Buddha's Little Finger

by Виктор Пелевин

  ‘You are mistaken, Katya.’ the governess replied quietly. ‘There is nothing saintly about this ship.’

  She peered sideways at me.

  ‘Let’s go.’ she said. ‘Standing here could be dangerous.’

  I shook my head to drive away the memory and turned over a few more pages: 102. Who created the Universe?

  a) God

  b) the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers

  c) I did

  d) Kotovsky

  I carefully closed the questionnaire and looked out of the window. I could see the snow-covered crown of a poplar, with a crow perched on it. It was hopping from one foot to the other, and snow was sprinkling down through the air from the branch on which it was sitting. Down below an engine of some kind roared into life and startled the bird. Flapping its wings ponderously, it took off from the branch and flew away from the hospital - I watched it go until it was reduced to an almost invisible black speck. Then I slowly raised my eyes to Timur Timurovich, meeting his own attentive gaze.

  ‘Tell me, what is this questionnaire needed for? Why did they invent it?’

  ‘I don’t know that myself,’ he replied. ‘Although, of course, there is a certain logic to it. Some patients are so cunning that they can wind even the most experienced doctor round their little finger. So this is just in case Napoleon decides for the time being to admit that he is mad, in order to obtain permission to leave the hospital and inaugurate the One Hundred Days…’

  A sudden startled thought glinted momentarily in his eyes, but he extinguished it immediately with a flick of his eyelids.

  ‘But then,’ he said, walking over quickly to me, ‘you’re perfectly right. I’ve only just realized I’ve been treating you as though you’re still a patient. As though I didn’t trust you myself. It’s terribly silly, but it’s just my professional reflex response.’

  He pulled the questionnaire from my grasp, tore it in half and threw it into the waste-paper basket.

  ‘Go and get ready,’ he said, turning towards the window. ‘Your documents have already been prepared. Zherbunov will show you to the station. And here is my telephone number, just in case you need it.’

  The blue cotton trousers and the black sweater that Zherbunov issued to me smelled of dusty broom cupboards. I was extremely displeased that the trousers were crumpled and stained, but as Zherbunov explained, the domestic services unit had no iron.

  ‘This isn’t a laundry, you know,’ he said caustically, ‘nor the bleeding Ministry of Culture neither.’

  I put on the high boots with the patterned soles, the round fur cap and the grey woollen coat, which would actually have been rather elegant if not for a hole with scorched edges in the back.

  ‘Got plastered, probably, and one of your mates burnt you with his fag,’ Zherbunov commented as he donned a poisonous-green jacket with a hood.

  It was interesting to note that I did not feel in the least bit offended by these boorish outbursts, which he had never permitted himself in the ward. Quite the contrary, they were like music to my ears, because they were a sign of my freedom. In actual fact he was not even being rude, this was merely his usual manner of speaking to people. Since I had ceased to be a patient, and he had ceased to be an orderly, the rules of professional ethics no longer applied to me; everything that had bound us together had been left hanging on that nail crookedly beaten into the wall, together with his white hospital coat.

  ‘And the travelling bag?’ I asked.

  His eyes opened wide in feigned astonishment.

  ‘There wasn’t any travelling bag,’ he said. ‘You can take that up with Timur Timurovich if you like. Here’s your purse, there were twenty roubles in it, and that’s what’s in it now.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘So there is no way to get at the truth?’

  ‘Well, what did you expect?’

  I made no attempt to argue any more. It was stupid of me even to have mentioned it. I limited my response to the stealthy extraction of the fountain pen from the side pocket of his jacket.

  The doors of freedom swung open in such a banal, everyday fashion that I actually felt slightly disappointed. Beyond them was an empty, snow-covered yard surrounded by a concrete wall; a pair of large green gates, oddly decorated with red stars, stood directly opposite us, and beside them a small lodge with pale smoke rising from its chimney. In any case, I had already seen all of this many times from the window. I went down the steps from the porch and glanced back at the faceless white building of the hospital.

  ‘Tell me, Zherbunov, where is the window of our ward?’

  ‘Third floor, second from the end.’ answered Zherbunov. ‘There, you see, they’re waving to you.’

  I caught a glimpse of two dark silhouettes in the window. One of them raised his open hand and pressed the palm against the glass. I waved to them in reply and Zherbunov tugged rather rudely at my sleeve.

  ‘Let’s get going. You’ll miss the train.’

  I turned and followed him towards the gates.

  It was cramped and hot in the lodge. An attendant in a green peaked cap with two crossed rifles on the cockade was sitting behind a small window; in front of it the passage was blocked by a boom made of painted iron piping. He took a long time to study the documents which Zherbunov passed over to him, several times looking up from the photograph at my face and then down again, and exchanging a few quiet comments with Zherbunov. Finally the boom was raised.

  ‘See what a serious guy he is,’ said Zherbunov, when we emerged. ‘He used to work in a Top-Secret Facility.’

  ‘I see.’ I answered. ‘Interesting. And did Timur Timurovich cure him as well?’

  Zherbunov gave me a sideways glance, but he said nothing.

  A narrow snow-covered path led away from the gates of the hospital. At first it wound its way through a sparse birch wood, and then for ten minutes it led along the edge of the wood before plunging back into the trees. There were no traces of civilization to be seen anywhere, apart from the thick cables sagging down between identical metal masts that looked like the skeletons of immense Red Army men in their helmets. Suddenly the forest came to an end, and we found ourselves beside a set of wooden steps leading up to a railway platform.

  The only structure on the platform was a brick shed with a feebly smoking chimney that bore a remarkable similarity to the, gate-lodge at the hospital. The thought even occurred to me that this might be the dominant form of architecture in this unfamiliar world - but of course, I still had too little experience to make such broad generalizations. Zherbunov went over to a little window in the hut and bought me a ticket.

  ‘Okay then,’ he said, ‘here’s your train coming. Fifteen minutes to Yaroslavl Station.’

  ‘Splendid,’ I replied.

  ‘Looking forward to the ladies, then?’ he sneered.

  I was only a little shocked by the directness of the question. From my long experience of associating with soldiers, I knew that among the lower classes the shameless discussion of the intimate side of life fulfils approximately the same function as conversation about the weather for the upper classes.

  I shrugged. ‘I cannot say that I have pined too badly for what you call ladies, Zherbunov.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Zherbunov asked.

  ‘Because.’ I replied, ‘ail women suck.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But all the same, what are you going to do? You’ve got to work somewhere, haven’t you?’

  ‘I do not know.’ I replied. ‘I can write poetry, I can command a cavalry squadron. Something will turn up.’

  The electric train came to a halt, and its doors opened with a hiss.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Zherbunov, proffering me a crablike hand. ‘Be seeing you.’

  ‘Goodbye.’ I said. ‘And please give my very best wishes to my wardmates.’

  As I shook his hand, I suddenly noticed a tattoo which I had not seen before on his wrist. It was a blurred blue anchor, and above it I c
ould just make out the letters ‘baltflot’ - they were very pale and indistinct, as though someone had tried to erase them.

  Entering the carriage, I sat down on a hard wooden bench. The train set off and Zherbunov’s stocky figure drifted past the window and disappeared for ever into non-existence. At the very end of the platform, protruding above the barrier on two metal poles I saw a board bearing the inscription: ‘LOZOVAYA JUNCTION’.

  Tverskoi Boulevard appeared exactly as it had been when I last saw it - once again it was February, with snowdrifts everywhere and that peculiar gloom which somehow manages to infiltrate the very daylight. The same old women were perched motionless on the benches, watching over brightly dressed children engaged in protracted warfare among the snowdrifts; above them, beyond the black latticework of the wires, the sky hung down close to the earth as though it were trying to touch it. Some tilings, however, were different, as I noticed when I reached the end of the boulevard. The bronze Pushkin had disappeared, but the gaping void that had appeared where he used to stand somehow seemed like the best of all possible monuments. Where the Strastnoi Monastery had been, there was now an empty space, with a sparse scattering of consumptive trees and tasteless street lamps.

  I sat on a bench opposite the invisible statue and lit a cigarette with a short yellow tip which had been kindly given to me by an officer wearing a uniform that looked as though it belonged in some operetta. The cigarette burnt away as quickly as a Bickford fuse, leaving me with a vague taste of saltpetre in my mouth.

  There were several crumpled bills in my pocket - in appearance they differed little from the rainbow-coloured hundred-rouble Duma notes which I remembered so well, although they were rather smaller in size. Zherbunov had told me at the station that this would be enough for a single lunch at an inexpensive restaurant. I sat there on the bench for quite a long time, pondering what I should do. It was already beginning to get dark, and on the roofs of the familiar buildings huge electrified signs lit up with messages in some barbarous artificial language - ‘Samsung’, ‘oca-co a’, ‘olbI’. In this entire city I had absolutely nowhere to go: I felt like a Persian who for some inexplicable reason has run the distance from Marathon to Athens.

  ‘And have you any idea what it is like, my dear sir, when you have nowhere left to go?’ I murmured to myself, gazing at the words burning in the sky, and I laughed as I remembered the Marmeladov-woman from the ‘Musical Snuffbox’.

  Suddenly I understood exactly what I had to do next. Getting up from the bench, I walked across the road and held out one hand in order to hail an automobile. Almost immediately a rattling old vehicle shaped like a drop of water and splattered all over with dirty slush pulled up alongside me. Sitting at the wheel was a bearded gentleman who reminded me vaguely of Count Tolstoy, except that his beard was rather shorter and thinner.

  ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I am afraid I cannot remember the precise address, but I need a place called «The Musical Snuffbox». A cafe. Somewhere not far from here - down along the boulevard and to the left. Quite close to Nikitsky Square.’

  ‘You mean on Herzen Street?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I’ve never heard of such a cafe,’ said the bearded gentleman. ‘I suppose it only opened recently.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘quite a while ago, actually.’

  ‘Ten roubles. Money up front.’

  I opened the door and sat beside him. The automobile set off and I stole a glance at his face: he was wearing a strange-looking jacket cut in a manner reminiscent of the military tunics so beloved by the Bolshevik leadership, but made of material patterned in a liberal check design.

  ‘You have a fine automobile,’ I said.

  He was obviously flattered by my remark.

  ‘It’s old now,’ he replied, ‘but after the war, there was no finer car in the world than the «Pobeda».’

  ‘After the war?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, of course, just after the war. But for five years at least. But now they’ve completely screwed everything up. You just wait and see, and the communists will come to power.’

  ‘Please do not talk about politics,’ I said, ‘I understand absolutely nothing about it and I always get confused.’

  He gave me a quick look.

  ‘That, young man, is precisely the reason why everything has fallen apart the way it has, because you and people like you understand absolutely nothing about it. What’s politics about anyway? It’s about how we can carry on with our lives. If everyone thought about how we could sort things out in Russia, then they wouldn’t need any sorting out. And that, if you’ll pardon the expression, is the dialectic.’

  ‘And just where do you intend to hang this dialectic?’ I asked.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter.’

  We stopped at the beginning of the boulevard. There was a long queue of vehicles ahead of us - there were horns sounding and orange and red lights flashing. The bearded gentleman said nothing, and I thought he might have found my words a little unfriendly. I felt I wanted to smooth over the awkwardness.

  ‘You know.’ I said, ‘if history teaches us anything, then it is that everybody who has tried to sort things out in Russia has ended up being sorted out by Russia instead.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the gentleman. ‘That’s precisely why we have to think about how to sort things out here - so that it won’t happen again.’

  ‘As far as I am concerned, I have no need to think about it,’ I replied. ‘I know perfectly well how to sort things out in Russia.’

  ‘Oh yes? And how’s that?’

  ‘It is all quite simple. Every time the concept and the image of Russia appears in your conscious mind, you have to let it dissolve away in its own inner nature. And since the concept and the image of Russia has no inner nature of its own, the result is that everything is sorted out most satisfactorily.’

  He looked at me carefully.

  ‘I see.’ he said. ‘That’s just what the American Zionists want to hear. That’s exactly how they poisoned the minds of your entire generation.’

  The automobile began to move again and turned on to Nikitskaya Street.

  ‘I do not entirely understand what you are talking about,’ I said, ‘but in that case all that has to be done is to take all the American Zionists and sort them out as well.’

  ‘And just how would you go about sorting them out, I wonder?’

  ‘In precisely the same way,’ I replied. ‘And America should be sorted out as well. But then, why bother going into every particular case? If one is going to sort things out, one might as well sort out the entire world at once.’

  ‘Then why don’t you go ahead and do so?’

  ‘That is exactly what I intend to do today,’ I said.

  The gentleman wagged his beard up and down condescendingly.

  ‘Of course, it’s stupid of me to try to talk to you seriously, but I should point out that you are not the first person ever to talk such drivel. Pretending that you doubt the reality of the world is the most cowardly form of escape from that very reality. Squalid intellectual poverty, if you want my opinion. Despite all its seeming absurdity, cruelty and senselessness this world nonetheless exists, doesn’t it? And all the problems in it exist as well, don’t they?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Therefore talk of the non-reality of the world does not signify a highly developed spirituality, but quite the opposite. In not accepting the creation, you also fail to accept the Creator.’

  ‘I do not entirely understand what «spirituality» is,’ I said. ‘But as for the creator of this world, I am rather briefly acquainted with him.’

  ‘And how’s that?’

  ‘Oh, yes. His name is Grigory Kotovsky and he lives in Paris, and judging from everything that we can see through the windows of your remarkable automobile, he is still using cocaine.’

  ‘And is that all you have to sa
y about him?’

  ‘I think I can also tell you that his head is presently covered with sticking-plaster.’

  ‘I see. And would you mind me asking exactly which psychiatric hospital you escaped from?’

  I thought for a moment.

  ‘I think it was number seventeen. Yes, there was a big blue board hanging by the door, with the number seventeen on it. And it also said that it was a model hospital.’

  The automobile came to a halt.

  I looked out of the window and saw the building of the Conservatory. We were somewhere close to the ‘Snuffbox’ already.

  ‘Listen, we should try asking someone the way.’

  ‘I won’t take you any further,’ the gentleman said. ‘Get out of the car and go to the devil.’

  I shrugged, opened the door and got out, while the automobile shot off in the direction of the Kremlin. It was rather upsetting that my attempts to speak honestly and sincerely had met with such a reception. But then, by the time I reached the corner of the Conservatory, I had already completely sorted out the bearded gentleman and his devil as well.

  I glanced around me on all sides - the street was definitely familiar. I walked along it for about fifty yards and saw a turn to the right and, almost immediately, the familiar gateway in the wall where Vorblei’s automobile had stopped on that memorable winter’s night. It was exactly the same as it had been, except that I think the colour of the house had changed, and standing on the road in front of the gateway were a great many automobiles of various different shapes and styles.

  Quickly crossing the inexpressibly depressing courtyard, I found myself facing a door surmounted by a futuristic-looking canopy of glass and steel. A small signboard in English had been hung on the canopy:

  JOHN BULL: Pubis International

  Light was showing through the pink blinds drawn halfway down several windows beside the door. From behind them I could hear the mechanically plaintive note of some obscure musical instrument.

  I tugged the door open, revealing behind it a short corridor hung with heavy fur coats and men’s overcoats, ending in an unexpectedly crude metal partition. A man in a canary-yellow jacket with gold buttons who looked like a convict rose from a stool to meet me; in one hand he had a strange-looking telephone receiver with the wire broken off to leave a stump no more than an inch long. I could have sworn that only a second before he got up he had been talking into it - moreover, he had been holding it incorrectly, with the broken-off wire sticking upwards. This touchingly childlike ability to become totally immersed in a fantasy world, so unusual in such a thug, inspired me with a feeling close to sympathy for him.