Solo (28 page)

H
IS CHAIR WAS AN EXPENSIVE OBJET D’ART
that he’d picked out from a store in Soho. Early Meiji, with gold dragons and cranes flying over Mount Fuji against a background of black lacquer, painted layer upon painstaking layer. Signed
Tokyo: Shibayama
.

A man who made his money from trends and cycles, predictions and futures, needed to seat himself on the firmness of the past – lest he become light headed and float away.

In the middle of his office stood an imposing pair of antique globes from Germany. They were his talking piece, when people came. Engraved in Berlin, he told them, and manufactured in Nuremberg, the centre of eighteenth-century German globe making. He took his time, pointing out, on the celestial globe, the late addition of Uranus, just then discovered by William Herschel and, on its terrestrial twin, the brand-new Pacific coastlines mapped out by James Cook.

He was on 53rd Street, on the forty-first floor, looking down through Midtown to the distant Twin Towers. At this moment he was pacing in the office, poring over a sheet of paper. He had printed out an email in order to consider it better.

For the last month, Plastic Munari had been producing a band of mystic musicians from Morocco. It was a challenge, trying to focus the wailing
rhaita
into a regular lounge beat and still preserve the purity. He did it small: there was a bass and a woman on tabla holding it together, but he kept the instruments up front. There were moments when the
beat disappeared entirely and you were thrown into that hectic infinity, speaking for itself.

Plastic had rented a big apartment on the Upper West Side for the musicians to stay in: they didn’t want to be split up. They were a sight in the streets, fifteen Moroccan tribesmen in robes marching to the studio, and even Plastic took a few photos for himself. Before they flew out from JFK they went to Bloomingdale’s and bought up the entire stock of $300 cast-iron Le Creuset casseroles.

The record was finished now, and Plastic could think about other things. The email came at a good time.

There was a mirror on the wall of his office, set up so he could see the back of his guests’ heads as they faced him at his desk. He stood close to it now.

Plastic had that enviable aura of a man whose inner obsessions have captured the imagination of millions, and so brought him, without obvious strain or compromise, enormous earthly rewards. He had hung on to all his hair and, as he approached the end of his forties, he slept with the kind of young women who would have been unattainable when he was their age.

His suit was cashmere and his tan real. He worked out several times a week, and he’d never looked better in his life.

He stood up when the two men were shown in. The younger one was all smiles.

‘I am Bozhidar Markov. This is my superior, Mr Gospodinov. He is Deputy Minister for Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria.’

Plastic’s secretary hung the men’s overcoats in the corner and they sat down, taking in the framed awards and the Manhattan view. They wore ties under their leather jackets. Plastic sensed they didn’t have the least idea of how the music business worked. Sometimes a good thing, sometimes not.

Plastic turned off his cell phones and studied the two men. Bozhidar Markov seemed earnest and hopeful. Gospodinov was older, with sunken eyes. Plastic said to him good-naturedly,

‘You look rather tired, if you don’t mind me saying.’

Gospodinov did not return Plastic’s gaze. He looked away and surveyed the office. He let his eyes run over the furniture and the paintings while he reached absent-mindedly inside his jacket and pulled out three packets of cigarettes. He turned back and said,

‘So you believe the world is round?’

‘I’m sorry?’

Gospodinov smirked. He motioned with his eyes towards the globes.

‘It’s a joke,’ he said obscurely, piling his cigarette packets up on the edge of Plastic’s desk. The brand name was
Smith & Wesson
.

Plastic passed it off with a nod. He said,

‘You can’t smoke in here.’

Gospodinov smiled sourly, but did not remove the packets.

‘I think you understand from our email,’ began Bozhidar, ‘why we wanted to meet you.’

‘More or less,’ said Plastic. ‘But I’d like to hear it directly from you.’

Bozhidar invited his boss to speak, but Gospodinov screwed up his face. Bozhidar said,

‘For the underline of our discussion, Mr Munari, it is necessary for you to understand the economic scene of Bulgaria.’

Bozhidar launched into an excessively detailed presentation of Bulgaria’s economic breakdown after the end of communism. As he listened, Plastic fingered the custom-made penknife he had recently bought from a boutique in Stockholm.

He noticed the steam rising from the men’s wet coats in the corner. He hated this weather.

‘Five hundred thousand people left Bulgaria to become housemaids and construction workers …’

Most people in the city complained about the summer, but Plastic loved the heat. He would die if he didn’t have a job that took him frequently to hot places.

‘Our university-educated women went to work as nannies in Greece …’

Plastic don’t melt
, as someone put it once.

Bozhidar ran off statistics with a bureaucrat’s ease. Gospodinov’s phone rang silently in his shirt pocket. He took it out, inspected the screen with distaste, and put it back. He interjected,

‘Mr Munari is here to do a job for us. Why are we giving him a history lesson?’

His caller persisted, but he ignored it, and through his shirt, where his heart was, came a blue flashing light.

Bozhidar pressed on.

‘Nowadays it is absolutely fashionable to say,
In communist times
everything was good! And now wild dogs are scaring people in the city and
the roads are getting holes!
’

Plastic stole a glance at the clock. He was supposed to leave in forty-five minutes to attend the premiere of a biopic about a rapper he had worked with in the early days, when he ran a hip-hop label. An incredible talent who had died of an overdose.

‘But there is no going back, Mr Munari. The past is a disaster. We have to make a future …’

Plastic was still wondering whether or not to subject himself to the movie. The singer had been a collaborator and a friend, and Plastic didn’t know whether he wanted to watch his death again on the big screen.

He, Plastic, was portrayed in the movie by a scrawny twenty-something no-name actor.

‘The Ministry of Culture has employed an American PR firm to send out positive images of Bulgaria. We pay CNN and BBC to make nice articles about Bulgarian wine and sunshine destinations …’

The actor had come to meet him over a year ago.
So you’re the real
Plastic Munari!
Plastic was so depressed at the guy’s ugly face he’d kicked him straight out.

His secretary came in with a tray of martinis. The room was turning dark in the winter afternoon, and she put on the lights. Gospodinov looked suspiciously into his cocktail glass. Plastic said,

‘I’m a little pressed for time, gentlemen. Perhaps you should tell me what it is you want?’

‘I want to smoke a cigarette,’ said Gospodinov, taking one from the packet and holding it between his fingers.

Plastic called his secretary.

‘Would you mind showing Mr Gospodinov to the fire escape? He would like to light a cigarette.’

Gospodinov took all three packets with him.

Bozhidar said,

‘We want you to make a
global music superstar
from Bulgaria.’

He watched Plastic carefully.

‘The people who run this world, Mr Munari, are not well informed. They have no patience to learn our history. We cannot attract them with rational arguments. They understand only celebrity.’

‘Do you have any specific musicians in mind? Because without that, it’s all academic.’

Bozhidar said,

‘Listen to me. For five centuries, our country was part of the Turkish Empire, full of every kind of music. Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Serbian, Gypsy. Then the communists banned everything. They sent expert musicologists to make police reports about musicians who used un-Bulgarian chords. Pop stars adored all over Bulgaria were taken to the camps for singing American songs …’

The truth was, Plastic had wanted for a long time to find a big musician from that region. That was why he had agreed to this meeting.

‘The old music was suppressed, and we did not even hum it in our heads …’

Plastic was known in the industry for the originality of his ear. Back when no one had thought of it, he had found big audiences for klezmer music and remixed Arab devotional chants for New York bars. He had turned small-time Pakistani qawwali singers and Cuban
son
pianists into some of the biggest recording properties in the world. But he had never found a musician from the Balkans, where they had some of the most exciting music in the world.

Bozhidar was saying,

‘Pirate cassettes broke the stranglehold. I was a teenager when the
Gypsies started to smuggle in cassettes, and I can tell you, it electrocuted our brains! We heard heavy metal! Absolutely real music! We were bored of the hollow idealism going on for forty years, we wanted music from the heart. We wanted pain music! Teenagers in Bulgaria were pumping feelings: it was crazy times in our country and we were already old when we were twenty years.’

Plastic was enjoying Bozhidar’s sudden verve.

‘Illegal Gypsy musicians became so famous that the communist state didn’t know what to do. Everything that was silenced came out again in joy, and the musicians walked like emperors. Music brought down the communist government, Mr Munari, because it showed clearly that everything illegal was beautiful and sophisticated and everything legal was shit.’

The door opened, and Plastic’s secretary showed in Gospodinov. He smelt as if he had bathed in nicotine. He looked from Bozhidar to Plastic. He sat down.

‘So when can you begin?’

Plastic eyed him coldly.

‘So far, I’ve not heard you make any proposal.’

‘Well: can you do it or not?’

Plastic gave a smile of finality. He said,

‘I thank you, gentlemen, for your interesting presentation. But this is not how music is made. I need to start with talent, with artists. Great music doesn’t come about because there is a government strategy.’

‘That is
exactly
how it comes about,’ retorted Gospodinov.

Plastic folded his hands.

‘It has been an interesting conversation. But now—’

Bozhidar spread his hands to slow things down.

‘My superior is a little impatient,’ he said. ‘Don’t be offended. I ask you just one thing: come to Bulgaria. We will organise for you to hear every kind of Bulgarian music. You will find incredible artists. You will not regret it.’

Plastic took his time. He said,

‘Let me give you some background, gentlemen. The record company I founded in the Bronx in the late seventies launched the brightest lights
of hip-hop, and when I sold it to Universal, I became a very wealthy man. I left hip-hop behind and started this label. I invented what everyone now calls world music. I have an instinct for talent, and when I find an artist I want I’ll get him if I have to kill my own mother – and that’s why this label is bigger and better than anything else in the field. I have a seat on the board of Universal Music Group. Do you see what I’m getting at? My inner life is secure. I have no interest in the Bulgarian government or its objectives.’

Bozhidar was sweating. He said,

‘I would like to say this to you, Mr Munari. Do not talk as if we are idiots. If we did not know who you are we would not be here. We know all about you and your country; it is you who know nothing about us. Try for one minute to imagine our perspective. You live in the richest nation on earth, and yet you speak as if you have acquired all your power with just your own abilities. In Bulgaria we are surrounded by people as talented as you, but their abilities go to waste. That is what we are here to change.’

It was true that Plastic could not think of a single fact he knew about Bulgaria. He had a vague sense that it wasn’t much fun to live there, and Bozhidar’s speeches had done little to change that. And yet the man was convinced his obscure little country would have its fortunes transformed if people could only hear its music.
Bulgaria grabs a chunk of the
global pie with unique thirteen-time rhythms
. There was something endearing about it.

He suddenly remembered that there had been a record of Bulgarian folk music that had sold in the millions some years ago. He tried to think of the title.

‘I wasn’t trying to imply that you are idiots,’ he said.

‘Come to Sofia,’ said the young bureaucrat, more amiably. ‘I’ll take you to hear things you never imagined. And I’ll give you nice warm weather, not like here.’

Looking into his cocktail, Plastic saw a tiny bubble escape from under the olive and surrender to the surface. He said,

‘Get in touch with my secretary about dates, and send me a plan.’

P
LASTIC WAS IN A HOTEL ROOM
in Sofia, staring at the winged statue in the square outside.

Bozhidar said,

‘I’m afraid the prime minister cannot meet you. He is away on official business.’

He appeared very regretful, and Plastic had the annoying feeling he was trying to show the level of his influence.

He was waiting for Bozhidar to leave his room so he could take a shower and freshen up from his journey. He had no patience at this moment for the twelve-page itinerary Bozhidar had prepared.

Plastic picked up his shampoo by way of a hint, but Bozhidar continued to read out the list of appointments. Plastic noted that two afternoons had been set aside for interviews with journalists, which he would cancel as soon as he could. It was not his style. He liked to go low key, his ears unburdened.

Bozhidar was saying,