Babylon

CHAPTER 14. Critical Times

They were shooting from the bridge, the way they do these things in Moscow. The old T-80s only fired at long intervals, as though the sponsors, short of money for shells, were afraid it would all be over too quickly and so they wouldn’t make the international news. There was apparently some unwritten minimal requirement for reports from Russia: there had to be at least three or maybe four tanks, a hundred dead and something else as well - Tatarsky couldn’t remember what exactly. This time an exception must have been made because of the picturesque visual quality of the events: although there were only two tanks, the quayside was packed with television crews with their optical bazookas blasting out megatons of somnolent human attention along the river Moscow at the tanks, the bronze Peter the Great and the window behind which Tatarsky was concealed.

The cannon of one of the tanks standing on the bridge roared and the same instant Tatarsky was struck by an interesting idea: he could offer the people in the Bridge image-service the silhouette of a tank as a promising logo to replace that incomprehensible eagle of theirs. In a split second - less time than it took for the shell to reach its target - Tatarsky’s conscious mind had weighed up the possibilities (‘the image of the tank symbolises the aggressive power of the group and at the same time introduces a traditional Russian note into the context of cosmopolitical finance’) and immediately the idea was rejected. "They’d piss themselves,’ Tatarsky decided. ‘Pity, though.’

A shell caught Peter the Great in the head, but it didn’t explode, passing straight on through and continuing its flight roughly in the direction of Gorky Park. A tall plume of steam shot up into the air. Tatarsky remembered that the head of the monument contained a small restaurant complete with full services and facilities, and he decided the blank must have severed a pipe in the heating system. He heard the TV crews yelling in delight. The swirling plume made Peter look like some monster knight out of Steven King. Remembering how the rotting brains of the monster in The Talisman had dribbled down over its shoulders, Tatarsky thought the resemblance would be complete if the next shell severed a sewage pipe.

Peter’s head was defended by the Defence of Sebastopol committee. They said in the news that didn’t mean the city, but the hotel, which was being fought over by two mafia groups, the Chechens and the Solntsevo mob. They also said the Solntsevo mob had hired stuntmen from Mosfilm and set up this strange shoot-out in order to attract TV coverage and generally inflame anti-Caucasian feeling (if the abundance of pyrotechnics and special effects was anything to go by, it had to be true). The simple-minded Chechens, who weren’t too well versed in the protocol of PR campaigns, hadn’t figured out what was going on, and they’d hired the two tanks somewhere outside Moscow.

So far the stuntmen were returning fire and giving as good as they got - there was a puff of smoke in the hole beside Peter’s ragged eye and a grenade exploded on the bridge. A tank fired in reply. The blank struck Peter’s head, sending fragments of bronze showering downwards. For some reason every new hit made the emperor even more goggle-eyed.

Of all the participants in the drama the only one Tatarsky felt any sympathy for was the bronze idol dying slowly before the glass eyes of the TV cameras; and he didn’t feel that very strongly - he hadn’t finished his work, and had to conserve the energy of his emotional centre. Tatarsky lowered the blinds, cutting himself off completely from what was going on, sat at his computer and re-read the quotation written in felt-tip pen on the wallpaper over the monitor:

In order to influence the imagination of the Russian customer and win his confidence (for the most part customers for advertising in Russia are representatives of the old KGB, GRU and party nomenklatura), an advertising concept should borrow as far as possible from the hypothetical semi-secret or entirely secret techiques developed by the Western special services for the programming of consciousness, which are imbued with a quite breathtaking cynicism and inhumanity. Fortunately, it is not too difficul to improvise on this theme-one need only recall Oscar Wilde’s words about life imitating art.

‘The Final Positioning’

‘Sure" said Tatarsky, ‘that’s not too difficult.’ He tensed as though he was about to leap into cold water, frowned, took a deep breath and held the air in his lungs while he counted to three, then launched his fingers at the keyboard:

We can sum up the preceding by saying that in the foreseeable longer term television is likely to remain the primary channel for the implantation of the customer’s schizo-units in the consciousness of the Russian public. In view of this, we regard as extremely dangerous a tendency that has emerged in recent times among the so-called middle class - the most promising stratum of viewers from the point of view of the social effectiveness ofteleschizomanipulation. We are referring to total abstinence or the conscious limitation of the amount of television watched in order to save nervous energy for work. Even professional television writers are doing it, because it is an accepted maxim of post-Freudianism that in the information age it is not sexuality that should be sublimated, so much as the energy that is squandered on the pointless daily viewing of television.

In order to nip this tendency in the bud, for this concept it is proposed to employ a method developed jointly by MI6 and the US Central Intelligence Agency for neutralising the remnants of an intellectually independent national intelligentsia in Third World Countries. (We have proceeded from the initial assumption that the middle class in Russia is formed directly from the intelligentsia, which has ceased thinking nationally and begun thinking about where it can get money.)

The method is extremely simple. Since every television channel’s programming contains a fairly high level of synapse-disrupting material per unit of time…

There was a boom outside the window, and shrapnel drummed across the roof. Tatarsky drew his head down into his shoulders. Having re-read what he’d written, he deleted ‘synapse-disrupting’ and replaced it with ‘neuro-destrucnve’.

…the goal of schizosuggestology will be achieved simply as a result of holding the individual to be neutralised in front of a television screen for a long enough period of time. It is suggested that in order to achieve this result one can take advantage of a typical feature of a member of the Intelligentsia - sexual frustration.

Internal ratings and data from secret surveys indicate that the biggest draw for the member of the intelligentsia is the erotic night-time channels. But the effect achieved would be maximised if instead of a certain set of television broadcasts the television receiver itself were to achieve the status of an erotic stimulus in the consciousness of the subject being processed. Bearing in mind the patriarchal nature of Russian society and the determinative role played by the male section of the population in the formation of public opinion, it would seem most expedient to develop the subconscious associative link: ‘television-female sexual organ’. This association should be evoked by the television itself regardless of its make or the nature of the material being transmitted in order to achieve optimal results from schizomanipulation.

The cheapest and technically simplest means of achieving this goal is the massive oversaturation of air time with television adverts for women’s panty-liners. They should be constantly doused with blue liquid (activating the associations: ‘blue screen, waves in the ether, etc.’), while the clips themselves should he constructed in such a way that the panty-liner seems to crawl on to the screen itself, implanting the required association in the most direct manner possible.

Tatarsky heard a light ringing sound behind him and he swung round. To the accompaniment of a strange-sounding, somehow northern music, a golden woman’s torso of quite exceptional, inexpressible beauty appeared on the television screen, rotating slowly. ‘Ishtar,’ Tatarsky guessed; ‘who else could it be?’ The face of the statue was concealed from sight behind the edge of the screen, but the camera was slowly rising and the face would come into sight in just a moment. But an instant before it became visible, the camera moved in so close to the statue that there was nothing left on the screen but a golden shimmering. Tatarsky clicked on the remote, but the image on the television didn’t change - the television itself changed instead. It began distending around the edges, transforming itself into the likeness of an immense vagina, with a powerful wind whistling shrilly as the air was sucked right into its black centre.

‘I’m asleep,’ Tatarsky mumbled into his pillow. ‘I’m asleep…’

He carefully turned over on to his other side, but the shrill sound didn’t disappear. Raising himself up on one elbow, he cast a gloomy eye over the thousand-dollar prostitute snoring gently beside him: in the dim light it was quite impossible to tell she wasn’t Claudia Schiffer. He reached out for the mobile phone lying on the bedside locker and croaked into it: ‘Allo.’

‘What’s this, been hitting the sauce again?’ Morkovin roared merrily. ‘Have you forgotten we’re going to a barbecue? Get yourself down here quick, I’m already waiting for you. Azadovsky doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

‘On my way,’ said Tatarsky. ‘I’ll just grab a shower.’

The autumn highway was deserted and sad, and the sadness was only emphasised by the fact that the trees along its edges were still green and looked just as though it was still summer; but it was clear that summer had passed by without fulfilling a single one of its promises. The air was filled with a vague presentiment of winter, snowfalls and catastrophe - for a long time Tatarsky was unable to understand the source of this feeling, until he looked at the hoardings installed at the side of the road. Every half-kilometre the car rushed past a Tampax advertisement, a huge sheet of plywood showing a pair of white roller skates lying on virginal white snow. That explained the presentiment of winter all right, but the source of the all-pervading sense of alarm still remained unclear. Tatarsky decided that he and Morkovin must have driven into one of those psychological waves of depression that had been drifting across Moscow and its surroundings ever since the beginning of the crisis. The nature of these waves remained mysterious, but Tatarksy had no doubt whatever that they existed, so he was rather offended when Morkovin laughed at him for mentioning them.

‘As far the snow goes you were spot on,’ he said; ‘but as far as these wave things are concerned… Take a closer look at the hoardings. Don’t you notice anything?’

Morkovin slowed down at the next hoarding and Tatarsky suddenly noticed a large graffito written in blood-red spray paint above the skates and the snow: ‘Arrest Yeltsin’s gang!’

