Buddha's Little Finger

by Victor Pelevin

  ‘Nowhere near it,’ Volodin said with a frown. ‘Compared with this smack is a heap of crap.’

  ‘Well then, kinda like coke, is it, or speed?’

  ‘No, Shurik. No, no, don’t even try comparing it. Just imagine you’ve done a bundle of speed and you’re tripping out – say you’ll be tripping for a day. You’ll want a dame and the whole works, right?’

  Shurik giggled.

  ‘And then you’ll be coming down for a day. And you’ll probably start thinking – what the fuck did I need all that for?’

  ‘Yeah, it happens,’ said Shurik.

  ‘But with this gear, once it gets to you, it stays with you for ever. And you won’t need any dames, and you won’t get any munchies. No coming down. No cold turkey. You just keep praying for the trip to go on and on for ever. Get it?’

  ‘Like, heavier than smack?’

  ‘Way heavier.’

  Volodin leaned over the camp-fire and stirred the branches around. It immediately flared up, as strongly as though petrol had been poured into the fire. The flames were strange – they gave off various-coloured sparks of unusual beauty, and the light that fell on the faces of the three men sitting there was also unusual, rainbow-coloured and soft, with an astonishing depth.

  They could be seen very clearly now. Volodin was a plump, roundish man of about forty with a shaved head and a small, neat beard – his appearance was that of a civilized Central Asian bandit. Shurik was a skinny, fidgety little man with blond hair who made a lot of small, meaningless movements. He didn’t look very strong, but his constant nervous twitching betrayed something so frightening that beside him the muscle-bound Kolyan looked like a mere wolfhound puppy. In short, if Shurik typified the élite type of St Petersburg mobster, then Kolyan was the standard Moscow hulkodrome whose appearance had been so brilliantly foretold by the futurists at the beginning of the century. He seemed to be nothing but an intersection of simple geometrical forms – spheres, cubes and pyramids – and his small streamlined head was reminiscent of that stone which according to the evangelist was discarded by the builders but nonetheless became the cornerstone in the foundation of the new Russian statehood.

  ‘There,’ said Volodin, ‘now the mushrooms have come on.’

  ‘Whoah,’ Kolyan confirmed. ‘And then some. I’ve turned blue all over.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shurik, ‘that sure don’t feel like nothing. Listen. Volodin, was all that stuff for real?’

  ‘All what stuff?’

  ‘All that stuff about fixing yourself up a trip that lasts all your life…So you just stay high all the time.’

  ‘I didn’t say all your life. The concepts in there are different.’

  ‘You said yourself as you’d be tripping all the time.’

  ‘I didn’t say that either.’

  ‘Kol, didn’t he say it?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ mumbled Kolyan. He seemed to have dropped out of the conversation and to be occupied with something else.

  ‘Then what did you say?’ asked Shurik.

  ‘I didn’t say all the time,’ said Volodin. ‘I said “for ever”. Keep your ears open.’

  ‘So what’s the difference?’

  ‘The difference is where that high starts, there isn’t any more time.’

  ‘What is there then?’

  ‘Grace.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Can’t quite get me head round that somehow,’ said Shurik. ‘Just hanging there in empty space, is it, this grace?’

  ‘There’s no empty space there either.’

  ‘Then what is there?’

  ‘I told you, grace.’

  ‘You’ve lost me again.’

  ‘Don’t bother about it,’ said Volodin. ‘If it was that easy to get your head round, half of Moscow would be tripping for free right now. Just think about it – a gram of cocaine costs one hundred, and here this is free, for nothing.’

  ‘Hundred and fifty,’ said Shurik. ‘Nah, something’s not right here. Even if it was tough to bend yer head round, people’d still know about it and they’d be tripping. They figured out how to make speed out of nose drops, didn’t they?’

  ‘Use your brains, Shurik,’ said Volodin. ‘Just imagine you’re dealing cocaine, right? One gram for one hundred and fifty bucks, and you get ten greenbacks from each gram. And in a month you sell, say, five hundred grams. How much is that?’

  ‘Five grand,’ said Shurik.

  ‘So now imagine some scumball has cut your sales from five hundred grams to five. What have you got?’

