Empire V

by Victor Pelevin

  Tears appeared in Hera’s eyes.

  ‘I did tell you not to come any closer than a metre to me. What I’d like to know is, isn’t there anywhere in this town a girl can feel safe?’

  ‘But I’d bitten you. I could see that you were not against my …’

  ‘That was before the bite. A girl’s hormonal balance alters when she’s been bitten. It’s physiological, you wouldn’t understand. It’s as though no one can be trusted any longer. Everything appears in a different light. And all desire to kiss evaporates. That’s why I said to you: either the bite, or everything else. Did you think I was joking?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  Tears were now trickling down her cheeks, first the right cheek, then the left as well.

  ‘That’s exactly what Loki said,’ she sobbed. ‘They’re always going to think you don’t mean it. So, go ahead and kick them in the balls with all your might, don’t worry about it … Now, you bastard, you’ve made me cry.’

  ‘You mean I’m the bastard?’ I asked, with something approaching interest.

  ‘My mother used to tell me, if a boy makes you cry, get rid of him and don’t waste time regretting him. Her own mother used to say the same thing to her but she didn’t listen. And then she suffered all her life with my father … even though the trouble didn’t start straight away. But you’ve made me cry on our first date …’

  ‘I do envy you,’ I said. ‘You’ve had such good advisors – kick ’em in the balls with all your might, chuck ’em out with no regrets. No one ever gave me advice about anything. I’ve had to learn everything the hard way.’

  Hera buried her face between her knees and burst into tears. Grimacing with pain I crawled over to her, sat beside her and said: ‘There there, don’t fret. It’s all right, calm down.’

  Hera shook her head as if to dislodge my words from her ears, and buried her head even deeper between her knees.

  I could see the absurdity of the whole situation. Here was someone who had a few moments ago very nearly killed me, then had been overcome by pity for herself and broken into sobs. The net result was that I had been transformed into the kind of monster her mummy had been warning her about all her life. The whole picture was so convincing that I could already feel the crushing burden of my guilt. Moreover – as she had said herself – this had all taken place on our first date.

  Where did we go next?

  At the second attempt I succeeded in getting to my feet.

  ‘OK then,’ I said. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Can you get there on your own?

  ‘I’ll try.’

  I thought she might offer me her car, but she said nothing.

  It was a long way to the door and I shan’t forget it. I moved there in tiny steps, taking plenty of time en route to look closely at details of the room’s decorations that had previously escaped my attention. They were, however, extremely banal: miniature frescoes with views of Sardinia, and Party membership cards from Soviet times, pinned to the wall with upholstery tacks.

  When I finally reached the door, I turned round. Hera was still sitting on the cushions, her hands clasped round her knees and her head still between them.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you know what?’

  ‘What?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Next time you feel like a date with me … do remind me to bring a death candy.’

  She lifted her head, smiled, and the familiar elongated dimples appeared on her damp cheeks.

  ‘Of course I will, darling,’ she said. ‘Promise.’

  OSIRIS

  The front door bell rang just as I was finishing breakfast, at exactly ten o’clock, coinciding with the beeping of the clock. I wasn’t expecting anyone to call.

  On the threshold stood Hera’s driver in his fatigues. His expression was, if anything, even more sullen than the last time. He smelt strongly of peppermint pastilles.

  ‘Letter for you,’ he said, handing me a yellow envelope with no stamp or address, similar to the one in which Hera had sent me her photograph. Right there on the stair I tore the envelope open. Inside was a sheet of paper on which was this handwritten note:

  Hello Rama,

  I’m terribly upset that everything went so wrong at our last meeting. I’ve been wanting to ring to make sure you had completely recovered, but thought you might be offended or think I was teasing you. So I decided to give you a present. I got the impression you would like to have a car too. I talked to Enlil Maratovich and he has given me another one, so this is now yours, along with the driver. His name is Ivan and he can also act as your bodyguard, so you can bring him with you when we next meet … Are you pleased? You’ll be a real blade now, with your very own bimmer. I hope I’ve raised your spirits just a little. Do give me a ring.

  Mwah, mwah,

  Hera

  P.S. I found out Osiris’s address through Mithra. Ivan knows where it is. Just tell him if you want to go there.

  P.P.S. Bablos is going to be soon – I know this for sure.

  I looked at Ivan.

  ‘What sort of a car does Hera have now?’

  ‘Bentley,’ replied Ivan, enveloping me in a cloud of menthol. ‘What are your instructions for me?’

  ‘I’ll be down in fifteen minutes,’ I said. ‘Please wait for me in the car.’

  Osiris lived not far from Mayakovsky Square in a big building dating from before the Revolution. The lift was not working so I had to walk up to the fifth floor. The stairs were in darkness because the windows on the landings had been boarded up with sheets of hardboard.

  The front door of Osiris’s flat was of a kind I had not seen for ages. It was like a farewell greeting from the Soviet era – assuming, of course, it was not a designer’s retro fantasy: the wall was encrusted with at least ten doorbells, all of them old and covered over by several layers of paint. The names under the bells seemed vaguely menacing, reminiscent of the triumphant proletariat.

