Babylon

CHAPTER 15. The Golden Room

When they removed Tatarsky’s blindfold, he was chilled to the bone. His bare feet were suffering particularly badly from the cold stone floor. Opening his eyes, he saw he was standing in the doorway of a spacious chamber similar to the foyer of a cinema where, as far as he could judge, there was something like a buffet supper taking place. One strange thing he noticed immediately: there wasn’t a single window in the walls faced with yellow stone, but one of the walls reflected like a mirror, which meant that in the light of the bright halogen lamps the hall appeared substantially larger than it actually was. The people gathered in the hall were conversing quietly and studying sheets of paper with typewritten texts hung round the walls. Despite the fact that Tatarsky was standing in the doorway completely naked, the assembled company paid no particular attention to him, except perhaps for two or three who cast an indifferent glance in his direction. Tatarsky had seen virtually everyone in the hall many times on television, but there was no one he knew personally apart from Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin, who was standing by the wall with a wineglass in his hand. He also spotted Azadovsky’s secretary Alla, engaged in conversation with two elderly playboys - her loose washed-out blonde hair made her look like a slightly debauched Medusa. Tatarsky thought that somewhere in the crowd he caught a glimpse of Morkovin’s check jacket, but he lost sight of him immediately.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ Tatarsky heard Azadovsky’s voice say, and then he appeared out of a passage leading to some inner chamber. ‘So you’re here? Why’re you standing in the doorway? Come on in; we won’t eat you.’

Tatarsky stepped towards him. Azadovsky smelled slightly of wine; in the halogen lighting his face looked tired.

‘Where are we?’ asked Tatarsky.

‘About a hundred metres underground, near the Ostankino pond. I’m sorry about the blindfold and all the rest - that’s just the way things are supposed to be before the ritual. Traditions, fuck ‘em. You scared?’

Tatarsky nodded, and Azadovksy laughed contentedly. ‘Don’t let it bother you,’ he said. ‘It’s a load of old cobblers. Have a wander around in the meantime, take a look at the new collection. It’s been hung for two days now. I’ve got to have a word with a couple of people.’

He summoned his secretary with a snap of his fingers. ‘Alla here can tell you about it. This is Babe Tatarsky. You know each other? Show him everything in the place, OK?’

Tatarsky was left in the company of the secretary.

‘Where shall we start the viewing from?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Let’s start from here.’ said Tatarsky. ‘But where’s the collection?’

‘There it is,’ said the secretary, nodding towards the wall. ‘It’s the Spanish collection. Who do you like best of the great Spanish artists?’

‘That would be…’ Tatarsky said, straining to recall an appropriate name,’…Velasquez.’

‘I’m crazy about the old darling too,’ said the secretary, glancing at him with a cold green eye. ‘I would call him the Cervantes of the brush.’

She took a precise grip on Tatarsky’s elbow and, with her tall hip pressing against his naked thigh, she led him towards the nearest sheet of paper on the wall. Tatarsky saw that it held a couple of paragraphs of text and a blue seal. The secretary leaned shortsightedly towards the paper in order to read the fine print.

‘Yes, this is the very canvas. A relatively little known pink version of the portrait of the Infanta. What you can see is a notarised certificate issued by Oppenheim and Radler to certify that the picture really was acquired for seventeen million dollars from a private collection.’

Tatarsky decided not to show that he was surprised by anything. Anyway, he didn’t really know for certain whether he was surprised by anything or not.

‘And this one?’ he asked, indicating the next sheet of paper with a text and seal.

‘Oh,’ said Alla, ‘that’s the pride of our collection. It’s a Goya - the Maja with a fan in the garden. Acquired from a certain small museum in Castile. Once again Oppenheim and Radler certify the price - eight and a half million. Astonishing.’

‘Yes,’ said Tatarsky, ‘it is. But I must admit I find sculpture much more interesting than painting.’

‘I should think so,’ said the secretary. ‘That must be because you’re used to working in three dimensions, I suppose?’

Tatarsky gave an inquiring glance.

‘Well, three-dimensional graphics. With those stiffs…’

‘Ah,’ said Tatarsky, ‘that’s what you’re talking about. Yes, I’m used to working with them, and living with them.’

