No.”

“Tamuna, you have to go,” she said. “I knew this was coming. They won’t let someone like you succeed in this country. This is not a place for love right now. Maybe you can do something in America.” She motioned toward a bookshelf full of encyclopedias. “Look inside the third book,” she said. Tamar gave a puzzled look but walked over and pulled out the volume. Inside the cover was a small red booklet with the letters CCCP written across the cover. A Soviet passport. Inside the passport was Tamar’s name and photo and a letter, folded, granting her permission to leave the country to visit her dying uncle.

Tamar stared at the letter, her mouth open. “What is…? How? Is he?”

“No,” her mother said, “he’s fine. You have to have a reason. It wasn’t cheap.”

“What? You paid a bribe! I can’t believe it!”

“Well, you know, sometimes you have to do things,” she said, sheepishly. “What can I say? Just come back when this is all over. Now, go to the kitchen and get my money.” Tamar did as she was told and began pulling out jars of preserved fruit until she found the envelope where her mother kept all her savings. She took hold of the envelope, then leaned on the sink and burst into tears. Her mother came into the kitchen and gently took the envelope out of Tamar’s hand and removed most of the money. She kissed her daughter’s eyes and took a handkerchief from her pocket and gently dried them, then took the passport and letter and money and placed them in Tama’s handbag and put the handbag over her daughter’s shoulder. Then she nodded to Demna and gently pushed Tamar after the men. As she headed out the door, Tamar squeezed her mother’s hand.

Downstairs, they climbed into a car, and as they were sped away, Tamar looked back, as if expecting someone to be following. No one was.

Was anyone thinking clearly now, even her? For the first time, she understood how people could have no hope in the future. Guns and bombs and the cruelty of wicked minds would win in the end, it seemed, in Georgia as everywhere else.

And then a worse thought, infinitely more torturous, came to her: Ilya Chestnov, that charming and cruel man, was going to get exactly what he wanted. He had barely touched her, and yet she was running for her life, abandoning her mother, her friends, her country. Was she really such a coward? She wanted to scream. But there had been two deaths, and she couldn’t take any more. This wasn’t a game. Moscow was still in charge, it was clear. Better to accept that than see more people die.

Demna took her to the airline counter and made sure she got a ticket for a flight that would carry her, eventually, to Washington. She couldn’t believe she was really going to America! She still pictured the country with beautiful weather all the time and people smiling in the streets. In Georgia, hope and fear seemed in perpetual war. In America, she was sure, there would be happiness. Lots and lots of happiness.

AMERICA

Chapter 10

The weather in America, it turned out, wasn’t always beautiful, and the people seemed too restless to be happy for very long, but there was something in the air – a confidence, an energy, a vision – that convinced Tamar that coming here had been the right thing to do.

For two and a half years, she lived with her Uncle Nika and Aunt Rosa, perfecting her English and learning her aunt’s native Spanish so she could work in their business helping new immigrants adapt to life in the United States. She liked the world of a small enterprise. It put your life and future in your own hands, something hard to come by in the Soviet Union.

But as she had got to know America better, some of the more complicated issues began to show themselves. For example, there was a phrase she heard often: The American Dream. It was the notion that anyone could achieve his or her ambitions through hard work and initiative. The American Dream supposedly gave energy and direction to the country, but in practice it seemed just to steer most people toward accumulating houses, cars, large bank accounts, as if the main point of America was to enable people to get rich. America existed for something much more important than personal riches, she was sure. It existed to open a window to a vast and fertile field blooming with hope for the entire world. She refused to let that idea of America die in her, even if it already seemed to have died for many Americans.

Then she herself began to be restless. She occasionally visited the Orthodox Church on Massachusetts Avenue – St. Tamar Georgian Orthodox Church, in fact – and the sounds and smells and shuffling silence of worshippers reminded her of home and quieted her for a time. It helped her feel the love that had once overwhelmed her in Tbilisi and showed her what she could do for her country. But that sense of love always evaporated when she left the church in Washington, and her restlessness only grew. Finally, she decided the only way to keep her deeper hopes alive, for America and for herself, was to try somehow to bring love into the public space again. But how was she supposed to do that? Could love move Americans as much as it had Georgians?

And who was she to think she could do it here? If someone had asked her to define love as a public force, she probably could not have done it. Did it mean love for your country no matter what? Did it mean love for your leaders, even if they only love themselves? Did it mean forcing your love on the world because, as a country that loves, you know best? The idea of love, however undefined, had helped Georgians believe they could do something important in the world, and it had given Tamar an anchor and a sense of direction when storms of emotion and memory had threatened to overwhelm her. Maybe love, not as an emotion but as a selfless and intelligent energy, could do something in America, too, but who really understood what that meant?

In America, love was a strange thing. You were supposed to love yourself first. That and love for your family and those close to you justified almost anything you could do, even if it was harmful to others. Love for America, of course, was a given. Everyone seemed to have it. But when it came to loving people outside your country and personal circle, love often lost its bearings. It isn’t love, Tamar was sure, if it’s only for those who love you back.

One chilly morning she was walking through Lafayette Park near the White House, lost in thought. It was April 9, 1992, and she was thinking about Tbilisi, where she knew thousands of people had one thing on their minds: the first anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union. The thought did not make her as happy as she would have liked. For all their passion for freedom, Georgians had proved naïve in execution, electing Gamsakhurdia president but then, less than a year later, allowing him to be overthrown in a coup and replaced with a former Soviet Minister. Ilya must be pleased, Tamar thought bitterly.

That was one reason the day brought little happiness for her. The other was even more wrenching: It was three years to the day since the bloody assault on Georgian dreams by the Soviet army, and her brother Dima’s death.

Nini had tried to keep Love, Georgia alive through the turmoil, but she admitted in letters to Tamar that many followers had drifted away. Every time she had called a rally, first for independence and then to support the new government, some person or group of people would appear and disrupt them with shouting or pushing or lies. Nini wasn’t a visionary like Tamar, but she understood what was happening: Ilya and his compatriots were still in the shadows, trying to incite fear and confusion where hope still breathed. When the coup against Gamsakhurdia had started in December, she had tried to gather their friends once more, but they ended up hiding in their apartments and watching on television as downtown Tbilisi turned into a war zone.

Tamar sighed. She wished she could be there, but she wasn’t sure what good she could do. Russia, it seemed, had won.

As she walked through the park, lost in her thoughts, she approached a bench and glanced at the man sitting there, writing in a notebook. Something about his face – serious but calm, generous but controlled, truthful to a fault – made her want to stop. She decided she had swallowed enough regret for one day.

“Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to H Street?” she asked him.

He looked up. “It’s right over there,” he said and pointed. But his face stayed on hers. “Do you mind my asking where you’re from?” he said. “I don’t recognize your accent.”

“Georgia,” she said. “The one near Russia.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “Georgia became independent a year ago today. Are you happy?”

She let out a quiet gasp and said, “Sort of. How did you know?”

He shrugged. “I keep track of things like that. I’m a journalist. Congratulations, I guess. Do you mind if I walk with you? I can show you where to go.”

“Sure. Thanks. My name’s Tamar.”

“David.”

For the next half hour they walked through the park, getting no closer to H Street. He seemed more interested in her than himself, which she found refreshing in a man. Carefully, she sketched a broad and happy picture of her life growing up in the Soviet Union and coming to America.

He looked for a few moments into her face. “Your life hasn’t been as happy as all that,” he said. “Tell me more.”

She searched his eyes and decided that, yes, she would trust him. And so she told him about Dima and the shovels, her voice breaking as she described the final kiss of his beautiful ears; about Love, Georgia and how eager Georgians had been to raise their hands for their country; and about a scheming Russian snake named Ilya Chestnov. “His name means ‘honest’ in Russian,” she said, “but I’m sure he’s still running around, keeping the country in chaos.”

David let out a long breath. “You’ve had an interesting life.”

She had felt her emotions rising as she told her story, but his voice was calm, and it quieted her. He paused for a moment. “You know, H Street is right over there,” he said. They had reached the end of the park for the third time.    

“I know,” she said and smiled.

He looked at her and laughed. “Well, I’ve enjoyed this, too.”

She turned away and started walking again. “Can we talk a bit more?” she said. “I want to hear some stories about life in America. I’ve decided I don’t really know your country at all yet. When I was growing up, I thought America was all about the pursuit of happiness. But it’s not that simple, is it.”

He looked at his watch. “Yes, okay, I can tell you a bit about my own life, but I don’t pretend it’s representative. Everyone pursues happiness in their own way, I guess, but for me, it’s about listening to angels. Really. It’s something I learned when I was a kid.

Chapter 11

A feverish twelve-year-old boy sat cross-legged on the floor of his family’s suburban home near Boston, trying to focus through his headache on the sports pages of the Boston Globe. It was disappointing that the Red Sox were stuck in second place again. They had Yaz and Fisk and Evans, but what were they supposed to do with no serious relief pitching and a spotty defense? When he was at Little League practice, he believed he could be their salvation. He just had to work harder, take more ground balls, overcome that infuriating flinch every time a ball skipped toward him. How likely was it, really, that an unseen pebble would send the ball crashing into his nose? He would make it. He would. Shortstop for the Boston Red Sox.

Except the fear had never left.

“David?”

His mother’s voice was soft and easy to ignore. He leafed through the sports pages to basketball and the Celtics, then reached up and took a drink of water from the glass on the bedside table. He blew his nose and wadded up the tissue and aimed it at the wastebasket, imitating a Havlicek jumper. Just as he was about to release it his head started spinning. He stopped to let the dizziness calm down, then shot. The tissue glanced off the rim and fell among the dozen other tissues on the floor.

“David, honey, it’s time for dinner. Your father and I are waiting.” He squirmed. He didn’t want to hear his father’s rumbling voice, which would surely sound if he ignored his mother for too long. He lifted himself to his knees, then to his feet, balanced himself for a moment and walked to the top of the stairs. Below, his mother waited. He felt dizzy again and grabbed the railing. The stairs were swimming.

Seeing how sick he was, his mother hurried into the dining room, and soon his father stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Do you need some help?” he asked in his tough-love voice. David didn’t want to admit weakness to a father who always seemed so in command. He closed his eyes and felt for something to hold onto, a sensation, a thought, anything to stop the nausea, but his head was pounding. He grabbed the railing tighter and shook his head.

Then words came to him as if they had been spoken. He knew them almost as well as he knew his own name, and he started voicing them silently, letting whatever meaning he could extract from them envelop him. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” A question formed in his mind: If God is Love, and His will is love, how can I be sick? He had heard the idea voiced many times in Sunday School and by his parents, but somehow it felt fresh now, meant just for him. An angel. There was only one will that mattered, and it included no sickness at all.

The thought spread quickly from his mind to his body. And, suddenly, the nausea was gone. He hadn’t felt it go; it had just vanished, as if it had never been. He opened his eyes and saw a world he had never seen before. He traced the grain of the oak railing with his finger. The wood had always felt smooth to his touch, but now he sensed every detail of its landscape. He began to descend the stairs, and he noticed the light from the crystal chandelier, how it made everything brighter, as if it were sucking matter from all the objects in the room, from the old garnet table lamp in the hallway, the brass umbrella stand, his muddy red boots by the front door, leaving everything fully formed but of an entirely different substance. He stopped a step from the bottom and looked into his father’s eyes.

“Everything okay?” his father asked, his eyes narrowed. David knew the look; his father had been praying.

“Yep, everything’s good,” David said, smiling. He descended the last step and walked into the dining room. He knew something important had happened, but it didn’t feel amazing. It just felt like the most natural thing in the world to walk without pain.

Chapter 12

When he finished telling the story of his healing, David half expected polite skepticism from Tamar – something like, “Uh huh, nice,” or “I’m sure your parents were happy.” Or maybe just silence. It was how most women he had known would have responded, which was why he generally kept his faith to himself. But something about Tamar felt different, and he had plunged into the story with hope that she would see in it information about him he didn’t know any other way to share. He was thrilled when she said, “That’s so good. I pray sometimes, too.” Whatever distance he had thought might remain between them fell away.

“Terrific,” he said, and allowed himself to regard her more closely. She was attractive, with a slim body and intelligent eyes. Her self-confidence was high without being vain. She was modest but clearly had her own mind, which he loved. He hated when women tried to adjust themselves to him and become what they thought he wanted. Women like that always turned out to be either mean or boring. Tamar was never going to be anyone but whom she appeared to be, and so she could take his story as it was meant – a glimpse into his deepest self – without feeling threatened. It made him feel that something good was happening right before his eyes.

They walked in silence for a while, then she asked, “Where do you work?”

“Over there.” He pointed at an office building on Sixteenth Street. “The Christian Reporter.”

“What’s that?”

“A newspaper.”

“Oh, right. I wanted to be a journalist once. It sounded interesting to be able to ask people questions and then write about what they say. But you can’t ask real questions where I come from without getting in trouble, so I figured it wasn’t for me.”

“I bet you would be a good journalist. It’s easy to talk to you.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather be the person you guys write about.”

He laughed. “You’d be interesting to write about, for sure. What’s your last name?”

“Tsmindashvili.”

“Tsmin –”

“It means something I can’t possibly live up to. Just call me Tamar.”

“Okay, Tamar. My last name’s Darke, with an e. But I prefer the light. I should write about you. Come on, what does it mean, your name?”

She laughed and shook her head. “It means, like, pure and holy, but I’m definitely not.”

“Would you tell me your secrets if I interviewed you?”

“Maybe,” she said with a sly smile. “Off the record, of course.”

“Of course.” He could see she wanted to talk, and he kept silent to let her know he was listening.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Here’s one. That Russian guy? I fell for him for a while. He could be really charming.” She looked at David, who was looking back intently, and she realized she hadn’t met many men who actually listened to her. “But he killed a guy I knew, and he probably had something to do with the shovels that killed my brother. It makes me hate him now,” she said. She forced a laugh. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

“Your brother, that must have been a real nightmare.” He fell respectfully silent for a few moments, then said, “You make me wish I could write from that part of the world.”

“Georgia is an interesting country,” she said, “but no one pays attention to us.”

“Why not?”

“We were great for, like, five minutes several centuries ago, but our neighbors beat the crap out of us.”

He laughed at her language, but she didn’t, and he straightened his face quickly. “Maybe you can go back someday and make Georgia great again.”

She shrugged. “I sometimes wonder if I should have stayed. That would have been, like, the heroic thing to do, right?” She paused and looked at him. “But I don’t like when people die.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said quietly.

She looked at him and smiled carefully, then said, “Journalists here seem like they’re on caffeine all the time, or they’re trying to trick you into saying something you didn’t mean to say. You’re not like that.”

“Thanks.” He looked down at his feet, then up again. “Do you mind if I tell you another story?” he said. “I think you’d understand it. About how I came to the way I see journalism now.”

“Sure. I like your stories.”

“Unfortunately, it involves me getting sick again.”

“Don’t worry. Maybe that’s how you learn. For me, it’s been having people around me die. I like your way better.”

Chapter 13

During his first week as a new reporter at the small Massachusetts daily, David could see the story possibilities: the manager at the downtown department store who wanted to keep everything looking like the nineteen-fifties because that was when the town boomed, even though everyone was shopping at the fancy malls in the suburbs now; the bright new school, paid-for with money from the state, with the super-friendly, middle-aged man from Vermont as principal who hugged the students one by one every morning as they came through the door. He had just left the priesthood “to work more directly with children”; the mayor of twenty-six years, who cleaned his ears with his ballpoint pen. David saw it during his first interview: The man took the pen, making sure the point was safely inside, and rooted around in his ear until he caught a little ball of wax in the tip, pulled out the wax with his fingers and flicked it onto the floor. David had never been so revolted.

The mayor ended up announcing his retirement soon after that, and a crop of candidates emerged to replace him. David was assigned to cover one of them: a fat old gasbag named Dexter Brown, a real townie, who had been around since he was a kid, “humping it” in the mill for years, then “working the beat” as a cop, then taking over the local stationery store, Brown’s Paper Goods, from his father and “helping keep downtown alive.” Now he said he wanted to “give back to the community.” The man talked in clichés, and it made David cynical from the start.

At the news conference where Brown announced his candidacy, David dutifully took notes, jotting down that Brown hadn’t even bothered to tie one shoelace. David’s editor cut the shoelace reference from the article. “Let’s not be disrespectful,” he said. “This is our town.” David grumbled but let it slide.

But as the campaign moved along, the editor kept cutting everything but the gentlest, most predictable reporting, and David became more and more irritated. This was not journalism, it was lullabies for the people. Meanwhile, Brown kept spinning his life story for the voters: As a young man just graduated from college, he had selflessly manned soup kitchens and delivered Christmas packages to poor families until a job opened up at the mill.

One day Brown called a news conference to announce his plan for revitalizing the town, and he told the story again of how he had helped so many poor families when he was younger. David raised his hand, and Brown picked him out from the half dozen reporters in front of him. “Sir, can you tell us exactly what years these were that you manned soup kitchens?” David asked. “Because from my research, it seems there were no soup kitchens in the town the year you graduated from college. Or for eight years after that.”

In an attempt to stall for time, Brown picked up his papers to adjust them and hit the microphone, causing everyone in the room to start at the amplified thump. Embarrassed, he mumbled, “Sorry,” then recovered quickly and nodded toward Darke. “Of course there were soup kitchens, Mister, Mister –”.  He leaned over and whispered to an aide, then turned back to David. “Mister Darke, of course there were soup kitchens. I’m not sure where you got your information, but everybody, at least those who are from here” – he said “from here” as a put-down to David, whose speech clearly identified him as coming from the eastern part of the state – “everybody knows this town has been through tough times, and helping our good people was a deeply meaningful part of my life, and I won’t have you imply that it wasn’t. That’s, frankly, disrespectful to everyone in this room, and everyone in this town. Next question, please.”

Alerted by Brown’s defensiveness, suspecting that there was a real story here, David began walking the streets of the town incessantly and knocking on doors, talking to people who had lived there for years and knew the candidate and his family. And sure enough, David uncovered clear evidence that during the period when he said he had been so generous with his time, the man had been a minor terror in his neighborhood, pulling up street signs and torturing pets for kicks and spending several nights in jail on charges of public intoxication and disorderly conduct. David was now confident that feeding the poor had never happened from this man’s hand.

He hoped this time his editor would see that good reporting could help keep the town from electing a bad mayor, but when the editor read the story, he balked. He looked at David over his small rectangular reading glasses. “It’s a small town,” he said, screwing up his mouth in concern. “I’m not sure it’s right to publish this.”

David’s face flushed. “What? I busted my butt for this story. The man’s a hypocrite! How can you not publish it?”

The editor shook his head. “I’ve got responsibilities to more people than just you, David,” he said.

How was this journalism? How was this ethical? As angry as he had ever been, David wanted to take his hand and sweep all the papers and books and the coffee cup and family pictures from the man’s desk and watch them crash to the floor. He stalked out of the office and told his fellow reporters what the editor had done. They all shrugged. Forget your snooty ideas of journalism, they said. This is the world of a small town. David swore under his breath. Every last one of them had now earned a place with Brown and the editor as people David detested.

Feeling powerfully self-righteous, he decided to publish his report anonymously in the newspaper of the neighboring town. When it came out, it quickly became clear who the writer was. David got faint praise from some of his fellow reporters for his courage, and gratitude from a few civic organizations, but it was obvious he couldn’t stay in his job, and by noon that day he had been fired. He heard a few snickers as he walked across the newsroom for the last time, wrapping a box of books and papers in his arms, and he thought, Not only did no one in this disgustingly insular town want a crusading journalist in their midst, no one deserved it. Let them rot in their corruption. He’d done good work.

That afternoon he gathered the clips of the stories he had written and mapped out a job-hunting strategy. He went to bed that night eager to get started with the rest of his life. The next morning, however, he found he couldn’t swallow his breakfast without intense pain in his throat. Having never visited a doctor, he was not inclined to seek one now, or to take drugs, either, but he had never been in this kind of pain. He began flinging panicked prayers at the problem, as if he were a seventh grader trying to pass a surprise math quiz without having done the homework. Nothing worked, and he struggled through the day and flopped through a sleepless night and tried to restart his job-hunting efforts the next morning, but the pain only grew worse. Finally, he decided he’d better do something more than stew in helplessness.

He loaded his clothes and typewriter into his car and drove to his family’s home near Boston. Reaching out desperately to his father, David asked him to pray for him. For two days nothing changed. David grew tired of drinking his mother’s smoothies and figured whatever his father was doing wasn’t working. His own prayers felt like tiny darts against a storm. His anger and discouragement were now stretching toward infinity.

On the third afternoon he called out of the door of his bedroom to ask his father to come see him. “It still hurts, Dad,” he whimpered when his father entered the room. His father pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed.

“You’re a good reporter, David,” he said, “but here’s what’s come to me. I wonder if you’re paying attention to the right things.” He picked up the Bible on the bedside table and thumbed through it till he found what he was searching for. “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel,” he read. David listened. He was through with anger. It was obvious his father was saying that the gnats he was straining at – the dishonest candidate, the spineless editor, the small-minded reporters and townspeople who worked together to keep their world undisturbed – none of them was the real story. David was finally exhausted enough to admit that maybe his father was right. Maybe they were distractions, nothing more. Gnats.

As he closed that door in his mind, another one opened, and the view suddenly became clearer: His enemy all along had not been those people but the imposing, smelly, hump-backed monster in his own house, the sanctimoniousness and resentment he had allowed to seep into every corner of his life. This lump of loathing for everything in his world, including, he realized, for himself, had gotten so big he couldn’t even swallow. You can’t report truth if you’re looking at life through your own blind emotions.

As the swamp in his mind revealed itself in all its odiousness, he realized how foolish he had been to hold onto it for so long. And why should he hold it longer? He dropped his arrogant passion like a stone, and in the freedom that filled the void he felt lifted off the ground. He no longer felt angry and vulnerable but chastened and liberated, and a flood of affection for everyone in the town surged through him. He couldn’t stop the torrent. Their failings, which had seemed so detestable to him, he saw now as people simply doing the good they understood, while his own failings, like thunderclouds chasing a departing storm, were fast surrendering to a deep and astonished humility.

And then it happened: As if an invisible hand had reached down his throat and flicked a switch, he felt a sudden release of pressure. The pain drained away. The earth seemed to shift a quarter degree to the left, and he saw a world he had not seen since the day on the stairs when his fever had melted. He looked around the room. Everything felt solid but not physical, bright as a miracle and yet as real as his father sitting quietly in the chair beside his bed, his eyes closed.

For the first time in a long time, he had no desire to put into words what was happening around him. He could only watch and listen, amazed.

Chapter 14

Tamar sat down on a bench and waited for David to join her. “I felt something like that in a church once, I guess what you’d call angels,” she said. “I lit a candle for my brother, and then I decided to light one for Georgia. I felt so much love for my country, and it was almost like I couldn’t help it, I started speaking about love as a way for Georgians to find hope, and they really responded. Is that how you felt?”

“Yeah, in fact. All my anger, it just went poof. I write in a different way now, see different things. The whole experience, it really changed me, and it changed my approach to journalism. I was so into myself before, my passions and pride and all that, but now I just want to write truth, but truth that heals. That’s the ultimate proof of truth, in my mind. I call it prophetic journalism.”

“What does it mean?”

“Basically, it means taking on the problems that make people feel hopeless and finding real hope. Not hope in, like, a person or a new government program or something, but hope as a function of your very being. That kind of hope is prophecy, as I see it, because there’s always a better future ahead if you have real hope. I write a column called Be Not Afraid, because fear’s usually the biggest thing that makes people feel hopeless.”

“You don’t sound like any journalist I’ve ever met.”

“People don’t give our paper a lot of respect because we’re published by a church, but if you can write about things truthfully and at the same time give people hope, why not?” They were still no closer to H Street. “Listen,” he said, “do you maybe want to continue this another time? I need to get back, but I really enjoyed talking with you.”

“Yes, I would,” she said. She was silent for a moment. “Can I ask you one more question? I’m thinking of going to a talk tomorrow at Georgetown University, but to be honest, I’m a bit scared. It’s Mikhail Gorbachev. This is his first talk in the West since he resigned. It was his army that killed my brother. Do you think I should go? Or is it going to just dredge up stuff that I don’t want to think about again?”

“Whoa,” David said. “That’s a tough one. In America he’s a hero.”

She shook her head. “Not to me. Not to most people where I come from. And I’m kind of afraid of what I might do when I see him. Then again, maybe it’ll be some kind of release. What do you think?”

He became thoughtful. “It depends on your motive, I guess,” he said. “Why do you want to see him?”

“I don’t know.” She laughed. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you.”

David stared into the distance. He followed an old man with his eyes for a few moments, the man’s face set in a fierce determination to move his body where it needed to go. Then he turned to her. “Can you forgive him for what he did?”

She didn’t look at him but instead at the neat rows of red and blue flowers lining the walkways of the park. Finally, she said, “Would you come with me?”

“Uh, yeah. I would like that, actually. I’d like to hear him speak. But are you sure I wouldn’t be, like, intruding? It sounds like you and he have a thing going.”

She laughed. “I would like your company,” she said.

They made arrangements to meet, but before they parted, he said, “I have one more question to ask you, too, if you don’t mind. I remember reading one time about a queen in Georgia named Tamar. She was, like, a great leader. Were you named after her?”

She laughed once more. Her laughs were like jets of cool water. “I was. My parents thought I would do something great. So did my brother. I’m not sure I do any credit to the name, though. She was a great leader. I’m a coward.”

“No, you’re not,” he said quickly. “You’re going to do great things, I can tell, just in your own time and in your own way.”  

“Thanks.” She could feel him moving closer to her, maybe even wanting to touch her, but he didn’t, and she liked that. She could sense his self-control, and she realized how safe she felt in his presence. She spotted a man coming across the park and waved. “That’s my uncle,” she said. “He’s looking for me.”

“Okay, you’d better go.”

“Thanks for the talk,” she said. “You made me feel better about today.”

Chapter 15

Tamar felt heat rise uncomfortably in her body as she stared at the man sitting in a chair on stage. She already wanted to leave, but a squall of emotions had turned her mind upside down and pushed her further into her seat. She sensed David leaning toward her to say something, but she kept looking straight ahead, and he remained silent.

From the other chair on stage, the university’s president rose and stepped quickly to the podium. “My job today is brief,” he said. “I am to introduce a man who has become one of the giants of the twentieth century.” He spoke of how the university’s classes in history and politics had often devolved into passionate discussions of the Cold War and how no one had believed it all could end so peacefully. Tamar chewed her bottom lip.

The president turned and said, “It is my honor to present one of the world’s great leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev.”

Gorbachev burst from his chair and walked quickly to the podium. David was struck by his energy but also by the profound sadness that seemed to trail him. He had tried to transform his country through what he had called perestroika, or restructuring, but in the end he had watched it fall apart with a speed no one had expected.

And then he stood still, taken aback at the enthusiasm with which the audience was welcoming him. David sensed his emotions were churning. He clearly felt the appreciation from the audience, and yet he knew that in important ways he was a failure. His nation, the nation he had poured his heart into and led with conviction and hope and even daring, had been destroyed. People, even if a relative few, had died. What could be more tragic than that? And yet, somehow, something good seemed to have come of it all. There would be no final war between West and East, and who could not be grateful for that? The people in the auditorium seemed to understand that. And yet the pain that he had caused for his country, and the pain that was surely still to come, were clear. Did that make him a traitor or a hero? David found himself feeling an unexpected compassion for the man.

The audience took their seats, and Gorbachev began to speak. And then, there he was, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, speaking in a weary and haughty monotone, as if a trompe l’oeil painting had dropped in front of him and he was standing again before the Politburo. That’s it, David thought. That’s his failure and his prison: He cannot let go. He feels trapped by history, by loyalty, by ego, by the ideology and system that had grabbed Russia by the neck in 1917 and twisted until its version of a socialist state emerged. The state had finally rotted from within, and Russia had come out of it severely wounded, but humanity had survived. Here in the capital of the West, people seemed to understand that. And yet Gorbachev longed for home, for the country he loved and the system he knew. Why could his people not love him back? For all that he had accomplished, and for all the terrible things that might have been that he had prevented, they hated him. He was a man without a country, and he was grieved.

Tamar leaned over. “This is not going to be easy,” she whispered.

David looked quickly at her and tried but failed to catch her eye. “What do you mean?” he said, suddenly nervous. “What’s not going to be easy?”

She didn’t answer but started breathing heavily, pressing her lips so tightly together they became white. “Come on,” she said. “I can’t sit.”

She stood and slid down the row, and he followed till they reached the back of the room, where they stood against the wall until the speech had ended. As the audience stood and applauded, Tamar took a deep breath and moved quickly out the door. “Pray for me,” she said, as David hurried to keep up. They walked downstairs and through an empty hallway to a dark green door. “This is where speakers come out,” she said. Two security men flanked the door. She spoke to them in a low voice, then said to David, “We wait.”

“Um, may I ask what you’re planning?” he said. He tried again to look her in the eye, but she kept staring at the door.

“I told you, pray,” she whispered.

“Alright.”

What had he gotten himself into? He realized he knew next to nothing about this woman. Was vengeance hidden somewhere beneath her gentle surface? The doubt left him uneasy, because nothing he had sensed from her until then had even remotely suggested duplicity. But he could not just stand there paralyzed, and so he decided he had no choice indeed but to pray, and when he did so, he found himself drawing on the same compassion that had shaped his thoughts on Gorbachev. He felt peace.

Sounds emerged from behind the door, and the door flew open. Two aides stepped out, with Gorbachev behind them, and the group moved toward Tamar and David. Tamar stepped in front of them and blocked their way and began speaking in Russian. Irritation rose in Gorbachev’s eyes, and one of his aides came forward and pushed his chest into Tamar. She folded her hands in front of her as if in prayer, a gesture that made the aide back off and assuaged momentarily Gorbachev’s anger. Then, before anyone could move, she reached into her purse and pulled out a faded leather pouch and handed it between the aides to Gorbachev. One of the aides stretched out his hand to intercept it, but Gorbachev waved him off and took the pouch.

Tamar switched to English. “This is for you, sir,” she said. “It was the last thing my brother held before he died. Tbilisi, April ninth, nineteen eighty-nine. It’s his medical supplies. He was a doctor.”

Gorbachev said something in Russian, but Tamar continued in English. She evidently wanted David to understand. “There are some wounds from that day that still need to be healed. I am hoping this will help.”

Gorbachev seemed to be trying to think of something to say, but he had no words. “Thank you for this,” he finally said in halting English. “I deeply regret what happened on April 9. May your brother’s soul rest in peace.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The group moved down the hall, and Tamar fell, exhausted, against the wall. “What did I say?” She was talking almost to herself. “I really don’t know what I said.” She turned to David in wonder.

All he could think to say was, “It was good. It was good.” 

She let out a breath as if she had been holding it for a long time. “Today’s a good day,” she said. “Take your heart out of your mouth and let’s celebrate.”

Chapter 16

The evening was lovely and cool. They walked toward a pier along the Potomac River, where a carousel had been set up and children were hopping and giggling as they waited their turns to ride. They found a café and sat down at an outside table and ordered tea. Tamar pulled her sweater over her hands and held the warm cup between them. “So, tell me,” she said. “Will he dump it in the trash?”

“I don’t think so,” David said. “He seemed to appreciate it. Why did you do it?”

“He could have thrown it in my face, right? But I felt it was worth the risk.”

“You gave away your last tie to your brother.”

“What else am I going to do with that thing? Carry it around forever?” She looked at him with wide eyes, and he expected them to become wet. They didn’t.

“Who are you, Tamar Tsmindashvili?” he said, continuing to search her eyes. “I’ve interviewed a lot of people, but never anyone like you.”

She smiled. No one had ever asked her who she was, not like he meant it. But it didn’t seem like the time or place for introspection. “Nobody, really,” she said. “I just figured I’d give him the thing that was closest to my heart and see what happened. I honestly didn’t plan it.”

He shook his head in astonishment, then decided he was at risk of sounding like an awe-struck teenager. “I suppose he could think you were trying to make him feel guilty,” he said, “but somehow I don’t think he will.”

“I thought of that. But there was a lot of love in that pouch. I wanted him to feel it. I don’t know why I wanted him to feel love, but I did.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you? For what?” she said.

“For letting me witness that. It was awesome. How did the idea come to you?”

She shrugged. “I just had this urge for justice, sitting there in the audience. I had no idea what to do about it, and then it came to me that he had to feel it too, otherwise it wouldn’t be justice, it would just be revenge. So I got up, and then it was like a hand was pulling me downstairs. It was only when we were waiting that it occurred to me that I had the pouch. And that was it. The pouch needed a new home.”

He was about to ask another question when she raised her hand to stop, then looked across the road at the carousel, bundled children hanging uncertainly to ears and necks and heads of animals as their parents held up cameras and clicked.

“How long has it been since you’ve ridden one of those things?” she asked.

“Forever.”

“Are you up for it?”

“Why not?”

They finished their tea, and in a few minutes they were sitting side by side, she on a horse and he on a camel, facing a princess carriage painted orange and red like a summer sun. A chilly breeze rose as the carousel gained speed. She leaned back and held her arms out wide.

“I didn’t do much on April ninth,” she said. “I just cried. Today feels better.” They were silent for a while, listening to the music of the carousel. Then she leaned over and said quietly, “You know, none of this would have happened today if I hadn’t met you. I really believe that. I probably would have just come and sat there like an angry stone. Thank you for coming with me.”

A half hour later, as they walked toward her apartment building, David felt himself wanting to put his arm around her, but he held back. At her doorstep, she said, “Thank you, David. I feel like this tremendous weight has lifted off me today.”

“No problem,” he said. He stood awkwardly, watching a jet streak overhead, its white trail in the fading sky like a brushstroke across a fresh canvas. “You gave Gorbie a little of his life back.”

“Yeah. It felt like the right thing to do, you know?” Then she looked at him and smiled playfully. “You’re a journalist, David. You’re not supposed to get too close to your subjects, right?”

“Um, right.” He looked her in the eye, searching for a clue to her meaning. Then he realized. “Oh. Are you my subject now?”

She took her key out of her handbag. “You’re the first journalist I’ve ever met I think could really understand me.”

“Well, alright then,” he said, subsuming his disappointment in a new ambition that felt suddenly inspired. “Let’s have another interview.”

“Yes, let’s.” She took a piece of paper out of her handbag and wrote down her phone number. “Call me when you’re ready,” she said. “But this time let’s make it just the two of us.”

Chapter 17

David wanted more than just a conversation with Tamar this time, so two days later he met her in front of her apartment building, and in half an hour they were looking up a long series of marble steps near the Potomac. As they began to climb, a cool breeze made them hug their jackets tightly. At the top they entered a white-columned marble shelter, and the weather’s presence receded. Before them sat the mammoth likeness of Abraham Lincoln.

“I love this place,” David said. They sat down in silence on a stone bench and looked up. Lincoln’s eyes were deep and watchful, but more than anything it was the hands – one resting comfortably on the arm of the chair, the other curled in a loose fist – that gave the figure life. They were humble and powerful, like small, alert animals. David had always wanted hands like that, hands that moved with lightning speed or calm authority, whether catching a baseball or writing words that healed. Hands like that could move mountains.

After a while he led Tamar to the north wall, where the words of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address were etched. The steam from their breaths mingled and added softness to the edges of the etching. They both read silently, but when David reached the bottom, he read the last paragraph to her in a low voice:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

He kept looking at the wall and said, “After all the suffering we’d been through in the Civil War, he had this incredible capacity to love, and it changed the country. Until then, America in many ways had been an abstraction. The theory behind the country had been inspiring, but much of the practice had been cruel, with things like slavery and the awful treatment of Native Americans, as if we were sleepwalking through our first eighty years. But Lincoln began to change all that by proving the real idea behind America, which I’m convinced is love not only for our own people but for all humanity. We still have a long way to go to make the ideal real, but he got us on the right track. I think we would have lost our way a long time ago if not for him.” He turned to her. “You forgave Gorbachev. That’s very American.”

She laughed. “Thank you, I guess,” she said. “I’ve always loved America. It’s special.” They both looked back at the statue, as if waiting for Lincoln himself to join the conversation. Then she said, “But I think you’re falling asleep again.”

“Really? How so?”

Instead of answering, she walked outside, and he followed. In a few moments, they were standing together, looking across the huge reflecting pool to the Washington Monument and, beyond it, the Capitol dome. Fog was rolling in, the chilly and ponderous air seeming to pull everything toward earth. “You say it’s the end of history,” she said, “that America’s going to dominate the world now. But people don’t want to be dominated. Like you say, they want to be loved.”

“Yes.”

“But how do you love in a world so full of evil? What I’ve decided is, it has to start with yourself. Not with history or ideology or tradition but with yourself. I guess that seems obvious, but I’ve only just realized it. Waiting for Gorbachev to come out of that door, I felt so at peace with myself, and then it just came to me that I had to give him the pouch. It wasn’t some clever scheme I came up with. I just knew. Of course, it wasn’t the pouch, per se. It isn’t just things that people want. They don’t really want the American Dream, either, which you guys are so obsessed with. What they want is to be loved. They want to be respected and treated as equals. Basically, it’s love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what makes love work. I was able to give him peace because I was at peace. And I think a lot of that had to do with you being there.”

“That’s so good, what you’ve seen. You know the Bible.”

“Sort of. But then, I’m not a great example. I couldn’t love that guy Chestnov if my life depended on it. As far as I’m concerned, he took away my family and my country, and I’d be happy to see his handsome face smashed with a shovel.” She grinned sheepishly. “But I think the idea’s right. Of course, how to do it on a bigger scale is another story, especially when it comes to a country like America.”

“Maybe someday you’ll get a chance to show Chestnov some love.”

“Hah. That’s one guy I hope I never see again. But who knows?”

Again he wanted to reach out and touch her, and again he held back. In part it was because he was a journalist, and he knew he might write about her at some point. But the very fact that he was drawn so strongly to her also made him hesitate, because he also knew that what he was drawn to was far deeper than her body, and he was afraid even the slightest touch would risk contaminating everything that was promising.

Tamar sensed his desire and control, and for the first time in a long time, she felt hopeful about a man. David understood her like no one ever had, and she could see that the hope she had had before – in her brother, in her country, in her friends, in Michael Jackson – had been naïve, or at best incomplete.

“I’m glad I came to America,” she said.

Chapter 18

“Do you know who Jonah Meek is?” David held the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he typed into his computer.

“No,” Tamar said.

“His father was a small-town minister in West Virginia who got arrested for stealing his church’s money. Sad story, really. Now his son has his own following, but it’s not in a church, it’s in public. He holds rallies around the state, and he seems to have an agenda. I’m driving to see one of the rallies tomorrow. Wanna come?

“Sure. I’d like to see how you do your job.”

“Great. I’ll pick you up at nine.”

***

“I have another question,” Tamar said as they followed Route 66 across Northern Virginia. “That election in Massachusetts that you covered when you were starting out. If you were doing it again, what would you do differently? I assume you wouldn’t just say nice things about the candidate. He was a fraud, after all.”

“No, I wouldn’t ignore anything,” he said. Dark clouds were hovering to the north, and it was suddenly cold enough that a storm might bring icy rain or even snow.

She shifted her body to look at him. “So, tell me.”

