Babylon

by Виктор Пелевин

  That is how the oral wow-factor manifests itself in our hearts. But as Tatarsky wandered towards the underground with a folder under his arm, he was indifferent to its insistent demands. He felt exactly like a ‘loser’ - that is, not only a complete idiot, but a war criminal as well, not to mention a failed link in the biological evolution of humanity.

  Yesterday’s attempt to compose the Russian idea had ended in the first total and absolute failure of Tatarsky’s career. At first the task hadn’t seemed very complicated, but once he’d sat down to it he’d been horrified to realise there wasn’t a single idea in his head, not a thing. Not even the ouija board was any help when he turned to it in his despair after the hands of the clock had crept past midnight. Che Guevara did respond, but in reply to a question about the Russian idea he produced a rather strange passage:

  Fellow compatriots! It would be more correct to talk of the oral-anal wow-effect, since these influences fuse into a single impulse and it is precisely this complex of emotions, this conglomerate of the two, that is regarded as defining the socially valuable aspects of human existence. Note that advertising occasionally prefers a quasi-Jungian approach to a quasi-Freudian one: it sometimes happens that the acquisition of a material object is not the expression of a naked act of monetarist copulation, but of the search for a magical quality capable of relegating oral-anal stimulation to the background. For instance, a blue-green toothbrush somehow guarantees the safety of an attempt to clamber from an upper balcony to a lower one, a refrigerator protects you from being crushed to death amidst the fragments of a grand piano that has fallen off the roof, and a jar of kiwi fruit in syrup saves you from an aeroplane crash - but this is an approach that most of the professionals regard as outmoded. Amen.

  The only thing in all this that reminded Tatarsky of the Russian idea was the use of Yeltsin’s favourite phrase: ‘Fellow compatriots’, which had always seemed to Tatarsky akin to the address ‘Fellow prisoners’ with which the institutionalised mobsters used to begin their written missives to the labour camps, their so-called ‘daubs’. But despite this similarity, Wee Vova would hardly have been satisfied by the brief extract produced. Tatarsky’s attempts to establish contact with some other spirit more competent in the question concerned came to nothing. True, an appeal to the spirit of Dostoievsky, in whom Tatarsky had placed especially high hopes, did evoke certain interesting side-effects, with the ouija board trembling and leaping into the air, as though it was being pulled in all directions at once by several equally strong presences, but the crooked scribbles left on the paper were useless to Tatarsky, although, of course, he could console himself with the thought that the idea he was seeking was so transcendent that this was the only way it could be expressed on paper. However that might be, Tatarsky hadn’t got the job done.

  There was no way in the world he could show Khanin the sheet of paper in his folder with the fragment about the tooth-brush and kiwi fruit, but he had to show him something, and Tatarsky’s mind retreated into self-flagellation, rewriting all the brand names with the word ‘laser’ in them and savouring them as he applied them to himself; ‘Loser-Jet’ and ‘Loser-Max’ lashed sweetly at his very soul, allowing him just for a moment to forget his impending disgrace.

  As he drew closer to the metro, however, Tatarsky was distracted from his thoughts somewhat. Something strange was going on there. A cordon of about twenty military police with automatic rifles were talking to each other on their walkie-talkies, pulling heroic and mysterious faces. In the centre of the cordoned-off area a small crane was loading the burnt-out remains of a limousine on to the platform of a truck. Several men in civilian clothes were walking round the skeleton of the car, carefully examining the asphalt, gathering up bits of something from it and putting them into plastic bags like rubbish bags. Tatarsky had a good view of all this from higher up the street, but once he came down to the same level as the station, the impenetrable crowd concealed what was happening from view. Tatarsky jostled briefly at the sweaty backs of his fellow citizens, then sighed and went on his way.

  Khanin was out of sorts. With his forehead propped in the palm of his hand, he was tracing some kind of cabbalistic symbols in the ashtray with a cigarette-butt. Tatarsky sat on the edge of the chair at the other side of the desk, pressing the folder to his chest and stuttering his rambling excuses.

