"What is this place?" asked Kate. Kate was a princess and princesses are
not accustomed to being brought to places like this.
Zaza looked at the slip of paper. "The Hinnom Heights Hotel. Between the
Scottish Church and the Old City."
"Zaza, you naughty boy, you can't be trusted," said Kate, and the cloud of
delicate perfume rising from her mingled with the dry scent of the pine
trees and dry, autumnal Jerusalem air.
"Jerusalem," said Zaza "you can smell how much holiness there is in the
air, and in the afternoon we will go to the Church of the Crucifixion to
visit Shota Rustaveli."
"He's dead, isn't he?" asked Kate indifferently, pulling a cigarette out of
a pack of an American brand. "You go visit Rustaveli, and I'll go shopping.
I hope that apart from God, they have a few other things to sell in this
city."
"Ah," said Zaza, "good morning to you. We have a reservation. This is the
Hinnom Hotel?"
"Jehennom," said the reception clerk, an Arab Christian from Sheikh Jarrah.
"And who, might I ask, is inquiring?"
"Please." Zaza handed him a visiting card.
David, the reception clerk, looked at the card upon which were written the
names and titles of Prince Zaza Chichishvili and his wife Princess Kate -
Ekatrina Ignatova. What a day, he thought to himself. Princes in my hotel.
Why not the King David? But maybe - oh, the dreams. He called one of the
boys who were standing at the entrance to the stone-paved courtyard and
sent him with the heavy suitcases to the 3rd floor.
"Isn't there an elevator here?" Kate disdainfully flicked her cigarette ash
onto the stone flags. Bougainvillea plants, geraniums and jasmine put out
their fragrance and silvery tendrils, and pine nuts lay buried in the piles
of needles from the evergreens that shaded the garden. The prince looked at
the sweet courtyard that was the heart of the hotel and saw the girl
sitting at its extreme end reading a morning newspaper, and immediately he
did not want to go anywhere else. For the prince, like other noble
Georgians, was a religious man, and religious men fall in love very easily.
He followed the tall princess, who wore jeans and a knit shirt and long,
dangling earrings. Her long, black hair was gathered into a bun and on her
feet she wore the most stylish of Italian shoes. The cloud of her delicate
perfume, Opium by Yves St. Laurent, filled the staircase that climbed up to
the first, second and third floor.
"There's no television here!" exclaimed Kate, and looked scornfully at the
suite. The refrigerator was simple and empty and without a mini-bar. The
boy opened the door to the balcony and the western city wall of Jerusalem
spread before them. Along the all the kilometers of the length of the wall
running from north to south there was only the Jaffa gate. A mass of sounds
- the bells pealing from the Church of the Dormition, the cry of the
muezzin from one of the mosques on the Temple Mount and the noise of the
hubbub of the city rose into a golden and wonderful day.
"A dream," said Prince Zaza and inhaled the city, and the princess looked
at the jeans and the green T-shirt he was wearing. What an ugly toad, she
thought, a toad. I wish he'd go into town already and I'll find me someone
here good enough to spend time with. Let him go to his monks, to pray, to
cross himself. Let him look for God and find him. "God is present here in
every stone," said Zaza, and lit a cigarette, instantly polluting the clean
air and Kate thought that God could be present in so many things but not in
this ugly thing she had married. How hard it is to be a noble. All those
trips,a nd the visiting cards. Why hadn't she married Bagrationi?
"Ah." The prince turned to the boy who stood at the door after he had shown
them the secrets of the room, with its patterned floor tiles, the bathroom
with its Armenian ceramics which the prince examined with interest and the
bottle of wine and the pitcher of lemonade with rose petals floating in it
and the wonderful platter of fruit that stood on the table. The princess
stood next to it and with bored carelessness popped late grapes into her
mouth. "Where can a person buy hashish in this town?"
"It's illegal," said the boy.
"What do you mean?" asked the prince. "And how do you expect a civilized
person to spend his day without a cigarette?"
"I'll check if there's any at the desk." The boy straightened up and the
prince slipped a ten shekel piece into his hand. "Is this enough?"
"Thank you," he said. "I'll find out and let you know." He returned a few
minutes later, with a little package of blossoms and a packet of papers.
"I'm sorry, there's no hashish, but there is grass. They say that it's good
stuff."
"We'll soon find out!" said the prince. "How much do I need to give you?"
"No, no - it's part of the service. The hotel owner's father is from
Persia, and there it's customary to use cannabis indica as part of the
ritual."