“Okay. Truth isn’t just what you see in front of you, right? If I only write about what I see or hear, or what happened yesterday, or what I think could happen tomorrow, given this or that scenario, I’m pretty much just stirring the pot. Truth is also what you can’t see. Or, rather, what you see through inspiration.”

“Explain that to me.”

“I don’t want to just inform people. People can get good information in a lot of places. I want to inspire them. That’s what Lincoln did, I think. He saw the truth about America, the real America, the America of freedom and hope, and he inspired people to reach for it.” She nodded, and he felt his thoughts snap into place. Being with her was like being alone, and being alone, shutting out the world and everyone in it and listening in solitude and stillness, was when he felt closest to God. “He knew keeping what he called our better angels alive was the only thing that would protect this country and move it forward.”

“So, what would you write now?”

He thought for a moment. “The town had fallen on hard times, and I’d probably try to define a realistic vision that would inspire people. I might interview some people about what the town represents to them, what they love about it, the qualities, I mean, and try to find evidence that they’re still alive, that they can’t be killed, because I believe that nothing good can be killed. I might find someone who can articulate the vision well and then try to amplify their voice. I’m sure people like that were there; I just had to look. And then I’d write as accurately as I could about the candidate and let people draw their own conclusions as to whether he fit with the vision. I suspect the contrast would be noticeable.

“But the most important thing, in my mind, isn’t what others are doing or saying, it’s what I’m thinking. You know, there’s this tradition in journalism that the reporter stays out of the picture, but that’s misleading. The reporter is always there. What the reporter thinks is the most important factor in the story, really. It determines everything. When I’m working on a story, my intention is to bring insight to the subject that transforms not only the writing but also the person reading it, and even the situation I’m writing about, if possible. I want to build on whatever hope there is, in the same way Lincoln built on the hope in America’s promise and amplified it through his speeches and governance. ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ That’s from the Bible. I listen for those better angels Lincoln talked about, and I try to let them guide me.” He paused to see if she wanted him to continue.

“Go on,” she said.

“Okay. Well, I gather facts like a journalist, because you have to have the facts, but you get the truth from angels. Angels are on a different level. I’m convinced they can actually change the news. I don’t want to just report what’s going on. I want to do something about it, if something’s not right. I want to help people learn that they can expect good to happen, not just hope for good but expect it, and that this expectation is an actual force for change. After the earthquake, wind and fire of the world, I want to help people hear the still, small voice and then act on it.” He glanced at her, embarrassed at what he figured sounded like pontificating. “That’s from the Bible, too. It’s easier said than done, of course. I fail all the time.”

She ignored his attempt at modesty. “So that’s your prophetic journalism? Listening for angels? What exactly are angels to you?”

“Inspiration. Intuitions. Revelations. That’s how I view it. Angels don’t speak through the senses, but they’re very real. They’re God speaking to us. I’m convinced we can change the world if we listen to them.”

She was quiet for a long time, and he began to wonder if he had somehow disappointed her. What did she care about ideas built around faith and metaphysics? But then she turned to him with a searching face and asked, “Do you really think angels can do all that?”

“Yes,” he said, with an intensity that surprised him. “And they don’t just come to me. They come to everyone. They can change the news. We just have to listen.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s see if there are angels in West Virginia.”

***

Jonah Meek affected a scowl, big and bad like a gunslinger’s. He formed the fingers of his right hand into a gun, then thrust it straight into the sky and held it there, looking up as if to heaven. Then he slowly lowered the hand until it pointed just over the heads of the crowd, toward the world and all the evil in it, and bang, he brought his thumb down like a hammer. His hand jerked up. The people roared.

“Meek!

“Meek!

“Meek!”

The crowd affected their own gun salutes and held them high.

“Are we good?” he called.

“Yes!”

“Are we bad?”

“Yes!”

“Are we Americans?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

The people swayed with the beat of his words. “America’s chosen by God!” he cried. He backed away from the microphone, then moved back in again. “We’re special, my friends! We’re mighty! We’re great!” He thrust out his chest and swung his hips and swayed across the stage. The audience roared its love.

He waited till all was quiet again. The stirring slowed, and the rhythm stopped. Buzz. Buzz. Quiet. Then he leaned toward the microphone and lowered his voice, and said, “We’re chosen, folks, and the world knows it now. We beat the crap out of the Soviet Union, and we’re only getting started.”

The buzz began again.

“That’s right,” he said, “we’re not done yet. We won the Cold War, but we’ve still got work to do. Does a football team win the Super Bowl and then relax? Of course not. A Super Bowl champ stays lean and mean from top to bottom. That’s how a Super Bowl team becomes a real superpower.”

He moved his eyes across the crowd. “America is God’s country, and we’re God’s people.” Excitement started to build, and he pointed to a spot in the crowd. “God’s people work hard, like you.” He pointed to another spot. “God’s people are loyal, like you.” He pointed again. “God’s people bear witness to the Lord, like you. If you’re not part of this hard-working, loyal, god-fearing family, you don’t belong in America. You’re not a real American. You don’t deserve to have the American Dream.”

A woman screamed, “We love you, Jonah! You should be President!” The crowd laughed.

“I love you too,” he said quietly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” He shot his finger-gun again and lowered the barrel to just outside his mouth and blew the smoke away, like a cowboy who had just dispatched a problem. He waited, smiling, as the sound built, until it was deafening and unstoppable:

“U.S.A.!                                                                      

“U.S.A.!

“U.S.A.!”

Chapter 19

Tamar watched a bird light on one of the bicycle racks lined in a kind of fence surrounding David and other journalists a few dozen yards in front of her. The bird looked around nervously, scratched its feet along the rack, jerked its head left and right and hopped into flight. Then it began circling the crowd, as if astonished at the spectacle below: a hundred people howling in delight at a red-faced man, his finger to his mouth as if blowing out a candle.

The sky started to sleet, and Tamar opened her umbrella and pulled the collar of her coat higher against the cold. She had never seen a crowd so fractious. The crowd in Tbilisi on April ninth had been on edge, but there had also been hope. The prospect of freedom from the Soviet Union had felt liberating, and when she began urging Georgians to love as a way to make the freedom real, her words had resonated because she was speaking to the best in people. But what Meek was preaching was not love. He was calling out not the best in people but merely the most intense, where anger, ecstasy, passion, fear and hate blended in a stew of incipient violence.

Meek lowered his hand and turned toward the media pen. “Mei Li, Morgantown Dominion Post,” he called out. “Are you American?” A tiny Asian woman stopped writing and lifted her head in surprise. “I call them the Morgantown Dominion Toast, folks, because that’s what they’ll be if they don’t wake up.”

The crowd laughed.

“What do you think?” Meek shouted. “Is she a real American? I saw her on TV recently. She thinks what I say isn’t American. That means, of course, she thinks you aren’t American.” Boos rained over the reporters. “By the way, she’s the little Asian woman over there in the red jacket.” Li quickly put her head back down and began scribbling into a notebook. “I ask you, someone who thinks like that, can she really be American? Maybe she’s a communist. Maybe she’s not Christian. So what’s she doing writing about us?” He threw up his hands. “Of course, it’s a free country. She can worship whatever the hell god she wants, as long as she doesn’t mess with America.” He laughed, and the crowd chanted his name. A man turned and spit toward Li, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pointed at her, “Chink!”

Tamar was astonished at how readily the crowd had been persuaded to turn on a woman who was so small it seemed she might blow away in a strong breeze. How did they know whether or not she was American, or what her faith was, or if she had even said the things Meek accused her of? Clearly, they didn’t care.

“I gotta go now, folks,” Meek said. “But I thank you all for standing tall – for America!”

***

Several aides ushered Meek off the stage, and a gray-haired man in a tie and v-neck sweater, incongruous in such a raucous scene, came over and opened the media pen. Tamar signaled to David, but he didn’t see her. Behind him was a man in a sweatshirt that said Blessed are the Meek – the man was skinny except for a belly that seemed to have its own swagger – and he shouted over David’s head, “Hey, there she is!” pointing at Li. “What are you doing here, you commie bitch? This is America!” He pushed his belly past David toward Li. “Go back where you came from!” he shouted. “This is God’s country!” He kept pushing, no arms or hands, just belly. 

David hurried instinctively to wedge his body between Li and the Belly. Four, five, six people surrounded the two reporters. Someone spit at Li, and someone else pushed David hard, and he fell. Immediately, three policemen stepped between the reporters and the crowd. “Calm down,” a cop said to the Belly. “They’re just doing their jobs.” A man walked by and poured liquid from a bottle onto Li’s head and merged quickly into the crowd, which closed behind him. A cop whirled but couldn’t spot the man in the dozens of staring faces. “Gonna arrest us all?” a woman said from inside the hood of a raincoat. David pulled a wad of paper napkins out of his backpack and handed them to Li. She took them and slipped away, and the crowd dissolved.

David, alone for a moment, spotted Tamar and waved, then held up a finger, indicating he wanted her to wait. She nodded and turned to watch Meek as he headed for a car, which had been parked on the edge of the field. When he reached the car he showed the gun salute again, and a large young man, a head taller than anyone else around and built like a football player, came up to him and said something into his ear. A woman in the crowd shouted happily, “Meek, you bastard!” but Meek was intent on whatever news or advice the young man was bringing. He looked briefly toward where the scuffle around the reporters had happened, then scanned the field. “Have faith, folks!” he shouted. He struck another pose, this time with his chin raised and his arms folded across his chest, and several people whooped. The large young man put a hand on his back, and Meek dipped his head and climbed into the car.

Chapter 20

Tamar turned from Meek and looked back toward David. He was talking with the woman in the hood, who had shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her raincoat and was hunched against the cold assaulting her through the thin fabric. Tamar moved closer to listen.

“I’m with The Christian Reporter,” David was saying. “We could go someplace warm.”

The woman’s face lit up. “Well, I’ll be. I know the Reporter. You’re published by a church, right?

“Yep.”

“Sure. Glad to give you a piece of my mind. No, that’s okay. We can stay here. What’s your name?” Her voice was hoarse, as if she had been shouting for the last hour.

“David Darke. I saw you back there a minute ago.”

“Glad to meet you, David. Sarah Cobb. I know, not very Christian, were we. Sorry about that.” She laughed, embarrassed, and stuck out her hand. David put his pen in his teeth and shook it.

“Thanks,” he said. “I take it you like Jonah Meek. Tell me why.” He dropped her hand and raised his notebook.

Cobb thought for a bit. “You know, if he came walking down my street, I’d probably get to the other side faster’n you can say bang bang,” she said and pretended to shoot her finger gun. “But it feels good to have someone remind you what it means to be American, you know what I mean? He’s a man of God.” David’s eyes widened, and she paused. “Well, he talks like one,” she mumbled. “Kind of.” She was shivering now, like a stranded bird.

“You sure I can’t buy you a hot coffee?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m good.” She looked around. “What did you think?”

“I don’t know, it seems to me he preaches violence.”

“Aw, it don’t mean nothin’.” She patted David on the shoulder. “Life is hard around here. We gotta defend America.”

He turned to a new page in his notebook, buying time to think. “Can you tell me something, Sarah?” he finally asked. “You’re a nice woman. What happened back there? Why did you and the others become so mean to that reporter? Is it Meek? Is it just life? Is that what you mean by defending America, attacking someone who looks different?”

The sleet was coming down harder, and Cobb pushed down on the pockets of her raincoat and pulled the hood tighter around her head. “That’s hard to answer,” she said. “We’re all sort of angry, I guess. America’s disappearing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, look around.”

David looked around at the field, still cluttered with attendees of the rally.

Cobb rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean here,” she said. “I mean, like, America. The country’s changing.” She lowered her voice. “You know?”

David cocked his head. “I’m not sure I do.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I mean, I go to Pittsburgh or Philly or someplace like that,” she said, “and I don’t recognize it anymore. The people on the street are different. And it’s probably gonna get worse now, with all those commies comin’ now, bringin’ their ideas and weird smells and what not. You know what I mean? We gotta protect the family.”

“Okay,” David said, “so Meek’s basically speaking for you, that –”

She interrupted him. “Look, I know what it sounds like. I don’t mean it that way, like I’m a bigot or something. I took a trip to the Middle East once with my church. Mainly Israel, you know, but also Jordan and some other countries. The Muslim people weren’t strange, like people told us. They were real friendly, nice as could be. But America’s still America. Greatest country on earth, right? We gotta stay strong, like a Super Bowl champ. Meek says the things we think.” She smiled guiltily. “Even the things we’re ashamed of.”

There, in the shame, an angel, small but definite. David asked her gently, “Who exactly is the enemy here, Sarah? Can you tell me? I mean, it takes all kinds of people to make a world.”

She twisted her body to look away, thinking, then turned back. Her face was pained. “It’s just that life doesn’t feel like winning anymore,” she said. “Pretty much everybody I know, we all work in the DuPont plant in Belle, and it’s hard. Some days when I get off work, I look up, and I see planes flying over, and I think, okay, they’re going to Washington or New York or Paris or wherever, and they got plenty of money and they’re livin’ high, and maybe some of ‘em are even famous, and we’re here on the ground struggling to get by. And it all just makes me mad. And then Meek comes along and says, You’re great. You’re special. You’re better than all those other people. And I say, Yeah, that sounds right. But it’s probably not good. We’re all God’s children, right?” She smiled a guilty smile.

Another angel. He glanced up from his notebook to see Tamar listening, and he motioned for her to come over. “Sarah Cobb, this is my friend, Tamar,” he said. “Sarah works in a chemical plant near here. She likes Meek because he says what she thinks.”

Tamar glanced at David, wondering with her eyes if it was okay to speak. He nodded. “Nice to meet you, Sarah,” she said. David saw Sarah flinch when she heard Tamar’s accent. Tamar noticed, too, and said, “I’m from a communist country, actually. Well, former communist. Our workers are struggling too, and our media suck, just like yours.” She looked over and smiled at David. “Some of us are atheists and some of us believe in God, but we’re good people.” Then she looked at Cobb again and said, “Here, Sarah, you need this,” and moved next to her, moving her umbrella over both their heads.

Cobb was silent, evidently thrown off by the unexpected friendliness. Finally, she said, “Thanks. I’m glad to know that.”

“America’s a wonderful country,” Tamar said. “I’m glad you won the Cold War. I hated communism.”

Sarah had finally recovered, and she smiled and stuck out her hand, and Tamar took it. “Good to know, Tamar. Are you from Russia?”

“No, Georgia.” She saw the confusion in Cobb’s face and added, “Not your Georgia. It’s near Russia. We were in the Soviet Union.”

Cobb smiled. “Yeah, well, it’s nice to meet you.”

David wanted to end the conversation; he was shivering now, too. “Thanks Sarah,” he said. “Thanks for talking to me.”

She smiled, relieved the interview was over, and let out a breath he hadn’t realized she was holding. She relaxed her hands and leaned back and shook off the hood, revealing a head almost entirely gray. “My pleasure,” she said. “And, hey, I’m sorry about back there. I’ve really got nothing against anyone, personally. We just want to protect America, is all I’m sayin’.”

“That reporter Meek went after, she’s American, too, you know,” David said.

“Okay, well, I guess she just looks like she’s – ” She laughed nervously, embarrassed that bigotry had popped out of her mouth again. She looked at Tamar with an apologetic expression.

Tamar put her arm around her shoulder. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Sarah,” she said, “Hang in there. America really is special. See this?” Tamar held out her finger like a gun, then lowered the umbrella and pointed her finger upward, as Meek had done. “Every time you think about your problems,” Tamar said, “or about America’s problems, or about Mr. Meek, or about all the people who make you mad, just do this.” She re-formed the gun into a simple, open hand, thrust straight up into the sky. “If you do this, it means you’re exceptional. You’re strong. You’re not afraid. You’re American, the kind of American who can inspire the world. Come on, do it with me.”

Cobb slowly lifted her hand toward the pelting sky. “Good,” Tamar said and hugged her. “Don’t worry, Sarah, you haven’t blown it. God still loves you.”

Cobb searched Tamar’s face, as if wondering if she knew her from somewhere. “Thanks, Tamar,” she finally said. “Can you guys stay around a bit?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Tamar said. “We need to get back to Washington. But it was a pleasure meeting you.”

“Well, you, too. Come back soon.”

David and Tamar turned and headed to the parking lot. When David looked back, Cobb was still standing there, staring after them, and when Tamar looked back as well, Cobb raised her hand in a little wave. Then, realizing what she was doing, she lifted her hand straight and high. Tamar smiled and pumped her fist.

Chapter 21

“That’s not America, what Meek did,” Tamar said quietly as she and David walked to the car. “Sarah saw it, she just couldn’t express it.” She smiled disarmingly. “I hope you didn’t mind that I got involved.”

He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation, “I thought you and Meek were separate stories, but now you’re taking over this one, too.” Not sure if he was serious, her face fell. He let out a broad smile. “No, of course I don’t mind. That was amazing. I can see how people really respond to you.”

He opened the car door for her, and she slid inside. “But tell me,” he said, leaning on the door. “Is the hand saying stop, or is it saying yes? Or is it volunteering for some mission? Or maybe canceling the Nazi salute?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe all of it?”

They drove for a while in silence. Bursts of icy rain drummed the car. What was it about her that touched him so deeply? She had made a famous world leader and now a simple factory worker pay attention. Was it her fearlessness? Her insight into people’s best selves? Her simple kindness? Listen to me, she seemed to be saying. Every word I speak will make you and everyone around you better and stronger and happier.

They were nearing a gas station and mini mart, and he asked if she was hungry.

“A bit.”

They pulled into the parking lot, and as they got out of the car a voice came from behind them.

“David, hey, how are you?” It was Mei Li, her head wrapped snuggly in a wool cap. “Thanks for helping me back there.”

“No problem. I’m sorry you had to go through that. You okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “It’s not the first time. On your way back to Washington?”

“Yeah. This is my friend Tamar.”

They shook hands. “Glad to meet you,” Li said. “Let’s get in. It’s freezing.”

In a few minutes, the three were standing in the checkout line, David holding a shopping basket with two apples, two bottles of water and a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Behind them waited a man in a knit hat with dangling ear flaps, trying to balance a bag of candy and a sandwich and a can of soda and a banana in his arms. He coughed into his shoulder, and the flaps danced.

A young man, his skin like raw honey, entered the store. Spotting someone, he headed for the back, where the bottled drinks were shelved. In a few moments a short scream sliced the air, and the man began guiding a stumbling woman toward the door. She held an unbought bottle of water in her hand, and the cashier ran toward the door to block it. Then she saw the look on the woman’s face and stopped.

“No!” the woman wailed and sank to her knees. The young man gently helped her stand again and guided her through the door, then stopped on the other side and took both her shoulders in his hands and began talking to her. Everyone in the store watched.

“My neighbors,” the man with the ear flaps breathed. “I gotta see what’s wrong.” He shoved his food onto the counter and hurried out. Li paid for her groceries, David paid for his and Tamar’s, and they put their bags down and waited. It somehow felt rude to leave just yet, with the pair standing just outside the door.

The man with the ear flaps came back inside and began paying for his groceries, along with the woman’s water. “They’re mother and son,” he announced to the people in the store. “Her older boy and his kid were shot. At the Morgantown paper.” Li gasped and pulled a phone from her bag and hurried outside.

David looked around at the small crowd in the store. The customers seemed unsure if they should resume shopping or hold some kind of vigil. But one woman had already begun shopping again, picking up bags of potato chips one by one and inspecting the pictures on the front. When she became aware that she was the only one shopping, she said in anger, “Well, excuse me, but are you all really that surprised? It’s the media. And, you know –” She motioned briefly at the mother and son still standing outside, then turned away, presumably embarrassed at the thoughts stomping through her mind.

The remark sat like a stack of cans at a carnival booth, waiting to be struck. “What are you saying?” a man near her said. He was wearing a leather jacket and had Chinese symbols tattooed around his neck. “You think it’s okay to shoot journalists?” The woman was silent, and his face took on a look of disgust. “Or is it because they’re not white?”

The woman ignored him and picked a bag of salt and vinegar chips off the shelf. “They all need to go back where they came from,” she grumbled as she walked toward the cashier. 

The man laughed sarcastically. “Oh, so that’s your deal? You think being white is what makes America great?”

The woman, now red-faced, whirled and looked at him, evidently trying to form words that would bite back. “Yes,” she finally said. She turned back to the cashier, who whispered something to the woman, who smiled gratefully.

The store was silent. The man shook his head. “Wow.” He shoved the bottle of soda he was holding onto a shelf full of cereal boxes. “You people are so messed up,” he said, and stormed out.

The man’s final comment seemed to trigger something in the woman, and she shuddered and gritted her teeth. “Commies,” she muttered to the rest of the customers. She turned around and hunched protectively over her chips while the cashier rang them up, then muttered something to the cashier.

“Damn right,” the cashier said emphatically and handed back her change. The woman turned and spotted Li outside the window, talking on her phone, and when their eyes met, the woman’s face slid from anger to something like hatred. She made a finger-gun and blasted Li, who turned her back. The woman stalked out the door and headed for her car, and the customers stared after her, paralyzed by the violence of the moment. Whatever joy they had brought with them into the store seemed to have vanished.

David realized that he, too, felt assaulted. And then, in a flash, he understood what was happening: Everyone there, himself included, had been scared into passivity, as if trapped in the middle of an actual mass shooting. He shook his head to clear the fog. Wake up, man, he thought. Don’t be a victim.

The man with the ear flaps, who had been watching the scene from inside the door, left, and the customers who remained began shopping again. The grandmother was now sitting in her son’s car. David decided to try to talk with them, and he left Tamar with their bag and walked up to the car. He tapped on the driver’s window, and the young man rolled it down. Tears were running down his cheeks. “Excuse me,” David whispered. “I’m a reporter just passing through. Can you tell me what happened?”

“My brother and his boy were shot,” the man said. “That’s all we know. He’s a reporter, and the kid was visiting him after school. We need to get home. Do you mind?”

“No. Sorry.”

The man started the engine. David turned toward the grandmother, who was staring straight ahead. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I’m praying for you. And for your family. God loves you. All of you.” She looked at him and bent her head slightly. They drove away, and David walked to the edge of the parking lot, determined to put his thoughts in order. Then he realized he had left Tamar in the store and glanced inside. His mouth dropped open. Through the window he could see her talking to the customers and the cashier. Everyone’s hand was in the air.

He hurried back inside. When he walked through the door, Tamar turned to him. “Folks, this is David Darke. He’s a reporter, and he’s going to write about this.” David raised his eyebrows. “David, we’ve all decided this is not the America we know, and we’re going to do something about it. Vicky here –” she indicated a small woman standing behind a stroller, a toddler next to her, holding tightly to her leg “– she’s going to invite her neighbor from Japan up for dinner. Others are going to, I don’t know, cook a foreign recipe.” Everyone laughed. “Gary –” she looked toward a young man with a big smile on his face “– he’s going to finally ask out the girl at his work from New York. She’s a foreigner to him.” Everyone laughed again. “We’re all going to do something to make America better. Because this isn’t right, this hate. We’ve decided that.”

Everyone turned to David. “Alright, then,” he said. “You’ve all been busy. Let me find out more.” He went up to the young mother, her son still clinging to her thigh. She told David her husband was at home, probably yelling at the TV. “Don’t blame the foreigners, I tell him,” she said. “They’re trying to live a decent life like the rest of us. But he’s always, like, ‘Who needs ‘em? They’re contaminating America.’ Stuff like that. Ouch!” Her son had pinched her in an effort to get her attention, and she snatched her leg away, which caused him to start screaming. She shook her head and sighed and offered her leg to him again. “We gotta wake up, is all,” she said. “You know what I mean?” She made a finger-gun. “Have you seen this guy?” She shook her head. “No foreigner could do to us what we’re doing to ourselves.”

David thanked her and talked to a few others and then joined Tamar, and the two of them walked outside. The storm had passed, and shades of rose and lavender washed the walls of the mini mart. The underbellies of the few gray clouds that remained glowed, as if pregnant with fire. They got into the car and started driving. “So, talk to me,” he said to Tamar.

“I don’t know, the hand just works,” she said. “I was standing there, feeling sick, and then I thought, I can’t stand by, you know?”

“I’m amazed at what you do,” David said. “I keep saying that, I know, but truly. People respond to you.”

“It makes me sad, all this. I love America, but too many people are asleep.” She put her head back. “I’m tired,” she said. In a short time she was sleeping.

As David drove, wide awake now, he realized something amazing was happening before his eyes: This woman he had just met, with whom he had shared thrilling ideas in Lafayette Park and the Lincoln Memorial, whom he had watched lift Gorbachev and Sarah Cobb and now the customers in the mini mart out of whatever mental swamp they had found themselves in, this woman seemed to have incredible power to transform any situation and the people in it into something hopeful. But what was most astonishing to him now was that there was a pattern and process to it all, and it involved him. He would see something good and holy and true about a situation and people involved, and then she would somehow be inspired to rise and do the rest. He would see angels, and she would make them real, and together they would create a story, one that was very different from the story the world expected. What remained for him to do was to actually write the story, but he was sure now that that would happen.

When, as a boy, he had stood at the top of the stairs and prayed, and when he had lain helpless in his bed as his father prayed for him, he had realized all was well, even before his body had confirmed it. Now he was witnessing the same process in the world around him. This was what prophetic journalism was all about, he realized. It was the journalism of angels, with the journalist as vanguard and quiet warrior, bearing witness to humanity’s native freedom, and with people like Tamar working silently and faithfully to bring that freedom to light.

They were approaching Washington, and the storm, which had seemed to dissipate at the mini mart, was rising again. The road had become an angry knot of cars and semis, snowplows and sand trucks, inching along like blind people feeling their way through a crowd.

Tamar woke and turned to David. He saw alarm in her eyes.

“I just had this dream,” she said. “They were coming after me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, but they were big and dark, and they had shovels.”

Chapter 22

Five people had been killed in the shooting at the Morgantown Dominion Post, including the shooter and the elder son and grandson of the woman in the mini mart. The son had been leading a team of reporters who had written a series of articles about all the ways workers of different races, cultures and religions were bolstering the economy of West Virginia. The shooter, as he pulled the trigger on the victims and then himself, had ranted about the contamination of America. Two other reporters on the team had also been killed. It was hard not to conclude that they had been targeted for their work.

Still feeling menaced by the violent images that had come to her in the car, Tamar hadn’t slept well all week. Each morning, exhausted from serrated dreams, she called David for comfort. Fear was something he had never seen in her, and he realized what happened in Georgia still haunted her. He searched for ideas that could help her find peace.

“God’s love is with you all the time,” he told her one morning, “His angels, His ideas, are always protecting you, defending you, bringing you comfort and peace and healing. I know from experience this is true. You live in God’s secret place, in the shadow of the Almighty. You have nothing to fear, Tamar, because God is with you. His love surrounds you.” He wasn’t sure the ideas would mean anything to her, since they had never talked explicitly about religion, but they were the most powerful comfort he could offer.

On Saturday morning they talked again, and at the end of the conversation she brightened. “You know what?” she said. “Let’s go to the memorial service for the reporters. It’s today, right? I’d really like to go.”

“Absolutely,” he said, “let’s do it.” She sounded more like herself than she had all week.

They drove the three and a half hours to Morgantown, and as they approached the church where the service would be held, they saw a dozen people marching back and forth on the sidewalk in front, holding up finger guns and shouting:

“Send them back!

“Send them back!

“Send them back!”

David sensed tension rising again in Tamar, and he spontaneously put his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t shake it away. “It’s not right,” she whispered.

Inside the church, they took programs from an usher, who indicated several empty seats toward the front. They sat quietly, waiting for the service to begin. The doors in the back kept opening, allowing the noise of the demonstrators to enter the sanctuary. Several times Tamar glanced toward the sound but said nothing. Then a short, skinny, deeply tanned young man burst into the church and started shouting:

“Send them back!

“Send them back!

“Send them back!”

A woman in the audience stood and chastised the man for disrespecting those who had lost someone and said he could go outside and scream as much as he wanted. Her tone was condescending, and he ignored her. Several policemen came in and tried to usher him out without turning the scene violent, but he refused to move.

As Tamar watched the scene unfold, she kept rubbing the tops of her knees. When it was clear the standoff was not ending, she slid out of the row and walked quickly toward the man, who paused his tirade and watched her warily. The congregation grew silent, and the police put their hands to their belts. When she got closer, the man raised his finger gun, then changed his hand to a fist, as if to strike her. The congregation gasped. Tamar looked him in the eye and raised her own hand high and straight. For several moments they faced each other, neither one moving. Then she whispered something to him, and he let his hand drop, and she reached out and took it. Trying to protest his own paralysis, he attempted to shout, but the words came out weakly, “Send them back.”

“Shhh,” Tamar whispered, loud enough for the congregation to hear. “This is a church.”

She turned and, still holding his hand, led him toward the front and sat him down in the empty seat next to her and David. Then she nodded toward the minister, who wasn’t sure whether to be shocked or pleased, and he raised his face to the congregation to begin the service.

***

For the young man, whose name was Adam Samson, it was a miracle that this woman had found him. Angry and humiliated at his family – his father was a Nebraska farmer who was always complaining about grain prices and once, in protest, had dumped a pickup truck full of rotten corn onto the grounds of the County/City Building in Lincoln; his mother was a teacher of disabled kids and often brought them to the house, but what was harder for him was that she was a devout Muslim who refused to go outside without her head scarf, which made her stand out in farm country like a blackbird in a field of snow – he had cursed his parents and dropped out of high school and hopped a bus and rode it as far as he could afford, which turned out to be Pittsburgh. He had been living in a hostel with other transients and grabbing odd jobs, and he was miserable and homesick, until one day a man came up to him and asked if he wanted fifty bucks. All he had to do was come to West Virginia for a day and walk and chant slogans. Sweet, Adam said, I can do that. He rode a bus to Morgantown with a dozen others, and when they arrived, they were given something red, white and blue to carry or wear and shown how to make a finger gun. An extra five bucks was in it for anyone who could get inside the church. When he heard it was a church he hesitated, but money was money.

All this he told David as they sat in the pew after the service. “Who was the guy who recruited you?” David asked. The mention of the finger gun had roused his curiosity.

Adam shrugged. “I never got his name,” he said. “He was tall, that I remember, and he kept telling everyone, ‘America’s in trouble! We’ve got to defend America!’” Obediently, Adam had worked himself into a frenzy, thrusting his finger gun in time with his steps, and, when he saw an opening, he sneaked behind some policemen and rushed inside the church. But when Tamar came up to him and stood there quietly, not condemning him, just telling him that love was with him, that it was all around him, he felt calm, and the money and the passion suddenly meant nothing. He never got the extra five bucks, he said, but by then it didn’t matter. He just wanted to follow Tamar wherever she went, and he let her take his hand. As far as he was concerned, she was a saint.

David talked to others in the church, many of whom found what had happened deeply moving. By the time he and Tamar left, the idea for his next column, which was due that afternoon, had become clear.

Chapter 23

BE NOT AFRAID

The Power of a Raised Hand

By David Darke

Staff Columnist

The Christian Reporter

WASHINGTON, DC - Let me introduce you to a young woman from the country of Georgia. I expect America and the world will be seeing much more of her in the future.

Tamar Tsmindashvili arrived in the US about two years ago. Since then, she has been working for a small company owned by her uncle in Washington, DC and growing in her understanding of America. Last week she began to put that understanding to work in an extraordinary way.

She had spent a morning in West Virginia at a rally held by Jonah Meek, the son of a disgraced church minister, who is gaining followers around the state through events of what can only be described as intensely xenophobic and racist fervor. Tsmindashvili watched with growing concern as he verbally attacked a Chinese-American reporter from the Morgantown Dominion Post newspaper, encouraging his audience, in the name of Christianity, to do the same.

Afterwards, as Tsmindashvili was returning to Washington, she stopped at a rest stop to buy something to eat. Standing in line to pay, she heard a scream from the back of the store. A woman had just learned that her son, a reporter at the Dominion Post, had been shot, along with the man’s young son.

Tsmindashvili and the rest of the customers were shocked to hear the news. But then one woman began defending the shooter, insisting that the news media deserved what they got and, anyway, the victims, who, given the color of the mother’s skin, were apparently white, should “go back where they came from.”

Most of the crowd in the mini mart were silent, but Tsmindashvili decided she could not stand idle and watch bigotry take control. When the shooter’s defender had left, Tsmindashvili gathered the remaining shoppers by the cash register and began to dismantle the ugly passions. She asked everyone to raise a hand and pledge, right then and there, that they would erase bigotry from their view of others. One woman said she would invite her Japanese neighbor upstairs for dinner. A young man said he would ask out a coworker from New York, a foreign country as far as he was concerned. The meeting ended in laughter and hope. Another customer, a young mother, said, “We gotta wake up, is all.” Then she made a gun with her finger and asked, rhetorically, “Have you seen this guy? No enemy could do to us what we’re doing to ourselves.”

The finger gun is Meek’s symbol. At the rally that day he had whipped the crowd into a frenzy, leading them in a mass raising of finger guns, a gesture both silly and ominous, especially when done in the name of religion. When he fired ugly sentiments of racism and xenophobia toward the Chinese-American reporter, the crowd had responded with their own epithets of bigotry. Repulsed, Tsmindashvili had talked afterwards with a member of the crowd, a West Virginia factory worker named Sarah Cobb, and showed her how to raise her hand straight and high as a rebuke to the finger guns. Then, at the mini mart, Tsmindashvili encouraged more people to raise their hands.

Yesterday, Tsmindashvili traveled to Morgantown to attend a memorial service for the victims of the shooting. As the mourners waited for the service to begin, a demonstrator burst into the church, lifted his finger gun and began shouting, “Send them back! Send them back!” Tsmindashvili rose from her seat and walked up to the man. Looking him in the eye, she raised her hand. He changed his hand into a fist. But after a few tense moments the man lowered his fist and took her hand and walked with her to a seat near the front of the church. They both listened quietly to the service.

Tsmindashvili, as I have learned, was doing similar things in Georgia before coming to the U.S. Heading a group she had founded called “Love, Georgia,” she had inspired hundreds of people to raise their hands in support of independence from Soviet rule. A nation is great when it loves, she preached. She wanted people to raise their hands as a gesture of commitment to this ideal, and when a growing number did, she was threatened and chased out of the country by armed men, by all appearances agents of the Soviet government.   

Now she has brought her courage and love to America. With its ideals of liberty and justice for all, America has always been an example for her of what a nation should be. She has come to realize, however, that America still has much work to do to fulfil its promise. Many people in the country clearly feel disrespected because of their origin or skin color or religion, and she fears that events such as Meek’s rallies threaten to turn America into a land hospitable more to anger and fear than to love.

How far and how high can Tsmindashvili’s hand stretch? Can it stop an ugly stain on America from spreading?

Hannah Arendt, in her famous book about the Holocaust, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, described how Germans living ordinary lives and thinking ordinary thoughts became instruments and enablers of grotesque crimes against Jews and other minorities. Arendt called it, “the moral debacle of a whole nation.” It may be unthinkable that something similar could happen in America, but is it impossible? Many people raised their hands in Germany in the Nazi salute. The finger-gun salute is not dissimilar. Tsmindashvili’s hand raised straight and high is a direct rebuke to both. Yes, more than hands is needed to change the course of nations, but hands are a place to start, and one woman’s hand, rising now in America, seems to have uncanny power to calm turbulent waters.

Let’s hope America responds before it’s too late.

Chapter 24

In the morning, Tamar read David’s column while she ate her breakfast. As she put her dishes in the dishwasher and was about to call him, her phone rang. A producer from a Morgantown TV news show wanted to book her for a live interview that evening. “What you did at that church was amazing,” the producer gushed. “People are talking about you.”

“Thank you, but no thanks,” Tamar said.

The line was silent. “All the news shows here are talking about you,” the producer finally said. “Meek and his people, they’re saying you disrespected America by stopping a legitimate protest. I’m giving you a chance to respond.”

“What?” she said. “Why would they say that? That was no protest. It was bigotry.” But before the producer could answer, Tamar said again, “Sorry, I’m not interested.” She still distrusted journalists. David was different, though. She felt safe with him.

No sooner had she hung up than the phone rang again. She thought of ignoring it but finally picked up, and she had to say hello twice before a timid voice spoke. The caller’s name was Elijah Samson, and he said he was Adam’s father and wanted to thank her, because his son had come home.

“He’s a new man,” Samson said. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” He also wanted to invite her to Las Vegas the following week as a speaker at the annual convention of the American Farmworkers Council, of which he was chairman that year. He had learned her story from Adam, and he thought the members would find it inspiring.

“Thank you, Mr. Samson. It would be an honor.” This seemed right. She could say what she wanted to say in the way she wanted to say it.

For the next week she fretted over her speech. What, in fact, could she say to a bunch of farmers that would make a difference in their lives? She rewrote the speech three times but still wasn’t happy with it, and she called David to see if he had any ideas.

 It was odd, he thought, being asked to shape what she would say, because he figured sooner or later he’d be quoting the speech. “Say what’s in your heart,” he said, then realized how trite it sounded. “Sorry, I just feel funny putting words in your mouth.”

“Okay, I’ll figure something out,” she said. “But can you come? You can get a room in the same hotel and cover the meeting. Somehow, I think more clearly when you’re around.”

He hesitated. How close could he afford to get to this woman? But his column about her had already received a strong response from readers, so he decided it would be good to be there. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll come.” He chuckled. “I’ve had a few people wonder if you’re going to become some kind of opposition to Meek.”

She let out a sound of disgust. “Are you kidding me?” she said. She realized that was why they wanted her on TV, for the controversy. “I have no interest in getting into a war with that man.”

***

Jet-lagged from her flight, Tamar got up at four a.m. and read through her speech. It still felt flat. She wanted to call David in his room but figured he was still asleep, so she threw on a t-shirt and sweatpants and made her way to the gym to try to get her frustration out and refocus.

After twenty minutes on the treadmill, she straddled the moving belt and wiped her face with a towel. As she did, she heard a light knock on the gym door. She climbed down and opened the door, and a girl, no more than sixteen years old, slipped in quickly, as if trying to hide from someone. The left sleeve of her shirt was torn at the elbow and half ripped down her forearm. Her skirt was askew, as if she had hastily pulled it on. Her long, dark hair was matted in blotches and hung over her eyes like strips of pasta. She smelled of vomit and alcohol. She had been crying.

Tamar stared for a moment, and then in a flash she knew what had happened. “Come here, Sweetheart,” she said, taking her arm. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” The girl didn’t protest, and Tamar gently guided her to the women’s locker room, where she raised the girl’s arms and removed her shirt and dropped it onto the floor, then bent her over the sink and began to wash the crusty and sticky substance out of her hair. She wet a towel and began cleaning her chest and stomach, then her legs, dropping to her knees as she moved lower and lower. Finally, she washed her feet. She stood up and took another towel and patted her dry, and with a third wrapped her head. She tied a towel around her chest and placed another on her shoulders and another around her waist, like some designer’s crazy idea for dressing a mannequin. Then they sat down together on a bench. The girl was shivering.

“What happened, Honey?” Tamar asked, wrapping her arm around her shoulders.

She shook her head and stared at the floor.

“Shall we call the police?”

Her eyes opened wide, and she shook her head violently.

“Have you been raped?”

Still looking at the floor, she held her head still.

