Other elements related to the time spent at Georgian House restaurant were the following.
Tommaso lingered a lot both on the menu, which was a consistent book written in 3 languages with an impressive variety of dishes, and on the table’s paper, arranged below the dish of each person, containing other information including information regarding Georgian dances performed in the restaurant itself.
The menu is decorated with colored drawings in a refined way, and the table’s paper makes his debut, in the central column, with an uncertain and incorrect English, on which Tommaso drew the attention of Mattia. — However, not to jeer that fact, but rather to questioning the reason of such carelessness, not very clear in his opinion.
Another element to note is that Tommaso, after a while being in that place, realized that that was the restaurant where Caritas Georgia organized a dinner to celebrate some anniversary a few months ago.
He had this information from Giuseppe Pellizzari, a Salesian priest, but until then Tommaso misunderstood, in his mind, the actual venue of the anniversary, and only then he was able to correct the accuracy of the information in his possession.
Giuseppe, indeed, told him that the anniversary would have taken place (or, “took place”) “in the best restaurant of the city”, along the river Mt’k’vari, but in that occasion Tommaso imagined another venue, with identical or almost identical name, located in another part of the city (in the area of Kolmeurneoba) which actually does not distinguish itself in a particular way and left him doubtful.
But now, they were clearly “in the best restaurant of the city”, and its name and location, and the advice itself, matched much better than the idea which he had in mind until now, with the information originally received from don Giuseppe.
Tommaso tried to express some of this reasoning (which had just the aspect of a punctual evidence in his mind) to Mattia, Mattia roughly understood, but the fact was actually impossible to express in that moment.
The fact was such correction of the knowledge of a person, on the basis of a new evidence: a process, which is as much surprising for the person retaining the error, as the time elapsed in such situation mistake and ignorance.
Such repentance was indeed impossible to transmit to Mattia in that occasion, even if he perhaps understood something in a kind of asymmetry in the conversation, which left the interlocutors with different feelings.
Another element related to the time spent in that place, was the presence of several tv screens hung on various sides of the spaces.
Because a tv is made in such a way that the attention is artificially (and dangerously) caught by it, over the “discrete imagination, retina, of reality”, Tommaso directed his gaze in that direction for a non negligible amount of time.
Then he realized that the subject of those screenings, were spectacles or “events” took place in the restaurant itself, or advertising of it.
This, which is not something rare in Georgia (being a little country, you can easily find self-referential representations of the daily life, which are in some way genuine compared to contents imposed by some external source) made those screenings more acceptable to Tommaso, or at least not totally unacceptable, as it would surely have been, in his opinion, in the other case.
In a sense, put aside for a moment the intrinsic dangerousness of the screen, the fact the once put in a screen, things and persons are transformed in simulacra and fetishes, which upset human perception and experience — in a sense the fact of being surrounded by images and representations of yourself, your space, your neighbors and surroundings, is theoretically healthy (however, not by a practical point of view when you take into account human nature).
I’m not sure if the experience and the feeling of Tommaso in that place, which I have described until now, is also representative of the feelings of Mattia, Gabriele and Tina.
As it should appear obvious, it was an experience and a feeling rather interior than exterior, partly due to the objective characteristics of that place (the music, the tv screens, the environment in general overwhelming), partly due to some subjective parameter (tiredness, dislike and intolerance towards wine, and so on).
It is possible that such subjective conditions were not present in Mattia, Gabriele and Tina as well, and it is also possible that the way of reacting to the external environment was completely different for them.
I think that especially Tina liked the situation, and I think that Tommaso, Mattia and Gabriele would have liked the situation in a similar way if they had recent experiences (specifically the fact to not having visited another similar place a few hours before) of Tina.
But I also think that the experience of Tommaso was, overall, also not comparable to that of Mattia and Gabriele, as well as to that of Tina.
I think that a proof of this observation can be found in the way as they greeted and separated each other, after about 30 minutes exiting that sumptuous venue.
