Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"Take me to America!" the toothless old woman next to me screamed, shaking her big soup spoon at me in a dripping demand.

Other diners at the long table began teasing and laughing. It was an unimaginably happy room of contented eaters with food-splashed faces, people with a hunk of bread in one hand and a spoon in the other, attacking bowls of thick beany soup.

None of the volunteers had anything to preach; no philosophy was imparted about what they were doing. They simply labored without question. And because operating costs were low, practically the whole budget was used for food. Oleg later told me that he got money from local companies, Oxfam, and various United Nations agencies, but that even without their help he would have continued to run the charity.

For the helpers it was a kind of inspired drudgery to which they brought humanity. Most of them were from other European countries, living frugally and far from home; they were uncomplaining, learning humility, but also in a position to understand the very heart of Georgia. I admired them for following the fundamental tenet of Buddhism, the key text of the Buddhist way, utter selflessness, perhaps without knowing any word of the Diamond Sutra.

Inevitably, a little later, on a nearby street I saw some Georgian youths skidding around corners too fast in their crappy cars and shouting out the window, playing rap music much too loudly and being stupid.

***

NOW AND THEN YOU MEET SOMEONE at a party or at a friend's house and he says, "I'm from Tbilisi"—or wherever—"and if you ever visit, you must look me up."

And you say, "Absolutely," but the day never comes, for why on earth would you ever go to Tbilisi? And usually the person is merely being polite and doesn't mean it. But Gregory and Nina, whom I had met a few years before in Massachusetts, seemed sincere.

And there I was in Tbilisi, under wintry skies, with time on my hands. And so I made the call.

"Are you going to be here tomorrow?" Nina asked.

"Oh, yes," I said.

"Then you must come to the ballet." Nina was a ballerina in the Georgia State Opera Company, and Gregory was her husband. "It's the premiere of Giselle. Come to the Opera Theater at seven. Ask for Lizaveta. She will have a ticket for you. We will meet you in the box."

The Opera Theater was a notable landmark of Tbilisi. I found it easily on foot. An imposing cheese-colored nineteenth-century edifice on the main boulevard, Rustaveli Avenue, it was built at a time when Russia—which had annexed Georgia in 1801—regarded an opera house as essential to the romantic idea of Georgia as one of the more picturesque regions of the Russian empire. Georgians were great agriculturalists, and their vineyards were renowned, but Georgians also danced and sang.

It turned out that Nina was not merely a prima ballerina but also head of the opera company. When I met her in the box, she had recently given birth to a little girl.

Gregory, who was a prosperous investor and also a doting husband and Nina's manager, said, "But she will dance next year. She will prove that you can have a baby and also be a great ballerina."

Other people—mostly friends and relations—were already seated.

Introducing me, Nina said, "This is Paul. He went through Africa alone!"

"Is true?" a woman said.

"By autostop," Nina said.

"Not really," I said.

But the woman hadn't heard. She had turned to tell her husband that I had hitchhiked through Africa.

Then Giselle began. The title role was performed by a ballerina from the Bolshoi. The male lead, Prince Albrecht, was a local dancer who was only twenty-one. He was cheered when he appeared onstage. I had no idea what I was in for. I knew nothing about ballet, but it seemed to me a melodious way of spending an evening in Tbilisi.

After my rainy journey of bleak hills and foggy valleys and muddy roads, this packed opera house—warm and well fed—was the antithesis of Batumi: pale pretty sprites in tutus, men in tights, some of them spinning, some of them leaping, and an orchestra pit where men in tuxedos scraped out mellifluous tunes and cascading harmonies.

I was sitting comfortably in a gilt chair, resting on velvet cushions, watching Prince Albrecht (in disguise) fall in love with the peasant girl Giselle. But there was a hitch: he had been betrothed to Bathilda, the Duke's daughter. Giselle also had another and very excitable lover. Lots of prancing and leaping and flinging of arms, and finally identities were revealed, sending Giselle off her head. Just before the prolonged and ex quisite death agonies of Giselle, she heard the Wilis—"the spirits of young girls who died before their wedding day," the program said—and then she died.