  ‘I’ve written it, of course. As best I could, that is. But I think I’ve made a balls of it, and it’s not something you should give to Wee Vova. The problem is, the theme is so… It turns out it’s not such a simple theme at all… Maybe I can think up a slogan, or add something to the brand essence of the Russian idea, or expand somehow on what Sasha Blo writes, but I’m still not ready to write a concept. I’m not just being modest, I’m just being objective. In general…’

  ‘Forget it,’ Khanin interrupted.

  ‘Why, what’s happened?’

  ‘Wee Vova’s been taken out.’

  ‘How?’ Tatarsky slumped back on his chair.

  ‘Dead easy,’ said Khanin. ‘Yesterday he had a shoot-out with the Chechens. Right beside your house it was, as it happens. He arrived on two sets of wheels with his fighters, everything fair and up front. He thought it would all be done right. But those bastards dug a trench on the hill opposite during the night, and as soon as he turned up they blasted him with a pair of "bumble-bee" flame-throwers. They’re fearsome fucking things: produce a volumetric explosion with a temperature of two thousand degrees. Wee’s car was armour-plated, but armour’s only good against normal people, not these abortions…’

  Khanin gestured in disgust.

  ‘Wee never stood a chance,’ he added quietly. ‘And they picked off the rest of his fighters, the ones who survived the explosion, with a machine-gun when they jumped out of the cars. I don’t know how you can do business with people like that. That’s if they are people. We-ell.’

  Instead of a sense of grief befitting the moment, to his shame Tatarsky felt a relief bordering on euphoria.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘now I understand. I saw one of those cars today. Last time he was in a different one, so I didn’t even think about anything being wrong. They’ve blown another guy away, I thought - every day someone or other gets it… But now I see - it all fits in. But what does it mean for us, in a practical sense?’

  ‘Leave,’ said Khanin. ‘Indefinite leave. There’s one hell of a big question to be answered. Hamlet’s question. I already had two calls since the morning.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Yeah. And then from the Caucasian Friendly Society. The bastards could smell a trader had been cut free. Like sharks. Straight for the scent of blood. So the question of the moment is very specific. Our swarthy wops can offer real protection, but all the filth want to do is line their pockets. You’d have to lick their boots till they shone to get them to a shoot-out. But either of them could blow you away. And especially the filth, as it happens. They came on to me real heavy today… "We know you’ve got diamonds," they said. What kind of diamonds have I got? Tell me that. What diamonds have I got?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tatarsky replied, remembering the photograph of the diamond necklace with the promise of eternity that he’d seen in the toilet at Khanin’s place.

  ‘OK. Don’t you bother your head about it. Just carry on living, loving, working… Oh, and by the way, there’s someone waiting for you in the next room.’

  Morkovin looked just as he had the last time they’d met, only now there were more grey hairs in his parting, and his eyes were sadder and wiser. He was wearing a severe dark suit and a striped tie with a matching handkerchief in his breast pocket. When he saw Tatarsky, he got up from the table with a broad smile and opened his arms to embrace him.

  ‘Oho!’ he said, slapping Tatarsky on the back, ‘what a face, Babe. Been on the sauce long?’

  ‘I’m just pulling out of a deep one,’ Tatarsky answered guiltily. ‘They gave me this job to d
o here; there was just no other way.’

  ‘Is that what you were talking about on the phone?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Don’t remember, huh? I thought not. You were in a real state - said you were writing a concept for God and the ancient serpent was giving you a real tough time about it… Asked me to find you a new job, said you were real world-weary…’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Tatarsky, raising an open palm towards him. ‘No need to pile it on. I’m up to my ears in shit as it is.’

  ‘So you do need a job, then?’

  ‘And how! We’ve got the filth clutching at one leg and the Chechens grabbing at the other. Everybody’s being given leave.’

  ‘Let’s go then. It just so happens I’ve got some beer in the car.’

