Babylon

by Виктор Пелевин

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ Tatarsky heard Azadovsky’s voice say, and then he appeared out of a passage leading to some inner chamber. ‘So you’re here? Why’re you standing in the doorway? Come on in; we won’t eat you.’

  Tatarsky stepped towards him. Azadovsky smelled slightly of wine; in the halogen lighting his face looked tired.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Tatarsky.

  ‘About a hundred metres underground, near the Ostankino pond. I’m sorry about the blindfold and all the rest - that’s just the way things are supposed to be before the ritual. Traditions, fuck ‘em. You scared?’

  Tatarsky nodded, and Azadovksy laughed contentedly. ‘Don’t let it bother you,’ he said. ‘It’s a load of old cobblers. Have a wander around in the meantime, take a look at the new collection. It’s been hung for two days now. I’ve got to have a word with a couple of people.’

  He summoned his secretary with a snap of his fingers. ‘Alla here can tell you about it. This is Babe Tatarsky. You know each other? Show him everything in the place, OK?’

  Tatarsky was left in the company of the secretary.

  ‘Where shall we start the viewing from?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘Let’s start from here.’ said Tatarsky. ‘But where’s the collection?’

  ‘There it is,’ said the secretary, nodding towards the wall. ‘It’s the Spanish collection. Who do you like best of the great Spanish artists?’

  ‘That would be…’ Tatarsky said, straining to recall an appropriate name,’…Velasquez.’

  ‘I’m crazy about the old darling too,’ said the secretary, glancing at him with a cold green eye. ‘I would call him the Cervantes of the brush.’

  She took a precise grip on Tatarsky’s elbow and, with her tall hip pressing against his naked thigh, she led him towards the nearest sheet of paper on the wall. Tatarsky saw that it held a couple of paragraphs of text and a blue seal. The secretary leaned shortsightedly towards the paper in order to read the fine print.

  ‘Yes, this is the very canvas. A relatively little known pink version of the portrait of the Infanta. What you can see is a notarised certificate issued by Oppenheim and Radler to certify that the picture really was acquired for seventeen million dollars from a private collection.’

  Tatarsky decided not to show that he was surprised by anything. Anyway, he didn’t really know for certain whether he was surprised by anything or not.

  ‘And this one?’ he asked, indicating the next sheet of paper with a text and seal.

  ‘Oh,’ said Alla, ‘that’s the pride of our collection. It’s a Goya - the Maja with a fan in the garden. Acquired from a certain small museum in Castile. Once again Oppenheim and Radler certify the price - eight and a half million. Astonishing.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tatarsky, ‘it is. But I must admit I find sculpture much more interesting than painting.’

  ‘I should think so,’ said the secretary. ‘That must be because you’re used to working in three dimensions, I suppose?’

  Tatarsky gave an inquiring glance.

  ‘Well, three-dimensional graphics. With those stiffs…’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tatarsky, ‘that’s what you’re talking about. Yes, I’m used to working with them, and living with them.’

  ‘Well here’s a sculpture,’ said the secretary, and she dragged Tatarsky over to a new sheet of paper on which the text was a little larger than on the others. ‘It’s a Picasso. Ceramic figurine of a woman running. Not much like Picasso, you might say. You’d be right, but that’s because it’s the post-cubist period. Almost thirteen million dollars - can you imagine it?’

  ‘And where’s the actual statue?’

  ‘I don’t actually know,’ said the secretary with a shrug. ‘Probably in some warehouse somewhere. But if you want to see what it looks like, the catalogue’s over there on that little table.’

  ‘What difference does it make where the statue is?’

  Tatarsky swung round. Azadovksy had come up behind him unnoticed.

  ‘Maybe none at all,’ said Tatarsky. ‘To tell the truth, it’s the first time I’ve come across this kind of a collection.’

  ‘It’s the cutting edge in design,’ said the secretary. ‘Monetaristic minimalism. They say it was invented here in Russia.’

  ‘Take a walk,’ Azadovsky said to her, and turned to Tatarsky. ‘D’you like it?’

  ‘It’s interesting. But I don’t really understand it.’

  "Then I’ll explain,’ said Azadovsky. "This bastard Spanish collection cost something like two hundred million dollars, and another hundred thousand went on the art historians - which picture would suit, which picture wouldn’t fit in, which order to hang them in, and so forth. Everything mentioned on the invoices has been bought. But if we brought all those paintings and statues here - and there are tapestries and suits of armour as well - there’d be no space left in here to move. You’d choke to death on the dust alone. And afterwards… Well let’s be honest, after you’ve seen these pictures once - maybe twice - what’re you going to see that’s new?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s right. So why keep them in your own place? Anyway, I reckon this Picasso’s a complete and utter plonker.’

  ‘I couldn’t entirely agree with you there,’ said Tatarsky, swallowing. ‘Or rather, I could, but only starting from the post-cubist period.’

  ‘I can see you’re a brainbox,’ said Azadovsky. ‘But I don’t get it. What’s the damn point, anyway? In a week’s time it’ll be the French collection. Just think: you figure one lot out, then a week later they cart it away and hang up another lot - so you’re supposed to figure that lot out as well? What’s the point?’

  Tatarsky couldn’t think of a good answer.

  ‘I tell you, there isn’t one,’ Azadovsky insisted. ‘OK, let’s go. It’s time to get started. We’ll come back here afterwards. For some champagne.’

  He turned and set off towards the mirror wall. Tatarsky followed him. When he reached the wall, Azadovsky pushed against it with his hand and the vertical row of mirror blocks casting an electrical reflection on him swung silently around their axis. Through the opening created a corridor built of rough-hewn stone came into view.

  ‘Go on in,’ said Azadovsky. ‘Only keep your head down:

  the ceiling’s low in here.’

  Tatarsky entered the corridor and the damp immediately made him feel even more cold. When will they let me get dressed? he thought. The corridor was long, but Tatarsky couldn’t see where it was leading: it was dark. Occasionally he felt a sharp stone under his foot and winced with the pain. At last there was a glimmer of light up ahead.

  They emerged into a small room lined with wooden boards that reminded Tatarsky of a changing room for a gym. In actual fact, it was a changing room, as the lockers by the wall and the two jackets hanging on a coat-stand made clear. Tatarsky thought one of them belonged to Sasha Blo, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain - Sasha had too many different jackets. There was a second exit from the changing room, a dark wooden door with a golden plaque engraved with a jagged line, looking like the teeth of a saw. Tatarsky still remembered from school that that was how the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘quickly’ looked. He’d only remembered it then because of a funny story connected with it: the ancient Egyptians, so their teacher had explained, used to build their zig-gurats very slowly, and so in the inscriptions of the greatest and most powerful Pharaohs the short jagged line meaning ‘quickly’ had become very long and even took up several lines, meaning ‘very, very quickly’.

  Hanging beside the washbasin, looking like decrees from some unknown authority, there were three sheets of paper with typed texts and seals (Tatarsky guessed they were not decrees at all, but more likely part of the Spanish collection), and one of the walls was covered with shelves with numbered pigeon-holes containing bronze mirrors and golden masks exactly like the ones in Azadovsky�
��s reception room.

  ‘What’s that?’ Azadovsky asked. ‘Did you want to ask something?’

  ‘What are these sheets of paper on the walls?’ Tatarsky asked. ‘More of the Spanish collection?’

  Instead of replying Azadovsky took out his mobile phone and pressed its one and only button.

  ‘Alla,’ he said, ‘some questions here for you.’ He handed the telephone to Tatarsky.

  ‘Yes?’ said Alla’s voice in the handset.

  ‘Ask her what we’ve got in the bath-house changing room,’ said Azadovsky, pulling off his vest. ‘I keep forgetting all the time.’

  ‘Hello.’ said Tatarsky, embarrassed, ‘this is Tatarsky again.

  Tell me, this exhibition in the changing room, what is it?’

  ‘Those are absolutely unique exhibits,’ said the secretary. ‘Im not allowed to talk about them over the phone.’

  Tatarsky covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘She says it’s not for discussion on the phone.’

  ‘Tell her I give my permission.’

  ‘He says he gives his permission,’ Tatarsky echoed.

  ‘Very well,’ sighed the secretary. ‘Number one: fragments of the gates of Ishtar from Babylon - lions and sirrufs. Official place of keeping, the Pergamon museum in Berlin. Certified by a group of independent experts. Number two: lions, bas-relief of moulded brick and enamel. Street of Processions, Babylon. Official place of keeping, the British Museum. Certified by a group of independent experts. Number three: Fukem-Al, a dignitary from Mari. Official place of keeping, the Louvre…’

  ‘Fukem-Al?’ Tatarsky repeated, and remembered he’d seen a photograph of this statue in the Louvre. It was thousands of years old, and it was a portrait of a cunning-looking little man carved in brilliant white stone - with a beard and dressed in strange, fluffy, skirtlike culottes.

  ‘I really like that one,’ said Azadovsky, lowering his trousers. ‘No doubt he woke up every morning and said: "Ah, fukem al…" And so he was all alone all his life, exactly like me.’

  He opened a locker and took out two unusual-looking skirts made either of feathers or fluffed-up wool. He tossed one over to Tatarsky and pulled the other up over his red Calvin Klein underpants, which immediately made him look like an overfed ostrich.

  ‘Let’s have the phone,’ he said. ‘What are you waiting for? Get changed. Then pick up a set of this junk here and go on through. You can take any pair you like, just as long as the muzzle’s the right size.’

  Azadovsky took a mask and a mirror from one of the pigeon-holes and clanged them against each other, then raised the mask and looked at Tatarsky through the eye-slits. The small golden face of an unearthly beauty, which might have appeared out of a crowd of maskers at a Venetian carnival, was so out of keeping with his barrel-shaped torso covered in ginger hair that Tatarsky suddenly felt afraid. Pleased with the effect he’d produced, Azadovsky laughed, opened the door and disappeared in a beam of golden light.

  Tatarsky began getting changed. The skirt Azadovsky had given him was made out of strips of long-haired sheepskin stitched together and glued to nylon Adidas shorts. Squeezing himself into it somehow or other (if Tatarsky hadn’t seen the statue of Fukem-Al, he would never have believed the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia actually wore anything of the kind), he put on the mask, immediately pressing it firmly over his face, and picked up the mirror. There could be no doubt that the gold and bronze were genuine - it was obvious from the weight alone. Breathing out as though he was about to plunge into cold water, he pushed open the door marked with the jagged line.

  The room he entered blinded him with the golden gleam of its walls and floor, lit by bright studio lights. The sheet-metal cladding of the walls rose up to form a smoothly tapering cone, as though the room were an empty church dome gilded on the inside. Directly opposite the door stood an altar - a cubic gold pediment on which there lay a massive crystal eye with an enamel iris and a bright reflective pupil. In front of the altar there was a gold chalice standing on the floor, and towering up on each side of it were two stone sirrufs, covered in the remnants of gilt and painted designs. Hanging above the eye was a slab of black basalt, which appeared to be very ancient. Chiselled into its very centre was the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘quick’, which was surrounded by complicated figures - Tatarsky could make out a strange dog with five legs and a woman in a tall tiara reclining on some kind of couch and holding a chalice in her hands. Along the edges of the slab there were images of four terrible-looking beasts, and between the dog and the woman there was a plant growing up out of the ground, resembling a Venus fly-trap, except that for some reason its root was divided into three long branches, each of which was marked with an unintelligible symbol. Also carved into the slab were a large eye and a large ear, and all the rest of the space was taken up by dense columns of cuneiform text.

  Azadovsky, dressed in his gold mask, skirt and red flip-flops, was sitting on a folding stool near the altar. His mirror was lying on his knee. Tatarsky didn’t notice anybody else in the room.

  ‘Right on!’ said Azadovsky, giving the thumbs-up sign. ‘You look just great. Having doubts, are you? Just don’t turn sour on us, OK; don’t you go thinking we’re nothing but a set of fuckheads. Personally I couldn’t give a toss for all this, but if you want to be in our business, you can’t get by without it. To cut it short, I’ll fill in the basic picture for you, and if you want more detail, you can ask our head honcho; he’ll be here in a minute. The important thing is, you just take everything as it comes; be cool. Ever go to pioneer camp?’