  Shurik’s lips moved as he quietly mumbled some figures.

  ‘A limp prick, that’s what,’ he answered.

  ‘Exactly. You could take your whore to McDonald’s one time, but as for snorting anything yourself – forget it. So what would you do with a scumball who set you up like that?’

  ‘Blow him away,’ said Shurik. ‘Obvious.’

  ‘So now do you see why nobody knows about it?’

  ‘You reckon the dope pushers keep things tight?’

  ‘There’s far more to it than just drugs,’ said Volodin. ‘There’s much bigger bread tied up in this. If you break through into this eternal high, then you don’t need any wheels, or any petrol, or any advertisements, or any porn, or any news. And neither does anyone else. What would happen then?’

  ‘Everything’d be fucked,’ said Shurik, glancing around him. ‘All of culture and civilization. Clear as day, that is.’

  ‘So that’s why nobody knows about the eternal high.’

  ‘But who controls the whole business?’ Shurik asked after a moment’s thought.

  ‘It works automatically. It’s the market.’

  ‘Don’t you go giving me any spiel about the market,’ Shurik said with a frown. ‘We’ve had it all before. Automatic. Yeah, well it’s automatic when that suits, or you can make it single-shot. Or you can put the safety catch on. Someone’s got all the trumps, that’s all. Maybe we’ll find out who later, in about forty years, not before.’

  ‘We’ll never find out,’ said Kolyan, without opening his eyes. ‘Come on. Just think about it. When a guy’s got a million greenbacks, he just sits back and takes it easy, and anyone who starts to spread the dirt about him gets dropped straight off. And the guys who’re holdin’ trumps or got the real power are way heavier than that! The most we can do is take out some hulk, or torch some office, and that’s it. Nothin’ but garbage men, we are, clean up the small stuff. But those guys can bring in the tanks if they can’t fix anythin’ by spielin’. And if that don’t do it, they’ve got planes, an atom bomb if that’s what it takes. Just look what happened when the Chechens stopped shellin’ out, came down on them like a ton of bricks, didn’t they? If they hadn’t copped on at the last moment, they wouldn’t be able to shell out for nothin’ no more. And remember the White House. How could we ever come on to Slav-East like that?’

  ‘You give over with yer White House,’ said Shurik. ‘Dopey bastard. We’re not talking politics. We’re talking about the eternal high…Listen…Really now…They said on the box that all of them in the White House were going around stoned out of their skulls. Maybe they twigged about this eternal high? And they wanted to tell everyone about it on the telly, so they went after Ostankino, only the cocaine mafia wouldn’t let them through…Nah, now me marbles is slipping.’

  Shurik put his hands around his head and fell silent.

  The forest around them was filled with trembling, mysterious rainbow lights, and the sky above the clearing was covered with mosaics of incredible beauty, unlike anything a man encounters in his gruelling, normal everyday existence. The world around them changed, becoming far more meaningful and animated, as though it had finally become clear why the grass was growing in the clearing, why the wind was blowing and the stars were twinkling in the sky. But the metamorphosis affected more than just the world, it affected the men sitting by the fire as well.

  Kolyan see
med to recede into himself. He closed his eyes and his small square face, which normally wore an expression of gloomy annoyance, no longer bore the imprint of any feeling at all and looked more than anything like a swollen lump of old meat. The standard-issue chestnut crew cut on top of his head also seemed to have softened, so that it looked like the fur trimming of some absurd cap. In the dancing light of the camp-fire his double-breasted pink jacket resembled some ancient Tartar war costume, with the gold buttons on it like decorative plaques from a burial mound.

  Shurik had become even skinnier, more fidgety and terrifying. He was like a frame cobbled together out of rotten planks of wood, on which many years ago someone had hung out their rags to dry and then forgotten about them; in some inexplicable fashion a spark of life had been kindled in the rags, then taken such firm hold that it made life thoroughly uncomfortable for almost everyone else anywhere in the neighbourhood. He bore little resemblance to a living being, and his cashmere pea-jacket only made him look like the electrified dummy of a sailor.

