Davit and the train conductors

I sat down in the empty carriage, sweaty and flustered. Once again I wondered why I always left catching trains so last minute and leaned back to settle into the six-hour train ride to Kutaisi, a city in the west of Georgia. There, I was to meet my best friend and the day glowed a little more than usual at the prospect. 

"You can't sit there." I heard in Russian above me. A train conductor was looking down at me.

"Why not? No one's in this carriage and I want a window seat." I replied.

"It's not your assigned seat." Came the sour reply and I was about to argue further when another train conductor with a felt hat and twinkly eyes shushed him and told me to rest where I was.

"She's hot and tired, leave her for now."

I settled back down and resumed looking out the window while Tbilisi thinned and the train entered the open countryside. The twinkly train conductor returned and I bristled at the idea of ​​moving seats. But he simply produced two home-grown apples, dropped them in my lap, and left. Minutes later, he returned to offer me some homemade wine in his cabin. 

"Come this way." Of course, I got up and followed. It was 9.35 am.

Six hours passed quickly then. Homemade wine, cheese, mashed potatoes, dill, green chillis, pears, apples fueled my conversation with Davit and his colleagues while the train pottered along at 20mph. Its first stop brought a pile of fresh shoti*, and soon the hot, elastic dough was torn apart and divided amongst us. We stopped a few more times and I was paraded around by Davit, quite drunk by now, being shown fountains and fruit sellers and unlocking secret doors within the train.

"All in one!" Davit had ordered after every toast. "You're not drinking tea!" And so we drank to our meeting, our families' health, our countries, friendship, nature, beauty, women, children, peace, and more, with each toast, a glass of amber wine downed. I was to meet my friend in quite a state.

I stood in the corridor, head out the window, watching the changing landscape. I saw two rivers, one black, one reddish-brown, join together and flow alongside the train. I saw mountains and gullies and German construction companies developing new train tracks. The alcohol had softened life's edges and I felt careless and content. It was a good feeling. 

I turned and saw a white china cup rimmed in white light, the steam rising.

"Coffee?"

"Yes please."

I stepped into a little cabin with a metal sink and a tiny plastic kettle. Spoons of finely ground coffee went in, its button clicked on, and clicked off again when the water bubbled and shook the cylinder. I often saw tea and coffee made like this in Georgia. Portable kettles would be perched on any surface, and I even saw one on the front seat of a truck, boiling away merrily while the driver smoked and drove with one hand.

After coffee, I was suddenly tired and needed to sit down. I returned to my now full-up carriage. The revelry was over. The train was nearly at Kutaisi, and my warm contentment had been replaced by a sour taste and a heavy head. I said my goodbyes to Davit, his not-so-sour colleague, Ushangi, and all the others.

"Come and make chacha* with me one weekend soon," Davit said. "I'll Facebook message you."

*boat shaped Georgian bread

* Georgian vodka

3 weeks later.

True to his word, in late November I met Davit again to make chacha.

"You're going alone?" One of my friends had asked. "Who is this guy? You met him on a train? Share your live location so I'll know where you are. Be careful." She had rolled her eyes and made me question myself. Was I being too naïve? 

We met at 12 o'clock on the dot at a metro station on the outskirts of Tbilisi.

"You have German time-keeping," Davit commented and led me out into the bright sunlight and down to his brother's house. On the way he bought me two red roses. In the yard of his brother's house there was a smell of quinces and apples in the air and among yellow fig leaves two kittens played. The sun was warm and the day had that voluptuous softness of the weekend.

Helping us was old Dima, a friend of Davit's and a veteran of the Abkhazian war of 1992-3. He was quiet, kind, and could never remember my name. Later, when our feast was in full swing, the endless toasts brought out his more garrulous side, but it didn't help him remember my name.

In his wool hat and Nike trackies, Davit and Dima, with cigarette in mouth, chucked handfuls of two-week-old grape mush that had been fermenting in a bathtub into a big copper cauldron. Flies buzzed around the grapes. Into the pot also went dried grasses to stop the mush from burning. A wonderfully shaped lid with a spout-like contraption then went on top and gave the cauldron much character. This spout was connected to a pipe that ran through a tub of cold water and out into a funnel. The tub was a condenser to cool the alcoholic steam into drops when the mush later heated up. Davit slapped some cement onto the sides of the spouted lid to stop steam from escaping and then lit the gas below the pot. The chacha contraption was well-used and made up of an array of recycled metal and corrugated iron. It sat atop a wire cage, surrounded by duckboards and concrete blocks. Behind this machinery were two huge apple and fig trees, magnificent in their autumnal leaves.