  ‘Sure,’ Tatarsky replied.

  ‘Did you have that business with the Day of Neptune? When everybody got dunked in the water?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, you just figure like this is another Day of Neptune. Tradition. The story goes that once there was this ancient goddess. Not that I mean to say she really existed - there was just this legend, see. And the storyline says the gods were mortal as well and carried their deaths around inside them, just like ordinary folks. So when her time was up, this goddess had to die too; and naturally enough, she didn’t fancy the idea. So then she separated into her own death and the part of her that didn’t want to die. See there, on the picture?’ - Azadovsky jabbed his finger in the direction of the bas-relief - ‘That dog there’s her death. And the dame in the fancy headgear - that’s her. To cut it short - from here on in you just listen and don’t interrupt, ‘cause I’m not too hot on this stuff myself - when they split apart, this war immediately started between them, and neither of them could stay on top for long. The final battle in the war took place right above the Ostankino pond - that is, where we are right now, only not underground, but way high up in the air. That’s why they reckon it’s a sacred spot. For a long time no one could win the battle, but then the dog began to overpower the goddess. Then the other gods got frightened for themselves, so they interfered and made them make peace. It’s all written down right here. This is like the text of a peace treaty witnessed in the four corners of the earth by these bulls and…’

  ‘Gryphons.’ Tatarsky prompted him.

  ‘Yeah. And the eye and the ear mean that everyone saw it and everyone heard it. To cut it short, the treaty gave them both a drubbing. It took away the goddess’s body and reduced her to a pure concept. She became gold - not just the metal, though: in a metaphorical sense. You follow me?’

  ‘Not too well.’

  ‘Not surprising,’ sighed Azadovsky. ‘Anyway, to cut it short, she became the thing that all people desire, but not just a heap of gold, say, that’s lying around somewhere, but all gold in general. Sort of like - the idea.’

  ‘Now I’m with you.’

  ‘And her death became this lame dog with five legs who had to sleep for ever in this distant country in the north. You’ve probably guessed which one. There he is on the right, see him? Got a leg instead of a prick. Wouldn’t want to run into him in the b
ack yard.’

  ‘And what’s this dog called?’ Tatarsky asked.

  ‘A good question. To tell the truth, I don’t know. But why d’you ask?’

  ‘I read something similar. In a collection of university articles.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  It’s a long story,’ answered Tatarsky. ‘I don’t remember it all.’

  ‘What was the article about, though? Our firm?’ Tatarsky guessed his boss was joking.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘about Russian swear words. It said swear words only became obscenities under Christianity, but before that they had an entirely different meaning and they signified incredibly ancient pagan gods. One of these gods was the lame dog Phukkup with five legs. In the ancient chronicles he was indicated by a large letter ‘P’ with two commas. Tradition says he sleeps somewhere among the snow, and while he sleeps, life goes along more or less OK; but when he wakes up, he attacks. When that happens, the land won’t yield crops, you get Yeltsin for president, and all that kind of stuff. Of course, they didn’t actually know anything about Yeltsin, but overall it’s pretty similar.’

  ‘And who is it this Phukkup attacks in this article?’ Azadovsky asked.

  ‘Not anyone or anything special - just everything in general. That’s probably why the other gods interfered. I asked what the dog was called specially - I thought maybe it was some kind of transcultural archetype. So what do they call the goddess?’

  ‘They don’t call her anything,’ broke in a voice behind them, and Tatarsky swung round.

  Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin was standing in the doorway. He was wearing a long black cloak with a hood framing his gleaming golden mask, and Tatarsky only recognised him from his voice.

  ‘They don’t call her anything,’ Seiful-Farseikin repeated, entering the room. ‘Once a long time ago they used to call her Ishtar, but her name has changed many times since then. You know the brand No Name, don’t you? And the story’s the same with the lame dog. But you were right about all the rest.’