“Come on, tell me. We can get help.”

She shook her head again, refusing to look at Tamar.

“It’s not your fault, you know.” Tamar looked away for a moment, thinking, then turned back to the girl. “May I call your parents?” The girl didn’t move. Then Tamar said again, “It’s not your fault.” She went over and picked up a phone on a table by the door and waited. The girl’s shoulders slumped, and she whispered, “my sister,” and then a phone number. Tamar dialed, and the girl’s sister said she’d be right there and would bring some fresh clothes. Then she went back and sat down next to the girl. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Valentina,” she said, softly, toward the floor.

“It’s a lovely name. You speak Spanish.” Tamar had heard the accent.

She looked up and nodded.

“Si quieres podemos hablar en español.” If you want, we can speak in Spanish.

The girl’s eyes went wide, and she burst into tears. Tamar put her arm around her again and held her tightly, and the girl curled slowly into a ball. Finally, she rested her head in Tamar’s lap, and Tamar gently rubbed her back. Words came to her that felt like a wound being gently washed, and she said, “Dios te ama, corazoncita.” God loves you, Sweetheart. She would never have spoken the words before, but having spent so much time with David, they felt natural now, even essential.

“Gracias,” the girl whispered.

Chapter 25

Back in her room for the next four hours, her inspiration full again, Tamar rewrote her speech. She called David and told him she’d be skipping breakfast and would see him in the auditorium. When she had finished the speech, she got dressed and printed it out on the hotel printer, walked across the lobby and took her place on stage with Elijah Samson. Like his son, he was short and deeply tanned, and he was dressed in what looked like a brand-new beige suit with shiny brown shoes. When he rose to introduce her, he stepped onto a small box behind the lectern, and still his face barely rose above the microphone. He methodically went through the facts of her life, then told the story of her encounter with his son. “We need good people like her in America,” he said. 

While he spoke, she looked down at the audience. There, in the first row, sat Adam, spruced up in a sport coat and tie, smiling brightly. Next to him sat David, notebook in his lap, recorder peeking out of his shirt pocket. She thought about how quickly he had become a constant in her life, something solid to rest on, a man, like her brother, who could help keep her spirits from straying too far from peace.

She scanned the hall. It had the appearance of a ballroom in Versailles, as if they all were part of an elaborate game of make-believe. She could sense that the audience was paying only partial attention, eager to get on with the real reasons they had come to Las Vegas, which had nothing to do with convention speeches.

“And now,” Samson said, “may I present, Tamar Tsmin… Tamar Tsminda…”

“Just Tamar is fine, thanks,” she said. She walked slowly to the lectern and placed a few sheets of paper in front of her. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. Hearing her voice amplified made her cringe, so immersed had she been in silence for the last several hours. She softened her tone and dropped into a smile. “I’m going to talk to you today about my hope for America. I appreciate what Mr. Samson has said, and I appreciate his son, whom I had the privilege of meeting last week.” She nodded at Adam. “But first, I want to tell you a story.” 

She leaned her elbows on the lectern. “This morning, about four a.m., I was in the gym of this hotel – believe me, it’s not my habit to work out at four a.m., but I’m still on Washington time – and this young woman came in. A girl, really. She had obviously had a rough night. In fact, as became clear, she had been raped, and by multiple men.” The hall became quieter. “She was convinced it was all her fault, that it was a kind of punishment for mistakes she had made. I helped her clean herself up, then we called her sister to pick her up, and they left.”

She paused and looked at the audience. Her tone of quiet sincerity sounded odd in a place like Versailles, but then again, this Versailles was in Las Vegas, where oddity was the norm. She plunged ahead. 

“This girl was from Latin America. She had come here recently with her family – whether she was illegal, I don’t know, I didn’t ask, but I had the feeling she was – and she had decided to sneak away and have some fun. By the end of the evening, she was clearly not having fun. She knew she hadn’t been very smart, and she knew that as a foreigner, maybe an illegal one, she would have problems if she got in trouble, which is why she didn’t want to call the police. None of that mattered to me. As far as I was concerned, she was as innocent as any one of us here.”

The audience was now as still as a desert morning. This was not what they had expected to hear.

“Do you know why I love America?” Tamar said. “Because here you can be innocent. From the time I was little, whenever I thought about your country, that’s what I felt, although I didn’t think of it as innocence. All I knew was, the thought of America made me happy. You could do whatever you thought was right here, and no one would make you feel guilty. I couldn’t come, of course; my country, the country of Georgia, was part of the Soviet Union, which sometimes felt like a prison. I had a wonderful family and good friends, but the system itself was very limiting. It was hard to get anywhere unless you were willing to compromise your principles, and I hated doing things dishonestly. The result was, I was constantly at war with people and institutions around me. I pushed back. I pushed everywhere and everyone. I pushed my teachers, I pushed my friends and I pushed my family to do what I wanted them to do. Most of all, I pushed myself. I never forgave myself the smallest mistake. I got through school with high honors because I never backed off. It’s a quality Americans admire. But it’s exhausting, pushing all the time.

“Then something terrible happened. I decided I wanted to get involved in the anti-Soviet movement that was growing at the time, and I pushed my brother to take me to an anti-Soviet rally, and he was killed by Soviet soldiers. I blamed myself for his death, and I was beside myself with grief. But I finally decided that wasn’t getting me anywhere, and I got more involved in the resistance. That led to starting my own movement, which led to an epiphany, which I believe brought me here today.

“What happened was, I walked inside a church in my neighborhood one morning, and half an hour later I walked out a changed woman. It came to me that not only were my country and my fellow Georgians innocent, but we had a mission, a mission to love. I started talking to people about love as a national purpose – love for our country, love for each other, even love for our enemies. I had people raise their hands to show their willingness to adopt this idea of love. People were starting to listen.

“But the Soviet government – they were still in control then – didn’t like what I was doing, and one man in particular, who for all I know was from the KGB, tried to undermine me and eventually came after me with a gun. I felt I had to leave the country. This made me sad – my mother is still there – but as it has turned out, coming to America has been the best thing that’s happened to me. I feel as if this pressure I felt for so long has finally been lifted off my shoulders. I feel relieved, as if my future won’t be determined after all by how hard I push other people or myself. It will be determined by how much I love, and how much love I can inspire in others. It has been a very good experience so far. I feel forgiven for a very willful and blind past. I feel what I can only describe as God’s grace.” She paused and looked into the faces of the audience, and she saw what she had hoped to see: Faces full of eagerness, stirred by her words.

Then her eye caught movement in the back of the hall, by the tables with the coffee urns and neatly stacked ceramic cups. A tall young man was talking agitatedly on a mobile phone. He kept his voice low, but his head bobbed with urgency. Tamar was surprised at the shiver that ran through her. He looked like the man she had seen with Meek at the rally in West Virginia. He clicked off his phone and halted his pacing and stood with his hands on his hips and stared at her. Then he shouted: “Americans don’t forgive! Americans don’t forget! Americans get angry!”

Adam and David whipped their heads around, others turned, and some people shouted at the man to shut up. But Tamar leaned into her microphone and said, “It’s okay, folks. Let him speak. Tell me, sir. What are you trying to say?” She could hear the strain in her own voice.

The man stood silently, his mouth open, not expecting to be given the floor so readily. “I’ve said my piece,” he finally spluttered. “Americans don’t forgive, and Americans don’t forget. Americans get angry!”

The audience murmured at his rudeness, but Tamar remained quiet and drew herself up as tall as she could. “Thank you for your words, sir,” she finally said. She turned to the audience. “I’m sure you all studied Abraham Lincoln in school. I’ve learned to love him. To my mind, he represents the best of America. When there was so much hate and fear around him during the Civil War, he embodied the healing spirit of this country. He said we all can be touched by the better angels of our nature. Despite what this gentleman here has said, I believe Americans can indeed forgive – forgive others and, most of all, forgive themselves. There’s tremendous power in that. This, to me, is what makes America great, its power to love.” She looked directly at the man. “I think you can do that, sir.”

The man stood silently, staring at her, then shouted nonsensically, “Well, I don’t.”

At that moment the door in the back of the hall opened, and a phalanx of men and women burst through. The man looked back and snapped again into his role. “No one here cares about your innocence,” he shouted toward Tamar, and then he repeated, with obvious relish, his words from before, “Americans don’t forgive, and Americans don’t forget. Americans get angry!” The group behind him punctuated his words with “Yeah! You go, Max!” and then laughed. Several of them kept looking back at the door through which they had come, as if expecting someone else to come through it.

Tamar lifted her hand for quiet. Her agitation was quickly giving way to thoughts that were so simple and clear she wondered for a moment if someone had just whispered them to her. Then she realized they were the thoughts that had come to her in the gym and that she had spoken to Valentina as she was leaving with her sister.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, sir,” she said to the man. The entourage around him lowered their voices, curious to hear what this strangely unflappable woman was going to say next. “Today, when you go out from here –” she scanned the audience “– when you go around the city or stop in a casino or see a show, think about one thing you can do to acknowledge someone’s innocence. Do something tangible to clean someone up or encourage them to do better or help them solve a problem. They’ll feel your love, and you’ll feel it, too, and it will make this trip to Vegas one you’ll never forget.”

In the softness of her words the audience was silent, but the entourage behind Max began talking loudly among themselves, as if to drown any thoughts that might temper their agitation.

Then the rear door opened, and a man burst in. Immediately the audience began buzzing. Behind the man TV cameras entered and spread out. Tamar’s first thought was that it must be some kind of Las Vegas show for tourists, like an Elvis impersonator sensing an audience and breaking into song. But then the man spoke, and it became clear who he was. “American brothers and sisters, it’s time to take charge of this country!” Jonah Meek shouted, his deep voice rising in volume with each word. “This woman is a communist, did you know that?” Tamar flushed. He lifted his hand and made a gun with his finger and pointed it at her and pretended to fire it. A few members of the audience repeated the gesture, then more joined in, hesitantly at first, then laughing. Max and his friends raised their hands like guns and chanted: 

“Meek.”

“Meek.

“Meek.”

Meek waved to the crowd, as if it were his now and not Tamar’s, and he began walking quickly toward the stage, his finger gun held high. What flashed before Tamar’s mind was the final scene outside her apartment window in Tbilisi, Ilya holding a real gun and looking at her. Meek climbed the steps and approached the podium, his body swaying like a runaway bull. Tamar had called her friends to rescue her in Tbilisi, but who could she call on now? She began looking around for the nearest exit.

But before she knew it, Elijah Samson and his son were at her side and holding her steady. Meek, surprised that she had not yielded the stage, stopped for a moment and looked at her. Then he slid in front, blocking the audience’s view, both hands raised high in the finger-gun salute.

Sensing the tension, the audience muted their enthusiasm. Then, on either side of Tamar, first Adam and then Elijah raised their hands too, but straight and high. Tamar lifted hers. Meek glanced back, and when he turned again, the audience was standing mute, hands now at their sides. A few hands rose, copying Tamar, Adam and Elijah. Meek stared, defiant. More hands rose straight, returning the defiance. Meek growled, “Folks, I had faith that the salt of our earth had more smarts than this. This woman here, she’s not American. You know that, right? She’s a communist. What does she know about America?”

Seeing the scene collapsing in front of him, Max thrust his finger gun into the air and shouted,

“U.S.A.!

“U.S.A.!

“U.S.A.!”

But only a few voices from the crowd joined him. Meek, sensing defeat, walked to the front of the stage. His voice was quiet and cold. “Folks, you will regret this,” he said. “America will prevail!” For one last time he threw his finger gun into the air and charged to the corner of the stage and down the steps and out through the crowd, which stared after him. In the back of the auditorium, he banged open the door with both hands and led Max and the entourage and the TV cameras out into the lobby of the hotel.

When the crowd had settled, Tamar returned to the lectern. For a long time, she scanned the audience, seeming to catch each person’s eye individually. Finally, she said, simply, “Thank you.” She looked behind her and spread her arms and signaled for Elijah and Adam to come forward and stand on either side of her, and she put an arm around each one. Then she raised her right hand, and the crowd did the same. “Now, let’s go out and be Americans,” she said. “Love someone today. That’s power.”  

Chapter 26

By the time Tamar had begun speaking again, David was out the back door of the auditorium and scanning the hotel lobby. He spotted Max, who was towering over a confused and fuming Meek. Max saw David coming and broke away from Meek and thrust his chest into David’s face.

“What do you want, sir?” Max demanded.

David pulled back and looked up at Max. “Hello, my name is David Darke, from The –”

“We know who you are,” Max growled. “You wrote about that woman like she’s some kind of saint. What do you want?”

David was taken aback by the hostility, but there was something in the man’s tone and movement, something hesitant or maybe calculating, that made David pause. He looked toward Meek, who was eyeing them, then back to Max and asked, “Why is Mr. Meek here, all the way out in Nevada? Did he come specifically to disrupt Ms. Tsmindashvili’s speech? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

The question was so direct that, for a moment, Max just stared. He glanced back at Meek, who was waiting impatiently, then looked down at David. “You think you’re so goddamned smart, with your journalism and insight” – he said the last word with heavy sarcasm – “but you’re the problem, not Mr. Meek. People love him because he speaks the truth.” His eyes narrowed. “It’s no accident those people got shot at that paper,” he said. “Do you get my meaning? No one likes the media, Mr. Darke, especially ones who call themselves Christian but clearly aren’t. Now if you’ll excuse me –”

“Wait. Are you threatening me?”

“No one’s threatening anyone, Mr. Darke. I’m just stating facts. Will you excuse me?”

“Why did you hire demonstrators to march in front of the church in Morgantown?”

Max stared, seemingly restraining himself from saying something rash. David took the silence as confirmation that he had indeed been the man who hired Adam. Finally, wanting to get Max’s last name, he said, “Well, nice talking to you, Mr. –”

But Max just stalked off to join Meek, and they quickly left the building. Before the last of the crowd followed them out the door, David tapped a young woman on the shoulder.

“Hi,” he said with a bright smile. “Sorry to bother you, but what can you tell me about Max? What’s his last name? Where’s he from?”

“Yasnov. Maxim Yasnov. I think he goes to American University in Washington. That’s all I know. Gotta run.”

“Sure. Thanks very much.”

***

As David was talking to Max, Elijah Samson was taking Tamar’s arm and guiding her down the steps and out a side door, Adam following. The door closed behind them. She stared at him.

“What just happened?” she asked.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. The hotel should have stopped this guy. Who the hell was he, anyway? I mean, we paid for this place, and –”

“No, I mean, your people, they were amazing. When I saw him, I thought it was all over, but thank you, thank you. That was Jonah Meek. He’s a kind of rabble rouser from West Virginia. I have no idea what he was doing here.” She hugged Elijah and then Adam. Elijah looked down at his shoes.

“Well, I need to get going,” Tamar finally said. She turned to Adam. “Thank you so much for coming today,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back home with your family.”

Father and son smiled, and then Elijah slapped his thigh. “Oh, I almost forgot! Wait there a moment.” He left and soon returned, holding a flat package wrapped in brown paper. “We wanted to give you something to remember your time with us,” he said, “I hope you like it. It’s Nebraska, where Adam and I live. One of our local artists did it.” She unwrapped the gift. It was a painting of the sun rising over the prairie. In the shimmering morning heat, the sun looked like the dome of an Orthodox church in her country.

“Thank you, Elijah. This is lovely. I’ll find a good place to hang it.”

He beamed, then took a sharp breath. “Oh, my goodness,” he said. “We didn’t even officially meet!” He took her hand and shook it. “I’m Elijah Samson. Well, you know that.” He laughed, embarrassed at his awkwardness, but kept shaking her hand. “They elected me chairman of the Council this year. Kind of funny, really. Me? My family doesn’t even listen to me. Anyway, it’s just an honorary position, and you don’t get much as chairman except a free trip to Vegas once a year, but hey, it’s for a good cause, right?” He finally dropped her hand and stood, his arms twitching at his sides. “Would you like to have lunch with us?”

He waited for her answer, self-conscious and hopeful in his crisp clothes, and Tamar wasn’t sure what to say, except, “Thank you, Mr. Samson. I’m glad you invited me, and I’m glad I got to know you and your son. This has been an amazing day, but I think I’ll pass on the lunch. I have some things to do before I head back to Washington. But thank you.”

He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it, then opened it again and said, “I can see why Adam couldn’t say enough good things about you, Tamar. Thank you so much for what you did for him, and what you did for us today. I hope we’ll see each other again in the future.”

She looked up and saw David leaning against a wall, writing in a notebook and breathing heavily, as if he had been running. She turned back to Samson. “I hope so, too,” she said. “You make America proud.”

***

“I’m numb, David.” She was standing at the window in her hotel room, her hair undone, staring at the dull, brown city below, the daytime reality of Las Vegas. “What’s going on?”

He stopped typing and looked up. “Meek wasn’t here by accident.”

She nodded and pursed her lips. “But why me? I’ve never met him. I’ve never said anything against him.” She turned to David, who was sitting at the small desk in the corner. “And it’s not just him. I’ve had this vision before, of Meek standing there with his finger gun pointed at me, but behind him is Ilya, and he’s holding a real gun. And then this guy with a Russian name gets in my face, Yasnov. Really, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know yet, but what you’re doing is certainly upsetting some people,” David said.

In the silence, a truck below their window ground its gears, heading toward the future.

Chapter 27

Again, David wrote a column about Tamar, describing her encounter with Valentina and confrontation with Meek. Her story was still about the power of love, but now it was also about the backlash that sometimes follows love, especially love in the public square. “A good and incorruptible woman can rouse fear in men who have lost their moral compass,” is how he ended the column. It was a direct challenge to Meek and whatever forces seemed to be building against Tamar, and he was curious if the column would provoke a reaction again.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. The morning after the column was published, Tamar’s phone rang. A man named Taylor Donohue, a partner in the Washington consulting firm of Donohue, Clawson, Hereford and Smith, said he’d read about her in the Reporter and wondered if she would like to interview for a job. The firm needed someone with her skills to help build a grassroots lobbying practice, and they would pay her a good salary and give her resources to do great things. Becoming a partner was a distinct possibility, too.

“Um, okay, we can talk,” she said. The job with her uncle and aunt was feeling increasingly narrow. “But I’ve never thought about that kind of work.”

“We think you’d be a natural,” Donohue said. “You have a way with people.”

When she told David about the call, he said he’d heard of the firm. “They’re kind of under the radar,” he said. “Nobody knows who their clients are.”

Tamar called Donohue back to inquire about the clients, but all he would tell her was, “Don’t worry. They’re all white hats.”

“I think I’ll go,” she said to David. “If nothing else, I can learn more about Washington.” He asked her to call him when she was done with the interview.

***

Donohue – tall, lean, hair short and flecked with gray – sat across from Tamar in his spacious office with a view of the Capitol. Three of her bedrooms in Tbilisi could have fit inside it. “So, tell me about Georgia,” he said. “I don’t know much about it.”

Most people who asked about Georgia were just making conversation. What had Georgia ever done to make the world pay attention? She waved her hand vaguely to the east. “It’s a country somewhere over there,” she said and smiled, and he laughed, relieved she was not going to be offended at his ignorance of all the new countries “over there” that used to be part of the Soviet Union. Who could keep track of them all?

But something seemed wrong. Why was she dismissing her own country? “But trust me,” she said quickly, “Georgia is where Stalin was from, so if anyone gives me grief, I know the way to the gulag.”

He laughed. She could tell he was impressed, a good-looking woman with a sense of humor and a hard core, perfect for turning heads in Washington. But now she was even more uncomfortable, realizing how quickly she had fallen into the I’m-a-woman-but-don’t-worry-I’m-not-threatening mode.

He asked the requisite questions about her experience and education, then placed his hand on a black binder lying in the center of the desk. In large gold letters across the front, it read,

The Raised-Hand Coalition (RHC)

He slid it over to Tamar, and she looked at the title with immediate revulsion. “What is this?” she asked.

He seemed not to notice her hostility. “This is what we envision,” he said. “It’s tailor-made for you, and we’ll be behind you a hundred and ten percent. A fantastic opportunity, for you and the firm. White-hat, totally, and a great way to break your teeth in the consulting business.” He looked her in the eye, waiting for her reaction.

She held his gaze, trying to keep her face calm. She already hated the way he talked. Clichés like “a hundred and ten percent” made her gag. And why did he go out of his way to use “white hat” again, as if not everything in the firm was clean? Then there was, “break your teeth.” Wasn’t the phrase, “cut your teeth”? He didn’t seem to be making a joke.

“Tell me more,” she said, pasting a smile onto her face. “Are you thinking parades?”

He widened his eyes. “Oh, do you like parades? We can do parades.”

She was clearly being too subtle for him. “Um, no, I mean, well, yeah, but –” She looked at him, letting her anger start to show. “What exactly do you have in mind, Mr. Donohue?”

“Taylor, please.” He gently pushed the binder closer to her. “Take a look. It’s all grassroots.”

She leafed through the pages. Scores of trade associations and nonprofit organizations were listed as possible members of RHC, starting with the American Farmworkers Council. There were sample press releases, a list of key messages, pages of reporters to contact, and a strategy, complete with mission statement. It felt like a hastily-thrown-together mix of ideas that had been used for a dozen other clients. “Okay,” she said slowly. “What’s going on, Taylor?”

He looked surprised by her question. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, who’s behind this? There must be someone who’s hiring you to create all this.” She looked him in the eye, refusing to let him evade the question.

He rubbed his hands and looked down for a moment, then back up at her. “It’s our firm. Donohue, Clawson, Hereford and Smith. We see it as a public service.”

She thought she saw fear in his eyes, and it made her distrust him all the more. “That’s bullshit,” she said.

He laughed in shock at her language. “Um, well, why don’t you think we could do this? We absolutely can. We’ll be behind you a hundred and ten percent.”

She rolled her eyes. “Taylor,” she said, “I’m not stupid. Consulting firms don’t create things like this on their own. Who’s the client?” She didn’t move a muscle, letting him know there was no give in her demand for the truth.

He finally yielded and looked away. “You’re a smart woman, Tamar,” he said as he gazed out the window. “But I can’t tell you more now.” He looked down at the binder and rubbed his hand across the cover. “All our clients are confidential.” His voice softened. “But they’re all white-hat.”

She let out a long breath. “I can’t do this, Taylor. It’s been nice meeting you.” She got up to leave and reached out her hand to shake his.

“Hold on a second,” he said. She sat back down, and he got up and left the office. In a few minutes he was back and handed her a white envelope. “Here, this is for you,” he said, smiling knowingly. “It might help you make your decision.” She looked at him carefully and opened the envelope. Inside was a check from Donohue, Clawson, Hereford and Smith for fifty thousand dollars, made out to her. Her heart jumped, and then her anger exploded. “What the hell is this for, Taylor?” she asked. But now she knew.

“Um,” he said, taken aback at her reaction, “well, it’s kind of a signing bonus. We thought –”

She stifled the urge to tear the check into little pieces and handed it back to him. “I appreciate the offer,” she said, standing up, “but tell Mr. Meek I’m not for sale.”

***

The phone on David’s desk rang. He glanced at his watch. Tamar would be done with her interview about now.

“David Darke,” he answered.

“I’m so sick of . . .”

He couldn’t hear the rest of the sentence because of the street noise, but her anger was melting the phone. “What’s up? Where are you?” he asked.

“I walked out . . . buy me off . . . they have no idea.”

He pushed the phone hard onto his ear and raised his voice slightly. “Buy you off? What do you mean?”

A horn on Tamar’s end sounded loudly several times and drowned out her answer. “What?” David shouted.

“Hey, pipe down!” a reporter called from across the room. David cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and made his voice as forceful as he could. “I can’t hear you!”

“…they think I’m a whore.”

The last word felt like a punch in the gut. “What do you mean?” He was aware he sounded clueless, but he was still getting only half a conversation.

Then the noise from the street stopped, and her voice came through like a knife slicing a slab of meat. “I’ve been fighting my whole life to do things right, David. I know I’m a pain in the ass because I won’t compromise, but how else can you live with yourself? Can you meet me in Lafayette Park?”

Ten minutes later, standing in the park, he saw her walking toward him. When she was close enough to speak, she dug her eyes into his. “They’re trying to bury me,” she said. She described what happened in the interview.

“You think it’s Meek?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “And maybe not just him.”

***

When Tamar got home, she found another letter from Nini in her mailbox. Nini was studying acting now, trying to follow her father onto the stage. She had not given up on Love, Georgia, she and their friends still danced, but more and more it was just in her apartment. On the street, Tbilisi continued to be a low-level war zone, and the violence had spread to regions of the country bordering Russia. The government was still headed by the former Soviet minister, and anyone who pointed out publicly that Russia was messing with Georgia was likely as not to have a fatal car accident. “You would know what to do, Tamar,” Nini wrote. “You always know what to do. It feels like the country is being swallowed up again.”

Tamar took a pen and notepad and went into the living room and sat down on her sofa. She looked up at the painting Elijah Samson had given her in Las Vegas. It gave her peace to think of the sun as a church dome hovering over the land. It’s not hopeless, she began her return letter, trying to encourage Nini to keep the flame lit, even though Tamar herself wasn’t sure where hope in Georgia would come from now. America is having a hard time, too. Half the people here are secretly angry, and the other half just want to party. Most of them have no idea what makes their country great. They had a president a long time ago who knew, but they killed him. She looked again at the painting. God loves you, Nini. Keep your joy.

Tamar went to the kitchen, set some water on the stove and turned the flames to high. She placed a bag of tea inside a cup, waiting.

Chapter 28

That evening Tamar reread the letter from Nini, and this time she was overcome with homesickness. Wanting to make something Georgian for dinner, she cooked khinkali and called David and invited him over.

“Sure,” he said, “I’d love to, but I can’t stay long. Meek’s got a rally tomorrow in Pittsburgh. It looks like he really is moving beyond West Virginia.”

“Well, give him my best,” she said sarcastically. But the last thing she wanted to think about was Jonah Meek. “You don’t have to come for long,” she said. “I need some company.”

He brought her flowers, which caused her to raise her eyebrows. “Hey, a nice lady invites me for dinner, I can’t come with nothing,” he said, smiling.

“Thanks,” she said quietly. Every time now that she felt some glitch in her joy, David would somehow be there, quieting her emotions, helping her feel that good was in the air, in the thoughts coming to her, telling her that all would be well, that all was well. And then, more often than not, in some graceful appearing, without special effort on her part, she would find a famous man needing comfort, a desperate woman needing hope, a lonely, panicked girl needing a sympathetic friend, a father and son coming to her own rescue, and she would know just what to do.

She placed the flowers in a vase and the vase in the center of the kitchen table, where she and David ate the succulent meat dumplings in quiet conversation. As she was clearing the plates and bringing out a small basket of baklava for dessert, her phone rang.

“Hello, Tamar. This is Elijah Samson. I hope I’m not interrupting,”  

“No problem, Elijah,” she said. She indicated to David that she would only be a minute. “It’s good to hear from you. How’s Adam doing?”

“Oh, just fine, thank you. We’re all fine, I guess. I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought I should tell you about a conversation I just had.”

Something about his tone made her brace herself. “What’s up?” she asked, leaning against the counter.

“A reporter from the Journal Star called me, that’s our local paper, and I told him I thought you should be President of the United States.”

She laughed. “What? Come on, Elijah. Don’t you have, like, something on your farm to plow?”

“I know, but that’s what I told him. I said I thought you should be President because you understand America better than most people I know.”

“Well, thank you, Elijah. That’s very nice, but I have no interest in politics. I’m not even American.”

“Well, I wasn’t really serious about that. But I also said something else, which is really why I called you. I said you understand America a lot better than this Jonah Meek guy, that he’s an egotistical fraud and brings out the worst in our country. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, because I’m finding there are a lot of people here who know about him and like him, and if they read that, they’re going to hate me and my family more than they already do. And they’re probably going to hate you, too.”

Tamar sighed. “Yeah, we don’t need to get on Meek’s radar again. But, whatever.” She tried to laugh, but something else bothered her. “Why do you think people hate you, Elijah?”

“Well, my family is different. Sometimes we feel like foreigners in our own city.” In the background she heard a door slam and footsteps crossing a wooden floor. “I’d rather talk later, if you don’t mind,” he said softly.

“Sure,” she said. “Thanks for letting me know about the reporter. Let’s hope his recorder broke when you said that. And give my best to Adam.”

“Okay.” His voice was soft now, and she thought she could hear it break. She hung up and transferred the baklava onto plates for David and herself and sat down again. “I suspect it’s his wife,” she said. “It can’t be easy being married to a Muslim in the middle of farm country.”

“It’s obvious what you’re doing is stirring up something big,” David said.

As she opened her mouth to respond, the phone rang again. Tamar tensed, thinking it was Elijah calling with more bad news, but it was the reporter from the Journal Star. She wanted to tell him she was busy and ask if he would call back the next day, but he quickly asked her how to spell her name and then launched into his first question, “When you were giving your speech in Las Vegas, what was your first thought when you saw Meek enter the room?” and she felt trapped. Telling him now that she didn’t want to talk would sound evasive, so she said, “I didn’t recognize him at first. I thought he was some kind of entertainer because he was quite far away. But then he spoke, and it was clear who he was.” She could sense what was coming and wanted to steer the conversation away from conflict. “It was quite an honor for those people to have Mr. Meek in their midst,” she continued. “It seemed a number of them had heard about him.” 

“So, you thought he was some sleazy Vegas entertainer?”

Ugh, she thought. Words in my mouth. “No, I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t recognize him at first. He was way in the back of the auditorium.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “That’s what my notes say. You said you thought he was an entertainer. You mean like an Elvis impersonator or something?”

She wanted to scream but knew it would only dig her deeper. “No, sir, you’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. I didn’t recognize him at first. That’s all.”

“And when he came up to the stage, why did you raise your hand? Were you trying to confront him? Maybe embarrass him?”

She could see the reporter was intent on turning this into a conflict. “No. I was in the middle of a speech. I just wanted to continue. He came up and stood in front of me.”

She could hear the reporter typing. “I got pictures from some of the people there,” he said. “It looks like you and Elijah Samson and his son were trying to shame Meek into leaving. That’s what it looks like to me.”

 “That’s a distortion, sir. The audience understood what we were doing. I have no interest in shaming anyone.” 

“Well, that’s what it looks like to me,” he mumbled. “Are you and the Samsons creating some kind of opposition to Meek?”

Now Tamar was angry. “No! I never said that, and it’s not true. Why are you trying to twist everything?”

“I’m not twisting anything, ma’am. I’m just trying to get at the truth. Are you creating an opposition to Mr. Meek?”

She wanted to swear at him but held her tongue and said, simply, “No. I am not creating an opposition.”

But he wouldn’t stop. “Maybe it’s the religion,” he said. “Communists were atheists, after all. Are you an atheist?”

She had had enough. “I am not an atheist,” she said. “And you’re not trying to get at the truth. You’re trying to drag me into a story you already have in your mind. Goodbye. I have to go now.”

She was about to hang up when he blurted, “Okay, but this David Darke.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Why is he writing about you so much? Do you have a relationship with him?”

She flashed red. “No! Goodbye.” She hung up and stared at David. “He wanted to know if we have a relationship.”

“Uh, no,” he replied firmly. “I don’t have relationships with people I write about.” He paused. “Even if I want to.”

She was still angry and didn’t smile. “I know that. He knows it, too. He was just fishing. God, I hate reporters.” She paused. “Well, maybe not all reporters.”

David smiled. “Congratulations. You’re officially a celebrity now.”

“Ha. Just what I don’t want.”

He soon left for the airport. She went to bed in a sour mood and in the morning became even more agitated when her fax machine beeped and disgorged the reporter’s article, courtesy of Samson. The article described Samson as “an oddball in his community, according to multiple sources, with a history of irrational actions,” his wife as “a Muslim with possible ties to Middle-East terrorist nations,” and Tamar as “a former Soviet rabble-rouser who has brought her methods to this country and now may be working with Samson in some kind of ‘fifth column’ to disrupt America.”

Samson was full of apologies when he called a few minutes later. “I’m so sorry I got you into this,” he said. “The guy is full of you-know-what, but fortunately, it’s just the paper here in Lincoln. I hope it blows over.”

“Yeah, me, too. I’ll be fine, Elijah. But what about you and your family? This is horrible.”

“We’re used to it, frankly,” he said. “But I can’t believe how this whole thing has been blown out of proportion.”

“Well, I’m sorry. Hang in there. It’s a crazy time.”

The next night, back home in Washington, David described to Tamar how the tension at Meek’s events was growing. Again, Meek had attacked an immigrant reporter, and again, he had caused finger guns to rise, this time by the hundreds. “But you know what really struck me?” he said. “Yasnov was with Meek constantly, and not like some assistant. After the speech, Meek went straight to him, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Meek was really listening. It was freaky.”

Tamar buried her face in her hands, then looked up. “What’s happening to America?” she said. “It’s like you’re all drunk.”

Chapter 29

That night Tamar woke with a start, sensing some presence at the window. Nothing was there that she could see, and she closed her curtains tightly. She couldn’t go back to sleep, however, and in the morning, groggy with fatigue, she got another call from the Samson family, this time from Adam. She could hear a woman crying in the background.

“Adam, what’s up?” she asked. “Is your father okay?”

 “He’s gone crazy,” he said. The woman in the background began wailing.

“Talk to me.” She was alert now.

“He’s got a gun, and he’s heading for town.”

She slapped her hand over her mouth. “What? Why?” she asked.

“This local news guy, he said some things about our family on TV last night.”  

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Whatever he said, it’s not as important as finding your dad.”

“I know, but –”  

“What but, Adam? Find your dad! Then we can deal with the other stuff.” She heard another loud wail in the background and could sense Adam trying to keep his voice calm.

“He called my mother a godless whore,” he said.

Tamar was silent for a few moments. “That’s really terrible, Adam, I agree,” she said. “But I think we’d better find your dad first. We don’t want him doing something he’ll regret. Can you call a neighbor to help you find him? Somebody?”

The line was silent, then Adam said, “Everybody hates us. They all think we’re traitors now. They won’t help us, for sure.”

“Really? After what happened in Vegas?”

“Well, what happens in Vegas…” He let out a mirthless chuckle.

“Yeah, okay,” she said, “give me the make of the car and the license number. I’ll call the police for you.”

“He doesn’t have the car. It’s in the shop.”

“Well, then,” she said slowly, “how is he traveling?”

“He took the tractor.”

“The tractor?” She slapped her hand over her mouth. Something about the picture of an angry farmer with a gun chugging to the big city on a tractor made her want to laugh. “That should make him easier to find,” she said. Adam started to cry. Tamar put her head in her hand for a moment, then lifted her face and slapped her hand lightly on the table. She knew what she had to do. “Adam, I don’t care how you do it, call a neighbor, call somebody, call the police, get on a bike, but go find your father, and tell him I’m coming to see you. I won’t leave you alone. I’ll be there tonight.”

She could hear him whimper. “Oh, that’s good, Tamar. He’ll be very happy.” He paused. “But do you really think you should be coming here? I mean, people know about you now.”

She raised her voice. “Adam, wake up. It doesn’t matter what people think. You’ve got to find your father. I’ll be there.”

“Okay. I’ll call Matt. He works for us, and his brother’s a cop.”

She softened her voice again. “Good. That’s a good idea. But do it now, Adam. And let me know what happens.”

When she hung up, she called David and told him about the conversation. “Can you, like, pray for Elijah?” she said. “I’m worried.”

“Sure,” he said. Five minutes later he called back. “He’ll know what to do,” he said. “God speaks to him. And to you, too.”

“Okay.” It was another thing she appreciated about David: He could sense the fear she tried to hide from the rest of the world and took it seriously. “I can’t see Elijah doing something like this,” she said. “I mean, harming someone. You met him. He’s a gentle soul.” Then she added, “He’ll know what to do,” repeating David’s words.

“Yep. You okay?”

“You wanna come?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. “I’d like to,” he said, “but I think I’d better stay here. I’m chasing down some things on Yasnov, and I have a column to get out. And you don’t need a reporter hanging around asking questions right now.”

“Okay,” she said softly. And then more softly still, “Thank you, David.”

“You’ll know what to do.”

“Yes,” she said. She felt finally calm. “I’ll know.”

Five minutes later, David called again. “You’ll never guess what just happened,” he said. “Meek just announced he’s going to hold a rally in Lincoln. He says he wants to rescue Lincoln from communist influence.”

She burst out laughing. “Does he mean me? This is getting ridiculous. I’m not his enemy!”

***

The woman at the American University registrar’s office said yes, they had a graduate student in government named Maxim Sergeevich Yasnov, from Moscow, but he had taken the semester off. She wouldn’t give David any more information. Confidential, she said.

David drove to the campus and began hanging around classrooms. Max was a serious student, one professor said, but a loner. A group of girls chatting outside a classroom agreed he was hard to get to know. He sat alone in the library and at meals and never went to parties. He always seemed kind of disturbed, they said, sometimes even angry. Another girl, walking by and overhearing, said, “I talked to him once. I don’t think he’s angry. I think he’s just really sad. I invited him to go to the movies with me and my sister, and he looked like he wanted to cry, but he said no, he had work to do. I don’t know what kind of work, it was the start of semester break, for god’s sake. But I felt sorry for him.”

David called Tamar and reached her as she was walking through the airport to catch her plane to Lincoln. He told her about his visit to the university.

The line was quiet for a long time. He could hear airport noises. “You there?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “He’s Russian. He’s got secrets.”

Chapter 30

BE NOT AFRAID

Wake up, America

By David Darke

Staff Columnist

The Christian Reporter

WASHINGTON, DC - America, we have a problem.

About a year ago, Jonah Meek, the son of a Christian minister from West Virginia, began conducting rallies around his home state. His theme: Foreigners are a threat to America. At his urging, crowds began holding up fingers like guns and chanting against these supposed enemies. He also stirred their passions against the news media, whom he accused of siding with this supposed enemy by treating them as worthy of compassion. Sometimes reporters have been physically assaulted at the rallies.

Yesterday, Meek held a rally near Pittsburgh. It was his first rally outside West Virginia, and it was as nasty as usual. In the course of the event, he asked his followers to chant the name of a reporter with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and fit the name to an insulting rhyme:

Juan de Soma, go back homa.

Juan de Soma, go back homa.

De Soma’s ancestors were from Nicaragua, but he was born in Philadelphia. He is an American citizen, as is his father, an accountant with U.S. Steel, and his mother, a planner with the city of Pittsburgh. He has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, and he has worked as a reporter at the Post-Gazette for six years. I list these facts to show the absurdity of what Meek did at this event – encourage a crowd of thousands of Americans to tell a fellow American to “go home.”

Meek’s incitement of hatred and fear toward foreigners is disturbing. But what is even more concerning is that he ties all this hatred and fear to Christianity. He peppers his speeches with phrases like, “America is God’s country, and you are God’s people.” His followers wear shirts that say, “Blessed are the Meek.” He implies that those who are not American, whatever his definition of that is, are somehow not fully loved by God. It wasn’t clear what faith de Soma espouses, if any, but that didn’t seem to matter to Meek and his listeners. What seemed to matter was that de Soma was supposedly an enemy.

Nothing could be more damaging to the American ideal. This war against foreigners that Meek seems to be pushing can only sour people on the idea that America is a beacon of hope in the world.

