Empire V

by Victor Pelevin

  He extended his hand in front of him as if to show the panorama of the invisible city beyond the walls.

  ‘What people are actually doing is producing something the nature of which they completely fail to understand,’ he continued, ‘despite spending all day every day thinking about it to the exclusion of everything else. Don’t imagine it gives me any pleasure to say it, but the workspace for today’s office proletarian – his cubicle – even looks like a stall for a large cattle stock. The only difference is that in front of his face instead of a feeding trough he has a monitor displaying his fodder digitally. And what does he produce in his pen? The answer is so obvious that it has even entered into the idiom of most languages: the worker is making money.’

  I wanted to register another objection.

  ‘Money is not a product which is being made,’ I said. ‘It is merely one of those inventions which have made life simpler, one of the evolutionary legacies by which mankind has risen above the animals …’

  Enlil Maratovich turned to me with an amused smile on his face.

  ‘Do you really believe man rose above the animals as a result of evolution?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Surely that is so?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He placed himself lower down, far lower. Nowadays the only person who can afford the lifestyle of an animal is a retired millionaire – to live in the bosom of nature in ideal climatic conditions, to move freely, to consume only ecologically pure food and, above all, to be entirely free from worry about anything. Just think about it – no animal works.’

  ‘What about squirrels?’ asked Hera. ‘They gather nuts, don’t they?’

  ‘My dear, that’s not work. If squirrels spent all their time from morning till night frenziedly trying to flog each other rotting bear shit, that would be work. Gathering nuts is just free retail therapy. The only animals who work are beasts of burden whom men have bred in their own image and likeness. Plus, of course, man himself. If, as you say, the purpose of money is to make life easier, why is it that people strive all their lives vainly trying to earn it, only to collapse at the end into a senile heap of debris? Can you seriously imagine that people do all that for their own convenience? Oh please! Man does not even know what money truly is.’

  He swept Hera and me with his gaze.

  ‘But the truth is,’ he went on, ‘it’s not at all a difficult or complex problem to understand what money truly is. All you have to do is pose the elementary question: where does it come from?’

  The question seemed to be directed at me.

  ‘It’s not easy to explain in a couple of words,’ I said. ‘Economists still argue about it after all these years …’

  ‘Let them go on arguing, for ever if necessary. But it makes no difference to the poor moneymaker. His time and his strength is where money comes from. His vital energy, drawn from the air, from the light of the sun, from nourishment and other life-giving experiences, are all transmuted into it.’

  ‘You mean metaphorically?’

  ‘I mean literally. Man thinks he is generating money for himself. In fact, he generates it from himself. Life is so arranged that the only way he is able to get hold of a little money for his own use is if he manages to produce considerably more for someone else. And everything that he does succeed in keeping for himself has this strange habit of slipping through his fingers … You must have noticed that? When you were working as an unloader in the supermarket?’

  Hera looked at me with some curiosity. I wanted to kill Enlil Maratovich on the spot.

  ‘I did notice,’ I muttered.

  ‘There is a simple reason why people do not understand the true nature of money,’ continued Enlil Maratovich. ‘They are only allowed to talk about it within the confines of cargo discourse. Human life has been processed into what to them is an unintelligible substance, but this is never mentioned. What does get endlessly discussed is which particular currency offers the best prospects at any given time – the euro or the yuan. Or should one be putting one’s trust in the yen? Serious people never think or talk about anything else.’

  ‘That’s only natural,’ I said. ‘A man has to strive to obtain money, because otherwise he will die of hunger. That’s the way life is.’

  ‘The words are the correct ones,’ agreed Enlil Maratovich. ‘But I would put them in a slightly different order. That would alter the nuance.’

  ‘How would you say it?’

  ‘The way life is, a man will die of hunger if he strives to acquire anything other than money. And what I’m trying to explain at the moment is who set it up like this, and why.’

  ‘That may be so,’ said Hera. ‘But how exactly does a man produce money? A cow has an udder. A man doesn’t have anything like that.’

  Enlil Maratovich smiled.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  I thought Hera was a trifle embarrassed by this.

  ‘You mean a man does have an udder, like a cow?’

  ‘Yes, I do mean that.’

  ‘Where is it, then?’ asked Hera, very quietly.

  I could not stop myself looking at her breasts. My glance did not escape Enlil Maratovich’s attention.

  ‘In the head,’ he declared, looking at me meaningfully and tapping his skull with his fingers.

  ‘Where, exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s what I have just been explaining to you,’ replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘Mind “B” is the money-producing organ. It functions as a money-generating gland that is found only in mankind, not in any other animal …’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ I interrupted. ‘We were talking about how Mind “B” can explain the difference between two Mercs. What’s money got to do with that?’

  ‘If you bring it out into the clear light of day, the points of difference between the two Mercedes, seen by Mind “B”, boil down to money. Nothing else. And the cultural landscape that consists of such differences is the mine from which money is produced. This mine, as you have already grasped, has no external reality at all, but is a construct within people’s heads. That is why I say that people generate money out of themselves.’

