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     Copyright Victor Pelevin 1999
     Translation Copyright Andrew Bromfield 2000
     FABER AND FABER
     Origin: Pokolenie "P"
     OCR: Scout
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     All trade marks mentioned in the text are the property of their owners.
All  rights are reserved.  Names of goods  and politicians do  not  indicate
actual  commercial products;  they refer only  to projections of elements of
the politico-commercial informational field that have been forcibly  induced
as perceptual objects of  the individual mind. The author requests that they
be understood exclusively in this sense. Any  other  coincidences are purely
accidental. The author's opinions do not necessarily coincide with his point
of view.




     Once upon  a  time  in  Russia  there really was a  carefree,  youthful
generation that  smiled in joy at the summer, the sea and the sun, and chose
Pepsi.
     It's hard at this stage to figure  out exactly how this situation  came
about. Most  likely  it involved more than just the remarkable taste  of the
drink  in  question.  More  than just  the  caffeine  that keeps young  kids
demanding another dose, steering them  securely  out  of  childhood into the
clear waters of  the channel of cocaine. More, even,  than a banal bribe: it
would  be  nice to think that  the Party  bureaucrat  who  took the  crucial
decision  to  sign the contract  simply fell in  love with this  dark, fizzy
liquid with every fibre of a soul no longer sustained by faith in communism.
     The  most likely reason, though, is  that the  ideologists of the  USSR
believed there  could  only  be  one truth. So in  fact Generation T' had no
choice in  the matter and children  of the Soviet seventies  chose  Pepsi in
precisely the same way as their parents chose Brezhnev.
     No  matter which way it  was, as these children lounged on the seashore
in the summer, gazing endlessly at a cloudless blue horizon, they drank warm
Pepsi-Cola  decanted into  glass  bottles  in  the city of  Novorossiisk and
dreamed that some day the distant forbidden world on the far side of the sea
would be part of their own lives.
     Babylen Tatarsky was by default a member of Generation 'P', although it
was a long time before he had any inkling of  the fact. If in those  distant
years someone  had told  him that  when he grew up he would be a copywriter,
he'd probably have dropped his bottle of Pepsi-Cola on the hot gravel of the
pioneer-camp beach in his astonishment. In those distant years children were
expected to direct their aspirations to-


     wards  a  gleaming fireman's helmet or a doctor's white coat. Even that
peaceful  word 'designer'  seemed  a  dubious  neologism only likely  to  be
tolerated until the next serious worsening in the international situation.
     In those days, however, language and life both  abounded in the strange
and  the dubious. Take  the  very name  'Babylen',  which  was conferred  on
Tatarsky by his  father,  who managed to combine  in  his  heart a faith  in
communism with the ideals of the sixties generation. He composed it from the
title of Yev-tushenko's famous poem 'Baby Yar'  and Lenin. Tatarsky's father
clearly found  it  easy to imagine a  faithful  disciple of  Lenin moved  by
Yevtushenko's  liberated verse  to the  grateful  realisation  that  Marxism
originally stood for free love, or  a jazz-crazy aesthete suddenly convinced
by  an elaborately protracted saxophone riff that communism would inevitably
triumph. It was  not only Tatarsky's father who  was  like that  -the entire
Soviet  generation  of the fifties and sixties was  the  same. This was  the
generation that gave  the world the amateur  song and  ejaculated  the first
sputnik  - that  four-tailed spermatozoon of  the future that never  began -
into the dark void of cosmic space.
     Tatarsky  was  sensitive  about  his  name,  and  whenever possible  he
introduced himself as Vladimir or Vova. Then  he began lying to his friends,
saying that  his father had given him a strange name  because he was keen on
Eastern mysticism,  and he was thinking of the ancient city of  Babylon, the
secret lore  of  which  was destined to be  inherited  by him, Babylen.  His
father  had  invented his alloy of Yevtushenko  and  Lenin because  he was a
follower of Manicheism and pantheism and regarded  it as his duty to balance
out  the principle  of  light with the  principle of  darkness. Despite this
brilliantly elaborated fable, at the age of eighteen Tatarsky  was delighted
to be able to lose his first passport  and receive a new one in the  name of
Vladimir.
     After that his life followed an entirely ordinary pattern. He went to a
technical institute - not, of course, because he had any love for technology
(he specialised in some  kind of  electric furnace),  but because he  didn't
want to go  into the  army. However,  at  the age  of  twenty-one  something
happened to him that changed the course of his life for ever.
     Out  in the countryside during the summer  he read  a small  volume  of
Boris Pasternak. The poems, which had previously left him entirely cold, had
such a profound impact that for several weeks he could think of nothing else
-  and then he began writing verse himself. He would never forget the  rusty
carcass of a bus, sunk at a crooked angle into the ground on the edge of the
forest outside Moscow at the  precise spot where the very first line  of his
life came to him: "The sardine-clouds swim onwards  to the south.' (He later
came to realise this poem  had a distinctly fishy odour.) In  short, his was
an  absolutely typical case, which ended  in  typical  fashion when Tatarsky
entered the Literary Institute. He couldn't get into the  poetry department,
though,  and had to content himself with translations from the languages  of
the  peoples  of  the USSR.  Tatarsky pictured  his  future approximately as
follows: during the day - an empty lecture hall in the Literary Institute, a
word-for-word translation from the Uzbek or  the Kirghiz that had to be  set
in rhyme by the next deadline; in the evenings - his  creative  labours  for
eternity.
     Then, quite unobtrusively, an event of fundamental significance for his
future occurred. The USSR, which they'd  begun  to renovate  and  improve at
about the time  when Tatarsky decided to  change his profession, improved so
much  that  it ceased to exist  (if a  state is capable of entering nirvana,
that's  what must have happened in this case); so any more translations from
the  languages  of the  peoples  of the USSR  were  quite simply out  of the
question. It was a blow, but Tatarsky survived it. He still had his work for
eternity, and that was enough for him.
     Then events took an  unforeseen turn. Something began  happening to the
very  eternity to which he had decided  to devote his labours and  his days.
Tatarsky couldn't  understand this at all. After all, eternity - at least as
he'd always thought of it - was  something  unchangeable, indestructible and
entirely  independent of the  transient fortunes of this earthly realm.  If,
for  instance,  the small volume of Pasternak that had  changed his life had
already entered this eternity,  then there  was no power capable of ejecting
it.
     But  this  proved not to be  entirely true. It turned out that eternity
only existed  for  as long  as Tatarsky sincerely believed  in it,  and  was
actually nowhere  to be found beyond the bounds of this belief. In order for
him  to believe sincerely in eternity,  others  had to share in this belief,
because a  belief that  no  one else  shares is  called  schizophrenia;  and
something strange had started happening to everyone else, including the very
people who had taught Tatarsky to keep his eyes fixed firmly on eternity.
     It wasn't  as though they'd shifted their  previous  point of view, not
that  -  just  that the very space into  which their gaze  had been directed
(after all,  a point of  view  always  implies  gazing  in  some  particular
direction) began to curl back in on itself and disappear, until all that was
left of it was a microscopic dot on the windscreen of the  mind. Glimpses of
entirely different landscapes began to fill in their surroundings.
     Tatarsky  tried  to  fight  it  and pretend  that nothing was  actually
happening.  At  first he could manage it. By keeping close company with  his
friends,  who were also pretending that nothing was happening, for a time he
was able to believe it was true. The end came unexpectedly.
     When Tatarsky was out walking one day, he  stopped at a  shoe shop that
was closed for  lunch. Swimming about in  the summer  heat behind  the glass
wall of  the shop window was a fat, pretty salesgirl whom Tatarsky  promptly
dubbed  Maggie, and there in the midst  of a chaos of multicoloured  Turkish
handicrafts stood a pair of unmistakably Soviet-made shoes.
     Tatarsky felt a sensation  of instantaneous, piercing recognition.  The
shoes had pointed toes and  high heels and were  made of  good leather. They
were  a  light  yellowish-brown,  stitched  with  a  light-blue  thread  and
decorated  with large gold buckles in the form of harps. It wasn't that they
were  simply in bad taste, or vulgar; they were the clear embodiment of what
a  certain drunken teacher  of Soviet literature from the Literary Institute
used to call 'our gestalt', and  the sight  was so  pitiful,  laughable  and
touching (especially the harp buckles) that tears sprang to Tatarsky's eyes.
The  shoes were covered by a thick layer of dust: the  new era obviously had
no use for them.
     Tatarsky knew the new era had no use for him either, but he had managed
to  accustom  himself  to  the  idea and  even take  a  certain bitter-sweet
satisfaction in it. The feeling  had been  decoded for him  by the words  of
Marina Tsvetaeva:
     'Scattered along the dusty shelves of shops (No one has bought them and
no one buys!) My poems, like precious wines, will have  their day': if there
was something humiliating in this feeling, then it was not he, but the world
around him that was humiliated. But in front  of that  shop window his heart
sank in the sudden realisation that the  dust settling  on him as  he  stood
there beneath  the vault  of the  heavens was  not the dust  that covered  a
vessel containing precious wine, but the same dust as covered the shoes with
the harp buckles;
     and he  realised something else too: the eternity he used to believe in
could only exist on state subsidies, or else -  which is just the same thing
-  as something  forbidden by the state. Worse even than that, it could only
exist in the form of the  semi-conscious reminiscences  of  some girl called
Maggie from the shoe shop. This dubious  species of eternity had simply been
inserted into her head, as it had into his, in the same packaging as natural
history and inorganic chemistry.  Eternity was  contingent: if, say,  Stalin
had not  killed Trotsky,  but  the other way round, then it would  have been
populated   by  entirely  different  individuals.  But  even  that  was  not
important,  because  Tatarsky  understood quite  clearly that no  matter how
things panned out, Maggie simply couldn't care less about eternity, and when
she finally and completely  stopped  believing  in it, there wouldn't be any
more  eternity, because  where  could it  be  then? Or, as he  wrote  in his
notebook when he  got home: 'When  the subject of  eternity disappears, then
all of  its  objects  also  disappear, and the only  subject  of eternity is
whoever happens to remember about it occasionally.'
     He didn't write any  more poems after that: with the collapse of Soviet
power they had simply lost their meaning and value.






     No sooner had  eternity  disappeared than Tatarsky found himself in the
present, and  it turned out that he knew absolutely  nothing about the world
that had sprung up around him during the last few years.
     It was a  very strange world. Externally  it  had not changed too much,
except perhaps that there were  more paupers on the  streets, but everything
in his surroundings - the  houses, the trees,  the benches  on the streets -
had somehow suddenly grown old and decrepit.  It wasn't possible to say that
the essential nature  of the  world had  changed,  either, because now it no
longer had any essential nature. A frighteningly vague uncertainty dominated
everything.  Despite  that,  however, the streets were flooded with Mercedes
and  Toyotas  carrying brawny  types  possessed  of  absolute confidence  in
themselves and  in  what was  happening, and  there was even,  if  one could
believe the newspapers, some kind of foreign policy.
     Meanwhile  the  television  was  still  showing  the same old repulsive
physiognomies that had been sickening the viewers for the last twenty years.
Now they were saying exactly the same things they used  to jail other people
for,  except that  they were  far  bolder,  far more  decisive and  radical.
Tatarsky often found himself imagining Germany in 1946, with Doktor Goebbels
shrieking hysterically on the radio about the abyss  into which fascism  had
led  the  nation,  with the former  Kom-mandant  of  Auschwitz  heading  the
Commission for the  Detention of Nazi Criminals, and  SS generals explaining
in clear and simple words the importance  of liberal values, while the whole
cabal  was led  by  the  newly  enlightened  Gauleiter of  Eastern  Prussia.
Tatarsky, of course,  hated most of the manifestations of  Soviet power, but
he still couldn't understand why  it was worth exchanging an evil empire for
an evil banana republic that imported its bananas from Finland.
     But then, Tatarsky had never been a great moral thinker, so he was less
concerned with the analysis of events (what was actually going on) than with
the problem of surviving them. He had no contacts that could help him, so he
dealt  with things in  the simplest way possible, by taking a job as a sales
assistant in a trading kiosk not far from where he lived.
     The work was simple  enough,  but quite hard on  the nerves. Inside the
kiosk it was half-dark and cool, like inside a tank;
     Tatarsky was connected with the world by a tiny little window, scarcely
large  enough  to allow him to push a bottle of champagne through it. He was
protected against  possible unpleasantness by a grille of metal rods crudely
welded to the walls. In the evening he handed over the takings to an elderly
Chechen  who  wore  a heavy  gold ring;  sometimes  he might even manage  to
squeeze out a little bit for  himself over and above his wages. From time to
time novice bandits  would come up to the kiosk and demand  money for  their
protection in squeaky, still-breaking voices. Tatarsky wearily directed them
to  Hussein. Hussein was  a short, skinny young  guy whose eyes were  always
oily from the opiates he took;  he usually lay on a mattress in a half-empty
trailer at the end of the string  of  kiosks, listening to Sufi music. Apart
from the mattress,  the trailer contained a table, a  safe that held a large
amount  of  money and a  complicated  version of  the Kalash-nikov automatic
rifle with a grenade-thrower mounted under the barrel.
     While he was working in the kiosk (it went on for a little  less than a
year),  Tatarsky acquired two new qualities.  The  first  was a cynicism  as
boundless as  the view from the  Ostankino  television tower; the second was
something quite remarkable and inexplicable. Tatarsky only had to  glance at
a customer's hands to know whether he could  short-change him and by exactly
how  much, whether  he  could  be  insulting to  him,  whether there was any
likelihood  of being passed  a false banknote and whether he could pass on a
false  note himself.  There  was no  definite system involved in  all  this.
Sometimes a fist like a hairy water-melon would appear in the little window,
but it was obvious  that Tatarsky could quite safely  send its owner to hell
and beyond. Then sometimes Tatarsky's heart would skip a beat in  fright  at
the sight of a slim female hand with manicured nails.
     One day a customer asked Tatarsky for a pack of Davidoff. The hand that
placed the crumpled hundred-thousand-rouble note on the counter was not very
interesting.  Tatarsky  noted the slight, barely  visible  trembling  of the
fingers and realised his customer  was a  stimulant  abuser. He could easily
be, for instance, some middle-level bandit or businessman, or - as was often
the case - something halfway between the two.
     'What kind of Davidoff? Standard or lights?' Tatarsky asked.
     'Lights,' the customer replied and leaned down to glance in through the
little window.
     Tatarsky started in surprise  - the customer was a fellow  student from
his year at the Literary Institute, Sergei Morkovin, one of the  outstanding
characters  of their year. He'd hardly  changed at  all, except that a  neat
parting had appeared in his  hair, and a few grey hairs  had appeared in the
parting.
     'Vova?' Morkovin asked in astonishment. 'What are you doing here?'
     Tatarsky couldn't think of a good answer.
     'I get it,' said Morkovin. 'Come on, you're out of this dump.'
     It  didn't take long  for  Tatarsky to be  persuaded. He  locked up the
kiosk  and, casting a fearful  glance in the direction of Hussein's trailer,
followed  Morkovin to his car. They went to an expensive Chinese  restaurant
called The Shrine of the  Moon, ate dinner and did some heavy  drinking, and
Morkovin told Tatarsky what he'd been up  to recently.  What he'd been up to
was advertising.
     'Vova,' he said, grabbing Tatarsky by the arm, his eyes gleaming, 'this
is a very special time.  There's never  been a time like it and there  never
will be again.  It's  a gold-rush,  just  like the  Klondyke. In another two
years everything'll  be all sewn up, but right  now there's a real chance to
get in  on the ground floor  straight off the street.  You know, in New York
they spend half a lifetime  just trying to get to meet the right people over
lunch, but here ...'
     There  was  a lot  in  what Morkovin said  that  Tatarsky simply didn't
understand.  The  only   thing  that  was  really  clear  to  him  from  the
conversation  was  the  outline  of  how business  functioned  in an era  of
primitive accumulation and the way it was interlinked with advertising.
     'Most of  the  time,' said Morkovin,  'it goes like this: a guy borrows
money  on  credit.  He uses the credit  to rent an  office  and  buy  a Jeep
Cherokee and eight crates  of  Smimoff.  When the Smimoff runs out, it turns
out  the jeep's  wrecked, the office is  awash with puke and the loan is due
for repayment. So he borrows money again - three times  more than before. He
uses it to pay back  the first loan, buys a  Jeep Grand Cherokee and sixteen
crates of Absolut vodka. When the Absolut...'
     'OK, I get the picture,' Tatarsky interrupted. 'So what's the ending?'
     'There's two  endings. If the bank the guy owes to is  one of the mafia
banks, then some time or other he gets killed; and  since  there  aren't any
others, that's what usually happens. On the  other hand, if the guy's in the
mafia himself, then the last loan gets shifted on to the State Bank, and the
guy  declares  himself bankrupt.  The  bailiffs come round  to  his  office,
inven-torise the empty bottles and  the  puke-covered  fax, and in  a little
while he starts up all over again. Nowadays, of course, the State Bank's got
its  own  mafia,  so the situation's a bit more  complicated, but the  basic
picture's still the same.'
     'Aha,' Tatarsky said thoughtfully. 'But I still don't see what all this
has to do with advertising.'
     'That's where we come  to the most important  part. When  there's still
about  half the Smimoff  or Absolut left, the jeep's still  on the road  and
death seems a  distant  and  abstract  prospect, a highly specific  chemical
reaction occurs inside  the head  of the guy  who created the whole mess. He
develops   this  totally  boundless  megalomania  and   orders   himself  an
advertising  clip. He  insists  his clip has  to  blow away  all  the  other
cretins' clips. The psychology of it's  easy enough to understand. The guy's
opened up some  little  company called Everest and he's so desperate to  see
his logo on Channel One, somewhere between BMW and Coca-Cola, that he  could
top  himself. So just as soon as this  reaction takes  place in the client's
head, we pop out of the bushes.'
     Tatarsky liked the sound of that 'we' very much.
     "The  situation's like  this/ Morkovin went on. 'There  are only  a few
studios that make  the videos, and they're  desperate for writers with nous,
because these days everything  depends on  the writer. The job itself  works
like this: the people from the studio find a client who wants to get himself
on TV. You take a look at him. He tells you something. You listen to what he
wants to say.  Then  you write the scenario. It's usually about a page long,
because the clips are short. It might only take you a couple of minutes, but
you don't go back to  him for at least a week - he has to think you've spent
all that time dashing backwards and forwards across your  room, tearing your
hair out and thinking, thinking, thinking. He reads what you've written and,
depending on whether he likes  the scenario  or not, he orders a  video from
your people  or gets in touch with someone else. That's why,  as far  as the
studio you work for is  concerned, you're the top man.  The order depends on
you. And if you can hypnotise the client, you take ten per cent of the total
price of the video.'
     'And how much does a video cost?'
     'Usually from fifteen to thirty grand. Say twenty on average.'
     'What?' Tatarsky asked in disbelief.
     '0 God, not roubles. Dollars.'
     In  a split second  Tatarsky had calculated what ten per cent of twenty
thousand would be. He swallowed hard and  stared  at  Morkovin with dog-like
eyes.
     'Of course,  it's not going to last,' said Morkovin. 'In a year or two,
everything's  going  to  look  entirely  different.  Instead  of  all  these
pot-bellied  nobodies  taking  loans  for  their  petty  little  businesses,
there'll be guys borrowing millions of bucks at a time. Instead of jeeps for
crashing into  lamp-posts there'll be castles  in France  and islands in the
Pacific. Instead  of five hundred grammes  the former party secretaries will
be demanding  five  hundred grand.  But basically what's going  on  in  this
country of ours won't be any different, which means that the basic principle
of our work will never change.'
     'My   God,'  said  Tatarsky.  'Money  like  that.  .  .  It's  kind  of
frightening.'
     'Ifs Dostoievsky's old eternal question/ Morkovin said, laughing. 'Am I
a timid cowering creature or have I got moral rights?'
     'Seems to me you've already answered that question.'
     'Yes,' said Morkovin, 'I reckon I have.'
     'And what is your answer?'
     'It's very simple.  I'm  a timid  cowering  creature  with  inalienable
rights.' The next day Morkovin took Tatarsky to a strange place called Draft
Podium (after several minutes  of intense mental  effort Tatarsky  abandoned
the attempt to guess what that meant).  It was located in the basement of an
old brick-built house not far from the centre of town. Entry was via a heavy
steel  door,  which led into  a small office  space crammed with  equipment.
Several  young  men were  waiting  there for Tatarsky.  Their  leader  was a
stubble-cheeked guy by the  name of Sergei, who looked like  Dracula in  his
younger days. He  explained to Tatarsky that the small cube  of blue plastic
standing on an empty cardboard box was a Silicon Graphics computer that cost
one hell of a lot of money, and the Soft Image program that was installed on
it cost twice as  much. The  Silicon was the most important treasure in this
subterranean  cave. The  room also contained  a few more  simple  computers,
scanners and some kind of VCR with lots of dials and lights. One detail that
made a great impression on Tatarsky was that the VCR had a wheel on it  with
a handle, like  the wheel on a sewing machine, and you could use  it to wind
on the frames on the tape by hand.
     Draft  Podium had a certain  very promising client in its sights.  'The
mark's about fifty,' said Sergei, dragging on a menthol cigarette. 'Used  to
work as  a teacher of physics. Just when things started coming  apart he set
up a co-operative baking  bird's  milk' cakes and in two  years made so much
money that now he rents an entire confectionery plant in Lefortovo. Recently
he took out a big  loan. The day before yesterday he  went on the sauce, and
he usually stays on it about two weeks.'
     'Where do you get that kind of information?' Tatarsky asked.
     'His secretary/ said Sergei. 'So anyway, we have to get to him with the
scenario  now, before he  has time to sober up. When  he  sobers up, he gets
greedy. We're meeting tomorrow at one in his office.'
     The next day Morkovin  arrived at  Tatarsky's  place early. He  brought
with him a large, bright-yellow plastic bag  containing a maroon jacket made
of  material  that  looked  like  the  fabric  they  use  for  Russian  army
greatcoats.   The  intricate  crest  gleaming  on  the  breast   pocket  was
reminiscent of the emblem on a packet of Marlboro cigarettes. Morkovin  said
it was a 'club jacket'. Tatarsky didn't understand what he meant, but he did
as he was told  and put it  on. Then Morkovin took  a foppish notebook  in a
leather cover  out of the bag, together with an incredibly  thick  ballpoint
pen with the word 'Zoom' on it  and a pager -  at that time they'd only just
appeared in Moscow.
     'You have to  hang  this thing on your belt,'  he said. 'You're meeting
the client at one, and at twenty past one I'll give you a call on the pager.
When  it beeps, take  it off your belt and look at  it  like it's  something
important.  All the  time the client's talking,  keep  making  notes in  the
notebook.'
     'What's it all for?' Tatarsky asked.
     'It's  obvious enough,  isn't  it? The client's paying big money  for a
sheet of paper and a few drops  of black ink out of a  printer. He has to be
absolutely certain  plenty of  others  have  paid money for  the  same thing
before him.'
     'Seems  to me,'  said Tatarsky, 'all these jackets and  pagers are just
the thing to raise doubts in his mind.'
     'Don't go complicating things,' said Morkovin with a dismissive wave of
his hand. 'Life's simpler and stupider than that. And then there's this ...'
     He  took a slim case out of his pocket,  opened it and held  it out  to
Tatarsky.  It  contained  a  heavy watch  that was  almost  beautiful  in  a
repulsive kind of way, made of gold and steel.
     'It's a Rolex Oyster.  Careful, you'll chip off the gold plate;  it's a
fake. I only take it out on business.  When you're talking  with the client,
flash it around a bit, you know. It helps.'
     Tatarsky  felt  inspired  by all  this support. At half past  twelve he
emerged from the  metro. The guys from Draft Podium were waiting for him not
far from the entrance. They'd arrived in a long black Mercedes. Tatarsky had
already learned enough about  business  to  know the car had  been hired for
about two  hours.  Sergei was unshaven as  ever, but now there was something
sullenly stylish about his stubble - probably  due  to the dark  jacket with
the incredibly  narrow lapels and the bow tie. Sitting beside him was  Lena,
who looked after  contracts and kept the  books.  She  was  wearing a simple
black dress (no jewellery and no make-up) and in her hand she was holding an
attache  case with a  golden lock. When Tatarsky  climbed into  the car, the
three of them exchanged glances and Sergei spoke to the chauffeur.
     'Drive on.'
     Lena was nervous. All the way there  she kept giggling as she told them
about  some  guy  called  Azadovsky  -  apparently  her friend's lover. This
Azadovsky  inspired  her with an admiration  that  bordered on rapture: he'd
arrived in Moscow from  Ukraine and moved  in  with her friend, got  himself
registered in her flat, then invited his sister and her two children up from
Dnepropetrovsk.  He'd registered  them in  the flat and immediately, without
the slightest pause, swapped the flat for a different one through the courts
and dispatched Lena's sister to a room in a shared apartment.
     'He's a man who'll really go far!' Lena kept repeating.
     She was especially impressed  by the  fact that, once the operation had
been completed, the  sister and her children were immediately banished  back
to Dniepropetrovsk; there  was so  much detail  in the way the tale was told
that  by the end of  the journey Tatarsky began to feel as though he'd lived
half his life in the flat with Azadovsky and his nearest and dearest;
     but then, Tatarsky was just as nervous as Lena.
     The  client (Tatarsky  never did  find out what his  name  was)  looked
remarkably like  the image that had taken shape in Tatarsky's mind following
the previous day's conversation. He was a  short, thickset little man with a
cunning face, from which the grimace  of a  hangover was only just beginning
to fade - evidently  he'd taken his first drink of the day  not long  before
the meeting.
     Following  a  brief  exchange of  pleasantries  (Lena  did most of  the
talking; Sergei sat in the  corner with his  legs crossed, smoking) Tatarsky
was introduced as the writer.  He sat down  facing  the client, clanging the
Rolex against the edge of the desk as he did so, and opened up his notebook.
It  immediately became clear that the  client had nothing  in particular  to
say. Without the assistance of  a powerful hallucinogen it was hard  to feel
inspired by the  details of his business  -  he droned on most  of the  time
about  some  kind  of oven-trays with  a special non-stick coating. Tatarsky
listened with  his face half-turned away,  nodding and doodling  meaningless
flourishes in his notebook. He surveyed the room out of the comer of his eye
-  there was nothing interesting  to be  seen there, either,  if  you didn't
count  the misty-blue reindeer-fur hat,  obviously very expensive,  that was
lying on the upper shelf in an empty cupboard with glass doors.
     As promised, after  a few minutes the pager on his belt rang.  Tatarsky
unhooked  the  little black  plastic box from  his belt. The  message on the
display said: 'Welcome to route 666.'
     'Some joker, eh?' thought Tatarsky.
     'Is it from Video International?' Sergei asked from the comer.
     'No,' Tatarsky  replied,  following his lead.  'Those  blockheads don't
bother me any more, thank  God. It's Slava Zaitsev's design studio. It's all
off for today.'
     'Why's that?'  Sergei asked,  raising one  eyebrow.  'Surely he doesn't
think we're that desperate for his business ...'
     'Let's talk about that later,' said Tatarsky.
     Meanwhile the client  was scowling thoughtfully at his reindeer-fur hat
in  the  glass-fronted cupboard.  Tatarsky looked at  his hands.  They  were
locked together, and his thumbs were circling around each other as though he
was winding in some invisible thread. This was the moment of truth.
     'Aren't  you  afraid  that it  could  all just come  to  a  full stop?'
Tatarsky asked. 'You know what kind  of times these are. What if  everything
suddenly collapses?'
     The client frowned and looked in puzzlement, first at Tatarsky and then
at his companions. His thumbs stopped circling each other.
     'I am afraid,' he answered, looking up.  'Who isn't? You ask  some  odd
questions.'
     'I'm sorry,' said Tatarsky. 'I didn't mean anything by it.'
     Five minutes  later the  conversation was over. Sergei  took a sheet of
the client's headed notepaper  with his logo - it was  a stylised bun framed
in an oval above the letters 'LCC'. They  agreed to meet  again in a  week's
time; Sergei promised the scenario for the video would be ready by then.
     'Have you totally lost your marbles,  or what?' Sergei asked  Tatarsky,
when they came out on to the street. 'Nobody asks questions like that.'
     The Mercedes took all three of them to the nearest metro station.
     When he got home, Tatarsky wrote the scenario in  a few hours. It was a
long time since he'd felt so inspired. The scenario didn't have any specific
storyline.  It  consisted of  a  sequence  of  historical  reminiscences and
metaphors. The Tower of Babel rose and fell, the  Nile flooded, Rome burned,
ferocious Huns  galloped in no particular direction across the steppes - and
in the background the hands of an immense, transparent clock spun round.
     'One  generation passeth  away  and another generation  cometh,' said a
dull and demonic voice-over (Tatarsky actually  wrote that in the scenario),
'but  the Earth abideth for ever.' But  eventually even  the earth with  its
ruins  of  empires and  civilisations  sank  from sight into a lead-coloured
ocean;
     only  a single  rock remained projecting above  its raging surface, its
form somehow echoing the form  of the Tower of Babel that the scenario began
with. The camera zoomed in on the cliff, and there carved in stone was a bun
and the letters 'LCC', and beneath them a motto that Tatarsky had found in a
book called Inspired Latin Sayings:
     MEDIIS  TEMPESTATIBUS PLACIDUS CALM IN  THE  MIDST  OF STORMS LEFORTOVO
CONFECTIONERY COMBINE
     In Draft Podium they reacted to Tatarsky's scenario with horror.
     'Technically  it's  not  complicated,'  said  Sergei.   'Rip  off   the
image-sequence from a few old  films, touch it up a bit, stretch it out. But
it's totally off the wall. Even funny in a way.'
     'So it's  off  the wall/ Tatarsky  agreed.  'And funny. But you tell me
what it is you want. A prize at Cannes or the order?'
     A couple of  days later Lena  took the  client  several  versions of  a
scenario  written  by  somebody else.  They  involved  a black  Mercedes,  a
suitcase  stuffed full  of  dollars  and other archetypes of the  collective
unconscious.  The client turned them all  down  without  explaining why.  In
despair Lena showed him the scenario written by Tatarsky.
     She came back to the studio  with a  contract for thirty-five thousand,
with  twenty to be paid in advance. It  was a record. She  said that when he
read the  scenario the client started behaving like a  rat from Hamlin who'd
heard an entire wind orchestra.
     'I could have taken him for forty grand/ she said. 'I was just too slow
on the uptake.'
     The  money  arrived  in their account  five  days  later, and  Tatarsky
received his honestly earned two thousand.  Sergei and his team were already
planning to go to Yalta to film a suitable cliff, on which the bun carved in
granite  was  supposed to appear in the  final  frames, when the  client was
found dead in  his office. Someone had strangled him with  a telephone cord.
The traditional electric-iron marks were discovered  on the body,  and  some
merciless hand had stopped the  victim's mouth with a Nocturne cake  (sponge
soaked  in liqueur,  bitter  chocolate in  a distinctly  minor key,  lightly
sprinkled with a tragic hoar-frosting of coconut).
     'One  generation  passeth away and  another generation cometh/ Tatarsky
thought philosophically, 'but thou lookest out always for number one.'
     And  so  Tatarsky became a copywriter.  He  didn't  bother  to  explain
himself  to any of his old bosses; he  simply  left the keys of the kiosk on
the porch of the trailer where Hussein hung out: there were rumours that the
Chechens  demanded  serious  compensation  when  anyone  left  one  of their
businesses.
     It  didn't  take him long to acquire new  acquaintances and he  started
working  for several studios at the same time. Big breaks like the  one with
Lefortovo's calm-amid-storms  Confectionery Combine didn't come very  often,
unfortunately.
     Tatarsky soon  realised that if one in ten  projects worked  out  well,
that  was already serious  success. He didn't earn a really  large amount of
money, but even so it was more than  he'd made in the retail trade. He would
recall  his first advertising  job with dissatisfaction, discerning  in it a
certain hasty, shamefaced willingness to sell cheap everything that was most
exalted in his  soul.  When the orders began coming in one after another, he
realised that  in this particular business it's always a  mistake to be in a
hurry, because  that  way you bring the  price way  down, and that's stupid:
everything  that  is  most sacred  and exalted should  only  be sold for the
highest price possible, because afterwards there'll be nothing left to trade
in. Tatarsky realised, however,  that this rule did not apply  to  everyone.
The true virtuosos of  the genre, whom he saw on TV, somehow managed to sell
off  all that  was most  exalted  every  day of the week, but in  a way that
provided no formal grounds for  claiming  they'd sold anything, so the  next
day they could start all over again with  nothing  to  worry about. Tatarsky
couldn't even begin to imagine how they managed that.
     Gradually a very unpleasant tendency began to emerge: a client would be
presented  with  a project  conceived  and  developed by  Tatarsky, politely
explain that it was not exactly what was required,  and  then a month or two
later Tatarsky would  come across a clip that was quite clearly based on his
idea. Trying to discover the truth in such cases was a waste of time.
     After listening to his new acquaintances' advice, Tatarsky attempted to
jump up a rung in the advertising hierarchy and began developing advertising
concepts. The work was much the  same as he had been doing before. There was
a certain magic book, and once you'd read  it there was no more need to feel
shy  of  anyone  at  all or  to  have  any kind  of  doubts. It  was  called
Positioning:  A Battle for  your Mind,  and  it  was written  by  two highly
advanced American  shamans. Its essential message was  entirely inapplicable
to Russia  - as far as Tatarsky could judge, there was no battle being waged
by trademarks for niches in befuddled Russian brains; the situation was more
reminiscent  of a smoking landscape after a nuclear explosion - but even  so
the  book  was  useful.  If  was  full  of  stylish expressions  like  'line
extension'  that  could  be stuck into concepts and dropped into  spiels for
clients.  Tatarsky realised  what  the difference  was  between  the era  of
decaying imperialism  and  the era of primitive capital accumulation. In the
West both  the client  who  ordered advertising  and the copywriter tried to
brainwash the consumer, but in Russia the copywriter's job was to screw with
the client's brains. Tatarsky  realised in addition  that Morkovin was right
and this  situation was never going to change.  One day, after  smoking some
especially good grass, he uncovered by pure chance the basic economic law of
post-socialist society: initial accumulation of capital is also final.
     Before  going to sleep Tatarsky would  sometimes  re-read  the book  on
positioning. He regarded  it as his little Bible; the comparison was all the
more appropriate because it contained echoes of religious  views that had an
especially powerful impact  on his chaste and  unsullied soul:  The romantic
copywriters of the fifties, gone on  ahead of us  to that great  advertising
agency in the sky ...'





     Lenin's statues were  gradually carted out of town  on  military trucks
(they said some colonel had thought up the idea of melting them down for the
non-ferrous metal content and made  a lot  of money before he was  rumbled),
but  his presence  was merely replaced by a  frightening  murky greyness  in
which the Soviet soul simply continued rotting until it collapsed inwards on
itself. The  newspapers claimed the whole world had been living in this grey
murk for absolutely ages, which was why it was so full of  things and money,
and  the  only  reason  people  couldn't  understand this was their  'Soviet
mentality'.
     Tatarsky didn't really understand completely what this Soviet mentality
was, although he used the expression frequently enough and enjoyed using it;
but  as  far as  his new  employer,  Dmitry Pugin, was concerned,  he wasn't
supposed  to  understand anything anyway. He was merely required  to possess
this  mentality.  That was  the  whole point of  what he did: adapt  Western
advertising concepts to the mentality  of the Russian consumer. The work was
'freelance' -  Tatarsky used the term as  though it still  had  its original
sense, having in mind first of all the level of his pay.
     Pugin, a man with a black moustache and gleaming black eyes very like a
pair  of buttons, had  turned up  by  chance among the  guests  at  a mutual
acquaintance's house. Hearing that Tatarsky was in advertising, he'd shown a
moderate interest. Tatarsky,  on  the other hand, had immediately been fired
with  an irrational respect for  Pugin -  he  was simply  amazed to  see him
sitting there drinking tea still in his long black coat.
     That was when  the conversation had  turned  to  the  Soviet mentality.
Pugin confessed  that  in the old days he had possessed it himself, but he'd
lost it  completely while working for  a  few years as a  taxi-driver in New
York. The salty winds  of  Brighton Beach had  blown  all  those  ramshackle
Soviet  constructs right out of his head  and infected him with a compulsive
yearning for success.
     'In New York you realise especially clearly/ Pugin said over a glass of
the vodka they moved  on to after the tea,  'that you can spend your  entire
life in some foul-smelling  little kitchen, staring out into some shit-dirty
little  yard and  chewing on a lousy burger. You'll just stand there  by the
window, staring at all that shit, and life will pass you by.'
     'That's interesting,' Tatarsky responded thoughtfully,  'but  why go to
New York for that? Surely-'
     'Because in New York you understand it, and in Moscow you don't,' Pugin
interrupted. 'You're right, there  are far  more  of those stinking kitchens
and shitty little  yards over here. Only here there's no way you're going to
understand that's where  you're going to spend the rest  of your life  until
it's already over. And that, by the way,  is one of the main features of the
Soviet mentality.'
     Pugin's  opinions  were  disputable in certain respects,  but  what  he
actually had to offer was simple, clear and logical.  As far as Tatarsky was
able to judge from the murky depths of his own Soviet mentality, the project
was an absolutely textbook example of the American entrepreneurial approach.
     'Look,' said Pugin, squinting intensely into the space above Tatarsky's
head, 'the country hardly produces anything at all;
     but people  have to  have something to eat and wear,  right? That means
soon goods will start pouring in here  from the West, and massive amounts of
advertising will come flooding in with them. But it won't be possible simply
to translate this advertising  from English into Russian, because the . .  .
what d'you call them .. . the cultural references here are different... That
means,  the  advertising  will have to be  adapted  in  short order  for the
Russian consumer. So now what do you and I do? You and I get straight on the
job well in  advance - get my point?  Now, before it  all starts, we prepare
outline concepts for all the serious brand-names. Then, just  as soon as the
right moment comes, we turn up at their offices with a folder under our arms
and  do  business. The most  important  thing is to get  a  few  good brains
together in good time!'
     Pugin  slapped  his palm down hard  on the table - he obviously thought
he'd  got a  few together  already  - but  Tatarsky  suddenly  had the vague
feeling he  was  being  taken  for a  ride again. The terms of employment on
offer from Pugin  were extremely vague - although the work itself was  quite
concrete, the prospects of being paid remained abstract.
     For  a test-piece Pugin set him the  development  of an outline concept
for Sprite -  at  first he was going  to give him Marl-boro as well, but  he
suddenly changed his  mind, saying it was too soon for Tatarsky to try that.
This  was the  point - as  Tatarsky  realised later  - at  which  the Soviet
mentality for which he had been selected raised its head. All his scepticism
about  Pugin  instantly dissolved in  a feeling  of  resentment  that  Pugin
wouldn't trust him with Marlboro,  but this resentment  was mingled  with  a
feeling of delight at the fact that he still  had Sprite. Swept away  by the
maelstrom created  by these conflicting feelings, he never  even  paused  to
think why some taxi-driver from Brighton  Beach, who  still hadn't given him
so much as a kopeck, was already deciding whether he was capable of applying
his mind to a concept for Marlboro.
     Tatarsky poured into  his conception for Sprite every  last drop of his
insight into his  homeland's  bruised and  battered history.  Before sitting
down  to  work,  he  re-read   several  selected  chapters  from   the  book
Positioning:  A  Battle for your  Mind,  and a  whole heap  of newspapers of
various tendencies. He hadn't read  any newspapers for ages and what he read
plunged him  into a state of confusion;  and that, naturally, had its effect
on the fruit of his labours.
     'The first  point that must be taken  into consideration,' he  wrote in
his concept, is that  the  situation that exists  at the present  moment  in
Russia cannot continue for very long. In the very near future we must expect
most of the  essential  branches of industry to come to a  total standstill,
the collapse of  the financial system  and serious  social upheavals,  which
will all  inevitably end in the establishment  of  a  military dictatorship.
Regardless of  its political and economic programme, the future dictatorship
will attempt to exploit nationalistic slogans: the dominant  state aesthetic
vsill be  the  pseudo-Slavonic  style.  (This term is not  used here in  any
negative judgemental sense: as distinct from the Slavonic style, •which does
not exist anywhere in the real world, the pseudo-Slavonic style represents a
carefully structured paradigm.) Within  the space structured by the symbolic
signifiers of this style, traditional Western  advertising is inconceivable.
Therefore  it will  either  be  banned completely or  subjected  to rigorous
censorship. This all has to be  taken  into consideration in determining any
kind of long-term strategy.
     Let  us take a classic positioning  slogan:  'Sprite - the Uncola'. Its
use in Russia would seem  to us  to  be most appropriate, but  for  somewhat
different  reasons  than  in  America.  The  term  'Uncola'  (i.e. Non-Cola)
positions  Sprite  very  successfully   against  Pepsi-Cola  and  Coca-Cola,
creating  a special  niche for  this  product  in the  consciousness of  the
Western  consumer. But  it  is  a well-known fact that in  the countries  of
Eastern Europe Coca-Cola is more  of an ideological fetish than a refreshing
soft drink. If, for instance, Hershi drinks are positioned as possessing the
'taste  of  victory', then  Coca-Cola possesses  the 'taste of  freedom', as
declared in the seventies and eighties by a vast  number of Eastern European
defectors.  For  the  Russian consumer,  therefore,  the  term  'Uncola' has
extensive  anti-democratic and  anti-liberal  connotations, which  makes  it
highly attractive and promising in conditions of military dictatorship.
     Translated into  Russian 'Uncola'would  become 'Nye-Cola'. The sound of
the  word (similar to the  old Russian name 'Nikola')  and the  associations
aroused by it offer a perfect fit  with the aesthetic required by the likely
future scenario. A possible version of the slogan:
     SPRITE. THE NYE-COLA FOR NIKOLA
     (It might make sense to consider infiltrating into the consciousness of
the consumer the character  'Nikola Spritov', an individual of the same type
as RonaldMcDonald, but profoundly national in spirit.)
     In addition,  some  thought has to be given to changing  the  packaging
format  of  the  product  as sold on  the  Russian market.  Elements of  the
pseudo-Slavonic  style need to be introduced here as well.  The ideal symbol
would  seem  to be  the birch  tree. It would be appropriate to  change  the
colour of the can from green to white with black stripes like the trunk of a
birch. A possible text for an advertising clip:
     Deep in the spring-time forest I drank my birch-bright Sprite.
     After reading the print-out  Tatarsky brought him,  Pugin  said:  '"The
Uncola" is Seven-Up's slogan, not Sprite's.'
     After that he said nothing for a while, simply  gazing at Tatarsky with
his black-button eyes. Tatarsky didn't speak either.
     'But that's OK,' Pugin said, eventually softening.  'We can use  it. If
not for Sprite,  then for Seven-Up. So you  can  consider you've passed  the
test. Now try some other brand.'
     'Which one?' Tatarsky asked in relief.
     Pugin thought for  a  moment, then rummaged in his pockets and held out
an opened pack of Parliament cigarettes. 'And think  up a poster for them as
well,' he said.
     Dealing with Parliament turned out  to be more complicated. For a start
Tatarsky wrote the usual intro: 'It is quite clear that the first thing that
has  to be  taken into consideration in the development of any  half-serious
advertising concept is . . .' But  after that  he just sat there for  a long
time without moving.
     Exactly  what  was  the  first  thing   that  had  to   be  taken  into
consideration   was   entirely  unclear.   The  only  association  the  word
'Parliament'  was  able,  with  a struggle,  to extract from his brain,  was
Cromwell's  wars in  England. The  same thing would  obviously apply  to the
average Russian  consumer who had read Dumas as a child. After half  an hour
of  the  most intensive intellectual exertion  had  led to nothing, Tatarsky
suddenly fancied  a smoke. He searched the entire flat looking for something
smokeable and  eventually found an old  pack of Soviet-time Yava. After just
two drags  he  chucked the cigarette down the toilet and dashed over  to the
table. He'd come up with a text that at first glance looked to him  as if it
was the answer:
     PARLIAMENT- THE NYE-YAVA
     When he realised this was  only  a poor low-grade caique  on  the  word
'uncola',  he very nearly gave  up.  Then he  had a sudden inspiration.  The
history dissertation  he'd written in the Literary Institute was  called: 'A
brief  outline  of  parliamentar-ianism in Russia'. He couldn't  remember  a
thing  about  it any  more, but he was absolutely certain  it would  contain
enough material for three concepts, let  alone one. Skipping  up and down in
his  excitement,  he set off along the corridor towards  the built-in closet
where he kept his old papers.
     After  searching for half  an hour  he realised he wasn't going to find
the dissertation, but  somehow that didn't worry him any more. While sorting
through the  accumulated strata deposited  in  the closet,  up on  the attic
shelf  he'd  come  across  several  objects  that  had been there since  his
schooldays:  a bust of  Lenin mutilated with a  small camping  axe (Tatarsky
recalled how,  in his fear  of  retribution  following  the  execution, he'd
hidden the bust in a place that was hard  to reach),  a  notebook on  social
studies, filled with drawings  of tanks  and nuclear explosions, and several
old books.
     This  all filled him with such aching nostalgia that his employer Pugin
suddenly seemed  repulsive and hateful, and was banished from consciousness,
together with his Parliament.
     Tatarsky  remembered  with  a  tender  warmth  how  the  books  he  had
discovered had been selected from  amongst the  waste paper they  used to be
sent to collect after class. They  included  a volume of a  left-wing French
existentialist published  in  the  sixties,  a  finely  bound  collection of
articles on theoretical physics. Infinity and the Universe, and a loose-leaf
binder with the word Tikhamat' written in large letters on the spine.
     Tatarsky remembered  the book  Infinity and  the Universe, but  not the
binder. He opened it and read the first page:
     TIKHAMAT-2 The Earthly Sea Chronological Tables and Notes
     The papers bound  into the  folder obviously dated from a  pre-computer
age.  Tatarsky  could recall heaps of samizdat books that had circulated  in
this format  - two typed  pages reduced to half-size and copied  on a single
sheet of paper. What he was holding in his hands seemed to be an appendix to
a  dissertation  on  the  history  of  the  ancient  world.  Tatarsky  began
rememberin:  in his childhood, he thought, he  hadn't even  opened the file,
taking  the  word  'Tikhamat' to  mean something like  a  mixture  of diamat
(dialectical materialism) with histmat (historical materialism).  He'd  only
taken the work  at  all  because of  the  beautiful  folder,  and  then he'd
forgotten all about it.
     As it turned out, however, Tikhamat was the name  either  of an ancient
deity  or of an  ocean, or  perhaps  both at the same time. Tatarsky learned
from a footnote that the word could be translated approximately as 'Chaos'.
     A lot  of the space in the folder was taken up by tables of kings. They
were  pretty  monotonous,  with their listings of unpronounceable names  and
Roman  numerals,  and information about when they'd launched their campaigns
or  laid the  foundations of a wall  or taken  some  city, and so  forth. In
several places different sources were  compared,  and  the  conclusion drawn
from  the comparison  was  that several events  that had  been  recorded  in
history as following each other were in fact one and  the same event,  which
had so  astounded contemporary and subsequent generations that its  echo had
been doubled and tripled, and then each echo had  assumed a life of its own.
It was clear from  the apologetically triumphant tone adopted by the  author
that  his  discovery  appeared to  him  to  be quite revolutionary and  even
iconoclastic, which  set Tatarsky pondering  yet again on  the vanity of all
human  endeavour. He didn't  experience even the slightest sense of shock at
the  fact that Ashuretilshamersituballistu II had turned out  actually to be
Nebuchadnezzar III,  and the nameless  historian's  depth of  feeling really
seemed rather  laughable. The kings seemed  rather  laughable too: it wasn't
even known for certain whether they were people or  simply slips made  by  a
scribe  on his clay tablets, and  the only traces remaining  of them were on
those same clay tablets.
     The chronological  tables  were followed  by  extensive  notes on  some
unknown text,  and  there were a  lot of photographs  of various antiquities
pasted into  the  folder. The second or  third  article  that Tatarsky  came
across  was entitled: 'Babylon:  The  Three  Chaldean Riddles'. Beneath  the
letter '0' in the  word 'Babylon' he  could make out  a letter 'E' that  had
been whited out and corrected - it was nothing more than a typing error, but
the sight of it threw Tatarsky into a state of agitation. The name he'd been
given at birth and had rejected on reaching the age of maturity had returned
to haunt  him just at  the moment  when he'd completely forgotten  the story
he'd told his  childhood friends  about  the part the secret lore of Babylon
was to play in his life.
     Below the heading there was a photograph of the impression of  a seal -
a gate of iron  bars on the top of either a mountain  or  a stepped pyramid,
and standing beside it a man with a beard dressed in a skirt, with something
that looked  like a shawl  thown  over his shoulders. It seemed to  Tatarsky
that the man was holding two severed heads by their thin plaits of hair; but
one of  the  heads  had no  facial features,  while  the  second was smiling
happily. Tatarsky read the inscription under the drawing: 'A Chaldean with a
mask and a  mirror on a zig-gurat'. He squatted  on a pile  of books removed
from the closet and began reading the text beneath the photograph.
     P. 123. The mirror and the mask are the ritual requisites oflshtar. The
canonical representation,  which  expresses the sacramental symbolism of her
cult more  fully, is oflshtar in a gold mask,  gazing into a mirror. Gold is
the  body of the  goddess and its negative projection  is the  light  of the
stars. This  has led several researchers  to  assume that the  third  ritual
requisite of the goddess is  the fly-agaric mushroom, the  cap of which is a
natural map of  the  starry  sky.  If  this is so,  then we must regard  the
fly-agaric  as  the  'heavenly mushroom' referred to in various texts.  This
assumption is indirectly  confirmed by the details of the myth of  the three
great ages, the  ages of the red, blue and  yellow skies. The red fly-agaric
connects  the  Chaldean with the past; it provides  access to the wisdom and
strength  of the age of the  red  sky.  The  brown fly-agaric  ('brown'  and
'yellow'  were  designated by the same word in Accadian), on the other hand,
provides a link with the future and a means of taking possession all  of its
inexhaustible energy.
     Turning  over  a few pages  at  random, Tatarsky  came across  the word
'fly-agaric' again.
     P.  145.  The  three  Chaldean  riddles (the  Three Riddles  oflshtar).
According  to  the tradition  of  the Chaldean  riddles, any  inhabitant  of
Babylon  could become the  goddess's husband. In order to  do this he had to
drink a special beverage and ascend her ziggurat. It is not clear whether by
this was intended the ceremonial ascent of a real structure  in Babylon or a
hallucinatory experience.  The  second assumption is supported  by  the fact
that  the  potion  was  prepared according  to a  rather  exotic recipe:  it
included 'the urine  of a  red ass'  (possibly the  cinnabar traditional  in
ancient alchemy) and 'heavenly  mushrooms' (evidently  fly-agaric,  cf. 'The
Mirror and the Mask').
     According to tradition the path to the  goddess  and to supreme  wisdom
(the Babylonians did not  differentiate these two concepts, which were  seen
as flowing naturally into  one  another and regarded as different aspects of
the same reality) was via sexual union with a  golden idol  of  the goddess,
which was located in the upper chamber of the ziggurat. It was believed that
at certain times the spirit of Ishtar descended into this idol.
     In order to be granted access to the idol it was necessary to guess the
Three Riddles oflshtar. These riddles have not come down to us. Let  us note
the controversial opinion of Claude Greco (see 11,12), who assumes that what
is meant is a  set  of  rhymed  incantations in ancient Accadian  discovered
during the excavation of Nineveh, which are rendered highly polysemantic  by
means of their homo-nymic structure.
     A far more convincing  interpretation,  however,  is  based  on several
sources  taken together: the  Three  Riddles of  Ishtar were  three symbolic
objects that were handed to a Babylonian who wished to become a Chaldean. He
had to interpret the significance of these items (the  motif  of  a symbolic
message).  On the spiral ascent of the ziggurat  there were  three gateways,
where the future Chaldean was  handed  each of  the objects in turn. Anybody
who got even one of  the  riddles  wrong was  pushed  over  the edge  of the
ziggurat  to  certain death by the soldiers of the  guard.  (There  is  some
reason  to derive the later cult  ofKybela, based on ritual self-castration,
from  the  cult  of  Ishtar: the  significance of  the  self-castration  was
evidently as a substitute sacrifice.)
     Even so,  there  were a great many candidates, since the  answers  that
would open the path to the summit of the ziggurat and union with the goddess
actually did exist.  Once in every few decades  someone was successful.  The
man who answered all three  riddles correctly would ascend to the summit and
meet the  goddess, following  which he became a consecrated Chaldean and her
ritual earthly husband (possibly there were several such simultaneously).
     According to  one  interpretation,  the  answers  to  the Three Riddies
oflshtar also existed in written form. In certain special  places in Babylon
tablets were  sold imprinted  with the answers  to  the  goddess's questions
(another  interpretation  holds  that  what was  meant was a magical seal on
which the answers were carved).  Producing these tablets and trading in them
was the business  of the priests of the central temple  ofEnkidu, the patron
deity of the  Lottery. It was believed that  the  goddess selected  her next
husband  through the  agency  of Enkidu.  This provides  a resolution to the
conflict,   well  known   to   the  ancient   Babylonians,   between  divine
predetermina-tion and free will.  Therefore most  of  those who  decided  to
ascend the ziggurat bought clay tablets bearing answers; it was believed the
tablets could not be unsealed until after the ascent had begun.
     This  practice  was known as  the Great Lottery (the accepted term, for
which we  are indebted  to numerous men of letters  inspired by this legend,
but a more precise rendering would  be  'The Game without a Name'). Its only
possible outcomes  were  success  and  death.  Certain bold spirits actually
decided to ascend the ziggurat without any tablet to prompt them.
     Yet  another  interpretation has  it that  the three questions oflshtar
were  not  riddles,  but  rather  symbolic reference  points  indicative  of
specific life-situations.  The  Babylonian  had  to  pass  through them  and
present proofs  of his wisdom to the guard on the ziggurat  in order to make
it  possible for him  to meet the goddess. (In this case  the ascent  of the
ziggurat  described  above is regarded rather  as  a metaphor.) There was  a
belief  that the  answers to the  three questions oflshtar were concealed in
the words  of the market songs that  were  sung  every day  in the bazaar at
Babylon, but no information about these songs or this custom has survived.
     Tatarsky wiped the dust  off the folder  and hid it away again  in  the
closet, thinking  that some time he  would definitely read  it  all the  way
through.
     He never did  find  his diploma dissertation on  the history of Russian
parliamentarianism  in the  closet;  but  by the  time  his  search was over
Tatarsky  had  realised   quite  clearly  that   the   entire   history   of
parliamentarianism  in Russia amounted to one  simple fact -  the only thing
the word was good for was advertising Parliament cigarettes, and even  there
you actually could get by quite well without any parliamentarianism at all.