After the event in Pittsburgh, I talked to a man named Frank Ellison, who owns a hardware store in Altoona, and asked him why he had come to Meek’s speech.

“I’m sick and tired of what this country is becoming,” he said. “You see people everywhere who can’t possibly appreciate what makes us great. I’m not racist or anything, it’s just a fact. America is going to disappear unless we do something.”

Ellison is the father of two girls, both of whom, he says, are honor roll students, athletes at their high school and active in their church. From all appearances he is a good father and businessman. But he has bought into hatred like it’s a revelation.

How did the end of the Cold War, a time we should be celebrating in peace and hope, become the beginning of a new war? Perhaps Meek thinks he’s gaining something for himself by rousing passions in the name of God. Perhaps his followers – that’s what I would call them, as they seem to hang on every word of his as if he were some kind of messiah – perhaps they find purpose for their own lives in bigotry. But there is something insidious here that can destroy America if it is allowed to spread.  

The United States is a nation built on immigrants. It is a nation built on freedom of religion and freedom of the press. Who benefits from a war against foreigners who have come here peacefully, especially a war conducted in the name of a religion? Who benefits from demonizing honest journalists who simply try to record and announce truthfully what is happening? Certainly not America. It’s as if a poison has been injected into American consciousness for the sole purpose of getting the country to engage in a war of self-destruction. A dangerous hate seems to be building here, and it will bring pain unless the country begins listening to its better angels.

Speaking of which: I’ve written in recent columns about a young woman from the formerly communist country of Georgia named Tamar Tsmindashvili. Raising her hand against the hatred that seems to be bubbling up in America, she has brought a quiet sense of hope to several public situations that threatened violence.

As I noted in my last column, Meek and some of his followers recently descended unannounced on a speech she was giving in Las Vegas and attempted to disrupt it, as if they perceived her message of love as a threat to their message of hate. With the help of some friends, she defused the situation and sent Meek scurrying away. Days later, those same friends found themselves slandered in the newspaper of Lincoln, Nebraska, where they live, for their connection with her. Soon after, Meek announced he would hold a rally in Lincoln, saying he wants to “help rescue Lincoln from communist influence.”

Why all this turmoil around Tsmindashvili? She is not spreading communism. She is spreading – and even demonstrating – the idea that love is more powerful than fear. It’s almost as if Meek is trying to undermine that message and bring America down. Or being used to do so. After all, no American in his right mind would promote a movement of thought and behavior that is so destructive to the ideals on which America was founded.

Chapter 31

Matt, the Samsons’ farmhand, had found Elijah sitting in the cab of his tractor in front of the TV station, the engine running and a small crowd of people gawking at the strange and lonely figure, his head bowed.

“The gun wasn’t even loaded,” Elijah told Tamar that evening as he and Adam drove her from the airport to their home. “I just didn’t know what else to do. You can’t stand around and let your family and friends be insulted like that. But then I realized I’d just be confirming that I’m the crazy one. What would be the point of that?”

“Good,” she said. “You did just right.”

The Samson home smelled of soft wood and sunshine. Elijah’s wife, Zaina, had cleaned and prepared the guest room next to the kitchen, placing a bouquet of goldenrod in a vase on the bedside table and, at the foot of the bed, neatly folded, bright red towels with the logo of the University of Nebraska.

“Welcome to our home,” Zaina said, softly. Adam presented Tamar with a can of peanuts from the state of Georgia as a joke, and she thanked the family for making her feel at home. She said she was tired and would rather talk in the morning, but after she closed her door she sat for a long time on the edge of the bed, putting her thoughts in order.

The next morning, she woke to the dull, clicking sound of a knife on a cutting board, and when she emerged into the kitchen, five people looked up as one, as if waiting for her to appear before starting their day. Elijah and Adam were setting the long wooden table for breakfast. Zaina was cutting red and yellow bell peppers in rings on the cutting board. A ten-year-old girl with Down Syndrome named Ruthie was sitting on a white stool at a counter, carefully folding white paper napkins to look like flowers. A teenaged boy with cerebral palsy named Michael squirmed in a wheelchair and smiled curiously, looking as if he were dying to play a practical joke on someone if he could only make his muscles work right. They were students in the school where Zaina taught, Elijah explained as he introduced Tamar, and they were weekday regulars in the Samson house because their parents dropped them off early as they went to work. The school van would pick them all up in half an hour.

Elijah and his son sat down shoulder to shoulder at the table, as if inseparable now. Elijah poured Tamar a cup of coffee.

“It’s amazing having you here,” Adam said.

Ruthie began placing the napkins next to each fork around the table. “I learned how to make these in art class,” she said, proudly.

“They’re beautiful,” Tamar said. She turned to Elijah and Adam. “So, let’s talk. I was thinking last night, the whole city of Lincoln could raise their hands when Meek comes.”

Elijah and Adam looked at each other, and she could see in their faces that they doubted she understood the problem they faced. “Meek has a lot of support here now,” Adam said.

“With all due respect, Tamar,” Elijah added, “this community is quite conservative. If you mean, raising their hands like they did in Vegas, they’re never going to do it here, not in a million years. Especially after what Meek said about Lincoln -- rescuing us from the commies. Ha.”

Tamar thought for a moment, then turned to Zaina, who was cracking eggs inside the pepper circles and setting everything sizzling in the frying pan. “I understand your family faces prejudice because you’re Muslim. Is that true?”

She nodded.

“Well, there’s something I don’t quite get. How are you able to teach? Because I would think the school would run into problems for even hiring you.”

Elijah broke in. “Notice where she works.” He stared at the table, not wanting to look at Ruthie or Michael, then peered up at Tamar. “One time we went to dinner downtown, and the manager, he came up to our table and asked us to leave because he said the other people couldn’t eat in peace because Zaina was wearing a scarf on her head and looked like one of ‘those people.’ Can you imagine? But then someone said she worked at a school for the retarded. That’s the word he used. And then they were fine with it. It was, like, they could lump us all into one category of, I don’t know, freaks, and then they could accept us.”

Tamar shook her head. “But that’s just it, Elijah. Americans are all freaks. You’re all different in weird and wonderful ways. You come from different countries and races, with all kinds of cultures and religions and dreams. But with all of that, you’ve created a single nation that believes in freedom and equality for everyone. That to me is amazing.”

The room became silent, and Michael began twisting his hands and chin to point at a magazine on the counter. Adam hopped up to get it and lay it in front of him. “Page seventeen,” Michael said. Adam opened it. There was a picture of Jonah Meek as a young man, raising his right hand on a witness stand. Adam described the picture to everyone and read the caption,

Do you solemnly swear: Jonah Meek testifies for the defense at the trial of his father for embezzlement from his church. His father was convicted and later died in prison.

Tamar asked to look at the magazine, and Adam set it in front of her. She stared at the picture for a long time. She could see the humiliation in Meek’s face, and then she noticed, almost invisible in the shadow of the witness stand, his left hand lying crimped and misshapen in his lap, as if anger and love had battled to a standstill and left it paralyzed. She looked up at Michael, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “Meek’s a real American,” she said. “He’s a freak, too.” She handed the magazine back to Adam. “Thank you, Michael,” she said. “This is our answer. Meek is part of the family.” She turned to Elijah. “Lincoln is going to welcome him with open hands.”

Chapter 32

Jonah Meek, big and bad as ever, affected a scowl. Forming the fingers of his right hand into a gun, he thrust it into the sky and held it there. Then he lowered the hand until it pointed just over the heads of the crowd, toward the world and all the evil in it, and bang! he brought his thumb down like a hammer. His hand jerked up, and the people roared.

“Meek!

“Meek!

“Meek!”

The crowd affected their own gun salutes, thousands of them, and held them high.

“Are we good?” he called.

“Yes!”

“Are we bad?”

“Yes!”

“Are we Americans?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

It was Meek’s biggest rally yet. Supporters, now numbering in the thousands, filled a high school football stadium and swayed with the beat of his words. “The world is going to hell!” he shouted. He backed away from the microphone, then moved back in again. “But we’re chosen, my friends! We’re strong! We’re great! We’re doing the work of God!” He thrust out his chest and swung his hips and swayed across the stage. The audience roared their love.

He waited till all was quiet again. The stirring slowed, and the rhythm stopped. Then he leaned toward the microphone and lowered his voice. “But we still have a problem, folks, and it’s getting worse. There are people in our midst who are here for one purpose, and one purpose only: to destroy America and its God-given mission. They’re communists. Yep, the commies are still alive, and they’re here to destroy our unity and our strength. And they’re right here in Lincoln today.”

“No!” several people shouted.

“I’m glad you’re with me, folks. What do you do if you hear someone breaking into your house in the middle of the night? Do you just walk up to them and raise your hand and politely ask them to go home?”

“You shoot ‘em!” someone shouted.

The crowd laughed. Meek stuck out his finger gun again, rigid and unmoving, and moved his eyes across the crowd. “Maybe. Maybe that’s what I’d do,” he said with a slight smile. “But first, folks, I’d get angry. I’m sure you would, too. I’d get mad as an ornery cow. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with my family. And if they wouldn’t leave, well, then maybe the coroner would be the next stop for their sorry ass.”

Whoops and hollers followed. Meek leaned forward and spoke with low intensity. “That’s good. I want to see your anger, folks. There are people breaking into your house as we speak. They’re trying to destroy your family. They don’t look like you. They don’t talk like you. They don’t act like you. They don’t think like you. They don’t worship like you. They probably don’t even smell like you. Now, where’s your anger? That’s the only thing that will keep you safe.”

“Right here!” someone shouted. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” The crowd laughed at the famous line from a movie.

“Good for you, sir. Now, this country, America, this is our home, and it’s being broken into. We’ve left the front door unlocked for far too long, and now the foreigners are coming here, waltzing right in. They’re gonna steal our silver and maybe even do us physical harm. Do we want that? Do we want to give up everything we love just so some commie can have a nice life at our expense?”

“No!”

“Damn right, no. America is for Americans. So, I wanna know, who’s part of this family? Stand up if you want to help me protect America.” Thousands of people who were not already standing stood up, and Meek pointed to a spot in the crowd. “Thank you, sir. We need people who work hard, like you, to defend this family.” He pointed to another spot. “Thank you, ma’am. We need people who raise good families, like you, to set the right example. You are God’s people.” He pointed again. “Thank you, everyone who loves America. America isn’t just a special country. America is an exceptional country. America is God’s country.” 

The crowd cheered again, as if they were at a rally for the high school football team, or at a church revival. “And what do we do with people who don’t appreciate God’s country the way we do?” he asked.

“Shoot ‘em!” someone shouted.

Meek smiled. “Well, maybe we just let ‘em leave. With a little encouragement.”

A woman screamed, as a woman always screamed, almost as if she were a plant, “We love you, Mr. President!” The crowd laughed.

“I love you, too. America, stay strong!” Meek then shot a finger gun and pretended to blow away the smoke.

At this point in his rallies, Meek often targeted a journalist with special intensity. This time, however, instead of launching an attack, he hesitated. The silence lasted for several beats longer than anyone expected, and the crowd grew restless. For the briefest moment, a moment too short to attract attention but too long to be incidental, he glanced to the side of the stage. Curious, David moved himself slightly to peer behind a jumble of sound equipment. There stood Maxim Yasnov, nodding impatiently.

Chapter 33

Meek looked toward the media pen below him. “David Darke, Christian Reporter,” he called out. “Are you American?” David looked up, startled that he was now the one being targeted.

“Good luck,” whispered Mei Li. Li had been assigned permanently to the Meek beat by her paper, and she stayed as close to David as she could. He would give her calming ideas when the air was filled with hate.

“Patience,” he had told her at the rally in Pittsburgh. “It can’t touch you. It’ll all just destroy itself.”

“Thanks,” she had said. “It’s not easy when you look like me.”

Now she was returning the favor. “Hang in there, man,” she said. “Whatever he says, it’s not true.”

Meek was shouting. “Don’t believe what you see! Is he American? Is he even Christian?” A few voices shouted “No!” but most had never heard of David Darke and had only a vague notion of what his newspaper was. “I usually focus on reporters who probably aren’t American and maybe aren’t Christian, but Mr. Darke, he was probably born here. He works for a paper that’s put out by a church. I don’t know what his excuse is.” He paused to let the doubt percolate.

“The problem is,” Meek continued, “he writes all the time about this woman from a country called Georgia. Why Georgia? It’s a good question. Are they trying to trick us with the same name as our wonderful state? It’s something we should definitely look into.” He paused to let more doubt sink in. “Now, that Georgia, the fake Georgia, they were communist for a long time. They were in the Soviet Union, where they didn’t even believe in God. But this Mr. Darke, he writes about this woman like she’s some kind of saint. Is that what we need in this country, a communist saint? I tell you, his paper used to be respected, but they’re just another rag now. They’re dangerous, and Mr. Darke is just another confused reporter.”

The crowd was showing less enthusiasm for this attack than had other crowds for Meek’s media assaults. Meek looked briefly to the side of the stage again, pressed his lips tight for a moment and continued. “Now, this woman from so-called Georgia is in Lincoln today.” A small gasp went up from the crowd. “You can guess what she’s here for. She hates me, and so for sure she hates you. She’s trying to create a communist cell in the city, like she does everywhere she goes. But look around, folks. Look at us!” He swept his hand across the stadium. “This is America. Thousands and thousands of real Americans. We’re not gonna let that happen. Right?”

“Right!” the crowd shouted. This was more familiar turf, and the crowd cheered themselves and their choice of whom to listen to. Meek seemed to relax slightly, and he continued, “But this Mr. Darke, he’s, like, her PR agent, and I think he needs to be enlightened. What do we do, folks, when a journalist isn’t behaving the way a good American should?”

The crowd let loose a lusty “boo.” Meek raised his finger gun. “When a man decides to help someone who is out to destroy America, should we be giving him the respect we give decent reporters?”

“No!” shouted several voices. But the crowd’s passion was still restrained.

“I hate to say it, but this guy doesn’t deserve our respect, folks. He’s opening the door to your house in the middle of the night and letting criminals just come waltzing right in. By the way, he’s the guy over there in the blue baseball cap. I think we should show him our love, don’t you?”

The word “love” finally broke the logjam, and the crowd felt justified in letting loose their hate. The air filled with profanities. “Christian, my ass!” a man yelled. A woman tossed a plastic cup of liquid in David’s direction. It landed on Li.

“What the –“ she stammered, quickly wiping her notebook on the leg of her pants.

David pulled a packet of tissues out of his pocket and handed it to her, then hunched his back to the thrower so he could continue making notes. But what came to him was not the observations or impressions or words of Meek that he normally would have written. Instead, what came to him were words from the Bible: “Lord, open his eyes that he may see.” He stayed crouched for a few moments, thinking about the words and what they meant, feeling an unexpected compassion for the man. He sensed Li still at his side and looked up. “You’d better move away,” he said.

“Hell, no,” she said, now wiping her face. “I’m not going anywhere. This is my country, too.”

Meek shouted one more time. “I gotta go, folks. Thank you all for standing tall – for America!”

Several aides moved toward the stage to usher Meek away. Yasnov emerged from behind the equipment and edged into the entourage, which began moving toward the stadium exit. When he caught up to Meek he began rubbing his back and speaking into his ear. Meanwhile, the gray-haired man in the v-neck sweater and tie opened the gates of the media pen. David didn’t move, however, watching Meek and Yasnov and the entourage head toward the stadium exit. Li started to leave, but David grabbed her by the arm. “Wait,” he said, and pointed.

A silence fell on the crowd. It started near the exit and quickly spread through the stadium. A column of figures was moving toward the Meek entourage. Along the sides of the column walked several large young men, casting their eyes around warily, and at its head marched Tamar and the Samson family, with some two dozen children and adults behind them. Some of the children walked with difficulty, some were pushed in wheelchairs. They were holding hands where they could, or in some cases just touching arms where hands didn’t work well, and they were staring at all the people, who were staring back at them.

When he spotted the column, Meek stopped, his face a muddle of confusion. Yasnov, next to him, clenched his fists and began moving his mouth in Meek’s ear. The silence of the crowd became as taut as the silence between lightning and thunder. Tamar and her people kept walking. As they passed Meek, Tamar nodded to him, and he stared back, his mouth agape. When they reached the stage, she quickly climbed the steps, as if she were the next scheduled act. Behind her mounted the Samsons and then the children, with the parents of those in wheelchairs lifting the chairs onto the stage. Elijah and Adam stood on either side of Tamar, and the children and parents fanned out behind.

Tamar leaned into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “we are you, and you are us.” Her voice echoed through the silence. “My name is Tamar, and I’m the woman from Georgia that Mr. Meek was talking about.” The crowd began murmuring. Tamar gestured behind her toward the Samsons and the children. “We are all here to help Mr. Meek protect America.”

David looked over at Meek, whose face was frozen with shock and indecision. Yasnov’s face was frozen too, but in rage. His hand was firmly on Meek’s shoulder.

“America is not only a great country, it’s a good country,” Tamar said. “And Jonah Meek is a good man.” She looked around the crowd, which was now stirring with bewilderment, and then turned toward Meek. “I want to ask Mr. Meek if he would come up on stage with me.” She smiled at him and opened her hand in a gesture of welcome.

Yasnov stepped in front of Meek and began talking furiously, as if warning a son not to do something that would ruin his life. The eyes of others in Meek’s entourage were bulging at the standoff in their midst. Tamar waited, then said, “Come on, folks, let’s support Mr. Meek. Say it with me, “Meek, Meek, Meek.”

The crowd joined the rhythm:

“Meek!

“Meek!

“Meek!”

Yasnov was now holding both of Meek’s shoulders firmly. “Raise your right hand and say it with me,” Tamar continued. “We are all one family, under God. Say it with me!”

The crowd raised their hands and mumbled through the words. They didn’t quite trust this woman, this foreigner, but she was saying things they believed.

Tamar continued. “And I do solemnly swear that I will defend this family from those who seek to divide it. Come on, say it with me.”

The crowd responded to Tamar’s confident tone with a bit more certainty of their own and repeated the words in a halting unity.

“Meek, Meek, Meek,” she began again, and the crowd followed. She reached out her hand toward him.

Suddenly, as if waked from a dream, Meek pushed Yasnov aside and began charging through the crowd. “Out of my way!” he shouted. “Out of my way!” He stormed onto the stage and held up a finger gun, and the crowd cheered. Tamar moved slightly aside and raised her own hand flat and high. Neither one looked at the other. The crowd became quiet, some hands like guns, some hands flat and high, some hands halfway up and limp with uncertainty.

Then a voice, clear and fresh as a prairie morning, rose from the back of the stage. A blind girl in worn overalls was singing.  

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found
T'was blind, but now I see.

The crowd’s perplexity was suddenly gone. They knew these words as well as they knew their own hearts. Tamar began swaying her hand to the rhythm of the hymn, and slowly hands rose and began swaying with her, first here and there, then more and more, until the stadium was a single field of waving grain, not a finger gun in sight.

Meek’s arm, perhaps the only one in the stadium still holding the finger gun, was still, and a look of shock and wonder had appeared on his face. Tamar reached as high as she could and took hold of his wrist. She could feel him trembling and gripped his wrist harder. “You are part of the family, Jonah,” she whispered. His gun wilted. He steadied himself against her hips.

Tamar leaned into the microphone and said, “We raise our hands today for one nation, one family, under God. By the grace of God, let’s love each other. No more hate.” Meek dropped his hand and took hold of the microphone gently, as if both he and Tamar knew the battle was no longer between them, and spoke, “Thank you all for standing tall for America!” The crowd chanted “U.S.A., U.S.A.” again, but the chant seemed less cutting than before, less deafening and unstoppable and more fervent and perhaps even a little joyous, as if a gate had been opened, or a wall had been removed.

David spotted Yasnov at the edge of the crowd, watching Meek intently, his mouth set and his eyes burning. As Meek absorbed the fresh energy around him, Tamar descended the stairs, her parade behind her. One step from the bottom she stopped, facing David. “You did it,” he whispered. “Every hand was raised.”

“Turns out there are angels in Nebraska, too,” she said. “But you knew that.”

Chapter 34

The evening sky had become dark with an approaching thunderstorm, but the Samsons’ back yard was a pool of laughter. Tamar, however, stood off to one side. It was astonishing, she thought, how much she liked crowds, and yet how willingly she had given the one today back to Meek. There seemed no need for them to fight any longer.

She held a paper plate and quietly picked at her potato salad. She could see David inside the house, sitting on the cushioned bench under the bay window in the living room, watching. She had learned from him about paying attention to the mental winds that were always swirling, especially when something good had just been done. There was always a reaction to angels.  

On the patio, the farmhand Matt, who had brought his friends to the stadium to help act as bodyguards for the group, scooped burgers off the grill onto waiting plates. Ruthie appeared in front of Tamar and proffered a platter of barbecued corn. Tamar politely declined.

By the picnic tables across the yard, Adam’s voice rose. “Hey, guys, listen,” he called. Sounds were rising from the direction of the road. He jumped onto a bench and craned his neck. “We’ve got company!”

Everyone stopped talking and looked. A band of about fifty men and women were coming up the driveway, marching in loose formation, like some hastily constructed army. At the head strode Maxim Yasnov. When the army neared the Samson house, Yasnov pulled a megaphone from a satchel at his waist and switched it on. He tapped it a few times and pointed it toward the group and began singing in a strained, off-key voice.

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

The girl who sang at the stadium scrunched her face and put her fingers in her ears. Others laughed, but several picnickers told them to shush and put their hands over their hearts.

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.

When the army reached the end of the National Anthem, Yasnov lifted the megaphone once more. “You have a dangerous communist agent in your midst,” he shouted. He pointed at Tamar. “That woman! She’s wanted in her country for murder! Did you know that?” He formed his hand into a finger gun and fired it at her. “And her accomplice…” He looked around for David but didn’t see him, then smirked, “He’s probably too cowardly to show his face.”

Adam looked at Tamar. “Is it true?” he whispered.

“No,” she said, “of course not.” She looked at Yasnov, as if he were a cartoon cowboy come to life, and lifted her voice and said, “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be afraid, Mr. Yasnov, or amused, I don’t know. If you got your information about me where I think you did, you know it’s not true. You’re wasting your time if you think you’re going to scare me or these people here. We believe in America. These are all good people, every last one of ‘em.”

Yasnov pulled his mouth tight, but Elijah had seen enough. He began walking quickly toward the barn, and in a few moments the roar of a tractor engine assaulted the air. Everyone watched nervously as Elijah, his face set into a hard glare, maneuvered the vehicle into gear. He stepped on the gas, and slowly, then more rapidly, began moving toward the invaders. When they saw he was not going to stop, they screamed and scattered, and he ripped straight through where they had been standing and crashed into the side of a tool shed. Farm implements exploded all over the yard. Elijah climbed out of the cab, his forehead gashed and bleeding.

“Eli!” Zaina screamed and rushed toward him. A member of Yasnov’s army, incensed that all their plans of intimidation were falling apart, picked up a shovel from the ground and began swinging it wildly left and right. Everyone gave him a wide berth, but Zaina, intent on helping her husband, barreled ahead, and with one mighty swing the man crashed the shovel squarely into her face. Her body flew into the air, and she fell backwards, her head cracking onto the asphalt driveway.

There was a stunned silence. Zaina didn’t move. A trickle of blood darkened the ground. Elijah and Adam rushed to her and bent over her motionless body, while Matt ran into the house to call an ambulance. Adam shouted at one of the parents to get the first-aid kit in the kitchen. The parent dashed back with the kit, and they removed Zaina’s scarf and cleaned her face and head and bandaged the cuts and bruises. Ruthie carried a pillow from the living room sofa and slid it under Zaina’s head. In the anxious silence, Tamar held her breath, her confidence suddenly crushed by a painful memory. Fear was quickly wrapping what remained of the joy of the evening in its deadly grip.

From the bench under the bay window in the house, David was watching. He saw Elijah stroke the head of his wife and kiss it, and Adam pace and wring his hands and look toward the road for signs of help, and Yasnov gape with bewilderment at how his anger and cunning had gone so wrong. He looked at Tamar, and the fear in her eyes told him he had to act.

For several minutes more David stayed still in the same place where he was. Then he stood up and walked out the front door toward Elijah, whose cheek was next to his wife’s. Bending down, he put his hand on Elijah’s shoulder and whispered a few words to him. Elijah looked at David, then at Adam, who was also looking at David. In fact, the whole crowd was wondering at the odd intervention from someone who had not been outside when the army came.

David stood up and walked back toward the house, and as he did, a collective sigh filled the yard. Zaina was sitting up. David continued into the house and sat down again on the bench under the window.

Tamar came in and sat down next to him. With scarcely a glance at each other, they watched the evening sun pierce the blackened sky and set Nebraska sparkling. “You’re not just a journalist, are you,” she said.

He knew what she was saying, but he wanted her to spell it out. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, you don’t just write about the news. You really do change it.”

“That’s the point. Prophetic journalism.”

She searched his eyes. “But how?” she asked. “How do you do it?”

“I listen for angels,” he said. He knew it wasn’t an explanation, but somehow an explanation wasn’t what she was asking for. And then, in an instant, he knew what she was asking for. “I listen for the truth,” he said, “and the truth does the rest.”

She was silent for a long time. She thought of his story of when he was a boy, how he had disappeared a fever. If God is Love, and His will is love, how can I be sick? “So what is truth?” she asked him and smiled faintly. “I know I’m not the first person to ask that.”  

He nodded toward Zaina. “That,” he said. “And what you did with Gorbachev. And with Valentina. And Sarah Cobb. And Adam. And Jonah Meek, today. You listened for the angels, and they told you the truth, that these people were loved. And then you proved it.”

“And what are they saying now, these angels?” she asked. But she knew.

“That all is well.”

She had always thought of faith as something mysterious, as accessible only through feeling, but this man made faith sound conscious and rational, and yet it clearly touched realms beyond the physical. “You’re like a prophet,” she said, then corrected herself. “No, you are a prophet. You see better news before it happens, and then it happens.”

“But don’t you see?” he said. “You do it, too. You see the outcome that needs to happen instead of the one that seems inevitable, because you have enough love to see the real, perfect selves that people hide, even from themselves. You see God’s image instead of a selfish, angry, helpless, hopeless individual. The angels are showing you what’s real, and you listen. It’s not mysterious. You don’t have to be a psychic to see the future and make good things happen. You just have to be humble enough to love.”

She looked at him but had no more words. Outside, Elijah was helping Zaina hold a glass of water while she sipped. Two little girls were laughing at something Michael was telling them. Tamara leaned her head on David’s shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head. “Thank you,” she whispered.

They stayed like that, watching as Yasnov tried to restart the National Anthem. A few of his compatriots responded tentatively, but a storm of voices told them to keep quiet. The ambulance arrived, and the medics began rebandaging Zaina’s face and head. She was now faintly smiling at the attention she was getting. The medics lifted her onto a gurney, and she waved to her students as she was slid into the vehicle. Elijah joined her in the back, and the ambulance moved down the driveway.

“I need to go,” Tamar said. She lifted her head and scanned the yard, then stood up and walked out the door. Yasnov saw her coming and took a step back. When she was close to him, she looked up into his face and then, without a word, turned her back on him and raised her hand to the crowd. All talking ceased. She motioned for everyone, army and picnickers alike, to come closer. Many did, but Yasnov and a few of his people moved farther away, toward the shambles that was the ruined tool shed.

Tamar took the hand of the man who had swung the shovel. “I am proud to be one of you today,” she said in a tone both quiet and resolute. “America is a forgiving nation.” She reached out her other hand toward Yasnov, but he refused to take it and turned and began walking down the driveway. Without looking back, he thrust his middle finger sharply into the sky.

Chapter 35

The news the next day, in Lincoln and beyond, was about how Meek’s rally had been turned into a revival of sorts by a blind girl with a stunning voice and an intriguing woman – some said brave, some said strange – from the country of Georgia. A few reporters did their research and realized she was the same woman who had saved a West Virginia memorial service from possible violence and stood up to Meek at a Las Vegas event. She didn’t want to talk to reporters now, but that didn’t stop them from talking about her. Her celebrity was growing fast, and it was making her more and more uneasy.  

When she had come to America, she had thought fame went to people who did great things. When she met David, she decided that her great thing would be to help Americans understand the power of love that she had proved on a much smaller scale in Georgia, and he could help her do it. But progress proved to be much slower and more difficult than she had expected, with constant resistance and backsliding from the people she was trying to help. The problem, she decided, wasn’t that Americans didn’t need or understand love. Of course they did. Everyone does. The problem was that Americans had lost their moral compass. They constantly acted and thought in ways that were completely out of character with the America she understood, and one lone woman from a tiny country, with one lone journalist from a tiny newspaper, were not going to wake them up. She was beginning to think that something bigger, perhaps something painful, might have to do it, but Americans were too caught up in their own fantasies of wealth and glory to see it coming. America was not defending itself, and her lone voice was not going to change things.

In the morning, back in Washington, she received a letter from Nini. She immediately called David and read it to him.

Dear Tamuna,

I have tried to follow your advice and keep my joy, but it’s hard. People keep dying in car accidents. I hope you are liking your life in America, and I hope you are helping them have hope. We don’t have much here. Love, Georgia doesn’t exist anymore. No one wants to dance. I just sit in my apartment all day and watch TV, but there is nothing to see, really. I keep my head away from the window in case there’s a stray bullet. Or maybe a stray bullet is what I want, I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Tamar, that I was not able to keep things alive, but it seems there is no one to help us.

Maybe I will try once more, but I’m not like you. You are brave. I am a coward.

Love, Nini

“I think I need to go back,” she said to David.

“What? No!”

“Nini’s my best friend. She’s desperate.”

“Yes, but –“ he started, puzzled at her changed attitude. “I mean, I don’t get it. Just yesterday you were doing great things in Lincoln. What happened?”

“Nini. I can’t leave her alone.”

He was silent for a long time. In the back of his mind he had always figured Tamar’s stay in America was temporary, a way station on the path to some undefined mission that would reconnect her with her country. But to hear her say it now was still a shock. It couldn’t be just Nini. He tried to keep his voice steady. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You’re needed here, too, you know.”

“Look,” she said. “I love America. But I think I’ve done all I can here. You understand me, but for most people I’m still just this strange woman from a fake country. America doesn’t need me. I really believe that now. I’m not sure what you need, but it’s not just a girl preaching love.”

What he was concerned about at the moment, though, was not America but their relationship. He couldn’t imagine losing her, even though there was no reason to think the relationship would ever have moved beyond journalist and source. “People are listening to you, Tamar,” he said. “Every time you raise your hand, more of us see that anger and fear aren’t the saviors or the monsters they seem to be. You’re helping us become more of who we really are.”

“I’m not America’s salvation, David. You already have the answers. You just need to pay attention.”

David dropped all pretense of neutrality. “Don’t go,” he said.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Don’t. Please.”

No sooner had they hung up than her phone rang.

“Tamuna.”

“Deda, how are you? How is –”

“Oh, Sweetheart, I have the most horrible news. Nini has been killed in a car accident.”

Tamar gasped. “No!”

“She’d decided to go to Republic Square next Sunday with a bunch of girls to have one more rally. The word was spreading, and I told her it was too dangerous, but she said you would have been brave and done it. She was driving to her father’s dacha this morning to talk to him about it. It was a terrible accident, I’m told. I’m so sorry.”

Tamar was too shocked to cry, and then anger surged in her. She was silent for a long time, just breathing.

“Tamuna?”                                                                                  

“Who hit her?” Tamar asked.                                                     

“Some drunk guy. I don’t know. It happens a lot now. I hope it was really an accident. But you know –” She started crying.

“I know, Deda. I know. I’ll come back for the funeral. Let me know –”

“Oh, Sweetheart,” her mother said, her voice now husky from tears. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You don’t know what it’s like here now. It seems more peaceful, but people die for no reason.”

“I’m coming. Don’t try to talk me out of it. Just tell me when it is.”

The line was silent. “Deda?”

“Okay.”

Tamar called David and told him the news and her plans to attend the funeral. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Should I come with you?” He didn’t want to let her out of his sight now.

“No.” She said it abruptly, as if rebuking him, then realized she might have offended him and said, “I’m sorry. It’s just…a very personal thing.”

“Sure. I understand.”

“We can talk when I get back.”

“You are coming back, right?”

“Of course. But David?”

“Yes?”

“Will you pray for me?”

“Yes, of course. I already do.”

***

The service for Nini was somber and melodious. After circling the open casket, Tamar and her friends stood together, some crying, all still stunned at the sudden change in their lives. Maia had put on a large amount of weight and had to pull up a chair and sit down beside the group. They all stayed close to Tamar, as if wanting to be brave but not knowing how to do so without her.

Outside, the crowd gathered around Tamar. “Stay strong,” she told several of her friends, and touched their arms. Half a dozen cars lined up, and the mourners climbed in for the trip to the cemetery and then to Nini’s family’s apartment, where they would eat and tell stories and talk about the past.

The procession started down the road and turned a corner. A man stepped into the road and held up his hand. When the procession halted, three men appeared from behind a parked car, two holding handguns and one carrying a large metal rod. They went straight to the car where Tamar was riding and demanded that the door be opened. When no one inside moved, the man with the rod swung it hard at the window, smashing the glass. Then he reached inside and yanked the door open, and the men dragged Tamar out. A large, silver Mercedes drove up behind them, the men pushed her in and climbed in after her, and they all sped away. Tamar’s mother screamed at the driver to follow, but he gripped the wheel tightly and refused to move. The other cars remained still while the silver Mercedes disappeared into the distance.

Chapter 36

Tamar was astonished and somehow comforted when she realized the men on either side of her in the car seemed more afraid than she was. For all the violence of the act, she sensed they were handling her with great care. One man offered her a bottle of Borjomi. “Where are we going?” she asked, taking the water and putting it beside her. No one spoke. The car began to ascend a mountain, and as she looked out the window at the city receding below, she knew there could be only one answer. Who else would kidnap her so theatrically and yet, somehow, so gently?

The front door of the apartment building clicked open, and two men guided Tamar to the elevator and rode with her to the top. The door slid open, and the men carefully pushed her out and closed the door behind her, leaving her alone.

Before her spread the most lavish apartment she had ever seen. To her left lay a huge, antique mirror wrapped in a latticed gold frame, leaning against the wall in a way an expensive decorator might have arranged it. In fact, the whole apartment looked professionally done, with an armchair angled just so, a matching blanket tossed faux casually over the back, a long wooden table the color of rich caramel and a crystal chandelier designed to look like tree branches with lights as blossoms. In one corner, framed by carefully placed lights, hung an expensive icon, as if it were part of a museum exhibition. It was a display only an oligarch could have. Or a high government official who had many people to protect his secrets.

“Gamarjoba, Tamar.”

Ilya Chestnov stood before her, holding a bunch of red roses and greeting her in Georgian, no less. For a moment her shoulders slumped, and she felt again like the scared young woman with no clue how to navigate a confusing and brutal world but with courage enough to try. And yet, here was the man who had chased her out of her country, and he was appearing submissive before her. Her defenses started to fall.

“Hello, Ilya Davidovich.”

“Call me Ilya, please. It’s a miracle you’re back,” he said. “Please, sit down. I’m so sorry about your friend Nini.”

“Thank you.” She sat down on the sofa, pulling her knees tightly together and angling her legs away from him. The thought occurred to her, How does he even know about Nini? But so much else was happening, she paid it little attention. He held a small blue box in one hand.

“From the day I first saw you, I knew you had great things in you,” he said. “I was sorry you chose to leave Tbilisi, and then to go to America, of all places.” His eyes were sad. “May I sit down?”

He handed her the roses and sat down before she could speak. She took the flowers and put them beside her so he couldn’t get too close. She felt his awkwardness, a little boy in a man’s body. “Okay,” she said, “but don’t tell me you’re sorry. I don’t believe you. You came after me with a gun.”

He put the small blue box beside him and then his hands into his lap, as if he were about to ask forgiveness. “Oh, I wasn’t going to harm you,” he said. “I wanted to protect you.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “From what? You were the one I was afraid of!”

He smiled. “We had the same goal. I had as much hope for Georgia as you did. I still do. I love Georgia.” He swept his hand around the room and laughed. “And as you can see, Georgia loves me.”

Had she misjudged him? As her gaze crossed the room, she tried to imagine working with him, wondering how differently her life might have turned out if she had. He could see she was thinking and pressed further. “You’re wasting your time in America,” he said. “They’ll pay for their sins, no matter how much you try to save them, and no matter how much that man writes about you.” She flinched at the mention of David, and he noticed. “He’s using you, you know. He’s like every other journalist, just wanting to make a name for himself.” His eyes became fiery, as if the very thought of David made him angry. “Do you know his newspaper is published by a church? A church that believes in miracles? I’m telling you, he’s a fraud. You should dump him. Immediately.”

She wanted to laugh. He’s jealous! “They’re a respected newspaper,” she said, “and he’s a respected writer. He’s a good man.”

He rubbed his hands and squeezed them, as if trying to keep his emotions under control. “A society functions best when the State controls information,” he grumbled.

She rolled her eyes. “The Soviet Union is dead, you know.”

He seemed to relax and gave a sly smile. “Maybe, but history isn’t. Have you noticed what’s happening in America? Everything is starting to come apart. Pretty soon it will be black against white again, native against foreigner, rich against poor, Christians against everybody. It’s what always happens when an empire begins to collapse. The weaknesses that were never addressed return with a vengeance. America is going to destroy itself, Tamar, and Russia will rise again. I wouldn’t waste my time trying to get them to raise their hands. Hands can’t stop the future.”

His mouth kept moving, but she was no longer listening. It was all beginning to make sense: The nasty rallies, the attacks on the media, on her and David, the Russian instigator, and now, words that couldn’t be clearer. No, she had not misjudged him. “Ilya, are you up to something in America?” she asked.

He stopped talking and looked at her.

“I mean, is it a coincidence that Jonah Meek is doing exactly what you’re saying,” she said, “putting native against foreigner and Christians against the world and spreading hate everywhere? And then there’s this Russian guy, Maxim Yasnov, advising him. Do you have anything to do with that?”

His face was like stone.

“Wow,” she said. It was more of a confirmation than she had expected. “Really? What’s he doing there, exactly, this Maxim Sergeevich Yasnov?”

He stared at her, still silent.

She shook her head. “Actually, what am I doing, Ilya,” she said. “Here, I mean.”

The question seemed to bring him to his senses, and he appeared to relax. “Sitting with me,” he said. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

He touched her knee, and immediately she felt a shot of old desire. No, she thought, this will not happen. She started to stand, but her legs had no strength, and she fell back. He put his hand on her knee again and squeezed tightly. She tried to pull away, but then she caught sight of the box next to him on the sofa, and he noticed.

“Oh, I thought you might like this,” he said. He handed it to her.

Wrapped with a blue satin ribbon, the box was suddenly all she could think about. She didn’t want to open it. Whatever was inside was surely dangerous. And yet, she wanted very much to see it.

“Go ahead,” he said.

She untied the ribbon and slowly lifted the top. Inside was a gold necklace. At the end of the necklace was an Orthodox cross, studded with what looked like diamonds. She gasped.

“Yes, the stones are genuine,” he said.