I was then sent into the kitchen to prepare greens. The kitchen had a concrete floor and concrete walls and tiny cupboards. There was an oven from the 1920s that looked like it belonged to a doll's house, 'Stalin-era' Davit had said. Soon this house will be destroyed and high-rise flats built within the year, 10 stories high. On the table were piled coriander, parsley, spring onions, and radishes. I was shown how to clean a radish with a knife in a bowl of water. Light came through the window of the dark kitchen and I loved the way it lit the water while I scraped the red skins, drops of color bleeding into the water. I was a bit confused about the order of the day. Since it's Georgia, there surely would be a big feast, but there were only men in the house and they certainly wouldn't be making the food.

Slabs of meat then arrived in plastic bags and the men set to work making shashliki or meat on skewers. 'Making chacha without shashliki is forbidden' declared Davit and the vodka started to drip slowly into a big glass jar under the funnel. I tasted one drop from this fresh chacha batch and felt white-hot fire. Sharp, bitter fire. Later a friend told me that this type of unrefined alcohol can blind you. I remembered a time when I bought nettle and raspberry vodka from a stall in the woods near Kyiv, and brought it to a party. We drank the dubious liquid in teacups and a friend quickly fell horizontal, unconscious. He thankfully woke up the next day, and we soon learnt to respect homemade alcohol, more or less.

    The chacha was flowing steadily now and people started to turn up. A table was set outside and the greens I had prepared went onto it. I sat in the corner on a tree stump and observed with my notebook. The men's friendship was so touching. They had that old friendship that makes you feel whole and heavy-hearted with happiness. They are such practical and hard-working men. They drive marshrutki (type of mini-bus), sell fruit by the road, conduct trains, had worked in Moscow during the Soviet Union. Dima handed me a shot glass of chacha, rimmed with bubbles. Since the bubbles didn't pop, it meant that the alcohol was very strong, 'around 60-70%'. The wives of the men now turned up and went straight to the kitchen. The men sat. I was the only woman at the table.

       As the light was dying through the leaves of the walnut tree, the pace of the party sped up, filled with toasts and stories and views on Russians and Russia. 'Russians are the noblest of people' a squat football coach friend had said. He was aggressive-looking, like a staffie, and like that breed he was loyal and sincere, 'we will protect you' they repeated often. I spoke a lot to Davit's son who was a doctor. I was then bundled into their car and taken back home, laden with roses, bottles of tkemali*, a bag of apples and quinces, and many words of familial love and protection

* Georgian plum sauce

***

A month later I was back on the train to Kutaisi. It was my last day in Georgia and I was going to the airport. This time, I was early and waited with a coffee I'd bought from a street seller. It was in a plastic cup and I ignored the taste, sipping away in the cold until the train arrived. I found a nice window seat and settled down. I was looking forward to reflecting on my six months of life in Georgia.

"Are you Ottilia?" I heard above me. A train conductor was looking down at me. She spoke in a very strange way, in many breaths that omitted most consonants.

"Yes."

"I've been told by Davit to look after you," came the reply. "If you need anything, anything at all, ask me. Water? Coffee?"

It turned out to be another pleasant journey. Not quite as raucous as the last, but still more than comfortable and VIP-like, thanks to my friend Davit. Granted, a policeman did sit beside me, talk at me, and forcefully offered to host me at his sister's house, but I politely declined and moved away, hardened by now to this sort of occurrence.

The train stopped at a familiar station. The last time I was here, Davit had bought a bag of fruit from a station seller and given it to me. I smiled in recollection. A train then blocked my view while we started to leave the station. Directly in front of me, on the other train, I saw Ushangi, the not-so-sour train conductor. We stared at each other, then smiled and waved. Both trains then slid past. It was a lovely moment, to say a final goodbye to a friend before I left the country I had come to love.