Babylon

CHAPTER 13. The Islamic Factor

It happens so often: you’re riding along in your white Mercedes and you go past a bus stop. You see the people who’ve been standing there, waiting in frustration for their bus for God knows how long, and suddenly you notice one of them gazing at you with a dull kind of expression that just might be envy. For a second you really start to believe that this machine stolen from some anonymous German burgher, that still hasn’t been fully cleared through the customs in fraternal Belorussia but already has a suspicious knocking in the engine, is the prize that witnesses to your full and total victory over life. A warm shiver runs up and down your spine, you proudly turn your face away from the people standing at the bus stop, and in your very heart of hearts you know that all your trials were not in vain: you’ve really made it.

Such is the action of the anal wow-factor in our hearts; but somehow Tatarsky failed to experience its sweet titillation. Perhaps the difficulty lay in some specific after-the-rain apathy of the punters standing at their bus stops, or perhaps Tatarsky was simply too nervous: there was a review of his work coming up, and Azadovsky himself was due to attend. Or perhaps the reason lay in the increasingly frequent breakdowns of the social radar locating unit in his mind.

‘If we regard events purely from the point of view of image animation,’ he thought, glancing round at his neighbours in the traffic jam, ‘then we have all our concepts inverted. For the celestial Silicon that renders this entire world, a battered old Lada is a much more complicated job than a new BMW that’s been blasted with gales for three years in aerodynamic tunnels. The whole thing comes down to creatives and scenario writers. But what bad bastard could have written this scenario? And who’s the viewer who sits and stuffs his face while he watches this screen? Most important of all, could it all really only be happening so that some heavenly agency can rake in something like money from something like advertising? Certainly looks like it. It’s a well-known fact that everything in the world is based on similitudes.’

The traffic jam finally began to ease. Tatarsky lowered the window. His mood was completely spoiled; he needed live human warmth. He pulled out of the stream of cars and braked at the bus stop. The broken glass panel in the side of the shelter had been patched over with a board carrying an advertisement for some TV channel showing an allegorical representation of the four mortal sins holding remote controls. An old woman was sitting motionless on the bench under the shelter with a basket on her knees, and sitting beside her was a curly-headed man of about forty, clutching a bottle of beer. He was dressed in a shabby, padded military coat. Noting that the man still seemed to possess a fair amount of vital energy, Tatarsky stuck out his elbow.

‘Excuse me, soldier,’ he said, ‘can you tell me where the Men’s Shirts shop is around here?’

The man looked up at him. He must have understood Tatarsky’s real motivation, because his eyes were immediately flooded with an ice-cold fury. The brief exchange of glances was most informative - Tatarsky realised that the man realised, and the man realised Tatarsky realised he’d been realised.

‘ Afghanistan was way heavier,’ said the man.

‘I beg your pardon, what did you say?’

‘What I said was’, the man replied, shifting his grip to the neck of the bottle, ‘that Afghanistan was way heavier. And don’t you even try to beg my pardon.’

Something told Tatarsky the man was not approaching his car in order to tell him the way to the shop, and he flattened the accelerator against the floor. His instinct had not deceived him - a second later something struck hard against the rear windsow and it shattered into a spider’s web of cracks, with white foam trickling down over them. Driven by his adrenalin rush, Tatarsky accelerated sharply. ‘What a fucker,’ he thought, glancing round. ‘And they want to build a market economy with people like that.’

After he parked in the yard of the Interbank Committee, a red Range-Rover pulled up beside him - the latest model, with a set of fantastical spotlights perched on its roof and its door decorated with a cheerful drawing of the sun rising over the prairie and the head of an Indian chief clad in a feather headdress. ‘I wonder who drives those?’ Tatarsky thought, and lingered at the door of his car for a moment.

A fat, squat man wearing an emphatically bourgeois striped suit clambered out of the Range-Rover and turned round, and Tatarsky was amazed to recognise Sasha Blo - fatter than ever, even balder, but still with that same old grimace of tormented failure to understand what was really going on.

‘Sasha,’ said Tatarsky, ‘is that you?’

‘Ah, Babe,’ said Sasha Blo. ‘You’re here too? In the dirt department?’

‘How d’you know?’

‘Elementary, my dear Watson. That’s where everybody starts out. Till they get their hand in. There aren’t all that many creatives on the books. Everyone knows everyone else. So if I haven’t seen you before and now you’re parking at this entrance, it means you’re in kompromat. And you’ve only been there a couple of weeks at most.’

‘It’s been a month already,’ Tatarsky answered. ‘So what’re you doing now?’

‘Me? I’m head of the Russian Idea department. Drop in if you have any ideas.’

‘I’m not much good to you" Tatarsky answered. ‘I tried thinking about it, but it was a flop. You should try driving around the suburbs and asking the guys on the street.’