 She looked at the necklace, afraid of what was swirling inside her. She didn’t want to thank him, but she didn’t want to dismiss him, either. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, looking up. His gaze held her face as if by a hand. He took her finger and touched the cross lightly with the tip. Then he stood up and walked behind her and attached the necklace  around her neck. “Georgia needs you, Tamar,” he said, quietly, stroking her shoulders. “Things are happening in Moscow, and I’m going back home soon, and I need someone in Tbilisi I can trust.” She felt paralyzed, and she knew he would take this as a sign that she was yielding. Shouldn’t she keep fighting? Yes, she should. She should stand up and walk out, now. But her muscles, soothed by the gift and the intimidating presence behind her, trapped in the memory of past sensations and desires, had ceased functioning. He squeezed her shoulders lightly. His touch felt comforting and protective. He stroked the back of her head with his palm, then ran his fingers through her hair and over the tops of her ears and across her shoulder blades and down her spine. She shivered with fear and anticipation.

“Tamar, you are home again,” he said quietly. “Come in here.” He took her by the hand and led her to the kitchen. Silently he guided her to the counter, a long, gray marble surface below a window with a breathtaking view of the city. Directly in front of her was a wooden block holding a set of knives of varying sizes, the handle of each knife decorated with the flag of Georgia.

“Can you lean on the counter, please,” he said. She was not sure what was happening, but she did as she was told. The cross clanked on the countertop.

“Now, I’m going to do something special. Are you ready?” She felt his fingers reach around her waist. “I will take care of you, Tamuna, and together we will rebuild Georgia.”

“Thank you, Ilya.” She couldn’t believe the words had come out of her mouth. Her mind was a fog.

“My pleasure.” He moved his hands to the top of her skirt and quickly unbuttoned it and pushed everything to the floor. She could see only his reflection in the window now, as if the world outside no longer existed. He made the sign of the cross, and she heard a rustling behind her.

“Now,” he said, “this is how we make Russia great again.”

She felt the thrust, and a shudder went through her so violent she let out a scream. She realized the knives in the wooden block were within her reach, and she stared at them. Then she whirled, empty handed, and slapped his face so hard her hand stung.

The shock in his eyes only made her angrier. He grabbed her shoulders and dug his fingers into her skin, but she locked her eyes onto his with a look that seemed to freeze him. She squirmed out of his grip and grabbed the largest knife and whipped it around in front of her. She kept her eyes on his and reached down with one hand and felt for her underwear and skirt and pulled them up, but she couldn’t fasten the button. The sound of his shallow breaths filled the space around them.

Then an amazing calm came over her. She put the knife onto the counter but out of his reach, and, with her eyes still on his and both hands free now, she slowly began tucking her blouse into her skirt, smoothing it carefully around her body, until no crease remained. She buttoned her skirt and put her hands behind her neck and unclasped the necklace and lay it softly on the counter. Her eyes still hadn’t moved from his. “You know, Ilya –” she said. His eyes snapped into focus, as if he had been in a trance. “You know, when I first met you, I thought you were an interesting man. Even as I ran from you and left Georgia, I really did think you could make miracles happen. But now I realize you’re just a fraud. You’ll never make Russia great again, or Georgia, either. You’ll just drag everyone deeper into darkness. The only miracle that’s ever come from you is that you’ve fooled so many people for so long.”

Tears came to his eyes. Tamar couldn’t believe it! “I never wanted to harm you,” he pleaded. “All I’ve wanted was to be with you again. And I finally found a way to bring you back.”

Her face froze. “What do you mean, you found a way to bring me back?” she said. “Did you have something to do with Nini’s accident?”

His lips started to move, but no sound came out. Finally, he said, “What matters is, you’re here, Tamar. I need you. I love you.”

She let out a torrent of profanity in Russian and Georgian and English that she didn’t even know she knew.

Chapter 37

“President,” David announced as he hung up the phone. “That’s the rumor in Moscow. Chestnov is going to become president of Russia, by appointment. Can you believe it? I guess democracy isn’t really working for them.”

They were sitting across from each other at the table in Tamar’s kitchen. She had told David the story of her trip in all its brutal truth, ending with a defeated Ilya quietly calling his driver to take her home. “He could have killed me if he’d wanted to,” she said, “or said I attacked him and had me arrested, but he just dropped it, as if it never happened. I’m not sure why.”

“He still cares about you.”

She stood up from the table and began pacing the kitchen, running her fingers along the edge of the counter, glancing now and then out the window but seeing nothing, picking up an apple from a basket and depositing it on an empty plate across the room. She cleared the dishes from the table and stacked them noisily in the sink, turned and leaned back against the counter, then walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa and began staring at the painting on the wall. The mothering sun rising like a church dome over the Nebraska prairie was still a kind of sanctuary to her: the commanding and forgiving rays, the bending, beautiful grain. They told her all would be well.

David came beside her and sat down, but she wouldn’t look at him. Her eyes kept scanning the painting. There was something different about it today. The grain wasn’t bending and beautiful, it was naked and sharp-edged, the sun cruel, the prairie a church of thinnish joy. There was no place for her eye to rest. She turned to David, and for the first time he saw tears in her eyes.

“I hate him so much,” she said.

David was silent. She appreciated his silence. She had learned the way his thought moved, and she knew that, even now, he was raising a hand, trying to lift her sights, defend her from the dark forces that always seemed to be threatening. But this was personal, what this man had done to Nini and what he had done to her, even more personal than Dima’s death. “I can’t,” she said.

He held her hand. He knew the rush of revulsion that can shade the world violet, like bruised flesh, but he had learned long ago that all that ever came from hate was fear and pain. You have to push back against the surge, turn away, then ask, Where am I called to love in this moment? In a low, soft voice, he began to sing to her, hymns he had learned as a child, rich with melodies that soothed and words that comforted.

“You have a nice voice,” she said.

He kept holding her hand as he sang, and then, in the middle of a hymn, he stopped. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. The thought that had just come to him was too crazy to voice. But the longer he held it, the more certain he was that it had to be spoken.

“What?” she asked.

“Remember your other candle?”

She looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Russia has been through hell, worse than Georgia or America. And they’re going through it again.”

She stared at him blankly.

“The candle you lit in the church before you started speaking about King Tamar. For Georgia.”

She nodded slowly.

“Maybe you need to light one more, for Russia.” Her eyes got big. “The world is a richer place because of them. Literature, science, music, even sports. It’s darker, too, because they can be as arrogant as Americans and as naïve as Georgians, and sometimes they have no moral compass. But then they gave us Tolstoy and Chekhov. Nobody works harder when they have a goal.”

“What are you saying, David?”

“I’m saying, Russia can be great, and the world will be better for it. They just don’t know how.” Their shoulders were touching, and he could feel her trembling. “Maybe that’s where you belong right now, more than Georgia, even more than here. Russia is dragging the world down, but maybe they can lift it up again.”

He could see her lips beginning to fire a desperate obscenity into the room. “Why the fuck would I want to go there?” she spat out. “I’m not even Russian, for god’s sake.”

“Neither was Catherine the Great. Neither was Stalin, for that matter.”

“Hah. And why would you want them to be great? They’re doing something nasty in this country, for sure.”

“All the more reason. ‘With malice toward none, with charity for all…”

“Okay, stop.”

But he wanted to hear the words again himself. “…with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Why should ‘all nations’ not apply to Russia? How is erasing decades of Cold War not the fulfillment of everything Lincoln was talking about? America can’t complete its promise until Russia is back on its feet, I’m convinced of it now. The Civil War never really ended because we didn’t do Reconstruction right, and the Cold War hasn’t really ended, and it won’t until there’s forgiveness. Not punishment. Not forgetting. Forgiveness. Anyway, you wouldn’t have to be alone.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. He smiled. “I could write my column from there. Why not? It would be irresponsible of me to drop your story now, you know?”

The contest in her mind was beginning to define itself. On one side was the hatred that had been reignited during her visit to Tbilisi. Sometimes it felt like a white-hot furnace, sometimes like an ice storm raging, sometimes like a hot bath in a cold room, sensual and mesmerizing. On the other side was the conviction she had felt in that church long ago, as clear as her name being spoken, that nations rise and keep rising when they find it in themselves to love. She had proved in Georgia, and then in America, that love moves people. But Russia was different. Russians weren’t moved by love, they were moved by fear. Everyone knew that. And now a rapist and murderer was going to become their president. She shook her head.

“You can’t run from who you are, Tamar,” he said. “It’s what Ilya loves about you but also fears. You’re pure light. He hates the light. It exposes everything. But he also wants the light desperately.”

She lay her head on his shoulder. “He doesn’t like that I’m talking with you,” she said. “He thinks you’re a fraud. But I know I can’t do anything without you now. You’re my rock, David.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s make Russia great again.”

RUSSIA

Chapter 38

David passed through a stone archway into a courtyard dusted with new snow. At the far end was a door with a handwritten sign in Russian that said, “Zoo.” The door was open. He tapped his boots on the wooden jamb and stepped inside.

To his left he saw three glass tanks, each containing colorless fish of various sizes. The fish swam as if nothing mattered anymore. Past the fish a caged monkey rubbed its eyes. In a corner a large parrot stared into space. Then came an empty cage, and another, and another, food strewn on the bottom of each, the inside of the glass streaked, as if animals had recently lived there and died.  

In a few minutes he was back at the entrance. By the door stood a slatted wooden chair with a handwritten sign taped to the back: “We would appreciate your help,” it said. On a small table next to the chair was an empty glass bowl with tiny painted daisies on the side. He dropped in a hundred-ruble note.

Outside, an old woman had just begun sweeping snow from the courtyard with a broom made of bound sticks, the sticks scraping the stones in a steady rhythm, like a piece of jazz.

“Hello,” David said. “I’m an American journalist and I’d like to ask you a few questions. Do you mind?”

She stopped and looked at him with suspicion, then continued sweeping without saying a word.

“I like your zoo,” he said, “and I’d like to ask you some questions about it. May I?” He pulled a notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket to let her know he was serious, then held his pen in his teeth and flipped to the next empty page.

“Khorosho.” Okay.

“Thank you. Are you the owner of the zoo?”

“Da.”

“Does it ever have visitors?”

“Sometimes,” she mumbled. “I keep it for the children.”

“There are children in the building?”

She stopped sweeping and moved her head slightly so she could see him out of the corner of her eye. “Not anymore,” she said.

“It’s a loving gesture to keep it going.” He took out another hundred ruble note and handed it to her.

She placed it in the pocket of her coat. “Spasibo,” she said. Thanks. She turned toward him but kept her eye on his notebook. “You’re American.” She scratched the broomstick idly with her finger. “Why are you interested in us?”

He wasn’t sure if she meant her and her zoo, or Russia and Russians. “Russia is an interesting country,” he said. He felt her relax. “Let me ask you a question. What inspires you about your country? What do you think makes Russia great?”

She thought for a moment. “Courage,” she said, and quickly turned and resumed sweeping, as if uncomfortable voicing an opinion she was sure would make no difference in the end.

“Courage. That’s interesting. Can you tell me more? Where have you seen Russian courage?” He had found in the short time he had been there that most Russians were intensely private and needed their deepest thoughts drawn out of them.

She stopped again and stood as if lost in thought, then began lightly sweeping and resweeping the spot where she was standing. “Blokada,” she said, as if she knew the word was enough to convey the depth of pride that still filled the minds of Russians awestruck by the survival of Leningrad after nearly 900 days under siege by the Nazis during World War II. The courage and suffering of millions of people during the “blockade” had been undeniable. “I was there.”

He was stunned by the sudden emotion in her voice. He had read of the brutal starvation that had caused some in the city to turn to murder and even cannibalism. He started to ask what she had seen, but she spoke first. “They wanted us all to die. Many of us did. People think it was a miracle that we survived, but it was no miracle. Russians don’t surrender.”

“Were you afraid?”

She looked at him for a long time, then shook her head. “We didn’t have time to be afraid. We had to keep living.”

He asked her about her family, her friends, the terrors they slept with and the hopes that kept them going. Finally, he could see the memories exhausted her. “Courage,” he said. “I can see how much it means to you. Thank you for talking with me. Can you tell me your name?” He flipped to the front of his notes.

“Olga Maximovna.”

He wrote it down. “Last name?” She shook her head.

He closed the notebook. It was nearly dark now. He could feel tiny snowflakes on his face. He watched as she began again to nudge the snow across the courtyard, stone by stone, sticks on stone, until all he could make out was the sound, a sturdy, steady rhythm in the darkness.

Chapter 39

The ground at Ismailovo outdoor market was gray-white, shuffled and stomped where customers had trudged and vendors had hauled their wares through months of snow. David spotted Tamar standing quietly by the entrance, waiting for him. The lights in the market had just switched on, pushing away the early winter darkness.

“Good interviews today?” she asked wearily, as they began walking among the stalls of assorted art, hand-made goods and food.

He nodded. “These people have been through so much,” he said.

She didn’t speak again for several minutes. David knew she was struggling; since they had arrived in Moscow, she had rarely wanted to leave her apartment, venturing out mostly just to shop for food. She admitted one time, as they talked by phone, that everywhere she went she felt assaulted by the presence of Ilya Chestnov.

That morning David had decided he had to get her out, so he invited her to meet him at Ismailovo. He said he wanted to buy her something to brighten her apartment, and she agreed.

They stopped at a photographer’s stall, and she began examining a photo of a couple on a wintertime picnic. The photographer, an old man whose nose appeared to have been broken many times, sat on a wooden crate in the back of the stall, his hands between his knees. When he saw Tamar’s interest, he hoisted his body off the crate. 

“That was taken in the Sparrow Hills,” he said as he approached her. He pointed at the photo with the knuckles of his right hand. He was missing two fingers. “I took it last week, just after the big storm.” He looked at her expectantly, but she turned away. The man sat down and dropped his hands between his knees again, like stones sinking to the bottom of a bucket.

“Let’s get something to eat,” David said. He spotted a man grilling shashlik and bought two sticks of meat and brought them to a wooden table near a knick-knack stall, where he and Tamar sat down. The table was stained with old meat juices. He took a small bite and chewed silently, then looked back down the row at the photographer. The man’s shoulders had slumped further at the weight of the silence around him.

“Can you stay here for a few minutes?” he asked Tamar. “I’d like to talk to him.”

“Okay.”

At the photographer’s booth, David looked at the picture of the couple in the snow and asked the man, “How much? I want to buy it for my friend.” 

The man stood up but didn’t move from his spot. “She liked it. Two thousand rubles.”

“Eighteen hundred.” The man nodded and took the simply framed photo down from the board, then reached under the counter and grabbed a newspaper from a small pile and began wrapping it, not looking at David.

“May I ask you a question?” David said as he took out his money.

The man looked up quickly, his muscles frozen. “Maybe.”

“My name is David Darke. I’m a journalist with The Christian Reporter newspaper.”

“American?”

David smiled. “I know. My accent is terrible.” But the man wasn’t interested in being friendly. He placed the photo and its wrapping in a flimsy white plastic bag and handed it to David by the cut-out handles. “What do you want to know?”

David paid him, then took out his notebook and pen. “Your pictures. They’re extraordinary. How long have you been taking them?”

“Forty-five years.”

“How did you get started?”

The man thought for a few moments, as if considering how much he wanted to invest in this relationship, then went back to his crate and reached into a bag beside it and pulled out a folder of transparent blue plastic. After he had dropped it onto the counter he leaned heavily against the wooden structure with both arms and nodded at David to look. Inside were dozens of old photos, newspaper clippings, certificates of this school and that. The man, whose name was Igor Ivanovich Orlov, had won a photography award in his town. David pulled out his notebook.

“May I?” he asked.

Orlov nodded, and David began making notes from the clippings and certificates. Then he looked up. “I’m curious about something, Igor Ivanovich,” he said. “When you look at a scene, what tells you it’s going to be a good photo?”

The man considered the unexpected question. “When I see light in a new way.”

David’s eyes drifted to a photo taken from behind a man and woman walking along a street at night. “That one?”

“There was a streetlight above their heads. It made them look like angels in love.”

David laughed. “I like it.” He began talking with the man about how Russia had changed in the years he had been pointing his camera at the country and its people. He asked about the pictures, his training, his customers, his inspirations. Then he asked what gave him joy.

“My pictures.”

“They’re beautiful. It’s like you can see in the dark.”

The man looked at David for a moment, then walked back to his crate and tipped it on edge. Underneath was a cardboard box with hundreds more photos. He thumbed through them for a while and then lifted one out. It showed the sun rising over St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, light bursting like inspiration from the highest cupola.

“Here,” he said, handing it to David with both hands. “Take it.”

David started to reach into his pocket, but the man put up his hand. “It’s a gift.”

“Thank you,” David said, “I’ll treasure it. May I ask you one more question?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

“I’m asking people what inspires them about this country, what they think makes Russia great. What do you think?”

All the fatigue seemed to return to his face. “Being great cost us a lot,” he said. He returned to his crate and sat down and motioned with his hand for David to leave.

“Okay, let me ask it this way,” David said, pretending he hadn’t noticed he was being dismissed. “Russia is a beautiful country. You’ve captured that beauty many times. What is it that makes Russia beautiful?”

The man stared into the current of people passing, then looked at David again. “There are many good people in Russia,” he said, “but there’s too much death.” He looked at David, expecting him to understand, and David nodded. He had sensed mortality everywhere in Russia, if not its presence, then its threat.

“But there’s beauty too,” David said. “You see it, I can tell. What is it that makes Russia beautiful?”

The man seemed slightly irritated at David’s persistence. “Hope, I guess,” he finally said. Then he let out a long breath, as if the thought itself was too fraught to hold. David was silent, and this time the man moved to fill the silence. “People say Russians are always negative, and it’s true. When we think things can’t get worse, they usually do. But it’s just the way we cope. We’re basically hopeful people. That’s why we work so hard.”

David wrote as fast as he could, then looked up. The man was staring at him.

“Are you going to use my name?” the man asked.

“I don’t have to.”

“Please don’t.”

“First name and patronymic?”

“Okay.”

David was ready to leave, but the man’s unease made him hesitate. He thought for a moment, then asked, “How much for the picture of the couple on the street?”

He thought. “How much do you want to pay?” he said.

“Three thousand.”

The man’s eyes went wide. “Okay.” He wrapped it and handed it to David. Then he said in a low voice, “Why do Americans hate us?”

David gave a pained expression. “We don’t hate you. We just don’t know you.” He chuckled. “We don’t even know ourselves very well.”

The man suddenly switched to English. “But we both think we’re exceptional,” he said, and for the first time he smiled.

David felt a sudden affection for this thoughtful and gentle man. “I agree.” He shook the man’s hand and felt the pressure of his three fingers. “Thank you for your time, Igor Ivanovich.”

He patted David on the shoulder. “Thanks for coming back.” He looked behind David. “You have company.”

David turned to see Tamar standing there. “Hi,” he said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

Tamar was looking, unsmiling, at Igor Ivanovich. “You don’t have any pictures of children,” she said.

The man looked at Tamar, then went back to the box under his crate and pulled out a yellowed envelope, and from it an old snapshot of two young children, a boy and a girl. The boy was leaning on a small shovel, as if his great dream was to do a hard day’s work, like his father. The girl was cradling a basket of vegetables. “My children,” he said. “They died.” He placed the photo face down on the counter, as if it was too painful to look at.

Tamar slowly reached out and touched his crippled hand. He looked at her for a moment, then withdrew his hand and slid the photo smoothly back into the envelope and placed the envelope back into the box. Then he sat down on the crate and bowed his head slightly toward Tamar and whispered, “Thank you.”

David watched in awe. “What just happened?” he asked as they walked again through the stalls.

“Russians can’t raise their hands yet, but they will,” she said, then more quietly, “I think I’m ready.”

Chapter 40

BE NOT AFRAID

Forgiveness

By David Darke

Staff Columnist

The Christian Reporter

MOSCOW – Americans like to think of their country as exceptional. Indeed, the world would be a poorer place if America did not exist. American ideals, such as “all men are created equal” and “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” even if not always respected by Americans themselves, are powerful lights for the world.

But words ultimately have to be matched with deeds or they begin to sound hollow, and when it comes to America’s relationship with Russia today, the gap is glaring.

Russia is beaten down after the Cold War, and many Russians are suffering and feel humiliated. They fear for their future. A primary reason, of course, is that the Soviet Union, of which Russia was the central nation, has collapsed. America had a lot to do with that collapse. But if Americans think that exposing the faults of a troubled system and watching it fall apart have ended their responsibility to Russia, they are mistaken. Russians are struggling now, and America needs to step in and help them build again so they can move on. If this is not done, the future will be difficult for both countries.

But many Americans don’t see things that way. In their minds, Russians are still communists, enemies of the U.S., and they deserve to suffer. Why? Russia can bring much good to the world. Russians have produced the marvelous music of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, the literature of Tolstoy and Chekhov, the artistry of Baryshnikov. Russia occupies the largest land mass of any country on earth. Many of its 150 million people are thoughtful, talented and hard-working, and they love their country.

Take Olga Maximovna. She lives in Moscow and operates a little zoo in her apartment building, which she keeps for any children who happen by. When asked what inspires her about her country, she answers, courage. She sees that noble quality in Russian history, especially in the people of Leningrad, now called by its former name, St. Petersburg, where she lived as a young woman during World War II. The city faced nearly 900 days of siege at the hands of the Nazis and did not yield. They showed their courage, she believes, in their simple decision not to give in to the terror.

“They wanted us all to die,” she said of the Nazis. “Many of us did. People think it was a miracle that we survived, but it was no miracle. Russians don’t surrender.”

“Were you afraid?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “We didn’t have time to be afraid. We had to keep living.”

I’ve seen the greatness of Russia in a Moscow restaurant manager named Irina, who smiles and keeps smiling, not only because people are flocking to her new restaurant, called New York! (with an exclamation point!), but also because joy gives her a sense of dominion. “It’s our secret ingredient,” she says. “Russians usually keep their smiles to themselves, but we really have a deep sense of joy, and when we let it show, the whole world smiles, too.” Add joy to courage on the list of qualities that make Russia great.

I’ve seen the greatness of Russia in a construction worker named Pavel, who reached out his hand and stopped me from walking into a construction area that was dangerous. “The government might let an American like yourself get killed,” he said with a chuckle, “but that’s not Russia. Russians don’t hate Americans.” Add forgiveness to the list.

I’ve seen Russia’s greatness in a museum ticket seller named Daria, who insisted on charging me double what she charges Russians. “It’s because you’re American,” she said, frankly. “You should be happy to help ordinary Russians who can’t afford this. Russia is rich, but Russians are poor.” After that gentle rebuke, I was more than happy to pay double. It cost me the equivalent of two dollars extra. Add a sense of justice to the list.

I’ve seen Russia’s greatness in a photographer named Igor Ivanovich, who has faced searing tragedies in his life. His children died when they were young, and he sustained a crippling hand injury. Yet his photographs are beautiful, because, he says, he is always looking for new ways to see light. “People say Russians are always negative, and it’s true,” he says. “When we think things can’t get worse, they usually do. But it’s just the way we cope. We’re basically hopeful people. That’s why we work so hard.”

Yes, courage, joy, forgiveness, justice and hope can be found in citizens of every country. But there is something about Russia that brings them out in exceptionally beautiful ways. Maybe it’s the discipline that many Russians have learned to bring to their work and lives because no one has been there to help them for so long. Maybe it’s the sincerity with which many Russians approach the world; life in their country has been brutal so often and so long that every moment of goodness can be a reason for gratitude. Maybe it’s the simple innocence that decades of isolation have wrought. All of it makes Russia impossible to ignore. If those qualities are what scares America, they shouldn’t. Russia can do tremendous good for the world, including for America.

“Forgive us our debts,” Jesus Christ instructed us all, “as we forgive our debtors.” Americans need to move beyond the fear of Russia and forgive the country its many sins, as we ourselves would be forgiven. The world will be a better place, let alone a safer one, when Russia breaks free from its debilitating past. It will be more likely to fulfil its great promise. And so will America.

Chapter 41

“Did you see our friend on the news last night?” David was holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder while he sliced bread for his breakfast.

“Our… Oh. You mean Jesus Christ?” Tamar said.

“Ha.”

Chestnov had been filmed walking with two priests through a park somewhere in Moscow when he came upon a crippled man leaning heavily on crutches. Chestnov touched the man’s leg, and the man dramatically shoved the crutches to the ground and threw up his hands in a hallelujah gesture, apparently healed. Then he dropped to his knees before Chestnov and the priests.

“I don’t know whether to laugh or be disgusted or just sad,” Tamar said. “It was all so staged. What do you think he’s trying to prove?”

“I guess he wants people to worship him and not question him too much,” David said. “Accept what he does and says on faith. A lot of Russians will believe it.”

“Maybe, but I think it’s more than that. I think it has something to do with you.”

“Me?”

“He was really jealous of you when I was with him in Tbilisi. I could feel it. He hates that I trust you. He probably knows about what happened in Lincoln, with Elijah’s wife. He mocked your church. I think he wants to compete with you on some level.”

“Then that means it’s about you, too,” he said. “Why would he still be so obsessed with us?”

“I’m not sure. He has to know we’re here.”

They were both quiet. “Hey, listen,” David finally said. “I’m going to do some more interviews this morning. Random, on-the-street stuff. Want to tag along?”

“No, thanks,” she said. “But I’ll be ready soon.”

“Okay.” He was surprised at the confidence in her voice. The cloud seemed to be lifting.

He spread cheese on top of two slices of bread and started eating his breakfast. Across the street, babushki in wool caps and faded coats waddled along the paths of the park, their arms layered out from their sides, looking like home-made dolls. In the building’s parking lot, a dozen car-sized metal boxes stood like a magic trick waiting to happen. One door was open where the overnight snow had been cleared from the asphalt, and an old Zhiguli was backing out. From the park a woman ran toward the car with the light steps of a dancer. The passenger door swung open, and she vanished inside.

David got dressed and walked to the Metro station to catch the subway. As the train rumbled along, he took out the pen and notebook from his jacket and asked a young woman with a sky-blue hair ribbon what she thought made Russia great. The woman’s eyes went wide, and she turned and walked toward the other end of the car and stared at the window, determined not to look at him.

He noticed a young man in a black leather jacket, shelling pistachios and eating them one by one, then placing the shells carefully back into the bag. He appeared never to have smiled in his life. A little girl came wandering down the aisle and bumped into his knee. He looked down in surprise and moved his leg away. She stood there, holding the car’s metal bar and staring. He peered around to see that no one was watching, then made a tortured face that he evidently thought was funny. He looked away, then back again. She was still staring. He took out his wallet and removed an American dollar bill.

“Look,” he whispered, with an expression that seemed to contain less happiness than pain. He waved the paper in front of the girl’s face. “Dollar.” He tickled her nose with it, and she laughed, but he looked sadder than ever. Then David noticed a woman several seats away, staring intently. She called the girl, who edged over and sat in her lap and watched the man from afar. The man glanced at the woman, then at the girl, then turned away. David caught his eye and took out his notebook and pen and sat down next to him.

“Hello. My name is David. I’m an American journalist. May I ask you a question?” The man looked at him with suspicion. David took the silence as assent. “You made that little girl laugh with your dollar,” David said. “Do you like to make people laugh?”

Surprised by the question, he felt instinctively for his wallet, then appeared flustered and shifted in his seat, saying nothing. “Well, you were nice to make her laugh,” David said.

The man tilted his head to indicate his interest in the observation. “You have to be nice to kids. They didn’t do anything.”

“Kids are great.”

He nodded again.

David pressed on. “I would really like to know more about how Russians live. Would you mind telling me a bit about yourself, like how you grew up and what you do now?” The smile seemed to relax the man, but he was still wary, so David showed him his notebook and the notes from conversations with other people. Nothing mysterious or nefarious. And so, for the next fifteen minutes, with nothing else to do, the man, whose name was Zhenya, described growing up in a family that had fallen into poverty when the Soviet Union collapsed, a mother who now sold hand-embroidered pillowcases outside a Metro station (“We’re supposed to call them entrepreneurs,” he said, bitterly) and a father who had lost his factory job and was helping a friend with his business. When David asked what kind of business it was, Zhenya looked at him, and David knew it wasn’t something to be proud of. He said his parents both drank heavily, and he did the shopping and spent as little as he could. Today he was going to help a friend fix his car, and his friend would pay him a few rubles.

“Are you happy?” David asked. The man shrugged. Maybe someday he would have enough money to live his own life, he said. Travel some place far, like China. But he admitted he couldn’t save much right now. He had to help his parents.

“You’re a good son, Zhenya,” David said. “Many people are struggling, like you.” Zhenya shrugged. “You live in a good country,” David continued. “Tell me, what do you love about Russia?”

Zhenya shrugged again and looked down at his knees. “It’s home,” he mumbled. But David could see there were more thoughts swirling, and he decided to ask a question he had never asked before. “What do you think of President Chestnov?” he said.  

Zhenya looked up, surprised that anyone would even ask such a question. “He’s going to make Russia great again,” he said.

“What makes you think so?”

“What, you don’t agree?” he gasped, hearing the skepticism in David’s voice. “Did you see the news last night?”

“I did,” David said. “Do you think it was real, what he did to the man?”

Zhenya’s mouth fell open. “You don’t?” He looked at David with suspicion, then grumbled, “Yeah, you’re American. What do you know?” A wall had suddenly risen between them. David was silent, unsure how to proceed without creating an argument or shutting off the conversation. Zhenya turned away and watched the tunnel lights flash past, like thoughts he couldn’t quite capture. “He’s a man of God,” he finally said softly to the window. “He can do miracles. But you’ll probably never understand that.”

“I’m trying,” David said.

The train began to slow at Teatralnaya station, and David finished scribbling the last of his notes. “I need to get off here,” he said. “Thanks for talking with me.” Zhenya continued staring at him, as if fighting a silent battle against the urge to hate this man, this American, who had probably used some kind of Western trick to get him to reveal his thoughts.

On the platform David held the young man’s eyes as the train headed for the tunnel. A deep sadness had returned to Zhenya’s face. David smiled once more, wanting to see if he could make the corners of Zhenya’s mouth rise, but before Zhenya could respond, he was swallowed by the blackness.

Chapter 42

David exited Teatralnaya Metro station and headed toward Red Square. He often found himself drawn to the Square, where church and state had mounted a dazzling display of solidarity. The Kremlin’s massive stone walls, standing alongside the exploding colors of St. Basil’s Cathedral, rendered a stunning and chilling reminder that the world ignored Russia at its peril.

As he entered the north end of the Square through Resurrection Gate, he saw an army of snowplows steering the snow into obedient piles. He took a deep breath and let it disperse into mist and looked toward the Kremlin walls. A young woman was sitting on a metal stool in front of an easel, her neck wrapped in a heavy wool scarf, her hands in fingerless mittens, holding a paintbrush. Next to her sat an infant in a stroller, swathed tightly against the cold. David walked over and stood behind her, watching her work. After a while she turned to look at him, then swiveled back and dipped her brush into a smudge of bright blue paint.

“I’m an American journalist,” he said over her shoulder. “May I ask you a question?”

She put the brush down and folded her hands in her lap and looked straight ahead. “You’ve disappointed us on so many levels,” she said.

He sighed. “Why? Why have we disappointed you? I’m getting this a lot.”

She picked up her brush and touched it to the paint and let it graze the canvas. A single blue stripe emerged from its tip. She looked down at her baby, who was sleeping soundly, then squiggled a drop of green paint onto one of the cupolas.

“Okay, fine,” he said at last. “You don’t have to answer. We could be doing more here, I know. I wish we were.”

She looked back at him and smiled faintly, then dashed more color onto the scene.

“May I ask your name?” he said.

“Larisa.”

He wrote it in his notebook. “Patronymic and last name?”

“Just Larisa. May I get back to my painting now?”

“Sure. Tell me one thing, though, Larisa. This is what I wanted to ask you: What do you think makes Russia a great country? What do you love about it?”

She let out a sound that was either surprise or sarcasm. “What kind of question is that?” she asked.

“I’m asking people for a column I write. Seriously. I want to know what you love about Russia. What inspires you?”

She remained silent.

He let out an exasperated breath. “Anyway, I’ve enjoyed watching you paint,” he said. He handed her his card. “If you’d like to talk, I’d be happy to. You strike me as a thoughtful person.”

She looked at the card briefly. “Thank you.” Her tone seemed to soften. “It’s a strange question. And a hard one. Some days Russia is a wonderful country, some days it’s hell.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Anyway, nothing good ever comes from answering strange questions,” she said. “Especially from foreigners.”

“Really, I understand. Have a good day.”

He wandered away, looking for other people to talk with, but the Square was nearly empty. He approached St. Basil’s, which was covered with blocks and swirls of primary colors, as if painted by children. Up close, the paint looked like nothing he had ever seen in a hardware store. It was flat and simple and a bit chalky, as if mixed in a kindergarten classroom. He cleared the snow from a spot on a stone step near the cathedral and sat down and took out his notebook and pen. As he was writing he felt someone stop in front of him and looked up. Larisa was standing behind her stroller, her easel and canvas slung over her back. She handed him her card. Larisa Lapina, Artist, it said, with her phone number.

“My father always talked about this correspondent from your newspaper,” she said. “She interviewed him for a story, and they talked about Russia and the Bible. He said it was the most interesting conversation he ever had with a Westerner.”

“We’ve had some good correspondents here.”

“I read the Bible,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows at the unexpected comment. “That’s good.”

Then she said, almost apologetically, “But I’m afraid to talk to you.” She lowered her voice, although no one was anywhere near, and said, “What you’re doing is very subversive.” He looked at her, curious what she meant. “It seems like a normal question you’re asking, but it’s not,” she went on. “What makes Russia great is a question the government wants to answer. We’re supposed to shut up and accept what we’re given. Or not given.”

He craved more conversation with her. “Are you sure you won’t talk to me?” he said quietly. “We can do it anonymously.”

She thought for a moment. “Fine. You seem honest. Sasha and I need to get home, but can you come to my apartment tonight? You could meet some of my friends. They’ll have a lot to say. It’s better not to do this in public, you know?”

“Sure. That would be great.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Do you mind if I bring a friend? I think she would like to meet you as well.”

“Um, okay, I guess. Who is she?”

“She’s Georgian. She’s as cautious as you are, but she’s very perceptive. I think you two should meet.”

“Okay,” she said, haltingly. She wrote her address on her card, then turned abruptly and began pushing Sasha along the Kremlin walls toward Resurrection Gate.

Chapter 43

David called Tamar when he got home, and she said yes, she would go with him to meet Larisa and her friends. “I want to start talking to people,” she said.

“Terrific. It will be nice to have you there.” David said it calmly, but in his mind he punched the air. The stories of people like Olga Maximovna and Igor Ivanovich had been interesting and important to tell; they showed Russia in its opera of misery and resilience. But Tamar’s story was different. If what she had brought to her small part of America was any guide, she would bring something transformative to this country, too. He was eager to see what it was and write about it, and to do his part to help in the transformation.

And what of him? Was he still part of her story? He had missed her the last few months. He had missed her perceptiveness, her courage, her humor, her unfailing goodness. He had missed simply being in her presence. He had asked himself many times if it was love that he felt, but it was not an easy question. Love was complicated, especially between a journalist and a source. One thing he did know: Now that they were together again, he wanted to touch her all the time. He wasn’t sure that was a wise thing to do.

***

When Larisa opened the door to her apartment that evening, the first thing David noticed was her skin problem. He hadn’t seen it when they had met in Red Square because of the heavy clothes and mittens. Her arms and hands were raw and red, and as she led the way into her kitchen, she carefully touched them in an attempt to relieve the itching. David felt a sudden compassion for her that surprised him with its intensity. Angels.

Sasha sat in a bouncy seat on the kitchen counter, trying to hold onto a fluffy white penguin. As David sat down at the table with Tamar, the penguin jumped out of Sasha’s hands and onto the floor. Larisa picked it up and took a wet paper towel and wiped a spot, then put the animal on the table. Sasha whimpered. “It’s wet now, solnyshka,” she said and stroked his cheek with the tip of her finger.

The table was draped with an embroidered white cloth, and two latticed metal baskets held pastries of various kinds. In the center was a small electric samovar, its cord draped across one end of the table and plugged into the wall. Around the table Larisa had placed six white ceramic teacups and saucers, each with a bright yellow paper napkin folded in a triangle beside it.

“Is he your first?” Tamar asked.

She smiled at Sasha and mouthed a kiss. “And only, maybe,” she said. “His father and I didn’t last long.”

“I’m sorry.”

Larisa shrugged. “He had ambitions.” She picked up the napkin beside her coffee cup and touched her arm. David noticed a tiny spot of blood on the napkin as she folded it neatly and placed it in a small trash can under the sink. She placed a new one on the table.

“My friends will be here soon,” she said. “I wanted to mention a few things before they come. But first, tell me about yourselves. I met David yesterday, but I don’t know you, Tamar, and I don’t know your relationship.”

Tamar and David looked at each other, and David spoke first. “I didn’t feel comfortable saying much yesterday,” he said, “but I sometimes write about her. She used to be active in the resistance in Georgia, and then she spent some time in the U.S. That’s where I met her.”

Larisa looked back and forth between them. “Okay. I appreciate the honesty,” she said. “Tamar, can you tell me what you’re doing here? Because we’re very sensitive about who we meet with. I’m sure you understand, coming from the Soviet Union. Things haven’t changed that much. Are you two, like, together?”

Tamar smiled. She liked this woman. She was cautious but smart and sincere. “He’s a reporter. I’m here to get to know Russia better,” Tamar said. “Nothing more than that.”

Larisa looked over at David, who was making notes. “Well, I feel like I’m part of something, but I don’t know what,” she said, trying to read upside down what he was writing. “I’m a bit uncomfortable now. Please tell me more about what you’re doing here, Tamar.” She looked hard at Tamar, less with suspicion than with a demand for honesty, a kind of level-with-me-sister look. “You know as well as I do that hidden agendas can get you into a lot of trouble here.”

“There’s not much to say,” Tamar said. “My brother was killed by Soviet troops in Georgia, and afterwards I started a group called Love, Georgia. We were mostly a bunch of girls who danced but also rallied for democracy. I had a run-in with a Russian guy, and I left the country and went to the U.S. and started to do something similar. But the U.S. has its own problems, and I decided to come here.”

Larisa looked at Tamar, waiting for more, but none came. “Why Russia?”

Tamar was silent.

“You have this reporter writing about you, Tamar,” she finally said with some irritation. “I don’t think you’ve told me everything. What are you up to?”

They looked at each other silently, then Tamar said, “I really don’t know yet, Larisa. I’m taking it step by step. David has his own agenda, to write about interesting people and give a picture of Russia that other media don’t. Maybe I’ll end up too boring to write about, and he’ll decide he’s wasting his time. But I’ve let him talk with me because he thinks I’m interesting.” She gave David the most disarming smile she could muster.

Larisa let out a long breath. “Alright,” she finally said. “I like you both, but I think I’m not getting everything. But let’s move ahead, because my friends will be here soon. First, David, please don’t use anyone’s name. We all have jobs and families.”

“Understood,” David said. “It’s more important to me to get your stories.”

“And second, well, I might as well get it out at the beginning, we hoped this new government would be better than the corruption and incompetence we’ve been through, but it doesn’t look very promising. Chestnov and his people are the same as the old people, pathologically selfish men who grab what they can and laugh at the people they hurt. They say they want democracy, and they pretend to be religious, but it’s only a cover. Nothing’s really changed. Actually, things are probably worse, because the rest of the world is ignoring us now.”

Her mood felt even heavier than Zhenya’s. “You don’t have some hope that things will get better?” David asked.

Larisa poured him and Tamar more tea. The penguin was dry, and she handed it back to Sasha. “It’s hard to give up hope, but no, to be honest.” She looked around, as if they were on the street and someone might hear, then leaned in and whispered, “They’re never going to let go, you know,” she said.

Before David could respond, the doorbell rang. Larisa sprang up and peered through the peephole and opened the door. Three women walked in.

“He’s obviously American!” one woman blurted immediately, pointing at David’s baseball cap hanging on the coat rack. The other women laughed.

“Ladies,” Larisa said, “This is David Darke. As I told you, he’s a journalist, and he wants to know what makes Russia a great country. I told him you could help. And this is Tamar Tsmindashvili. She’s from Georgia. I trust them, but let’s not, you know, say anything crazy, Okay? Svetlana?”

“I’ll tell you crazy,” the first woman, apparently Svetlana, grumbled, “that we all thought America was going to help us, and then they started treating us like criminals.” She raised her hand and pointed her finger like a gun, then aimed it at David’s head and brought her thumb down like a hammer and blew the smoke away. 

“I forgot to tell you, David,” Larisa said. “Svetlana is a bit, you know –.” She twisted her finger at her head to indicate crazy. Everyone laughed again. Svetlana took a seat at the table, then immediately stood up. Her head was barely higher than the samovar. “Don’t worry, Mr. Darke. I like Americans,” she said. “I just don’t like bullies.” She eyed him briefly, then straightened her back and stared straight ahead, bit her lip and balled her fists, like a little boy who wants to show he’s a man. “Can you guess who this guy is?” she said. The room was silent. “It’s our president pretending to worship.” Everyone laughed. Chestnov had recently been caught on video standing in a church, listening to a priest, visibly uncomfortable with the surroundings, his eyes shifting left and right, as if he couldn’t wait to get outside and kick a ball or torture some smaller kid. “He’s a bully,” Svetlana said.

Larisa introduced the other two women: Maria, a piano teacher who was fighting a cold and had wrapped her wool scarf, decorated with the design of a piano keyboard, around her neck despite the warmth in the apartment, and Tanya, a thin woman with sorrowful eyes, like some forlorn religious acolyte.

Larisa turned to Svetlana again. “If you don’t mind being serious for a moment, Sveta, tell them your story.”

She looked at Larisa but suddenly had nothing to say. Maria, her voice raw from the cold, spoke up. “Her son was killed by a drunk driver,” she said. “She saw it happen.” Svetlana was still silent, so Maria told the rest of the story for her. “The man was a neighbor, but the police wouldn’t investigate without a bribe, so nothing happened, and he’s still driving around drunk all the time.”

“So you wouldn’t pay?” David asked.

“It would contaminate his soul,” Svetlana said. “And it’s not like it would bring him back.”

“I’m so sorry,” David said as he made notes. He took a deep breath. “Is there anything that gives you hope?”

Svetlana shook her head. “Not really. We need a government that doesn’t steal from the people. They’ve been doing it for years.” 

“Chestnov has said he’s determined to wipe out corruption,” David said. “Is that hopeful?” David knew the question sounded naïve, but it was how he often got interview subjects to express their honest thoughts, as if they were educating him. “I mean, he’s saying positive things. Does he mean them?”

She scoffed. “Yeah, he’ll wipe out corruption, except for himself and his friends. He’s made that pretty clear.”

Maria picked a pastry out of the basket, took a bite and chewed it carefully, trying to taste it through her cold. “We all have to deal with the government in one way or another,” she said. “Sveta’s right. Nothing’s really changed, and we don’t expect it to. This is Russia.” She got up and took a tissue from a box on the sink and blew her nose.

“A lot of people like Chestnov,” David reminded them. “He did this, you know, miracle the other day?” He smiled, showing he understood it wasn’t real.

“Hah,” Svetlana said, a hint of frustration in her voice. “We’re a religious country, but he’s no different from anyone else in the government, pretending he’s a good man but really just looking out for himself. And the people sit here like cabbages.” She puffed out her cheeks in an attempt to look like a vegetable, but this time her antics prompted less laughter and more cautious nods.

Tanya began nervously tracing the embroidery on the tablecloth with a finger. “The president is defender of the faith,” she said. “We can’t forget that. I think that’s what makes Russia great, our religion.” She saw Svetlana’s sneer and quickly added, “But I don’t know if he’s a very religious man, really.”

Svetlana patted Tanya’s shoulder and said sarcastically, “He’s about as religious as my dog.”

Larisa turned to Tamar. “I hope you don’t get the wrong impression,” she said. “Svetlana likes to make everyone laugh, but we’re not really anti-government.” She smiled wistfully, knowing she was contradicting her earlier insistence that the government was run by pathologically selfish men. “We’re just trying to find some hope.”

Sasha let out a soft cry from behind the bedroom door, and Larisa went to check on him. The other women fell silent, and Tamar bent forward. “Where is hope going to come from, do you think?” she asked. David looked over at her. It was his next question.

“Maybe the church?” Tanya said, quietly.

Svetlana opened her mouth to speak, but Maria shot her a look, and she closed it again. Maria looked out the window at the dim lights of the apartment building next door and adjusted the scarf around her neck. “There’s something dead at the core of this country,” she said. She held her teacup in both hands and took a sip, then looked toward the door through which Larisa had gone. “I’d like to have hope, but things have to get really bad before Russians do something. It’s like we’re an ocean always waiting for a storm.”

David was struck by the image and wrote it down, then asked, half in jest, “So, where’s the storm going to come from this time? Are we talking another Lenin?”

Svetlana laughed and Tanya smiled, content to let their silence speak for the uneasiness, or maybe the horror, of the idea. But Maria suddenly had a thought. “Maybe we’re the storm,” she said. “Us. In this room.”

Tanya’s eyes went wide, and she looked at Maria and then at David. “Don’t write that,” she said.

Svetlana turned on Tanya. “What? You think this country’s going to save itself? That’s exactly what we need. Yeah. One of those storms that turns everything upside down.”

The room was quiet. David’s pen scratched, and he felt his heart beat. He had expected some tension from his questions, but not talk of revolution. He caught Tamar’s eye, and she stood up. “Will you excuse me?” she said and knocked on Larisa’s bedroom door.

Chapter 44

“Come in.” Larisa was sitting on a bed next to her son’s crib, a Bible in her lap, singing a Russian lullaby. Tamar sat down next to her. The haunting minor key of the lullaby made her think of Cossacks and snow-covered steppes, of the Soviet storybooks and movies she had devoured as a child. She looked at the Bible and then up at Larisa, who placed the book gently on the table beside her. “It comforts me,” she said. She covered Sasha and kissed the top of his head and looked out the window. A light snow swirled, texturing the concrete monotony of the Krushchevka apartment buildings. Tamar looked at the bare skin on her arm, raw and red as pain, and she felt a compassion so intense she wanted to touch her, and she did.

“Thank you,” Larisa said quietly. “I don’t know who you are, but there’s something about you that is very strong. It’s something I need. We all do.”

“I know Chestnov,” Tamar said. “He’s the one who chased me out of Georgia. You have it exactly right, he’s a pathologically selfish man. How can I help you?”

Larisa looked at Tamar and cocked her head. “Then you know what we’re going through,” she said. She picked up a small blanket draped over the crib and put it over her shoulders, covering her arms. “Life here presses down on you, but I can’t afford to feel hopeless.” She looked away for a few moments, then back at Tamar again. “Have you ever felt hopeless?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “When my brother was killed, I wanted to give up, but I had some friends who kept me going. I finally decided Georgia was worth fighting for. I love my country. We have this wonderful sense of hospitality, like, you come to Georgia, and you just want to have dinner with friends. I love America, too, because they know what it means to be free, even though they seem determined to trash their freedom every day, like, you should be free to hurt anyone who gets in your way.” She frowned and made a finger gun and quietly shot it. “Russia is about hope. I’ve decided that. If this country works well, the world is a much better place, because it shows the good that happens if you educate yourself and work hard. I’ll never stop believing it was Russia, more than the West, that saved the world from the Nazis. But if Russia doesn’t work well, we’re all in trouble, because then it attracts men like Ilya Chestnov, and they can do a lot of harm.” Tamar sat quietly, looking at Larisa. Then she said, “He had my best friend killed, and then he raped me. That’s the part I didn’t tell you.”

Larisa gasped. She searched Tamar’s eyes, trying to determine if revenge was driving her; that would be dangerous for them all. “Do you hate him?” she said. “You must hate him.”

“Yes, to be honest, I do. I still do. I fight against it every day. I can’t believe I’m in his country now, but I’ve decided I can’t let it stop me. I’m determined to do something good here.”

“I’m so sorry, Tamar. You’ve had a hard life. David seems more than just a reporter to you.”

“He is, but I’m not sure what yet. He’s helped me a lot to understand what love is and what it can do.”

“Okay. Your relationship is none of my business. But what exactly are you planning? I need to know.”

“I’m really not sure about that yet, either.”

Larisa remained cautious. “I like you,” she said. “I hope this isn’t about getting back at that man.”

“It’s not.” Tamar smiled and motioned with her head toward the living room. “At least I don’t think so. But you’d better keep an eye on your friends.”

Larisa narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Actually, that’s why I came in here. They mean well, but –”

Tamar got up and went to the door. Larisa, looking alarmed, adjusted Sasha’s covers and stood up, pulling the blanket protectively over her shoulders and arms.

Chapter 45

Ten minutes earlier, when Tamar went into the bedroom to talk with Larisa, Svetlana had breathed a sigh of relief. “They’re alike,” she said, her face taking on a faint look of disdain. “Both scared of their own shadow.”

The comment jolted David, and he looked up from his notebook. “Tamar’s careful. She’s not scared.”

Svetlana peered at him intently. “Well, careful isn’t enough these days, is it. I’m tired of being careful.” She started pacing the room, working herself into a passion. “I’m just so sick of everything changing and nothing changing. There are lots of people who want to do something in Russia, but they’re scared. You should have seen the people who agreed with me when my son was killed. If we all got together, we could change things.” She turned to Maria and Tanya, who were staring at her, afraid of the Svetlana they had been trying to keep in check. “We could really get people excited. Like, if we did something in Red Square.”

Tanya took a sharp breath. “Svetlana, shut up!” She blushed at her own blunt language. “We can’t do something in Red Square. They’ll arrest us.”

Svetlana rolled her eyes. “Do you really want to sit around all your life and do nothing?” David noticed that she sneaked a glance at him, and he realized his presence was what had emboldened her.

Maria noticed, too. “Actually, Sveta’s right,” she said, her eyes bright with sudden energy. “We should do something. I’m tired of waiting for things to change.”

Tanya whipped her head around, shocked that Maria was agreeing. “But why? Why do something that will only get us all into trouble and not accomplish anything?”

“Proletariat of the world, unite!” Svetlana said, and where David expected a sardonic laugh from the other women, he heard only silence. “Well, it worked before,” she mumbled.

Tanya shook her head. “We’re not proletariat,” she said. “We’re just a bunch of peasants with nuclear weapons and delusions of grandeur.” Then she, too, looked at David, and he noticed a smile starting to grow on her face.

“We’re better than that,” Svetlana said. “We’ve been to the moon. Well, sort of.” The Soviet Union had landed spacecraft on the moon but never cosmonauts.

Tanya leaned over to fill her cup from the samovar, subtly turning her back on Svetlana. “Actually,” she said quietly, looking at David again but speaking to her friends, “I know something we could do. Christ didn’t want us to be passive, after all.”

He caught his breath, amazed at the transformation in the room since Larisa and Tamar had left. Was it their absence, or was it the fact that these women were now alone with a reporter? He was feeling more uneasy by the second.

Svetlana rolled her eyes again at Tanya and opened her mouth, but Maria put her hand on her arm. “What do you have in mind, Tanya?” Maria asked.

She took a careful sip of her tea. “Our president likes to do miracles,” she said. “Why couldn’t we do one, too?” She looked around at the group with her gently questioning smile. “We could serve people breakfast. Like Christ feeding the multitude.”

Maria looked at Svetlana, who was looking at Tanya. David scarcely breathed. “Okay,” Svetlana said slowly, “how would that work?”

 “We wouldn’t say anything political,” Tanya said, “just that we’re feeding people with hope. They could interpret it any way they want.”

“You’re smarter than I thought,” Svetlana said.

Tanya sighed. “Maybe if you’d go to church sometimes.”

David stared. Did they know what they were getting into? “Do you think Chestnov is going to want to let other people do miracles?” he broke in. “It seems to me he would want a monopoly on that.”

But the women ignored him, and he became intrigued, wanting to see how this would play out. Maria put her hand on Svetlana’s knee. “I’ve got a good recipe for blinchiki,” she said. “Let’s do it!”

At that moment Tamar and Larisa emerged from the bedroom, and Svetlana popped out of her chair. “We’re going to serve breakfast in Red Square!” she announced.

“What?” Larisa raised her voice, then realized she might wake Sasha and lowered it to an angry whisper. “What’s this about?”

Svetlana looked at Tanya, apparently in an attempt not to look at Larisa. “We’re a religious country,” she said. “Our president is a man of God, or so he says. Why not serve people breakfast, like Christ did?”

“Like Christ did?” Larisa repeated, dumbfounded.

“What’s the harm?” Maria asked.

“Yeah, we can’t just sit here like cabbages,” Tanya said. Larisa looked at her, surprised at her boldness. “I’m just quoting Svetlana,” Tanya said quietly. Svetlana rolled her eyes again but was obviously pleased she was setting the tone for her friends.

“It’s naïve and stupid,” Larisa said. The government will never allow it. She glared at David. “Did you put them up to this?”

Before he could respond, Tanya jumped in, as if to protect him. “No, he didn’t,” she said. “It was my idea. Do you want us to take this to my apartment?”

“No! I want you to stop!” Larisa said. She ripped the blanket off her shoulders and threw it onto the sofa, then stomped into the kitchen and began noisily washing dishes, forgetting about Sasha. “Anything in Red Square attracts attention,” she said amid the clanking of ceramic and metal. On her left arm blood was oozing in several places. “Why are you doing this? It’s not a game.” When she noticed everyone looking at her arm, she threw some water on it and wiped it with her hand. Sasha started making noises. “I’ve gotta go,” Larisa said and hurried back into the bedroom and shut the door.

The three women looked at each other, then at Tamar and David. “Do you want to help us?” Maria asked, as if Larisa had been only a brief distraction.

Tamar shook her head firmly. “I understand your frustration, but it’s not a good idea, what you’re doing,” she said.

“Well, we’re not going to just let this country be dragged back to the Soviet Union, I’ll tell you that,” Svetlana said. “I don’t know about Georgia, but Russia’s been through hell, and we’re still there.”

Tamar opened her mouth and then closed it again. She looked at David as if to say, Do something, and went into the bedroom again and shut the door.

David looked up and saw the women staring at him. For the first time since coming to Russia, he felt unsure of himself. His questions had exposed real passion, which had now been set into motion, and the passion had ignited something in him, too. What an amazing story this would be! “Okay, I’ll come,” he said, “but just as an observer.” It was a weak defense; what else would he be as a journalist? But he wanted badly to be there. The fact that all of them might be in danger just added to the thrill.

Chapter 46

The women talked and laughed and cooked all night, while David interviewed each one in turn. No one slept. In the morning, they filled a picnic basket with breakfast crepes and pastries and plastic plates and forks and said goodbye to Larisa and Tamar and, with David a few steps behind, bounced out the door. Maria carried the basket on her shoulder as she and her friends jounced through the Metro and up the escalator at Teatralnaya station. They landed at a spot in the middle of Red Square, in front of Lenin’s Tomb. The women fanned out and started handing out food, telling everyone the food represented hope in the future of Russia. David stood at a discrete distance and took notes.

An hour later the women had collected the names of a dozen people who wanted to know more about their ideas. Two policemen in uniform became interested in the commotion and inquired of Tanya what they were doing. David could overhear her saying they were helping people have hope. “Our president would love the idea, don’t you think?” she asked the policemen. “It’s like Christ feeding the multitude.” They inquired if she had a permit; she said no, it was spontaneous, and anyway, they weren’t doing anything but serving breakfast. The cops listened for a while, and one left. The women soon gathered their things and headed toward the Metro, with David again trailing behind.

“That was fun!” Svetlana said when they reached the train platform. “Operation Blinchiki!”

But when they arrived at the apartment, Larisa was in a sour mood. She had received four phone calls from people wanting to know when the next meeting of the group was. “You gave them my number?” she asked, incredulous.

“Come on, Larisa,” Svetlana said. “You’re our leader.”

“No, I’m not your leader. I have a bigger apartment, that’s all.”

Within an hour, six more people called. Maria, whose cold was noticeably better, gushed, “People really like this!” One woman, who said she was an artist and found the group’s spirit inspiring, was so gushing in her praise that they invited her to join them at Larisa’s apartment that evening.

“We don’t know her,” Larisa said when she found out.

“We don’t know anyone,” Tanya said. “Have faith.”

“But what’s the point?” Larisa asked, desperately.

“The point is doing something to give people hope,” Maria said. “I’m tired of hiding. People want this!”

Larisa threw open the window, as if to bring some different air into the room. “What’s gotten into you guys?” she pleaded. “You’re walking blindfolded on the edge of a cliff. Everything is political in Russia. You’re not giving hope, you’re encouraging suicide.”

Tamar, who had been sitting silently next to David, leaned over and whispered, “What did you think?”

“There were cops,” he whispered back.

Larisa paced the kitchen, scratching her arms. Her friends seemed not to notice her distress, as if they all were being pulled toward a world where pain was soothing. Svetlana was laughing at something Maria had said, and then she jumped up. “Let’s do it again!”

“What?” Larisa said, incredulous. She pulled her sweater down to cover her arms, embarrassed at what she was doing to herself.

“Yeah,” Maria agreed, ignoring Larisa. “If we could make our little group, what, four times bigger in one morning, think of what we could do with two mornings!”

Larisa snapped, “Don’t be greedy.” But she was tired, and the rebuke turned quickly to biting anger. “What is this group anyway? You think you’re doing something brilliant, but you’re just three stupid women who want glory for yourselves. What do you think you’re going to do, start a revolution?” When she said the last word, her eyes opened wide, and she bit her bottom lip hard.

Tanya, ignoring the insult, pleaded, “Come with us, Larisa. We’ll show you what we mean. It was great!”

“No!” Larisa sat down on a kitchen chair and began crying. “You guys are scaring me. We never agreed to do something like this.” She covered her face with her hands. “I thought I was doing a good thing by bringing a reporter here, but I was stupid. We’re all stupid. The whole damn country is stupid to think America can help us. Stop writing, David.” He looked up. “It’s not helpful.”

 David held his pen above his notepad, halting at the sharpness of her tone.

“Please, Larisa,” Tanya said. “Can we just cook here one more night?”

Before Larisa could answer, Tamar stood up. “May I say something?” she asked, softly. The room grew quiet. “If you go out there again, I guarantee there will be trouble. I know you mean well, but the government is not going to tolerate a bunch of women trying to make Russia great on their own. I realize you didn’t ask me, but from my experience, the better course would be to take what you got today, perhaps meet some of your new friends in a neutral place, but not rush into this. I don’t think you should be inviting people here. It’s too risky. There will be a time for the people to rise, but I don’t think it’s yet, and I don’t think this is the way. I’m sorry.”

Svetlana frowned and whispered “coward” under her breath. Maria looked sad that her excitement might be tamed. Tanya was wringing her hands. “Maybe we should all go home and get some rest,” she said. “We didn’t sleep last night.”

Svetlana and Maria grudgingly agreed, and the three women got ready to leave. “You’ll come with us tomorrow, right?” Maria said to David in a whisper loud enough for everyone to hear. Svetlana and Tanya turned and looked at him.

“I’d like to,” he said. “We’ll see.” He gave Tanya his phone number and told her to call him in the morning.

When the door closed, Larisa turned to David. “Are you really going to write about this?” she asked. “Because it would make us all a target, and what will it accomplish except give the government someone to blame for their own mess?”

“Yes, I understand the stakes,” David said defensively. But there was no question he would go if they decided to do it again. He was a journalist after all, and he had never witnessed the genesis of a revolution.

“No, I don’t think you understand, David,” Larisa said. “This is literally life and death for us. You asked me what makes Russia great. I don’t know, but this is what makes Russia miserable, people getting emotional and doing stupid things, and foreigners coming in and thinking they can make everything right again.” She realized she herself had become emotional and turned to Tamar. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “What should I do?” All her caution about accepting Tamar as a friend had vanished.

Tamar took Larisa’s hand. “Come, stay with me tonight, you and Sasha,” she said. “I think it would be best for you not to be reachable. But David?” She turned to him, and her eyes burned into his. “If you write something, show it to me before you send it, okay? I think it would be safest.”

He stared at her, deeply offended. Not a chance, he thought. What kind of journalist lets a source dictate what he writes?

Chapter 47

David couldn’t sleep that night. Uneasy about the day to come and Larisa’s pointed rebuke, angry at Tamar for inserting herself where she didn’t belong, he flopped his body here and there in the bed, then got up to use the bathroom. Glancing out the window, he saw a scene he had never noticed before. 

Dozens of cars were parked haphazardly along the curb and on the sidewalk. Girls in their teens and twenties were standing around smoking, shifting their feet, laughing, getting into the cars to warm themselves, then emerging with their arms wrapped tightly around their bodies to try to keep the heat in. A steady stream of cars crawled by, and the faces of giddy men, most of them considerably older than the girls, stared out.

A car stopped. A woman in a leather jacket approached. After a short conversation with the driver, she turned and knocked on the hood of one of the parked cars, and three girls emerged and lined up quickly. One smoothed her skirt and stood tall, as if presenting herself to the school headmaster for inspection. The driver consulted his friends, shook his head, and the girls returned to their car, the last one checking her face in the side mirror before closing the door.

Another car pulled up, and the woman in the leather jacket beckoned for two girls standing with arms around each other. They approached, and one suppressed a giggle. The driver nodded. The girls slid into the back of the car, one on each side, and sat on the laps of two men, the men smiling like it was Christmas morning.

As David watched, his thoughts began slowly to numb, and into the emptiness slid sensations both sharp and soothing. Ever since he had met Tamar, he had fought to keep feelings like this in check, but in the last twenty-four hours he had somehow lost his bearings. An image of her began rising in his mind. If she were here tonight, he wondered, would she let him touch her? Would she let him kiss her? He surrendered to the thought and imagined the eager softness of her kisses and the trusting warmth of her embrace. His nerves began to throb. Fantasy became his lover, bringing distraction to his troubled mind.

Later, still awake but calm again, he returned his focus to the world outside and watched the stream of cars continue their comings and goings. He got out his notebook and wrote, “Russia in the 1990s. People looking desperately for hope but finding little more than numbing pleasures. Russia deserves more than days of pain and nights of hopeless coupling.” He was pleased with the words as he wrote them, their veneer of concern and somber music, but after the cars had left and he read the words again, they seemed infected with his own arrogance. Exhausted and angry at himself, he closed his eyes, and when the phone jangled in his ears a few hours later, his mind felt dull, as if the sharp blade of insight had lost its edge, and the angels he had thought of as friends had moved on to more promising fields.

***

On the phone, Tanya said she and her friends had met up with the artist who had wanted to be part of their group and made more blinchiki and would be gathering at the same spot in Red Square in an hour. Did David still want to come?

“Of course,” he said. He hurried to get dressed, and when he got to the Square, he saw that the women were already handing out breakfast. A few new women were helping them. He also saw that the two policemen from the day before were now four, then eight, but the women seemed not to notice. He thought of warning them but saw no discreet way to do it without becoming part of the scene himself.

Then a commotion started in the distance. Everyone turned to watch. Through the Square a phalanx of young people was moving, women and men, their faces set and arms raised as if they were figures on an old Soviet poster. They flowed across the Square, not running but walking fast, singing the Russian national hymn.

Russia – our sacred homeland,
Russia – our beloved country.
A mighty will, great glory –
These are your heritage for all time!

When they reached the crowd, they began grabbing the baskets of food and spilling them onto the ground. “What are you doing?” Svetlana shouted. She kicked one man in the shin. Suddenly the three women were alone, swallowed by a sea of police and agitators. All the new women had melted away. Maria was knocked to the ground. An elbow hit Tanya on the side of her head, and she staggered. Something popped in Svetlana, and she started screaming at a policeman twice her height and wouldn’t stop. Another policeman, his face screwed in anger, grabbed her arm and started dragging her toward a van parked beside the cathedral. Four men in plain clothes pulled Maria and Tanya in the same direction.

Someone reached around and snatched the notebook out of David’s hand. He turned to see a smiling policeman putting it into his pocket.

“Hey, that’s mine,” David objected.

“I’ve always wanted to read what you foreign reporters write,” he said. David glared at him. The man seemed to be listening to something, and David noticed an earpiece in his right ear. “Come with me,” the policeman said to David.

“Why?”

But the policeman was in no mood to explain. He pulled David’s arm, and a second policeman hurried over and grabbed his legs. When they reached the van, they shoved him in next to Svetlana, Maria and Tanya.

Svetlana shook her head but stewed in silence. Maria was rubbing her hands fretfully. Tanya gripped a cross she had pulled from her sweater. David looked out the small window in the back of the van. The phalanx of young people, their morning’s work done, had become a milling mix of laughter and truculence, while tourists, snapping photos of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s, marveled at the beauty of an authentic Russian tableau.

Then he spotted a figure at the edge of the Square, and everything else blurred. Tamar, her eyes alert, her body erect, stood like a king on the commanding heights, observing the troop movements of a coming war.

Chapter 48

David slumped on a white bench along a wall the shade of skin rubbed raw. His thoughts flitted from impression to sensation with no anchor, as if they were not his own but merely planted in his brain to wander and reproduce. The noise around him was constant and unsettling. He had never felt so exposed. Larisa had been right. The only thing he had accomplished the last two days was making everyone, himself included, a target. It was exactly what he had feared for years: that he would be tempted to fall back into pride and ambition and start behaving like an arrogant journalist again. How had this happened? He put his head in his hands and thought of Tamar standing in the Square, in charge of herself and everything around her. The distance between wherever she was at that moment and this noisy and stinky jail was the distance between heaven and hell.

“Hello, David. Welcome to Russia.”

Astonished at hearing the familiar voice, he turned and saw a man moving toward him. Maxim Yasnov was holding a small Russian flag. “I thought you might appreciate this,” he said, handing the flag to David. “Russia is a far more interesting country than America these days, don’t you think?”

David dropped the flag next to him on the bench and stared at the visitor. Yasnov pulled up a metal chair dented with someone’s ancient rage and straddled it, facing him. He reached into his coat pocket and handed him his notebook. “I believe this belongs to you,” he said. David took it without a word and put it in his pocket. “You’ve been a very busy man, but you’re wasting your time, with your interviews and columns and now these stupid women.” David opened his mouth to speak, but Yasnov had a lecture prepared and didn’t stop. “The Russian people are as clueless about greatness as Americans,” he said. “All they want is to be slapped and amazed. Lenin came with his dictatorship of the proletariat, and they all drank that in like they had never drunk before. Stalin brought discipline, like a stern father, and they loved him for that, too, even though he brutalized them. But Khrushchev was an idiot, and Brezhnev? He was half drunk.” Yasnov shook his head sadly. “He gave us bread and peace, and that’s when it all began falling apart. Russians don’t just want bread and peace. They want authority, and they want bright, shiny miracles. We’re just peasants, after all, and peasants respond to the fist and the amazing.”

All David could think was, this is not the Max Yasnov I saw in America. “Does Meek know about this?” David asked. 

Yasnov scoffed. “Meek doesn’t know anything but his own ego,” he said. “But he’s useful.”

David narrowed his eyes. “Meaning?”

Yasnov just smiled.

“You’re not a student, are you,” David said.

Yasnov laughed. “I was, yes, and now I’m getting work experience. I had an internship with Mr. Meek, and now I have an internship with Mr. Chestnov. Good training, you know?”

“Who are you, really?”

Yasnov ignored his question. “Okay, let’s move on. We have an important story for you.” David opened his mouth to object, but Yasnov continued. “Ilya Davidovich is holding an event later this morning that we’d like you to cover. It’s mainly for the Russian media, because they’ll understand what’s happening, and they’re the only media most people see here. But I’ve convinced my superiors to make an exception, because I think it’s perfect for you and your paper, and what you write could be useful for us.”

David could feel himself being sucked down some kind of hole, and he wasn’t sure where it would end. “I can’t just cover something because you tell me to, Max,” he said, weakly. “We’re an independent newspaper.”

“Well, I assumed you’d rather not spend more time here. It’s a rather unpleasant place, you know? But maybe I’m wrong.”

He looked at David without blinking, and David saw no reason to sustain the charade. What was he going to prove by staying? Anyway, he was curious what Max was offering. “Okay.”

Yasnov smiled and stood. “Good,” he said. “Come, I’ll drive you to meet the other reporters. They’re waiting at the bus.”

David felt a sudden pang of guilt. “Where are the women?” he asked.

Yasnov looked down at him with what struck David as pity. “Oh, they’ll be here a while,” he said. “They broke the law.”

“What kind of law is that? They were just giving people hope.”

Yasnov rolled his eyes. “Don’t play the naïve journalist, David. In Russia, hope has to be authorized.”

David’s eyebrows rose, and he searched Yasnov’s face for a trace of irony or some awareness of the absurdity of his statement. What he saw, though, was bitterness, and it surprised him. Yasnov seemed aware that he was letting too much show, and he quickly began walking toward the door. David followed, dropping the Russian flag on a table.

Yasnov held the door open, and as David passed through, Yasnov said quietly, “We saw her in Red Square this morning.” David stopped but kept looking straight ahead. “If she so much as lifts a hand,” he went on, “and you so much as write a word about her –.”  He left the threat hanging and continued walking through the door and into the parking lot.

Chapter 49

Last off the bus, David followed the other journalists along a half-frozen forest path, crunchy with ice. In ten minutes, the path opened into a clearing along a riverbank, where some two dozen men and women from the Russian media were already milling about, some holding notebooks, some with cameras on their shoulders. The air was brittle with an ice-fog. The river flowed deep and quiet.

At the far end of the group Yasnov stood, watching. When he saw David arrive and assured himself that no one else was coming, he began walking along the river’s edge, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to make sure the group was following. He reached ground that was relatively dry and stable, then turned toward the journalists. “Alright,” he said in a growling monotone, “spread out and face the river so everyone can see.”

David staked out a spot close to the water. As everyone settled, a lone woman, out of breath, hurried up behind the group. David saw that it was Elena Kulikova, the popular anchor of the evening news broadcast Moscow Tonight. He had known her in Washington, where she had worked as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency, TASS. She was dressed in a wool coat dyed a bright purple, as if insisting on being the center of attention. Finding herself stuck behind several taller reporters, she motioned to Yasnov. He nodded, and she shouldered her way to the front and took a place next to David.

“Hi, Elena,” David whispered.

She did a double take. “Well, hello, David,” she whispered. “Working for the Russian press now?”

He shook his head. “Yasnov invited me.”

She smiled. “I know. I hear you’ve been a bad boy.”

He was surprised the word was already out, but before he could respond, a sound came from beyond the trees, dirt grinding under rubber tires. Car doors slammed, and he could hear bodies barreling through nature.

“Here we go,” Elena said.

In a few minutes two priests emerged from the forest, one holding a cross and a small broom, the other a brass container the size of a small soup tureen, both chanting. Behind the priests came Chestnov, flanked by two soldiers and several aides. Behind Chestnov walked an old woman, shivering. David recognized her immediately: Olga Maximovna, the woman with the little zoo.

The priests stopped and turned toward Chestnov, and the one with the broom dipped it into the brass container and drew it out, dripping with liquid. He waved the broom lightly toward Chestnov, who remained still as small drops of water touched his face and body. “We ask you, dear Lord, to bless this miracle of God, Ilya Davidovich Chestnov,” the priest intoned.

Chestnov and Olga Maximovna, with several aides, headed toward the bank of the river. When they reached the edge, the president turned and folded his hands in front of him and stared at the journalists with an expression both proud and contemptuous, the look of a man who loves power and is determined to keep it. Olga Maximovna continued to tremble, perhaps at the cold, perhaps because of the man she was with.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Yasnov began, “you are here to witness something extraordinary. Russia is, and always has been, a great country, but times are changing, and greatness must be shown in new ways. Ilya Davidovich is about to demonstrate what true greatness means.”

Chestnov’s eyes moved down the line of journalists, stopping at a few to show a flicker of acknowledgement. He stopped finally at David, who gazed intently back at him. It was the first time they had seen each other face to face, and David was determined not to look away. Chestnov lowered his eyebrows and pinched his face together, like someone who has just smelled something bad. David felt a sweeping antipathy course through him. This is not a good man, he thought. Not only has he done terrible things to Tamar, he’s going to do terrible things to his country and perhaps beyond.

Chestnov turned away and began unbuttoning his coat, revealing a small, tight swimming suit underneath, then removed the coat and handed it to an aide and walked to the edge of the river. He stood for a moment, looking back and forth along the length of it. An aide whispered to him, and his eyes moved to a large rock. He walked there quickly and climbed it, then stared down into the water. A breeze, slight but biting, rose through the fog, and the river began beating softly against the rock, throwing fistfuls of foam into the air. He stood for a long time, staring into the water. Then he crossed himself, raised his arms wide in a crucifixion pose and looked up into the mist. He rose on his toes once, twice, then hopped a few inches into the air and knifed straight down into the water.

The reporters rushed forward and stared down at the churning bubbles under the surface. In a few moments Chestnov’s head popped out. He held up a fish and threw it onto the rock. The fish did not struggle. He hoisted himself out of the water and, kneeling, picked up the fish and reached into its mouth. Feeling around for a few moments, he pulled out a piece of paper, wiped it off with his hand and held it up so everyone could see. It was a five thousand ruble note. He walked over to Olga Maximovna and handed her the money. Momentarily confused as to how to respond, Olga Maximovna finally performed a short curtsy, then appeared to curse herself for how stupid she thought she looked. An aide standing beside Chestnov, ignoring Olga Maximovna, put the coat over Chestnov’s shoulders, and the group headed back through the forest, Olga Maximovna trudging and shivering behind.

When the group was out of sight, the reporters gathered around Yasnov. Several hands shot up, but Yasnov ignored them all and pointed to a pretty young man with eyes that both smiled and seemed ready to weep. He was wearing a sheepskin coat and matching hat.

“Maxim Sergeevich,” the young man said, “can you please tell us the significance of this extraordinary miracle?” David recognized him as one of the Kremlin’s favorite reporters, who always got the news first and set the tone for the rest of the Russian media.

“I’m glad you asked, Arkady Ivanovich. Both Russia and the world have many problems, and Ilya Davidovich is here to lead the way in solving them with vision and courage through the grace of God.”

Hands shot up, but Yasnov again called on the pretty reporter.

“Can you tell us who this woman is and why she was chosen to receive this miracle?”

“Yes. She is Olga Maximovna Khlebnikova, a pensioner. She lives in an apartment building in Moscow and takes care of a tiny zoo there, which she keeps for the neighborhood children. She is poor, and Ilya Davidovich showed the great compassion he has for her, as he has for all Russian citizens.”

More hands rose, but the same reporter was called upon. “Has Ilya Davidovich performed other miracles that we don’t know about? We all saw him cure a crippled man.”

“Ilya Davidovich is a miracle in himself,” Yasnov said. “The world is profoundly disappointed in the West, with its corruption and materialism, and people are beginning to look to Russia for a return to traditional values. Ilya Davidovich embodies those values in every fiber of his being. Alright, any more questions?”  

David felt an elbow in his ribs and looked over to see Elena motioning with her head for him to lean toward her. As he did, she said in a low voice, “You can ask the things we can’t.”

David looked at her. Yes, he thought, the hypocrisy in the whole event was jarring. Why should he stand there silently? He raised his hand, and Yasnov, looking wary, called on him.

“Maxim Sergeevich, may I ask how the money got into the fish’s mouth? Can you tell us who put it there?”

A look of disappointment came across Yasnov’s face. “Thank you for your question, Mr. Darke,” he said with a note of sarcasm. He scanned the crowd of journalists. “Of course, we all know what happened here. But there is a larger point, and I’m sure everyone understands. Russia is an exceptional country, and Ilya Davidovich is an exceptional leader, the kind that Russia and the world need now.” He looked intently at David. “I hope that answers your question.”

David shook his head. “This miracle wasn’t real,” he said, “any more than curing that crippled man was real. Why are you misleading people?” The journalists began murmuring; this ignorant Westerner clearly understood nothing. “I mean, does he really think the Russian people will believe he is a miracle worker?” He was proud of his question in the face of such hostility. It was surely what these journalists wanted to ask but were afraid to.

Yasnov sighed. “I’m surprised you don’t get it yet, Mr. Darke,” he said. “This is what the Russian people expect from their leader, and he is giving it to them. Life in Russia is hard. People want miracles, and he is giving them miracles. Is that so hard to understand? Now if you don’t mind –” He turned to the rest of the journalists. “Any other questions?”

David looked around at the faces of the Russian journalists. Did they really intend to let their president’s cynicism and fake religion stand unquestioned?

But then, in the sententious silence with which David had once again wrapped himself, a new thought pushed itself forward, a thought so astonishing that it dislodged his disdain, leaving in its place an abashed, Oh, wait, yes.

The only power here is the power of love.

He didn’t question where the thought had come from, or exactly what it meant, because it had suddenly taken over his whole being, and he knew he had to pay attention as if his life depended on it. It was always that way with angels.

What he and the other journalists had just seen was clearly no miracle. The hypocrisy, the showy religiosity and manipulation, were undeniable. But what he now realized was that Russia did indeed need something more than just a different ideology to bring it out of its misery. It needed love. More specifically, it needed proof of the love of God. That, not Western ideas or fake miracles or journalistic cynicism, would open the eyes of the people to their greatness. David had already proved the power of love in the tiny space of his boyhood bedroom and the panicked confines of the Samson family’s backyard. Now he had to prove it in the vastness of Russia. People had a right to be loved, they could expect to be loved, through the grace of God. Grace belonged to all the Russian people, including to Chestnov himself, and neither he nor David had the power to stop it.

David glanced over at Elena, who was biting her lip and staring at the river. Did she see it? Did she hear what he heard? The insight could not possibly be his alone, it was too powerful.

Soon Yasnov headed through the forest again, and David and Elena merged into the stream of journalists following. After a while, David whispered to her, “How are you going to report this?”

She looked at the ground and gave a weak smile. “Carefully.” She tripped over a broken tree branch and staggered. He grabbed her arm and steadied her. “Thanks,” she said. She picked up the branch and began slapping trunks as they passed, with each stroke slapping harder.

“You okay?” David asked her.

She took one big whack and snapped the branch in half and dropped the remaining piece onto the ground. “Listen,” she said, “would you come to my show this afternoon? It’s a Q&A with Ilya Davidovich and some quote unquote average citizens. Olga Maximovna will be there. You can sit in the back.” For the first time since leaving the river, she looked up at him.