     The following day Tatarsky,  still absorbed in his  thoughts about  the
cigarette  concept,  ran  into  his  old  classmate  Andrei  Gireiev  at the
beginning of  Tverskaya  Street.  Tatarsky hadn't had  any  news of him  for
several  years, and  he  was astounded at the  style of  the  clothes he was
wearing -  a  light-blue  cassock  with  a  Nepalese  waistcoat  covered  in
embroidery  worn  over the top  of it. In his  hands he had  something  that
looked like a  large coffee-mill, covered all over with Tibetan symbols  and
decorated  with coloured ribbons.  He  was  turning its handle. Despite  the
extreme  exoticism  of  every  element of  his  get-up, in combination  they
appeared so  natural that they somehow neutralised each other. None  of  the
passers-by  paid any  attention  to Gireiev. Just  like a fire hydrant or an
advertisement  for Pepsi-Cola, he failed  to  register  in  their  field  of
perception because he conveyed absolutely no new visual information.
     Tatarsky first recognised  Gireiev's face and only  afterwards began to
pay attention to the rich  details  of  his appearance.  Looking attentively
into  Gireiev's eyes,  he  realised  he was  not quite himself,  although he
didn't seem to be drunk. In fact he was calm and in control, and he inspired
confidence.
     He said he was living just outside Moscow in the village of Rastorguevo
and invited Tatarsky to  visit him. Tatarsky agreed, and they went down into
the  metro, then changed to the  suburban  train. They travelled in silence;
Tatarsky occasionally  turned away from the view through  the window to look
at Gireiev. In his crazy gear he seemed like the final fragment of some lost
universe  - not  the  Soviet  universe,  because  that  didn't  contain  any
wandering Tibetan astrologers,  but  some other  world  that  had existed in
parallel with the Soviet one, even in  contradiction of it, and had perished
together with  it. Tatarsky felt regret at its passing, because a great deal
of what he had liked and been moved by had come from that parallel universe,
which everyone  had been certain could never  come to any harm; but  it  had
been  overtaken  by the  same  fate  as  the  Soviet  eternity, and  just as
imperceptibly.  Gireiev  lived in  a crooked  black house with the garden in
front of  it run  wild, all  overgrown with umbrellas  of giant dill half as
tall again as a man. In terms of amenities his  house  was somewhere between
village and town: looking  down through the hole  in the  hut of the outside
lavatory he could  see wet and slimy sewage pipes that ran across the top of
the cesspit, but where they ran from or to wasn't clear.  On the other hand,
the house had a gas cooker and a telephone.
     Gireiev  seated  Tatarsky  at  the table  on  the verandah and tipped a
coarsely  ground powder into  the  teapot from  a red tin box with something
Estonian written on it in white letters.
     'What's that?' Tatarsky asked.
     'Fly-agarics,' answered Gireiev,  and  began pouring boiling water into
the teapot. The smell of mushroom soup wafted round the room.
     'What, are you going to drink that?'
     'Don't worry,' said Gireiev, 'there aren't any brown ones.'
     He said it as though it was the answer to every  conceivable objection,
and Tatarsky couldn't think of anything to say in reply. He hesitated for  a
moment,  until  he  recalled that  only yesterday he'd  been  reading  about
fly-agarics,  and he  overcame his  misgivings.  The  mushroom  tea actually
tasted quite pleasant.
     'And what will it do for me?'
     'You'll see soon enough,' replied Gireiev. 'You'll  be drying  them for
winter yourself.'
     'Then what do I do now?'
     'Whatever you like.'
     'Is it OK to talk?'
     'Try it.'
     Half an hour passed in rather inconsequential conversation about people
they both knew.  As was only  to  be expected,  nothing very interesting had
happened to any of them in the meantime. Only one  of them, Lyosha Chikunov,
had  distinguished himself - by drinking several bottles of  Finlandia vodka
and  then freezing to death one starry  January  night in the toy house on a
children's playground.
     'Gone to Valhalla,' was Gireiev's terse comment.
     'Why are you so sure?' Tatarsky asked; then he suddenly  remembered the
running deer and the crimson sun on the vodka label and assented internally.
He  reached for his notebook and wrote: 'An ad for Finlandia. Based on their
slogan:
     "In   my   previous  life   I   was  clear,  crystal   spring   water".
Variant/complement: a snowdrift with a frozen puddle of  puke  on top. Text:
"In my previous life I was Finlandia vodka".'
     Meanwhile a scarcely perceptible  sensation  of  happy  relaxation  had
developed in his body. A  pleasant quivering rose in his chest, ran in waves
through  his trunk and his  arms  and faded away without  quite reaching his
fingers.  And for some  reason Tatarsky very much  wanted  the quivering  to
reach his  fingers. He realised he hadn't drunk enough; but the  teapot  was
already empty.
     'Is there any more?' he asked.
     'There, you see,' said Gireiev, 'what did I tell you?'
     He  stood  up,  left the room  and  came back with  an  open  newspaper
scattered with dry pieces of sliced fly-agaric mushrooms. Some of them still
had scraps  of red skin with  little white blots, while others had shreds of
newspaper with the mirror-images of letters clinging to them.
     Tatarsky tossed a few pieces into his mouth, chewed them and swallowed.
The taste of the dried fly-agarics reminded him a little of  potato  flakes,
except  that  it was nicer - it  occurred to him that they could be sold  in
packets  like  potato  chips, and this must be one of the secret routes to a
bank loan, Grand Cherokee  jeep,  advertisement  clip  and violent death. He
started pondering what the clip might be  like, tossed  another portion into
his mouth and  looked around him. It was only at this stage that he actually
noticed several of the objects decorating the room. For instance, that sheet
of  paper hanging in  the obvious  place on the  wall - there was  a  letter
written  on  it, maybe Sanskrit, maybe Tibetan, resembling  a dragon  with a
curved tail.
     'What's that?' he asked Gireiev.
     Gireiev glanced up at the wall. 'Hum/ he said.
     'What d'you need it for?'
     'That's how I travel.'
     'Where to?' asked Tatarsky.
     Gireiev shrugged. 'It's  hard to explain/ he said. 'Hum. When you don't
think, lots of things become clear.'
     But Tatarsky had already forgotten his own question. He was overwhelmed
by a  feeling of gratitude to Gireiev  for inviting  him here. 'You know/ he
said/  I'm going through a difficult period right now.  Most  of the  time I
associate with  bankers and other scum  who want  advertising. The stress is
just  incredible. But out here with you ... I feel just  as though I've come
back home.'
     Gireiev seemed  to understand what  he  was feeling.  'It's nothing/ he
said, 'Don't even think about it. A couple of  those bankers  came to see me
last winter. Wanted to expand their  consciousness. Afterwards they ran  off
barefoot across the snow. Why don't we go for a walk?'
     Tatarsky was happy to agree. Once outside the garden gate, they set off
across a field criss-crossed by  freshly dug ditches. The path led them to a
forest and began  winding  between the trees. The itching  and  trembling in
Tatarsky's  hands  was getting stronger, but  it still wasn't  reaching  his
fingers. Noticing there were lots of fly-agarics growing on the ground among
the  trees, he  dropped behind  Gireiev and picked  several  of  them.  They
weren't red, but dark brown and very beautiful. He ate them quickly and then
caught up with Gireiev, who hadn't noticed anything.
     Soon the forest came to an  end and  they  came  out into a large  open
space,  a  collective  farm  field  bounded  on  its far side  by the river.
Tatarsky  looked upwards to where motionless  clouds towered up into the sky
above the  field  in the last orange rays of one of those  inexpressibly sad
sunsets that autumn sometimes  produces outside Moscow. They walked on for a
while down the track along the edge  of the field and sat down  on a  fallen
tree.
     Tatarsky  suddenly thought  of  a  potential  advertising  concept  for
fly-agarics. It was based on the startling realisation that the supreme form
of self-realisation for  fly-agarics is an atomic explosion - something like
the glowing non-material  body  that certain advanced mystics acquire. Human
beings  were simply a subsidiary form of life that the fly-agarics exploited
in order  to  achieve their supreme  goal, in the same  way as human  beings
exploited  mould for making cheese.  Tatarsky  raised  his  eyes towards the
orange rays of the sunset  and the flow of his thoughts  was abruptly broken
off.
     'Listen,'  Gireiev  said  after a few  more  minutes' silence, 'I  just
thought about Lyosha Chikunov again. Sad about him, isn't it?'
     'Yeah, it is,' Tatarsky replied.
     'Weird, that - he's dead, and we're alive ... Only I suspect that every
time we lie down and sleep, we die just the same way. And the sun disappears
for ever, and all history comes  to an end. And then non-existence just gets
sick of itself and we wake  up. And the world  comes into existence all over
again.'
     'How can non-existence get sick of itself?'
     'Every  time you  wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does
everything else.  Death  just  means  the replacement  of the  usual morning
wakening  with  something  else, something  quite impossible  even  to think
about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because  our mind and our
world are the same thing.'
     Tatarsky tried to understand what this meant. He  noticed that thinking
had  became difficult and even dangerous, because  his thoughts had acquired
such freedom  and  power  that he  could  no longer control them. The answer
appeared to  him  immediately in the form of a three-dimensional geometrical
figure. Tatarsky saw his own  mind: it was a  white  sphere, like a  sun but
absolutely calm and  motionless. Dark, twisted fibrous threads extended from
the centre of the sphere  to its periphery. Tatarsky realised that they were
his five senses. The fibres that were a  little thicker were sight, the ones
a bit thinner than those were hearing, and the others were almost invisible.
Dancing and meandering around these motionless fibres was  a winding spiral,
like the filament of an electric-light bulb. Sometimes it would align itself
for a moment with one of them; sometimes it  would curl up around  itself to
form a  glowing circle of light like the one left  by  the lighted tip of  a
cigarette swirled rapidly in the dark. This was the thought  with which  his
mind was occupied.
     'That means there is no death/ Tatarsky thought  happily. 'Why? Because
the threads disappear, but the sphere remains!'
     He was filled with  happiness at having managed to formulate the answer
to  a  question  that  had  tormented humanity for the last several thousand
years  in terms  so simple anyone could understand  them. He wanted to share
his discovery  with Gireiev,  and taking him  by  the shoulder he  tried  to
pronounce this  final phrase out  loud. But his mouth spoke  something else,
something meaningless - all the syllables that made up  the words were still
there, but  they  were jumbled up chaotically. Tatarsky thought  he needed a
drink of water, and so he said to Gireiev, who was staring at him in fright:
     'Li'd winker drike I watof!'
     Gireiev obviously didn't understand what was going on; but it was clear
that whatever it was, he didn't like it.
     'Li'd dratinker  wike  of wit!'  Tatarsky repeated  meekly and tried to
smile.
     He  really  wanted  Gireiev  to smile  back  at  him;  but Gireiev  did
something  strange - he got to  his  feet and backed away from Tatarsky, who
understood for the first  time  what  was  meant  by  the phrase 'a mask  of
horror'. His friend's face  was  distorted  into  the most distinct possible
mask of precisely that kind. Gireiev took several faltering steps backwards,
then turned and ran. Tatarsky was offended to the depths of his soul.
     Meanwhile the  evening twilight  had begun to  thicken. As  it  flitted
through the blue haze between the trees, Gireiev's Nepalese waistcoat looked
like a large  butterfly. Tatarsky found the  idea  of  pursuit  exciting. He
launched himself  after Gireiev, bounding high  in the air  in order  not to
stumble over some root or hummock. It  was soon clear that  he was running a
lot faster that Gireiev, quite incomparably faster, in fact. He overtook him
and turned  back  several times before he realised that  he  wasn't  running
around Gireiev, but around the  remnant of a dry  tree-trunk the same height
as a man. That sobered him up a little, and he set off down the path in what
he thought was the direction of the railway station.
     Along the  way he  ate  several more  fly-agarics  that  attracted  his
attention  among the trees, and soon  he  found himself on a wide dirt  road
with a fence of barbed wire running along one edge of it.
     Someone  appeared  ahead of him, walking along. Tatarsky went up to him
and  asked politely:  'Stan  gou thecation  totet  yell  he mow? There  trun
rewains?'
     Glancing sharply at Tatarsky, the stranger took a quick step backwards,
then took to his heels. Everybody seemed to be reacting to  him in the  same
way today. Tatarsky  remembered  his Chechen employer and thought cheerfully
to himself:
     'What if I met Hussein now, I wonder if he'd be scared?'
     When Hussein promptly appeared at the edge of the road, it was Tatarsky
who was scared.  Hussein was  standing there silently in  the grass and  not
reacting  in any way to Tatarsky's approach.  But  Tatarsky slowed his pace,
walked across to Hussein with meek, childish steps and stood there paralysed
with guilt.
     'What did you want?' Hussein asked.
     Tatarsky said something extremely inappropriate: 'I just need a second.
I  wanted to  ask  you,  as  a  representative  of  the  target  group: what
associations does  the word "parliament" have for  you?' In  his  fright  he
didn't even notice whether he was speaking normally or not.
     Hussein wasn't surprised at  all. He thought for a moment and answered:
'Al-Ghazavi  had this  poem called "The Parliament of Birds". It's about how
thirty birds flew off in search of the bird that is called Semurg - the king
of all birds and a great master.'
     'But  why did  they  fly  off  in  search  of  a king,  if they  had  a
parliament?'
     'You ask  them  that. And then, Semurg  was not  just  a king, he was a
fount of great knowledge. That's more than you can say for a parliament.'
     'How did it all end?' asked Tatarsky.
     'When  they  had  endureded thirty  trials, they  learned that the word
"Semurg" means "thirty birds".'
     'Who from?'
     'The voice of God told them.'
     Tatarsky sneezed. Hussein immediately  fell silent and turned away  his
glowering  face. Tatarsky waited for a continuation  for quite  a  long time
before he realised that Hussein was actually a post with a sign nailed to it
saying:  'Campfires  forbidden!'  that  he could  scarcely make  out in  the
semi-darkness. That  upset him - so Gireiev and Hussein were in  league now!
He'd liked Hussein's story,  but now it  was clear that he'd never leam  all
the details,  and  in  the form  he'd heard  it, it  wasn't  even  fit for a
cigarette concept. Tatarsky walked  on,  wondering what it was that had made
him stop in such a cowardly fashion by a Hussein-post that hadn't even asked
him to.
     The explanation was not a  very  pleasant  one: it was a relict  of the
Soviet  era, the slave mentality he still hadn't completely  squeezed out of
himself. Tatarsky  thought for a while and came to the conclusion  that  the
slave  in the soul  of  Soviet  man  was not  concentrated in any particular
sector, but rather tinged everything that happened in its twilit expanses in
a shade of chronic psychological  peritonitis,  which meant there was no way
to squeeze this slave out  drop  by drop without damaging precious spiritual
qualities.  This thought seemed  important  to Tatarsky  in the light of his
forthcoming collaboration  with Pugin, and he  rummaged in his pockets for a
long time to find a pen to note it down, but couldn't find one.
     Another  passer-by  appeared,  coming  towards  him;  this  time it was
definitely no hallucination. That much became clear after Tatarsky's attempt
to borrow  a pen -  the passer-by took  to his  heels, running with  genuine
speed and not looking back.
     Tatarsky simply couldn't figure  out what it was in his  behaviour that
had  such  a  terrifying effect  on  the  people he  met.  Perhaps they were
frightened by the strange disorder of his speech, the way the words he tried
to pronounce fell apart into syllables that then  re-attached themselves  to
each other in a random order. Even so, there was something rather flattering
in such an extreme reaction.
     Tatarsky was suddenly struck  so forcibly by a certain thought  that he
stopped  dead and slapped his  palm against his  forehead. 'Why, of  course,
it's the Tower of Babel!' he thought. 'They probably drank that mushroom tea
and the words began to break apart in their mouths, just like mine.
     Later they began to call it a confusion  of tongues. It would be better
to call it a confusion of language ...'
     Tatarsky could sense that his thoughts were filled with such power that
each one was a stratum of reality, just as important in every respect as the
forest  he was walking through  this  evening. The  difference was  that the
forest was a thought he couldn't stop thinking, no matter how much he wanted
to. On  the other hand, there was almost no will whatsoever involved in what
was going on in  his mind. As soon as he had the thought about the confusion
of tongues,  it became clear to him that the memory of Babylon was the  only
possible Babylon: by thinking  about it, he had summoned it to life; and the
thoughts  in  his  head were like  trucks  loaded with  building  materials,
rushing towards Babylon, making it more and more substantial.
     'They called the confusion of tongues the Tower  of Babel/ he  thought.
'But just what is the Tower of Babel?'
     He swayed on his  feet, feeling  the earth swing round smoothly beneath
him.  He  only stayed upright because  the axis  of the earth's rotation ran
precisely through the top of his head.
     The confusion of tongues coincides  in  time with the  creation of  the
tower. When there is a confusion  of tongues, then the Tower of Babel starts
to rise. Or maybe it doesn't rise;
     maybe  it's just that the  entrance to the  ziggurat opens up. Yes,  of
course. There's the entrance right there.
     A pair of large  gates decorated  with three-dimensional  red stars had
appeared in the  barbed-wire fence along which Tatarsky  was  walking. Above
them blazed a powerful lamp surmounted by a cowl, and the  bright-blue light
illuminated the  numerous  graffiti covering  the green sheet-metal  of  the
gates. Tatarsky stopped.
     For a minute or two he studied the traditional  mid-Russian attempts to
write the names of  the surrounding villages in  Latin script, various names
surmounted by crude crowns, symbolic representations of a penis and a vulva,
the English verbs  'to fuck' and 'to  suck' in the  third person singular of
the  present tense, but all  peppered with incomprehensible apostrophes  and
abundant logos  from the  music business. Then  his gaze fell  on  something
strange.
     It was a  large inscription - significantly  larger than  all the rest,
stretching right across the gates  - written in fluorescent orange paint (it
gleamed brightly in the rays of the electric lamp): THIS GAME HAS NO NAME.
     The moment Tatarsky read it, all the other ethnographic material ceased
to  register  in  his awareness;  his consciousness held  nothing but  these
glittering  words. He seemed  to understand  their  meaning at  a  very deep
level, and although he  could hardly have explained it to anyone else,  that
meaning  undoubtedly required him  to climb over the gates. It proved not to
be difficult.
     Behind the  gates was an abandoned building site, a  wide area of waste
ground with  only sparse indications of any human presence. At the centre of
the  site stood an  unfinished  building  - either the foundations  of  some
intergalactic  radio telescope or a strangely designed multi-storey  parking
lot:
     the  construction  work had  been broken off  at  a stage when only the
load-bearing structures and walls were in place. The structure looked like a
stepped  cylinder  made up of several  concrete boxes standing one on top of
another. Round them wound a spiral roadway on reinforced concrete  supports,
which  ended at  the  top box, surmounted by a small cubic tower with  a red
signal lamp.
     Tatarsky thought it must be one of those military construction projects
begun in the seventies that had failed to save  the empire,  but had  shaped
the aesthetic of  'Star  Wars'. He  recalled Darth Vader  and  his asthmatic
wheezing and marvelled at what  a  wonderful metaphor he was for  the career
communist: probably somewhere on  his starship he had a dialysis machine and
two teams  of cardiologists, and Tatarsky recalled  vaguely that  there  had
been hints at something of the kind in  the film.  But  in his present state
thinking about Darth Vader was dangerous.
     The  unfinished building  was  illuminated by three or four floodlights
that plucked patches of it out of the gloom - sections of the concrete wall,
the spiral road and the upper tower with  its winking  signal light. If  not
for that red  beacon, the building's incompleteness could have been taken in
the darkness for the dilapidation of  age, and it might have been a thousand
or  even a full  ten  thousand years old.  But then, thought  Tatarsky,  the
beacon could be powered by some unimaginable ancient electricity transmitted
under the ground from Egypt or Babylon.
     Recent  traces  of man were  only visible  by  the gates,  where he was
standing. There was something like the branch office of a military unit here
- several living trailers, a boom, a board with a fire bucket and a crowbar,
and  a  stand  with a poster  showing  identical  soldiers  with  a  strange
self-absorption  imprinted on  their faces  demonstrating  various  training
formations.  Tatarsky  was not in the least  bit surprised  when  he saw  an
immense  mushroom  with  a  tin-sheet cap  and a  telephone hanging  on  its
stalk-post - he realised  it must  be  the sentry post. At first he was sure
there was no sentry on duty, but then he saw that the mushroom's conical cap
was painted red and decorated with symmetrical white spots.
     'Nothing's quite as simple as it seems,' he whispered.
     That very  moment a quiet, mocking voice spoke somewhere  close  beside
him: 'This game has no name. It will never be the same.'
     Tatarsky swung  round.  There  was no  one  anywhere  near him, and  he
realised it was an auditory hallucination. He felt a bit scared, but despite
everything, what was taking place held a strangely delightful promise.
     'Onwards,'  he whispered, leaning forward and  slipping quickly through
the murk towards the road that led to the ziggurat. 'After all,' he thought,
'it's just a multi-storey carpark.'
     'With hanging gardens,' the voice in his head added quietly.
     The  fact that the voice  spoke in Russian convinced Tatarsky it was  a
hallucination, but it reminded him once again  of the confusion  of tongues.
As though in response to his thought the voice pronounced a long phrase in a
strange  language with  a  large  number  of  sibilants. Tatarsky decided to
ignore it, especially since he had already set foot on the spiral ascent.
     From the  distance he  had  failed to appreciate the true dimensions of
the  building. The road was wide  enough for two  trucks to  pass each other
('Or chariots,' the voice added  gleefully, 'chariots with four-in-hand! Now
those were chariots!').
     It was constructed of concrete slabs, with the the joints between  them
left unsealed. Tall plants protruded from the  joints - Tatarsky didn't know
what they  were called, but he had known since  he was a child that he could
use their  tough stems in his shoes instead of shoe laces. From time to time
wide  gaps appeared in the wall to his right, leading  into the body  of the
ziggurat.  Inside there were wide open spaces littered with building  waste.
The road constantly disappeared round  the comer ahead, seeming to break off
in mid-air, and  Tatarsky  walked  carefully,  clinging to the wall with one
hand.  On  one side the  tower  was illuminated  by the floodlights from the
building site, and on the other by  the moon, suspended in  a gap  in a high
cloud.  He could hear an open door banging in  the wind  somewhere up above,
and the same  wind brought  the  distant  sound  of  dogs  barking. Tatarsky
slackened his pace until he was walking really slowly.
     Something crunched under his foot. It was an empty cigarette pack. When
he picked it up and moved into a  patch of  light, he saw  it  was a pack of
Parliament Menthol. But there was something else much  more surprising about
it: on the front of the pack there was an advertising hologram showing three
palm trees.
     'It all fits,' he  whispered and  carried  on, keeping a careful eye on
the ground beneath his feet.
     The  next discovery  was  waiting one tier higher - he spotted the coin
gleaming  in the  moonlight from  a distance. He'd never seen  one  like  it
before: a Republic of Cuba  three-peso piece with a portrait of Che Guevara.
Tatarsky  was not at  all surprised that a Cuban coin should be  lying on  a
military construction site  - he remembered the final sequence  of the  film
Golden Eye, with that immense Soviet-made antenna rising up out of the water
somewhere  on the Isle of  Freedom. This was obviously the  payment received
for its construction. He replaced the coin in the  empty Parliament pack and
put  it in his pocket, completely confident  that there  was something  else
waiting for him.
     He  wasn't mistaken. The road was  approaching its end at the very  top
box,  in front of which  lay a  heap  of building waste  and broken  crates.
Tatarsky noticed a strange little cube lying in among the waste  and  picked
it  up. It was a pencil sharpener  in the shape of a television, and someone
had  drawn a large eye  on  its plastic  screen with a  ballpoint  pen.  The
sharpener  was old - they used  to make them like that in the seventies -and
it was remarkable that it was so well preserved.
     Cleaning  off the mud  clinging  to the  sharpener, Tatarsky slipped it
into his inside pocket and looked  round, wondering what  to do next. He was
afraid to go into the box: it was  dark  in there and  he could easily break
his neck  if he  fell  into some hole or  other.  Somewhere up above, a door
banged  once again in the wind,  and Tatarsky  remembered  there was a small
tower on the summit of the building, with a red beacon lamp. He couldn't see
the  tower from  where he was standing, but there  was a  short  fire-ladder
leading upwards.
     The small tower  turned out to  be  the housing  where the  lift motors
should have been. The door was open. On the wall right inside the door there
was a light-switch. When Tatarsky  turned on the  light he saw the lingering
traces of  a soldier's harsh life: a wooden  table, two stools and and empty
beer bottles in the corner.  It was  obvious that these were the traces of a
soldier's life, and  not any other, from the magazine  photographs of  women
stuck to the walls. Tatarsky  studied them for a  while. He thought that one
of them, running across the sand of a tropical beach entirely naked and with
a golden  suntan, looked very beautiful. It wasn't even so much her face and
figure, but the  incredible, indefinable  freedom of her movement, which the
photographer had managed to capture. The sand, the sea and the leaves of the
palm trees on the photograph were all so vivid that Tatarsky heaved a  heavy
sigh -the meagre Moscow summer was already  over. He closed his eyes and for
a few seconds he fancied he could hear the distant murmur of the sea.
     He sat down at the table, laid out  his trophies  on it and looked them
over  once  again.  The  palms on  the  empty  Parliament  pack  and  on the
photograph were  very  similar, and he thought they  must  grow in  the same
place, in a part of the world he would never get  to  see - not even  in the
Russian style, from  inside a tank - and if  he ever did,  it would  only be
when he  no longer needed anything from this woman or this sand or this  sea
or even from  himself. The dark melancholy into which he was plunged by this
thought was  so profound  that at its very  deepest  point  he  unexpectedly
discovered light: the slogan and the poster for Parliament  that he had been
searching for suddenly came to him. He hastily pulled out his notebook - the
pen turned out to be inside it - and jotted the ideas down:
     The  poster  consists of a photograph  of  the  embankment of the river
Moscow taken from the bridge on which the  historic  tanks  stood in October
'93. On the site of the Parliament building we see a huge pack of Parliament
(digital editing). Palms are growing profusely all  around it. The slogan is
a quotation from the nineteenth-century poet Griboedov:
     Sweet and dear Is the smoke of our Motherland
     Parliament slogan:
     THE MOTHERLAND'S#1 SMOKE!
     "Thou lookest out always for number one" he thought gloomily.
     Putting the notebook  back into his pocket, he gathered up  his  prizes
from the table and took a final glance around  the room. The thought flashed
through  his mind that he could take the beautiful woman running  across the
sand as a souvenir, but he decided against it. He turned out the light, went
out on  to  the roof and stopped to allow his eyes to grow accustomed to the
darkness.
     'What now?' he thought. To the station.'







     The  adventure  in   the   forest  outside   Moscow  proved  positively
stimulating to Tatarsky's professional abilities. Scenarios and concepts now
came to him far more easily, and Pugin even paid him a small advance for his
slogan for Parliament:
     he said  Tatarsky had hit  the bull's-eye, because until '93 a  pack of
Parliament  had cost the same as a pack of Mariboro, but after  those famous
events Parliament had rapidly become the most  popular  cigarette in Moscow,
and  now  they cost twice as  much. Subsequently, however, 'the smoke of the
Motherland' was dispersed  without a trace into  the thick gloom of a winter
that arrived unexpectedly early. The only dubious echo of the slogan left in
the snowbound  advertising space of  Moscow was  the  phrase: 'From ship  to
ball', another  borrowing - by an unknown colleague of Tatarsky's - from the
poet  Griboedov.  It  was  to  be glimpsed  at one  time  on large  hoarding
advertisements for menthol cigarettes -  a yacht, blue sea and sky, a peaked
cap  with  a  sunburst  and a  pair of  long legs. Tatarsky felt a  pang  of
jealousy at this, but not  a very powerful one  - the  girl  in  the menthol
advert  had  been chosen to suit the taste  of such a wide target group that
the text seemed spontaneously to read as: 'From ship to balls'.
     For some reason the wave of fly-agaric  energy  that had swept  through
his  nervous  system found its  finest  outlet  in  texts for  cigarettes  -
probably for  the same reason  that the first truly successful experience of
love or narcotics determines your preferences for the rest of your life. His
next great  success (not only in his  own  opinion,  but  in the opinion  of
Pugin,  who surprised him once again by paying him) was  a text  written for
Davidoff cigarettes, which was symbolic, because his career had started with
them. The text was  based on an advertisement for Davidoff Classic  that was
on all the hoardings in the city centre: dark tones, a close-up of a wasting
face with the burden of  unbearable knowledge  glinting in the eyes, and the
inscription:
     THE MORE YOU KNOW: DAVIDOFF CLASSIC
     At  the first  sight of  the wise,  wrinkled face, Tatarsky immediately
began wondering  just what it was that  this foreign smoker knew.  The first
explanation to come to mind was rather sombre: a visit to the cancer clinic,
an X-ray and a dreadful diagnosis.
     Tatarsky's  project was  in  total  contrast:  a  light  background,  a
youthful face expressive of ignorant happiness, a white pack  with slim gold
letters and the text:
     'FOR IN MUCH  WISDOM  IS  MUCH SORROW  AND  HE WHO INCREASES  KNOWLEDGE
INCREASES GRIEF.' DA VIDOFF LIGHTS
     Pugin said Davidoff's  agent  would be  unlikely to be  interested, but
some other cigarette market leader  might very  well take it.  'I'll  have a
word with  Azadovsky/  he said casually. 'He's got an  exclusive  on sixteen
brands.' It seemed to Tatarsky he'd heard  that name  before. He jotted  the
phrase  down  in  his   notebook  and  casually  dropped  it   into  several
conversations with clients, but his natural shyness found expression  in the
fact that he usually halved the number of brands.
     At  the beginning  of winter Tatarsky had his one-room flat redecorated
after a fashion (against the background of  cornflower-blue Soviet-era tiles
that were  coming away from the wall, the expensive Italian mixer-tap looked
like  a gold tooth in the  mouth  of a leper, but he  had no money for major
renovations). He also bought a new computer,  although he  had no particular
need  for it -  he'd simply begun to have difficulties getting texts printed
out that  he'd typed  in his  favourite  word-processing program:  one  more
muffled  groan  under the  iron boot  of  Microsoft.  Tatarsky  didn't  feel
seriously aggrieved, although he did note the profoundly  symbolic nature of
the  event: his  interface program -  a  medium  by its very  nature  -  was
becoming  the most  important message, taking  over an  incredible amount of
computer memory space and resources, and that reminded him  very  much of  a
brazen  new Russian  running the funds  for teachers' salaries  through  the
accounts in his bank.
     The further he penetrated into the jungles of the advertising business,
the more questions he  had to which  he couldn't find the answer, neither in
Al Rice's Positioning: a Battle  for your Mind, nor even in the latest  book
on the same  topic.  The  final Positioning. One colleague swore to Tatarsky
that  all  the  themes that Al  Rice  hadn't  touched  on  were  analysed in
Confessions of an Advertising Man by David  Ogilvy. In his  heart  of hearts
Tatarsky suspected Ogilvy  was really the  same character who appeared for a
second in George Orwell's  1984 in the consciousness of the hero in order to
perform an imaginary feat of heroism and  then disappear into the  ocean  of
oblivion. The  fact that comrade Ogilvy, despite his double  unreality,  had
nonetheless made it to  the shore, lit his pipe, donned his tweed jacket and
become  a world-famous advertising guru  filled  Tatarsky  with a  mystical,
rapturous admiration for his own profession.
     But  the book  he found particularly  helpful was by Rosser Reeves:  he
discovered  two terms in it - 'penetration'  and 'involvement' - that proved
very useful when it came to throwing curves. The first project he managed to
design on the basis of these two concepts was for Nescafe Gold.
     'It has long been recognised,' Tatarsky wrote just twenty minutes after
he first learned about  it,  that  there  are  two basic indicators  of  the
effectiveness  of  an  advertising  campaign:  penetration and  involvement.
'Penetration' is  the  percentage  of people who remember the advertisement.
'Involvement' is the percentage of people the advertisement has persuaded to
consume the product. The problem is,  however, that a brilliantly scandalous
advertisement, capable of producing high-level penetration, is absolutely no
guarantee  of high  levels of involvement. Likewise a campaign that cleverly
demonstrates  the  virtues  of a product  and is capable of  producing  high
levels of  involvement  is no guarantee of high-level penetration.  Which is
why  we  propose  taking  a  new  approach  and creating  a  kind  of binary
advertising, in which the functions of  penetration  andinvolvement  will be
performed by different sets of information. Let's  examine how this approach
would work in an advertising campaign for Nescafe Gold coffee.
     The first  step  in  the campaign is directed exclusively at implanting
the  brand name 'Nescafe Gold' in the consciousness of  the largest possible
number of people (we start from the assumption  that any means are justified
to this end). For example, we organise the planting of fake bombs in several
large  shops and  railway  stations  - there should be  as  many of  them as
possible. The Ministry of  the Interior  and  the  Federal Security Services
receive calls from  an  anonymous terrorist organisation informing them that
explosive devices have  been planted. But  the searches carried  out by  the
police at the sites named  by the  terrorists  produce nothing  but a  large
number of jars of Nescafe Gold packed in plastic bags.Next morning  this  is
reported  in  all the magazines and newspapers and on  television, following
which we  can  regard the penetration  phase  as complete  (its  success  is
directly dependent on the scale  of the  operation). Immediately  after this
comes phase two - involvement. At this stage the campaign is waged according
to the classical rules:  the  only  thing  linking it with phase one  is the
basic slogan:
     'Nescafe  Gold:  The  Taste  Explosion!' Here is  the  scenario/or  the
advertising clip:
     A bench in a small city square. A young man  in a red tracksuit sitting
on it, with a  serious expression  on his face. Across  the  road  from  the
square  a  Mercedes-600 and two jeeps are parked outside  a chic town house.
The young man glances at his watch. Change of  camera angle:  several men in
severe dark suits and dark glasses  emerge from the mansion  -  the security
guards. They surround the Mercedesfrom  all  sides  and one of them gives  a
command over his walkie-talkie. A small fat man with a depraved face emerges
from the mansion and looks  around in a frightened manner, then he runs down
the steps to the Mercedes and disappears behind the dark-tinted glass of the
car, and the guards get into the jeeps. The Mercedes starts to move  off and
suddenly  there are three powerful  explosions in rapid succession. The cars
are  scattered  in flying  debris;  the street  where  they have  just  been
standing is hidden by smoke.  New camera angle:  the young man on  the bench
takes a thermos flask and a red mug with a gold band out of his  sports bag.
He  pours  some coffee into the  mug,  takes a  sip and  closes his  eyes in
ecstasy. Voice-over: 'He brewed it  rough and  dark. Nescafe  Gold. The real
taste explosion.'
     The term 'involvement'  didn't  only come in  useful  at work. It  also
forced  Tatarsky to start  thinking  about just who he was involving in what
and, most importantly of all, just who was involving him in what.
     He first began thinking about it when he was reading an article devoted
to cult pom films.  The author of the article was called Sasha Blo. To judge
from  the  text,  he  should  have  been a cold  and  world-weary  being  of
indeterminate sex, writing  in  the breaks between orgies in order to convey
his  opinions  to  a  dozen or  so similar fallen  supermen/women. The  tone
adopted  by Sasha Blo made it clear that  de Sade and Sacher-Masoch wouldn't
even have  made  it  as  doormen in his circle, and  the best Charles Manson
could have  hoped for  would have been to  hold the  candlesticks. In short,
Blo's  article  was  a  perfectly formed apple of sin, worm-eaten,  beyond a
shadow of a doubt, personally by the ancient serpent himself.
     But  Tatarsky had been around  in the advertising  business for a  long
time now. In the  first place, he knew that the only thing these apples were
good for was to tempt  suburban Moscow's kids out of the  Eden of childhood.
In the second place, he doubted the  very existence of cult  pom films,  and
was only prepared to believe in them if he was presented with living members
of  the cult. In the  third place, and most importantly, he  knew Sasha  Blo
himself very well.
     He was a fat, bald, sad, middle-aged father of three,  and his name was
Ed. In  order to pay  the rent on their flat, he wrote simultaneoulsy  under
three or four pseudonyms for several magazines on any topic. He and Tatarsky
had invented the name 'Blo'  together,  borrowing the title  of a bottle  of
bright-blue glass-cleaning  fluid  they'd found  under the  bath (they  were
looking for the vodka  Ed's wife had hidden). The word 'Blo' summoned up the
idea  of  inexhaustible  reserves  of  vital  energy  and  at the same  time
something non-humanoid, which was why Ed used it carefully. He only used  it
for signing articles imbued with such boundless freedom and am-bivalence, so
to speak,  that a common signature such  as Tvanov' or  'Petrov'  would have
been absurd.  There  was  a  great demand  for this ambivalence  in Moscow's
glossy magazines, so great indeed that it posed the question of just who was
controlling its penetration. To be honest, even thinking about the topic was
a  bit frightening, but after reading Sasha Blo's article, Tatarsky suddenly
realised that it wasn't being implanted by some demonic spy  or some  fallen
spirit who had assumed human form, but by Ed and himself.
     Of  course, not just by them alone - Moscow probably  had two  or three
hundred  Eds,  universal minds choking  on the fumes of the  home hearth and
crushed  under the weight of their  children. Their lives were not one  long
sequence  of lines of coke, orgies  and disputes about Burroughs and Warhol,
as  you might have concluded from their writings, but an endless battle with
nappies and Moscow's own omnipresent cockroaches. They weren't obsessed with
arrogant snobbery,  or possessed by serpentine carnal lust or cold dandyism:
they demonstrated no tendencies to devil worship, or even any real readiness
to  drop a  tab of acid occasionally - despite their  casual use of the term
'acid' every  day  of  the  week. What  they  did  have  were problems  with
digestion, money  and  housing, and  in  appearance they resembled not  Gary
Oldman, as the first acquaintance with their writing led you to believe, but
Danny de Vito.
     Tatarsky could  not gaze trustingly into the distant  expanses sketched
for him  by Sasha Blo, because  he  understood the  physiological genesis of
those  expanses in  the bald head of  downtrodden Ed, who was chained to his
computer  in  just the same way as  they  used to chain Austrian soldiers to
their machine-guns during the First World  War. Believing in his product was
harder than achieving  arousal  from telephone sex, when  you  knew that the
voice hoarse  with  passion  speaking  to  you  didn't  belong to the blonde
promised by the photograph, but to an old woman with a cold who was knitting
a sock as she read off a set of standard phrases from a crib soaked  by  the
drops falling from her running nose.
     'But how do we - that is, Ed and me - know what to involve other people
in?' wrote Tatarsky in his notebook.
     From one point of view, of course, it's obvious: intuition. No  need to
inquire about what to  do and how to do it - when you reach a certain degree
of  despair, you just  start  to intuit things for yourself. You  sense  the
dominant tendency, so to speak, with your empty stomach. But  where does the
tendency come from? Who thinks it up, if-- as I'm convinced- everyone in the
world is simply trying to catch it  and sell it, like Ed and me, or to guess
what it is and print it, like the editors, of those glossy magazines?
     His thoughts  on this theme were morose and they were  reflected in his
scenario for a clip for  the washing powder Ariel,  written soon  after this
event.
     The  scenario is based on motifs  from Shakespeare. Loud  music, solemn
and menacing. The opening shot shows a  cliff  on the  seashore. Night. Down
below, menacing  waves rear up in the  dim moonlight. In the  distance is an
ancient  castle, also  illuminated by the moon. Standing on the top  of  the
cliff  is a girl of  incredible  beauty. She  is Miranda. She  is  wearing a
medieval dress of  red velvet and a tall  pointed  cap with a trailing veil.
She raises her arms towards the moon and utters a  strange incantation three
times.  When  she  pronounces  it for  the third time there is a  rumble  of
distant thunder. The music grows louder  and  more menacing. A wide beam  of
light  emerges from the moon, which is visible in a break in the clouds, and
extends  until it  reaches the rocks at  Miranda's feet.  Her face expresses
confusion - she  is  clearly afraid of what is  about to happen, and yet she
wants it. A shadow  slides down the beam of light, coming closer, and as the
melody  reaches its climax, we see a proud  spirit in all his evil beauty  -
his robes are flowing  in  the  wind  and his long  hair  is silvered by the
moonlight. On his head is a slim wreath  set with diamonds. He  is Ariel. He
flies  close  to  Miranda, halts in  mid-air and holds out his hand  to her.
After  a  moment's struggle  Miranda reaches  out her own hand to his.  Next
frame: close-up of two hands approaching each  other. Lower left - Miranda's
pale weak  hand: upper right  - the spirit's  hand, transparent and glowing.
They touch each other, the spirit instantly  transforms into a box of  Ariel
and everything  is  flooded in blinding light.  Next  frame:  two  boxes  of
washing powder. On one it says Ariel. On the other, in pale-grey letters, it
says    Ordinary   Caliban.   Miranda's   voice-over:   'Ariel.   Temptingly
tempestuous'.
     Possibly the specific elements in this clip were  inspired  by  a black
and   white  photograph  that   hung  above  Tatarsky's  desk.   It  was  an
advertisement for some  boutique, showing a young  man  with  long hair  and
carefully tended stubble in a luxurious wide-cut coat carelessly hung across
his shoulders -  the wind filled out the form of  the coat so that it echoed
the sail of a boat visible on the  horizon.  The waves breaking against  the
rocks and splashing up on  to the shore fell just  short of his shiny shoes.
His face was set in  a  harsh, sullen grimace, and somehow he  resembled the
birds  with outstretched wings (maybe  eagles, maybe  seagulls) soaring into
the twilit sky from a supplement to the latest version  of  Photoshop (after
taking a  closer look at the photograph, Tatarsky  decided that  the boat on
the horizon must have come sailing in from there too).
     After contemplating it for  days Tatarsky  finally understood: all  the
cliches  to  which the photograph was alluding had  been born together  with
romanticism in the nineteenth century; their remains, together with those of
the  Count of  Monte Cristo, had survived into  the  twentieth,  but  on the
threshold of the twenty-first the count's legacy had already been completely
squandered. The human mind had sold this  romanticism to itself far too many
times to be able to do any more business on it. Now, no matter how sincerely
you wished to deceive yourself,  it was  virtually  impossible to believe in
any correspondence between the  image that  was  being sold and  its implied
inner content. It was an empty form that had long ago ceased to mean what it
should have meant. Everything was moth-eaten: the thoughts  provoked  by the
sight of  the conventional Niebelung in the studio photograph were not about
the proud  Gothic spirit  implied by the  frothing waves and  sideburns, but
about whether  the photographer charged a  lot, how much the  model got paid
and  whether the model had to pay a fine when his personal lubricant stained
the seat of the trousers from the company's spring collection.
     Tatarsky's  deductions  led  him  into  a  state  of  total  and  utter
confusion.  On  the  one hand, it  seemed  that he  and  Ed crafted  a false
panorama  of  life for others (like  a  battle scene in a museum,  where the
floor  in front  of the spectator is  scattered with sand and worn-out boots
and  shells, but the  tanks and the explosions are only drawn on  the wall),
guided solely by their intuition  as  to what  the punters would swallow. On
the other hand, his own life  was a frustrating attempt to move a bit closer
to the contents of  this panorama. In  essence it was an attempt to run into
the picture drawn on  the wall. Being  a co-author  of this picture made the
attempt more  than grotesque. Of  course - or  so it seemed to Tatarsky -  a
rich man could escape the bounds of  false reality. He could move beyond the
limits of the panorama that was compulsory  for  the  poor. Tatarsky  didn't
actually know much  about  what  the world of the rich was like. There  were
only vague  images  circling  around  in  his  consciousness,  cliches  from
advertising, which he  himself had been rebroadcasting for  such a long time
he  couldn't possibly believe in  them. What was clear to him was  that  you
could only  find out  what prospects opened  up to a man  with a substantial
bank account from the  rich themselves, and on one occasion - by pure chance
- Tatarsky managed to do just that.
     While  he was drinking  away a small  fee in  the  Poor  Folk  bar,  he
eavesdropped on a conversation between two TV chat-show hosts - it was after
midnight and they were continuing a drinking  spree begun  earlier somewhere
else. Tatarsky was sitting just a couple of metres  away from them, but they
paid  no more  attention  to him  than  if he'd  been a  stuffed model  of a
copywriter nailed to the counter in order to brighten up the decor.
     Although both of the showmen were thoroughly drunk, they'd lost none of
that  strange holographic  gleam  m every fold  of  their clothes, as though
their physical bodies were not  actually sitting at the  next table but were
simply being shown  on a huge  television standing next to Tatarsky. When he
noticed  this  inexplicable but  undoubtedly  real  effect,  Tatarsky  found
himself thinking how long it would take them in limbo to scrape away all the
human  attention that had  eaten into the pores of their souls. The  showmen
were  talking shop,  and  Tatarsky gathered  that  one  of  them was  having
problems with his contract.
     'If they'd just extend it for next year/ he said, clenching his fists.
     'Say they do,' the other replied. 'At the end of  the year it'll be the
same thing all over again. And you'll be living on tranquillizers again  ...
And then what?'
     'Then what? Then I've got  a serious  plan.' He slumped over  the table
and  poured himself some vodka. 'I'm just  five hundred thousand short,'  he
said. 'That's what I've got to make.'
     'What plan?' 'You won't tell anyone? Listen ...'
     He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, rummaged around for  a
long while and finally pulled out a sheet of glossy paper folded into four.
     'There/ he said, 'it says it on here... The kingdom of Bhutan. The only
country in the  world where television is  forbidden. Unnerstand? Completely
forbidden. It says here that  not far from  the capital  they have an entire
colony where big  TV  moguls  live. If you  spend  all your  life working in
television, the  very coolest  thing you can  do  when you retire is move to
Bhutan.'
     'Is  that what you need the  five hundred  grand for?' 'No,  I need the
five hundred grand so no one will come looking  for me in Bhutan afterwards.
Can you  just imagine  it? Forbidden.  Not a single television  set anywhere
except in counter-espionage! And the embassies!'
     His companion took the sheet of paper from him, unfolded it and started
reading.
     'You unnerstand?' - the first showman carried on  speaking regardless -
'If  anyone is  keeping  a  television at home and the authorities find  out
about it, the police come round, unnerstand? And they  cart the queer fucker
off to prison. Or maybe they even shoot him.'
     He pronounced the word 'queer' with that sabre-whistle intake of breath
you only ever  hear from latent homosexuals who have deprived themselves  of
the  joys of love in the  name of a perverse misinterpretation of the social
contract. His companion understood everything  and  didn't take offence  -he
was looking through the article.
     'Ah,' he said, 'out of a magazine. It's interesting all right... So who
wrote it? Where is it now... Some guy called Edward Debirsian...'
     Tatarsky almost knocked over his table as  he  stood  up to  go  to the
toilet. He wasn't surprised that TV personalities should feel that way about
their work, although the  degree of these people's spiritual degradation did
make it possible to  allow that some of them might actually like their jobs.
It was something  else that  had  finally finished  him off. Sasha Blo had a
particular foible:  any  material that he liked, he would sign  with his own
real name. And what  he  liked  more than anything else on earth was to pass
off the products of his own  untrammelled imagination as a narrative of real
events - but it was a luxury he allowed himself only very rarely.
     Tatarsky laid down  a  line  of cocaine  on the cold white cheek of the
toilet  tank  and,  without  even  bothering to crush the  lumps, snorted it
through  a rolled-up  hundred-rouble bill  (he was already  out of dollars),
then took out his notebook and wrote:
     In itself a wall on which  a panoramic  view of a non-existent world is
drawn does not change. But for a great deal of money you can buy a view from
the  window  with  a painted  sun,  a  sky-blue  bay  and  a  calm  evening.
Unfortunately, the author of this fragment will again be Ed-but even that is
not important, because the very window the  view is bought for  is also only
drawn in. Then  perhaps the wall on which it is drawn is a  drawing too? But
drawn by whom and on what?
     He raised his eyes  to the wall of the toilet as though in  hopes of an
answer  there. Traced  on  the  tiles in red  felt-tip  pen  were the jolly,
rounded letters of a brief slogan: 'Trapped? Masturbate!'
     Going back  to  the  bar, he sat further away from the TV personalities
and attempted to  lean back and  enjoy it. But it didn't work  for him -  it
never  did.  The  repulsive  Moscow  cocaine,  cut almost  to nothing by the
unwashed  hands of a long chain of dealers, deposited  an entire bouquet  of
medicinal smells in his nasopharynx - everything from streptocide to aspirin
-  and triggered an intense, stressful trembling  in his body. They  did say
the powder they took a hundred and fifty dollars a gramme for in Moscow  was
not cocaine at all,  but a mixture of Estonian speed with an  assortment  of
Russian  pharmaceuticals. As if  that wasn't enough, for some reason half of
the dealers  always wrapped  the powder  in  a glossy advertisement  for the
Toyota  Camry cut out of some magazine,  and  Tatarsky was  tormented by the
unbearable  suspicion that they made a fat living not just at the expense of
other people's health, but by  providing a  PR service  as well. Every  time
Tatarsky asked  himself why he  and others paid  all that money  in order to
subject themselves once again to a humiliating and unhygienic procedure, the
only explanation  he  could  come up with  went  as  follows: people weren't
sniffing cocaine, they were sniffing money, and the rolled-up hundred-dollar
bill required by  the  unwritten order of ritual was actually more important
than  the powder  itself. If cocaine  was sold in chemists' shops for twenty
kopecks a gramme  as a mouthwash for  toothache, he thought, then nobody but
punks would sniff  it - the way it  was, in fact, at the  beginning  of  the
century. But  if some ether-based  glue  sniffed  by juvenile junkies cost a
thousand dollars a bottle, all the gilded youth of Moscow would be delighted
to sniff it, and at presentations and buffet luncheons it would be tres chic
to waft the volatile  chemical vapours around yourself, complain about  your
brain neurons dying off and disappear  for  long periods  into  the  toilet.
Youth fashion magazines would  devote revelatory cover  stories (written, of
course, by Sasha Blo) to  the aesthetics of the plastic bag that was  placed
over the head for this procedure.
     'Oho!'  Tatarsky exclaimed, smacked  himself on the forehead,  took out
his notebook, opened it at the letter 'C', and noted down:
     Youth market colognes (all manufacturers). Link them with money and the
Roman  emperor  Vespasian (tax  on  lavatories, the  saying  'Money  doesn't
smell'). Example:
     MONE Y DOES SMELL! "BENJAMIN" THE NEW COLOGNE FROM HUGO BOSS
     Putting  away  his  notebook, he felt that  the  peak of the  loathsome
sensation  had passed and he was quite strong enough to  walk  as far as the
bar and  get himself a  drink. He  wanted  tequila, but when he  reached the
barman for some reason he ordered Smimoff, which he normally couldn't stand.
He downed one shot right  there at the bar, then  took another and went back
to his  table. In  the  meantime he'd  acquired a companion, a man  of about
forty with long, greasy hair  and a wild  beard, dressed in a crazy  kind of
embroidered  jacket  - in  appearance he was a typical former hippy, one  of
those who had failed to find a place for themselves either in the past or in
the present. Hanging round his neck was a large bronze cross.
     'Excuse me,' said Tatarsky, 'I was sitting here.'
     'So be my guest,' said his new neighbour. 'Don't need the entire table,
do you?'
     Tatarsky shrugged and sat facing him.
     'My name's Grigory,' his neighbour said affably.
     Tatarsky raised his weary eyes to look at him. 'Vova/ he said.
     Catching his glance, Grigory frowned and shook his head in sympathy.
     'You've got the shakes bad,' he said. 'Snorting?'
     'A bit,' said Tatarsky. 'Just now and again.'
     'Fool,' said Grigory. 'Just think about it: the  mucous membrane of the
nose - it's as good as the  exposed surface of the  brain .  . . And did you
ever  think about where that powder came from and  who's been  sticking  his
body parts in it?'
     'Just this moment,' Tatarsky confessed. 'But what's all this about body
parts? What other body parts can you stick in it except your nose?'
     Grigory glanced around, pulled  out  a bottle  of  vodka from under the
table and took a quick swallow from it.
     'Maybe  you've heard of an American writer called  Harold Robbins?'  he
asked, hiding the bottle away.
     'No,' answered Tatarsky.
     'A total arsehole. But all the  English teachers  read him. That's  why
there  are so  many of his books  in Moscow, and the children's knowledge of
the language  is so bad. In one of his  novels there  was this black  guy, a
professional fucker who  pulled rich white dames.  So  before the  procedure
this black dude sprinkled his . ..'
     'OK, I get it,' said Tatarsky. 'I'm going to be sick now.'
     ' .  . . his  massive black dong with pure cocaine,'  Grigory concluded
with satisfaction. 'You  might ask: what's this black  dude got  to  do with
anything?  I'll tell you. I was re-reading Andreiev's "Rosa Mundi" recently,
the part about the soul of the nation.  Andreiev says it's a woman and she's
called Navna. Then afterwards  I had this vision -  she's  lying  there like
she's sleeping on this  white rock, and leaning  over her there's this vague
black figure, with short little wings, you can't see his face, and he's just
giving her it...'
     Grigory pulled an invisible control column in towards his stomach  with
his hands.
     'You want to know what it is you're all  using?'  he whispered, leaning
his leering face close to Tatarsky. 'Exactly.  What he sprinkles on himself.
And at the moment he sticks it in, you're all shooting up and snorting. When
he pulls it out,  you  all go running off trying  to find more  . . . And he
just keeps  on sticking it in and pulling it out, sticking it in and pulling
it out...'
     Tatarsky leaned down into the gap between the table and the counter and
puked.  He  glanced   up  cautiously  at  the  barman:  he  was  engaged  in
conversation with some customers and didn't seem to have  noticed  anything.
Looking  around, Tatarsky  noticed an advertising  poster  on  the wall.  It
showed the  nineteenth-century  poet  Tyutchev  wearing  a pince-nez, with a
glass in  his hand  and a rug  across his knees. His piercingly sad gaze was
directed out of  the  window, and with his  free  hand he was stroking a dog
sitting  beside  him. The strange  thing was, though,  that Tyutchev's chair
wasn't standing on  the floor, but on the ceiling. Tatarsky  looked a little
lower and read the slogan:
     RUSSIA  - NO WAY  IS THERE  TO UNDERSTAND HER NO WAY HER SECRET SOUL TO
RENDER SMIRNOFF
     Everything   was  calm.   Tatarsky  straightened  up.  He  was  feeling
significantly better.
     Grigory leaned back in his chair and took another swig from his bottle.
'It's disgusting,' he asserted. 'Life should be lived cleanly.'
     'Oh, yes? And how's that done?' Tatarsky asked, wiping his mouth with a
paper napkin.
     'Nothing but LSD. Only via the gut and always with a prayer.'
     Tatarsky shook his head like  a dog that has  just clambered out of the
water. 'Where can you get it?'
     'What do you mean?' Grigory was offended. 'Just you come round here.'
     Tatarsky obediently got up, walked round the table and sat beside him.
     'I've  been collecting  for  eight years,' said Grigory, taking a stamp
album out from under his jacket. 'Take a look at that.'
     Tatarsky opened the album. 'Well I'll be damned,' he said. 'Look at all
those different ones.'
     'That's nothing,' said Grigory. 'What I've got here's just for swapping
and selling. I've got two shelves of these albums back at home.'
     'And you mean they all have different effects?'
     Grigory nodded.
     'But why?'
     'In the  first place,  because  the formula's different.  I've not gone
into it too deeply myself, but there's always  something added to the acid -
phenamine maybe, maybe barbiturate or something else - and when it all works
together, the  effect's cumulative. But apart  from that, the most important
thing  is the  drawing. There's  no getting away  from the fact that  you're
swallowing Mel  Gibson or Mitsubishi,  get  it? Your  mind remembers it; and
when  the  acid  reaches it,  everything follows  a set  path. It's hard  to
explain ... have you ever tried it once at least?'
     'No,' said Tatarsky. 'Fly-agarics are more in my line.'
     Grigory shuddered and crossed himself.
     'Then  what  am I  doing  telling  you  about  it?'  he said,  glancing
mistrustfully up at Tatarsky. 'You should understand well enough.'
     'Yes, I understand, I understand,' said Tatarsky  casually.  'And these
here,  with the skull and cross-bones  -  does anyone take those? Are  there
people who like those?'
     "They take all sorts. People come in all sorts, too, you know.'
     Tatarsky  turned over  the page. 'Hey, those are pretty,' he said.  'Is
that Alice in Wonderland?'
     'Aha. Only that's a block. Twenty-five tabs. Expensive. This one here's
good, with the crucifixion. Only I don't  know  how  it'd go  down on top of
your  fly-agarics. I wouldn't recommend the one  with Hitler. It's  euphoric
for a couple of hours, but afterwards there's bound to be a  few seconds  of
eternal torment in hell.'
     'How can you have a few seconds of  eternal torment? If it's only a few
seconds, how come they're eternal?'
     'You just  have  to  go through  it. Yeah. And  you might  not make  it
through.'
     'I get you/  said Tatarsky, turning the page. 'And that glitch of yours
about "Rosa Mundi" - which one was that from? Is it in here?'
     'Not a  glitch, it was a vision,' Grigory corrected him. 'There's  none
in  here.  It  was  a rare tab with a  dragon defeating  St George. From the
German series: "John the  Evangelist's Bad Trip". 1 wouldn't recommend  that
one either. They're a bit longer and narrower than usual, and hard too. Less
like a tab than a tablet with a label  on it. A lot of stuff. You know what,
I'd recommend  you to try this one,  with the blue Ra-jneesh.  It's kind and
gentle. And it'll sit well on top of the booze.'
     Tatarsky's attention was caught by three identical lilac rectangles set
between  a  tab with a picture of  the  Titanic and a tab with some laughing
eastern deity.
     'These three here  all the same, what  are they?' he asked. 'Who's this
drawn on them? With the  beard and the  cap? I can't tell whether it's Lenin
or Uncle Sam.'
     Grigory chuckled in approval.
     'There's instinct for you,' he said. 'Who it  is that's drawn on them I
don't know.  But it's really wild stuff. The difference is  the acid's mixed
with a metabolic. So  it cuts  in really sharp and  sudden, in  about twenty
minutes. And the dose in  them is enough for a whole platoon  of soldiers. I
wouldn't give stuff like that to you, but  if you've been eating fly-agarics
...'
     Tatarsky noticed the security guard looking at them attentively.
     'I'll take them,' he said. 'How much?'
     'Twenty-five dollars,' said Grigory.
     'All I've got left is a hundred roubles.'
     Grigory thought for a second and nodded.
     Tatarsky held  out the banknote rolled into a narrow tube, took a stamp
out of the album and tucked it into his breast pocket.
     "There you go' said Grigory, putting his album away. 'And don't  you go
snorting that garbage  any more. Ifs never done anybody any good. Just makes
you tired and ashamed about yesterday and makes your nose bleed.'
     'Do you know what comparative positioning is?' Tatarsky asked.
     'No,' said Grigory. 'What is it?'
     'It's an advertising technique you're an absolute master of"