‘Right!’ he said ecstatically. ‘There was the same kind of thing on all the others! On the last one there was a hammer and sickle, on the one before that there was a swastika, and before that, something about wops and nig-nog s… Incredible. Your mind just filters it out - you don’t even notice. And the colour, what a colour! Who dreamed it all up?’

‘You’ll laugh when you hear,’ answered Morkovin, picking up speed. ‘It was Malyuta. Of course, we rewrote almost all the texts - they were much too frightening - but we didn’t change the idea. As you’re so fond of saying, an associative field is formed: ‘days of crisis - blood could flow - Tampax -your shield against excesses’. Figure it out: nowadays there are only two brands selling the same volumes they used to in Moscow, Tampax and Parliament Lights.’

‘Fantastic,’ said Tatarsky, and clicked his tongue. ‘It just begs for the slogan: ‘Tampax ultra-safe. The reds shall not pass!’ Or personalise it: not the reds, but Zyuganov - and according to Castaneda, menstruation is a crack between the worlds. If you want to stay on the right side of the crack… No, like this: Tampax. The right side of the crack…

‘Yes,’ said Morkovin thoughtfully, ‘we should pass these ideas on to the oral department.’

‘We could bring up the theme of the white movement as well. Imagine it: an officer in a beige service jacket on a hillside in the Crimea, something out of Nabokov… They’d sell five times as many.’

‘What does that matter?’ said Morkovin. ‘Sales are just a side effect. It’s not Tampax we’re promoting; it’s alarm and uncertainty.’

‘What for?’

‘We have a crisis on our hands, don’t we?’

‘Oh, right,’ said Tatarsky, ‘of course. Listen, about the crisis - I still don’t understand how Semyon Velin managed to delete the entire government. It was all triple protected.’

‘Semyon wasn’t just a designer.’ replied Morkovin. ‘He was a programmer. D’you know the scale he was working on? They found thirty-seven million in greenbacks in his accounts afterwards. He even switched Zyuganov’s jacket from Pierre Cardin to St Lauren. Even now nobody can figure out how he managed to break into the oral directory from our terminal. And as for what he did with neckties and shirts… Azadovsky was sick for two whole days after he read the report.’

‘Impressive.’

‘Sure it was. Our Semyon had a roving eye, but he knew what he was getting into. So he decided he needed some insurance. He wrote a program that would delete the entire directory at the end of the month if he didn’t cancel it personally, and he planted it in Kirienko’s file. After that the program infected the entire government. We have anti-virus protection, of course, but Semyon thought up this fucking program that wrote itself on to the ends of sectors and assembled itself at the end of the month, so there was no way it could be picked up from the control sums. Just don’t ask me what all that means - I don’t understand it myself - I just happened to overhear someone talking about it. To cut it short, when they were taking him out of town in your Mercedes, he tried to tell Azadovsky about it, but he wouldn’t even talk to him. Then everything defaulted. Azadovsky was tearing his hair out.’

‘So will there be a new government soon?’ Tatarsky asked. ‘I’m already tired of doing nothing.’

‘Soon, very soon. Yeltsin’s ready - tomorrow we’ll discharge him from the Central Kremlin Hospital. We had him digitised again in London. From the wax figure in Madame Tussaud’s - they’ve got it in the store room. It’s the third time we’ve had to restore him - you wouldn’t believe the amount of hassle he’s given everyone - and we’re finishing off the NURBS for all the others. Only the government’s turning out really leftist; I mean, it’s got communists in it. It’s those schemers in the oral department. But that doesn’t really bother me much - it’ll only make things easier for us. And for the people too: one identity for the lot and ration cards for butter. Only so far Sasha Blo’s still holding us back with the Russian Idea.’

‘Hold hard there,’ Tatarsky said, suddenly cautious; ‘don’t frighten me like that. Who’s going to be next? After Yeltsin?’

‘What d’you mean, who? Whoever they vote for. We have honest elections here, like in America.’

‘And what in hell’s name do we need them for?’

‘We don’t need them in anybody’s name. But if we didn’t have them they’d never have sold us the render-server. They’ve got some kind of amendment to the law on trade - in short, everything has to be the way it is there. Total lunacy, of course, the whole thing…’

‘Why should they care what we do? What do they want from us?’

‘It’s because elections are expensive,’ Morkovin said gloomily. ‘They want to finally destroy our economy. At least, that’s one of the theories… Anyway, we’re moving in the wrong direction. We shouldn’t be digitising these deadheads; we need to make new politicians, normal young guys. Develop them from the ground up through focus-groups - the ideology and the public face together.’

