Buddha's Little Finger

by Виктор Пелевин

  ‘Can I go in now?’ he asked.

  ‘Go ahead. Take a lantern and go straight down the corridor. Room number three.’

  ‘Why the lantern?’ Serdyuk asked in amazement.

  ‘That’s the rule here,’ said the security guard, taking one of the lanterns down from the wall and holding it out to Serdyuk, ‘you don’t wear a tie to keep you warm, do you?’

  Serdyuk, who had knotted a tie round his neck that morning for the first time in many years, found this argument quite convincing. At the same time he felt a desire to take a look inside the lantern to see whether there was a real flame in there or not.

  ‘Room number three,’ repeated the security guard, ‘but the numbers are in Japanese. It’s the one with three strokes one above the other. You know, like the trigram for «sky».’

  ‘Aha,’ said Serdyuk, ‘I’m with you.’

  ‘And whatever you do, don’t knock. Just let them know you’re outside - try clearing your throat, or say a few words. Then wait for them to tell you what to do.’

  Serdyuk set off, lifting his feet high in the air like a stork and clutching the lantern at arm’s length. Walking was very awkward, the shoe-stretchers squeaked indignantly under his feet and Serdyuk blushed at the thought of the security guard laughing to himself as he watched. Around the smooth bend he found a small dimly lit hall with black beams running across the ceiling. At first Serdyuk couldn’t see any doors there, but then he realized the tall wall panels were doors that moved sideways. There was a sheet of paper hanging on one of the panels. Serdyuk held his lantern close to it and when he saw the three lines drawn in black ink, he knew this must be room number three.

  There was music playing quietly behind the door. It was some obscure string instrument: the timbre of the sound was unusual, and the slow melody, built upon strange and - as it seemed to Serdyuk - ancient harmonies, was sad and plaintive. Serdyuk сleared his throat. There was no response from beyond the wall. He cleared his throat again, louder. this time and thought that if he had to do it again he would probably puke.

  ‘Come in,’ said a voice behind the door.

  Serdyuk slid the partition to the left and saw a room with its floor carpeted with simple dark bamboo mats. Sitting on a number of coloured cushions scattered in the corner with his legs folded under him was a barefooted man in a dark suit. He was playing a strange instrument that looked like a long lute with a small sound-box, and he took absolutely no notice of Serdyuk’s appearance. His face could hardly have been called mongoloid, though you could say there was something southern about it - Serdyuk’s thoughts on this point followed a highly specific route as he recalled a trip he’d made to Rostov-on-Don the year before. Standing on the floor of the room was a small electric cooker with a single ring, supporting a voluminous saucepan, and a black, streamlined fax machine, with a lead that disappeared into a hole in the wall. Serdyuk went in, put down his lantern on the floor and closed the door behind him.

  The man in the suit gave a final touch to a string and raised his puffy, red eyes in a gesture of farewell to the note as it departed this world for ever, before carefully laying his instrument on the floor. His movements were very slow and economical, as though he were afraid a clumsy or abrupt gesture might offend someone who was present in the room but invisible to Serdyuk. Taking a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket he wiped away the tears from his eyes and turned towards his visitor. They looked at each other for a while.

  ‘Hello. My name is Serdyuk.’

  ‘Kawabata,’ said the man.

  He sprang to his feet, walked briskly over to Serdyuk and took h i m by the hand. His palm was cold and dry.

  ‘Please,’ he said, literally dragging Serdyuk over to the scattered cushions, ‘sit down. Please, sit down.’

  Serdyuk sat down.

  ‘I’ he began, but Kawabata interrupted him:

  1 don’t want to hear a word. In Japan we have a tradition, a very ancient tradition which is still alive to this day, which says that if a person enters your house with a lantern in his hand and geta on his feet, it means that it is dark outside and the weather is bad, and the very first thing you must do is pour him some warm sake.’

  With these words Kawabata fished a fat bottle with a short neck out of the saucepan. It was sealed with a watertight stopper and there was a long thread tied to its neck, which Kawabata used to extract it. Two small porcelain glasses with indecent drawings on them appeared - they depicted beautiful women with unnaturally high arched eyebrows giving themselves in intricately contrived poses to serious-looking men wearing small blue caps. Kawabata filled the glasses to the brim.

  ‘Please,’ he said, and held out one of the glasses to Serdyuk.

  Serdyuk tipped the contents into his mouth. The liquid reminded him most of all of vodka diluted with rice water. Worse still, it was hot - perhaps that was the reason why he puked straight on to the floor mats as soon as he swallowed it. The feeling of shame and self-loathing that overwhelmed him was so powerful that he just covered his face with his hands.

  ‘Oh,’ said Kawabata politely, ‘there must be a real storm outside.’

  He clapped his hands.

  Serdyuk half-opened his eyes. Two girls had appeared in the room, dressed in a manner very similar to the women shown on the glasses. They even had the same high eyebrows - Serdyuk took a closer look and realized they were drawn on their foreheads with ink. In short, the resemblance was so complete that Serdyuk’s thoughts were only restrained from running riot by the shame he had felt a few seconds earlier. The girls quickly rolled up the soiled mats, laid out fresh ones in their place and left the room - not by the door that Serdyuk had used to enter, but by another; apparently there was another wall panel that moved sideways.

  ‘Please,’ said Kawabata.

  Serdyuk raised his eyes. The Japanese was holding out another glass of sake, Serdyuk gave a pitiful smile and shrugged.

  ‘This time,’ said Kawabata, ‘everything will be fine.’

  Serdyuk drank it. And this time the effect really was quite different - the sake went down very smoothly and a healing warmth spread through his body.

  ‘You know what the trouble is,’ he said, ‘yesterday…’

  ‘First another one,’ said Kawabata.

  The fax machine on the floor jangled and a sheet of paper thickly covered with hieroglyphics came slithering out of it. Kawabata waited for the paper to stop moving, then tore the sheet out of the machine and became engrossed in studying it, completely forgetting about Serdyuk.

  Serdyuk examined his surroundings. The walls of the room were covered with identical wooden panels, and now that the sake had neutralized the consequences of yesterday’s bout of nostalgia, each of them had assumed the appearance of a door leading into the unknown. But then one of the panels, which had a printed engraving hanging on it, was quite clearly not a door.

  Like everything else in Mr Kawabata’s office, the print was strange. It consisted of an immense sheet of paper in the centre of which a picture seemed gradually to emerge out of a mass of carelessly applied yet precisely positioned lines. It showed a naked man (his figure was extremely stylized, but it was clear from the realistically depicted sexual organ that he was a man) standing on the edge of a precipice. There were several weights of various sizes hung around his neck, and he had a sword in each hand; his eyes were blindfolded with a white cloth, and the edge of the precipice was under his very feet. There were a few other minor details - the sun setting into a bank of mist, birds in the sky and the roof of a pagoda in the distance - but despite these romantic digressions, the main sensation aroused in Serdyuk’s soul by the engraving was one of hopelessness.

  ‘That is our national artist Aketi Mitsuhide,’ said Kawabata, ‘the one who died recently from eating fugu fish. How would you describe the theme of this print?’

  Serdyuk’s eyes slithered over the figure depicted in the print, moving upwards from its exposed penis to the weights hanging on its ches
t.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, surprising even himself. ‘On and giri. He’s showing his prick and he’s got weights round his neck.’

  Kawabata clapped his hands and laughed.

  ‘More sake?’ he asked.

  ‘You know,’ replied Serdyuk, ‘I’d be glad to, but perhaps we could do the interview first? I get drunk very quickly.’

  ‘The interview is already over,’ said Kawabata, filling the glasses. ‘Let me tell you all about it. Our firm has existed for a very long time, so long in fact that if I told you, I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe me. Our traditions are more important to us than anything else. We can only be approached, if you will allow me to use a figurative expression, through a very narrow door, and you have just stepped through it with confidence. Congratulations.’

  ‘What door’s that?’ asked Serdyuk.

  Kawabata pointed to the print.

  ‘That one,’ he said. ‘The only one that leads into Taira incorporated.’

  ‘I don’t really understand,’ said Serdyuk. ‘As far as I was aware, you’re traders, and for you…’

  Kawabata raised an open palm.

  ‘I am frequently horrified to observe,’ he said, ‘that half of Russia has already been infected with the repulsive pragmatism of the West. Present company excepted, of course, but I have good reason for saying so.’

  ‘But what’s wrong with pragmatism?’ asked Serdyuk.

  ‘In ancient times,’ said Kawabata, ‘in our country officials were appointed to important posts after examinations in which they wrote an essay on beauty. And this was a very wise principle, for if a man has an understanding of that which is immeasurably higher than bureaucratic procedures, then he will certainly be able to cope with such lower matters. If your mind has penetrated with such lightning swiftness the mystery of the ancient allegory encoded in the drawing, then could all those price lists and overheads possibly cause you the slightest problem? Never. Moreover, after your answer I would consider it an honour to drink with you. Please do not refuse me.’

  Serdyuk downed another one and unexpectedly found he had fallen into reminiscing about the previous day - it seemed he’d gone on from Pushkin Square to the Clean Ponds, but it wasn’t clear to him why: all that was left in his memory was the monument to Griboedov, viewed in an odd perspective, as though he were looking at it from underneath a bench.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kawabata thoughtfully, ‘but if you think about it, it’s a terrible picture. The only things that differentiate us from animals are the rules and rituals which we have agreed on among ourselves. To transgress them is worse than to die, because only they separate us from the abyss of chaos which lies at our very feet - if, of course, we remove the blindfold from our eyes.’

  He pointed to the print.

  ‘But in Japan we have another tradition - sometimes, just for a second, deep within ourselves - to renounce all traditions, to abandon, as we say, Buddha and Mara, in order to experience the inexpressible taste of reality. And this second sometimes produces remarkable works of art…’

  Kawabata glanced once again at the man with the swords standing on the edge of the abyss and sighed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Life here nowadays is enough to make a man give up on everything too. And as for traditions… well, some go to different kinds of churches, but of course most just watch the television and think about money.’

  He sensed that he had seriously lowered the tone of the conversation and he needed quickly to say something clever.

  ‘Probably,’ he said, holding out his empty glass to Kawabata,’ the reason it happens is that by nature the Russian is not inclined to a search for metaphysical meaning and makes do with a cocktail of atheism and alcoholism which, if the truth be told, is our major spiritual tradition.’

  Kawabata poured again for himself and Serdyuk.

  ‘On this point I must take the liberty of disagreeing with you,’ he said. ‘And this is the reason. Recently I acquired it for our collection of Russian art.’

  ‘You collect art?’ asked Serdyuk.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kawabata, rising to his feet and going over to one of the sets of shelves. ‘That is also one of our firm’s principles. We always attempt to penetrate the inner soul of any nation with whom we do business. It is not a matter of wishing to extract any additional profit in this way by understanding the… What is the Russian word? Mentality, isn’t it?’

  Serdyuk nodded.

  ‘No,’ Kawabata continued, opening a large file. It’s more a matter of a desire to raise to the level of art even those activities that are furthest removed from it. You see, if you sell a consignment of machine-guns, as it were, into empty space, out of which money that might have been earned any way at all appears in your account, then you are not very different from a cash register. But if you sell the same consignment of machine-guns to people about whom you know that every time they kill someone they have to do penance before a tripartite manifestation of the creator of the world, the the simple act of selling is exalted to the level of art and acquires a quite different quality. Not for them, of course, but for you. You are in harmony, you are at one with the Universe in which you are acting, and your signature on the contract acquires the same existential status… Do I express this correctly in Russian?’

  Serdyuk nodded.

  ‘The same existential status as the sunrise, the high tide or the fluttering of a blade of grass in the wind… What was I talking about to begin with?’

  ‘About your collection.’

  ‘Ah, that’s right. Well then, would you like to take a look at this?’

  He held out to Serdyuk a large sheet of some material covered with a thin protective sheet of tracing-paper.

  ‘But please, be careful.’

  Serdyuk took hold of the sheet. It was a piece of dusty greyish cardboard, apparently quite old. A single word had been traced on it in black paint through a crude stencil - ‘God’.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s an early-twentieth-century Russian conceptual icon,’ said Kawabata. ‘By David Burliuk. Have you heard of him?’

  ‘I’ve heard the name somewhere.’

  ‘Strangely enough, he’s not very well known in Russia,’ said Kawabata. ‘But that’s not important. Just look at it!’

  Serdyuk took another look at the sheet of cardboard. The letters were dissected by white lines that must have been left by the strips of paper holding the stencil together. The word was crudely printed and there were blobs of dried paint all around it the overall impression was strangely reminiscent of a print left by a boot.

  Serdyuk looked up at Kawabata and drawled something that sounded like ‘Ye-ea-es’.

  ‘How many different meanings there are here!’ Kawabata continued. ‘Wait a moment, don’t speak - I’ll try to describe what I see, and if I miss anything, then you can add it. All right?’

  Serdyuk nodded.

  ‘Firstly,’ said Kawabata, ‘there is the very fact that the word «God» is printed through a stencil. That is precisely the way in which it is imprinted on a person’s consciousness in childhood -as a commonplace pattern identical with the pattern imprinted on a myriad other minds. But then, a great deal depends on the quality of the surface to which it is applied - if the paper is rough and uneven, the imprint left on it will not be sharp, and if there are already other words present, it is not even clear just what mark will be left on the paper as a result. That’s why they say that everyone has his own God. And then, look at the magnificent crudeness of these letters - their corners simply scratch at your eyes. It’s hard to believe anyone could possibly imagine this three-letter word to be the source of the eternal love and grace, the reflection of which renders life in this world at least partially tolerable. But on the other hand, this print, which looks more like a brand used for marking cattle than anything else, is the only thing a man has to set his hopes on in this life. Do you agree?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk.

  �
�But if that were all there were to it, the work which you hold in your hands would not be anything particularly outstanding - the entire range of the s e arguments can be encountered at any atheist lecture in a village club. But there is one small detail which makes this icon a genuine work of genius, which sets it -and I am not afraid to say this - above Rublyov’s «Trinity». You, of course, understand what I mean, but please allow me to say it myself.’

  Kawabata paused in solemn triumph.

  ‘What I have in mind, of course, are the empty stripes left from the stencil. It would have been no trouble to colour them in - but then the result would have been so different. Yes indeed, most certainly. A person begins by looking at this word, from the appearance of sense he moves on to the visible form and suddenly he notices the blank spaces that are not filled in with anything-and only there, in this nowhere, is it possible to encounter what all these huge, ugly letters strive in vain to convey, because the word «God» denominates that which cannot be denominated. This is a bit like Meister Eckhart, or… But that’s not important. There are many who have attempted to speak of this in words. Take Lao-tzu. You remember - about the wheel and the spokes? Or about the vessel whose value is determined solely by its inner emptiness? And what if i were to say that every word is such a vessel, and everything depends on how much emptiness it can contain? You wouldn’t disagree with that, surely?’

  ‘No,’ said Serdyuk.

  Kawabata wiped away the drops of noble sweat from his forehead.

  ‘Now take another look at the print on the wall,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk.

  ‘Do you see how it is constructed? The segment of reality in which the on and the giri are contained is located in the very centre, and all around it is a void, from which it appears and into which it disappears. In Japan we do not torment the Universe with unnecessary thoughts about its cause and origin. We do not burden God with the concept of «God». But nonetheless, the void in this print is the same void as you see in Burliuk’s icon. A truly significant coincidence, is it not?’