‘Well here’s a sculpture,’ said the secretary, and she dragged Tatarsky over to a new sheet of paper on which the text was a little larger than on the others. ‘It’s a Picasso. Ceramic figurine of a woman running. Not much like Picasso, you might say. You’d be right, but that’s because it’s the post-cubist period. Almost thirteen million dollars - can you imagine it?’

‘And where’s the actual statue?’

‘I don’t actually know,’ said the secretary with a shrug. ‘Probably in some warehouse somewhere. But if you want to see what it looks like, the catalogue’s over there on that little table.’

‘What difference does it make where the statue is?’

Tatarsky swung round. Azadovksy had come up behind him unnoticed.

‘Maybe none at all,’ said Tatarsky. ‘To tell the truth, it’s the first time I’ve come across this kind of a collection.’

‘It’s the cutting edge in design,’ said the secretary. ‘Monetaristic minimalism. They say it was invented here in Russia.’

‘Take a walk,’ Azadovsky said to her, and turned to Tatarsky. ‘D’you like it?’

‘It’s interesting. But I don’t really understand it.’

"Then I’ll explain,’ said Azadovsky. "This bastard Spanish collection cost something like two hundred million dollars, and another hundred thousand went on the art historians - which picture would suit, which picture wouldn’t fit in, which order to hang them in, and so forth. Everything mentioned on the invoices has been bought. But if we brought all those paintings and statues here - and there are tapestries and suits of armour as well - there’d be no space left in here to move. You’d choke to death on the dust alone. And afterwards… Well let’s be honest, after you’ve seen these pictures once - maybe twice - what’re you going to see that’s new?’

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s right. So why keep them in your own place? Anyway, I reckon this Picasso’s a complete and utter plonker.’

‘I couldn’t entirely agree with you there,’ said Tatarsky, swallowing. ‘Or rather, I could, but only starting from the post-cubist period.’

‘I can see you’re a brainbox,’ said Azadovsky. ‘But I don’t get it. What’s the damn point, anyway? In a week’s time it’ll be the French collection. Just think: you figure one lot out, then a week later they cart it away and hang up another lot - so you’re supposed to figure that lot out as well? What’s the point?’

Tatarsky couldn’t think of a good answer.

‘I tell you, there isn’t one,’ Azadovsky insisted. ‘OK, let’s go. It’s time to get started. We’ll come back here afterwards. For some champagne.’

He turned and set off towards the mirror wall. Tatarsky followed him. When he reached the wall, Azadovsky pushed against it with his hand and the vertical row of mirror blocks casting an electrical reflection on him swung silently around their axis. Through the opening created a corridor built of rough-hewn stone came into view.

‘Go on in,’ said Azadovsky. ‘Only keep your head down:

the ceiling’s low in here.’

Tatarsky entered the corridor and the damp immediately made him feel even more cold. When will they let me get dressed? he thought. The corridor was long, but Tatarsky couldn’t see where it was leading: it was dark. Occasionally he felt a sharp stone under his foot and winced with the pain. At last there was a glimmer of light up ahead.

They emerged into a small room lined with wooden boards that reminded Tatarsky of a changing room for a gym. In actual fact, it was a changing room, as the lockers by the wall and the two jackets hanging on a coat-stand made clear. Tatarsky thought one of them belonged to Sasha Blo, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain - Sasha had too many different jackets. There was a second exit from the changing room, a dark wooden door with a golden plaque engraved with a jagged line, looking like the teeth of a saw. Tatarsky still remembered from school that that was how the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘quickly’ looked. He’d only remembered it then because of a funny story connected with it: the ancient Egyptians, so their teacher had explained, used to build their zig-gurats very slowly, and so in the inscriptions of the greatest and most powerful Pharaohs the short jagged line meaning ‘quickly’ had become very long and even took up several lines, meaning ‘very, very quickly’.

Hanging beside the washbasin, looking like decrees from some unknown authority, there were three sheets of paper with typed texts and seals (Tatarsky guessed they were not decrees at all, but more likely part of the Spanish collection), and one of the walls was covered with shelves with numbered pigeon-holes containing bronze mirrors and golden masks exactly like the ones in Azadovsky’s reception room.