     Next morning  Tatarsky was woken by  the phone.  His first reaction was
annoyance - the phone had interrupted a very strange and beautiful dream, in
which  Tatarsky was taking  an examination. The dream had started  with  him
drawing three question tickets one after the other,  and then setting off up
a long  spiral staircase like there used to be in  one of the blocks  of his
first  institute, where  he studied electric furnaces. It  was  up to him to
find  the  examiners himself,  but every  time  he opened one of  the doors,
instead of an examination hall  he found himself gazing into the  sunset-lit
field outside Moscow where he and Gireiev had gone walking on that memorable
evening. This was very strange, because his search  had already taken him up
several floors above ground level.
     When he was fully awake  he suddenly remembered  Grig-ory and his stamp
album. 'I bought it,' he thought in horror, 'and I ate it. . .' He leapt out
of bed, went  over to the  desk, pulled out the top drawer and saw the stamp
with the  smiling lilac face looking up at him. 'No,' he thought, 'thank God
for  that. . .' Placing the stamp in the  very farthest comer of the drawer,
he covered it with a box of pencils.
     Meanwhile the phone  was  still ringing. 'Pugin/  Tatarsky  thought  to
himself and picked up the receiver.
     'Hello,'  said  an  unfamiliar voice, 'can  I  speak  to  Mr  Tatarsky,
please?'
     'Speaking.'
     'Good  morning.  This is  Vladimir  Khanin  from  the Privy  Counsellor
agency.  I  was  left your number by Dima Pugin. Could we maybe get together
some time today? Right away would be best.'
     'What's happened?' Tatarsky asked,  realising immediately from the verb
'left' that something bad must have happened to Pugin.
     'Dima's  no  longer with us. I know you worked with  him, and he worked
with me. So indirectly we're acquainted. In any case, I have several of your
works we were waiting for an answer on lying here on my desk.'
     'But how did it happen?'
     'When we meet,' said his new acquaintance. 'Write down the address.'
     An hour and  a  half later Tatarsky walked into the immense building of
the Pravda complex, the building that  had once housed the editorial offices
of almost all the Soviet newspapers. A pass was ready and waiting for him at
the duty desk. He  went up to the  eighth floor and found the room with  the
number he  needed; there  was a  metal  plate on the door bearing the words:
'Ideological Department'  - apparently  a  leftover  from Soviet  times. 'Or
maybe not,' thought Tatarsky.
     Khanin was alone in the room. He was a middle-aged man with a pleasant,
bearded face, and he was sitting at a desk, hastily writing something down.
     'Come in and  sit down,' he said, without  looking  up.  'I won't be  a
moment.'
     Tatarsky took two  steps into the  room,  saw  the  advertising  poster
sellotaped  to the wall and almost choked on the spot. According to the text
under  the photograph,  it  was an advertisement for a  new type of  holiday
involving the alternate  use  of  jointly rented apartments  -  Tatarsky had
already heard talk that  it was  just  another  big rip-off, like everything
else.  But  that  wasn't the problem. The metre-wide photograph showed three
palm   trees  on  some  paradise  island,  and  those  three  palms  were  a
point-for-point copy  of the holographic image from the packet of Parliament
cigarettes he'd  found on  the ziggurat. Even that was nothing compared with
the  slogan. Written in large  black letters under the  photograph  were the
words:
     IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!
     'I told you to sit down!  There's  a chair over here.'  Khanin's  voice
roused Tatarsky from his  trance. He sat down  and  awkwardly shook the hand
that was extended towards him over the desk.
     'What's the problem over there?' Khanin asked, squinting  across at the
poster.
     'Oh, nothing/ said Tatarsky. 'Deja vu.'
     'Ah! I  understand/ said Khanin in a tone  of voice  that  suggested he
really had understood something. 'Right, then. First of all about Pugin ...'
     Gradually recovering his composure, Tatarsky began to listen.
     The robbery had obviously  been an  inside  job and, taking  everything
into  consideration, the thief must  have  known  that Pugin had worked as a
taxi-driver in New York.  It  was a horrible  and rather  improbable  story:
while  Pugin was warming up the  motor of his car, two guys had climbed into
the  back  seat  and  given  him  an  address:  Second  Avenue,   corner  of
Twenty-Seventh Street. Under some kind of reflex  hypnosis  Pugin had driven
off, then  turned into  a side street -  and that  was all he had managed to
tell the police and the doctors. Seven bullet wounds had  been found in  his
body - they'd fired straight through the back of his  seat. Several thousand
dollars  Pugin was  carrying with him were missing, as  well as some file or
other that he kept raving about until the moment of death.
     'Except  that the file,' Khanin said sadly, 'isn't missing. Here it is.
He left it  here, forgot  it. Why don't  you take a  look?  I'll just make a
couple of calls in the meantime.'
     Tatarsky  picked  up  the  loose-leaf  binder.  He  remembered  Pugin's
mustachioed face, just  as pasty and colourless  as this cardboard,  and his
black-button  eyes,  like  plastic  studs.  The folder  evidently  contained
Pugin's own works - how many times  had he hinted that he was more than just
a passive observer when it came to judging what other  people  produced? 'He
probably started  back  in  New York,' Tatarsky  thought to  himself.  While
Khanin was discussing some rates or other on the phone, Tatarsky came across
two genuine masterpieces. The first was for Calvin Klein:
     An elegant, rather  effeminate Hamlet (general  sty lisation -- unisex)
in black tights and a light blue tunic worn next to the skin, wanders slowly
around a graveyard. Beside  one of the graves he halts, bends down and picks
up  a  pink skull out  of the  grass.  Close-up: Hamlet  knitting  his brows
slightly as he gazes at the skull. View from the rear:
     close-up  of taut  buttocks with  the letters  'CK'. New camera  angle:
skull, hand, letters 'CK' on the blue tunic. Next  frame:  Hamlet tosses the
skull  into the air and kicks  it.  The skull soars upwards, then  arcs back
down and falls straight through the bronze wreath  held by a bronze angel on
one of the graves, just as though it were a basketball hoop. Slogan:
     JUST BE. CALVIN KLEJN
     The  second slogan Tatarsky liked was  intended for  the Gap  chain  of
shops in  Moscow. The proposal was for a poster showing Anton Chekhov, first
in a  striped suit, and then in  a striped jacket but with no  trousers: the
gap between his bare, skinny legs was emphasised in strong contrast, so that
it  resembled a  Gothic  hourglass. Then  the outline  of  the  gap  between
Chekhov's legs was repeated, but without Chekhov;
     now it really had become an hourglass, with almost all the sand already
fallen through into the bottom half. The text was:
     RUSSIA   WAS   ALWAYS  NOTORIOUS  FOR  THE  GAP  BETWEEN  CULTURE   AND
CIVILISATION.  NOW THERE IS NO MORE CULTURE. NO MORE CIVILISATION. THE  ONLY
THING THAT REMAINS IS THE GAP. THE WAY THEY SEE YOU.
     A  few  pages  further  on,  Tatarsky  came  across  his  own  text for
Parliament. Suddenly it was clear to him that  Pugin hadn't  invented any of
the  other pieces either. By this stage his imagination had already built up
the  image of  a  masked giant of advertising  thought,  capable of  punning
fluently  on  Shakespeare  or Russian history at will.  But like  some heavy
metal  from the bottom of the periodic table, this virtual  Pugin existed in
Tatarsky's  consciousness   for  no  more  than  a  few  seconds  before  he
disintegrated.
     Khanin said goodbye  and hung up the phone. Tatarsky looked  up and was
amazed  to see a bottle of tequila, two glasses and a saucer of lemon slices
standing  on the desk  -Khanin  had deftly  set everything up  while  he was
talking.
     'One for the departed?' he suggested.
     Tatarsky nodded. They clinked  glasses and  drank. Tatarsky squeezed  a
slice of lemon between his gums  and began nervously composing  a  phrase to
suit the occasion, but the telephone rang again.
     'What's that?  What's  that?' Khanin said into the  receiver.  'I don't
know. This is a very  serious matter. You go straight round to the Institute
of Apiculture ... Yes, yes, to the tower.'
     He hung up and looked intently at Tatarsky.
     'And now,' he said, removing the  tequila from the table, 'let's get to
grips  with your  latest works, if  you have  no objection. I presume you've
understood that Dima was bringing them to me?'
     Tatarsky nodded.
     'Right,  then.  As  far as Parliament is concerned  I must admit,  it's
good. But once you've latched on to a theme like that, why do you hold back?
Relax ! Let yourself go all the way!  Put a Yeltsin on all four tanks with a
glass in his hand.'
     'That's  an  idea,' Tatarsky agreed, inspired,  sensing he was  sitting
opposite a man of real  understanding. 'But  then we'd have to take out  the
parliament building, give each  Yeltsin  a rose and make it an advertisement
for  that  whisky ...  What's  it  called  - the  one with the roses  on the
label...'
     'Four  Roses bourbon?' Khanin said, and chuckled. 'Why not?  We  could.
Make a note of it somewhere for yourself.'
     He pulled several sheets of paper held together by a paper-clip towards
himself, and Tatarsky  immediately recognised the project  that had cost him
so  much  effort  for Tampako,  a  company that produced juices but for some
reason intended to sell shares - he'd given it to Pugin two weeks before. It
wasn't  a scenario  but  a  concept,  that  is,  a  product  of  a  somewhat
paradoxical genre  in which the  author explains,  as it  were, to very rich
people how  they should earn their living and asks them to give him a little
bit of money for doing it. The pages of the familiar text were covered  with
dense red scribblings.
     'Aha,' said Khanin, glancing over  the markings, 'here I see you've got
problems. In the  first  place, they took serious offence  at  one  of  your
pieces of advice.'
     'Which one?'
     'I'll  read it to you,'  said Khanin, leafing through the pages, 'where
is it now ...  it was underlined in red ... but almost  all of this  part is
underlined . . . aha, here it is - triple underlining. Listen:
     And so there  exist  two  methods for advertising  shares: the approach
that shapes the  investor s image of the issuing firm, and the approach that
shapes the  investor's  image of  the  investor.  In  the  language  of  the
professional  these  approaches are  called  'where  to invest'  and 'who to
invest with'. . .
     'No, they actually liked that bit... aha, here it is:
     In our opinion, before the campaign begins it would make good  sense to
think  about changing the  name of the firm.  The  reason  for this  is that
Russian TV carries a lot of advertising  for Tampax  sanitary products. This
concept  is so  firmly  positioned  in  the  consumers'  consciousness  that
displacing   and  replacing  it  would   involve  immense  expenditure.  The
associative link  Tampako-Tampax  is  exceptionally  inappropriate/or a firm
that  produces  soft  drinks.  In our  opinion, it  is enough to change  the
penultimate  vowel  in  the  firm's  name:  'Tampuko'  or   'Tampeko'.  This
completely eliminates the negative association ...'
     Khanin looked up. 'You've learned  a lot of good words, can't fault you
there,' he  said. 'But  why don't you understand  you  just don't  go making
suggestions  like that?  Here they've  poured  their life's  blood into this
Tampako of theirs. For them it means ... To keep it short, these people have
totally identified themselves with their product, and you start telling them
things like this. You might  as well tell a mother: your son's a real freak,
of  course,  but  we'll  give  his  face  a  couple of  licks  of  paint and
everything'll be just fine.'
     'But the name really is appalling.'
     'Just who are you trying to please, them or yourself?'
     Khanin was right;  and  Tatarsky felt  doubly stupid when he remembered
how he had  explained the very same idea  to the guys in Draft Podium at the
very beginning of his career.
     'What about the concept in general?' he asked. 'There's a lot of  other
stuff in it.'
     Khanin turned over another page. 'How  can I put it? Here's another bit
they've underlined, at the end,  where you go on about  shares again... I'll
read it:
     Thus the answer to the question 'where  to invest is 'in  America', and
the answer to the question 'who to invest with' is 'with everyone who didn'/
invest  in the various pyramid schemes, but waited  until it was possible to
invest in America'. This is the  psychological crystallisation following the
first stage of the  campaign - note that the advertising  should not promise
to place the investors  'funds in  America, but it should arouse the feeling
thatit'will'happen...
     'So why the hell did you underline that? Really smart  that, is it? OK,
what comes next...
     The effect  is achieved by  the extensive use in the image sequence  of
stars and stripes, dollars and eagles.  It is proposed that  the main symbol
of the campaign should be a sequoia tree,  with hundred-dollar bills instead
of leaves, which  would evoke a subconscious association with the money tree
in the story ofPinocchio ...'
     'So what's wrong with that?' asked Tatarsky.
     'The sequoia is a conifer.'
     Tatarsky said nothing for a few seconds while he explored a hole he had
suddenly  discovered  in his tooth with the  tip of his  tongue  ... Then he
said: 'Never mind  that. We can roll up the hundred-dollar bills into tubes.
You know, it could be  even better because  it could result  in  a  positive
psychological crystallisation in the minds of a signi-'
     'Do you know what "schlemazi" means?' Khanin interrupted.
     'No.'
     'Me  neither. They've written here in the margin that they  don't  want
this "schlemazi" - that's you - to be  let anywhere near their orders again.
They don't want you.'
     'Fair enough,' said Tatarsky. 'So they  don't want  me. And  what if  a
month from now  they change their  name? And in two months  they start doing
what I suggested? Then what?'
     'Then nothing,' said Khanin. 'You know that.'
     'Yes, I  know,' said Tatarsky  with a sigh.  'And what about the  other
orders? There was one for West cigarettes in there.'
     'Another wash-out,'  said  Khanin. 'You always  used  to  do well  with
cigarettes, but now ...'
     He turned over a few more pages. 'What can I say ... Image sequence ...
where is it now? ...there it is:
     Two naked men shot from behind, one tall and one short, arms round each
other's hips, hitch-hiking on the highway.  The short one has a pack of West
in his hand, the tall one has  his arm  raised  to stop a car - a light-blue
Cadillac that's coming down the road.  The hand of the short man holding the
pack of cigarettes  is set in the same line as the uplifted arm of the  tall
man, thereby creating another layer of meaning -'choreographic':  the camera
seems  to  have frown  a single  moment in a  passionately emotional  dance,
filled with the anticipation of approaching freedom. Slogan: Go West.
     'That's from a song by those  Sex-Shop Dogs, the one they made from our
anthem, right? That part is OK. But then you have this  long paragraph about
the heterosexual part of the target group. What did you write that for?'
     'No, well,  I...  I  just  thought if the customer raised the  point he
would know we'd covered it...'
     'The  customer raised  a  point  all  right,  but  not  that  one.  The
customer's an old-time hood from Rostov who's been  paid two million dollars
in cigarettes by some Orthodox metropolitan. In the margin beside  the  word
"heterosexual" he's written - the  bandit,  that is,  not  the metropolitan:
"Wots he on abowt,  queers?"And he  turned the  concept  down. Pity - it's a
masterpiece. Now if it  had been  the  other way round  - if  the bandit was
paying back the metropolitan - it would all have gone down a treat. But what
can you do? This business of ours is a lottery.'
     Tatarsky said nothing. Khanin rolled a cigarette between his fingers to
soften it and lit up.
     'A lottery,' he repeated with emphasis. 'Just recently you haven't been
doing too well in the draw, and I know why.'
     'Tell me.'
     'Well, now,' said  Khanin, 'it's a very subtle point.  First you try to
understand what people will like, and then you hand it  to them in  the form
of a lie. But what people want is for you to hand them the same thing in the
form of the truth.'
     That was not at all what Tatarsky had been expecting.
     'What's that? What do you mean  by  "in the form of the  truth"?'  'You
don't believe in what you do. Your heart  isn't  in it/ 'No, it isn't,' said
Tatarsky. 'Of course it isn't. What do you expect? Do you want me to give my
heart  to Tampako?  There's not a single whore  on  Pushkin  Square would do
that.' 'OK, OK,  just drop  the pose,' said Khanin, frowning. 'No, no,' said
Tatarsky, calming  down,  'don't  get me wrong. We're all  in the same frame
nowadays; you just have to position yourself correctly, right?' 'Right.'
     'So  why  do I say  not a  single whore  would  do it? Not because  I'm
disgusted.  It's just that a whore  always collects her money every  time  -
whether she pleased the client  or not  -but I have  to ... You know  what I
mean. And  the client only makes  his mind  up afterwards ... There's no way
any whore would work on those terms.'
     'A  whore might not,' Khanin interrupted, 'but we will,  if we  want to
survive in this business. And we'll go even further than that.'
     'I don't know,' said Tatarsky. 'I'm not absolutely convinced.'
     'Oh,  yes  we  will.  Babe,'  said  Khanin,  and  looked  straight into
Tatarsky's eyes.
     Tatarsky tensed. 'How do you know my name's not Vova, but Babe?'
     'Pugin told me. And as far as positioning is concerned . . . Let's just
say you've positioned yourself and I get  where you're coming from. Will you
come and work for me full-time?'
     Tatarsky took  another look at the poster with the three palm trees and
the promise of never-ending metamorphoses.
     'What as?'he asked.
     'A creative.'
     'Is that a writer?' Tatarsky asked. Translated into ordinary Russian?'
     Khanin smiled gently.
     'We don't need any fucking writers here,' he said. 'A creative, Babe, a
creative.'
     Out  on the  street,  Tatarsky  wandered slowly in the direction of the
centre.
     He wasn't feeling particularly overjoyed at finding himself employed so
unexpectedly. One  thing was really  bothering  him: he  was sure he'd never
told  Pugin the  story of  his  real name; he'd always just  called  himself
Vladimir  or  Vova. Of course, there  was just  an infinitesimal chance that
he'd blurted it out  when they  were drinking  and then forgotten about it -
they  had  got very  drunk  together  a  couple of times. Any other possible
explanations drew so heavily on genetically transmitted fear of the KGB that
Tatarsky dismissed them out of hand. Anyway, it wasn't important.
     'This  game has no name,' he whispered, and clenched his fists  in  the
pockets of his jacket.
     The uncompleted Soviet  ziggurat rose up in his  memory  in such minute
detail that he  felt the forgotten tingling sensation of the fly-agaric  run
through his fingers several times. The mystic force had gone a  bit over the
top this  time  in presenting so many signs  at once  to his startled  soul:
first  the  poster  with  the palms  and the familiar line of text, then the
words 'tower'  and  'lottery' that  Khanin had used several times  in  a few
minutes as though by chance, and finally  the name 'Babe', which had alarmed
him more than anything else.
     'Perhaps  I  misheard,'  thought  Tatarsky.   'Perhaps  it's  just  his
pronunciation ... But then I asked how he knew my name was Babe, and he said
he knew from Pugin. No, I should never get drunk like that, never.'
     After about  forty minutes of slow,  pensive  walking he found  himself
beside the statue of  Mayakovsky.  He stopped and studied  it  closely for a
little while. The bronze jacket in which Soviet power had invariably dressed
the poet was back in  fashion now -  Tatarsky remembered  that only recently
he'd seen exactly the same style in a Kenzo advertisement.
     After walking round the statue and admiring the firm, reliable backside
of  the Party's loudmouth,  Tatarsky  finally realised that  depression  had
invaded  his soul.  There  were two  ways he could get rid  of it  - down  a
hundred  grammes  of vodka,  or spend  about  a  hundred  dollars  on buying
something immediately (some time ago Tatarsky had realised with astonishment
that the two actions evoked a similar state of light euphoria lasting for an
hour to an hour and a half).
     He didn't fancy the vodka in view of the newly surfaced memories of his
drinking  bouts with  Pugin. Tatarsky glanced around. There were  plenty  of
shops, but  they were all very specialised. He had  no  real use for blinds,
for  instance.  He began  peering  at  the  signboards  on the far  side  of
Tverskaya Street and suddenly started in amazement. This was too much: at an
acute  angle  to him  on the wall of a building on the Garden  Ring he could
make  out  a  white  signboard  bearing  the  clearly  distinguishable  word
'ISHTAR'.
     A  couple of  minutes  later, slightly  out of  breath,  he was already
approaching the  entrance.  It was a tiny fly-by-night shop, newly converted
from a sandwich bar, but already bearing the imprint of decline and imminent
extinction: a poster in the window promised a fifty-per-cent sale.
     Inside, in the cramped space doubled by the mirrors on the walls, there
were several long  rails  with  various types  of jeans and a long shelf  of
shoes, mostly  trainers.  Tatarsky cast a weary glance over the splendour of
leather and rubber.  Ten years ago a new pair  of trainers brought  in  from
abroad by a distant relative used to mark the starting point of a new period
in your life - the design on the sole was a simulacrum of the pattern on the
palm of  your hand,  from which  you  could forecast the  future for  a year
ahead. The happiness  that could be  extracted from  such an acquisition was
boundless. Nowadays, to earn the right to the same  amount you had to buy at
least a  jeep,  maybe even a house. Tatarsky didn't have that kind of money,
and he didn't expect to have it at any time in the foreseeable future. True,
he  could buy  a  whole  truckload of trainers, but they didn't gladden  his
heart  in  the same way any more.  Tatarsky wrinkled up  his  forehead as he
struggled to remember what this  phenomenon was called  in  the professional
jargon;  and when he remembered,  he took  out his notebook and opened it at
the  letter  'R'.  "The  inflation  of happiness,' he jotted  down  hastily:
'having to  pay more  money  for the same  amount.  Use in advertising  real
estate:  Ladies and gentlemen!  These walls  offer you sure-fire  protection
against cognitive dissonance'. You need never even know what it is.'
     'What are you looking for?' the salesgirl asked. She definitely did not
like the idea of this customer writing things down in a notebook - that sort
of thing ended in unannounced visits from inspectors of one kind or another.
     'I'd like some shoes,' Tatarsky replied with a polite smile. 'Something
light, for summer.'
     'Ordinary shoes? Trainers? Gym shoes?'
     'Gym shoes' said Tatarsky. 'It's years since I've seen any gym shoes.'
     The girl led him over to the shelf. "There you are/ she said. 'Platform
soles.'
     Tatarsky picked up a thick-soled white gym shoe.
     'What make is it?' he asked.
     'No name,' said the girl. 'From England.'
     'What d'you mean?' he asked in astonishment.
     The  girl turned the back of the gym shoe to face him, and there on the
heel he saw a rubber badge with the words: 'NO NAME'.
     'Do you have a forty-three?' Tatarsky asked.
     He left the shop wearing his  new gym shoes, his old shoes in a plastic
bag. He was  absolutely sure now that there was some meaning to the route he
was  following today and he was afraid of making a mistake by taking a wrong
turning. He hesitated for a moment and then set off down Sadovaya Street.
     About fifty metres further on he came  across a tobacco kiosk, but when
he  stepped up  to buy  some cigarettes, Tatarsky  was amazed  to see a wide
range of condoms looking more like the display in a chemist's shop. Standing
out  clearly  among  the  Malaysian Kama-Sutra  condoms with  their bob-bled
shafts  was a  strange semi-transparent device of blue rubber covered with a
multitude of thick knobs, looking very much like the head  of the main demon
from the film Hell-raiser. The label underneath it said 're-usable'.
     But  Tatarsky's attention was  caught by a neat black,  yellow and  red
rectangle with a  German eagle in a  double black circle that looked like an
official  seal and the inscription  'Sico'.  It looked so much like a  small
banner that Tatarsky bought two packs  on the spot. On the  back of the pack
it said: 'In buying Sico condoms, you put your  trust in traditional  German
quality control.'
     'Clever/ thought Tatarsky. 'Very clever.'
     He pondered the theme for several seconds, trying  to  invent a slogan.
Eventually the phrase he was looking for lit up in his head.
     'Sico. A Porsche in the  world of condoms/ he whispered, and wrote down
his invention.  Then  he put  his notebook  away  and looked around. He  was
standing  on the comer  of Sadovo-Triumfalnaya Street and some other  street
that branched off to the right. There on the wall in front of his face was a
poster with the  words: "The Path to Your Self and a  yellow  arrow pointing
round the corner.  Tatarsky's  heart skipped  a  beat,  and then  the  vague
realisation dawned that The Path to Your Self was a shop.
     'Of course, what else?' Tatarsky muttered to himself.
     He  only found the shop after weaving his way for  ages  through nearby
yards and passages - near the end of his journey  he remembered that Gireiev
had  mentioned this shop to him, but he'd used  the abbreviated form of  its
name, PYS. There were no large signboards anywhere to be seen, nothing but a
small  board  with  the  handwritten  word  'Open'  in  the  doorway  of  an
ordinary-looking  two-storey building. Tatarsky realised,  of  course,  that
things  hadn't  been  arranged  like this through lack of foresight,  but in
order to induce  a feeling of esoteric anticipation. Nonetheless, the method
worked on him  as well - as he climbed the  stairs leading into the shop, he
was aware of a sensation of subtle reverence.
     Once  inside the  door  he knew  that instinct had led him to the right
place.  Hanging above the  counter was a black tee shirt with  a portrait of
Che Guevara and the inscription: 'Rage Against the Machine'. On the piece of
cardboard under the tee shirt it said: 'Bestseller of the month!'  There was
nothing surprising about that - Tatarsky knew very well (he had even written
about it in  one of his concepts) that  in the area of radical youth culture
nothing  sells  as  well as well-packaged and  politically correct rebellion
against  a  world  that  is  ruled  by  political correctness  and  in which
everything is packaged to be sold.
     'What sizes do  you have?' he  asked the sales assistant, a very pretty
girl in a vaguely Babylonian-Assyrian style.
     "There's only one left,' she answered. 'Just your size.'
     He  paid,  put the tee  shirt in  his  shoulder-bag  and then  froze in
indecision at the counter.
     'We've got  a new lot of  crystal balls, better buy one before they all
go,'  purred the girl, and she began sorting out  a pile of children's  bibs
with inscriptions in runic characters.
     'What are they for?' Tatarsky asked.
     'For meditation.'
     Tatarsky was just about to ask whether you were supposed to meditate on
something through the crystal balls or something  actually in  them, when he
suddenly noticed a small shelf  on the wall - it had been  hidden behind the
tee  shirt he had  just  bought.  Slumbering on the  shelf  under  a clearly
visible layer of dust were two objects of an uncertain nature.
     'Tell me,' he said, 'what are those things up there? Is that  a  flying
saucer or something? What's that pattern on it?'
     'That's a supreme practice frisbee/ said the girl, 'and what you call a
pattern is a blue letter "hum".'
     'But  what's it  for?'  asked  Tatarsky,  a  vague memory  of something
connected  with  mushrooms and Gireiev nudging briefly  at the  edge  of his
awareness. 'How is it different from an ordinary frisbee?'
     The  girl twisted  her  lips into a wry expression.  'When you  throw a
frisbee with a blue letter "hum", you're not simply throwing a plastic disc,
but  accumulating merit. Ten  minutes throwing a  frisbee with a blue letter
"hum"  generates  the  same  amount  of  merit as  three  hours  of  samadhi
meditation or one hour of vipassana meditation.'
     'A-ha/ Tatarsky drawled uncertainly. 'But merit in whose eyes?'
     'What do you mean, in whose eyes!' the girl said, raising her eyebrows.
'Are you buying or do you just want to talk?'
     'I'm buying,'  said Tatarsky. 'But I  have  to  know what  I'm  buying.
What's that to the right of the supreme practice?'
     'That's a ouija board, a classic.'
     'What's it for?'
     The girl sighed. She was obviously tired of dealing with fools all  day
long. She took the ouija board down from the shelf and set it on the counter
in front of Tatarsky.
     'You stand it  on a sheet of paper,' she said. 'Or you can attach it to
a  printer with these clips here. In that case you put the  paper in through
here and set the line print speed to 'slow'. It's easier if you load a roll.
In  this slot here  you  put  a pen  - best  to  buy  a  helium one, with  a
reservoir.  You put your  hands  on it like  this, see? Then  you enter into
contact  with the spirit and just let your hands move however they want. The
pen will write out the text that's received.'
     'Listen,' said Tatarsky, 'please  don't be angry, I really want to know
- what spirit am I supposed to contact?'
     'I'll tell you if you're buying.'
     Tatarsky took out  his wallet and counted out the money. For a piece of
varnished plywood on three wheels the ouija board was refreshingly expensive
-  and  this disproportion between  price and object  inspired a trust  that
could hardly have been generated by any explanation, no matter how profound.
     'There you go,' he said, putting the banknotes on the counter. 'So what
spirit do I get in contact with?'
     'The answer to that  question depends on your level of personal power,'
said the girl, 'and especially on your  belief in  the existence of spirits.
If you stop your internal dialogue using the method from Castaneda's  second
volume,  you enter into contact  with the  spirit  of  the abstract. But  if
you're  a Christian or  a Satanist, you  can contact a specific spirit. .  .
Which kinds are you interested in?'
     Tatarsky shrugged.
     The girl lifted up the crystal hanging on a narrow black leather  strap
round her neck  and looked at Tatarsky through it for two  or three seconds,
gazing directly at the centre of his forehead.
     'What kind of job are you in?' she asked. 'What do you do?'
     'Advertising,' Tatarsky answered.
     The girl slipped her  hand under  the counter and took  out an ordinary
exercise book with  squared paper  and spent some time leafing through pages
covered with tables  in which  the  columns were completely filled with fine
handwriting.
     'It  would be best  for  you,' she said  at last,  'to  regard the text
received  as a free  discharge of subconscious psychic energy facilitated by
the motor  skills of writing. A  kind of spring-cleaning for an  advertising
man's personal Augean stables.  That approach will be  less offensive to the
spirits.'
     'I beg  your pardon,' said Tatarsky, 'do  you mean to tell  me that the
spirits will be offended when they find out I work in advertising?'
     'Yes, I think  so. So the best protection against  their wrath would be
to doubt their existence. When it comes down to it, everything in this world
is  a  matter  of  interpretation,  and a quasi-scientific  description of a
spiritualist seance  is  just  as  correct  as  any  other.  And  then,  any
enlightened spirit will readily agree that he doesn't exist.'
     'Interesting. But how will the spirits guess that I'm  in  advertising?
Is it written on my forehead or something?'
     'No,' said the girl. 'It's written in the adverts that came out of your
forehead.'
     Tatarsky was  about  to  take  offence  at that, but after  a  moment's
consideration he realised that he actually felt flattered.
     'I'll tell you what,' he said,  'if I need a consultation  on spiritual
matters, I'll come to you. You don't mind, do you?'
     'All things are in the hands of Allah,' the girl answered.
     'I  don't  know  about that,'  said  a  young  man with dilated pupils,
swinging round from the huge  crystal ball into which he  had been gazing to
face the girl. 'All things?  What about  Buddha-consciousness? The hands  of
Allah  only  exist in Buddha-consciousness. You won't argue with  that, will
you?'
     The girl behind the counter smiled politely.
     'Of  course  not,'  she  said.  "The  hands  of  Allah  only  exist  in
Buddha-consciousness. The  catch is that Buddha-consciousness still  lies in
the hands of Allah.'
     'As Isikawa Takuboku wrote,' interrupted a gloomy-looking customer of a
Mephistophelean appearance, who  had approached the counter in the meantime,
'"leave off,  leave  off  this vain dispute"  ... I  was told you had  Swami
Zhigalkin's brochure "Summer Thoughts of a Samsaric Being". Do you think you
could have a  look for it?  It's  probably  up on  that shelf, no,  no, over
there, to the left, under the tibial flute ...'












     On the table  the ouija board looked  like a tank on the central square
of a  small European  town.  The bottle of  Johnny Walker standing beside it
reminded Tatarsky of the town  hall, and so  in his mind the red wine he was
drinking was fitted into the same pattern. Its vessel, a long narrow bottle,
was  like a Gothic cathedral occupied by the Communist Party  committee, and
the void within the bottle was  reminiscent of the ideological exhaustion of
communism,  the  senselessness  of bloodshed and the general  crisis  of the
Russian idea. Setting the mouth of the bottle to his lips, Tatarsky finished
what was left of the wine and tossed the bottle into the waste-paper basket.
The velvet revolution,' he thought.
     Sitting at the  table  in the  tee  shirt  with  the inscription: 'Rage
Against the Machine', he finished reading the  manual  for  the ouija board.
The helium pen  he'd bought in  a kiosk by the  metro  fitted  into the slot
without any  effort  and  he  secured  it in place  with the  screw. It  was
suspended on a small spring that was supposed to press it against the paper.
The paper -an entire pile of it -  was already lying under the  ouija board.
He could begin.
     He glanced around the room and was just about to place his hands on the
board, when he rose  nervously to his feet, walked across the room  and back
again and drew the blinds over the  windows. After another moment's thought,
he  lit  the candle standing on  the  table. Any  further preparations would
simply have been  laughable. In actual  fact, even the ones he had made were
ridiculous.
     He  sat  down  at the table and set his  hands on the ouija  board. 'OK
then,' he thought, 'so now what? Should I say something out loud or not?'
     'I  summon  the  spirit  of  Che Guevara. I summon  the  spirit  of Che
Guevara,' he said,  and immediately thought that he ought not just to summon
the spirit; he ought to ask it a question. 'I'd like to know . .. mmm, let's
say,  something new about advertising, something that wasn't  in  Al Rice or
comrade Ogiivy,' he said. 'I want to understand more than anybody else.'
     At  that very instant  the  ouija  board  began jerking  epilepti-cally
beneath his spread palms and the pen set in  the slot traced out a string of
large capital letters at the top of the sheet of paper:
     IDENTIALISM AS THE HIGHEST STAGE OF DUALISM
     Tatarsky  jerked his hands away and stared  in fright at  the words for
several seconds. Then he put his hands back and the ouija board began moving
again, but this time the letters produced by the pen were small and neat:
     These thoughts  were originally intended for  the journal  of the Cuban
armed  forces, Oliva Verde. But it would be foolish to insist on  matters of
such petty  detail now  that we  know  for certain that  the entire  plan of
existence,  in which  journals  are  published and  armed forces  engage  in
action, is simply a sequence of  moments  of awareness, united solely by the
fact  that  in  each  new  moment  the concept  of  the preceding moments is
present.  Although   from  time  without  beginning  this  sequence  remains
unbroken,  awareness  is  never actually  aware  of  itself.  Therefore  the
condition of man in this life is lamentable.
     That great champion of the  liberation of humanity, Siddhartha Gautama,
has  indicated  in  many  of his works  that  the principle  reason  for the
lamentable condition of man in  this life is  first  and  foremost  the very
conception of  man's existence, life  and lamentable condition -  that is to
say,  the  dualism  that imposes  the division  into  subject  and object of
something that in actual fact has never existed and never will.
     Tatarsky pulled out  the  sheet of  paper  covered in  writing, set his
hands on the ouija board and it trembled into motion again:
     Siddhartha Gautama was able to convey  this simple truth to many people
because  in  his time  their  feelings  were simple  and  strong, and  their
internal  world  was  clear  and  unclouded.  Hearing  a single  word  could
completely  change  a  man's entire life and  transport him instantly to the
other shore, to a freedom unconstrained in any way. But since that time many
centuries have passed. The words of  the Buddha  are  now accessible to all,
yet  salvation comes  to but  few. There  can be no  doubt  that this is the
result of  the cultural  situation that the  ancient texts  of all religions
called the 'dark age' to come.
     Comrades  in  the struggle! This dark age  has already begun.  And  its
onset  has  been  brought about  primarily by  the  role that the  so-called
visual-psychic generators or type-two objects have come to play  in the life
of man.
     In speaking of the fact that dualism lisas  engendered by the arbitrary
division of the world into subject and object, the Buddha was concerned with
subject-object  division of the first type. The major distinguishing feature
of the dark age lies in the decisive influence exerted on the life of man by
subject-object division of the  second type, which in the time of the Buddha
simply did not exist.
     In  order to explain what  is meant by objects  of the first and second
types, let us take a simple example,  a television set. This is simply a box
with  a  glass  wall,  which  we  are  free to watch or not  watch. When  an
individual's gaze  falls upon a dark screen, the movement of his or her eyes
is controlled  exclusively by internal  nerve impulses or the  psychological
process  taking  place  in  his  or  her  consciousness.  For  instance,  an
individual might notice that the screen is fly-spotted. Or  he or she  might
decide  that it would be  a good idea to buy a  television  twice as big. Or
think that it would be a good idea to stand it in a different comer. Until a
television is switched on it is in no way  different from the  objects  with
which people had to deal in the Buddha's time,  be it a  stone, the dew on a
blade of grass or  an arrow with a divided head -- in short, everything that
the Buddha used to illustrate his talks.
     But when a television is turned on, it is transformed from an object of
the first type into an object of the second type. It becomes a phenomenon of
an entirely different  order.  And although the person looking at the screen
does not notice this customary transformation, it is truly immense.  For the
viewer the television disappears as a material object that possesses weight,
size and  other physical properties.  Instead  of this  the viewer  has  the
sensation of being present in a different space, a sensation familiar to all
who are assembled there.
     Tatarsky glanced around, as though expecting to find himself surrounded
by this assembled company, but of course there was nothing to be seen. As he
removed  another  sheet of paper covered in writing from under the board, he
figured  out roughly how long the paper would last, then set his  palms back
against the wooden surface.
     Comrades  in the struggle! The  question is - who is  actually present?
Can we say that it is the viewer himself?
     Let us  repeat the  question,  since it is extremely  important:  is it
possible to say that the television is being watched  by  the individual who
is watching it?
     We assert that it is not, for the/allowing reason. When  the individual
viewed the television  while it was switched off, the movement of his or her
eyes  and  the  flow  of his  or her  attention were controlled  by  his own
voluntary impulses, chaotic though they  may have been. The dark screen with
no image of any kind did not exert any influence over them, or if it did, it
was only as a background.
     When it is switched  on, a  television almost never  transmits a static
view from a single motionless camera, and therefore the image on it is not a
background.  Quite  the contrary, this image changes  at an  extremely rapid
rate.  Every few seconds there is either a change  of camera angle or a fade
into  close-up on some object, or a switch to a different camera - the image
is  constantly  being  modified by the cameraman and the producer who stands
behind him. This changing of the image is known as technomodification.
     We ask you to pay particularly close attention at this point, since our
next  thesis  is  rather  difficult  to grasp,  although  in  essence  it is
extremely simple. In addition,  the feeling might arise that we are  dealing
with something that is insignificant. But we make bold to assert that we are
in  fact dealing with the  most real psychological phenomenon of  the end of
the second millennium.
     The changes in the image produced by various technomodifications can be
correlated with  a  virtual  psychological process  in which the observer is
forced to switch his attention from one event to another and select the most
interesting content  from what is taking place - that is,  to manage his own
attention as  the makers of  the  programme manage  it.  This  psychological
process creates  its  own  virtual subject,  which for  the  duration of the
television programme exists in place of the individual, fitting into  his or
her consciousness like a hand into a rubber glove.
     This  is similar  to  the  condition  of  possession by  a spirit.  The
difference lies in the fact that in this case the spirit does not exist; all
that does exist are the symptoms of possession.  This is a  virtual  spirit,
but from the moment the viewer entrusts the programme-makers with redi-
     reeling  his  or her attention at will from object to object, he or she
effectively  becomes  this spirit, and the spirit, which  does  not actually
exist, possesses this viewer and millions of others.
     What is taking  place  could appropriately be called the  experience of
collective  non-existence,  since  the  virtual  subject that  replaces  the
viewer's  actual consciousness is absolutely non-existent -  it is merely an
effect  created  by  the  collective   efforts  of  editors,  cameramen  and
producers.  However, for  the  individual  watching the  television there is
nothing more real than this virtual subject.
     Furthermore, Lapsang Suchong of the  Pu Er monastery believes that if a
certain  programme,  for  instance  a  football  game,  were  to be  watched
simultaneously by  more than  four-fifths of the population  of Earth,  this
virtual effect would become capable of  displacing from  the aggregate human
consciousness the collective karmic vision  of the human plane of existence,
the consequences of which  could be unpredictable (it  is entirely  possible
that to  the hell of molten metal, the hell of knife trees etc. there  would
be added a new hell, the hell of an eternal football championship). However,
his calculations  have yet to be  verified, and in any case this is a matter
for  the  future.  Here  we are  interested not so much  in  the frightening
prospects for tomorrow as in the no less frightening reality of today.
     Let us draw our first  conclusion.  Corresponding  to the object of the
second type, that is, to a television that is switched on, we have a subject
of  the second  type  - that is,  a  virtual viewer, who  manages his or her
attention in exactly  the  same way as a  programme  production  crew  does.
Feelings and  thoughts,  as well  as the secretion of  adrenalin  and  other
hormones in the viewer's organism, are dictated by an  external operator and
determined  by the calculations  of another  individual. And of course,  the
subject of the first type does not notice the moment when he is displaced by
the subject of  the second type, since following  this displacement there is
no longer anyone to notice it, as the subject of the second type is unreal.
     But it  is  not  merely unreal (this word is in  effect  applicable  to
everything in the human world). There are no words to describe the degree of
its  unreality.  It is a  heaping of one unreality upon  another,  a  castle
constructed of air,  the foundations  of  which stand upon a profound abyss.
The  question  might arise: why are  we  wallowing in  these non-existences,
attempting to gauge the degree  of their unreality? However, this difference
between subjects of the first and second types is of extreme importance.
     Subject  number one believes that reality  is  the material world.  But
subject number  two believes  that reality  is the  material  world as it is
shown on the television.
     As  a  product of false subject-object division,  subject number one is
illusory.  But at least there is an observer of the chaotic  movement of his
or her thoughts and moods - in metaphorical terms  we can  say that  subject
number one  is constantly watching a television  programme about himself  or
herself, gradually forgetting that he or she is an  observer and identifying
with the programme.
     From  this  point of view subject  number  two is something  absolutely
improbable and indescribable. It is a  television programme watching another
television programme. Emotions and thoughts participate in this process, but
the individual in whose consciousness they arise is entirely absent.
     The rapid switching of a television from one channel  to another, which
is used to avoid watching the advertisements, is known as zapping. Bourgeois
thought has investigated in considerable detail  the psychological condition
of  the  individual  who  engages in zapping, and  the corresponding thought
patterns, which are rapidly becoming the basic forms of the modem world. But
the type of zapping that is considered by the researchers of this phenomenon
corresponds only to switching between channels by the viewer.
     The switching to and  fro of the  viewer  that  is  controlled  by  the
producer  and cameraman (that is, the forcible induction of  subject  number
two  by means  of  technomodifications) is a different type  of  zapping,  a
coercive form, study of which is effectively prohibited in every country  of
the  world  except  Bhutan,  where  television  is  forbidden.  But coercive
zapping, whereby the television  is converted into a remote  control for the
viewer,  is  not  simply one method  among others  of  organising  an  image
sequence; it  is the  very  foundation of television broadcasting, the major
means by which the  advertising-informational  field exerts its influence on
consciousness. From this point on, therefore, we shall refer to the type-two
subject as Homo Zapiens, or HZ.
     Let us repeat this extremely important conclusion: in the same way as a
viewer who  does  not  wish  to  watch  the  advertisements switches between
television  channels,  instantaneous and  unpredictable  technomodifications
switch the actual viewer to and fro. Assuming the condition of Homo Zapiens,
the viewer becomes a remotely controlled television programme. And he or she
spends a significant part of his life in this condition.
     Comrades  in  the  struggle!  The  position of modem man is not  merely
lamentable; one  might even say there is  no condition,  because man  hardly
exists. Nothing exists  to  which one could point and say: 'There,  that  is
Homo Zapiens.' HZ  is  simply the residual  luminescence of  a  soul  fallen
asleep; it  is  a  film  about the  shooting of  another  film,  shown  on a
television in an empty house.
     At this point the question logically arises of why  modem man has found
himself  in such a situation. Who  is  trying to replace the already deluded
Homo Sapiens with a cubic metre of empty space in the condition of HZ?
     The answer, of course, is  clear: nobody. But let us not become fixated
on the bitter absurdity  of  the situation. In order  to  understand  it  in
greater  depth, let us  recall  that the main  reason  for the existence  of
television  is its  advertising function, which is  indissolubly linked with
the  circulation of money. We shall therefore have to turn  our attention to
that area of human thought which is known as economics.
     Economics is the name of a pseudo-science that deals with the  illusory
relations  between  subjects  of  the first  and  second types  as they  are
involved in the hallucinatory process of their imaginary enrichment.
     This discipline regards each  individual as a cell of an organism  that
the  economists of the  ancient world knew  as  Mammon. In  the  educational
materials  of  the Front for Full and Final Liberation it  is called  simply
ORANUS (which translates into  Russian as 'moutharse'). This more accurately
reflects  its  real nature and  leaves less scope  for mystical speculation.
Each of these cells - that is, each individual, when regarded as an economic
entity -possesses a kind of social membrane  that allows money (which  plays
the role of blood and lymph in the organism of oranus)  to pass into and out
of the cell. From the  point of view of economics,  the function of each  of
these cells is to absorb as much money as possible through this membrane and
to release as little as possible back through it.
     But  the  imperative  oforanus's  existence as  a  whole  requires  its
cellular structure to be bathed  in a constantly increasing stream of money.
Therefore oranus, in  the process of its evolution  (and it is  located at a
level of evolution close to that of a mollusc) develops a  primitive nervous
system, the so-called 'media'. This nervous system transmits  throughout its
virtual organism impulses that control the activity of the monadic cells.
     These  impulses are  of three  types,  which are  called oral, anal and
displacing wow-impulses (from the commercial ejaculation 'wow!').
     The  oral wow-impulse  induces  a cell  to ingest  money  in  order  to
eliminate its  suffering as a result of the conflict  between its self-image
and the image of the ideal 'super-self created by advertising. Note that the
point does not lie in the things that can be  bought for money in  order  to
embody this ideal 'self  -  the point  lies in the money itself.  Certainly,
many millionaires walk  around in rags and drive cheap cars, but in order to
be able  to do  that one has  to  be a millionaire. A  poor man in  the same
circumstances would  suffer inexpressible agonies as a  result  of cognitive
dissonance, which is why many poor people will spend their last penny in  an
effort to dress well.
     The  anal wow-impulse induces the cell to eliminate  money in  order to
experience pleasure from the coincidence of the above-mentioned images.
     Since the  two  actions  described (the  ingestion  of  money  and  its
elimination) contradict each other, the anal wow-impulse acts in a concealed
form, and the individual genuinely believes that the pleasure is derived not
from  the act of  spending  money, but  from  the acquisition of  a  certain
object. But of course  it is quite obvious that as a physical object a watch
that costs fifty thousand dollars  cannot afford an  individual any  greater
pleasure than a watch that costs fifty dollars  -- the •sshole point lies in
the amount of money involved.
     The  oral  and  anal  wow-impulses  are  so  called  by   analogy  with
sphincteral  functions, although it would be more  accurate to compare  them
with  inhaling  and  exhaling;  the sensation  that they  induce is  akin to
psychological  asphyxia, or,  by contrast, hyperventilation.  This oral-anal
irritation achieves its greatest intensity at the gaming table in the casino
or  during  speculation  on  the  stock  market,   although  the   means  of
wow-stimulation may take any form.
     The displacing  impulse suppresses and displaces from  an  individual's
consciousness   all  psychological  processes   that  might   hinder   total
identification  with  a  cell  of oranus. It  arises  when  a  psychological
stimulus  contains  no  oral-anal  components.  The  displacing impulse is a
jamming   signal  that  blocks   the   transmission   from  an   undesirable
radio-station by generating  intense interference.  Its  mode  of  action is
admirably expressed in the sayings: 'Money  talks,  bullshit walks' and, 'If
you  're  so  clever, show me your  money.' Without  this lever of influence
oranus  would not be  able  to make individuals function as its cells. Under
the  influence  of  the  displacing  impulse,  which  blocks out  all subtle
psychological processes that are not directly related to the circulation
     of money, the world  comes to be seen exclusively as the  embodiment of
oranus. This produces terrify ing results. For instance, one broker from the
London Stock Exchange  has described his hallucinatory vision of the  world,
induced  by the displacing wow-impulse as  follows: 'The world  is  a  place
where business meets money.'
     It is  no  exaggeration  to  say that  this  psychological condition is
widespread. All the questions dealt with  in modem  economics, sociology and
culturology are in effect the description of metabolic and somatic processes
occurring in the organism of oranus.
     By  its nature  oranus is a primitive virtual organism of  a  parasitic
type. Its  distinctive feature is  that it  does not  attach  itself to  any
single donor organism, but makes other organisms into its own cells. Each of
its  cells is a human  being  possessing  unlimited potential and endowed by
nature with the right to freedom. The paradox lies  in the fact  that oranus
as an organism  stands  much lower on the evolutionary scale than any of its
cells. It is incapable of abstract thought, or  even of self-awareness.  One
might  say that the famous  eye  in the  triangle  that is depicted  on  the
one-dollar note actually sees  nothing. It was simply  daubed on the surface
of  the pyramid  by  some  cartoonist and nothing more.  Therefore, to avoid
confusing  the  theorists   of   conspiracy,   with   their  inclination  to
schizophrenia, it would be more correct  to cover the said eye with a  black
blindfold.
     Oranus has neither ears, nor  nose, nor eyes, nor mind. And of  course,
it is far from being  the embodiment of evil  or the spawn of hell that many
representatives  of  the religious business  would have it be. In itself  it
wishes for nothing, since it is simply incapable of wishing in the abstract.
It is an  inane polyp,  devoid of emotion or  intention,  which ingests  and
eliminates emptiness. Each of  its cells is potentially capable of realising
that it is not one of oranus's cells at all, in fact just the opposite: that
oranus  is merely  one of the  insignificant  objects of  its mind. It is in
order to block this possibility that oranus requires the displacing impulse.
     Previously  oranus possessed only a vegetative nervous  system, but the
emergence of the  mass media has allowed it to evolve,  developing a central
nervous system.  In our  times  oranus's most  important nerve ending, which
reaches  every individual, is the television. We have already mentioned that
the consciousness of the television viewer is displaced by the consciousness
of the virtual  Homo Zapiens. Now let us  consider the mode of action of the
three wow-impulses.
     In  his  or  her  normal  state  the human individual is  theoretically
capable of identifying the wow-impulses and resisting them. But Homo Zapiens
in  unconscious  fusion  with  a   television  broadcast  is  no   longer  a
personality,  merely a  condition.  Subject number  two  is not  capable  of
analysing events, in exactly the same way as an electromagnetic recording of
a  cock crowing is incapable of it. Even the illusion of critical assessment
of  what   takes  place  on  the  screen  is  itself  part  of  the  induced
psychological process.
     After every few minutes of a television programme - that is, within the
consciousness of  subject number  two --  a sequence of advertising clips is
shown,  each of which is a  complex and carefully constructed combination of
anal, oral and displacing wow-impulses, which resonate in phase with various
cultural strata of the psyche.
     To employ a crude analogy with physical processes, the patient is first
anaesthetised (subject number one  is displaced by  subject number  two) and
then follows a rapid and  intensive session of hypnosis, each stage of which
is fixed in the memory by  means of a conditioned  reflex mechanism. At some
stage subject number  two switches off the television and once again becomes
subject  number one  - that  is, an  ordinary  individual. After that  he no
longer receives the three  wow-impulses directly. But an effect is  produced
similar  in nature to residual magnetisation: the mind begins to produce the
same influences for Itself. They arise spontaneously and act as a background
against which all other thoughts appear. While the subject in  the condition
of  HZ is  subject to the three  wow-impulses,  on  returning  to  a  normal
condition  he or she is subjected to the action of  the  three -snow-factors
that are automatically generated by his or her mind.
     The constant and regular  assumption by an Individual  of the condition
of HZ and exposure  to the displacing wow-impulse lead to the development in
consciousness of a  specific  filter that allows the ingestion of only  that
information which is  saturated  with oral-anal wow-content. The individual,
therefore, is not even afforded the capability of inquiring after his or her
own true nature.
     But just what is this true nature?
     By virtue  of a number  of circumstances that we have no space  to deal
with here, each  individual can  only answer that  question  for himself  or
herself. No matter how lamentable  the condition of the  ordinary individual
might be, he or she still has the opportunity to find an answer. But subject
number two has no such opportunity, since he or she
     does  not exist. Despite this (or possible,  precisely because  of it),
the media system of oranus, which  transmits the three  wow-impulses through
the   informational   field,   confronts    HZ   with   the    question   of
self-identification.
     Now we come  to our most interesting and paradoxical  conclusion. Since
subject number  two does  not possess  any  inner nature, the  only possible
answer for it is to define itself via a combination of  the material objects
shown on the television, which are  quite clearly neither it nor any part of
it. This is reminiscent of the method of apophatic theology, in which God is
defined  through  what He is not,  only  here we are dealing  with apophatic
anthropology.
     For subject number two the only  possible answer to  the question 'What
am I?'  is: 7 am  the individual who  drives  such-and-such a car, lives  in
such-and-such   a  house,   wears  such-and-such   a   type   of   clothes.'
Identification  of the self is  only possible through  the compilation  of a
list of goods consumed, and  transformation is only  possible by means  of a
change in the list. Therefore, most objects advertised are associated with a
specific  personality type,  character trait,  propensity  or  quality.  The
result  is   a  completely  convincing  combination  of  these   properties,
propensities and features, which is capable of producing the impression of a
real  personality.  The  number  of  possible  combinations  is  practically
unlimited, as  is  the  scope  for choice. Advertising  formulates  this  as
follows:  7 am  a  calm and  self-confident  individual, therefore I buy red
slippers.' The  type-two  subject,  wishing  to  add to its  collection  the
qualities of calmness and self-confidence, achieves this by remembering that
it must buy  red slippers, which is accomplished under the influence of  the
anal  wow-factor.  In  the classic case  the oral-anal stimulation  forms  a
closed  loop, as in the famous instance of a snake biting its  own tail: you
need a million  dollars to  buy a  house in an  expensive neighbourhood, you
need the house to have somewhere to wear your red slippers, and you need red
slippers to provide  you  with the calmness  and self-confidence  that  will
allow you to earn a million dollars, in order to buy the  house in which you
can  wear the red slippers, thus acquiring  the qualities  of  calmness  and
confidence.
     When oral-anal  stimulation  forms  a closed loop, we  can say that the
goal  of  advertising magic has  been  achieved: an  illusory  structure  is
created that has  no centre, although all objects and  qualities are related
to each other via a fictional centre that is called 'identity'.
     Identity is the type-two subject at the stage of development when it is
capable  of  existing independently without constant activation by the three
wow-impulses, under  the influence only  of the three residual  wow-factors,
generated independently by its own mind.
     Identity  is a false ego,  which  says  everything there is  to be said
about  it. In its analysis of the modern human  situation, bourgeois thought
regards the  violent  escape  from  identity  back to one's  own  ego  as  a
tremendous spiritual achievement. Perhaps that really is the case, since the
ego  is  non-existent  in  relative  terms,  while  identity  is  absolutely
non-existent. The only difficulty with this is that it  is impossible, since
there is nowhere to escape from  or to and  nobody to escape. Despite  that,
however,  we  might allow that in  this situation  the slogans  'Back to the
ego!' or  'Forward to the ego!'  do  acquire, if not actual meaning, then at
least a certain aesthetic justification.
     The  superimposition  of  the  three  wow-impulses on  the more  subtle
processes  taking  place in  the human  psyche is the  source of  all of the
mediocre variety of modem culture. A  special  role is played in this by the
displacing impulse.  It  is like  the rumbling of a  pneumatic  drill, which
drowns out all other sounds. Ml external stimuli apart from the wow-oral and
wow-anal  impulses are filtered  out, and the individual  loses interest  in
everything  that has no oral or anal component. In this brief article we  do
not consider the sexual  aspect of advertising, but  let  us note in passing
that  more  and more  frequently  sex  becomes attractive  only  because  it
symbolises  the  vital  energy  of youth that can be transformed into money.
This  can be confirmed by any competentpsychoan-alyst. In the final analysis
the  modern  individual  experiences  a  profound  distrust  of  practically
everything that is not connected with the ingestion or elimination of money.
     Externally this is manifested  in the fact that life  becomes ever more
boring,  and  people  become  evermore  cold  and calculating.  In bourgeois
science the  new code  of  behaviour is usually explained by  the attempt to
maintain and conserve emotional energy, which is a response  to  the demands
of the corporate economy and the modern  lifestyle. In actual  fact there is
no less emotional content  in human life, but the unremitting  influence  of
the displacing  wow-factor  results  in all  of the  individual's  emotional
energy being shunted into  psychological processes related to oral  and anal
wow-content. Many bourgeois specialists instinctively  sense the part played
by the mass media in the paradigm shift that is taking place, but as comrade
Allende  junior  used to say,'They are  searching for a black cat which  has
never existed in a dark room which will never  exist.' Even when  they go so
far as to call television a prosthetic support for the wrinkled and withered
'self, or say that the media inflate  a personality  that has become unreal,
they are still missing the point.
     Only a personality that was  real can become unreal. In order to become
wrinkled and withered, this 'self wouldhave had'to exist. In  the  preceding
argument,  and also in our previous writings (see The Russian  Question  and
Cedera Luminosa) we have demonstrated the groundlessness of this approach.
     Under the influence of the displacing  wow-factor, the  culture and art
of  the  dark   age  are  reduced  exclusively  to  oral-anal  content.  The
fundamental feature of this art may be succinctly defined as 'moutharsing'.
     A black  bag stuffed with hundred-dollar bills  has  already become the
supremely Important cultural symbol and a central element of the majority of
films and  books, for which the trajectory of its path through life provides
the mainspring of the plot. In more precise terms, it is the presence in the
work  of art of  this  black  bag that  stimulates the  audience's emotional
interest in what is taking place on the screen or in the text.  Note that in
certain  instances the bag of money is not directly present,  in  which case
its function is fulfilled either by  the participation of so-called 'stars',
of whom it is known as a certain fact that they have  such a bag at home, or
by  persistently  touted information  about the budget  of the film and  its
takings at the box office. In the future, not  a single work  of art will be
created simply for its  own  sake;  the time is approaching when  books  and
films will appear  in which the dominant element of content will be a secret
hymn of praise to Coca-Cola and an attack on Pepsi-Cola - or vice-versa.
     The  effect of the impact  of  oral-anal  impulses  is to encourage the
development  in  the human  individual  of an  internal  auditor  (a typical
market-economy  variant of  the 'internal  party committee').  He constantly
assesses  reality exclusively in terms of  property and performs  a punitive
function  by  forcing consciousness to  suffer  intolerably as  a  result of
cognitive  dissonance.  The oral  wow-impulse  corresponds  to  the internal
auditor holding up the flag 'loser . The anal wow-impulse corresponds to the
flag 'winner'. The displacing  wow-impulse  corresponds  to a  condition  in
which  the internal  auditor simultaneously holds up  the flags 'winner' and
'loser.  It is possible to identify several stable types of  identity. These
are:
     a) the oral wow-type (the dominant pattern around which  emotional  and
psychological life is organised is an obsessive yearning for money)
     b)  the  anal  wow-type  (the  dominant   pattern  is  the  pleasurable
elimination of money or the manipulation of  objects that are surrogates for
it, also known as anal wow-exhibitionism)
     c)  the displaced wow-type (possible in combination with either of  the
first two types), in which the individual effectively becomes insensitive to
all stimuli apart from oral-anal impulses.
     The relative nature  of this classification can be seen from  the  fact
that one and the same identity may be  anal  in relation to those who  stand
lower in the wow-hierarchy and oral in relation  to  those who  stand higher
(of course,  there is no 'identity in itself - we are concerned here with  a
pure  epiphenomenon).  The linear wow-hierarchy  that is  formed by numerous
ranked  identities is  known as a corporate string.  It is a kind of  social
perpetuum mobile; ifs secret lies in the fact that any 'identity' is obliged
constantly  to  validate itself against  another  that is  located  one step
higher. In  folklore  this  great principle is  reflected  in the colloquial
phrase: 'keeping up with the Joneses'.
     Individuals  organised  according  to  the principle of  the  corporate
string are like fish threaded on a line. But in this case the fish are still
alive. More than that - under the influence of the oral and anal wow-factors
they crawl, as it  were,  along the  corporate  string in the direction that
they think of as up. They are driven to do this by instinct or, if you will,
by  the  urge to find  the meaning  of  life. And from  the point of view of
economic metaphysics the meaning of life is  the  transformation of the oral
identity into the anal.
     The implications  of the situation are not exhausted by  the fact  that
the subject  who  is  overcome  by  the  influence  of  the  three  residual
wow-factors is  obliged  to regard himself or herself as an identity. Coming
into contact with another human  being,  he  or she  sees  him or her  as an
identity too.  The culture of the dark age has already correlated absolutely
everything that can  characterise a human being with its oral-anal system of
coordinates and located it in a context of endless moutharsing.
     The  displaced wow-individual analyses  everybody he or she meets  as a
video clip saturated with commercial information. The external appearance of
the  other  person,  his  or  her  speech  and  behaviour,  are  immediately
interpreted as a set of wow-symbols. A very rapid and uncontrollable process
is initiated, consisting of a sequence of anal, oral and displacing impulses
that flare  up  and fade away  in consciousness,  determining the  relations
people have vsith each other.  Homo homini lupus est,  as one inspired Latin
saying has it. But man has long ceased being a wolf to man. Man is not  even
an image-maker  to  man, as  some modern sociologists assume.  It is all far
more terrifying and much simpler than that. Man is wow to man - or if not to
man,  then to  precisely  another such wow,  the  result  of  which is that,
projected on to the modem  system of cultural  coordinates the  Latin saying
becomes:
     'Wow Wow Wow!'
     This  applies  not only  to  people, but in general to  everything that
falls within  the range of our  attention.  In assessing what we are looking
at,  we  experience a weary sense of depression  if we  do not encounter the
familiar  stimuli.  Our  perception  is  subjected  to  a  specific form  of
digitization - every phenomenon is disassociated  into  a linear combination
of anal and oral vectors. Every image can be precisely expressed in terms of
money. Even if it is emphatically non-commercial,  the  question immediately
arises of how commercially valuable that type of non-commercialism is. Hence
the  feeling, familiar to us all,  that in  the end everything comes down to
money.
     And indeed, everything does come  down to money, because money has long
since been reduced to nothing but  itself,  and everything  else proscribed.
Surges  of  oral-anal  activity  become  the  only  permitted  psychological
reaction. All other mental activity is blocked.
     The type-two subject is absolutely  mechanistic, because it  is an echo
of electromagnetic processes in  the  cathode-ray tube of  a television. The
only freedom  that it  possesses is the  freedom to say  'Wow!' when it buys
another thing, which as likely as not is a new television. This is precisely
why  oranus's   controlling   impulses  are  called  wow-impulses,  and  the
subconscious  ideology  ofidentialism  is  called  'wowerism'.  As  for  the
political  regime  corresponding  to wowerism,  it  is  sometimes  known  as
telecracy  or mediacracy, since it  is a regime  under which  the object  of
choices  (and  also  the subject,  as  vse have  demonstrated  above)  is  a
television  programme. It  should be remembered  that the word  'democracy',
which is used so frequently in the modem mass media, is by no means the same
word 'democracy ' as was so widespread in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. The  two words are merely homonyms.  The old word 'democracy' was
derived  from  the  Greek 'demos',  while the  new word is derived  from the
expression 'demo-version'.
     Ana so, let us sum up.
     Identialism is  dualism at that  stage  of development  when  the major
corporations are finalising the division of human consciousness which, being
under the  constant  influence of oral,  anal  and  displacing wow-impulses,
begins independently to  generate the three corresponding  wow-factors. This
results in the stable and permanent displacement of  the personality and the
appearance in its place of the so-called 'identity '. Identialism is dualism
that possesses a triple distinction. It is  dualism  that is:  a)  dead;  b)
putrid; c) digitised.
     Numerous different definitions of  identity could be provided, but this
would  be a senseless exercise, because in  any case it does  not  exist  in
reality. At the stage ofidentialism, the individual for whose freedom it was
once possible to fight disappears completely from the field of view.
     It  follows, therefore,  that  the  end  of  the  world,  which  is the
inevitable  outcome  of  the  wowerisation  of consciousness,  will  present
absolutely  no danger  of  any kind  -for  the  very  subject  of danger  is
disappearing. The  end of the world will simply  be  a television programme.
And this, comrades in the struggle, fills us all with inexpressible bliss.
     Che Guevara
     Mt Shumeru, eternity, summer.
     'Sumer again. We're all Sumerians, then/ Tatarsky whispered quietly and
looked up. The grey light of a new day was trembling beyond the blind at the
window.  To  the left  of the ouija board lay  a heap of  paper  covered  in
writing, and the weary  muscles  of his forearms  ached.  The  only thing he
could remember from all that writing was the expression 'bourgeois thought'.
Getting up from the table, he went across to the bed and threw himself on to
it without getting undressed.
     'Just  what is  bourgeois thought?' he wondered. 'God only knows. About
money, I suppose. What else?'