Sasha Blo frowned in dissatisfaction.

‘I tried that at the beginning,’ he said. ‘You pour the vodka, look into their eyes, and then it’s always the same answer:

"Bugger off and crash your fucking Mercedes." Can’t think of anything cooler than a Mercedes… And it’s all so destructive…’

‘That’s right,’ sighed Tatarsky and looked at the rear window of his car. Sasha Blo followed his glance.

‘Is it yours?’

‘Yes it is,’ Tatarsky said with pride.

‘I see’ said Sasha Blo, locking the door of his Range-Rover; ‘forty minutes of embarrassment gets you to work. Well, don’t let it get you down. Everything’s still ahead of you.’

He nodded and ran off jauntily towards the door, flapping a fat, greasy attache case as he went. Tatarsky gazed after him for a long moment, then looked at the rear window of his car again and took out his notebook. "The worst thing of all’, he wrote on the last page, ‘is that people base their intercourse with each other on senselessly distracting chatter, into which they cold-bloodedly, cunningly and inhumanly introduce their anal impulse in the hope that it will become someone else’s oral impulse. If this happens, the winner shudders or-giastically and for a few seconds experiences the so-called "pulse of life".’

Azadovsky and Morkovin had been sitting in the viewing hall since early morning. Outside the entrance several people were walking backwards and forwards, sarcastically discussing Yeltsin’s latest binge. Tatarsky decided they must be copywriters from the political department practising corporate non-action. They were called in one by one; on average they spent about ten minutes with the bosses. Tatarsky realised that the problems discussed were of state significance - he heard Yeltsin’s voice emanate from the hall at maximum volume several times. The first time he burbled:

‘What do we want so many pilots for? We only need one pilot, but ready for anything! The moment I saw my grandson playing with Play Station I knew straightaway what we need…’

The second time they were obviously playing back a section from an address to the nation, because Yeltsin’s voice was solemn and measured: ‘For the first time in many decades the population of Russia now has the chance to choose between the heart and the head. Vote with your heart!’

One project was wound up - that was obvious from the face of the tall man with a moustache and prematurely grey hair who emerged from the hall clutching a crimson loose-leaf folder with the inscription ‘Tsar’. Then music began playing in the hall - at first a balalaika jangled for a long time, then Tatarsky heard Azadovsky shouting: ‘Bugger it! We’ll take him off the air. Next.’

Tatarsky was the last in the queue. The dimly lit hall where Azadovsky was waiting looked luxurious but somewhat archaic, as though it had been decorated and furnished back in the forties. For some reason Tatarsky bent down when he entered. He trotted across to the first row and perched on the edge of the chair to the left of Azadovsky, who was ejecting streams of smoke into the beam of the video-projector. Azadovsky shook his hand without looking at him - he was obviously in a bad mood. Tatarsky knew what the problem was: Morkovin had explained it to him the day before.

‘They’ve dropped us to three hundred megahertz,’ he said gloomily. ‘For Kosovo. Remember how under the communists there were shortages of butter? Now it’s machine time. There’s something fatal about this country. Now Azadovsky’s watching all the drafts himself. Nothing’s allowed on the main render-server without written permission, so give it your best shot.’

It was the first time Tatarsky had seen what a draft - that is a rough sketch before it’s been rendered in full - actually looked like. If he hadn’t written the scenario himself, he would never have guessed that the green outline divided by lines of fine yellow dots was a table with a game of Monopoly set up on it. The playing pieces were identical small red arrows, and the dice were two blue blobs, but the game had been modelled honestly - in the lower section of the screen pairs of numbers from one to six flickered on and off, produced by the random number generator. The players themselves didn’t exist yet, though their moves corresponded to the points scored. Their places were occupied by skeletons of graduated lines with little circles as ball-joints. Tatarsky could only see their faces, constructed of coarse polygons - Salaman Raduev’s beard was like a rusty brick attached to the lower section of his face and a round bullet scar on his temple looked like a red button. Berezovsky was recognisable from the blue triangles of his shaved cheeks. As was only to be expected, Berezovsky was winning.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in Mother Russia, Monopoly’s a bit dicey. You buy a couple of streets, and then it turns out there are people living on them.’

Raduev laughed: ‘Not just in Russia. It’s like that everywhere. And I’ll tell you something else, Boris: not only do people live there; often they actually think the streets are theirs.’

Berezovsky tossed the dice. Once again he got two sixes.

"That’s not quite how it is.’ he said. ‘Nowadays people find out what they think from the television. So if you want to buy up a couple of streets and still sleep well, first you have to buy a TV tower.’

There was a squeak, and an animated insert appeared in the corner of the table: a military walkie-talkie with a long aerial. Raduev lifted it to his head-joint, said something curt in Chechen and put it back.

‘I’m selling off my TV announcer,’ he said, and flicked a playing piece into the centre of the table with his finger. ‘I don’t like television.’

‘I’m buying,’ Berezovsky responded quickly. ‘But why don’t you like it?

‘I don’t like it because piss comes into contact with skin too often when you watch it,’ said Raduev, shaking the dice in the green arrows of his fingers. ‘Every time I turn on the television, there’s piss coming into contact with skin and causing irritation.’

‘You must be talking about those commercials for Pampers, are you? But it’s not your skin, Salaman.’

‘Exactly,’ said Raduev irritably, ‘so why do they come into contact in my head? Haven’t they got anywhere else?’

The upper section of Berezovsky’s face was covered by a rectangle with a pair of eyes rendered in detail. They squinted in concern at Raduev and blinked a few times, then the rectangle disappeared.

‘Anyway, just whose piss is it?’ Raduev asked as if the idea had only just entered his head.

‘Drop it, Salaman,’ Berezovsky said in a reconciliatory tone. ‘Why don’t you take your move?’

‘Wait, Boris; I want to know whose piss and skin it is coming into contact in my head when I watch your television.’

‘Why is it my television?’

‘If a pipe runs across my squares, then I’m responsible for the pipe. You said that yourself. Right? So if all the TV anchormen are on your squares, you’re responsible for TV. So you tell me whose piss it is splashing about in my head when I watch it!’

Berezovsky scratched his chin. ‘It’s your piss, Salaman,’ he said decisively.

‘How come?’

‘Who else’s can it be? Think it out for yourself. In Chechnya they call you "the man with a bullet in his head" for your pluck. I don’t think anyone who decided to pour piss all over you while you’re watching TV would live very long.’ ‘You think right.’ ‘So, Salaman, that means it’s your piss.’ ‘So how does it get inside my head when I’m watching TV? Does it rise up from my bladder?’

Berezovsky reached out for the dice, but Raduev put his hand over them. ‘Explain,’ he demanded. "Then we’ll carry on playing.’

An animation rectangle appeared on Berezovsky’s forehead, containing a deep wrinkle. ‘All right,’ he said,’ I’ll try to explain.’

‘Go on.’

‘When Allah created this world.’ Berezovsky began, casting a quick glance upwards, ‘he first thought it; and then he created objects. All the holy books tell us that in the beginning was the word. What does that mean in legal terms? In legal terms it means that in the first place Allah created concepts. Coarse objects are the lot of human beings, but in stead of them Allah’ - he glanced upwards quickly once again - ‘has ideas. And so Salman, when you watch advertisements for Pampers on television, what you have in your head is not wet human piss, but the concept of piss. The idea of piss comes into contact with the concept of skin. You understand?’

‘More or less,’ said Raduev thoughtfully. ‘But I didn’t understand everything. The idea of piss and the concept of skin come into contact inside my head, right?’

‘Right.’

‘And instead of things, Allah has ideas. Right?’

‘Right,’ said Berezovsky, and frowned. An animation patch appeared on his blue-shaven cheeks, showing his jaw muscles clenched tightly.

‘That means what happens inside my head is Allah’s piss coming into contact with Allah’s skin, blessed be his name? Right?’

‘You probably could put it like that,’ said Berezovsky, and the insert with the wrinkle appeared again on his forehead (Tatarsky had indicated this point in the scenario with the words: ‘Berezovsky senses the conversation is taking a wrong turning.’)

Raduev stroked the rusty brick of his beard.

‘Al-Halladj spoke truly,’ he said, ‘in saying that the greatest wonder of all is a man who sees nothing wonderful around him. But tell me, why does it happen so often? I remember one time when piss came into contact with skin seventeen times in one hour.’

"That was probably to settle up with Galiup Media,’ Berezovsky replied condescendingly. ‘The customer must’ve been a tough guy. So they had to account for his money before his protection could account for them. But what of it? If we sell the time, we show the material.’

Raduev’s skeleton swayed towards the table. ‘Hang on, hang on. Are you telling me that piss comes into contact with skin every time they give you money?’

‘Well, yes.’

Raduev’s skeleton was suddenly covered with a crudely drawn torso dressed in a Jordanian military uniform. He put his hand down behind the back of his chair, pulled out a Kalashnikov and pointed it at his companion’s face.

‘What’s wrong, Salaman?’ Berezovsky asked quietly, automatically raising his hands.

‘What’s wrong? I’ll tell you. There’s a man who gets paid for splashing piss on the skin of Allah, and this man is still alive. That’s what’s wrong.’

The insert with the Jordanian uniform disappeared, the thin lines of the skeleton returned to the screen and the Kalashnikov was transformed into a wavering line of dots. The upper section of Berezovsky’s head, at which this line was pointed, was concealed by an animation patch with a Socratean brow covered with large beads of sweat among sparse hair.

‘Easy, now, Salaman, easy,’ said Berezovsky. ‘Two men with bullets in their heads at one table would be too much. Don’t get excited.’

‘What d’you mean, don’t get excited? You’re going to wash away every drop of piss you’ve spilled on Allah with a bucket of your blood, I’m telling you.’

Furiously working thought was reflected in Berezovsky’s screwed-up eyes. That was what it said in the scenario - ‘furiously working thought’ - and Tatarsky couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of technology could have allowed the an-imators to achieve such literal accuracy.

‘Listen,’ said Berezovsky, ‘I’ll start getting worried if you keep this up. Of course my head isn’t armour-plated, that’s obvious. But then neither is yours, as you know very well. And my protection are all over the place… Aha… That’s what they told you on your radio?

Raduev laughed. ‘They wrote in Forbes magazine that you grasp everything instantly. Looks like they were right.’

‘You subscribe to Forbes^[7]’

‘Why not? Chechnya’s part of Europe now. We should know our clientele.’

‘If you’re so fucking cultured,’ Berezovsky said irritably, ‘then why can’t we talk like two fucking Europeans? Without all this barbarism?’

‘Go on then.’

‘You said I would wash away every drop of piss with a bucket of my blood, right?’

‘Right,’ Raduev agreed with dignity. ‘And I’ll say it again.’

‘But you can’t wash away piss with blood. It’s not Tide, you know.’

(Tatarsky had the idea that the phrase ‘You can’t wash away piss with blood’ would make a wonderful slogan for an all-Russian campaign for Tide, but it was too dark for him to note it down.)

"That’s true,’ Raduev agreed.

‘And then, you agree that nothing in the world happens against Allah’s will?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right then, let’s go further. Surely you don’t think that I could… I could… well, that I could do what I’ve done if it was against the will of Allah?’

‘No.’

‘Then let’s go further,’ Berezovsky continued confidently. ‘Try looking at things this way: I’m simply an instrument in the hands of Allah, and what Allah does and why are beyond understanding. And then, if it wasn’t Allah’s will, I wouldn’t have gathered all the TV towers and anchormen in my three squares. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Can we stop here?’

Raduev stuck the barrel of the gun against Berezovsky’s forehead. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll go a bit further than you suggest. I’ll tell you what the old folks say in my village. They say that according to Allah’s original idea this world should be like a sweet raspberry that melts in your mouth, but people like you with their avarice have turned it into piss coming into contact with skin. Perhaps it is Allah’s wish that people like you should come into the world; but Allah is merciful, and so it is his will too that people like you who stop life tasting like a sweet raspberry should be blown away. After talking to you for five minutes life tastes like piss that’s eaten away all my brains, get it? And in fucking Europe they pay compensation for things like that, get it? Haven’t you ever heard of deprived adulthood?’

Berezovsky sighed. ‘I see you prepared thoroughly for our talk. All right, then. What kind of compensation?

‘I don’t know. You’d have to something pleasing to God.’

‘For instance?’

‘I don’t know,’ Raduev repeated. ‘Build a mosque; but it would have to be a very big mosque. Big enough to pray away the sin I’ve committed by sitting at the same table with a man who has splashed piss on the skin of the Inexpressible.’

‘I’m with you,’ said Berezovsky, lowering his hands slightly. ‘And to be precise, just how big?’

‘I think the first contribution would be ten million.’

‘Isn’t that a lot?’

‘I don’t know if it’s a lot or not,’ said Raduev, stroking his beard pensively, ‘because we can only comprehend the notions of "a lot" and "a little" in comparative terms. But perhaps you noticed a herd of goats when you arrived at my headquarters?’

‘I noticed them. What’s the connection?’

‘Until that twenty million arrives in my account in the Islamic bank, seventeen times every hour they’ll duck you in a barrel of goat’s piss, and it’ll come into contact with your skin, and cause irritation, and you’ll have plenty of time to think about whether it’s a lot or a little - seventeen times an hour.’

‘Hey-hey-hey,’ said Berezovsky, lowering his hands. ‘What’s that? Just a moment ago it was ten million.’

‘You forgot about the dandruff.’

‘Listen Salaman, my dear, that’s not the way business is done.’

‘Do you want to pay another ten for the smell of sweat?’ Raduev asked, shaking his automatic. ‘Do you?’

‘No, Salaman,’ Berezovsky said wearily. ‘I don’t want to pay for the smell of sweat. Tell me, by the way, who is it filming us with that hidden camera?’

‘What camera?’

‘What’s that briefcase over there on the window sill?’ Berezovsky jabbed his finger towards the screen.

‘Ah, spawn of Satan,’ Raduev muttered and raised his automatic.

A white zigzag ran cross the screen, everything went dark, and the the lights came on in the hall.

Azadovsky exchanged glances with Morkovin. ‘Well, what do you think?’ Tatarsky asked timidly. ‘Tell me, where do you work?’ Azadovsky asked disdainfully. ‘In Berezovsky’s PR department or in my dirt squad?’

‘In the dirt squad,’ Tatarsky replied.

‘What were you asked for? A scenario of negotiations between Raduev and Berezovsky, with Berezovsky giving the Chechen terrorists twenty million dollars. And what’s this you’ve written? He’s not giving them money! You’ve got him building a mosque! A fucking good job it’s not the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. If we didn’t produce Berezovsky ourselves, I might imagine you were being paid by him. And who’s this Raduev of yours? Some kind of professor of theology? He reads magazines even I’ve never heard of.’

‘But there has to be some development of the plot, some logic…’

‘I don’t want logic, I want dirt. And this isn’t dirt, it’s just plain shit. Understand?’

‘Yes.’ replied Tatarsky, lowering his eyes.

Azadovsky softened slightly.

‘But in general.’ he stated, ‘there is a certain healthy core to it. The first plus is that it makes you hate television. You want to watch it and hate it, watch it and hate it… The second plus is that game of Monopoly. Was that your own idea?’

‘Yes,’ Tatarsky said, more brightly.

"That works. Terrorist and oligarch dividing up the people’s wealth at the gaming table… The punters’ll go raging mad at that.’

‘But isn’t it a bit too…’ Morkovin put in, but Azadovsky interrupted him.

‘No. The most important thing is to keep brains occupied and feelings involved. So this move with the Monopoly is OK. It’ll improve the news rating by five per cent at least. That means it’ll increase the value of one minute at prime time…’

Azadovsky took his calculator out of his pocket and began to press tiny buttons.

‘…by nine thousand,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘So what does that mean for an hour? Multiply by seventeen. Not bad. We’ll do it. To cut it short, let them play Monopoly and you tell the producer to inter-cut it with shots of queues for the savings bank, miners, old women, hungry children, wounded soldiers - the works. Only take out that stuff about TV anchormen, or else we’ll have to create a stink over it. Better give them a new piece for their Monopoly - a TV drilling tower. And have Berezovsky say he wants to build these towers everywhere so they can pump out oil and pump in advertising at the same time. And do a montage of the Ostankino TV tower with a rock drill. How d’you like it?’

‘Brilliant,’ Tatarsky readily agreed.

‘How about you?’ Azadovsky asked Morkovin.

‘I’m for it one hundred per cent.’

‘Yeah, right! I could replace the lot you all on my own. Right, listen to the doctor’s orders. Morkovin, you give him that new guy who writes about food for reinforcements. We’ll leave Raduev basically the way he is, only give him a fez instead of that cap of his; I’m sick of it already. That means we get in a poke at Turkey as well. And then I’ve been meaning to ask for ages about his dark glasses. Why’s he always wearing them? Are we saving time on rendering the eyes or something?’

‘That’s right,’ said Morkovin. ‘Raduev’s always in the news, and dark glasses cut down the time by twenty per cent. We get rid of all the expressions.’ Azadovsky’s face darkened somewhat.

‘God grant, we’ll get this business with the frequency sorted out. But give Berezovsky a boost, OK?’

‘OK.’

‘And do it now, urgent material.’

‘We’ll do it,’ answered Morkovin. ‘As soon as the viewing’s over we’ll go back to my office.’

‘What have we got next?’

‘Ads for televisions. A new type.’

Tatarsky rose halfway out of his chair, but Morkovin put out a hand to stop him.

‘Get on with it,’ Azadovsky said with a wave of his hand. ‘There’s still twenty minutes to go.’

The lights went out again. A small, pretty Japanese woman in a kimono appeared on the screen. She was smiling. She bowed and then spoke with a distinct accent:

‘You will now be addressed by Yohohori-san. Yohohori-san is the oldest employee at Panasonic, which is why he has been given this honour. He suffers from a speech impediment due to war wounds, so please, dear viewers, forgive him this shortcoming.’

The young woman moved aside. A thickset Japanese man appeared, holding a sword in a black scabbard. At his side there was a black streamlined television looking like an eye ripped from the head of some huge monster - the comparison occurred to Tatarsky because the background was scarlet.

‘Panasonic presents a revolutionary invention in the world of television,’ said the Japanese. "The first television in the world with voice control in all languages of the planet, including Russian. Panasword V-2!

The Japanese stared into the viewer’s eyes with an intense hatred and suddenly pulled his sword from its scabbard.

‘Sword forged in Japan!’ he yelled, setting the cutting edge up against the camera lens. ‘Sword that will slit the throat of the putrefied world! Long live the Emperor!’

Some people in white medical coats fluttered across the screen - Mr Yohohori was ushered off somewhere, a pale-faced girl in a kimono began bowing in apology and across all this disgrace appeared the Panasonic logo. A low voice-over commented with satisfaction: ‘Panasodding!’

Tatarsky heard a telephone trill.

‘Hello,’ said Azadovsky’s voice in the darkness. ‘What? I’m on my way.’

He stood up, blocking out part of the screen.

‘Ogh,’ he said, ‘seems like Rostropovich’ll get another medal today. They’re about to call me from America. I sent them a fax yesterday telling them democracy was in danger and asking them to raise the frequency two hundred megahertz. They finally seem to have twigged we’re all in the same business.’

Tatarsky suddenly had the impression that Azadovsky’s shadow on the screen wasn’t real, but just an element of a video recording, a black silhouette like the ones you get in pirate copies of films shot from the cinema screen. For Tatarsky these black shadows on their way out of the cinema, known to the owners of underground video libraries as ‘runners’, served as a special kind of quality indicator: the influence of the displacing wow-factor drove more people out of a good film than a bad one, so he usually asked for the ‘films with runners’ to be kept for him; but now he felt almost afraid at the thought that if a man who’d just been sitting beside you could turn out to be a runner, it could mean you were just another runner yourself. The feeling was complex, profound and new, but Tatarsky had no time to analyse it: humming a vague tango, Azadovsky wandered over to the edge of the screen and disappeared.

The next video began in a more traditional manner. A family - father, mother, daughter with a pussy cat and granny with a half-knitted stocking - were sitting round a fire in a hearth set in a strange mirror-surface wall. As they gazed into the flames blazing behind the grate, they made rapid, almost caricatured movements: the granny knitted, the mother gnawed on the edge of a piece of pizza, the daughter stroked the pussy cat and the father sipped beer. The camera moved around them and passed in through the mirror-wall. From the other side the wall was transparent: when the camera completed its movement, the family was overlaid by the flames in the hearth and bars of the grate. An organ rumbled threateningly; the camera pulled back and the transparent wall was transformed into the flat screen of a television with stereo speakers at each side and the coy inscription ‘Tofetissimo’ on its black body. The image on television showed flames in which four black figures were jerking in rapid movements behind metal bars. The organ fell silent and an insidious announcer’s voice took over:

‘Did you think there was a vacuum behind the absolutely flat Black Trinitron’s screen? No! there’s a flame blazing there that will warm your heart! The Sony Tofetissimo. It’s a Sin.’

Tatarsky didn’t understand very much of what he’d seen; he just thought that the coefficient of involvement could be greatly improved if the slogan was replaced by another reference to those Sex-Shop Dogs or what-d’you-call-them: Go Fumes.

‘What was that?’ he asked, when the lights came on. ‘It wasn’t much like an advertisement.’

Morkovin smiled smugly.

‘It’s not; that’s the whole point,’ he said. ‘In scientific terms, it’s a new advertising technology reflecting the reaction of market mechanisms to the increasing human revulsion at market mechanisms. To cut it short, the viewer is supposed gradually to develop the idea that somewhere in the world - say, in sunny California - there is a final oasis of freedom unconstrained by the thought of money, where they make advertisements like this one. It’s profoundly anti-market in form, so it promises to be highly market-effective in content.’

He looked to make sure there was no one else in the hall and began talking in a whisper.

‘And now down to business. I don’t think this place is bugged, but talk quietly just in case. Well done, that went just great. Here’s your share.’

Three envelopes appeared in his hand - one fat and yellow and two rather slimmer.

‘Hide these quick. This is twenty from Berezovsky, ten from Raduev and another two from the Chechens. Theirs is the thickest because it’s in small bills. They took up a collection round the hill villages.’

Tatarsky swallowed hard, took the envelopes and quickly stuffed them into the inside pockets of his jacket. ‘Do you think Azadovsky could have twigged?’ he whispered.

Morkovin shook his head.

‘Listen,’ whispered Tatarsky, glancing round again, ‘how is this possible? I can understand about the hill villages, but Berezovsky doesn’t exist, and neither does Raduev. That is, they do exist, but they’re only a combination of ones and zeroes, ones and zeroes. How can they send us money?’

Morkovin shrugged.

‘I don’t really understand it myself,’ he answered in a whisper. ‘Maybe it’s some interested parties or other. Maybe some gangs are involved and they’re re-defining their image. Probably if you work it all out it all comes back down to us. Only why bother to work it all out? Where else are you going to earn thirty grand a throw? Nowhere. So don’t worry about it. Nobody really understands a single thing about the way this world works.’

The projectionist stuck his head into the hall. ‘Hey, are you guys going to stay there much longer?’

‘We’re discussing the clips,’ Morkovin whispered.

Tatarsky cleared his throat.

‘If I’ve grasped the difference correctly,’ he said in an unnaturally loud voice, ‘then an ordinary advertisement and what we’ve seen are like straight pop-music and the alternative music scene?’

‘Precisely,’ Morkovin replied just as loudly, rising to his feet and glancing at his watch. ‘But just what exactly is alternative music - and what is pop? How would you define it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tatarsky answered. ‘From the feel, I suppose.’

They walked past the projectionist loitering in the doorway and went towards the lifts.

‘There is a precise definition,’ said Morkovin didactically. ‘Alternative music is music the commercial essence of which consists in its extreme anti-commercial ethos. Its anti-pop quality, so to speak. Which means that, in order to get this quality right, an alternative musician must first of all be a really shrewd merchant, and those are rare in the music business. There are plenty of them, of course, but they’re not performers, they’re managers… OK, relax. Have you got the text with you?’

Tatarsky nodded.

‘Let’s go to my office. I’ll give you a co-author, just like Azadovsky ordered. And I’ll stick the co-author three grand so he won’t spoil the scenario.’

Tatarsky had never gone up to the seventh floor where Morkovin worked. The corridor they entered on leaving the lift looked dull and reminded him of an old Soviet-period office building - the floor was covered with scuffed and dirty wooden parquet and the doors were upholstered with black imitation leather. On each door, though, there was an elegant metal plaque with a code consisting of numbers and letters. There were only three letters - ‘A’, ‘0’ and ‘D’, but they occurred in various combinations. Morkovin stopped beside a door with a plaque marked ‘i - A-D’ and entered a code in the digital lock.

Morkovin’s office was imposingly large and impressively furnished. The desk alone had obviously cost several times as much as Tatarsky’s Mercedes. This masterpiece of the furniture-maker’s art was almost empty - there was a file containing papers and two telephones without number pads, one red and one white. There was also a strange device: a small metal box with a glass panel in its top. Hanging above the desk was a picture that Tatarsky took at first for a cross between a socialist realist landscape and a piece of Zen calligraphy. It showed a bushy corner of a shady garden depicted with photographic precision, but daubed carelessly across the bushes was a giant hieroglyph covered with identical green circles.

‘What’s that?’

‘The president out walking,’ said Morkovin. ‘Azadovsky presented it to me to create an air of responsible authority. Look, you see, the skeleton’s wearing a tie. And some kind of badge as well - it’s right on top of a flower, so you have to look closely. But that’s just something the artist dreamed up.’

Turning away from the picture, Tatarsky noticed they weren’t alone in the office. At the far end of the spadous room there was a stand with three flat monitors and ergonomic keyboards, with their leads disappearing into a wall covered with cork. A guy with a ponytail was sitting at one of the monitors and grazing his mouse with lazy movements on a small grey mat. His ears were pierced by at least ten small earrings, and there were two more passing through his left nostril. Remembering Morkovin’s advice to prick himself with something sharp whenever he began thinking about the lack of any general order of things in the Universe, Tatarsky decided this wasn’t a case of excessive enthusiasm for piercing; it was the result of close proximity to the technological epicentre of events - the guy with the ponytail simply never bothered to remove his pins.

Morkovin sat at the desk, picked up the receiver of the white phone and issued a brief instruction.

‘Your co-author’ll be here in a minute,’ he said to Tatarsky. ‘You haven’t been here before, have you? These terminals are linked into the main render-server. And this man here is our head designer, Semyon Velin. You realise what a responsibility that is?’

Tatarsky deferentially approached the guy at the computer and glanced at the screen, which showed a trembling grid of finely spaced blue lines. The lines were linked up in the form of two extended hands, the palms held close together with the middle fingers touching. They were slowly revolving around an invisible vertical axis. In some elusive fashion the picture reminded Tatarsky of a shot from a low-budget science-fiction movie of the eighties. The guy with the ponytail moved his mouse across the mat, stuck the arrow of the cursor into a menu that appeared at the top of the screen and the angle between the palms of the hands changed.

‘Didn’t I say we should program in the golden section straightaway?’ he said, turning to face Morkovin.

‘What are you talking about?’

"The angle. We should have made it the same as in the Egyptian pyramids. It’ll give the viewer this unconscious feeling of harmony, peace and happiness.’

‘Why are you wasting time messing about with that old rubbish?’ Morkovin asked. ‘"Our Home Russia" has no chance.’

‘"Our Home Russia" be buggered,’ Velin replied. "They had a good slogan - "The Roof of Your House". We can make this roof out of fingers. The target group will instantly be reminded of bandits’ finger-talk and the works. The message will be clear: we provide protection. We’re bound to come back round to it anyway.’

‘OK,’ said Morkovin, ‘put in your golden section. Let the punters relax. Only don’t mention it in the documentation.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ said Morkovin, ‘you and I know what the golden section is. But the accounts department’ - he jerked his head upwards - ‘might not approve the budget. They’ll think if it’s gold it must be expensive. They’re economising on "Our Home Russia" now.’

‘I get you,’ said Velin. "Then I’ll just put in the angle. Call to get them to open the root directory.’

Morkovin pulled over the red phone.

‘Hello? This is Morkovin from the anal-displacement department. Open the root directory for terminal five. We’re doing some cosmetic repairs. All right…’

‘That’s done,’ said Morkovin. ‘Just a moment. Alla, Semyon wants to ask you something.’

Velin grabbed the receiver. ‘Alla, hi! Could you check the hair density for Chernomyrdin? What? No, that’s the whole point, I need it for the poster. OK, I’m writing - thirty-two hpi, colour Ray-Ban black. Have you given me access? OK, then that’s the lot.’

‘Listen,’ Tatarsky asked quietly, when Velin was back at his terminal, ‘what’s that - hpi?’

‘Hairs per inch,’ Morkovin answered. ‘Like dots per inch with those laser printers.’

‘And what does that mean - "the anal displacement department"?’

"That’s what our department is called.’

‘Why such a strange name?’

‘Well it’s the general theory of elections.’ Morkovin said with a frown. ‘To cut it short, there should always be three wow-candidates: oral, anal and displacing. Only don’t go asking me what that means, you don’t have security clearance yet. And anyway I don’t remember. All I can say is that in normal countries they get by with the oral and anal wow-candidates, because the displacement has been completed; but things are only just getting started here and we need the displacing candidate as well. We give him about fifteen per cent of the votes in the first round. I think I can write you a clearance if you’re that interested.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tatarsky, ‘forget it.’

‘Dead right. Why the fuck should you strain your brains on your salary. The less you know, the easier you breathe.’

‘Exactly,’ said Tatarsky, noting to himself that if Davidoff started making ultra-lights there couldn’t possibly be a better slogan.

Morkovin opened his file and took up a pencil. Out of a sense of delicacy Tatarsky moved away to the wall and began studying the sheets of paper and pictures pinned to it. At first his attention was caught by a photograph of Antonio Banderas in the Hollywood masterpice Stepan Banderas. Banderas, romantically unshaven, holding a giant balalaika case, was standing on the outskirts of some abstract Ukrainian village and gazing sadly at a burned-out Russian tank in a sunflower chaparral (from the first glance at the crowd of droopy-mustachioed villagers in their cockerel-embroidered ponchos, who were squinting at the reddish-yellow sun, it was obvious that the film had been shot in Mexico). The poster wasn’t genuine - it was a collage. Some anonymous joker had matched up Banderas’ torso in dark leather with a heavy-assed pair of girl’s legs in dark-brown tights. There was a slogan under the image:

SAN PELEGRINO TIGHTS FASHIONED TO RESIST ANY STRAIN

Sellotaped directly on to the poster was a fax on the letterhead of Young and Rubicam. The text was short:

Sergei! Essence correction/or three brands:

Chubais-green stuff in the bank/green stuff in the jar

Yavlinsky - think different/think doomsday (‘Apple’ doesn’t object)

Yeltsin - stability in a coma/democracy in a coffin

Hi there, Wee Kolya.

‘It’s a weak idea for Chubais.’ said Tatarsky, turning towards Morkovin, ‘and where are the communists?’

‘They write them in the oral displacement department.’ Morkovin answered. ‘And thank God for that. I wouldn’t take them for twice my salary.’

‘Do they pay more over there?’

‘The same. But they have some guys who are willing to slave away for free. You’ll meet one of them in a moment, by the way.’

Hanging beside Banderas was a greetings card produced on a colour printer, showing a golden double-headed eagle clutching a Kalashnikov in one taloned foot and a pack of Marlboro in the other. There was an inscription in gold below the eagle’s feet:

SANTA BARBARA FOR EVER! THE RUSSIAN IDEA DEPARTMENT CONGRATULATES OUR COLLEAGUES ON ST VARVARA’S DAY

To the right of the greetings card there was another advertising poster: Yeltsin leaning over a chessboard on which no figures had been moved. He was looking at it sideways on (the setting seemed to emphasise his role as the supreme arbiter). The king and the rook on the white side had been replaced by small bottles labelled ‘Ordinary Whisky’ and ‘Black Label’. Next to the chessboard there stood a small model of a seashore villa looking more like a fortress. The text was: