Eleven #3
She inspected the small sprouts—these would be the carrots, of course, their tops bright green and feathery; their season must have started earlier in Georgia.
Her mother had grown carrots, too, and used their tops in vegetable soup.
In fact, Amy had never realized people discarded carrot tops until she watched one of her roommates do it, carelessly, throwing them out along with the halves of the tomatoes she wasn’t using, or the heels of her loaves of bread, dazzling in her wastefulness.
“The children call this Angel’s garden,” Irine said.
The loud bell clanged, and within moments the peace of the garden was overtaken by clamoring children, running outside in their black-and-white uniforms, climbing on the jungle gym, pushing each other on the swings, chasing each other around the perimeter of the yard.
They looked to be maybe six or seven years old.
They were followed by a pair of harried-looking teachers.
One of them, catching sight of Irine, patted the other on the arm and marched quickly over.
“Es sisulelea, Direk’toro, da shen es itsi!”
Irine carefully wiped a speck of dirt off her trousers before responding. The teacher raised her voice, and the conversation quickly grew heated, or seemed to grow heated, before Irine held up her hand. “Sak’marisi,” she said.
The other woman started to speak again.
“Enough,” Irine said, loudly and in English. “We will go inside now, Amy. You will excuse us.”
Amy followed Irine as she click-clacked down the hall a half step in front of her. “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” Irine said. “It is a complicated internal matter.” She stopped in front of her office. “I’m sorry, but I have to get to work now. You will be able to find your way?”
“Of course.”
“If you are going to spend the day looking for Angel, you might want to head north, toward the market,” she said. “If she were to be around here, someone would have already spotted her.”
“That makes sense,” Amy said.
“All right,” Irine said. “I will see you at home.” Then she turned and headed into her office, a jangling of heavy black telephones and the scowl of her secretary.
Conversations here turned on a dime.
As Amy wandered through the hallways, trying to find her way out (all schools were like this, endless mazes, door after the exact same door), she peeked into some of the classrooms, which looked very much like American classrooms: friendly signs and paintings on the walls, children’s artwork.
The kids were bent over schoolbooks or standing at broad chalkboards, much like she herself had done once upon a time.
Here, though, there were also framed posters at regular intervals on every hallway that had several official-looking symbols on them.
And, toward the end of the hallway, framed headshots of several imposing-looking people, like the photos of the governor and lieutenant governor at highway rest stops.
“Edzeb rames?”
“I’m sorry?” It was the teacher from outside, the one who had confronted Irine. She had dark hair cut in a bob, a youthful face, a worried expression.
“You speak English,” she said. “I can help you?”
“Oh, I’m just on my way out,” Amy said. “I’m a friend of Irine’s—of the principal’s.”
“Yes, I saw you in the courtyard,” she said. “I take a break now while the children play. I can lead you outside.”
Amy followed her down one hallway and through another—she would never have found it herself—and outside the building. The teacher lit a cigarette on the broad front steps, then tilted her pack at Amy.
God, she was going to come home with such a habit!
She took one from the pack—not a Crown, thank God—and they stood together in the way of smokers all over the world, in quiet rapport with each other and the nicotine and their hands.
Smoking was so great—why on earth had she ever stopped?
And smoking with an informant (she was really playing detective now) was a perfect way to gather some intel.
“I’m Amy, by the way. I’m visiting from New York.”
“New York!” the woman said. “Cool.”
“Thank you,” Amy said.
“I am Marta,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you.” Then, because what the hell, she said, “You know anything about Angel?”
“Angel?”
“The dog? Angelozi? Who used to walk children across the street? ”
“Oh, yes, Angelozi. Well, the children are very sad about it, of course,” she said. “It seems terrible to me that someone would do such a thing, but of course there are terrible things happening all over the world right now. Why should our school be spared?”
“I suppose that’s true. Still, it’s a weird one. To take a dog.”
“I do not think it is weird at all.” Marta inhaled sharply on her cigarette, gave Amy a look that suggested confidence, even conspiracy. “It could be part of the plan.”
“The plan?”
“You haven’t heard about the Russians?”
“What about them?”
“Well,” Marta said, “It’s no secret they have been putting money into our school system to change the curriculum.”
“Tell me more,” said Amy, a regular Sherlock Holmes.
“You see,” Marta said. “They have already done it in the east of the country, changing the history books, making Russian language lessons compulsory. Russian music, Russian art, if you can call their garbage art. But now they want to do that here in Tbilisi, too. And if you make noise about it you are fired. You cannot protest. You must keep your mouth shut. In fact,” Marta said, “my colleague was fired six weeks ago for standing up to Director Benia about the Russian program.”
“Ah,” said Amy. “And what is the program exactly?”
Marta inhaled, looked up the street. “I am not entirely sure what it will be, but,” she lowered her voice—“but everyone knows that it is coming. Starting next year, we will be teaching our children Russian language instead of English language. And Russian history instead of Georgian history.”
Amy nodded, gestured for Marta to continue.
“My colleague was making a protest about it. And then she was fired. And there is no money to replace her, so now we have two teachers for thirty five-year-olds, some of whom need very special attention. It is quite difficult.”
“I can imagine,” Amy said, blowing smoke from the corner of her mouth.
“And then Angelozi disappeared just as the parents were going to organize on behalf of Miss Lomidze,” she said. “So there was something very new to get upset about. The parents quickly lost interest in Miss Lomidze when it turned out Angelozi disappeared. The distraction was very effective.”
“That sounds terrible,” Amy said, hoping that she simply seemed curious to Marta—not suspicious or, worse, stupidly na?ve. “But you think it was really orchestrated? Couldn’t it have been just a coincidence?” How to explain a coincidence? “Like two things randomly happening at the same time.”
“Nobody believes in coincidences,” Marta said.
She pointed her cigarette toward the street, toward the white-and-red doghouse.
“The saddest part, of course, is how much the children miss her. Every morning they looked forward to seeing her, brought her treats, made sure she took her—I don’t know.
Her medicine. To prevent her from getting parasites. ”
Amy followed the line of the cigarette smoke toward Angel’s doghouse. It did look so forlorn, alone on the corner. “So who do you think took her?”
“Probably the Russians,” she said. “Or people who want to impart the Russian system on our children. To distract us from what they are doing. They’re everywhere around here.
The Russians have never left us alone and they never will.
They invaded us before they even invaded Ukraine, you know. Nobody seems to remember.”
“I remember,” Amy said.
Marta crushed her cigarette under her heel. “I must get back to my students,” she said. “It was nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.” And then Marta disappeared back through the school’s front doors.
Amy finished her cigarette on the school steps, watching the street life passing in front of her.
If Russians really did take Angel—well, it seemed like such a petty thing.
To kidnap a dog! Like the plot of a children’s mystery story superimposed onto international relations.
At the same time, it was clear that someone took Angel.
A dog that well-fed, that well-cared for, who never showed a predilection to wander before, who had a job to do—that dog would never just wander away on her own.
But why couldn’t it be something simpler than Russians?
A family whose child was attached to Angel, say, and brought her home to be a family pet.
Or maybe she had, indeed, been hit by a car (but then wouldn’t it have been reported?
Wouldn’t someone have seen?). Or maybe she had gotten pregnant and was off tending to pups?
But no, she’d been spayed, she had had one of those tags—
Maybe she could ask Andrei what he thought might have happened to Angel.
As the only official Russian person she knew, perhaps he’d have some ideas?
But Andrei was a refugee, an exile, separated from his wife and child.
His life had dimensions to it she could not even see.
To ask him to weigh in on whether his countrymen would fuck around with a dog felt a little—petty.
She had heard him in the morning, listening to quiet music in his room next door. She wondered if he ever slept. She wondered if he missed his wife. She wondered if he thought about or cared that she was right next door, changing her clothes, breathing, lying in the dark.