  Morkovin had arrived in a tiny blue BMW like a torpedo on wheels. Tatarsky felt strange sitting in it - his body assumed a semi-recumbent position, his knees were raised to his chest and the bottom of the car itself hurtled along so low over the road-surface his stomach muscles involuntarily contracted every time it bounced over another hole in the road.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of riding in a car like this?’ Tatarsky asked. ‘What if somewhat leaves a crowbar sticking out of a manhole? Or there’s one of those iron bars sticking up out of the road…’

  Morkovin chuckled. ‘I know what you’re trying to say.’ he said. ‘But I’ve been used to that feeling at work for so long now…’

  The car braked at a crossroads. A red jeep with six powerful headlamps on its roof halted to the right of them. Tatarsky stole a glance at the driver, a man with a low forehead and massive eye-ridges, with almost every inch of his skin sprouting thick wool. One of his hands was stroking the steering wheel and the other held a plastic bottle of Pepsi. Tatarsky suddenly realised Morkovin’s car was way cooler, and he had one of his very rare experiences of the anal wow-factor at work. The feeling, it must be confessed, was enthralling. Sticking his elbow out of the window, he took a swig of beer and looked at the driver of the jeep pretty much the same way as the sailors on the bow of an aircraft carrier look down on a pygmy paddling over his raft to trade in rotten bananas. The driver caught Tatarsky’s glance and for a while they stared each other in the eye. Tatarsky could sense the man in the jeep took this long exchange of glances as an invitation to fight -when Morkovin’s car eventually moved off there was fury bubbling in the shallow depths of his eyes. Tatarsky realised he’d seen this face somewhere before. ‘Probably a film actor,’ he thought.

  Morkovin moved out into a free lane and started going faster.

  ‘Listen, where are we going?’ Tatarsky asked.

  ‘Our organisation.’

  ‘What organisation’s that?’

  ‘You’ll see. I don’t want to spoil the impression.’

  A few minutes later the car braked to a halt at some gates in a set of tall railings. The railings looked impressive: the bars were like Cyclopean cast-iron spears with gilded tips. Morkovin showed a policeman in a little hut some card or other and the gates slowly swung open. Behind them was a huge Stalinist-style building from the forties, looking like something between a stepped Mexican pyramid and a squat skyscraper constructed with the low Soviet sky in mind. The upper part of the facade was covered in moulded decorations - lowered banners, swords, stars and some kind of lances with jagged edges; it was all redolent of ancient wars and the forgotten smell of gunpowder and glory. Screwing up his eyes, Tatarsky read the moulded inscription up under the very roof: ‘To the heroes’ eternal glory!’

  ‘Eternal glory’s a bit over the top for them,’ he thought gloomily. ‘They’d be happy enough with a pension.’

  Tatarsky had often walked past this building; a very, very long time ago someone had told him it was a secret institute where they developed new types of weapons. It seemed as though that must have been somewhere near the truth, because hanging by the gates like some hoary greeting from antiquity was a board bearing the crest of the Soviet Union and an inscription in gold: ‘The Institute of Apiculture’. Underneath it Tatarsky just had time to make out an inconspicuous plaque bearing the words ‘Interbank Committee for Information Technology’.

  The parking lot was packed with cars and Morkovin barely managed to squeeze in between an immense white Lincoln and a silver Mazda racer.

  ‘I want to introduce you to my bosses,’ Morkovin said as he locked the car. ‘Just act natural. But don’t go saying too much.’

  ‘What exactly does "too much" mean? Who says what’s too much?’

  Morkovin cast him a sideways glance: ‘What you just said is a good example. It’s definitely too much.’

  After walking across the yard they went into a side entrance and found themselves in a marble hallway with an unnaturally high ceiling where several security men in black uniforms were sitting. They looked far more serious than the ordinary cops, and not just because of the Czech Scorpion automatics hanging at their shoulders. The cops just weren’t in the same league - for Tatarsky their blue uniform, which once used to radiate the oppressive power of the state from every button and badge, had long ago become an object of disdainful incomprehension - such a totally empty symbol only emphasised the absurdity of these people constantly stopping cars on the roads and demanding money. But the bodyguards’ black uniform was a real mind-blower: the designer (Morkovin said it was Yudashkin) had brilliantly combined the aesthetic of the SS Sonderkomande, motifs from anti-utopian films about the totalitarian society of the future and nostalgic gay fashion themes from the Freddie Mercury period. The padded shoulders, the deep decollage on the chest and the Rabelaisian codpiece blended together in a heady cocktail that made you want to steer clear of anybody wearing such a uniform. The message was crystal clear even to a total cretin.

