CHAPTER 12. Cloud in Pants

The pivotal element of the office environment was the piercing voice of the western Ukrainian cook that emanated from the small canteen almost all day long. All the other elements of aural reality were strung on it like beads on a thread: telephones ringing, voices, the fax squeaking and the printer humming. The material objects and people occupying the room all condensed around this primary reality - or at least that was the way things had seemed to Tatarsky for quite a few months now.

‘So there I am yesterday driving down Pokrovka,’ a cigarette critic who’d just dashed in was telling the secretary in a high, thin tenor, ‘and I brake at the crossroads there for this queue. Beside me there’s this Chaika, and out of it gets this real heavy-looking Chechen, and he looks around like he’s just shit on everyone from a great height. He stands there, you know, like really getting into it; then suddenly up pulls this real gen-u-ine Cadillac, and out gets this girl in tattered jeans and runners and dashes over to a kiosk to get some Pepsi-Cola. You can just imagine what’s going on with the Chechen! Imagine having to swallow that!’

‘Wow!’ replied the secretary, without looking up from her computer keyboard.

There were talking behind Tatarsky too, and very loudly. One of his subordinates, a late-middle-aged editor and old Communist Party publication type, was hauling someone over the coals on the speaker-phone in a rumbling bass voice. Tatarsky could tell the editor’s deafening volume and implacable heartiness were intended for his ears. This only irritated him, and his sympathy was captured by the thin, sad voice replying from the speaker-phone.

‘I corrected one but not the other,’ the voice said quietly. "That’s how it happened.’

‘Well, well" growled the editor. ‘So what on earth do you think about when you’re working? You’re handling two pieces - one called "Prisoner of Conscience" and the other called "Eunuchs of the Harem", right?’

‘Right.’

‘You put headings on the clipboard to change the font, and then on page thirty-five you find "Prisoner of the Harem", right?’

‘Right.’

‘Then shouldn’t it be obvious enough that on page seventy-four you’re going to have "Eunuchs of Conscience"? Or are you just a total tosser?’

‘I’m a total tosser,’ agreed the sad voice.

‘You’re both fucking tossers,’ thought Tatarsky. He’d been feeling depressed since the morning - probably because of the constant rain. He’d been sitting by the window and staring at the roofs of the cars as they ploughed through the streams of murky water. Old Ladas and Moskviches built back in Soviet times stood rusting along the edge of the pavement like garbage the river of time had tossed up on to its muddy shore. The river of time itself consisted for the most part of bright-coloured foreign cars with water spurting up in fountains from under their tyres.

Lying on the desk in front of Tatarsky was a pack of Gold Yava cigarettes, the new version of the old Soviet favourite, set in a cardboard display frame, and a heap of papers.

‘Just take a Mercedes, even,’ he thought feebly. ‘A great car, no denying that. But somehow the way life’s arranged round here all you can do with it is ride from one heap of shit to another…’

He leaned his head against the glass and looked down at the car park, where he could see the white roof of the secondhand Mercedes he’d bought a month earlier that was already starting to give him trouble. ‘Second-hand,’ he thought. ‘A good name for a prosthesis shop…’

He sighed and mentally switched round the ‘c’ and the ‘d’ to make ‘Merdeces’.

‘But it doesn’t really matter,’ his train of thought ploughed on wearily, ‘because if you keep riding around in these heaps long enough, you turn into such a shit yourself that nothing around you leaves any kind of mark on you. Of course, you don’t turn into a shit just because you buy a Mercedes-6oo. It’s the other way round: the reason you can afford to buy a Mercedes-6oo is that you turn into a shit…’

He looked out of the window again and jotted down: ‘Merde-SS.

In the sense of the occult group or movement.’

It was time he got back to work. Or rather, it was time he started work. He had to write an internal review on the Gold Yava advertising campaign, then on the Camay soap and Gucci male fragrances scenarios. The Yava job was a real pain because Tatarsky hadn’t been able to work out whether or not they were expecting a positive review from him, so he wasn’t sure which way he should direct his thoughts So he decided to start with the scenarios. There were six pages of the soap text, filled with close-set writing. Opening it at the last page with a gesture of squeamish disgust, Tatarsky read the final paragraph: ‘It’s getting dark. The heroine is falling asleep and she dreams of waves of bright, gleaming hair greedily drinking in a blue liquid pouring down on them from the sky, full of proteins, vitamin B-5 and infinite happiness.’

He frowned, picked up the red pencil from his desk and wrote in above the text: ‘Too literary. How many times do I have to tell you: we don’t need writers here, we need cre-atives. Infinite happiness can’t be conveyed by means of an image sequence. Scrap it!’

