Guram Dochanashvili — A Fellow Traveller
Guram Dochanashvili (1939 – 2021) was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. A renowned novelist, short-story writer, historian, and archeologist, he is considered one of the most popular writers in Georgia. His novel The First Robe is regarded as a modern Georgian classic and was adapted in 2016 as a production for the Georgian State Opera Theatre. His work has been described to align with dissident, satirical, and postmodernist literary currents, and has been widely published and translated.
Excerpt:
—Do you remember, Temur, how stuffy it was when we were at the sea, panting at the open window for even a little breeze. Do you remember?
—Sure I remember, Temur says.
—How awesome it was, the sea, Dato says, cheering up. Nothing beats the sea!
—We got bored with the sea too, eventually, as I recall.
—Not at all, I wasn’t the least bit bored.
—Sure you were.
—Never! How could I get bored with the sea... ? Ah, the sea is so gorgeous.. .Just the pleasure of lazing around on the sand makes it worthwhile. No, you don’t laze, you stretch out onto it, entrusting your body to the sun . . . The sun will burn you, will calm you, will take you over, till you can’t think of anything, can’t remember anything, you’re just feeling the sun. Eventually you get up, and you’re ... can one say, “saturated” with sun?
—I’m not sure.
—Well, in any case ... You’re saturated with sun, and so you step into the cool, pleasant sea. The gorgeous sea! Now the sea, the sea really is overwhelming. The overwhelming sea . . . The word “overwhelming” actually fits the word “sea,” I think, Dato says, looking at the old man.
The man is looking through the window. The snow is now dark blue. What a foolish expression he has, Dato thinks, feeling compelled to engage the man in conversation nonetheless.
—Do you like the sea? he asks.
—Well, now, I don’t really know ...
—What? Have you never seen the sea, then?
—Yes, I have ...
—How could you not love it, then? The sea is amazing, awe-inspiring ... That’s like saying you don’t like sunsets. You’ve seen the sun set, right?
—Yes, certainly I’ve seen it... the man says uneasily, without taking his eyes from the window.
I was so sure that he’d love nature, Temur thinks.
—Well, didn’t you like it? Sunsets too are awe-inspiring, Dato says, looking at the ceiling. It turns bluish-green and blue. A golden reddish disc emerges into the blue. The disc is leaving the blue space slowly, lingeringly, hiding in the bluish-green.
—Ah, the greatness of the sea, Dato says. How could anyone not love the sea?
—Perhaps it’s not so rare as all that, the old man says.
—You only like peace, is that it? But isn’t it peaceful at the seaside? Isn’t it peaceful at the seaside during sunset? You know, I’ve often observed that when people go out to watch the sun go down over the ocean, they tend to whisper. They stand there and whisper! It’s so tranquil, then they’re so calm. They don’t want to break the spell. They don’t want to ruin the peacefulness of it all.
—You don’t understand. What I like is ... oblivion. To lose oneself in nothingness, you know? That’s the kind of peace I enjoy.
—And the sea isn’t good enough for you? Look, nothing obliterates the self like a raging sea! You haven’t thought this through. How great is a raging sea, anyway?
The old man is nervously tapping his cigarette holder on his knee.
—How great it is to sit and watch the sea rage, Dato says, looking at nothing in particular. Think about it. The sea is preparing a wave. It gets a good running start. It shakes a little, then rocks back and forth, then it brings in other waves in clusters, then it swings them all around, and ... you hear it roar, the waves all come crashing onto the shore, look at it roll those rocks around, the big ones too, and of course the little pebbles, and finally it’s just clinging to the sand as it rolls back, it seems to me that a wave has fingers ... Are you sure you don’t like the sea?
The old man’s muscles can be seen tensing up and relaxing again in his cheeks.
—Are you sure, Dato goes on, that you don’t like the rough and powerful sea?
—Enough! the old man shouts. Why can’t you leave me in peace?
The man is on his feet, glaring down at at Dato. He looks like he’s ready to attack.
—Why, what did I say? Dato asks, astonished.
The old man sees that this surprise is genuine. He sits back down. Almost calm.
—Sorry, the man says, looking down.
But Dato is furious now. Why did he yell at me? What the hell did he have to yell about?
—You know, Dato says, if you were my age, I wouldn’t let you get away with that. But, look, you’re—what? My dad’s age, probably. At least.
Silence is necessary and inevitable at such moments.There are channels running between the planks that make up the coach’s floor.
Dato wants to look at the man, but doesn’t want to get caught doing it. He’s a bit worried, frankly. And the train continues on. And the train probably stopped at yet another station, in the meantime, at which yet another bell was rung, after which the train started up again, and is now continuing on. Dato risks looking at the old man’s boots. Then at his knees. Then at the button on his shirt pocket. Then at his face. Which doesn’t really have a big nose at all. What a sad expression the old man has.
—Sorry, Dato says.
—No need to apologize, kid. You couldn’t have known. Please excuse me for crying. I was crying because of the sea, the sea ...
Silence again. The cigarette holder is tapping on the old man’s knee again. First he taps it with the cigarette end, then with the mouthpiece, in turn.
Dato wants to console the man, or to say something pleasant to the man. He can’t find the word.
The old man is looking back through the window. The snow is altogether black now. It looks black, anyway. But perhaps it’s still white, somewhere.
—I love it very much, the man says. Yes, I see the sea, the raging sea ... But when I’m looking at the snow, I forget every¬ thing. I just feel peacefulness. Sometimes I look at some of the fir trees too. There’s so much snow on the branches of a fir tree, but the branches don’t bend, they don’t sway. Yet I worry that the tree might shake down the snow from its shoulders ... If that happens, the silence will break, and the sight of the sea will come back to me, and I’ll remember it . . . and I don’t want to remember it. Peace, emptiness—those are better. The old man smiles sadly and says: overwhelming peace.
And back again he turns to the window. And, as ever, the little train is moving ahead. Overwhelming, Dato thinks. Overwhelming is a real cool word.
Explanation:
Georgian author Guram Dochanashvili’s A Fellow Traveller (1970s) is a short story, translated by Khatuna Beridze for the Best European Fiction 2014 anthology. It follows three men in a late-Soviet period train carriage, and reflects upon the Black Sea littoral space as one of complex multiplicity. Throughout this story, it is articulated as a location of pure bliss, release, and escape for the two younger passengers. It is simultaneously, however, a harbor of painful, involuntary memory for the third passenger, an old man, who longs never again to find himself by the tumultuous shore. This story captures the littoral space as a destination through which the fleeting experiences of youth are materialized. It reflects upon the water as an immersive experience within the rough and raging, transient, and impetuous, but also as a symbol of pain, the unforgettable, and inevitably destructive. For all of Dochanashvili’s characters, the sea is alive – a force, it is clear, that we must learn to live and grow alongside, against whose tides we are unfathomably small.
Citation: Dochanashvili, Guram. A Fellow Traveller. Trans. Khatuna Beridze, in Best European Fiction 2014, edited by Drago Jančar, Dalkey Archive Press, 2013, pp. 97-101