Babylon

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 - BOMBAY SAPPHIRE GIN WITH TONIC, JUICE OR YOUR FAVOURITE MIXER

The second text must have been delivered from the great advertising agency in the sky when Tatarsky had already reached an extreme stage of drunkenness - it took him several minutes just to decipher his own scrawl. The slogan had evidently been written when his prayerful ecstasy had passed its peak and his consciousness had finally reverted to a mode of pragmatic rationalism: