Solo

by Rana Dasgupta

  They made to depart. Magdalena was still playing the piano, now some modern work that Ulrich did not know. It was strident and brave, and he looked towards the closed door. Boris smiled.

  ‘Let me call her.’

  She came out of the room, her shirtsleeves rolled up.

  ‘Goodbye, Magdalena,’ said Ulrich, and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Goodbye!’ she said. She came to the door as they stepped out into the street, and she called after Ulrich,

  ‘We are all so happy to have you back.’

  They wandered through the square around the Alexander Nevski church, whose vastness made it tranquil in spite of the remaining trinket sellers, and the packs of roaming youths. The golden domes were lit up, and the moon shone overhead, almost full.

  ‘Do you remember this, Ulrich? Berlin hasn’t crushed your memories?’

  ‘It’s coming back.’

  Boris carried an umbrella, the same one from the old days.

  ‘I haven’t been to Berlin. Or anywhere very much. But I think nowhere else has this altitude. I still love the way that you can look down our streets in the afternoon and see them walled off by cloud. That’s when you feel that the city lives up to its name. A city called Wisdom should float on clouds.’

  ‘What about a city called Murder?’ offered Georgi. ‘That would need a veil around it.’

  Boris sniggered boyishly.

  ‘Georgi pretends he’s a revolutionary,’ he said. ‘But look at the quality of his suit. His father owns coal mines: you should see the house they have. Even the flies wipe their feet before they go in there.’

  Georgi scowled.

  ‘Have you seen the police?’ Boris asked. ‘Lining every street? That must be new for you. Everywhere you go they’re watching. You should see them when they give chase on horseback. I never realised what a powerful formation was a man on a horse until I saw a poor wretch being chased down in the street. Three hissing men on horses with pistols and raised batons – it was a terrifying sight. They beat him senseless.’

  Boris led them down a narrow passageway and through a courtyard. They entered a grimy bar where the wall lights had red handkerchiefs tied around them for atmosphere. They sat down, and Boris called for beer. He looked expectantly at Ulrich.

  ‘So now. Tell us everything about Berlin.’

  Ulrich had been looking forward to this moment, but did not know how to begin.

  The sullen barmaid brought a tray of beer. At the next table the men played cards, roaring with victory and defeat. The barmaid said,

  ‘I hope this time you have money to pay?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ replied Boris humorously.

  They raised glasses. Over the lip Ulrich watched Georgi, whose face became a sneer when he puckered to drink.

  There was a loud exclamation at the door, and a large man came bellowing to their table, his arms theatrically spread. Boris gave a broad smile, and stood for the embrace.

  ‘You’re here! You’re back!’ he cried.

  The man shook hands with Georgi and Ulrich, and sat down. He was red faced and ebullient, and talked a lot about his journeys.

  The air was thick with vapours: tobacco smoke, and the smoke from the paraffin lamps that had left such ancient black circles on the ceiling. An old man played an out-of-tune piano that had been wedged in behind the entrance so that the door hit it every time someone entered. The red-faced man was saying,

  ‘Everywhere I went I saw him. First he was looking pointedly at me in a bar in Budapest. Then he was waiting when I came out of a meeting in Vienna. Then, a few days later, I spotted him at my elbow while I watched two men fighting in the street in Bucharest. And every time I caught sight of him, he looked away. I thought he was secret services: I couldn’t understand how they’d got on to me.’

  The man was entirely bald, and, as he talked, Ulrich wondered at how the mobility of his lined, arching forehead stopped suddenly and gave way to the utter inexpressive smoothness of his pate.

  ‘Then I saw the bastard here in Sofia, sitting calmly in a café, and for once he hadn’t seen me. I listened in to his conversation and I realised he was a revolutionary like me. He’s from Plovdiv, would you believe? Now we’re great friends. Turns out he was even more scared of me than I was of him!’

  Two other men joined their table, and more beer came. The table was soaked with spilt drink. A large group of people, actors evidently, came into the bar and took over two more tables; and now the noise of arguments and conversations became such that you could hardly hear the person next to you. One man brought out some dog-eared pages from his pocket, offering to read his poems, but everyone protested scornfully.

  Boris’s face was shiny in the close air. He asked Ulrich something inconsequential, and Ulrich soon found himself discoursing about music. He told him about jazz, which Boris had never seen; he described the shows in Berlin, and explained about Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson. ‘If only you could have been there,’ he kept saying, because he could not find words to convey the music. He told him about the women who dressed as men and the men who dressed as women, and how no one took any notice in Berlin when they saw lovers of the same sex, for everything was possible in that place. There were people from all over the world, and all they cared about was to do things as well as human beings could do them.

  He said,

  ‘I saw Leopold Godowsky play. I am convinced he is the most spectacular pianist in the world: he piled his own embellishments upon Liszt. He’s a little man, with small hands. Albert Einstein was in the audience, just a few rows in front of me.’

  Boris was impressed by Einstein, and Ulrich went on happily with other anecdotes about the scientist. In his gesticulations he sent flying a full glass of beer, and the man next to him had to mop his thighs. The group at the table was large by now, and the red-faced man was telling another story.

