Buddha's Little Finger

7

‘Dinama! Dinama! Where the fuck you goin’?’

I leapt up from my bed. A man was chasing a horse around the yard and yelling: ‘Dinama! Where d’ya think you’re off to? Come ‘ere, yer bugger!’ There were horses snorting and whinnying under my window; looking out, I saw a huge jostling crowd of Red Army I men who had not been there the day before. I could only actually tell that they were Red Army men from their ragamuffin appearance: they were clearly dressed in the first garments that had come to hand, for the most part in civilian garb, and it seemed that their preferred method for equipping themselves must have been pillage. Standing in the centre of the crowd was a man wearing a pointed Red Army helmet with a crookedly tacked-on red star, waving his arms about and issuing some kind of instruction. He bore a striking resemblance to the weavers’ commissar, Furmanov, whom I had seen at the meeting in front of the Yaroslavl Station in Moscow, except that now he had a crimson scar from a sabre cut across his cheek.

I did not, however, waste long contemplating this motley crew, for my attention was drawn to the carriage standing in the very centre of the yard. Four black horses had been harnessed to a long open landau with pneumatic tyres, soft leather seats and a frame made of expensive timber which still bore lingering traces of gilt. There was something quite unhearably nostalgic in this object of luxury, this fragment of a world which had disappeared for ever into oblivion; its inhabitants had naively supposed that they would be riding into the future in vehicles just like this one. In the event, it was only the vehicles which had survived their jaunt into the future, and only then at the cost of transformation into parodies of Hunnish war chariots - such were the associations triggered by the sight of the three Lewis machine-guns tied together by a metal beam which had been installed in the rear section of the landau.

As I moved back from the window I suddenly remembered that in Russian the soldiers called this kind of chariot I tachanka. The origins of this word were mysterious and obscure, and although I mentally reviewed all of the possible etymologies as I pulled on my boots, I could not find one that really suited the case. I did, however, come up with a humorous play on words in English: tachanka - ‘touch Anka’. But since the memory of my declaration of feelings the previous day to the lady in question was enough to bring a sullen flush to my cheeks, I felt unable to share my joke with anyone.

These, more or less, were the thoughts that filled my head as I went down the stairs and out into the yard. Someone said that Kotovsky had asked me to come into the staff barn, and I set off in that direction immediately. Two soldiers in black uniforms were standing on guard at the entrance. As I walked past, they stood to attention and saluted. From the look of concentration on their faces, I realized that they knew me well, but unfortunately the concussion had completely erased their names from my memory.

Kotovsky was sitting on the table wearing a tightly buttoned brown service jacket. He was alone in the room. I noted the deathly pallor of his face, as though a thick layer of powder had been applied to it. Standing beside him on the table was a transparent cylinder inside which clouds of some molten white substance were clumped together. It was a lamp made out of a spirit-stove and a long glass retort, inside which lumps of wax floated in tinted glycerine: five years be fore they had been the height of fashion in St Petersburg.

Kotovsky held out his hand. I noticed that his fingers were trembling slightly.

‘Since early this morning,’ he said, raising his cool, limpid eyes to my face, ‘for some reason I have been thinking about what awaits us beyond the grave.’

‘Then you believe that something does await us?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps I didn’t express myself very well,’ said Kotovsky. Let us just say I have been pondering on death and immortality.’

‘What could have brought on such a mood?’

‘It has never really left me since a certain memorable day in Odessa,’ Kotovsky answered with a cold smile. ‘But that is not important.’

He folded his arms on his chest and pointed to the lamp with his chin.

‘Look at that wax,’ he said. ‘Watch carefully what happens to it. As the spirit-stove heats up, it rises upwards in drops that assume the most fantastic forms. As it rises, it cools. The higher the pieces rise, the more slowly they move. And finally, at some point they stop and begin to fall back towards the very place from which they have just risen, often without ever reaching the surface.’

‘There’s a tragedy straight out of Plato in it,’ I said thoughtfully.

‘Possibly. But that is not what I have in mind. Imagine that the solidified drops rising upwards in the lamp are endowed with consciousness. In this case they will immediately encounter the problem of self-identification.’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘Now this is where it becomes really interesting. If one of those lumps of wax believes that it is the form which it has assumed, then it is mortal, because that form will be destroyed -but if it understands that it is wax, then what can happen to it?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied.

‘Precisely.’ said Kotovsky. ‘In that case it is immortal. But the tricky part is, it’s very difficult for the wax to understand that it is wax - it’s almost impossible to grasp one’s own primordial nature. How can you notice what has been there right in front of you since the beginning of time? And so the only thing that the wax does notice is its temporary lorm. But the form is arbitrary every time it arises, influenced by thousands and thousands of different circumstances.’

‘A quite magnificent allegory. But what conclusion can we draw from it?’ I asked, recalling our conversation of the previous evening concerning the fate of Russia, and the facility with which he had directed the subject towards cocaine. It might well prove to be that he was simply trying to obtain the remainder of the powder and was gradually leading the conversation around to that topic.

‘The conclusion is that the only route to immortality for a drop of wax is to stop thinking of itself as a drop and to realize that it is wax. But since our drop is capable only of noticing its own form, all its brief life it prays to the Wax God to preserve this form, although, if one thinks about it, this form possesses absolutely no inherent relation to the wax. Any drop of wax possesses exactly the same properties as its entire volume. Do you understand me? A drop of the great ocean of being is the entire ocean, contracted for a moment to the scope of that drop. But now, tell me how to explain this to these drops of wax that fear most of all for their own fleeting form? How can we instil this thought into them? For it is thoughts that drive them towards salvation or destruction, because in their essence both salvation and destruction are also thoughts. I believe it is the Upanishads that tell us that mind is a horse harnessed to the carriage of the body…’

At this point he clicked his fingers, as though he had been struck by an unexpected idea, and again raised his cold gaze to my face:

‘By the way, while we are on the subject of carriages and horses, don’t you think that, after all, half a tin of cocaine for a pair of Oryol trotters is just a bit…’

A sudden thunderous crash burst upon my ears, startling me so badly that I staggered backwards. The lamp standing beside Kotovsky had exploded, splattering a cascade of glycerine across the table and over the map which was spread on it. Kotovsky leapt off the table and a revolver appeared in his hand like magic.

Chapaev was standing in the doorway with his nickel-plated Mauser in his hand; he was wearing a grey jacket with a high collar, a shoulder-belt, an astrakhan hat with a slanting watered-silk ribbon and black riding breeches trimmed with leather and decorated with a triple stripe. A silver pentagram gleamed on his chest - I remembered that he had called it ‘The Order of the October Star’ - and a small pair of black binoculars hung beside it.

‘That was smart talking there, Grisha, about the drop of wax.’ he said in a thin, hoarse tenor, ‘but what’re you going to say now? Where’s your great ocean of beans now?’

Kotovsky glanced in perplexity at the spot where the lamp had been standing only a moment before. A huge greasy spot had spread across the map. Thankfully, the wick of the lamp had been extinguished by the explosion, otherwise the room would already have been ablaze.

‘The form, the wax - who created it all?’ Chapaev asked menacingly. ‘Answer me!’

‘Mind.’ replied Kotovsky.

‘Where is it? Show me.’

‘Mind is the lamp.’ said Kotovsky. ‘I mean, it was.’

‘If mind is the lamp, then where do you go to now it’s broken?’

‘Then what is mind?’ Kotovsky asked in confusion.

Chapaev fired another shot, and the bullet transformed the ink-well standing on the table into a cloud of blue spray.

1 felt a strange momentary dizziness.

Two bright red blotches had appeared on Kotovsky’s pallid cheeks.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘now I understand. You’ve taught me a lesson, Vasily Ivanovich. A serious lesson.’

‘Ah, Grisha.’ Chapaev said sadly, ‘what’s wrong with you? You know yourself you can’t afford to make any mistakes now - you just can’t. Because where you’re going there won’t be anyone to point out your mistakes, and whatever you say, that’s how it’ll be.’

Without looking up, Kotovsky turned on his heels and ran out of the barn.

‘We’re just about to advance,’ said Chapaev, putting his smoking pistol back into its holster. ‘Why don’t we go in that carriage you won from Grisha yesterday? While we’re at it we can have a little chat.’

‘With pleasure,’ I said.

‘I’ve already ordered it to be harnessed.’ said Chapaev. ‘Anka and Grisha can ride the tachanka.’

A dark shadow must have flitted across my face, because Chapaev laughed loudly and slapped me on the back with all his might.

We went out into the yard and pushed our way through the crowd of Red Army men to the stables, where the prevailing mood was that bustling confusion of alarm and jollity so dear to the heart of every true cavalryman, the mood that always envelops a detachment as it prepares for imminent battle. The soldiers were tightening saddle girths, checking hooves and conversing loudly, but behind the merriment one could sense the sober concentration and the supreme tension in every fibre of their spirit. These human feelings seemed to infect the horses, which were shifting from one foot to the other, whinnying occasionally as they attempted to spit out their bits, and squinting sideways out of their large, magnetic eyes, which seemed to shine with an insane joy.

I too felt myself falling under the hypnotic influence of inv minent danger. Chapaev began explaining something to two soldiers and I went over to the nearest horse and sank my fingers into his mane. I can recall that second perfectly - coarse hairs under my fingers, the slightly sour smell of a new leather saddle, a spot of sunlight on the wall in front of my face and a quite incredible, incomparable feeling of the completeness, the total reality of this world. I suppose it was the feeling which people attempt to express in phrases like living life to the full’, it lasted for no more than a single brief second, but that was long enough for me to realize yet again that this full, authentic sense of life can never, by its very nature, last any longer.

‘Petka!’ Chapaev shouted behind me. ‘Time to be off!’

I slapped the horse on the neck and set off towards the carriage, glancing sideways at the tachanka, in which Kotovsky and Anna were already seated. Anna was wearing a white peaked cap with a red band and a simple soldier’s blouse with a narrow belt on which hung a small suede holster; her blue riding breeches with the narrow red piping were tucked into high lace-up boots. Decked out in that fashion, she looked unbearably young, almost like a schoolgirl. When she caught my glance, she turned away.

Chapaev was already in the carriage. Sitting in front was the silent Bashkir, the same one who had poured the champagne in the train and later had almost skewered me with his bayonet as he stood on his absurd guard duty over a haystack. As soon as I had taken my seat, the Bashkir jerked the reins, clicked his tongue and we rolled out through the gates.

Travelling behind us came the tachanka with Kotovsky and Anna, followed by the cavalrymen. We turned to the right and set off up the road, which rose steeply, then curved to the right into a green wall of foliage.

We drove into something like a tunnel, formed by branches that wove themselves together above the road - the trees were rather strange, rather more like overgrown bushes than real trees; the tunnel proved to be very long, or perhaps I had that impression because we were moving slowly. Sunlight filtered through the branches and glinted in the final drops of the morning dew. The brilliant green of the foliage was so dazzling that at one point I completely lost all orientation and I felt as though we were falling slowly down a bottomless green well. I closed my eyes and the feeling passed.

The thickets on each side of us came to an end as abruptly as they had begun and we found ourselves on an earth road leading uphill. On the left there was a shallow rocky slope, on the right a weathered stone cliff of an incredibly beautiful pale lilac colour, with little trees sprouting here and there in i racks in the stone. We continued our ascent for about a quarter of an hour.

Chapaev sat with his eyes closed and his hands clasped together on the handle of his sabre, which was thrust against (he floor. He seemed to be absorbed in profound thought on some subject, or to have fallen into a light sleep. Suddenly he opened his eyes and turned towards me.

‘Are you still suffering from those nightmares you were complaining about?’ he asked.

As always, Vasily Ivanovich,’ I replied.

And still about that clinic?’

‘Oh, if they were only about that. As in every dream, everything changes at a most fantastic pace. Last night, for instance, I dreamed about Japan. But the night before I did dream about the clinic, and do you know what happened? That butcher in charge of everything that goes on there asked me to write down in detail what happens to me here. He said he needed it for his work. Can you imagine it?’

‘I can.’ said Chapaev. ‘Why don’t you do as he says?’

I stared at him in amazement.

‘You mean to say you would seriously advise me to do it?’

He nodded.

‘But why?’

‘You told me yourself that in your nightmares everything changes with fantastic speed. Any consistent activity that you repeatedly come back to makes it possible to create something like a fixed centre to the dream. Then the dream becomes more real. You couldn’t possibly think up any better idea than making notes in your dream.’

I pondered the idea,

‘But what good is a fixed centre to my nightmares if what I really want is to get rid of them?’

‘It’s precisely in order to get rid of them - you can only gel rid of something that is real.’

‘I suppose so. You mean, then, that I can write down absolutely everything that takes place here?’

‘Of course.’

‘But what should I call you in this journal of mine?’

Chapaev laughed.

‘Petka, it’s no accident you’re dreaming about a mental hospital. What difference does it make what you call me in the notes you make in a dream?’

‘That’s true enough,’ I said, feeling like a complete fool. ‘I was simply afraid that… No, there really must be something wrong with my head.’

‘Call me any name you like,’ said Chapaev. ‘Even Chapaev, if you like.’

‘Chapaev?’ I asked.

‘Why not? You can even write,’ he said with a chuckle, ‘that I had a long moustache, and after I said that I twirled it.’

He twirled his moustache with a gentle, precise movement of his fingers.

‘But I think the advice you were given applies more to reality,’ he said. ‘You should start writing down your dreams, and you should try to do it while you can still remember all the details.’

‘They are quite impossible to forget,’ I said. ‘Every time I come round, I realize that it was no more than a nightmare… But while I am dreaming, it’s impossible to understand what is real in actual fact - the carriage we are sitting in or that white-tiled hell where demons in white coats torment me at night’

‘What is real in actual fact?’ Chapaev repeated after me, closing his eyes again. ‘That’s a question you’re not likely to find an answer to. Because in actual fact there is no actual fact.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Well now, Petka my lad.’ said Chapaev, ‘I once used to know a Chinese communist by the name of Tzu-Chuang, who often dreamed the same dream, that he was a red butterfly fluttering through the grass and the flowers. And when he woke up, he often couldn’t make out whether the butterfly had dreamt it was engaged in revolutionary activity or the underground activist had had a dream about flitting through the air from flower to flower. So when this Tzu-Chuang was arrested in Mongolia for sabotage, what he said at his interrogation was that he was actually a butterfly who was dreaming about what was happening. Now since he was interrogated by Baron Jungern himself, and the Baron is a man of some considerable understanding, the next question was why this butterfly was on the communist side. Fie said he wasn’t on the communist side at all. So then they asked him why the butterfly was engaged in sabotage, and his answer was that all the things people do are so monstrous, it doesn’t make any difference whose side you’re on.’

‘And what happened to him?’

‘Nothing. They just stood him up in front of a firing squad and woke him up.’

‘And then what?’

Chapaev shrugged.

‘He carried on flitting around the flowers, I suppose.’

‘I understand, Vasily Ivanovich, ‘I understand.’ I said thoughtfully.

The road made another looping turn, and a dizzying view of the town opened up on our left. I spotted the yellow dot of our manor-house and the bright green patch of low trees which it had taken us so long to traverse. The shallow mountain slopes on all sides came together at their base to form a kind of chalice-shaped depression, and lying on the very bottom of the chalice was Altai-Vidnyansk.

It was not the actual view of the town that made the most powerful impression, but the panorama of the chalice formed by the mountain slopes; the town was rather unkempt and reminded me more than anything of a heap of rubbish washed down into a pit by torrential rain. The houses were still half-concealed by the final lingering wisps of morning mist. I was suddenly astonished to realize that I myself was a part of the world which lay on the bottom of this gigantic drain - where this strange, confused civil war was happening, where people were greedily dividing up the tiny, ugly houses and the crooked patches of vegetable gardens in order to gain a firmer foothold in what was literally the sink of creation. I thought about the Chinese dreamer whose story Chapaev had told me and then looked down again. In the face of the motionless world stretched out around me, beneath the calm gaze of its sky, it became inexpressibly clear that the little town at the bottom of the pit was precisely like every other town in the world. All of them, I thought, lie on the bottom of the same kind of depression, even though it may not be discernible to the eye. They are all stewing in a massive devil’s cauldron on the flame that is said to rage at the centre of the Earth, and they are all simply different versions of one and the same nightmare which nothing can change for the better. The only thing that can be done with this nightmare is to awaken from it.

‘If they wake you up from your nightmares the same way they did that Chinaman, Petka.’ Chapaev said without opening his eyes, ‘all that’ll happen is that you’ll drop from one dream into another. You’ve been flitting to and fro like that all eternity. But if you can understand that absolutely everything that happens to you is a dream, then it won’t matter a damn what kind of dreams you have. And when you wake up afterwards, you’ll really wake up - for ever. If you want to, that is.’

‘But why is everything that is happening to me a dream?’

‘Because, Petka.’ Chapaev said, ‘there just isn’t anything rise.’

The climb came to an end and we emerged on to a broad plateau. Far away on the horizon, beyond a line of shallow hills, the massive blue, lilac and purple forms of mountains thrust up high into the sky, with an immense open expanse of grass and flowers before them. Their colours were dull and laded, but there were so many of them that the overall tone of the steppe seemed not so much green as straw-coloured. It was so beautiful that for several minutes I forgot all about what Chapaev had said - and about everything else in the world.

Except, strangely enough, for that Chinese dreamer. As I looked at the faded faces of the flowers drifting past our carnage, I imagined him soaring through the space between them, pausing occasionally out of habit to paste up an anti-

government broadsheet on a slim shoot of bracken, and then starting in surprise every time he recalled that it was a long

time since he had had any broadsheets to paste up. And even he had had any, who would read them?

Soon, however, I was disturbed from my meditations. Chapaev had obviously given our driver some kind of signal. We picked up speed, and everything around the carriage began to blur into stripes of colour. The Bashkir lashed the horses mercilessly, half-standing on the coach-box and shouting guttural sounds in an unfamiliar language.

The road along which we were travelling could be called that only in name. Perhaps there were fewer flowers growing on it than in the open field, and traces of some ancient rut could still be discerned at its centre, but it was far from easy to guess where it ran. Nonetheless, the surface of the steppe was so ideally even that we were hardly shaken at all. The cavalrymen in black who brought up the rear of our small detachment moved off the road, drew almost level with our carriage and formed into two groups, one on each side, so that now they were hurtling along with us over the grass in the form of an extended arc; it was as though our carriage had sprouted two narrow black wings.

The machine-gun landau in which Anna and Kotovsky were sitting also picked up speed and drew almost level with us. I noticed Kotovsky prodding his driver in the back with his cane and nodding towards our carriage. They were clearly trying to overtake us, and at one point they very nearly succeeded, hurtling along beside us at a distance of only a few yards. I noticed a design on the side of the tachanka, a circle divided by a wavy line into two halves, one black and one white, each of them with a small circle of the opposite colour at its centre - I thought I recognized it as an Eastern symbol of some kind. Beside it there was a large inscription, crudely daubed in white paint:

POWER OF NIGHT AND POWER OF DAY SAME OLD GARBAGE ANY WAY

The Bashkir lashed our horses, and the tachanka fell behind again. It seemed incomprehensible to me that Anna could have agreed to travel in a carriage decorated with words of that kind. But then I suddenly had the feeling, which rapidly hardened into certainty, that she was the very one who had written the inscription on the side of the landau. How little, in actual fact, did I really know about this woman!

Our detachment hurtled on across the steppe to the accompaniment of wild whistles from the cavalrymen. We must have covered five or six miles like that - the hills on the horizon had moved so much closer that I could clearly distinguish their large rocks and the trees that grew on them. The surface of the steppe across which our carriage was racing at such speed was now less even than when we had begun our gallop; sometimes the carriage was thrown high into the air, and I began to feel afraid that the excursion would end in a broken neck for some of our company. Then Chapaev drew his Mauser from its holster and fired into the air.

‘Enough!’ he roared. ‘Walk on!’

Our carriage slowed its pace. The horsemen, as though afraid of crossing the invisible boundary of a line projected from the rear axle of our carriage, began dropping out of view behind us one by one. The landau with Anna and Kotovsky also fell back, and within a few minutes we were again far ahead of them.

Ahead of us I noticed a vertical column of smoke rising from behind the hills. It was dense and white, like the smoke I mm grass and damp leaves thrown on to a fire; the strangest thing about it, however, was that it scarcely widened out at all as it rose, which made it appear like a tall white pillar propping up the sky. It was no more than a mile ahead of us, with its fire concealed by the hills. We continued our advance for a few more minutes and then halted.

The road came to an end at two low, steep-sided hillocks with a narrow path running between them. They were like gateposts to some natural gateway, and were so symmetrical that they looked like a pair of ancient towers which had sunk down into the ground many centuries ago. They seemed to mark a boundary, beyond which the landscape changed, with foothills beginning to merge into the mountains on the horizon. It seemed, too, that it was not only the landscape that was different on the far side; feeling a gust of wind on my tace, I looked up in amazement at the column of smoke which rose absolutely straight from a source which must now be very close at hand. ‘Why are we standing here?’ I asked Chapaev. ‘We’re waiting,’ he replied. ‘For whom? The enemy?’

Chapaev did not answer. I suddenly realized that I had left my sabre behind and only had my Browning with me, so that I would find myself in a somewhat uncomfortable position if we had to deal with cavalry. But then, judging from the calm manner in which Chapaev carried on sitting in the carriage, we were not in any immediate danger. I glanced behind me.md saw the landau with Kotovsky and Anna standing beside us. I noticed Kotovsky’s white face; sitting there on the back seat with his arms folded across his chest, he looked rather like an opera singer poised to make his entrance. I could see Anna’s back as she fiddled with the machine-guns, but she seemed to be doing it less in order to prepare the guns than to relieve her irritation at sitting beside the insufferably solemn Kotovsky. Our mounted escort, apparently afraid of approaching the earthwork gateposts, kept a good distance, and I could make out no more of them than their dark silhouettes

‘But who are we waiting for?’ I asked again.

‘We have a meeting with the Black Baron,’ replied Chapaev. ‘I expect, Pyotr, that this will be an acquaintance you will remember.’

‘What kind of terrible nickname is that? I suppose he has a name of his own?’

‘Yes.’ said Chapaev, ‘his real surname is Jungern von Sternberg.’

‘Jungern?’ I repeated. ‘Jung-ern… That sounds familiar… Does he have something to do with psychiatry? Has he not done some work on the interpretation of symbols?’

Chapaev looked me up and down in amazement.

‘No.’ he said. ‘As far as I can judge, he despises all manner of symbols, no matter what they might refer to.’

‘Ah, now I remember. He is the one who shot that Chinese of yours.’

‘Yes,’ Chapaev answered. ‘He is the defender of Inner Mongolia. They say he is an incarnation of the god of war. He used to command the Asian Cavalry Division, but now he commands the Special Regiment of Tibetan Cossacks.’

‘I have never heard of them.’ I said. ‘And why do they call him the Black Baron?’

Chapaev thought for a moment.

‘A good question,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know. Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s already here.’

I started and turned my head to look.

A strange object had appeared in the narrow passage between the two hillocks. On looking closely I realized that it was a palanquin of a very ancient and strange design, consisting of a small cabin with a humped roof and four long handles on which it was carried. Both the roof and the handles appeared to be made of bronze which had turned green with age, and were covered with a multitude of minute jade plaques which glinted mysteriously, like cats’ eyes in the dark. There was nobody in the vicinity who could have brought up the palanquin without being noticed, and I could only assume that the unknown bearers whose palms had polished the long handles until they gleamed had already reheated.

The palanquin stood on curved legs, giving it the appearance of something between a sacrificial vessel and a small hut supported on four short piles. Its resemblance to a hut was actually stronger, and the impression was reinforced by blinds of fine green silk netting which covered its windows. Behind them I could just discern a motionless silhouette.

Chapaev jumped out of the carriage and walked over to the palanquin. ‘Hello, baron,’ he said.

‘Good day,’ replied a low voice from behind the blind.

‘I come with another request.’ said Chapaev.

‘I presume that once again you are not asking for yourself?’

‘No.’ said Chapaev. ‘Do you recall Grigory Kotovsky?’

‘I do.’ said the voice in the palanquin. ‘What has happened to him?’

‘I simply can’t explain to him what mind is. This morning he pushed me so far that I reached for my pistol. I’ve already told him everything that can be said, over and over again. What he needs is a demonstration, baron, something he won’t be able to ignore.’

‘Your problems, my dear Chapaev, grow a little monotonous. Where is your protégé?’

Chapaev turned towards the carriage where Kotovsky was siting and waved.

The blind in the palanquin moved aside and I saw a man of about forty, with blond hair, a high forehead and cold, colourless eyes. Despite the drooping Tartar-style moustache and the cheeks covered with several days’ stubble, his features were highly refined. He was dressed in a strange garment halfway between a cassock and a greatcoat, cut in the style of a Mongolian robe with a low, semicircular neck. I would never even have thought of it as a greatcoat if it had not been for the shoulder-straps bearing the zigzag lines of a general’s rank. Hanging at his side was a sabre exactly like Chapaev’s in every respect, except that the tassel attached to its handle was not purple, but black. And on his breast there were no less than three silver stars, hanging in a row. He climbed quickly out of the palanquin - he proved to be almost a full head taller than me - and looked me up and down inquiringly.

‘Who is this?’

‘This is my commissar, Pyotr Voyd.’ Chapaev replied. ‘He distinguished himself in the battle of Lozovaya Junction.’

‘I have heard something of that.’ said the baron. ‘Is he here for the same reason?’

Chapaev nodded. Jungern held out his hand to me.

‘Pleased to meet you, Pyotr.’

‘The feeling is mutual, general.’ I replied, squeezing his powerful, sinewy hand in mine.

‘Just call me baron,’ said Jungern, turning to face Kotovsky as the latter approached. ‘Grigory, how very long… ‘

‘Hello, baron.’ Kotovsky replied. ‘I am very glad to see you.’

‘Judging from the pallor of your cheeks, you are so very glad to see me that all your blood has rushed to your heart.’

‘Why, not at all, baron. That is because I think so much about Russia.’

‘Ah, the same old thing. I cannot approve. However, let us not waste any time. Let us take a walk, shall we?’ Jungern nodded towards the earthwork gateposts.

Kotovsky swallowed hard. ‘I should be honoured,’ he replied.

Jungern turned inquiringly towards Chapaev, who held out a small paper package to him.

‘Are there two here?’ asked the baron.

‘Yes.’

