h 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.
     <i>Enkidu</i>  (Enki  fecit) ;'s <i>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...</i>
     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:
     <i>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</i>
     <i>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.</i>
     <i>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.</i>
     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 <i>delirium tremens</i> 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 <i>tofet.'</i>
     '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 <i>the material fire.</i> 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:
     <i>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:</i>
     <I>THE SHINING WORD FOR YOUR SHINING WORLD!</I>
     <i>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.</i>
     Tatarsky dropped the  pen and raised his red, tear-stained eyes to  the
ceiling. 'Dost Thou like it. Lord?' he asked quietly.




        CHAPTER 10. Wee Vova


     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 - <I>BOMBAY SAPPHIRE</I> 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 <I>REEBOK</I>
     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 <i>asura.</i> 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 newspap