Solo. Rana Dasgupta
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