‘What’s that?’ Azadovsky asked. ‘Did you want to ask something?’

‘What are these sheets of paper on the walls?’ Tatarsky asked. ‘More of the Spanish collection?’

Instead of replying Azadovsky took out his mobile phone and pressed its one and only button.

‘Alla,’ he said, ‘some questions here for you.’ He handed the telephone to Tatarsky.

‘Yes?’ said Alla’s voice in the handset.

‘Ask her what we’ve got in the bath-house changing room,’ said Azadovsky, pulling off his vest. ‘I keep forgetting all the time.’

‘Hello.’ said Tatarsky, embarrassed, ‘this is Tatarsky again.

Tell me, this exhibition in the changing room, what is it?’

‘Those are absolutely unique exhibits,’ said the secretary. ‘Im not allowed to talk about them over the phone.’

Tatarsky covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘She says it’s not for discussion on the phone.’

‘Tell her I give my permission.’

‘He says he gives his permission,’ Tatarsky echoed.

‘Very well,’ sighed the secretary. ‘Number one: fragments of the gates of Ishtar from Babylon - lions and sirrufs. Official place of keeping, the Pergamon museum in Berlin. Certified by a group of independent experts. Number two: lions, bas-relief of moulded brick and enamel. Street of Processions, Babylon. Official place of keeping, the British Museum. Certified by a group of independent experts. Number three: Fukem-Al, a dignitary from Mari. Official place of keeping, the Louvre…’

‘Fukem-Al?’ Tatarsky repeated, and remembered he’d seen a photograph of this statue in the Louvre. It was thousands of years old, and it was a portrait of a cunning-looking little man carved in brilliant white stone - with a beard and dressed in strange, fluffy, skirtlike culottes.

‘I really like that one,’ said Azadovsky, lowering his trousers. ‘No doubt he woke up every morning and said: "Ah, fukem al…" And so he was all alone all his life, exactly like me.’

He opened a locker and took out two unusual-looking skirts made either of feathers or fluffed-up wool. He tossed one over to Tatarsky and pulled the other up over his red Calvin Klein underpants, which immediately made him look like an overfed ostrich.

‘Let’s have the phone,’ he said. ‘What are you waiting for? Get changed. Then pick up a set of this junk here and go on through. You can take any pair you like, just as long as the muzzle’s the right size.’

Azadovsky took a mask and a mirror from one of the pigeon-holes and clanged them against each other, then raised the mask and looked at Tatarsky through the eye-slits. The small golden face of an unearthly beauty, which might have appeared out of a crowd of maskers at a Venetian carnival, was so out of keeping with his barrel-shaped torso covered in ginger hair that Tatarsky suddenly felt afraid. Pleased with the effect he’d produced, Azadovsky laughed, opened the door and disappeared in a beam of golden light.

Tatarsky began getting changed. The skirt Azadovsky had given him was made out of strips of long-haired sheepskin stitched together and glued to nylon Adidas shorts. Squeezing himself into it somehow or other (if Tatarsky hadn’t seen the statue of Fukem-Al, he would never have believed the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia actually wore anything of the kind), he put on the mask, immediately pressing it firmly over his face, and picked up the mirror. There could be no doubt that the gold and bronze were genuine - it was obvious from the weight alone. Breathing out as though he was about to plunge into cold water, he pushed open the door marked with the jagged line.

The room he entered blinded him with the golden gleam of its walls and floor, lit by bright studio lights. The sheet-metal cladding of the walls rose up to form a smoothly tapering cone, as though the room were an empty church dome gilded on the inside. Directly opposite the door stood an altar - a cubic gold pediment on which there lay a massive crystal eye with an enamel iris and a bright reflective pupil. In front of the altar there was a gold chalice standing on the floor, and towering up on each side of it were two stone sirrufs, covered in the remnants of gilt and painted designs. Hanging above the eye was a slab of black basalt, which appeared to be very ancient. Chiselled into its very centre was the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘quick’, which was surrounded by complicated figures - Tatarsky could make out a strange dog with five legs and a woman in a tall tiara reclining on some kind of couch and holding a chalice in her hands. Along the edges of the slab there were images of four terrible-looking beasts, and between the dog and the woman there was a plant growing up out of the ground, resembling a Venus fly-trap, except that for some reason its root was divided into three long branches, each of which was marked with an unintelligible symbol. Also carved into the slab were a large eye and a large ear, and all the rest of the space was taken up by dense columns of cuneiform text.

Azadovsky, dressed in his gold mask, skirt and red flip-flops, was sitting on a folding stool near the altar. His mirror was lying on his knee. Tatarsky didn’t notice anybody else in the room.

‘Right on!’ said Azadovsky, giving the thumbs-up sign. ‘You look just great. Having doubts, are you? Just don’t turn sour on us, OK; don’t you go thinking we’re nothing but a set of fuckheads. Personally I couldn’t give a toss for all this, but if you want to be in our business, you can’t get by without it. To cut it short, I’ll fill in the basic picture for you, and if you want more detail, you can ask our head honcho; he’ll be here in a minute. The important thing is, you just take everything as it comes; be cool. Ever go to pioneer camp?’

‘Sure,’ Tatarsky replied.

‘Did you have that business with the Day of Neptune? When everybody got dunked in the water?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, you just figure like this is another Day of Neptune. Tradition. The story goes that once there was this ancient goddess. Not that I mean to say she really existed - there was just this legend, see. And the storyline says the gods were mortal as well and carried their deaths around inside them, just like ordinary folks. So when her time was up, this goddess had to die too; and naturally enough, she didn’t fancy the idea. So then she separated into her own death and the part of her that didn’t want to die. See there, on the picture?’ - Azadovsky jabbed his finger in the direction of the bas-relief - ‘That dog there’s her death. And the dame in the fancy headgear - that’s her. To cut it short - from here on in you just listen and don’t interrupt, ‘cause I’m not too hot on this stuff myself - when they split apart, this war immediately started between them, and neither of them could stay on top for long. The final battle in the war took place right above the Ostankino pond - that is, where we are right now, only not underground, but way high up in the air. That’s why they reckon it’s a sacred spot. For a long time no one could win the battle, but then the dog began to overpower the goddess. Then the other gods got frightened for themselves, so they interfered and made them make peace. It’s all written down right here. This is like the text of a peace treaty witnessed in the four corners of the earth by these bulls and…’

‘Gryphons.’ Tatarsky prompted him.

‘Yeah. And the eye and the ear mean that everyone saw it and everyone heard it. To cut it short, the treaty gave them both a drubbing. It took away the goddess’s body and reduced her to a pure concept. She became gold - not just the metal, though: in a metaphorical sense. You follow me?’

‘Not too well.’

‘Not surprising,’ sighed Azadovsky. ‘Anyway, to cut it short, she became the thing that all people desire, but not just a heap of gold, say, that’s lying around somewhere, but all gold in general. Sort of like - the idea.’

‘Now I’m with you.’

‘And her death became this lame dog with five legs who had to sleep for ever in this distant country in the north. You’ve probably guessed which one. There he is on the right, see him? Got a leg instead of a prick. Wouldn’t want to run into him in the back yard.’

‘And what’s this dog called?’ Tatarsky asked.

‘A good question. To tell the truth, I don’t know. But why d’you ask?’

‘I read something similar. In a collection of university articles.’

‘What exactly?’

It’s a long story,’ answered Tatarsky. ‘I don’t remember it all.’

‘What was the article about, though? Our firm?’ Tatarsky guessed his boss was joking.

‘No,’ he said, ‘about Russian swear words. It said swear words only became obscenities under Christianity, but before that they had an entirely different meaning and they signified incredibly ancient pagan gods. One of these gods was the lame dog Phukkup with five legs. In the ancient chronicles he was indicated by a large letter ‘P’ with two commas. Tradition says he sleeps somewhere among the snow, and while he sleeps, life goes along more or less OK; but when he wakes up, he attacks. When that happens, the land won’t yield crops, you get Yeltsin for president, and all that kind of stuff. Of course, they didn’t actually know anything about Yeltsin, but overall it’s pretty similar.’

‘And who is it this Phukkup attacks in this article?’ Azadovsky asked.