  ‘The whole Russian army comes through Sofia on its way to fight the Turks. And they see my father, a nine-year-old boy, and take him off with them to war. And they beat the Turks and they bring the boy back to Sofia and say, Boy, you’ve served us well. Tell us what you’d like to be and we will help. They expect him to say, A general, or something like that. But he says, A cook. And the men all laugh, but the boy sticks to his guns so the Russian soldiers, good as their word, take him to Petersburg to work in the tsar’s kitchen.’

  More beer came, and the red light began to curdle: Georgi’s face looked almost green in the corner. Ulrich watched the woman behind the bar, who used it to rest her breasts on. She made evident her displeasure when a customer ordered a drink and obliged her to haul them away again.

  ‘My father works his way up over the years and becomes a great cook, and when our independence comes around, Tsar Nicholas wonders what he can give to the Bulgarian king in congratulation, remembers that my father is from Sofia, and sends him. So my father becomes the Bulgarian royal chef.’

  A young woman sat down next to Ulrich and introduced herself as Else; they talked about why they both had German names. She was pretty, but he did not like the prominence of her gums. Her stockings were full of holes.

  ‘So – listen! – so the years go by. My brother and I grow up. My father makes good money and he builds himself a house in the Centrum, the first two-storey house on the street. The new king comes in, and hears rumours of his chef’s wayward sons. He says he would like to come and see the house. So my father brings the king to Ovche Pole Street and shows him, and the king asks him how much it cost. My father works in a good margin and says that all in all it cost around twenty-five gold napoleons, and the king takes the money from his purse and gives it to him. And it’s obvious what the money says: You and I both know that no one can kill me more easily than you. So don’t forget it was I who bought you your house.’

  Amid the hubbub, Else smoked unhappy cigarettes and told Ulrich that the girl who used to work here was coming back and she, Else, would be out of a job. The other girl
had a more attractive body than she, and this thought made Else melancholy. She asked Ulrich whether he would go upstairs with her and he declined, so she slipped away to another table.

  ‘My brother keeps company with revolutionaries and he keeps falling into scrapes. The king covers it up each time, but he tells my father, You have to control those boys because I can’t protect them for ever. One night two foreigners come into a restaurant and start to harass the girl my brother is courting, who’s having dinner with her mother. Word gets to him and he comes down and shoots both the foreigners dead. Everyone sees it, and most people support him, though it was an extreme response. But the king says, This time you have to get that boy out of the country. Otherwise I’ll have him killed. My father sells some land, gives him the money, tells him to go to Paris, live a good life and never come back.’

  Boris was talking to the people on his other side. There was a chorus of shouts at the other end of the bar, where an old singer was sitting. A crowd was pleading with her to perform. The red-faced man took a sip of beer and resumed his story.

  ‘So last week – he’s only been gone ten months, hasn’t written a single letter since he left – last week he appears at the door, says he’s spent everything and he’s got nowhere else to go. I asked him a thousand times what he’s done with the money but he couldn’t account for it. Paris is full of Bulgarians, apparently, and he fell straight into a high life. His lover was a Romanian princess who loved gambling, and it all seems to have left him with a perpetual smile on his face. That’s what sends my father close to apoplexy.’

  There was laughter all round, and people raised glasses to the obstinate rake.

  ‘So I tell this idiot he has to leave. Does he realise what he’s doing, coming back here with things as they are? He takes no notice, he’s out every night, and eventually he doesn’t come home. They found him face down in the river yesterday morning. The king was as good as his word.’

  They fell silent. Someone murmured,

  ‘Bastard.’

  On the other side of the bar, the folk singer had agreed to sing, and there was enthusiastic applause as she made her way to the piano. She had lost nearly all her teeth. Her companion tuned his violin. Ulrich had a glass wedged between his knees, and Boris clinked it to rouse him from his reverie. He said,

  ‘Did you meet any girls?’

  His eyes were velvet with drink, and a tinnitus started up in Ulrich’s ears as he told the story of Clara Blum. Boris shook his head as he listened. He said,

  ‘Why have you come back, Ulrich? You love this woman and you’ve left her there. You’ve sacrificed this chemistry degree, which was all you ever dreamed of. What are you thinking?’

  ‘What could I do?’ asked Ulrich fiercely. ‘There’s no more money to keep me there: that’s the clear reality. You should have seen what my mother wrote to me. Surely you can imagine what it’s like when you hear your mother in despair? I have no choice but to stay here and help her.’

  ‘Reality is never clear,’ said Boris. ‘It’s never final. You can always change it or see it a different way. If you’d asked me for money I would have given it to you. I want you to become a great chemist, not to sit around here in Sofia. This place is a disaster. You should have asked me, and my father would have sent you money. He’s still got more money than he knows what to do with.’

  Ulrich stopped short, for he had never considered such a thing. Boris said,

  ‘You never once wrote to me from Berlin, as if you broke everything off as soon as you left. And now you’ve given up your degree and this wonderful woman. It’s as if you’re never truly attached to anything. Except your mother, perhaps.’

