Solo (40 page)

Ulrich lowers himself into the car and settles in the seat. He shuts the door, and Boris sets off. The car turns a corner and heads down a slope, and now they are driving underground. There’s hardly anyone else in sight, and driving through the Holland Tunnel is like swimming in a yellow dream.

Boris is accustomed, now, to American roads.

When they come out on the New Jersey side, Ulrich takes a last look back at the Manhattan skyline. He doesn’t think he will see it again.

Boris finds that Ulrich has introduced a new smell into the car: a smell of old candles and much-worn wool. It’s a familial smell, and Boris is drawn to this strange old man. He feels bad that he shut the door in his face the first time he saw him.

The evening is pure sapphire light, and the empty road is broad and peaceful. There are green banks of grass along both sides of the highway, blocking out the view, but when they reach the crest of a hill they get a panorama over the rolling green of New Jersey. There is a sheepdog bringing in the flock at the end of the day, the sheep running in waves among the factories.

‘I look at the beauty of an evening like this,’ says Boris, ‘and the fact Irakli is in the ground and cannot see it is the most terrible thing in the world.’

Ulrich turns so he is facing Boris, and the new leather creaks. The car moves so smoothly there is hardly any noise from the engine.

‘I found that old note again,’ Boris continues, ‘the one you slipped under my door with your phone number – and I wanted to see you one more time. I keep thinking back to what you said about Irakli when I met you in the street. As if you already knew.’

Ulrich says,

‘I didn’t think it would go so far.’

They pass a fairground in the distance, the big wheel glinting in the sun.

‘He was like the other half of myself,’ says Boris, ‘and I thought he would always be around.’

He looks desolate and strung out. Ulrich says to him,

‘You haven’t lost Irakli, you know. I don’t know if it helps to say that. I lost a friend once myself, and I know how it goes.

‘He’ll find his way inside you, and you’ll carry him onward. Behind your heartbeat, you’ll hear another one, faint and out of step. People will say you are speaking his opinions, or your hair has turned like his.

‘There are no more facts about him, that part is over. Now is the time for essential things. You’ll see visions of him wherever you go. You’ll see his eyes so moist, his intention so blinding, you’ll think he is more alive
than you. You will look around and wonder if it was you who died.

‘Gradually you’ll grow older than him, and love him as your son.

‘In the future, you’ll live astride the line separating life from death. You’ll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won’t wait until people die to grieve for them. You’ll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgement falls away, and there remains only the miracle of being.’

Boris drives on. Ulrich watches the play of thoughts on his face, and the swallow in his throat. His exterior is as thin as a meniscus, and Ulrich can see through to the grinding inside. This son of his daydreams has already done things that Ulrich could not do in a hundred years. But he is still so young, and he is tossed around by feelings he cannot understand. It will be difficult to leave him, knowing he will be alone.

Ulrich tells himself, reassuringly,

‘Millions of people manage to lead their lives, and there’s no reason he should be any different. He’s not a bad child. Considering what happened to me, I could have made something much worse. I could have made a monster.’

He worries about Khatuna. He doesn’t know where she will end up or what she will become. She has grown beyond him. She has become volatile, and he cannot even approach her.

‘They are not the children I thought I would have,’ he thinks. ‘I always imagined I would produce people more civilised. But a confounded man like me, living through such mess – it’s not surprising if my offspring carry a few scars. They’ll have a better life than I did, and things will smooth themselves out. Their children will be better than they. In a couple of generations they’ll give birth to angels, and there’ll be nothing left to show what bad times we sprang from.’

By now the highway is delivering prophecies of sea. There are seabirds overhead, and there’s a maritime smell in the air. When the gaps line up in the landscape, it is possible to spy the continent’s end.

Ulrich tells Boris that he’s been holding on to a story for him and now he wants to let it out.

‘Back in my day,’ he says, ‘there was a scientist named Albert Einstein.
I had a thing for science when I was young and I thought Albert Einstein was the greatest man alive. I even studied at his university in Berlin, where I used to see him in the flesh.

‘One day I was walking behind him in a corridor and he dropped a sheaf of papers. He didn’t notice he’d lost them, so I picked them up and raced after him. I handed them over and he looked at me, smiled and said,
I would be nothing without you
.’

The old man gives Boris a look.

