It was a pagan desire, she thought, and it was a pagan place: a dark garden of yews and straggling roses and, at its center, the stone church, with its altar and its font and, above it all, the bells, suspended in the chillair of the belfry, heavy and still, waiting to be brought to life.
When I left -- my stomach full and cheeks rosy from wine and the chill mountain air -- Kevlishvili offered me a water bottle filled with more of his heady, homemade grape juice.