  Ulrich felt foolish. He made a silent resolution to solve future dilemmas by imagining what Boris would say. He said weakly,

  ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do now.’

  Boris drew curly lines with his finger in the beer on the table, extending the reflections of the lamps. The folk singer began to sing, and the bar became hushed. She had a deep, raspy voice, but sang with great sensitivity:

  There sat three girls, three friends,

  Embroidering aprons and crying tiny tears,

  And they asked each other who loved whom.

  Boris said,

  ‘What do you think of Georgi?’

  ‘He has a vicious face.’

  Boris laughed.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t like him,’ he said. ‘The strange thing about Georgi is that he holds a devilish attraction for women. You and I would think, with those teeth and that face, he’d have to make a big effort. But Georgi treats women with contempt, and they still fall over themselves to get him. I can never understand it.’

  The first said: ‘I love a shepherd.’

  The second one said: ‘I love a villager.’

  Boris said under the music:

  ‘Do you remember the conversation we had before you left? When I came to your house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve thought of it very often. I was wrong. You were right.’

  Ulrich was taken aback. Boris added,

  ‘I sometimes wonder if I should not just have carried on playing music.’

  To Ulrich’s astonishment, Boris’s eyes began to overflow with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. He wiped his face.

  The third one said, ‘I love a huge dragon.

  He comes to me in the evening,

  In the middle of the night.

  He lightly knocks and he lightly enters

  So that no one will hear him

  So that no one will know.

  ‘Things can’t continue as they are,’ said Ulrich, trying to help. Boris gave a doubtful smile.

  This evening the dragon will come,

  He will come to take me away.’

  Georgi came over.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Boris. ‘It’s very late.’

  Boris dropped an offering of coins among the glasses and shook a man whose head was collapsed upon the table. The man would not stir. They left the gathering, pushing through the crowd of people waiting for the musicians’ next song, and made for the door. Outside, the night was cool, and with the air on their necks they realised how drunk they were.

  ‘He wouldn’t even wake up!’ said Boris, who was suddenly overcome with giggles. ‘He couldn’t raise his head to say goodbye!’

  Ulrich had no thought of returning home, and walked where they led him. Georgi said to Boris,

  ‘He can’t come with us.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My room is secret. No one goes there.’

  Boris put his arm around Ulrich.

  ‘He will come with us!’

  Georgi was unhappy, and walked ahead. Boris sang with drunken sentimentality,

  This evening the dragon will come,

  He will come to take me away.

  The street was empty, and the echo of their footsteps ricocheted between the rows of houses. Men dozed under fruit barrows, and horses slumbered by a line of caravans. On the steps outside a church, a man was sitting patiently with wakeful eyes, and, seeing him, Ulrich felt a wave of happiness. He said to Boris,

  ‘Soon we’ll go for a long walk, and I’ll tell you everything!’

  There were bats overhead, and a sense of life pent up behind locked doors. Cats wailed.

  Ulrich said,

  ‘Did you ever see Ida? The Jewess?’

  ‘No. I never heard from her again.’ Boris laughed loudly. ‘And you? Did you see the angels in the Admiralspalast?’

  ‘I did. Everything you said was true.’

  Boris screamed with joy. He called out to Georgi in the distance,

  ‘Georgi! Let’s all go away to the country! We’ll find some pretty girls. We’ll take books and keep some pigs. I’ll get my violin out again!’

  They came to a gate, which surrendered to their drunken rattling, and climbed two lurching flights of stairs. They arrived in Georgi’s room, the ringing
worse than ever in Ulrich’s ears. Georgi lay straight down on one of the beds in his clothes and boots and went to sleep.

  Belatedly, Ulrich realised.

  ‘That man we saw. Outside the church. It was Misha the fool.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I knew I recognised him. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for years.’

  Boris took a swig from a bottle of brandy.

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ Ulrich repeated, and they fell together on the narrow bunk in a dreamless embrace that lasted until the next afternoon.

  9

  TWO DAYS LATER, Boris was arrested for sedition, and executed.

  The police went out in force, with names and addresses, and many were taken in. Georgi was arrested too, and thrown into jail.

  Afterwards, the police sent word to Boris’s parents that his body was available for collection.

  When the coffin was lowered into the earth, Magdalena and her mother collapsed simultaneously into their skirts.

  Ulrich walked home afterwards with his parents. Elizaveta was disabled by it.

  ‘I loved that boy,’ she kept saying. ‘I loved that boy.’

  She forbade Ulrich from going out, fearing that something might happen to him, too. But when evening came he could not stay shut up any more. He ran to Boris’s house.

  A storm had come up suddenly, and unfastened shutters banged. He battled through a wind so fierce that the entire sky was too small a pipe for it, and the air groaned in its confines.

  Outside Boris’s house was a crowd of street people. Magdalena stood in front, handing out clothes, while her mother wept on the steps. Boris’s shrunken father watched from an upstairs window.