  I chose one at random and pressed the bell. I could hear it ring on the other side of the door. I waited a minute or two and then tried another button. The same bell rang. Then I pressed each one in turn, all of them proving to be wired up to the same unpleasantly tinny jangle, to which no one responded. I gave up on the bells and started pounding on the door with my fist.

  ‘Coming,’ came a voice from the corridor, and the door opened.

  On the threshold stood a pale, thin man with a horseshoe-shaped moustache, wearing a leather waistcoat over a none too clean shirt outside his trousers. I immediately felt there was something Transylvanian about him, although he had rather too emaciated a look to be a vampire. But I remembered that Osiris was a Tolstoyan. Perhaps it was just the effect of having adopted the simple life.

  ‘Hello Osiris,’ I said. ‘I’ve come from Ishtar Borisovna.’

  The man with the moustache yawned indifferently into his palm.

  ‘I’m not Osiris. I’m his assistant. Come in.’

  I noticed on his neck a little square of sticking plaster with a brown stain in the middle, and all became clear.

  Osiris’s flat was a large, shabby communal apartment with signs of emergency repairs all over it: traces of welding on the radiators, holes in the ceilings with plaster filler in them, naked wires snaking along skirting boards as old as Marxism itself. One room, however – the largest, the door to which stood open – looked as though it had been completely refurbished: the floor had been finished with new parquet and the walls painted white. On the door, in black marker pen, was written:

  REDQUARTERS

  This room did indeed seem to be the spiritual and economic epicentre of the apartment, because while everywhere else appeared entombed in the sleep of ages, a powerful stink of tobacco and the sound of confident male voices emanated from this one. The men in the room seemed to be talking in Moldavi
an.

  I approached the door. A big dining table stood in the middle of the room, and around it sat four men with playing cards in their hands. On the floor were various packages, rucksacks and sleeping bags. The card-players had sticking plaster on their necks, similar to that on the Moldavian who had opened the door to me. All four were dressed in identical grey t-shirts with the word:

  BIO

  printed in white letters across the chest.

  The conversation fell silent, and the four card-players fixed their eyes on me. I returned their look in silence. Eventually the burliest of them, built like a bull, said: ‘Overtime, is it? Triple pay, or you can fuck off right now.’

  ‘Fuck off right now,’ I replied politely.

  The moustache said something in Moldavian, and I immediately ceased to be of interest to the card-players. Moustache took me delicately by the elbow.

  ‘Not this room. We have to go further along. Come with me, I’ll show you where.’

  I followed him down a long corridor.

  ‘Who were the people in that room?’

  ‘Immigrant workers,’ replied the Moldavian. ‘I think that’s the right name for them. I’m one myself.’

  At the far end of the passage we stopped. The Moldavian knocked on the door.

  ‘What is it?’ came a quiet voice.

  ‘Someone to see you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your people, I think,’ said the Moldavian. ‘Men in black.’

  ‘How many of them?’

  ‘They are one of them,’ replied the Moldavian, squinting at me.

  ‘Let him come in, then. And tell those boys to stop smoking. We’re going to be dining in an hour.’

  ‘OK, Chief.’

  The Moldavian nodded at the door and shuffled off. Just in case, I knocked once more.

  ‘It’s open,’ said the voice.

  I opened the door.

  The room was in half-darkness, the blinds drawn over the windows. However, I already knew enough to recognise the indefinable but distinctive character of a vampire’s living quarters.

  The room reminded me of Brahma’s study in that it also had a tall filing cabinet going right up to the ceiling, only simpler and made of cheaper materials. On the opposite wall was a deep recess for a bed (what I think is called an ‘alcove’, although I had never seen one before). In front of the alcove was a low homemade magazine table improvised from an old mahogany dining table with the legs cut in half. On it was piled all sorts of rubbish – scraps of material, rulers, bits of various broken mechanical instruments, dismembered soft toys, books, clumsy old mobile phones from the late Russian era of the initial accumulation of capital, old power supply units, cups and so on. The most interesting object was a piece of apparatus resembling the product of a lunatic inventor’s mind – a kerosene lamp with two circular mirrors on either side positioned so that the light would reflect precisely from one to the other.

  Beside the magazine table was a yellow leather armchair.

  I approached the alcove. Inside was a bed, covered with a quilted coverlet. Above it on the wall was a black ebony Stalin-era telephone, surrounded by a blizzard of pencil-scribbled notes. Beside it was a bell push similar to those I had seen outside on the landing.

  Osiris lay on his side with one foot propped on the other knee, as if training his muscles for the lotus position. He had on an old cotton dressing-gown and large spectacles. His face and head resembled a balding cactus, with the sort of growth one gets if one starts off with a clean shave all over and then does not shave again for a week but allows the stubble to grow simultaneously over the cheeks and the head. His skin was pale and flabby, and he looked to me as though he probably spent most of his time in the dark. After inspecting me for a few seconds in a disinterested manner, he extended his hand for me to shake his wrist, which was white, soft and cool to the touch. In order to grasp it I had to stoop down so low that I needed to support myself on the junk-strewn table.