“Sure, thanks,” he said.

“I would like to have you in the room, even if you can’t ask questions. It feels like we’re in a fog all the time. You help me think more clearly.”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

They were approaching the bus, and Yasnov was waiting for them. Elena surged ahead, walking carefully to keep her feet on the few patches of dry ground. Yasnov eyed her, then pulled in front of David.

“Be careful what you write, David,” he said. “The truth is not always what it seems, especially in Russia.”

“I agree,” David said, and for the first time that day, he smiled.

Chapter 50

David had some time before Elena’s television show started, so he decided to eat lunch at New York! Irina Sardarova, the restaurant’s owner, had been the first person he had interviewed in Russia. She was in the lobby when he walked in, checking the seating chart. When she looked up, she broke into a big smile.

“Oh, David, I’m so glad to see you again!” she gushed. “Welcome back to New York!”

“Thanks. It’s good to be here.”

“Let me find you a table.”

As they walked through the dining room, he looked around. The place was almost empty, quite a contrast to the bustling enterprise he remembered. He looked over at her. “How are things? Business okay?”

“Oh, you know.” She looked briefly at him and then stopped at a table by the window. “Here you go.”

David remained standing. “Do you still do your show?” he asked. The restaurant, an imitation of a famous American chain, had had a dancing wait staff, which periodically would dash to the front of the restaurant and launch into a spirited rendition of some classic American rock-and-roll song.

Irina apologized with her eyes, then said quietly, “It’s been hard.” She placed a menu on the table. It still had the iconic pictures of New York and America – sketches of the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the capitol building in Washington, DC, the flag.

“Can I just get a tuna sandwich and some chips?” he asked.

“Sure.” Her smile was pained. “Enjoy your lunch.”

David sat down and looked around. Were people afraid now to be seen at an American-themed restaurant?

At a table several yards away, what looked like a grandfather and his granddaughter seemed to be in the middle of a squabble, the girl, about five years old, trying to protect a toy monkey from being taken away. The grandfather was still wearing his ushanka, as if making clear, with the furry hat perched on his head and the ear flaps down, that he did not approve of his granddaughter’s choice of restaurant and wanted to leave. The room was empty enough that David could hear their conversation.

“She went to the doctor yesterday,” the little girl insisted. “I have to take care of her.”

“I see,” the grandfather said. “But you’re going to spill something, and then she’s going to get all dirty, and your mother will get mad at me.” The girl ignored her grandfather’s prodding and removed a rubber band from the pocket of her skirt, took a paper napkin and used the rubber band to fasten the napkin to the monkey’s tail, like a bandage. She saw her grandfather eyeing her again, impatiently tapping his fork on the table.

“She’s hurt,” the girl said.

The grandfather rolled his eyes. “Masha, give it to me.” He reached out his hand, but Masha quickly pulled the animal back.

“I have to take care of her, Deda,” she frowned. She cuddled the monkey in her arms.

David’s food arrived, and he picked up a potato chip and kept watching.

A waitress began placing burgers and fries on the family’s table. Masha reached for a fry from her plate as the waitress was setting it down, but her hand hit the plate, flipping it and sending bread, hamburger patty, lettuce pieces, tomato slices, barbecue sauce and pickles flying. The plate crashed to the floor and clattered for several seconds, jarring the restaurant into silence. All eyes turned to their table.

The waitress, momentarily flustered, gave a cursory apology and started cleaning up. The grandfather looked disgusted but examined Masha’s outfit and declared it clean. But Masha, peering around the restaurant and seeing customers staring, felt the sting of rebuke. Her face began to quiver, and in a moment she burst into tears. Her grandfather, embarrassed at the attention the incident had drawn, tried to give Masha a hug, but she twisted away.

Irina headed toward the table and sent the waitress to the kitchen while Irina continued cleaning. In a few minutes, the waitress returned and handed Masha a glass of strawberry milkshake, noting that it matched the color of her skirt. Masha refused to look at it. She placed the monkey in her lap and stared straight ahead while the table was reset and more food delivered. The waitress placed a new burger in front of Masha, but she didn’t touch it.

David stood up and took one of his chips and walked over and handed it to Masha. “For your monkey,” he said. “She’s probably hungry.”

The grandfather frowned at David, but Masha, grateful for the attention from someone friendly, took the gift and acknowledged it with a slight upturn of her mouth. In a few moments she began feeding the chip to the monkey. The grandfather, noticing that Masha wasn’t feeding herself, and apparently deciding it wouldn’t be good for him to bring the girl home without lunch, picked up her burger and held it in front of her mouth. But Masha was more interested in the monkey, and she ignored her grandfather and straightened the monkey’s bandage and continued to feed the chip to her. The grandfather became bored and began looking around the room but continued holding the burger. Soon a blob of ketchup appeared at the edge of the bun, and it became larger and larger until it was about to drop. Masha looked up at her grandfather and noticed it.

“Deda,” the little girl said, nervously.

“Not now, Masha,” the grandfather said, staring out the window. “You can see I’m busy.”

“But Deda, it’s going to –”

“Not now, I said.”

“But Deda.”

The grandfather’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to his granddaughter.

“I said I was busy,” he said, raising his voice. “Now behave!”

And at that, the blob of ketchup dropped like an overripe tomato onto the monkey’s back.

Masha gasped. “Deda, I was going to tell you!”

The grandfather swore under his breath. He grabbed a glass of water and dipped a napkin and began frantically wiping the animal until all that was left was a large wet spot. “I told you it would get dirty, didn’t I?” the grandfather said, without a trace of irony. 

David had seen enough. He slid his chair back and stood up and started walking toward the front of the restaurant, where Irina stood. “Can you still play your music?” he asked.

“Um, I think so.”

They walked into a back room, and in a few minutes Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes” jumped out of the speakers. David returned to the restaurant and began walking around and signaling the waitresses to join him at the front. He lined them up behind himself, like background singers, then began imitating Presley, his hips whirling. He looked like a scarecrow in the wind, but he felt like the wind itself, free and whipping. No one was eating now. The grandfather scowled at the scene unfolding around him, but one, then two, then all the other customers began clapping to the rhythm.

David led the waitresses across the floor to Masha’s table. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of her seat and onto the floor. The grandfather stared but didn’t move. Masha looked around, embarrassed at the renewed attention, but when she noticed all eyes on her and bright, she began moving her hips and shoulders and arms together in ways no adult can imitate, giggling at every funny move. When the song was over, the kitchen staff stuck out their heads and raised their fists, and customers and waitresses cheered. Masha hugged her grandfather’s leg and smiled up at him.

David glanced over at Irina and called out the name of another song, and she started the music again. It was a Michael Jackson song, and David raised his hand, palm up, indicating Irina should crank up the volume. Then he grabbed her hand and led her out the front door and, together on the sidewalk, they began an awkward and hilarious imitation of Jackson and his moonwalk, until no one on the street could look away.

After a while, David stood aside and watched as Irina continued the dance, growing more and more animated, loving the spotlight. Customers began drifting into New York!, and in a short time she had to rush back inside to seat everyone. The restaurant was full of happy sounds again. The grandfather was still scowling, but he had finally removed his hat and was ordering dessert for himself and Masha.

David sat down at his table. His next column had virtually written itself. He would build it around what had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours, but it would be about much more than a disastrous public breakfast, a noisy jail, a fake miracle, a little girl made happy again and a business revived. It would be about how the news everywhere demands to be made better, and how you don’t have to be a journalist to make that happen. By understanding and demonstrating the patient, potent love of God, any woman, man or child can witness the power of love in everything and everyone, in grandfathers and grandchildren, in restaurant owners and staffs and customers, in so-called leaders who think they are in charge. What you have to do is listen to the angels. And then you have to act.

Chapter 51

As David left the restaurant and headed toward Elena’s studio, he saw zephyrs in the window of a food shop and bought two boxes, one for Tamar and one for Larisa and Sasha. He was feeling happy, generous and free. Who didn’t like zephyrs?

The first thing he noticed as he entered the studio was the set. It was empty but for two chairs on a slightly raised stage. The chairs were angled toward one another, with a small glass table between them holding a vase of yellow flowers. Facing the set were three rows of padded, royal blue seats. He found a chair in a shadowed corner of the room, behind the audience and out of the camera’s eye, and sat down and watched cameramen and assistants adjust their equipment and joke together.

His eyes drifted back to the set, and he saw Elena behind a barrier, studying her notes, her eyes burrowing into the paper. An aide came behind and whispered something into her ear. She took a pencil out of her pocket and made a note in the margin of her papers, then put the pencil between her fingers and slowly applied pressure until it snapped.

David watched for a while longer, thinking, listening, making notes. Then he looked around the studio. The audience were arriving in ones and twos and settling into the seats. A young couple in the back row held hands, not saying a word to each other. The woman kept bending down and wiping an imaginary spot off her shoes with a finger.

To David’s left a small commotion started, and he looked over to see Olga Maximovna entering the studio with a young man at her shoulder. The man helped her find a seat and then left her alone. She sat down and hung her purse on the seat in front of her, then removed her head scarf and smoothed the back of her hair. She reached into the purse and took out a piece of paper and began reading it, her lips moving silently. After a while she looked around the room. Her eyes momentarily landed on David, and she gave a broad smile and lifted her hand in a little wave.

The time approached for the program to begin, and the seats began filling up faster. A murmur rose from the crowd, and suddenly there were Elena and Chestnov moving across the stage to their seats. As the president sat down, he began scanning the audience and stopped at Olga Maximovna and nodded. She froze, and the paper slid unnoticed from her lap onto the floor.

Elena raised her hand for silence. What a privilege it is to be here, she said in practiced tones of soft-spoken fervor. The chance to ask questions of our president! She listed the order in which the members of the audience would speak. Announce your name and where you are from, she instructed. Speak clearly and in a conversational manner, as if you are asking your question of a friend. Don’t be afraid; Ilya Davidovich won’t bite! She smiled slightly, but she knew this was serious business and she shouldn’t upstage the president. And, most important, you must ask the question that was approved. No changes. Then she looked over at Chestnov and raised her eyebrows, silently asking if he was ready to start. He nodded. The television lights switched on.

The first questioner, a woman named Sofia from St. Petersburg, asked whether the people could count on Ilya Davidovich to keep the country safe.

“Of course,” he said. “Our enemies are numerous and determined, but our army and intelligence services are second to none. If our enemies raise their heads, we will crush them under our heels like cockroaches!”

The audience buzzed with surprise and guilty pleasure at the violence of the image.

After a while the questioners moved on to domestic issues, and a young man in a baggy suit, holding a microphone, edged down Olga Maximovna’s row until he stood next to her. She seemed startled when she saw him, as if she had forgotten she would be called upon. She slowly stood and took the microphone and straightened her back. “My name is Olga Maximovna,” she said in a trembling voice. “I am a widow from Moscow, and sometimes I have a hard time making ends meet. I operate a little zoo in my apartment building, and it brings in a tiny bit of money, but not enough for everything I need.” She paused for a moment and realized she didn’t have her paper and spotted it on the floor. It seemed inappropriate to bend down and pick it up, so for a few seconds more she was silent, gathering her wits. Then she said, “And, well, Ilya Davidovich, perhaps you cannot always be there personally for us, to perform miracles as you did for me this morning.” The audience chuckled. Everyone had seen her on TV. But Olga Maximovna seemed surprised at the reaction, as if she had forgotten where she was, and she looked around momentarily, then back at Chestnov. “But Ilya Davidovich, can you assure people like me that the government will always pay our pensions? I cannot live without mine.” Her shoulders relaxed. She had done it.

Chestnov paused, then leaned forward, his hands on his knees as if ready to spring. “Every citizen has a right to live without fear,” he said. “Yes, I can make you that promise. Your needs will always be met.” He smiled slyly. “Even if we have to resort to miracles.” The audience chuckled.

“Thank you, Ilya Davidovich,” she said.

Elena motioned to the man in the baggy suit to move toward the back, where the woman with the imaginary spot on her shoes was sitting tall and nodding toward the stage. But before the man could leave her side, Olga Maximovna grabbed the microphone. The audience gasped, and for the first time David noticed Yasnov. He was rising out of a chair in the opposite corner of the auditorium, his fists clenched.   

“Ilya Davidovich,” Olga Maximovna said, “I asked my question as I promised, but now, if you don’t mind, I have one more.” Chestnov’s face froze, and Elena made a motion with her hand to stop the cameras. Chestnov swayed his head back and forth, indicating his displeasure. Elena opened her mouth to speak, but Olga Maximovna spoke first, and this time she was deeply calm, as if settling into her true self. “I want to ask you another question, Ilya Davidovich. May I do that? It is a very important one.”

Yasnov was signaling that he wanted the woman with the spot on her shoes to speak next. Elena nervously rubbed her hands, unsure what to do, and she looked at Chestnov again. He let out a loud breath and nodded, and she turned to Olga Maximovna. “Ilya Davidovich will take your question,” she said. But she motioned to the cameras to stay dark.

Olga Maximovna smiled broadly and said, “Thank you, Ilya Davidovich. This is what I want to ask: Why can’t Russia be a normal country? We’re all tired. We don’t need more pretending. Seventy years of communism was enough pretending. We just need peace and a chance to live our lives. Russians are hard-working and clever, and we have a rich land. We can be great if we feel supported. Then we can do real miracles. Is that too much to ask, to let the people do miracles?”

Elena appeared to be struggling mightily to keep a straight face, as if she wanted to jump up and run to this woman and hug her. The room was silent, and Olga Maximovna spoke again. “Greatness is about more than a big army or a long history or lots of land or resources or money. Greatness is when people have hope.” She looked around, as if expecting support from the audience, but almost all faces were stone. She glanced back at David, who was sitting now on the edge of his seat, smiling and nodding at her, and she smiled back, as if relieved to see someone on her side. Then she turned to the front and waited. David had never seen such courage from a Russian in the face of government and public disapproval.

Chestnov still had not replied, so Olga Maximovna spoke again. “My husband was a great man,” she said. “He fought in the war. He loved his country. We all do.”

Chestnov looked at Elena, who whispered something to him. He began turning his head dramatically from left to right, scanning the audience, seemingly buying time to formulate a response. Then he looked directly at Olga Maximovna, and his face turned as stern as if he were about to chastise a child who had disobeyed a direct order. “We in the government know many things that are, frankly, beyond the understanding of the people,” he said. “In due time you will know what is to be done. You would do well to be grateful for the miracle you have already received. That is enough for now.” To punctuate the point, he made a fist and slammed it into his other palm.  

Chestnov turned to Elena, who signaled for the cameras to restart, and the woman in the back asked her question, about whether citizens were really free now to travel as they wished. Yes, you are, Chestnov said, and listed the actions the government was taking to make sure the borders stayed open. The questioner thanked him for the miracle of freedom, and he accepted the praise with a nod.

After a few more questions, Elena ended the program. Yasnov dashed backstage to be with his boss. Elena caught the eye of Olga Maximovna and gave a slight smile, then stood up and left the stage. Olga Maximovna stared a while longer at the empty set, her hands folded in her lap. No one was bold enough to come near her. She had a worried expression on her face, as if only now aware of what she had done. David grabbed his bag and moved quickly to the chair next to her and took out a box of zephyrs and placed it in her lap. She jerked her head toward him, then looked down at the box, then back at him. Her eyes brightened.

“Do you remember me, Olga Maximovna?” David said. “I’m the journalist –.”  She patted him on the knee. “I know, dear. I saw you back there. I’m glad you like zephyrs. They’re the best.” She opened the box, then let out a laugh that cut sharply through the still-tense air. “Oh, strawberry! I love these. Thank you!” Then she turned to him and said quietly, “Did you see how he looked at me? I lived forty years with a bully. I don’t like bullies.” She smiled. “I know. I kind of lied about my husband. He was a terrible man.” She paused, then said, “But you can’t hate people, you know? We’re all part of the same zoo.”

“You’re a brave woman, Olga Maximovna,” David said. “How is it, by the way, your zoo?”

“Just fine, thank –” David noticed that she looked behind him, but before he could turn, he felt a hand grip his shoulder. 

“Thank you, Olga Maximovna,” Yasnov said through gritted teeth. “You may leave now.” She rose slowly from her chair – it seemed to David she was deliberately taking her time – and lifted her purse off the back of the seat in front. David stood and faced Yasnov, who was shaking his head.

“Did Elena invite you here?” he asked. But he didn’t wait for an answer. “If you write anything about what this woman said –” His eyes made certain David felt the unnamed threat. “I should have left you in that god-damned jail, like they told me to.” He looked at David with disgust and opened his mouth to say more, but before any words came out, Olga Maximovna pushed her arm between him and David. In her hand was a pink zephyr. “This is for you, Maxim Sergeevich,” she said. “You’ve had a long day. You need a bit of Russian sweets.”

Yasnov, unsure what to do about this annoying woman, took the zephyr and held it awkwardly in his hand. His hand was sweaty, and David knew the sugar was melting against his skin. He wanted to laugh, but he also felt a burst of sympathy. It must be hard, he thought, to threaten someone when your hand is pink and sticky.

Yasnov looked at David with as stern a face as he could muster. “I want to see you in my office tomorrow morning, ten o’clock,” he said. “This is our country. We make the rules.”

“Yes,” Olga Maximovna interjected, “but the people make the miracles.”

Chapter 52

As soon as David saw Tamar standing in the entryway to her apartment, holding the door open for him, he knew. She had said back in Washington that he was her rock; well, she was his light in a way, always on, always making things brighter. He thought of the story in the Bible where Jesus, after his resurrection, had pulled alongside two of his followers and begun talking with them. They didn’t recognize him at first; they thought he was a stranger. But this man, they realized afterward, had made their hearts burn. Tamar made David’s heart burn. What this ultimately meant for their relationship he wasn’t sure, but he knew he had to stay close to her. As for writing about her, certainly he couldn’t be neutral, but wasn’t that the point? It’s not possible to write honestly about anyone unless you understand who they are, and when you understand who they are, who they really are, how can you be neutral? The goal of good journalism is not neutrality, after all. The goal is truth.

“Leave your coat on,” Tamar said, as if David had been on a brief errand and was just returning. She motioned to Larisa. “Come with me, both of you. I want to show you something.”

Larisa bundled Sasha and dropped him into the stroller, and she and David followed Tamar out of the building and across the street to the little grocery store on the corner. As they walked, David told them about the events of the day, the noisy jail, the surprise meeting with Max, Ilya finding money in a fish’s mouth, lunch at New York!, the TV broadcast and Max’s insistence that David meet with him tomorrow.

“Ilya doesn’t know what to do with this country,” Tamar said. “He wants to make it great, but he has no idea what that means.” They had reached the store. “This is what it means.”

Inside, a thoroughly mundane scene was unfolding. An old man holding a carton of eggs stood in line at the cheese counter. A mother gently held her young child by the hand, keeping her from grabbing the colorful products around her. An old woman looked up toward a shelf full of shampoo bottles, which were too high for her to reach. She started to step onto the bottom shelf, which did not appear very sturdy, and a man, seeing the risk she was taking, hurried over and asked, “May I help you?” He pulled the bottle she wanted down for her, and she thanked him. Then she moved on and walked by the woman with the young child and said something to the mother that made her laugh. The mother let go of her child, and the child moved with purpose, ignoring the distractions and going straight to the line for cheese. When she arrived, the old man didn’t see her behind him and backed into her, stumbled and dropped his eggs to the floor, breaking some. Instead of freezing or crying, the girl picked up the carton and put it onto a nearby shelf and ran to get the man a new carton of eggs. He thanked her with a smile and a bow.

David looked at Tamar and laughed. “You didn’t even have to raise your hand!”

“Exactly,” she said. “Russians just need faithful witnesses.” She didn’t smile; her eyes gleamed with purpose. “This country is already great. They don’t need a tortured ideology or clever leadership or a big army to be great; they just need their goodness to be recognized.”

David looked around the store. The man and the woman and the mother with child had all departed, and a new set of customers had entered. Tamar continued speaking, as if firmly in charge of everything around, seen and unseen. “Real miracles happen when people feel loved,” she said.

David had never felt so inspired as a journalist. “Will you excuse me?” he said. Tamar and Larisa moved to a corner of the store and waited while he asked customers about times when they felt loved, when something beautiful burst through, like the sun from behind clouds: A threat neutralized, a friendship renewed, a promise kept, or something as simple as a carton of broken eggs replaced. He could feel in the store the hopelessness that had plagued Russia for so long being subsumed in a flood of ordinary goodness.

As they walked back to the apartment, Tamar turned to David. “We’re not going to leave Max out of this,” she said. “Larisa and Sasha are going with you to your meeting tomorrow.” She described her plan, and David was surprised that he felt no objection. It all made sense. There was something different in Larisa since she and Tamar had become close: a confidence, a fearlessness, a sense of peace. As for Tamar, he welcomed her involvement now in his work. It was clear they were of one mind.

“It will be a pleasure,” he said.

Chapter 53

“Girl! Bring us some tea!”

Maxim Yasnov shouted into the phone, then slammed the receiver down. “Russians respect power,” he growled, looking down the long, low table at David and Larisa. Sasha sat on the table in front of his mother, chewing on the foot of his fluffy penguin. Max sat at a high desk at the end of the table, the whole arrangement forming a “T.”

“I’m sorry to have to say this in front of your friend,” he said to David, “but we’ve reached the end of the line.”

“What do you mean?” David asked.

“Your visa is being revoked.”

For some reason David found this funny. “That makes no sense, Max,” he said. “You have correspondents from other foreign papers who criticize the government all the time. I never do.”

Max shrugged. “I have my orders.”

David shook his head and lifted himself slightly off his chair and swiveled his legs under the table. He felt metal bars scrape the tops of his thighs. Why would Max put them at such a low table, like naughty pupils in the principal’s office? “Okay,” David said, pretending not to understand the seriousness of his situation. “Is that all?” He finally found some relief by inserting his knees between two metal bars. “Because Larisa here has something to ask you, and I’ve got work I need to get out today.” He glanced at her, but she was playing some kind of finger game with Sasha.

“I’m not finished,” Max grumbled. David could see his heart wasn’t in it. Someone had clearly instructed him to get rid of this pesky writer, and he was merely carrying out orders. But as Max opened his mouth to say more, a young woman of about twenty, dressed in a tight black sweater and pants, appeared in the doorway, holding a tray with three cups of tea. She looked hesitantly at Max, as if afraid she would be fired if she did the wrong thing.

“Alright,” Max said. He motioned angrily with his head for her to come in. The woman placed two cups in front of the men and the third near Larisa but, thoughtfully, out of reach of Sasha. Larisa nodded her thanks, and the woman left. Max had not taken his eyes off David. “You’ve humiliated us,” Max said.

“What? How?”

Max scowled. “If you had been fair, you would have written about a Russia of faith and strength, with a government that’s maybe not perfect but is trying. But instead, you write about a country where people are poor and confused and essentially on their own. It’s insulting, and as far as we’re concerned, it’s just another display of American arrogance.” Twice Max eyed Larisa as he said all this, perhaps trying to judge how the only other Russian in the room was reacting. She calmly looked back into Max’s face, betraying no emotion. “You’re basically saying Russia is a desperate country, and America needs to step in and help us,” he said. “We don’t need your help. We don’t want it.”

David shook his head. “I have the highest admiration for the Russia I see and for the Russian people,” he said. “They’re generous and intelligent and kind. You’re intentionally misinterpreting what I write.”

But Max seemed not to be listening. He picked up his cup and took a sip of tea, then spit it back into the cup. “It’s cold,” he grumbled. “I don’t know why that idiot can’t get it right.” He looked at Larisa, and suddenly the room grew quiet. She was looking back at him with an expression that said, Come on, man, you know better than to treat a woman like that. Max looked down at the desk for a moment, and then his tone turned suddenly solicitous. He looked at her. “Do you want another cup?” He turned to David, “And you? Do you want another one?”

Larisa said quietly, “No, thank you.” David, marveling at the emotional gymnastics going on in front of him, said, “No, it’s fine, thanks.” The tea was lukewarm at best, but the woman had looked so frightened David didn’t want to get her into any more trouble.  

“Alright.”

Max looked out the window, as if he had said his piece and wanted to move on. David swiveled his legs again. Larisa had an expression of mild amusement on her face. Max turned back to his visitors. “Come up here, both of you,” he said, and he made a demonstrable roll of his eyes. “I’m sick of this Soviet furniture. It’s designed to humiliate guests, but what’s the point of humiliating people if you want to work with them?” David realized it wasn’t his discomfort or nonchalance or defense of his writing that had produced the change in Max, it was Larisa. She understood him better than David did.

“Let me ask you something,” Max said. He pulled two chairs from against the wall, slid them to points either side of his own, patted the seats and smiled welcomingly at David and Larisa. David stood up slowly and walked to the desk and sat down, but Larisa stayed where she was. “Thank you, but I think I’ll stay here with Sasha,” she said.

Max, surprised, shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.”

David, unsure what was happening, sat down on the edge of the chair. Max opened a drawer and pulled out a clipping from a newspaper. “Here’s your column about Olga Maximovna,” he said. He read aloud what David had written, then looked up. “Now, that’s one aspect of Russia,” he said, “a little zoo in Moscow that an old woman keeps for her fantasies. But the fact is rather depressing, don’t you think, when Moscow already has one of the finest zoos in the world? Why would we want to celebrate a dirty little apartment-zoo? It makes us look pathetic.” He paused and looked carefully at David. “Are you trying to make us look pathetic?”

David let out a small sigh of disappointment. “No, I’m trying to show what a diverse and interesting country you have. Seriously. She loves her zoo. I think it’s touching. She keeps it for the children, even though they rarely come.”

“They rarely come because it’s pathetic,” Max said. He tried to sound forceful, but he looked at Larisa again and his shoulders slumped. David could see he was exhausted and shamed by trying to deal simultaneously with the two worlds in front of him.

“Then why did you have her at the river,” David asked, “if you don’t want the focus on her?”

“She’s our citizen,” he said, “and you’d already built a narrative around her. We had to change it. We constantly feel disrespected. All the Western media focus on in Russia is what’s pathetic. And the fire keeps burning.”

Max’s head bowed slightly, as if his neck were supporting a heavy weight, and he looked at Larisa. And the longer he looked, the more David realized something was changing before his eyes. Max’s resentment seemed to be falling away like burned skin, and in its place was settling a deep and seemingly inconsolable sadness.

“One thing I’ve learned in my time here,” David said quietly, “is that Russia is full of surprises. I find you very interesting, Maxim Sergeevich. Who are you, really?”

Max ran his finger around the edge of his teacup, then looked back up at David. “I’m one of the people who’s supposed to keep the fire lit,” he said. “To be honest, I’m tired.”

This was unexpected, to have the man bare his soul so openly. David wanted to be gentle. “What fire are we talking about, Max?” he asked quietly.

“For some people in the government, the fire is the point of life,” he said. “They want to burn everything down and be the last person standing. I’ve never understood that. People who live in straw houses shouldn’t play with matches. We’ve both got big problems in our countries. What does it accomplish for either of us to burn the world down just so we can stand on top of a heap of ashes?”

There was international news buried in that answer, but there was also pleading. David noticed that Max was looking at Larisa again. What had he been through that drew him so forcefully to her?

Max turned back to David and continued, “But what choice does Russia have? We have to defend ourselves. As far as you Americans are concerned, we deserve to be humiliated. What harm did we ever do you? We saved your skin in World War II. Millions of our people died. Millions. Russia was ninety percent of the reason Hitler lost, but you act like you saved the world. Yes, Stalin was brutal, but would you rather have Hitler? Stalin took a society that was basically peasants and built it into a superpower. That’s not nothing. Say what you will about communism, it brought people together. We had pride. My grandmother helped build the Moscow subway when she was a girl. She worked in bare feet with water to her knees because she was passionate about creating a new society. We didn’t hate America. There were many things we admired about you. But I know the feeling wasn’t mutual, and when the wall came down, it was a huge disappointment to find out Americans are as arrogant and selfish as everyone else.”

Max abruptly shut his mouth and looked again at Larisa, as if for confirmation that his ideas weren’t crazy. She suddenly smiled, and Max seemed to melt. He let loose a smile of his own, as big as a Siberian sky. David could see there was much more ready to come out and decided to make a bold move. “Max, I’d like to write about you,” he said. “You could be my next story about what makes Russia great. I think you have a lot to say. Will you let me profile you?”

Max chewed his lip for a long time, glancing back and forth between David and Larisa. She swiveled Sasha to face him, as if she wanted him to get to know her son. Then he said, “I’m going to regret it, but alright, write about me. But you can’t use my name.”

“No problem. What shall I call you?”

“Call me Maxim Slabov.”

“Maxim the Weak?”

“Yes. I’m not proud of a lot of the things I’ve done.”

David saw he had no choice but to put everything he had to do that day on hold. This was his biggest story yet. He pulled out his notebook.

Chapter 54

“Let’s do this right now,” David said, spreading out his notebook on his side of Max’s desk. “How did you get to know Ilya Davidovich?”

Max pursed his lips, as if it were the most important question he had ever been asked. “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this,” he said. He leaned back in his chair. “The Soviet Union was falling apart, and Ilya Davidovich was in Tbilisi. Word got around here among people like me from elite families – my father worked with Brezhnev – that he was kind of a star. We didn’t want to lose the USSR, just the corruption and complacency, and he seemed like someone who understood that. So my sister and I decided to go there and help him keep at least something of what was good about the USSR alive. We didn’t want to lose Georgia. It was one of our star republics. He said I had promise. I was really pleased with that. And since I spoke American English – I’d had good teachers and watched American movies all the time – he asked me if I would go to the United States and help with some things.”

David raised his eyebrows. “What kinds of things?”

Max shook his head. “Just things. Katya, that’s my sister, she stayed in Tbilisi, and then, when Ilya Davidovich became president, she went with him and worked as his personal assistant.”

David wanted to focus on what Max had just hinted at. “This is big,” he said. “What did he ask you to help with in the U.S.?”

A brief fire flashed in Max’s eyes. “You Americans are just as bad, you know,” he said angrily. “You think you can go around and bully the world.” He made a finger-gun and shot it.

“You encouraged that stuff!”

Max let out a long breath and smiled slightly. “I had a lot to work with,” he said.

“Okay.  In any case, it’s safe to say you weren’t going there as a student, right?”

“Not entirely. I figured it would be useful to get a degree in the US. I didn’t end up getting one.”

David decided to try a different angle. “So, what did you do, exactly, besides recruiting people to march in front of memorial services for murdered reporters?”

“That was later. At first, I just did some research, and it seemed Meek was someone we could work with.”

David stopped writing. “So, Meek agreed to work with you? Doing what?”

“Oh, he had no clue what I was doing. I was just some student taking a semester off to get work experience. But I figured out I could tell him what a great man he was, that he was chosen by God and all that, and he would listen.” He let out a breath. “But then you and your friend came along.”

“Wait. Listen to what? What did you tell him?”

Max just shook his head.

David, amazed at the thoughts firing in all directions, knew he had to tread carefully. “Okay. Tell me about Tamar. Why were you so obsessed with her?”

Max stared at him, as if trying to decide how much he should say.

“Come on, Max, tell me,” David said. “Did that come from Ilya Davidovich? He knew her in Tbilisi.”

“Of course,” Max said. “You have to understand where he was coming from. The Soviet Union was his life. For him, the United States is to blame for everything bad that’s happened to us. He has a huge chip on his shoulder, as you like to say. He hates America, and he wasn’t going to let one woman ruin everything he was trying to do. He knows what she’s capable of.” He chewed his lip for a moment. “I know at one point he brought her back to Tbilisi and talked with her – this is what he told me – but I don’t know exactly what happened.”

David was quiet.

“When you guys applied for visas,” Max went on, “we decided to give them to you to get you out of the U.S.”

“So, you knew we were here?”

“Of course. Keep your enemies close, you know?” Realizing he had said more than he wanted to, he shut his mouth firmly and made a motion to zip it. “Enough.”

But David was not about to let this go. “So, what you’re saying is, Ilya Davidovich was pushing some kind of war against the United States, with Jonah Meek as a key part, and he was afraid Tamar would screw it all up. Is that right?”

“Don’t ask me anything else. I’m done.”

David sighed. “Why are you telling me all this? Ilya is not going to be pleased.”

“Oh, he’ll be super pissed, as you Americans would say.”

“Then . . . why do it?”

“Things have changed,” he said softly. He glanced at Larisa again.

“Okay, um, want to tell me more?”

“My sister is dead.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” David said. “What happened?”

“She was raped, and then she killed herself.”

Larisa gave a small gasp, and David knew she was thinking the same thing he was: Chestnov. For a moment he wasn’t sure what to say, but Max filled the silence, as if a deep secret was out now and he could finally talk freely. “She told me about it when I came back for New Year’s last year and begged me not to tell anyone. I asked her who did it, but she wouldn’t say. But afterwards Ilya Davidovich gave her money and jewelry and an apartment, so I got this awful feeling it was him. Anyway, she knew she’d lose everything if word got out, so I swore I’d keep my mouth shut, but it was torture after that to work for someone who had probably done this. I’m ashamed to say I just went back to work and continued like before. I decided to swallow it all and keep my head down and work, for Katya’s sake.”

Larisa quietly stood up, but Max, who was looking intently at David, didn’t notice. She took Sasha in her arms and walked to the desk and sat down in the empty chair next to Max. She touched his shoulder. He looked up, surprised, but didn’t shake her touch away. In fact, it seemed to embolden him, and his voice became more determined. “One day she called me, out of her mind, and said she couldn’t take it anymore, the humiliation. I told her not to worry, she could just quit, but she said that wasn’t an option. She knew too much. She was crying and crying.” He paused and looked at David and then at Larisa. “That night she killed herself.”

David shook his head. “That’s terrible.”

Yasnov looked at Larisa, who was now holding his hand. “I should have been with her,” he said. “I should have been helping her get through it. After that, Ilya Davidovich brought me back and gave me a job here, so I’m grateful to him in kind of a perverse way, but I know it was because he didn’t want me to talk. He’s paying me double. A lot of people who work for him are like that. We all know secrets we can’t talk about.”

“But you’re talking now,” David said. “He’ll know this is from you.”

He gently pulled his hand away from Larisa’s “Well, I don’t care anymore,” he said. “I respect him in a way, because he loves Russia as much as we all do. But I know he’s going to drag this country down, and everyone in it, until he and his friends are the only ones standing.” He folded his hands again, as if resolved to be forever lonely, and stared out the window.

David was about to speak again, but Larisa opened her mouth. “Maxim Sergeevich?” she said. “May I suggest something? You’ve clearly never been appreciated for your dedication, to your sister and to Russia. This is what I came to ask you, and I’m convinced you can do it.”

Max turned and faced her.

“I think you can do miracles,” she said. “I mean real ones, things that are just amazingly good but perfectly natural. Do you know the Bible?”

“Sure, I mean, yeah.” He gave a sheepish grin, as if acknowledging he might have picked one up once and glanced at it.

“Well, I’ve been reading it a lot lately. It gives me peace. And there’s a story about Paul and his friend Silas, how they were thrown into prison, and they started praying and singing, and then there was an earthquake so big it shook the foundations of the prison, and the doors flew open and everyone’s chains fell off. And so, I was thinking.” They looked at each other for a long time, as if the conversation were continuing mentally. Then he raised his eyebrows, and she continued. “And so, I was thinking, Maxim Sergeevich, you can do that. You can free the prisoners. That would be a real miracle. And you can start with the prison where my friends are.” He looked confused. “The most dangerous thing they’ve ever done is burn some blinchiki,” she continued.

Max realized who she was talking about and turned to David. “You shouldn’t have been there,” he said. “They probably wouldn’t be in jail if we didn’t think the news about it would spread. It’s why Ilya Davidovich wanted to bring you to the river. He wanted you to write about him, not about some crazy women. If they were going to feed the people with hope, he would do something even more amazing and feed them with a miracle.”

“Well, you know, this may surprise you,” David said, “but standing by the river, I realized something. I realized he was actually trying to do good, in his own perverse way. It was clumsy and deceptive, but I could see that there was also something genuine about it, too.”

“Well, I think he means well,” Max said, “I really do. But at bottom, he’s just not a good man.” He thought for a few moments. “I’m not going to push the thing about your visa, David. They told me to cancel it, but frankly, what you write is good for us. It’s where we should be focusing, on the people. Sooner or later my bosses will find out you’re still here, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re safe. For now.”

“Thanks.”

Max turned to Larisa. “But I’m sorry,” he said, “I have no way to just walk in and let people out of prison. That’s out of my hands.” His face became forlorn.

David looked at Larisa and was surprised she was not disappointed or angry but smiling, a look of sympathy on her face. David realized that that was what had drawn Max to her, the simple, generous love she expressed in abundance and that he missed so much from his sister. He needed to feel that love in order to do the right thing, and she knew it.

An idea occurred to David. “Is there anyone else I could talk to, Max, who could give me a fresh perspective? Someone who knows you but can also help me understand what’s happening in Russia right now, how people are thinking, how the government is thinking, after everything the country has been through?”

“Yes,” he said right away. “Sergei Melnik. He was at university with me and then went into the priesthood. But he decided that wasn’t for him, and now he runs a little restaurant in St. Petersburg. He sees a spiritual struggle going on in this country. I think you’ll appreciate what he has to say.” He took out a piece of paper and wrote down his contact information and handed the paper to David. “By the way, can you tell me something?” he asked. “It’s been on my mind for a long time. Remember when that woman in Lincoln was hit in the face by a shovel and you came out of the house and said something to her husband and she revived? What did you say? What did you do?”

“Nothing amazing,” David said. “There was a lot of emotion that day. I just told him not to be afraid, that God loved her and was caring for her. That’s all. It’s something I’ve learned over the years. God is Love and He’s always there, even in our darkest moments. Her husband needed to see that, and once he felt it, the atmosphere changed, and his wife could be herself again.”

Max was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “By the way, tell her to watch her back.”

David was startled at the comment. “You mean, um, Tamar? Why? What do you know?”

“Nothing,” he said. “But Ilya Davidovich knows she’s here, and he knows what she can do. He saw what happened in Lincoln, how Meek wasn’t the same after that. He can be dangerous when things don’t go well for him, and things aren’t going well for him right now. People are restless.” His face fell once more into grief. “Just write my story. I don’t want to leave without it being told.” Slowly, he stood up. “Thank you for coming. Talk to Sergei.”

Larisa, however, remained seated and kissed the top of Sasha’s head. “What do you mean, you don’t want to leave, Maxim Sergeevich?” she asked. She turned to her son. “What do you think, solnyshka?” she asked Sasha. “Do you think Maxim Sergeevich can perform a real miracle?”

Sasha made sounds that sounded like words but had no meaning.

“Yes, you’re right,” Larisa said and turned to Max, looking at him with such fierce eyes that David had to catch his breath. “Sasha reminded me that the keeper of the prison where Paul and Silas were, he wanted to kill himself because he knew he’d be in trouble when they found out the prisoners had escaped. But he hadn’t done anything wrong, and Paul and Silas convinced him of that; all the prisoners were still there. And the next day they walked free, everyone.”

“And your point is?” Max asked.

“My point is –” She stood up and took his hand again and looked into his eyes, her intensity holding him fast. “My point is, there’s a happy ending to this story if we all do our part.”

