Rana Dasgupta - Solo

There were cheers, and then the DJ pushed the volume towards the mythic. Fat, breathless men in suits left behind political debate to sing old socialist anthems and dance with the end-time. Models in G-strings performed mannered lesbian acts on platforms around the room. The room was hot, and there was hardly place to stand amid the swaying people. On the sofa, Vakhtang leered ecstatically over the exposed breasts of the woman he had singled out hours before, on whose satin surfaces he had just arranged stripes of coke. In the doorways, impassive security guards stood watching the writhing gathering, glancing coldly at each other across the room.

Khatuna was dancing gently on her own when Kakha appeared by her side.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

She put her arms around him. He said,

‘I saw you with that American. Was he disturbing you?’

‘No.’ She laughed.

‘You realise there’s only ten minutes left?’

Khatuna was laughing long and hard. She said,

‘Nothing can ever harm me now.’

‘Come and see the fireworks.’

They walked out together, and he put his jacket round her shoulders in the fresh air. Natalia Sabadze staggered out of the house, her arm around a friend, the two of them shouting, Millennium! The first rockets went off, a few minutes premature. Charles was there, watching, and two men were pushed into the pool, coming up shining and breaking into a fistfight. A countdown gathered in the crowd, starting from sixty and soon losing all relationship to actual seconds — and before it was over there was an enormous explosion of coloured light. For a moment, 2000 was written in fire above them. Kakha held Khatuna tightly against him, and guards let off machine guns into the air to show appreciation. The sky boiled with red and green, and from this high point they could see chemical bursts glinting over the rest of the city.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ said Khatuna. ‘It’s so lovely.’

Tears started flooding over her cheeks, but she did not know why. She wondered where all the festive bullets would land, and if the century would begin with incomprehensible deaths across the city. She had not expected the new time to be so urgent, and wished she was not apart from her brother. She whispered his name to the gunpowder galaxies, and even the word Mother . She said to Kakha,

‘Make love to me.’

They slipped away, Khatuna whispering,

‘When you understand me it is like the best wine.’

They lay next to each other, and Khatuna undid the top buttons of his shirt. His chest was covered in tattoos.

They made love. The incessant thud from downstairs filled her reeling brain with the dark pleasure of ducts, the moist embrace of membranes.

Afterwards, she did not move, so she could rock in the continuation. Her thoughts drifted on thermals to the ceiling.

He got up, and put on his shirt. She had been asleep. She asked him,

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to the party,’ he said. ‘You stay here. I like to think of you in my bed.’

He tucked a blanket around her and she smiled drowsily. He opened the door.

‘Kakha.’

He turned back.

‘Yes?’

Her make-up was smudged across her face.

‘I have a favour to ask you.’

Khatuna did not go home for four days. When finally she turned the key in the lock and opened the door, she found Irakli roasting aubergines. The room seemed newly bright and clean, and her mother was dressed and sitting at the table. Khatuna kissed her silently on the cheek.

‘Long time, sister,’ said Irakli, sprinkling pepper.

Khatuna’s mother inspected her stonily.

Irakli laid out three plates and served the food. He sat down and looked appreciatively at his cooking.

‘This aubergine is from the twentieth century,’ he said, holding a piece up on a fork. ‘It was kept in a fridge from that century to this. Cryogenic.’

‘It tastes good,’ said Khatuna. ‘Even now.’

‘I feel weightless in this new time,’ declared Irakli. ‘I love this emptiness. We have no idea what twenty-first-century music sounds like, because we have never heard it.’

He ate with gusto.

‘When the year ended, I realised: this is the century I’ll die in. I feel protective about it. The last century was fucked up by other people. But this one is ours. This is the century when I’ll write all my books.’

Khatuna could hardly eat. Her stomach was tense and twisted. She said,

‘What the hell are you going on about?’

Irakli smiled indulgently.

‘Khatuna. How are you? How did you celebrate the dawning of the new millennium?’

She glared at him. Her mother burst from her silence:

‘Where have you been, for God’s sake? It’s been four days!’

Khatuna concentrated on placing her knife and fork parallel on her plate.

‘I’ve had some merry conversations with the police,’ said Irakli. ‘They told me you were probably sold by now, and far away.’

‘You couldn’t call? What has happened to you? Is this how you treat your old mother?’

Khatuna retorted,

‘You’re not old. I hate it when you say that. You’re not even fifty.’

Her mother began to cry. Khatuna kept on:

‘What do you do for this household? Everything comes from me. If you want me to earn all the money, you let me live my way.’

Her mother was shaking, and Khatuna watched her with contempt. It was a feeling, she found, that made a lot of life’s troubles easier. She left the table and picked up her bag. Irakli said,

‘You’re tied up with bad people. It’s not unreasonable for us to get worried.’

‘Shut your mouth, Irakli.’

‘Will you just stay for one moment?’ wailed her mother. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Goodbye,’ she said tersely, and slammed the door.

‘Where are you going?’ her mother cried again.

Khatuna moved into Kakha’s house, and Kakha made good on his favour. He asked his best men to take care of it for him.

It was only days later when a black car pulled up quietly near an antique shop in old Tbilisi. Khatuna sat in the front seat of the car. With her were four men with guns. One of them was Vakhtang.

The lights were on in the shop, and she peered in from the other side of the road.

‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘The young one on the stool. The man behind the counter is his father.’

The men got out of the car and ran across the street. In the shop, Khatuna saw the younger man leap towards the door, trying to lock it against them, but he was too late. She checked her hair in the car mirror, and lit a cigarette. The smoke’s twist was slow and feline against the windscreen.

She was aware of how she walked, careful across the street. A bell rang with the door’s opening, and what she was most conscious of was how the shop was completely bare, with just a couple of painted icons, modern reproductions, propped up on cheap shelving, and a few glass vases, and a telephone, and the two men held down on the floor.

‘The shop is empty,’ she said to Vakhtang.

‘Money laundering,’ he said. ‘That’s all they do.’

She lifted the chin of the younger man.

‘Do you remember me?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said.

She nodded to Vakhtang who smashed his rifle butt against the side of his head.

‘Do you remember me now?’ asked Khatuna while the father stammered entreaties.

The man groaned. Khatuna said,

‘Put a bullet in his leg.’

Vakhtang aimed his gun and the man writhed and cried out.

‘I remember! I remember.’

‘What do you remember?’ asked Khatuna.

‘A few years back. I remember coming to your mother’s house.’