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, then 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 these 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?’
‘Of course,’ said Serdyuk, holding out his empty glass to Kawabata.
‘But you will not find this void in Western religious painting,’ Kawabata said as he poured. ‘Everything there is filled up with material objects – all kinds of curtains and folds and bowls of blood and God only knows what else. The unique vision of reality reflected in these two works of art is common to only you and us, and therefore I believe what Russia really needs is alchemical wedlock with the East.’
‘I swear to God,’ said Serdyuk, ‘only yesterday evening I was…’
‘Precisely with the East,’ interrupted Kawabata, ‘and not the West. You understand? In the depths of the Russian soul lies the same gaping void we find deep in the soul of Japan. And from this very void the world comes into being, constantly, with every second. Cheers.’
Kawabata drank up, as Serdyuk had already done, and twirled the empty bottle in his fingers.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘most certainly
, the value of a vessel lies in its emptiness. But in the last few minutes the value of this particular vessel has increased excessively. That disrupts the balance between value and the absence of value, and that is intolerable. That’s what we must fear the most, a loss of balance.’
‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Definitely. So there’s none left then?’
‘We could go and get some,’ Kawabata replied with a glance at his watch. ‘Of course, we’d miss the football…’
‘D’you follow the game?’
‘I’m a “Dynamo” fan,’ Kawabata answered, giving Serdyuk a very intimate kind of wink.
In an old, worn jacket with a hood and rubber boots Kawabata lost all resemblance to a Japanese, becoming instead the absolute picture of a visitor to Moscow from down south – the kind whose appearance alone was enough to prompt suspicions about the real reason for his visit.
But then Serdyuk had long known that most of the foreigners he encountered on the streets of Moscow were not really foreigners at all, but petty trader riff-raff who’d scrabbled together a bit of cash and then tarted themselves up at the Kalinka-Stockman shop. The genuine foreigners, who had multiplied to a quite incredible extent in recent years, had been trying to dress just like the average man on the street, for reasons of personal safety. Naturally enough, most of them got their idea of what the average Moscow inhabitant on the street looked like from CNN. And in ninety cases out of a hundred CNN, in its attempts to show Muscovites doggedly pursuing the phantom of democracy across the sun-baked desert of reform, showed close-ups of employees of the American embassy dressed up as Muscovites, because they looked a lot more natural than Muscovites dressed up as foreigners. And so despite Kawabata’s similarity to a visitor from Rostov – or rather, precisely because of that similarity – and especially because his face didn’t look particularly Japanese, it was really clear from the start that he was actually a pure-blooded Japanese who had just slipped out of his office for a minute into the Moscow twilight.
Furthermore, Kawabata led Serdyuk along one of those routes that only foreigners ever use – slipping across dark yards, in and out of buildings, through gaps in wire fences, so that after a few minutes Serdyuk was completely disoriented and had to rely entirely on his impetuous companion. Before very long they emerged on to a dark, crooked street where there were several trading kiosks and Serdyuk realized they’d reached their destination.
‘What shall we get?’ asked Serdyuk.
‘I think a litre of sake would do the job –’ said Kawabata. ‘And a bit of grub to go with it.’
‘Sake?’ said Serdyuk in astonishment. ‘Have they got sake here?’
‘This is the place all right,’ said Kawabata. ‘There are only three kiosks in Moscow where you can get decent sake. Why do you think we set up our office here?’
He’s joking, thought Serdyuk, and looked into the kiosk window. The selection was the usual one, except for a few unfamiliar litre bottles with labels crammed with hieroglyphics visible in among the others.
‘Black sake,’ Kawabata spoke gruffly. ‘Two. Yes.’
Serdyuk was given one bottle, which he stuck in his pocket. Kawabata kept hold of the other one.
‘Now just one other thing,’ said Kawabata. ‘It won’t take a moment.’
They walked along the line of kiosks and soon found themselves in front of a large tin-plated pavilion with a door pockmarked with holes, either from bullets or from nails or – as was more usual – from both. Both of the pavilion’s windows were protected with a traditional decorative grating, consisting of a metal rod bent into a semicircle in one bottom corner with rusty rays of iron radiating from it in all directions. The sign hanging above the door said ‘Jack of All Trades’.
Inside, there were tins of enamel paint and drying-oil on the shelves, with samples of tiles hanging from the walls and a separate counter piled high with various types of gleaming locks for safes. But in the corner, on an upturned plastic bath, there was something that Serdyuk had never seen before.
It was a black cuirass finished in gleaming lacquer, with small gold encrustations. Beside it lay a horned helmet with a fan of dangling neck-plates, also covered in black lacquer; on the helmet’s forehead there was a gleaming five-pointed silver star. On the wall beside the cuirass were several swords of various lengths and a long, asymmetrical bow.
While Serdyuk was inspecting this arsenal, Kawabata engaged the salesman in quiet conversation – they seemed to be talking about arrows. Then he asked him to take down a long sword in a scabbard decorated with white diamond shapes. He drew it half-way out of the scabbard and tried the blade with his thumbnail (Serdyuk noticed that Kawabata was very careful about the way he handled the sword and even when he was testing its cutting edge, he tried not to touch the blade with his fingers). Serdyuk felt as though Kawabata had completely forgotten that he existed, so he decided to remind him.
‘Tell me,’ he said, turning to Kawabata, ‘what could that star on the helmet mean? I suppose it’s a symbol of some sort?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Kawabata. ‘It’s a symbol, and a very ancient one. It’s one of the emblems of the Order of the October Star.’
Serdyuk chortled.
‘What kind of order’s that?’ he asked. ‘One they gave to the milkmaids in the ancient world?’
Kawabata gave him a long look, and the corner of his mouth turned up in an answering smile.
‘No,’ he said. ‘This order has never been awarded by anyone to anyone. Certain people have simply realized that they are entitled to wear it. Or rather that they had always been entitled to wear it.’
‘But what is it for?’
‘There is nothing that it could be for.’
‘The world’s full of idiots, all right,’ Serdyuk said vehemently.
Kawabata slammed the sword back into its scabbard. The air was suddenly thick with embarrassment.
‘You’re joking,’ said Serdyuk, instinctively trying to smooth things over. ‘You might as well have said the Order of the Red Labour Banner.’
‘I have never heard of…that decoration,’ said Kawabata. ‘The Order of the Yellow Flag certainly does exist, but that’s from a quite different area. And why do you think I’m joking? I very rarely joke. And when I do, I give warning by laughing softly.’
‘I’m sorry if I said something wrong,’ said Serdyuk. ‘It’s just that I’m drunk.’
Kawabata shrugged and handed the sword back to the salesman.
‘Are you taking it?’ the salesman asked.
‘Not this one,’ said Kawabata. ‘Wrap up that one over there, the small one.’
While Kawabata was paying, Serdyuk went out on to the street. He had a terrible feeling that he’d done something irredeemably stupid, but he soon felt calmer once he’d looked up a few times at the damp spring stars that had appeared in the sky. Then his eye was caught once again by the splayed metal rays of the window gratings and he thought sadly that when it came down to it, Russia was a land of the rising sun too – if only because the sun had never really risen over it yet. He decided this was an observation he could share with Kawabata, but by the time Kawabata emerged from the pavilion with a slim parcel tucked under his arm, this thought had already been forgotten, its place taken instead by an all-consuming desire for a drink.
Kawabata seemed to take in the situation at a glance. Moving several steps away from the doorway, he put his bundle down beside the dark, wet trunk of a tree growing out of a hole in the asphalt and said:
‘You know, of course, that in Japan we warm our sake before we drink it. And naturally, nobody would ever dream of drinking it straight from the bottle – that would totally contradict the spirit of the ritual. And drinking on the street is deeply dishonourable. But there is a certain ancient form which allows us to do this without losing face. It is called the “horseman’s halt”. It could also be translated as the “horseman’s rest”.’
Keeping his eyes fixed on Serdyuk’s face, Kawabata drew the bot
tle out of his pocket.
‘According to tradition,’ he continued, ‘the great poet Arivara Narihira was once dispatched as hunting ambassador to the province of Ise. The road was long, and in those times they travelled on horseback, so the journey took many days. It was summer. Narihira was travelling with a group of friends, and his exalted soul was filled with feelings of sadness and love. When the horsemen grew weary, they would dismount and refresh themselves with simple food and a few mouthfuls of sake. In order not to attract bandits, they lit no fire and drank the sake cold as they recited to each other marvellous verses about what they had seen on the way and what was in their hearts. And then they would set off again…’
Kawabata twisted open the screw-cap.
‘That is where the tradition comes from. When you drink sake in this fashion, you are supposed to think of the men of old, and then these thoughts should gradually merge into that radiant sadness that is born in your heart when you are aware of the fragility of this world and at the same time captivated by its beauty. So let us…’
‘With pleasure,’ said Serdyuk, reaching out for the bottle.
‘Not so fast,’ said Kawabata, jerking it away from him. ‘This is the first time you have taken part in this ritual, so allow me to explain the sequence of the actions involved and their significance. Do as I do and I will explain to you the symbolic meaning of what is happening.’
Kawabata set down the bottle beside his bundle.
‘First of all we must tether our horses,’ he said.
He tugged at the tree’s lowest branch to test its strength and then wove his hands around it as though he were winding a string on to it. Serdyuk realized he was supposed to do the same. Reaching up to a branch a little higher, he roughly repeated Kawabata’s manipulations under his watchful gaze.
‘No,’ said Kawabata, ‘he’s uncomfortable like that.’
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