Buddha's Little Finger

by Victor Pelevin

  ‘Why d’you want to waste the inner pigs?’ Shurik put in. ‘Why bother, when you can just cut them in?’

  ‘You mean the inner pigs are on the take too?’ Kolyan asked.

  “Course they’re on the take,’ said Shurik. ‘Haven’t you seen The Godfather 3? Remember Don Corleone? To get out from under his inner pigs, he sent the Vatican six hundred million greenbacks. Got off with parole, even with all the guys he’d wasted.’

  He turned to face Volodin.

  ‘Maybe you’re gonna tell us the inner pigs ain’t on the take?’

  ‘What difference does it make if they’re on the take or not?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Shurik, ‘that’s not where the spiel was at. It was Kolyan started taking out the pigs. Where was we at? We was talking about the eternal high, yeah? And about some fourth guy who goes tripping on the eternal high while you’re getting things together with the internal prosecutors and briefs.’

  ‘That’s right. It doesn’t matter how you settle up with the inner pigs – you can take them out or cut them in or write a confession. None of the pigs or the guys who pay them off or the guys who confess actually exist. It’s just you pretending to be each of them by turns. I thought you’d understood all that.’

  ‘Not so very much.’

  ‘Remember how you and Kolyan used to work down by Red Square before democracy? When he sold hard currency and you came over with a pig’s pass and confiscated it, and took away the client? Remember how you used to say that if you didn’t believe for just a moment that you were a pig, then the client wouldn’t believe it either and he wouldn’t walk? So you used to feel like a pig.’

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘And maybe you actually became one?’

  ‘Volodin,’ said Shurik, ‘you’re a mate of mine, but I mean it, you watch your mouth.’

  ‘This entire spiel’s down to me, you just listen. D’you see what we’ve got here? You yourself can believe for a while that you’re a pig. Now just imagine that you do the same thing all your life, only it’s not the client you’re fooling, it’s yourself, and all the time you believe your own show. Sometimes you’re a pig, and sometimes you’re the guy he’s fingering. Sometimes you’re the prosecutor, sometimes you’re the brief. Why d’you think I said they don’t really exist? Because when you’re the prosecutor – where’s the brief? And when you’re the brief – where’s the prosecutor? Nowhere. So it turns out like you’re dreaming them, get me?’

  ‘Okay, okay, I get you.’

  ‘And then apart from the pigs, you’ve got so many other assholes standing in line that life’s not long enough for you to be all of them. The queue waiting for you inside is longer than any of those queues for sausage under the commies. And if you want to understand the eternal high, you have to wipe out the whole queue, get me?’

  Shurik thought about it for a while.

  ‘Ah, who needs it,’ he said at last. ‘I’d better do five grams of coke than go crazy. Maybe this eternal high won’t give me no trip anyway – just like weed don’t do nothing for me.’

  ‘That’s why no one knows about the eternal high,’ said Volodin. ‘That’s precisely why.’

  This time the silence that followed was a long one. Volodin began breaking branches and throwing them into the fire. Shurik took a flat metal flask with an embossed image of the Statue of Liberty out of his pocket, took several large gulps from it and handed it to Kolyan. Kolyan drank too, handed it back to Shurik and began spitting into the fire at regular intervals.

  The branches in the flames cracked like gunfire – sometimes single shots, sometimes short bursts. The camp-fire seemed like an entire universe in which tiny beings, whose scarcely visible shadows flickered between the tongues of flame, squirmed and struggled for a place beside the gobs of spittle falling on the hot embers, in order to escape for at least a few moments from the intolerable heat. The fate of these beings was a sad one – even if anyone were to guess at their spectral existence, how could he possibly explain to them that in actual fact they didn’t live in a fire, but in the middle of a forest filled with the coolness of the night, and if they would only stop struggling for a place by the gobs of a mobster’s spittle, then all of their sufferings would be at an end? Probably he couldn’t. Perhaps the neo-Platonist who used to live in these parts could have managed it – but then the poor man had died without even living to see the Twentieth Congress.

  ‘Verily,’ Volodin said sadly, ‘this world is like unto a burning house.’

