Solo. Rana Dasgupta
to the house of an artist named Mircho. He had a large collection of high-quality liquor, to which I paid due respect, and there was excellent gossip about society men, there was a little dog barking all night, which for some reason seemed hilarious, and the women were pretty, and a man recited Latin poems that were apparently very erotic. After a well-planned sequence of manoeuvres, I ended up sitting next to the Jewess: I was so close I could smell her washed-off make-up, and she touched my arm when she spoke. She was a jewel! She had dramatic gestures: she would spread a long-fingered hand with horror on her cheek, or cover her breasts with her handkerchief. She sang Bohemian love songs and told comic stories from her travels. Someone had a violin, so I played a folk dance for her, which she admired, though I’m sure by that time I had no control over my fingers at all. I offered to show her around Sofia, and she said, Next time I come! Then a photographer arrived, it was already the early hours, he had printed the photographs from the performance, some exquisite ones of her under the lights, and I asked her for one, which she gave me and signed it on the back.’
He took the photograph out of his pocket.
‘Look at this.’
‘God,’ said Ulrich. ‘She is lovely.’
‘Yes. And look.’
He turned the photograph over and read:
‘For Boris. Next time we make music together! Ida.’
Ulrich contemplated the handwriting for a moment.
‘She is much older than you,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Boris, joyous.
The stars were bright overhead, and fireflies glimmered.
‘Look what else is written there,’ said Ulrich, bending close. He indicated with his finger where the photographic paper was embossed with the manufacturer’s name.
‘Agfa,’ he said.
Boris sighed. He ran his hands through his hair. He said,
‘I have to tell you: I’ve given up playing music.’
Ulrich looked at him in disbelief.
‘Why?’
‘There’s no point any more.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Ulrich. ‘Just last week you were so excited about your concert of Bach!’
‘I don’t know, Ulrich. You’re caught up in all your ideas about chemistry and I can’t talk to you about it. If you opened your eyes you’d see our society is destroying itself. Bulgaria has already lost the best of its men in the wars, and things are only getting worse. I can’t stand by and watch. Will I just throw in my lot with the nations, whose governments are more bloodthirsty with each passing day? They will end up killing us and each other. No: the only chance we have of surviving until we are old, you and I, is the international revolution. It has happened in Russia, it will come soon to Germany, and before long we will have no nations, only international socialism. Then there’ll be time for Bach. When there’s no more Bulgaria.’
Boris flicked his cigarette stub down into the courtyard. Ulrich watched the red glow skate across the pavings in the breeze, and then die.
‘This is some insanity that’s got into you.’ His voice trembled. ‘It’s not even fifteen years since Bulgaria was independent, with so much joy, and now you want to destroy it?’
‘Joy?’ cried Boris, with unpleasant emphasis. ‘You borrow everything you say from other people; you don’t see anything for yourself. Is your father joyful since he lost his leg and everything he worked for? Did the independent nation thank him after it had sucked out everything he had? The truth is there in your own household, and you cannot see it: nations are steel boilers pitching madly with our soft flesh inside. I cannot think of anything that was not much better when we were just a territory in the empire, scratching our backsides for entertainment. And it will not be better again until we have abolished this Bulgaria, and all the other killing machines.’
‘And for this you’ll give up your violin?’ said Ulrich. ‘You’re an idiot. You could do much more for the world with your music.’
Down below a mother banged a spoon on the kitchen window to summon her sons in from their game. It was early in the year, and still cold outside, and her boiling pot had steamed up the window.
Boris took a magazine from inside his jacket. There was a bloated capitalist on the cover, stifling houses and factory chimneys in his enormous arms. There was jagged geometry, and words split up at different angles.
‘Have you heard of Geo Milev?’ Boris asked.
‘I heard he’s a dangerous man.’
‘He’s a genius! A bloodstained lantern with shattered windows. That’s what he wrote after he lost half his skull in the war. One of his eyes has gone and he’s completely without fear. He’s a true poet and revolutionary, and he’s asked me to write for his magazine. This is where I’m going to devote myself.’
‘You’ll be lucky if you don’t get yourself killed.’
‘We die anyway. At least this way there’s hope.’
‘These people have poisoned your mind!’ said Ulrich. ‘I couldn’t stand it if you didn’t play the violin. I only live it through you.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a child!’
Boris’s face was contorted with anger.
‘Damn you, Ulrich! Until you wake up and take a look at the world around you I have nothing to say to you.’
Boris stood up and went down to the courtyard below, step by step.
‘I warn you: when you arrive in Berlin you’ll find the crisis even more advanced than here.’
And with that, he walked out of the gate.
Ulrich sat for a while, watching candles illuminate the upper rooms around the courtyard. He did not call on Boris before his departure for Berlin.
His father had roused himself from his deafness to oppose it.
‘What use is chemistry in this town?’ he raged. ‘Do you see any opportunities here? Our family will starve for this chemistry.’
But Elizaveta supported him. She shouted in her husband’s ear, as she had to in those days,
‘You must let him grow up in his times, my dear. How did your father make his money? With his pig-farming! And look at you, an engineer, a railway builder, a man of the modern world. Have you lost your hope of the future? Look at Germany now with its chemical industry. Do you think things will not improve and it will not spread everywhere? He will be a pioneer in our country, as you were. You know his passion for the subject.’
Ulrich’s father gave in. He sent his son off to the University of Berlin to study chemistry, and, with this last-ditch investment, hoped he might hold the old world together.
6
ULRICH PREPARES TO FRY SOME POTATOES. Even without his eyes, he is capable of that much, and on this day, his neighbour has failed to come with food.
It is a long time since he has cooked anything. He puts his hand into the plastic bag, and withdraws it with a shock. It has been months, and the tubers have sprouted into a blind underworld tangle, which provokes disgust in him, unexpectedly intense.
He throws the bag out, and eats instead from a tin of beans, which he does not bother to heat.
Ulrich’s kitchen activities are mostly restricted, these days, to the making of