Buddha's Little Finger

by Victor Pelevin

  Anna gestured with her hand.

  ‘He drinks,’ she said. ‘God knows what is going on, it really is quite frightening. Yesterday he ran out into the street with his Mauser, wearing nothing but his shirt, fired three times at the sky, then thought for a moment, fired three times into the ground and went to bed.’

  ‘Stunning, absolutely stunning,’ muttered Kotovsky. ‘Are you not afraid that in this state he might bring the clay machine-gun into action?’

  Anna gave me a sideways glance, and I instantly felt that my presence at the table was superfluous. My companions evidently shared this feeling – the pause lasted so long that it became unbearable.

  ‘Tell me, Pyotr, what did those gentlemen think about the metaphysics of dreams?’ Kotovsky asked eventually.

  ‘Oh, nothing significant,’ I said. ‘They weren’t very intelligent. Excuse me, but I feel a need for some fresh air. My head has begun to ache.’

  ‘Yes, Grigory,’ said Anna, ‘let us see Pyotr home, and then we can decide what to do with the evening.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I can manage on my own. It is not very far, and I remember the way.’

  ‘Until later then,’ said Kotovsky.

  Anna did not even look at me. I had scarcely left the table before they launched into an animated conversation. On reaching the door I glanced round: Anna was laughing loudly and tapping Kotovsky’s hand with her open palm, as though she was begging him to stop saying something unbearably funny.

  Stepping outside I saw a light-sprung carriage with two grey trotters harnessed to it. It was obviously Kotovsky’s équipage. I turned the corner and set off up the slope of the street along which Anna and I had so recently been walking.

  It was about three o’clock in the afternoon and the heat was unbearable. I thought of how everything had changed since the moment of my awakening – there was not a trace left of my pacific mood; most unpleasant of all was the fact that I simply could not get Kotovsky’s trotters out of my head. It seemed absurd that such a petty detail could have depressed me so much – or rather, I wished to regain my normal state, in which such things appeared absurd to me, but I could not. I was in fact deeply wounded.

  The reason, of course, did not lie in Kotovsky and his trotters. The reason lay in Anna, in the elusive and inexpressible quality of her beauty, which from the very first moment had made me invent and ascribe to her a soul of profound and subtle feeling. I could not possibly have dreamed that an ordinary pair of trotters might be capable of rendering their owner attractive in her eyes. And yet it was so. The strangest thing of all, I thought, was that I had assumed that a woman needs something else. But what might that be – the riches of the spirit?

  I laughed out loud and two chickens walking along the edge of the road fluttered away from me in fright.

  Now that was interesting, I reasoned, for if I were truthful with myself, that was precisely what I had thought – that there existed in me something capable of attracting this woman and raising me in her eyes immeasurably higher than any owner of a pair of trotters. But the very comparison already involved a quite intolerable vulgarity – in accepting it I was myself reducing to the level of a pair of trotters what should in my view seem of immeasurably greater value to her. If for me these were objects of one and the same order, then why on earth should she make any distinction between them? And just what was this object which was supposed to be of immeasurably greater value to her? My inner world? The things that I think and feel? I groaned out loud in disgust at myself. It was time I stopped deceiving myself, I thought. For years now my main problem had been how to rid myself of all these thoughts and feelings and leave my so-called inner world behind me on some rubbish tip. But even if I assumed for a moment that it did have some kind of value, at least of an aesthetic kind, that did not change a thing – everything beautiful that can exist in a human being is inaccessible to others, because it is in reality inaccessible even to the person in whom it exists. How could it really be possible to fix it with the eye of introspection and say: ‘There it was, it is and it will be?’ Was it really possible in any sense to possess it, to say, in fact, that it belonged to anyone? How could I compare with Kotovsky’s trotters something that bore no relation to myself, something which I have merely glimpsed in the finest seconds of my life? And how could I blame Anna if she refused to see in me what I have long ago ceased to see in myself? No, this was genuinely absurd – even in those rare moments of life when I have perhaps discovered this most important of things, I have felt quite clearly that it was absolutely impossible to express it. It might be that someone utters a succinct phrase as he gazes out of the window at the sunset, and no more. But what I myself say when I gaze out at sunsets and sunrises has long irritated me beyond all tolerance. My soul is not endowed with any special beauty, I thought, quite the opposite – I was seeking in Anna what had never existed in myself. All that remained of me when I saw her was an aching void which could only be filled by her presence, her voice, her face. So what could I offer her instead of a ride with Kotovsky on his trotters – myself? In other words, my hope that in intimacy with her I might discover the answer to some vague and confused question tormenting my soul? Absurd. Had I been in her position myself, I would have chosen to ride the trotters with Kotovsky.

  I stopped and sat down on a worn milestone at the edge of the road. It was quite impossibly hot. I felt shattered and depressed; I could not recall when I had ever felt so disgusted with myself. The sour stench of champagne that had permeated my astrakhan hat seemed at that moment truly to symbolize the state of my spirit. I was surrounded on all sides by the indifferent torpidity of summer, somewhere there were dogs barking lazily, while the overheated machine-gun barrel of the sun was strafing the earth in a continuous, never-ending burst of fire. No sooner had this comparison come to mind than I remembered that Anna had called herself a machine-gunner. I felt tears well up in my eyes and I buried my face in my hands.

  A few minutes later I got to my feet and set off up the hill again. I was feeling better; more than that, the thoughts that had just passed rapidly through my mind and seemingly crushed me had suddenly become a source of subtle pleasure. The sadness that had enveloped me was inexpressibly sweet, and I knew that in an hour’s time or so I would attempt to summon it again, but it would not come.

  I soon reached the manor-house. I noticed that there were several horses tethered in the courtyard that had not been there before, and that smoke was rising from the chimney of one of the outhouses. I halted at the gates. The road continued on up the hill and disappeared around a bend into dense greenery; not a single building was visible above me, and it was quite incomprehensible where it might lead to. I did not wish to encounter anyone, so I entered the courtyard and made my way furtively round the house.

  ‘You’ve lost again, you idiot!’ shouted a bass male voice on the first floor.

  They must have been playing cards. I reached the edge of the building, turned round the corner and found myself in a back yard, which proved to be unexpectedly picturesque – several steps away from the wall the ground fell away steeply, forming a natural depression concealed beneath the shade of the trees that overhung it. A babbling brook ran through the dip and I could see the roofs of two or three outbuildings, while further off, in a small open area, there was a tall stack of hay, exactly like those depicted in the idyllic rural scenes to be found in the journal Niva. I felt a sudden, crazy desire to tumble in the hay, and I set off towards the stack. Then suddenly, when I was only ten paces away from it, a man with a rifle leapt out from beneath the trees and barred my way.

  Standing before me was the very same Bashkir who had served us dinner in the staff car and then uncoupled the weavers’ carriages from our train, but now his face was covered by a sparse black beard.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we know each other, don’t we? All I want to do is take a roll in the hay. I promise you not to smoke.’

  The Bashkir did not react to my words
in any way; his eyes gazed at me without the slightest trace of expression. I attempted to walk round him, and then he stepped backwards, raised his rifle and set the bayonet against my throat.

  I turned and walked away. I must confess that there was something in the Bashkir’s manner which I found genuinely frightening. When he pointed his bayonet at me he had gripped his rifle as though it were a spear, as if he had no notion that one could shoot from it, and the movement had hinted at such wild strength born of the steppe that the Browning in my pocket had seemed no more than a simple child’s firecracker. But it was all surely no more than nerves. When I reached the brook I looked back, but the Bashkir was no longer anywhere to be seen. I squatted down by the water and carefully washed my astrakhan hat in it.

  Suddenly I noticed that the murmuring of the brook was overlaid, like the strains of some obscure instrument, by the tones of a low, rather pleasant-sounding voice. In the building nearest to me which, judging from the chimney in its roof, had once been a bathhouse, someone was intoning:

  ‘Calmly I walk the open field in my white shirt…And the storks are like the crosses on the bell towers…’

  Something in these words moved me, and I decided to see who was singing. Wringing the water from my hat, I thrust it into my belt, walked across to the door and swung it open without knocking.

  Inside there was a wide table made of freshly planed boards and two benches. On the table stood an immense bottle containing a turbid liquid, a glass and several onions. Sitting on the nearer of the benches with his back to me was a man wearing a white Russian shirt hanging loose outside his trousers.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ I asked, ‘but is that not perhaps vodka in your bottle?’

  ‘No,’ said the man, turning round as he spoke, ‘this is moonshine.’

  It was Chapaev.

  I started in surprise. ‘Vasily Ivanovich!’

  ‘Hi there, Petka,’ he answered with a broad smile. ‘Back on your feet already, I see.’

  I had absolutely no memory of when we had moved on to such familiar terms. Chapaev glanced at me with gentle cunning; a damp lock of hair had fallen across his forehead and his shirt was unbuttoned down to the middle of his belly. His appearance was so absolutely ordinary and so far removed from the image that I carried in my memory that I hesitated for several seconds, thinking it was a mistake.

  ‘Siddown, Petka, siddown,’ he said, nodding towards the other bench.

  ‘I thought you were out of town, Vasily Ivanovich,’ I said as I took a seat.

  ‘I got back an hour ago,’ he said, ‘and came straight to the bathhouse. Just the job in this heat. But why are you asking about me, tell me about yourself. How’re you feeling?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘Gets up just like that, puts on his hat and goes off into town. You should stop playing the bleeding hero. What’s this talk I hear about your losing your memory somewhere?’

  ‘I have,’ I said, trying not to pay any attention to his buffoonery and perverse use of uncultured language. ‘But who could have told you already?’

  ‘Why Semyon, who else? Your orderly. You really can’t remember anything then, eh?’

  ‘All I remember is getting into the train in Moscow,’ I said. ‘Everything after that is a blank. I cannot even recall under what circumstances you began calling me Petka.’

  Chapaev stared me in the face for a minute or so with his eyes screwed up, as though he were looking straight through me.

  ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘I see. A bad business. I reckon that you, Petka, are simply muddying the water.’

  ‘What water?’

  ‘Carry on muddying it if you like,’ Chapaev said mysteriously, ‘you’re still young yet. And I began calling you Petka at Lozovaya Junction, not long before the battle.’

  ‘I know nothing of this battle,’ I said, frowning. ‘I keep hearing about it all the time, but I cannot remember a single thing. It just makes my head start aching.’

  ‘Well, if it makes your head ache, don’t think about it. You wanted a drink, didn’t you? So have one!’

  Tipping the bottle Chapaev filled the glass to the brim and pushed it across to me.

  ‘Many thanks,’ I said ironically and drank. Despite its frightening murky sheen, the moonshine proved to be quite excellent – it must have been distilled with some kind of herbs.

  ‘Like some onion?’

  ‘Not at the moment. But I do not rule out the possibility that in a while I might indeed reach a state in which I am able and even eager to chew onions with my moonshine.’

  ‘Why so down in the dumps?’ asked Chapaev.

  ‘Oh, just thoughts.’

  ‘And what thoughts might they be?’

  ‘Surely, Vasily Ivanovich, you cannot really be interested in what I am thinking?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Chapaev. ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘I am thinking, Vasily Ivanovich, that the love of a beautiful woman is always in reality a kind of condescension. Because it is simply impossible to be worthy of such a love.’

  ‘You what?’ said Chapaev, wrinkling up his forehead.

  ‘Enough of this swaggering foolery,’ I said, ‘I am being serious.’

  ‘Serious are you?’ asked Chapaev. ‘All right then, try this for size – condescension is always movement down from something to something else. Like down into this little gully here. So where does this condescension of yours go to – and from where?’

  I started thinking about it. I could see what he was getting at: if I had said that I was talking about the condescension of the beautiful to the ugly and the suffering, he would immediately have asked me whether beauty is aware of itself, and whether it can remain beauty having once become conscious of itself in that capacity. To that question, which had driven me almost insane through long sleepless nights in St Petersburg, I had no answer. And if the beauty I was speaking of was a beauty unconscious of itself, then there could surely be no talk of condescension? Chapaev was very definitely far from simple.

  ‘Let us say, Vasily Ivanovich, not the condescension of something to something else, but the act of condescension in itself. I would even call it ontological condescension.’

  ‘And where exactly does this an-ta-logical condescension happen, then?’ asked Chapaev, obviously relishing his mimicry. He took another glass from under the table.

  ‘I am not prepared to converse in that tone.’

  ‘Let’s have another drink, then,’ said Chapaev.

  We drank. I stared dubiously at an onion for several seconds.

  ‘But really,’ said Chapaev, wiping his moustache, ‘you tell me where it all happens.’

  ‘If you are in a fit state to talk seriously, Vasily Ivanovich, then I will tell you.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me.’

  ‘It would be more correct to say that there is no condescension involved. It is simply that such love is felt as condescension.’

  ‘And which parts is it felt in?’

  ‘In the mind, Vasily Ivanovich, in the perception of the conscious mind,’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘Ah, in simple terms you mean here in the head, right?’

  ‘Roughly speaking, yes.’

  ‘And where does the love happen?’

  ‘In the same place, Vasily Ivanovich. Roughly speaking.’

  ‘Right,’ said Chapaev in a satisfied voice. ‘So you were asking about, what was it now…Whether love is always condescension, right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And it seems that love takes place inside your head, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is that condescension too?’

  ‘So it appears, Vasily Ivanovich. What of it?’

  ‘Tell me, Petka, how on earth you have managed to get yourself into a state where you ask me, your commanding officer, whether what happens in your head is always what happens in your head, or not always?’

  ‘Sophistry,’ I said and drank. ‘Unadulterated sophistry. And anyw
ay, I cannot understand why I continue to torment myself. I have endured all this before in St Petersburg, and the beautiful young woman in the maroon velvet dress set her empty goblet on the tablecloth in exactly the same fashion and I took my handkerchief out of my pocket in exactly the same way…’

  Chapaev cleared his throat loudly, drowning out what I was saying. I finished in a quiet voice, not quite sure to whom I was actually speaking:

  ‘What do I want from this girl? Am I not aware that one can never return to the past? One might skilfully reproduce all of its external circumstances, but one can never recover one’s former self, never…’

  ‘Oi-oi, you spin a very fine line in garbage, Petka,’ Chapaev said with a laugh. ‘Goblet, tablecloth.’

  ‘What is wrong with you, Vasily Ivanovich,’ I asked, restraining myself with some difficulty. ‘Have you been rereading Tolstoy? Have you decided to become more simple?’

  ‘We’ve no need to reread any of your Tol-stoys,’ said Chapaev, chuckling again. ‘But if you’re pining because of our Anka, then I can tell you that every woman has to be approached in the right way. Pining away for our Anka, are you? Have I guessed right?’

  His eyes had become two narrow slits of cunning. Then he suddenly struck the table with his fist.

  ‘You answer when your divisional commander asks you a question!’

  There was definitely no way I was going to be able to break through his strange mood today.

  ‘It is of no importance,’ I said. ‘Vasily Ivanovich, let us have another drink.’

  Chapaev laughed quietly and filled both glasses.

  My memories of the hours which followed are rather vague. I got very drunk. I think we talked about soldiering – Chapaev was reminiscing about the Great War. He made it sound quite convincing: he spoke about the German cavalry, about some positions above some river, about gas attacks and mills with machine-gunners sitting in them. At one point he even became very excited and began shouting, glaring at me with gleaming eyes:

  ‘Ah, Petka! D’you know the way I fight? You can’t know anything about that! Chapaev uses only three blows, you understand me?’