Rana Dasgupta - Solo

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 looked 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.’

‘It’s a millionaire’s club.’

Khatuna said,

‘I’ve always been surrounded by juveniles. Teenagers without a car between them. I didn’t realise how sick of it I was until now.’

She told him stories of her friends. A good-looking boy who played in a band, but had no ambition. Her friend Tako, who slept with older men in return for clothes and parties, and always talked about the same things. Kakha was staring at her, and he said,

‘Your eyes are so blue.’

The models on Fashion TV walked up and down, up and down. Khatuna leaned towards Kakha.

‘When I want to learn something about myself I look at my eyes in the mirror. I always discover something new.’

The candlelight showed up the fingerprints on their wineglasses. Their faces were close together.

‘With all this wine I’ve drunk,’ said Khatuna, ‘I don’t even notice your wine-coloured stain. You look almost handsome.’

She felt Kakha’s foot against hers under the table, but she could not be sure: perhaps it was an accident.

‘I always see the hidden meaning in things. I’m very sensitive. If someone is not aware of those things I break off contact with them.’

He was talking too, but she did not even know what he was saying any more. She watched his expensive suit sit easily across his shoulders, and the rings flitting on his fingers. Sometimes he left such great silences between his sentences that she wanted to dive in there and thrash about, blowing herds of scream bubbles.

Kakha’s inexpressive face was not so at all. It was just restrained. If you focused on it too much, the other conversations became an unbearable din.

The night wheeled, and she hardly noticed him pay the bill. He was standing up, putting her coat around her shoulders. At another table, a man looked at her lustfully, and Khatuna realised it was somebody she had seen in the newspapers.

‘I love this song,’ she said as they left. ‘You listen to this track at seven in the morning when you have no energy and you feel connected to the world. You can estimate the pleasure.’

Kakha’s Moscow apartment was not far away, and the journey took only a few minutes. Khatuna fell asleep in the car. Upstairs, Kakha pulled off her shoes and she said dreamily,

‘I’ll introduce you to my brother. He’s a lovely boy.’

He locked the door of the bedroom and turned off the light. She heard him undressing, and he lay down next to her.

‘I had the best evening,’ she said.

The wine was rushing in her ears.

He tried to kiss her, but she said, ‘You’re crazy,’ and turned away.

6

IRAKLI REMEMBERED THE BABY SPARROW he had found when he and Khatuna were children.

It fell out of a nest on to the pavement outside their house, and he picked it up and fed it. When Khatuna saw what he was doing, he said,