     The lift that was elevating Tatarsky towards his new job contained only
a single  solitary graffito, but even that was enough  to make it clear at a
glance that the  heart of the  advertising business beat somewhere close  at
hand. The graffito was a variation on a classic theme, the advertisement for
Jim Beam  whisky in  which a simple basic hamburger evolved  into a complex,
multi-tiered sandwich, then  the  sandwich  became  an even  more  intricate
baguette, and finally the  baguette turned back into  the  basic  hamburger,
which all went to show that everything returns to its origins. Traced out on
the wall  in gigantic three-dimensional letters casting a long drawn  shadow
were the words: FUCK YOU.
     Written below it  in small  letters  was  the original Jim Beam slogan:
'You always get back to the basics.'
     Tatarsky  was  simply delighted  at  the  way  the  entire evolutionary
sequence implied  in the inscriptions had  simply  been  omitted - he  could
sense  the  laconic  hand of a  master at work.  What was more, despite  the
risque nature of  the  subject,  there wasn't  even the  slightest  trace of
Freudianism in the text.
     It was quite  possible  that  the  unknown master was one  of  his  two
colleagues  who  also  worked  for Khanin.  They  were  called Seryozha  and
Malyuta, and they were almost complete opposites. Seryozha, a short man with
light hair, wore  gold-rimmed spectacles and  strove with  all  his might to
resemble  a  Western copywriter, but  since  he didn't know what  a  Western
copywriter  actually  looked like  and relied on nothing but his own strange
ideas about the matter, the impression he actually produced was of something
touchingly Russian and very nearly extinct.
     Malyuta, a robust slob in a dirty denim suit, was Tatarsky's comrade in
misfortune - he had also suffered from his romantically-minded parents' love
for exotic names -- in this case the name borne by Ivan  the Terrible's most
infamous lieutenant - but that didn't make them close. When he began talking
to  Tatarsky  about his favourite theme,  geopolitics, Tatarsky said that in
his opinion it  consisted  mostly of  an  irresolvable conflict between  the
right  hemisphere and  the left  that certain people suffer with from birth.
After that Malyuta began behaving towards him in an unfriendly fashion.
     Malyuta  was  a  frightening  individual in  general. He  was  a  rabid
anti-Semite, not  because he had any reason to  dislike Jews, but because he
tried as hard as he  could  to  maintain the image of a  patriot,  logically
assuming there was nothing else a man called Malyuta could do with his life.
All  the  descriptions of  the  world Malyuta encountered  in the analytical
tabloids were in agreement that  anti-Semitism was an indispensable  element
of the patriotic image. The result was that, following long efforts to mould
his own image, Malyuta  had come to resemble most of  all a villain from Bin
Laden's  gang in a  stupid low-budget action movie,  which  started Tatarsky
wondering whether these low-budget action movies were quite so stupid  after
all, if they were capable of transforming reality after their own image.
     When they were introduced, Tatarsky and  Khanin's  other two  employees
exchanged folders of their work; it was a bit like the mutual positioning of
dogs sniffing each other's ass the first time they meet. Leafing through the
works in  Ma-lyuta's folder, Tatarsky several times found himself shuddering
in horror. The very same  future he had playfully described in  his  concept
for Sprite (the folk-costume image of the pseudo-Slavonic aesthetic, visible
ever more  clearly  through the dark, swirling smoke of a military coup) was
present in full-blown form in these sheets typed with carbon paper. Tatarsky
was particularly badly shaken by the scenario for a Harley-Davidson clip:
     A  street in a small Russian town. In the foreground a  rather blurred,
out-of-focus motorcycle,  looming  over  the  viewer. In  the distance  is a
church; the  bell is ringing. The service has only  just finished and people
are walking  down along the street. Among the  passers-by are two  young men
wearing red Russian shirts  outside  their trousers -  they  could be cadets
from military  college  on holiday.  Close-up:  each of  them is carrying  a
sunflower in his hands.  Close-up: a mouth  spitting out a  husk.  Close-up:
foreground - the handlebars and petrol tank of  the motorcycle, behind  it -
our heroes, gazing obsessively at the motorcycle. Close-up: fingers breaking
seeds out of a  sunflower. Close-up:  the  two heroes exchange glances,  one
says to the other:
     'Sergeant  in  our platoon was called Harley. A real bull of a man. But
he took to the drink.'
     'Why'd he do that?'
     'You know. No one gives a Russian a chance these days.'
     Next frame - a HassidicJew of massive proportions comes out of the door
of  a  house  wearing a black leather  jacket and a black  wide-brimmed hat.
Beside him our two heroes appear skinny  and puny -- they involuntarily take
a step backwards. The  Jew gets on  to  the motorcycle, starts  it up with a
roar, and a few seconds later has disappeared from view - all that's left is
a blue  haze of petrol smoke. Our two heroes exchange glances again. The one
who recalled the sergeant spits out a husk and says with a sigh:
     'Just how long can  the  Davidsons  keep riding  the  Harley s? Russia,
awake!'
     (Or: 'World history. Harley-Davidson'. A possible softer version of the
slogan: 'The Harley motorcycle. Not to say Davidson's.')
     At first Tatarsky decided it must  be a parody,  and only after reading
Malyuta's  other  texts  did he realise  that for  Ma-lyuta  sunflowers  and
sunflower-seed husks were  positive aesthetic  characteristics. Having  been
convinced by the analytical tabloids that  sunflower  seeds were inseparably
fused with the image  of a patriot, Malyuta had cultivated his  love of them
as dedicatedly and resolutely as he cultivated his anti-Semitism.
     The second copywriter, Seryozha, would leaf for hours at a time through
Western magazines, translating advertising slogans with a dictionary, on the
assumption that  what worked for a vacuum cleaner  in  one  hemisphere might
well do the job  for a  wall-clock  ticking away  in  the other. In his good
English he would  spend hours interrogating  his cocaine dealer, a Pakistani
by the name of Ali, about the  cultural codes and passwords to which Western
advertising made reference. Ali had lived for a long time in Los Angeles and
even if he couldn't  provide explanations  for the  most obscure elements of
obscurity,  he  could  at  least  lie  convincingly  about  what  he  didn't
understand. Perhaps it was Seryozha's intimate familiarity with  advertising
theory and Western  culture in  general that made him think so highly of the
first  job  Tatarsky  based   on  the   secret  wow-technology  imparted  by
commendante  Che  during the seance.  It was an advert  for a  tourist  firm
organising tours to Acapulco. The slogan was:
     WOW! ACAPULYPSE NOW!
     'Right on!' Seryozha said curtly, and shook Tatarsky by the hand.
     Tatarsky in turn was  quite  genuinely delighted  by one of  Seryozha's
early works, which the author himself regarded as a failure:
     No, you're not a  sailor any more... Your friends will reproach you for
your  indifference. But you will only smile in reply - you never really were
a  sailor anyway. All your life you've  simply been  heading  for this  safe
haven.
     SAFE HAVEN. THE PENSION FUND
     Malyuta  never  touched Western magazines  -  he  only  ever  read  the
tabloids, or The Twilight of the Gods, always with a bookmark in one and the
same place.  But soon  Tatarsky was astonished  to notice that for all their
serious  differences  in  intellectual orientation  and personal  qualities,
Seryozha and Malyuta were both sunk equally deeply  in the bottomless pit of
moutharsing. It was evident in numerous details and traits of behaviour. For
instance, when they spoke to Tatarsky about a certain common acquaintance of
theirs, both of them in turn described him as follows:
     'You know,' said Seryozha,  'in psychological terms he's something like
a novice broker who earns six hundred  dollars a month, but  is  counting on
reaching fifteen hundred by the end of the year ...'
     'And then,' added Malyuta, raising  a finger, 'when he  takes  his dame
out to Pizza  Hut and spends forty dollars on the two of them he thinks it's
a big deal.'
     Immediately  following  this  phrase  Malyuta  was  overwhelmed  by the
influence  of the  anal wow-factor: he took out his  expensive mobile phone,
twirled it between his fingers and made an entirely unnecessary call.
     Apart from  all  that,  Seryozha  and  Malyuta  actually turned  out  a
remarkably  similar product - Tatarsky  realised this when he discovered two
works devoted to the same item in their folders.
     Two or three weeks before  Tatarsky joined the  staff, Khanin's  office
had submitted a big order to a client. Some  shady  customers, who  urgently
needed  to  sell  a large lot  of  fake  runners, had ordered an advert from
Khanin for Nike  -that was the brand their canvas slippers were disguised to
look  like.  The  intention  was to off-load the goods at the markets around
Moscow, but the lot was so large that the shady characters, having mumbled a
few incantations  over  their  calculators, had decided  to shell out for  a
television advert in  order to accelerate their turnover. And the kind of ad
they  wanted  had to be  heavy  stuff  - 'the kind,' as  one  of  them said,
'that'll  do their heads  in straight  off. Khanin  submitted two  versions,
Seryozha's  and  Malyuta's. Seryozha, who  read  at  least  ten textbooks on
advertising written in English while he was working on the job, produced the
following text:
     The  project employs  an American  cultural reference  familiar  to the
Russian consumer from the mass  media - that is, the mass suicide of members
of the occult group Heaven's  Gate from San Diego,  which  vsas  intended to
allow them to make the transition  to their subtle bodies so that they could
travel  to a  comet. All  those  who  killed themselves were lying on simple
two-level  bunk-beds;  the  video sequence  was shot strictly  in  black and
white. The faces of the deceased were  covered with simple black cloth,  and
on their feet they were  wearing black Nike runners with a white symbol, the
so-called  'swoosh'. In aesthetic terms  the proposed video  is based on  an
Internet clip devoted to the event -  the  picture on the television  screen
duplicates  the  screen  of  a  computer monitor,  in  the  centre of  which
well-known  frames from a CNN  report are  repeated in sequence. At the end,
when the motionless soles of  the runners with  the  inscription 'Nike' have
been displayed for long  enough, the shot  shifts to the end-board  of a bed
with a sheet of Whatman paper glued to it, on which a 'swoosh' looking  like
a comet has been drawn with a black felt-tip pen:
     The  camera moves lower, and vse see the  slogan,  written in the  same
felt-tip pen:
     JUST DO IT.
     While  Malyuta was working on his  scenario  he didn't read anything at
all except the gutter tabloids and so-called patriotic newspapers with their
scatologically eschatalogical positioning of events; but he  obviously  must
have watched a lot of films. His version went like this:
     A  street in a small Vietnamese village lost deep in the jungle. In the
foreground  a typical third-world  country Nike workshop  - we  recognise it
from  the sign:  NIKE  sweatshop  No.  1567903. All around  there  are  tall
tropical  trees,  a section of railway line  suspended on the  village fence
rings  like a bell. Standing in the doorway  of the workshop is a Vietnamese
with  a  Kalashnikov automatic  rifle,  wearing  khaki trousers and  a black
shirt, which automatically bring to mind the film The Deer Hunter. Close-up:
hands on an automatic rifle.  The camera enters the door and we see two rows
of work-tables  with  workers who are chained in place sitting at  them. The
scene  brings to  mind the  galley scene from the film Ben  Hur. A//  of the
workers  are  wearing  incredibly old, torn and tattered  American  military
uniforms. They are the last American prisoners of war. On the table in front
of them  there are Nike runners  in various stages of completion. All of the
prisoners of war have curly black beards and hooked noses. (This last phrase
was  written in between the lines in pencil - evidently  the inspiration had
struck Malyuta  after the text had been printed.)  The prisoners of  war are
dissatisfied with  something - at first they murmur quietly, then they start
banging on the tables with the half-glued runners. There are shouts of:
     'We demand a meeting with the American consul!' and, 'We demand a visit
from a UN  commissioner!' Suddenly a burst of automatic rounds is fired into
the  ceiling,  and the  noise instantly ceases. The Vietnamese in  the black
shirt is standing in the doorway, with a smoking automatic in his hands. The
eyes of everyone in the room  are fixed  on him. The Vietnamese  strokes his
automatic rifle, then jabs his finger in the direc-
     /ion of the nearest table with half-finished runners and says in broken
English: 'Just do it!'
     Voice-over: 'Nike. Good2, Evi/o.'
     Once when he caught Khanin  alone in his  office, Tatarsky asked: 'Tell
me, this work Malyuta produces - does it ever get
     accepted?'
     'It does/ said  Khanin,  putting aside the book  he  was  reading.  'Of
course it does. The runners may be American, but they have to be sold to the
Russian mentality. So it all  suits very well. We edit it a bit,  of course,
so as not to fall foul of the law.'
     'And you say the advertisers like it?'
     'The advertisers  we have here have to have  it explained to them  what
they  like and  what they don't. And anyway, why does any advertiser give us
an ad?'
     Tatarsky shrugged.
     'No, go on, tell me.'
     'To sell product.'
     "That's in America - to sell product/
     "Then so he can feel like a big-shot.'
     "That was three years ago,' Khanin said in a didactic tone. 'Things are
different  now. Nowadays  the client wants to show the  big guys  who keep a
careful  eye on what's  happening  on screen and in  real  life  that he can
simply  flush a million dollars down the tubes; and for that,  the worse his
advert  is, the better. The viewer is left with  the feeling that the client
and the producers are absolute idiots, but then'  - Khanin raised one finger
and  his eyes  twinkled wisely - 'the  signal indicating how  much money  it
costs reaches the viewer's brain. The  final conclusion  about the client is
as follows - he  may be a total cretin, but his business is doing so well he
can afford to put out any old crap over and over again. And that's  the best
kind of advertising  there can possibly be. A  man like that will get credit
anywhere, no sweat.'
     'Complicated,' said Tatarsky.
     'Sure it is. There's more to it than reading your Al Rice.'
     'And where can  you  gather  such profound insight  into  life?'  asked
Tatarsky.
     'From life itself,' Khanin said with feeling.
     Tatarsky looked  at  the  book lying  on  the desk in front of  him. It
looked exactly like a Soviet-era secret edition of Dale Carnegie for Central
Committee members - there  was a  three-digit copy  number on the cover  and
below that a typed title:
     Virtual Business and Communications. There  were several bookmarks  set
in   the  book:  on  one  of   them  Tatarsky  read   the  words:  'Suggest,
schizo-blocks'.
     'Is that something to do with computers?' he asked.
     Khanin picked up the book and hid it away in the drawer of his desk.
     'No,' he replied unwillingly. 'It actually is about virtual business.'
     'And what's that?'
     'To cut it short,' said Khanin, 'it's business in which the basic goods
traded are space and time.'
     'How's that?'
     'It's  just  like things are  here in  Russia. Look around: the country
hasn't produced  anything  for  ages.  Have  you done  a  single advertising
project for a product produced here?'
     'I can't recall one,' Tatarsky replied. 'Hang on, though, there was one
- for Kalashnikov. But you could call that an image ad.'
     'There, you see,' said  Khanin. 'What's the  most  important feature of
the Russian economic miracle? Its most important feature is that the economy
just keeps on sinking deeper and deeper into the  shit, while business keeps
on  growing  stronger and expanding  into the international  arena.  Now try
this: what do the people you see all around you trade in?'
     'What?'
     "Things that are absolutely  non-material.  Air  time  and  advertising
space - in the newspapers or out on the  street. But time in itself can't be
air time,  just as space  in itself  can't be  advertising space.  The first
person who managed to  unite time and space via the fourth dimension was the
physicist Einstein. He had this theory of relativity - maybe you've heard of
it. Soviet power did it as well, only via  a paradox  -  you know that. They
lined up the guys in the camps, gave them shovels  and  told  them to  dig a
trench from the fence as far as lunchtime. But
     now it's very easily done - one minute of prime air time costs the same
as a two-column colour ad in a major magazine.' 'Then that means the  fourth
dimension is money?' asked Tatarsky.
     Khanin nodded.
     'Not  only  that/ he  said,  'from  the  point of  view  of  monetarist
phenomenology, it is the  substance from which  the  world  is  constructed.
There was an American philosopher called Robert Pirsig who believed that the
world  consists of moral values; but that was just the way things could seem
in the  sixties - you know, the Beatles, LSD, all that stuff. A lot more has
become clear since then. Have you heard about the cosmonauts' strike?'
     'I think  I heard something,' Tatarsky answered, vaguely recalling some
newspaper article.
     'Our  cosmonauts  get twenty to thirty thousand  dollars a flight.  The
Americans get  two  hundred  or three hundred  thousand. So  our  guys said:
"We're not going  to  fly at thirty grand;  we want to fly at  three hundred
grand too." What does that mean? It means they're not really flying  towards
the twinkling points of light of those unknown stars, but towards absolutely
specific sums of hard currency.  Such is the nature of  the  cosmos. And the
non-linear nature of time and space is expressed in the fact that we and the
Americans  bum equal amounts of fuel and fly  equal numbers of kilometres in
order to arrive at absolutely different amounts of money. That is one of the
fundamental secrets of the Universe ...'
     Khanin suddenly broke off  and  began  to  light  a  cigarette, clearly
winding up the conversation. 'Now go and get some work done,' he said.
     'Can I  read the  book some time?'  Tatarsky asked, nodding towards the
desk where Khanin had hidden his secret text. 'For my general development?'
     'All in good time,' said Khanin, giving him a sweet smile.
     Even  without  any secret handbooks Tatarsky was  already  beginning to
find  his  bearings  in the  commercial  relations  of  the age  of  virtual
business. As he was quick  to realise  from observing the behaviour  of  his
colleagues at  work, the basis of these relations was so-called 'black  PR',
or as Khanin pronounced it in full: 'black public relations'. The first time
Tatarsky heard the words the bard  of the Literary Institute was resurrected
briefly in his soul, intoning in sombre tones:
     'Black  public relations,  uniting all nations . . .' But there  wasn't
actually  any  real  romantic feeling behind this  abbreviation, and it  was
entirely devoid of  the  baggage of  negative connotations ascribed to it by
those who use the phrase 'black  PR' to mean an attack mounted  via the mass
media.
     It was actually quite the opposite - advertising,  like  other forms of
human  activity in  the  vast,  cold expanses  of  Russia,  was inextricably
intertwined  with the 'black cash flow', which in practical terms  meant two
things. Firstly, journalists were quite willing  to deceive their newspapers
and  magazines  by  extracting  black  cash  from  anyone  who more  or less
naturally  fell  within their  field  of  attention  -  and it  wasn't  just
restaurant-owners who wanted to be compared with Maxim's who had to pay, but
writers who  wanted  to  be compared  with  Marquez,  which  meant that  the
boundary  between literary and restaurant criticism grew ever finer and more
arbitrary. Secondly, copywriters took  pleasure  in deceiving their agencies
by finding a client through them  and then concluding an unwritten deal with
him  behind  their  bosses'  backs.  After he'd  taken a  good  look around,
Tatarsky took a cautious first step on to this fruitful ground, where he met
with immediate success: he managed to sell his slightly modified project for
Finlandia vodka (the new slogan was: 'Reincarnation Now!').
     Usually he dealt with  lowly cogs in the PR machinery, but this time he
was  summoned  to  the owner  of  the firm  that  intended  to  take  on the
dealership for Finlandia,  who was a dour  and serious-minded youth.  Having
read several times through the two pages Tatarsky had brought,  he chuckled,
thought  for  a  moment, rang  his  secretary and asked  her to prepare  the
paperwork. Half an hour  later a stunned  Tatarsky emerged on to the street,
carrying in his inside pocket an envelope containing two and a half thousand
dollars and a contract for the full and unconditional transfer of all rights
to the young man's company.
     For those changed times this was an absolutely fantastic haul.
     But  a couple  of  months  later Tatarsky  accidentally  discovered  an
incredibly insulting  little  detail:  it  turned  out  Finlan-dia's  future
distributor  hadn't paid up because he'd  decided to  use  his text  in  his
advertising,  but because he was afraid Tatarsky might sell it to Absolut or
Smimoff dealers. Tatarsky even started to write  a sonnet dedicated to  this
event, but  after  a couple of minutes discarded  it  as non-functional.  In
general, it was hard to believe that not so very long  ago he  had been wont
to  spend so much  time searching for meaningless rhymes that had long since
been abandoned  by  the poetry of  the market democracies. It  seemed simply
inconceivable that only  a  few short years  ago life had been so gentle and
undemanding  that  he  could waste  entire kilowatts  of  mental  energy  in
dead-end circuits of his brain that never paid back the investment.
     Tatarsky suspected that black PR was a more widespread and  significant
phenomenon   than  just  a  means  of  survival  for  certain  protein-based
life-forms  in the era of the  mass media;  but he couldn't connect  up  his
heterogeneous suspicions concerning the true  nature  of  the phenomenon  to
form a clear and unified understanding. There was something missing.
     'Public relations are people's  relations with each  other,' he  jotted
down in confused fashion in his notebook.
     People want to earn  money in  order  to  gain freedom, or  at least  a
breathing space  from  their  interminable  suffering.  And  we  copywriters
manipulate reality  in front  of people's  eyes so that  freedom comes to be
symbolised  by an iron,  or a sanitary towel with wings, or lemonade. That's
what they pay us for. We pawn this  stuff of  f on them from the screen, and
then they pawn it off on each other, and on us who write the stuff, and it's
like radioactive  contamination, when it  makes no difference any longer who
exploded the bomb. Everyone tries to show everyone else that they've already
achieved  freedom, and as a  result, while we  pretend to  socialise  and be
friendly, all  we really do is keep pawning each other off with all sorts of
jackets, mobile  phones  and  cars.  It's a  closed circle.  And this closed
circle is called black PR.
     Tatarsky  became so  absorbed in  his thoughts  on the  nature  of this
phenomenon that he wasn't in the least surprised when one day Khanin stopped
him in the corridor, grabbed hold of one of his buttons and said: 'I see you
know all there is to know about black PR.'
     'Almost,'  Tatarsky  answered  automatically,  because  he'd  just been
thinking about the  topic. "There's  just some central element that's  still
missing.'
     'I'll tell  you  what  it is. What's missing is the understanding  that
black public relations only exist in theory.  What  happens in  real life is
grey PR.'
     'That's   interesting,'   said    Tatarsky    enthusiastically,   'very
interesting! Quite astounding! But what does it mean in practical terms?'
     'In practical terms it means you have to shell out.'
     Tatarsky started. The  fog  of thoughts clouding his mind was dispersed
in an instant to be replaced by a terrifying clarity.
     'How d'you mean?' he asked feebly.
     Khanin took him by the arm and led him along the corridor.
     'Did you take delivery of two grand from Finlandia?' he asked.
     'Yes,' Tatarsky replied uncertainly.
     Khanin bent the middle and fourth fingers  of his  hand over slightly -
far enough  to  suggest  that  he was about to  shift to  the  hand-gestures
characteristic of New Russian thugs, but not too far, so the situation still
seemed to be peaceful.
     'Now remember this,' he said quietly. 'As long  as  you work here,  you
work to me. There's no other way to figure it and make sense. So the figures
say  one grand of greenbacks is mine.  Or were you thinking of setting up on
your own?'
     '!,!... I'd  be delighted . ..' Tatarsky stammered in a state of shock.
'That is, of course  I don't want to... That is, I do. I wanted to split it;
I just didn't know how to bring up the subject.'
     'No need to be shy about it. Someone might get the wrong idea. You know
what? Why don't you come round to my place this evening. We can have a drink
and a talk. And you can drop in the mazuma while you're at it.'
     Khanin lived  in a large, newly refurbished flat, in which Tatarsky was
astonished by the patterned oak doors with  gold locks - what astonished him
about them  was the fact  that the wood had already cracked and  the gaps in
the panels  had  been filled in a slapdash  fashion with mastic.  Khanin was
already drunk when  he greeted his guest. He was in an excellent mood - when
Tatarsky held out the envelope  to him  from the doorway, Khanin knitted his
brows and waved it aside,  as though offended at such a brusque businesslike
entrance, but  at the extreme extent of the  gesture he lifted  the envelope
out of Tatarsky's fingers and immediately tucked it away somewhere.
     'Let's go,' he said, 'Liza's cooked something.'
     Liza proved  to  be  a tall woman with  a face  red from  some kind  of
cosmetic scrubbing. She  fed Tatarsky  stuffed cabbage leaves, which  he had
hated ever since he was a small child. In order to overcome his revulsion he
drank  a  lot of  vodka,  and by the  time the dessert arrived he had almost
reached  Khanin's state of intoxication, which  meant socialising went a lot
smoother.
     'What's  that you  have  up there?'  Tatarsky  asked,  nodding  in  the
direction of the wall.
     There was a reproduction of a Stalinist  poster hanging  at the spot he
indicated: ponderous red banners  with yellow tassels  and the  blue-looking
Moscow university building visible in the gaps between them. The poster  was
obviously twenty years or thereabouts older than Tatarsky, but the print was
absolutely fresh.
     'That? A young guy  who used  to work for us before you did that on the
computer,'  answered Khanin. 'You see, there  used to be a hammer and sickle
there, and a star,  but  he  took  them  out and put in  Coca-Cola and  Coke
instead.'
     'Yes, I  see,' Tatarsky said, amazed. 'But you  can't see it at first -
they're exactly the same yellow colour.'
     'If you look closely you'll see  it. I used to  have the poster over my
desk, but  the  other guys  started  getting awkward about it. Malyuta  took
offence for the flag and Seryozha  took offence for Coca-Cola. In the  end I
had to bring it home.'
     'Malyuta  took offence?' Tatarsky asked in surprise 'Have you seen what
he put up over his own desk yesterday?'
     'Not yet.'
     '"Every pogrom has its programme, every brand has its bend".'
     'So what?'
     Tatarsky  suddenly  realised that Khanin  really  didn't  see  anything
strange  in such sentiments. And what was  more,  he suddenly stopped seeing
anything strange in them himself.
     'I didn't understand what it meant: "Every brand has its bend".'
     'Bend.  That's the way  we  translate the  expression  "brand essence".
That's to say, the concentrated expression of  a comprehensive image policy.
For instance,  the  Marlboro bend or  essence is a country of real  men. The
Parliament essence is jazz, and so on. You mean you didn't know that?'
     'No, of course  I  knew that. What d'you take me for? It's just  a very
odd kind of translation.'
     'What's to be done about it?' said Khanin. "This is Asia.'
     Tatarsky got up from the table. 'Where's your toilet,' he asked.
     'First door after the kitchen.'
     When he stepped  into  the toilet, Tatarsky's gaze was confronted by  a
photograph of a diamond necklace with the text:
     'De Beers. Diamonds are for ever', hanging on the wall facing the door.
This rather threw him off balance and for several seconds he couldn't recall
why he was  there. When he remembered,  he tore off  a sheet of toilet paper
and wrote on it:
     i)  Brand  essence   (bend).  Include  in  all  concepts  in  place  of
'psychological crystallisation'.
     •2.) Parliament with  tanks on the bridge. Instead of 'the smoke of the
Motherland'' - 'All that jazz'.
     Tucking the piece  of paper  into his  breast  pocket  and flushing the
toilet conspiratorially, he went back to the  kitchen and walked right up to
the Coca-Cola red banners.
     'It's quite incredible,' he said.  'Looks  like it said "Coke" on  this
flag from the very beginning.'
     'So  what did you  expect?  What's so surprising about that? D'you know
what the Spanish for "advertising"  is?' Khanin hiccupped: '"Propaganda." So
you  and  me  are ideological  workers,  if  you  hadn't  realised  it  yet.
Propagandists  and agitators. I used to work  in ideology, as it happens. At
Komsomol Central  Committee level.  All my friends are  bankers now; I'm the
only one ... I tell you, I didn't have to reconstruct myself at all. It used
to  be: "The  individual is nothing,  the collective is everything/' and now
it's: "Image  is  nothing, thirst is everything." Agitprop's immortal.  It's
only the words that change.'
     Tatarsky felt an uneasy presentiment.
     'Listen/  he  said,  'you  didn't  happen to speak  at party  personnel
meetings outside Moscow, did you?'
     'Yes, I did,' said Khanin. 'Why?'
     'In Firsanovka?'
     'Yes, in Firsanovka.'
     'So that's it,' said Tatarsky, gulping down his vodka. 'All the time  I
had this feeling  your face  was familiar, but I couldn't remember where I'd
seen it. Only you didn't have a beard then.'
     'You mean you  used to go to Firsanovka too?' Khanin asked in delighted
surprise.
     'Only once,' Tatarsky answered. 'You came out on the platform with such
a hangover I thought you were going to puke the moment you opened your mouth
...'
     'Hey,  take it easy in front of  the  wife . . . Although you're right:
the main reason we went out there was to drink. Golden days!'
     'And so what happened?  You came  out with this great speech,' Tatarsky
continued.  'I  was  studying at the Literary Institute at the  time, and it
really upset  me. I felt jealous, because I realised I would  never learn to
manipulate words like that. No sense to it whatsoever, it just blew me away;
all at once everything was absolutely clear. That's to say, what the speaker
- you - was trying to say wasn't clear, because he didn't really want to say
anything, but  everything in life  was clear. I  suppose  that's  what those
party personnel  meetings were held for. I  sat down to write  a sonnet that
evening, but I just got drunk instead.'
     'What was I speaking about, d'you remember?' Khanin asked. He obviously
found reminiscing pleasant.
     'Something or  other to do with the twenty-seventh  Party  congress and
its significance.'
     Khanin cleared his throat: 'I think there is no  need to explain to you
Komsomol  activists,' he  said  in  a  loud,  well-trained  voice,  'why the
decision of our  Party's twenty-seventh congress are  regarded as not merely
significant,  but epoch-making.  Nonetheless, the methodological distinction
between   these   two   concepts  occasions  misunderstanding   even   among
propagandists  and agitators. After all, the propagandists and agitators are
the builders  of our tomorrow, and  they  should not  be  unclear in any way
about the plan for the future that they have to build ...'
     He hiccupped loudly and lost the thread of his speech.
     'That's it, that's it,' said Tatarsky. 'I  recognise you now all right.
The  most  amazing  thing  is  that you  actually did  spend an  entire hour
explaining  the  methodological   difference   between   "significant"   and
"epoch-making", and I understood every single  sentence perfectly. But  if I
tried to understand any two sentences together, it was like running my  head
against a brick wall... There  was just no way. And there was no way I could
repeat it in my own words. But then, on the other hand . . . What's "Just do
it" supposed to mean? And what's the methodological difference between "Just
do it" and "Just be"?'
     'Exactly  what I'm  getting  at,'  said Khanin,  pouring  the vodka. "S
exactly the same.'
     'What are you men doing drinking away like that?' put in Liza, speaking
for the first time. 'You might at least propose a toast.'
     'OK,  let's have a toast,' said Khanin, and  he hiccupped again. 'Only,
you  know,  one that's  not only  significant,  but  epoch-making  as  well.
Komsomol member to party member, you follow?'
     Tatarsky held on to  the table as he rose to his feet. He looked at the
poster and thought for a second before raising his glass and speaking:
     'Comrades! Let us drown the Russian bourgeoisie in a flood of images!'




     On arriving  home,  Tatarsky  felt  the  kind of  energy rush he hadn't
experienced in ages. Khanin's metamorphosis had positioned the entire recent
past in such a strange perspective it simply had to be followed by something
miraculous. Pondering on  what he might  amuse himself with, Tatarsky strode
restively around the flat several times until he remembered the acid  tab he
had bought in the Poor Folk  bar.  It was  still lying in the drawer  of the
desk - in all that  time  he'd not  had any reason to swallow it, and anyway
he'd been afraid.
     He  went  over  to the  desk, took the lilac-coloured stamp out of  the
drawer  and looked at it carefully. The face with the pointed  beard smirked
up at him; the stranger was wearing  an odd kind of hat, something between a
helmet  and  a dunce's  cap with a very  narrow brim. 'Wears a pointed cap,'
thought  Tatarsky;  'probably  a jester, then.  That  means it'll  be  fun.'
Without giving it any more thought, he tossed the tab into his mouth, ground
it up between his teeth and  swallowed  down the small ball  of soft fibres.
Then he lay down on the divan and waited.
     He  was  soon bored just lying there.  He  got up, lit a cigarette  and
walked around  the flat again. Reaching the closet, he remembered that since
his adventure in the forest outside Moscow he hadn't taken another look into
the 'Tikhamat-2' folder. It was a classic case of displacement: not once had
he recalled that he  wanted to  finish  reading  the materials  in the file,
although,  on the other hand,  he didn't  really seem  to have forgotten  it
either. It had been exactly the same story with the acid tab, as though both
of these items had  been reserved  for  that special occasion  which, in the
course of normal life, never arrives. Tatarsky took down the folder from the
top  shelf  and went back into  the room. There were  a  lot of  photographs
inside,  glued to the pages. One of  them fell  out as soon as he opened the
folder, and he picked it up from the floor.
     The photo  showed a fragment of a  bas-relief - a section of  sky  with
large stars carved into it. In the lower  part of the photograph there  were
two upraised arms, cut off by the edge of the shot. These were genuine stars
of heaven - ancient, immense and alive.  Stars like that had long ago ceased
to shine  for  the living and continued to exist only  for  stone  heroes in
antediluvian sculptures. But  then,  thought Tatarsky,  the stars themselves
can hardly have changed  since then  - it's people who've changed. Each star
consisted  of a  central  circle and pointed  rays  with bundles of  sinuous
parallel lines set between them.
     Tatarsky noticed there were almost invisible little red and green veins
twinkling around the lines,  as  though  he  was  watching a badly  adjusted
computer  monitor. The  shiny surface of the photograph took on a  brilliant
rainbow gleam and its glimmering began to occupy more of  his attention than
the  actual  image.  'It's  started,'  thought  Tatarsky. 'Now that's really
quick...'
     Finding the  page  the  photograph had come  unstuck  from, he ran  his
tongue across the dried-up spot of casein glue and set it back in its place.
Then he carefully turned over the page and smoothed it down with the palm of
his  hand,  so the  photograph  would  stick  properly. Glancing at the next
photo, he almost dropped the folder on the floor.
     The photograph showed the same face as on the  lilac tab-stamp.  It was
shown from a different  angle, in profile, but there was absolutely no doubt
about it.
     It  was  a  complete  photograph  of   the  same  bas-relief.  Tatarsky
recognised the fragment with  the stars  - they were  small  now and hard to
pick out, and the arms uplifted towards  them turned to belong to  the  tiny
figure of  a man standing on the roof  of  a  house,  frozen  in  a  pose of
absolute terror.
     The  central  figure  in  the   bas-relief,  whose  face  Tatarsky  had
recognised, was several times larger than the figure on the roof and all the
other figures around  it. It was a  man  wearing a  pointed iron cap  with a
mysterious,  half-drunk  smile  playing  about  his  lips.  His face  seemed
strangely, even absurdly out of  place in  the ancient image - it looked  so
natural Tatarsky could easily have believed the bas-relief had not been made
three thousand years ago in Nineveh, but some time late last year in Yerevan
or  Calcutta.  Instead  of the spade-shaped beard with symmetrical  curls an
ancient Sumerian was supposed to wear, the  man was wearing a sparse goatee,
and he looked like a cross between Cardinal Richelieu and Lenin.
     Tatarsky  hastily turned over the page and found  the  text relating to
the photograph.
     Enkidu  (Enki  fecit) ;'s a fisherman-god, the servant of the god  Enki
(Lord  of the Earth).  He is the  god  of the Great Lottery and protector of
ponds and canals; there are also examples of spells invoking Enkidu  against
various ailments of the digestive tract. He was made from clay, like Adam in
the Old Testament  story -  the  clay  tablets •with the  questions for  the
Lottery  were believed  to  be the  flesh  of Enkidu,  and  the ritual drink
prepared in his temple was his blood...
     It was hard to read the text - the sense wasn't getting through to him,
and  the  letters  were shimmering and blinking  in all the  colours  of the
rainbow. Tatarsky began studying the  image of  the  deity in detail. Enkidu
was draped in a mantle covered with oval plaques and in  his  hands he  held
bundles of  strings that radiated  out like fans towards the ground, so that
he reminded Tatarsky  of Gulliver with an  army  of  Lilliputians trying  to
restrain him  by cables attached  to  his arms. None of the pools and canals
Enkidu  was supposed to be concerned with were to be  seen anywhere - he was
walking through a burning city, where the houses came up to his waist. Under
his  feet  lay  prostrate  figures with  their  arms extended  in  identical
gestures  -  looking at  them,  Tatarsky noted  the  quite definite  kinship
between Sumerian art and socialist  realism.  The most interesting detail of
the image were the  strings radiating from Enkidu's hands. Each string ended
in a large wheel,  in  the  centre of  which was  a triangle containing  the
crudely  traced  image of an eye.  There  were human bodies threaded  on the
strings  - like the fish Tatarsky used to dry in his childhood, hanging them
out in the yard on a length of fishing line.
     On  the  next page  there  was an enlarged fragment of  the  bas-relief
showing  the little human figures on one of  the  strings. Tatarsky was even
slightly nauseated. With quite repulsive realism,  the bas-relief showed the
cable entering each human figure at the mouth and exiting from its backside.
Some of the people's arms were flung out to the sides, others were  pressing
their  hands to  their  heads,  and large-headed birds hung  in  the  spaces
between them. Tatarsky carried on reading:
     According  to tradition  Endu,  wife of  the god Enki  (another account
regards her as his female hypostasis, which  seems unlikely; she can also be
identified with the  figure  of  Ishtar) was once sitting  on the  bank of a
canal and telling the rosary of rainbow-coloured beads her husband had given
her. The sun was shining very brightly and Endu was  overcome  by sleep. She
dropped her rosary, which fell into the water, where the beads scattered and
sank. After this the  rainbow-coloured beads decided  that they  were people
and  settled  throughout the pond.  They built towns and had their own kings
and  gods. Then Enki took a lump of  clay and moulded it into the  form of a
fisherman. He  breathed  life into it and  called  it  Enkidu. He gave him a
spindle of golden thread, and told him to go  down into the water and gather
up all  the beads.  Since  the name  'Enkidu contains  Enki's  own  name, it
possesses special power and the beads are obliged to  submit to the will  of
the  god and  string themselves on  to the  golden thread.  Some researchers
believe that Enkidu gathers up the souls of the deceased and transports them
on  his  threads  to  the kingdom  of  the dead;  numerous images  have been
preserved in which merchants and officials are shown appealing to Enkidu for
help.  These prayers contain a repeated plea to 'raise the strong higher  on
the thread of gold' and  to 'endow with the earthly enlility' (see 'Enlil').
There  are also eschatological  motifs to be found in the myth of  Enkidu-as
soon as  Enkidu gathers everyone living on earth on to his  thread life will
cease, because they will once  again become  beads  on  the  necklace of the
great goddess.  This event, due  to  happen at some point in the future,  is
identified with the end of the world.
     The ancient legend  contains  one motif  for which it  is  difficult to
provide  an explanation: several versions describe in detail exactly how the
bead-people crawl up along Enkidu's threads. They don't
     use their hands  for this -- their hands serve to cover their eyes  and
ears or to beat off the  white  birds  that  attempt to  tear  them from the
threads. The bead-people ascend the string by  first swallowing  it and then
grasping it alternately with their mouths  and  anuses. It is  not clear how
such Pantagruelesaue  details  come  to be  found  in  the myth  ofEnkidu  -
possibly they are echoes of another myth that has been lost.
     The  wheels  in  which  Enkidu's  threads  end  are  also   worth  some
consideration. They bear the likeness of  an  eye  inscribed in a  triangle.
Here we have  the intersection of the real with the mythical: the wheels  of
ancient Sumerian war chariots actually were  secured by  a triangular bronze
plate attached to the  wheel externally,  and the form  drawn  on the plate,
which is similar to the outline of an  eye, symbolises the spindle on  which
the golden thread was wound. The wheel is a symbol of movement; thus we have
the  self-propelling  spindle  of the god Enki  (cf.  for instance Ariadne's
thread or the many-eyed  wheels in the  vision of the prophet Ezekiel).  The
power of the name 'Enki' is such that although originally there was only one
such spindle, it might have come to seem to people  that their numbers  were
beyond count.
     Tatarsky  noticed  a  glimmering in  the  semi-darkness  of  the  room.
Thinking it must be the reflection of some light  in the street, he stood up
and looked out of the window, but there was nothing of any interest going on
outside. He caught sight of his own orange divan  reflected in the glass and
was amazed to observe  that, seen in mirror inversion, the tattered couch he
had  so often  felt  like throwing  out  on to the dump and burning  was the
finest  part  of  an  unfamiliar  and quite  amazingly  beautiful  interior.
Returning  to his  seat, he glimpsed  the glimmering light again out of  the
corner of his eye. He looked round, but the light shifted too, as though its
source was a spot on his iris. 'OK,' Tatarsky thought happily, 'so now we're
into  the  glitches.'  The  focus of his attention  shifted to the spot  and
rested there for only the briefest of moments, but that was enough  for  his
mind to record an event that began gradually unfolding as it surfaced in his
memory, like a photograph in a bath of developing fluid.
     It  was  summer,  and  he was  standing  on a  city  street lined  with
identical small houses. Towering up  above the city was something  between a
conical factory chimney and a television tower - it was hard to tell what it
was, because mounted on the summit of the chimney-tower was a blinding white
torch, blazing so brilliantly that the haze of hot air obscured the outline.
He could see its lower section was like a stepped pyramid, but higher up, in
the white  radiance, it  was  impossible to make out  any details.  Tatarsky
thought  the construction  was probably something  like  the gas flares they
have at  oil refineries,  except  that the  flame  was so bright. There were
people  standing  motionless at the  open windows of the houses  and on  the
street  - they were gazing upwards  at  the white fire. Tatarsky  turned his
eyes in the same direction, and immediately felt himself jerked  upwards. He
could feel the fire drawing him towards itself and he knew that if he didn't
turn  his  eyes  away the flame  would drag  him  upwards  and  consume  him
completely. Somehow he knew a lot about this fire. He knew many  had already
entered it ahead of him  and were drawing him after them. He knew there were
many who could only enter it after him, and they were  pressing at his back.
Tatarsky forced himself  to close his eyes. When  he opened them, he saw the
tower had moved.
     Now he could see it  wasn't a tower - it was an immense  human  figure,
towering up over the town. What  he had  taken for a pyramid now looked like
the  folds of a  garment  resembling a cloak or a  mantle. The source of the
light was  the conical helmet on  the figure's head.  Tatarsky could clearly
see  the face, with some kind of  gleaming  battering  ram in the place of a
beard. It was turned towards him, and he realised he could only see the face
and the  helmet instead of the  flame, because the flame was looking at him,
and in reality there  was nothing human about it. The gaze directed  towards
Tatarsky expressed anticipation, but before he had  time to think about what
he actually wanted to say or ask, or  whether he really wanted to say or ask
anything  at all,  the figure gave him its answer and turned its gaze  away.
The same  intolerably bright  radiance  appeared where the face had been and
Tatarsky lowered his eyes.
     He noticed two people  beside him, an elderly  man in  a  shirt with an
anchor embroidered on it and a boy in  a black tee-shirt:  they were holding
hands and  gazing upwards,  and he had a feeling they  had almost completely
melted and merged with the bright fire,  and their bodies, the street around
them and the entire city were no more than shadows. Just a moment before the
picture  faded, Tatarsky guessed  the bright fire  he'd  seen wasn't burning
high in the sky, but down below, as though he'd glimpsed a reflection of the
sun in a puddle and forgotten he wasn't  looking at  the  actual position of
the sun. Where the sun actually was, and what it was, he didn't have time to
find out, but he  did manage to  understand  something  else, something very
strange: it wasn't the sun that was  reflected in the  puddle, but the other
way round; everything and everybody else - the street, the houses, the other
people and he himself  - were all reflected in  the  sun, which was entirely
uninterested in the whole business, because it wasn't even aware of it.
     This idea  about  the sun  and the puddle filled  Tatarsky with such  a
feeling of happiness that he laughed  out loud in his joy and gratitude. All
the  problems of  life,  all those things that had seemed so unsolvable  and
terrifying,  simply  ceased  to  exist  -  for  an  instant  the  world  was
transformed in the same  way as his  divan had been transformed when it  was
reflected in the window pane.
     When Tatarsky came round he was sitting  on the  divan, holding between
his  fingers  the  page  that  he   still  hadn't  turned.   There  was   an
incomprehensible  word  pulsating  in his ears,  something like 'sirrukh' or
'sirruf. It was the answer the figure had given him.
     'Sirrukh, sirruf,' he repeated. 'I don't understand.'
     The happiness he had  been feeling only a moment before was replaced by
fright.  He suddenly felt it  must be unlawful to learn anything  like that,
because  he couldn't see how you could live with the knowledge. 'And I'm the
only one who knows it,' he thought nervously; 'how can I be allowed  to know
it and still stay here  and keep on walking around in this world? What if  I
tell someone? But then, who is there to  permit it or forbid it,  if I'm the
only one who knows? Just a second, though - what can I actually tell  anyone
anyway?'
     Tatarsky  started  thinking  about  it:  there really  was  nothing  in
particular he could  tell anyone.  What was  the point of telling  a drunken
Khanin it was the puddle that was reflected in the sun, and not the sun that
was reflected in the  puddle? Of course, he could tell  him, but then .  . .
Tatarsky scratched the back of  his head.  He remembered this was the second
revelation  of this  kind in his life: after gorging himself on  fly-agarics
with Gireiev, he'd understood  something of equal  importance. But then he'd
completely forgotten it. All that remained in his memory were the words that
were supposed to convey the truth: 'There is  no  death, because the threads
disappear but the sphere remains.'
     'Oh, Lord,' he muttered, 'how difficult it is to  bring anything at all
back here ...'
     'That's  exactly right,'  said  a  quiet  voice.  'Any insight  of true
breadth  and profundity will inevitably  be reduced to words. And the  words
will inevitably be reduced to themselves.'
     Tatarsky thought  the voice sounded familiar. 'Who's there?' he  asked,
looking round the room.
     'Sirruf has arrived,' the voice replied.
     'What's that, a name?'
     "This game  has no name,' the voice replied. 'It's more  of an official
position.'
     Tatarsky remembered where it was he'd heard the voice -on the  military
building  site in  the woods  outside  Moscow.  This time  he could  see the
speaker, or rather,  he was  able to imagine him  instantly and without  the
slightest effort. At first he thought  it was the likeness  of a dog sitting
there in front  of him - something  like a greyhound, but with powerful paws
with claws and  a  long vertical neck. The  beast had an elongated head with
conical ears and a very pleasant-looking, if slightly  cunning, little  face
crowned by  a coquettish mane of fur.  There  seemed  to be a pair  of wings
pressed against its  sides. After a short while Tatarsky realised the  beast
was  so large and so strange  that the  word  'dragon'  would suit him best,
especially since he was covered in shimmering rainbow scales (but then, just
at that moment almost every object in the room was shimmering with every hue
of  the  rainbow).  Despite  its  distinctly reptilian  features,  the being
radiated goodwill so powerfully that Tatarsky wasn't at all frightened.
     'Yes, everything is reduced to words/ repeated the Sirruf. 'As far as I
am aware, the most profound revelation ever to visit a human being under the
influence of drugs was occasioned by a critical dose of ether. The recipient
summoned up the  strength  to  write it down, even though it cost a  supreme
effort. What  he wrote was: "The universe is permeated  by a smell  of oil.'
You've got a long way to go before you reach depths like that. Well, anyway,
that's all beside the point. Why  don't you tell me  where you got the stamp
from?'
     Tatarsky remembered the collector from the Poor Folk bar and his album.
He was about to reply, but the Sirruf interrupted him:
     'Grisha the stamp-collector. I thought as much. How many of them did he
have?'
     Tatarsky  remembered the page of the album and the three lilac-coloured
rectangles in the plastic pocket.
     T see,' said the Sirruf. 'So there are two more.'
     After that he  disappeared, and Tatarsky returned to his  normal state.
He understood now what happens to a person who has the delirium tremens he'd
read so much about in the classics of nineteenth-century Russian literature.
He had no  control at all  over his  hallucinations,  and he simply couldn't
tell  which way he  would be tossed  by the next thought. He  began to  feel
afraid. He got up and walked quickly into the bathroom, put his head under a
stream of water and  held  it there until the cold became painful. He  dried
his  hair on a towel,  went back into the room and took another look  at its
reflection in  the window  pane. The familiar  interior appeared to  him now
like a Gothic stage  set for some menacing event due to occur at any moment,
and the divan appeared like some sacrificial altar for large animals.
     'Why on earth did I have to go and swallow that garbage?' he thought in
anguish.
     'Absolutely no reason whatsoever,' said the Sirruf, resurfacing in some
obscure dimension of his consciousness. 'It really isn't good  for man to go
taking drugs. Especially psyche-delics.'
     'Yes, I know that myself/ Tatarsky replied quietly. 'Now I do.'
     'Man has a world in which he lives/ the Sirruf said  didactically. 'Man
is man because he  can see nothing  except  that world. But when you take an
overdose  of LSD or dine on panther fly-agarics, you're  stepping way out of
line - and  you're  taking  a  grave risk.  If you only  realised  how  many
invisible eyes are watching you at that moment you would never do it;
     and if you were to see  even just a few of those who are watching  you,
you'd die of fright. By  this act you declare that being human is not enough
for  you and  you  want to become someone else. But in  the  first place, in
order to cease being human, you have to die. Do you want to die?'
     'No,' said Tatarsky, earnestly pressing his hand to his heart.
     'And who is it you want to be?'
     'I don't know,' Tatarsky said, crushed.
     'You see  what I mean? Just one more tab from  happy  Holland might not
have meant too  much, but what you swallowed was something  quite different.
It's a numbered  issue, an  official  service  document, by eating which you
shift across  into  a  different  realm  where there are absolutely no  idle
pleasures or amusements. And which you're not supposed to go wandering about
in without  an official  commission. And you don't  have any  commission. Do
you?'
     'No,' agreed Tatarsky.
     'We've settled things with Grisha. He's a sick man, a collector; and he
came by the pass by accident... But what did you eat it for?'
     'I wanted to feel the pulse of life,' Tatarsky said with a sob.
     'The pulse of life? Very well, feel it,' said the Sirruf.
     When Tatarsky came to his senses, the only thing in the world he wanted
was that the experience he'd just been through and had no words to describe,
merely a feeling of black horror, should never happen to him again. For that
he was prepared to give absolutely anything.
     'Again, perhaps?' asked the Sirruf.
     'No,' said Tatarsky, 'please, don't. I'll never, never eat that garbage
again. I promise.'
     'You  can promise  the local policeman.  If you live till morning, that
is.'
     'What d'you mean ?'
     'Just what  I say. Do  you at  least realise that  was a pass  for five
people? And you're here alone. Or are there really five of you?'
     When Tatarsky recovered his senses again he  felt he really didn't have
much chance  of surviving the  night. There had  just been five of  him, and
every one of them had felt so bad  that Tatarsky had instantly realised what
a blessing it was to exist in the singular/ and he was astonished how people
could be so blind as not to appreciate their good fortune.
     'Please/ he said, 'please, don't do that to me again.'
     'I'm  not doing anything to you,' replied the Sirruf. 'You're doing  it
all yourself.'
     'Can  I explain?' Tatarsky asked  piteously. 'I  realise  I've  made  a
mistake. I  realise  it's not right to  look  at  the Tower of Babel.  But I
didn't. ..'
     'What  has  the  Tower  of  Babel  got  to  do  with  it?'  the  Sirruf
interrupted.
     'I've just seen it.'
     'You can't see the Tower  of Babel, you can only ascend it/ replied the
Sirruf. 'I tell you that as its guardian. And what you saw  was the complete
opposite. One could call it the Carthaginian Pit. The so-called tofet.'
     'What's a tofet?'
     'It's a place of sacrificial cremation. There were pits of the kind  in
Tyre, Sidon, Carthage and so forth, and they really did burn people in them.
That, by the way, is why Carthage was destroyed.  These pits were also known
as Gehenna -after a certain ancient valley where the whole business started.
I might add that the Bible calls it the "abomination of the Ammonites" - but
you haven't read the  Bible  anyway, you  only  search through  it  for  new
slogans.'
     'I don't understand.'
     'Very well. You can regard the tofet as an ordinary television/
     'I still don't understand. Do you mean I was inside a television?'
     'In  a certain sense. You saw the  technological space  in  which  your
world is being consumed by fire. Something like a garbage incinerator.'
     Once again Tatarsky glimpsed the  figure holding the glittering strings
on  the  periphery  of his field of  vision.  The vision lasted  for  only a
fraction of a second.
     'But isn't he the god Enkidu?' he asked. 'I was just reading about him.
I even know  what those strings are he has in his hands. When the beads from
the great goddess's necklace decided they were people and they settled right
across the reservoir. ..'
     'In  the first place, he isn't a god, quite the opposite. Enkidu is one
of his  less  common names,  but  he  is better  known as Baal. Or Baloo. In
Carthage they tried to sacrifice to him by burning their children, but there
was no point, because he makes no allowances and simply cremates everyone in
turn. In the second place, the beads didn't decide they were people,  it was
people who decided  they were  beads. That's why the entity you  call Enkidu
gathers up  those beads  and cremates them,  so  that  some  day people will
realise they aren't beads at all. Do you follow?'
     'No. What are the beads, then?'
     The Sirruf said nothing for a moment.
     'How can  I explain it to you?  The beads are what that  Che Guevara of
yours calls "identity".'
     'But where did these beads come from?'
     'They didn't come from anywhere. They don't actually exist.'
     'What is it that burns then?' Tatarsky asked doubtfully.
     'Nothing.'
     'I don't  understand. If  there's  fire,  then  there must be something
burning. Some kind of substance.'
     'Have you ever read Dostoievsky?'
     'I can't stand him, to be honest.'
     'A pity. In one of his novels  there was an  old man  called Zosima who
was  horrified by intimations of the material fire. It's not clear quite why
he was  so  afraid. The material  fire is your world.  The fire in which you
burn has to be maintained. And you are one of the service personnel.'
     'Service personnel?'
     'You  are a copywriter, aren't you? That means you are one of those who
force people to gaze into the consuming fire.'
     'The consuming fire? But what is it that's consumed?'
     'Not  what,  but  who.  Man  believes that he is the consumer,  but  in
reality the fire of consumption consumes him. What he receives in return are
certain modest joys.  It's  like  the safe  sex  that  you  all  indulge  in
ceaselessly,  even when  you  are  alone. Environmentally  friendly  garbage
incineration. But you won't understand it anyway.'
     'But who's the garbage, who is it?' Tatarsky asked. 'Is it man?'
     'Man by nature is almost as great  and beautiful as Sirruf/ the  Sirruf
replied. 'But he is not aware of it. The garbage is this  unawareness. It is
the identity that  has no existence in reality. In this life man attends  at
the incineration of the garbage of his identity . ..'
     'Why should man gaze into this fire if his life is burning in it?'
     'You have no idea of what to do with these lives anyway;
     and whichever way  you might turn your eyes,  you are still gazing into
the flames in which your life is consumed. There  is mercy in  the fact that
in place of crematoria you have televisions and supermarkets;  but the truth
is that their function is the  same. And in  any case, the fire is  merely a
metaphor. You  saw it  because you  ate a pass to the  garbage  incineration
plant. All most people see in front of them is a television screen...'
     And with that he disappeared.
     'Hey there,' Tatarsky called.
     There  was  no  reply.  Tatarsky waited for  another  minute  before he
realised he'd  been left alone with his own mind, ready to wander off in any
direction at all. He had to occupy it with something quickly.
     'Phone,' he whispered. 'Who? Gireiev! He knows what to do.'
     For a  long  time  no  one  answered. Eventually, on  the fifteenth  or
twentieth ring, Gireiev's morose voice responded.
     'Hello.'
     'Audrey? Hello. This is Tatarsky.'
     'Do you know what time it is?'
     'Listen,'  Tatarsky  said hastily, 'I'm in trouble.  I've done too much
acid. Someone in  the know tells  me it was  five  doses. Anyway, to  cut it
short, I'm coming apart at all the seams. What can I do?'
     'What can you  do? I don't know what you can do. In cases  like that  I
recite a mantra.'
     'Can you give me one?'
     'How can I give you one? It has to be conferred.'
     'Aren't there any you can just give me without any conferring?'
     Gireiev  thought. 'Right, just hang on  a minute,' he said, and put the
receiver down on the table.
     For several minutes  Tatarsky tried to make sense of the distant sounds
borne to  him along  the wires  on an  electric wind. At first he could hear
fragments of conversation; then an  irritated  woman's voice broke in  for a
long time; then everything was drowned out by the abrupt and demanding sound
of a child crying.
     'Write this down,' Gireiev said at  last. 'Om  melafefon  bva kha  sha.
I'll give you it letter by letter: o, em ...'
     'I've got it,' said Tatarsky. 'What does it mean?'
     'That's not important. Just concentrate on the  sound, OK? Have you got
any vodka?'
     'I think I had two bottles.'
     'You can  drink them both. It  goes  well with this  mantra. In an hour
it'll be all over. I'll call you tomorrow.'
     'Thanks. Listen, who's that crying there?'
     'My son,' Gireiev answered.
     'You have a son? I didn't know. What's his name?'
     'Namhai,' Gireiev replied in a disgruntled voice. 'I'll call tomorrow.'
     Tatarsky put down the  receiver and  dashed into  the kitchen,  rapidly
whispering to  himself the incantation he'd just been  given.  He took out a
bottle of Absolut  and drank it all in three  glassfuls, followed it up with
some cold tea and  then  went  into the bathroom - he  was afraid to go back
into the room. He sat on the edge of the bath,  fixed  his eyes  on the door
and began to whisper:
     'Om melafefon bva kha sha, om melafefon bva kha sha ...'
     The phrase was so difficult to pronounce, his mind simply couldn't cope
with  any other  thoughts. Several  minutes  went by  and  a  warm  wave  of
drunkenness  spread  throughout  his body.  Tatarsky had almost relaxed when
suddenly he noticed the familiar glimmering on the periphery of his field of
vision. He clenched his fists  and began whispering the mantra more quickly,
but it was already too late to halt the new glitch.
     Something  like  a firework  display  erupted  at the  spot  where  the
bathroom door  had just been, and when the red and  yellow blaze died down a
little, he  saw a burning bush in front of  him. Its branches were enveloped
in bright flame, as  though  it had been  doused in blazing petrol,  but the
broad  dark-green leaves  were not consumed  in  the  fire.  No  sooner  had
Tatarsky studied  the  bush  in detail  than a  clenched fist  was  extended
towards him from out of its heart. Tatarsky swayed and almost fell backwards
into the  bath. The fist unclenched and on the palm extended in front of his
face Tatarsky saw a small, wet, pickled cucumber covered in green pimples.
     When the bush  disappeared, Tatarsky  could no longer recall whether he
had taken the cucumber or not, but there was a distinctly salty taste in his
mouth. Perhaps it was blood from a bitten lip.
     'Oh  no,  Gireiev,  this mantra  of yours  isn't  doing the  business,'
Tatarsky whispered, and went into the kitchen.
     After drinking more  vodka (he had to force it down), he went back into
the room  and  turned on  the television. The room  was filled  with  solemn
music; the blue spot on  the screen expanded and  transformed itself into an
image. They were broadcasting some concert or other.
     'Lord, hear Thou my plea,' sang a man with a  powdered face, wearing  a
bow tie and a shot silk waistcoat  under black tails.  As he sang  he rolled
his goggling eyes and  sawed at the  air  with  his  open hand  in a strange
manner, as though he was being borne away on a current of celestial ether.
     Tatarsky clicked on the remote and the man  in the bow tie disappeared.
'Maybe  I should  pray?'  he thought. 'It  might  do  some good  .  . .'  He
remembered the man from the bas-relief with his arms upraised to  the starry
sky.
     He  went out into  the centre  of  the  room  and  knelt down with some
difficulty, then crossed  his arms on  his chest and raised  his eyes to the
ceiling.
     'Lord, hear  Thou my  plea,' he  said quietly. 'I  have sinned  greatly
against Thee. I live  a bad  life,  a wrong one. But in my soul there are no
abominable desires, cross my heart. I'll  never eat any  of that junk again.
I... I only want to be happy,  and I just can't manage it. Perhaps it's what
I deserve. I can't do anything else except write bad  slogans. But for Thee,
oh Lord, I'll write a good  one - honest I will.  You know, they do position
Thee quite wrongly. They  haven't got a clue.  Take that  latest clip, where
they're collecting  money for  that church. There's this old woman  standing
there with a box,  and first someone driving an old jalopy puts in  a rouble
and  then someone driving a Mercedes  drops in a  hundred bucks.  The idea's
clear enough, but in terms  of positioning it's way off beam. The guy in the
Mercedes wouldn't wait in the queue of jalopies. A blind horse could see it.
And the target group we need is all those guys in their Mercedes, because in
terms of yield one Mercedes is worth a thousand jalopies. That's not the way
to do it. Here ...'
     Managing  somehow  to scramble upright, Tatarsky  struggled over to the
desk, picked up a pen and began writing in a jerky, spiderish scrawl:
     Poster  (theme for a clip).  A room in  a very expensive hotel. Carrara
marble  table.  A  laptop  computer  flashes  out  a  message:  'Transaction
confirmed'. Near the  computer vse see a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill and a
hotel-room Bible in three languages. Slogan:
     THE SHINING WORD FOR YOUR SHINING WORLD!
     Variant: another setting - a private jet airplane, a  stock exchange, a
Manhattan penthouse, a Cote d'Azur estate,  etc. Instead of the Bible we see
the Saviour Himself approaching the camera in the rays of His glory. Slogan:
     A FIRST-CLASS LORD FOR YOUR HAPPY LOT.
     Tatarsky dropped the  pen and raised his red, tear-stained eyes to  the
ceiling. 'Dost Thou like it. Lord?' he asked quietly.







     God's  love  for man  is  manifest in  a  great  principle  that defies
adequate expression in words: 'and yet it  can be done'. The phrase 'and yet
it can be  done' means an immense number of things, including, for instance,
that  the principle itself, despite being absolutely impossible  to express,
can yet  be  expressed  and manifested.  Even  more  than  that,  it  can be
expressed an infinite number of times, and each time in a completely new way
- which is why  poetry exists. Such is the  love of God.  And what  is man's
response to it?
     Tatarsky woke in a  cold sweat, unable to understand  what the pitiless
onslaught of the  daylight  was punishing him for. He  could vaguely  recall
shouting  out  in his  sleep  and  apparently  trying  to justify himself to
someone  - in other words he'd had  an alcoholic nightmare. Now his hangover
was so fundamental and profound that there was no point in seeking salvation
by  simply pouring  a  shot of vodka down his throat. He couldn't even think
about it, because the very thought of alcohol triggered spasms  of retching;
but to his great good fortune, that irrational and mystical manifestation of
the  divine love that  spreads its trembling wings  over  Russia had already
embraced his suffering soul.
     He could yet take a hair of the dog that bit him. There was  a  special
method  for  it,  known as  a  'locomotive'.  It  had  been  perfected  over
generations  of  alcoholics  and  handed  down  to  Tatarsky  by  a  certain
individual from the esoteric circles  of St  Petersburg the morning after  a
monstrous drinking session. 'In essence the method is Gurdjieffian,' the man
had explained. 'It belongs to what he called  "the path of the cunning man".
You have to regard yourself as a machine. This  machine has receptors, nerve
endings and a central control centre that  is declaring quite  unambiguously
that any attempt to  consume alcohol will instantly result in vomiting. What
does  the  cunning  man  do?  He  deceives the  machine's receptors.  From a
practical  point of  view  it  goes  like  this:  you fill  your  mouth with
lemonade. Then you pour a glass of  vodka and  raise it  to your mouth. Then
you  swallow the  lemonade, and while  the receptors  are reporting  to  the
supreme control centre  that you're  drinking lemonade, you  quickly swallow
the vodka.  Your body simply doesn't have time to react,  because its mind's
fairly  sluggish.  But there is one  subtle point involved.  If you  swallow
Coca-Cola before  the  vodka instead of lemonade,  there's  a fifty per cent
chance you'll puke anyway; and if  you swallow Pepsi-Cola, you're absolutely
certain to puke.'
     'What a  concept  that would  make,' Tatarsky  pondered  dourly  as  he
entered the kitchen. There  was still a little vodka  in one of the bottles.
He  poured  it  into a glass  and  then turned  towards  the  fridge. He was
frightened  by the  thought that there might  not be anything in  it  except
Pepsi-Cola, which he usually bought out of faithfulness to the ideals of his
own generation, but  fortunately, standing  there on the bottom  shelf was a
can of Seven-Up some visitor or other had brought together with the vodka.
     'Seven-Up,'  Tatarsky  whispered,  licking  his  desiccated lips.  "The
Uncola ...'
     The operation was a success. He went back into the room and over to the
desk,  where he  discovered  several  sheets  of  paper  covered  in crooked
lettering. Apparently the previous evening's flood-tide of religious feeling
had cast up some debris on the paper shoreline.
     The first text was printed in very neat and tidy capital letters:
     'ETERNAL LIFE' COCKTAIL MAN, DESIRE NOUGHT FOR THYSELF. WHEN PEOPLE WHO
SUFFER COME TO YOU IN MULTITUDES GIVE OF THYSELF WITHOUT REMAINDER
     YOU SAY YOU'RE NOT READY? TOMORROW WE BELIEVE YOU WILL  BE!  BUT IN THE
MEANTIME - BOMBAY SAPPHIRE GIN WITH TONIC, JUICE OR YOUR FAVOURITE MIXER
     The  second text must  have been  delivered from  the great advertising
agency  in the sky when Tatarsky had  already reached  an extreme  stage  of
drunkenness  - it took him several minutes  just to decipher his own scrawl.
The slogan had evidently been  written when his prayerful ecstasy had passed
its peak  and his consciousness had  finally reverted to a mode of pragmatic
rationalism:
     DO IT YOURSELF, MOTHERFUCKER REEBOK
     The phone rang. 'Khanin/ Tatarsky thought in fright as he picked up the
receiver. But it was Gireiev.
     'Babe? How're you doing?'
     'So-so, 'Tatarsky replied.
     'Sorry about  yesterday. You phoned  so  late, and my wife  went on the
warpath. Did you get by OK?'
     'More or less.'
     'Know what  I wanted to  tell you? You might find it interesting from a
professional point  of view.  This  lama's  arrived in town -  Urgan Djambon
Tulku the Seventh,  from  the Gel-ugpa sect - and he gave an entire  lecture
about advertising.  I've got it on cassette;  you  can  have a listen to it.
There  was loads  of  all sorts  of  stuff, but the  central  idea  was very
interesting. From the Buddhist point of view  the meaning  of advertising is
extremely simple.  It  attempts to convince  us  that consuming the  product
advertised will result in a high and auspicious reincarnation - and not even
after  death, but  immediately following the act of consumption.  Like, chew
Orbit sugar-free and  straightaway you're an asura. Chew Dirol, and you're a
god with snow-white teeth.'
     'I  don't understand a  word  you're saying,' said Tatarsky, wincing at
his gradually dissipating spasms of nausea.
     'Well, to keep it simple, what  he was trying to say was that the  main
purpose of advertising is to show people other people who've managed to find
happiness  in  the  possession of  material objects. But  in  reality people
suffering from that delusion don't exist anywhere except in the ads.'
     'Why?' asked Tatarsky, struggling to keep up with the ebbs and flows of
his friend's thought.
     'Because  it's  never  the  things  that  are  advertised,  it's  human
happiness. The people they show are always equally happy, only the happiness
comes from buying different things in different cases. So people don't go to
a shop to  buy things, they go there  looking  for this  happiness; but  the
shops  don't sell it. Then the  lama criticised the theory of someone called
Che  Guevara. He  said  Che  Guevara wasn't a proper Buddhist  and therefore
wasn't a proper authority for  a Buddhist; and he hadn't  actually given the
world anything except a burst of machine-gun fire and  his famous trademark.
But then, the world hadn't give him anything else either . ..'
     'Listen,' said Tatarsky, 'finish up, will you? I can't take anything in
anyway - my head  hurts. Why don't you just tell me what that mantra was you
gave me?'
     'It's not a mantra,' replied Gireev.  'It's a sentence in Hebrew from a
textbook. My wife's studying it.'
     'Your wife?' Tatarsky  echoed in  surprise,  wiping  the beads  of cold
sweat from his forehead. 'But of course. If you have a son, then you have  a
wife. What's she studying Hebrew for?'
     'She wants to  get out  of  here. Not long  ago she  had this  terrible
vision. No glitches,  mind, just while  she  was meditating. Anyway, there's
this  rock and this  naked  girl lying  on  it and the girl  is  Russia.  So
stooping  over  her there's this . . . You can't make  out the face, but  he
seems to be wearing an army coat with epaulettes, or some kind of cloak. And
he's giving her.. /
     'Don't  pile it on,' said Tatarsky. 'I'll  be sick.  I'll call you back
later, OK?'
     'OK,' agreed Gireiev.
     'Hang on. Why'd you give me that sentence and not a mantra?'
     'What's  the  difference? In that  state  it doesn't  matter  what  you
recite. The main thing is to keep your mind occupied and drink as much vodka
as possible. Who's going to give you a mantra without conferring it properly
anyway?'
     'So what does the phrase mean?'
     'Let me have a look. Where is it now ... Aha, here it is. 'Od melafefon
bva kha sha.' It means "Please give me another cucumber". What a gas,  eh? A
natural  born  mantra. Of  course, it starts with  "od", not "om", I changed
that. And if you put "hum" at the end as well...'
     'OK, OK" said Tatarsky. 'Cheers. I'm going out for some beer/
     It  was a clear, fresh morning;  its cool purity seemed to conceal some
incomprehensible reproach.  Tatarsky emerged  from the  entrance-way of  his
house and stopped, absorbed in  thought.  It  would  take him ten minutes to
walk  as far as the round-the-clock shop he  normally went  to  for hangover
remedies (the local winos called it 'the round-the-bend place') and the same
amount of  time to get  back. Close by, just a couple  of minutes away, were
the kiosks in one of which he had formerly worked. Since then he hadn't gone
anywhere near them, but he  had no time right now to worry  about any vague,
ill-defined fears. Struggling against his own reluctance to carry on living,
Tatarsky set off towards the kiosks.
     Several  of  them  were already open, and there  was  a newspaper stand
beside them. Tatarsky bought three cans of Tuborg and an  analytical tabloid
-  it  was one  he used  to  look  through for  the sake of  the advertising
spreads,  which  aroused  his  professional  interest  even  in  a  severely
hung-over state. He drank the first can while he leafed through the tabloid.
His attention  was caught by an advertisement for Aeroflot showing a married
couple climbing up a gangway set against a palm tree laden with paradisaical
fruit.  'What  idiots,' Tatarsky  thought. 'Who advertises  themselves  like
that? Someone needs to fly to Novosibirsk, and they promise him he'll end up
in heaven. But maybe  he's not  due  in heaven  just  yet;  maybe  he's  got
business in  Novosibirsk ... Might  as  well invent an "Icarus" airbus .. .'
The  next page was  taken up  by  a colourful advertisement  for an American
restaurant on  Uprising Square  -  a photograph of the entrance with a jolly
neon sign blazing above it:
     BEVERLY KILLS A CHUCK NORRIS ENTERPRISE
     Tatarsky  folded  up the  newspaper,  laid  it  flat on a  dirty  crate
standing between the kiosks, sat down on it and opened up the second can.
     He  felt better almost immediately,  m order not to look at  the  world
around him, Tatarsky fixed his gaze on the can. There was a large picture on
it under the yellow word 'Tuborg': a fat man in braces wiping the sweat from
his forehead with a  white handkerchief. Above the man's head was a  searing
expanse of blue, and he was standing on a narrow track that  led away beyond
the horizon; in short, the picture was so heavily loaded with symbolism that
Tatarsky couldn't understand how the thin aluminium of the can could support
it. He automatically began composing a slogan.
     'Something like this,' he  thought: 'Life is a solitary journey beneath
a scorching sun. The road we  walk along leads to nowhere; and no  one knows
where death  lies in  wait. Remembering this, everything in  the world seems
empty and meaningless. And  then -  enlightenment. Tuborg. Prepare yourself.
Variant: Think final.'
     Part  of the slogan could be  written in Latin - Tatarsky still had the
taste for that going back to his first job. For instance, 'Halt, wayfarer' -
something-something viator. Tatarsky couldn't remember  precisely; he'd have
to look  it up in his Inspired Latin Sayings. He rummaged  in his pockets to
find a pen to note down his creation.  There wasn't one. Tatarsky decided to
ask a passer-by for one and he  looked up. Standing there right  in front of
him was Hussein.
     Hussein was  smiling  with the corners of  his  mouth,  his hands  were
thrust into the pockets of his broad velvet  trousers, and his gleaming oily
eyes were quite expressionless - he  was just surfacing from  a  recent fix.
He'd hardly changed at all, except for maybe  putting on  a  little  weight.
There was a short astrakhan hat on his head.
     The can of beer slipped from Tatarsky's  fingers  and a symbolic yellow
stream traced  out a  dark spot  on the  asphalt. The feelings that  flitted
through his heart  in the  space of  a second were a perfect  match for  the
concept  he'd  just  invented for  Tuborg  - except for  the  fact  that  no
enlightenment ensued.
     'Come on,' said Hussein, beckoning with his finger.
     For one second Tatarsky hesitated, wondering whether to make a dash for
it, but he  decided  it would be wiser not to. As  far  as he  could recall,
Hussein's reflex response was to regard any fast-moving object larger than a
dog  and smaller  than  a car as a target. Of course, in  the  time that had
elapsed the influence  of morphine and Sun music could  have wrought serious
change in the world of his spirit, but Tatarsky wasn't seriously  tempted to
test this possibility in practice.
     The trailer in which Hussein lived  had  hardly changed  either, except
that  now there were  thick  curtains at the windows,  and a green satellite
dish  perched  on  the  roof. Hussein  opened the  door and prodded Tatarsky
gently in the back.
     Inside it was half dark. A huge television was switched on,  and on its
screen  three figures were frozen beneath the spreading branches  of a tree.
The image  was  trembling slightly - the TV  was  connected  to a VCR set on
'pause'. Opposite the television was a bench and sitting on it, leaning back
against  the wall,  was a man  who hadn't shaved for a  long time, wearing a
crumpled club jacket with gold buttons. He  gave off a mild stink. His right
leg was chained to  his hand with  handcuffs that passed under the bench, so
that  his  body was  held in  a  semi-recumbent  position hard to  describe,
reminding Tatarsky of the wow-anal position of  the business-class passenger
from the  Korean  Air  ad (except  that in the  Korean  Air ad the body  was
twisted so that the handcuffs were hidden). At the sight of Hussein the  man
twitched. Hussein took a mobile phone out of his pocket and waved it at  the
man chained to the bench, who shook his head, and Tatarsky  noticed that his
mouth  was  gagged  with a strip of  flesh-coloured  sticky  tape, on  which
someone had drawn a smile in red marker.
     'Pain in the ass,' mumbled Hussein.
     He  picked up  the remote control from the table and pressed a  button.
The figures on the television  stirred  sluggishly  into  life - the VCR was
working on slow play-back. Tatarsky recognised an unforgettably  politically
correct  sequence  from  a Russian film set in  Chechnya  -  Prisoner of the
Caucasus, he thought it  was called -  a  Russian  commando  in  a  crumpled
uniform gazing uncertainly about him, two militants in national costume with
blazing eyes holding him by the arms, and  a third, wearing the same kind of
astrakhan  hat as  Hussein,  raising a long  museum-piece of  a sabre to his
throat. Several close-ups followed each other in sequence on the screen -the
commando's eyes, the  blade  set against  the tight-stretched skin (Tatarsky
thought  it must  be  a  deliberate  reference to Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou,
included for the benefit of the jury at Cannes) and  then the killer pulling
the sabre sharply back towards himself.  Immediately  the  screen showed the
start  of the  scene  again: once again the killer raised his  sabre to  the
throat  of his  victim.  The sequence  had been  set in a loop. Only now did
Tatarsky  realise he was watching  something like an advertising video being
shown at an exhibition stand. Not even  something like one - it actually was
a promotional video: information technology had  influenced Hussein too, and
now he was using an image sequence to position  himself in the consciousness
of  a client.  The client was evidently very familiar with the clip and what
Hussein was trying  to position - he closed his eyes and his head slumped on
to his chest. 'Come on, watch it, watch it,'  said Hussein, grabbing  him by
the  hair and turning his face towards the  screen. 'You jolly bastard. I'll
teach you how to smile ...'
     The unfortunate victim moaned quietly, but because of the broad beaming
smile painted on  his face, Tatarsky felt nothing but irrational dislike for
him.
     Hussein  let  go of  him, straightened  his  astrakhan hat  and  turned
towards Tatarsky:  'All he has to  do  is make just one  phone  call, but he
doesn't want to. Just makes  things hard on himself and everyone else. These
people . . . How're you doing? On a bad trip, I see?'
     'No,' said Tatarsky, 'it's a hangover.'
     'Then I'll pour you a drink,' said Hussein.
     He  went over to the safe and  took out a bottle of Hennessy and a pair
of none-too-clean tooth-glasses.
     'A welcome to my guest,' he said as to he poured the cognac.
     Tatarsky clinked glasses with him and drank.
     'What are you up to nowadays?' asked Hussein.
     'Working.'
     'Where would that be?'
     He  had  to say  something, and something that meant  Hussein  couldn't
claim  compensation for his withdrawal  from the business.  Tatarsky  didn't
have any money  right now. His eyes came to rest on  the television  screen,
where death was advancing yet again. They'll kill me like that/  he thought,
'and no one will even put flowers on my grave .. /
     'So where is it then?' Hussein asked again.
     'In   the   flower   business,'   Tatarsky  blurted   out.  'With   the
Azerbaidjanis.'
     'With   the   Azerbaidjanis?'   Hussein  repeated   doubtfully.   'What
Azerbaidjanis?'
     'With Rafik"  Tatarsky replied, inspired,  'and  Eldar.  We  charter  a
plane, fly in flowers and fly out. .  . Well, you know what. I don't charter
the plane, of course. I'm just the gopher.'
     'Yeah?  So why couldn't  you  just explain what was going on? Why'd you
just drop off the keys?'
     'I was hitting the sauce,' Tatarsky answered.
     Hussein thought it  over.  'I  don't know,' he  said. 'Rowers are  good
business. I wouldn't  have said anything, if  you'd told me man to  man. But
now ... I'll have to have a word with this Rafik of yours.'
     'He's in Baku right now,' said Tatarsky. 'Eldar too.'
     The pager on his belt bleeped.
     'Who's that?' asked Hussein.
     Tatarsky glanced at the screen and saw Khanin's number.
     'Just a friend of mine. He's got nothing to do ...'
     Hussein held out his  hand  without speaking, and Tatarsky submissively
placed his pager in  it. Hussein took out his phone, dialled the number  and
gave Tatarsky  a  glance  filled with meaning. At the  other end of the line
someone picked up the receiver.
     "Allo" said  Hussein,  'who  am I talking to?  Khanin? How do  you  do,
Khanin. I'm calling from the Caucasian Friendly  Society. My name's Hussein.
Sorry to bother  you, but we have your friend Vova here.  He has a bit  of a
problem - he owes  us money. Doesn't know where to get it from. So  he asked
me to call you and see if you  could help out. You're in the flower business
with him, aren't you?'
     He winked at  Tatarsky and then listened without speaking for a  minute
or two.
     'What?'  he asked,  frowning.  'Just tell  me  if you're in the  flower
business with him or not. What's that mean  metaphorical flowers?  What rose
of the Persians? Which  Ar-iosto? Who? What? Give  me your friend then . . .
Right then, I'm listening ...'
     Tatarsky  realised from Hussein's expression that someone at  the other
end of the line had said something unthinkable.
     'I don't care who you are,' Hussein replied after a  long  pause. 'Send
anyone  you like . . . Yes .  . .  Send an  entire regiment of your arsehole
troops  on tanks. Only you'd better warn them they're not going to find some
wounded  boy-scout from  the White  House in here, get it? What? You'll come
yourself? Come on then ... Write down the address ...'
     Hussein put down his phone and looked inquiringly at Tatarsky.
     'I told you it would be best not to,' said Tatarsky.
     Hussein chuckled.
     'Worried about me? I appreciate that. But there's no need.'
     He took two grenades out of the safe, half-straightened the whiskers on
the detonators and put  a  grenade in each pocket.  Tatarsky pretended to be
looking the other way.
     Half  an hour  later the legendary Mercedes-6oo with dark-tinted  glass
drew up a few metres away from the trailer, and  Tatarsky set his eye to the
gap  in the curtains at the window.  Two men got  out of the car - the first
was Khanin, his suit looking crumpled and untidy, and the second was someone
Tatarsky didn't know.
     All  the  wow-indicators  suggested  he  was  a representative  of  the
so-called middle  class -  a typical  red-necked, red-faced hitman from some
gang down  in  the Southern Port.  He was wearing  a black leather jacket, a
heavy gold  chain  and  track-suit  trousers; but judging  from the car,  he
represented that  rare instance  when a private gets himself promoted to the
rank of general. He exchanged a couple of words with Khanin and came towards
the door. Khanin stayed where he was.
     The  door opened. The stranger lumbered into the wagon and looked first
at  Hussein, then  at Tatarsky,  then  at the man chained  to the  bench. An
expression of astonishment appeared on his face. For a second he stood there
motionless,  as though he  couldn't believe his eyes, then  he  took  a step
towards  the prisoner, grabbed him  by the  hair and smashed his  face twice
against his knee. The prisoner tried to  protect himself with his free hand,
but he was too late.
     'So  that's where  you  got to,  you  bastard!'  the  newcomer  yelled,
squatting down, his face turning more scarlet than ever. 'We've been looking
for you all over town  for two  weeks  now. Wanted to hide, did you? Keeping
out of sight, were you, you fucking merchant?'
     Tatarsky and Hussein exchanged glances.
     'Hey now, don't get  carried  away,' Hussein said uncertainly.  'He's a
merchant, OK, but he's my merchant.'
     'What?'  the stranger asked, letting go of the bloody head.  'Yours? He
was my merchant when you were still herding cows in the mountains.'
     'I didn't herd cows in the  mountains, I herded bulls,' Hussein replied
and nodded at the TV  screen. 'And bulls like  you  don't bother me any more
than they did. I'll soon set a ring through your nose, better believe it.'
     'What did  you  say?' the stranger asked with a frown, unbuttoning  his
jacket,  where there was an  interesting bulge  under the  left  flap. 'What
ring?'
     'This one,' said Hussein, taking a grenade out of his pocket. The sight
of the straightened whiskers had an instant calming effect on the stranger.
     'This bastard owes me money,' he said with emphasis.
     'Me too,' said Hussein, putting away the grenade.
     'He owes me first.'
     'No. He owes me first.'
     'All right,' said the stranger. 'We'll meet tomorrow to discuss it. Ten
o'clock in the evening. Where?'
     'Just come back here.'
     'You're  on,' said  the stranger  and jabbed his  finger  in Tatarsky's
direction. 'I take the young guy. He's one of mine.'
     Tatarsky looked inquiringly at Hussein, who smiled affectionately.
     'I've no more claims on you. Your friend here's in the firing line now.
Call round some time,  as a friend. Bring some flowers.  Some  roses. I like
them.'
     Hussein followed the two of them out on to the street, lit a  cigarette
and leaned back against the wall of the trailer. Tatarsky took two steps and
then turned back.'
     'I forgot my beer,' he said.
     'Go and get it,' Hussein answered.
     Tatarsky went back into the  wagon and took the last can of Tuborg from
the table. The man  chained to  the bench moaned  and raised  his free hand.
Tatarsky noticed the small rectangle of coloured paper in it. He took it and
hastily shoved it into his pocket. The prisoner gave out  a quiet  groan  an
octave higher,  dialled an invisible  phone with his finger and  pressed his
open  hand to  his heart. Tatarsky nodded and  went  out. Hussein  was still
smoking on the porch and  didn't seem to have noticed anything. The stranger
and Khanin  were already in the car. As soon as  Tatarsky got into the front
seat, it moved off.
     'Let me introduce  you,' said Khanin.  'Babe Tatarsky, one of  our best
specialists. And this' - Khanin nodded in the direction of the  stranger who
was driving the car out on to the road - 'is Wee Vova, almost your namesake.
Also known as the Ni-etzschean.'
     'Ah,  that's all a  load of crap,' Wee Vova mumbled, blinking  rapidly.
'That was a long time ago.'
     'This man,' Khanin continued, 'performs an extremely important economic
function. You might  call him the key link in the liberal model in countries
with a low annual average temperature. D'you understand at least a bit about
the market economy ?'
     'About that much,' Tatarsky replied, bringing his thumb  and forefinger
together until there was just a millimetre gap left between them.
     'Then you  must  know that in  an absolutely free market by  definition
there must be  services provided by the  limiters  of  absolute freedom. Wee
Vova  here happens  to be  one  of those  limiters. In other words, he's our
protection . . .'
     When the car  braked at  a traffic  light.  Wee Vova raised  his  small
expressionless eyes to look at Tatarsky. It was hard to see why he should be
called 'wee' - he was a man of ample dimensions and advanced years. His face
had the vague meat-dumpling contours of the  typical bandit physiognomy, but
it didn't inspire any particular revulsion.
     He  looked Tatarsky over and said: 'So, to  cut it  short, tell me, you
into the Russian idea?'
     Tatarsky started and his eyes gaped wide.
     'No,' he said. 'I've never thought about that theme.'
     'All the better,' Khanin interrupted. 'A fresh approach, as they say.'
     'A fresh approach to what?' Tatarsky asked, turning to face him.
     'You've got a commission to develop a concept,' answered Khanin.
     'Who from?'
     Khanin nodded in the direction of Wee Vova.
     'Here, take this  pen and this  notepad,' he said, 'listen carefully to
what he has to say and make notes. You can use them to write it up later.'
     'No listening needed,' Wee Vova blurted out. 'It's obvious enough. Tell
me. Babe, when you're abroad, d'you feel humiliated?'
     'I've never been abroad,' Tatarsky confessed.
     'And good for you. 'Cause if you do go you will. I  tell you straight -
over there they don't reckon we're  people at all, like we're all  shit  and
animals. Of course, like when  you're in some Hilton or  other and  you rent
the entire floor, they'll all stand in line to suck your cock. But if you're
out at some buffet or socialising, they talk to you like you're some kind of
monkey.  Why d'you wear  such a  big  cross,  they say, are you some kind of
theologian? I'd show them some fucking theology if they was in Moscow ...'
     'But why do they treat us like that?'  Khanin interrupted. 'What  d'you
think?'
     'The way I reckon it,' said Wee Vova, 'it's all because we're living on
their handouts.  We watch their films,  ride  their wheels,  even  eat their
fodder. And we  don't produce  nothing, if  you  think  about  it, 'cept for
mazuma ... Which is still only their dollars, whichever way  you look at it,
which makes it a mystery how come we can be producing  'em. But then somehow
we  must be  producing 'em -  no  one'd  give us  'em  for free.  I ain't no
economist, but  I  got  a  gut  feeling  something's  rotten  here,  somehow
something somewhere don't add up.'
     Wee  Vova fell silent and started thinking  hard.  Khanin was  about to
make some remark, but Wee Vova suddenly erupted: 'But they think  we're some
kind of cultural scumbags. Like some kind of nig-nogs out in Africa, get it?
Like we was animals with money. Pigs, maybe, or bulls. But  what  we are, is
Russia! Makes you frightened to think of it! A great country!'
     'That's right,' said Khanin.
     'It's  just that we've lost  our roots for the time being 'cause of all
this crap that's going down. You know yourself what life's like now. No time
for a fart. But that don't  mean we've forgot where we  come from, like some
half-baked golly-wogs.. .'
     'Let's  try to keep feelings out of it,' said Khanin. 'Just  explain to
the  boy  here  what  you  want  him  to  do. Keep  it  simple, without  the
trimmings.'
     'OK,  listen up and  I'll lay  it out  for you just like counting on my
fingers,' said  Wee  Vova.  'Our  national  business  is expanding  into the
international market. Out there there's all kinds of mazuma doing the rounds
- Chechen, American, Columbian -  you get  the  picture. And if  you look at
them like mazuma, then they're all the same; but in actual fact behind every
kind of mazuma there's a national idea. We used to have Orthodoxy, Autocracy
and Nationality. Then came this communism stuff.  Now that's  all over,  and
there's no idea  left at all 'cept  for mazuma. But there's  no  way you can
have nothing but mazuma behind mazuma, right?  'Cause then there's  just  no
way to understand why some mazuma's up front and some's in behind, right?'
     'Spot on,' said Khanin. 'Listen and leam. Babe.'
     'And when  our  Russian dollars are doing the rounds somewhere  down in
the Caribbean,'  Wee Vova  continued, 'you  can't  even  really  figure  why
they're  Russian dollars  and  not anyone else's. We  don't have no national
i-den-ti-ty ...'
     Wee Vova articulated the final word syllable by syllable.
     'You dig it? The Chechens have one, but we don't. That's  why they look
at  us  like we're shit. There's got  to be some nice, simple  Russian idea,
so's we can lay it out  clear  and simple  for any bastard from any of their
Harvards: one-two, tickety-boo, and screw all that staring. And we've got to
know for ourselves where we come from/
     'You  tell him what the job  is" said Khanin, and he winked at Tatarsky
in the driving  mirror. 'He's my senior creative. A minute of his time costs
more than the two of us earn in a week.'
     The job's simple/  said Wee Vova. 'Write  me  a Russian idea about five
pages  long. And  a short version one page  long.  And lay it out  like real
life,  without any  fancy gibberish, so's  I can splat any of those imported
arseholes with it -  bankers, whores, whoever.  So's they  won't  think  all
we've done in Russia  is heist the money and put up  a steel door. So's they
can feel the same kind of spirit like in '45 at Stalingrad, you get me?'
     'But where would I get. .7 Tatarsky began, but Khanin interrupted him:
     'That's your business, sweetheart. You've got one day, it's a rush job.
After that I'll be  needing you for other work. And just bear  in mind we've
given this commission to another  guy  as well as  you. So  try your  best.'
'Who, if it's not a secret?' Tatarsky asked. 'Sasha Blo. Ever heard of him?'
     Tatarsky  said nothing. Khanin made a  sign to  Wee  Vova  and the  car
stopped. Handing Tatarsky a  hundred-rouble bill,  Khanin said: 'That's  for
your taxi. Go home and work. And no more drinking today.'
     Out  on the pavement Tatarsky waited for the car to leave before taking
out the business card from the prisoner of the Caucasus. It looked strange -
in  the  centre there  was a picture of  a sequoia,  covered  with leaf-like
dollar bills, and all the rest  of  the space was taken up by stars, stripes
and eagles. All of this Roman magnificence was crowned by the following text
in curly gold lettering:
     TAMPOKO
     • OPEN  JOINT  STOCK COMPANY SOFT  DRINKS AND  JUICES  Shares Placement
Manager:
     Mikhail Nepoiman
     'Aha,' muttered Tatarsky. 'I see we're old acquaintances/
     He tucked the card in his pocket, turned towards the stream of cars and
raised his hand. A taxi stopped almost immediately.
     The  taxi-driver was a fat-faced  bumpkin with an expression of intense
resentment on his face. The thought flashed through Tatarsky's  mind that he
was like a condom filled so full of water you barely needed to touch it with
something sharp  for  it  to  soak  anyone  nearby in a  one-off  disposable
waterfall.
     'Tell me,' Tatarsky asked on  a sudden impulse, 'you wouldn't happen to
know what the Russian idea is, would you?'
     'Ha,'  said the  driver, as if he  been  expecting this very  question.
'I'll tell you about that. I'm half Mordvinian. So when I was serving in the
army, the first  year, on  training,  there  was  this sergeant there called
Harley. Used to say, "I hate  Mords and nig-nogs," and  he'd send me  off to
scrub the shit-house with a toothbrush. Two months the bastard took the piss
out of me. Then all  of a sudden these three  Mordvin  brothers arrived  for
their training, and all of them weightlifters, can you imagine that? "So who
is it round here doesn't like Mordvini-ans?" they said.'
     The driver  laughed happily and the car swerved across the road, almost
skipping out into the opposite lane.
     'What's that got to  do with the Russian idea?' Tatarsky asked, hunched
down in his seat in fear.
     'I'll tell you what. That  Harley got such a belting he spent two weeks
on  his back with a  medical battalion. That's  what. They  worked him  over
another five times until  he  was  fit  for nothing but demobbing.  But they
didn't just work him over...'
     'Can you stop there, please,' Tatarsky  said, not  wanting to  hear any
more.
     'I can't stop here,'  said the  driver,  'I've got  to find a  place to
turn. I tell you, if only they'd just beaten him ... But, oh no!'
     Tatarsky  gave in, and as the car took him home the driver  shared  the
fate of  the chauvinist sergeant in a  degree of detail that destroyed  even
the slightest possibility  of  sympathy -after all, sympathy is always based
on a brief instant of identification, and in this case that was impossible -
neither heart nor mind would dare  risk it. In fact, it  was just a  typical
army story.
     When Tatarsky got out of the car, the driver said to him: 'As  for that
idea  of yours, I'll tell you straight: fuck only knows.  All I want  is the
chance to earn enough  to keep me in petrol and booze.  Yeltsin-Schmeltsin -
what do I care, so long as they don't go smashing my face against a table?'
     Perhaps it was these words that made  Tatarsky remember the  handcuffed
manager who'd  dialled the telephone number in  the  empty air.  Inside  the
entrance-way of his house, he stopped. He'd only just realised what the case
really  required.  He took  the card  out of  his  pocket and  wrote on  its
reverse:
     THERE'S ALWAYS SOMEBODY WHO CARES! PUT YOUR TRUST IN TAMPOKO SHARES!
     'So it's a conifer, is it?' he thought.






     It happens so often:  you step outside on a summer's morning  and  come
face to face with this immense, beautiful world hastening on its way to some
unknown destination  and filled with mysterious promise, and the blue sky is
awash  with happiness, and suddenly your heart  is  pierced  by  a  feeling,
compressed  into a  single split second, that  there life is in front of you
and you can follow it on down the road without a backwards glance, gamble on
yourself  and win, go coursing across life's seas on a  white  speedboat and
hurtling along  her  roads in  a white Mercedes; and  your fists tighten and
clench  of  their own accord, and the muscles  on your temples  stand out in
knots, and you promise yourself that  you will rip mountains of money out of
this  hostile void with your bare teeth  and you'll  brush aside anybody you
have to, and nobody will  ever dare to  use that American word 'loser' about
you.
     That is how the oral wow-factor manifests itself in  our hearts. But as
Tatarsky wandered towards  the underground  with a folder under  his arm, he
was indifferent  to its insistent demands.  He felt exactly like a 'loser' -
that is, not  only a  complete  idiot, but a war  criminal  as well, not  to
mention a failed link in the biological evolution of humanity.
     Yesterday's attempt to compose the Russian  idea had ended in the first
total and absolute failure of  Tatarsky's career. At first  the  task hadn't
seemed very complicated, but once he'd sat down to it he'd been horrified to
realise  there wasn't a single idea  in his head, not a thing. Not even  the
ouija board was any help when he turned to it in his despair after the hands
of the clock had crept past midnight. Che Gue-vara did respond, but in reply
to a question about the Russian idea he produced a rather strange passage:
     Fellow compatriots! It would be more correct  to talk of the  oral-anal
wow-effect, since  these  influences  fuse  into a single impulse and it  is
precisely this  complex of  emotions, this  conglomerate of the two, that is
regarded as  defining the socially valuable aspects of human existence. Note
that  advertising  occasionally prefers  a  quasi-J  ungian  approach  to  a
quasi-Freudian one: it sometimes happens  that the acquisition of a material
object is not the expression of a naked act of monetarist copulation, but of
the search for a magical quality capable of relegating oral-anal stimulation
to the background. For instance, a blue-green toothbrush  somehow guarantees
the safety of  an attempt to clamber from an upper balcony to a lower one, a
refrigerator protects you from being  crushed to  death amidst the fragments
of a grand piano that has fallen off  the roof, and  a jar of  kiwi fruit in
syrup saves you from an aeroplane crash  - but this is an approach that most
of the professionals regard as outmoded. Amen.
     The only thing in  all this that reminded Tatarsky of the Russian  idea
was  the use  of Yeltsin's favourite phrase: Tel-low compatriots', which had
always seemed to Tatarsky akin  to the address 'Fellow prisoners' with which
the institutionalised mobsters used to begin  their written missives  to the
labour camps, their so-called 'daubs'. But despite this similarity, Wee Vova
would hardly have been  satisfied by the  brief extract produced. Tatarsky's
attempts to establish  contact with some  other spirit more competent in the
question concerned  came  to nothing.  True,  an  appeal to  the  spirit  of
Dostoievsky,  in whom Tatarsky had placed especially  high hopes, did  evoke
certain interesting side-effects, with the ouija board trembling and leaping
into  the air, as though it was being pulled  in all  directions at once  by
several equally  strong  presences,  but the crooked scribbles left  on  the
paper  were  useless to  Tatarsky,  although, of course,  he  could  console
himself  with the thought  that the idea he was  seeking was so transcendent
that  this  was the  only way it could be expressed on  paper.  However that
might be, Tatarsky hadn't got the job done.
     There  was no way in the world he could  show Khanin the sheet of paper
in his folder with the fragment about the tooth-brush and kiwi fruit, but he
had   to  show  him   something,   and   Tatarsky's   mind   retreated  into
self-flagellation, rewriting all the  brand names  with  the word 'laser' in
them  and savouring them  as  he applied  them  to himself; 'Loser-Jet'  and
'Loser-Max'  lashed sweetly at his very soul, allowing him just for a moment
to forget his impending disgrace.
     As he  drew closer to the metro, however, Tatarsky was distracted  from
his thoughts  somewhat.  Something  strange was going on there.  A cordon of
about  twenty military police with  automatic rifles  were  talking to  each
other on their walkie-talkies,  pulling heroic and mysterious faces.  In the
centre  of the  cordoned-off  area a small crane  was loading  the burnt-out
remains of a  limousine  on  to  the  platform  of  a truck.  Several men in
civilian clothes were  walking  round  the skeleton  of  the  car, carefully
examining the asphalt, gathering  up  bits  of something from it and putting
them into plastic bags like rubbish  bags. Tatarsky  had a good view  of all
this from higher up the street, but once he came  down to the  same level as
the  station, the impenetrable crowd concealed what was happening from view.
Tatarsky  jostled  briefly at the sweaty  backs of his fellow citizens, then
sighed and went on his way.
     Khanin was out  of sorts. With his forehead propped in the palm  of his
hand, he was tracing some  kind of cabbalistic symbols in the ashtray with a
cigarette-butt. Tatarsky sat on the edge  of  the chair at the other side of
the desk,  pressing  the folder  to  his  chest and stuttering  his rambling
excuses.
     'I've written it, of course. As best I could, that is. But I think I've
made a balls  of it, and it's not something you should give to Wee Vova. The
problem is, the theme is so ... It turns out it's not such a simple theme at
all... Maybe I can think up a  slogan, or add something to the brand essence
of the Russian idea,  or expand  somehow on  what  Sasha Blo writes, but I'm
still  not ready to write a concept.  I'm  not just being  modest,  I'm just
being  objective.  In  general...'  'Forget it,'  Khanin interrupted.  'Why,
what's happened?' 'Wee Vova's been taken out.' 'How?' Tatarsky slumped  back
on his chair.  'Dead easy,' said Khanin. 'Yesterday  he had a shoot-out with
the Chechens.  Right beside your  house it was, as it happens. He arrived on
two  sets  of  wheels with  his fighters,  everything fair and up  front. He
thought it would all be done right. But those  bastards dug a trench on  the
hill opposite during the night, and as soon as he turned up they blasted him
with a pair of "bumble-bee" flame-throwers. They're fearsome fucking things:
produce a volumetric explosion with  a temperature of  two thousand degrees.
Wee's  car was armour-plated, but armour's  only good against normal people,
not these abortions ...'
     Khanin gestured in disgust.
     'Wee  never stood a chance,' he added quietly. 'And they picked off the
rest  of  his  fighters,  the  ones  who  survived  the  explosion,  with  a
machine-gun when they jumped out of the cars.  I don't know  how you  can do
business with people like that. That's if they are people . We-ell.'
     Instead of a sense of grief befitting the moment, to his shame Tatarsky
felt a relief bordering on euphoria.
     'Yeah,' he said, 'now I understand. I saw one of those cars today. Last
time he was in a different one, so I didn't even think about anything  being
wrong.  They've  blown another guy away, I  thought -  every day  someone or
other  gets it... But now I see - it all fits  in. But what does it mean for
us, in a practical sense?'
     'Leave,' said Khanin.  'Indefinite  leave. There's  one hell of  a  big
question  to be  answered. Hamlet's question. I already had two calls  since
the morning.'
     "The police?'
     'Yeah. And then from the Caucasian Friendly Society. The bastards could
smell  a  trader had been cut free.  Like sharks. Straight  for the scent of
blood. So  the question of the moment is very specific. Our swarthy wops can
offer real  protection, but all  the filth want to do is line their pockets.
You'd have to lick their boots till they  shone to get them to a  shoot-out.
But either  of them  could  blow you away. And especially the filth,  as  it
happens. They came on  to  me real heavy  today . .  .  "We know  you've got
diamonds,"  they said. What kind of diamonds have I got? Tell me  that. What
diamonds have I got?'
     'I  don't  know,' Tatarsky  replied,  remembering the photograph of the
diamond necklace with the promise of eternity  that he'd seen  in the toilet
at Khanin's place.
     'OK. Don't you bother your head about it. Just carry on living, loving,
working... Oh, and by the way, there's someone waiting  for you in the  next
room.'
     Morkovin looked just as he had the last time they'd met, only now there
were more  grey hairs in his parting, and his eyes were sadder and wiser. He
was  wearing  a  severe  dark  suit  and  a  striped  tie  with  a  matching
handkerchief  in his breast pocket. When he saw Tatarsky, he got up from the
table with a broad smile and opened his arms to embrace him.
     'Oho!' he said, slapping Tatarsky on the back, 'what a face, Babe. Been
on the sauce long?'
     'I'm just pulling out of a deep one,' Tatarsky answered guiltily. 'They
gave me this job to do here; there was just no other way.'
     'Is that what you were talking about on the phone?'
     'When?'
     'Don't remember, huh?  I  thought not. You were in a real  state - said
you were writing a concept for God  and the ancient serpent was giving you a
real tough time about it ... Asked me  to find you  a new job, said you were
real world-weary . ..'
     'That's enough,' said Tatarsky, raising an  open  palm towards him. 'No
need to pile it on. I'm up to my ears in shit as it is.'
     'So you do need a job, then?'
     'And  how! We've got the filth clutching  at  one leg and the  Chechens
grabbing at the other. Everybody's being given leave.'
     'Let's go then. It just so happens I've got some beer in the car.'
     Morkovin  had arrived  in a  tiny  blue BMW  like a  torpedo on wheels.
Tatarsky  felt  strange  sitting  in  it - his body assumed a semi-recumbent
position, his knees were  raised to his  chest  and the  bottom of  the  car
itself  hurtled  along so  low  over the  road-surface  his stomach  muscles
involuntarily contracted  every time  it  bounced  over another  hole in the
road.
     'Aren't you afraid of riding in a car like this?' Tatarsky asked. 'What
if somewhat leaves a  crowbar sticking out of a manhole?  Or there's  one of
those iron bars sticking up out of the road ...'
     Morkovin  chuckled. 'I know what you're  trying to say/ he  said.  'But
I've been used to that feeling at work for so long now.. .'
     The car braked at a crossroads.  A red jeep with six powerful headlamps
on  its  roof halted to the  right of them.  Tatarsky stole a  glance at the
driver,  a man with a low forehead and massive eye-ridges, with almost every
inch of his  skin  sprouting  thick wool. One of his  hands was stroking the
steering wheel  and  the  other held  a plastic  bottle  of  Pepsi. Tatarsky
suddenly realised Morkovin's car was way cooler,  and he had one of his very
rare  experiences  of the anal wow-factor at work. The  feeling,  it must be
confessed, was enthralling. Sticking his elbow out of the window,  he took a
swig of  beer and  looked at the driver of the jeep pretty much the same way
as  the  sailors  on the  bow  of an  aircraft carrier look down  on a pygmy
paddling over  his  raft to  trade  in  rotten  bananas. The  driver  caught
Tatarsky's  glance  and  for  a  while  they stared  each other in  the eye.
Tatarsky could sense the man in the jeep took this long  exchange of glances
as  an invitation to fight  -when Morkovin's  car eventually moved off there
was fury bubbling in the shallow depths of his eyes. Tatarsky realised  he'd
seen this face somewhere before. 'Probably a film actor,' he thought.
     Morkovin moved out into a free lane and started going faster.
     'Listen, where are we going?' Tatarsky asked.
     'Our organisation.'
     'What organisation's that?'
     'You'll see. I don't want to spoil the impression.'
     A few minutes later the car braked to a halt at some gates in  a set of
tall  railings. The railings looked impressive: the bars were like Cyclopean
cast-iron spears  with gilded tips. Morkovin showed a policeman in a  little
hut some card  or other and the  gates slowly  swung open. Behind them was a
huge  Stalinist-style  building  from  the forties,  looking  like something
between a stepped Mexican pyramid and  a  squat skyscraper  constructed with
the low Soviet sky in mind. The  upper  part  of  the facade was  covered in
moulded decorations - lowered banners, swords, stars and some kind of lances
with jagged  edges; it was all redolent  of ancient  wars  and the forgotten
smell  of  gunpowder  and glory. Screwing  up his eyes,  Tatarsky  read  the
moulded inscription up under the very roof: 'To the heroes' eternal glory!'
     'Eternal glory's a  bit over the  top  for  them,' he thought gloomily.
'They'd be happy enough with a pension.'
     Tatarsky  had  often walked past this building; a very, very  long time
ago someone had told him it was  a secret institute where they developed new
types of weapons. It seemed as though that must have been somewhere near the
truth, because hanging by the  gates like some hoary greeting from antiquity
was a  board bearing the  crest of the Soviet  Union and an  inscription  in
gold: 'The Institute of Apiculture'. Underneath it Tatarsky just had time to
make out an inconspicuous plaque bearing the words 'Interbank  Committee for
Information Technology'.
     The  parking lot was packed with cars  and  Morkovin  barely managed to
squeeze in between an immense white Lincoln and a silver Mazda racer.
     'I want to introduce you  to my bosses,' Morkovin said as he locked the
car. 'Just act natural. But don't go saying too much.'
     'What exactly does "too much" mean? Who says what's too much?'
     Morkovin  cast him  a  sideways  glance: 'What you just said  is a good
example. It's definitely too much.'
     After walking across the yard  they went into a side entrance and found
themselves  in a  marble  hallway  with  an unnaturally high  ceiling  where
several security  men in  black uniforms were sitting. They  looked far more
serious than the  ordinary cops,  and not just because of the Czech Scorpion
automatics hanging  at their  shoulders. The cops just weren't  in the  same
league  - for Tatarsky  their blue  uniform, which  once used to radiate the
oppressive power  of the state from every  button  and badge, had  long  ago
become an object of disdainful incomprehension - such a totally empty symbol
only emphasised the  absurdity of these people constantly stopping  cars  on
the roads and demanding money. But the bodyguards'  black uniform was a real
mind-blower: the designer  (Morkovin said it was Yudashkin)  had brilliantly
combined  the  aesthetic  of the SS Sonderkomande, motifs from  anti-utopian
films about the totalitarian society of the future and nostalgic gay fashion
themes  from the  Freddie  Mercury period.  The  padded  shoulders, the deep
decollage  on  the chest and the Rabelaisian  codpiece blended together in a
heady cocktail that made you want to  steer clear of  anybody wearing such a
uniform. The message was crystal clear even to a total cretin.
     In the lift Morkovin took out a small key, inserted it into  a hole  on
the control panel and pressed the top button.
     'And  another thing,' he said, turning to face the mirror and smoothing
down his hair: 'don't worry about looking stupid. In fact, be careful not to
seem too smart.' 'Why?'
     'Because if you do, a certain question will  arise: if you're so smart,
how come you're looking for a job instead of hiring people yourself?'
     'Logical,' said  Tatarsky.  'And  pile on the cynicism.'  "That's  easy
enough.'
     The doors of  the lift opened to  reveal a corridor  carpeted in a grey
runner with yellow  stars. Tatarsky  remembered  from a photograph that  the
sidewalk on some  boulevard in Los  Angeles looked like  that.  The corridor
ended in  a black door with no nameplate, with a small  TV camera set  above
it. Morkovin walked to the middle of the corridor, took his phone out of his
pocket  and  entered  a  number. Two or  three  minutes passed  in  silence.
Morkovin waited  patiently. Finally  someone at  the other  end of  the line
answered.
     'Cheers,' said Morkovin. 'It's me. Yes, I've brought him. Here he is.'
     Morkovin turned and beckoned Tatarsky towards him from where he'd  been
standing timidly  by the doors of  the lift.  Tatarsky walked up to  him and
raised his eyes  dog-like to the camera lens. The person talking to Morkovin
must have said something funny, because  Morkovin suddenly giggled and shook
Tatarsky by the shoulder. "That's OK,' he said,  'we'll soon  take  off  the
rough edges.' A lock clicked open and Morkovin  pushed Tatarsky forward. The
door immediately closed behind them. They were in an entrance-hall where  an
antique bronze mirror with a handle hung on the wall below a golden Venetian
carnival  mask of  astounding  beauty. 'I've  seen  them  before somewhere,'
Tatarsky thought, 'a mask and a  mirror.  Or have  I? My mind's been  on the
blink all  day today  . .  .' Below the  mask there was  a desk  and sitting
behind the desk was a secretary of cold avian beauty.
     'Hello, Alia,' said Morkovin.
     The secretary flapped her hand at him and pressed a button on her desk.
There was the sound of a discreet buzzer and the tall sound-proofed door  at
the other end of the hall opened.
     For a  moment Tatarsky thought the  spacious office  with  blinds drawn
over  the windows was empty. At least there was no on sitting at the immense
desk with the gleaming metal supports. Above  the  desk, at the spot where a
portrait of  the leader would have hung in Soviet times, there was a picture
in a heavy round frame. The coloured rectangle set  at the centre of a white
field  was hard  to make out from  the door, but Tatarsky recognised it from
its colours  - he had one  just  like it  on his  baseball  shirt. It  was a
standard label with the American flag and the words:  'Made  in the USA. One
size fits all'.  Mounted on another wall was an  uncompromising installation
consisting of a line of fifteen tin cans with a portrait of Andy Warhol on a
typical salt-pork label.
     Tatarsky lowered his gaze. The floor was covered with a genuine Persian
carpet with an  incredibly  beautiful design that looked like  the  patterns
he'd seen some time in his childhood in an ancient  edition of  The Thousand
and  One  Nights.  Following the  lines of the design, Tatarsky's  eyes slid
along  a  capricious  spiral  to  the  centre  of  the  carpet,  where  they
encountered the occupant of the office.
     He was  a man still young, a  stocky, overweight  individual  with  the
remnants of a head of red hair combed backwards and a rather  pleasant face,
and he was lying on the carpet  in a totally relaxed posture. He was hard to
spot  because  the hue of  his  clothes  blended almost  perfectly  into the
carpet.  He was wearing a 'pleb's orgasm' jacket  - neither business uniform
nor  pyjamas,  but something quite  excessively  camivalesque,  the  kind of
outfit in which particularly calculating businessmen  attire themselves when
they want to make their partners feel things are going so well for them they
don't have to bother about business at all. A bright-coloured retro tie with
a lecherous monkey perched on a palm  tree spilled out of his jacket and ran
across the carpet like a startling pink tongue.
     However, it wasn't the young man's outfit that astonished Tatarsky, but
something else:  he knew his face.  In fact  he knew it very  well, although
he'd  never met him. He'd  seen that face in a hundred short television news
reports and advertising clips, usually playing some secondary  part; but who
the man was he  had no idea.  The last time it had happened  was the evening
before, when Tatarsky had been distractedly watching TV as he tried to think
about the Russian  idea. The office's owner had appeared in an advertisement
for some tablets or  other -  he was dressed  in a white doctor's coat and a
cap with a red cross,  and a blonde beard and moustache had been glued on to
his broad face, making him appear like a good-natured young Trotsky. Sitting
in  a  kitchen surrounded  by  a family in  the grip  of an incomprehensible
euphoria, he  had  said  in a didactic tone:  'All these  adverts can easily
leave you feeling all at sea. And often they're not even honest. It's not so
bad if you make a mistake buying a saucepan or a washing powder, but when it
comes to  medicines, you're taking risks with your  health. So  who will you
believe -  the heartless advertising or your  own family doctor? Of  course!
The answer's obvious! Nobody but your own family doctor, who recommends that
you take Sunrise pills!'
     'So that's it,' thought Tatarsky, 'he's our family doctor.'
     In the meantime the family doctor had  raised one hand in a  gesture of
greeting, and Tatarsky noticed he was holding a short plastic straw.
     'Join the club,' he said in a dull voice.
     'We're old members,' Morkovin replied.
     Morkovin's response  was evidently the usual one in this place, because
the owner of the office nodded his head indulgently.
     Morkovin took two straws  from the  table, handed  one  to Tatarsky and
then lay down on the  carpet. Tatarsky followed his example. Once seated  on
the  carpet he looked inquiringly  at the owner  of  the office, who  smiled
sweetly in  reply.  Tatarsky noticed  he had a watch  on  his wrist  with  a
bracelet made of unusual links  of  different sizes.  The  winding knob  was
decorated with a small  diamond, and there  were three  diamond spirals  set
round  the face of the watch. Tatarsky recalled an editorial about expensive
watches he'd read in some radical youth magazine and he gulped respectfully.
The owner of the office noticed his gaze and looked at his watch.
     'You like it?' he asked.
     'Of course,' said Tatarsky. 'A Piaget Possession,  if I'm not mistaken?
I think it costs seventy thousand?'
     'Piaget Possession?' The young man glanced at the dial. 'Yes, so it is.
I don't know how much it cost.'
     Morkovin gave Tatarsky a sideways glance.
     'There's nothing  that  identifies  someone  as belonging  to the lower
classes of society  so clearly  as knowing  all about expensive  watches and
cars. Babe,' he said.
     Tatarsky blushed and lowered his eyes.
     The section of carpet immediately in front of his face was covered in a
pattern  depicting fantastic  flowers with long  petals of  various colours.
Tatarsky  noticed that the nap of the carpet was thickly covered with minute
white pellets  like  pollen,  as though with frost.  He  glanced  across  at
Morkovin. Morkovin  stuck his small tube  into one nostril, closed the other
nostril with one finger and ran the free end of the tube across the petal of
a fantastical violet daisy. Tatarsky finally got the idea.
     For several minutes the  silence in the  room was  broken only  by  the
sound of intense snorting. Eventually the owner of the office raised himself
up on one elbow. 'Well?' he asked, looking at Tatarsky.
     Tatarsky  tore  himself  away from  the pale-purple rose  that  he  was
absorbed in processing. His resentment had completely evaporated.
     'Excellent,' he said. 'Simply excellent!'
     He found talking  easy and pleasurable;  he  might have  felt a certain
constraint when he  entered  this huge office,  but now  it  had disappeared
without trace. The  cocaine was  the  real  thing,  and  hardly cut at all -
except perhaps for the very slightest aftertaste of aspirin.
     'One thing I don't understand, though,' Tatarsky continued, 'is why all
this fancy technology? It's all very elegant, but isn't it a bit unusual!'
     Morkovin and the owner of the office exchanged glances.
     'Didn't you see the sign on our premises?' the owner asked:
     'The Institute of Apiculture?'
     'Yes,' said Tatarsky.
     'Well then. Here we are, making like bees.'
     All three of  them laughed, and they laughed for a long tune, even when
the reason for laughing had been forgotten.
     Finally the  fit  of  merriment passed.  The owner of the office looked
around as though  trying to recall what  he  was  there  for,  and evidently
remembered. 'OK,' he said, 'let's get down to business. Morky, you wait with
Alia. I'll have a word with the man.'
     Morkovin  hurriedly sniffed a couple of paradisaical cornflowers, stood
up and left the room. The owner of the  office  got to his  feet, stretched,
walked round the desk and sat down in the armchair.
     'Have a seat,' he said.
     Tatarsky sat in the armchair facing the desk. It was very soft, and  so
low  that he fell into  it like falling into a snowdrift. When he looked up,
Tatarsky  was  struck dumb.  The  table  towered over him like a tank over a
trench, and  the  resemblance was  quite  clearly not  accidental. The  twin
supports decorated with plates of embossed  nickel looked exactly like broad
caterpillar  tracks, and the picture in the round frame hanging on  the wall
was now exactly behind the head of the office's owner,  so it looked  like a
trapdoor  from  which  he had just emerged  -  the resemblance  was  further
reinforced by  the fact that only his head and shoulders could be seen above
the desk. He savoured the effect for a few seconds, then he rose, leaned out
across the desk and offered Tatarsky his hand:
     'Leonid Azadovsky.'
     'Vladimir Tatarsky,' said  Tatarsky, rising slightly as he squeezed the
plump,  limp  hand.  Tou're   no  Vladimir;  you're  called  Babylon,'  said
Azadovsky.
     'I know all about it. And I'm not Leonid. My old man was a  wanker too.
Know what he called  me? Legion. He probably  didn't even know what the word
means. It used to  make me miserable too, at  first. Then I  found out there
was something about me in the Bible, so I felt better about it. OK then ...'
     Azadovsky rustled the papers scattered around on his desk.
     'Now what have we here . . . Aha. I've had a look at your  work,  and I
liked  it. Good  stuff. We need people like you. Only in  a few places ... I
don't  completely believe  it.  here,  for  instance;  you  write about  the
"collective unconscious". Do you actually know what that is?'
     Tatarsky shuffled his fingers as he tried to find the words.
     'At the unconscious collective level,' he answered.
     'Aren't you afraid someone might turn up who knows exactly what it is?'
     Tatarsky  twitched his  nose.  'No, Mr Azadovsky,'  he said,  'I'm  not
afraid of that; and the  reason I'm not is that for a long time now everyone
who knows  what the "collective unconscious" is  has been selling cigarettes
outside the metro. One way  or another, I mean. I  used  to  sell cigarettes
outside the metro myself. I went into advertising because I was sick of it.'
     Azadovsky said nothing  for a few seconds while he  thought  over  what
he'd just heard. Then he chuckled.
     'Is there anything at all you believe in?' he asked.
     'No,' said Tatarsky.
     'Well, that's  good,' said Azadovsky,  taking  another  look  into  the
papers,  this time  at  some  form  with  columns  and sections. 'OK  .  . .
Political views - what's this we have here? It says "upper left" in English.
I  don't get  it. What a fucking  pain  - soon  every form and  document  we
have'll be written in English. So what are your political views?'
     'Left of right centrists,' Tatarsky replied.
     'And more specifically?'
     'More specifically ... Let's just say I like it when life has big tits,
but  I'm  not  in  the  slightest  bit  excited  by  the  so-called  Kantian
tit-in-itself, no matter how much milk there might be splashing about in it.
That's what makes me different from selfless idealists like Gaidar ...'
     The phone rang and Azadovksy held up his hand to stop the conversation.
He picked up the receiver and listened for a few minutes, his face gradually
hardening into a grimace of loathing.
     'So keep looking/ he barked, dropped the receiver on to its cradle  and
turned  towards Tatarsky. 'What was  that about Gaidar? Only keep it  short,
they'll be ringing again any minute/
     'To cut it  short,'  said  Tatarsky,  'I couldn't  give a toss for  any
Kantian  tit-in-itself  with all its  categorical  imperatives. On  the  tit
market the only tit that  gives  me a buzz is  the  Feuerbachian tit-for-us.
That's the way I see the situation.'
     "That's what  I think  too/Azadovksy said in all seriousness.  'Even if
it's not so big, so long as it's Feuerbachian ...'
     The phone rang again. Azadovsky picked up the receiver and listened for
a while, and his face blossomed into a broad smile.
     'Now that's what  I wanted  to hear! And the control shot? Great!  Good
going!'
     The news was obviously very good: Azadovsky stood up,  rubbed his hands
together, walked jauntily  over to a cupboard set  in the  wall, took out  a
large cage in which something started dashing about  furiously,  and carried
it over to the  desk. The cage  was  old, with traces of rust, and it looked
like the skeleton of a lampshade.
     'What's that?' asked Tatarsky.
     'Rostropovich/ replied Azadovsky.
     He opened  the little door, and a small white hamster emerged  from the
cage on to the desk. Casting a glance at Tatarsky from its  little red eyes,
it buried its face in its paws and began rubbing its  nose. Azadovsky sighed
sweetly, took something like a  toolbag out of  the  desk, opened it and set
out  a bottle  of Japanese glue, a pair of tweezers and  a small tin on  the
desktop.
     'Hold him,' he ordered. 'Don't be afraid, he won't bite.'
     'How should I hold him?' Tatarsky asked, rising from his armchair.
     Take hold of his paws and  pull them apart.  Like  a little Jesus. Aha,
that's right.'
     Tatarsky noticed there were several small  discs of  metal with toothed
edges on the hamster's chest, looking like  watch cog-wheels. When he looked
closer he  saw they were tiny  medals made with remarkable skill  -  he even
thought he could see tiny precious stones gleaming in them, accentuating the
similarity to  parts of a watch.  He  didn't recognise a single one  of  the
medals - they clearly belonged to a different era,  and they reminded him of
the dress  uniform  regalia  of  a general  from the times of Catherine  the
Great.
     'Who gave him those?' he asked.
     'Who could give them to him, if not me?'  Azadovsky chanted, extracting
a short little ribbon of blue watered silk from the tin. 'Hold him tighter.'
     He  squeezed a  drop of glue out on to a sheet of paper and deftly  ran
the ribbon across it before applying it to the hamster's belly.
     'Oh,' said Tatarsky, 'I think he's ...'
     'He's shit himself,' Azadovsky confirmed,  dipping  a diamond snowflake
clasped in the pincers into the glue. 'He's so happy. Hup ...'
     Tossing the tweezers down  on the desk, he leaned down over the hamster
and blew hard several times on his chest.
     'Dries instantly,' he announced. 'You can let him go.'
     The hamster began running fussily around the table - he would run up to
the edge, lower  his  nose over it as  though he was trying to make  out the
floor far below, twitch it rapidly and then set  off  for the opposite edge,
where the same procedure was repeated.
     'What did he get the medal for?' Tatarsky asked.
     'I'm in a good mood. Why, are you jealous?'
     Azadovsky caught the hamster, tossed it back into the cage,  locked the
door and carried it back to the cupboard.
     'Why does he have such a strange name?'
     'You know what,  Babylen,'  said  Azadovsky, sitting back  down in  his
chair, 'Rostropovich could ask you the same thing.'
     Tatarsky  remembered he'd been advised  not to say too much or  ask too
many  questions. Azadovsky put the medals and accessories away  in the desk,
crumpled  up the sheet  of  paper stained with glue and tossed  it  into the
waste bin.
     'To  cut it short,  we're taking  you on  for a trial period  of  three
months/' he said.  'We have our own advertising department now, but we don't
produce so much ourselves;  we're more into coordinating the work of several
of the major agencies. Sort of like we don't play, but we keep score. So for
the  time being  you'll be in the  internal reviews department  on the third
floor  from  the next  entrance. We'll keep an eye on  you and  think things
over,  and  if   you  suit,  we'll  move  you  on  to  something  with  more
responsibility. Have you seen how many floors we have here?'
     'Yes, I have,' said Tatarsky.
     'All right then. The potential for growth is unlimited. Any questions?'
     Tatarsky decided to ask the question that had been tormenting him since
the moment they met.
     'Tell me, Mr Azadovsky, yesterday  I saw this clip  about these pills -
wasn't it you playing the doctor?'
     'Yes, it was,' Azadovsky said drily. 'Is there some law against that?'
     He  looked  away  from Tatarsky,  picked up the  phone and  opened  his
notebook. Tatarsky realised that the audience was over. Shifting uncertainly
from one foot to the other, he glanced at the carpet.
     'D'you think I could ...'
     He  didn't need to finish. Azadovsky smiled,  pulled a straw out of the
vase and tossed it on to the desk.
     'Shit-stupid question,' he said, and began dialling a number.