  ‘How can someone who works down a mine be doing so just in his head?’

  ‘Very easily. A continuous process of abstract thinking goes on in Mind “B” which is condensed down to a pecuniary concentrate. This concentrate is the difference between the two Mercedes. It bears the same relationship to money as the leaves of the coca plant do to cocaine. Another way of putting it is that money is the purified and refined product of Mind “B”.’

  ‘Could this monetary distillate be the same thing as Glamour?’ asked Hera.

  ‘Good thinking,’ replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘But there are more inputs into our money distillate than Glamour alone. Almost any perception in the city of today is convertible into money. Nevertheless, some kinds of concentrate lend themselves to the output of a larger monetary yield per unit of information than others. In this context Glamour is miles out in front of the competition. That is why modern man is surrounded by so much gloss coating and hype. It’s like clover for cows.’

  ‘Does Glamour exist all around the globe?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly, it’s everywhere. But it’s also different everywhere. In New York it’s a Ferrari and clothes from Donna Karan. In a village in Asia it’s a mobile phone with a big screen and a t-shirt with a Mickey Mouse USA Famous Brand logo. But essentially they are the same thing.’

  Hera looked at my legs. I noticed that my trouser bottoms had fallen down, that is to say up, exposing my socks whose elasticated tops were embellished with labels in the shape and design of the Union Jack.

  ‘And what is the role of Discourse in all this?’ I asked quickly.

  ‘Pasture has to be enclosed,’ replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘You must have a fence so that the stock doesn’t straggle away.’

&n
bsp; ‘Who is outside the fence?’

  ‘We are. Who else could be?’

  I remembered Jehovah having said the same thing to me, almost word for word.

  Hera sighed.

  Enlil Maratovich laughed.

  ‘Were you expecting more from life, then?’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t.’

  ‘What happens to people who refuse to consume the concentrate and produce money?’ asked Hera.

  ‘I am the Good Shepherd,’ replied Enlil Maratovich, ‘so I won’t come down too hard on you. But do just stop and think for a moment: how do you think a cow is going to set about refusing to produce milk? The only way she could do that would be to stop eating.’

  ‘But surely people could, if they wanted to, produce something other than money? As they used to in the Soviet Union?’

  Enlil Maratovich’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘A good question … I can put it in a nutshell like this – animal husbandry can be aimed at producing both meat and dairy products. When it stops being for dairy, it changes to being for meat, and vice versa. Periods of transition are a combination of both. No third possibility has yet been discovered.’

  ‘But what, in this context, is meant by raising stock for meat?’

  ‘It means this,’ said Enlil Maratovich. ‘You can drink milk, and you can eat meat. There is a resource which people provide while they are alive, and there is a resource which they provide when they die … Happily, those dreadful practices have been condemned and are safely buried in the past, so we do not need to concern ourselves with them.’

  ‘You mean wars?’ asked Hera.

  ‘Not only,’ replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘Although war does have a role to play. There are different kinds of war. Sometimes vampires from various countries start it like children playing a game, except that instead of toy soldiers they use people. It can also happen that vampires from the same clan play games against one another with their toy soldiers at home, on their own territory. Of course, we usually try to divide the resources in an equitable manner. But we do not always succeed.’

  ‘Why don’t people just get rid of these beef and dairy cattle breeders?’ asked Hera.

  ‘Yes,’ I echoed her. ‘Tear down the walls? Return to their natural environment?’

  ‘Don’t forget, you yourselves are now numbered among the breeders. Otherwise you would not be hanging upside down here. I understand how you feel. I am myself by nature kind and compassionate. But you must get it into your heads once and for all that cows, pigs and people can never be liberated. Even if it were possible to devise some way of letting this happen for cows and pigs, it could never be done for human beings because in essence they are merely extensions of our digestive tract. There is no natural environment for them to live in, only an artificial one, because they themselves are fundamentally artificial. Humans have been bred to live only as they do. But there is no need to shed tears over their fate. In place of liberty they have freedom, and this is a wonderful thing. We tell them: go and graze wherever you like! The more freedom you have, the more money you will produce. That’s not so bad, is it?’

  Enlil Maratovich chuckled contentedly.

  ‘I don’t understand the most important thing of all,’ I said. ‘The entire flow of money from start to finish is controlled by people. How do vampires collect and use the money?’

  ‘That is a whole different story,’ replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘You will learn about it later. But now I think we should stop talking for a while …’

  Silence fell. I closed my eyes, enjoying simply being able to hang upside down and not think about anything. Soon I descended into a pleasant state akin to sleep, but not exactly sleep, more a crystal-clear state of abstraction. Iggy Pop must have known something of the sort when he sang: ‘The fish doesn’t think, because the fish knows everything …’ Quite possibly in this state I too knew everything but it was too much of a problem to verify, since to do so I would have had to start thinking, and emerge from my state of bliss.

  I cannot say how much time elapsed. Presence of mind returned with a loud clap of the hands. I opened my eyes.

  ‘Reveille!’ announced Enlil Maratovich briskly.

  Taking hold of the hoop he nimbly lowered himself to the floor with an agility surprising in someone so corpulent. It was clear the audience was at an end. Hera and I followed suit to join him on the floor.

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘what you were saying about how vampires use money. Couldn’t you just give us a hint?’

  Enlil Maratovich smiled. Taking a wallet from the pocket of his sports trousers, he extracted a one-dollar bill, tore it in half and presented me with one of the halves.

  ‘There’s your answer,’ he said. ‘And now, quick march. It is time to leave here.’

  ‘Where to?’ enquired Hera.

  ‘There is a lift here,’ replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘It will take you straight up to the garage of my house.’

  HERA

  The car exited from the underground concrete bunker, passed the security booth and out through the gates. Pine trees flashed past the car windows. I did not even catch a glimpse of Enlil Maratovich’s house, or indeed anything else except the three-metre high wall. It was already noon – evidently we had been hanging in the hamlet all night and all morning. I could not imagine where all the time could have gone.

  Sitting beside me, Hera laid her head on my shoulder.

  I was stunned. But the truth was she had merely fallen asleep. I closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep myself, and allowed my hand to fall on her open palm. We sat like that for a quarter of an hour or so, after which she awoke and removed her hand from mine.

  Opening my eyes, I looked out of the window and yawned, simulating emergence from sleep. We were approaching Moscow.

  ‘Where to now?’ I asked Hera.

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Let’s get out in the centre. We could go for a walk.’

  Hera looked at her watch.

  ‘All right. But not for long.’

  ‘Can you take us to Pushkin Square, please?’ I said to the driver.

  He nodded.

  We did not speak again for the rest of the journey; I did not want to talk in front of the driver, who glanced at us from time to time in the mirror. He looked like an actor playing the role of an American President in a medium-budget disaster movie: sober dark suit, red tie, strongly featured face lined with fatigue. It was rather flattering to be driven by such an impressive specimen.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ asked Hera when we got out of the car.

  ‘Let’s walk along Tverskoi Boulevard.’

  Past the fountain, avoiding the noxious petrol fumes suffocating the statue of Pushkin, we descended into the subway pedestrian crossing. I thought back to my first bite. It had happened not far away – as they say, the murderer is always drawn back to the scene of his crime. Could this be why I had asked the driver to drop us here?

  But it would be a bad idea to bite Hera, I thought. It would almost certainly put an end to our expedition. I’ll have to do without a crib in this exam … A lack of confidence bordering on physical weakness gripped me, and I decided the best way to overcome it would be to make some telling remark, an insight testifying to my acuteness of observation and brilliance of mind.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘When I was small, this subway used to have separate stalls all over the place. Then gradually there were more and more of them, so that now they’re all combined into one complete row …’

  I nodded towards the glass front of what was now in effect a shopping mall.

  ‘Yes,’ Hera assented placidly. ‘They’ve rather gone over the top with them now.’

  We came up on the other side of the street and walked on to Tverskoi Boulevard. As we passed the stone urns at the edge of the stairs it was on the tip of my tongue to point out
that they were always full of rubbish and empty bottles, but decided not to offer any further demonstrations of my mental acuity. It was still necessary to say something, however; the silence was getting embarrassing.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ I said.

  ‘I was thinking about Enlil,’ said Hera, ‘or rather the way he lives. A hamlet perched over a precipice. A bit pretentious, of course. But very stylish as well. There aren’t many people who could afford it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And the way you hang on a ring, not a beam. Something rather philosophical about that.’

  Luckily Hera did not ask me what was particularly philosophical about that, because I could have got myself into considerable difficulties trying to account for it. She laughed, evidently taking what I had said as a joke.

  I remembered that her photograph had reminded me of a picture posted by a LiveJournal user. Perhaps it really was her I had seen, and she had an account with LJ? I had one myself, and even had about fifty friends (with whom, needless to say, I did not share all the details of my life). This seemed a suitable conversational topic.

  ‘Say, Hera, didn’t I see your user pic on LiveJournal?’

  ‘You couldn’t have,’ came the reply. ‘I don’t indulge in any of that blog squittering.’

  It was an expression I had not heard before.

  ‘Why so severe?’

  ‘Not severe at all. It’s a scientific fact. Presumably Jehovah explained to you why people go in for blogging?’

  ‘I don’t remember anything about that,’ I said. ‘Why do they?’

  ‘The human mind these days is subject to three main influences. They are: Glamour, Discourse and so-called News. When over a long period a man lives on a diet consisting of advertising, assorted punditry and so-called news stories, he starts wanting to become a brand, a pundit, and a source of news stories himself. That is the reason for the existence of these mental latrines we call Internet blogs. Blogging is the defensive reflex of a mutilated psyche which continually spews out Glamour and Discourse. We shouldn’t mock it, but it is rather degrading for a vampire to crawl about in these sewers.’