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:
     <I>RUSSIA  - NO WAY  IS THERE  TO UNDERSTAND HER NO WAY HER SECRET SOUL TO
RENDER SMIRNOFF</I>
     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  <i>Titanic</i> 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"


        CHAPTER 6. The Path to Your Self


     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:
     <i>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:</i>
     <i>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:</i>
     <I>JUST BE. CALVIN</I> 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:
     <i>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'. . .</i>
     'No, they actually liked that bit... aha, here it is:
     <i>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 ...'</i>
     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:
     <i>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</i>'/
<i>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...</i>
     'So why the hell did you underline that? Really smart  that, is it? OK,
what comes next...
     <i>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 ...'</i>
     '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:
     <i>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.</i>
     '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 <i>the</i> 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 <i>cognitive dissonance'.</i> 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 <i>Hell-raiser.</i> 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