     The pivotal element of the office environment was the piercing voice of
the western Ukrainian cook that  emanated from the  small canteen almost all
day long. All  the  other elements of aural reality were  strung on  it like
beads on a  thread:  telephones ringing,  voices, the  fax squeaking and the
printer  humming.  The material  objects and people occupying  the room  all
condensed around this primary reality - or at least  that was the way things
had seemed to Tatarsky for quite a few months now.
     'So  there I am yesterday  driving down Pokrovka,'  a  cigarette critic
who'd just dashed in was telling the secretary in a high, thin tenor, 'and I
brake at the crossroads there for this queue. Beside me there's this Chaika,
and out of it gets this real heavy-looking Chechen, and he looks around like
he's  just shit on everyone from a  great height. He stands there, you know,
like  really getting into it; then suddenly  up pulls  this  real  gen-u-ine
Cadillac, and out gets  this girl in tattered jeans and  runners  and dashes
over to a kiosk to get some Pepsi-Cola. You can just imagine what's going on
with the Chechen! Imagine having to swallow that!'
     'Wow!'  replied  the secretary, without  looking  up from her  computer
keyboard.
     There were talking behind  Tatarsky too, and  very  loudly. One  of his
subordinates, a late-middle-aged  editor and old Communist Party publication
type, was hauling someone over the coals on the speaker-phone in  a rumbling
bass voice. Tatarsky could tell the editor's deafening volume and implacable
heartiness  were intended  for  his ears. This only  irritated  him, and his
sympathy  was   captured  by  the   thin,  sad   voice   replying  from  the
speaker-phone.
     'I corrected one but  not  the other,'  the voice said quietly. "That's
how it happened.'
     'Well, well" growled the editor. 'So what  on earth  do you think about
when you're working? You're  handling  two pieces -  one called "Prisoner of
Conscience" and the other called "Eunuchs of the Harem", right?'
     'Right.'
     'You put headings on the clipboard to change the font, and then on page
thirty-five you find "Prisoner of the Harem", right?'
     'Right.'
     'Then  shouldn't it be obvious enough that on  page seventy-four you're
going to have "Eunuchs of Conscience"? Or are you just a total tosser?'
     'I'm a total tosser,' agreed the sad voice.
     'You're  both  fucking  tossers,' thought  Tatarsky. He'd been  feeling
depressed since the morning -  probably because of the constant  rain.  He'd
been  sitting by the window  and staring at the roofs  of the cars  as  they
ploughed through the streams of  murky water. Old Ladas and Moskviches built
back  in Soviet  times stood  rusting  along  the  edge of the pavement like
garbage the river of time had tossed up on  to its muddy shore. The river of
time itself consisted for the most part of bright-coloured foreign cars with
water spurting up in fountains from under their tyres.
     Lying  on  the desk  in front of Tatarsky  was  a  pack  of  Gold  Yava
cigarettes, the new version of the old Soviet  favourite, set in a cardboard
display frame, and a heap of papers.
     'Just  take  a  Mercedes,  even,' he  thought  feebly. 'A great car, no
denying that. But somehow the way life's arranged round here all  you can do
with it is ride from one heap of shit to another ...'
     He leaned his head against the glass and looked down  at  the car park,
where  he could  see the white roof of the secondhand Mercedes he'd bought a
month earlier that was already starting to  give him trouble. 'Second-hand,'
he thought. 'A good name for a prosthesis shop ...'
     He sighed  and mentally switched  round  the  'c' and  the 'd' to  make
'Merdeces'.
     'But  it  doesn't  really matter,' his  train  of  thought ploughed  on
wearily, 'because if you keep riding around in these  heaps long enough, you
turn into such  a  shit yourself  that nothing around you leaves any kind of
mark on  you. Of course, you  don't turn into a shit just because you  buy a
Mercedes-6oo.  It's the other way round:  the reason you can afford to buy a
Mercedes-6oo is that you turn into a shit...'
     He looked out of the window again and jotted down: 'Merde-SS.
     In the sense of the occult group or movement.'
     It  was  time he got back to  work. Or rather,  it was  time he started
work.  He had  to write an  internal review on  the  Gold  Yava  advertising
campaign, then on the Camay  soap and Gucci  male fragrances  scenarios. The
Yava job was  a  real pain  because Tatarsky hadn't been  able to  work  out
whether or not they were expecting a positive review from him,  so he wasn't
sure which way he should direct his thoughts So he decided to start with the
scenarios. There  were  six pages of the soap text,  filled  with  close-set
writing.  Opening  it at the last page with a gesture of  squeamish disgust,
Tatarsky  read the final  paragraph:  'It's  getting  dark.  The heroine  is
falling  asleep  and she dreams  of waves of bright,  gleaming hair greedily
drinking in  a blue  liquid pouring  down  on them  from  the sky,  full  of
proteins, vitamin B-5 and infinite happiness.'
     He  frowned, picked up  the red pencil from his desk and wrote in above
the text: 'Too literary. How many times do I have to tell you: we don't need
writers  here, we need  cre-atives. Infinite  happiness can't be conveyed by
means of an image sequence. Scrap it!'
     The scenario for Gucci was much shorter:
     Opening shot - the door of  a country lavatory. Flies buzzing. The door
slowly opens and we see a skinny man with a horseshoe moustache who looks as
though  he  has a  hangover  squatting  over  the  hole.  Caption  onscreen:
''Literary critic  Pavel Bisinsky'. The man looks up towards the camera, and
as though  continuing a conversation  that's been going on  for a long time,
says: 'The argument over whether Russia is  a  part of Europe is  a very old
one.  In  principle  a real  professional  has no difficulty in telling what
Pushkin  thought on this matter at  any  period  of his  life, within a  few
months  either way. For instance, in a letter of 1833 to Prince Vyazemsky he
wrote . . .'
     At this point  there is  a loud cracking  sound, the boards beneath the
man break and he plunges into the cesspit. We hear a loud splash. The camera
closes in  on the  pit,  rising  higher  at the same  time (camera  movement
modelled on the aerial shot of the Titanic)  and shows us the surface of the
dark sludge from above. The  literary critic's head  emerges at the surface,
he  looks upwards  and  continues where  he was  interrupted  by his  sudden
tumble.
     'Perhaps the origins of  the debate should be sought in the division of
the church. Krylov had a point when he said to Chaadaev: "Sometimes you look
around  and  it  seems  as  though  you don't live in Europe,  but  in  some
kindof'.. ."'
     Something jerks the critic  violently  downwards, and  he sinks to  the
bottom with a  gurgling sound. There is silence, broken only by the  buzzing
of the flies. Voice-over:
     GUCCIFORMEN BE A EUROPEAN: SMELL BETTER.
     Tatarsky  took  up his blue pencil. 'Very  good/ he wrote in  under the
text. 'Approved. But replace the flies  with  Michael Jackson/Sex-Shop Dogs,
change the critic  for  a new  Russian and Pushkin, Krylov and  Chaadaev for
another new Russian. Cover the walls of the lavatory with pink silk. Rewrite
the  monologue  so the speaker is recalling a fight in a restaurant  on  the
Cote d'Azur. It's  time to  have done  with literary history and think about
our real clientele.'
     The scenario  had inspired Tatarsky  and he  decided  finally to settle
accounts with Yava. He picked up the item to be reviewed  and looked it over
closely once again. It was  a pack of cigarettes with an empty cardboard box
of  the same dimensions glued to it. There was a bird's-eye view of New York
on the cardboard, with a pack of  Gold Yava swooping over it like  a missile
warhead. The caption under the picture was:
     'Counter-Strike'. Tatarsky  pulled over a  clean  sheet  of  paper  and
hesitated for a while  over which pencil to  choose, the red or the blue. He
laid  them side by side, closed his  eyes, waved  his hand around above them
and jabbed downwards with his forefinger. He hit the blue one.
     We must  certainly acknowledge that the use in advertising  of the idea
and the symbolism of the counter-strike is a fortunate choice. It  suits the
mood of  the broad masses of the lumpen intelligentsia, who are  the primary
consumers of these cigarettes.  For a long time already the mass media  have
been agitating for some healthy  national 'response' in opp-position  to the
violent  domination of American pop culture and  Neanderthal liberalism. The
problem is to  locate the basis  of this response. In an internal review not
intended for outsiders' eyes, we can state that it simply doesn't exist. The
authors of this  advertising concept attempt  to  plug this  semantic breach
with a pack of Gold  Yava, which  will undoubtedly trigger a highly positive
crystallisation  in  the potential consumer. It  will  take the  form of the
consumer unconsciously believing  that every  cigarette he smokes brings the
planetary triumph of the Russian idea a little closer . ..
     After a moment's hesitation Tatarsky changed the first letter of 'idea'
to a capital.
     On the  other  hand, we have to take into account the overall impact of
all  the  symbolism  that  is  incorporated in the brand  essence.  In  this
connection it would seem that the combination of the slogan 'Counter-Strike'
with the logo of  British-American Tobacco Co.,  the company  that  produces
these  cigarettes now, could induce a kind  of mental  short-circuit  in one
section  of the  target group.  The question that quite logically arises  is
whether the pack  is descending on New  York or actually being launched from
there. If the  latter is  the  case (and  this would appear  to be the  more
logical assumption, since the pack is shown with its lid upwards) it is  not
clear why this is a 'counter-strike'.
     Outside  the window the  bells in the tower of  a  small church  nearby
began chiming  rapidly.  Tatarsky listened  thoughtfully for several seconds
and then wrote:
     The  consumer might be  led  to  conclude that  Western  propaganda  is
superior in  a general sense,  and that it is impossible for  an introverted
society to compete with an extroverted one in the provision of images.
     Re-reading  the  last sentence,  Tatarsky  saw  that  it  stank of  the
Slavophilic complex. He crossed it out and rounded off the theme decisively:
     However, only the least materially well-off section of the target group
is capable of drawing such  analytical conclusions,  and therefore this slip
is unlikely to  have any adverse  effect  on sales.  The  project should  be
approved.
     The  phone  on  his  desk  rang  and Tatarsky  picked  up the receiver:
'Hello.'
     "Tatarsky! On the boss's carpet at the double" said Morkovin.
     Tatarsky  told  the secretary  to  type up what  he'd written  and went
downstairs. It was still raining.  He pulled his collar up and dashed across
the yard  to the  other wing of the building. The rain was  heavy and he was
almost soaked through before he'd run as far as the entrance  to  the marble
hall.  'Surely  they  could have  built an  internal connection/ he  thought
irritably. 'It's the same building, after  all. Now I'll make  a mess of the
entire carpet.' But the sight of the guards  with their sub-machine guns had
a calming effect on him. One of  the guards with  a Scorpion on his shoulder
was waiting for him by the lift, toying with a key on a chain.
     Morkovin  was sitting in Azadovsky's reception room.  When he saw  that
Tatarsky was soaked, he gave a  laugh of satisfaction. 'Nostrils flaring are
they? Forget it. Leonid's away; there won't be any bee-keeping today.'
     Tatarsky sensed something was missing in the  reception room. He looked
around and saw the  round mirror and  golden mask  had  disappeared from the
wall.
     'Where's he gone then?'
     'Baghdad.'
     'What for?'
     'The ruins of Babylon are near there. He got some kind of idea into his
head about  climbing that tower they still have there.  Showed  me a  photo.
Real heavy stuff.'
     Tatarsky  gave no sign of  being  affected in any way by what he'd just
heard. Trying to make his movements look normal, he picked up the cigarettes
lying on the desk and lit one.
     'What makes him so interested in that?' he asked.
     'Says his soul's thirsting for the heights. Why've you gone so pale?'
     'I haven't had a cigarette for two days/ said  Tatarsky.  'I was trying
to give up.'
     'Buy a nicotine patch.'
     Tatarsky was already back in control of himself.
     'Listen,' he said,  'yesterday I saw Azadovsky  in another two clips. I
see him every time I turn on the TV.  One day he's  dancing in the  corps de
ballet,  the next he's reading the weather forecast. What does it all  mean?
Why's he on so often? Does he just like being filmed?'
     'Yeah,' said Morkovin, 'it's a weakness of his. My advice to you is not
to stick your nose into that for the time being. Some time maybe you'll find
out all about it. OK?'
     'OK.'
     'Let's get  down to  business. What's  the latest on  our  Kalash-nikov
scenario? Their brand manager was just on the phone.'
     'Nothing new. It's still the same: two old guys shoot  down Batman over
the Moskvoretsky market. Batman falls on to this kebab brazier and flaps his
webbed  wing in  the  dust;  then he's hidden by this group  of old women in
sarafans dancing and singing folk songs.'
     'But why two old guys?'
     'One has  a  short-barrel version and  the  other  has a standard. They
wanted the whole range.'
     Morkovin thought for a moment.
     'Probably a father and son would do better than just two old guys. Give
the father the standard and the son the short  barrel. And  let's  have  not
just Batman, but Spawn and Nightman and the whole fucking gang. The budget's
huge; we have to cover it.'
     'Thinking logically,' Tatarsky said, 'the son should  have the standard
and the father should have the sawn-off.'
     Morkovin thought again for a moment.
     "That's  right,'  he  agreed.  'Good thinking. Only we won't  have  the
mother with a holster, that would be overkill. OK, that wasn't what I called
you over for. I've got some good news.'
     He paused tantalisingly.
     'What news is that?' Tatarsky asked with feeble enthusiasm.
     'The  first  section  has  finally  checked  you out.  So you're  being
promoted  - Azadovsky  told me to put  you in the  picture. So  I'll do that
right now.'
     The canteen  was empty and quiet. The  television hanging on a  pole in
the corner was showing  a news broadcast with the sound turned off. Morkovin
nodded for Tatarsky to sit at the table by the television, then went over to
the  counter and returned with  two glasses  and a bottle of  Smimoff Citrus
Twist.
     'Let's have a drink. You're soaked; you could catch a cold/
     He sat down at the table, then shook the bottle  with some special kind
of  movement and gazed for a long time at the small bubbles that appeared in
the liquid.
     'Well,  would  you  believe  it!'  he  said  in  astonishment.  'I  can
understand it  in some kiosk out on the street. .  . But even  in here  it's
fake. I can tell for sure  it's  homebrew out  of Poland ... Just look at it
fizz! So that's what an upgrade can do ...'
     Tatarsky realised that the final phrase referred  not to the vodka, but
the television, and he switched his gaze from the opaque bubbly vodka to the
screen, where a ruddy-faced, chortling Yeltsin was sawing rapidly at the air
with a hand missing two fingers.
     'Upgrade?' queried Tatarsky. 'Is that some kind of cardiac stimulator?'
     'Who on earth spreads all of those rumours?' said Morkovin, shaking his
head.  'What  for?  They've  just  stepped  up the frequency to six  hundred
megahertz, that's all. But we're taking a serious risk.'
     'You've lost me again,' said Tatarsky.
     'It used  to take two days to render a report like this; but  now we do
it  in a single night, which means  we can program more  gestures and facial
expressions.'
     'But what is it we render?'
     'We render  him,'  said Morkovin with  a nod in the  direction  of  the
television. 'And all the rest of them. 3-D.'
     -3-D?'
     'Three-dimensional modelling, if  you  want  the precise term. The guys
call it "fiddly-dee".'
     Tatarsky gaped  at his friend, trying to work out whether he was joking
or serious. His friend withstood his gaze in silence.
     'What the hell is all this you're telling me?'
     'I'm telling you what Azadovsky told me to tell you. I'm putting you in
the picture.'
     Tatarsky looked at  the screen. Now  it was showing  the rostrum in the
Duma,  occupied by  a dour-looking orator who seemed  to  have just surfaced
from the agitated and murky millpond of folk fury. Suddenly Tatarsky had the
impression that the Duma deputy really wasn't alive: his body was completely
motionless; only his lips and occasionally his eyebrows moved at all.
     'Him as well,' said  Morkovin. 'Only his  rendering's  coarser; there's
too many of them. He's episodic. That's a dummy.'
     'What?'
     'Oh, that's what we call the Duma 3-Ds. Dynamic video bas-relief -  the
appearance is rendered always  at the same  angle. It's the same technology,
but it  cuts  the work  down by two orders of magnitude. There's two types -
stiffs and semi-stiffs. See the  way he moves his hands and head? That means
he's a stiff. And that one over there, sleeping across his newspaper  - he's
a  semi-stiff.  They're  much smaller - you can squeeze one of  them on to a
hard disk. Yes, by the way, our legislature department recently won a prize.
Azadovsky was watching the news from the State Duma, and all the semi-stiffs
were saying how  television's  whorish  and  calculating,  all that  kind of
stuff. Naturally,  Azadovsky  took offence - he heard the word "calculating"
and thought that they were trying to poke their  noses into our business. So
he decided to get to  the  bottom of this. He even got as far as picking  up
the phone and he was already dialling the number  when  he remembered  there
was nothing  to get to the bottom of!  We must  be doing a  good  job if  we
manage to impress ourselves.'
     'You mean they're all...?'
     'Every last one of them.'
     'Oh come off it,' Tatarsky said uncertainly. 'What about all the people
who see them every day?'
     'Where?'
     'On TV ... Oh, right... Well, I mean... After all, there are people who
meet them every day.'
     'Have you seen those people?'
     'Of course.'
     'Where?'
     Tatarsky thought about it. 'On TV,' he said.
     'You get my point, then?'
     'I'm beginning to,' Tatarsky replied.
     'Speaking strictly theoretically, you could  meet someone who tells you
he's  seen  them himself or even knows them.  There's  a special service for
that called The  People's  Will.  More than a hundred of them, former  state
security agents, and  all Azadovsky's  men. That's their job: to  go  around
telling people they've just seen our leaders. One at his three-storey dacha,
one with an under-age whore, one  in a yellow Lamborghini on the Rubliovskoe
Highway.  But The People's  Will  mostly works  the beer halls  and  railway
stations, and you don't hang around those places.'
     'Are you telling me the truth?' Tatarsky asked.
     "The truth, cross my heart.'
     'But it's such a massive scam.'
     'Aagh, no,'  Morkovin  said  with a  grimace, 'please, not that. By his
very nature every politician is just a television broadcast.  Even  if we do
sit a live human being in front of the camera, his  speeches are going to be
written by  a team of speechwriters, his jackets are going to be chosen by a
group of stylists, and his decisions  are going to be taken by the Interbank
Committee. And what if he suddenly has a stroke - are we supposed to set  up
the whole shebang all over again?'
     'OK, let's say you're right,' said Tatarsky. 'But how is it possible on
such a huge scale?'
     'Are you  interested in the  technology? I can  give  you  the  general
outline.  First you need a source figure - a wax model or a human being. You
use it to model the corporeal cloud. D'you know what a corporeal cloud is?'
     'Isn't it some kind of astral thing?'
     'No. Some blockheads or other have been feeding you a load of nonsense.
A corporeal cloud is the same thing as a digital cloud-form. Just a cloud of
points in space. You define it either with a probe or with a  laser scanner.
Then the points are linked up -  you impose a digital grid on them and close
up  the cracks. That  involves  a whole  bundle  of  procedures  -stitching,
clean-up, and so on.'
     'But what do they stitch it up with?'
     'Numbers. They stitch up numbers with other numbers. I don't understand
it all by a  long way -1 studied the humanities, you know that. Anyway, when
we've stitched everything up  and cleaned it all up, we end up with a model.
There  are two types - one's called  polygonal, and the other's called NURBS
patch.  A  polygonal  model  consists of triangles,  and a NURBS  -  that is
'non-union  rational  bi-spline'  - consists of  curves. That's the advanced
technology for serious 3-Ds. The Duma dummies are all polygonals - it's less
hassle and it keeps the faces more  folksy.  So when the  model's ready, you
put a skeleton inside it, and  that's digital too. It's like a set of sticks
on ball-joints -  on the monitor  it actually  looks  like  a  skeleton, but
without the ribs  - and you animate the skeleton like they do for  a cartoon
film:  move an arm this way, move a leg that  way. Only we don't actually do
it by hand any more. We have special people who work as skeletons.'
     'Work as skeletons?'
     Morkovin  glanced at his watch. "They're  shooting right now  in studio
number 3.  Let's go  take a look.  It'll take me all  day  to try to explain
things to you.'
     Several minutes  later Tatarsky timidly followed Morkovin  into a space
that  resembled the studio of a conceptual  artist who has received a  large
grant for working  with plywood. It was  a hall two storeys high filled with
numerous  plywood  constructions of  various shapes and  indefinite function
-there were staircases leading into  nowhere, incomplete  rostrums,  plywood
surfaces sloping  down  to  the  floor at various  angles, and even  a  long
plywood limousine. Tatarsky  didn't see any cameras or  studio  lights,  but
there were large numbers of mysterious electrical boxes looking like musical
equipment heaped up by the wall, and sitting beside them on chairs were four
men  who  seemed to be engineers. Standing on the  floor  beside them were a
half-empty bottle  of  vodka  and  a large  number of beer cans.  One of the
engineers,  wearing earphones, was staring  into  a monitor.  They waved  in
friendly greeting to Morkovin, but no one took his attention off his work.
     'Hey, Arkasha,'  the man in the earphones called out. 'Don't laugh now,
but we'll have to go again.'
     'What?' said a hoarse voice somewhere in the centre of the hall.
     Turning  towards the voice,  Tatarsky saw a  strange device: a  plywood
slope  like the ones you  see  in  children's playgrounds, only  higher. The
sloping surface broke off above a hammock supported on  wooden poles, and an
aluminium stepladder led  up to its summit.  A heavy, elderly  man with  the
face of a veteran policeman was sitting on the floor  beside the hammock. He
was  wearing tracksuit trousers  and  a tee  shirt  with  an  inscription in
English:  'Sick  my  duck'. Tatarsky thought the inscription too sentimental
and not quite grammatically correct.
     'You heard, Arkasha. Let's go for it again.'
     'How many more times?' Arkasha mumbled. Tm getting dizzy.'
     'Try another shot to loosen you up. So far it's still kind  of tight. I
mean it; take one.'
     'The last glass hasn't hit me yet,' Arkasha replied, getting up off the
floor and wandering over to the engineers. Tatarsky noticed there were black
plastic  discs attached to  his wrists, elbows, knees and ankles; and  there
were more of them on his body - Tatarsky counted fourteen in all.
     'Who's that?' he asked in a whisper.
     'That's Arkady Korzhakov. No, don't go getting any ideas. Not Yeltsin's
old bodyguard. He's just  got the same  name.  Works  as Yeltsin's skeleton.
Same weight, same dimensions;
     and he's an actor, too. Used to do Shakespeare at  the  Young  People's
Theatre.'
     'But what does he do?'
     'You'll see in a moment. Like some beer?'
     Tatarsky  nodded.  Morkovin  brought over  two  cans of Tuborg. It gave
Tatarsky a strange feeling to see the familiar figure in the white  shirt on
the can - Tuborg man was still  wiping the  sweat  from his forehead in  the
same old way, afraid of continuing his final journey.
     Arkasha  downed a  glass  of vodka  and  went  back to  the  slope.  He
scrambled  up the  slope  and stood  motionless at the  top of  the  plywood
structure.
     'Shall I start?' he asked.
     'Hang on,' said the man in the earphones, 'we'll just recalibrate.'
     Arkasha squatted down on his haunches and took hold  of the edge of the
plywood surface with his hand, so that he resembled a huge fat pigeon.
     'What are those washers he's got on him?' asked Tatarsky.
     "Those are sensors,' replied Morkovin.  'Motion-capture technology.  He
wears them  at  the  points  where  the skeleton  has  its ball-joints. When
Arkasha moves, we record their trajectory. Then we filter it  a little  bit,
superimpose it on the  model and  the machine works it all out.  It's a  new
system,  called  Star  Trak. The hottest thing  on  the market right now. No
wires, thirty-two sensors, works anywhere you like,  but the price - you can
imagine ...'
     The man in the earphones turned away from the monitor.
     'Ready,' he  said.  'Right I'll run through it from the  top. First you
hug him, then you invite  him to walk down,  then you stumble. Only when you
lower your arm,  make it grander, more majestic. And fall flat, full length.
Got it?'
     'Got it,'  Arkasha mumbled,  and  rose  carefully to his  feet. He  was
swaying slightly.
     'Let's go.'
     Arkasha  turned  to  his left, opened his arms wide and slowly  brought
them together in empty space. Tatarsky was amazed  at the way  his movements
were instantly filled with  stately  grandeur and majestic pomp. At first it
put  Tatarsky  in mind of  of  Stanislavsky's system, but  then  he realised
Arkasha was  simply having difficulty balancing  on  such  a tiny  spot high
above the  floor  and was  struggling not to fall. When he  opened his  arms
again,  Arkasha gestured  expansively for his invisible companion to descend
the  slope,  took  a step  towards it, swayed on  the edge  of  the  plywood
precipice and went  tumbling clumsily downwards.  As he fell he somersaulted
twice,  and  if his  heavy frame had  not  landed in the hammock there would
certainly have  been  broken  bones. Having fallen into the hammock, Arkasha
carried on lying there, with his arms wrapped round his head. The  engineers
crowded round the monitor and began arguing about something in quiet voices.
     'What's it going to be?' Tatarsky asked.
     Without saying a word, Morkovin held  out  a  photograph. Tatarsky  saw
some kind of hall in the Kremlin with malachite columns and a wide, sweeping
marble staircase with a red-carpet-runnner.
     'Listen, why do we show him pissed if he's only virtual?'
     'Improves the ratings.'
     'This improves his ratings?'
     'Not his rating. What kind of rating can  an electromagnetic wave have?
The  channel's ratings. Never  tried to figure out why it's forty thousand a
minute during prime time news?'
     'I just did. How long has he been ... like this?'
     'Since that time he danced in Rostov during the election campaign. When
he fell  off  the stage. We had to get him coded double quick. Remember that
by-pass operation he had? There were no end  of  problems. By the time  they
finished  digitising  him,  he  stank so bad that  everyone  was  working in
respirators.
     'But  how do  they  do the face?' Tatarsky asked.  The movement and the
expression?'
     'Same thing. Only it's an optical system, not a magnetic one. "Adaptive
optics".  And  for the  hands we have the  "Cyber Glove" system.  Slice  two
fingers off one of them - and Boris is your uncle.'
     'Hey, guys,' said one  of the engineers,  'keep it down a bit, can you?
Arkasha's got another jump to do. Let him rest up.'
     'What?' said  Arkasha,  sitting  up  in  the  hammock.  'You lost  your
marbles, have you?'
     'Let's go,' said Morkovin.
     The  next space Morkovin  took  Tatarsky into was called  the  'Virtual
Studio'.  Despite  the name, inside there  were genuine  cameras and  studio
lights that gave  off a pleasant warmth.  The studio  was a large room  with
green  walls  and  floor.  They  were  filming  several  people  got  up  in
fashionable  rural outfits. They  were standing  round an  empty  space  and
nodding thoughtfully, while one of them rolled  a ripe ear of wheat  between
his hands.  Morkovin explained  that they were  prosperous farmers, who were
cheaper to shoot on film than to animate.
     'We tell them  more  or less which way to look,' he said, 'and  when to
ask questions. Then we can  match them up with anyone we like. Have you seen
Starship Troopers? Where the star-ship troopers fight the bugs?'
     'Yeah.'
     'It's the  same thing. Only instead of the troopers we have farmers  or
small  businessmen,  inside  of the automatics  we have bread and  salt, and
instead of  the bug we have Zyuganov or Lebed. Then  we match them up, paste
in the  Cathedral  of Christ the Saviour or the Baikonur  launch-pad  in the
background,  copy  it to  Betacam and put it out on air ... Let's go take  a
look at the control room as well.'
     The  control room, located  behind  a  door  with  the coy  inscription
'Engine Room', failed to make any particular impression on Tatarsky. The two
guards with automatic  rifles standing  by the door made  an impression  all
right,  but  the actual  premises  seemed uninteresting. They consisted of a
small room with  squeaky parquet flooring and  dusty  wallpaper  with  green
gladioli that  could clearly remember Soviet  times very  well. There was no
furniture in  the room, but  hanging on one  wall was a colour photograph of
Yuri Gagarin holding a dove in his hands, and the wall opposite  was covered
with metal shelving holding numerous identical blue boxes, on which the only
decoration  was the  Silicon  Graphics  logo,  looking like a snowflake.  In
appearance  the boxes  were not  much different from the device Tatarsky had
seen once in Draft Podium. There were no interesting lamps or indicators  on
these boxes - any old run-of-the-mill transformer might have looked just the
same - but Morkovin behaved with extreme solemnity.
     'Azadovsky said you  like life to have  big tits,' he said. 'Well, this
is the  biggest of the lot. And  if it doesn't excite  you  yet, that's just
because you're not used to it yet.'
     'What is it?'
     'A 100/400 render-server. Silicon Graphics turns them out specially for
this  kind of work - high  end. In American terms it's  already outdated, of
course, but it does the job for us. All of Europe runs on  these, anyway. It
can  render  up   to   one  hundred   primary  and  four  hundred  secondary
politicians.'
     'A massive computer,' Tatarsky said without enthusiasm.
     'It's not  even a  computer. It's  a  stand with  twenty-four computers
controlled from a single keyboard. Four 1,5-giga-hertz  processors  in every
one. Each block  calculates the frames in turn and the entire system works a
bit like an aviation  cannon with revolving  barrels. The Americans took big
bucks  off us for this baby! But what can  you do? When  everything was just
starting  up, we didn't  have  anything  like it. Now, you know yourself, we
never will  have. The Americans, by the way,  are our biggest  problem. They
keep cutting us back like we were some kind of jerks.'
     'How d'you mean?'
     'The  processor  frequency.  First  they  cut  us  back by two  hundred
megahertz for Chechnya. It was really for  the  pipeline - you realise that,
anyway. Then  because we stole those loans. And so on, for any old reason at
all. Of course, we push things to the  limit  at night, but they watch TV in
the embassy like everyone else. As soon we step up  the  frequency they pick
it up and send round an inspector. It's plain shameful. A great country like
this stuck on four hundred megahertz - and not even our own.'
     Morkovin went over  to the stand, pulled out a slim blue box and lifted
up its lid to expose a  liquid-crystal monitor. Below it was a keyboard with
a track-ball.
     'Is that the keyboard it's controlled from?' Tatarsky asked.
     'Of course not,' said Morkovin with a dismissive wave of his hand. 'You
need  clearance to  be able to get into  the  system.  All the terminals are
upstairs. This is just a  check monitor. I  want to see what we're rendering
at the moment.'
     He prodded at the  keys and a window with a progress indicator appeared
at the bottom of  the screen.  It also had several incomprehensible messages
in English in  it: memory used 5184 M, time  elapsed  23:11:12 and something
else  in  very  fine script.  Then the pathway  selected  appeared in  large
letters:
     C:/oligarchs/berezka/excesses /field_disgr/slalom.prg.
     'I see,' said Morkovin. 'It's Berezovsky in Switzerland.'
     Small  squares  containing  fragments  of an  image began covering  the
screen,  as  though  someone  was assembling a  jigsaw. After a few  seconds
Tatarsky recognised the familiar face with a few black holes in it still not
rendered  - he was  absolutely astounded  by the insane joy  shining  in the
already computed right eye.
     'He's  off skiing,  the bastard,' said Morkovin,  'and you and  me  are
stuck in here breathing dust.'
     'Why's the folder called "excesses"? What's so excessive about skiing?'
     'Instead of those  sticks  with flags on them  the  storyboard has  him
skiing  round naked ballerinas,' Morkovin  replied. 'Some of them have  blue
ribbons  and some of  them have red  ones. We filmed the girls  out  on  the
slope.  They  were delighted to get a  free trip to Switzerland. Two of them
are still doing the rounds over there.'
     He turned off the control monitor, closed  it and  pushed the unit back
into place. Tatarsky was suddenly struck by an  alarming  thought. 'Listen,'
he said, 'you say the Americans are doing the same?'
     'Sure. And it started a lot earlier. Reagan was animated all his second
term. As for  Bush -  d'you remember that time he stood beside a  helicopter
and the hair he'd combed across his bald patch kept lifting up and waving in
the  air? A real masterpiece. I don't  reckon there's ever  been anything in
computer graphics to compare with it. America ...'
     'But is it true their copywriters work on our politics?'
     'That's a load of  lies. They can't even come up with anything any good
for themselves. Resolution, numbers of pixels, special effects - no problem.
But it's a  country  with no  soul. All their political  creatives  are pure
shit.  They  have  two  candidates  for  president  and  only  one  team  of
scriptwriters. It's just full of guys who've been  given the push by Madison
Avenue, because the money's bad in politics. I've been looking through their
election campaign material for ages now, and it's  dreadful.  If one of them
talks about a  bridge to  the  past, then  a couple of days  later the other
one's bound to start talking about a bridge to  the future. For Bob Dole all
they  did  was  rewrite  the Nike slogan from "just do it" to "just don't do
it". And the best they can come up with is a blow job in the Oral Office . .
. Nah,  our  scriptwriters are  ten  times  as  good. Just look what rounded
characters they  write.  Yeltsin, Zyuganov, Lebed. As good  as Chekhov.  The
Three Sisters. Anyone who  says Russia has  no brands of its own should have
the words  rammed down their throat. With the  talent we have here, we've no
need  to  feel ashamed in  front of anyone. Look at  that, for instance, you
see?'
     He nodded at the photograph of Gagarin.  Tatarsky took a closer look at
it and  realised it  wasn't  Gagarin at all,  but  General  Lebed  in  dress
uniform, and it wasn't a dove in his hands but a  white rabbit with its ears
pressed  back.  The  photograph was  so  similar  to  its  prototype that it
produced a kind of trompe I'oeil effect: for a moment the rabbit in  Lebed's
hands actually seemed to be an indecently obese pigeon.
     'A young miner did that,'  said Morkovin.  'It's  for  the cover of our
Playboy. The slogan to go with it is: "Russia will be glossy and sassy". For
the  hungry  regions it's spot on, a bull's  eye -  instant association with
"sausage". The young guy probably only used to eat every other  day, and now
he's  one of  the top  creatives.  He  still tends  to focus  on food a lot,
though...'
     'Hang on,' said Tatarsky, 'I've got a good idea.  Let  me just write it
down.'
     He took his notebook out of his pocket and wrote:
     Silicon  Graphics  I big  tits  - new  concept/or  the  Russian market.
Instead of a snowflake  the  outline of an Immense  tit that  looks like its
been filled out with  a silicon  implant  (casually  drawn with  a  pen, for
'graphics'). In the animation (the clip) an organic  silicon worm crawls out
of the nipple and curves  itself into  a $ sign (model  on Spedes-II). Think
about it.
     'A rush of sweaty inspiration?'  Morkovin asked. 'I  feel envious.  OK,
the excursion's over. Let's go to the canteen.'
     The  canteen was still empty. The  television  was playing away with no
sound, and their two glasses and unfinished bottle  of Smirnoff Citrus Twist
were  still standing  on the table below it.  Morkovin  filled the  glasses,
clinked his own glass against Tatarsky's without saying a word and drank up.
The excursion had left Tatarsky feeling vaguely uneasy.
     'Listen,'  he  said, 'there's  one  thing I  don't understand.  OK,  so
copywriters write all their texts for them; but who's responsible for what's
in the texts? Where do we get the subjects from? And  how do we decide which
way national policy's going to move tomorrow?'
     'Big  business,'  Morkovin  answered  shortly.  'You've  heard  of  the
oligarchs?'
     'Uhuh. You mean, they get together and sort out things? Or do they send
in their concepts in written form?'
     Morkovin put  his thumb  over  the opening  of the bottle, shook it and
began  gazing at  the bubbles  - he obviously found something fascinating in
the sight. Tatarsky said nothing as he waited for an answer.
     'How can  they  all get  together anywhere,'  Morkovin replied  at long
last, 'when  all of them  are made on the next floor  up?  You've just  seen
Berezovsky for yourself.'
     'Uhuh,'  Tatarsky  responded  thoughtfully.  'Yes, of course. Then  who
writes the scripts for the oligarchs?'
     'Copywriters. All exactly the same, just one floor higher.'
     'Uhuh. And how do we decide what the oligarchs are going to decide?'
     'Depends  on the political situation. "Decide" is only a word,  really.
In actual fact we don't have too much choice about it. We're hemmed in tight
by the  iron law  of necessity. For  both  sets of them. And  for you and me
too.'
     'So you  mean  there aren't any oligarchs, either? But what about  that
board downstairs: the Interbank Committee ...?'
     'That's just to stop the filth from trying to foist their protection on
us. We're  the  Interbank  Committee  all  right,  only  all the  banks  are
intercommittee banks. And we're the committee. That's the way it is.'
     'I get you,' said Tatarsky. 'I think I get you, anyway... That is, hang
on there . . . That  means this lot determine that lot, and that lot... That
lot determine this lot.  But then how . . .  Hang on ... Then what's holding
the whole lot up?'
     He broke off  in a howl of  pain: Morkovin had pinched him on the wrist
as hard as he could - so hard he'd even torn off a small patch of skin.
     'Don't you ever,'  he said, leaning over the  table and  staring darkly
into Tatarsky's eyes, 'not ever, think about that. Not ever, get it?'
     'But  how?' Tatarsky  asked, sensing that the pain had thrown  him back
from the edge of a deep, dark abyss. 'How can I not think about it?'
     "There's this  technique,' said Morkovin. 'Like  when you  realise that
any moment now you're going to  think that  thought all the way through, you
pinch yourself or you prick yourself  with something  sharp. In  your arm or
your  leg -  it  doesn't  matter  where.  Wherever there are plenty of nerve
endings. The way a swimmer pricks his calf when he gets  cramp. In order not
to drown. And then gradually you build up something like a callus around the
thought and it's no real problem to you to avoid it. Like, you can feel it's
there, only you never think it. And gradually you get used to it. The eighth
floor's supported by the seventh floor, the seventh floor's supported by the
eighth floor; and everywhere, at any specific point and any specific moment,
things are stable. Then, when the work comes piling in, and you do a line of
coke, you'll spend the whole day on the run  fencing concrete problems.  You
won't have time left for the abstract ones.'
     Tatarsky drained the rest of the vodka in a single gulp and pinched his
own thigh several times. Morkovin gave a sad laugh.
     'Take Azadovsky,' he said, 'why  d'you think he winds  everyone up  and
comes on heavy like that? Because it never even enters his head that there's
something  strange in all of this. People like that  are only born once in a
hundred years. He's got a real sense of life on an international scale ...'
     'All right,' said Tatarsky, pinching his leg again. 'But surely someone
has to control the economy,  not  just wind people up and come on heavy? The
economy's complicated. Doesn't it take  some kind of  principles to regulate
it?'
     'The  principle's  very simple,'  said Morkovin. 'Monetarism.  To  keep
everything in the economy normal, all we have to  do is to control the gross
stock  of money we have. And everything else automatically falls into place.
So we mustn't interfere in anything.'
     'And how do we control this gross stock?'
     'So as to make is as big as possible.'
     'And that's it?'
     'Of  course. If the gross stock of money we have is as big as possible,
that means everything's hunky-dory.'
     'Yes,'  said  Tatarsky, 'that's logical. But  still someone has to  run
everything, surely?'
     'You want to understand everything far too quickly,' Morkovin said with
a frown. 'I told you, just wait a while. That, my friend, is a great problem
- trying to  understand just who's running things. For the time being let me
just say the world isn't  run  by a "who", it's run by  a "what". By certain
factors and impulses it's too soon for you to be learning about. Although in
fact. Babe, there's no way you could not know about them. That's the paradox
of it all...'
     Morkovin fell silent and began thinking about something. Tatarsky lit a
cigarette - he didn't feel like talking any more. Meanwhile a new client had
appeared  in the canteen,  one that Tatarsky  recognised immediately: it was
the well-known TV political analyst Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin. In real life he
looked a  bit older than he did on the screen. He  was obviously  just  back
from a broadcast: his face was covered  with  large beads of sweat,  and the
famous pince-nez was set crooked on his nose. Tatarsky expected Farseikin to
dash over to the counter for vodka, but he came over to their table.
     'Mind if I turn on the sound?' he asked, nodded towards the television.
'My son made this clip. I haven't seen it yet.'
     Tatarsky looked up. Something  strangely familiar was  happening on the
screen: there  was a choir of rather  dubious-looking sailors  standing in a
clearing in a  birch forest  (Tatarsky recognised  Azadovsky right away - he
was standing  in the middle of the group, the only one with a medal gleaming
on  his chest).  With their  arms round each other's  shoulders, the sailors
were  swaying  from  side  to  side  and  gently  singing in  support  of  a
yellow-haired  soloist who looked like  the poet Es-enin raised to the power
of  three. At first Tatarsky  thought the soloist  must be  standing on  the
stump of a gigantic birch tree, but from the ideally cylindrical form of the
stump  and the  small yellow lemons  drawn on it, he realised it  was a soft
drinks can magnified  many times over and painted to resemble either a birch
tree or a zebra. The slick image-sequencing  testified that this was  a very
expensive clip.
     'Bom-bom-bom,' the swaying sailors rumbled dully. The soloist stretched
out his hands from his heart towards the camera and sang in a clear tenor:
     My motherland gives me
     For getting it right
     My fill of her fizzy,
     Her birch-bright Sprite!
     Tatarsky crushed his cigarette into the ashtray with a sharp movement.
     'Motherfuckers/ he said.
     'Who?' asked Morkovin.
     'If only I knew  ... So tell me then, what area do they want to move me
into?'
     'Senior creative  in the kompromat department; and you'll be on standby
when we have a rush on. So now we'll be standing, shoulder to shoulder, just
like those sailors . . .  Forgive me,  brother, for dragging you into in all
this. Life's much simpler for the punters, who don't know anything about it.
They  even think there are different TV channels and different TV  companies
... But then, that's what makes them punters.'