  No sudden changes had taken place in Volodin. Some invisible chisel seemed to have smoothed out all the sharp corners and irregularities of his material exterior, leaving nothing but soft lines that flowed smoothly into each other. His face had become a little paler, and the lenses of his spectacles reflected rather more sparks than were flying into the air from the camp-fire. His movements had also acquired smoothness and precision – in short, it was clear from many signs that he had eaten mushrooms a good many times before.

  ‘Whoah, hea-vy,’ said Shurik, breaking the silence, ‘but heavy! Kol, how’re you doing?’

  ‘Nothin’ much,’ said Kolyan without opening his tightly glued eyelids. ‘Some kind of lights.’

  Shurik turned to Volodin and after the fluctuations produced in the ether by his sharp movement had settled down, he said:

  ‘Listen, Volodin, d’you know how to switch on to this eternal high yourself?’

  Volodin said nothing.

  ‘Nah, I’ve got it now,’ said Shurik. ‘Seems like I’ve realized why no one knows and why no one’s allowed to spiel about it. But you tell me, ah? I ain’t no lunk. I’ll just spend my time quietly tripping out at the dacha, that’s all.’

  ‘Stop that,’ said Volodin.

  ‘Nah, you mean you don’t trust me, for real? Think I’ll cause trouble?’

  ‘No,’ said Volodin, ‘that’s not it. It’s just that nothing good would come of it.’

  ‘Aw, come on,’ said Shurik, ‘don’t be such a tight-wad.’

  Volodin took off his spectacles, wiped them carefully with the hem of his shirt and put them back on again.

  ‘The main thing is you’ve got to understand,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know how to explain…You remember our talk about the inner public prosecutor?’

  ‘Yeah, I remember. The guy who can put you away if you step over the line. Like Raskolnikov when he topped that dame, and he thought his inner prosecutor’d let him go on the nod, only it didn’t work out that way.’

  ‘Exactly. And who do you think the inner prosecutor is?’

  Shurik pondered the question.

  ‘I dunno…probably it’s me myself, some part of me. Who else?’

  ‘And the inner brief who gets you off?’

  ‘Probably me as well. Only it sounds a bit odd, me taking a case against myself and then getting myself off.’

  ‘Nothing odd about it. That’s the way it always is. Now try imagining this inner prosecutor of yours has arrested you, all of your inner briefs have screwed up, and you’ve been put away in your own inner lock-up. Then imagine that there’s some other guy, a fourth one, who never gets dragged off anywhere, who you can’t call a prosecutor, or the guy he’s trying to get behind bars, or a brief. Who’s never involved in any cases at all.’

  ‘Okay, I’ve imagined it.’

  ‘Right, then this fourth guy is the one that goes tripping on the eternal high. And there’s no need to explain anything to him about this high, get me?’

  ‘Who is this fourth guy, then?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Can I get to see him somehow?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Maybe not see him then, but feel him at least?’

  ‘Not that either.’

  ‘So that means he don’t really exist?’

  ‘If you really want to know,’ said Volodin, ‘all these prosecutors and briefs don’t really exist. And you really don’t exist either. If anyone really does exist, then it’s him.’

  ‘I still don’t catch your drift. Why don’t you just tell me what I have to do to switch on to this eternal high?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Volodin. ‘That’s the whole point, you don’t have to do anything. Just as soon as you start doing anything, the court’s in session, right? That’s so, isn’t it?’

  ‘Seems to make sense all right.’

  ‘You see. And once the court’s in session, that means prosecutors, briefs and the whole works.’

  Shurik fell silent and became quite motionless. The energy that lent him life passed momentarily to Kolyan, who seemed to be suddenly roused from sleep – he opened his eyes and glared with hostility at Volodin, then he bared his teeth, revealing a gleaming palladium crown.

  ‘You sold us a line, Volodin, with that inner prosecutor of yours,’ he said.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Volodin asked in amazement.

  ‘Because. Afterwards Vovchik Maloi gave me this book with it all laid out straight down the line. Nietzsche it was wrote it. The bastard’s tied it all up in knots so’s no normal person can suss it, but it all adds up right enough. Vovchik hired this hungry prof. special and sat him down with a young guy as talks the spiel, and in a month the two of them sorted the whole thing so’s all the brothers could read it. Translated it into normal language. Turns out all you gotta do is take out that inner pig of yours, and that’s it. Then no one don’t finger no one, get it?’

