Solo

by Rana Dasgupta

Men stopped to talk, and she moved them on. ‘Take another for your girlfriend!’ she shouted after them.

  The job did not interfere with school, and gave her a little amount of money to stave off disasters. The company was satisfied with her performance.

  Her mother sold her long, black hair to a wig maker. Khatuna thought it was a bid for sympathy, and offered no reaction when she saw her mother’s shaved head. Instead she asked,

  ‘Did you sell that crucifix?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much did you get?’

  ‘Three bottles of vodka.’

  Khatuna spat in her mother’s face.

  One spring evening, Khatuna was standing with her tray of cigarettes outside a bar on Perovskaya Street. The bar was named Beluga. Young playboys were out with Gucci sunglasses for the darkness, and models for each arm. There were man-hugs and back-slaps, and car keys rapped on glass when bouncers took too long to unlock doors. Eye make-up sparkled in the nightlights, and men dealt kisses on practised cheeks. A taxi clattered around the potholes, and three girls climbed out, singing together,

  You’re just too good to be true.

  Can’t take my eyes off of you.

  You feel like heaven to touch.

  I wanna hold you so much …

  A black Mercedes drew up, spilling bodyguards. A man got out with velvety movements, lithe in a suit and T-shirt, and Khatuna was surprised to see that it was Kakha Sabadze, the footballer-turned-tycoon. He was unmistakable, for his face was disfigured by a wine-red birthmark in the shape of Australia.

  ‘What’s he doing in a place like this?’ she wondered.

  Kakha Sabadze was one of Georgia’s richest men. Before Khatuna was born he had already been a famous footballer who had played for Dinamo Tbilisi, and for the USSR in the World Cup. They used to call him legendary, when the word still had a depth of meaning. When communism fell, Sabadze became Minister for Sports, and made himself rich selling Georgian football players to foreign clubs. He left behind politics for business. Now he owned an oil company, several mines and a chain of hotels, and he had a monopoly on the supply of Mercedes cars into Georgia. He was chairman of the national airline. His nephew ran a television company and his daughter was the country’s leading model.

  Kakha Sabadze walked past Khatuna with his men all around and she held out a cigarette.

  ‘Would you like to improve your life, Mr Sabadze?’

  He stopped.

  ‘My life is already perfect. What can you offer?’

  ‘Marlboro. Best cigarette in the world.’

  ‘I don’t smoke. I take care of my health.’

  Khatuna looked at him patiently.

  ‘I know how rich you are. But at your age, youth must be more exciting than money. Every time you talk to a woman as young as me, you must think of what you can never buy.’

  ‘I’m not so old!’ He laughed for his men. ‘And I know a lot of women as young as you.’

  ‘Passing through your life, in and out of your bed. Do you remember it after it’s over, Mr Sabadze?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Look into my eyes. The moon is full tonight, and you have met a beautiful Georgian woman. Wouldn’t you like to remember how it feels? Smoke one of these world-famous cigarettes and you can inhale this moment so it will never go away. It will stay with you and keep you young.’

  Kakha Sabadze laughed.

  ‘Do they tell you to say these things?’

  He took a business card from his pocket.

  ‘I don’t want your world-famous cigarette. But here is my card. You can call me and we’ll talk.’

  ‘I’m very disappointed.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Khatuna.’

  ‘Khatuna. Call me.’

  And he disappeared into Beluga with his bodyguards, while Khatuna stood on the sidewalk staring at his business card in her hand. A little paper miracle.

  5

  KAKHA’S HOUSE WAS LARGE AND NEW, and set back from the street. When Khatuna arrived there, she found him in the kitchen, talking on the phone.

  His movements were easy, and his birthmark less ruddy up close. She appreciated the smooth economy of his kitchen, the steely surfaces opening on to dishwashers and ovens.

  She wandered out into the hallway. A bodyguard was sitting there, reading a paperback. There was a giant framed photograph of Kakha Sabadze from the football days, standing with a trophy, a mass of tousled hair and a blue-eyed gleam of boyish achievement. Pairs of shoes were lined up neatly; in the corner stood a small tree planted in a yellow oil drum. A staircase wound up out of sight.

  She heard the end of Kakha’s conversation.

  ‘Step outside your house in three minutes. A black Audi will come to pick you up.’

  She went back into the kitchen and found him sitting at the table with two glasses of beer. She sat down with him.

  ‘You’re still selling cigarettes?’ he said.

  ‘World-famous. Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to do that all your life?’

  ‘I’m going to travel all over the world. I’ll have a big house, and another for my brother, too, so he doesn’t get into trouble. I’ll drive a Mercedes and wear big diamonds on my finger.’

  ‘How are you going to make all that money?’

  ‘Business. I’ll make loads of money in business. When I’m really rich I’ll study architecture and rebuild Tbilisi.’

  ‘What is this fabulous business of yours?’

  Kakha spoke lightly, with a smile on his face.

  Khatuna said,

  ‘I’m still working it out. I haven’t got all the answers yet.’

  ‘Do you think today’s your lucky day?’

  She glanced at him severely.

  ‘I’m not here to sleep with you,’ she said. ‘With that stain on your face you won’t seduce me, no matter how rich you are.’

  They drank their beer, and he said,

  ‘Come on. I want to show you something.’

  They got into the car. Bodyguards fanned out around the entrance while they reversed into the street.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Khatuna.

  ‘My house.’

  ‘I thought this was your house?’

  He laughed. ‘This is just for storage: it’s temporary. While my house is being built.’

  They drove up into the hills behind the old city, nearly to the television tower. Khatuna loved his car, which took no account of how steep the roads were. On top of a generous outcrop were the dilapidated outer walls of an old castle.

  ‘This is my house.’

  He called from his phone. The gate opened, and they drove through into a courtyard.

  Inside the ancient walls, the main building stood straight and thickset. There was a massive front door and windows with steel shutters.

  ‘The building is totally new. We pulled down the old fort and saved the bricks. We built the most advanced security installation in Georgia, then we put the medieval bricks on the façade so it looks just like it always did.’

  There was a tower on one side of the house, with a steep conical roof like on the old churches.

  ‘The doors are explosive-proof steel, and there’ll be a new perimeter wall, four metres high, with electric fencing, cameras, the lot. It will be totally secure. I have a shipment of Rottweilers arriving soon from Russia. There’s a man called Sergei in a shitty small town outside Moscow who trains the best guard dogs in the world.’

  They walked around the building. From inside came the sound of saws and drills. They ran into two men smoking together; Kakha introduced them.

  ‘This is my cousin, Vakhtang. And our architect from Moscow, Vladimir.’

  The ground was wet and hacked. Hundreds of Corinthian pillars were piled up on tarpaulin sheets.

  ‘We’ll clean all this up,’ said Kakha. ‘We’ll landscape everything, put in trees and grass, make it look really good.’

  ‘It will look re
ally good,’ confirmed Vakhtang, who looked like a weightlifter. ‘Kakha’s going to landscape it and everything.’

  ‘Vladimir is the best there is,’ said Kakha, putting his hand on the architect’s shoulder. ‘Ask him to tell you all the things he’s done. He’s just built that new casino everyone’s talking about. My young friend here, Khatuna, she’s interested in architecture.’

  Vladimir bowed. He said,

  ‘What do you think of our castle?’

  ‘It’s beautiful. It’s like old Tbilisi.’

  ‘It’s just like old Tbilisi. Mr Sabadze was very clear on this point. The proportions, the materials, the decorations, the angles of the arches – they’ve all been taken from medieval Georgian architecture. Have you seen the interior?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let me show you. Come.’

  Inside, men were laying a marble floor, and the place was raw and empty. A mosaic portrait of Kakha Sabadze had already been set into one wall of the main room – the backdrop, it appeared, to a future waterfall. Chandeliers hung prematurely from the ceiling, their wires trailing to the floor. Vladimir walked in front, commenting on the construction-in-progress, while Kakha Sabadze followed on, speaking on the phone.

  ‘This room has been designed to show off Mr Sabadze’s art collection. You probably read about the two Warhols he just bought. We’ll hang them here. Over there is the gym. Then the billiard room and bar. The other side: the study. Gold walls and leather floor. Completely soundproofed.’

  ‘Amazing,’ said Khatuna.

  ‘The entire installation is served with custom internet and phone lines directly from the backbone. The lines come underground to a bunker in the basement. The place has its own water reservoir and electricity generator. Mr Sabadze wanted to make something that would last a thousand years.’

  They went upstairs. Kakha’s cousin, Vakhtang, was running madly through the bare corridors, dribbling a football. He scored a goal against the wall, and exploded with his own awe, like eighty thousand people.

  ‘Master bedroom,’ indicated Vladimir.

  Workmen were fixing gold pillars into the four corners of the room. In the middle of the main wall was a tall window surrounded by a border of stained glass. It had been designed to frame the enormous aluminium statue of the Mother of Georgia higher up on the hill.

  ‘Every morning, that statue will be the first thing Mr Sabadze sees. He has a strong affection for her. He feels she is a personal talisman.’

  Khatuna went close to the window and looked down. A muddy hole lay abandoned in the grounds, the size of a small house. There was a length of hosepipe in the bottom, and a rainbow of oil slick, and two crows pecking at a plastic bag. The future swimming pool.

  ‘Khatuna. Come here.’ Kakha Sabadze was standing in the doorway. ‘Come with me.’

  She followed him down the corridor, which opened out into a large hall. The outer wall was a sweeping semicircular window as if for air traffic control, and there, spread out below, was the entire city.

  ‘This is what I wanted you to see,’ he said.

  ‘All Tbilisi,’ she murmured.

  She tapped the glass absent-mindedly with her knuckle.

  ‘Bulletproof,’ he said softly.

  Just below them were the tiled roofs, ornate balconies and winding streets of the old city, sloping down towards the river. She could see into ramshackle courtyards, where boys and girls kicked footballs and washing hung low between the houses. Far away she could see groups of apartment towers, flecked with the royal blue of tarpaulin.

  ‘When I was at school,’ said Kakha Sabadze, ‘we were taught the general story of the world: feudalism is replaced by capitalism, and capitalism is replaced by socialism, and then history ends. And look at this: socialism has gone, and here is Kakha Sabadze standing in his castle looking down on all the peasants.’

  He seemed to find it very amusing. He said,

  ‘Come to Moscow with me next week.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You speak nicely, you look good. I’m sure there are things you could do for me.’

  ‘Are you offering me a job?’

  ‘If that’s how you’d like to see it.’

  ‘It has to be something real. I’m not going to be your mistress.’

  Kakha looked at her appraisingly.

  ‘Why don’t you start by furnishing my house? You like buildings: get the plans from Vladimir and take charge of the interior. Since you want a challenge, I’ll give you the whole job. Let me see how capable you are, behind all that talk.’

  During the five days she spent in Moscow, Khatuna put somewhere close to thirty-nine million roubles on Kakha Sabadze’s credit card.

  On her last night in the city, he took her for a drink in a bar behind Novy Arbat, not far from the Kremlin. Bodyguards waited outside, their bulging jackets zipped to their chins. The waitress who led them to their table was the whitest woman Khatuna had ever seen, her pallor accentuated with dark pink lipstick and an immense black wig with ringlets.

  They talked about the things Khatuna had purchased for Kakha Sabadze’s house. He quizzed her about each item, and she explained how she had arrived at her decisions. She described the antique Turkish rug she had found for his study, and the crystal chandelier she was putting in the reception room.

  He nodded approvingly.

  ‘You’ve thought of everything.’

  Her face shone with excitement. She had come with heavy make-up, a ‘K’ written in eyeliner on her cheek.

  The bar was maroon and gold, and there was a florid painting on the ceiling, showing palaces, clouds and angels. Businessmen and politicians gathered with models and film stars, and the air swirled with church incense and cigar smoke.

