Solo

He lightly knocks and he lightly enters

So that no one will hear him

So that no one will know.

‘Things can’t continue as they are,’ said Ulrich, trying to help. Boris gave a doubtful smile.

This evening the dragon will come,

He will come to take me away.’

Georgi came over.

‘Let’s go,’ he said to Boris. ‘It’s very late.’

Boris dropped an offering of coins among the glasses and shook a man whose head was collapsed upon the table. The man would not stir. They left the gathering, pushing through the crowd of people waiting for the musicians’ next song, and made for the door. Outside, the night was cool, and with the air on their necks they realised how drunk they were.

‘He wouldn’t even wake up!’ said Boris, who was suddenly overcome with giggles. ‘He couldn’t raise his head to say goodbye!’

Ulrich had no thought of returning home, and walked where they led him. Georgi said to Boris,

‘He can’t come with us.’

‘Why not?’

‘My room is secret. No one goes there.’

Boris put his arm around Ulrich.

‘He will come with us!’

Georgi was unhappy, and walked ahead. Boris sang with drunken sentimentality,

This evening the dragon will come,

He will come to take me away.

The street was empty, and the echo of their footsteps ricocheted between the rows of houses. Men dozed under fruit barrows, and horses slumbered by a line of caravans. On the steps outside a church, a man was sitting patiently with wakeful eyes, and, seeing him, Ulrich felt a wave of happiness. He said to Boris,

‘Soon we’ll go for a long walk, and I’ll tell you everything!’

There were bats overhead, and a sense of life pent up behind locked doors. Cats wailed.

Ulrich said,

‘Did you ever see Ida? The Jewess?’

‘No. I never heard from her again.’ Boris laughed loudly. ‘And you? Did you see the angels in the Admiralspalast?’

‘I did. Everything you said was true.’

Boris screamed with joy. He called out to Georgi in the distance,

‘Georgi! Let’s all go away to the country! We’ll find some pretty girls. We’ll take books and keep some pigs. I’ll get my violin out again!’

They came to a gate, which surrendered to their drunken rattling, and climbed two lurching flights of stairs. They arrived in Georgi’s room, the ringing worse than ever in Ulrich’s ears. Georgi lay straight down on one of the beds in his clothes and boots and went to sleep.

Belatedly, Ulrich realised.

‘That man we saw. Outside the church. It was Misha the fool.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I knew I recognised him. I’m sure of it.’

‘I haven’t seen him for years.’

Boris took a swig from a bottle of brandy.

‘I’m sure of it,’ Ulrich repeated, and they fell together on the narrow bunk in a dreamless embrace that lasted until the next afternoon.

9

TWO DAYS LATER, Boris was arrested for sedition, and executed.

The police went out in force, with names and addresses, and many were taken in. Georgi was arrested too, and thrown into jail.

Afterwards, the police sent word to Boris’s parents that his body was available for collection.

When the coffin was lowered into the earth, Magdalena and her mother collapsed simultaneously into their skirts.

Ulrich walked home afterwards with his parents. Elizaveta was disabled by it.

‘I loved that boy,’ she kept saying. ‘I loved that boy.’

She forbade Ulrich from going out, fearing that something might happen to him, too. But when evening came he could not stay shut up any more. He ran to Boris’s house.

A storm had come up suddenly, and unfastened shutters banged. He battled through a wind so fierce that the entire sky was too small a pipe for it, and the air groaned in its confines.

Outside Boris’s house was a crowd of street people. Magdalena stood in front, handing out clothes, while her mother wept on the steps. Boris’s shrunken father watched from an upstairs window.

‘Ulrich!’ cried Magdalena when she saw him, and she threw herself at his chest.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘I’m giving away his clothes.’

She had brought everything out of the house. Jackets, shirts and sweaters flapped in the gale. Ulrich could not bear to see it all disappear.