  ‘Ah, come on, Kolyan,’ Volodin protested gently, almost pityingly. ‘Think what you’re saying. D’you know what you’ll get for taking out the pig?’

  Kolyan laughed loudly.

  ‘Who from? The rest of the inner pigs? That’s the whole idea, you take them all out.’

  ‘Okay, let’s just suppose you’ve dropped all the inner pigs. That just means the inner swat team gets on your ass.’

  ‘I can see where you’re comin’ from a mile away,’ said Kolyan. ‘Next you’ll be givin’ me the inner State Security, and then the “Alpha” team, and on and on. What I’m sayin’ is you gotta take them all out and then make yourself internal president.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Volodin, ‘let’s assume you’ve made internal president. Then if you have any doubts, what do you do about it?’

  ‘No problem,’ said Kolyan. ‘Put them down and move on down the line.’

  ‘So you still need the internal pigs for putting down your doubts? And if the doubts are a bit bigger, will it be the internal State Security?’

  ‘They’ll be working for me now,’ said Kolyan. ‘I’m my own internal president. And you all ain’t shit!’

  ‘Yes, Vovchik Maloi did a good job on you. Okay, let’s assume you’ve made internal president and you’ve got your own internal pigs and a huge internal security service with all those Tibetan astrologers and the works.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Kolyan. ‘So’s no one can even get close.’

  ‘So then what’re you going to do?’

  ‘Whatever I wanna,’ said Kolyan.

  ‘Like for instance?’

  ‘Like for instance I take a dame and split for the Canaries.’

  ‘What do you do there?’

  ‘Like I said, whatever I wanna. If I feel like swimmin’ I go swimmin’, if I feel like screwin’ the dame I screw her, if I feel like it I smoke dope.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Volodin, and the red tongues of flame glinted in his spectacles. ‘You smoke dope. Doesn’t dope put ideas in your head?’

  ‘Sure.’
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  ‘So if you’re president, that means you have state ideas, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you what happens next. The first dope you smoke fills your head with state ideas and your internal president ends up facing internal impeachment.’

  ‘We’ll break through,’ said Kolyan, ‘I’ll bring in the internal tanks.’

  ‘How are you going to bring them in? Who was it got all the ideas? You. That means you impeach your own internal president. So then who’s going to bring in the tanks?’

  Kolyan thought in silence for a moment.

  ‘Straight away you’ll have a new president,’ said Volodin. ‘And I hate to think what the internal security service will do to the old one so they can get in with the new one.’

  Kolyan pondered.

  ‘Well, what of it?’ he said uncertainly. ‘So there’s a new president.’

  ‘But you were the old one, weren’t you? So now who ends up in the inner Lubyanka for the rubber-hosepipe kidney treatment? Got no answer? You do. So now you tell me which is best – for the inner pigs to take you in for doing the old woman, or to wind up with the inner State Security Services as ex-president?’

  Kolyan wrinkled up his brow and held his fingers up in a fan shape as he prepared to say something, but at that point he obviously had an unpleasant idea, because he suddenly dropped his head limply.

  ‘Yeah, yeah…’ he said. ‘It’s probably best not to stick your head up. It’s tricky all right…’

  ‘Now the inner pigs have got you,’ Volodin stated. ‘And you tell me, Nietzsche, Nietzsche…D’you know what happened to that Nietzsche of yours?’

  Kolyan cleared his throat. A gob of spittle like a tiny bull terrier separated from his lips and plopped into the fire.

  ‘You’re a real bastard, Volodin,’ he said. ‘You’ve screwed my head up again. I just saw this film on the video, Pulp Fiction, about the American brothers. I felt so good after it! Like I knew now how to carry on livin’. But talkin’ with you’s like getting flushed down into some ditch full of shit…I’ll tell you this – I ain’t never come across none of your inner pigs. If I do, then I’ll waste them, or I’ll call in the shrink to get me off on an insanity plea.’