The scenario for Gucci was much shorter:

Opening shot - the door of a country lavatory. Flies buzzing. The door slowly opens and we see a skinny man with a horseshoe moustache who looks as though he has a hangover squatting over the hole. Caption onscreen: ‘‘Literary critic Pavel Bisinsky’. The man looks up towards the camera, and as though continuing a conversation that’s been going on for a long time, says: ‘The argument over whether Russia is a part of Europe is a very old one. In principle a real professional has no difficulty in telling what Pushkin thought on this matter at any period of his life, within a few months either way. For instance, in a letter of 1833 to Prince Vyazemsky he wrote…’

At this point there is a loud cracking sound, the boards beneath the man break and he plunges into the cesspit. We hear a loud splash. The camera closes in on the pit, rising higher at the same time (camera movement modelled on the aerial shot of the Titanic) and shows us the surface of the dark sludge from above. The literary critic’s head emerges at the surface, he looks upwards and continues where he was interrupted by his sudden tumble.

‘Perhaps the origins of the debate should be sought in the division of the church. Krylov had a point when he said to Chaadaev: "Sometimes you look around and it seems as though you don’t live in Europe, but in some kind of’…"‘

Something jerks the critic violently downwards, and he sinks to the bottom with a gurgling sound. There is silence, broken only by the buzzing of the flies. Voice-over:

GUCCI FOR MEN BE A EUROPEAN: SMELL BETTER.

Tatarsky took up his blue pencil. ‘Very good.’ he wrote in under the text. ‘Approved. But replace the flies with Michael Jackson/Sex-Shop Dogs, change the critic for a new Russian and Pushkin, Krylov and Chaadaev for another new Russian. Cover the walls of the lavatory with pink silk. Rewrite the monologue so the speaker is recalling a fight in a restaurant on the Cote d’Azur. It’s time to have done with literary history and think about our real clientele.’

The scenario had inspired Tatarsky and he decided finally to settle accounts with Yava. He picked up the item to be reviewed and looked it over closely once again. It was a pack of cigarettes with an empty cardboard box of the same dimensions glued to it. There was a bird’s-eye view of New York on the cardboard, with a pack of Gold Yava swooping over it like a missile warhead. The caption under the picture was:

‘Counter-Strike’. Tatarsky pulled over a clean sheet of paper and hesitated for a while over which pencil to choose, the red or the blue. He laid them side by side, closed his eyes, waved his hand around above them and jabbed downwards with his forefinger. He hit the blue one.

We must certainly acknowledge that the use in advertising of the idea and the symbolism of the counter-strike is a fortunate choice. It suits the mood of the broad masses of the lumpen intelligentsia, who are the primary consumers of these cigarettes. For a long time already the mass media have been agitating for some healthy national ‘response’ in opp-position to the violent domination of American pop culture and Neanderthal liberalism. The problem is to locate the basis of this response. In an internal review not intended for outsiders’ eyes, we can state that it simply doesn’t exist. The authors of this advertising concept attempt to plug this semantic breach with a pack of Gold Yava, which will undoubtedly trigger a highly positive crystallisation in the potential consumer. It will take the form of the consumer unconsciously believing that every cigarette he smokes brings the planetary triumph of the Russian idea a little closer…

After a moment’s hesitation Tatarsky changed the first letter of ‘idea’ to a capital.

On the other hand, we have to take into account the overall impact of all the symbolism that is incorporated in the brand essence. In this connection it would seem that the combination of the slogan ‘Counter-Strike’ with the logo of British-American Tobacco Co., the company that produces these cigarettes now, could induce a kind of mental short-circuit in one section of the target group. The question that quite logically arises is whether the pack is descending on New York or actually being launched from there. If the latter is the case (and this would appear to be the more logical assumption, since the pack is shown with its lid upwards) it is not clear why this is a ‘counter-strike’.

Outside the window the bells in the tower of a small church nearby began chiming rapidly. Tatarsky listened thoughtfully for several seconds and then wrote:

The consumer might be led to conclude that Western propaganda is superior in a general sense, and that it is impossible for an introverted society to compete with an extroverted one in the provision of images.

Re-reading the last sentence, Tatarsky saw that it stank of the Slavophilic complex. He crossed it out and rounded off the theme decisively:

However, only the least materially well-off section of the target group is capable of drawing such analytical conclusions, and therefore this slip is unlikely to have any adverse effect on sales. The project should be approved.

The phone on his desk rang and Tatarsky picked up the receiver: ‘Hello.’

"Tatarsky! On the boss’s carpet at the double" said Morkovin.

Tatarsky told the secretary to type up what he’d written and went downstairs. It was still raining. He pulled his collar up and dashed across the yard to the other wing of the building. The rain was heavy and he was almost soaked through before he’d run as far as the entrance to the marble hall. ‘Surely they could have built an internal connection.’ he thought irritably. ‘It’s the same building, after all. Now I’ll make a mess of the entire carpet.’ But the sight of the guards with their sub-machine guns had a calming effect on him. One of the guards with a Scorpion on his shoulder was waiting for him by the lift, toying with a key on a chain.

