Our social position there was something quite peculiar. We had to be earning something, so that we might live,—hence in the forenoons I went to several houses giving music lessons, for which I was well paid; my husband had a place under a French wall-paper manufacturer and builder, as bookkeeper and especially as designer of new patterns. For this service he received a salary of one hundred and fifty rubles a month, and moreover we had board and lodging in the pretty private house of the manufacturer, Monsieur Bernex of Marseilles. The bell for work rang at five o’clock in the morning. Then My Own, My Own who at home had been so spoiled and in truth shamefully lazy, had to get up. He did it right gayly; then he went to the press-room to oversee the workmen. At eight o’clock he sat down with the owner and the bosses to the early breakfast, consisting of a pail of weak coffee with milk, and black bread—it tasted good to him!—then he had to go to the office and figure and design till one. Meantime I had given a few lessons, and we all ate dinner together at the Bernex table. In the afternoon My Own had to go on business errands, to customers, to the customhouse, to the railway station, all long distances; he did it with pleasure. But after six o’clock in the evening we were free, put on full dress, and almost every evening dined en ville, now with the Princess of Georgia, now with her sister, and with all the great families of the city. Our romance was generally known, also our close relations with the Dadiani family; and in society we were not treated as the factory employee and the music teacher, but as a sort of aristocratic emigrants, not only on a footing of equality but with that peculiar courtesy which is usually shown to illustrious foreigners. We could not help laughing about it.
I kept up my literary labors as far as my time permitted. I wrote novels,—Doras Bekenntnisse, Ketten und Verkettungen,—and carried about with me the scheme of a larger work, Inventarium einer Seele. My husband got very little opportunity for writing, for now his employer had set him to work also at designing architectural plans. And he did it. How he made a success of it I do not understand to this day; but it is a fact that several houses and castles in the vicinity of Tiflis were built from his plans. As he played the piano without having taken music lessons, so he made architectural designs without having studied architecture. He had already picked up enough of the Georgian language to be able to get along with the native workmen and contractors. In the meantime I was perfecting myself in Russian, which I had already begun to study in Vienna with a view to the prospect of residing in Zugdidi as the Dedopali had planned for me. That castle, by the way, was not even then finished; nor was it finished during the lifetime of its mistress.
During our sojourn in Tiflis I underwent an illness, the only one in my whole life. The period of this illness is among my sweetest, dearest recollections. I could not eat: my stomach refused everything that I took. I could not walk: if I tried to take a few steps, I fell down. Certainly that does not sound as if one were bringing up sweet, dear recollections; and yet God knows it was a happy time. I was in a state of half-stupefied faintness, lying down gave me a comfortable sense of rest, and My Own’s care and assiduity and tenderness cradled me into a deep quiet consciousness of bliss. This lasted about six weeks; then I was well again, and we two were a good bit more in love with each other than ever.
XX
ZUGDIDI
The capital of Mingrelia · Our little house · Labors on the Murat estate · Social life at the Murats’ and the Dedopali’s · Lonely summer at Zugdidi · New literary labors · Prototype of Es Löwos · New horizons · Study together
We changed our residence from Tiflis to Kutais again, then to Gordi and to Zugdidi, and to many other places; I cannot here recount in chronological order and in detail all the migrations that filled up our nine years of the Caucasus. Nor was it external events that were the “important thing” for us; it was inner experiences, there in our exile, that made of us two wholly new persons,—two happy persons, two good persons.
We spent a few lovely years in the little town of Zugdidi, the Mingrelian capital; only a village, although a capital. A long row of Oriental houses with open shops, stall on stall; for that reason the row was called “The Bazaar”; but it was also called “The Boulevard,” because the street was planted with a double row of tall trees. And what trees! Nothing less than mimosas, if you please. When they were in bloom the whole place was filled with drowsy fragrance. Besides this Oriental row there was a bunch of little peasant huts occupied by—Württemberg peasants: this was “the German colony.” Then, scattered about in larger and smaller fenced grassplots or fields of Indian corn, one-storied houses in the style of the Caucasus,—that is, built of wood and surrounded with verandas; also, in a garden, Count Rosmorduc’s villa; then the Princess’s provisional dwelling on the border of the great park, in the midst of which rose the unfinished magnificence of the castle,—this was Zugdidi.
There was to be something else added. Achille and Salomé Murat had decided to take up their residence in the Caucasus. A large uncultivated domain was assigned to them, and upon it a country house, farm buildings, stables, flower and kitchen gardens, greenhouses, and cultivated fields were to be created. And all this we actually saw created in the course of four years.
For ourselves we had rented the cottage of a German colonist. Paradisal, according to our ideas; in itself it was not so very pretentious. Level with the ground, three low-studded rooms and a kitchen. A wooden veranda in front of the entrance. The first room was our drawing-room. We had got at the bazaar a sufficient quantity of a very inexpensive red material, and we used it to tapestry the walls of the drawing-room and to provide the windows with hangings. We were our own upholsterers. The material was cut and sewed together, then tacked up, and it was done. For furniture our red drawing-room had a very large table which served both of us as a writing-table, a few chairs, another table, and a takhta. This is a piece of furniture which is never lacking in a Caucasian room,—a long, wide divan, uncovered and without a back. A rug is thrown over it and forms the covering; four long bolsters covered with carpeting serve as the back and arms. One can add a few fancy pillows, and it makes the most comfortable contrivance for sitting, lying down, or lounging. With the aid of a few bookcases, a few vases kept always full of fresh flowers, a mirror over the fireplace, and a carpet on the floor, the red drawing-room assumed an almost elegant appearance. We were to the last degree proud of it.
The two other rooms were arranged with corresponding luxury as a bedchamber and dressing-room. Our corps of servants consisted of the daughter of our Swabian landlord, who lived in another little house situated behind the grass-grown court; we also had a fundus instructus consisting of five geese. These marched forth independently to pasture every morning and came dignifiedly home toward evening. Of course they had been acquired for culinary purposes; but having watched them every day from our balcony returning home so unsuspiciously, we felt it so hard to betray their confidence that during our whole residence there we left them in possession of their lives. One may enjoy roast fowl, but it should not be personal acquaintances.
The reason for our settling in Zugdidi was that Prince Achille Murat had engaged my husband as overseer and assistant in the construction of his buildings and other improvements. Designing plans and directing workmen had become his specialty. Prince Murat himself was a sort of amateur architect, amateur farmer, and amateur gardener; so the two shared in making and executing plans. Gardens were plotted, wooden ceilings painted, ditches dug, wall-paper put on, horse-thief-proof stalls constructed, all with combined forces; I frequently saw the two, owner and manager, together enthroned on the top of a ladder or wading in the depths of a drainage-ditch. And now and then, in a short dress of rough cloth, the princess herself, armed with paint-brush, spade, or shovel, also gave her aid. I had another field of labor: for two hours every day I taught German and the piano to the two little boys, Lucien and Napo.