ABSTRACT
I ’d come to the former Georgian capital of Mtskheta with Tamuna; it would be our last trip together. She said she had two friends in the town to visit, one from her university days, and the other . . . “You probably think I’m sentimental,” she said, “but I feel its cathedral is a kind of older
relation — I always learn something from it.” For the 20-minute drive up the Mtkvari river from Tbilisi, a taxi hadn’t
been difficult to find. The problem came in the driver’s baffling refusal to accept my money.