‘Not anyone or anything special - just everything in general. That’s probably why the other gods interfered. I asked what the dog was called specially - I thought maybe it was some kind of transcultural archetype. So what do they call the goddess?’

‘They don’t call her anything,’ broke in a voice behind them, and Tatarsky swung round.

Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin was standing in the doorway. He was wearing a long black cloak with a hood framing his gleaming golden mask, and Tatarsky only recognised him from his voice.

‘They don’t call her anything,’ Seiful-Farseikin repeated, entering the room. ‘Once a long time ago they used to call her Ishtar, but her name has changed many times since then. You know the brand No Name, don’t you? And the story’s the same with the lame dog. But you were right about all the rest.’

‘You talk to him, will you, Farsuk?’ said Azadovksy. ‘He knows everything anyway, without us telling him.’

‘What do you know, I wonder?’ Farseikin asked.

‘Just a few bits and pieces,’ answered Tatarsky. ‘For instance, that jagged sign in the centre of the slab. I know what it means.’

‘And what does it mean?’

‘"Quick" in ancient Egyptian.’

Farseikin laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s certainly original. New members usually think it’s M amp;M chocolate. Actually it’s a symbol that indicates a certain very ancient and rather obscure dictum. All the ancient languages in which it existed have been dead for ages, and even translating it into Russian is difficult - there aren’t any appropriate glosses. But English has an exact equivalent in Marshall MacLuhan’s phrase: "The medium is the message." That’s why we decode the symbol as two ‘M’s joined together. And we’re not the only ones, of course - altars like this are supplied with all render-servers.’

‘You mean the slab isn’t genuine?’

‘Why not? It’s absolutely genuine,’ answered Farseikin. ‘Three-thousand-year-old basalt. You can touch it. Of course, I’m not sure this drawing always meant what it means now"

‘What’s that Venus fly-trap plant between the goddess and the dog?’

‘It’s not a Venus fly-trap; it’s the Tree of Life. It’s also the symbol of the great goddess, because one of her forms is a tree with three roots that blossoms in our souls. This tree also has a name, but that is only learned at the very highest stages of initiation in our society. At your stage you can only know the names of its three roots - that is, the root names.’

‘What are these names?’

Farseikin solemnly pronounced three strange long words that had absolutely no meaning for Tatarsky. He could only note that they contained many sibilants.

‘Can they be translated?’

‘It’s the same problem of there being no appropriate glosses. The root names can only be rendered very approximately as "oral", "anal" and "displacing".’

‘Uhuh,’ said Tatarsky. ‘I see. And what society’s that? What do its members do?’

‘As if you really don’t know. How long have you been working for us now? All that is what its members do.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘Once long ago it was called the Chaldean Guild,’ Farseikin replied. ‘But it was called that by people who weren’t members and had only heard about it. We ourselves call it the Society of Gardeners, because our task is to cultivate the sacred tree that gives life to the great goddess.’

‘Has this society existed for a long time?’

‘For a very, very long time. They say it was active in Atlantis, but for the sake of simplicity we regard it as coming to us from Babylon via Egypt.’

Tatarsky adjusted the mask that had slipped from his face. ‘I see.’ he said. ‘So did it build the Tower of Babel?’

‘No. Definitely not. We’re not a construction firm. We’re simply servants of the great goddess. To use your terminology, we watch to make sure that Phukkup doesn’t awaken and attack; you understood that part right. I think you understand that here in Russia we bear a special responsibility. The dog sleeps here.’

‘But where exactly?’

‘All around us,’ replied Farseikin. ‘When they say he sleeps among the snow, that’s a metaphor; but the fact that several times this century he has almost awoken isn’t.’

‘So why do they keep cutting back our frequency?’

Farseikin spread his hands and shrugged. ‘Human frivolity,’ he said, going over to the altar and picking up the golden chalice. ‘Immediate advantage, a short-sighted view of the situation; but they’ll never actually cut us off, don’t worry about that. They watch that very closely. And now, if you have no objections, let us proceed with the ritual.’

He moved close to Tatarsky and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Kneel down and remove your mask.’

Tatarsky obediently went down on his knees and removed the mask from his face. Farseikin dipped a finger into the chalice and traced a wet zigzag on Tatarsky’s forehead.

‘Thou art the medium, and thou art the message,’ he said, and Tatarsky realised that the line on his forehead was a double ‘M’.

‘What liquid is that?’ he asked.

‘Dog’s blood. I trust I don’t need to explain the symbolism?’

‘No,’ said Tatarsky, rising from the floor. ‘I’m not an idiot; I’ve read a thing or two. What next?’

‘Now you must look into the sacred eye.’

For some reason Tatarsky shuddered at this, and Azadovsky noticed it.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he put in. ‘Through this eye the goddess recognises her husband; and since she already has a husband, it’s a pure formality. You take a look at yourself in the eye, it’s clear you’re not the god Marduk, and we calmly get on with business.’

‘What god Marduk?’

‘Well, maybe not Marduk, then,’ said Azadovsky, taking out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter; ‘it doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean anything in particular. Farsuk, you explain to him; you’ve got it all taped. Meanwhile I’ll take a trip to Marlboro country.’

‘It’s another mythologeme,’ said Farseikin. "The great goddess had a husband, also a god, the most important of all the gods, to whom she fed a love potion, and he fell asleep in the shrine on the summit of his ziggurat. Since he was a god, his dreaming was so powerful that… In general, it’s all a bit confused, but all of our world, including all of us, and even the goddess, are apparently his dream. And since he can’t be found, she has a symbolic earthly husband, whom she chooses herself.’

Tatarsky cast a glance in the direction of Azadovsky, who nodded and released a neat smoke ring through the mouth-hole of his mask.

‘You guessed,’ said Farseikin. ‘At the moment it’s him. For Leonid, it’s naturally a rather tense moment when someone else looks into the sacred eye, but so far it’s been all right. Go on.’

Tatarsky went up to the eye on the stand and knelt down in front of it. The blue enamel iris was separated from the pupil by a fine gold border; the pupil itself was dark and reflected like a mirror. In it Tatarsky could see his own distorted face, Farseikin’s crooked figure and Azadovsky’s bloated knee.

‘Turn the light this way,’ Farseikin said to someone. ‘He won’t be able to see like that, and he has to remember for the rest of his life.’

A bright beam of light fell on the pupil, and Tatarsky could no longer see his own reflection, which was replaced by a blurred golden glimmering, as though he had just spent several minutes watching the rising sun, then closed his eyes and seen its imprint lost and wandering through his nerve endings. ‘Just what was it I was supposed to see?’ he wondered.

Behind him there was a rapid scuffle, something metallic clanged heavily against the floor and he heard a hoarse gasp. Tatarsky instantly leapt to his feet, sprang back from the altar and swung round.

The scene that met his eyes was so unreal that it failed to frighten him, and he decided it must be part of the ritual. Sasha Blo and Malyuta, wearing fluffy white skirts, with golden masks dangling at their chests, were strangling Azadovsky with yellow nylon skipping ropes, trying to keep themselves as far away from him as possible, while Azadovsky, his sheep’s eyes staring out of his head, was pulling the thin nylon rope with both hands towards himself with all his might. Alas, it was an unequal struggle: blood appeared on his lacerated palms, staining the yellow string red, and he fell first to his knees and then on to his belly, covering his fallen mask with his chest. Tatarsky caught the moment when the expression of dumbfounded astonishment disappeared from the eyes gazing at him and was not replaced by any other. It was only then he realised that if this was part of the ritual, it was an entirely unexpected part for Azadovsky.

‘What is this? What’s happening?’

‘Take it easy,’ said Farseikin. ‘Nothing’s happening any more. It’s already happened.’

‘But why?’ asked Tatarsky.

Farseikin shrugged. ‘The great goddess had grown weary of her mismatch.’

‘How do you know?’

‘At the sacred divination in Atlanta the oracle foretold that in our country Ishtar would have a new husband. We’d been having problems with Azadovsky for ages, but it took us a long time to figure out who the new husband could be. All that was said about him was that he was a man with the name of a town. We thought and thought about it, we searched, and then suddenly they brought in your file from the first section. Everything adds up: you’re the one.’

‘Me???’

Instead of replying, Farseikin gave a sign to Sasha Blo and Malyuta. They went over to Azadovsky’s body, took hold of his legs and dragged him out of the altar room into the changing room.

‘Me?’ Tatarsky repeated. ‘But why me?’

‘I don’t know. Ask yourself that one. For some reason the goddess didn’t choose me. How fine it would have sounded: "He who has abandoned his name"…’

‘Abandoned his name?’

‘I come from a Volga German background; but when I was due to graduate from university, an order came in from state TV for a nig-nog to be their Washington correspondent. I was the Komsomol secretary, which meant I was first in line for America. So they changed my name for me in the Lubyanka. Anyway, that’s not important. It’s you that’s been chosen.’

‘And would you have accepted?’

‘Why not? It certainly sounds impressive: husband of the great goddess! It’s a purely ritual post, no responsibilities at all, but the opportunities are absolutely immense. No limits at all, you could say. Of course, it all depends on how imaginative you are. Every morning the deceased here had his cleaning-lady scatter cocaine across his carpet from a bucket; and he built himself a bunch of dachas, bought a load of pictures… And that was all he could think of. As I said: a mismatch.’

‘And can I refuse?’

‘I think not,’ said Farseikin.

Tatarsky glanced through the open door, behind which there was something strange going on. Malyuta and Sasha Blo were packing Azadovsky into a container in the form of a large green sphere. His body, hunched over in an unnatural fashion, was already in the container, but one hairy leg with a red flip-flop still protruded from the container’s small door and stubbornly refused to fit inside.

‘What’s the sphere for?’

‘The corridors here are long and narrow,’ answered Farseikin. ‘Carrying him would be the devil’s own job; and when you roll it outside, nobody takes the slightest notice. Semyon Velin thought it up before he died. What a designer he was… And we lost him because of this idiot as well. I wish Semyon could see all this!’

‘But why is it green?’

‘I don’t know. What difference does it make? Don’t go looking for symbolic significance in everything. Babe - you might regret it when you find it.’

There was a quiet crunching sound in the changing room and Tatarsky winced.

‘Will they strangle me some time too?’ he asked.

Farseikin shrugged: ‘As you’ve seen, the consorts of the great goddess are sometimes changed, but that goes with the job. If you don’t get too full of yourself, you could easily reach old age. Even retire. The main thing is, if you have any doubts about anything, you just come to me; and follow my advice. The first thing I’d advise you to do is get rid of that cocaine-polluted carpet. There are rumours going round town. That’s something we can do without.’

‘I’ll get rid of the carpet; but how do we explain to all the others about me moving into his office?’

‘No need to explain anything to them. They understand all right, or they wouldn’t be working for us.’

Malyuta put his head out of the changing room. He was already changed. He glanced at Tatarsky for a moment then looked away and held out Azadovsky’s mobile phone to Farseikin.

‘Shall we roll it out?’ he asked briskly.

‘No,’ said Farseikin. ‘Roll it in. Why d’you ask such stupid questions?’

Tatarsky waited until the metallic rumbling in the long burrow of the corridor had died away and asked in a low voice:

‘Farsuk Karlovich, will you tell me something, in confidence?’

‘What?’

‘Who actually controls all of this?’

‘My advice to you is not to stick your nose in,’ said Farseikin. ‘That way you’ll stay a living god for longer; and to be honest about it, I don’t know. Even after all the years I’ve been in the business.’

He went over to the wall beside the altar, unlocked a small concealed door, bent down and went in through the opening. A light came on beyond the door and Tatarsky saw a large machine that looked like an open black book flanked by two vertical cylinders of frosted glass. The flat black surface facing Tatarsky bore the word ‘Compuware’ in white and some unfamiliar symbol, and standing in front of the machine was a seat rather like a dentist’s chair with straps and latches.

‘What’s that?’ Tatarsky asked.

‘A 3-D scanner.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘We’re going to scan in your image.’

‘Do I have to go through with it?’

‘Absolutely. According to the ritual, you only become the husband of the great goddess after you’ve been digitised - converted, as they say, into a sequence of visual images.’

‘And then I’ll be inserted into all the clips and broadcasts? Like Azadovsky?’

‘That’s your main sacramental function. The goddess really doesn’t have a body, but there is something that takes the place of her body. Her corporeal nature consists of the totality of all the images used in advertising; and since she manifests herself via a sequence of images, in order to become godlike, you have to be transformed. Then it will be possible for you to enter into mystical union. In effect, your 3-D model will be her husband, and you’ll be… a regent, I suppose. Come over here.’

Tatarsky shifted his feet nervously and Farseikin laughed:

‘Don’t be afraid. It doesn’t hurt to be scanned. It’s like a photocopier, only they don’t close the lid… At least, not yet they don’t… OK, OK, I’m only joking. Let’s get on with it; they’re waiting for us upstairs. It’s a celebration - your coming-out party, so to speak. You can relax in a circle of close friends.’

Tatarsky took a last look at the basalt slab with the dog and the goddess before plunging decisively through the doorway beyond which Farseikin was waiting for him. The walls and ceiling of the small room were painted white and it was almost empty - apart from the scanner it contained a desk with a control panel on it and several cardboard boxes that had once held electronic goods standing over by the wall.

‘Farsuk Karlovich, have you heard of the bird Semurg?’ Tatarsky asked as he sat in the armchair and set his forearms on the armrests.

‘No. What kind of a bird is it?’

‘There was an oriental poem,’ said Tatarsky; ‘I haven’t read it myself, only heard about it. About how thirty birds flew off to search for their king Semurg and then, after all kinds of different tests and trials, at the very end they learned that the word "Semurg" means "thirty birds".’

‘So?’ Farseikin asked, pushing a black plug into a socket.

‘Well,’ said Tatarsky, ‘I just thought, maybe the entire Generation "P", that is the one that chose Pepsi - you chose Pepsi when you were young as well, didn’t you?’

‘What other choice was there?’ Farseikin muttered, clicking switches on the control panel.

‘Yes, well… I had this rather frightening thought: that dog with five legs - maybe it’s all of us together? And now we’re all on the attack, sort of.’

Farseikin was clearly too absorbed in his manipulations to take in what Tatarsky had said.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘now hold dead still and don’t blink. Ready?’

Tatarsky gave a deep sigh.

‘Ready,’ he said.

The machine began to hum and whirr and the frosted white lamps at each side of it lit up with a blinding brilliance. The structure that looked like an open book began slowly rotating around its axis, a ray of white light struck Tatarsky in the eyes and he was blinded for several seconds.’

‘I bow before the living god,’ Farseikin said solemnly.

When Tatarsky opened his eyes, Farseikin was kneeling in front of the armchair with his head bowed, holding out to him a small black object. It was Azadovsky’s phone. Tatarsky took it gingerly and examined it: the phone looked like an ordinary small Phillips, except that it had only one button, in the form of a golden eye. Tatarsky wanted to ask if Alla knew what was happening, but he had no chance: Farseikin bowed, rose to his feet, walked backwards to the exit and tactfully closed the door behind him.

Tatarsky was left alone. He got up from the chair, walked over to the door and listened. He couldn’t hear anything: Farseikin must already be in the changing room. Tatarsky moved across into the farthest comer of the room and cautiously pressed the button on the phone.

‘Hello,’ he said quietly into the handset. ‘Hello!’

‘I bow before the living god,’ Alla’s voice replied. ‘What are your instructions for today, boss?’

‘None yet,’ Tatarsky replied, amazed to sense that he could play his new part without the slightest effort. ‘Although, you know what. Alla, there will be a few after all. Firstly, have the carpet in the office taken up - I’m fed up with it. Secondly, make sure that from today on there’s nothing but Coca-Cola in the buffet, no Pepsi. Thirdly, Malyuta doesn’t work for us any more… because he’s about as much use to us as a fifth leg to a dog. All he does is spoil other people’s scenarios, and then the mazuma has to go back… And you. Alla my love, remember: if I say something, you don’t ask "why?", you just jot it down. You follow? That’s all right then.’

When the conversation was over, Tatarsky tried to hook the phone on to his belt, but his Fukem-Al sheepskin skirt was too thick. He thought for a few moments about where he could stick it, and then recalled that he’d forgotten to say something, and pressed the golden eye again.

‘And one more thing,’ he said; ‘I completely forgot: take care of Rostropovich.’