Babylon

DO IT YOURSELF, MOTHERFUCKER REEBOK

The phone rang. ‘Khanin.’ Tatarsky thought in fright as he picked up the receiver. But it was Gireiev.

‘Babe? How’re you doing?’

‘So-so, ‘Tatarsky replied.

‘Sorry about yesterday. You phoned so late, and my wife went on the warpath. Did you get by OK?’

‘More or less.’

‘Know what I wanted to tell you? You might find it interesting from a professional point of view. This lama’s arrived in town - Urgan Djambon Tulku the Seventh, from the Gelugpa sect - and he gave an entire lecture about advertising. I’ve got it on cassette; you can have a listen to it. There was loads of all sorts of stuff, but the central idea was very interesting. From the Buddhist point of view the meaning of advertising is extremely simple. It attempts to convince us that consuming the product advertised will result in a high and auspicious reincarnation - and not even after death, but immediately following the act of consumption. Like, chew Orbit sugar-free and straightaway you’re an asura. Chew Dirol, and you’re a god with snow-white teeth.’

‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying,’ said Tatarsky, wincing at his gradually dissipating spasms of nausea.

‘Well, to keep it simple, what he was trying to say was that the main purpose of advertising is to show people other people who’ve managed to find happiness in the possession of material objects. But in reality people suffering from that delusion don’t exist anywhere except in the ads.’

‘Why?’ asked Tatarsky, struggling to keep up with the ebbs and flows of his friend’s thought.

‘Because it’s never the things that are advertised, it’s human happiness. The people they show are always equally happy, only the happiness comes from buying different things in different cases. So people don’t go to a shop to buy things, they go there looking for this happiness; but the shops don’t sell it. Then the lama criticised the theory of someone called Che Guevara. He said Che Guevara wasn’t a proper Buddhist and therefore wasn’t a proper authority for a Buddhist; and he hadn’t actually given the world anything except a burst of machine-gun fire and his famous trademark. But then, the world hadn’t give him anything else either…’

‘Listen,’ said Tatarsky, ‘finish up, will you? I can’t take anything in anyway - my head hurts. Why don’t you just tell me what that mantra was you gave me?’

‘It’s not a mantra,’ replied Gireev. ‘It’s a sentence in Hebrew from a textbook. My wife’s studying it.’

‘Your wife?’ Tatarsky echoed in surprise, wiping the beads of cold sweat from his forehead. ‘But of course. If you have a son, then you have a wife. What’s she studying Hebrew for?’

‘She wants to get out of here. Not long ago she had this terrible vision. No glitches, mind, just while she was meditating. Anyway, there’s this rock and this naked girl lying on it and the girl is Russia. So stooping over her there’s this… You can’t make out the face, but he seems to be wearing an army coat with epaulettes, or some kind of cloak. And he’s giving her…’

‘Don’t pile it on,’ said Tatarsky. ‘I’ll be sick. I’ll call you back later, OK?’

‘OK,’ agreed Gireiev.

‘Hang on. Why’d you give me that sentence and not a mantra?’

‘What’s the difference? In that state it doesn’t matter what you recite. The main thing is to keep your mind occupied and drink as much vodka as possible. Who’s going to give you a mantra without conferring it properly anyway?’

‘So what does the phrase mean?’

‘Let me have a look. Where is it now… Aha, here it is. ‘Od melafefon bva kha sha.’ It means "Please give me another cucumber". What a gas, eh? A natural born mantra. Of course, it starts with "od", not "om", I changed that. And if you put "hum" at the end as well…’

‘OK, OK" said Tatarsky. ‘Cheers. I’m going out for some beer.’

It was a clear, fresh morning; its cool purity seemed to conceal some incomprehensible reproach. Tatarsky emerged from the entrance-way of his house and stopped, absorbed in thought. It would take him ten minutes to walk as far as the round-the-clock shop he normally went to for hangover remedies (the local winos called it ‘the round-the-bend place’) and the same amount of time to get back. Close by, just a couple of minutes away, were the kiosks in one of which he had formerly worked. Since then he hadn’t gone anywhere near them, but he had no time right now to worry about any vague, ill-defined fears. Struggling against his own reluctance to carry on living, Tatarsky set off towards the kiosks.

Several of them were already open, and there was a newspaper stand beside them. Tatarsky bought three cans of Tuborg and an analytical tabloid - it was one he used to look through for the sake of the advertising spreads, which aroused his professional interest even in a severely hung-over state. He drank the first can while he leafed through the tabloid. His attention was caught by an advertisement for Aeroflot showing a married couple climbing up a gangway set against a palm tree laden with paradisaical fruit. ‘What idiots,’ Tatarsky thought. ‘Who advertises themselves like that? Someone needs to fly to Novosibirsk, and they promise him he’ll end up in heaven. But maybe he’s not due in heaven just yet; maybe he’s got business in Novosibirsk… Might as well invent an "Icarus" airbus…’ The next page was taken up by a colourful advertisement for an American restaurant on Uprising Square - a photograph of the entrance with a jolly neon sign blazing above it: