9
Georgian DoIt Yourself The View from the Balcony MUSIC
What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what starMaecenas, it is
meet to turn the sodOr marry elm with vine; how tend the steer;What
pains for cattle-keeping, or what proofOf patient trial serves for
thrifty bees;Such are my themes. VIRGIL The Georgics
It is often said that the way to test relationships is to work
with people. I remember a tall, willowy Belgian pianist lady, ideal
had she been available (and in duets when she was appareled with
just the score and an adjacent, treble, long summer cotton dress,
she was well - interesting) but who had a distinct aversion to
brown cardboard boxes; so nul points. Life is all about moving on;
and moving on always involves brown cardboard boxes; and lots of
manual work; and maybe, like Virgil inThe Georgics, we can rejoice
in manual work even non-agricultural work (!) and especially that
manual work which is dona ferentes or bearing gifts: and the first
thing that happens when you sign up a few neighbours for some
so-called casual but, in the end, deeply serious renovation work is
that they bring your almost immediately many wonderful gifts: gifts
which are not worth at least twice the modest sum you decide to pay
them; but gifts of memory and recognition.gifts which in the famous
words of a Hebrew painter I once knew make you feel more human.
Gifts which help make your day and help to define your
collaborators as a nation and yourself as a person.
Tariel,Toko,Alina,Nika,Khvicha,GiaNinas balcony has long been in
need of renovation Nina is my Armenian landlady, a friend. I pay
rent, rather than buy: above all for the relationship.Only in
Georgia could people enjoy work exactly as above depicted. Nina has
no idea how amazingly we are improving her mothers property!*
This collaborative phase in my life began, innocently and maybe
appropriately enough, less than a month ago, with the need to visit
the Georgian-Armenian border. My taxi friend Shota delivered
admirably enough - waiting, in the searing heat, for an hour and
three quarters for me to return from (what must have been) the
Azerbaijani border. On the way home we bought some of the most
sumptuous strawberries I have ever tasted. So a few days later I
included Shota in the task of helping me in the disposing of 700
sheets of old A4 written notes; and later, helping me extract the
essential information from a noticeboardbecause although I am
easily inspired by complex tasks, I have a huge amount of trouble
in starting mundane ones (He was more than happy to oblige)
Next, I commandeered Alina, a neighbour, in the production of
notebooks full of ruled lines, and then the watercolour painting of
symbolic squares. Success!Thus encouraged, I asked Alina and her
husband to assist me in reconstructing the balcony and renovating
the paintwork in the house.First, the water bottles essential in
times of administrative draught need to have been filled. For the
rare days when something goes wrong, one needs water stored in
advance maybe 50 liters. Gia admirably helped me reposition this,
but was astonished at my demandingness and inability to suffer
gladly any lapse from perfection. With a great effort, rubbish was
dislodged from around an old oil tank; and things which had fallen
down the crack retrieved. Difficult poking movements with long
sticks. The ensemble was then washed down, and all the water
bottles stored precisely on the ancient, rusty surface.
Wildlife, in the form of grasses which had sprung up in and
around the balcony had to be uprooted and two old carpets and a
small babys bath relocated in Alinas cellar storage area. The bath
contained a wasps nest, which accounted for the preponderance of
these creatures around the balcony area as we started work.
The only bad moment of the day came when my ex-student and
adventurous youth Toko momentarily imprisoned me in this dungeon.
In a second I relived the Gulag, and it was a bit like the moment
in Kes when, in the shop, and to get a bit of counter-play, Billy
deliberately crashes in to newsagent Mr Porters step-ladder: I fair
felt me eart go then!, says the recently stranded and perspiring
Northerner, when rescued
The decision to remove all the fallen stones from the
reticulated metal roof separating my balcony from that of the
doctor below was a bold one. This required Gia to venture out on
the pack-ice, as it were, and throw down all the irregular chunks
of concrete which had fallen down over the years from the decaying
balcony two floors above; and then sweep out all the debris of
stones, earth, broken washing-line pegs, and so on, from the
metallic crevices, with a selection of brushes. I worried much for
his safety during this operation, at one time thinking of tying him
in with a piece of old electrical wire, or at least getting his
wife to cling on to him as he worked. But he proceeded with
sang-froid and no fear; but the noisy, percussive operation
provoked friendly or concerned visits and shouts from both the
black-clad doctors sister below; and the headmistress who lives
above. The first just arrived and barged in: Georgians have no
sense of this is somebodys dwelling maybe I should knock; while Lia
above called down various comments from her own balcony (itself
infested with bindweed and miscellaneous ancient pieces of string,
some blown there by the wind) but soon saw the virtues of my
campaign; and as I pointed out to her, she could benefit from our
developing expertise and already marshaled assault team. Ocha,
Martin she said; which in Georgian roughly translates as, You are
doing a great job here.
The metal roof when cleared
To everyones advantage, another restoration effort was going on
in the flat above hers. I knew this as a few days back, the
restorers had begun irrationally with painting the balcony rails in
the kind of red you would have seen on the Great Western Railway in
the days of Brunel, not sparing, with a few stray drops, some of my
washing which was drying below. This as how I knew that they were
in possession of the crease. But here an entire paved balcony floor
was being abandoned and there would be rich pickings in the form of
replacement tiles for those of mine which had become dislodged, or
had simply been gratuitously kicked to touch over the years. At my
urgings, their own balcony now sported a bright blue tarpaulin,
apparently in an effort to protect the North Ossetia and Abhkazia
of my own and Lias dwellings from further carnage. And in this
flat, which in a topsy-turvy Jabberwocky fashion they were busy
restoring, there was some sensational original Soviet-era wallpaper
in mint condition; which I urged them to preserve at all costs.
Here, Khvicha greying and tall like an ancient sea-god and the deft
nimble Nika were the chief protagonists. Nika was to help me
later
With a weather eye to my teaching plans, I took an overnight
decision not to get too carried away by the prospects of restoring
the Soviet-era woodwork just yet. It would be a task I could carry
out myself alongside others in the months and years ahead And
around 2 a.m. , still surfing on the energy of a great day of
collaboration, I realized that I had not even noticed that I had
not had any supper. Rebatets wonderful lines came back to me,
something like, the long, long day at last drew to a close. He is
writing about Michels final conquest of Anne-Marie (after 800
pages) and before things begin to turn sour (Michels jealousy,
Anne-Maries insanity, Rgis lifelong enmity and hauteur). In spite
of all, here was a writer who understood the great rhythms of life,
which are all around us and which return like a motif in Parsifal,
Siegfried or Gotterdmmerungand which - of course - are like that
because they want to show us the great rhythms of life)And I had
re-connected with the craft side of my skills, dormant for almost
two decades, those skills I needed so painfully to excavate from
the chaos of my psyche, in that almost remote past now vague to me,
which it turned out were essential in giving me what balance, tact
and individuation I may now possess.
Rare Soviet wallpaper in the flat upstairs The virtues of
sanding (below) and plastic wood - not generally obtainable in
Georgia
And as Huysmans wrote somewhere, God opened up the shuttered
lodging of my soul, and light and air streamed in