Solo

by Rana Dasgupta

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ she said, rolling over. ‘You sleep with a beautiful young woman, trying to get your youth back, and still it’s not enough.’

  His phone rang again, fallen out on the bed. She grabbed it and turned it off. Plastic said angrily,

  ‘That might have been Boris.’

  ‘Boris, Boris!’ she cried. ‘Everyone is fucking obsessed!’

  She threw his phone across the room.

  ‘I hate your little phone. It makes you look like a woman.’

  ‘I thought phones were supposed to be small,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘That’s so old,’ she said contemptuously. ‘Kakha’s phone was huge like a fucking BMW. With diamonds.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Plastic.

  Khatuna picked up her jacket from the floor, and reached inside for another cigarette.

  ‘Don’t smoke in my house,’ said Plastic.

  ‘I want to smoke,’ she said.

  She started to put her clothes on.

  When the door slammed behind her, Plastic picked up his phone and went to sit on the toilet. He dialled Boris’s number again and again. He called the other members of the band. Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, yellow and naked, he listened to the phone ringing endlessly in another country. Then he sent a grim torpedo into the underworld.

  Boris came back from his tour, but he didn’t come to see Irakli. Irakli did not hear from him, nor could he get an answer on his phone. Eventually he decided to go to his apartment.

  Boris wanted to get out, and they walked together. Boris told a story from Prague.

  ‘This guy came to meet me at the airport when I arrived, said he wanted me to do the music for his film. I discovered he was a famous film director. He took me to a restaurant and told me the story of the film and how he wanted the music to be. There was no time at all, I was only there for three days, but he said, I know you can do it. I sketched some things out with the band and on the last night after the gig he screened the film without audio and we improvised to the images. It started at three a.m., there were just ten or twelve people in the room, the actors were all there, absolutely silent. We played through in one take and went straight to the airport.’

  He played the melodies to Irakli on his violin as they walked. They came to the gates of an old cemetery, and Irakli led them in.

  ‘You have no idea how much money he paid me,’ Boris continued. ‘I came back with a suitcase of money from this trip. People paid me to do anything. They paid me to record a piece for four minutes. They paid me to come to their restaurant. I have so much money I can buy you anything you want.’

  They sat down on a bench. Boris said,

  ‘Where’s your umbrella?’

  ‘It was stolen,’ said Irakli unhappily. ‘Some bastard picked it up in a café and walked away with it.’

  Boris studied him.

  ‘You don’t look well.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Irakli burst out accusingly. ‘You’ve been back for days. I’m having a terrible time.’

  Boris stared in surprise.

  ‘I needed a few days to rest,’ he said.

  Irakli tried to contain himself. He said,

  ‘I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. My skin’s peeling off. I walk around the city and everything makes me angry. I can’t write at all. I hate you because it’s no effort for you. I struggle with every single word. I wish I’d never met you. I wish you’d get out of my head and leave me alone.’

  A funeral was going on in a far corner of the graveyard. Mourners huddled around the grave, and snatches of the priest’s voice came in on the air. Boris said,

  ‘Look, I’ve been playing concerts non-stop for three months. I’ve been with people all the time. That’s all. I needed a few days on my own.’

  Irakli studied him. He hung his head in his hands.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Something’s happening to me I don’t understand, and I can’t talk to my sister any more. I don’t want to see anyone except you, and you’re never here.’

  The sun was dropping, and the shadows were long behind the headstones. In the distance, the funeral mourners stepped back for the filling in of earth, and Boris and Irakli watched for a moment.

  Irakli said,

  ‘It’s strange: I can taste soil in my mouth.’

  Boris played a funeral march quietly on his violin. Irakli inhaled the graveyard air. There was the faintest scent of flowers. He said,

  ‘Sometimes I’ve felt the exact sensation of death. It was like old wine from a cellar, and when it was over I wished it would return.’

  Suddenly Boris remembered something. He put down his bow, reached in his pocket and pulled out a book.

  ‘I forgot: I bought this for you. It’s poetry. I picked it up in a bookshop and thought of you. She’s very famous in Ireland.’

