Buddha's Little Finger

6

‘Next station - «Dynamo».’

The voice from the loudspeaker brought Serdyuk to attention.

The passenger sitting opposite, a weird-looking type with a round, pockmarked face, dressed in a dirty padded kaftan and a turban streaked with splashes of green paint, caught Serdyuk’s senseless glance, touched two fingers to his turban and said loudly:

‘Heil Hitler!’

‘Hitler heil,’ Serdyuk replied politely and turned his gaze away.

He couldn’t figure out who the man was or what he was doing riding in the metro, when an ugly mug like that should have been driving around in at least a BMW.

Serdyuk sighed, squinted down to his right and began reading the book which lay open on the knees of his neighbour. It was a thin, tattered brochure wrapped in newsprint, on which the words ‘Japanese Militarism’ had been scrawled in ballpoint pen. The brochure was obviously some kind of semi-secret Soviet textbook: the paper was yellow with age and the typeface was peculiar, with a text made up of large numbers of Japanese words set in italics.

‘The concept of social duty,’ read Serdyuk, ‘is interwoven for the Japanese with a sense of natural human duty in a way that generates the emotional energy of high drama. This duty is expressed in the concepts on and giri (derived from the hieroglyphs meaning «to prick» and «to weigh down» respectively) which are still very far from being historical curiosities. On is the «debt of gratitude» owed by a child to its parents, a vassal to his suzerain, a citizen to the state. Giri is «obligation and responsibility», and requires that each individual act in accordance with his station and position in society. It is also obligation in relation to one’s own self, the preservation of the honour and dignity of one’s own person, of one’s name. Duty consists in being prepared to sacrifice oneself in the name of on and giri, which define a specific code of social, professional and human behaviour.’

His neighbour apparently noticed that Serdyuk was reading his book, and he lifted it closer to his face, half-closing it for good measure, so that the text was completely hidden. Serdyuk closed his eyes.

That’s why they’re able to live like normal human beings, he thought, because they never forget about their duty. Don’t spend all their time getting pissed like folks here.

It’s not really possible to say what exactly went on in his head over the next few minutes, but when the train stopped at Pushkinskaya station and Serdyuk emerged from the carriage his own soul had become filled with the fixed desire to have a drink - in fact, to take an entire skinful of something. Initially this desire remained formless and unrecognized, acknowledged merely as a vague melancholy relating to something unattainable and seemingly lost for ever, and it only assumed its true form when Serdyuk found himself face to face with a long rank of armour-plated kiosks, from inside which identical pairs of Caucasian eyes surveyed enemy territory through narrow observation slits.

Deciding on what exactly he wanted proved more difficult. There was a very wide, but fairly second-rate selection - more like an election than a piss-up, he thought. Serdyuk hesitated for a long time, until he finally spotted a bottle of port wine bearing the name ‘Livadia’ in one of the glass windows.

Serdyuk’s very first glance at the bottle brought back clear memories of a certain forgotten morning in his youth; a secluded corner in the yard of the institute where he studied, stacked high with crates, the sun on the yellow leaves and a group of laughing students all from the same year, handing round a bottle of that same port wine (with a slightly different label, it was true - in those days they hadn’t started putting dots on the Russian ‘i’s yet). Serdyuk also recalled that to reach that secluded spot, secure against observation from all sides, you had to slip through between some rusty railings, usually messing up your jacket in the process. But the most important thing in all of this wasn’t the port wine or the railings, it was the fleeting reminiscence that triggered a pang of sadness in his heart -the memory of all the limitless opportunities and endless highways there used to be in the world that stretched away from that corner of the yard.

This memory was followed rapidly by the absolutely unbearable thought that the world itself had not changed at all since those old days, it was just that he couldn’t see it any more with the same eyes as he had then: he could no longer squeeze through those railings, and there was nowhere left to squeeze into either - that little patch of emptiness behind the railings had long since been completely paved over with zinc-plated coffins of experience.

But if he couldn’t view the world through those same eyes any more, he could at least try for a glimpse of it through the same glass, darkly. Thrusting his money in through the embrasure of the kiosk, Serdyuk scooped up the green grenade that popped out through the same opening. He crossed the street, picked his way carefully between the puddles that reflected the sky of a late spring afternoon, sat down on a bench opposite the green figure of Pushkin and pulled the plastic stopper out of the bottle with his teeth. The port wine still tasted exactly the same as it had always done - one more proof that reform had not really touched the basic foundations of Russian life, but merely swept like a hurricane across its surface.

Serdyuk polished off the bottle in a few long gulps, then carefully tossed it into the bushes behind the low granite kerb; an intelligent-looking old woman who had been pretending to read a newspaper went after it straight away. Serdyuk slumped back against the bench.

Intoxication is by its nature faceless and cosmopolitan. The high that hit him a few minutes later had nothing in common with the promise implied by the bottle’s label with its cypresses, antique arches and brilliant stars in a dark-blue sky. There was nothing in it to indicate that the port wine actually came from the left bank of the Crimea, and the suspicion even flashed through his mind that if it had come from the right bank, or even from Moldavia, the world around him would still have changed in the same fashion.

The world was changed all right, and quite noticeably - it stopped feeling hostile, and the people walking past him were gradually transformed from devoted disciples of global evil into its victims, although they themselves had no inkling that was what they were. After another minute or two something happened to global evil itself - it either disappeared or simply stopped being important. The intoxication mounted to its blissful zenith, lingered for a few brief seconds at the highest point, and then the usual ballast of drunken thoughts dragged him back down into reality.

Three schoolboys walked past Serdyuk and he heard their breaking voices repeating the words ‘you gotta problem?’ with forceful enthusiasm. Their backs receded in the direction of an amphibious Japanese jeep parked at the edge of the pavement with a big hoist on the front of its snout. Jutting up directly above the Jeep on the other side of Tverskaya Street he could see the McDonald’s sign, looking like the yellow merlon of some invisible fortress wall. Somehow it all left Serdyuk in no doubt as to what the future held for them.

His thoughts moved back to the book he had read in the metro. ‘The Japanese,’ Serdyuk thought, ‘now there’s a great nation! Just think - they’ve had two atom bombs dropped on them, they’ve had their islands taken away, but they’ve survived… Why is it nobody here can see anything but America? What the hell good is America to us? It’s Japan we should be following - we’re neighbours, aren’t we? It’s the will of God. And they need to be friends with us too - between the two of us we’d polish off your America soon enough… with its atom bombs and asset managers…’

In some imperceptible fashion, these thoughts developed into a decision to go for another bottle. Serdyuk thought for a while about what to buy. He didn’t fancy any more port wine, the right thing to follow the playful left-bank adagio seemed like a long calm andante - he wanted something simple and straightforward with no boundaries to it, like the sea in the TV programme Travellers’ Club, or the field of wheat on the share certificate he’d received in exchange for his privatization voucher. After a few minutes’ thought, Serdyuk decided to get some Dutch spirit.

Going back to the same bench, he opened the bottle, poured out half a plastic cupful, drank it, then gulped at the air with his scorched mouth as he tore open the newspaper wrapped around the hamburger he’d bought to go with his drink. His eyes encountered a strange symbol, a red flower with asymmetrical petals set inside an oval. There was a notice below the emblem:

The Moscow branch of the Japanese firm Taira incorporated is interviewing potential employees. Knowledge of English and computer skills essential.’

Serdyuk cocked his head sideways. For a second he thought he’d seen a second notice printed beside the first one, decorated with a similar emblem, but when he took a closer look at the sheet of newspaper, he realized that there really were two ovals - right beside the flower inside its oval border there was a ring of onion, a wedge of dead grey flesh protruding from under the crust of bread and a bloody streak of ketchup. Serdyuk noted with satisfaction that the various levels of reality were beginning to merge into each other, carefully tore the notice out of the newspaper, licked a drop of ketchup off it, folded it in two and stuck it in his pocket.

Everything after that went as usual.

He was woken by a sick feeling and the grey light of morning. The major irritant, of course, was the light - as always, it seemed to have been mixed with chlorine in order to disinfect it. Looking around, Serdyuk realized he was at home, and apparently he’d had visitors the evening before - just who, he couldn’t remember. He struggled up from the floor, took off his mud-streaked jacket and cap, went out into the corridor and hung them on a hook. Then he was visited by the comforting thought that there might be some beer in the fridge - that had happened several times before in his life. But when he was only a few feet from the fridge the phone on the wall began to ring. Serdyuk took the receiver off the hook and tried to say ‘hello’, but the very effort of speaking was so painful that instead he gave out a croak that sounded something like ‘Oh-aye-aye’.

‘Ohae gozaimas,’ the receiver echoed cheerfully. ‘Mr Serdyuk?’

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk.

‘Hello. My name is Oda Nobunaga and I had a conversation with you yesterday evening. More precisely, last night. You were kind enough to give me a call.’

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk, clutching at his head with his free hand.

‘I have discussed your proposal with Mr Esitsune Kawabata, and he is prepared to receive you today at three o’clock for purposes of an interview.’

Serdyuk didn’t recognize the voice in the receiver. He could tell straight away it was that of a foreigner - although he couldn’t hear any accent, the person talking to him made pauses, as though he were running through his vocabulary in search of the right word.

‘Much obliged,’ said Serdyuk. ‘But what proposal’s that?’

‘The one you made yesterday. Or today, to be precise.’

‘Aha!’ said Serdyuk. ‘A-a-ha!’

‘Write down the address,’ said Oda Nobunaga.

‘Hang on,’ said Serdyuk, ‘just a moment. I’ll get a pen.’

‘But why do you not have a notepad and a pen by the telephone?’ Nobunaga asked with obvious irritation in his voice. ‘A man of business should do so.’

‘I’m writing now.’

‘Nagornaya metro station, the exit on the right. There will be an iron fence facing you and a house, with an entrance to the yard. The precise address is Pyatikhlebny Lane, house number five. There will be a… What is it now… A plaque.’

‘Thank you.’

‘That is all from me. Sayonara, as they say,’ said Nobunaga and hung up.

There was no beer in the fridge.

Emerging on to the surface of the earth from Nagornaya metro station long before the appointed time, Serdyuk immediately saw a fence covered with battered and peeling tin-plate, but he didn’t believe it could be the same one mentioned by Mr Nobunaga - this fence was somehow too plain and too dirty. He walked around the area for a while, stopping the rare passers-by and asking where Pyatikhlebny Lane was. This was something nobody seemed to know, however, or perhaps they simply didn’t want to tell him - most of the people Serdyuk found to ask were old women in dark clothes plodding slowly on their way to some mysterious destination.

It was a wild place, like the remnants of some industrial region bombed to smithereens in the distant past and now overgrown with wild grass, through which, here and there, pieces of rusty iron protruded. There was plenty of open space and sky, and he could see dark strips of forest on the horizon. But despite these banal commonplaces, this region was very unusual: if he looked to the west, where the green fence was, he saw a normal panoramic cityscape, but if he turned his gaze to the east, his field of view was entirely filled with a vast stretch of emptiness, with a few street lamps towering above it like gallows trees. It was as though Serdyuk had found his way precisely to the secret border between post-industrial Russia and primordial Rus.

It was not one of the areas where serious foreign companies opened their offices, and Serdyuk decided this must be some two-bit firm staffed by Japanese who had failed to adjust fully to the demands of the changing world (for some reason he thought of the peasants from the film The Seven Samurai). It was clear now why they’d taken such an interest in his drunken phone call, and Serdyuk even felt a surge of sympathy and warm fellow-feeling for these slightly dull-witted foreigners who, just like himself, had not been able to find themselves a comfortable niche in life - and now, of course, the doubt that had been nagging at him all the way there, the idea that he really should have had a shave, quite simply disappeared.

Mr Nobunaga’s direction that ‘there will be a house’ could have applied to several dozen buildings in his field of view. Serdyuk decided for no particular reason that the one he was looking for was a grey eight-storey building with a glass-fronted delicatessen on the ground floor. Remarkably enough, after he had spent about three minutes walking around the yard behind the building, he spotted a brass oblong on the wall with the inscription Taira Trading House and a tiny bell-push, at first glance invisible against the uneven surface of the wall. About a yard away from the plaque there was a crude iron door hanging on immense hinges, painted with green paint. Serdyuk looked around in consternation - apart from the door, the only other thing the plaque could possibly relate to was a cast-iron manhole cover in the asphalt. Serdyuk waited until his watch showed two minutes to three and rang the bell.

The door opened immediately. Standing behind it was the inevitable hulk in camouflage gear, holding a rubber truncheon. Serdyuk nodded to him and opened his mouth in order to explain the reason for his visit - but then his jaw dropped.

Beyond the door there was a small hallway with a desk, a telephone and a chair, and on the wall of this hallway there was a large mural, showing a corridor extending into infinity. But on looking more closely at the mural, Serdyuk realized it wasn’t a mural at all, it was a genuine corridor, which began on the other side of a glass door. This corridor was very strange: there were lanterns hanging on its walls - he could actually see flickering flames through their thin rice-paper shades - and scattered over the floor was a thick layer of yellow sand, across the surface of which narrow mats made of slivers of split bamboo lay side by side to form a kind of carpet-runner. The same emblem that he had seen in the newspaper was drawn in bright red paint on the lanterns - a flower with four diamond-shaped petals (the side petals were longer than the others), enclosed in an oval. The corridor did not actually run off into infinity, as he’d thought at first, it simply curved smoothly to the right (it was the first time Serdyuk had seen that kind of layout in a building in Moscow), and its far end was hidden from sight.

‘What’yer want?’ said the security guard, breaking the silence.

‘I’ve a meeting with Mr Kawabata,’ said Serdyuk, pulling himself together, ‘at three o’clock.’

‘Ah. Come inside then, quick. They don’t like it when the door’s left open for long.’

Serdyuk stepped inside and the guard closed the door and locked it with something that looked like a massive valve-wheel.

‘Take your shoes off, please,’ he said. ‘The geta are over there.’

‘The what?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘The geta. What they use for slippers. They don’t wear any other shoes inside. That’s a strict rule.’

Serdyuk saw several pairs of wooden shoes lying on the floor.

They looked very clumsy and uncomfortable, something like tall shoe-stretchers with a strap made out of a split string, and you could only put the shoe-stretchers on your bare feet, because the strap had to be inserted between the big toe and the second toe. Just for a second he thought the security guard was joking, but then he noticed several pairs of shiny black shoes with socks protruding from them standing in the corner. He sat down on a low bench and began removing his own shoes. When the procedure was complete, he stood up and noticed that the geta had made him three or four inches taller.

‘Can I go in now?’ he asked.

‘Go ahead. Take a lantern and go straight down the corridor. Room number three.’

‘Why the lantern?’ Serdyuk asked in amazement.

‘That’s the rule here,’ said the security guard, taking one of the lanterns down from the wall and holding it out to Serdyuk, ‘you don’t wear a tie to keep you warm, do you?’

Serdyuk, who had knotted a tie round his neck that morning for the first time in many years, found this argument quite convincing. At the same time he felt a desire to take a look inside the lantern to see whether there was a real flame in there or not.

‘Room number three,’ repeated the security guard, ‘but the numbers are in Japanese. It’s the one with three strokes one above the other. You know, like the trigram for «sky».’

‘Aha,’ said Serdyuk, ‘I’m with you.’

‘And whatever you do, don’t knock. Just let them know you’re outside - try clearing your throat, or say a few words. Then wait for them to tell you what to do.’

Serdyuk set off, lifting his feet high in the air like a stork and clutching the lantern at arm’s length. Walking was very awkward, the shoe-stretchers squeaked indignantly under his feet and Serdyuk blushed at the thought of the security guard laughing to himself as he watched. Around the smooth bend he found a small dimly lit hall with black beams running across the ceiling. At first Serdyuk couldn’t see any doors there, but then he realized the tall wall panels were doors that moved sideways. There was a sheet of paper hanging on one of the panels. Serdyuk held his lantern close to it and when he saw the three lines drawn in black ink, he knew this must be room number three.

There was music playing quietly behind the door. It was some obscure string instrument: the timbre of the sound was unusual, and the slow melody, built upon strange and - as it seemed to Serdyuk - ancient harmonies, was sad and plaintive. Serdyuk сleared his throat. There was no response from beyond the wall. He cleared his throat again, louder. this time and thought that if he had to do it again he would probably puke.

‘Come in,’ said a voice behind the door.

Serdyuk slid the partition to the left and saw a room with its floor carpeted with simple dark bamboo mats. Sitting on a number of coloured cushions scattered in the corner with his legs folded under him was a barefooted man in a dark suit. He was playing a strange instrument that looked like a long lute with a small sound-box, and he took absolutely no notice of Serdyuk’s appearance. His face could hardly have been called mongoloid, though you could say there was something southern about it - Serdyuk’s thoughts on this point followed a highly specific route as he recalled a trip he’d made to Rostov-on-Don the year before. Standing on the floor of the room was a small electric cooker with a single ring, supporting a voluminous saucepan, and a black, streamlined fax machine, with a lead that disappeared into a hole in the wall. Serdyuk went in, put down his lantern on the floor and closed the door behind him.

The man in the suit gave a final touch to a string and raised his puffy, red eyes in a gesture of farewell to the note as it departed this world for ever, before carefully laying his instrument on the floor. His movements were very slow and economical, as though he were afraid a clumsy or abrupt gesture might offend someone who was present in the room but invisible to Serdyuk. Taking a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket he wiped away the tears from his eyes and turned towards his visitor. They looked at each other for a while.

‘Hello. My name is Serdyuk.’

‘Kawabata,’ said the man.

He sprang to his feet, walked briskly over to Serdyuk and took h i m by the hand. His palm was cold and dry.

‘Please,’ he said, literally dragging Serdyuk over to the scattered cushions, ‘sit down. Please, sit down.’

Serdyuk sat down.

‘I’ he began, but Kawabata interrupted him:

1 don’t want to hear a word. In Japan we have a tradition, a very ancient tradition which is still alive to this day, which says that if a person enters your house with a lantern in his hand and geta on his feet, it means that it is dark outside and the weather is bad, and the very first thing you must do is pour him some warm sake.’

With these words Kawabata fished a fat bottle with a short neck out of the saucepan. It was sealed with a watertight stopper and there was a long thread tied to its neck, which Kawabata used to extract it. Two small porcelain glasses with indecent drawings on them appeared - they depicted beautiful women with unnaturally high arched eyebrows giving themselves in intricately contrived poses to serious-looking men wearing small blue caps. Kawabata filled the glasses to the brim.

‘Please,’ he said, and held out one of the glasses to Serdyuk.

Serdyuk tipped the contents into his mouth. The liquid reminded him most of all of vodka diluted with rice water. Worse still, it was hot - perhaps that was the reason why he puked straight on to the floor mats as soon as he swallowed it. The feeling of shame and self-loathing that overwhelmed him was so powerful that he just covered his face with his hands.

‘Oh,’ said Kawabata politely, ‘there must be a real storm outside.’

He clapped his hands.

Serdyuk half-opened his eyes. Two girls had appeared in the room, dressed in a manner very similar to the women shown on the glasses. They even had the same high eyebrows - Serdyuk took a closer look and realized they were drawn on their foreheads with ink. In short, the resemblance was so complete that Serdyuk’s thoughts were only restrained from running riot by the shame he had felt a few seconds earlier. The girls quickly rolled up the soiled mats, laid out fresh ones in their place and left the room - not by the door that Serdyuk had used to enter, but by another; apparently there was another wall panel that moved sideways.

‘Please,’ said Kawabata.

Serdyuk raised his eyes. The Japanese was holding out another glass of sake, Serdyuk gave a pitiful smile and shrugged.

‘This time,’ said Kawabata, ‘everything will be fine.’

Serdyuk drank it. And this time the effect really was quite different - the sake went down very smoothly and a healing warmth spread through his body.

‘You know what the trouble is,’ he said, ‘yesterday…’

‘First another one,’ said Kawabata.