‘What did he mean? He would be nothing without me? It seemed so personal, the way he said it. It seemed like a divine verdict. In those days, I had such an opinion of the man that there had to be greatness in his words even if he was only talking about a few missing papers.
I
would be nothing without you
. I had a hopeful ego in those days: I tried to think of something I had done that could have contributed to Einstein’s achievement. I assumed that a great success such as his must be fed by many smaller successes all around: perhaps I was part of this blessed orbit, I thought, perhaps I would grow to unfold exploits and discoveries of my own.’

Boris’s eyes are fixed on the road ahead. He has to be in a certain place at a certain time, so he has those thoughts in his head. He overtakes a solitary truck.

‘Later on,’ says Ulrich, ‘I heard new stories about Albert Einstein which altered my thinking.’

He tells Boris the story of Einstein’s pitiable wife, Mileva. He tells him about the Nobel Prize money lost in the Wall Street crash. He tells him about the daughter mislaid somewhere in Serbia, and the son abandoned in an insane asylum. He tells him all these stories and he says,

‘I’d imagined that Einstein would live in a realm of uninterrupted success. Fulfilment as far as the eye could see: happy people bursting with rich conversation and achievements. But it wasn’t true. He was surrounded by failure. The people close to him were blocked up and cut off. Their lives were subdued, and they were prevented from doing what they hoped to do.

‘And that is exactly the point. That’s how he could make such unnatural
breakthroughs. Do you see? How could one man do what he did otherwise? He could not summon such earth-shattering energy on his own!’

Ulrich is speaking heatedly.

‘How many stopped-up men and women does it take to produce one Einstein? Ten? A thousand? A hundred thousand? We can’t answer questions like that, they are simply too mysterious. But we know that if we are to feel the thrill of progress and achievement, there have to be sacrifices elsewhere.’

Ulrich raises his eyebrows at Boris.

‘So this is what Einstein meant, when he looked me in the eye that day and said,
I would be nothing without you
. It was not success he saw written in my face. He saw, rather, that I would never accomplish anything in my life.’

At this point in the old man’s speech, Boris spies a gap in the railings and he drives the car off the road. It jerks violently over the edge, and Ulrich is forced to grab on to his door handle. The crest of the grassy bank bounces in the frame of the windscreen and the unevenness of the slope shakes them from side to side. They climb the slope and, still juddering, they reach the summit. The horizon opens, they see the great ocean glittering beyond, and the car comes to a halt.

Boris turns off the engine, and there is silence. They can see the containers stacked high in the port, and the cranes, and the trucks queued up for cargo.

Ulrich says,

‘I have a lot of failure to give away. Look at my music: a fantastic failure. A triumphant failure – I nurtured it for a lifetime!’

The sun is setting now, over the land, and the ships on the sea are aflame in the final rays.

‘My failed music, Boris, that’s my gift to you. That’s the legacy I leave behind.

‘If I could make an Einstein with my failed science, think what will come of my music!’

Boris is fully attentive, but Ulrich is not sure he understands everything
he is saying. Ulrich has the impression, not for the first time during this ride, that Boris has become more absent than before. Perhaps it is because he no longer has his violin. He is acting strangely, as if he is worried about waking someone: his voice has become soft and he takes care to avoid sudden movements.

Boris opens the door and gets out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. The wind is strong off the sea, and his hair is swept back. He takes Ulrich’s arm and walks him down the slope to the highway. The air smells of salt and kelp and manatee.

Ulrich says,

‘I’m happy I had this time with you.’

Boris is watching the highway, waiting for something, and before long a grey van appears in the distance. He steps into the road and waves to attract its attention. Ulrich realises that time is short and there are still so many things he has not asked. As the van draws up he says,

‘Where are you going?’

Boris puts his face close to Ulrich.

‘I have a new music in my head,’ he says. ‘Since Irakli died I’ve been hearing something new. But it’s so remote I can’t grasp it well. I need to find somewhere quiet. I want to be alone again.’

Ulrich treats this information as if it is an amazing revelation. He breathes it in and it sets him nodding for a while.
A new music
, he mutters to himself.

The van door opens from inside, and there are several men crowded there who haul Boris in, laughing and clapping him on the back. They greet him in Russian. Boris reaches for the open door.

‘These men are my friends,’ he says to Ulrich. ‘They’re sailors. They’re going to hide me in their ship.’

He grasps Ulrich’s hand, and Ulrich holds on tight. It is all happening so fast.

‘Thank you!’ Boris calls – but the van is already pulling away. Boris lets go of Ulrich’s hand and slams the door. He waves from inside the moving vehicle.

Ulrich shouts,

‘Wait!’

He runs as best he can, banging on the van’s metal rear with the flat of his hand until it slows again, and stops. He catches up finally, holding his chest.

