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Solo
‘Boris is going to play the Mendelssohn concerto next week in the national theatre. His teacher has told him to give up everything else and to devote his life to the violin!’
His father did not look up, but bellowed deafly,
‘No more of this talk! What are your parents thinking of? You’ll fall in among criminals!’
Boris wrestled with confusion, but Ulrich looked triumphantly at him and smiled in happy complicity. In plotting this conversation, he had reasoned that what linked siblings was their sharing of the most irrational aspects of their parents’ characters; and, having exposed Boris to his father’s insanity, he could now truly consider him a brother.
Ulrich remembers that he kept, for some years, a notebook about his friendship with Boris. He felt that their sentiments for each other were so noble, and their conversations so remarkable, that everything had to be preserved for posterity. In the inevitable way of things, this notebook has disappeared, and with it the detail of those adolescent feelings. Thinking back on Boris too many times has buried him with rememberings, and turned him into a shining icon that glides unblinking through the past without smell or voice.
There is one event he can still call to mind. He was sixteen, perhaps, when the two of them were invited by other men to a foray into the brothels of Serdika. Ulrich had never been with a woman before, and was terrified; but he could not find an excuse that would pass in public, and he found himself carried along against his will to the streets of pacing men where whores beckoned from the windows. Once inside, a cudgel in his chest, there were women stacked up on the stairs, smoking and talking, their breasts peeking out, and Boris, pointing, said, ‘You like the one in green?’
Ulrich was startled by his friend’s self-possession, but the woman had already responded to the signal and led them away into a corridor with gold-framed mirrors, her pale behind clearly visible through her robe, and Boris went in ahead. Ulrich sat in the armchair outside, wretched at his own uselessness. The curtain over the doorway was inadequate to its function, and he could see the whole room through the chink, where his friend hopped on one foot then the other to pull off his boots. The woman sat on the bed, watching him coolly and removing her gown, while Boris threw off his clothes. He stood naked in the lamplight, his penis tall, and the woman pulled him close. Boris lifted her up and fell with her fully on the bed, where he kissed the breasts she offered and moaned over them and suddenly, so expertly, entered her! And there was a cold burn in Ulrich’s heart at the realisation that Boris had done this before without telling him. He stood up and ran from the brothel, not stopping till he reached home, and the refuge of his laboratory.
Perhaps that is the last memory, in fact, that Ulrich has retained from his garden laboratory, for it must have been immediately afterwards that the house on Dondukov Boulevard was sold. After it no longer belonged to his family, he used to walk past it every day on his way to school. It was later destroyed in the bombings, and now the site is occupied by a car showroom.
5
THE FAMILY MOVED INTO A HOUSE on Tsar Simeon Street. It was much smaller than the previous one, and built in the old style with clay and straw. It shared a courtyard at the back with several other houses.
A girl lived in one of these houses, whose name was Tatiana. After dinner, she used to take a lamp up to her bedroom so she could read novels, and Ulrich liked to sit at the top of the steps outside his house watching her. She spread out in a chair with her bare feet up on the windowsill, and, during the long hours when she read, Ulrich could follow the unfolding of the story in the splaying and clenching of her toes.
He decided he would make a photograph of her sitting there. He discovered the principles of glass-plate negatives, and he built a pinhole camera out of wood, sealed at the joins with tar. On one visit to Boris’s house he made an excuse to go up to the laboratory alone, and, with beating heart, he sought out the bottle of silver nitrate and purloined enough for his secret project. He knew it was wrong, but he would neither compromise his experiment nor make it public.
One evening, he set his camera up on the steps. He estimated an exposure of twenty minutes in that darkness, and he waited for Tatiana to become comfortable in her position before uncovering the tiny hole. But instead, to his alarm, she got up from her seat and came to the window, calling out to him,
‘Why do you always sit there watching me?’
Ulrich was paralysed and could not reply.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’m coming down.’
He waited for her to retreat into the house before snatching up his camera and running inside.