  Irakli opened the book and read from it. He read one poem, then he closed the book and put his hand on the cover. He looked up into the trees, which had lost all their leaves. It was cold, and the wind blew in gusts.

  He pointed and said,

  ‘Look at that.’

  A piece of videotape was unspooled in the branches. It was looped across the cemetery, passing from tree to tree. It shook in the wind, and glinted with the evening sun, and the untrapped lengths leaped and fluttered with inner life, like the ribbons of Russian gymnasts.

  17

  IT IS A GREY DAY when Ulrich goes to see the Woolworth Building. A long time ago, when he was in Berlin, he bought a postcard of this building – Tallest Man-made Structure in the World! – and he has always wanted to see the real thing. But today the summit is swathed in cloud, and the building does not have the anticipated effect.

  He stands for some time, hoping for the clouds to lift. He has waited a lifetime, after all, and a few more minutes will not hurt. He looks at the gold script over the entrance – Woolworth Building – and the grand Gothic arches above. He hums a tune he used to know.

  As he is standing there, motionless amid the Broadway swarm, he becomes aware of someone else waiting next to him. He looks round and sees it is Clara Blum. She is old, and quite stooped, but he recognises her at once.

  ‘Clara!’ he cries.

  She smiles radiantly, and he stoops to kiss her cheek. He is amazed to see her again after so long.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asks.

  ‘I’ve come to see the Woolworth Building,’ she says, and he remembers the charm of her Czech accent.

  ‘You’ve never seen it before?’

  ‘This is the first time.’

  Ulrich is astonished at this coincidence of time and place. There are so many things to ask he does not know where to start.

  ‘I recognised you immediately,’ he says. ‘You’re still beautiful.’

  She smiles at his gallantry. He says,

  ‘How are you, Clara? What have you been doing? You became a chemist: I heard that. I heard you got married, too.’

  ‘True,’ she says, laconically.

  ‘I thought of you very often,’ he says, ‘after I left Berlin.’

  She says nothing in response. She does not seem eager to speak of personal things. He says,

  ‘I lost touch with science after I left Berlin, and I never understood what it became. It was so far away from Sofia. What happened to everything we knew?’

  The day is brightening, and all at once the sun breaks through. They both look up to see the top of the Woolworth Building. For a while they gaze at the ornate tower. Ulrich says hesitantly,

  ‘It’s big—’

  ‘But it’s not that big,’ finishes Clara, and suddenly they laugh with merry complicity. They look up again, and the building is quite ordinary, and this seems hilarious.

  ‘I imagined something far more,’ says Ulrich.

  He is still laughing.

  ‘I don’t know what we were expecting,’ replies Clara. ‘It’s quite unimpressive!’

  Ulrich feel
s relieved. It is wonderful to be together like this.

  ‘Shall we walk?’ he asks.

  She leans on his arm and they wander slowly into the park, where businessmen are sitting around the fountain eating lunchtime sandwiches. They find a bench and sit down.

  ‘You always loved Einstein,’ says Clara. ‘Did you ever hear the story of his children?’

  Ulrich wants to hear it. Clara says,

  ‘When Einstein was studying in Zurich, he fell in love with a brilliant Serbian student called Mileva. They were penniless: they lived together in a cramped apartment and worked on physics problems – and before long she was pregnant. You know what things were like in those days: Einstein was worried that a scandal might harm his career, and he sent Mileva away to the Balkans. While she was away, of course, he got his job in the Swiss Patent Office, and his fortunes were transformed.

  ‘Mileva had a little girl and she called her Lieserl. Einstein was excited to be a father but he couldn’t tell anyone. When Mileva came back to Zurich she was forced to leave their daughter behind.

  ‘And that’s the last anyone knows about Lieserl. Can you believe it, Ulrich? No one knows where she ended up, or whether she lived or died. Einstein was embarking on the greatest work of his life, and he was determined to keep his daughter a secret. And he did. The only trace of her was the melancholy she left behind in Mileva, who always spoke to her friends about the unhappiness of having no daughter.’

  As Ulrich listens to the story, he thinks that he and Clara might have had children if events had been different. He wonders whether she ever had children of her own. He wonders whether she is speaking to him about the things that did not happen. He watches pigeons bobbing for crumbs.

  ‘Einstein and Mileva had two sons after their marriage, but over time their love turned bitter, and when he moved from Zurich to Berlin he left her behind. When you and I were in Berlin he was the most famous scientist in the world, but he suffered from an irrational fear that Mileva might bring him down. He agreed to give her the money from his Nobel Prize as a settlement in their divorce, but he could never bring himself to hand it over. He lost it in the Wall Street crash, and Mileva ended her days in poverty.

  ‘Poor Mileva had to take care of their musician son, Eduard, who was a schizophrenic. He had to be committed to an asylum, which she could hardly afford. Einstein only visited his son once, and he was horrified at what he saw. He didn’t want his scientific legacy to be tainted by it. He told everyone that Mileva was from degenerate stock, and had caused this madness all on her own. Einstein would have nothing to do with Eduard, and refused to respond to his letters.

  ‘Eduard was given insulin and electric shocks, and he attempted suicide several times. When his mother died, all the money for his care ran out, and he was placed in a pauper’s cell. When visitors came to see him he said he wished he could play the piano, but he had been told his playing disturbed the other inmates. He said he wanted to sink into absolute sleep, but the doctors had said it wasn’t sensible.’

  ‘Meanwhile Einstein was a celebrity in America,’ says Ulrich.

  ‘Quite,’ says Clara.

  Clara’s story holds a revelation for Ulrich about his own life, but he needs some time before he can understand precisely what it is. For the moment, he is too moved by all that is happening.

  ‘Your story is making me sad,’ says Ulrich. ‘Let’s not be sad. It’s good to think of those old days. It’s good to find someone who knew me then. So much has happened since.’

  Clara seems to agree, though she is strangely distant.

  Smiling, he says,

  ‘I was never very good at chemistry, was I?’

  ‘No,’ she agrees.

  ‘I wanted so much to be good at it.’

  ‘You must have found other things to do with your life. You were always full of ideas.’

  Ulrich is sitting on a bench, looking up at the sky. He sees an arrow of geese flying overhead, and though they are inconceivably high he fancies he can hear their cries. He says,

  ‘I’m sorry I failed you, Clara. You cannot have regretted it as much as I did.’

  Clara does not respond, and Ulrich says,

  ‘I didn’t know how to hold everything together. I had to go and save my parents, it was the only thing to do. But I loved you, and I couldn’t live up to my love. I always wondered what would have happened if I had stayed with you in Berlin.’

  Clara’s hair is tied up, but a slight breeze plays among the grey wisps at her temples. The strands are iridescent, for by now the clouds have all gone. It is a beautiful day.

  ‘You know this is all a dream,’ Clara says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You and me, together in New York?’ She cuffs him playfully with the back of her hand. ‘You must know I died long ago – a Jewish woman in Berlin in those days, married to a Jewish professor. In your heart you know that, yes? You know we’re not really here, and it’s only a dream?’

  Ulrich says,

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  But he cannot leave it there.

  ‘It’s a dream, Clara, but it’s not only a dream. There is far more to us than what we live.’

  He speaks with unusual passion.

  ‘Life happens in a certain place for a certain time. But there is a great surplus left over, and where will we stow it but in our dreams?’

  Clara stares into her lap. She says,

  ‘Those children of yours are imaginary.’

  ‘I have a real son, who is even more imaginary. These ones stay with me, and make me proud.’

  A butterfly alights for a time on Clara’s floral dress, and then takes flight again.

  ‘When I die,’ says Ulrich, ‘they will put me under the ground, where even those with eyes become blind like me. I will lie with an eternity of dreamers, breeding visions that will flicker on the surface – and the children of my daydreams will roam free.’

  18

  ULRICH SITS ON A DOORSTEP opposite the entrance to Boris’s apartment block. He has tried repeatedly to gain entrance, but Boris is famous now, and security has tightened. Still, when he finally emerges, he is accompanied only by his violin, and for this Ulrich is grateful. He walks fast to catch up with him.

  To his relief, Boris is not hostile. When he sees Ulrich he stops in his tracks and says,

  ‘Is it you, old man?’

  Ulrich leans against a wall to regain his breath. Nothing about Boris’s appearance reveals his new-found success and prosperity. Ulrich would like to take him in his arms. But now is not the time. He says,

  ‘I wanted to say something about your friend, Irakli. I’ve seen him, wandering in the streets on his own. He’s not himself.’

  Boris is surprised at this intervention. But he agrees with its spirit.

  ‘I’ve been worried about him myself. You think he’s very bad?’

  ‘He needs something to set him back on track,’ Ulrich says. ‘And it can only come from you.’

  Boris thinks for a moment.

  ‘I know what to do,’ he says. ‘I know what’s good in these situations.’

  ‘Please think about him,’ says Ulrich. ‘He’s more delicate than you.’

  He puts his hand in his pocket and takes out two marbles. Looking into Boris’s eyes, he puts the marbles into his hand, as if they were a token of his solemnity.

  Boris arrives at Irakli’s apartment with an animal wrapped in a sack.

  ‘I was thinking about what might restore you to yourself again,’ he says.

  He opens the sack and lets out a little pig. It’s small and pink, with two grey patches on its flanks. It feels exposed in the spacious room, and runs away squealing, keeping close to the walls, trotters clicking on the wooden floor.

  ‘You have this big balcony where he can live,’ says Boris. ‘Pigs are very intelligent and they fill your head with wild ideas. He’ll be good for your poetry.’

  ‘I already have a parrot.’

  ‘The
parrot is nice, but you need something closer. A horse is good sometimes, but a pig is best. You’ll write much better with a pig around.’

  Boris goes to get nails, wood and roofing, and he builds a shelter for the pig on the balcony. They drink beer and laugh while he works. Irakli is impressed by how fast Boris can build, and makes no attempt to get involved. The pig sniffs at the planks of wood and eats an apple from Irakli’s hand. Its ears are enormous for its little size.

  Boris saws and hammers, his breath clouding in the air, and before long he has built a sty into the crook of the building, big enough for a man to stoop into. He lays down straw and newspaper inside, and the pig goes in of its own accord to look around. Boris says,

  ‘After everyone left my town, I grew up with pigs,’ he says. ‘I slept between them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Irakli. ‘Thank you.’

  Afterwards, they go out to a bar. Irakli is suddenly animated and cannot stop talking. He tells stories, and finishes his drinks so fast that Boris tells him to calm down.

  ‘Are you trying to empty the bar?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ Irakli says.

  He tells Boris about things he has seen in New York.

  ‘There’s a tower where ten thousand Africans live. It’s not far from here. People from Senegal on one floor, Nigerian on the next. Some are legal, some are illegal; they’ve come to supply the city’s cravings for luxury handbags and DVDs. Can you imagine the stories in a tower like that – the friendships, the conflicts, the journeys people have taken just to get there? I tell you: no one is writing the real novels of our age. There must be more in that tower than in Tolstoy and Balzac together.’

  Boris listens quietly, happy to see him spirited.

  ‘Writers have a lot of work to do,’ finishes Irakli.

  The music is calling out to him and he says,

  ‘Do you want to dance?’

  Boris shakes his head, smiling, and Irakli goes on his own. He stands next to the speaker and begins to move. His steps, once again, are Georgian. His legs scissor, slicing beats in half, and soon enough there are people gathered around him, who have never seen feet move so fast to keep a torso so still. He dances for several songs, transforming himself completely with every new mood. Now his heels stamp and he slices the air with his hands, his eyes gleaming with masculine seduction; now he beckons to the earth like a woman. He puts a bottle on his head and spins on his knees, finding a corridor through the crowd, and there seem to be no limits on his body – for now he is leaping close to the ceiling and there is gasping and cheering in the bar.