  ‘Never mind a burning house,’ Shurik replied readily. ‘It’s a fire in a bloody brothel during a fucking flood.’

  ‘So what d’you do? You gotta live,’ said Kolyan. ‘Tell me, Volodin, d’you believe in the end of the world?’

  ‘That’s a purely individual question,’ said Volodin. ‘If some Chechen or other blows you away, that’s the end of your world.’

  ‘We’ll see who blows who away,’ said Kolyan. ‘What d’you reckon, is it true all the Orthodox believers are in line for pardon?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At the Last Judgement,’ Kolyan said quickly in a half-whisper.

  ‘You don’t mean you believe in all that garbage?’ Shurik asked disbelievingly.

  ‘Dunno if I believe it or not,’ said Kolyan. ‘Once I was on my way home from this kill, I felt real miserable, I had all these doubts – you know, when you feel your spirit getting weak. And there’s this kiosk with these icons and these pamphlets and stuff. So I bought one of them – “Life Beyond the Grave” it was called. I read about what happens after you’re dead. It was all such dead familiar stuff, honest. I recognized it all straight off. Holding cell, trial, pardon, time, article. Dying’s like movin’ from jail to the camps. They send the soul off to this heavenly transit jail, tribulations it’s called. Everything done right, two armed escorts and all the whole works, punishment cell downstairs, upstairs – the good life. And while you’re in this transit jail they slap the charges on you – your own and everybody else’s too – and you gotta get yourself off on every article, one after the other. The main thing is, you gotta know the criminal code. But if the big boss feels like it, he’ll stick you in solitary anyway. ‘Cause under his criminal code you’re fitted up under half the articles from the day you’re born. For instance, there’s this article says you answer for all your spiel. Not just when you mouth off out of line, but the whole thing, every single word you ever said. You get that? No matter which way you twist it, there’s always somethin’ they can put you away for. If you got a soul, you’re in for the tribulations. But the big boss can slim your time down, especially if you call yourself a worthless heap of shit. He likes that. And he likes it when you’re afraid of him. Wants everyone to be afraid of him and feel like shit. And there he is with this big-time radiance, and these big wings fanned out wide, bodyguards, angels – the whole works. He looks down at you – what you gotta say now, you lump of shit? Get the picture now? I’m readin’ it and I remember – a long time ago, when I was trainin’ to be a weightlifter and it was perestroika, they printed somethin’ like it in Ogonyok. And when I remembered it, I broke out in a sweat. Turns out life under Stalin was like life after death is now!’

  ‘I don’t get you,’ said Shurik.

  ‘Well, look, under Stalin after death there was atheism, but now there’s religion again. And accordin’ to religion, after death everyone lives like they did under Stalin. Just you figure it the way it was. Everybody knows there’s this window lit up in the Kremlin at night, and He’s there behind it, and He loves you like a brother, and you’re shit-scared of Him, but you’re supposed to love Him with all your heart as well. It’s just like in religion. The reason I remembered Stalin is I began wonderin’ how you can be shit-scared of someone and love him with all your heart at the same time.’

  ‘And what if you’re not scared?’ Shurik asked.

  ‘That means you’ve no fear of God. And that means the punishment cell.’

 
‘What punishment cell’s that?’

  ‘There wasn’t much written about that. The main thing is it’s dark and there’s this gnashin’ of teeth. After I read it I was wonderin’ for half an hour what kind of teeth the soul has…nearly lost my marbles over it. Then I started readin’ some more, and I realized that if you call yourself a pile of shit soon enough, or not just call yourself one but believe it for real, then you’ll get a pardon – and then they’ll let you into heaven, to see Him. The way I made it out, the main thing they have to get off on is looking at Him all the time while he’s taking the parade from up on top of the tribune. And they don’t need anythin’ else, because for them it’s either that or grindin’ their teeth down in the shit-hole, and that’s it. That’s the bastard thing about it, there can’t be anythin’ else – it’s either up on the top bunk or down in the punishment cell. I figured out the whole system, top to bottom. I just couldn’t figure out who dreamed up such a heavy deal. What d’you reckon, Volodin?’