‘What is the matter?’ his mother asked darkly, and Ulrich could see her suspicions were aroused. He shut himself up in his room.
Later on he tried to make a print from his negative. But there was hardly any exposure, and only Tatiana’s lamp showed up, an almost indiscernible smudge in the night.
One night, when Ulrich was approaching his eighteenth birthday, Boris came to visit. Ulrich’s mother opened the door, and embraced him effusively. Boris was now fully a head taller than her. He wore his tie loose, like an artist, and there were dark circles under his eyes. Though it was quite dry, he carried an umbrella: it was his latest affectation, and he took it with him everywhere.
‘You know our house is always open to you. Just because Ulrich is going away, you mustn’t stop coming to see us. Come for dinner whenever you want. You’re part of our family. You know how proud we are of you.’
Boris smiled at her, assenting, and murmured a greeting to Ulrich’s father, who was staring in his armchair.
‘Ulrich is out in the courtyard,’ said Elizaveta. ‘He doesn’t like to sit with us in the evenings any more.’
Boris went out of the back door and climbed up to where Ulrich was perched on the steps.
‘So are you ready to leave?’ he asked stiffly. They had recently got into an argument over Ulrich’s departure, and had not spoken since. Down below, four young boys were kicking a small rubber ball around.
‘I still have another week.’
‘I suppose so.’
Boris offered a cigarette. Ulrich shook his head, and Boris lit one himself. He tried to lighten Ulrich’s mood:
‘When you come back, can you bring a chorus girl from the Admiralspalast? That can be your gift to me. I met a trumpet player who told me Berlin girls are like a more evolved species. They do things that Bulgarian girls won’t be able to imagine for centuries.’
Ulrich said nothing. Sometimes Boris irritated him. The boys downstairs shrieked in dispute over a goal.
Boris sighed smokily. He said,
‘What are you going to do in Berlin? Day to day.’
‘I’ll study. Do my experiments. I’ll go to lectures by Fritz Haber and Walther Nernst. I’ll live and breathe chemistry. I want nothing else.’
‘I still don’t understand why you couldn’t stay here and study.’
‘I’ve already told you: there’s no chemistry in Sofia. If you want to learn chemistry you have to go to Germany. They invented chemistry, and they lead the world.’
‘They lead the world with oppression. Their chemical companies are great tentacled monsters, exploiting the poor of all nations, and making fuel for wars.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. German chemical companies are saving lives every day with their new cures and treatments.’
‘I know Bayer invented mustard gas. Is that the kind of cure you mean?’
‘Why can’t you see the good in anything?’ exclaimed Ulrich. ‘A great new age is being born through chemistry. Polymers. That’s what they’ve discovered in Berlin: long carbon molecules they can use to make furniture, utensils and houses. It is all completely new, and society will be better for it. One day you’ll understand.’
Their arguments were often like this. They were still young, and they spoke sententiously, reproducing opinions they had read or heard.
Boris was watching the sport in the courtyard, his long hair over his eyes, his cigarette burned down to his lips. He had his hand tucked in his belt, as he often did. He said nothing to Ulrich’s outburst. He wanted to tell a story.
‘Last night I went with Georgi to see this Yiddish theatre troupe from Prague. The story was absurd: people were beheaded and shot and set on fire, there were love affairs, and a scene with Lenin and Mussolini which had us shrieking on the floor. The female characters were played by men with enormous lipstick but there was one woman in the troupe, a beautiful Jewess, and the climax of the play comes when she is taking a bath in red wine: she’s dragged naked from her bathtub and viciously raped by a group of marauders. But this Jewess was a magnificent presence and the other actors were too timid to touch her, so she just lay in her bath, waiting for them to rape her, and nothing happened! I’ve never laughed so much in all my life. After the play we went to the house of an artist named Mircho. He had a large collection of high-quality liquor, to which I paid due respect, and there was excellent gossip about society men, there was a little dog barking all night, which for some reason seemed hilarious, and the women were pretty, and a man recited Latin poems that were apparently very erotic. After a well-planned sequence of manoeuvres, I ended up sitting next to the Jewess: I was so close I could smell her washed-off make-up, and she touched my arm when she spoke. She was a jewel! She had dramatic gestures: she would spread a long-fingered hand with horror on her cheek, or cover her breasts with her handkerchief. She sang Bohemian love songs and told comic stories from her travels. Someone had a violin, so I played a folk dance for her, which she admired, though I’m sure by that time I had no control over my fingers at all. I offered to show her around Sofia, and she said, Next time I come! Then a photographer arrived, it was already the early hours, he had printed the photographs from the performance, some exquisite ones of her under the lights, and I asked her for one, which she gave me and signed it on the back.’
