Rana Dasgupta - Solo

She has been lying there only a few minutes when her phone rings. The call is from a hospital, where Irakli is recovering after being hit by a car.

The hospital is near by, and she runs there. Irakli has broken an arm. He is lying in bed with his arm in plaster, and he is still drunk. She says,

‘How could you get hit by a car tonight? There were hardly any cars on the streets.’

‘I don’t know what happened,’ he says.

She looks him over with concern.

‘Where’s Boris?’ she says. ‘Didn’t he stay with you?’

‘He was here. He just left.’

Khatuna sighs with contempt.

‘He’s a fucking coward.’

She touches the tips of her brother’s fingers poking out from the plaster.

‘I was clearly lit up in the headlights,’ says Irakli, ‘and still it drove into me.’

His eyes are closed, and his forehead wrinkles.

‘I think I’m becoming transparent,’ he says.

19

Item

Perhaps Boris would not have achieved such extraordinary fame if he had cropped up in another age. But these were unusual times. It was noticeable, for instance, that children knew less than their parents, who themselves preserved a mere fraction of what they had been taught. People no longer felt they could rely upon the future, and they fell upon Boris’s musical prophecies as if they were sparkling ponds in the desert.

Item

Khatuna employed a private detective to collect information about Boris.

‘Anything suspicious, I want to know it. Anything at all. Anything that can be made to look suspicious. There are a lot of stories circulating about him, so it shouldn’t be hard.’

The detective blew air both ways through his lips.

‘He’s a public figure, he’s a famous musician. It’ll cost a lot to keep tabs on him.’

‘I’m in security: I know what I’m talking about. He has no protection; he goes everywhere normal people go. He’s an easy target. Just do what I’m telling you.’

Item

Irakli went to gather food for himself and his pig. At the back of a local supermarket were bins into which mountains of good food were thrown out for regulatory reasons. He picked out cheese, meat, vegetables and a couple of loaves of olive bread. He found a packet of macaroons, which he thought Khatuna would like. Then he went for a walk in the Midtown orchards, where the last apples were still on the trees. His arm was mended now, and he felt light without his plaster.

In recent weeks, Irakli’s poetry had returned without warning. Now the obscure feelings of his heart broke out of him in words, and poems arrived, fully formed, without any urging. His book was nearly finished.

The season was ending, and the ground was covered in rotting apples. Irakli found a few good ones on the branches and put them in his bag. He returned home, and let the pig in from the balcony. It had already grown since Boris first brought it. It had developed the habit of staring longingly into Irakli’s eyes.

Item

Plastic flipped back through the article in consternation. He did not know what to believe any more.

The CEO had called him at 7.15 on a Sunday morning.

‘You get the Times ?’

‘Yes.’

‘Read the magazine cover story and then call me back.’

The photo on the cover showed a simple stone room, with a wood stove in the middle where two men stood to keep warm. They had guns slung over their shoulders, and they watched two other men at a game of chess. One of these chess players sat amply, like their leader.

The journalist had managed to secure an interview with a fugitive Serbian general wanted for war crimes committed during the conflict in Yugoslavia. He had been blindfolded during his journeys to and from the hideout, which he surmised was in Montenegro. He had spent two days with the voluble Serb, who lived in a house in the mountains with only four bodyguards for company. A priest from the Serbian Orthodox Church stayed in the evenings to lead them in chanting and prayer.

The journalist was informed that a world-famous musician was coming to play a concert in the house. Do not think we are sad people , said the guard. Do not think we are poor . That evening, to the journalist’s astonishment, Boris arrived in a helicopter. This was during his European tour, and he came with a Hungarian accordion player he had met on his travels. The two of them played the whole night. The general wept for hours, drinking to Boris and his genius, and kissing his hands. In the morning, Boris got back in the helicopter to resume his tour.

‘The beauty of music,’ said the war criminal, shaking his head as the helicopter receded above the fir trees. ‘Whatever happens, no one can take that away from you.’

Item

Khatuna put her business card on the table. The man had heard of her company. He nodded at her title: Vice-President Security Systems .

‘You’ve been referred to me,’ he said, ‘because of the nature of your information. But so far I don’t have a real detailed … I only have a basic outline of what it concerns.’

Khatuna had a folder of papers and photographs. She placed it in front of him.

‘This is a file about an organised crime network operating between New York and a number of eastern European countries. Boris is a key player in these operations. His musical activities provide a front.’

‘Interesting,’ said the agent. He flicked through the folder, dwelling on the photographs. ‘These things happen all the time, of course, but you don’t expect it to happen with … When it happens with someone so well known it’s a bit of a surprise.’

He took out a sheet of paper and began to read.

Khatuna looked at the FBI crest on the wall behind him. It showed a pair of scales surrounded by a wreath. She was disappointed by it. What harm could you do to someone with a pair of scales? She had thought it would show a gun, at least, or maybe a missile.

In America, the strength lay with the government, and if you wanted to destroy someone you had to get the government to do it. But there was little gratification in that. People in the government looked like bus drivers and chewed their nails. Considering this man’s ugly suit and tie, Khatuna mentally jabbed her fingers twice down her throat.

Item

A song was released on the internet: a duet between Boris and a singer. There was no documentation of the performance, and it was never clear who had written it.

Everything that was difficult or obscure in Boris’s other music fell away for that song, and what was left was the simplest, most heartrending beauty. The song became a worldwide sensation of the purest sort. For a time, people played it everywhere, and it was the greatest moment of Boris’s fame.

Item

Boris never went back to his apartment, and Plastic did not know how to find him any more.

People called him every five minutes to get hold of Boris. They wanted him on TV. They wanted to hear him speak. They wanted to know what he thought about every possible subject.

Plastic read about him in the newspapers, like everyone else. He read about him getting kicked out of restaurants, and beaten up by angry film stars. He read about the drugs he took, and his excessive sexual tastes.

Boris appeared on the covers of all the big music magazines. He was the future of jazz and the future of folk. He had raw, beat-up good looks. He said crazy things that looked great in print.

Boris had ceased to be a single person. There were too many stories about him for them all to be true.

Plastic read that Boris was a sadist and a fake. He read he hated the American government and gave his money to terror. He read he played in Baghdad and Kabul. He read he was a laundry machine for eastern European crime money. He read he liked prostitutes and sometimes conducted rehearsals without clothes on.