  Their wine arrived with caviar. She clinked his glass with her own.

  ‘To Georgia,’ she said.

  He smiled and drank.

  ‘To women,’ he proposed, raising his glass.

  ‘To feelings.’

  ‘To God.’

  ‘To Stalin.’

  She held out her glass for more wine, and said,

  ‘To secret dreams.’

  Fashion TV was showing on the walls, and the latest Russian club hits played just loud enough to ruffle the atmosphere. She smoked her slim cigarettes, and everything felt perfect. She liked being with this strong man.

  ‘What do you do, Mr Sabadze? I can’t really imagine how you spend each day.’

  He talked about his business. He had just returned from a military trade fair in Johannesburg, and he talked about strongrooms, interrogation aids and perimeter protection systems. He described the latest innovations in armoured vehicles and surveillance. He spoke easily, but without giving anything away.

  Khatuna said,

  ‘I heard you like art.’

  Kakha’s face lit up.

  ‘Fantastic,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything about it until recently. In England they have these new artists who totally mess up your head. I have a woman in New York who buys for me and educates me bit by bit; you have no idea how sophisticated these people are. I wish some of our Georgians would understand: they’re like children, just drinking and squabbling all the time. They don’t know what it means to do something well. I’m just a dumb sportsman myself, but I want to learn about everything.’

  Khatuna said,

  ‘You’re more serious than people think. You remind me of my father. He died when I was a child. He was a bit like you.’

  A waiter brought more caviar. The DJ nodded in a glass booth, headphones against one ear. There was a mezzanine for models, and Khatuna gazed up at a woman on display there, admiring her breasts, her gestures, her dramatic make-up.

  ‘Look at her. She’s so beautiful!’

  Kakha Sabadze glanced up neutrally.

  ‘She’s a TV hostess. Her father’s a general in the army.’

  The ceiling spotlights pricked Khatuna’s retinas, and black patches swam over Kakha Sabadze’s face as she l
ooked back to him. She said,

  ‘I’m so happy tonight. But happiness isn’t real. Don’t you think? Happiness is fleeting. When I’m unhappy I want to be happy, but when I’m happy I get tired of this happiness because it is only illusion.’

  She was feeling drunk, and the mannered waiter made her laugh. She said,

  ‘I used to take heroin to feel good. When you take it you have everything: you have wife, husband, lover – you are king and queen. But it’s a mirage, and it vanishes.’

  ‘There are some things that are real, Khatuna. Land is real. Loyalty is real.’

  She sighed. She said,

  ‘One day I will make a perfect bar like this, with perfect design and Fashion TV on every wall. Beauty gives you harmony. It makes you a perfect person.’

  This was the mood she was looking for in her life. This security. She felt as if she were in a luxurious, velvet bomb shelter. She looked down at her own legs under the table, and she wished others could see how sexy they were, crossed like that with her shoe swinging from her toes.

  ‘Dying for another person, that is real,’ said Kakha Sabadze. ‘Would you ever die for someone?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’m the most loyal person you will ever meet. I will do anything for the people I love.’

  He sipped his wine, watching her. She said,

  ‘You and I are real, Mr Sabadze. The emotion we have at this moment is real. Everything else is just footnotes. If you cannot generate emotion you are just a big hole. Don’t you agree?’

  He said quietly,

  ‘Don’t call me Mr Sabadze.’

  The bar was decorated like a fantasy from tsarist times. The mezzanine was gilt, like an old theatre balcony, and the walls were ornamented with plaster lyres, and urns overflowing with fruit. There was a frenzy to the laughter, and the beat of the music was remote.

  A man came in with a beautiful woman in furs, her face stern against the stares. She was barely older than Khatuna, and Khatuna could sense her contentment. My youth is registered with all these rich people, it said, it is not going to waste.

  ‘This place is like the end of the world,’ said Khatuna. ‘You could slit a waiter’s throat and they would thank you for it. They would apologise for the mess.’