As they stood there, holding hands, David realized Larisa had not scratched herself once in all the time they had been there. That was what was different about her since the night at her apartment. She had needed someone who could appreciate the strength even she didn’t know she had, and Tamar had done that for her. Now she was doing the same for Max. They were both at peace and unafraid to love.

Chapter 55

When David and Larisa reached Tamar’s apartment after the meeting with Max, Tamar opened the door wearing a heavy scarf and wool cap. “The radiators don’t work,” she said, looking apologetically at Larisa. David walked over and felt one for himself. “That’s odd,” he said to Tamar. “Have you talked to the manager?”

“He’s not home.” She pulled her cap tighter. “How was your meeting?”

“Great,” David said. “Larisa can tell you more. I’m supposed to go to St. Petersburg tomorrow to talk to a friend of his.” He paused for a moment. “But I’m wondering if I should go now. Are you guys going to be okay?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” Tamar said.

“And something else,” David said. “Max told me to tell you to watch your back. Chestnov knows you’re here.”

Tamar scoffed. “I’m sure he does,” she said. A dark look flickered across her face but disappeared quickly. “But I’ve got better things to do than worry about that man.” She touched David’s shoulder, and he reached up and placed his hand on hers.

“Keep alert,” he said.

“I know.”

***

The midnight train for St. Petersburg rolled from under the covered platforms of Moscow’s Leningradsky Station. David looked around his cabin. There was a bunk bed, a chair and a little fold-down table under the window, with a vase of plastic yellow flowers and a bottle of water.

In a short time, a man with a thin black mustache and sleepy eyes knocked on the cabin door. He was wearing a pressed gray uniform, smart-looking but fraying at the edges. It struck David as a metaphor for Russia itself, a proud country doing its best to hide how far it had fallen.

“Good evening, sir,” the man said. “This is my vagon. Would you like some tea?”

“That would be lovely,” David said.

The man returned in a few minutes with a steaming glass mug and placed it next to the flowers and the bottle of water. Everything jiggled as the train picked up speed. The man made sure David had towels, a pillow, an extra blanket and directions to the toilet. David asked him what it was like working on a midnight train.

“It can be lonely,” he said.

“Do you have a family?”

He looked surprised at the personal question and said, “Just a minute.” He walked down the hallway of the vagon, one by one closing the little white curtains on each window, creating the feeling of a rolling country inn. He came back and brought another chair with him and sat down and smiled at David. “Okay now, I have a few minutes,” he said. “I like talking to Americans. Do I have a family? Yes. My wife and a girl who’s nine and a boy who’s six. They drive me to the station on nights when I work, and I sleep the next day in a small apartment in Petersburg, with other people from the railroad. Then I take the train back that night, and my family picks me up in the morning. I’ve been doing this for ten years now. My wife is Katya. My children are Alina and Sasha. I’m Oleg. And you?”

David, feeling the man’s warmth, said, “I’m David. No family yet. I write for a newspaper called The Christian Reporter, and I’m interested in what you have to say about Russia. Do you mind if I make notes?”

Oleg was quiet for a moment. “Okay, I guess,” he said. He rubbed his knees nervously. “I have to get back to work soon.”

“Don’t worry,” David said, “it will only take a minute. Tell me about something wonderful that has happened to you here in Russia. Something good or special that came about that was just all good, like a miracle. I’m trying to describe for my readers what’s so special about this country.” 

He thought for a long time. “It’s not the way we think here. For Russians, the glass is always half empty. It’s how we protect ourselves. Life right now for a lot of people feels like a bomb exploded and we all ended up alone in a field somewhere. Me, I’m grateful. I’m reasonably happy, I’ve got a good family and a steady job and nice customers to talk to. I suppose all that is kind of a miracle. What about America?”

“For Americans the glass is always half full,” David said, “or we pretend it is, but only half. We constantly want more, and we sometimes have a problem being grateful. Maybe together we can make a full glass someday.”

“That would be nice,” he said. “I think the world needs us both.” A bell chimed softly in the hallway outside the cabin. “I’ve gotta go,” he said. “Have a peaceful sleep. I’ll wake you a half hour before we arrive.”

Chapter 56

As David’s train pulled into the St. Petersburg station, Tamar woke in Moscow, shivering. Larisa and Sasha were still asleep, buried deep under blankets. She pulled a scarf out of her dresser and wrapped it several times around her neck and pushed it under her chin. She felt the radiator. Stone cold. Muttering to herself, she dialed the manager. No answer. Throwing a long wool coat over her nightgown, she rode the elevator to his apartment, but he did not respond to her knock. She knocked at a neighbor’s door, and when the woman peered out, a burst of warm air hit Tamar’s face. Puzzled, she asked the woman if she knew what was happening, or where the manager was. She had no idea, she said. “Have you paid your bill?”

Tamar, indignant, said, “Of course.”

“I don’t know, then.”

“I need to find a way to get my heating fixed,” Tamar said, her annoyance growing. “Any ideas?”

“Drink some hot tea. That always works for me,” the woman said and shut the door.

Back in her apartment, Tamar began pacing the living room. Dark thoughts circled her mind. She felt a heavy presence at the window and looked but saw nothing. She knew what it was, of course. She had lived with the festering fear for months. She forced herself to turn away and whispered I am not afraid. I am not afraid. This country may be his, but I am not.

She felt a little stronger, but the presence did not yield. She pulled the scarf tighter around her neck. The phone rang. Thinking it was the manager, Tamar answered quickly.

“Yes, hello,” said a deep male voice. “Is this Tamar Tsmindashvili?”

“Yes,” she said, warily.

“You need to come to the Mosenergosbyt office. There’s a problem with your heat.”

“Um, yes, there is,” she said, “but why should I go there? The manager should take care of this.”

“If you want your heat, you’d better come,” the man said and hung up.

Tamar hesitated, then decided she needed to do something before the apartment became unlivable. She threw on some clothes and scratched out a note for Larisa that she would be back in an hour or two.

***

David departed the train in St. Petersburg feeling rested and happy after a peaceful sleep and a warm goodbye from Oleg. But as he walked from the station into the city, a cold drizzle began to glaze his face. The wind picked up, and shards of frozen rain pelted his cheeks. Pictures came into his mind of the city as it must have been in its days as Leningrad under Nazi siege: the frozen bodies, the empty shelves, people eating dirt because sugar had spilled there, jelly made from glue. The cold, the dark, the bombs. St. Petersburg was beautiful again, with buildings restored to something like their former grandeur, but the restoration felt only partial, as if the devastation had merely been painted over, the terror and cruelty never quite vanquished.

He approached a store window, gray with inner fog, and saw a child’s hand moving in circles, wiping away the mist. Soon the child’s face peered out half wrapped in a scarf, his eyes red from a cold. David leaned back and looked up.  The sign said simply “Sergei’s Restaurant” in Russian.

In a moment, a man in a baggy knit sweater cleared a broader swath on the window and motioned for him to come around the side.

“You must be David,” the man said. “I’m Sergei.”

David entered and looked around. Eight tables were neatly spaced, with four chairs precisely placed around each one. In the center of each table stood a matryoshka. Along the windowsill a matryoshka had been dismantled and the dolls lined from largest to smallest. At the end of the windowsill sat a young boy, about nine years old and obviously sick, staring at the visitor and stroking the head of the tiniest doll. His brother, a young teenager, was sitting on a chair next to him, paging through a hockey magazine.

Sergei guided his visitor into the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind if I work while we talk,” he said, offering David a seat on a small bench by the window. He began scrubbing around the burners of an old gas stove. “It’s my day to clean. We’re closed today. But Maxim is an old friend, and I’m happy to help, if I can.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you like some tea?”

 “I would. Thank you.”

He waited as Sergei filled a cup and placed a few cookies from a package onto a plate. He set the cup and plate on a crate beside David, and David sipped the bitter liquid, letting the warmth roll up his face. He nodded at the boys, who were sneaking glances at him. “Do they help you a lot?” he asked.

Sergei smiled. “I don’t need them to, really. I just like having them around.”

“What do you want for them when they grow up?”

“Not this.” He swept his hand around the room. “Anton’s good at math. Maybe he’ll be an engineer someday.”

The mention of his name seemed to liberate the older boy, and he stood up and looked out the window where the fog had been cleared. The younger boy, copying his brother, joined him at the glass. His scarf had slipped down over his shoulders. He blew his nose on a paper towel, making as much noise as he could. His brother frowned and made eyes, which encouraged the younger boy to blow even louder. David held out the plate of cookies for the boys. They came into the kitchen, and each took one.

“They feel loved, I can tell,” David said.

“I hope so.”

Sergei began wiping down the sides of the stove. “So, you’re American,” he said.

“I am,” David laughed. “Why do I always feel I need to apologize for that around here?”

“Well, the promise of America has kind of turned out to be one big headache for us,” he said. He finished cleaning the sides of the stove and sat down on the floor. “But I don’t think it’s entirely spontaneous, how people see you now.”

“What do you mean?”

Sergei silently traced a tile on the floor with a finger. “I need a guarantee you won’t use my name or identify me in any way,” he said. “I think you call it ‘deep background’. You can use the ideas, or not, as you wish, but please leave me out of it.”

“That’s fine. I won’t mention you as a source.”

“Even anonymously.”

“Even anonymously.”

“Okay.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Ilya Davidovich hates the West and especially America. That’s no secret. You can see it in the comments he makes. He blames America for everything bad that’s happened to Russia, now and for decades before this.”

“Yes, that’s clear.”

“But what’s not so obvious is that he doesn’t just blame America. He’s actively trying to undermine your country.”

“I gathered that from Maxim.”

“I’m convinced there’s more to it than just what he was doing. Do you know the novel “Confession” by Maxim Gorky?

“No.”

“It’s about a bunch of people who get together to heal a crippled girl mentally, not through faith but through mass will-power. Gorky called it ‘God-building,’ with the people taking the place of God. The idea became infectious in the Soviet Union, at least for a while, that mass will-power was all you needed to create a good country and a good life. That and the ideology, of course. Add science and technology, and you could do anything faith claimed to do, even raise the dead.”

“I hadn’t heard that part.”

“Some people thought it was one of the reasons they preserved Lenin’s body in the tomb, so Soviet scientists could find a way to resuscitate it. It was ignorant and arrogant, but that was the Soviet Union for you.”

“And what does this have to do with America?”

“America is the opposite of God-building. You have your ideology, capitalism, and you have your will-power and technology, but you also have something the Soviet Union didn’t, which is faith. Russians are religious, of course, and many of us kept our faith during Soviet times, but the Soviet Union itself wasn’t built on faith. America was. Not a particular denomination or set of religious beliefs, which would have destroyed your country if one had been allowed to dominate, but faith in humanity, faith that people are naturally good, that the normal state of mankind is freedom and equality. Faith in humanity gives America its core character. I believe that faith comes from God, and apparently so did your founders, but you don’t have to believe in God to accept it.”

“I agree.”

“The Soviet Union had its freedoms, too, at least on paper,” Sergei continued. “Our constitution included the right to freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of the press. But the application of the rights became cynical, and it gradually eroded the strength of the country. It’s why you came out on top in the Cold War, because the moral and spiritual strength of your country was greater than the moral and spiritual vacuum the Soviet Union had become, and what Russia still is today. Ilya Davidovich knows this, which is why he believes the only choice he has if he’s going to restore Russian greatness is to destroy America’s faith. He wants to turn your country into a cesspool of resentment and fear, so faith loses its grip. Then he can say, see, Russia may be bad, but America is worse. For him, it’s a holy war.”

“Faith is not as strong in America as it used to be,” David said.

“That’s not really true. The principles your country was founded on are still alive, and they still enable you to inspire the world and lift it up, when you actually practice them. He knows that. He would like to do it himself, lift the world up. That’s why he pretends to do miracles. But he’s a deeply troubled man, and all he can do is fake it. Kind of like your Jonah Meek.”

“Which brings us back to Maxim.”

“Meek is a godsend for Chestnov. He’s the perfect vehicle to corrupt American faith. To Meek, the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of self-interest, which is the pursuit of material wealth and advantage. There’s nothing spiritual or moral in that. If Meek, or someone like him, gets a big following and starts to sway millions, America will lose sight completely of what makes it strong, and the real winner will be Russia, at least in Chestnov’s mind.”

“Did Maxim tell you all this?”

“Not in so many words, but I’m convinced that was his job: Infect America. He said he would constantly give Meek ideas that would mix lies with truth, hate with love, the profane with the religious. Basically, poison America’s sense of faith until there’s nothing left but resentment and fear in the name of God. Then America will have lost, and Russia, or, more specifically, Ilya Davidovich and the people around him, will have won, because fake religion is a field on which they can compete.”

“That’s clever, I suppose.”

“Listen, Americans have to wake up. You act as if the world is your playground, and you can do whatever immoral thing you want in the name of freedom. You need to get back to your roots. It’s what we expect from America. Malice toward none, charity for all. Excuse me if I sound like a priest, but you can’t fake real faith.”

David glanced out the kitchen door. The young boy was looking back at him. “Your younger son,” David said, “what’s his name?”

“Pavel.” At the mention of his name, Pavel smiled like a full moon with a big red cloud in the middle. He pulled his scarf across his mouth and nose like a bandit.

“I love that he doesn’t let anything get in the way of his joy,” David said. “Even if he’s sick, he makes this whole place feel happy.”

Sergei laughed. “He loves people. You should see him with his hockey team. They have so much fun.” Sergei made a motion as if he were slapping a puck through the kitchen door, and Pavel laughed and lifted his arms as if his father had just scored.

“Maybe that’s all it is,” David said, “this stuff we’re all going through in both our countries, the envy and hatred, the suffering and disappointment and resentment and fear. Maybe the solution is as simple as replacing all that with love. I know that sounds naïve, but really, if you can love, I mean love in tangible ways and do it fearlessly, little by little you can change the world. It takes courage to love people when they don’t seem lovable, but what choice do we have? We’ve got to forgive. And keep forgiving.”

“It’s how I run my restaurant,” Sergei said. “The things people do sometimes make me want to scream, like reserving the whole place for a party and then forgetting to show up because they’re all drunk. If I didn’t forgive them and welcome them back, I’d have no customers.” He got up and cleared David’s cup and the empty plate of cookies and put them on the counter. Then he leaned back against his stove and looked at his guest. “There are many things wrong with Russia, but there’s one thing I believe with all my heart: We’re trying our best to be good. Despite everything Chestnov says and does, we’re good people. If you can forgive all the terrible things we’ve done, and hasn’t America done terrible things too, with your slavery and massacres of Native Americans and Vietnam and everything else, this country will rise again, and this time it will be to everyone’s benefit, including America’s. Have you read Resurrection? It was Tolstoy’s last novel.”

“Not that one either,” David said. “I can see I need to expand my library.”

“By the end of his life, he’d realized that everything was about forgiveness. Awful things happen, but we have to forgive it all. It’s the only way we’re going to rise.” He thought for a moment, then added, “If this city can come back from the dead, so can this country. Maybe someday America will need to come back from the dead, too.”

David looked out again at Pavel, who was busy taking apart all the matryoshka dolls and setting them up as spectators for some event. He thought of Tamar standing before the crowd in Lincoln, transforming the mood of thousands from hate to love. “Maybe we also need someone to lead us all out of this mess,” he said, “someone who embodies the best of both countries and can lift everyone’s sights.”

“Sure,” Sergei laughed. “Let me know if you find someone brave enough to do that.”

David looked out the window. “Oh, my,” he said and chuckled. He never said the phrase; it sounded so old-fashioned. But something about “Oh, my” seemed just right for a scene that smacked of eternity. “The rain has stopped. The sun is coming out.”

Sergei laughed, too. “So it is. A miracle.”  

“Thank you, Sergei. We didn’t really talk about Maxim, but I think I got what I came for. You’ve done more for me than you can imagine.”

Chapter 57

When David arrived back in Moscow in the afternoon, he called Tamar at home. Larisa answered and said Tamar had left a message that she was going to the Mosenergosbyt office, but Mosenergosbyt said they had no record of her being there, and Larisa hadn’t seen her all day. The heat was still not working, and Larisa was worried. 

“Try her mobile,” Larisa said. “I’ve called it several times. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

David tried but couldn’t reach her there either. Then his phone rang, and her number appeared on the screen.

“Tamar! How are you?” he answered, almost shouting.

The sound of a male voice was so jarring that he missed the first few words.

“. . . Medical Center. May I ask who this is?”

All his muscles tightened. “Excuse me?” he said.

“This is Doctor Valery Chalinets at Petrovskaya Vorota Medical Center. We have received an injured woman here with no identification. She’s unconscious, and we were going through her coat pockets to see what we could find and heard the phone. Can you tell me whose phone this is? And who you are?”

“The phone belongs to a woman named Tamar Tsmindashvili,” he said. “Dark hair, in her twenties.”

“Okay. That seems right.”

“I’m David Darke. I’m a friend of hers. Tell me what’s going on.”

“We should talk to her family. Can you tell me how we can reach them?”

“She has no family in Russia. I’m her closest friend. You can talk to me.”

He hesitated. “Alright,” he said. “Are you able to come to the hospital?”

“Of course,” David said. “I’ll be right there.”

“I have to be honest, things are not looking good.”  

“I’m coming.”

In the taxi he wanted to slap the seats and punch out the windows. He tried to pray, but in his shock all he felt was heat flooding his brain.

When he arrived at the hospital, he asked for Dr. Chalinets and dropped onto a red plastic sofa in the waiting room. He watched an old woman wring her hands and stare imploringly out the window, as if hoping better news would arrive from somewhere, anywhere. He closed his eyes and tried to pray again, but his thoughts were still mostly words, moving through his mind like plastic ducks through a shooting gallery.

Dr. Chalinets appeared and asked David to follow him. When they entered Tamar’s room, two nurses were adjusting equipment and tubes attached to her body. One nurse, an older woman with a gray ponytail, looked at David with a practiced smile. “We’re trying to make her as comfortable as we can,” she said. Her eyes told David she held little hope.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

The nurses left, and David stood beside the bed with Dr. Chalinets. Tamar’s head rested on two pillows. Her head and chest were covered in bandages. Her left hand rested at her side. The only movement was in her chest and eyelids, which twitched periodically. “Do you know about the accident?” Dr. Chalinets whispered.

“No.”

“Apparently a car hit her while she was crossing the street. We have the police trying to locate the car, or at least some witnesses who will talk, but I’m not hopeful. This is Russia.”

“Okay,” David said. “I would like to stay with her, if you don’t mind.” 

“Certainly,” Dr. Chalinets said. “We need to make some decisions, though. I’ll be back in a bit.”

David pulled a chair up to the bed and took Tamar’s hand and held it. The thunder of his emotions was finally yielding to a persistent rain of cooling thoughts. He talked with her about God’s love, how it was always with her. He hoped she could hear.

The nurses returned to check the equipment. David left for a few minutes to go to the bathroom, and when he re-entered the room, Dr. Chalinets was standing next to the bed. “We need to operate,” he said. He described the procedure he and his doctors wanted to perform and the hope that it would help. “As the closest person she apparently has in Moscow, will you give us your permission?” he asked.

David thought for a few moments. “I would like to stay with her a bit longer,” he said.

Dr. Chalinets scowled. “We can’t wait any longer,” he said.

“I understand, but I need to be with her,” David said. He was surprised at the forcefulness of his own voice.

Dr. Chalinets hesitated, then said, “Just a moment, please.” He walked out and in a few minutes returned with an older man. “My name is Dr. Petrov,” the man said. “I am the chief doctor here. Dr. Chalinets says your friend needs surgery, and I am not going to go against the advice of my doctors. They just need your permission. You can wait in the visitors’ area. That’s the rule. They will call you when they’re done.”

“Dr. Petrov,” David said, “I am the patient’s friend, and I have my rules too, and the first one is that I will not leave her, even if you call out the Russian army. Do you understand?” David felt a strength welling in him that he had never felt before.

Dr. Petrov was already getting irritated. “We have a duty to the patient,” he said.

“Well, so do I,” David said. Then, for what seemed like a long time, he stood there, not moving, blinking as little as possible, waiting for Dr. Petrov to respond, knowing that the first one to talk would lose.

“Please wait here for a moment,” Dr. Petrov finally said. He stepped into the hallway with Dr. Chalinets, and in a few minutes they returned.

“Alright, I’ve talked with Dr. Chalinets, and he says her signs are actually a bit better. If they continue to improve, he believes they can hold off till morning. But I ask that you not get in the way of anything the nurses or doctors are doing and step out of the room for a short time, if they ask. Do we have your agreement on that?”

“No problem, sir. Thank you.”

When they left, David sat down next to the bed. He closed his eyes and began, finally, to embrace the thoughts he had been trying to gather since the call from Dr. Chalinets. His stand with the doctors had given him the strength he needed to push back against the fear.

Rich silence soon wrapped him and became the air around. He began softly to sing, filling the room with the hymns he had sung to Tamar the night she had returned from Tbilisi. The words flowed gently, thoughtfully, their rich meaning suffusing his mind. Halfway through the third hymn, he sensed a stirring and opened his eyes. “Tamar,” he whispered. He waited for a response, but none came.

He began a new hymn, drawing hope and comfort from the words:

Blessed are the meek, blessed are the pure,

Blessed are the merciful, for mercy shall endure.

Blessed are the persecuted, ever safe with God,

Blessed are the peacemakers, the children of the Lord.

Blessed are the generous, giving like the sun,

Brightly, widely, joyfully, loving all as one,

Their words are rich, their voices full, their actions full of grace,

Tenderly they touch the heart, forgive the sin, erase the hate.

Nations rise and falter, kingdoms come and go,

But love is ever faithful, its blessings overflow,

And we are all Love’s sons and daughters, governed from above,

One people strong and precious, one nation under Love.

David looked at Tamar and saw, not just a brave, wise and gentle woman, but something more, something beyond physical form and yet whole and distinct and more solid than steel. He felt a clarity he had never felt before, not only about her but about himself and his place in the world, and words came to him like a burst of bright air, flooding his mind: “Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

And then he knew, with a clarity beyond conscious thought, that he could have whatever he wanted. And what he wanted, in the deep and simple love he felt for this woman, was that this mountain of hate and fear that had shadowed her for years and was pinning her to this bed, that it be removed and dropped into the vast ocean of nothingness. Because to the infinite Love he was sure was in the room, evil was nothing. The only power, the only presence, was the unassailable, unbreakable, immovable love of God.

Slowly, gently, he felt the room explode. Fresh thoughts, coming from beyond yet somehow deep within himself, flooded his mind. He felt nothing but these thoughts now; they were beautiful; they were powerful; they were perfect. They were, he realized, those fabulous angels returned in force.

The nurse rotation changed, and David dozed off in his chair. In the middle of the night, he woke with a start and looked around. Something was different. It took him a while to realize that Tamar’s hand had moved in his direction, her palm turned up. He took it and squeezed, and she brought her thumb down and touched his fingers as lightly as if she were an injured bird.

* * *

“God is Love.”

He wasn’t sure if she whispered it to him, or if he said it to himself, or if it just came as a thought that dilated and swept him through the night, but by morning he felt as if something much bigger than both of them was now in charge.

Dr. Chalinets entered the room and stood on one side of the bed as David sat on the other. They watched Tamar breathe.

“I’ve given you a lot of time,” Dr. Chalinets said, “but we need to move forward. She looks peaceful.”

“She is,” David said.

Tamar whispered, “I am.”

Startled, they stared at her. She opened her eyes and looked at David and blinked several times, as if processing new thoughts. She looked at Dr. Chalinets and around the room, then closed her eyes and seemed to go back to sleep.

“We’re ready,” Dr. Chalinets said.

Tamar’s eyes shot open. “Ready for what?” Her voice was surprisingly strong. Dr. Chalinets looked at David and then at the nurses.

“Give us a few minutes, will you?” David said.

“I’ll give you five,” Dr. Chalinets said. He and the nurses left the room.

“Well, good morning,” David said. “Good to see you.”

“Yeah.” She gave a quiet laugh and looked around the room again. “What’s going on?”

He took her hand but said nothing, and she looked at both their hands, then up at him. “I don’t know, I just feel this amazing peace,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“Why am I in a hospital? I remember leaving the apartment, then – I don’t know, nothing.”

“I’ll tell you later,” he said. “Right now, just enjoy the peace.”

She looked at him for a long time, searching his eyes. “Is Ilya here?” she asked.

“What? No. Just me.”

“Good.” She lifted her face and kissed him lightly on the lips. He smiled in surprise, then kissed the tops of both her ears, each soft puck like the final plucking of a sorrow. She nodded, understanding.

“Thank you,” she said again.

“I love you,” he said.

“Hah. It’s about time we said it, huh?” She squeezed his hand and laughed quietly. “I love you, too. Did your journalism prophecy this?”

He thought for a few moments. “Yeah, actually,” he said. “You’re the fulfillment of all my hopes.” He paused. “Ilya would probably be jealous.”

“Yeah,” she said, “he knew a long time ago.” She thought for a few moments, then said, “He put me here, didn’t he.”

“Possibly.”

She nodded and then, slowly, began maneuvering her body to an upright position. “I need clothes, David. Can you call the nurse? They must have my clothes, or something I can wear. And tell the doctor, thanks, but we’ll be leaving now. I’ve got work to do. We both do.”

Chapter 58: We are family

“As they approached Lenin’s Tomb, Tamar dropped David’s hand and stepped over a restraining rope onto a low marble barrier. She turned and faced the crowd. When the people spotted the figure with her back to Lenin, a sound moved through them, something between a whisper and a wonder.”

Dr. Chalinets looked carefully into Tamar’s eyes as she put on her jacket. She knew he was searching for signs of weakness or relapse, but she had never felt so strong. She declined an offered wheelchair, took David’s hand and walked toward the hospital door. As Tamar said goodbye, one of the nurses called her “Madame Miracle.”

“This is no miracle,” Tamar said. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

As they waited outside for a taxi, David asked her, “Do you want to go home?”

“No, actually, I want to walk.”

“Me, too. Let’s go.”

They cancelled the taxi, and as they stepped onto the street, a single firework shot into the air, as if synchronized to their appearance. A massive searchlight began scanning the sky.

“Call Larisa,” Tamar said quietly. David could see her confidence bursting. Soon, Larisa and Sasha joined them on the street, and a crowd began gathering, as if drawn by some invisible force.

“Follow me,” Tamar commanded the crowd, and everyone began moving toward the light. Before long they were standing in front of the prison where David had spent a morning, and where Svetlana, Maria and Tanya were still being held.

Two limousines pulled up. Out of one stepped Ilya Chestnov and out of the other the two priests who had accompanied him to the river. Chestnov looked tired, his shoulders slumped, and Tamar felt a wave of compassion sweep through her like the one she had felt standing next to Meek in the stadium in Lincoln. These are lonely men, she thought, but they, too, are loved.

The priests performed their ritual, and Chestnov, straightening his shoulders as best he could, nodded toward an aide, who signaled toward the prison. In a few moments, dozens of women and men began pouring out. A weary smile came across his face, and David wrote in his notebook, “Ilya Davidovich seems happy tonight. He has performed a real miracle.”

Larisa spotted her friends and ran toward them, pushing Sasha’s stroller in front of her. Last from the prison walked Maxim Yasnov, shepherding everyone to freedom. When Larisa saw him, she mouthed an astonished “Oh my god!” and punched her fist into the air. He nodded to her, and she blew him a kiss. He broke into a surprised smile and motioned for her and her friends to join him. When they arrived, Larisa lifted Sasha into his arms, and he held the boy tightly, as if he were his own.

Chestnov and his entourage climbed back into their cars, and Tamar watched as they disappeared into the distance. The only power he has is the power to love. The thought came as if spoken to her, and she felt years of resentment wash away like flecks of dirt. She turned back to the crowd and saw Max, stunned, staring at her. She bowed her head toward him and he toward her, and with a force it seemed he could not suppress, he shot his hand into the air, straight and high. Then he started to cry, and Tamar walked over and gently placed his hand in Larisa’s.

Tamar and David began moving again, and the crowd, which was growing quickly as word spread of the extraordinary events at the prison, followed. An old man tripped on a stray rock and stumbled, and Tamar reached out a hand and steadied him. A woman inquired if by chance she was Tamar Tsmindashvili. “Yes,” Tamar said. The woman turned to her friends and said, “I knew it! I read about her!” They agreed it had been a perfect day, with prisoners freed, the warm spring sun finally softening the edges of winter, and another Georgian leader in their midst. A child began singing a Russian folk song, and the crowd joined in. An old woman took out a package of zephyrs and began sharing them with those around her. When her supply seemed exhausted, still she handed them out to all who wanted a taste of Russian sweets.

The crowd reached Red Square, and everyone lingered, as if awaiting further instruction. Tamar and David kept walking toward the Kremlin wall. As they approached Lenin’s Tomb, Tamar dropped David’s hand and stepped over a restraining rope onto a low marble barrier. She turned and faced the crowd. When the people spotted the figure with her back to Lenin, a sound moved through them, something between a whisper and a wonder. Among the billions of evenings that had been lived by Muscovites till then, no one had ever lived one like this. Tamar stood motionless, seeming to draw all attention not so much to herself as to a kind of radiance.

Then, on the platform above, from which, not long before, Soviet leaders had reviewed passing troops and armaments, Chestnov walked out. He strolled to the front of the platform and raised his arms, waiting for the sound of adoration to build. But instead of reverence a silence fell, and his look formed into one of bafflement. Did they not recognize him? Had they not been impressed by what he had just done? Maxim Sergeevich had been right. Freeing prisoners was a perfect way to prove to the world that Russia was now the exceptional country, and he, Ilya Davidovich Chestnov, the exceptional One.

Then he noticed that the people were not looking at him but at something below his feet. He peered down and saw a woman he recognized. Shock spread across his face.

I thought she was… No, this cannot be!

He felt his muscles go weak, and he collapsed to the platform floor. As aides rushed toward him, he struggled to his knees, but his head hung heavy, as if an invisible hand were pushing it down. Two aides grasped him by the shoulders and tried to lift him, but he waved them away. His world was spinning.

She has come to torment me for the terrible things that I have done.  

He heard the crowd murmuring, and it occurred to him that he should get up and show that he was still in charge. He tried to rise, but his legs would not support him, and once more he collapsed to his knees, which was where he stayed, frightened and alone.

Below the platform and Chestnov’s crumpled form, Tamar spread her arms, and in a voice both gentle and strong, she began to speak:

Welcome home, friends. All of us in this Square tonight, with every other person on this earth, we are family. No matter who you are or where you live or what you have done, you are loved. Take that love and lift it high. Love each other, love yourselves, love the people who have done you wrong. If we live as children of the God who is Love, if we do it moment by moment and day by day, each of us alone and all of us together, we will do amazing things. We will transform the world!

In the past, Tamar might have raised her hand at this point and asked the crowd to raise theirs. Tonight, though, she does something different. Like the man above her, she drops to her knees, and the throng follow her example. A great silence wraps the assembly and lights Red Square from the Kremlin walls to Resurrection Gate. The silence flows into the city and through its streets and into its troubled homes.

And so, in the capital of one of the world’s great nations, under the eye of a writer who understands more clearly than ever how a journalism of prophecy can transform the world, a woman prays, and the people hear the words of their better angels. Above the woman, the nation’s leader hangs his head in wise surrender. Across the earth, many women, men and children feel silent bursts of hope. And above them all, like an undiscovered country, the heavens spread fertile and vast and blooming.

EPILOGUE

BE NOT AFRAID

Forgiveness and Resurrection

By David Darke

Staff Columnist

The Christian Reporter

MOSCOW - I had every intention of beginning this column today with more stories of life in Russia. Life here can be inspiring, with beauty, wisdom and courage popping up in unexpected places.

But life here can also make you furious in its injustice and cruelty. A deeply patriotic man I know, saddened by the collapse of the Soviet Union, worked, with his beloved sister, to help a high government official try to keep the Soviet dream alive, only to have his sister be raped – possibly by the official himself – and then, in shame, kill herself. The experience shattered him.

It’s easy to hope one day and despair the next in Russia. But then something happened to a woman I know, and to the man I just referred to, and it revealed a bigger picture, and a brighter one. I’ll tell you about them in a moment.

For decades Russia, along with the 14 other nations making up the Soviet Union, was locked in a cold conflict with the West, particularly America. Both entities, the USSR and the USA, did their best to turn that conflict into energy in an effort to keep their people focused on building stronger societies. But in the USSR the effort ran increasingly off the rails, and as their Union fell apart, many Soviet citizens held out hope that the America they had dreamed about – the America of freedom, justice and infinite possibilities – would come to their rescue.

The rescue, however, didn’t happen. America, whether out of arrogance or malice or just plain selfishness, turned to other challenges and left Russia to drift.

Now a general sadness has descended here, because the promise of America has turned out to be mostly pain for Russia. Hope struggles to stay alive. And so, to try to buttress that faltering hope, or perhaps to exploit it, the Russian government has turned to miracles. Well, fake miracles. Recently, President Chestnov dived into a remote river and pulled money out of a dead fish’s mouth, a fish that had been planted earlier, and handed it to a poor woman, clearly attempting to imitate one of the works of Jesus Christ.

Chestnov’s action can easily prompt cynicism. No one who is thinking clearly believes the “miracle” was real, and the president knows this. Then what is really happening?

To understand, it may be worthwhile to consider some history.

In 1908, the Russian author Maxim Gorky published a novel called Confession, about a group of people who get together to heal a crippled girl mentally, not through faith or prayer but through mass will-power. The movement behind the healing was called “God-building,” with the people taking the place of God. Lenin hated the idea of marrying socialism with religion, but Gorky explained to him: "I am an atheist. In Confession, the idea was to show the means by which man could progress from individualism to the collectivist understanding of the world. The main character sees 'God-building' as an attempt to reconstruct social life according to the spirit of collectivism, uniting the people on their way to one common goal: liberating man from slavery, within and without."

Although Gorky’s relationship with Lenin and the Bolsheviks was rocky, this idea, that people united in ideology and positive thinking can build a healthy society, was at the root of popular support for the Soviet Union. Joining this idea to science and technology, communism claimed it could do anything faith could do. People have even conjectured that one reason Lenin’s body was preserved in Red Square was so that Soviet scientists could eventually resuscitate him when they discovered how to do it.

The idea that humanity can enjoy the benefits of faith without believing in and understanding God was a major feature of communism, as, indeed, it is of many other political, social and economic systems, including America’s. That idea is a prime cause of many problems in the world. It leads to governments uniting with religion in unholy alliance, government leaders becoming like gods and priests, theology transforming into ideology and vice versa, hypocrisy posing as morality, nationalism taking the form of a crusade, and human will becoming a proxy for the divine will.

But let’s be honest: As poorly and cruelly executed as it often was, communism’s goal of “liberating man from slavery, within and without” cannot be dismissed out of hand. If the understanding of those who managed communism’s brief ascendancy was that national unity and social progress meant rejecting religion, this does not automatically mean that either the country or its leaders should be condemned out of hand. America has to wake up. If Abraham Lincoln’s “with malice toward none, with charity for all” is a reliable guide for Americans to behave toward the world, that behavior cannot stop at the border of countries with systems or ideologies they don’t agree with. 

There is no one right political, social or economic system for everyone, any more than there is one right place to live. Self-righteousness is poison. The only way humanity is going to move forward is if we see our problems, individual and collective, not as ideological, national, political, economic or military but as spiritual challenges.

America and Russia face huge spiritual challenges right now, and they both seem at a loss as to how to cope with them. Even as Chestnov conducts his own version of God-building, anointing himself as the nation’s savior, Jonah Meek, the American son of a Christian minister, is trying to create a movement to bring misery into the lives of America’s supposed enemies, both internal and external.

Neither man is meeting the spiritual demand of the times, but that doesn’t mean we should despair. Ironically, Karl Marx, who provided the philosophical underpinnings of communism, had a sense of how to get out of this mess. He once said of Lincoln that he was ‘one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good.’ Marx seemed to understand that, in the end, goodness rises above ideologies and systems, nationalities and alliances, ambitions and resentments.

Goodness is as alive and well in Russia as it is in America, and it has been for a long time. In the years following the 1917 Revolution, many people were determined to build a successful society with hard work and loyalty, and in a sense they succeeded: The Soviet Union became a superpower. If nothing else, the world should be grateful for the sacrifices the Soviet people made to defeat Nazism.

And yet, the belief has put down roots in America that Russia should be ignored and even punished for everything that has happened over the past seventy-plus years. Why? Even if Russian and Soviet history is full of atrocities, which it is, the Russian people are trying their best to be good. They need to be forgiven, not punished. Love – practical, patient and forgiving – is the only way all this hatred, confusion, hypocrisy and mad ambition will end.

And what of false prophets like Chestnov and Meek, who, in the effort to lead their people, mislead them? In fact, they have no power of themselves to do good or evil. This is something I realized while watching Chestnov do his fake miracle with the dead fish. Deception and cruelty have no actual power. They can be neutralized through truth and love.

This is not naïve optimism, and here is my proof: Yesterday, a woman I know was hit by a car in Moscow, by all appearances intentionally. (There is abundant evidence that high officials in the government want her eliminated.) The driver sped away, and bystanders called an ambulance, which took her, unconscious, to a hospital. The doctor and staff that attended her doubted she would recover, at least without serious medical intervention.

A few hours later, the power of prayer was brought into the hospital, and by this morning, without medical intervention, she walked out of the hospital, well. This woman is Tamar Tsmindashvili, and readers of this column know her. She gained a small following in the Soviet Republic of Georgia as the Soviet Union was self-destructing, and then in America as Jonah Meek rose to prominence. She brought a sense of hope to both countries for people who felt trapped in floods of personal and national trauma. But as much as she loves her native country, and as much as she loves the America she has come to know, last year she decided that Russia was vital to what is happening in the world and that her time and efforts would be well spent here.

What she has realized is that Russia, more than anything else, needs love. That love, the love of God demonstrated, is what lifted her out of her hospital bed. And interestingly, at virtually the same time, the man whose sister committed suicide and who saw no hope for his own life, found a way to bring dozens of unjustly accused Russians out of a Moscow prison. Talk about love.

Russia and America don’t need miracles, fake or otherwise; they need love. There are strong interests in both countries that are ready to kill love if it threatens to outshine fear and hate, but practical, powerful love proves they can be overcome.

What it comes down to is this: Humanity is in a holy war. It’s a war, as the Bible says, “…not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The most powerful weapon in this war is love – God’s love demonstrated in the lives of those who believe in, understand and love God and humanity.

The final novel of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy was called Resurrection. It may be his most profound. As a friend of mine observed recently, by the end of his life Tolstoy had realized that everything was about love. Terrible things have happened in Russia, as they have in America and every other country, but all must be forgiven. “Forgive us our debts,” Jesus prayed, “as we forgive our debtors.” It’s the only way people and nations can rise.

Russians will discover their confidence again, and Americans will regain their generous spirit, not through hatred, not through deception or anger or force or fear or willpower, but through love, for each other and for the world.

In that humble spirit, isn’t it time for all of us to rise? “The kingdom is the Lord’s,” the Psalmist said, “and he is the governor among the nations.”

Note: This is the last column that I intend to write about Tamar Tsmindashvili. In full disclosure, she and I have become too close for me to credibly build my writing around her. However, I am confident this is not the last the world will hear about her.

© Keith Collins 2024