     It  happens so often: you're  riding along in your white  Mer-cedes and
you  go  past  a bus stop.  You  see the people who've been  standing there,
waiting  in  frustration for their bus for God knows  how long, and suddenly
you notice one of  them  gazing at you with a dull kind  of  expression that
just  might be  envy. For  a second you really start  to believe  that  this
machine stolen from some anonymous  German  burgher, that  still hasn't been
fully cleared through the customs in fraternal Belorussia but  already has a
suspicious knocking in the engine, is the prize that witnesses to  your full
and total victory over life. A warm shiver runs up  and down your spine, you
proudly turn your face away from the people standing at the bus stop, and in
your  very heart of hearts  you know that all  your trials were not in vain:
you've really made it.
     Such is the action of the anal  wow-factor in our hearts;  but  somehow
Tatarsky  failed to experience its sweet titillation. Perhaps the difficulty
lay in some specific after-the-rain apathy of the punters standing at  their
bus stops, or perhaps Tatarsky was simply too nervous: there was a review of
his work coming up, and Azadovsky himself was due to attend. Or  perhaps the
reason  lay  in  the  increasingly frequent breakdowns of  the  social radar
locating unit in his mind.
     'If we regard events purely from the point of view of image animation,'
he thought, glancing round at his  neighbours in the  traffic jam, 'then  we
have  all our concepts inverted. For the celestial Silicon that renders this
entire world, a battered old Lada is  a much more complicated job than a new
BMW  that's been blasted with gales  for three years in aerodynamic tunnels.
The  whole thing comes down  to creatives and scenario writers. But what bad
bastard could have  written this scenario? And who's the viewer who sits and
stuffs his face while he watches this screen?  Most important of all,  could
it all really  only  be happening so that  some heavenly agency can rake  in
something like  money from something like  advertising? Certainly looks like
it.  It's  a well-known  fact  that  everything  in  the world is  based  on
similitudes.'
     The traffic jam finally began to ease. Tatarsky lowered the window. His
mood was completely spoiled; he  needed live human  warmth. He pulled out of
the stream of cars and braked at the bus stop. The broken glass panel in the
side  of  the  shelter  had  been  patched over with  a  board  carrying  an
advertisement  for  some TV channel showing an allegorical representation of
the  four mortal  sins holding  remote controls.  An old woman  was  sitting
motionless on the bench under the  shelter with  a basket on her knees,  and
sitting beside her was a curly-headed man of about forty, clutching a bottle
of beer. He was dressed in  a shabby, padded military coat. Noting  that the
man still  seemed to possess a  fair amount of vital energy,  Tatarsky stuck
out his elbow.
     'Excuse me, soldier,' he said, 'can you tell me where the Men's  Shirts
shop is around here?'
     The man looked  up  at  him. He  must  have  understood Tatarsky's real
motivation, because his eyes were immediately flooded with an ice-cold fury.
The brief exchange of glances was most informative - Tatarsky  realised that
the man realised, and the man realised Tatarsky realised he'd been realised.
     'Afghanistan was way heavier,' said the man.
     'I beg your pardon, what did you say?'
     'What I said was',  the  man replied, shifting  his grip to the neck of
the bottle, 'that Afghanistan was way heavier. And don't you even try to beg
my pardon.'
     Something told Tatarsky the man was not approaching his car in order to
tell him the way to the  shop, and he flattened  the accelerator against the
floor. His instinct had not deceived him - a second  later something  struck
hard against the rear windsow  and  it  shattered  into  a  spider's web  of
cracks, with  white foam  trickling down  over them. Driven by his adrenalin
rush, Tatarsky accelerated sharply. 'What  a  fucker,' he  thought, glancing
round. 'And they want to build a market economy with people like that.'
     After  he  parked  in  the  yard of  the  Interbank  Committee,  a  red
Range-Rover  pulled  up  beside  him  -  the  latest model, with  a  set  of
fantastical spotlights perched on  its roof and its door  decorated  with  a
cheerful  drawing  of the sun rising  over  the prairie  and the head of  an
Indian  chief  clad  in a  feather  headdress. 'I wonder who  drives those?'
Tatarsky thought, and lingered at the door of his car for a moment.
     A  fat,  squat man  wearing  an  emphatically  bourgeois  striped  suit
clambered out of the Range-Rover  and turned round, and Tatarsky was  amazed
to recognise Sasha Blo - fatter than ever, even  balder, but still with that
same old grimace of tormented failure  to understand  what  was really going
on.
     'Sasha,' said Tatarsky, 'is that you?'
     'Ah, Babe,' said Sasha Blo. 'You're here too? In the dirt department?'
     'How d'you know?'
     'Elementary,  my  dear Watson. That's where everybody  starts out. Till
they get their  hand  in. There aren't all that many creatives on the books.
Everyone knows everyone else. So if I haven't seen you before and now you're
parking at this entrance, it means you're in kompromat. And you've only been
there a couple of weeks at most.'
     'It's been  a month already,' Tatarsky answered.  'So what're you doing
now?'
     'Me? I'm head of the Russian Idea department. Drop in  if you have  any
ideas.'
     'I'm  not  much good to you" Tatarsky answered. 'I tried thinking about
it, but it was a flop. You should try driving  around the suburbs and asking
the guys on the street.'
     Sasha Blo frowned in dissatisfaction.
     'I tried that at the  beginning,'  he  said. 'You  pour the vodka, look
into their eyes, and then it's always the same answer:
     "Bugger  off and crash your fucking  Mercedes." Can't think of anything
cooler than a Mercedes . . . And it's all so destructive .. .'
     'That's  right,' sighed  Tatarsky and looked at the rear  window of his
car. Sasha Blo followed his glance.
     'Is it yours?'
     'Yes it is,' Tatarsky said with pride.
     'I see' said  Sasha  Blo, locking  the door of his Range-Rover;  'forty
minutes of embarrassment  gets you to work. Well, don't let it get you down.
Everything's still ahead of you.'
     He nodded and ran off jauntily towards the door, flapping a fat, greasy
attache case as he  went. Tatarsky gazed  after him for  a long moment, then
looked at  the rear window  of his car again and took out his notebook. "The
worst  thing of all', he wrote on the last page, 'is that  people base their
intercourse with  each  other on senselessly distracting chatter, into which
they cold-bloodedly, cunningly and inhumanly introduce their anal impulse in
the hope  that it will become someone  else's oral impulse. If this happens,
the  winner  shudders or-giastically and for  a few seconds  experiences the
so-called "pulse of life".'
     Azadovsky and Morkovin had been sitting in the viewing hall since early
morning.  Outside  the  entrance  several  people were walking backwards and
forwards, sarcastically discussing Yeltsin's  latest binge. Tatarsky decided
they must be copywriters from the  political department practising corporate
non-action. They were called  in one by one; on average they spent about ten
minutes with the bosses. Tatarsky realised that the problems discussed  were
of state significance -he  heard Yeltsin's  voice emanate  from  the hall at
maximum volume several times. The first time he burbled:
     'What do we  want so many pilots for? We only need one pilot, but ready
for anything! The moment I saw my grandson playing with Play Station I  knew
straightaway what we need ...'
     The second time they  were obviously  playing  back  a section  from an
address to the nation, because Yeltsin's voice was solemn and measured: 'For
the first time in  many decades the population of  Russia now has the chance
to choose between the heart and the head. Vote with your heart!'
     One project was wound  up - that was obvious from  the face of the tall
man with a moustache and prematurely  grey  hair who  emerged from the  hall
clutching  a  crimson loose-leaf  folder  with  the inscription 'Tsar'. Then
music began playing  in the hall - at first a balalaika jangled  for  a long
time, then Tatarsky heard Azadovsky shouting: 'Bugger it! We'll take him off
the air. Next.'
     Tatarsky was the last in the queue. The dimly lit hall where  Azadovsky
was  waiting looked  luxurious but somewhat archaic, as  though it had  been
decorated and furnished back in the  forties. For some  reason Tatarsky bent
down when he entered. He  trotted across to the first row and perched on the
edge of  the chair  to  the left of  Azadovsky,  who was ejecting streams of
smoke into the beam of the video-projector. Azadovsky shook his hand without
looking at  him - he was  obviously  in a bad mood.  Tatarsky knew what  the
problem was: Morkovin had explained it to him the day before.
     'They've dropped us to three hundred megahertz,' he said gloomily. 'For
Kosovo.  Remember how under the  communists  there were shortages of butter?
Now it's  machine time.  There's  something fatal  about  this country.  Now
Azadovsky's watching all the drafts  himself. Nothing's allowed on the  main
render-server without written permission, so give it your best shot.'
     It was the first time Tatarsky had seen what a draft - that is  a rough
sketch before it's  been  rendered  in full  - actually  looked like.  If he
hadn't  written the scenario himself, he  would never have  guessed that the
green outline divided  by lines of fine yellow dots  was a table with a game
of Monopoly set  up  on  it.  The  playing  pieces were identical  small red
arrows, and the  dice were two  blue blobs,  but the game had  been modelled
honestly -  in the lower section of the screen pairs  of numbers from one to
six  flickered  on  and  off, produced by the random number  generator.  The
players themselves  didn't exist yet, though their moves corresponded to the
points scored.  Their places were  occupied by skeletons  of graduated lines
with  little  circles as ball-joints. Tatarsky could only  see  their faces,
constructed  of coarse polygons  -  Salaman Raduev's beard was  like a rusty
brick attached to the lower  section of his  face and a round bullet scar on
his temple  looked like a red button. Bere-zovsky was recognisable from  the
blue triangles of his shaved cheeks. As was  only to be expected, Berezovsky
was winning.
     'Yes,' he  said,  'in Mother  Russia, Monopoly's a bit dicey. You buy a
couple of streets, and then it turns out there are people living on them.'
     Raduev  laughed: 'Not just in Russia.  It's like  that everywhere.  And
I'll tell  you something else,  Boris: not only do people live there;  often
they actually think the streets are theirs.'
     Berezovsky tossed the dice. Once again he got two sixes.
     "That's  not quite how it  is/ he  said. 'Nowadays people find out what
they think from the television. So if you want to buy up a couple of streets
and still sleep well, first you have to buy a TV tower.'
     There was a squeak, and an animated insert appeared in the comer of the
table:  a military walkie-talkie with a long aerial. Raduev lifted it to his
head-joint, said something curt in Chechen and put it back.
     'I'm selling off my TV announcer,' he said, and flicked a playing piece
into the centre of the table with his finger. 'I don't like television.'
     'I'm buying,' Berezovsky responded quickly. 'But why don't you like it?
     'I don't  like it because piss comes into contact  with skin too  often
when you watch it,' said Raduev, shaking the dice in the green arrows of his
fingers.  'Every time I  turn on  the  television,  there's piss coming into
contact with skin and causing irritation.'
     'You must be  talking about those commercials for Pampers, are you? But
it's not your skin, Salaman.'
     'Exactly,' said Raduev irritably, 'so why do they  come into contact in
my head? Haven't they got anywhere else?'
     The upper section of Berezovsky's face was covered by a  rectangle with
a pair of  eyes rendered in detail. They squinted  in concern at Raduev  and
blinked a few times, then the rectangle disappeared.
     'Anyway,  just whose piss is it?' Raduev asked  as if the idea had only
just entered his head.
     'Drop  it, Salaman,' Berezovsky said  in  a  reconciliatory  tone. 'Why
don't you take your move?'
     'Wait, Boris; I want to  know  whose  piss and  skin it is coming  into
contact in my head when I watch your television.'
     'Why is it my television?'
     'If a pipe  runs across my squares, then I'm responsible for the  pipe.
You  said that yourself.  Right?  So if  all the  TV anchormen  are  on your
squares, you're  responsible  for  TV. So  you tell  me  whose  piss  it  is
splashing about in my head when I watch it!'
     Berezovsky scratched  his  chin.  'It's your  piss,  Salaman,' he  said
decisively. 'How come?'
     'Who else's can it be? Think it out for yourself. In Chechnya they call
you "the man with a bullet in his head" for your pluck. I don't think anyone
who  decided to pour piss all over  you while you're watching TV would  live
very long.' 'You think right.' 'So, Salaman, that means it's your piss.' 'So
how does it get inside my head when I'm watching TV? Does it rise up from my
bladder?'
     Berezovsky reached out for the dice, but Raduev put his hand over them.
'Explain,' he demanded. "Then we'll carry on playing.'
     An animation rectangle appeared on Berezovsky's  forehead, containing a
deep wrinkle. 'All right,' he said,' I'll try to explain.' 'Go on.'
     'When Allah  created  this  world/ Berezovsky began,  casting  a  quick
glance upwards, 'he  first thought it;  and then he created objects. All the
holy books tell us that  in the beginning was the word.  What does that mean
in  legal terms?  In  legal terms  it means  that  in the  first place Allah
created concepts. Coarse objects are the  lot of human  beings, but in stead
of them Allah' - he glanced  upwards quickly once again - 'has ideas. And so
Salman,  when  you watch advertisements for Pampers  on television, what you
have in your head is not wet human piss,  but the concept of  piss. The idea
of piss comes into contact with the concept of skin. You understand?'
     'More or  less,' said  Raduev thoughtfully. 'But  I  didn't  understand
everything. The  idea  of piss  and  the  concept of skin come  into contact
inside my head, right?' 'Right.'
     'And  instead  of  things,  Allah  has  ideas.  Right?'  'Right,'  said
Berezovsky,  and  frowned. An animation  patch appeared  on  his blue-shaven
cheeks, showing his jaw muscles clenched tightly.
     'That means  what happens  inside my  head is  Allah's piss coming into
contact with Allah's skin, blessed be his name? Right?'
     'You probably could put  it like that,' said Berezovsky, and the insert
with the wrinkle appeared again on his forehead (Tatarsky had indicated this
point in the scenario with the words: 'Berezovsky senses the conversation is
taking a wrong turning.')
     Raduev stroked the rusty brick of his beard.
     'Al-Halladj spoke  truly,' he said, 'in saying that the greatest wonder
of all is a man who sees nothing wonderful around him. But tell me, why does
it happen  so  often? I remember one time when piss came  into  contact with
skin seventeen times in one hour.'
     "That was probably to  settle up with Galiup Media,' Berezovsky replied
condescendingly.  'The customer  must've been  a tough  guy. So they  had to
account for his money before his protection could account for them. But what
of it? If we sell the time, we show the material.'
     Raduev's skeleton swayed towards the table. 'Hang on,  hang on. Are you
telling me that piss comes into contact with skin every  time they  give you
money?'
     'Well, yes.'
     Raduev's  skeleton  was suddenly  covered  with a  crudely  drawn torso
dressed  in a Jordanian military  uniform.  He put  his hand down behind the
back  of  his  chair,  pulled  out  a  Kalashnikov  and pointed  it  at  his
companion's face.
     'What's  wrong,  Salaman?'   Berezovsky  asked  quietly,  automatically
raising his hands.
     'What's wrong? I'll tell you. There's a man who gets paid for splashing
piss  on the skin  of  Allah, and  this man  is still  alive. That's  what's
wrong.'
     The insert with  the Jordanian  uniform disappeared, the  thin lines of
the skeleton returned to the screen and the Kalashnikov was transformed into
a  wavering line of dots. The  upper  section of Berezovsky's head, at which
this line was pointed, was concealed by an animation patch with  a Socratean
brow covered with large beads of sweat among sparse hair.
     'Easy, now, Salaman, easy,' said Berezovsky.  'Two men  with bullets in
their heads at one table would be too much. Don't get excited.'
     'What d'you mean,  don't get excited?  You're going to wash  away every
drop of  piss you've spilled  on  Allah  with a bucket  of your  blood,  I'm
telling you.'
     Furiously  working  thought  was  reflected in Berezovsky's  screwed-up
eyes. That was  what it said in the scenario - 'furiously working thought' -
and Tatarsky  couldn't  even begin to  imagine what kind of technology could
have allowed the an-imators to achieve such literal accuracy.
     'Listen,' said Berezovsky, 'I'll start getting worried if you keep this
up. Of course my head isn't armour-plated, that's  obvious. But then neither
is yours, as you know very well. And my  protection are all over the place .
. . Aha . . . That's what they told you on your radio?
     Raduev   laughed.  'They  wrote  in  Fortes  magazine  that  you  grasp
everything instantly. Looks like they were right.'
     'You subscribe to Forties[7]'
     'Why not? Chechnya's part of Europe now. We should know our clientele.'
     'If you're so fucking  cultured,' Berezovsky said irritably,  'then why
can't we talk like two fucking Europeans? Without all this barbarism?'
     'Go on then.'
     'You  said I  would wash away  every drop of piss  with  a bucket of my
blood, right?'
     'Right,' Raduev agreed with dignity. 'And I'll say it again.'
     'But you can't wash away piss with blood. It's not Tide, you know.'
     (Tatarsky  had the idea that the phrase 'You can't wash away  piss with
blood' would make a  wonderful slogan for an all-Russian campaign  for Tide,
but it was too dark for him to note it down.)
     "That's true,' Raduev agreed.
     'And  then, you agree that nothing in the world happens against Allah's
will?'
     'Yes.'
     'Right then, let's go  further. Surely you don't think that I could ...
I could . . .  well, that I  could do what  I've done if it was against  the
will of Allah?'
     'No.'
     'Then let's go further,' Berezovsky continued confidently. 'Try looking
at things this way: I'm simply an instrument in the hands of Allah, and what
Allah does and why  are beyond understanding. And then, if it wasn't Allah's
will, I wouldn't have gathered all the TV towers  and  anchormen in my three
squares. Right?'
     'Right.'
     'Can we stop here?'
     Raduev stuck the barrel of the gun against Berezovsky's forehead. 'No,'
he said. 'We'll go a bit  further than you  suggest. I'll  tell you what the
old  folks  say in my village. They say  that  according to Allah's original
idea this world should  be like a  sweet raspberry that melts in your mouth,
but people like you with their avarice have  turned it into piss coming into
contact with  skin. Perhaps  it  is Allah's wish that people like you should
come into the world; but  Allah  is merciful, and so it is his will too that
people like you who stop life tasting like a sweet raspberry should be blown
away. After talking  to  you  for five minutes life tastes like  piss that's
eaten  away  all  my  brains,  get  it?  And  in  fucking  Europe  they  pay
compensation  for  things like  that,  get it?  Haven't  you  ever heard  of
deprived adulthood?'
     Berezovsky sighed. 'I  see  you  prepared thoroughly for  our talk. All
right, then. What kind of compensation?
     'I don't know. You'd have to something pleasing to God.'
     'For instance?'
     'I don't know,' Raduev repeated.  'Build a mosque; but it would have to
be  a very big  mosque. Big enough to pray away  the  sin I've  committed by
sitting  at  the same table with a man  who has splashed piss on the skin of
the Inexpressible.'
     'I'm with you,' said Berezovsky,  lowering his  hands slightly. 'And to
be precise, just how big?'
     'I think the first contribution would be ten million.'
     'Isn't that a lot?'
     'I  don't  know if  it's a lot or not,' said Raduev, stroking his beard
pensively, 'because we  can  only comprehend  the notions of  "a lot" and "a
little" in comparative  terms. But perhaps you noticed a herd of  goats when
you  arrived at my headquarters?' 'I noticed them. What's  the  connection?'
'Until  that twenty  million arrives  in my  account in  the  Islamic  bank,
seventeen  times every hour they'll duck you in a barrel of goat's piss, and
it'll  come  into contact  with your  skin, and cause irritation, and you'll
have  plenty  of  time to  think about  whether  it's a  lot  or a little  -
seventeen times an hour.'
     'Hey-hey-hey,' said Berezovsky,  lowering his hands. 'What's that? Just
a moment ago it was ten million.' 'You forgot about the dandruff.'
     'Listen Salaman, my dear, that's not the way business is done.' 'Do you
want to pay another ten for the  smell of sweat?'  Raduev asked, shaking his
automatic. 'Do you?'
     'No, Salaman,' Berezovsky said wearily.  'I don't want  to pay for  the
smell  of sweat.  Tell me, by the way, who is it filming us with that hidden
camera?' 'What camera?'
     'What's  that  briefcase over  there  on the  window  sill?' Berezovsky
jabbed his finger towards the screen.
     'Ah, spawn of Satan,' Raduev muttered and raised his automatic.
     A white zigzag ran cross the screen, everything went dark,  and the the
lights came on in the hall.
     Azadovsky exchanged  glances with Morkovin. 'Well, what do  you think?'
Tatarsky asked timidly.  'Tell  me,  where  do  you work?'  Azadovsky  asked
disdainfully. 'In Berezovsky's PR  department or in my dirt squad?'  'In the
dirt squad,' Tatarsky replied.
     'What were you asked for? A scenario of negotiations between Raduev and
Berezovsky, with  Berezovsky giving the Chechen  terrorists  twenty  million
dollars. And what's this you've  written? He's not giving them money! You've
got  him  building  a  mosque! A fucking good job it's  not the Cathedral of
Christ the  Saviour.  If we  didn't  produce  Berezovsky ourselves, I  might
imagine  you  were being  paid by him. And who's this Raduev of  yours? Some
kind of professor of theology? He reads magazines even I've never heard of.'
     'But there has to be some development of the plot, some logic...'
     'I don't want logic,  I want dirt. And this isn't dirt, it's just plain
shit. Understand?'
     'Yes/ replied Tatarsky, lowering his eyes.
     Azadovsky softened slightly.
     'But in general/ he stated, 'there is a certain healthy core to it. The
first plus is that it makes you hate television.  You want to watch  it  and
hate  it, watch it and hate it.. The second plus is  that game of  Monopoly.
Was that your own idea?'
     'Yes,' Tatarsky said, more brightly.
     "That works. Terrorist and oligarch dividing up the people's wealth  at
the gaming table . . . The punters'll go raging mad at that.'
     'But isn't  it  a  bit  too  .  .  /  Morkovin  put  in, but  Azadovsky
interrupted him.
     'No. The  most important thing is to keep brains occupied  and feelings
involved.  So  this move with the Monopoly  is  OK. It'll  improve the  news
rating by five per cent at least. That means it'll increase the value of one
minute at prime time...'
     Azadovsky took his calculator out of his pocket and began to press tiny
buttons.
     ' ... by nine thousand,' he said when he'd finished. 'So what does that
mean for  an hour? Multiply by seventeen. Not  bad.  We'll do it. To cut  it
short, let them play Monopoly and you tell the producer to inter-cut it with
shots of queues  for the savings bank,  miners, old  women, hungry children,
wounded soldiers -  the works. Only take out that stuff about TV  anchormen,
or else we'll have  to create  a stink over it. Better give them a new piece
for their Monopoly - a TV drilling tower.  And have  Berezovsky say he wants
to  build these towers  everywhere so they  can pump  out  oil  and pump  in
advertising  at the  same time. And do a montage of  the Ostankino TV  tower
with a rock drill. How d'you like it?'
     'Brilliant,' Tatarsky readily agreed.
     'How about you?' Azadovsky asked Morkovin.
     'I'm for it one hundred per cent.'
     'Yeah, right! I could replace the lot you all  on my own. Right, listen
to the doctor's orders. Morkovin, you give him that new guy who writes about
food  for reinforcements. We'll leave Raduev basically the way he  is,  only
give  him a fez instead  of that  cap of his;  I'm sick of it  already. That
means we get in a poke at Turkey as  well. And then I've been meaning to ask
for ages about his dark glasses. Why's he always wearing them? Are we saving
time on rendering the eyes or something?'
     'That's right,' said Morkovin.  'Raduev's always in the  news, and dark
glasses  cut down  the  time  by  twenty  per  cent. We  get rid of all  the
expressions.' Azadovsky's face darkened somewhat. 'God grant, we'll get this
business with  the frequency sorted out. But  give Berezovsky a  boost, OK?'
'OK.'
     'And do it now, urgent material.'
     'We'll do it,' answered  Morkovin. 'As soon as the viewing's over we'll
go back to my office.' 'What have  we got next?' 'Ads for televisions. A new
type.'
     Tatarsky rose halfway out of his chair, but Morkovin  put out a hand to
stop him.
     'Get on  with  it,' Azadovsky said with a wave  of  his hand.  'There's
still twenty minutes to go.'
     The  lights went out again. A small, pretty  Japanese woman in a kimono
appeared on  the screen. She  was smiling.  She bowed and then spoke with  a
distinct accent:
     'You will now be addressed by Yohohori-san. Yohohori-san is  the oldest
employee  at  Panasonic, which  is  why he has  been  given this honour.  He
suffers from a speech impediment due to war wounds, so please, dear viewers,
forgive him this shortcoming.'
     The young woman moved  aside. A thickset Japanese man appeared, holding
a sword  in  a black  scabbard.  At  his  side there was a black streamlined
television looking  like an eye ripped from the head of some huge  monster -
the comparison occurred to Tatarsky because the background was scarlet.
     'Panasonic  presents  a  revolutionary  invention   in  the   world  of
television,' said the  Japanese. "The  first  television  in the  world with
voice control in all languages of the planet, including  Russian.  Panasword
V-2!
     The Japanese stared into  the viewer's  eyes with an intense hatred and
suddenly pulled his sword from its scabbard.
     'Sword forged in Japan!' he yelled, setting the cutting edge up against
the camera  lens. 'Sword that will  slit the  throat of the putrefied world!
Long live the Emperor!'
     Some  people in white  medical coats fluttered across  the screen -  Mr
Yohohori  was  ushered off somewhere, a  pale-faced girl  in a kimono  began
bowing in apology and across all this disgrace appeared the  Panasonic logo.
A low voice-over commented with satisfaction: 'Panasodding!'
     Tatarsky heard a telephone trill.
     'Hello,' said Azadovsky's voice in the darkness. 'What? I'm on my way.'
     He stood up, blocking out part of the screen.
     'Ogh,' he  said,  'seems like Rostropovich'll get another medal  today.
They're about to call  me from America. I sent them a  fax yesterday telling
them democracy  was in  danger  and  asking them to raise the  frequency two
hundred megahertz. They finally  seem to have twigged  we're all in the same
business.'
     Tatarsky suddenly  had  the  impression  that Azadovsky's shadow on the
screen  wasn't  real, but just  an element of a  video  recording,  a  black
silhouette like the  ones you get in  pirate copies  of films  shot from the
cinema screen.  For Tatarsky  these black shadows on  their way  out of  the
cinema, known  to the owners of underground  video  libraries  as 'runners',
served  as  a  special  kind of  quality  indicator: the  influence  of  the
displacing wow-factor  drove more people out of a good film than  a bad one,
so he usually asked for the 'films with runners' to be kept for him; but now
he felt almost  afraid at the thought  that if a man who'd just been sitting
beside  you  could turn  out to be a  runner, it  could  mean you  were just
another  runner  yourself.  The  feeling  was complex, profound and new, but
Tatarsky  had  no  time  to analyse it:  humming  a  vague tango,  Azadovsky
wandered over to the edge of the screen and disappeared.
     The next video began  in a more traditional manner.  A family - father,
mother,  daughter with a pussy cat and granny with a half-knitted stocking -
were sitting round a fire in a hearth set in a  strange mirror-surface wall.
As  they  gazed into the  flames blazing behind the grate,  they made rapid,
almost  caricatured movements: the granny knitted,  the mother gnawed on the
edge of a piece of pizza, the daughter stroked the pussy cat  and the father
sipped  beer.  The  camera  moved  around them  and  passed  in through  the
mirror-wall. From the other side the  wall was transparent: when the  camera
completed its movement, the  family was overlaid by the flames in the hearth
and bars of  the  grate. An organ  rumbled threateningly;  the camera pulled
back and the  transparent  wall was  transformed into  the flat screen of  a
television with  stereo  speakers  at  each  side  and  the  coy inscription
Tofetis-simo'  on its black body. The  image on television showed flames  in
which four black figures were jerking in rapid  movements behind metal bars.
The organ fell silent and an insidious announcer's voice took over:
     'Did you  think  there was a vacuum  behind the  absolutely flat  Black
Trinitron's  screen? No! there's  a flame  blazing there that will warm your
heart! The Sony Tofetissimo. It's a Sin.'
     Tatarsky didn't understand very much of what he'd seen; he just thought
that the coefficient  of involvement could be greatly improved if the slogan
was   replaced   by   another   reference  to   those   Sex-Shop   Dogs   or
what-d'you-call-them: Go Fumes.
     'What was  that?'  he asked, when  the lights came on. 'It  wasn't much
like an advertisement.'
     Morkovin smiled smugly.
     'It's not; that's the whole point,' he said. 'In scientific terms, it's
a new advertising technology reflecting the reaction of market mechanisms to
the increasing human  revulsion at market  mechanisms.  To cut it short, the
viewer is supposed gradually to develop the idea that somewhere in the world
-say, in  sunny California - there is a final oasis of freedom unconstrained
by the thought of money, where they make advertisements  like this one. It's
profoundly anti-market in form, so it promises to be highly market-effective
in content.'
     He  looked to make  sure there was no  one else in the  hall  and began
talking in a whisper.
     'And now down to business. I don't think this place is bugged, but talk
quietly just in case. Well done, that went just great. Here's your share.'
     Three  envelopes  appeared in  his hand  - one fat and yellow  and  two
rather slimmer.
     'Hide these  quick. This is twenty from Berezovsky, ten from Raduev and
another two from the Chechens.  Theirs is the thickest because it's in small
bills. They took up a collection round the hill villages.'
     Tatarsky swallowed  hard, took  the envelopes and quickly  stuffed them
into  the inside pockets  of his  jacket. 'Do you think Azadovsky could have
twigged?' he whispered.
     Morkovin shook his head.
     'Listen,'  whispered  Tatarsky,  glancing round  again,  'how  is  this
possible? I can understand about the  hill villages, but  Berezovsky doesn't
exist, and neither does Raduev.  That is,  they do exist, but they're only a
combination  of ones  and  zeroes,  ones  and  zeroes.  How can they send us
money?'
     Morkovin shrugged.
     'I don't really understand it myself,' he answered in a whisper. 'Maybe
it's some  interested parties or  other. Maybe some  gangs are  involved and
they're re-defining their image.  Probably  if you work  it  all out  it all
comes back down to  us. Only why bother to work  it all  out? Where else are
you going  to earn thirty grand  a throw?  Nowhere. So don't worry about it.
Nobody really understands a single thing about the way this world works.'
     The projectionist  stuck  his head into  the hall. 'Hey,  are  you guys
going to stay there much longer?'
     'We're discussing the clips,' Morkovin whispered.
     Tatarsky cleared his throat.
     'If I've grasped the difference correctly,'  he said in an  unnaturally
loud  voice, 'then an ordinary  advertisement and  what we've  seen are like
straight pop-music and the alternative music scene?'
     'Precisely,' Morkovin  replied just as loudly, rising to his  feet  and
glancing at his watch. 'But  just what  exactly  is alternative music  - and
what is pop? How would you define it?'
     'I don't know,' Tatarsky answered. 'From the feel, I suppose.'
     They  walked past the projectionist loitering  in the  doorway and went
towards the lifts.
     "There  is   a  precise  definition,'   said   Morkovin   didactically.
'Alternative music is music the  commercial essence of which consists in its
extreme anti-commercial  ethos. Its  anti-pop  quality,  so to  speak. Which
means that, in order to get this quality right, an alternative musician must
first of all  be a  really shrewd merchant,  and those are rare in the music
business. There are plenty of them,  of  course, but they're not performers,
they're managers ... OK, relax. Have you got the text with you?'
     Tatarsky nodded.
     'Let's go to  my office. I'll give you a co-author, just like Azadovsky
ordered.  And  I'll stick the  co-author three grand  so he  won't spoil the
scenario.'
     Tatarsky had never gone up to the seventh floor where  Morkovin worked.
The corridor they entered on  leaving the lift looked dull and reminded  him
of an old Soviet-period office building - the floor was covered with scuffed
and dirty wooden parquet and the doors were upholstered with black imitation
leather. On each door, though, there was an elegant metal plaque with a code
consisting of numbers and letters. There were only three letters  - 'A', '0'
and 'D', but they occurred in various combinations. Morkovin stopped  beside
a  door  with  a  plaque marked 'i - A-D' and  entered a code in the digital
lock.
     Morkovin's office was imposingly large and impressively  furnished. The
desk alone had obviously cost several times as much  as Tatarsky's Mercedes.
This masterpiece of the furniture-maker's art was almost empty - there was a
file containing papers and  two telephones without number pads, one red  and
one white. There was also  a strange device: a small metal box with  a glass
panel in its top. Hanging above the desk was a picture that Tatarsky took at
first for a cross between a socialist realist landscape and a piece  of  Zen
calligraphy.  It  showed  a  bushy corner of  a shady  garden  depicted with
photographic precision, but daubed carelessly across the  bushes was a giant
hieroglyph covered with identical green circles.
     'What's that?'
     'The president out walking,'  said Morkovin. 'Azadovsky presented it to
me to create an air of responsible authority. Look,  you see, the skeleton's
wearing a tie.  And some kind  of badge  as well -  it's  right on top of  a
flower, so you have to look closely. But that's just  something  the  artist
dreamed up.'
     Turning away from  the picture,  Tatarsky noticed they weren't alone in
the office. At the far end of the spadous room  there was a stand with three
flat monitors and ergonomic keyboards, with their leads disappearing into  a
wall covered with cork.  A guy with a  ponytail  was  sitting at  one of the
monitors and grazing his mouse with lazy movements on a small  grey mat. His
ears  were pierced  by at least  ten small earrings, and there were two more
passing through  his left nostril.  Remembering Morkovin's advice  to  prick
himself with  something sharp whenever he  began thinking about  the lack of
any general order  of things in the Universe, Tatarsky decided this wasn't a
case of excessive  enthusiasm  for piercing;  it  was the  result  of  close
proximity  to  the  technological  epicentre  of  events - the guy with  the
ponytail simply never bothered to remove his pins.
     Morkovin sat at the desk, picked up the receiver of the white phone and
issued a brief instruction.
     'Your co-author'll be  here in  a  minute,' he said to  Tatarsky.  'You
haven't been here before, have you? These terminals are linked into the main
render-server. And  this  man here is  our head  designer, Semyon Velin. You
realise what a responsibility that is?'
     Tatarsky deferentially  approached the guy at the computer  and glanced
at the  screen,  which showed a trembling grid  of finely spaced blue lines.
The  lines were linked up in the form of two extended hands, the palms  held
close together with the  middle fingers touching. They were slowly revolving
around an invisible  vertical  axis. In  some  elusive  fashion  the picture
reminded Tatarsky of a shot from a low-budget  science-fiction movie of  the
eighties.  The guy  with the ponytail moved his mouse across the  mat, stuck
the arrow of the cursor into  a menu that appeared at the top of the  screen
and the angle between the palms of the hands changed.
     'Didn't I say we should program in the golden section straightaway?' he
said, turning to face Morkovin.
     'What are you talking about?'
     "The angle. We  should  have  made  it the  same  as  in  the  Egyptian
pyramids. It'll  give the viewer  this unconscious feeling of harmony, peace
and happiness.'
     'Why  are  you  wasting  time  messing  about  with that old  rubbish?'
Morkovin asked. '"Our Home Russia" has no chance.'
     '"Our Home Russia" be buggered,' Velin replied. "They had a good slogan
- "The Roof of Your House". We can make this roof out of fingers. The target
group will instantly be reminded of  bandits' finger-talk and the works. The
message will be clear: we provide protection. We're bound to come back round
to it anyway.'
     'OK,' said Morkovin, 'put  in  your  golden  section.  Let  the punters
relax. Only don't mention it in the documentation.'
     'Why not?'
     'Because,' said Morkovin, 'you  and I know what the  golden section is.
But  the accounts  department'  -  he  jerked his head upwards - 'might  not
approve the budget. They'll think if it's gold it must be expensive. They're
economising on "Our Home Russia" now.'
     'I get you,' said Velin.  "Then I'll just put in the angle. Call to get
them to open the root directory.'
     Morkovin pulled over the red phone.
     'Hello?  This is Morkovin from the anal-displacement  department.  Open
the root directory for terminal five. We're doing some cosmetic repairs. All
right...'
     'That's done,' said Morkovin. 'Just a moment. Alia, Semyon wants to ask
you something.'
     Velin grabbed the receiver. 'Alia, hi! Could you check the hair density
for Chernomyrdin?  What?  No, that's the  whole  point,  I  need it for  the
poster.  OK, I'm  writing - thirty-two hpi, colour  Ray-Ban  black. Have you
given me access? OK, then that's the lot.'
     'Listen,' Tatarsky asked quietly, when Velin was back at his  terminal,
'what's that - hpi?'
     'Hairs per inch,' Morkovin  answered. 'Like dots  per  inch with  those
laser printers.'
     'And what does that mean - "the anal displacement department"?'
     "That's what our department is called.'
     'Why such a strange name?'
     'Well it's the general theory of elections/ Morkovin said with a frown.
'To cut it  short, there should  always be three wow-candidates:  oral, anal
and displacing. Only  don't go asking  me  what  that means, you don't  have
security clearance yet. And anyway I don't remember. All I can  say  is that
in  normal countries they  get by  with  the oral and  anal  wow-candidates,
because the displacement has been completed;
     but  things  are  only  just  getting started  here  and  we  need  the
displacing  candidate as  well. We  give him about fifteen per  cent  of the
votes in the first round. I think I can write you a clearance if you're that
interested.'
     'Thanks,' said Tatarsky, 'forget it.'
     'Dead right. Why the fuck should you strain your brains on your salary.
The less you know, the easier you breathe.'
     'Exactly,'  said Tatarsky, noting to himself  that if Davidoff  started
making ultra-lights there couldn't possibly be a better slogan.
     Morkovin  opened  his file  and  took  up a  pencil. Out of  a sense of
delicacy Tatarsky  moved away to the  wall and began studying  the sheets of
paper  and  pictures pinned  to it. At first his attention was  caught by  a
photograph of Antonio Banderas in the Hollywood  masterpice Stepan Banderas.
Ban-deras,  romantically  unshaven,  holding  a  giant  balalaika case,  was
standing  on the outskirts of  some abstract Ukrainian  village  and  gazing
sadly at a burned-out Russian  tank in a sunflower chaparral (from the first
glance   at   the   crowd   of   droopy-mustachioed   villagers   in   their
cockerel-embroidered ponchos, who were squinting  at the reddish-yellow sun,
it was obvious that  the  film had been shot in  Mexico). The  poster wasn't
genuine -  it was a collage. Some anonymous joker  had matched  up Banderas'
torso in dark  leather with a heavy-assed pair of  girl's legs in dark-brown
tights. There was a slogan under the image:
     SAN PELEGRINO TIGHTS FASHIONED TO RESIST ANY STRAIN
     Sellotaped  directly on to the  poster was a fax on  the  letterhead of
Young and Rubicam. The text was short:
     Sergei! Essence correction/or three brands:
     Chubais-green stuff  in  the bank/green  stuff  in the  jar Yavlinsky -
think  different  /  think  doomsday  ('Apple'  doesn't  object)  Yeltsin  -
stability in a coma /democracy in a coffin
     Hi there, Wee Kolya.
     'It's a weak idea for Chubais/ said Tatarsky, turning towards Morkovin,
'and where are the communists?'
     'They  write  them  in  the   oral  displacement  department/  Morkovin
answered.  'And  thank  God for  that. I  wouldn't take  them  for  twice my
salary.'
     'Do they pay more over there?'
     'The same. But they have some guys  who are willing to  slave  away for
free. You'll meet one of them in a moment, by the way.'
     Hanging  beside  Banderas  was  a greetings card  produced  on a colour
printer, showing a golden double-headed eagle clutching a Kalashnikov in one
taloned foot  and a  pack of Marlboro in the other. There was an inscription
in gold below the eagle's feet:
     SANTA BARBARA FOR  EVER! THE RUSSIAN IDEA  DEPARTMENT CONGRATULATES OUR
COLLEAGUES ON ST VARVARA'S DAY
     To  the  right of the  greetings  card there  was  another  advertising
poster: Yeltsin leaning over  a  chessboard  on which  no figures  had  been
moved. He was looking at it sideways on (the setting seemed to emphasise his
role as  the supreme arbiter). The king and  the rook on the white  side had
been replaced by small bottles labelled 'Ordinary Whisky' and 'Black Label'.
Next to the chessboard there stood a small model of a seashore villa looking
more like a fortress. The text was:
     BLACK LABEL: THE TIME TO CASTLE
     Tatarsky  reached for  his  notebook - an idea for  another  poster had
suddenly occurred to him.
     He wrote down: 'A view from  inside  a car. The president's sullen face
with the window  behind it. Outside in  the street  -poor old  women, street
urchins, bandaged  soldiers, etc. Inscription in large letters at the top of
the  poster: "How low can we go?" In tiny print at the  very bottom: "As low
as 2.9 per cent intro. Visa Next."'
     There was a knock at the door. Tatarsky turned round and froze. So many
meetings with  old  acquaintances in the same  day seemed  rather unlikely -
into  the office came Ma-lyuta,  the anti-Semite copywriter he'd worked with
in Khanin's agency. He was dressed in a Turkish-made Russian folk shirt with
a soldier's belt  supporting an entire array of  office  equipment: a mobile
phone, a pager,  a  Zippo  lighter in a leather case and an  awl in a narrow
black scabbard.
     'Malyuta! What are you doing here?'
     Malyuta, however, gave no sign of being surprised.
     T  write the image  menu  for the whole  cabal,'  he replied.  'Russian
style. Have you  ever heard of pelmeni  with kapusta? Or kvass with khrenok?
Those  are  my hits.  And I  work  in  the  oral displacement department  on
half-pay. Are you in dirt?'
     Tatarsky didn't answer.
     'You know each other?' Morkovin asked with  curiosity. 'Yes, of course,
you worked together  at  Khanin's place. So you shouldn't have any  problems
working together.'
     'I prefer working alone/ Malyuta said drily. 'What d'you want done?'
     'Azadovsky  wants  you to finish  up  a  project. With Bere-zovsky  and
Raduev. Don't touch Raduev, but you need to boost Berezovsky  up a bit. I'll
call you this evening and give you a few instructions. Will you do it?'
     'Berezovsky?' Malyuta asked. 'And how. When d'you need it?'
     'Yesterday, as always.'
     'Where's the draft?'
     Morkovin  looked at  Tatarsky, who shrugged and handed Malyuta the file
with the printout of the scenario.
     'Don't you want to  talk  with the author?' Morkovin asked.  'So he can
put you in the picture?'
     'I'll figure it out  for  myself from the text. It'll be ready tomorrow
at ten.'
     'OK, you know best.'
     When Malyuta left the room, Morkovin said: 'He doesn't like you much.'
     'Nor I him,' said Tatarsky. 'We had an argument once about geopolitics.
Listen,  who's  going  to  change  that  bit  about  the television-drilling
towers?'

     'Damn, I forgot, A good  job you  reminded me - I'll explain it  to him
this  evening. And you'd better  make peace with him. You know  how  bad our
frequency problem is right now, but  Azadovsky's  still allowed him  one 3-D
general. To liven up the news. He's a guy with a future. No one can tell how
the market will shift tomorrow. Maybe he'll be head of department instead of
me, and then ...'
     Morkovin didn't  finish his train of thought. The  door  swung open and
Azadovsky burst  into  the  room.  Behind  him came  two of the  guards with
Scorpions  on  their shoulders. Azadovsky's face was white with fury and  he
was  clenching and unclenching his fists with such  force that Tatarsky  was
reminded of  the  talons of the eagle from the greetings card. Tatarsky  had
never seen him like this.
     'Who edited Lebed the last time?'
     'Semyon  Velin,  as  usual,' Morkovin  replied in fright. 'Why,  what's
happened?'
     Azadovsky turned towards the young guy with the ponytail.
     'You?' he asked. 'Did you do this?'
     'What?' asked Velin.
     'Did you change Lebed's cigarettes? From Camel to Gitanes?'
     'Yes I did,' said Velin. 'What of it? I just thought it would be better
stylistically. After we rendered him together with Alain Delon.'
     'Take him away,' Azadovsky commanded.
     'Wait, wait,'  said Velin, thrusting his hands  out  in front of him in
fear. 'I'll explain everything . . .' But  the guards  were already dragging
him out into the corridor.
     Azadovsky  turned  to  face  Morkovin and stared  intensely at  him for
several seconds.
     'I knew nothing about it/ said Morkovin, 'I swear.'
     "Then who is supposed to know about it? Me? D'you know where I just got
a  call from? J. R. Reynolds  Tobacco -  who paid us for Lebed's Camels  two
years in  advance. You  know what  they said?  They're  going to  get  their
congressman to drop us fifty megahertz; and they'll drop us another fifty if
Lebed  goes  on air next time with Gitanes again. I don't know how much this
asshole was raking in from  black PR, but we  stand to lose a  lot, an awful
rucking lot. Do we want to  ride into the twenty-first  fucking century on a
hundred megahertz? When's the next broadcast with Lebed?'
     'Tomorrow.  An  interview  on  the  Russian  Idea.  It's  all  rendered
already.'
     'Have you watched the material?'
     Morkovin clutched his head in his hands. 'I have,' he replied. 'Oh, God
. .. That's right. He's got Gitanes.  I noticed  it,  but I thought it  must
have  been  approved  upstairs. You  know  I  don't decide  these  things. I
couldn't imagine.'
     'Where are his cigarettes? On the table?'
     'If only! He waves the pack around all through the interview.'
     'Can we undo?'
     'Not the whole thing.'
     'Change the design on the pack then?'
     'Not that either. Gitanes are a different size; and the pack's  in shot
all the time.'
     'So what are we going to do?'
     Azadovsky's gaze  came  to  rest on  Tatarsky, as though he'd only just
noticed him there. Tatarsky cleared his throat.
     'Perhaps,' he said  timidly, we  could  put in a  patch with a  pack of
Camel on the table? That's quite simple.'
     'And then what? Have  him waving one  pack  around in  the air  and the
other one lying in front of him? You're raving.'
     'And we  put the arm  in plaster,' Tatarsky went  on, giving  way to  a
sudden wave of inspiration. 'So we get rid of the pack.'
     'In plaster?' Azadovsky repeated thoughtfully. 'But what'll we say?'
     'An assassination attempt,' said Tatarsky.
     'You mean they shot him in the arm?'
     'No,' said Tatarsky, 'they tried to blow him up in his car.'
     'And he's not  going to say  anything about the attempt to kill him  in
the interview?' Morkovin asked.
     Azadovsky thought  for a  moment. 'That's actually OK. Imperturbable -'
he waved  his  fist in the air - 'never even  said  a  word. A real soldier.
We'll put the attack out in the news.  And we won't just patch in  a pack of
Camel on the table, we'll patch in a whole block. Let the  bastards choke on
that.'
     'What'll we say in the news?'
     'As little as possible. Clues pointing to Chechens, the Islamic factor,
investigations proceeding and so forth.  What car does Lebed's legend say he
drives?  An  old  Mercedes?  Get a  film crew  sent  out  into  the  country
straightaway, find an old Mercedes, blow  it up and film it. It's  got to be
on the air by ten. Say the general left immediately to get on with his  work
and he's keeping up with his schedule. Yes, and have them find a fez at  the
site of the crime, like the one Raduev's going to have. Is the idea clear?'
     'Brilliant,' said Morkovin. 'It really is brilliant.'
     Azadovsky gave a crooked smile that was more like a nervous twitch.
     'But where'll we get an  old Mercedes?'  asked Morkovin.  'All ours are
new.'
     'There's someone here who drives one,' said Azadovsky. 'I've seen it in
the parking lot.'
     Morkovin looked up at Tatarsky.
     'But .  .  . But .  . .'  Tatarsky mumbled, but Morkovin just shook his
head.
     'No,' he said, 'forget it. Give me the keys.'
     Tatarsky took his car  keys out of his pocket and  submissively  placed
them in Morkovin's open hand.
     'The seat-covers are new,' he said piteously; 'maybe I could take  them
off?'
     'Are you rucking crazy?'  Azadovsky exploded. 'D'you want them to  drop
us to  fifty megahertz so we have to dismiss the government and  disband the
Duma again? Bloody seat-covers! Use your head!'
     The telephone rang in his pocket.
     "Allo/  he said, raising it to his ear. 'What? I'll tell you what to do
with him. There's a camera crew going out into the country straightaway - to
film  a bombed car. Take that arse-hole, put him  in  the driver's  seat and
blow him  up. Make  sure there's blood and  scraps of flesh, and you film it
all.  It'll be a lesson for the rest of them, with their black  PR ... What?
You tell  him  there isn't anything in the world  more important than what's
about  to happen to  him.  He shouldn't let  himself be distracted by  minor
details. And he shouldn't  think he  can tell  me anything  I  don't already
know.'
     Azadovsky folded up his phone  and tossed  it into  his pocket,  sighed
several times and clutched at his heart.
     'It hurts,' he  complained. 'Do you bastards  really want me  to have a
heart attack at thirty? Seems to me I'm the only one in this committee who's
not  on the take. Everybody back to work on  the double. I'm going  to phone
the States. We might just get away with it.'
     When  Azadovsky  left  the  room,  Morkovin  looked  meaningfully  into
Tatarsky's  eyes, tugged a small tin box out of his  pocket and tipped out a
pile of white powder on the desk.
     'Right,' he said, 'be my guest.'
     When the procedure was completed, Morkovin moistened his finger, picked
up the white grains left on the table and licked them off with his tongue.
     'You were  asking',  he  said,  'how  things could  be this  way,  what
everything's based  on, who it's all controlled by. I tell you, all you need
to think about  here is to cover your own ass and get your job done. There's
no time left for any other thoughts. And by the way, there's something you'd
better do:
     put  the money into your pockets and flush the envelopes down the John.
Straightaway. Just in case. The toilet's down the corridor on the left...'
     Tatarsky  locked  himself in  the cubicle  and  distributed the wads of
banknotes around his pockets - he'd never seen  such a  load of money at one
time  before.  He tore the envelopes into small  pieces and threw the scraps
into  the  toilet bowl.  A  folded note fell out of  one of the envelopes  -
Tatarsky caught it in mid-air and read it:
     Hi,  guys!  Thanks  a lot/or  sometimes allowing me to live a  parallel
life.  Without  that the  real one would  be  so  disgusting! Good  luck  in
business, B. Berezovsky.
     The  text  was printed on a  laser printer, and  the  signature  was  a
facsimile. 'Morkovin playing the  joker again,' thought Tatarsky. 'Or  maybe
it's not Morkovin ...'
     He  crossed himself,  pinched  his  thigh really hard  and flushed  the
toilet.






     They were shooting from the bridge, the way they do these
     things in Moscow. The old T-8os only fired at long intervals, as though
the sponsors,  short of money for shells, were afraid it would  all be  over
too  quickly  and so they  wouldn't  make the international news.  There was
apparently some unwritten minimal requirement for reports from Russia: there
had to be at  least three  or maybe four tanks, a hundred dead and something
else  as well - Tatarsky  couldn't  remember  what  exactly.  This  time  an
exception  must have been made because of  the picturesque visual quality of
the events: although there were only two tanks, the quayside was packed with
television crews  with  their optical  bazookas  blasting  out  megatons  of
somnolent  human attention along the river Moscow  at the  tanks, the bronze
Peter the Great and the window behind which Tatarsky was concealed.
     The cannon of one of  the tanks standing on the bridge  roared and  the
same instant Tatarsky  was struck by an interesting idea: he could offer the
people  in the Bridge image-service the silhouette of  a tank as a promising
logo  to replace that incomprehensible eagle of theirs. In  a split second -
less time  than  it  took for the shell  to  reach its target  -  Tatarsky's
conscious  mind had  weighed up the possibilities ('the  image  of  the tank
symbolises the aggressive power of the group and at the same time introduces
a traditional Russian note into the context of  cosmopolitical finance') and
immediately  the  idea  was  rejected.  "They'd piss  themselves,'  Tatarsky
decided. 'Pity, though.'
     A shell caught  Peter the Great  in the head,  but it  didn't  explode,
passing  straight  on  through  and  continuing  its flight  roughly in  the
direction  of Gorky Park. A  tall  plume of  steam  shot  up  into the  air.
Tatarsky remembered  that  the  head  of  the  monument  contained  a  small
restaurant  complete with full services  and facilities, and  he decided the
blank must  have severed a pipe in the heating system. He heard the TV crews
yelling in delight. The  swirling plume made  Peter look like  some  monster
knight out of Steven King. Remembering how the rotting brains of the monster
in The Talisman  had  dribbled down over its shoulders, Tatarsky thought the
resemblance would be complete if the next shell severed a sewage pipe.
     Peter's head was defended by the Defence of  Sebastopol committee. They
said in the news that didn't mean the  city, but  the hotel, which was being
fought  over by two  mafia groups,  the Chechens and the Solntsevo mob. They
also  said the Solntsevo mob had hired stuntmen from Mosfilm and set up this
strange shoot-out in  order  to  attract TV  coverage and generally  inflame
anti-Caucasian feeling (if the abundance of pyrotechnics and special effects
was  anything to go by,  it had to be true). The simple-minded Chechens, who
weren't too well versed in the  protocol of PR campaigns, hadn't figured out
what was going on, and they'd hired the two tanks somewhere outside Moscow.
     So far  the stuntmen were returning fire and giving as good as they got
- there was  a puff of smoke  in the hole  beside Peter's ragged  eye and  a
grenade  exploded  on the bridge.  A  tank fired  in reply. The blank struck
Peter's  head, sending  fragments  of bronze showering  downwards. For  some
reason every new hit made the emperor even more goggle-eyed.
     Of all the participants in  the drama  the only one Tatarsky  felt  any
sympathy  for was  the bronze idol dying slowly before the glass eyes of the
TV  cameras; and he  didn't feel that very strongly - he hadn't finished his
work, and  had  to  conserve  the energy of his emotional  centre.  Tatarsky
lowered the blinds, cutting himself off completely from  what was going  on,
sat at his computer and re-read the quotation written in felt-tip pen on the
wallpaper over the monitor:
     In order to influence the  imagination of  the Russian customer and win
his confidence (for the  most part customers  for advertising in Russia  are
representatives of the old KGB,  GRU and party nomenklatura), an advertising
concept should  borrow as far  as possible from the hypothetical semi-secret
or entirely secret techiques developed by the Western  special  services for
the programming of consciousness, which are imbued with a quite breathtaking
cynicism and inhumanity. Fortunately, it is not too difficul to improvise on
this  theme-one need only  recall Oscar Wilde's  words about life  imitating
art.
     'The Final Positioning'
     'Sure" said Tatarsky, 'that's not too difficult.'  He tensed as  though
he was about to leap into  cold water, frowned, took a  deep breath and held
the air in his lungs while he counted to three, then launched his fingers at
the keyboard:
     We  can sum up the preceding by saying that  in the  foreseeable longer
term television is likely to remain the primary channel for the implantation
of  the customer's schizo-units in the consciousness of the  Russian public.
In view  of this, we regard  as  extremely  dangerous  a  tendency that  has
emerged  in  recent  times  among  the so-called  middle  class  -  the most
promising  stratum  of  viewers  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  social
effectiveness ofteleschizomanipulation. We are referring to total abstinence
or the conscious limitation of  the amount of television watched in order to
save nervous energy for work. Even professional television writers are doing
it, because  it  is  an  accepted  maxim of  post-Freudian-ism  that in  the
information age it is not  sexuality that should  be sublimated,  so much as
the energy that is squandered on the pointless daily viewing of television.
     In  order to nip this tendency in  the  bud,  for  this concept  it  is
proposed  to employ a method  developed jointly  by Ml^ and  the  US Central
Intelligence  Agency  for neutralising  the remnants  of  an  intellectually
independent  national  intelligentsia  in  Third World  Countries.  (We have
proceeded from  the initial  assumption  that the middle class in Russia  is
formed  directly  from  the  intelligentsia,   which  has  ceased   thinking
nationally and begun thinking about where it can get money.)
     The  method  is  extremely  simple.  Since  every  television channel's
programming contains a fairly high level of  synapse-disrupting material per
unit of time...
     There was a boom outside  the window, and shrapnel  drummed  across the
roof.  Tatarsky drew his head down into  his shoulders. Having re-read  what
he'd   written,  he  deleted   'synapse-disrupting'  and  replaced  it  with
'neuro-destrucnve'.
     ... the goal ofschizosuggestology  will be achieved simply as  a result
of holding  the individual to be neutralised in front of a television screen
for a long enough period  of time. It is suggested that in order to  achieve
this result one can take advantage  of a typical  feature of a member of the
Intelligentsia - sexual frustration.
     Internal ratings and data from secret surveys indicate that the biggest
draw for the member of the intelligentsia is the erotic night-time channels.
But the effect  achieved would  be maximised if instead of a  certain set of
television  broadcasts the television receiver  itself were to  achieve  the
status of  an erotic  stimulus  in the  consciousness  of  the subject being
processed. Bearing in mind the patriarchal nature of Russian society and the
determinative  role played by  the male  section of  the  population  in the
formation  of  public opinion, it would seem most expedient to  develop  the
subconscious   associative  link:  'television-female  sexual  organ'.  This
association should be evoked by the television itself regardless of its make
or the nature of the material being transmitted in order to achieve  optimal
results from schizomanipulation.
     The  cheapest and technically simplest means of achieving this  goal is
the massive oversaturation of air  time with television  adverts for women's
panty-liners.  They should be constantly doused with blue liquid (activating
the associations: 'blue  screen, waves in the ether, etc.'), while the clips
themselves should he constructed in such a way that the panty-liner seems to
crawl on to the  screen itself, implanting the required  association in  the
most direct manner possible.
     Tatarsky heard a light ringing sound  behind him and he swung round. To
the accompaniment of a strange-sounding, somehow  northern music,  a  golden
woman's  torso  of quite exceptional, inexpressible  beauty appeared on  the
television  screen, rotating slowly.  Tshtar,'  Tatarsky guessed; 'who  else
could it  be?' The face of  the statue was  concealed from  sight behind the
edge of the screen, but the camera was slowly rising and the face would come
into sight in just a  moment.  But an instant before it became visible,  the
camera moved in so close to the  statue  that there was nothing left on  the
screen  but a golden shimmering.  Tatarsky clicked  on  the remote,  but the
image  on  the television didn't change  -  the  television  itself  changed
instead. It began distending around the edges,  transforming itself into the
likeness of an immense vagina, with a powerful wind whistling shrilly as the
air was sucked right into its black centre.
     'I'm asleep,' Tatarsky mumbled into his pillow. 'I'm asleep ...'
     He carefully  turned  over on to his other side,  but  the shrill sound
didn't disappear. Raising himself up on one elbow, he cast a gloomy eye over
the thousand-dollar prostitute snoring gently beside him: in  the  dim light
it was quite impossible to tell she wasn't Claudia Schiffer. He reached  out
for  the mobile  phone lying on  the bedside  locker  and  croaked into  it:
'Allo.'
     'What's  this, been hitting the sauce again?' Morkovin roared  merrily.
'Have you forgotten we're going to a barbecue? Get yourself down here quick,
I'm already waiting for you. Azadovsky doesn't like to be kept waiting.'
     'On my way,' said Tatarsky. 'I'll just grab a shower.'
     The autumn  highway was  deserted and  sad,  and  the sadness  was only
emphasised by the fact that the trees along its  edges  were still green and
looked just as though it was still summer;
     but it was clear that summer had passed by without  fulfilling a single
one of its promises. The air was filled with a vague presentiment of winter,
snowfalls  and  catastrophe  -  for  a  long  time  Tatarsky  was unable  to
understand  the source  of this feeling,  until he looked at  the  hoardings
installed at the side of the road.  Every half-kilometre the car rushed past
a  Tam-pax advertisement,  a huge sheet of plywood  showing a  pair of white
roller skates lying on virginal white snow. That explained  the presentiment
of winter all right, but  the source  of the  all-pervading sense  of  alarm
still  remained unclear.  Tatarsky decided that  he  and Morkovin must  have
driven into  one of  those psychological waves of depression  that  had been
drifting across  Moscow and its surroundings ever since the beginning of the
crisis. The nature of  these waves  remained mysterious, but Tatarksy had no
doubt  whatever that they existed,  so he was rather offended  when Morkovin
laughed at him for mentioning them.
     'As far the snow goes you were spot on,' he said; 'but as far
     as  these wave  things are concerned  . .  . Take  a closer look at the
hoardings. Don't you notice anything?'
     Morkovin slowed down at the next hoarding and Tatarsky suddenly noticed
a large graffito written in blood-red spray paint  above the  skates and the
snow: 'Arrest Yeltsin's gang!'
     'Right!' he said ecstatically. 'There was the same kind of thing on all
the others! On the last one there was a hammer and sickle, on the one before
that  there  was a  swastika,  and  before  that,  something  about wops and
nig-nogs . . . Incredible. Your mind just filters  it out  - you don't  even
notice. And the colour, what a colour! Who dreamed it all up?'
     'You'll laugh when you hear,' answered Morkovin, picking  up speed. 'It
was Malyuta. Of course, we rewrote almost all the texts - they were much too
frightening - but we didn't change the idea. As you're so fond of saying, an
associative field  is  formed: 'days of crisis - blood could  flow -  Tampax
-your  shield against excesses'. Figure it out: nowadays  there are only two
brands  selling  the  same  volumes they  used  to  in  Moscow,  Tampax  and
Parliament Lights.'
     'Fantastic,' said Tatarsky, and  clicked his tongue.  'It just begs for
the slogan: 'Tampax ultra-safe. The reds shall not pass!' Or personalise it:
not the reds, but Zyuganov  -  and according to Castaneda, menstruation is a
crack between the worlds. If you want to stay on the right side of the crack
. . . No, like this: Tampax. The right side of the crack ...
     'Yes,' said Morkovin  thoughtfully,  'we should pass these ideas on  to
the oral department.'
     'We could bring up the theme of the white movement as well. Imagine it:
an officer in a beige service jacket on a hillside  in the Crimea, something
out of Nabokov ... They'd sell five times as many.'
     'What does that matter?' said Morkovin. 'Sales are just a side  effect.
It's not Tampax we're promoting; it's alarm and uncertainty.'
     'What for?'
     'We have a crisis on our hands, don't we?'
     'Oh, right,' said Tatarsky, 'of course. Listen, about  the crisis  -  I
still  don't  understand  how  Semyon  Velin managed  to delete  the  entire
government. It was all triple protected.'
     'Semyon wasn't just a designer/ replied Morkovin. 'He was a programmer.
D'you know the scale he was working on?  They found  thirty-seven million in
greenbacks  in his accounts afterwards.  He even  switched Zyuganov's jacket
from Pierre  Cardin to St  Lauren.  Even  now nobody  can figure out how  he
managed to break into the oral  directory from our terminal. And as for what
he did with neckties and shirts ...  Azadovsky was sick for  two whole  days
after he read the report.'
     'Impressive.'
     'Sure it was. Our  Semyon had a  roving eye,  but he  knew what he  was
getting  into.  So he  decided he needed some insurance.  He wrote a program
that would delete the entire  directory at the end of the month if he didn't
cancel  it personally, and he planted  it in Kirienko's file. After that the
program infected  the  entire government. We have anti-virus protection,  of
course, but  Semyon thought up  this fucking program that wrote itself on to
the ends  of  sectors and assembled itself at the end of the month, so there
was no  way it could be picked up from the control  sums. Just don't  ask me
what  all that means  -I  don't  understand it myself - I  just happened  to
overhear someone talking about it.  To  cut it  short, when they were taking
him out of town in your Mercedes,  he tried to tell Azadovsky about it,  but
he  wouldn't even talk  to him.  Then  everything  defaulted. Azadovsky  was
tearing his hair out.'
     'So will there be  a new government soon?' Tatarsky asked. 'I'm already
tired of doing nothing.'
     'Soon, very soon. Yeltsin's  ready - tomorrow we'll discharge him  from
the Central Kremlin Hospital. We had him digitised again in London. From the
wax figure in Madame Tussaud's - they've got it in the  store room. It's the
third time  we've had to restore  him -  you wouldn't believe the amount  of
hassle he's given  everyone  - and we're finishing off the NURBS for all the
others. Only the government's turning out  really  leftist; I mean, it's got
communists  in it.  It's  those schemers  in the  oral department.  But that
doesn't really  bother  me much - it'll  only make things easier for us. And
for  the  people too: one identity for  the lot and ration cards for butter.
Only so far Sasha Blo's still holding us back with the Russian Idea/
     'Hold hard there,' Tatarsky said, suddenly cautious; 'don't frighten me
like that. Who's going to be next? After Yeltsin?'
     'What d'you mean, who? Whoever they vote for. We  have honest elections
here, like in America.'
     'And what in hell's name do we need them for?'
     'We  don't  need them  in  anybody's  name. But if we didn't have  them
they'd  never  have sold us  the render-server.  They've  got  some  kind of
amendment to the law on trade - in short, everything has to be the way it is
there. Total lunacy, of course, the whole thing .. /
     'Why should they care what we do? What do they want from us?'
     'It's  because elections are  expensive,' Morkovin said gloomily. 'They
want to  finally destroy our economy. At least, that's one of the theories .
. . Anyway, we're moving in the wrong direction.  We shouldn't be digitising
these deadheads;
     we need  to make new politicians, normal young guys.  Develop them from
the  ground up  through focus-groups -  the ideology  and  the  public  face
together.'
     'Why don't you suggest it to Azadovsky?'
     'You try suggesting anything to him ... OK, we've arrived.'
     There was an earth road adorned on both sides with Stop signs branching
off from the road they  were on. Morkovin  turned on  to it, slowed down and
drove on  through the forest. The road soon led them to a pair of tall gates
in  a brick wall. Morkovin sounded his horn  twice, the gates opened and the
car rolled into a huge yard the size of a football pitch.
     Azadovsky's  dacha  created  a  strange  impression.  Most  of  all  it
resembled  the Cathedral of  St  Basil  the Holy  Fool, doubled in size  and
overgrown with a multitude of domestic accretions. The  corkscrew attics and
garrets were decorated with  little balconies with balustrades of  short fat
columns, and all  the windows above  the second floor were hidden completely
behind shutters.  There were  several Rottweilers strolling around the  yard
and a ribbon of blue-grey  smoke was rising from  the chimney of  one of the
extensions  (evidently  they  were  stoking  up  the  bath-house). Azadovksy
himself, surrounded by a  small entourage  including Sasha Blo and  Malyuta,
was  standing  on the steps  leading up  into the  house. He  was wearing  a
Tyrolean  hat with a feather, which suited him  very well and even  lent his
plump face a kind of bandit nobility.
     'We  were just  waiting for  you/  he  said when Tatarsky and  Morkovin
walked up. 'We're going out among the people. To drink beer at the station.'
     Tatarsky felt an urgent desire to say something his boss would like.
     'Just like Haroun el-Raschid and his viziers, eh?'
     Azadovsky stared at him in amazement.
     'He used  to  change  his  clothes and walk  around  Baghdad/  Tatarsky
explained, already regretting  he'd started  the conversation. 'And  see how
the people lived. And find out how his rating was doing.'
     'Around  Baghdad?' Azadovsky asked suspiciously. 'Who  was  this Haroun
guy?'
     'He was the Caliph. A long time ago, about five hundred years.'
     'I  get  it. You  wouldn't  do too  much strolling around Baghdad these
days.  It's just like  here, only  you  have  to  take three jeeps  full  of
bodyguards. Right, is everyone here? Wagons roll!'
     Tatarsky got into the last car, Sasha Blo's red  Range-Rover. Sasha was
already slightly drunk and obviously feeling elated.
     'I keep meaning  to congratulate you/ he said. 'That  material of yours
about Berezovsky  and  Raduev -  it's  the best kom-promat there's been  all
autumn. Really. Especially the place  where they plan to pierce the mystical
body of Russia with their television-drilltowers at the major sacred points.
And those inscriptions on the  Monopoly  money:  'In God we Monopolise!' And
putting that Jewish prayer cap on Raduev -that must have taken some thinking
up ...'
     'OK, OK,' said Tatarsky, thinking gloomily to himself:
     "That jerk Malyuta was asked not to touch Raduev.  Now the mazuma  goes
back. And I'll be lucky if they didn't have the meter running on it.'
     'Why  don't you  tell  me when  your department's  going to  throw up a
decent idea?' he asked. 'What stage is the project at?'
     'It's all supposed to be strictly secret. But without getting specific,
the idea's coming on, and it'll make everyone sick as  parrots. We just have
to think through the role of Attila and polish up the stylistic side - so we
have something like an ongoing counterpoint  between the pipe organ  and the
balalaika.'
     'Attila? The one who burnt Rome? What's he got to do with it?'
     'Attila means "the man from Itil". In Russian, a Volga man. Itil is the
ancient name for the Volga. D'you get my drift?'
     'Not really.'
     'We're the third Rome - which,  typically enough, happens to lie on the
Volga. So  there's no  need  to go off  on any campaigning.  Hence our total
historical self-sufficiency and profound national dignity.'
     Tatarsky sized up the idea. 'Yeah,' he said, 'that's neat.'
     Glancing out of the window, he  caught sight  of  a  gigantic  concrete
structure above the  edge of the  trees,  a crooked spiral  rising  upwards,
crowned with a small grey tower. He screwed up his eyes and then opened them
again  - the concrete monolith hadn't disappeared,  only shifted backwards a
little. Tatarsky nudged Sasha  Blo so  hard in the ribs that the car swerved
across the road.
     'You crazy, or what?' asked Sasha.
     'Look quick, over there/ said Tatarsky.  'D'you see it,  that  concrete
tower?'
     'What of it?'
     'D'you know what it is?'
     Sasha looked out of the window.
     'Oh,  that.  Azadovksy  was  just  telling us  about  it.  They started
building an Air Defence station here. Early warning or some such thing. They
got as  far as building the foundations and the  walls and  then,  you know,
there  was  no one left  to  warn. Azadovsky has this plan to privatise  the
whole thing and  finish building it, only not for  a radar station - for his
new  house. I don't know. Speaking for myself, I can't stand concrete walls.
What's got you so wound up?'
     'Nothing,' said Tatarsky. 'It just  looks  very  strange.  What's  this
station we're going to called?'
     'Rastorguevo.'
     'Rastorguevo/ Tatarsky repeated. 'In that case, everything's clear/
     'And here it is. We're headed for that building over there. This is the
dirtiest beer-hall anywhere near  Moscow. Leonid likes to drink beer here at
weekends. So's he can really appreciate what he's achieved in life.'
     The beer-hall, located in the basement of a brick building with peeling
paint  not  far from the  railway platform,  really  was quite exceptionally
dirty  and  foul-smelling. The people squeezed in at  the tables  with their
quarter-litres of vodka matched the institution perfectly. The only ones who
didn't fit in  were two bandits in tracksuits standing behind a table at the
entrance. Tatarsky was amazed to see Azadovsky  actually greet  some  of the
customers - he obviously really was a regular here.  Sasha  Blo swept up two
glass mugs of pale beer in one hand, took Tatarsky by the arm with the other
and dragged him off to a distant table.
     'Listen,' he said. 'There's something I want  to talk to you about. Two
of  my brothers  have  moved  up here  from Yerevan  and  decided to set  up
business. To  cut it short, they've opened an exclusive funeral parlour with
top-class service. They  just  figured out  how  much mazuma there is  stuck
between banks  up here.  They're all beginning to  beat it out of each other
now, so a real market niche has opened up.'
     "That's  for  sure,'  said  Tatarsky,  glancing at the  bandits  by the
entrance, who were drinking Czech beer out  of bottles they'd  brought  with
them.  He couldn't figure  out what they were doing in a place  like  this -
although their motives could have been the same as Azadovsky's.
     'Just for friendship's sake,' Sasha Blo rattled on,  'write me a decent
slogan for them,  something that'll actually  get to  the target group. When
they get on their feet they'll pay you back.'
     'Why not, for old times' sake?' Tatarsky answered. 'So what's our brand
essence?'
     'I told you - high-class death.'
     'What's the firm called?'
     "The family name.  The  Brothers  Debirsian  Funeral Parlour. Will  you
think about it?'
     'I'll do it/ said Tatarsky. 'No problem.'
     'By the way,' Sasha went on, 'you'll laugh when I tell you, but they've
already  had one  of our acquaintances  as a  client. His  wife  paid  for a
top-rate funeral before she slung her hook and split.'
     'Who's that?'
     'Remember Khanin from  the Privy  Councillor  agency? Someone took  him
out.'
     'That's terrible. I didn't hear about it. Who did it?'
     'Some say the Chechens, and some  say  the filth.  Something to do with
diamonds. To cut it short, a murky business. Where are you off to?'
     "The toilet,' Tatarsky answered.
     The washroom was even dirtier than the rest of the beer-hall.  Glancing
at  the wall covered in  patches of  geological  damp that  rose up from the
urinal, Tatarsky  noticed a triangular piece of  plaster that was remarkably
similar  in shape  to the  diamond  necklace in the  photograph  hanging  in
Khanin's toilet. At  the first glimpse of this formation the feeling of pity
for  his  former   boss  that  filled  Tatarsky's  heart  was  alchemi-cally
transformed into the slogan ordered by Sasha Blo.
     When he emerged from the toilet  he stopped, astounded at the view that
suddenly confronted him. There must have been a double door in  the corridor
before,  but it had  been broken out and its frame, daubed with black paint,
was protruding from the walls and ceiling. With its slightly rounded outline
the opening looked like  the frame around a television screen - so much like
it,  in  fact,  that  for  a moment  Tatarsky  thought he  was  watching the
country's biggest TV set. Azadovsky  and  his company were outside his field
of  view, but  he could see the two bandits by the nearest table and the new
customer who had appeared beside them. He was a tall, thin old man wearing a
brown raincoat, a beret and powerful spectacles with earpieces that were too
short.  Through the lenses his eyes  appeared  disproportionately large  and
childishly honest. Tatarsky could have sworn he'd seen him somewhere before.
The old man had already gathered around himself a few  listeners, who looked
like homeless tramps.
     'You guys,' he was saying in a thin voice full of astonishment, 'you'll
never believe  it! There I was picking up half a litre in the vegetable shop
at the Kursk station,  you  know. I'm queuing up to pay, and guess who comes
into the shop? Chubais!  Fuck me ..  . He  was wearing this shabby grey coat
and a red mohair cap, and not a bodyguard in sight. There was just a bit  of
a bulge in his right pocket, as though he had his rod in there. He went into
the pickles section and  took a big three-litre jar  of Bulgarian tomatoes -
you know, the green ones,  with some green stuff in the jar? And he stuck it
in his string bag. I'm  standing there  gawping at  him with my  mouth  wide
open, and he noticed, gave me a wink and hopped  out the door. I went across
to the window, and  there was this  car with a light on the roof, winking at
me just  like  he did. He hops in and drives off. Bugger me, eh, the  things
that happen ...'
     Tatarsky cleared his throat and the old man looked in his direction.
     "The  People's  Will,' Tatarsky  said  and  winked, unable to  restrain
himself.
     He pronounced  the words very quietly, but the old man heard. He tugged
on one of the bandits' sleeves and nodded in the direction of the gap in the
wall. The bandits put down their half-finished  bottles of beer on the table
in  synchronised motion  and advanced  on Tatarsky, smiling slightly. One of
them  put  his hand in his  pocket,  and Tatarsky  realised they were  quite
possibly going to kill him.
     The  adrenalin  that  flooded  through  his  body  lent  his  movements
incredible  lightness.  He turned, shot out of  the  beer-hall  and set  off
across  the yard at a run.  When he  reached the very middle  of it he heard
several loud  cracks behind  him and  something  hummed  by him  very close.
Tatarsky doubled  his speed. He only allowed himself to glance around  close
to  the comer of a tall  log-built house  that  he  could hide  behind - the
bandits had stopped shooting,  because Azadovsky's security guards  had come
running up with automatics in their hands.
     Tatarsky slumped against the wall, took out his cigarettes with fingers
that  refused to bend and lit up. "That's  the way  it happens,' he thought,
'just like that. Simple, out of the blue.'
     By the next time he screwed up the nerve to glance round the comer  his
cigarette had almost burnt away. Azadovsky and his company were getting into
their cars; both  the  bandits,  their faces beaten to pulp, were sitting on
the  back seat of a  jeep with the bodyguards, and the old man in the  brown
raincoat was  heatedly arguing his case to an indifferent bodyguard. At last
Tatarsky remembered  where  he'd  seen the  old  man  before  - he  was  the
philosophy lecturer from the Literary Institute. He didn't  really recognise
his  face  -  the  man had  aged  a  lot -  so  much as  the  intonation  of
astonishment with which he once used to read his lectures. 'The object's got
a pretty strong character,' he  used to  say, throwing back his head to look
up at the ceiling of the auditorium; 'it demands  disclosure of the subject:
that's the way it is! And then, if it's lucky, merging may take place ...'
     Tatarsky realised that  merging had finally taken  place. "That happens
too,'  he thought and, taking out  his notebook, jotted down the slogan he'd
invented in the beer-hall:
     DIAMONDS ARE NOT FOR EVER! THE BROTHERS DEBIRSIAN FUNERAL PARLOUR
     'They'll  probably fire me,' he  thought,  when the cavalcade  of  cars
disappeared round a bend. 'Where now? God only knows  where.  To Gireiev. He
lives somewhere just around here.'
     Gireiev's house proved surprisingly  easy to find - Tatarsky recognised
it from the garden with  its  forest of  unbelievably tall  dill  umbrellas,
looking  more  like small trees than  large weeds.  Tatarsky knocked several
times on  the gate  and Gireiev  appeared on  the verandah. He  was  wearing
trousers of an indefinite colour, baggy at the knees, and a tee shirt with a
large letter 'A' in the centre of a rainbow-coloured circle.
     'Come on in,' he said, 'the gate's open.'
     Gireiev had been drinking for  a few days, drinking away a fairly large
sum  of  money, which was now coming to  an end. This was the deduction that
could be  drawn from the fact that  there were  empty bottles from expensive
brands  of whisky and  brandy  standing along  the  wall, while  the bottles
standing closer to the centre of the  room were from various  kinds of vodka
bootlegged  from the Caucasus, the  kinds that  had  romantic and passionate
names  and were  sold around the railway  stations.  In  the  time  that had
elapsed since Tatarsky's last visit the kitchen had  hardly  changed at all,
except for becoming even dirtier,  and images  of rather frightening Tibetan
deities  had appeared on the walls. There was  one other innovation: a small
television glimmering in the comer.
     When  he sat down  at the  table, Tatarsky noticed  the  television was
standing upside  down. The screen was showing the  animated titles from some
programme - a fly was buzzing around an eye  with long lashes thickly larded
with mascara. The name of the programme appeared - Tomorrow - at  which very
moment the fly landed on the pupil and  stuck fast, and  the lashes began to
wrap themselves  around it  like a  Venus fly-trap. The anchor man appeared,
dressed in the uniform of a  jail guard -  Tatarsky guessed that must be the
insulted response of a copywriter from  the  seventh  floor  to  the  recent
declaration by a copywriter from the eighth floor  that television in Russia
is one of the state power  structures. Because  the anchor man was inverted,
he looked very much like a bat hanging from an invisible perch. Tatarsky was
not particularly surprised to recognise him as Azadovsky.  His hair was dyed
jet-black and he had a  narrow shoelace moustache under his nose. He grinned
like a halfwit and spoke:
     'Very soon now in the city of Murmansk the nuclear  jet-powered cruiser
The Idiot will slide down the slipway. Its keel was laid to mark the hundred
and  fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoievsky. It
is not clear as  yet whether the government will be able  to find  the money
needed  to  lay  the  keel  of another ship  of the same kind, the Crime and
Punishment. Book  news!' - Azadovsky produced  a book with a cover depicting
the holy trinity of a grenade-thrower, a chain-saw and a naked woman - 'Good
needs hard fists. That's  something  we've known for  a long time, but there
was still something missing! Now here is the book we've been waiting for all
these  years  -  good  with  hard fists  and  a  big  dick:  The  Adventures
ofSvyatoslav the  Roughneck.  Economic  news:  in the State  Duma  today the
make-up was  announced of the new minimum annual consumer goods  basket.  It
includes   twenty  kilo-grammes  of   pasta,  a  centner  of  potatoes,  six
kilogrammes of pork, a padded coat, a pair of shoes, a fur cap with earflaps
and a Sony Black Trinitron television. Reports from Chechnya ...'
     Gireiev turned off the sound.
     'Did you come to watch the television, then?' he asked.
     'Course not. It's just strange - what's it doing upside down?'
     "That's a long story.'
     'Like the one with the cucumbers, is it? Has to be properly conferred?'
     'No, not that,' Gireiev  said with a shrug. 'It's open information, but
it's  part of the practice of true dharma, so if you ask someone to tell you
about it, you take on the karmic obligation to  adopt the practice yourself.
And I don't think you will.'
     'Maybe I will. Try me.'
     Gireiev sighed  and  glanced at  the tall umbrellas swaying outside the
window.
     'There  are three Buddhist  ways of watching  television.  In essential
terms, they're all the same way, but  at different  stages of  training they
appear  different. First  you watch television with  the  sound turned  off.
About  half an hour  a day, your favourite programmes. When you get the idea
they're  saying  something important and interesting on  the television, you
become aware of the thought at the moment it arises and so neutralise it. At
first you're  bound to give way and turn on the sound,  but gradually you'll
get used to it. The main thing is not to allow a feeling of guilt to develop
when you  can't restrain yourself.  It's  like that for  everybody at first,
even  for  lamas.  Then you  start  to watch the television with  the  sound
switched  on  but the  picture  off.  And  finally  you  start watching  the
television completely  switched  off. That's actually the main technique and
the first two are only preparatory. You  watch  all the news programmes, but
you  don't turn the television on.  It's very important to  keep  your  back
straight while you  do this,  and  it's best to fold your  hands across your
belly, right hand underneath, left hand  on top - that's for men; for  women
it's the other  way round - and you mustn't be distracted even for a second.
If you watch the television like that for ten years at  least an hour a day,
you can come to understand the nature of television.  And of everything else
as well.' 'So then why do you turn it upside down?'
     "That's the fourth Buddhist  method. It's used when you really  do need
to watch the television  after all.  For  instance,  if you want to know the
dollar exchange rate, but you don't know  exactly  when or how they're going
to announce it -whether they'll  read it out loud or show one of the  boards
outside the bureaux de change.'
     'But why turn it upside down?'
     "That's another long story.'
     'Try.' Gireiev ran his palm across his forehead and sighed again.
     He seemed to be searching for the right words.
     'Have  you  ever  wondered  where  that  heavy, piercing  hate  in  the
anchormen's eyes comes from?' he eventually asked.
     'Come  off it,' said Tatarsky. "They don't even look at  the camera; it
just seems like they do.  There's a special  monitor right under  the camera
lens  that  shows  the  text  they're reading out  and special  symbols  for
intonation and facial expression. I think there are only six of them; let me
just try to remember . . . irony, sadness,  doubt, improvisation,  anger and
joke. So  nobody's  radiating any kind of hate -  not their own or  even any
official kind. That much I know for certain.'
     'I'm not saying they  radiate anything.  It's just that, when they read
their  text, there are several  million people  staring straight  into their
eyes, and as  a rule  they're  very  angry and dissatisfied with life.  Just
think about  what  kind  of  cumulative  effect it generates  when  so  many
deceived consciousnesses come together in a single second at the same point.
D'you know what resonance is?'
     'More or less.' 'Well then: if a battalion of soldiers marches across a
bridge
     in step,  then the bridge can easily collapse - there have been cases -
and so when a column crosses a bridge, the soldiers are ordered to march out
of step. When so many people stare into this box and see the same thing, can
you imagine what kind of resonance that sets up in the noosphere?'
     'Where?'  Tatarsky asked,  but at  that moment  the mobile phone in his
pocket rang  and he  raised a hand  to halt the conversation. He  could hear
loud music and indistinct voices in
     the earpiece.
     'Babe!' Morkovin's voice cut through the music. 'Where are
     you? Are you alive?'
     'I'm alive,' replied Tatarsky. 'I'm in Rastorguevo.' 'Listen,' Morkovin
went on merrily, 'we've given those fucking tossers a good working over, and
now  we'll  probably send  them off to jail, give  them ten years. After the
interrogation Azadovsky  was laughing like mad! Said you'd  released all his
stress. Next  time you'll get a  medal together  with Ros-tropovich. Shall I
send some wheels round for you?'
     No, they're not going to  fire me, Tatarsky thought, feeling a pleasant
warm glow spreading through his body. Definitely not. Or do me in me either.
     'Thanks,' he said. 'I think I'll go home. My nerves are shot.' 'Yeah? I
can  understand  that,' Morkovin agreed.  'Away with  you then, get yourself
fixed up. But  I've got to be  going - the bugle's sounding loud  and clear.
Only don't be late tomorrow - we have a very important occasion. We're going
to Ostankino TV  headquarters.  You'll see Azadovsky's collection there,  by
the way - the Spanish section. Cheers for now.'
     Tatarsky hid the phone  in his pocket and looked  around the room  with
unseeing eyes. 'So they take me me for a hamster, then,' he said pensively.
     'What?'
     'Nothing. What was that you were saying?'
     'To  keep it short,'  Gireiev continued,  'all the  so-called magic  of
television  is  nothing but psychoresonance due  to  the fact  that so  many
people watch  it at the same time.  Any  professional knows that  if you  do
watch television-'
     'I   can  tell  you,   professionals   never  do  watch  it,'  Tatarsky
interrupted, examining a patch he'd only just noticed on his
     friend's trouser-leg.
     '-if you  do watch television, you have to look at a point somewhere in
the corner of the screen, but never under any circumstances into the eyes of
the announcer,  or else you'll start to develop  gastritis or schizophrenia.
But the safest thing is to turn it upside down the way I do. That's the same
thing as not marching in step; and in general, if you're interested, there's
a fifth  Buddhist method for  watching  television, the highest and the most
secret one of all...'
     It  often  happens: you're  talking  with someone, and you kind of like
what he's saying, and there seems to be some truth in it. Then suddenly  you
notice he's wearing  an old tee shirt, his slippers are darned, his trousers
are patched at the knee and the furniture in his room is worn and cheap. You
look  a bit closer and all around you you see  signs  of humiliating poverty
you  didn't notice before, and you realise everything  your interlocutor has
done and  thought in his life  has failed to lead him to that single victory
that you wanted so  badly on that distant May  morning when you gritted your
teeth and promised yourself you wouldn't lose, even  though it still  wasn't
really very clear just  who you were playing with and what the game was. And
although  it  hasn't  become  the  slightest bit  clearer  since  then,  you
immediately lose interest in  what he's saying.  You  want to say goodbye to
him  in some  pleasant fashion, get away  as quickly as possible and finally
get down to business.
     That is how  the displacing wow-factor operates in our hearts; but when
Tatarsky  was struck by  its  imperceptible blow, he gave no sign  that he'd
lost interest in the conversation with Gireiev, because an  idea had  struck
him. He waited until Gireiev stopped speaking; then he stretched, yawned and
asked as though it was a casual question: 'By the way, have you  got  any of
those fly-agarics left?'
     'Yes,' said Gireiev, 'but I won't take any with you. I'm sorry, but you
know, after what happened the last time ...'
     'But will you give me some?'
     'Why not? Only don't eat them here, please.'
     Gireiev  got  up from the table, opened the crooked cupboard hanging on
the wall and took out a bundle wrapped in newspaper.
     "This is a good dose. Where are you going to take them - in Moscow?'
     'No,' said Tatarsky; 'in the town I always get a bad trip. I'll go into
the forest. Since I'm already out in the countryside.'
     'You're right.  Hang on, I'll give you some  vodka. Softens the effect.
They can bugger  up your brains  if  you  take them neat. Don't worry, don't
worry, I've got some Absolut.'
     Gireiev picked up an empty Hennessy bottle from the floor, twisted  out
the cork and began carefully pouring in vodka from a litre bottle of Absolut
he'd taken from the same cupboard the mushrooms had been in.
     'Listen,  you've got something to  do with television,' he said; 'there
was a good joke going round about you. Have you heard the one about the blow
job with singing in the dark?'
     'No.'
     'Well, this guy comes to a brothel. He looks at the price-list and sees
the most expensive service: a blow  job with singing in the dark for fifteen
hundred bucks;  and  he thinks.  That's strange. What  could that be? And he
buys  a ticket.  When  his  turn comes, he finds himself in a dark room  and
everything seems to go as promised - someone  sucks his  dick while singing.
Afterwards he goes outside and thinks. But that's impossible! So  he goes to
a  department  store and  buys a flashlight. Then he borrows another fifteen
hundred and  goes back to the brothel. To cut  it short, everything  happens
all over again. And just as he's about to come, he  whips out the flashlight
and  turns it  on;  and he sees that  he's standing in  a giant  round room.
There's a stool by the wall, and on  top of the  stool there's a giant glass
eye.'
     Gireiev stopped.
     'So what's next?' Tatarsky asked.
     'That's it. Some people just don't get it. I mean  the joke. A blow job
in the dark is something that everyone gets.'
     'Ah  . . . Now I do  get it... What d'you think -  is that the same eye
that's on the dollar bill?'
     'I never thought about it,' Gireiev answered.
     'Frankly, this kind of humour's too glum for me. You have to believe in
something.'
     Gireiev  shrugged.  'Hope  dies last,'  he  said.  'What's  that you're
writing down? The joke?'
     'No,' said Tatarsky, 'an idea  for work/ Idea for a  poster, he  jotted
down in his notebook:
     A dirty room covered in cobwebs. On the table a still for moonshine, by
the table an alcoholic  dressed in  rags, vsho is pouring his product from a
large Absolut bottle into a small Hennessy bottle. Slogan:
     ABSOLUT HENNESSY
     Offer to  Absolut  and Hennessy distributors  first,  and if they don't
take it, to Finlandia, Smimoff and Johnny Walker.
     "There you go/ said  Gireiev, holding out  the bundle and the bottle to
Tatarsky.  'Only let's agree between ourselves that when you  eat  them, you
don't come back here. I still haven't forgotten that time in autumn.'
     'I promise/ said Tatarsky. 'By the way, where's  that  unfinished radar
tower around here? I saw it from the car when we were driving here.'
     'It's quite near. You go across the field and then the road through the
forest starts. When you see a  wire fence, just  follow it. It's about three
kilometres. Why, do you want to go wandering around it?'
     Tatarsky  nodded.'I'm not  so sure about that,' said Gireiev. 'It's not
so bad  when you're clean, but if you're on the  mushrooms . . . The old men
say it's a bad place;  but then,  where  can you  find a  good  place around
Moscow?'
     In  the doorway  Tatarsky  turned  back and  hugged Gireiev  round  the
shoulders. 'You  know,  Andriusha/  he said, 'I  don't  want this  to  sound
sentimental, but thank you very, very much!'
     'What for?' asked Gireiev.
     'For sometimes allowing me to live a  parallel  life. Without  that the
real one would be so disgusting!'
     'Thank you,' Gireiev replied, 'thank you.' He was obviously touched.
     'Good luck in business/ Tatarsky said, and left.
     The  fly-agarics kicked in when  he'd  already  been walking along  the
wire-netting fence for half an hour. First  came the familiar  symptoms: the
pleasant trembling and itching in the  fingers.  Then looming  up out of the
bushes  came the  pillar with  the  notice: 'Campfires forbidden!' that he'd
once taken  for Hussein. As was only to expected, in the daylight there  was
no noticeable resemblance. Even so, Tatarsky felt a certain nostalgia  as he
recalled the story of Semurg the king of the birds.
     'Semurg,  Sirruf/  said a  familiar voice in his head: 'what difference
does  it  make? Just  different  dialects. So you've  been  guzzling garbage
again?'
     'Now it's started,' thought Tatarsky; 'the beastie's here.'
     But the Sirruf gave no further indication of  its presence  all the way
to the tower. The gates that Tatarsky had climbed over were  open. There was
no one to be seen on the construction site; the trailers were locked and the
telephone  that  used  to  hang  on  the  sentry's   mushroom  shelter   had
disappeared.
     Tatarsky climbed to the summit of the structure without any adventures.
In  the  lift-tower  everything  was  still the same  as  it had been: empty
bottles and a table in the centre of the room.
     'Well,' he asked out loud, 'where's the goddess here?'
     There was no reply, nothing but the sound of the autumn forest rustling
in the  wind somewhere below.  Tatarsky leaned against the wall, closed  his
eyes and  began to listen. For  some reason  he decided it was  willows that
were  whispering in  the wind, and he recalled a line from a play he'd heard
on  the  radio: 'It's the sisters  of sorrow, who  live in the willows.' And
immediately he could hear snatches of women's voices in the  quiet murmuring
of the trees, sounding like a dim echo of words spoken to him long, long ago
that had lost their way among the cul-de-sacs of memory.
     'But do they know,' the quiet voices whispered, 'that this famous world
of theirs  consists of nothing  but the  condensation of  darkness - neither
breathing in, nor breathing out; neither right, nor left; neither fifth, nor
tenth? Do they know that their extensive fame is known to no one?'
     'Everything  is  the precise  opposite of what  they think,' the  quiet
voices  whispered; 'there is no truth or falsehood; there is  one infinitely
clear, pure and simple thought in which the spirit of man swirls like a drop
of ink that has fallen into a glass  of water.  When man ceases to  swirl in
this simple purity,  absolutely nothing happens  and  life  turns out  to be
merely the  rustling of curtains in  the window of a  long-ruined tower, and
every thread in those curtains thinks that the great goddess is with it. And
the goddess truly is with it.'
     'Once, my love, all  of us  were free - why did you have to create this
terrible, ugly world?'
     'Was it I who created it?' whispered Tatarsky.
     No  one replied. Tatarsky  opened his eyes and  looked out  through the
doorway. Above  the horizontal  of the  forest  hung  a cloud shaped like  a
heavenly mountain -  it was  so  large that the infinite height  of the sky,
forgotten already in  childhood,  was suddenly visible again.  On one of the
slopes of the cloud there was a narrow conical projection, like a tower seen
through mist. Something trembled inside Tatarsky - he recalled that once the
ephemeral celestial substance of which these white mountains and  this tower
consisted had also been within him. And then - long, long ago, probably even
before  he was born  - it had cost no effort at all for him to become such a
cloud and  float up  to the very  summit of the tower. But life had squeezed
this strange substance out of his  soul and there was only just enough of it
left  to  allow  him to  recall  it  for  a second and  instantly  lose  the
recollection.
     Tatarsky noticed that  the floor  under  the table was  covered  with a
panel made from boards nailed together.  Peering through a gap between them,
he saw the blackness of a dark multi-storey abyss. 'Of course,' he recalled,
'it's the lift-shaft;
     and  this  is   the  engine   room,  just  like  the  room   with  that
render-server. Only there aren't any automatic rifles.'  He sat at the table
and gingerly  placed his feet on  the boards.  At first he felt a bit afraid
that the boards  under  his feet would  break and that he  and they would go
tumbling down together into the deep  shaft  with the stratified garbage  of
the years lying at its bottom. But the boards were thick and secure.
     The  chamber  had obviously  been visited by  someone, most  likely the
local tramps.  There were freshly trampled cigarette butts on the floor, and
on  the table there  was  a  fragment  of.  newspaper  with  the  television
programmes for  the week.  Tatarsky read the title  of  the final  programme
before the jagged line of the torn edge: 0:00 - The Golden Room
     'What kind of programme's that?'  he thought. 'Must  be something new.'
He rested  his chin on his folded hands and gazed at  the  photograph of the
woman running along the sand, which was still hanging in the same place. The
daylight exposed the blisters and blots the damp had produced on the  paper.
One  of the  blots lay  directly  over the  face of  the goddess, and in the
daylight it appeared warped, pock-marked and old.
     Tatarsky drank the remainder of the vodka and closed his eyes.
     The  brief dream he saw was very strange. He was walking along  a sandy
beach towards a golden statue gleaming in the sun  - it was still a long way
off, but he could see it was a female torso without a head or  hands. Slowly
trudging along beside Tatarsky  was the Sirruf, with Gireiev sitting on  its
back. The Sirruf was sad and looked like an ass exhausted by heavy work, and
the wings folded on its back looked like an old felt saddle.
     'You write slogans,' Gireiev said, 'but do you know  the most important
slogan of all? The base slogan, you could call it?'
     'No,' said Tatarsky, screwing up his eyes against the golden radiance.
     'I'll tell you it. You've heard the expression "Day of Judgement"?'
     'Of course.'
     'Well, there's nothing really frightening about  that judgement. Except
that  it's already begun, and what happens to all  of us is  no  more than a
phase  in a court experiment, a re-enactment of  the crime. Think  about it:
surely it's no problem for God to create  this entire world out  of nothing,
with  its eternity  and infinity, for just  a few seconds in order to test a
single soul standing before him?'
     'Andrei/ Tatarsky  answered, squinting at  the darned  slippers  in the
string stirrups, 'just leave it out, will you? I get enough shit at work. At
least you could lay off.'






