Empire V

by Victor Pelevin

  I sensed an increase in the intensity of the electric atmosphere among the watchers.

  ‘No, all things considered I probably should bring it out,’ I concluded after a pause. ‘Here it is. Ivan Grigorievich is on a friendly footing with many financial big shots and powerful businessmen, some of whom are here tonight. They are all extremely wealthy people. They know Ivan Grigorievich as a powerful businessman in his own right, whose company is currently confidentially managed by a group of lawyers. This is because our hero has been for many years in the service of the Government …’

  I sensed that Semnyukov’s head was moving from side to side as if in denial of something. I paused, assuming that he wished to make some response. But he said not a word.

  ‘And so, gentlemen,’ I continued, ‘the most shameful, dark and repulsive secret of Ivan Grigorievich is that this confidential direction, these shares, these lawyers, are all a sham, and in reality he has no business at all. All he has are a couple of brass-plate Potemkin firms, consisting of an accommodation address for legal purposes, a company name and logo. He has not set up these companies for any particularly dubious purposes, but merely in order to give the impression of being engaged in dubious practices. As an interesting aside, gentlemen, the example of Ivan Grigorievich provides a perfect formulation of the principle establishing the divide between the rich and the poor in our country today. The rich man goes to great lengths to suggest that he has less money than he really has. The poor man pretends to have more. By this criterion Ivan Grigorievich is unquestionably a poor man, and his poverty causes him more humiliation than anything else, despite the fact that the majority of our contemporaries consider him to be very rich. He has invented numerous devices to conceal the true state of his affairs, including the not trivial matter of a Potemkin offshore company. But the truth is that he lives off bribes like any official. And even though the bribes can be very substantial, they are not enough, because the way of life Ivan Grigorievich seeks to maintain does not come cheap. And of course he cannot keep himself on a level to match the kind of people he consorts with in Davos and Courchevel … Well, there you have it.’

  ‘I knew that,’ said a male voice from the group of Chaldeans.

  ‘Well, I never did,’ chimed in another.

  ‘Nor I,’ announced a third.

  Ivan Grigorievich crossed the line on the floor. He was probably not aware he had done so, but the fateful step had been noted by many of the watchers, and the hall resounded with voices calling: ‘He’s gone over! He’s over the line!’ or ‘He’s lost!’ as though we were present at a quiz show being filmed for television. Ivan Grigorievich meekly bowed his head, accepting defeat, and then launched himself at me with his fists.

  I could not see it, but I sensed his arm speeding towards the back of my head. I tilted my head and his fist, appearing from behind my back, whizzed past my ear. I saw on his wrist the white disc with the doubled Maltese Cross symbol of a Vacheron Constantin watch.

  The strangest thing was that, although events in the physical world seemed to be taking place very slowly, my thoughts were moving at their accustomed tempo. Why the Maltese Cross? I thought, and immediately told myself not to be distracted. I recalled the advice Hector had given to Paris before the duel in the film Troy: ‘Think only of his sword and of your sword.’ But instead of swords, I was suddenly envisaging the psychoanalyst’s couch. How disgusting this Discourse is …

  What happened next was in real time practically instantaneous, but according to my subjective chronometer took about as long as it does to make a sandwich or change the batteries in a torch.

  Before Ivan Grigorievich reached the place where I had been standing, I had already jumped to one side, and as his corpulent carcase lumbered past I took hold of his shoulder and let his momentum jerk me after him. We sailed over the space together like a figure-skating duo. He was too big for me to hit him with my bare fists; I needed something heavy, preferably made of metal. The only suitable object within reach was his mask. I tore it from him, whirled it in the air and brought the expressionless golden face down upon his head. Immediately after the blow I let go of his shoulder and we separated. The mask stayed in my hand. There was nothing at all complicated about this manoeuvre, but from the fierce spurts of my movements and the tension, my joints were aching.

  After I had come to rest he took a few steps and crashed face downwards to the floor. I thought he had decided to avoid total disgrace by pretending to be stunned. Evidently the turning of my thoughts towards Hector had not been in vain. The whole mise en scène reminded me so vividly of the sequence in Troy where Brad Pitt kills the Thessalonian giant that I could not resist the temptation to become Achilles for a moment. Advancing on the crowd of Chaldeans, I clasped Ivan Grigorievich’s mask to my face, surveyed them, and using the words of Brad Pitt said: ‘Is there no one else?’

  As in the film, the answer was silence.

  The mask proved to be very uncomfortable; it was pressing on my nose. When I took it off, I noticed that its golden nose had been flattened, as if by a hammer. Perhaps Ivan Grigorievich had not been shamming after all.

  ‘Rama,’ called Enlil Maratovich softly, ‘no need to overdo things. Better keep it all in proportion …’

  Turning back to the stage, he clapped his hands and commanded: ‘Music!’

  The music released the hall from the paralysis that had overtaken it. A few of the Chaldeans came up to Ivan Grigorievich, bent over his prone form, lifted him up and hauled him to the exit. I was relieved to see that he was able to stumble out on his legs.

  The Chaldeans gradually recovered themselves – they split up into groups and dispersed around the room, getting hold of drinks, striking up conversations with one another. They avoided me. I stood alone in the empty space in the middle of the room, the heavy mask in my hand, wondering what I should do next. Enlil Maratovich looked sternly at me and made a sign that I should join him. I was sure I was going to receive a dressing down. But I was wrong.

  ‘Very good,’ he said quietly, although his face was frowning. ‘That’s the only way to deal with those bastards. Well done. You frightened the shit out of the lot of them. That’s what it means to have young muscles. I can’t do it any longer.’

  ‘Why just the muscles?’ I said, offended. ‘Seems to me the main role is played by the intellect.’

  Enlil Maratovich pretended not to have heard this observation.

  ‘But that’s not all you have to do,’ he said. ‘Now you have got to try to make them like you. Take part in their conversations.’

  Saying these words he wagged his finger censoriously at me. From a distance our colloquy would have looked as though a strict papa was telling off his naughty little son. The inappropriateness of his gestures to the words he was speaking was highly entertaining.

  ‘So I get to be the Queen of the Ball, do I?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t have to change your gender,’ smiled Enlil Maratovich. ‘All you have to do is make the acquaintance of the most important of our guests, so that they get to know you personally. Come along, I’ll introduce you. And make sure you smile at them as broadly as possible – they must be persuaded that you are a heartless, hypocritical swine.’

  SOLDIERS OF THE EMPIRE

  Enlil Maratovich pushed me in the direction of three Chaldeans who were deep in discussion not far away, and followed behind me. As we neared them, their conversation ceased and they stared at us. Enlil Maratovich extended his arms in a conciliatory gesture, spreading the fingers wide as he did so. I suddenly realised the significance of this ancient token: it shows you have no knife or stone concealed in your hand.

  ‘It’s all over,’ said Enlil Maratovich cheerfully, ‘there’ll be no more biting today. I’ve already reproved the lad for churlish behaviour.’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ replied the Chaldean furthest away, a short, stooping man in a r
obe of grey fabric dotted with little flowers. ‘Thank you for a most entertaining spectacle.’

  ‘This is Professor Kaldavashkin,’ Enlil Maratovich told me. ‘He is Chief of Discourse, undoubtedly the senior position of responsibility in the Chaldean community.’

  He turned to Kaldavashkin.

  ‘Allow me to present to you Rama the Second. You are already familiar with his name. May I recommend him to your tender offices?’

  ‘Rest assured, our offices will be of the kindest,’ responded Kaldavashkin with equal formality, screwing up his elderly blue eyes to scrutinise me. ‘We’re quite used to it, you know. I am told you are highly accomplished in Discourse?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say highly accomplished,’ I replied, ‘but it’s true I got on better with Discourse than I did with Glamour.’

  ‘Most gratifying to hear that such things still happen in the Fifth Empire. Ordinarily as far as I can see it is the other way about.’

  ‘The Fifth Empire?’ I said, surprised. ‘What is that?’

  It was Kaldavashkin’s turn to be surprised.

  ‘Did Jehovah not explain it to you?’

  Thinking it must be something that had slipped my memory, I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘It is the worldwide regime of anonymous dictatorship, usually called ‘Fifth’ to distinguish it from the Third Reich of Nazism and the Fourth Rome of globalisation. It is a dictatorship whose anonymity, as you know, extends only as far as people. In essence it is the humane epoch of Vampire Rule, the universal empire of vampires or, as we write it in secret symbolic form, Empire V. You must surely have covered it in your course?’

  ‘I think there was something of the sort,’ I said hesitantly. ‘Yes, yes … I remember Baldur also saying that Glamour is the culture of the anonymous dictatorship.’

  ‘Not the culture,’ corrected Kaldavashkin, raising his finger, ‘the ideology. The culture of the anonymous dictatorship is mature postmodernism.’

  We had definitely not covered this subject.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Mature postmodernism is that stage in the evolution of the postmodern in which it ceases to be based on previous cultural formations, but continues its development purely on its own basis.’

  I had not even a glimmer of a clue what Kaldavashkin was talking about.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Kaldavashkin’s basilisk eyes blinked several times behind the slits in his mask.

  ‘Your speech contained a very precise demonstration of what it means,’ he answered. ‘Your generation has lost all knowledge of the cultural codes of the classics. The Iliad, The Odyssey – all such works have been forgotten. Citations now incorporate previous borrowings and quotations which have been extracted from their original sources and so become completely anonymous. It is the most adequate cultural projection of the anonymous dictatorship, and at the same time the most effective of the contributions Chaldean culture has made to the creation of Black Noise.’

  ‘Black Noise? What is that?’

  ‘Didn’t you cover that either?’ asked Kaldavashkin in astonishment. ‘What were you doing all that time? Black Noise is the sum total of all the different aspects of Discourse. Another way of putting it is that it is White Noise, all elements of which have been independently conceived and bought to form an arbitrary and random amalgam of signals, while each separate signal has in itself nothing random or arbitrary at all. Black Noise is the name for the informational environment that now envelops contemporary human beings.’

  ‘But what is its purpose? To deceive people?’

  ‘No,’ replied Kaldavashkin. ‘The purpose of Black Noise is less outright deceit than the creation of a background that renders it impossible for anyone accidentally to stumble on the truth, inasmuch as …’

  But Enlil Maratovich was already pushing me towards the next group of Chaldeans and I did not hear the end of the phrase. All I could do was smile apologetically at Kaldavashkin and spread my hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  My next encounter was with a small Chaldean of somewhat feminine appearance with long, manicured fingernails and dressed in a dark blue tunic. Around him was what appeared to be a retinue of admiring acolytes in their gold masks.

  ‘Mr Shepkin-Kupernik,’ announced Enlil Maratovich by way of introduction. ‘He is Chief of Glamour, undoubtedly the most important position of responsibility among our Chaldean friends.’

  I had already grasped that there would be as many holders of positions of primary importance as there were Chaldeans.

  Shepkin-Kupernik inclined his mask in dignified acknowledgement.

  ‘Tell me, Rama,’ he said in a melodious voice, ‘perhaps you at least I shall succeed in weaning away from this black affliction? After all, you are still so young. Might we have a chance with you?’

  The group of acolytes laughed. Even Enlil Maratovich joined in.

  I was seized by panic. I had just avoided falling flat on my face over Discourse, but there I had been on a level playing field, discussing a subject in which I was generally reckoned to be pretty capable. But with Glamour I had always had trouble. Now, I thought to myself, I am sure to be headed for disgrace. What the ‘black affliction’ was I could not remember either. My only hope was to go for broke.

  ‘It may be black affliction for some,’ I said sternly, ‘but there are some for whom it is the black death …’

  The laughter died down.

  ‘Very true,’ answered Shepkin-Kupernik. ‘No one could quarrel with that. But why is it that all you vampires, even the youngest and freshest of you, immediately take to dressing in these coal-black garments? Why is it so difficult to persuade you to add even the smallest ingredient of a different colour and texture to this banquet of total blackness? You can’t imagine what I had to go through to get your friend Mithra to agree to that little red bow tie.’

  At last I twigged what he was talking about.

  ‘You vampires have such a wonderful, deep course on Glamour,’ continued Shepkin-Kupernik mournfully. ‘Yet as far back as I can remember it always ends up the same way. At first you all dress very well, in accordance with the theory. And then the rot sets in. One month, at the most two – and everything starts to slide into this hopeless black abyss …’

  As soon as he said these words, a glacial tension spread around his listeners.

  ‘Oh,’ he whispered in alarm. ‘Forgive me if I have said something tactless …’

  I saw that I had been given me an opening to show myself in a better light.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ I said in my friendliest manner. ‘You are a witty conversationalist and by no means ill-informed. But if we wish to speak seriously of this … it is true that we, humble suckers that we are, have a predilection for the noir. In the first place, as I am sure you know, black is our national colour. Secondly … surely you remember how this came about for us?’

  ‘On my red liquid, I swear I do not,’ replied Shepkin-Kupernik.

  It seemed to me he was relieved at having successfully avoided a dangerous turn in the discussion.

  ‘Please think again. What is it that vampires do?’

  ‘Direct the course of history?’ offered Shepkin-Kupernik obsequiously.

  ‘Not only that. Vampires also see into the dark recesses of your souls. In our early days as vampires, while we are still students, we still draw on a store of that divine purity we inherited from the Mighty Bat, which impels us to believe in people despite all that we learn about them as the days go by. During this period vampires often dress frivolously. But the time inevitably comes when it becomes clear to us that there will be no ray of light amid the gloom. At that point the vampire goes into eternal mourning for mankind, and clothes himself in black to match the hearts that every day pass before his mental vision.’

  ‘Bravo!’ bellowed Marduk Semyonovich, who was
also listening. ‘Enlil, I believe you could incorporate that into the Discourse.’

  Shepkin-Kupernik dropped something like a curtsey, intended to express the range and variety of his feelings, and passed on out of our way, along with his retinue.

  The next little group to which Enlil Maratovich led me consisted of just two Chaldeans, both very alike one another. Neither was in his first youth, nor particularly neatly dressed – both were obese and extravagantly bearded. The only real difference between them was that below one mask bristled a ginger beard, below the other a dull grey one. Greybeard seemed to be half asleep.

  ‘This is a gentleman with a very interesting profession,’ said Enlil Maratovich, indicating the ginger-bearded Chaldean. ‘It may well be the most vital in today’s world. Just like in an Italian play, Mr Samartsev is our Chief Agent Provocateur.’

  ‘Chief Agent Provocateur?’ I asked in surprise. ‘Can you tell me exactly what it is you do?’

  ‘As a title it has a somewhat sarcastic tinge,’ returned Samartsev in a deep bass voice. ‘But vampires, you see, love to mock us poor defenceless humans. As you yourself have just reminded all of us here in a particularly brash manner.’

  I was a little taken aback at his words. Samartsev paused for a few seconds, then jabbed his finger into my stomach and said, ‘I’m now demonstrating what I do. I agitate. I provoke. Does it work?’

  The assembled company neighed with laughter. I laughed along with them. As befits a provocateur, Samartsev was quite charming, in a twisted sort of way.