He took the photograph out of his pocket.
‘Look at this.’
‘God,’ said Ulrich. ‘She is lovely.’
‘Yes. And look.’
He turned the photograph over and read:
‘For Boris. Next time we make music together! Ida.’
Ulrich contemplated the handwriting for a moment.
‘She is much older than you,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Boris, joyous.
The stars were bright overhead, and fireflies glimmered.
‘Look what else is written there,’ said Ulrich, bending close. He indicated with his finger where the photographic paper was embossed with the manufacturer’s name.
‘Agfa,’ he said.
Boris sighed. He ran his hands through his hair. He said,
‘I have to tell you: I’ve given up playing music.’
Ulrich looked at him in disbelief.
‘Why?’
‘There’s no point any more.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Ulrich. ‘Just last week you were so excited about your concert of Bach!’
‘I don’t know, Ulrich. You’re caught up in all your ideas about chemistry and I can’t talk to you about it. If you opened your eyes you’d see our society is destroying itself. Bulgaria has already lost the best of its men in the wars, and things are only getting worse. I can’t stand by and watch. Will I just throw in my lot with the nations, whose governments are more bloodthirsty with each passing day? They will end up killing us and each other. No: the only chance we have of surviving until we are old, you and I, is the international revolution. It has happened in Russia, it will come soon to Germany, and before long we will have no nations, only international socialism. Then there’ll be time for Bach. When there’s no more Bulgaria.’
Boris flicked his cigarette stub down into the courtyard. Ulrich watched the red glow skate across the pavings in the breeze, and then die.
‘This is some insanity that’s got into you.’ His voice trembled. ‘It’s not even fifteen years since Bulgaria was independent, with so much joy, and now you want to destroy it?’
‘Joy?’ cried Boris, with unpleasant emphasis. ‘You borrow everything you say from other people; you don’t see anything for yourself. Is your father joyful since he lost his leg and everything he worked for? Did the independent nation thank him after it had sucked out everything he had? The truth is there in your own household, and you cannot see it: nations are steel boilers pitching madly with our soft flesh inside. I cannot think of anything that was not much better when we were just a territory in the empire, scratching our backsides for entertainment. And it will not be better again until we have abolished this Bulgaria, and all the other killing machines.’
‘And for this you’ll give up your violin?’ said Ulrich. ‘You’re an idiot. You could do much more for the world with your music.’
Down below a mother banged a spoon on the kitchen window to summon her sons in from their game. It was early in the year, and still cold outside, and her boiling pot had steamed up the window.
Boris took a magazine from inside his jacket. There was a bloated capitalist on the cover, stifling houses and factory chimneys in his enormous arms. There was jagged geometry, and words split up at different angles.
‘Have you heard of Geo Milev?’ Boris asked.
‘I heard he’s a dangerous man.’
‘He’s a genius! A bloodstained lantern with shattered windows. That’s what he wrote after he lost half his skull in the war. One of his eyes has gone and he’s completely without fear. He’s a true poet and revolutionary, and he’s asked me to write for his magazine. This is where I’m going to devote myself.’
‘You’ll be lucky if you don’t get yourself killed.’
‘We die anyway. At least this way there’s hope.’