  In the lift Morkovin took out a small key, inserted it into a hole on the control panel and pressed the top button.

  ‘And another thing,’ he said, turning to face the mirror and smoothing down his hair: ‘don’t worry about looking stupid. In fact, be careful not to seem too smart.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if you do, a certain question will arise: if you’re so smart, how come you’re looking for a job instead of hiring people yourself?’

  ‘Logical,’ said Tatarsky.

  ‘And pile on the cynicism.’

  ‘That’s easy enough.’

  The doors of the lift opened to reveal a corridor carpeted in a grey runner with yellow stars. Tatarsky remembered from a photograph that the sidewalk on some boulevard in Los Angeles looked like that. The corridor ended in a black door with no nameplate, with a small TV camera set above it. Morkovin walked to the middle of the corridor, took his phone out of his pocket and entered a number. Two or three minutes passed in silence. Morkovin waited patiently. Finally someone at the other end of the line answered.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Morkovin. ‘It’s me. Yes, I’ve brought him. Here he is.’

  Morkovin turned and beckoned Tatarsky towards him from where he’d been standing timidly by the doors of the lift. Tatarsky walked up to him and raised his eyes dog-like to the camera lens. The person talking to Morkovin must have said something funny, because Morkovin suddenly giggled and shook Tatarsky by the shoulder. ‘That’s OK,’ he said, ‘we’ll soon take off the rough edges.’ A lock clicked open and Morkovin pushed Tatarsky forward. The door immediately closed behind them. They were in an entrance-hall where an antique bronze mirror with a handle hung on the wall below a golden Venetian carnival mask of astounding beauty. ‘I’ve seen them before somewhere,’ Tatarsky thought, ‘a mask and a mirror. Or have I? My mind’s been on the blink all day today…’ Below the mask there was a desk and sitting behind the desk was a secretary of cold avian beauty.

  ‘Hello, Alla,’ said Morkovin.

  The secretary flapped her hand at him and pressed a button on her desk. There was the sound of a discreet buzzer and the tall sound-proofed door
at the other end of the hall opened.

  For a moment Tatarsky thought the spacious office with blinds drawn over the windows was empty. At least there was no on sitting at the immense desk with the gleaming metal supports. Above the desk, at the spot where a portrait of the leader would have hung in Soviet times, there was a picture in a heavy round frame. The coloured rectangle set at the centre of a white field was hard to make out from the door, but Tatarsky recognised it from its colours - he had one just like it on his baseball shirt. It was a standard label with the American flag and the words: ‘Made in the USA. One size fits all’. Mounted on another wall was an uncompromising installation consisting of a line of fifteen tin cans with a portrait of Andy Warhol on a typical salt-pork label.

  Tatarsky lowered his gaze. The floor was covered with a genuine Persian carpet with an incredibly beautiful design that looked like the patterns he’d seen some time in his childhood in an ancient edition of The Thousand and One Nights. Following the lines of the design, Tatarsky’s eyes slid along a capricious spiral to the centre of the carpet, where they encountered the occupant of the office.

  He was a man still young, a stocky, overweight individual with the remnants of a head of red hair combed backwards and a rather pleasant face, and he was lying on the carpet in a totally relaxed posture. He was hard to spot because the hue of his clothes blended almost perfectly into the carpet. He was wearing a ‘pleb’s orgasm’ jacket - neither business uniform nor pyjamas, but something quite excessively camivalesque, the kind of outfit in which particularly calculating businessmen attire themselves when they want to make their partners feel things are going so well for them they don’t have to bother about business at all. A bright-coloured retro tie with a lecherous monkey perched on a palm tree spilled out of his jacket and ran across the carpet like a startling pink tongue.