Morkovin was sitting in Azadovsky’s reception room. When he saw that Tatarsky was soaked, he gave a laugh of satisfaction. ‘Nostrils flaring are they? Forget it. Leonid’s away; there won’t be any bee-keeping today.’

Tatarsky sensed something was missing in the reception room. He looked around and saw the round mirror and golden mask had disappeared from the wall.

‘Where’s he gone then?’

‘ Baghdad.’

‘What for?’

‘The ruins of Babylon are near there. He got some kind of idea into his head about climbing that tower they still have there. Showed me a photo. Real heavy stuff.’

Tatarsky gave no sign of being affected in any way by what he’d just heard. Trying to make his movements look normal, he picked up the cigarettes lying on the desk and lit one.

‘What makes him so interested in that?’ he asked.

‘Says his soul’s thirsting for the heights. Why’ve you gone so pale?’

‘I haven’t had a cigarette for two days.’ said Tatarsky. ‘I was trying to give up.’

‘Buy a nicotine patch.’

Tatarsky was already back in control of himself.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘yesterday I saw Azadovsky in another two clips. I see him every time I turn on the TV. One day he’s dancing in the corps de ballet, the next he’s reading the weather forecast. What does it all mean? Why’s he on so often? Does he just like being filmed?’

‘Yeah,’ said Morkovin, ‘it’s a weakness of his. My advice to you is not to stick your nose into that for the time being. Some time maybe you’ll find out all about it. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Let’s get down to business. What’s the latest on our Kalashnikov scenario? Their brand manager was just on the phone.’

‘Nothing new. It’s still the same: two old guys shoot down Batman over the Moskvoretsky market. Batman falls on to this kebab brazier and flaps his webbed wing in the dust; then he’s hidden by this group of old women in sarafans dancing and singing folk songs.’

‘But why two old guys?’

‘One has a short-barrel version and the other has a standard. They wanted the whole range.’

Morkovin thought for a moment.

‘Probably a father and son would do better than just two old guys. Give the father the standard and the son the short barrel. And let’s have not just Batman, but Spawn and Nightman and the whole fucking gang. The budget’s huge; we have to cover it.’

‘Thinking logically,’ Tatarsky said, ‘the son should have the standard and the father should have the sawn-off.’

Morkovin thought again for a moment.

"That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘Good thinking. Only we won’t have the mother with a holster, that would be overkill. OK, that wasn’t what I called you over for. I’ve got some good news.’

He paused tantalisingly.

‘What news is that?’ Tatarsky asked with feeble enthusiasm.

‘The first section has finally checked you out. So you’re being promoted - Azadovsky told me to put you in the picture. So I’ll do that right now.’

The canteen was empty and quiet. The television hanging on a pole in the corner was showing a news broadcast with the sound turned off. Morkovin nodded for Tatarsky to sit at the table by the television, then went over to the counter and returned with two glasses and a bottle of Smirnoff Citrus Twist.

‘Let’s have a drink. You’re soaked; you could catch a cold.’

He sat down at the table, then shook the bottle with some special kind of movement and gazed for a long time at the small bubbles that appeared in the liquid.

‘Well, would you believe it!’ he said in astonishment. ‘I can understand it in some kiosk out on the street… But even in here it’s fake. I can tell for sure it’s homebrew out of Poland… Just look at it fizz! So that’s what an upgrade can do…’

Tatarsky realised that the final phrase referred not to the vodka, but the television, and he switched his gaze from the opaque bubbly vodka to the screen, where a ruddy-faced, chortling Yeltsin was sawing rapidly at the air with a hand missing two fingers.

‘Upgrade?’ queried Tatarsky. ‘Is that some kind of cardiac stimulator?’

‘Who on earth spreads all of those rumours?’ said Morkovin, shaking his head. ‘What for? They’ve just stepped up the frequency to six hundred megahertz, that’s all. But we’re taking a serious risk.’

‘You’ve lost me again,’ said Tatarsky.

‘It used to take two days to render a report like this; but now we do it in a single night, which means we can program more gestures and facial expressions.’

‘But what is it we render?’

‘We render him,’ said Morkovin with a nod in the direction of the television. ‘And all the rest of them. 3-D.’

‘3-D?’

‘Three-dimensional modelling, if you want the precise term. The guys call it "fiddly-dee".’

Tatarsky gaped at his friend, trying to work out whether he was joking or serious. His friend withstood his gaze in silence.

‘What the hell is all this you’re telling me?’

‘I’m telling you what Azadovsky told me to tell you. I’m putting you in the picture.’

Tatarsky looked at the screen. Now it was showing the rostrum in the Duma, occupied by a dour-looking orator who seemed to have just surfaced from the agitated and murky millpond of folk fury. Suddenly Tatarsky had the impression that the Duma deputy really wasn’t alive: his body was completely motionless; only his lips and occasionally his eyebrows moved at all.