  ‘You remember Globus?’ Volodin asked.

  ‘The one who became a banker? Sure,’ Kolyan answered.

  ‘I remember him too,’ said Shurik, sipping the liberating liquid from his flask. ‘Became a real big wheel before he died. Drove around in a Porsche, wore all these chains at five thousand bucks a pop. He was on television too – a sponsor, no fucking less, the whole works.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Volodin, ‘and when he went to Paris for that loan, know what he did? He went to a restaurant with one of their bankers for a heart-to-heart, and he got plastered, just like he was in the Slavyansky Bazaar and started yelling – “Garçon, two pederasts and a bucket of your strongest tea!” He wasn’t gay himself, but what do you do when there’s no other ass in sight for twenty years?’

  ‘No need to explain that. So what happened next?’

  ‘Nothing. They brought the tea. And they brought the queers too. They’ve got the market system there.’

  ‘And did they give him the loan?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether they gave him the loan or not. But just think about it. If he ended his life with ideas like that still in his head, it means he never really left the prison camps at all. He just got so big that he started driving around them in a Porsche and giving interviews. And then he even found his own Paris in the camps. So if Globus, with his jailhouse queers and his prison tea, had started thinking about life after death, what kind of thoughts do you think he would have had?’

  ‘He never gave a thought to that stuff in his life.’

  ‘But what if he had started thinking about it? If he doesn’t know anything but the camps, but he’s drawn to higher things, like any other man, then what would he have imagined?’

  ‘I don’t get you. What you drivin’ at? His only high was dope.’

  ‘I get you,’ said Shurik. ‘If Globus had started thinking about life after death, he’d have come up with exactly that pamphlet. And not just Globus, neither. Just think about it, Kol – the entire country was one big labour camp from the day we was born, and it’ll always be a camp. That’s why God’s the way he is, with all them flashing lights and sirens. Who believes in any other kind round here?’

  ‘Don’t you like our country, or what?’ Kolyan asked in a serious voice.

  ‘Course I do. Parts of it.’

  Kolyan turned towards Volodin.

  ‘Listen, though. Did they give Globus the loan that time in Paris?’

  ‘I think they did,’ said Volodin. ‘The banker enjoyed the show, he really liked it. Queers have never been any problem for them there, but they’d never tried tea quite like that. It became all the rage, they called it thé à la russe nouveau.’

  ‘Listen,’ Shurik said suddenly, ‘I just had a thought…Agh…Fucking hell…’

  ‘What?’ asked Kolyan.

  ‘Maybe that’s not the way it really is. Maybe it’s not because we live in a camp that our God is like a big boss with flashing lights, but just the opposite – we live in a camp ‘cause we chose a God like a mobster with a police siren. All that garbage about the teeth and the soul, about the stove where they burn the down-and-outs, and that armed escort up in the sky – it was all dreamed up centuries ago! And here they decided to build heaven on earth. And they did build it, too! Built it for real, from all the plans! And when they built heaven it turned out it wouldn’t work without hell, because what kind of heaven can there be without hell? It wouldn’t be heaven at all, just boring as fuck. So…Nah, I’m afraid to carry on thinking like that.’

  ‘Maybe in places where people produce less shit, God’s kinder too. In the States maybe, or in Japan,’ said Kolyan.

  ‘What d’you reckon, Volodin?’ Shurik asked.

  ‘What do I reckon? As it is above, so is it below. And as it is below, so is it above. And when everything’s bottom up, how can you explain that there isn’t any above or below? As they say round here – at night your ass gives the orders.’

  ‘That’s some heavy trippin’,’ said Kolyan. ‘Enough to make you jealous. How much did you eat?’

  ‘You not tripping yourself, then?’ asked Shurik. ‘You just tripped all the way across the world beyond the grave, and you took us along for the ride. Turns out you got more than just a pig and a brief tucked away inside there, you got the entire Holy Synod as well.’

  Kolyan held his hand out in front of him and studied it carefully. ‘There,’ he said. ‘I’ve gone blue again. Why do these mushrooms keep turnin’ me blue?’