     When they removed Tatarsky's blindfold, he was chilled to the bone. His
bare  feet  were  suffering particularly badly from  the  cold stone  floor.
Opening his  eyes, he  saw he  was standing in  the  doorway of  a  spacious
chamber similar to the foyer of a cinema where, as  far  as  he could judge,
there was something like a buffet  supper taking place. One strange thing he
noticed immediately:  there  wasn't a single  window in the walls faced with
yellow stone, but one of the walls reflected like a mirror, which meant that
in the  light of the bright halogen  lamps the hall  appeared  substantially
larger than it actually was. The people gathered in the hall were conversing
quietly and studying sheets of paper with  typewritten texts  hung round the
walls. Despite the fact that Tatarsky was standing in the doorway completely
naked, the  assembled  company  paid  no particular attention to him, except
perhaps for two or three who cast an indifferent  glance in  his  direction.
Tatarsky had seen virtually everyone in the hall many times  on  television,
but there was no one he knew personally  apart from Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin,
who was standing by the wall  with a wineglass in  his hand. He also spotted
Azadovsky's  secretary  Alia,  engaged  in  conversation  with  two  elderly
playboys - her  loose washed-out blonde  hair made her look like  a slightly
debauched Medusa. Tatarsky thought that somewhere  in the  crowd he caught a
glimpse of Morkovin's check jacket, but he lost sight of him immediately.
     'I'm coming,  I'm  coming,'  Tatarsky  heard Azadovsky's voice say, and
then he appeared out of a passage leading to some inner chamber.  'So you're
here? Why're you standing in the doorway? Come on in; we won't eat you.'
     Tatarsky  stepped towards him.  Azadovsky smelled slightly of  wine; in
the halogen lighting his face looked tired.
     'Where are we?' asked Tatarsky.
     'About a hundred metres underground, near the Ostankino pond. I'm sorry
about  the  blindfold and  all the  rest - that's  just the way  things  are
supposed to be before the ritual. Traditions, fuck 'em. You scared?'
     Tatarsky  nodded, and  Azadovksy  laughed contentedly.  'Don't  let  it
bother you,' he said. 'It's a load of old cobblers. Have a wander around  in
the meantime, take a look at the new collection. It's been hung for two days
now. I've got to have a word with a couple of people.'
     He summoned his secretary with a  snap of his fingers.  'Alia  here can
tell  you about  it.  This is Babe Tatarsky.  You know each other? Show  him
everything in the place, OK?'
     Tatarsky was left in the company of the secretary.
     'Where shall we start the viewing from?' she asked with a smile.
     'Let's start from here/ said Tatarsky. 'But where's the collection?'
     'There it is,' said the secretary, nodding towards the wall. 'It's  the
Spanish collection. Who do you like best of the great Spanish artists?'
     'That  would be ...' Tatarsky  said, straining to recall an appropriate
name,'... Velasquez.'
     'I'm crazy about the old darling too,' said the secretary,  glancing at
him with a cold green eye. 'I would call him the Cervantes of the brush.'
     She  took  a  precise grip on  Tatarsky's elbow  and, with her tall hip
pressing against his naked thigh,  she led him towards the nearest  sheet of
paper on the wall.  Tatarsky saw that it held a couple of paragraphs of text
and a blue seal. The secretary  leaned shortsightedly towards  the  paper in
order to read the fine print.
     'Yes, this  is the very canvas. A relatively little known  pink version
of the portrait  of the Infanta. What you can see is a notarised certificate
issued  by  Oppenheim  and Radler  to  certify that  the picture really  was
acquired for seventeen million dollars from a private collection.'
     Tatarsky decided not to show that he was surprised by anything. Anyway,
he  didn't  really know for certain whether  he was surprised by anything or
not.
     'And  this  one?' he asked, indicating the  next sheet of paper with  a
text and seal.
     'Oh,' said Alia, 'that's the pride of our collection. It's a Goya - the
Maja  with a fan  in  the  garden. Acquired from a  certain small  museum in
Castile.  Once again Oppenheim and Radler certify the  price -  eight and  a
half million. Astonishing.'
     'Yes,' said Tatarsky, 'it  is.  But I must  admit I find sculpture much
more interesting than painting.'
     'I should think  so,' said the secretary. 'That  must be because you're
used to working in three dimensions, I suppose?'
     Tatarsky gave an inquiring glance.
     'Well, three-dimensional graphics. With those stiffs ...'
     'Ah,' said Tatarsky, 'that's  what you're talking about. Yes, I'm  used
to working with them, and living with them.'
     'Well here's a sculpture,' said the secretary, and she dragged Tatarsky
over to a new sheet of paper on which  the text was a little larger than  on
the others. 'It's a  Picasso. Ceramic figurine of a  woman running. Not much
like Picasso, you might say. You'd  be right,  but  that's because it's  the
post-cubist period. Almost thirteen million dollars - can you imagine it?'
     'And where's the actual statue?'
     'I  don't actually know,' said the secretary with a shrug. 'Probably in
some warehouse  somewhere. But  if you  want to see what it looks like,  the
catalogue's over there on that little table.'
     'What difference does it make where the statue is?'
     Tatarsky swung round. Azadovksy had come up behind him unnoticed.
     'Maybe none at all,' said Tatarsky. 'To tell the truth,  it's the first
time I've come across this kind of a collection.'
     'It's the cutting edge  in design,' said the secretary.  'Mone-taristic
minimalism. They say it was invented here in Russia.'
     'Take a walk,' Azadovsky said to her,  and turned  to  Tatarsky. 'D'you
like it?'
     'It's interesting. But I don't really understand it.'
     "Then I'll explain,' said  Azadovsky. "This  bastard Spanish collection
cost  something  like  two  hundred million  dollars,  and  another  hundred
thousand went on the art historians -which picture would suit, which picture
wouldn't  fit in,  which order  to  hang them  in, and  so forth. Everything
mentioned  on  the invoices has been  bought.  But if  we brought  all those
paintings and statues here - and there are tapestries and suits of armour as
well - there'd be no space left in here to move. You'd choke to death on the
dust alone. And afterwards ... Well let's be honest, after you've seen these
pictures once - maybe twice - what're you going to see that's new?'
     'Nothing.'
     'That's  right. So why keep them in  your  own place?  Anyway, I reckon
this Picasso's a complete and utter plonker.'
     'I couldn't entirely  agree with you there,' said Tatarsky, swallowing.
'Or rather, I could, but only starting from the post-cubist period.'
     'I  can see you're  a brainbox,' said Azadovsky. 'But  I  don't get it.
What's  the  damn  point,  anyway? In  a week's time  it'll  be  the  French
collection. Just think: you figure one lot  out, then a week later they cart
it away and hang up another lot -so  you're supposed to figure that  lot out
as well? What's the point?'
     Tatarsky couldn't think of a good answer.
     'I tell you,  there isn't one,' Azadovsky insisted. 'OK, let's go. It's
time to get started. We'll come back here afterwards. For some champagne.'
     He turned and set off towards the mirror wall.  Tatarsky followed  him.
When he  reached the wall, Azadovsky pushed against it with his hand and the
vertical row of mirror blocks casting an electrical reflection  on him swung
silently around their  axis. Through the opening created a corridor built of
rough-hewn stone came into view.
     'Go on in,' said Azadovsky. 'Only keep your head down:
     the ceiling's low in here.'
     Tatarsky  entered the  corridor  and the damp immediately made him feel
even more  cold. When will they let me get dressed? he thought. The corridor
was  long,  but  Tatarsky  couldn't  see where it was leading: it  was dark.
Occasionally he  felt a sharp stone under his foot and winced with the pain.
At last there was a glimmer of light up ahead.
     They emerged into a small room lined with wooden  boards  that reminded
Tatarsky of a changing  room  for a gym.  In actual fact,  it was a changing
room, as the lockers by the wall and the two jackets hanging on a coat-stand
made  clear.  Tatarsky  thought one of them belonged to  Sasha  Blo, but  he
couldn't be absolutely certain - Sasha had too many different jackets. There
was a second exit from  the  changing room, a dark wooden door with a golden
plaque  engraved  with a  jagged  line,  looking like the  teeth of  a  saw.
Tatarsky  still  remembered  from  school that  that was  how  the  Egyptian
hieroglyph for 'quickly' looked. He'd  only remembered  it then because of a
funny story connected with it: the ancient  Egyptians, so their teacher  had
explained, used  to  build their  zig-gurats  very  slowly,  and  so  in the
inscriptions of the greatest  and most  powerful Pharaohs the  short  jagged
line  meaning 'quickly' had become very long and even took up several lines,
meaning 'very, very quickly'.
     Hanging beside  the washbasin, looking like  decrees from  some unknown
authority, there  were  three sheets of paper  with typed  texts  and  seals
(Tatarsky guessed they were not decrees  at all, but more likely part of the
Spanish collection),  and one  of the walls  was  covered  with shelves with
numbered pigeon-holes  containing bronze  mirrors  and golden masks  exactly
like the ones in Azadovsky's reception room.
     'What's that?' Azadovsky asked. 'Did you want to ask something?'
     'What are these sheets of paper on the walls?' Tatarsky asked. 'More of
the Spanish collection?'
     Instead of replying Azadovsky took out his mobile phone and pressed its
one and only button.
     'Alia,' he said, 'some questions here for you.' He handed the telephone
to Tatarsky.
     'Yes?' said Alla's voice in the handset.
     'Ask  her  what  we've  got in  the  bath-house  changing  room,'  said
Azadovsky, pulling off his vest. 'I keep forgetting all the time.'
     'Hello/ said Tatarsky, embarrassed, 'this is Tatarsky again.
     Tell me, this exhibition in the changing room, what is it?'
     "Those  are absolutely  unique exhibits,'  said the  secretary. Tm  not
allowed to talk about them over the phone.'
     Tatarsky  covered the mouthpiece with his hand. 'She says it's  not for
discussion on the phone.'
     Tell her I give my permission.'
     'He says he gives his permission,' Tatarsky echoed.
     'Very well,' sighed  the secretary. 'Number one: fragments of the gates
of  Ishtar from Babylon - lions and sirrufs.  Official place of keeping, the
Pergamon museum in  Berlin.  Certified by  a  group of  independent experts.
Number  two: lions,  bas-relief  of  moulded brick  and  enamel.  Street  of
Processions,  Babylon.  Official  place  of  keeping,  the  British  Museum.
Certified by a group of independent experts. Number three:
     Fukem-Al, a dignitary from Mari. Official  place of keeping, the Louvre
.. .'
     'Fukem-Al?' Tatarsky repeated, and remembered he'd seen a photograph of
this  statue  in  the Louvre. It was  thousands of  years old, and it  was a
portrait  of a cunning-looking little man carved in brilliant white stone  -
with a beard and dressed in strange, fluffy, skirtlike culottes.
     'I  really like that  one,' said  Azadovsky, lowering his trousers. 'No
doubt he woke up every morning and said: "Ah,  fukem al.  . ." And so he was
all alone all his life, exactly like me.'
     He opened a locker and took out two unusual-looking skirts  made either
of feathers or fluffed-up  wool. He tossed one  over  to Tatarsky and pulled
the other  up over his red Calvin  Klein underpants, which  immediately made
him look like an overfed ostrich.
     'Let's  have  the  phone,'  he said. 'What  are  you  waiting  for? Get
changed. Then pick up a  set of this junk here and go  on  through.  You can
take any pair you like, just as long as the muzzle's the right size.'
     Azadovsky took  a mask and a  mirror  from one of the pigeon-holes  and
clanged them against each other, then raised the mask and looked at Tatarsky
through the eye-slits. The small golden face  of an unearthly beauty,  which
might have appeared out of a crowd of maskers at a Venetian carnival, was so
out of keeping with  his barrel-shaped  torso covered  in  ginger  hair that
Tatarsky  suddenly  felt  afraid.  Pleased  with the effect  he'd  produced,
Azadovsky laughed, opened the  door and  disappeared  in  a beam  of  golden
light.
     Tatarsky began  getting changed. The  skirt Azadovsky had given him was
made  out of strips of long-haired  sheepskin stitched together and glued to
nylon Adidas shorts. Squeezing himself into it somehow or other (if Tatarsky
hadn't seen the statue of Fukem-Al, he would never have believed the ancient
inhabitants  of  Mesopotamia actually wore  anything of the kind), he put on
the mask, immediately  pressing it  firmly over his face, and picked  up the
mirror. There could be no doubt that the  gold and bronze were genuine  - it
was obvious  from the weight alone.  Breathing out as though he was about to
plunge into cold water, he pushed open the door marked with the jagged line.
     The room he entered blinded him with the golden gleam of its walls  and
floor, lit by bright  studio  lights. The sheet-metal cladding  of the walls
rose  up to form a smoothly tapering cone, as though the room were  an empty
church dome gilded on the inside. Directly opposite  the door stood an altar
- a  cubic gold pediment on which  there  lay a  massive crystal eye with an
enamel iris and a bright reflective pupil. In front of the altar there was a
gold chalice standing on the floor, and towering  up on each side of it were
two  stone  sirrufs,  covered  in the remnants of gilt  and painted designs.
Hanging above the eye was a slab of black basalt, which appeared  to be very
ancient. Chiselled  into  its  very  centre was the Egyptian hieroglyph  for
'quick',  which was surrounded by  complicated figures - Tatarsky could make
out a strange dog with five  legs and  a woman in a tall tiara reclining  on
some  kind of couch and holding a  chalice in her  hands. Along the edges of
the slab there were  images of four terrible-looking beasts, and between the
dog and the woman there was a plant growing up out of the ground, resembling
a Venus  fly-trap, except  that for some reason its  root  was divided  into
three long branches, each of which was marked with an unintelligible symbol.
Also carved into the slab were a large eye and a large ear, and all the rest
of the space was taken up by dense columns of cuneiform text.
     Azadovsky,  dressed in  his gold  mask, skirt  and red  flip-flops, was
sitting on a folding stool near the altar. His mirror was lying on his knee.
Tatarsky didn't notice anybody else in the room.
     'Right on!' said Azadovsky, giving the thumbs-up  sign. 'You  look just
great. Having doubts, are you? Just don't turn sour on us, OK; don't  you go
thinking we're nothing but a set of fuckheads. Personally I couldn't  give a
toss for all this,  but if you want to  be in our business, you can't get by
without it. To cut it short, I'll fill in the basic picture for you, and  if
you  want more  detail, you  can ask our head honcho;  he'll  be  here  in a
minute.  The important thing  is, you just  take everything as it  comes; be
cool. Ever go to pioneer camp?'
     'Sure,' Tatarsky replied.
     'Did you have that business with the Day of Neptune? When everybody got
dunked in the water?'
     'Yeah.'
     'Well, you just figure like this  is another Day of Neptune. Tradition.
The  story goes that once there was this ancient goddess. Not that I mean to
say she really existed -  there was just this legend, see. And the storyline
says  the gods were  mortal  as well and  carried their deaths around inside
them, just like ordinary folks. So when her time was up, this goddess had to
die too; and  naturally enough,  she  didn't fancy  the idea.  So  then  she
separated into  her  own  death and the part of her that didn't want to die.
See there, on the picture?'  - Azadovsky jabbed his finger in  the direction
of the  bas-relief -  'That dog there's her death. And the dame in the fancy
headgear - that's her. To cut it short - from here on in you just listen and
don't  interrupt,  'cause  I'm not too hot on this stuff  myself - when they
split apart,  this war immediately started between them, and neither of them
could stay on top for long.  The  final battle  in the war took place  right
above the  Ostankino pond  -that is,  where  we  are  right  now,  only  not
underground,  but way high  up  in the  air. That's  why they reckon it's  a
sacred spot. For a long time no one  could win the battle,  but then the dog
began to overpower the  goddess.  Then  the  other gods got  frightened  for
themselves,  so they interfered and made them make  peace.  It's all written
down  right  here. This is like the text of a peace treaty witnessed in  the
four comers of the earth by these bulls and ...'
     'Gryphons/ Tatarsky prompted him.
     'Yeah. And the eye  and the ear mean that everyone  saw it and everyone
heard  it. To cut it  short, the treaty gave them  both a  drubbing. It took
away the goddess's body and reduced her to a pure concept. She became gold -
not just  the metal, though:  in a metaphorical sense. You follow  me?' 'Not
too well.'
     'Not surprising,'  sighed Azadovsky.  'Anyway,  to  cut it  short,  she
became the thing that all people desire, but  not  just a heap of gold, say,
that's lying around somewhere, but all gold  in general. Sort of like -  the
idea.' 'Now I'm with you.'
     'And her death became this lame dog with five legs who had to sleep for
ever in this distant country in  the  north. You've probably  guessed  which
one. There  he  is  on the  right,  see him? Got a leg instead of  a  prick.
Wouldn't want to run into him in the back yard.'
     'And what's this dog called?' Tatarsky asked. 'A good question. To tell
the truth, I don't know. But why d'you ask?'
     'I read  something  similar. In a collection  of university  articles.'
'What exactly?'
     It's a long story,' answered Tatarsky. 'I don't remember it all.' 'What
was the  article about, though?  Our  firm?' Tatarsky guessed his  boss  was
joking. 'No,' he said, 'about Russian swear words. It  said swear words only
became obscenities under Christianity,  but before that they had an entirely
different meaning and they  signified incredibly ancient pagan gods. One  of
these  gods  was  the  lame  dog  Phukkup  with five  legs.  In  the ancient
chronicles he was indicated by a large letter 'P' with two commas. Tradition
says he  sleeps  somewhere  among the snow, and while he  sleeps,  life goes
along more or less OK; but  when he wakes up, he attacks. When that happens,
the land won't yield crops, you get Yeltsin for president, and all that kind
of stuff. Of course, they  didn't actually know  anything about Yeltsin, but
overall it's pretty similar.'
     'And who is it this Phukkup attacks in this article?' Azadovsky asked.
     'Not anyone or  anything special - just everything  in  general. That's
probably  why  the other gods interfered. I  asked what  the  dog was called
specially - I thought maybe  it was some kind of transcultural archetype. So
what do they call the goddess?'
     'They  don't  call  her  anything,'  broke  in a voice behind them, and
Tatarsky swung round.
     Farsuk  Seiful-Farseikin was standing in the doorway.  He was wearing a
long black cloak with a hood framing his gleaming golden mask, and  Tatarsky
only recognised him from his voice.
     'They don't call her anything,' Seiful-Farseikin repeated, entering the
room. 'Once a long time ago they  used to call her Ishtar,  but her name has
changed many times since  then. You know the  brand No  Name, don't you? And
the story's the same with  the lame  dog. But  you were right about  all the
rest.'
     'You  talk  to  him,  will you,  Farsuk?'  said  Azadovksy.  'He  knows
everything anyway, without us telling him.'
     'What do you know, I wonder?' Farseikin asked.
     'Just a  few bits and pieces,' answered  Tatarsky. 'For instance,  that
jagged sign in the centre of the slab. I know what it means.'
     'And what does it mean?'
     '"Quick" in ancient Egyptian.'
     Farseikin  laughed.  'Yes,'  he  said,  'that's certainly original. New
members  usually  think it's  M&M chocolate.  Actually  it's  a  symbol that
indicates a certain very ancient and  rather obscure dictum. All the ancient
languages in which it existed have been  dead for ages, and even translating
it into  Russian  is  difficult  - there aren't any appropriate glosses. But
English has an exact equivalent  in  Marshall MacLuhan's phrase: "The medium
is the  message."  That's  why  we decode  the  symbol as  two  'M's  joined
together.  And we're not the only ones, of  course - altars  like  this  are
supplied with all render-servers.'
     'You mean the slab isn't genuine?'
     'Why    not?   It's    absolutely   genuine,'    answered    Farseikin.
'Three-thousand-year-old  basalt. You can  touch it. Of course, I'm not sure
this drawing always meant what it means now"
     'What's that Venus fly-trap plant between the goddess and the dog?'
     'It's not a Venus fly-trap; it's the Tree of Life. It's also the symbol
of the  great goddess,  because one of  her forms is a tree with three roots
that blossoms  in our souls.  This tree also has  a  name,  but that is only
learned  at the  very highest  stages of initiation in our society. At  your
stage you can only  know the names of its  three  roots - that is, the  root
names.'
     'What are these names?'
     Farseikin  solemnly  pronounced  three  strange  long  words  that  had
absolutely  no meaning for Tatarsky. He could only  note that they contained
many sibilants.
     'Can they be translated?'
     'It's the same problem of there being  no appropriate glosses. The root
names  can  only  be rendered  very  approximately  as  "oral",  "anal"  and
"displacing".'
     'Uhuh,' said Tatarsky. 'I  see. And  what society's that?  What  do its
members do?'
     'As if you really don't know.  How long have  you been  working  for us
now? All that is what its members do.'
     'What's it called?'
     'Once long ago  it  was called the  Chaldean Guild,' Farseikin replied.
'But  it  was called that by people who weren't members  and had  only heard
about it. We ourselves call it the Society of Gardeners, because our task is
to cultivate the sacred tree that gives life to the great goddess.'
     'Has this society existed for a long time?'
     'For a very, very long time. They say it was  active in At-lantis,  but
for  the  sake of simplicity we  regard  it as coming to us from Babylon via
Egypt.'
     Tatarsky adjusted the mask that had slipped from his face. 'I  see/' he
said. 'So did it build the Tower of Babel?'
     'No.  Definitely not.  We're  not  a  construction  firm.  We're simply
servants  of the great  goddess. To use your terminology, we  watch to  make
sure that Phukkup doesn't awaken and attack; you understood that part right.
I think you understand that here in Russia we bear a special responsibility.
The dog sleeps here.'
     'But where exactly?'
     'All around us,' replied Farseikin. 'When  they say he sleeps among the
snow, that's a metaphor; but the fact that several times this century he has
almost awoken isn't.'
     'So why do they keep cutting back our frequency?'
     Farseikin spread his hands and shrugged. 'Human  frivolity,'  he  said,
going over to  the  altar  and  picking  up  the  golden chalice. 'Immediate
advantage, a short-sighted view of the situation; but they'll never actually
cut us off, don't worry about that. They  watch that very closely.  And now,
if you have no objections, let us proceed with the ritual.'
     He  moved  close to  Tatarsky and put his hand on  his shoulder. 'Kneel
down and remove your mask.'
     Tatarsky obediently went down on  his knees and removed  the mask  from
his face. Farseikin dipped a finger into the chalice and traced a wet zigzag
on Tatarsky's forehead.
     'Thou art the medium, and thou art the message,'  he said, and Tatarsky
realised that the line on his forehead was a double 'M'.
     'What liquid is that?' he asked.
     'Dog's blood. I trust I don't need to explain the symbolism?'
     'No,' said Tatarsky, rising from the floor. 'I'm not an idiot;
     I've read a thing or two. What next?'
     'Now you must look into the sacred eye.'
     For some reason Tatarsky shuddered at this, and Azadovsky noticed it.
     'Don't  be scared,' he put in. 'Through this eye the goddess recognises
her husband; and since she already has a husband, it's a pure formality. You
take a look  at yourself  in the eye,  it's clear you're not the god Marduk,
and we calmly get on with business.'
     'What god Marduk?'
     'Well,  maybe not Marduk,  then,' said Azadovsky, taking out a pack  of
cigarettes  and  a lighter; 'it doesn't matter.  I  didn't  mean anything in
particular.  Farsuk, you explain to him; you've got it all  taped. Meanwhile
I'll take a trip to Marlboro country.'
     'It's another mythologeme,' said  Farseikin. "The  great goddess  had a
husband, also a god, the most important of all the gods, to whom she  fed  a
love potion, and he fell asleep in the shrine on the summit of his ziggurat.
Since  he was a  god, his dreaming was  so powerful that... In general, it's
all a bit confused, but all  of our world, including all of us, and even the
goddess, are apparently his dream. And since he  can't be found,  she has  a
symbolic earthly husband, whom she chooses herself.'
     Tatarsky cast a  glance in the direction of Azadovsky,  who nodded  and
released a neat smoke ring through the mouth-hole of his mask.
     'You  guessed,' said  Farseikin. 'At the  moment it's  him. For Leonid,
it's naturally a rather tense moment when someone else looks into the sacred
eye, but so far it's been all right. Go on.'
     Tatarsky went up to the eye on the stand and knelt down in front of it.
The blue enamel iris was separated from the pupil by a fine gold border; the
pupil itself was dark and reflected like a mirror. In  it Tatarsky could see
his own  distorted face, Farseikin's crooked figure  and Azadovsky's bloated
knee.
     'Turn the light this way,' Farseikin said to someone. 'He won't be able
to see like that, and he has to remember for the rest of his life.'
     A bright beam of light fell on the pupil, and Tatarsky could  no longer
see his own reflection, which was  replaced by  a blurred golden glimmering,
as though he  had just spent several minutes  watching the rising sun,  then
closed his eyes and  seen  its imprint lost and wandering through  his nerve
endings. 'Just what was it I was supposed to see?' he wondered.
     Behind  him  there  was  a rapid  scuffle,  something  metallic clanged
heavily against  the  floor and he  heard a hoarse gasp.  Tatarsky instantly
leapt to his feet, sprang back from the altar and swung round.
     The scene that  met his eyes was so unreal that  it failed to  frighten
him, and  he decided it must be  part of the ritual.  Sasha Blo and Malyuta,
wearing fluffy white skirts,  with golden masks  dangling at  their  chests,
were  strangling Azadovsky  with yellow nylon skipping ropes, trying to keep
themselves as far away  from  him as possible, while Azadovsky, his  sheep's
eyes  staring out of  his head, was  pulling  the thin nylon  rope with both
hands towards himself with all his might. Alas,  it was an unequal struggle:
blood  appeared on his lacerated palms, staining the yellow string red,  and
he  fell  first to his knees and then on  to his belly,  covering his fallen
mask  with his  chest. Tatarsky caught  the moment  when  the  expression of
dumbfounded astonishment disappeared from the eyes gazing at him and was not
replaced by any other. It was only then he realised that if this was part of
the ritual, it was an entirely unexpected part for Azadovsky.
     'What is this? What's happening?'
     'Take it easy,'  said  Farseikin. 'Nothing's  happening any more.  It's
already happened.'
     'But why?' asked Tatarsky.
     Farseikin  shrugged.  'The  great  goddess  had  grown  weary  of   her
mismatch.'
     'How do you know?'
     'At the  sacred divination in  Atlanta the oracle  foretold that in our
country Ishtar would  have a  new  husband. We'd been  having  problems with
Azadovsky for ages, but  it  took  us a long time to figure out  who the new
husband could be. All that was said about him was that he was a man with the
name of a town.  We  thought  and thought about  it, we searched,  and  then
suddenly they brought in  your file from the  first section. Everything adds
up: you're the one.'
     'Me???'
     Instead  of replying, Farseikin gave a  sign to Sasha Blo  and Malyuta.
They went over to Azadovsky's body, took  hold of  his legs and  dragged him
out of the altar room into the changing room.
     'Me?' Tatarsky repeated. 'But why me?'
     'I  don't know. Ask  yourself that  one.  For  some  reason the goddess
didn't choose me. How fine it would have sounded:
     "He who has abandoned his name" ...'
     'Abandoned his name?'
     'I come from a Volga  German background; but when I was due to graduate
from university,  an order  came  in from state TV for a nig-nog to be their
Washington correspondent.  I was  the Komsomol secretary,  which meant I was
first in line for America. So they changed my name for  me in the Lyubyanka.
Anyway, that's not important. It's you that's been chosen.'
     'And would you have accepted?'
     'Why not? It certainly sounds impressive: husband of the great goddess!
It's a purely ritual post, no responsibilities at all, but the opportunities
are absolutely immense.  No  limits at all, you could say. Of course, it all
depends on how imaginative you are.  Every morning the deceased here had his
cleaning-lady scatter  cocaine across his carpet from a bucket; and he built
himself a bunch of dachas, bought a load of pictures ... And that was all he
could think of. As I said: a mismatch.'
     'And can I refuse?'
     'I think not,' said Farseikin.
     Tatarsky  glanced  through  the  open  door,  behind  which  there  was
something strange going on. Malyuta  and  Sasha  Blo were packing  Azadovsky
into a container in the form of a large green sphere. His body, hunched over
in an  unnatural fashion,  was already  in  the container, but one hairy leg
with a red  flip-flop still  protruded from  the container's  small door and
stubbornly refused to fit inside.
     'What's the sphere for?'
     'The corridors here are long and narrow,' answered Farseikin. 'Carrying
him would be the devil's own job; and when you roll it outside, nobody takes
the  slightest  notice. Semyon  Velin  thought  it up before he died. What a
designer he was ... And we lost him because of this  idiot as  well.  I wish
Semyon could see all this!'
     'But why is it green?'
     'I  don't  know. What difference does it  make?  Don't  go looking  for
symbolic  significance in  everything. Babe  - you might regret  it when you
find it.'
     There was  a quiet crunching sound in the  changing  room  and Tatarsky
winced.
     'Will they strangle me some time too?' he asked.
     Farseikin  shrugged: 'As you've seen, the consorts of the great goddess
are sometimes changed, but that goes with the job. If you don't get too full
of yourself, you could easily reach old age. Even retire. The main thing is,
if you have any doubts about anything, you just  come to  me;  and follow my
advice.  The  first  thing  I'd  advise  you  to  do  is  get  rid  of  that
cocaine-polluted  carpet.   There  are  rumours  going  round  town.  That's
something we can do without.'
     'I'll get rid of the  carpet; but how  do we explain to all  the others
about me moving into his office?'
     'No  need  to  explain  anything to them. They understand all right, or
they wouldn't be working for us.'
     Malyuta put his head out  of the changing room. He was already changed.
He  glanced  at  Tatarsky  for  a  moment  then  looked  away  and held  out
Azadovsky's mobile phone to Farseikin.
     'Shall we roll it out?' he asked briskly.
     'No,'  said  Farseikin.  'Roll  it  in.   Why  d'you  ask  such  stupid
questions?'
     Tatarsky waited  until the metallic rumbling in the long burrow of  the
corridor had died away and asked in a low voice:
     'Farsuk Karlovich, will you tell me something, in confidence?'
     'What?'
     'Who actually controls all of this?'
     'My advice to you is  not to stick your nose in,' said Farseikin. "That
way you'll stay a living god for longer; and to be honest about it,  I don't
know. Even after all the years I've been in the business.'
     He went over  to the  wall beside the altar, unlocked a small concealed
door, bent down and went  in through the opening. A light came on beyond the
door  and Tatarsky saw a large machine that looked  like an open black  book
flanked by two vertical cylinders of frosted glass.  The  flat black surface
facing Tatarsky  bore the  word 'Compuware' in  white  and  some  unfamiliar
symbol,  and  standing  in front of  the machine  was a  seat rather like  a
dentist's chair with straps and latches.
     'What's that?' Tatarsky asked.
     'A 3-D scanner.'
     'What's it for?'
     'We're going to scan in your image.'
     'Do I have to go through with it?'
     'Absolutely.  According  to the ritual,  you only become the husband of
the  great goddess after you've been digitised -converted, as they say, into
a sequence of visual images.'
     'And  then  I'll be  inserted  into all  the clips and broadcasts? Like
Azadovsky?'
     'That's your main sacramental function. The goddess really doesn't have
a body,  but  there is  something  that takes the  place  of her  body.  Her
corporeal  nature  consists  of  the  totality of all  the  images  used  in
advertising; and since she manifests  herself via  a  sequence of images, in
order to  become  godlike,  you  have  to  be  transformed. Then it  will be
possible  for you to enter into mystical  union.  In  effect, your 3-D model
will be her husband, and you'll be... a regent, I suppose. Come over here.'
     Tatarsky shifted his feet nervously and Farseikin laughed:
     'Don't  be  afraid.  It  doesn't  hurt  to  be  scanned.  It's  like  a
photocopier,  only  they  don't  close the lid  ... At least, not  yet  they
don't... OK, OK, I'm only joking.  Let's get on with it; they're waiting for
us upstairs. It's a celebration -  your  coming-out party,  so to speak. You
can relax in a circle of close friends.'
     Tatarsky  took a last  look  at  the  basalt slab with the dog  and the
goddess  before  plunging  decisively  through  the   doorway  beyond  which
Farseikin was waiting  for him. The walls and ceiling of the small room were
painted white and it was almost empty  - apart from the scanner it contained
a desk with a control panel on it and several cardboard  boxes that had once
held electronic goods standing over by the wall.
     'Farsuk Karlovich, have you heard of  the bird Semurg?'  Tatarsky asked
as he sat in the armchair and set his forearms on the armrests.
     'No. What kind of a bird is it?'
     'There was an oriental poem,' said Tatarsky; 'I haven't read it myself,
only  heard about it. About  how  thirty birds flew off to search  for their
king Semurg and then, after all kinds of different tests and  trials, at the
very end they learned that the word "Semurg" means "thirty birds".'
     'So?' Farseikin asked, pushing a black plug into a socket.
     'Well,'  said Tatarsky, 'I just thought,  maybe the  entire  Generation
"P", that is the one that chose Pepsi - you chose Pepsi  when you were young
as well, didn't you?'
     'What other choice was there?' Farseikin muttered, clicking switches on
the control panel.
     'Yes, well... I had this rather frightening thought: that dog with five
legs - maybe it's all of us together? And  now we're all on the attack, sort
of.'
     Farseikin was clearly too absorbed in his manipulations to take in what
Tatarsky had said.
     'Right,' he said, 'now hold dead still and don't blink. Ready?'
     Tatarsky gave a deep sigh.
     'Ready,' he said.
     The machine began to hum and  whirr and the frosted white lamps at each
side of it lit up with a blinding brilliance. The structure that looked like
an open  book began slowly rotating  around its axis,  a ray of  white light
struck Tatarsky in the eyes and he was blinded for several seconds.'
     'I bow before the living god,' Farseikin said solemnly.
     When Tatarsky opened his eyes,  Farseikin was kneeling  in front of the
armchair with his  head bowed, holding  out to him a  small black object. It
was Azadovsky's phone. Tatarsky took  it gingerly and examined it: the phone
looked like an ordinary small  Phillips, except that it had only one button,
in the form of a  golden eye.  Tatarsky wanted to ask if  Alia knew what was
happening, but he had no chance: Farseikin bowed,  rose  to his feet, walked
backwards to the exit and tactfully closed the door behind him.
     Tatarsky was left alone. He got up from the chair,  walked over to  the
door and listened.  He couldn't hear anything: Farseikin must already  be in
the changing room. Tatarsky moved across into the farthest comer of the room
and cautiously pressed the button on the phone.
     'Hello,' he said quietly into the handset. 'Hello!'
     'I bow  before  the living god,' Alla's  voice  replied. 'What are your
instructions for today, boss?'
     'None yet,' Tatarsky replied,  amazed to sense that  he  could play his
new part without the slightest effort. 'Although, you know what. Alia, there
will be  a few after  all. Firstly, have the carpet in the office taken up -
I'm fed up with it. Secondly, make sure that  from  today on there's nothing
but Coca-Cola in the buffet, no  Pepsi. Thirdly, Malyuta doesn't work for us
any more . . . because he's about as much use to us as a fifth leg to a dog.
All he does is spoil other people's scenarios, and then the mazuma has to go
back  . .  . And you. Alia my love, remember: if I say something, you  don't
ask "why?", you just jot it down. You follow? That's all right then.'
     When the conversation was over,  Tatarsky tried to hook the phone on to
his belt, but his Fukem-Al sheepskin skirt was  too thick. He  thought for a
few moments  about  where  he  could stick it, and  then recalled  that he'd
forgotten to say something, and pressed the golden eye again.
     'And  one more  thing,' he  said;  'I completely forgot:  take  care of
Rostropovich.'






     Babylen Tatarsky's 3-D double appeared on screen times  without number,
but Tatarsky himself only liked to rewatch a few of the tapes. The first was
a press conference  given by  officers of  the State Security Forces who had
been ordered to eliminate the  well-known businessman and  political  figure
Boris  Berezovsky: Tatarsky, wearing a black mask covering his entire  face,
is  sitting at the extreme  left of a table  crowded  with  microphones. The
second tape was the funeral of  the  TV commentator Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin,
who was  strangled  with a yellow skipping rope  in strange circumstances in
the entrance-way  of his own  house: Tatarsky,  wearing dark  glasses and  a
black armband, is  seen  kissing the inconsolable widow and tossing a  green
billiard ball on to the coffin half-covered in earth. The event shown in the
next report is  rather harder to understand: it's live footage from a hidden
camera of the  unloading  of an American  Hercules  €-130 military transport
plane following  a night landing on Red Square. The cargo being  carried out
of  the  plane consists of  a large  number  of cardboard  boxes bearing the
inscription  'electronic  equipment'  and  an  unusual-looking  logo  -  the
casually traced outline of a human mammary  gland of a size that can only be
achieved  by the  installation of a  silicone implant. Tatarsky, wearing the
uniform  of a  crack  commando,  is standing  there  stock-still.  His  next
appearance is  one familiar to everybody, as Charles I in the  monumental ad
for  the shampoo  Head and Shoulders. Far less  well  known  is another clip
filmed on Red  Square, an advert for Coca-Cola that  was shown several times
on St  Petersburg TV, showing a congress of radical fundamentalists from all
of the  world's major confessions. Dressed  completely  in  black,  Tatarsky
plays an evangelist  from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Stamping in fury on a can
of Pepsi-Cola he raises his arm to point to the Kremlin  wall  and intones a
verse from Psalm 14:
     There were they in great fear;
     for God is in the generation of the righteous.
     Many still  remember his appearance in  the  clip  for Adidas  (slogan:
"Three More  White Lines'), but for some  reason Tatarsky didn't keep it  in
his collection. It didn't even include the famous ad for the Moscow chain of
Gap  stores, in which  Tatarsky appeared together with  his deputy Morkovin,
Morkovin wearing a denim jacket embroidered with gold in the shop window and
Tatarsky  wearing a padded army  uniform hurling a  brick  at the reinforced
glass and yelling:
     'Afghanistan was  heavier'  (slogan: 'Enjoy  the Gap').  But  his  very
favourite video  clip,  the one -  as his  secretary Alia used to  say in  a
whisper - that would bring tears to his eyes, was  never shown on television
even once.
     It is a commercial for Tuborg beer with the slogan: 'Sta, viator!' (and
the  variants: 'Prepare Yourself  and  "Think  Final'  for the  regional  TV
networks)  in which the famous picture of the solitary wanderer is animated.
There were  rumours that a version of this clip was made in which there were
thirty  Tatarskys walking along the road  one after  the  other,  but  there
doesn't seem to be any way to determine whether or not that's true. The only
thing we know for sure is that the existing clip is very short and simple.
     Tatarsky, wearing a white shirt open at the  chest, is walking  along a
dusty track under a sun standing at  its  zenith.  Suddenly he is struck  by
some kind of thought.  He halts, leans against a wooden  fence and wipes the
sweat from his face  with a  handkerchief. A few seconds go by, and the hero
seems  to  grow  calmer.  Turning his  back  to the  camera,  he  stuffs the
handkerchief  into  his pocket and slowly  walks on  towards the bright-blue
horizon, where a few wispy clouds hang high in the sky.

Last-modified: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 12:15:03 GMT
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