Night had fallen. Dumas was separated from his companions, lost in a trackless forest, with no firearms, the howls of hungry wolves in the distance. Likely to be canis lupus campetris, a subspecies of grey wolf native to the steppe regions of the Caucasus. The Persians called this the land of the wolves with good reason. As a storyteller, he may know that there was once a warrior king in the east of the country who became a saint, The Holy and Right-Believing King Vakhtang, who was portrayed with the head of a wolf and wolf skin on his shoulders. Indeed, the origin of his name, in both Georgian and Persian, meant ‘wolf-bodied’.

His imagining fills the deep blue mists of the forest with unnatural wild creatures that walk on their hind legs. Le Grand Méchant Loup. He is not keen to encounter them, in any shape or form. He lets the reins hang loose, trusting the instinct of the horse to lead to safety. He believes that memory does not lose its way, even though the body may move in a different direction, towards the unknown, with chance as its guide.

He has been to St Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Astrakan, Derbent, Tiflis, on this, the longest journey of his life. In February 1859, because of this unexpected detour, he misses the steamer at Poti. He fails to be impressed by the accommodation offered in this primitive place. He stays in a miserable room in a miserable inn at icy temperatures, the only source of heat a suffocating stove. He records this time as the most disagreeable of all his travels. He writes, ‘Poti est le paradis terrestre des cochons’. Poti may be a paradise for pigs, though better a pig below us than the jaws of a wolf behind us.

With works translated into 100 languages, he is the most successful writer of his generation. He never lets the facts get in the way of a good story, always concocting with his collaborators a fancy mix of reality and invention. What does Dumas dream of, these days and nights in Poti? Can he imagine that 144 years later that there will be a bronze statue of him erected here, sitting on his trunk, leaning on a cane – or that this cane will be later stolen? Perhaps he has no dreams at all, cold and miserable, awaiting a boat, stuck here in the relative safety of these bare walls, amidst the sludge of Poti.

Animal heads, approximately 2000 B.C; variously attributed to be dragons or wolves.