‘Him as well,’ said Morkovin. ‘Only his rendering’s coarser; there’s too many of them. He’s episodic. That’s a dummy.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, that’s what we call the Duma 3-Ds. Dynamic video bas-relief - the appearance is rendered always at the same angle. It’s the same technology, but it cuts the work down by two orders of magnitude. There’s two types - stiffs and semi-stiffs. See the way he moves his hands and head? That means he’s a stiff. And that one over there, sleeping across his newspaper - he’s a semi-stiff. They’re much smaller - you can squeeze one of them on to a hard disk. Yes, by the way, our legislature department recently won a prize. Azadovsky was watching the news from the State Duma, and all the semi-stiffs were saying how television’s whorish and calculating, all that kind of stuff. Naturally, Azadovsky took offence - he heard the word "calculating" and thought that they were trying to poke their noses into our business. So he decided to get to the bottom of this. He even got as far as picking up the phone and he was already dialling the number when he remembered there was nothing to get to the bottom of! We must be doing a good job if we manage to impress ourselves.’

‘You mean they’re all…?’

‘Every last one of them.’

‘Oh come off it,’ Tatarsky said uncertainly. ‘What about all the people who see them every day?’

‘Where?’

‘On TV… Oh, right… Well, I mean… After all, there are people who meet them every day.’

‘Have you seen those people?’

‘Of course.’

‘Where?’

Tatarsky thought about it. ‘On TV,’ he said.

‘You get my point, then?’

‘I’m beginning to,’ Tatarsky replied.

‘Speaking strictly theoretically, you could meet someone who tells you he’s seen them himself or even knows them. There’s a special service for that called The People’s Will. More than a hundred of them, former state security agents, and all Azadovsky’s men. That’s their job: to go around telling people they’ve just seen our leaders. One at his three-storey dacha, one with an under-age whore, one in a yellow Lamborghini on the Rubliovskoe Highway. But The People’s Will mostly works the beer halls and railway stations, and you don’t hang around those places.’

‘Are you telling me the truth?’ Tatarsky asked.

"The truth, cross my heart.’

‘But it’s such a massive scam.’

‘Aagh, no,’ Morkovin said with a grimace, ‘please, not that. By his very nature every politician is just a television broadcast. Even if we do sit a live human being in front of the camera, his speeches are going to be written by a team of speechwriters, his jackets are going to be chosen by a group of stylists, and his decisions are going to be taken by the Interbank Committee. And what if he suddenly has a stroke - are we supposed to set up the whole shebang all over again?’

‘OK, let’s say you’re right,’ said Tatarsky. ‘But how is it possible on such a huge scale?’

‘Are you interested in the technology? I can give you the general outline. First you need a source figure - a wax model or a human being. You use it to model the corporeal cloud. D’you know what a corporeal cloud is?’

‘Isn’t it some kind of astral thing?’

‘No. Some blockheads or other have been feeding you a load of nonsense. A corporeal cloud is the same thing as a digital cloud-form. Just a cloud of points in space. You define it either with a probe or with a laser scanner. Then the points are linked up - you impose a digital grid on them and close up the cracks. That involves a whole bundle of procedures - stitching, clean-up, and so on.’

‘But what do they stitch it up with?’

‘Numbers. They stitch up numbers with other numbers. I don’t understand it all by a long way - I studied the humanities, you know that. Anyway, when we’ve stitched everything up and cleaned it all up, we end up with a model. There are two types - one’s called polygonal, and the other’s called NURBS patch. A polygonal model consists of triangles, and a NURBS - that is ‘non-union rational bi-spline’ - consists of curves. That’s the advanced technology for serious 3-Ds. The Duma dummies are all polygonals - it’s less hassle and it keeps the faces more folksy. So when the model’s ready, you put a skeleton inside it, and that’s digital too. It’s like a set of sticks on ball-joints - on the monitor it actually looks like a skeleton, but without the ribs - and you animate the skeleton like they do for a cartoon film: move an arm this way, move a leg that way. Only we don’t actually do it by hand any more. We have special people who work as skeletons.’

‘Work as skeletons?’

Morkovin glanced at his watch. "They’re shooting right now in studio number 3. Let’s go take a look. It’ll take me all day to try to explain things to you.’

Several minutes later Tatarsky timidly followed Morkovin into a space that resembled the studio of a conceptual artist who has received a large grant for working with plywood. It was a hall two storeys high filled with numerous plywood constructions of various shapes and indefinite function -there were staircases leading into nowhere, incomplete rostrums, plywood surfaces sloping down to the floor at various angles, and even a long plywood limousine. Tatarsky didn’t see any cameras or studio lights, but there were large numbers of mysterious electrical boxes looking like musical equipment heaped up by the wall, and sitting beside them on chairs were four men who seemed to be engineers. Standing on the floor beside them were a half-empty bottle of vodka and a large number of beer cans. One of the engineers, wearing earphones, was staring into a monitor. They waved in friendly greeting to Morkovin, but no one took his attention off his work.

‘Hey, Arkasha,’ the man in the earphones called out. ‘Don’t laugh now, but we’ll have to go again.’

‘What?’ said a hoarse voice somewhere in the centre of the hall.

Turning towards the voice, Tatarsky saw a strange device: a plywood slope like the ones you see in children’s playgrounds, only higher. The sloping surface broke off above a hammock supported on wooden poles, and an aluminium stepladder led up to its summit. A heavy, elderly man with the face of a veteran policeman was sitting on the floor beside the hammock. He was wearing tracksuit trousers and a tee shirt with an inscription in English: ‘Sick my duck’. Tatarsky thought the inscription too sentimental and not quite grammatically correct.

‘You heard, Arkasha. Let’s go for it again.’

‘How many more times?’ Arkasha mumbled. ‘Im getting dizzy.’

‘Try another shot to loosen you up. So far it’s still kind of tight. I mean it; take one.’

‘The last glass hasn’t hit me yet,’ Arkasha replied, getting up off the floor and wandering over to the engineers. Tatarsky noticed there were black plastic discs attached to his wrists, elbows, knees and ankles; and there were more of them on his body - Tatarsky counted fourteen in all.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked in a whisper.

‘That’s Arkady Korzhakov. No, don’t go getting any ideas. Not Yeltsin’s old bodyguard. He’s just got the same name. Works as Yeltsin’s skeleton. Same weight, same dimensions; and he’s an actor, too. Used to do Shakespeare at the Young People’s Theatre.’

‘But what does he do?’

‘You’ll see in a moment. Like some beer?’

Tatarsky nodded. Morkovin brought over two cans of Tuborg. It gave Tatarsky a strange feeling to see the familiar figure in the white shirt on the can - Tuborg man was still wiping the sweat from his forehead in the same old way, afraid of continuing his final journey.

Arkasha downed a glass of vodka and went back to the slope. He scrambled up the slope and stood motionless at the top of the plywood structure.

‘Shall I start?’ he asked.

‘Hang on,’ said the man in the earphones, ‘we’ll just recalibrate.’

Arkasha squatted down on his haunches and took hold of the edge of the plywood surface with his hand, so that he resembled a huge fat pigeon.

‘What are those washers he’s got on him?’ asked Tatarsky.

"Those are sensors,’ replied Morkovin. ‘Motion-capture technology. He wears them at the points where the skeleton has its ball-joints. When Arkasha moves, we record their trajectory. Then we filter it a little bit, superimpose it on the model and the machine works it all out. It’s a new system, called Star Trak. The hottest thing on the market right now. No wires, thirty-two sensors, works anywhere you like, but the price - you can imagine…’

The man in the earphones turned away from the monitor.

‘Ready,’ he said. ‘Right I’ll run through it from the top. First you hug him, then you invite him to walk down, then you stumble. Only when you lower your arm, make it grander, more majestic. And fall flat, full length. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ Arkasha mumbled, and rose carefully to his feet. He was swaying slightly.

‘Let’s go.’

Arkasha turned to his left, opened his arms wide and slowly brought them together in empty space. Tatarsky was amazed at the way his movements were instantly filled with stately grandeur and majestic pomp. At first it put Tatarsky in mind of of Stanislavsky’s system, but then he realised Arkasha was simply having difficulty balancing on such a tiny spot high above the floor and was struggling not to fall. When he opened his arms again, Arkasha gestured expansively for his invisible companion to descend the slope, took a step towards it, swayed on the edge of the plywood precipice and went tumbling clumsily downwards. As he fell he somersaulted twice, and if his heavy frame had not landed in the hammock there would certainly have been broken bones. Having fallen into the hammock, Arkasha carried on lying there, with his arms wrapped round his head. The engineers crowded round the monitor and began arguing about something in quiet voices.

‘What’s it going to be?’ Tatarsky asked.

Without saying a word, Morkovin held out a photograph. Tatarsky saw some kind of hall in the Kremlin with malachite columns and a wide, sweeping marble staircase with a red-carpet-runnner.

‘Listen, why do we show him pissed if he’s only virtual?’

‘Improves the ratings.’

‘This improves his ratings?’

‘Not his rating. What kind of rating can an electromagnetic wave have? The channel’s ratings. Never tried to figure out why it’s forty thousand a minute during prime time news?’

‘I just did. How long has he been… like this?’

‘Since that time he danced in Rostov during the election campaign. When he fell off the stage. We had to get him coded double quick. Remember that by-pass operation he had? There were no end of problems. By the time they finished digitising him, he stank so bad that everyone was working in respirators.

‘But how do they do the face?’ Tatarsky asked. The movement and the expression?’

‘Same thing. Only it’s an optical system, not a magnetic one. "Adaptive optics". And for the hands we have the "Cyber Glove" system. Slice two fingers off one of them - and Boris is your uncle.’