The fax machine on the floor jangled and a sheet of paper thickly covered with hieroglyphics came slithering out of it. Kawabata waited for the paper to stop moving, then tore the sheet out of the machine and became engrossed in studying it, completely forgetting about Serdyuk.

Serdyuk examined his surroundings. The walls of the room were covered with identical wooden panels, and now that the sake had neutralized the consequences of yesterday’s bout of nostalgia, each of them had assumed the appearance of a door leading into the unknown. But then one of the panels, which had a printed engraving hanging on it, was quite clearly not a door.

Like everything else in Mr Kawabata’s office, the print was strange. It consisted of an immense sheet of paper in the centre of which a picture seemed gradually to emerge out of a mass of carelessly applied yet precisely positioned lines. It showed a naked man (his figure was extremely stylized, but it was clear from the realistically depicted sexual organ that he was a man) standing on the edge of a precipice. There were several weights of various sizes hung around his neck, and he had a sword in each hand; his eyes were blindfolded with a white cloth, and the edge of the precipice was under his very feet. There were a few other minor details - the sun setting into a bank of mist, birds in the sky and the roof of a pagoda in the distance - but despite these romantic digressions, the main sensation aroused in Serdyuk’s soul by the engraving was one of hopelessness.

‘That is our national artist Aketi Mitsuhide,’ said Kawabata, ‘the one who died recently from eating fugu fish. How would you describe the theme of this print?’

Serdyuk’s eyes slithered over the figure depicted in the print, moving upwards from its exposed penis to the weights hanging on its chest.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, surprising even himself. ‘On and giri. He’s showing his prick and he’s got weights round his neck.’

Kawabata clapped his hands and laughed.

‘More sake?’ he asked.

‘You know,’ replied Serdyuk, ‘I’d be glad to, but perhaps we could do the interview first? I get drunk very quickly.’

‘The interview is already over,’ said Kawabata, filling the glasses. ‘Let me tell you all about it. Our firm has existed for a very long time, so long in fact that if I told you, I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe me. Our traditions are more important to us than anything else. We can only be approached, if you will allow me to use a figurative expression, through a very narrow door, and you have just stepped through it with confidence. Congratulations.’

‘What door’s that?’ asked Serdyuk.

Kawabata pointed to the print.

‘That one,’ he said. ‘The only one that leads into Taira incorporated.’

‘I don’t really understand,’ said Serdyuk. ‘As far as I was aware, you’re traders, and for you…’

Kawabata raised an open palm.

‘I am frequently horrified to observe,’ he said, ‘that half of Russia has already been infected with the repulsive pragmatism of the West. Present company excepted, of course, but I have good reason for saying so.’

‘But what’s wrong with pragmatism?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘In ancient times,’ said Kawabata, ‘in our country officials were appointed to important posts after examinations in which they wrote an essay on beauty. And this was a very wise principle, for if a man has an understanding of that which is immeasurably higher than bureaucratic procedures, then he will certainly be able to cope with such lower matters. If your mind has penetrated with such lightning swiftness the mystery of the ancient allegory encoded in the drawing, then could all those price lists and overheads possibly cause you the slightest problem? Never. Moreover, after your answer I would consider it an honour to drink with you. Please do not refuse me.’

Serdyuk downed another one and unexpectedly found he had fallen into reminiscing about the previous day - it seemed he’d gone on from Pushkin Square to the Clean Ponds, but it wasn’t clear to him why: all that was left in his memory was the monument to Griboedov, viewed in an odd perspective, as though he were looking at it from underneath a bench.

‘Yes,’ said Kawabata thoughtfully, ‘but if you think about it, it’s a terrible picture. The only things that differentiate us from animals are the rules and rituals which we have agreed on among ourselves. To transgress them is worse than to die, because only they separate us from the abyss of chaos which lies at our very feet - if, of course, we remove the blindfold from our eyes.’

He pointed to the print.

‘But in Japan we have another tradition - sometimes, just for a second, deep within ourselves - to renounce all traditions, to abandon, as we say, Buddha and Mara, in order to experience the inexpressible taste of reality. And this second sometimes produces remarkable works of art…’

Kawabata glanced once again at the man with the swords standing on the edge of the abyss and sighed.

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Life here nowadays is enough to make a man give up on everything too. And as for traditions… well, some go to different kinds of churches, but of course most just watch the television and think about money.’

He sensed that he had seriously lowered the tone of the conversation and he needed quickly to say something clever.

‘Probably,’ he said, holding out his empty glass to Kawabata,’ the reason it happens is that by nature the Russian is not inclined to a search for metaphysical meaning and makes do with a cocktail of atheism and alcoholism which, if the truth be told, is our major spiritual tradition.’

Kawabata poured again for himself and Serdyuk.

‘On this point I must take the liberty of disagreeing with you,’ he said. ‘And this is the reason. Recently I acquired it for our collection of Russian art.’

‘You collect art?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘Yes,’ said Kawabata, rising to his feet and going over to one of the sets of shelves. ‘That is also one of our firm’s principles. We always attempt to penetrate the inner soul of any nation with whom we do business. It is not a matter of wishing to extract any additional profit in this way by understanding the… What is the Russian word? Mentality, isn’t it?’

Serdyuk nodded.

‘No,’ Kawabata continued, opening a large file. It’s more a matter of a desire to raise to the level of art even those activities that are furthest removed from it. You see, if you sell a consignment of machine-guns, as it were, into empty space, out of which money that might have been earned any way at all appears in your account, then you are not very different from a cash register. But if you sell the same consignment of machine-guns to people about whom you know that every time they kill someone they have to do penance before a tripartite manifestation of the creator of the world, the the simple act of selling is exalted to the level of art and acquires a quite different quality. Not for them, of course, but for you. You are in harmony, you are at one with the Universe in which you are acting, and your signature on the contract acquires the same existential status… Do I express this correctly in Russian?’

Serdyuk nodded.

‘The same existential status as the sunrise, the high tide or the fluttering of a blade of grass in the wind… What was I talking about to begin with?’

‘About your collection.’

‘Ah, that’s right. Well then, would you like to take a look at this?’

He held out to Serdyuk a large sheet of some material covered with a thin protective sheet of tracing-paper.

‘But please, be careful.’

Serdyuk took hold of the sheet. It was a piece of dusty greyish cardboard, apparently quite old. A single word had been traced on it in black paint through a crude stencil - ‘God’.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s an early-twentieth-century Russian conceptual icon,’ said Kawabata. ‘By David Burliuk. Have you heard of him?’

‘I’ve heard the name somewhere.’

‘Strangely enough, he’s not very well known in Russia,’ said Kawabata. ‘But that’s not important. Just look at it!’

Serdyuk took another look at the sheet of cardboard. The letters were dissected by white lines that must have been left by the strips of paper holding the stencil together. The word was crudely printed and there were blobs of dried paint all around it the overall impression was strangely reminiscent of a print left by a boot.

Serdyuk looked up at Kawabata and drawled something that sounded like ‘Ye-ea-es’.

‘How many different meanings there are here!’ Kawabata continued. ‘Wait a moment, don’t speak - I’ll try to describe what I see, and if I miss anything, then you can add it. All right?’

Serdyuk nodded.

‘Firstly,’ said Kawabata, ‘there is the very fact that the word «God» is printed through a stencil. That is precisely the way in which it is imprinted on a person’s consciousness in childhood -as a commonplace pattern identical with the pattern imprinted on a myriad other minds. But then, a great deal depends on the quality of the surface to which it is applied - if the paper is rough and uneven, the imprint left on it will not be sharp, and if there are already other words present, it is not even clear just what mark will be left on the paper as a result. That’s why they say that everyone has his own God. And then, look at the magnificent crudeness of these letters - their corners simply scratch at your eyes. It’s hard to believe anyone could possibly imagine this three-letter word to be the source of the eternal love and grace, the reflection of which renders life in this world at least partially tolerable. But on the other hand, this print, which looks more like a brand used for marking cattle than anything else, is the only thing a man has to set his hopes on in this life. Do you agree?’

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk.

‘But if that were all there were to it, the work which you hold in your hands would not be anything particularly outstanding - the entire range of the s e arguments can be encountered at any atheist lecture in a village club. But there is one small detail which makes this icon a genuine work of genius, which sets it -and I am not afraid to say this - above Rublyov’s «Trinity». You, of course, understand what I mean, but please allow me to say it myself.’

Kawabata paused in solemn triumph.

‘What I have in mind, of course, are the empty stripes left from the stencil. It would have been no trouble to colour them in - but then the result would have been so different. Yes indeed, most certainly. A person begins by looking at this word, from the appearance of sense he moves on to the visible form and suddenly he notices the blank spaces that are not filled in with anything-and only there, in this nowhere, is it possible to encounter what all these huge, ugly letters strive in vain to convey, because the word «God» denominates that which cannot be denominated. This is a bit like Meister Eckhart, or… But that’s not important. There are many who have attempted to speak of this in words. Take Lao-tzu. You remember - about the wheel and the spokes? Or about the vessel whose value is determined solely by its inner emptiness? And what if i were to say that every word is such a vessel, and everything depends on how much emptiness it can contain? You wouldn’t disagree with that, surely?’

‘No,’ said Serdyuk.

Kawabata wiped away the drops of noble sweat from his forehead.

‘Now take another look at the print on the wall,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk.

‘Do you see how it is constructed? The segment of reality in which the on and the giri are contained is located in the very centre, and all around it is a void, from which it appears and into which it disappears. In Japan we do not torment the Universe with unnecessary thoughts about its cause and origin. We do not burden God with the concept of «God». But nonetheless, the void in this print is the same void as you see in Burliuk’s icon. A truly significant coincidence, is it not?’

‘Of course,’ said Serdyuk, holding out his empty glass to Kawabata.

‘But you will not find this void in Western religious painting,’ Kawabata said as he poured. ‘Everything there is filled up with material objects - all kinds of curtains and folds and bowls of blood and God only knows what else. The unique vision of reality reflected in these two works of art is common to only you and us, and therefore I believe what Russia really needs is alchemical wedlock with the East.’

‘I swear to God,’ said Serdyuk, ‘only yesterday evening I was…’

‘Precisely with the East,’ interrupted Kawabata, ‘and not the West. You understand? In the depths of the Russian soul lies thesame gaping void we find deep in the soul of Japan. And from this very void the world comes into being, constantly, with every second. Cheers.’

Kawabata drank up, as Serdyuk had already done, and twirled the empty bottle in his fingers.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘most certainly, the value of a vessel lies in its emptiness. But in the last few minutes the value of this particular vessel has increased excessively. That disrupts the balance between value and the absence of value, and that is intolerable. That’s what we must fear the most, a loss of balance.’

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Definitely. So there’s none left then?’

‘We could go and get some,’ Kawabata replied with a glance at his watch. ‘Of course, we’d miss the football…’

‘D’you follow the game?’

‘I’m a «Dynamo» fan,’ Kawabata answered, giving Serdyuk a very intimate kind of wink.

In an old, worn jacket with a hood and rubber boots Kawabata lost all resemblance to a Japanese, becoming instead the absolute picture of a visitor to Moscow from down south - the kind whose appearance alone was enough to prompt suspicions about the real reason for his visit.

But then Serdyuk had long known that most of the foreigners he encountered on the streets of Moscow were not really foreigners at all, but petty trader riff-raff who’d scrabbled together a bit of cash and then tarted themselves up at the Kalinka-Stockman shop. The genuine foreigners, who had multiplied to a quite incredible extent in recent years, had been trying to dress just (ike the average man on the street, for reasons of personal safety. Naturally enough, most of them got their idea of what the average Moscow inhabitant on the street looked like from CNN. And in ninety cases out of a hundred CNN, in its attempts to show Muscovites doggedly pursuing the phantom of democracy across the sun-baked desert of reform, showed close-ups of employees of the American embassy dressed up as Muscovites, because they looked a lot more natural than Muscovites dressed up as foreigners. And so despite Kawabata’s similarity to a visitor from Rostov - or rather, precisely because of that similarity - and especially because his face didn’t look particularly Japanese, it was really clear from the start that he was actually a pure-blooded Japanese who had just slipped out of his office for a minute into the Moscow twilight.

Furthermore, Kawabata led Serdyuk along one of those routes that only foreigners ever use - slipping across dark yards, in and out of buildings, through gaps in wire fences, so that after a few minutes Serdyuk was completely disoriented and had to rely entirely on his impetuous companion. Before very long they emerged on to a dark, crooked street where there were several trading kiosks and Serdyuk realized they’d reached their destination.

‘What shall we get?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘I think a litre of sake would do the job - said Kawabata. ‘And a bit of grub to go with it.’

‘Sake?’ said Serdyuk in astonishment. ‘Have they got sake here?’

‘This is the place all right,’ said Kawabata. ‘There are only three kiosks in Moscow where you can get decent sake. Why do you think we set up our office here?’

He’s joking, thought Serdyuk, and looked into the kiosk window. The selection was the usual one, except for a few unfamiliar litre bottles with labels crammed with hieroglyphics visible in among the others.

‘Black sake,’ Kawabata spoke gruffly. ‘Two. Yes.’

Serdyuk was given one bottle, which he stuck in his pocket. Kawabata kept hold of the other one.

‘Now just one other thing,’ said Kawabata. ‘It won’t take a moment.’

They walked along the line of kiosks and soon found themselves in front of a large tin-plated pavilion with a door pockmarked with holes, either from bullets or from nails or - as was more usual - from both. Both of the pavilion’s windows were protected with a traditional decorative grating, consisting of a metal rod bent into a semicircle in one bottom corner with rusty rays of iron radiating from it in all directions. The sign hanging above the door said ‘Jack of All Trades’.

Inside, there were tins of enamel paint and drying-oil on the shelves, with samples of tiles hanging from the walls and a separate counter piled high with various types of gleaming locks for safes. But in the corner, on an upturned plastic bath, there was something that Serdyuk had never seen before.

It was a black cuirass finished in gleaming lacquer, with small gold encrustations. Beside it lay a horned helmet with a fan of dangling neck-plates, also covered in black lacquer; on the helmet’s forehead there was a gleaming five-pointed silver star. On the wall beside the cuirass were several swords of various lengths and a long, asymmetrical bow.

While Serdyuk was inspecting this arsenal, Kawabata engaged the salesman in quiet conversation - they seemed to be talking about arrows. Then he asked him to take down a long sword in a scabbard decorated with white diamond shapes. He drew it half-way out of the scabbard and tried the blade with his thumbnail (Serdyuk noticed that Kawabata was very careful about the way he handled the sword and even when he was testing its cutting edge, he tried not to touch the blade with his fingers). Serdyuk felt as though Kawabata had completely forgotten that he existed, so he decided to remind him.

‘Tell me,’ he said, turning to Kawabata, ‘what could that star on the helmet mean? I suppose it’s a symbol of some sort?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Kawabata. ‘It’s a symbol, and a very ancient one. It’s one of the emblems of the Order of the October Star.’

Serdyuk chortled.

‘What kind of order’s that?’ he asked. ‘One they gave to the milkmaids in the ancient world?’

Kawabata gave him a long look, and the corner of his mouth turned up in an answering smile.

‘No,’ he said. ‘This order has never been awarded by anyone to anyone. Certain people have simply realized that they are entitled to wear it. Or rather that they had always been entitled to wear it.’

‘But what is it for?’

‘There is nothing that it could be for.’

‘The world’s full of idiots, all right,’ Serdyuk said vehemently.

Kawabata slammed the sword back into its scabbard. The air was suddenly thick with embarrassment.

‘You’re joking,’ said Serdyuk, instinctively trying to smooth things over. You might as well have said the Order of the Red labour Banner.’

‘I have never heard of… that decoration,’ said Kawabata. ‘The Order of the Yellow Flag certainly does exist, but that’s from a quite different area. And why do you think I’m joking? I very rarely joke. And when I do, I give warning by laughing softly.’

‘I’m sorry if I said something wrong,’ said Serdyuk. ‘It’s just that I’m drunk.’

Kawabata shrugged and handed the sword back to the salesman.

‘Are you taking it?’ the salesman asked.

‘Not this one,’ said Kawabata. ‘Wrap up that one over there, the small one.’

While Kawabata was paying, Serdyuk went out on to the street. He had a terrible feeling that he’d done something irredeemably stupid, but he soon felt calmer once he’d looked up a few times at the damp spring stars that had appeared in the sky. Then his eye was caught once again by the splayed metal rays of the window gratings and he thought sadly that when it came down to it, Russia was a land of the rising sun too - if only because the sun had never really risen over it yet. He decided this was an observation he could share with Kawabata, but by the time Kawabata emerged from the pavilion with a slim parcel tucked under his arm, this thought had already been forgotten, its place taken instead by an all-consuming desire for a drink.

Kawabata seemed to take in the situation at a glance. Moving several steps away from the doorway, he put his bundle down beside the dark, wet trunk of a tree growing out of a hole in the asphalt and said:

‘You know, of course, that in Japan we warm our sake before we drink it. And naturally, nobody would ever dream of drinking it straight from the bottle - that would totally contradict the spirit of the ritual. And drinking on the street is deeply dishonourable. But there is a certain ancient form which allows us to do this without losing face. It is called the «horseman’s halt». It could also be translated as the «horseman’s rest».’

Keeping his eyes fixed on Serdyuk’s face, Kawabata drew the bottle out of his pocket.

‘According to tradition,’ he continued, ‘the great poet Ari-vara Narihira was once dispatched as hunting ambassador to the province of Ise. The road was long, and in those times they travelled on horseback, so the journey took many days. It was summer. Narihira was travelling with a group of friends, and his exalted soul was filled with feelings of sadness and love. When the horsemen grew weary, they would dismount and refresh themselves with simple food and a few mouthfuls of sake. In order not to attract bandits, they lit no fire and drank the sake cold as they recited to each other marvellous verses about what they had seen on the way and what was in their hearts. And then they would set off again…’

Kawabata twisted open the screw-cap.

‘That is where the tradition comes from. When you drink sake In this fashion, you are supposed to think of the men of old, and then these thoughts should gradually merge into that radiant sadness that is born in your heart when you are aware of the fragility of this world and at the same time captivated by its beauty. So let us…’

‘With pleasure,’ said Serdyuk, reaching out for the bottle.

‘Not so fast,’ said Kawabata, jerking it away from him. ‘This is the first time you have taken part in this ritual, so allow me to explain the sequence of the actions involved and their signifi(ance. Do as I do and I will explain to you the symbolic meaning of what is happening.’

Kawabata set down the bottle beside his bundle.

‘First of all we must tether our horses,’ he said.

He tugged at the tree’s lowest branch to test its strength and then wove his hands around it as though he were winding a string on to it. Serdyuk realized he was supposed to do the same. Reaching up to a branch a little higher, he roughly repeated Kawabata’s manipulations under his watchful gaze.

‘No,’ said Kawabata, ‘he’s uncomfortable like that.’

‘Who?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘Your horse. You’ve tethered him too high. How will he graze? Remember, it’s not just you that’s resting, it’s your faithful companion as well’

An expression of puzzlement appeared on Serdyuk’s face, and Kawabata sighed.

‘You must understand,’ he said patiently, ‘that in performing this ritual we are transported back, as it were, to the Heian era. At present we are riding through the summer countryside to the province of Ise. I ask you, please, retie the bridle.’

Serdyuk decided it would be best not to argue. He waved his hands over the upper branch and then wove them around the lower one.

‘That’s much better,’ said Kawabata. ‘And now we should compose verses about what we see around us.’

He closed his eyes and waited in silence for several seconds, then pronounced a long, guttural phrase in which Serdyuk was unable to detect either rhythm or rhyme.

‘That’s more or less about what we’ve been saying,’ he explained. ‘About invisible horses nibbling at invisible grass and about how it’s far more real than this asphalt which, in essence, does not exist. But in general it’s all built on word-play. Now it’s your turn.’

Serdyuk suddenly felt miserable.

‘I really don’t know what to say,’ he said in an apologetic tone. ‘I don’t write poems, I don’t even like them very much. And who needs words with the stars up in the sky?’

‘Oh,’ Kawabata exclaimed, ‘magnificent! Magnificent! How right you are! Only thirty-two syllables, but worth an entire book!’

He took a step backwards and bowed twice.

‘And how good that I recited my verse first!’ he said. ‘After you I wouldn’t have dared to do it! But where did you learn to write tanka?’

‘Oh, around,’ Serdyuk said evasively.

Kawabata held out the bottle to him. Serdyuk took several large gulps and handed it back. Kawabata also applied himself eagerly, drinking in small sips, holding his free hand behind him - there was obviously some ritual meaning to the gesture, but to be on the safe side Serdyuk avoided asking any questions. While Kawabata was drinking, he lit a cigarette. Two or three drags restored his self-confidence and he even began to feel slightly ashamed of his recent state of timidity.

‘And by the way, about the horse,’ he said. ‘I didn’t actually tether him too high. It’s just that recently I’ve been getting tired very quickly, and I take halts of up to three days at a time. That’s why he has a long bridle. Otherwise he’d eat all the grass the first day…’

Kawabata’s face changed. He bowed once more, walked off to one side and began unfastening the buttons of his jacket over his stomach.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘l am so ashamed,’ said Kawabata. ‘I can’t carry on living after suffering such dishonour.’

He sat down on the asphalt surface, unwrapped the bundle, took out the sword and bared its blade - a glimmering patch of lilac slithered along it, reflected from the neon lamp above their heads. Serdyuk finally realized what Kawabata was about to do and managed to grab hold of his hands.

‘Stop that will you, please,’ he said in genuine fright. ‘How can you give such importance to trifles like that?’

‘Will you be able to forgive me?’ Kawabata asked emotionally, rising to his feet.

‘Please, please, let’s just forget about this stupid misunderstanding. And anyway, a love of animals is a noble feeling. Why should you be ashamed of that?’

Kawabata thought for a moment and the wrinkles on his brow disappeared.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘l really was motivated by sympathy for a tired animal, not the desire to show that I understood something better than you. There really is nothing dishonourable about that. I may have said something stupid, but I have not lost face.’

He put the sword back into its scabbard, swayed on his feet and applied himself to the bottle once again.

‘If some petty misunderstanding should arise between two noble men, surely it will crumble to dust if they both attack it with the keen edge of their minds,’ he said, handing the bottle to Serdyuk.

Serdyuk finished off what was left.

‘Of course it will,’ he said, ‘That’s as clear as day, that is.’

Kawabata raised his head and looked dreamily up at the sky.

‘And who needs words with stars up in the sky?’ he declaimed. ‘How very fine. You know, I would really like to celebrate this remarkable moment with a gesture of some kind. Why don’t we release our horses? Let them graze on this beautiful plain, and retreat into the mountains during the nights. Surely they have deserved their freedom?’

‘You’re a very kind-hearted man,’ said Serdyuk.

Kawabata walked unsteadily over to the tree, drew the sword from its scabbard and sliced off the lower branch with a movement that was almost invisible, it fell on to the asphalt of the pavement. Kawabata waved his arms in the air and shouted something loud and incomprehensible - Serdyuk realized that he was driving away the horses. Then he came back, picked up the bottle and with disappointment tipped out the last few drops on to the ground.

‘It’s getting cold,’ Serdyuk observed, looking around and instinctively sensing that any moment now the damp Moscow air would weave itself into the solid shape of a police patrol. ‘Shouldn’t we be getting back to the office?’

‘Of course,’ said Kawabata, ‘of course. And we can have a bite to eat there too.’

Serdyuk didn’t remember the way back at all. He only became aware of himself again when they were back in the same room from which their journey had started. Kawabata and he were sitting on the floor and eating noodles out of soup plates. The second bottle was already half-empty, but Serdyuk realized that he was completely sober and in a distinctly exalted mood. Kawabata must have been feeling good as well, because he was humming quietly and beating time with his chopsticks, sending slim vermicelli snakes flying off in all directions around the room. Some of them landed on Serdyuk, but he didn’t find it annoying.

When he’d finished eating, Kawabata set his plate aside and turned towards Serdyuk.

‘Now tell me,’ he said, ‘what does a man want after returning home from a dangerous journey, once he has satisfied his hunger and thirst?’

‘l don’t know,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Round here they usually turn on the television.’

‘Nah-ah,’ said Kawabata. ‘In Japan we make the finest televisions in the world, but that doesn’t prevent us from realizing that a television is just a small transparent window in the pipe of a spiritual garbage chute. I wasn’t thinking of those unfortunates who spend their whole lives in a trance watching an endless stream of swill and only feeling alive when they recognize a familiar tin can. I’m talking about people who are worthy of mention in our conversation.’

Serdyuk shrugged.

‘Can’t think of anything in particular,’ he said.

Kawabata screwed up his eyes, moved closer to Serdyuk and smiled, so that just for a moment he really did look like a cunning Japanese.

‘You remember, just a little while ago, when we set the horses loose, then forded the Tenzin river and walked on foot to the gates of Rasemon, you were talking of the warmth of another body lying beside you? Surely this is what your spirit was seeking at that moment?’

Serdyuk shuddered.

He’s gay, he thought, I should have guessed it right from the start.

Kawabata moved even closer.

‘After all, it is one of the few remaining natural feelings which a man may still experience. And we did agree that what Russia needs is alchemical wedlock with the East, didn’t we?’

‘We did,’ said Serdyuk, squirming inwardly. ‘Of course it does. I was just thinking about it only yesterday.’

‘Good,’ said Kawabata, ‘but there is nothing that happens to nations and countries that is not repeated in symbolic form in the life of the individuals who live in those countries and make up those nations. Russia, in the final analysis, is you. So if you spoke sincerely, and of course I cannot at all believe otherwise, then let us perform this ritual immediately. Let us, as it were, reinforce our words and thoughts with a symbolic fusion of basic principles…’

Kawabata bowed and winked.

‘In any case, we shall be working together, and there is nothing which brings men so close together as…’

He winked again and smiled. Serdyuk bared his teeth mechanically in response and noticed that one of Kawabata’s own teeth was missing. But there were other things that struck him as far more significant: first of all, Serdyuk remembered the danger of AIDS, and then he recalled that his underwear wasn’t particularly clean. Kawabata got up and went across to the cupboard, rummaged in it and tossed Serdyuk a piece of cloth. It was a blue cap, exactly like those shown on the heads of the men on the sake glasses. Kawabata put one on his head, gestured for Serdyuk to do the same and clapped his hands.

Immediately one of the panels in the wall slid to one side and Serdyuk became aware of a rather wild-sounding music. Behind the panel, in a small room that looked more like a broom cupboard, there was a group of four or five girls wearing long colourful kimonos and holding musical instruments. For a moment Serdyuk thought they weren’t actually wearing kimonos, but some kind of long, badly cut dressing-gowns belted at the waist with towels and tucked up so as to look like kimonos, but then he decided that dressing-gowns like that were essentially kimonos after all. The girls waved their heads from side to side and smiled as they played. One had a balalaika, another one was banging together a pair of painted wooden Palekh spoons, and another two were holding small plastic harmonicas which made a fearful, piercing squeaking noise; this was only natural, Serdyuk thought, since harmonicas like that were never actually made to play on, merely to create a happy atmosphere at children’s parties.

The girls’ smiles were a little forced and the layer of rouge on their cheeks looked a bit too thick. Their features were not even slightly Japanese, either - they were just ordinary Russian girls, and not even particularly beautiful. One of them looked like a student from Serdyuk’s year at college, a girl called Masha.

‘Woman, Semyon,’ Kawabata said thoughtfully, ‘Is by no means created for our downfall. In that marvellous moment when she envelops us in her body, it is as though we are transported to that happy land from which we came and to which we shall return after death. I love women and I am not ashamed to admit it. And every time I am joined with one of them, it is as though I…’

Without bothering to finish, he clapped his hands and the girls danced forward in close formation, gazing straight ahead into empty space as they moved directly towards Serdyuk.

‘Sixth rank, fifth rank, fourth rank, and now our horses turn to the left, and the longed-for palace of Suzdaku emerges from the mist,’ said Kawabata as he buttoned up his pants, gazing attentively all the while at Serdyuk.

Serdyuk raised his head from the floor-covering. He must have fallen asleep for a few minutes - Kawabata was obviously continuing with some story, but Serdyuk couldn’t remember the beginning. He took a look at himself. He was wearing nothing but an old washed-out T-shirt with Olympic symbols; the rest of his clothing was scattered about the room. The girls, tousled, half-naked and passionless, were fussing around the electric kettle that was boiling in the corner. Serdyuk started getting dressed quickly.

‘Further on, by the left wing of the castle,’ Kawabata continued, ‘we take a turn to the right, and there are the gates of Blissful Light rushing towards us… And now everything depends on which poetic style is in closest harmony with your soul at this moment. If you are inwardly attuned to simplicity and joy, you will gallop straight forward. If your thoughts are far removed from this frail and perishable world, then you will turn to the left and see before you the gates of Eternal Peace. And finally, if you are young and hot-headed and your soul thirsts for delights, you will turn to the right and enter in at the gates of Enduring Joy.’

Squirming under Kawabata’s unwavering gaze, Serdyuk pulled on his trousers, his shirt and his jacket, and began knotting the tie round his neck, but his fingers got tangled up in the knots and he gave up, dragged the tie off over his head and shoved it back into his pocket.

‘But then,’ Kawabata continued, raising one finger in a solemn gesture - he seemed so absorbed in what he was saying that Serdyuk realized there was no need to feel embarrassed or hurry - ‘then, whatever gateway you may have chosen to enter the imperial palace, you find yourself in the same courtyard! Think what a revelation this is for a man accustomed to reading the language of symbols! Whatever road your heart has followed, whatever route your soul may have mapped out, you always return to the same thing! Remember what is said - all things return to the one, but where does the one return to? Ah?’