The prince regarded him with interest. 'Where do you know things like that
from?"
"I'm a student at the Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus. I'm working here
during the vacation to save some money and to collect some adventures and
stories."
"Ah," said the prince, "and do you smoke?'
"Not when I'm on duty."
"Too bad," said the prince. "I would have invited you to have a smoke with
us."
"What are you studying?" asked the princess.
"History and literature."
"Have you ever heard of Shota Rustaveli?"
"I once went with my father to his grave at the Church of the Crucifixion."
"By the northwestern pillar," mused the prince. "What a story!"
He sat down by the table and looked through the door at the walls of the
old city and the black dome of the Church of the Dormition, beneath which
lay the cemetery travelers and researchers and anyone who ever done
anything in this land of holiness and madness are buried.
"What a story," said the princess, and sat down next to the prince. The
prince crumbled the flowers and separated the seeds from the dried petals
and rolled the paper and took out a fine-looking mouthpiece that had
evidently seen a lot of use and stuck the cigarette into it. Then he rolled
another two cigarettes and laid them on the silver tray and gestured to the
student to sit down next to him. He lit the cigarette, took a drag as if he
were tasting a wine, and a pleased smile spread over his face. "A land of
milk and honey," he said, and passed the mouthpiece over to the princess,
and the princess shut her eyes and smoked and then passed the mouthpiece
over to Amnon who decided that in any case the vacation was almost over and
he was going back to university and it had been a long time since he last
sat and smoked with a prince and a princess.
When they started on the second cigarette, Amnon excused himself and went
down to get a bottle of water and a few things to munch, because maybe the
prince and the princess would be hungry after they smoked and David
regarded him with interest and agreed to take some of his duties off his
shoulders and he disappeared up the staircase. And when he got back, the
prince and the princess took out a bottle of Georgian wine from Kachti or
from the Magrelia estates and they clinked glasses. The sun passed the
zenith and the city wall was dry and sharp and devoid of any softness.
"Ah," said the prince. "You know, our Shota was the chancellor of the
exchequer of the kingdom of Georgia. And not just the chancellor of the
exchequer, but the chancellor of King Tamar's exchequer. Why aren't you
asking me how come the king was called Tamar?"
"I don't ask a whole lot when I smoke," said Amnon, "but I'm a great
listener."
"The stinking Georgian men couldn't call Queen Tamar queen, but only king
so that their Muslim Seljuk neighbors wouldn't laugh at them so they called
her King Tamar and she was worth a lot more than any man," said Princess
Ekatrina Ignatova and Amnon looked at her and knew that he would go
anywhere after such a woman, crazed with love.
"Ekatrina Ignatova is from Tamar's family," said Zaza. "You only think…" He
stopped and then continued. "King Tamar was in love with Shota Rustaveli,
who was a philosopher and a poet and a historian and a chancellor of the
exchequer and a great lover and he couldn't live without his king and she
couldn't live without her chancellor of the exchequer. But several hundred
years ago, just like today, there were things you couldn't do, that maybe
you wanted to do or maybe you should do but you couldn't. So, in order that
she could remain queen he resigned from all his royal positions and came
here. He became a monk and built the monastery in the Valley of the Cross
and there he wrote the greatest book that was ever written in the Georgian
language, his despairing love song to King Tamar, "The Night in the Tiger's
Skin," and he never loved another woman.
"Ah, l'amour," said the princess, and Amnon could see that she was crying.
"She came to Jerusalem."
"I came to Jerusalem,' said Kate, and there was a tenderness about her.
"I have brought King Tamar to Jerusalem," said Zaza Chichishvili. "We have
an appointment today with Shota Rustaveli."
Amnon crushed the cigarette into the ashtray following the prince's gesture
to do so, and everything looked logical and possible. The last light on the
walls. The Old City was tender again. The illusion of the airy tenderness
on which so many dreamers have crashed. "We are all dreamers," said Amnon,
and lights of the city began to twinkle on. "Yes," said the prince, "what
great luck," and the princess looked at him and instead of a big nose, thin
lips, incipient baldness and the filth of his clothes, she was sitting next
to Shota Rustaveli, the man who had stopped the world so that his queen
could continue to be king and for her sake he went to Jerusalem to build
her a church and write her the most wonderful book in the world and love
her with a passion that he changed to stone and paper until he died,
faithful to the woman he loved.

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