‘Hey, guys,’ said one of the engineers, ‘keep it down a bit, can you? Arkasha’s got another jump to do. Let him rest up.’

‘What?’ said Arkasha, sitting up in the hammock. ‘You lost your marbles, have you?’

‘Let’s go,’ said Morkovin.

The next space Morkovin took Tatarsky into was called the ‘Virtual Studio’. Despite the name, inside there were genuine cameras and studio lights that gave off a pleasant warmth. The studio was a large room with green walls and floor. They were filming several people got up in fashionable rural outfits. They were standing round an empty space and nodding thoughtfully, while one of them rolled a ripe ear of wheat between his hands. Morkovin explained that they were prosperous farmers, who were cheaper to shoot on film than to animate.

‘We tell them more or less which way to look,’ he said, ‘and when to ask questions. Then we can match them up with anyone we like. Have you seen Starship Troopers? Where the star-ship troopers fight the bugs?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s the same thing. Only instead of the troopers we have farmers or small businessmen, inside of the automatics we have bread and salt, and instead of the bug we have Zyuganov or Lebed. Then we match them up, paste in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour or the Baikonur launch-pad in the background, copy it to Betacam and put it out on air… Let’s go take a look at the control room as well.’

The control room, located behind a door with the coy inscription ‘Engine Room’, failed to make any particular impression on Tatarsky. The two guards with automatic rifles standing by the door made an impression all right, but the actual premises seemed uninteresting. They consisted of a small room with squeaky parquet flooring and dusty wallpaper with green gladioli that could clearly remember Soviet times very well. There was no furniture in the room, but hanging on one wall was a colour photograph of Yuri Gagarin holding a dove in his hands, and the wall opposite was covered with metal shelving holding numerous identical blue boxes, on which the only decoration was the Silicon Graphics logo, looking like a snowflake. In appearance the boxes were not much different from the device Tatarsky had seen once in Draft Podium. There were no interesting lamps or indicators on these boxes - any old run-of-the-mill transformer might have looked just the same - but Morkovin behaved with extreme solemnity.

‘Azadovsky said you like life to have big tits,’ he said. ‘Well, this is the biggest of the lot. And if it doesn’t excite you yet, that’s just because you’re not used to it yet.’

‘What is it?’

‘A 100/400 render-server. Silicon Graphics turns them out specially for this kind of work - high end. In American terms it’s already outdated, of course, but it does the job for us. All of Europe runs on these, anyway. It can render up to one hundred primary and four hundred secondary politicians.’

‘A massive computer,’ Tatarsky said without enthusiasm.

‘It’s not even a computer. It’s a stand with twenty-four computers controlled from a single keyboard. Four 1,5-giga-hertz processors in every one. Each block calculates the frames in turn and the entire system works a bit like an aviation cannon with revolving barrels. The Americans took big bucks off us for this baby! But what can you do? When everything was just starting up, we didn’t have anything like it. Now, you know yourself, we never will have. The Americans, by the way, are our biggest problem. They keep cutting us back like we were some kind of jerks.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘The processor frequency. First they cut us back by two hundred megahertz for Chechnya. It was really for the pipeline - you realise that, anyway. Then because we stole those loans. And so on, for any old reason at all. Of course, we push things to the limit at night, but they watch TV in the embassy like everyone else. As soon we step up the frequency they pick it up and send round an inspector. It’s plain shameful. A great country like this stuck on four hundred megahertz - and not even our own.’

Morkovin went over to the stand, pulled out a slim blue box and lifted up its lid to expose a liquid-crystal monitor. Below it was a keyboard with a track-ball.

‘Is that the keyboard it’s controlled from?’ Tatarsky asked.

‘Of course not,’ said Morkovin with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘You need clearance to be able to get into the system. All the terminals are upstairs. This is just a check monitor. I want to see what we’re rendering at the moment.’

He prodded at the keys and a window with a progress indicator appeared at the bottom of the screen. It also had several incomprehensible messages in English in it: memory used 5184 M, time elapsed 23:11:12 and something else in very fine script. Then the pathway selected appeared in large letters:

C:/oligarchs/berezka/excesses/field_disgr/slalom.prg.

‘I see,’ said Morkovin. ‘It’s Berezovsky in Switzerland.’

Small squares containing fragments of an image began covering the screen, as though someone was assembling a jigsaw. After a few seconds Tatarsky recognised the familiar face with a few black holes in it still not rendered - he was absolutely astounded by the insane joy shining in the already computed right eye.

‘He’s off skiing, the bastard,’ said Morkovin, ‘and you and me are stuck in here breathing dust.’

‘Why’s the folder called "excesses"? What’s so excessive about skiing?’

‘Instead of those sticks with flags on them the storyboard has him skiing round naked ballerinas,’ Morkovin replied. ‘Some of them have blue ribbons and some of them have red ones. We filmed the girls out on the slope. They were delighted to get a free trip to Switzerland. Two of them are still doing the rounds over there.’

He turned off the control monitor, closed it and pushed the unit back into place. Tatarsky was suddenly struck by an alarming thought. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you say the Americans are doing the same?’

‘Sure. And it started a lot earlier. Reagan was animated all his second term. As for Bush - d’you remember that time he stood beside a helicopter and the hair he’d combed across his bald patch kept lifting up and waving in the air? A real masterpiece. I don’t reckon there’s ever been anything in computer graphics to compare with it. America…’

‘But is it true their copywriters work on our politics?’

‘That’s a load of lies. They can’t even come up with anything any good for themselves. Resolution, numbers of pixels, special effects - no problem. But it’s a country with no soul. All their political creatives are pure shit. They have two candidates for president and only one team of scriptwriters. It’s just full of guys who’ve been given the push by Madison Avenue, because the money’s bad in politics. I’ve been looking through their election campaign material for ages now, and it’s dreadful. If one of them talks about a bridge to the past, then a couple of days later the other one’s bound to start talking about a bridge to the future. For Bob Dole all they did was rewrite the Nike slogan from "just do it" to "just don’t do it". And the best they can come up with is a blow job in the Oral Office… Nah, our scriptwriters are ten times as good. Just look what rounded characters they write. Yeltsin, Zyuganov, Lebed. As good as Chekhov. The Three Sisters. Anyone who says Russia has no brands of its own should have the words rammed down their throat. With the talent we have here, we’ve no need to feel ashamed in front of anyone. Look at that, for instance, you see?’

He nodded at the photograph of Gagarin. Tatarsky took a closer look at it and realised it wasn’t Gagarin at all, but General Lebed in dress uniform, and it wasn’t a dove in his hands but a white rabbit with its ears pressed back. The photograph was so similar to its prototype that it produced a kind of trompe I’oeil effect: for a moment the rabbit in Lebed’s hands actually seemed to be an indecently obese pigeon.

‘A young miner did that,’ said Morkovin. ‘It’s for the cover of our Playboy. The slogan to go with it is: " Russia will be glossy and sassy". For the hungry regions it’s spot on, a bull’s eye - instant association with "sausage". The young guy probably only used to eat every other day, and now he’s one of the top creatives. He still tends to focus on food a lot, though…’

‘Hang on,’ said Tatarsky, ‘I’ve got a good idea. Let me just write it down.’

He took his notebook out of his pocket and wrote:

Silicon Graphics amp; big tits - new concept for the Russian market. Instead of a snowflake the outline of an Immense tit that looks like its been filled out with a silicon implant (casually drawn with a pen, for ‘graphics’). In the animation (the clip) an organic silicon worm crawls out of the nipple and curves itself into a $ sign (model on Spedes-II). Think about it.

‘A rush of sweaty inspiration?’ Morkovin asked. ‘I feel envious. OK, the excursion’s over. Let’s go to the canteen.’

The canteen was still empty. The television was playing away with no sound, and their two glasses and unfinished bottle of Smirnoff Citrus Twist were still standing on the table below it. Morkovin filled the glasses, clinked his own glass against Tatarsky’s without saying a word and drank up. The excursion had left Tatarsky feeling vaguely uneasy.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘there’s one thing I don’t understand. OK, so copywriters write all their texts for them; but who’s responsible for what’s in the texts? Where do we get the subjects from? And how do we decide which way national policy’s going to move tomorrow?’

‘Big business,’ Morkovin answered shortly. ‘You’ve heard of the oligarchs?’

‘Uhuh. You mean, they get together and sort out things? Or do they send in their concepts in written form?’

Morkovin put his thumb over the opening of the bottle, shook it and began gazing at the bubbles - he obviously found something fascinating in the sight. Tatarsky said nothing as he waited for an answer.

‘How can they all get together anywhere,’ Morkovin replied at long last, ‘when all of them are made on the next floor up? You’ve just seen Berezovsky for yourself.’

‘Uhuh,’ Tatarsky responded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, of course. Then who writes the scripts for the oligarchs?’

‘Copywriters. All exactly the same, just one floor higher.’

‘Uhuh. And how do we decide what the oligarchs are going to decide?’

‘Depends on the political situation. "Decide" is only a word, really. In actual fact we don’t have too much choice about it. We’re hemmed in tight by the iron law of necessity. For both sets of them. And for you and me too.’

‘So you mean there aren’t any oligarchs, either? But what about that board downstairs: the Interbank Committee…?’

‘That’s just to stop the filth from trying to foist their protection on us. We’re the Interbank Committee all right, only all the banks are intercommittee banks. And we’re the committee. That’s the way it is.’

‘I get you,’ said Tatarsky. ‘I think I get you, anyway… That is, hang on there… That means this lot determine that lot, and that lot… That lot determine this lot. But then how… Hang on… Then what’s holding the whole lot up?’

He broke off in a howl of pain: Morkovin had pinched him on the wrist as hard as he could - so hard he’d even torn off a small patch of skin.

‘Don’t you ever,’ he said, leaning over the table and staring darkly into Tatarsky’s eyes, ‘not ever, think about that. Not ever, get it?’

‘But how?’ Tatarsky asked, sensing that the pain had thrown him back from the edge of a deep, dark abyss. ‘How can I not think about it?’

"There’s this technique,’ said Morkovin. ‘Like when you realise that any moment now you’re going to think that thought all the way through, you pinch yourself or you prick yourself with something sharp. In your arm or your leg - it doesn’t matter where. Wherever there are plenty of nerve endings. The way a swimmer pricks his calf when he gets cramp. In order not to drown. And then gradually you build up something like a callus around the thought and it’s no real problem to you to avoid it. Like, you can feel it’s there, only you never think it. And gradually you get used to it. The eighth floor’s supported by the seventh floor, the seventh floor’s supported by the eighth floor; and everywhere, at any specific point and any specific moment, things are stable. Then, when the work comes piling in, and you do a line of coke, you’ll spend the whole day on the run fencing concrete problems. You won’t have time left for the abstract ones.’

Tatarsky drained the rest of the vodka in a single gulp and pinched his own thigh several times. Morkovin gave a sad laugh.

‘Take Azadovsky,’ he said, ‘why d’you think he winds everyone up and comes on heavy like that? Because it never even enters his head that there’s something strange in all of this. People like that are only born once in a hundred years. He’s got a real sense of life on an international scale…’

‘All right,’ said Tatarsky, pinching his leg again. ‘But surely someone has to control the economy, not just wind people up and come on heavy? The economy’s complicated. Doesn’t it take some kind of principles to regulate it?’

‘The principle’s very simple,’ said Morkovin. ‘Monetarism. To keep everything in the economy normal, all we have to do is to control the gross stock of money we have. And everything else automatically falls into place. So we mustn’t interfere in anything.’

‘And how do we control this gross stock?’

‘So as to make is as big as possible.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Of course. If the gross stock of money we have is as big as possible, that means everything’s hunky-dory.’

‘Yes,’ said Tatarsky, ‘that’s logical. But still someone has to run everything, surely?’

‘You want to understand everything far too quickly,’ Morkovin said with a frown. ‘I told you, just wait a while. That, my friend, is a great problem - trying to understand just who’s running things. For the time being let me just say the world isn’t run by a "who", it’s run by a "what". By certain factors and impulses it’s too soon for you to be learning about. Although in fact. Babe, there’s no way you could not know about them. That’s the paradox of it all…’

Morkovin fell silent and began thinking about something. Tatarsky lit a cigarette - he didn’t feel like talking any more. Meanwhile a new client had appeared in the canteen, one that Tatarsky recognised immediately: it was the well-known TV political analyst Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin. In real life he looked a bit older than he did on the screen. He was obviously just back from a broadcast: his face was covered with large beads of sweat, and the famous pince-nez was set crooked on his nose. Tatarsky expected Farseikin to dash over to the counter for vodka, but he came over to their table.

‘Mind if I turn on the sound?’ he asked, nodded towards the television. ‘My son made this clip. I haven’t seen it yet.’

Tatarsky looked up. Something strangely familiar was happening on the screen: there was a choir of rather dubious-looking sailors standing in a clearing in a birch forest (Tatarsky recognised Azadovsky right away - he was standing in the middle of the group, the only one with a medal gleaming on his chest). With their arms round each other’s shoulders, the sailors were swaying from side to side and gently singing in support of a yellow-haired soloist who looked like the poet Esenin raised to the power of three. At first Tatarsky thought the soloist must be standing on the stump of a gigantic birch tree, but from the ideally cylindrical form of the stump and the small yellow lemons drawn on it, he realised it was a soft drinks can magnified many times over and painted to resemble either a birch tree or a zebra. The slick image-sequencing testified that this was a very expensive clip.

‘Bom-bom-bom,’ the swaying sailors rumbled dully. The soloist stretched out his hands from his heart towards the camera and sang in a clear tenor:

My motherland gives me

For getting it right

My fill of her fizzy,

Her birch-bright Sprite!

Tatarsky crushed his cigarette into the ashtray with a sharp movement.

‘Motherfuckers.’ he said.

‘Who?’ asked Morkovin.

‘If only I knew… So tell me then, what area do they want to move me into?’

‘Senior creative in the kompromat department; and you’ll be on standby when we have a rush on. So now we’ll be standing, shoulder to shoulder, just like those sailors… Forgive me, brother, for dragging you into in all this. Life’s much simpler for the punters, who don’t know anything about it. They even think there are different TV channels and different TV companies… But then, that’s what makes them punters.’

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