‘Why don’t you suggest it to Azadovsky?’

‘You try suggesting anything to him… OK, we’ve arrived.’

There was an earth road adorned on both sides with Stop signs branching off from the road they were on. Morkovin turned on to it, slowed down and drove on through the forest. The road soon led them to a pair of tall gates in a brick wall. Morkovin sounded his horn twice, the gates opened and the car rolled into a huge yard the size of a football pitch.

Azadovsky’s dacha created a strange impression. Most of all it resembled the Cathedral of St Basil the Holy Fool, doubled in size and overgrown with a multitude of domestic accretions. The corkscrew attics and garrets were decorated with little balconies with balustrades of short fat columns, and all the windows above the second floor were hidden completely behind shutters. There were several Rottweilers strolling around the yard and a ribbon of blue-grey smoke was rising from the chimney of one of the extensions (evidently they were stoking up the bath-house). Azadovksy himself, surrounded by a small entourage including Sasha Blo and Malyuta, was standing on the steps leading up into the house. He was wearing a Tyrolean hat with a feather, which suited him very well and even lent his plump face a kind of bandit nobility.

‘We were just waiting for you.’ he said when Tatarsky and Morkovin walked up. ‘We’re going out among the people. To drink beer at the station.’

Tatarsky felt an urgent desire to say something his boss would like.

‘Just like Haroun el-Raschid and his viziers, eh?’

Azadovsky stared at him in amazement.

‘He used to change his clothes and walk around Baghdad.’ Tatarsky explained, already regretting he’d started the conversation. ‘And see how the people lived. And find out how his rating was doing.’

‘Around Baghdad?’ Azadovsky asked suspiciously. ‘Who was this Haroun guy?’

‘He was the Caliph. A long time ago, about five hundred years.’

‘I get it. You wouldn’t do too much strolling around Baghdad these days. It’s just like here, only you have to take three jeeps full of bodyguards. Right, is everyone here? Wagons roll!’

Tatarsky got into the last car, Sasha Blo’s red Range-Rover. Sasha was already slightly drunk and obviously feeling elated.

‘I keep meaning to congratulate you.’ he said. ‘That material of yours about Berezovsky and Raduev - it’s the best kompromat there’s been all autumn. Really. Especially the place where they plan to pierce the mystical body of Russia with their television-drilltowers at the major sacred points. And those inscriptions on the Monopoly money: ‘In God we Monopolise!’ And putting that Jewish prayer cap on Raduev - that must have taken some thinking up…’

‘OK, OK,’ said Tatarsky, thinking gloomily to himself:

"That jerk Malyuta was asked not to touch Raduev. Now the mazuma goes back. And I’ll be lucky if they didn’t have the meter running on it.”

‘Why don’t you tell me when your department’s going to throw up a decent idea?’ he asked. ‘What stage is the project at?’

‘It’s all supposed to be strictly secret. But without getting specific, the idea’s coming on, and it’ll make everyone sick as parrots. We just have to think through the role of Attila and polish up the stylistic side - so we have something like an ongoing counterpoint between the pipe organ and the balalaika.’

‘Attila? The one who burnt Rome? What’s he got to do with it?’

‘Attila means "the man from Itil". In Russian, a Volga man. Itil is the ancient name for the Volga. D’you get my drift?’

‘Not really.’

‘We’re the third Rome - which, typically enough, happens to lie on the Volga. So there’s no need to go off on any campaigning. Hence our total historical self-sufficiency and profound national dignity.’

Tatarsky sized up the idea. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s neat.’

Glancing out of the window, he caught sight of a gigantic concrete structure above the edge of the trees, a crooked spiral rising upwards, crowned with a small grey tower. He screwed up his eyes and then opened them again - the concrete monolith hadn’t disappeared, only shifted backwards a little. Tatarsky nudged Sasha Blo so hard in the ribs that the car swerved across the road.

‘You crazy, or what?’ asked Sasha.

‘Look quick, over there.’ said Tatarsky. ‘D’you see it, that concrete tower?’

‘What of it?’

‘D’you know what it is?’

Sasha looked out of the window.

‘Oh, that. Azadovksy was just telling us about it. They started building an Air Defence station here. Early warning or some such thing. They got as far as building the foundations and the walls and then, you know, there was no one left to warn. Azadovsky has this plan to privatise the whole thing and finish building it, only not for a radar station - for his new house. I don’t know. Speaking for myself, I can’t stand concrete walls. What’s got you so wound up?’

‘Nothing,’ said Tatarsky. ‘It just looks very strange. What’s this station we’re going to called?’

‘Rastorguevo.’

‘Rastorguevo.’ Tatarsky repeated. ‘In that case, everything’s clear.’

‘And here it is. We’re headed for that building over there. This is the dirtiest beer-hall anywhere near Moscow. Leonid likes to drink beer here at weekends. So’s he can really appreciate what he’s achieved in life.’

The beer-hall, located in the basement of a brick building with peeling paint not far from the railway platform, really was quite exceptionally dirty and foul-smelling. The people squeezed in at the tables with their quarter-litres of vodka matched the institution perfectly. The only ones who didn’t fit in were two bandits in tracksuits standing behind a table at the entrance. Tatarsky was amazed to see Azadovsky actually greet some of the customers - he obviously really was a regular here. Sasha Blo swept up two glass mugs of pale beer in one hand, took Tatarsky by the arm with the other and dragged him off to a distant table.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about. Two of my brothers have moved up here from Yerevan and decided to set up business. To cut it short, they’ve opened an exclusive funeral parlour with top-class service. They just figured out how much mazuma there is stuck between banks up here. They’re all beginning to beat it out of each other now, so a real market niche has opened up.’

"That’s for sure,’ said Tatarsky, glancing at the bandits by the entrance, who were drinking Czech beer out of bottles they’d brought with them. He couldn’t figure out what they were doing in a place like this - although their motives could have been the same as Azadovsky’s.

‘Just for friendship’s sake,’ Sasha Blo rattled on, ‘write me a decent slogan for them, something that’ll actually get to the target group. When they get on their feet they’ll pay you back.’

‘Why not, for old times’ sake?’ Tatarsky answered. ‘So what’s our brand essence?’

‘I told you - high-class death.’

‘What’s the firm called?’

"The family name. The Brothers Debirsian Funeral Parlour. Will you think about it?’

‘I’ll do it.’ said Tatarsky. ‘No problem.’

‘By the way,’ Sasha went on, ‘you’ll laugh when I tell you, but they’ve already had one of our acquaintances as a client. His wife paid for a top-rate funeral before she slung her hook and split.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Remember Khanin from the Privy Councillor agency? Someone took him out.’

‘That’s terrible. I didn’t hear about it. Who did it?’

‘Some say the Chechens, and some say the filth. Something to do with diamonds. To cut it short, a murky business. Where are you off to?’

"The toilet,’ Tatarsky answered.

The washroom was even dirtier than the rest of the beer-hall. Glancing at the wall covered in patches of geological damp that rose up from the urinal, Tatarsky noticed a triangular piece of plaster that was remarkably similar in shape to the diamond necklace in the photograph hanging in Khanin’s toilet. At the first glimpse of this formation the feeling of pity for his former boss that filled Tatarsky’s heart was alchemically transformed into the slogan ordered by Sasha Blo.

When he emerged from the toilet he stopped, astounded at the view that suddenly confronted him. There must have been a double door in the corridor before, but it had been broken out and its frame, daubed with black paint, was protruding from the walls and ceiling. With its slightly rounded outline the opening looked like the frame around a television screen - so much like it, in fact, that for a moment Tatarsky thought he was watching the country’s biggest TV set. Azadovsky and his company were outside his field of view, but he could see the two bandits by the nearest table and the new customer who had appeared beside them. He was a tall, thin old man wearing a brown raincoat, a beret and powerful spectacles with earpieces that were too short. Through the lenses his eyes appeared disproportionately large and childishly honest. Tatarsky could have sworn he’d seen him somewhere before. The old man had already gathered around himself a few listeners, who looked like homeless tramps.

‘You guys,’ he was saying in a thin voice full of astonishment, ‘you’ll never believe it! There I was picking up half a litre in the vegetable shop at the Kursk station, you know. I’m queuing up to pay, and guess who comes into the shop? Chubais! Fuck me… He was wearing this shabby grey coat and a red mohair cap, and not a bodyguard in sight. There was just a bit of a bulge in his right pocket, as though he had his rod in there. He went into the pickles section and took a big three-litre jar of Bulgarian tomatoes - you know, the green ones, with some green stuff in the jar? And he stuck it in his string bag. I’m standing there gawping at him with my mouth wide open, and he noticed, gave me a wink and hopped out the door. I went across to the window, and there was this car with a light on the roof, winking at me just like he did. He hops in and drives off. Bugger me, eh, the things that happen…’

Tatarsky cleared his throat and the old man looked in his direction.

"The People’s Will,’ Tatarsky said and winked, unable to restrain himself.

He pronounced the words very quietly, but the old man heard. He tugged on one of the bandits’ sleeves and nodded in the direction of the gap in the wall. The bandits put down their half-finished bottles of beer on the table in synchronised motion and advanced on Tatarsky, smiling slightly. One of them put his hand in his pocket, and Tatarsky realised they were quite possibly going to kill him.

The adrenalin that flooded through his body lent his movements incredible lightness. He turned, shot out of the beer-hall and set off across the yard at a run. When he reached the very middle of it he heard several loud cracks behind him and something hummed by him very close. Tatarsky doubled his speed. He only allowed himself to glance around close to the comer of a tall log-built house that he could hide behind - the bandits had stopped shooting, because Azadovsky’s security guards had come running up with automatics in their hands.

Tatarsky slumped against the wall, took out his cigarettes with fingers that refused to bend and lit up. "That’s the way it happens,’ he thought, ‘just like that. Simple, out of the blue.’

By the next time he screwed up the nerve to glance round the comer his cigarette had almost burnt away. Azadovsky and his company were getting into their cars; both the bandits, their faces beaten to pulp, were sitting on the back seat of a jeep with the bodyguards, and the old man in the brown raincoat was heatedly arguing his case to an indifferent bodyguard. At last Tatarsky remembered where he’d seen the old man before - he was the philosophy lecturer from the Literary Institute. He didn’t really recognise his face - the man had aged a lot - so much as the intonation of astonishment with which he once used to read his lectures. ‘The object’s got a pretty strong character,’ he used to say, throwing back his head to look up at the ceiling of the auditorium; ‘it demands disclosure of the subject: that’s the way it is! And then, if it’s lucky, merging may take place…’

Tatarsky realised that merging had finally taken place. "That happens too,’ he thought and, taking out his notebook, jotted down the slogan he’d invented in the beer-hall:

DIAMONDS ARE NOT FOR EVER! THE BROTHERS DEBIRSIAN FUNERAL PARLOUR

‘They’ll probably fire me,’ he thought, when the cavalcade of cars disappeared round a bend. ‘Where now? God only knows where. To Gireiev. He lives somewhere just around here.’

Gireiev’s house proved surprisingly easy to find - Tatarsky recognised it from the garden with its forest of unbelievably tall dill umbrellas, looking more like small trees than large weeds. Tatarsky knocked several times on the gate and Gireiev appeared on the verandah. He was wearing trousers of an indefinite colour, baggy at the knees, and a tee shirt with a large letter ‘A’ in the centre of a rainbow-coloured circle.

‘Come on in,’ he said, ‘the gate’s open.’

Gireiev had been drinking for a few days, drinking away a fairly large sum of money, which was now coming to an end. This was the deduction that could be drawn from the fact that there were empty bottles from expensive brands of whisky and brandy standing along the wall, while the bottles standing closer to the centre of the room were from various kinds of vodka bootlegged from the Caucasus, the kinds that had romantic and passionate names and were sold around the railway stations. In the time that had elapsed since Tatarsky’s last visit the kitchen had hardly changed at all, except for becoming even dirtier, and images of rather frightening Tibetan deities had appeared on the walls. There was one other innovation: a small television glimmering in the comer.

When he sat down at the table, Tatarsky noticed the television was standing upside down. The screen was showing the animated titles from some programme - a fly was buzzing around an eye with long lashes thickly larded with mascara. The name of the programme appeared - Tomorrow - at which very moment the fly landed on the pupil and stuck fast, and the lashes began to wrap themselves around it like a Venus fly-trap. The anchor man appeared, dressed in the uniform of a jail guard - Tatarsky guessed that must be the insulted response of a copywriter from the seventh floor to the recent declaration by a copywriter from the eighth floor that television in Russia is one of the state power structures. Because the anchor man was inverted, he looked very much like a bat hanging from an invisible perch. Tatarsky was not particularly surprised to recognise him as Azadovsky. His hair was dyed jet-black and he had a narrow shoelace moustache under his nose. He grinned like a halfwit and spoke:

‘Very soon now in the city of Murmansk the nuclear jet-powered cruiser The Idiot will slide down the slipway. Its keel was laid to mark the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoievsky. It is not clear as yet whether the government will be able to find the money needed to lay the keel of another ship of the same kind, the Crime and Punishment. Book news!’ - Azadovsky produced a book with a cover depicting the holy trinity of a grenade-thrower, a chain-saw and a naked woman - ‘Good needs hard fists. That’s something we’ve known for a long time, but there was still something missing! Now here is the book we’ve been waiting for all these years - good with hard fists and a big dick: The Adventures of Svyatoslav the Roughneck. Economic news: in the State Duma today the make-up was announced of the new minimum annual consumer goods basket. It includes twenty kilogrammes of pasta, a centner of potatoes, six kilogrammes of pork, a padded coat, a pair of shoes, a fur cap with earflaps and a Sony Black Trinitron television. Reports from Chechnya…’

Gireiev turned off the sound.

‘Did you come to watch the television, then?’ he asked.

‘Course not. It’s just strange - what’s it doing upside down?’

"That’s a long story.’

‘Like the one with the cucumbers, is it? Has to be properly conferred?’

‘No, not that,’ Gireiev said with a shrug. ‘It’s open information, but it’s part of the practice of true dharma, so if you ask someone to tell you about it, you take on the karmic obligation to adopt the practice yourself. And I don’t think you will.’

‘Maybe I will. Try me.’

Gireiev sighed and glanced at the tall umbrellas swaying outside the window.

‘There are three Buddhist ways of watching television. In essential terms, they’re all the same way, but at different stages of training they appear different. First you watch television with the sound turned off. About half an hour a day, your favourite programmes. When you get the idea they’re saying something important and interesting on the television, you become aware of the thought at the moment it arises and so neutralise it. At first you’re bound to give way and turn on the sound, but gradually you’ll get used to it. The main thing is not to allow a feeling of guilt to develop when you can’t restrain yourself. It’s like that for everybody at first, even for lamas. Then you start to watch the television with the sound switched on but the picture off. And finally you start watching the television completely switched off. That’s actually the main technique and the first two are only preparatory. You watch all the news programmes, but you don’t turn the television on. It’s very important to keep your back straight while you do this, and it’s best to fold your hands across your belly, right hand underneath, left hand on top - that’s for men; for women it’s the other way round - and you mustn’t be distracted even for a second. If you watch the television like that for ten years at least an hour a day, you can come to understand the nature of television. And of everything else as well.’

‘So then why do you turn it upside down?’

"That’s the fourth Buddhist method. It’s used when you really do need to watch the television after all. For instance, if you want to know the dollar exchange rate, but you don’t know exactly when or how they’re going to announce it - whether they’ll read it out loud or show one of the boards outside the bureaux de change.’

‘But why turn it upside down?’

"That’s another long story.’

‘Try.’ Gireiev ran his palm across his forehead and sighed again.

He seemed to be searching for the right words.

‘Have you ever wondered where that heavy, piercing hate in the anchormen’s eyes comes from?’ he eventually asked.

‘Come off it,’ said Tatarsky. "They don’t even look at the camera; it just seems like they do. There’s a special monitor right under the camera lens that shows the text they’re reading out and special symbols for intonation and facial expression. I think there are only six of them; let me just try to remember… irony, sadness, doubt, improvisation, anger and joke. So nobody’s radiating any kind of hate - not their own or even any official kind. That much I know for certain.’

‘I’m not saying they radiate anything. It’s just that, when they read their text, there are several million people staring straight into their eyes, and as a rule they’re very angry and dissatisfied with life. Just think about what kind of cumulative effect it generates when so many deceived consciousnesses come together in a single second at the same point. D’you know what resonance is?’

‘More or less.’

‘Well then: if a battalion of soldiers marches across a bridge in step, then the bridge can easily collapse - there have been cases - and so when a column crosses a bridge, the soldiers are ordered to march out of step. When so many people stare into this box and see the same thing, can you imagine what kind of resonance that sets up in the noosphere?’

‘Where?’ Tatarsky asked, but at that moment the mobile phone in his pocket rang and he raised a hand to halt the conversation. He could hear loud music and indistinct voices in the earpiece.

‘Babe!’ Morkovin’s voice cut through the music. ‘Where are you? Are you alive?’

‘I’m alive,’ replied Tatarsky. ‘I’m in Rastorguevo.’

‘Listen,’ Morkovin went on merrily, ‘we’ve given those fucking tossers a good working over, and now we’ll probably send them off to jail, give them ten years. After the interrogation Azadovsky was laughing like mad! Said you’d released all his stress. Next time you’ll get a medal together with Rostropovich. Shall I send some wheels round for you?’

No, they’re not going to fire me, Tatarsky thought, feeling a pleasant warm glow spreading through his body. Definitely not. Or do me in me either.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll go home. My nerves are shot.’

‘Yeah? I can understand that,’ Morkovin agreed. ‘Away with you then, get yourself fixed up. But I’ve got to be going - the bugle’s sounding loud and clear. Only don’t be late tomorrow - we have a very important occasion. We’re going to Ostankino TV headquarters. You’ll see Azadovsky’s collection there, by the way - the Spanish section. Cheers for now.’

Tatarsky hid the phone in his pocket and looked around the room with unseeing eyes. ‘So they take me me for a hamster, then,’ he said pensively.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. What was that you were saying?’

‘To keep it short,’ Gireiev continued, ‘all the so-called magic of television is nothing but psychoresonance due to the fact that so many people watch it at the same time. Any professional knows that if you do watch television-’

‘I can tell you, professionals never do watch it,’ Tatarsky interrupted, examining a patch he’d only just noticed on his friend’s trouser-leg.

‘-if you do watch television, you have to look at a point somewhere in the corner of the screen, but never under any circumstances into the eyes of the announcer, or else you’ll start to develop gastritis or schizophrenia. But the safest thing is to turn it upside down the way I do. That’s the same thing as not marching in step; and in general, if you’re interested, there’s a fifth Buddhist method for watching television, the highest and the most secret one of all…’

It often happens: you’re talking with someone, and you kind of like what he’s saying, and there seems to be some truth in it. Then suddenly you notice he’s wearing an old tee shirt, his slippers are darned, his trousers are patched at the knee and the furniture in his room is worn and cheap. You look a bit closer and all around you you see signs of humiliating poverty you didn’t notice before, and you realise everything your interlocutor has done and thought in his life has failed to lead him to that single victory that you wanted so badly on that distant May morning when you gritted your teeth and promised yourself you wouldn’t lose, even though it still wasn’t really very clear just who you were playing with and what the game was. And although it hasn’t become the slightest bit clearer since then, you immediately lose interest in what he’s saying. You want to say goodbye to him in some pleasant fashion, get away as quickly as possible and finally get down to business.

That is how the displacing wow-factor operates in our hearts; but when Tatarsky was struck by its imperceptible blow, he gave no sign that he’d lost interest in the conversation with Gireiev, because an idea had struck him. He waited until Gireiev stopped speaking; then he stretched, yawned and asked as though it was a casual question: ‘By the way, have you got any of those fly-agarics left?’

‘Yes,’ said Gireiev, ‘but I won’t take any with you. I’m sorry, but you know, after what happened the last time…’

‘But will you give me some?’

‘Why not? Only don’t eat them here, please.’

Gireiev got up from the table, opened the crooked cupboard hanging on the wall and took out a bundle wrapped in newspaper.

"This is a good dose. Where are you going to take them - in Moscow?’

‘No,’ said Tatarsky; ‘in the town I always get a bad trip. I’ll go into the forest. Since I’m already out in the countryside.’

‘You’re right. Hang on, I’ll give you some vodka. Softens the effect. They can bugger up your brains if you take them neat. Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ve got some Absolut.’

Gireiev picked up an empty Hennessy bottle from the floor, twisted out the cork and began carefully pouring in vodka from a litre bottle of Absolut he’d taken from the same cupboard the mushrooms had been in.

‘Listen, you’ve got something to do with television,’ he said; ‘there was a good joke going round about you. Have you heard the one about the blow job with singing in the dark?’

‘No.’

‘Well, this guy comes to a brothel. He looks at the price-list and sees the most expensive service: a blow job with singing in the dark for fifteen hundred bucks; and he thinks. That’s strange. What could that be? And he buys a ticket. When his turn comes, he finds himself in a dark room and everything seems to go as promised - someone sucks his dick while singing. Afterwards he goes outside and thinks. But that’s impossible! So he goes to a department store and buys a flashlight. Then he borrows another fifteen hundred and goes back to the brothel. To cut it short, everything happens all over again. And just as he’s about to come, he whips out the flashlight and turns it on; and he sees that he’s standing in a giant round room. There’s a stool by the wall, and on top of the stool there’s a giant glass eye.’

Gireiev stopped.

‘So what’s next?’ Tatarsky asked.

‘That’s it. Some people just don’t get it. I mean the joke. A blow job in the dark is something that everyone gets.’

‘Ah… Now I do get it… What d’you think - is that the same eye that’s on the dollar bill?’

‘I never thought about it,’ Gireiev answered.

‘Frankly, this kind of humour’s too glum for me. You have to believe in something.’

Gireiev shrugged. ‘Hope dies last,’ he said. ‘What’s that you’re writing down? The joke?’

‘No,’ said Tatarsky, ‘an idea for work.’ Idea for a poster, he jotted down in his notebook:

A dirty room covered in cobwebs. On the table a still for moonshine, by the table an alcoholic dressed in rags, vsho is pouring his product from a large Absolut bottle into a small Hennessy bottle. Slogan: