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

That was when I realized they wanted to take my children away, when the door handle remained slightly above my head and someone locked in the room whispered: “They should not be here.”

All this happened in the back room of an old Tbilisi theater, at six o’clock in the evening, forty minutes before the premiere. I am one hundred and twelve centimeters tall and was playing the role of a little king onstage. My wife, Nino, is only four centimeters taller than me. From the very first day we were together, we knew that people often perceived our love only as a spectacle.

That evening, however, we brought our two children, Ana and Luka, to the theater for the first time. Ana was twelve years old, Luka—nine. Both held small paper crowns in their hands, which Nino had cut out on the kitchen table that morning. The crowns smelled of glue and oranges.

“Dad, do you really have to go up that enormous staircase?” Luka asked me.

“Kings do not ask stairs how tall they are,” I smiled.

“Then you are the bravest king,” Ana told me, and with her fingers she straightened the little copper anchor on my jacket.

I had that anchor from Nino’s mother. I pinned it to my jacket before every important performance. When I was nervous, I touched it with my finger and made sure that I was still directing my own life.

Producer Vakhtang Beridze entered the room when the children were standing by the window. Behind him came Doctor Irakli Makharadze, who years earlier had told us that having children was a “risky experiment.”

“Why are you here?” Vakhtang asked, looking at the children.

“We came to Dad’s performance,” Ana answered.

Vakhtang snickered.

“This stage is for professionals. We do not have time for family photographs.”

Nino stepped in front of him. Her hand gripped my wrist.

“They are not part of your advertising. They are our children.”

The doctor put his bag on the table. The leather clasp shut noisily.

“That is exactly why we need to talk,” he said. “About the children’s health and future.”

“We know their health better than you do,” I told him.

“You know only what you have been shown,” the doctor replied.

At that moment the telephone rang. My lawyer’s name appeared on the screen. He quietly told me that the theater owner was canceling our contract because Vakhtang had a “serious document” about the children.

“What document?” I asked.

Vakhtang looked toward the door.

“The one that will prove that the children are in danger because of this project.”

Ana stepped back. Luka dropped his paper crown onto the floor.

Nino went pale, but her voice did not tremble.

“We received a warning from doctors. Then we made the decision anyway. You have no right to use this.”

“Right?” Vakhtang snickered. “You have lived your whole life on other people’s sympathy. And now you think the truth is on your side.”

I took a step toward him. Everything in the room seemed to become smaller all at once: the table, the chairs, even Vakhtang himself.

“Say once more that my children live on other people’s sympathy.”

Vakhtang did not answer. The doctor opened the folder and took out the top sheet. The children’s birth dates were written in its corner.

“If I read this now,” he said, “your career will be over, and the children may need state guardianship.”

Nino stepped in front of me.

“You cannot frighten us.”

“Then see what you signed seven years ago,” the doctor whispered.

His finger reached the dark green sheet hidden inside the folder. I touched the anchor and reached out to take the document from him, but at that exact moment the door opened and an unfamiliar woman appeared on the threshold…

The unfamiliar woman was a lawyer. She held a small wooden box in her hand and had a face as if she had reconsidered coming several times on the way.

“Giorgi Mchedlidze?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

“I am Salome Japaridze. This document is in your name, but only you can open it.”

Vakhtang immediately took a step forward.

“Salome, we had an agreement.”

“I had no agreement with you,” she answered and put the box on the table.

There was the seal of my old theater on the box. I had seen that seal seven years earlier, one week before the children’s birth, in a hospital corridor. At the time I thought it was an item accidentally left behind.

Nino put her hand on the box.

“What is inside?”

Salome first looked at the children, then at me.

“The answer to a question the doctor hid from you.”

Luka grabbed his mother’s hand.

“Mom, will something happen to us?”

“No, my love,” Nino told him, although there was fear in her eyes.

Salome began opening the lock. Just then the sound of heavy footsteps came from the corridor. Vakhtang put the telephone to his ear and said quietly:

“Come in now. It is time for everyone to learn who these children really are…”

Two people in police uniforms appeared in the corridor, but behind them came our family doctor, Irakli Makharadze. His face was calm, excessively calm. He held a telephone in his hand, and a video was visible on the screen.

“Before anyone raises their voice, you must see this,” Salome said.

“No one has the right to publish my documents!” Vakhtang shouted.

“This is not publication,” Salome replied. “This is evidence.”

She took a memory card from the wooden box and inserted it into the lawyer’s computer. Only the ticking of the old clock could be heard in the room. I noticed Nino’s shoulders—both her hands were pressed against her heart.

A hospital room from seven years earlier appeared in the video. The camera stood in the corner. Nino and I were sitting beside the bed, holding newborn Ana wrapped in a blanket. Doctor Irakli stood before us.

“Genetic testing of both children is necessary,” he was saying. “But no one should send the results anywhere yet.”

In the next shot Vakhtang appeared. He handed the doctor an envelope.

“The contract with them will work only if the children are born with the same condition,” he said. “The public needs a story to pity.”

My voice sounded in the video.

“What do you mean?”

Vakhtang did not know then that he was being filmed.

“If the children are healthy, your family will no longer be interesting. If they have the same traits, all of you will become my project.”

Nino covered her mouth with her hand. Ana’s breathing could be heard in the room.

“Turn it off,” she said.

“No, my child,” I told her, although I could barely hear my own voice. “We must hear the truth.”

Salome took out a second sheet.

“This is the official genetic conclusion. Ana and Luka do not have the inherited alteration from either parent. Both children were born with a healthy genetic profile of average height.”

Vakhtang laughed loudly.

“Impossible.”

The doctor lowered his head.

“Not impossible. Rare, but completely possible. Both of them had a chance not to inherit their parents’ condition.”

“Then why did you not tell us?” I asked.

Irakli looked at me.

“Vakhtang told me that if I revealed the truth, your family would be financially ruined. He forced me under threat to hide the conclusion.”

Ana stepped forward.

“Dad, does that mean we are not like you?”

Nino knelt down.

“You are like us in what matters most. Everything else is only the size of the body.”

Vakhtang struck the table with his hand.

“This video will change nothing! The contract says that the children’s photographs and story are my property.”

Salome calmly opened the last page.

“This is exactly where you are mistaken. This clause does not exist in the contract at all. You made another version disappear and gave the family a false copy.”

The policeman put handcuffs on Vakhtang, but I did not feel victory. I only saw how the doctor took his glasses off his eyes and cried for the first time.

At that same moment Salome’s telephone rang. She listened, her face changed, and she turned toward me.

“Giorgi, this story does not end here. Another record has been found in the hospital archive. It says that a third child was born that night, whose existence was hidden from everyone…”