‘These people have poisoned your mind!’ said Ulrich. ‘I couldn’t stand it if you didn’t play the violin. I only live it through you.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a child!’
Boris’s face was contorted with anger.
‘Damn you, Ulrich! Until you wake up and take a look at the world around you I have nothing to say to you.’
Boris stood up and went down to the courtyard below, step by step.
‘I warn you: when you arrive in Berlin you’ll find the crisis even more advanced than here.’
And with that, he walked out of the gate.
Ulrich sat for a while, watching candles illuminate the upper rooms around the courtyard. He did not call on Boris before his departure for Berlin.
His father had roused himself from his deafness to oppose it.
‘What use is chemistry in this town?’ he raged. ‘Do you see any opportunities here? Our family will starve for this chemistry.’
But Elizaveta supported him. She shouted in her husband’s ear, as she had to in those days,
‘You must let him grow up in his times, my dear. How did your father make his money? With his pig-farming! And look at you, an engineer, a railway builder, a man of the modern world. Have you lost your hope of the future? Look at Germany now with its chemical industry. Do you think things will not improve and it will not spread everywhere? He will be a pioneer in our country, as you were. You know his passion for the subject.’
Ulrich’s father gave in. He sent his son off to the University of Berlin to study chemistry, and, with this last-ditch investment, hoped he might hold the old world together.
Carbon
6
ULRICH PREPARES TO FRY SOME POTATOES. Even without his eyes, he is capable of that much, and on this day, his neighbour has failed to come with food.
It is a long time since he has cooked anything. He puts his hand into the plastic bag, and withdraws it with a shock. It has been months, and the tubers have sprouted into a blind underworld tangle, which provokes disgust in him, unexpectedly intense.
He throws the bag out, and eats instead from a tin of beans, which he does not bother to heat.
Ulrich’s kitchen activities are mostly restricted, these days, to the making of morning tea. It is a ritual he has stuck to for most of his life, and he still uses the same cup, only survivor of a once-complete tea set. For many years he has held this hot cup in the morning, and it has given him the resolve to put the night away.
He switches on his television for a bit of sound to eat his beans by.
He is irritated by the weather programmes that come on the international channels. Ignorant people judging the world’s weather. In that place it will be a nice day because there is pure sunshine. They estimate a nice day as when you can sit outside in sunglasses and drink coffee that no normal person can afford. Their minds cannot consider that a place is full of people cursing because there is no rain. They say: There it will be a nice sunny day today. Or: There they will have to suffer rain. What do they drink, these people? he thinks.
And here there has not been rain for so long.
He hears explosions: there is another war in Iraq, and now Bulgaria is sending troops to assist the Americans in their occupation. He pictures the journeys of his childhood, when Baghdad was part of his family, when his father strived to connect that great city with silver rails to Berlin. He thinks of his dead mother, who would be driven mad if she knew of her country’s assault on those places she loved so much. How time changes things, he thinks: making people forget who they were, and turning them against their own kind.
He switches the channel.
It is a science documentary, and Ulrich hears how the world has far more computing capacity than it needs. Most computers are idle for most of the time. He hears that when a modern computer is idle it switches into a reverie, and displays on the screen a meditative pattern, like fishes swimming, or whizzing stars, or geometric designs. At any one moment, most computers in the world are occupied in this way. They sit alone in dark, after-hour offices, considering the movement of fish or the emptiness of space.
Ulrich thinks about a planet full of computers with nothing to do except daydream.
In his own idle moments, Ulrich makes lists in his head. He makes lists of journeys he has made, and animals he has eaten. Making lists gives him a sense that he is in command of his experiences. It helps him to feel he is real.
He makes lists of the pills he has to take each day, though in reality it is his neighbour who takes the responsibility. She draws up grids that she pins to the cupboard door to remind herself, and she walks back and forth to check them as she pours out the pills, because she is never sure. Her step is uneven as she goes, and the floor creaks with the heaviness of one side, the left or the right. She has referred before to problems with her legs, but Ulrich does not know exactly what is wrong.
