Part 4 — I Put Up with Humiliation on Stage, but When They Showed Me a Photo of the Children, the Producer’s Smile Suddenly Vanished

Salome’s words fell into the room as if a heavy stone had rolled across the floor.

“A third child?” I repeated.

Nino nodded, but there was only confusion in her eyes.

“Only Ana was born with us,” she said. “Luka was born three years later.”

Salome put the telephone on the table.

“The record is in your names. The time matches Ana’s birth. But the name field has been erased.”

Vakhtang looked at his handcuffed hands.

“This is nonsense.”

“Then why did the hospital call you every year for years on each birthday?” Salome asked.

For the first time Vakhtang’s face changed.

The policeman took him by the arm.

“You will discuss this at the station.”

“I hid nothing!” he shouted. “You do not know whom you are dealing with!”

“Now we do,” I told him.

It was the first time my voice had not trembled before him.

That same night the police sealed the theater archive. Vakhtang’s lawyer met us in the corridor and lowered his head awkwardly.

“I no longer represent him in this case,” he said.

“Why?” Nino asked.

“Because today I heard the complete recording for the first time. He admitted everything in his own voice.”

Salome turned on the computer. The video played again, but this time Vakhtang’s words sounded different. The people who had worked with him for years stood silently and listened.

“If the children are healthy, your family will no longer be interesting.”

Vakhtang raised his head.

“I did not say it like that.”

His face appeared in the video.

“You said it yourself,” Salome replied.

He heard his own voice through someone else’s ears for the first time. His eyes filled with tears, although this time no one applauded him.

The next morning we went to the hospital. In the old archive room there was the smell of dust and paper. The hand of the clock hanging on the wall had stopped at four eleven.

The archivist brought us a brown folder.

“I found this record years ago,” he said. “But my superior told me not to touch it.”

There was only one certificate in the folder: on the same day, in the same maternity hospital, another family had lost a boy. The child’s mother died after childbirth, and the father signed a refusal.

“Where is that child?” I asked.

The archivist bit his lips.

“According to the record, the child was transferred to a private institution. Then the trail disappears.”

Nino grabbed the chair.

“Did Vakhtang know?”

Salome turned over the last page of the folder. Vakhtang’s signature was there.

The police searched his house that same day. They found tapes, letters, and transfers of money. It became clear that for years he had used the stories of dozens of people for his own shows, but the record of the third child turned out to be the most serious.

That child was Lasha.

Four days later we found him in a children’s shelter. He was seventeen years old, tall, thin, with a small scar near his left eyebrow. When he saw me for the first time, he stepped back several paces.

“Who are you?”

I took an old photograph from my pocket. In it I was holding Ana as a baby, and I was standing beside her. On the back of the photograph, four eleven was written.

“I think we have been looking for each other all our lives,” I told him.

Lasha looked at the photograph for a long time.

“I do not know whether I want to be part of your family.”

“I do not know either how to be your father after so many years,” I answered. “But if you ever want to, I will be here.”

The trial began three months later. Vakhtang was charged with fraud, forgery of documents, and the illegal exploitation of children. Doctor Irakli testified. He neither defended himself nor asked for forgiveness.

“I hid the truth for money,” he said. “And by doing so I took years away from people.”

Vakhtang tried to regain control until the end.

“This man would have been nobody without me!” he shouted.

I stood up from my chair.

“Perhaps. But my children were always my children even without you.”

After the trial we moved away from the old theater. Nino found a small apartment on the edge of the city, where the sound of buses could be heard in the morning and we had a pot of mint by the window.

Ana returned to school. Luka began attending football club. Lasha came to us twice a week, and at first he only stood by the kitchen door.

One evening he asked me:

“Do you really put on that anchor every important day?”

I took the small copper anchor off my jacket.

“I used to think it held me in place when everything was falling apart.”

“What do you think now?”

“Now I know that sometimes an anchor only reminds you where your shore is.”

Lasha took the object in his hand and carefully turned it around.

Several weeks later I received a letter from Vakhtang. It said that he had made a mistake, that life without our family was difficult for him, and that he wanted to see the children at least once.

Nino left the letter closed for me.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

For a long time I watched the raindrops sliding down the window glass.

“I will ask the children. The decision will be theirs.”

Ana refused. Luka did not want to see a strange man. And Lasha said only one thing:

“I promise him nothing.”

“Nor is it necessary,” I answered.

The meeting between Vakhtang and the children did not take place.

Not because we wanted revenge.

But because for the first time we gave them the right to draw their own boundaries themselves.

Six months later I went onstage again in a small theater. The hall was not large. Nino sat in the first row, with Ana, Luka, and Lasha beside her. Behind the curtain my hands were trembling, but this time not from fear.

Ana was no longer wearing a paper crown. Instead, she held a sheet of paper on which four people were drawn: of different heights, but standing on one line.

Luka quietly told me:

“Dad, are you a king today?”

“No,” I smiled. “Today I am simply your father.”

I went onto the stage.

When I said the first word, the hall fell silent. I was no longer trying to prove to anyone that a big heart can fit in a small body. I no longer needed to.

After the performance Lasha came to me.

“May I wear this anchor tomorrow?”

I placed the object on his palm.

“If you want, yes.”

He took the anchor between his fingers and smiled at me for the first time.

That night, after returning home, I hung my jacket on the chair. The copper anchor was no longer attached to it.

It was now hanging around Lasha’s neck.

And for the first time in my whole life I realized that I no longer needed my shore.

We found each other.