  ‘Rama,’ I introduced myself. ‘Rama the Second.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard about you. You’re instead of Brahma, aren’t you?’

  ‘You could probably put it like that,’ I replied, ‘although I don’t feel as though I am a substitute for anyone.’

  ‘Please sit down,’ said Osiris, nodding towards the armchair.

  Before doing so I carefully inspected the dusty parquet underneath the chair and moved it a little way along the floor. Osiris laughed, but said nothing.

  From where I was seated, Osiris’s head was hidden from me by the corner of the recess, with only his feet visible. The chair had evidently been positioned there on purpose.

  ‘I’ve come from Ishtar Borisovna,’ I explained.

  ‘How are things with the old girl?’ asked Osiris amiably.

  ‘Pretty well. She does drink a lot, though.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Osiris. ‘There not much else left to her …’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘That doesn’t concern you. Might I know the purpose of your visit?’

  ‘When I was presented to Ishtar Borisovna,’ I said, ‘she noticed that I think a lot about abstract questions. About where the world has come from. About God. Things like that. It’s quite true: at the time I was thinking about such things. Anyhow, Ishtar Borisovna told me to seek you out because you are the guardian of the sacred lore and know all the answers …’

  ‘That I do,’ confirmed Osiris.

  ‘I was wondering if you could perhaps give me something to read? Some sacred vampire texts?’

  Osiris looked at me out of the alcove. His face loomed up in front of me when he bent forward.

  ‘Something to read?’ he repeated. ‘I’d be glad to. But there are no sacred texts for vampires. The tradition exists only in oral form.’

  ‘Well, could I hear it, then?’

  ‘Ask away, whatever you like,’ said Osiris.

  I thought for a while. Before, I had seemed to have a great many serious questions, but now for some reason none would come to mind. Those that did seemed silly and childish.

  ‘Who is Ishtar?’ at length I settled on asking.

  ‘Vampires believe she is a great goddess who was exiled to this world in ancient times. “Ishtar” is one of her names. Another is the “Mighty Bat”.’

  ‘Why was she sent into exile?’

  ‘Ishtar committed a crime, the nature and significance of which we shall never understand.’

  ‘Ishtar Borisovna? A crime?’ I was astonished to hear this. ‘When I talked to her, I …’

  ‘You were not talking to the Mighty Bat,’ interrupted Osiris. ‘You were talking to her disposable head.’

  ‘You mean there is a difference?’

  ‘Certainly. Ishtar has two brains, a spinal brain and a cranial brain. Her higher nature is connected to her spinal brain, which has no power of language. For this reason it is difficult to communicate with her higher nature. It would be truer to say that vampires communicate with her when they imbibe bablos. But this is a very unusual and specific form of communication …’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘if you say so. But why was our world chosen for her exile?’

  ‘It was not chosen. Our world was created in the first instance to be a prison.’

  ‘How? Do you mean that a prison was constructed somewhere here in which to confine the great goddess?’

  ‘This prison has no address, no location.’

  ‘But according to the logic of the thing,’ I observed, ‘the prison must be wherever Ishtar’s body is.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ replied Osiris. ‘Ishtar’s body is itself part of the prison. The prison is not somewhere, it is everywhere. If you are in a cell and examine its walls through a magnifying glass, you will find that you have entered another cell. You can pick up a speck of du
st from the floor, look at it magnified hundreds of times in a microscope, see into yet another cell, and so on and so on, many times over. This is what some philosophers term “the malignant infinity”, organised according to the principle of the kaleidoscope. Even illusions are so arranged that any one element in them can disintegrate into an infinite number of further illusions. The dream which you are dreaming, turns second by second into something else.’

  ‘So the whole world is a prison of this kind?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Osiris. ‘And it is very well built, down to the smallest imaginable details. Take the stars, for example. People in ancient times believed they were decorative points in the spheres which surround the earth. In essence, that is what they are: that is their main function, to be golden points in the sky. But at the same time it is possible for a rocket to fly to any of these points and after many millions of years arrive at an enormous ball of fire. Further, it would be possible to land on a planet orbiting this star, to take from the planet’s surface a sample of some mineral deposit, and analyse its chemical composition. There is no end to the number of these ornamental entities. But neither is there any point in journeying to them. All you would be doing is touring round casemates from which there can be no possibility of escape.’

  ‘Just a second,’ I said. ‘Let us accept that our planet was created in order to function as a prison, and that the stars are merely golden dots in the sky. But surely the universe, including the stars, existed long before the appearance of our planet. Is that not so?’

  ‘You cannot conceive with what subtlety this prison has been put together. It has been made full of traces of the past. But they are all simply elements in the design of the prison.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Like this. The creation of the world includes the fabrication of a spurious, but at the same time absolutely authentic, panorama of the past. All those illimitable vistas into space and time are no more than stage settings in a theatre. Incidentally, this has already been well understood by those astronomers and physicists who have concluded that the universe is closed. Think about it yourself: even light itself cannot escape from it. There is nowhere else for it to go. What more proof could be needed that we are in prison?’