  ‘You spoil too quickly,’ said Shurik and he turned to face Volodin. ‘Listen, fuck you. This spiel’s bouncing about like we’d lost our marbles. We started talking about the eternal high and now look where we’ve ended up.’

  ‘Where have we ended up?’ asked Volodin. ‘Seems to me we’re still sitting where we started. The fire’s burning, the cocks are crowing.’

  ‘What cocks? That’s Kolyan’s pager.’

  ‘Ah…Never mind, they’ll crow all right.’

  Shurik chuckled and took a sip from his flask. ‘Volodin,’ he said, ‘I still wanna know who that fourth guy is.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fourth guy. Haven’t forgotten, have you? What we started off talking about – that there’s this inner prosecutor and this inner brief and the guy who gets off on the inner high. Only I don’t get why he’s the fourth. That makes him the third.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten the accused, haven’t you?’ asked Volodin. ‘The one they’re all trying? You can’t shift straight from being your own prosecutor to being your own brief. You have to be the accused for at least a second or two. He’s the third guy. But the fourth guy isn’t in on any of those deals. There’s nothing he needs except this eternal high.’

  ‘And how does he know about the eternal high?’

  ‘Who said he knows about it?’

  ‘You said so yourself.’

  ‘I never said that, I said there was no need to tell him anything about the eternal high – but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about it. If he knew anything’ – Volodin laid a heavy stress on the word ‘knew’ – ‘then he’d be a witness at your inner trial.’

  ‘You mean I got witnesses inside me as well? Explain that to me.’

  ‘Well then, imagine you’ve done some foul shit. The inner prosecutor says you’re a scumball, the accused stares at the wall, and the inner brief mumbles something about a difficult childhood.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘But for the trial to begin, you have to remember the shit you’ve done, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s obvious enough.’

  ‘So when you’re remembering it, you become a witness.’

  ‘From listening to you,’ said Shurik, ‘I must have the entire courtroom inside me.’

  ‘Why, what else did you expect?’

  Shurik said nothing for a short while, then he suddenly slapped his hands against his thighs.

  ‘Ah!’ he yelled abruptly. ‘Now I’ve twigged it! I’ve twigged how to switch on to t
hat eternal high! You’ve got to turn into that fourth guy, right? Like being the prosecutor or the brief.’

  ‘That’s right. Only how are you going to turn into him?’

  ‘Dunno, I s’pose you have to want to.’

  ‘If you want to be the fourth guy, you won’t turn into him, you’ll just be someone who wanted to be him. And that’s a big difference. You don’t turn into the prosecutor when you want to be him, but only after you really say to yourself in your heart, “Shurik, you’re a real shit.” And then afterwards your inner brief realizes that a moment ago he was the prosecutor.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Shurik. ‘Then tell me, how can you turn into that fourth guy if you don’t want to?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of whether you want to or you don’t. The point is that if you want something, then for sure you’re not the fourth guy, but somebody else. Because the fourth guy doesn’t want anything at all. Why should he want anything when he’s surrounded by the eternal high?’

  ‘Listen, why d’you keep on being so mysterious about it? Can’t you just tell me in normal words who this fourth guy is?’

  ‘I can say anything you like, but there’s no point.’

  ‘Well, try it anyway.’

  ‘Well, for instance, you could say he’s the son of God.’

  While these words still hung in the air, the three men by the fire suddenly heard the crowing of cocks on every side – which was very odd, if you think about it, because there hadn’t been any chickens kept in that district since the Twentieth Party Congress. Be that as it may, the crowing came again and again, and the ancient sounds gave rise to terrible thoughts, perhaps about witchcraft and devil-worship, or perhaps about the Chechen mounted cavalry breaking through to Moscow, hurtling across the steppe with their Stingers all poised for launching, crowing like cocks to send military intelligence off on a false trail. This latter supposition seemed to be supported by the fact that the cries always came in threes, and were followed by a brief pause. It was very mysterious indeed. For a while they all listened, entranced, to this forgotten music, and then the crowing either faded away or mingled so completely with the background noise that it no longer held their interest. No doubt they simply thought to themselves that anything can happen when you’re on mushrooms. The conversation picked up again.