e
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/ <i>Idea for a  poster,</i> he  jotted
down in his notebook:
     <i>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</i>
     <i>Offer to  Absolut  and Hennessy distributors  first,  and if they don't
take it, to Finlandia, Smimoff and Johnny Walker.</i>
     "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 - <i>The Golden Room</i>
     '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.'



        CHAPTER 15. The Golden Room


     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?'
     <i>It's a</i> 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 jo