Rana Dasgupta - Solo

‘I left the driver outside the Marriott. I didn’t even tell him where I was going.’

‘You can call him later.’

They entered an apartment block and started up the stairs.

‘Can you see?’ asked Irakli.

It was pitch dark, and Khatuna didn’t like to touch the handrail.

‘Just stick behind me,’ said Irakli. He climbed quickly.

‘How much further?’ Khatuna asked.

‘They’re on the twelfth floor.’

They climbed until Khatuna was out of breath. Irakli stopped on a landing and lit a match.

‘Two more,’ he said, setting off again.

A door opened to a strip of candlelight, and a man threw his arms around Irakli, cigarette glowing in his mouth. Inside, the room was crowded, people sitting where they could.

‘This is my sister, Khatuna,’ announced Irakli.

In the middle of the room were two low candles, which threw their glow over a cluster of empty beer cans and bottles.

‘She’s good looking, your sister. And well dressed.’

‘Are you sure she’s your sister?’

‘She’s a rich girl who pays Irakli for sex.’

‘She’ll never use him again after he’s brought her here.’

Someone got off the only chair and offered it to Khatuna, laughing.

‘So many of us are living here, and we only have two rooms. We take turns with the love room. Sometimes we have to wait all night.’

‘Have something to drink.’

‘We’re not used to chic people. We’re all bums.’

‘Give us more light! I want to see Irakli’s sister.’

They lit more candles. Above their heads was a clothes line, where underwear hung. Firewood was piled in the corner. There was a television on a plastic stool, and an Uzbek carpet hanging on the wall. In one corner, the ceiling had collapsed, and the beams were propped up by the wardrobe. Someone handed Khatuna a bottle.

‘Give her a glass, you bum.’

Khatuna sat down in her coat, her arms crossed defensively.

‘You must be proud of your brother,’ someone said. ‘He’s so talented.’

‘We all admire him.’

‘We carry his poetry around with us.’

‘Someone just gave me that poem with the long title. The eloquence of a drunkard’s hands when his mouth has stopped producing speech . I read it yesterday. It’s beautiful.’

‘I like to read your poems at night, Irakli, so my mind subsides.’

‘At night you’re so drunk, my friend,’ said Irakli. ‘You could read Shevardnadze’s speeches and your mind would subside.’

‘I love Irakli’s poems. They remind me of feelings I’ve forgotten.’

‘Stop it,’ said Irakli. ‘I feel ashamed you’ve read those terrible old poems. I get a cold sweat when I think of them.’

They drank. They talked about the taxi driver who had just been caught trying to cross the border into Turkey with a lead box full of enriched uranium. The hospital doctors who made up their income by sleeping with their patients. The twenty-year-olds driving million-lari Maybach cars. The rise of prayer and miracles, now that everything else was exhausted.

‘How about you, Khatuna? Where do you steal clothes like that?’

‘I don’t steal. I work for Kakha Sabadze.’

There was a moment of silence.

‘What does that mean? Have you met him?’

‘Almost every day.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Is it true he never sleeps?’

Everyone was looking at Khatuna except for Irakli, who was lying on the floor with his eyes closed.

‘He’s the most wonderful man I’ve ever met.’

‘He’s the biggest criminal in Georgia. How can you work for him?’

Khatuna gave an exasperated sigh.

Someone said,

‘Half the Georgian women in foreign brothels, Kakha Sabadze has sold them. Don’t you feel ashamed?’

‘How can you go near a man like that?’

‘You should take advantage of your situation. Put poison in his drink.’

Khatuna retorted,

‘Look at you all, living in this cesspit! At least Kakha Sabadze can hold his head up. He’s a Georgian who works hard and doesn’t just sit all day playing video games in the arcades. You’re all losers, that’s why you hate him.’

‘Why is there nothing to do in our country except play video games? It’s because of criminals like Kakha Sabadze who suck everything out of this place and leave nothing for anyone else.’

Khatuna said,

‘There are some people who have to do a thing perfectly: it’s an obsession with them. They may do it five times, ten times, it doesn’t matter. In the end they set the standard so high that no one else can come close. Kakha Sabadze is like that.’

‘Does he line the people up against a wall? So he can kill them five times. Ten times?’

Khatuna snorted contemptuously.

‘If you’re ambitious you have to offend others. Sometimes you have to kill. That’s life. In Georgia, if you won’t fight for what you want, you won’t get anything.’

There was silence. Irakli still lay with his eyes closed, and a woman tore her cigarette packet studiously into little squares. Breeze made the candles shiver, and someone quoted an old Russian poem:

That was when the ones who smiled

Were the dead, glad to be at rest .

Khatuna was frustrated. She said,

‘Where’s the bathroom?’

‘It’s there,’ someone said, pointing. ‘You can’t use the toilet because the plumbing doesn’t work. Use the bowl on the ground if you want.’

‘Every morning we have to carry that thing down twelve floors to empty it.’

Everyone was staring expectantly at Khatuna. She said to Irakli,

‘Get me out of here.’

He opened his eyes and looked at her too.

‘We have to leave,’ she said.

The taxi rattled over the cobbles, and Khatuna was shouting.

‘Are these the people you spend your time with? Infected losers floating in their own shit? Stealing whatever they have? It’s disgusting that you’re around those people.’

‘Calm down, for God’s sake. They’re just ordinary people, like you and me.’

He sat forward in his seat, staring into the dim horizon of the car’s headlights. The two men in front were silent. A few nightclubs were still running, but most of the city was shut up. Khatuna said,

‘Our family was rich! We had everything taken away, we were humiliated, Irakli, do you remember that? — and now you’re wallowing in poverty and dirt as if you loved it. I won’t let you. I’m going to set us right again.’

In the distance Irakli saw a white horse lying by the side of the road, its head erect, watching the traffic. He squinted through the night: it was a glorious, miraculous beast, its coat as bright as cocaine, its mane billowing in the breeze. Then, as the car drew close, Irakli realised it was no horse, just a man in white overalls lying on his back by the side of the road, one knee crooked, which had made the head.

They arrived home.

Inside, their mother was asleep in an armchair. A candle was burning but the lights and television were all on, for the power had come back since she passed out. The room smelt bad.

‘Do you want anything to drink?’ asked Irakli, putting water on the stove.

‘No.’

Khatuna switched off the television and stood looking at her mother. She had become painfully thin, and her face had gone slack.

Irakli brought a bowl of steaming water, took his Nescafé sachet from his pocket, and stirred it in.

‘Did you see what I did?’ He pointed to the ceiling, where he had hung a string of plastic ivy. ‘Doesn’t the room look better?’

She sat down on the mattress, her hands between her thighs for warmth. She said more calmly,

‘I worry about you. That’s why I get worked up.’