Eight #4
“Okay, so here’s what I don’t get,” she said, offering the man the sanitizer. “Russia is such a huge country,” she said. “Why on earth would they need more land?”
“They don’t just need land, my dear , ” the man said, accepting her spritz. “They need empire. ”
“But isn’t empire just—I mean, at its heart, isn’t it just a lot of land?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” the man said. “Kazakhstan,” he said, “is a lot of land. Canada is a lot of land. Russia is, yes, a lot of land, of course that’s true.
But, more importantly, it’s a force bestriding the globe.
With its own imposed culture and way of being.
That’s what makes an empire more than just a lot of land.
” He looked over at her with small twinkling eyes. “There’s a difference.”
“But what’s the point of it all?” They stopped for a second to let a mother with a stroller pass by.
“Why do you need other countries to—I don’t know, live under the influence of your country?
What do you gain from that? It’s not like this is the age of exploration anymore.
It’s not like land equals power or even influence.
Germany is influential and it’s relatively small! Same with Japan, or France!”
She was unnerved by the man’s patient smile.
“What?” she said.
“What?”
“Do I sound ridiculously na?ve? I probably do,” Amy said.
“No, no, not naive. It’s just that—and do forgive me, especially seeing as how we just met, but I must say—this is rather rich coming from an American.”
She looked at him as they walked; he was still smiling.
“Surely you know that no other country in the history of the world has dominated every facet of the global order the way that the United States does today. You are a citizen of the most empire-minded civilization since civilization began.”
“Oh, stop.”
“Did you know that, right now in Rome, the hardest restaurant reservation to get is for a restaurant that sells American barbecue?”
“American barbecue is pretty amazing,” Amy said.
“In Rome ?”
“Okay, fine,” Amy said. “But what about England? Did the sun ever set on your empire?”
“England, England, yes, of course,” he said.
“Certainly, we were an empire. But even at our peak, even between the wars, it was nothing like America’s world conquest. It couldn’t have been.
We didn’t have the resources you do, the cultural dominance, the military might, the money.
We had ships and men with rifles and bush hats.
You have Hollywood and Silicon Valley and Wall Street. A very different thing.”
“Excuse me, but didn’t you guys take over—I don’t know, India? And Kenya ? And Hong Kong ?”
“More or less, of course we did, you’re right.
You’re right. And it still stings for us, too—the collapse of empire.
I myself felt a little bit teary when we handed back Hong Kong.
The lowering of the British flag, the dismissal of the governor.
A bit of a punch in the gut, to be quite honest. And what was that, twenty-six years ago? But I feel it still.”
“So even you lament the loss of British power,” she said.
“Maybe I do,” the man said. “I suppose I do. But that’s because nobody on earth likes to give up power.” He tightened his grip on his poodle to keep her from going after a fallen stick. “Even if it’s power you had no business having in the first place.”
They were three-quarters around the track already, near a little beach on the lake where three kids were building sandcastles in the chilly air.
The dogs were jaunty, pulling ahead on their leashes.
From off in the distance, Georgian joggers came toward them, then moved gracefully past: spandex leggings, Nike sneakers. The day still sparkled.
“So what happens now?” Amy asked. “Does Russia win?”
“Probably,” the man said, “since Russia wants Georgia more than the West does.”
“And then what?”
“Oh, it will be a nightmare for Georgia. No free expression, no rule of law. Violent crackdown against political dissent. Total plunder of state resources,” he said. “The usual.”
They walked in silence then, letting the dogs lead the way. A murmuration of starlings lifted off into the sky toward the east. Joggers jogged. Mothers pushed their children. A beautiful woman on a bench smoked a cigarette, staring off into space.
“May I ask you a question now?” the man said. “Why on earth did you bring a drone to Tbilisi?”
“Oh, I’m just—I’m searching for a dog,” Amy said. “She went missing a few months ago. She belonged to a friend, so I came here to help find her. Drones are useful in animal rescue.”
“You must be joking.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“You came all the way from America to Tbilisi to help find a dog.”
“I did.”
“That’s”—and she was afraid he was going to say ridiculous , but instead he said—“very kind.”
They came, then, across a group of strays, and the dogs engaged in a bit of friendly butt-sniffing; the strays were brownish and grayish and very much not Angel, and Amy knew, without her drone, that her chances of finding the dog had gone down about 90 percent.
“I assume none of these are the one you’re looking for? ” the man said.
“They are not,” Amy said. Then: “Do you think if I’d offered the cop money he would have given me my drone back?”
“Oh dear,” the man said. “Oh no. That would have been a terrible idea—”
“But maybe—”
“Truly,” he said, “if I can give you one word of advice during your time here, do not ever, ever try to bribe a police officer. They’re very proud of the integrity of their municipal force.
The police were once profoundly corrupt, back in the nineties, and the government did an admirable job rebuilding.
One of the best things they’ve done, to be honest. They would not look kindly on you trying to bribe them. ”
“Ah,” Amy said.
“The consequences could be extraordinarily severe.”
“Got it,” Amy said.
“Don’t try it.”
“Gotcha,” she said.
“Well, looks like we’re back at the end of the road,” he said, as the British school emerged in the distance, Union Jacks and Georgian flags fluttering.
“What does your dog do while you teach?”
“Poppy? She sits in the corner.” The man patted Poppy on her soft, curly head. “Learns her maths.”
“Right,” Amy said. She bent to pet Poppy good-bye, and the poodle accepted her pats with equanimity. “Well, it was nice talking with you. Thanks again for your help with the cop.”
“No problem,” said the man. “Enjoy Tbilisi. Beware the chacha.”
“Too late,” Amy said.
“Ah well,” the man said, then he and Poppy pushed off up the hill.
SHE ASKED THE cab to drop her off in Liberty Square.
The Opel weaved through traffic, endless streets of open-air vendors selling auto parts and construction materials, the dogs asleep on either side of her in the back seat, before they finally crossed over a bridge into the center of the city.
Down Rustaveli, past the parliament building with its drooping cross, and then, finally, the square.
But despite its grandiose name, the Square was little more than a traffic roundabout, a grassy oval plaza with an obelisk in the middle.
“This is it?” she asked the cabby, who didn’t speak English and ushered her out with hand gestures.
According to her Google map, this was it. The seminary Stalin had attended as a teenager was just down the street. There was a monument to Pushkin in an adjacent park. On the other side of the oval, a Courtyard by Marriott and a Burberry store.
The square, according to her phone, had been, in its previous lifetimes, known as Erivansky Square, Beria Square, and Lenin Square.
It was where George W. Bush gave a speech that afternoon fifteen years ago, where someone threw a grenade at him that didn’t go off.
(Honestly, how did she miss that?) Georgians liked to throw protests there every few years.
During the Soviet period, there had been a large statue of Vladimir Lenin a few feet from where she stood.
Amy tried to feel something, standing in the middle of the grassy oval: gratitude for her own freedom or a sense of being at a crossroads in history or anything, really.
But instead she felt only droneless, homeless—and the fiercely growing cold.
A few feet away, in the tall shadow of the obelisk, lounged a fluffy white dog.
Large-ish, Lab-shaped. “Zazi! Zazi!” she whispered.
“Zazi, is it her?” Zazi looked up at her, confused.
“Angelozi, Zazi, could it be?” The poetic beauty of finding Angel after a day of searching in the wrong place, in this modest historic circle.
Was it possible?
“Angel!” Amy said, then, louder, “Angelozi!”
The dog looked at her curiously as she approached.
Amy tried to make herself small, praying Zazi and Phil wouldn’t scare her away.
“Angelozi,” she said, removing a pig’s ear from her bag—“Angelozi, please come—” and then the dog stood, and it turned out that she wasn’t large at all, nor Lab-shaped, and she had reddish-brown spots on her hind quarters, and her ears folded over, which meant of course she wasn’t Angel at all.
But Amy gave her the pig’s ear anyway, and watched, disappointed, as she ate it.