‘That nearly killed me,’ he says breathlessly, supporting himself against the van. His face is radiant. He says,

‘I forgot. This is for you.’

He shows him the gold watch on his wrist.

‘Can you take it off me? I have trouble doing it myself.’

Boris can see the glow in Ulrich’s face, and it has an inviting authority. He steps out of the van to undo the watchstrap. He takes the watch off and puts it on his own wrist. Ulrich smiles, seeing it there. He puts his arms around Boris’s bigger frame and embraces him. Boris returns his affection, holding him like a vice while the air is whipped by passing cars and the sailors call out from the van. Boris turns and gets back in.

‘Goodbye,’ he says.

‘Goodbye,’ Ulrich replies, smiling. He has lived this parting before, and this time it is joy.

A tinnitus starts up in his ears. He still has the force of Boris in his arms, and from the depths of his memory, an ancient word floats into his throat, speaking itself through his involuntary mouth.
So-
i-né
.

He has been trying to think of that word for – what? – decades and decades. It is a Japanese word he heard about long ago. It speaks of a feeling that is not named in the old man’s own language.
The unique
sensuality of holding an infant. Not erotic, but indecent, nevertheless, in its
fervour
.

The engine roars, the van pulls out, and Ulrich watches it drive away. The sun is bursting on the horizon, and gulls cry overhead, infinite and plaintive. At last the van turns into the port, and Ulrich can see it no more.

For conversations and stories: Irina Aristarkhova, Nadeem Aslam, Rossitsa Draganova, Elena Filipovic, Graham Harwood, Robert Hutchinson, Claire Levy, Boris Katzunov, Nikoloz Kenchosvili, Christina Madjour, Vakhtang Maisaia, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Tim Parks, Lisl Ponger, Shveta Sarda, Alexis Schwarzenbach, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Tristram Stuart, Jeet Thayil, Matsuko Yokokoji, and the members of Riyaz.

Thanks to Valery Katzunov for unforgettable walks through Sofia, and to Alexander Kiossev, who, when I related the story I was about to write, said,
You have just told me the life of my father
. Thanks to Natalia Kajaia, who led me through the remarkable worlds of her Tbilisi. And to Paul Fennell, who explained how to make barium chloride.

Thanks to my agent, Toby Eady, for bewildering insights whose brilliance unfurled over time. To Laetitia Rutherford for getting me drunk and making everything clear. To Tilo Eckardt and Nicholas Pearson, who set me straight and reined me in.

In writing this novel I have enjoyed the immense privilege of a number of dedicated and exhilarating allies. All words fall short of the affections and insights offered by Jeebesh Bagchi, Sofia Blake, Marlene Nichols, Bhrigupati Singh, Prerna Singh and Phil Taffs.

Alas, one of these allies, Shakti Bhatt (1980–2007), did not live to see the end. These pages bear her trace, and my gratitude to her is, I suppose, eternal.

Monica Narula has lived in delicious complicity with this novel. She has inspired it, reasoned it and loved it – and dedicating it to her is like throwing a wave back into the sea.

The folksong heard by Ulrich and Boris on pages 61–2 is adapted from a song described by Tim Rice in his account of Bulgarian music,
May It Fill Your Soul
(University of Chicago Press, 1994), page 154.

The opening of Alexander Pushkin’s
Eugene Onegin
on pages 121–2 is adapted from a translation by Vladimir Nabokov (Princeton University Press, 1991, page viii) and the translation by James E. Falen (Oxford World’s Classics, 1998, page 5).

The jokes on pages 122–3 are adapted from
Russia Dies Laughing: Jokes from
Soviet Russia
by Zhanna Dolgopolova (Unwin, 1983).

The lines on page 223 are from Anna Akhmatova’s poem ‘Requiem’ as translated by Judith Hemschmeyer in
Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova
(Zephyr Press, 2000).

The extract from Plato’s
Symposium
on page 329 is adapted from the translation by Christopher Gill (Penguin Classics, 2003) and the translation by Benjamin Jowett (Dover Thrift, 1994).

Irakli’s poem, ‘The dream of the embryo on the night before birth’, on page 335, is adapted from Eliot Weinberger’s translation of ‘Nocturno Preso’ by Xavier Villaurrutia in
Nostalgia for Death
(Copper Canyon Press, 1993), page 23.

For information on Einstein’s life I was particularly indebted to
Das
Verschmahte Genie: Albert Einstein und die Schweiz
by Alexis Schwarzenbach (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2005).