He has a strong feeling about the calendars that she makes: they seem like divine plans, sustaining him in life.
‘I cannot die yet,’ he jokes with her as she draws them, ‘or who will take all those pills?’
He has many more lists. He makes a list of activities that, when they have been proposed to him, have always triggered the thought ‘That is not for me’. A list of things he would tell his son about himself, if he ever saw him. A list of things he never enjoyed, though he always said he did. A list of things that comprise, in his view, the minimal requirements for a happy life. He makes a list of his possessions, as if it were a will:
Item:One armchair.Item:One television.Item:One writing desk.Item:Two photograph albums with photographs.Item:Books, assorted.Item:Gramophone records, assorted.Item:Gramophone player.Item:One bed.Item:Kitchen utensils, various.Item:Clothes, various.Item:Tools, various.There are several things he does not include. Paint, ashtrays, various kinds of string and sewing thread, medical supplies, writing ink, cleaning fluids, playing cards. There is a host of objects like this that seem too insignificant to be part of a list.
7
SOME DECADES BEFORE Ulrich arrived in Berlin, German scientists made a philosophical leap that would change history. They rejected the idea that life is a unique and mystical essence, with different qualities from everything else in the universe. They reasoned instead that living things were only chemical machines, and they speculated that with enough research, chemical laboratories could emulate life itself.
They began to experiment with making medicines, not merely from trees or plants, but from man-made chemicals. A triumph came in 1897, in the laboratories of the chemical company Bayer, when chemists observed several positive effects of the first synthetic drug: aspirin. Not long afterwards, the chemist Paul Ehrlich, who was seeking a cure for the sleeping sickness that devastated his compatriots in the German Congo, injected infected mice with hundreds of different chemicals until he found that an industrial dye cured the disease – and so discovered the first antibiotic. Ehrlich coined the term ‘chemotherapy’ to describe the great new work he had started off.
German scientists also wanted to see whether chemical laboratories could make materials that were usually found only in nature. The world was running out of natural nitrogen deposits, for instance, and agriculturalists were concerned about how they would continue to fertilise crops. Populations were exploding. Doomsayers began to warn of imminent famine, and people dying off in swathes. The Berlin chemist Fritz Haber began to seek a chemical solution to this problem. Working with BASF, he discovered a way of fixing the enormous supplies of nitrogen in the air, and turning them into ammonia for fertilisers. He won a Nobel Prize for his discovery, and a large fortune, and the newspapers called him the saviour of the human race.
When its empire was taken away after the First World War, Germany was deprived of access to essential raw materials. It was set far behind Britain, which could take all the Malayan rubber it wanted, and Middle Eastern oil. Germany’s chemical firms – BASF, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Casella, and the rest – were consolidated into a vast chemical cartel, I. G. Farben, whose objective was to produce chemical versions of these lacking natural resources.
Farben’s synthetic rubber and oil technologies soon became the envy of the world. Within a few years, it was the largest corporation in Europe, with stakes in oil companies, steelworks, armaments manufacturers, banks and newspapers – in Germany and across the globe. It had its own mines for coal, magnesite, gypsum and salt, and cartel arrangements with leading American companies DuPont, Alcoa and Dow Chemical.
It was in Farben’s laboratories that a chemist named Hermann Staudinger, while attempting to synthesise natural rubber, first hypothesised that there might exist molecules much more extensive than any hitherto imagined. These giant molecules, he suggested, would be arranged in mobile, chain-like structures, which explained the unusual flexibility of rubber. Staudinger’s work on polymers won him a Nobel Prize, and set the course for a new direction in chemistry: the development of plastics.
This new area of innovation transformed the human environment. Until that era, every human being had lived among the same surfaces: wood, stone, iron, paper, glass. Suddenly, there emerged a host of extraterrestrial substances that produced bodily sensations that no one had ever experienced before.