Serdyuk raised his eyes from the floor.

‘Well, where does the one return to?’ Kawabata repeated, and his eyes narrowed into two slits.

Serdyuk coughed and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could speak Kawabata had clapped his hands in delight.

‘Oh.’ he said, ‘profound and accurate as always. And especially for those rare horsemen who have risen to the height of this truth, growing in the first courtyard of the imperial palace there is an orange-blossom tree and a… What would you plant to pair with an orange blossom?’

Serdyuk sighed. There was only one Japanese plant he knew.

‘What’s it called… Sakura,’ he said. ‘A blossoming sakura.’

Kawabata took a step backwards and added yet another bow to the long sequence he had already made that evening. There seemed to be tears gleaming in his eyes,

‘Yes, yes,’ said Kawabata. ‘Precisely so. Orange blossom and cherry blossom in the first courtyard, and further on, by the Chambers of the Drifting Scents there is a wistaria, by the Chambers of the Frozen Flowers there is a plum tree, by the Chambers of the Reflected Light there is a pear tree. Oh how ashamed i am that I have subjected you to the insult of this interrogation! Please believe me, I am not to blame for this. Such are…’

He glanced across at the girls sitting round the electric kettle and clapped his hands twice. The girls gathered up the kettle and their scattered clothes and quickly disappeared into the broom cupboard from which they had emerged; the screen closed behind them and nothing, apart perhaps from a few spots of something white on the fax machine, was left to remind Serdyuk of the bonfire of passion that had been blazing in the room only a few minutes earlier.

‘Such are the rules of our firm,’ Kawabata finished his sentence. ‘I’ve already told you that when I use the word «firm» I am not translating absolutely accurately. In actual fact it would be more correct to say «clan». But if this term is used too early, it may arouse suspicion and fear. We therefore prefer first to find out what kind of man we are dealing with and then go into the details. Even though in your case the answer was clear to me from the moment when you recited that magical poem…’

Kawabata stood absolutely still and closed his eyes, and for several seconds his lips moved silently. Serdyuk guessed that he was repeating the phrase about the stars in the sky, which Serdyuk couldn’t remember exactly himself.

‘Quite remarkable words. Yes, from that moment on everything was absolutely clear to me. But there are rules, very strict rules, and I was obliged to ask you the required questions. Now I must tell you the following,’ Kawabata continued. ‘Since I have already mentioned that our firm is in reality more like a clan, it follows that our employees are more like members of a clan. And the obligations which they take upon themselves are also different from the usual obligations that hired hands accept. To put it simply, we accept you as a member of our clan, which is one of the most ancient in Japan. The title of the vacant post which you will occupy is «Assistant Manager for the Northern Barbarians’’. I understand that the title might possibly seem offensive to you, but this is a tradition older than the city of Moscow. It is a beautiful city, by the way, especially in summer. This is a post for a samurai, and a layman may not occupy it. Therefore, if you are willing to accept the post, I will make you a samurai.’

‘But what kind of work is it?’

‘Oh, nothing complicated,’ said Kawabata. ‘Papers, clients. From the outside it all looks just the same as in any other firm, except that your inner attitude to events must match the harmony of the cosmos.’

‘And what’s the pay like?’

‘You wilt receive two hundred and fifty koku of rice a year,’ said Kawabata, and frowned as he calculated something in his head. ‘That’s about forty thousand of your dollars.’

‘In dollars?’

‘However you wish,’ Kawabata said with a shrug.

‘I’ll take it,’ said Serdyuk.

‘As I expected. Now tell me, are you ready to accept that you are a samurai of the Taira clan?’

‘I should say so.’

‘Are you willing to link your life and your death with the destiny of our clan?’

All these crazy rituals they have, thought Serdyuk. Where do they find the time to make all those televisions?

‘I am,’ he said.

‘Will you be prepared, as a real man, to cast the ephemeral blossom of this life over the edge of the abyss and into the void if this is required of you by your giri?’ Kawabata asked with a nod in the direction of the print on the wall.

Serdyuk took another look at it.

‘I will,’ he said, ‘of course. Chuck the blossom down the abyss - no problem.’

‘You swear?’

‘I swear.’

‘Splendid,’ said Kawabata, ‘splendid. Now there is only one small formality left, and we’ll be finished. We must receive confirmation from Japan. But that will only take a few minutes.’

He sat down facing the fax machine, rummaged through a pile of papers until he found a clean sheet, and then a brush appeared in his hand,

Serdyuk changed his position. His legs had gone numb from sitting too long on the floor and he thought it would be a good idea to ask Kawabata whether he would be allowed to bring a stool - just a small one - to work with him. Then he looked around for the remains of the sake, but the bottle had disappeared. Kawabata was busy with his sheet of paper and Serdyuk was afraid to ask - he couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t disrupt the ritual. He remembered the oath he had just taken. God almighty, he thought, the number of oaths I’ve sworn in my life! Promised to struggle for the cause of the Communist Party, didn’t I? Half a dozen times, probably, going back to when I was just a kid. Promised to marry Masha, didn’t I? Sure I did. And yesterday, after the Clear Ponds, when I was drinking with those idiots, didn’t I promise we’d get another bottle on me? And now look where it’s got me - chucking blossoms down an abyss.

Meanwhile Kawabata finished pushing his brush around the sheet of paper, blew on it and showed it to Serdyuk. It was a large chrysanthemum drawn in black ink.

‘What is it?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘Oh,’ said Kawabata, ‘it’s a chrysanthemum. You understand, when a new member joins us, it is such a great joy for the entire Taira clan that it would be inappropriate to entrust it to marks on paper. In such cases, we usually inform our leaders by drawing a flower. What’s more, this is the very flower of which we were just speaking. It symbolizes your life, which now belongs to the Taira clan, and at the same time it testifies to your final awareness of its fleeting ephemerality…’

‘I get it,’ said Serdyuk.

Kawabata blew on the sheet of paper once more, then set it in the crack of the fax machine and began dialling some incredibly long number.

He got through only at the third attempt. The fax hummed into life, a little green lamp on its corner lit up and the page slowly slid out of sight into the black maw.

Kawabata stared fixedly at the fax machine, without moving or changing his pose. Several long and weary minutes went by, and then the fax began to hum again and another sheet of paper slid out from underneath its black body. Serdyuk understood immediately that this was the reply.

Kawabata waited until the full length of the page had emerged and then tore it out of the fax, glanced at it and looked slowly round at Serdyuk.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘my sincere congratulations! The reply is most propitious.’

He held out the sheet of paper to Serdyuk, who took it and saw a different drawing - this time it was a long, slightly bent stick with some kind of pattern on it and something sticking out from it at one side.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘lt’s a sword,’ Kawabata said solemnly, ‘the symbol of your new status in life. And since I never had any doubt that this would be the outcome, allow me to present you, so to speak, with your passport.’

With these words Kawabata held out the short sword he had bought earlier in the tin-plated pavilion.

Perhaps it was Kawabata’s fixed, unblinking stare, or perhaps it was the result of some chemical reaction in his own alcohol-drenched metabolism, but for some reason Serdyuk became aware suddenly of the significance and solemnity of the moment. He almost went down on his knees, but just in time he remembered that it was the medieval European knights who did that, not the Japanese - and not even the knights, if he thought about it, but only the actors from the Odessa film studios who were playing them in some intolerably dreary old Soviet film. So he just held out his hands and took a cautious grip on the cold instrument of death. There was a design on the scabbard that he hadn’t noticed before: it was a drawing of three cranes in flight - the gold wire impressed into the black lacquer of the scabbard traced a light and dashing contour of exceptional beauty.

‘Your soul,’ said Kawabata, gazing into Serdyuk’s eyes again, ‘lies in this scabbard.’

‘What a beautiful drawing,’ said Serdyuk. ‘You know, it reminds me of a song I know, about cranes. How does it go, now? «… And in their flight I see a narrow gap, perhaps that is a place for me…»‘

‘Yes, yes,’ Kawabata cut in. ‘And why would a man need any greater gap? The Lord Buddha can easily fit the entire world with all its problems into the gap between two cranes. Why, it would be lost in the gaps between the feathers of either of them… How poetical this evening is! Why don’t we have another drink? For the place in the flight of cranes which you have finally occupied?’

Serdyuk thought he sensed something ominous in Kawabata’s words, but he paid no attention, because Kawabata could hardly have known the song was about the souls of dead soldiers.

‘Gladly,’ said Serdyuk, ‘in just a while. I…’

Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door. Kawabata turned and shouted something in Japanese, the panel slid to one side and a man’s face, also with southern features, appeared in the gap. The face said something and Kawabata nodded.

‘I shall have to leave you for a few minutes,’ he said to Serdyuk. ‘It seems there is some serious news coming in. If you wish, please look through any of the print albums while you are waiting,’ - he nodded in the direction of the bookshelf-’or simply amuse yourself

Serdyuk nodded. Kawabata quickly left the room and closed the panel behind him. Serdyuk went over to the shelves and glanced at the long row of different-coloured spines, then went over to the corner of the room and sat down on a bamboo mat, leaning his head against the wall. He had no appetite left for all those prints.

It was quiet in the building. He could hear someone hammering on a wall somewhere above him - they must be installing a metal door. Behind the sliding panel he could hear the whispers of the girls swearing at each other; they were very close, but he could hardly make out any of their obscenities, and the muffled voices mingled together to produce a gentle, calming rustling sound, as though there were a garden behind the wall and the leaves of the blossoming cherries were murmuring in the wind.

Serdyuk was woken by a low moaning. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been asleep, but it must have been quite a long time - Kawabata was sitting in the centre of the room, already changed and shaved. He was wearing a white shirt and his hair, so recently tousled and untidy, was combed back neatly. He was the source of the moaning that had woken Serdyuk - it was some kind of mournful melody, a long-drawn-out dirge. Kawabata was holding the long sword in his hands and wiping it with a white piece of cloth. Serdyuk noticed that Kawabata’s shirt was unbuttoned, and his hairless chest and belly were exposed.

Kawabata realized that Serdyuk had woken up and turned to face him with a broad smile.

‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.

‘I wasn’t exactly sleeping,’ said Serdyuk, ‘I just…’

‘Had a doze,’ said Kawabata, ‘I understand. All of us are merely dozing in this life. And we only wake when it ends. Do you recall how we forded the brook when we were walking back to the office?’

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk, ‘that stream coming out of the pipe,’

‘Pipe or no pipe, that is not important. Do you recall the bubbles on the surface of that brook?’

‘Yes. They were big ones all right.’

‘Truly,’ said Kawabata, raising the blade to the level of his eyes and gazing at it intently, ‘truly this world is like bubbles on the water. Is that not so?’

Serdyuk thought that Kawabata was right, and he wanted very much to say something so that his companion would realize how well he understood his feelings and how completely he shared them.

‘Not even that,’ he said, raising himself up on one elbow. ‘It’s like… let me think now… It’s like a photograph of those bubbles that has fallen down behind a chest of drawers and been gnawed by the rats.’

Kawabata smiled once again.

‘You are a genuine poet,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt at all about that.’

‘And what’s more.’ Serdyuk went on, inspired, ‘it could well be that the rats got to it even before it had been developed.’

‘Splendid,’ said Kawabata, ‘quite splendid. This is the poetry of words, but there is also the poetry of deeds. I hope that your final poem without words will prove a match for the verses that have brought me so much delight today.’

‘What d’you mean?’

Kawabata carefully set his sword down on a bamboo mat.

‘Life is uncertain and changeable,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In the early morning no one can say what awaits him in the evening.’

‘Has something happened, then?’

‘Oh, yes. You know, of course, that business is like war. The Taira clan has an enemy, a mighty enemy - Minamoto.’

‘Minamoto?’ echoed Serdyuk, feeling a shiver run down his spine. ‘So what?’

‘Today news came that cunning treachery on the Tokyo stock exchange has allowed the Minamoto Group to acquire a controlling interest in Taira incorporated. A certain English bank and the Singapore mafia were involved, but that is not important. We are destroyed. And our enemy is triumphant.’

Serdyuk said nothing for a while as he tried to work out what this meant. Only one thing was clear, though - it didn’t mean anything good.

‘But you and I,’ said Kawabata, ‘we two samurai of the clan of Taira - surely we shall not allow our spirits to be overcast by the shifting shadows of these insignificant bubbles of existence?’

‘Er… no,’ Serdyuk answered.

Kawabata laughed fiercely and his eyes flashed.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Minamoto shall not behold our degradation and dishonour. One should leave this life as the white cranes disappear into the clouds. Let not a single petty feeling remain in our hearts at a moment of such beauty.’

He swung round sharply where he sat, turning the bamboo mat with him, and bowed to Serdyuk.

‘I wish to ask you a favour,’ he said. ‘When I rip open my belly, please cut off my head!’

‘What?’

‘My head, please cut off my head. We call this rendering the final service. And a samurai who is asked to do this may not refuse without covering himself in great dishonour.’

‘But I never… That is, before…’

‘It’s very simple. One stroke and it’s done. Wh-oo-oosh!’

Kawabata waved his hands rapidly through the air.

‘But I am afraid I won’t manage it,’ said Serdyuk. ‘l don’t have •my experience of that kind of thing.’

Kawabata pondered for a moment, then suddenly his face darkened as though he had been struck by some exceptionally unpleasant thought. He slapped his hand against his tatami.

‘It’s good that I am leaving this life soon,’ he said, looking up guiltily at Serdyuk. ‘What a coarse and ignorant brute I am!’

He covered his face with his hands and began rocking from side to side.

Serdyuk quietly stood up, tiptoed over to the screen, silently slid it to one side and went out into the corridor. The cold concrete felt unpleasant under his bare feet, and Serdyuk suddenly realized that while he and Kawabata had been wandering around dark and dubious alleyways in search of sake, his socks and shoes had been standing in the corridor by the door, where he’d left them in the afternoon; he couldn’t remember what he’d been wearing on his feet at all, just as he couldn’t recall how he and Kawabata had got out on to the street or how they’d got back in.

‘Split, I’ve got to split right now,’ he thought as he turned the corner in the corridor. ‘First I split, then there’ll be time for a bit of thinking.’

The security guard rose from his stool as Serdyuk approached.

‘And where are we off to at a time like this?’ he asked with a yawn. ‘It’s half past three in the morning.’

‘We got a bit involved,’ said Serdyuk. You know, with the interview.’

‘Okay then,’ said the security guard. ‘Let’s have your pass.’

‘What pass?’

‘To get out.’

‘But you let me in without any pass.’

‘That’s right,’ said the security guard, ‘but to get out, you need a pass.’

The lamp on the desk cast a dim glow on Serdyuk’s shoes standing over by the wall. The door was only a yard away from item, and beyond the door lay freedom. Serdyuk took a small step towards the shoes. Then another one. The security guard cast an indifferent glance at his bare feet.

‘And then,’ he said, toying with his rubber truncheon, ‘we’ve got regulations. The alarm’s on. The door’s locked until eight o’clock in the morning. If I open it the pigs’ll be round in a flash. that means hassle, official statements. So I can’t open up. Not unless there’s a fire. Or a flood.’

‘All this world,’ Serdyuk began ingratiatingly, ‘is like bubbles en the water.’

Security guard laughed and shook his head.

‘Sure, sure,’ he said. ‘We know what kind of place it is we are in. But you’ve got to understand where I’m coming from, just imagine that along with those bubbles there’s a set of instructions drifting along on the water. And just as long as it’s reflected in one of those bubbles, we lock up at eleven and open tie door at eight. And that’s it.’

Serdyuk sensed a note of uncertainty in the security guard’s voice and he tried pressing his point home a little harder.

‘Мг Kawabata will be very surprised at your behaviour,’ he answered. ‘You’re supposed be responsible for security in a series firm, and you need such simple things explained to you. It m u st be obvious that if the world is only a mirage…’

‘A mirage, a mirage,’ said the security guard in a thoughtful voice, and he focused his eyes on a point that was obviously away beyond the wall. ‘We know all about that. We haven’t jut started here, you know. And we have training sessions every week. But I’m not trying to tell you that door’s real. Shall I tell you what I think?’

‘Go on then.’

‘That way I reckon, there isn’t any substantial door at all, tlere’s nothing but a provisional totality of essentially empty elements of perception.’

‘Precisely!’ said Serdyuk, delighted, and he took another little step in the direction of his shoes.

‘But there’s no way I’m opening up that totality before eight o’clock,’ said the security guard, slapping himself on the palm with his rubber truncheon.

‘Why?’ asked Serdyuk.

The security guard shrugged.

‘Karma for you,’ he said, ‘dharma for me, but it’s all really just the same old crap. The void. And even that doesn’t really exist’

‘Ye-es,’ said Serdyuk. ‘That’s some serious training they give you.’

‘What’d you expect? The Japanese security forces run it.’

‘So what am I supposed to do?’ Serdyuk asked.

‘What can you do? Wait until eight. And ask them to write you out a pass.’

Serdyuk cast a final glance at the security guard’s burly shoulders and the truncheon in his hands, then slowly turned on his heel and started trudging back to Kawabata’s room. He had the unbearable feeling that there were words which would have made the guard give in and open the door, but that he had failed to find them. If I’d read the Sutras, I’d know what was trumps, he thought dejectedly.

‘Listen,’ the security guard called out behind him, ‘better not go walking about without your geta. The floor in here’s concrete. You’ll get a chill in your kidneys.’

When he reached Kawabata’s office again and noiselessly slid the panel open, Serdyuk noticed there was a strong smell in the room of stale drink and female sweat. Kawabata was still sitting there on the floor, his face in his hands, rocking from side to side, as though he hadn’t even noticed that Serdyuk had gone out.

‘Mr Kawabata,’ Serdyuk called quietly.

Kawabata lowered his hands.

‘Are you feeling bad?’

‘I feel terrible,’ said Kawabata, ‘I feel absolutely terrible. If I had a hundred bellies, I would slit them all without a moment’s delay. Never in my life have I felt such shame as I am feeling now.’

‘Why, what’s the problem?’ Serdyuk asked sympathetically, kneeling down to face the Japanese.

‘I made bold to ask you to render me the final service without thinking that there would be no one to render the service to you if I commit seppuku first. Such monstrous dishonour.’

‘Me?’ said Serdyuk, rising to his feet. ‘Me?’

‘Why yes,’ said Kawabata, also rising and fixing Serdyuk with his blazing eyes. ‘Who will cut off your head? Not Grisha, I suppose?’

‘Who’s Grisha?’

‘The security guard. You were just talking to him. He’s no good for anything except breaking heads with his truncheon. The rules say it has to be cut off, and not just any old way, it has to be left hanging on a scrap of skin. Imagine how terrible it would look if it went rolling across the floor! But sit down, sit down.’

There was such hypnotic power in Kawabata’s gaze that Serdyuk involuntarily lowered himself on to a bamboo mat. It was all he could do to tear his eyes away from Kawabata’s face.

‘And anyway, I suspect you don’t know what the doctrine of the direct and fearless return to eternity tells us about seppuku,’ said Kawabata.

‘What?’

‘Do you know how to slit open your belly?’

‘No,’ said Serdyuk, staring blankly at the wall.

‘There are various ways of doing it. The simplest is a horizontal incision. But there’s nothing special in that. As we say in japan, five minutes’ dishonour and Amidha’s your Buddha. Like driving into the Pure Land in an old Lada. A vertical incision is a little bit better, but that’s the lower-middle-class style, and it’s a bit provincial too. You can use crossed incisions, but I wouldn’t advise that either. If you cut vertically, they’ll pick up a Christian allusion, and if you cut on the diagonal, you get the St Andrew’s Cross, which is the Russian naval flag. They’ll think you’re from the Black Sea Fleet - but you’re not a naval officer, are you?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Serdyuk confirmed in an expressionless voice.

‘That’s what I’m saying, there’s no point. Two years ago a double parallel incision was all the fashion, but that’s difficult. So what I would suggest is a long diagonal cut from the lower left to the upper right with a slight turn back towards the centre at the end. From the strictly aesthetic point of view it’s quite beyond reproach, and when you’ve done it, I’ll probably do it the same way.’

Serdyuk attempted to stand up, but Kawabata placed a hand on his shoulder and forced him back down.

‘Unfortunately, we shall have to do everything in a rush,’ he said with a sigh. ‘We don’t have any white blinds or anything suitable to smoke. There are no warriors with drawn swords waiting at the edge of the platform… We do have Grisha, I suppose, but then, what kind of a warrior is he? Anyway, they’re not really necessary, they’re only there in case a samurai betrays his oath and refuses to commit seppuku. Then they beat him to death like a dog. There haven’t been any cases like that in my time - but then, it’s really beautiful when there are men with drawn swords standing around the border of the fenced-off area, the sun glinting on i heir steel. Yes, perhaps… Do you want me to call Grisha? And maybe Shura from the first floor as well? To bring it closer to the original ritual?’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Serdyuk.

‘That’s right,’ said Kawabata, ‘that’s right. Of course, you understand that the most important thing in any ritual is not the external form, but the internal content that fills it’

‘I understand, I understand. I understand everything,’ said serdyuk, staring with hatred at Kawabata.

‘I am therefore absolutely certain that everything will proceed excellently.’

Kawabata lifted the short sword he had bought from the floor, drew it out of its scabbard and sliced through the air a couple of times.

‘It will do,’ he said. ‘Now let me tell you something. There are always two problems. Not to fall over on your back after the incision - that’s really most inelegant, but I can help you there -and the other problem is not to catch the spinal column with the blade. Therefore the blade should not be inserted too far. Let’s doit this way…’

He picked up several sheets of paper with fax messages on them - Serdyuk noticed that the sheet with the drawing of the chrysanthemum was among them - stacked them into a neat pile and then carefully wrapped them round the blade, leaving four or five inches of steel projecting.

‘That’s it. So, you take the handle in your right hand, and you hold it here with your left hand. You don’t need to push it in very hard, or it might get stuck and then… All right, and then upwards to the right. And now you probably want to focus your mind. We don’t have much time, but at least there’s enough for that’

Serdyuk was sitting there in a kind of a trance, staring at the wall. Feeble thoughts ran through his head about pushing Kawa-bata aside and running out into the corridor and… But the door out there was locked, and there was Grisha with his truncheon. And there was supposed to be someone called Shura on the first floor, too. In theory he could phone the police, but Kawabata was right there beside him with his sword… And the police wouldn’t turn out at this hour of the night. But the most unpleasant thing of all was that any such course of action would bring an expression of astonishment to Kawabata’s face, to be followed rapidly by a grimace of fierce contempt. There was something in what had happened that day which Serdyuk didn’t want to betray, and he even knew what it was - it was that moment after they’d tethered their horses, when they recited poetry to each other. And even though, if he really thought about it, there hadn’t actually been any horses or any poems, the moment had been real, and so had the wind from the south that brought the promise of summer, and the stars in the sky. There couldn’t be the slightest doubt that it had all been real - that is, just the way it should have been. But as for the world waiting for him behind that door which was due to be opened at eight in the morning…

Serdyuk’s thoughts paused briefly, and he could suddenly hear quiet noises all around him. Kawabata’s stomach was gurgling as he sat there beside the fax with his eyes closed, and Serdyuk thought that his companion was sure to complete the entire procedure with brilliant ease. And the world that the Japanese was preparing to quit - if by ‘world’ we mean everything that a man can feel and experience in his life - was certainly far more attractive than the stinking streets of Moscow that closed in on Serdyuk every morning to the accompaniment of the songs of Filipp Kirkorov.

Serdyuk realized why he’d suddenly thought of Kirkorov - the girls sitting behind the wall were listening to one of his songs. Then he heard the sounds of a brief quarrel, stifled weeping and the click of a switch. The invisible television began transmitting a news programme, but it seemed to Serdyuk that the channel hadn’t realty changed and Kirkorov had simply stopped singing and begun talking in a quiet voice. Then he heard one of the girls whispering agitatedly:

‘He is, look! Pissed again! Look at him embracing Chirac! I tell you, he’s pissed as a newt!’

Serdyuk thought for a few more seconds.

‘Ah, to hell with the lot of it,’ he said decisively. ‘Give me the sword.’

Kawabata walked quickly over to him, went down on one knee and held out the handle of the sword to him.

‘Hang on,’ said Serdyuk, and he unbuttoned his shirt under his jacket. ‘Can I do it through the T-shirt?’

Kawabata thought for a moment.

‘It has been done on occasion. In 1454 after he lost the Battle of Okehajama, Takeda Katsueri slit open his belly through his hunting costume. So it’s okay.’

Serdyuk took hold of the sword.

‘Na-ah,’ said Kawabata, ‘I told you, take the handle in your right hand and use your left hand to grip the blade where it’s wrapped. Like that.’

‘So I just cut and that’s all?’

‘Hang on a second. I’ll be right with you.’

Kawabata ran across the room and picked up his big sword, then came back to Serdyuk and stood behind him.

‘You don’t have to cut very deep. I’ll have to cut deep though. I won’t have a second to assist. You’re lucky. You must have lived a good life.’

Serdyuk smiled wanly.

‘Just an ordinary life,’ he said. ‘Like all the others.’

‘But then, you are dying like a true warrior,’ said Kawabata. ‘I’ m all set. Let’s do it on the count of three. ‘

‘Okay,’ said Serdyuk.

‘Take a deep breath,’ said Kawabata, ‘and we’re off. One… Two… two and a half… And three!’

Serdyuk stuck the sword into his belly.

The paper jammed tight against the T-shirt. It wasn’t particularly painful, but the blade felt extremely cold.

The fax machine on the floor began to ring.

‘That’s it,’ said Kawabata. ‘And now up and to the right. Harder, harder… That’s it, that’s right.’

Serdyuk’s legs began to tremble.

‘Now a quick turn in towards the centre and push it into yourself with both hands. That’s it, that’s it… That’s right… Now just an inch more…’

‘I can’t,’ Serdyuk said with a struggle, ‘everything’s on fire!’

‘So what did you expect?’ said Kawabata. ‘just a moment’

He skipped over to the fax machine and picked up the receiver.

‘Hello! Yes! That’s right, this is the place. Yes, a 1996 model, it’s done two thousand miles.’

Serdyuk dropped the sword on the floor and pressed his hands to his bleeding belly.

‘Quickly!’ he wheezed. ‘Quickly!’

Kawabata frowned and gestured for him to wait.

‘What?’ he yelled into the receiver. ‘What do you mean, three and a half thousand is too much? I paid five thousand for it only a year ago!’

The light in Serdyuk’s eyes slowly faded and went out, like the lights in a cinema just before the film. He began slowly slumping over to one side, but before his shoulder reached the floor, all awareness of his body had disappeared; there was nothing left but an all-consuming agony. Through a red, pulsating mist he heard Kawabata’s voice:

‘What d’you mean damaged? Where’s it damaged? You call two scratches on the bumper damage? What? What? Arsehole yourself! You shit, you fucking wanker! What? You can go fuck yourself!’

The receiver clanged back into place and the fax machine immediately began ringing again.

Serdyuk noticed that the space in which the telephone was ringing and Kawabata was swearing and everything else was happening was somewhere very far away from him; it was such an insignificant segment of reality that he had to focus with all his strength to follow what was going on there. At the same time, there was absolutely no sense in this act of concentration: Serdyuk realized that this concentration was life, it turned out that his entire, long existence as a human being, with all its longings, hopes and fears, had been nothing more than a fleeting thought that had momentarily attracted his attention. And now Serdyuk - although it was not really Serdyuk at all - was drifting through a qualityless void and he sensed he was coming close to something huge that radiated an intolerable heat. The most terrible thing was that this immense thing that breathed fire was approaching him from behind, which meant that it was impossible for him to see what it actually was. The sensation was quite unbearable, and Serdyuk began feverishly searching for the spot where he had left behind the old, familiar world. By some miracle he found it, and Kawabata’s voice sounded in his head like the tolling of a bell:

‘On the islands they didn’t believe at first that you would manage it. But I knew you would. And now, allow me to render you the final service. Huh-u-up!’

For a long time after that there was nothing at all - although it was not really even correct to say that it was a long time, because there was no time either. And then there was a cough, «md a squeaking of floorboards and Timur Timurovich’s voice said:

‘Yes, Senya. They found you there like that by the heater with the neck of a broken bottle in your hand. Who were you really drinking with, can you remember?’

There was no answer.

‘Tatyana Pavlovna.’ said Timur Timurovich, ‘two cc’s please. Yes, now.’

‘Timur Timurovich,’ Volodin said unexpectedly from the corner, ‘they were spirits, you know.’

‘Oh yes?’ Timur Timurovich asked politely. ‘Who were spirits?’

‘All of them from the House of Taira. I swear they were. And he behaved with them like he wanted to die. Probably he really did want to.’

Then why is he still alive?’ asked Timur Timurovich.

‘He was wearing that T-shirt with the Olympic symbols. You remember the year they held the Olympic Games in Moscow, don’t you? Lots and lots of those little symbols, right? He was cutting through the T-shirt.’

‘What of it?’

‘Well, we should think of them as magic hieroglyphs. I read in a book about a case in ancient times when they drew protective symbols all over this monk, but they forgot about his ears. And when the spirits of Taira came, they took his ears, because as far as they were concerned everything else was invisible.’

‘But why did they come to him? I mean, to the monk?’

‘He played the flute very well.’

‘Ah, the flute,’ said Timur Timurovich. ‘Well, that’s logical enough, I suppose. But don’t you find it odd that these spectres are «Dynamo» fans?’

‘There’s nothing surprising about that,’ Volodin replied. ‘Some spectres support «Spartak», others support the Army Club. Why shouldn’t some of them support «Dynamo»?’