Jungern put the package into the pocket of his robe, put his arm round Kotovsky’s shoulders and literally dragged him in the direction of the gateway. They disappeared into the opening, and I turned to face Chapaev.

‘What lies beyond that gateway?’

Chapaev smiled. ‘I wouldn’t like to spoil your first impression.’

The dull report of a revolver shot rang out. A second later the solitary figure of the baron appeared.’

‘And now you, Pyotr,’ he said.

I cast a glance of inquiry at Chapaev, who screwed up his eyes and nodded with an unusually powerful movement of his chin, as though he were forcing an invisible nail into his own chest.

I walked slowly towards the baron.

I must confess that I was afraid. It was not that I felt any real threat of danger hanging over me - or rather, it was precisely a sense of danger, but not of the kind felt before a duel or a battle, when you know that even the very worst that can happen can only happen to you. At that moment I had the feeling that the danger was not threatening me, but my very conception of myself. I was not expecting anything terrible to happen, but the ‘I’ who was not expecting anything terrible suddenly seemed to me like a man walking a tightrope across an abyss who has just sensed the first breath of a burgeoning breeze.

‘I will show you my camp,’ the baron said when I reached him.

‘Listen, baron, if you are intending to awaken me in the same way as you did the Chinese…’

‘Oh, come now,’ he interrupted with a smile. ‘Chapaev must have been telling you all sorts of horror stories. That’s not what I’m really like.’

He took me by the elbow and turned me to face the earthwork gateposts.

‘Let us take a stroll around the camp-fires.’ he said, ‘and see how our lads are getting on.’

‘I do not see any camp-fires.’ I replied.

‘You don’t?’ he said. Try looking a bit harder.’

I looked once again into the gap between the two sunken earthen mounds, and at that very moment the baron pushed me from behind. I flew forward and fell to the ground; the sheer rapidity of his movement was such that for a second I felt as though I were a gate that he had kicked off its hinges. A moment later I felt a strange spasm run across my entire field of vision; I screwed up my eyes, and bright spots appeared in the darkness ahead of me, as though I had pressed my fingers into my eyes or made too sudden a movement with my head. However, when I opened my eyes and rose to my feet, the lights still did not disappear.

I could not understand where we were. The hills and the summer breeze had completely disappeared; we were surrounded by intense darkness, and scattered all around us in it, for as far as the eye could see, were the bright spots of camp-fires. They were arranged in an unnaturally precise pattern, as though they stood on the intersections of an invisible grid which divided the world up into an infinite number of squares. The distance between the fires was about fifty paces, so that if you stood at one it was impossible to see the people sitting at the next one; all that could be made out were vague, blurred silhouettes, but how many people there were, and whether they were people at all, was impossible to say with any degree of certainty. The strangest thing of all, however, was that the ground beneath our feet had also changed beyond recognition, and we were now standing on an ideally level plane covered with something like scrubby, shrivelled grass, but without a single projection or depression anywhere on its surface - that much was clear simply from the absolutely perfect patterning of the fires.

‘What is all this?’ I asked in confusion.

‘Aha!’ said the baron. ‘Now, perhaps, I think you can see.’

‘I can.’ I said.

‘This is one of the branches of the world beyond the grave.’ said Jungern, ‘the one for which I am responsible. For the most part the people who find their way here were warriors during their lifetimes. Perhaps you have heard of Valhalla?’

‘Yes, I have,’ I said, feeling an absurdly childish desire welling up in me to grab hold of the baron’s robe.

‘Well, this is it. Unfortunately, however, it’s not only warriors who find their way here, but all kinds of other trash who have gone in for shooting. Bandits, murderers the range of scum we get is amazing, which is why I have to make the rounds and check on things. Sometimes I even feel as though I were employed here in the capacity of a forest warden.’

The baron sighed.

‘But then, as I recall,’ he said, with a faint note of sadness in his voice, ‘when I was a child I wanted to be a forester. I tell you what, Pyotr, why don’t you take a good grip on my sleeve? It’s not so simple to walk around here.’

‘I do not quite understand,’ I answered with relief, ‘but by all means, if you say so.’

1 took a tight hold on the cloth of his sleeve and we began moving forward. One thing immediately struck me as strange; the baron was not walking particularly fast, certainly no quicker than he was before the world had been so horrifyingly transformed, but the camp-fires past which we made our way receded behind us at a quite startling rate. It was as though he and I were walking at a leisurely pace along a platform which was being towed at incredible speed by a train, and the direction in which the train moved was determined by the direction in which the baron turned. One of the camp-fires appeared ahead, came rushing towards us and then stopped dead at our very feet when the baron stopped walking.

There were two men sitting by the fire. They were wet and half-naked, and they looked like Romans, with only short sheets wrapped around their bodies. They were both armed, one with a revolver and the other with a double-barrelled shotgun, and they were covered all over with repulsive bullet wounds. No sooner did they catch sight of the baron than they fell to the ground and literally began trembling with an overwhelming, physically palpable terror.

‘Who are you?’ the baron asked in a low voice.

‘Hit men for Seryozha the Mongoloid,’ one of them said without raising his head,

‘How did you get here?’ the baron asked.

‘We was topped by mistake, boss.’

‘I’m not your boss,’ said the baron, ‘and no one gets topped by mistake.’

‘Honest, it was by mistake,’ the second man said in a plaintive voice. ‘In the sauna. They thought Mongoloid was in there signing a contract.’

‘What contract?’ asked Jungern, raising his eyebrows in astonishment.

‘We had to pay back this loan. Slav-East Oil transferred the money on an irrevocable letter of credit, and the invoice didn’t go through. So these two hulks from Ultima Thule came down…’

‘Irrevocable letter of credit?’ the baron interrupted. ‘Ultima Thule? I see.’

He leant down and breathed on the flame, which immediately shrank to a fraction of its size, changing from a hot roaring torch into a pale tongue only a few inches in height. The effect this produced on the two half-naked men was astounding - they stiffened into complete immobility, and their backs were instantly covered in hoarfrost.

‘Warriors, eh?’ said the baron. ‘How do you like that? The people who find their way into Valhalla these days. Seryozha the Mongoloid… It’s that stupid rule about having a sword in your hand that’s to blame.’

‘What has happened to them?’ I asked.

‘Whatever was supposed to happen,’ said the baron. ‘I don’t know. But I can take a look.’

He blew once again on the barely visible blue flame and it flared up with its old energy. The baron stared into it for several seconds with his eyes half-closed.

‘It seems likely they will be bulls in a meat-production complex. That kind of indulgence is rather common nowadays, partly because of the infinite mercy of the Buddha, and partly because of the chronic shortage of meat in Russia.’

I was astounded by the camp-fire, now that I had the time to study it in detail. In fact, it could not really be called a camp-fire at all: there was no sign of firewood in the flames instead they sprang from a fused opening in the ground shaped like a star with five narrow points.

‘Tell me, baron, what is this pentagram beneath the flames?’

‘A strange question,’ said the baron. ‘This is the eternal flame of the compassion of Buddha. And what you call a pentagram is really the emblem of the Order of the October Star, Where else should the eternal flame of mercy burn, if not above that emblem?’

‘But what is the Order of the October Star?’ I asked, peering at his chest. ‘I have heard the phrase in the most varied of cir cumstances, but no one has ever explained to me what it means.’

‘The October Star?’ Jungern replied. ‘It’s really very simple It’s just like Christmas, you know - the Catholics have it in December, the Orthodox Christians have it in January, but they’re all celebrating the same birthday. This is the same sort of thing. Reforms of the calendar, mistakes made by scribes - in other words, although it’s generally believed to have happened in May, in actual fact it was in October.’

‘But what was?’

‘You astonish me, Pyotr. it’s one of the best-known stories in the world. There was once a man who could not live as others did. He tried to understand what everything meant - all the things that happened to him from day to day; and who he himself was - the person to whom all those things were happening. And then, one night in October when he was sitting under the crown of a tree, he raised his eyes to the sky and saw a bright star. At that moment he understood everything with such absolute clarity that to this day the echo of that distant second

The baron fell silent as if he were seeking for words to express himself, but was unable to find anything appropriate.

‘You’d better have a talk with Chapaev.’ he concluded. ‘He enjoys telling people about it. The main thing though, the essential point, is that ever since that second this flame of compassion has been burning for all living beings, a flame which cannot be completely extinguished even in the line of administrative duty.’

I looked around. The panorama surrounding us was truly magnificent. I suddenly felt that I was viewing one of the most ancient pictures in the world - an immense horde which has set its camp-fires for a night halt in the open field, with warriors squatting at each of the fires, dreaming avidly into the flames, where they see the phantom forms of gold, cattle and women from the lands that lie in their path. But where was this horde moving, and what could its men be dreaming of as they sat beside these camp-fires? I turned to Jungern.

‘Tell me, baron, why are they all sitting apart, without visiting each others’ fires?’

‘You try walking over to one of them.’ said Jungern.

The distance to the nearest camp-fire, where five or six people seemed to be warming themselves, was no more than fifty paces. I looked quizzically at Jungern.

‘Walk over,’ he repeated.

I shrugged and began walking, without feeling any special or unusual sensation. Probably I had been walking for a minute or two before I realized that I had not moved any closer to the point of bright light towards which I had set off. I glanced around. Jungern was standing by the flames, three or four steps behind me, and watching me with a mocking smile.

‘The fact that this place seems similar to the world which you know.’ he said, ‘does not at all mean that it is the same world.’

I noticed that the two frozen figures had vanished from beside the fire, and all that remained were two dark stains on the ground.

‘Let’s get away from here,’ Jungern said. ‘After all, we wanted to pay a visit to my lads, didn’t we?’

I clutched at his sleeve and the camp-fires went hurtling past us once again - our speed was now so great that they extended into blurred zigzags and dotted lines. I was more than half certain that it must all be some kind of illusion, for I could not feel any wind upon my face; it was as though when the baron began to move, it was not us, but the world around us that was set into motion. I became completely disoriented and lost all concept of the direction of our movement. Sometimes we would halt for a few seconds and I could examine the individuals sitting round the nearest camp-fire - for the most part they were men with bushy beards and rifles who all looked very much like one another, and as soon as we approached they would throw themselves to the black ground beneath our feet. Once I was struck by the fact that they held spears instead of rifles, but our halt was too brief for me to be absolutely certain. After a while I realized what our manner of movement reminded me of: these crazy, unpredictable zigzags were precisely the movements of a bat flying in the darkness.

‘I hope you understand, Pyotr,’ the baron’s voice rumbled in my ear, ‘that you and I are not at present in a place where it is possible to lie? Or even not to be completely honest?’

‘I understand.’ I said, feeling my head beginning to spin from the flashing yellow and white streaks and broken lines.

‘Answer me one question.’ said the baron. ‘What do you want more than anything else in life?’

‘Me?’ I queried and began thinking.

This was a question which was hard to answer without telling a lie. I thought for a long moment about what I should say, but I couldn’t think of anything, and then suddenly the answer came by itself.

‘I want to find my golden joy.’ I said.

The baron laughed loudly. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘But what does that mean to you - your golden joy?’

‘The golden joy.’ I replied, ‘is when a peculiar flight of free thought makes it possible to see the beauty of life. Am I making myself clear?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the baron. ‘If only everyone expressed themselves so clearly and so much to the point. How did you arrive at such a precise formulation?’

‘It comes from my dream,’ I replied, ‘or rather, from my nightmare. I remembered the strange phrase by heart because it was written in a notebook from a mental home which I was leafing through in the dream - I was leafing through it because there was supposed to be something very important about me in there.’

‘Yes,’ said the baron, turning to the right at which the carousel of flames around us performed a movement like a side-somersault. ‘I’m very glad that you mentioned this yourself. The reason you are here is that Chapaev asked me to explain something to you. In essence, of course, he didn’t ask me to explain anything special that he couldn’t have told you himself. He has already told you it all before - the last time was during your journey here. But for some reason you still seem to think that the world of your dreams is less real than the space in which you get drunk with Chapaev in the bathhouse.’

‘You are correct.’ I said.

The baron came to a sudden halt, and immediately the camp-fires stopped dancing around us. I noticed that the flames had taken on a strangely alarming reddish tinge.

‘But why do you think so?’ he asked.

‘Well, if only because eventually I return to the real world.’ I said. To the place, as you put it, where I get drunk with Chapaev in the bathhouse. On the intellectual level, of course, I understand perfectly well what you are trying to say. More than that, I have even noticed that when I am actually dreaming the nightmare it is so real that there is absolutely no way of knowing that it is a dream. I can touch objects in the same way, I can pinch myself

‘But then how do you distinguish your dream from the waking world?’ the baron interrupted.

‘By the fact that when I am awake I have a clear and unambiguous sense of the reality of what is happening. As I have now.’

‘So you have that feeling now?’ the baron asked.

‘In general, yes, I do.’ I said, somewhat bemused. ‘Although I must confess that the situation is somewhat unusual.’

‘Chapaev asked me to take me you with me so that for once j at least you would find yourself in a place which has absolutely no relationship either to your nightmare about the mental home or to your nightmares about Chapaev.’ said the baron. ‘Take a good look around you - both of your obsessive I dreams are equally illusory here. All I have to do is leave you by one of the camp-fires and you will understand what I mean.’

The baron was silent for a moment, as though allowing me time to savour the full horror of such a prospect. I looked around slowly at the blackness studded with an infinite number of unattainable points of light. He was right. Where were Chapaev and Anna? Where was that fragile night-time world with the tiled walls and the busts of Aristotle that crumbled into white dust? They were nowhere now, and furthermore I knew with absolute certainty that there was no place where they could exist, because I myself, standing here beside this strange man - if he was indeed a man - constituted the only possibility of being, the exclusive means by which all these psychiatric clinics and civil wars came into the world. And the same applied to this gloomy limbo, to its terrified inhabitants and its tall, stern sentry - all of them existed only because I existed.

‘I think I understand.’ I said.

Jungern looked at me doubtfully. ‘What exactly do you understand?’ he asked.

Suddenly there was a wild shouting from behind us: Me! Me! Me! Me!’

We both turned together at the sound.

Not very far away a camp-fire was burning, but it was quite unlike all the others. The colour of the flame was quite different - it was pale and gave off smoke - and something was crackling in the fire, with sparks flying off in all directions. Furthermore, this camp-fire was not aligned with the strict linear pattern of the others: it was quite obviously burniIng in a place where it should not be.

‘Right, let’s go and take a look.’ Jungern muttered, tugging me sharply by the sleeve.

The men sitting by the fire were quite unlike the baron’s other charges. There were four of them, of whom the most agitated was a big, burly fellow in a poison-pink jacket with a stiff crew-cut brush of chestnut hair on the top of his head that reminded me of a small cannon shell. He was sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped tightly around himself, as though his own body inspired him with an obscene passion.

‘Me! Me! Me!’ he kept roaring again and again.

The intonation of his shouts changed - when the baron and I first heard them, they had a certain note of feral triumph, but as we drew closer the single syllable ‘me’ became more like a question. Sitting beside the man who was shouting was a skinny type with a quiff, who was wearing something like a sailor’s pea-jacket and staring into the flames as though paralysed. He was quite motionless, and if not for the fact that his lips occasionally moved slightly, one might have assumed that he was unconscious. It seemed as though only the third man, with a shaven head and a neat little beard, was in control of himself - he was shaking both of his companions in turn with all his might as though attempting to bring them around; he was successful to the extent that the skinny blond with the quiff began intoning something and swaying to and fro, as though he were praying. The man with the shaven head was just about to start shaking his second companion awake when he suddenly looked up and saw us. His face was instantly distorted in terror - he shouted something to his companions and leapt to his feet.

The baron swore under his breath. A hand grenade had appeared in his hand; he pulled out the ring and tossed the grenade towards the camp-fire - it fell to the ground about five yards away from our feet. In a reflex response I dropped to the ground and covered my head with my hands, but several seconds went by and still there was no explosion.

‘Get up.’ said the baron,

I opened my eyes to see his figure bending over me. I saw the baron now in a distorted perspective - the hand extended towards me was close beside my face and the eyes gazing attentively at me, in which the multiple reflections of camp fires merged into a single light, seemed like the only two stars in the dark sky of that place.

‘Thank you.’ I said. ‘What happened? Didn’t it detonate?’

‘On the contrary,’ said the baron, ‘everything worked per fectly.’

Glancing at the spot where the fire had been burning, I was astonished to see no trace of anything - neither of the fire it self, nor of those who had been sitting around it.

‘What was that?’ I asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said the baron, ‘petty hooligans high on shamanic mushrooms. They had no idea themselves where they had ended up.’

‘And you-’

‘Certainly not.’ the baron reassured me. ‘Of course I didn’t I simply brought them round.’

‘I am almost sure.’ I said, ‘that I have seen the bald one with the little beard somewhere before - in fact, I am absolutely certain.’

‘Perhaps you saw him in your dream.’

‘Perhaps,’ I replied. The shaven-headed gentleman was quite unambiguously associated for me with the white-tiled walls and cold touch of a needle against the skin which were the standard elements of my nightmares. For several seconds I even thought I might be able to recall his name, but then my attention was distracted by other thoughts, Meanwhile Jungern stood beside me without speaking, as though he were weighing the words he was about to say.

‘Tell me, Pyotr,’ he said eventually, ‘what are your political views? I assume you’re a monarchist?’

‘Naturally.’ I replied. ‘Why, have I given you cause for any other…’

‘No, no,’ cut in the baron. ‘I simply wanted to use an example that you would easily understand. Imagine a stuffy room into which a terribly large number of people have been packed, and they are all sitting on various kinds of ugly stools, on rickety chairs, on bundles and anything else that comes to hand. The more nimble among them try to sit down on two chairs at once or to shove someone else aside in order to take his place. Such is the world in which you live. Simultaneously, every one of these individuals has an immense, shining throne of his own, a throne towering up above this world and all the other worlds that exist. This is a truly regal throne, and nothing lies beyond the power of the person who ascends it. And, most important of all, this throne is entirely legitimate. It belongs to everyone by right. But it is almost impossible to ascend it, because it stands in a place that does not exist. Do you understand? It is nowhere.’

‘Yes.’ I said thoughtfully, ‘I was thinking about that only yesterday, baron. I know what «nowhere» means.’

‘Then think about the following,’ the baron went on. Here, as I have already said, both of your obsessive states - with Chapaev and without him - are equally illusory. In order to reach «nowhere» and ascend that throne of eternal freedom and happiness, it is enough to remove the single dimension which still remains - the one, that is, in which you see me and yourself. Which is what my own wards are attempting to do. But their chances are very slim, and after a certain period of time they are obliged to repeat the weary round of existence. Why should you, however, not find yourself in this «nowhere» while you are still alive? I swear to you that this is the very best thing you could possibly do with your life. No doubt you are fond of metaphors - you could compare this to discharging yourself from the mental home.’

‘Believe me, baron…’ I began with emotion, pressing my hand to my heart, but he did not let me finish.

‘And you must do this before Chapaev puts his clay machine-gun to use. Afterwards, as you know, there will be nothing left, not even «nowhere».’

‘His clay machine-gun?’ I asked. ‘But what is that?’

‘Has Chapaev not told you?’

‘No.’

Jungern frowned,

‘Then we won’t go into details. Just keep in mind the metaphor of leaving behind the mental home for freedom. And then perhaps in one of your nightmares you may recall our conversation. But now it is time for us to be going, the lads will be tired of waiting.’

The baron took hold of my sleeve and the chaotic streaks of light began flashing around us once again. By this stage I was accustomed to the fantastic spectacle and it no longer made me feel dizzy. The baron went on ahead, peering into the gloom; I glanced at his receding chin, his ginger moustache and the severe line at the corner of his mouth, and thought that his external appearance was the least likely thing about him to scare anybody.

‘Tell me, baron, why is everyone here so afraid of you?’ I asked, unable to restrain my curiosity. ‘I don’t wish to offend you, but I do not find anything in your appearance particularly frightening.’

‘Not everyone sees what you see,’ replied the baron. ‘I usually appear to my friends in the guise of the St Petersburg intellectual whom I once actually was. But you should not conclude that that is what I actually look like.’

‘What do all the others see?’

‘I won’t bore you with all the details,’ said the baron. ‘Lei me just say that I hold a sharp sabre in each of my six hands.’

‘But which of your appearances is the real one?’

‘I do not have a real one, unfortunately,’ he replied.

I must confess that the baron’s words produced quite a profound impression on me, even though, of course, if I had bothered to think for a while, I might have guessed everything for myself.

‘We’re almost there now,’ the baron said, in almost a casual holidaymaker’s voice.

‘Tell me,’ I said, glancing at him sideways, ‘why do they call you the Black Baron?’

‘Ah,’ said Jungern with a smile, ‘that is probably because when I was fighting in Mongolia the living Buddha Bogdo-Gegen Tutukhtu granted me the right to use a black palanquin.’

‘Then why do you ride in a green one?’

‘Because in exactly the same way I was granted the right to ride in a green palanquin.’

‘Very well. But then why don’t they call you the Green Haron?’

Jungern frowned.

‘Do you not think you are asking rather too many questions?’ he said. ‘You would do better to take a look around in order to fix this place in your memory - you will never see it again. That is, you could, of course, see it again, but I sincerely hope that will not happen to you.’

I followed the baron’s advice.

Far ahead of us a light had appeared which seemed larger than the others. It was not hurtling towards us with the same rapidity as the other fires, but was approaching gradually, as though we really were walking towards it in the normal fashion. I guessed that this must be the final point of our walk.

‘Are your friends by that big camp-fire?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ replied the baron. ‘But I wouldn’t call them friends exactly. They are my former regimental comrades: I was once their commanding officer.’

‘You mean that you fought together?’

‘Yes,’ said the baron, ‘that too. But that is not the most important thing here. We were all executed together by firing squad in Irkutsk. I wouldn’t exactly say it was my fault, but even so… I feel a certain special responsibility for them.’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘If I were suddenly to find myself in such a dark and desolate place, I should probably very much want someone to come and help me.’

‘You know, you should not forget that you are still alive,’ said the baron. ‘All this darkness and emptiness that surrounds you is actually the most brilliant light in all existence. Just stop there for a moment.’

I stopped mechanically, and without giving me a moment to grasp what he was doing, the baron gave me a sudden shove from behind.

This time, however, he did not catch me completely unawares. During the moment when my body was falling to the ground, I was somehow able to retain my awareness of that imperceptibly short instant of return to the usual world - or rather, since in reality there was absolutely nothing of which to be aware, I managed to grasp the nature of this return. I do not know how to describe it; it was as though one set of scenery was moved aside and the next was not set in its place immediately, but for an entire second I stared into the gap between them. And this second was enough to perceive the de ception behind what I had always taken for reality, to perceive the simple and stupid way in which the Universe was arranged. It was an encounter which left me filled with confusion, annoyance and a certain sense of shame for myself.

The baron’s movement had been so powerful that I only managed to put my hands out in front of me at the very last moment, and I struck my forehead against the ground.

When I raised my head I saw the ordinary world in front of me once again - the steppe, the early evening sky and the line of hills close by. I could see the baron’s back swaying as he walked towards the only camp-fire on this steppe, from which a column of white smoke rose vertically into the sky.

I leapt to my feet and dusted down my trousers, which were soiled at the knees, but I thought better of following him. As the baron approached the camp-fire the group of bearded men in khaki uniforms and matted yellow astrakhan hats who were seated at it rose to greet him.

‘Now then, my lads!’ Jungern roared in a roistering commanding officer’s bass. ‘How’s it going?’

‘We do our best, your honour! We get by all right, God be praised!’ came the chorus of replies. The baron was surrounded from all sides and completely hidden from view. I could see that the soldiers loved him.

I noticed a Cossack in a yellow astrakhan hat walking towards me from the direction of the fire. His face looked so fierce that for a second I felt quite scared, but I was reassured by the sight of a bluish-green tinted tooth glass in his hand.

Well, yer honour.’ he grated as he reached me, ‘you must have had a fair old scare, I reckon.’

‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I did rather.’

‘Better put yerself right then.’ said the Cossack, holding out the glass.

I drank. It was vodka, and I really did begin feeling better almost immediately.

‘Thank you. That was just the thing.’

‘Well now,’ said the Cossack, taking back the empty glass, ‘you and the baron on friendly terms, are ye?’

‘We are acquainted.’ I said evasively.

«He’s a strict one.’ the Cossack commented. ‘Everything by the book. We’re going to chant now, and then answer questions. That is, the others is going to answer questions. I’ve already hit the target. I’m leaving today. For good.’

I looked at him - on closer inspection there no longer seemed to be anything fierce about his face, it was just that his features were coarse, weathered by the wind and scorched by the mountain sun. Despite this coarseness, his face bore a thoughtful, even dreamy expression.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked the Cossack.

‘Ignat.’ he replied. ‘And you’d be called Pyotr.’

Yes.’ I said, ‘but how do you know?’

Ignat smiled ever so slightly.

‘I’m from the Don.’ he said. ‘And you’d be from the capital, I reckon.’

‘Yes.’ I said, ‘from Petersburg.’

‘Well now, Pyotr, don’t you go over to the camp-fire for the time being. His lordship the baron don’t like anyone interfering with the chanting. Just let’s you and me sit here and listen a while. And whatever you don’t understand I can explain.’

I shrugged and sat on the ground, crossing my legs Turkish style.

Something rather strange was taking place around the camp-fire. The Cossacks in the yellow astrakhan hats had sat down in a semicircle and the baron was standing in front of them exactly like a choirmaster, with his hands raised.

‘Oh, the nights, the weary nights,’ their powerful male voices sang out. ‘And I have slept hardly at all…’

‘I am very fond of this song.’ I said.

‘How could your lordship be fond of it, if he’s never heard it before?’ asked Ignat, squatting down beside me.

‘What do you mean, of course I have. This is an old Cossack song.’

‘No.’ said Ignat. ‘You’re mixing things up. This is a song his lordship the baron wrote specially for us so that chanting it would make us think. And so it’d be easy for us to remember, the words in it are just the same as in the song you’re talking about, and the music too.’

‘Then what does his contribution consist of?’ I asked. ‘I mean, how is it possible to distinguish the song that existed earlier from the one that the baron composed, if the words and the music are both the same?’

‘Well, the song his lordship the baron wrote has a completely different meaning. Just you listen and I’ll explain, Hear them singing: «And I have slept hardly at all, but I have seen a dream.» You know what that means? Although I couldn’t sleep, I still dreamed just like as if I was sleeping, under stand? That means, it makes no difference whether you sleep or you don’t, it’s all a dream.’

‘I understand.’ I answered. ‘What comes next?’

Ignat waited for the couplet.

‘That’s it.’ he said, ‘listen: «And in my dream my black steed gambolled, danced and pranced beneath me.» There’s great wisdom hidden in them words. You’re an educated man, you must know that in India they have a book called the Oopsanyshags.’

‘Yes.’ I said, immediately recalling my conversation with Kotovsky.

‘Well, it says in that book a man’s mind is like a Cossack’s horse. Always carrying you forward. Only his lordship thl baron says as nowadays people is riding horses of quite a different colour… Nobody can manage his steed, so it’s taken the bit in its teeth, like, and now it’s not the rider as controls the horse, but the horse as carries him off wherever it fancies. So the horseman’s not even thinking any more about how he has to get any place in particular. He just goes along wherever the horse wanders. His lordship the baron even promised to bring us this special book - The Headless Horseman, it’s called - seems like it was written specially all about this. But he keeps on forgetting. He’s just too busy. We have to be grateful for-.

‘And what comes next?’ I interrupted.

‘Next? What comes next? «And our captain quick of wit, heard my dream then read me it… Oi, your wild and woolly head you are bound to lose, he said.» The captain, like - well, that’s clear enough, that’s the way his lordship the baron writes about himself, he really is smart all right. And the bit about the head is clear enough, too - that’s straight out of the Oopsanyshags. I f the mind has worked itself up into such a lather that it don’t know where it’s going itself, it’s clear enough it’s done for. And there’s another meaning here, too, one as his lordship only whispered in my ear not long ago. The meaning is as all this human wisdom will have to be left behind here anyway, like. But that’s no cause for regretting, ‘cause all that don’t apply to the most important thing of all. That’s why the song don’t say that you’re done for, only your wild and woolly head. And that’s a gonner anyway.’

Ignat rested his chin thoughtfully on his hands and fell silent as he listened to the song.

“nd, oh, the bitter winds did roar From out the East so cold and heavy. And the yellow hat they tore From off my head so wild and woolly…”

I waited some time for his commentary, but it did not come, so I decided to break the silence myself.

‘I can understand the part about the winds from the East myself.’ I said, 'Ex orienta lux, as they say. But why does the hat get blown off?’

‘So as he won’t have any more attachments.’

‘But why is the cap yellow?’

‘That’s because we’re Gelugpa. So we have yellow hats. If we was Karmapa, they’d be red hats. And if we was Bonpo, like down on the Don, then they’d be black. But the reality behind them all is the same anyhow. If the head’s a gonner, then what’s it care what kind of hat it used to wear? Or if you looks at it from the other side - where freedom begins, colours don’t mean nothing no more.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the baron has certainly taught you well. But what exactly is that most important thing of all which starts after the wild and woolly head is gone?’

Ignat gave a deep sigh.

‘Ah, that’s the tricky bit.’ he said. ‘His lordship the baron asks that one every evening, and no one can answer him, no matter how they all try, D’you know what happens when one of the lads answers that one?’

‘How should I know?’

‘His lordship immediately transfers him to the Special Regiment of Tibetan Cossacks. That’s a very special kind of force, that is. The pride and joy, so to speak, of the entire Asian Cavalry Division, although if you think about it, a regiment like that doesn’t really belong in any cavalry division, because those who serve in it ride elephants, not horses.’ It occurred to me that the man before me was probably one of those natural-born liars who can momentarily invent a story of any degree of improbability, but who always adorn it with such an abundance of detail that they make you believe it, if only for a second.

‘How can you slash with your sabre from up on an elephant?’ I asked. ‘That would be most awkward.’

‘Awkward all right, but that’s the army for you.’ Ignat said, and he looked up at me. ‘Don’t you believe me, your lordship? Well, it doesn’t matter if you don’t. Until I answered his lordship the baron’s question, I didn’t believe it either. And now I don’t have to believe anything, because I know it all.’

‘So you answered that question, did you?’

Ignat nodded solemnly in reply.

‘That’s why I can walk around the steppe like a man, and not have to stick close by the camp-fires.’

‘And what did you say to the baron?’

‘What I said isn’t no use to you,’ said Ignat. ‘it’s not your mouth you have to answer with. Nor your head, neither.’

We said nothing for a long time; Ignat seemed to be sunk deep in thought. Suddenly he raised his head.

‘There’s his lordship the baron coming over. That means it’s time for us to say goodbye.’

I looked round and saw the tall thin figure of the baron approaching. Ignat rose to his feet; to be on the safe side I followed his example.

‘Well, then.’ the baron asked Ignat when he reached us, ‘are you ready?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ignat replied, ‘I am.’

The baron stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled like a street hooligan, following which something absolutely unexpected happened.

An enormous white elephant suddenly emerged from behind the low line of bushes behind us. It actually did appear tо emerge from behind the bushes, even though it was ten times their height, and I was entirely unable to explain how it

could have happened. It was not as though it was small when it appeared and then increased in size as it approached, nor did it emerge from behind some invisible wall that was aligned with the bushes. When it appeared the elephant was already quite incredibly huge - and yet it came from behind a tiny row of bushes behind which even a sheep would have

had difficulty in concealing itself.

I experienced the same feeling I had several minutes earlier

I felt as though I were on the verge of understanding something extremely important, that any moment now the levers and cables of the mechanism that was concealed behind the veil of reality and made everything move would become visible. But this feeling passed, and the enormous white elephant was still standing there in front of us.

It had six tusks, three on each side. I decided I must be hallucinating, but then realized that if what I was seeing was an hallucination, it was not very different in nature from everything else around me.

Ignat walked over to the elephant and scrambled briskly onto its back, climbing up the tusks as though they were a ladder. He acted as though he had spent his entire previous life doing nothing but ride round plateaux created by someone’s fantastic imagination on the backs of white elephants with six tusks. Turning towards the fire where the figures in khaki uniform and yellow hats were sitting, he waved, then struck the elephant’s sides with his heels. The elephant began to advance, taking a few steps forward - then I saw a blinding flash of light, and he disappeared. It was so very bright that for almost a minute I could see nothing at all except its yellow and purple imprint on my retina.

‘I forgot to warn you there would be a flash.’ said Jungern. ‘It’ actually very bad for the eyesight. In the Asian Cavalry Division we used to protect our eyes with a blindfold of black material.’

‘You mean such occurrences were common?’

‘They used to be,’ said the baron. ‘There was a time when it happened several times a day. At that rate you could easily go blind. These days the lads are getting a bit thin on the ground. Well, has it passed off? Can you see?’

I could just make out the forms of objects around me again.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Would you like me to show you how it was before?’

‘But how do you intend to do that?’

Instead of replying the baron drew his sabre from its scabbard.

‘Watch the blade,’ he said.

I looked at the blade and saw a moving image on it, as though it were a cinema screen. It was a hill of sand, with a group of about ten officers standing on it; several were wearing normal military uniform, but two or three were in astrakhan hats and Cossack camouflage overalls with something that looked like cartridge-pouches instead of breast pockets. They were all wearing black blindfolds, and their heads were turned in the same direction. Suddenly I recognized Chapaev among them, despite the blindfold that concealed his eyes: he seemed a great deal younger and there were no grey hairs at his temples. With one hand he was pressing a small pair of field binoculars to the cloth over his eyes, and with the other he was slapping a riding-whip against his boot. It seemed to me that the figure in the Cossack uniform close to Chapaev was Baron Jungern, but I had no time for a good look at him because the blade turned over and the men on the hill disappeared. Now I could see the infinite and smooth surface of a desert. In the distance two silhouettes were moving against the bright sky; looking closer, I managed to discern the outlines of two elephants. They were too far away for me to be able to make out the riders, who were no more than tiny bumps on their backs. Suddenly the horizon was flooded with bright light, and when it faded, only one elephant remained. Back on the hill they applauded and immediately I saw a second flash. ‘Baron, at this rate I shall have no eyes left,’ I said, averting them from the blade. Jungern put the sabre away in its scabbard. ‘What is that yellow thing over there in the grass?’ I asked. ‘Or do I still have spots in front of my eyes.’

‘No, it’s not a spot,’ said the baron. ‘It’s Ignat’s hat.’

‘Ah, the raging winds have torn it off? The winds from the East?’

‘It’s a genuine pleasure to talk with you, Pyotr.’ said the h.iron, ‘you do understand everything so well. Would you like to keep it as a memento?’

I bent down and picked it up. The hat was exactly my size. I wondered for a while what I should do with my own - I couldn’t think of anything better than simply dropping it on I he ground.

‘In reality I understand very far from everything.’ I said. I or instance, I simply cannot understand at all where an elephant like that could appear from in this forsaken spot.’

‘My dear Pyotr,’ said the baron, ‘there are quite incredible numbers of invisible elephants wandering around us all the time, please take my word for it. They are more common in Russia than crows. But allow me to change the subject - it’s time for you to be getting back, you see, so permit me to tell you one more thing before you go. Perhaps the most important one of all.’

‘What is it?’

‘It is about the place a person goes to when he manages to ascend the throne that is nowhere. We call that place «Inner Mongolia».’

‘Who are «we»?’

‘You can take me to mean Chapaev and myself.’ the baron said with a smile. ‘Although I hope that in time we will also be able to include you in our number.’

‘And where is it, this place?’

‘That’s the point, it is nowhere. It is quite impossible to say that it is located anywhere in the geographical sense. Inner Mongolia is not called that because it is inside Mongolia. It is inside anyone who can see the void, although the word «in side» is quite inappropriate here. And it is not really any kind of Mongolia either, that’s merely a way of speaking. The most stupid thing possible would be to attempt to describe to you what it is. Take my word for this, at least - it is well worth striving all your life to reach it. And nothing in life is better than being there.’

‘And how does one come to see the void?’

‘Look into yourself.’ said the baron. ‘I beg your pardon for the unintentional pun on your name.’

I pondered for several seconds.

‘May I be honest with you?’

‘Of course,’ Jungern replied.

‘The place we have just visited - I mean the black steppe with the camp-fires - seemed rather gloomy to me. If the Inner Mongolia of which you speak is anything similar, then I would hardly wish to be there.’

‘You know, Pyotr.’ Jungern said with a chuckle, ‘when, to take an example, you unleash mayhem in a drinking-den like the «Musical Snuffbox», you may perhaps reasonably assume that what you see is approximately the same as what the people around you see - although even that is far from certain. But in the place where we have just been, everything is very individual. Nothing there exists, so to speak, in reality. Everything depends on who is looking at it. For me, for instance, everything there is flooded in blinding light. But my lads here’ - Jungern nodded in the direction of the little figures in the yellow astrakhan hats who were moving around the camp-fire - ‘see the same things around themselves as you do. Or rather, you see the same things as they do.’

‘Why?’

‘Are you familiar with the concept of visualization?’ the baron asked. ‘When so many believers begin to pray to some god or other that he actually comes into existence, in the precise form in which they have imagined him?’

‘I am familiar with it,’ I said.

‘The same applies to everything else as well. The world in which we live is simply a collective visualization, which we are taught to make from our early childhood. It is, in actual fact, the only thing that one generation hands on to the next. When a sufficient number of people see this steppe, this grass and feel this summer wind, then we are able to experience it all together with them. But no matter what forms might be prescribed for us by the past, in reality what each of us sees in life is still only a reflection of his own spirit. And if you discover that you are surrounded by impenetrable darkness, it only means that your own inner space is like the night. It’s a good thing you’re an agnostic, or there would be all manner of gods and devils roaming about in this darknoss.’

‘Baron…’ I began, but he interrupted me:

‘Please do not think that there is anything in any way demeaning to you in all this. There are very few who are prepared to admit that they are exactly the same as everyone else. But is not this the usual condition of man - sitting in the darkness beside a camp-fire kindled through someone else’s compassion and waiting for help to arrive?’

‘Perhaps you are right,’ I said. ‘But what is this Inner Mongolia?’

‘Inner Mongolia is precisely that place from which help arrives.’

‘And so…’ I asked, ‘you have been there?’

‘Yes.’ replied the baron.

‘Then why did you return?’

The baron nodded without speaking in the direction of the ramp-fire, where the silent Cossacks were huddled.

‘And then,’ he said, ‘I never really did come back from there. I am still there now. But it really is time for you to be getting back, Pyotr.’

I glanced around.

‘But where to, precisely?’

‘I’ll show you.’ said the baron.

I noticed that he was holding a heavy burnished-steel pistol, and I shuddered at the sight.

The baron laughed. ‘Pyotr, Pyotr. What’s the matter? You really should not be so very mistrustful of people.’

He thrust his other hand into his pocket and took out the package which Chapaev had given him. He unwrapped it and showed me a perfectly ordinary ink-well with a black stopper.

‘Watch carefully.’ he said, ‘and do not look away.’

With that he tossed the ink-well into the air and when it was about two yards away from us, he fired.

The ink-well was transformed into a cloud of blue spray and minute fragments which hung in the air for a moment before scattering across the table.

I staggered backwards, and in order to avoid falling from my sudden dizziness, I braced myself against the wall with one hand. I was facing a table covered with a hopelessly stained map, beside which Kotovsky was standing, his mouth wide open. Glycerine from the shattered lamp was dripping on to the floor.

‘Right then.’ said Chapaev, toying with his smoking Mauser, ‘now you understand what mind is, Grisha, eh?’

Kotovsky covered his face with his hands and ran out of the room. It was clear that he had suffered a powerful shock. The same, indeed, could have been said of myself.

Chapaev turned towards me and looked at me closely for a while. Suddenly he frowned. ‘What’s that on your breath?’ Chapaev barked. ‘Well, well, less than a minute goes by, and he’s drunk already. And why are you wearing a yellow hat? Trying to get yourself court-martialled are you, you bastard?’

‘I only had one glass’

‘Qui-et! Quiet, I tell you! The weavers’ regiment is here, we have to settle them in, and you’re wandering around drunk! Want to put me to shame in front of Furmanov, do you? Go and sleep it off! And if I catch you pulling tricks like this again, it’s a court-martial, straight off! Do you want to know what my court-martials are like?’

Chapaev raised his nickel-plated Mauser.

‘No, Vasily Ivanovich, I do not.’ I answered.

‘Sleep!’ Chapaev repeated. ‘And on your way to bed don’t you dare breathe on anyone.’

I turned on my heels and walked to the door. When I reached it I glanced around. Chapaev was standing by the table and following my movements with an expression of menace.

‘I have just one question,’ I said.

‘Well?’

‘I just wanted to say… I have long known that the only real moment of time is «now». But I cannot understand how it is possible to fit such a long sequence of sensations into it. Does it mean that if one remains strictly within the bounds of this moment, without creeping over into the past or the fu-lure, it can be extended to such a degree that phenomena like those I have just witnessed will become possible?’

‘And just where are you thinking of extending it to?’

‘I have expressed myself incorrectly. Does it mean that this moment, this boundary between the past and the future, is itself the door to eternity?’

Chapaev jiggled the barrel of his Mauser and I fell silent. He looked at me for some time with an expression of something close to mistrust.

‘This moment, Petka, is eternity, and not any kind of door,’ he said. ‘So how can we say that it takes place at any particular time? When will you finally come round?’

‘Never,’ I replied.

Chapaev gaped at me, wide-eyed.

‘Well, look now, Petka,’ he said in astonishment. ‘Have you really understood at last?’

Finding myself back in my room, I began wondering how I could occupy myself to best calm my nerves. I recalled Chapaev’s advice to write down my nightmares, and I thought about my recent dream on a Japanese theme. There was a great deal in it that was incomprehensible and confused, but even so I could recall almost every detail. It began in a strange underground train with an announcement of the name of the next station - I could remember the name and even knew where it had come from: there could be no doubt that my consciousness, following the complex rules that govern the world of dreams, had created it in the instant before I awoke from the name of the horse that some soldier was shouting under my window. Furthermore, this shout had been reflected in two mirrors simultaneously, becoming transformed, in addition to the name of the station, into the name of the football team from the conversation with which my dream had ended. That meant that a dream which had seemed to me to be very long and detailed had in reality lasted no longer than a second, but after that day’s meeting with Baron Jungern and the conversation with Chapaev, nothing could amaze me any more. I sat at the desk, set several sheets of paper in front of myself, dipped my pen into the ink-well and traced the following words in large letters across the top of the first sheet: ‘Next station «Dynamo»!’

I worked for a long time, but even so I managed to write down less than half of what I could remember. The details that flowed out from my pen on to the paper possessed such a glimmer of decadence that towards the end I could no longer be certain whether I was actually writing down my dream or already improvising on its contents. I wanted to smoke; I took my papyrosas from the desk and went out into the yard.

Downstairs everything was in a state of bustling activity, as some of the newly arrived men formed themselves into a column; there was a smell of pitch and horse sweat. I noticed a small regimental orchestra standing at the back of the column - a few battered and dented trumpets and a huge drum hung on a strap round the neck of a tall strapping lad who looked like Peter the Great without his moustache. For some reason which was incomprehensible to me, the sight of this orchestra filled me with an inexpressible, aching melancholy.

The formation was commanded by the man with the sabre scar across his cheek whom I had seen from my window. I re called the sight of the snow-covered square in front of the station, the platform covered with red cloth, Chapaev slicing the air with his yellow-cuffed gauntlet and this man at the barrier nodding thoughtfully in response to the monstrous, meaningless phrases which Chapaev was showering on to the square formation of snow-covered soldiers. It was definitely Furmanov. He turned in my direction, but I ducked back into the doorway of the manor-house before he could recognize me.

I went upstairs to my room, lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, I remembered the fat man with the shaven head and the beard who had been sitting by the fire in that world beyond the grave, and I recalled his name - Volodin. From somewhere deep in the recesses of my memory a large tiled loom emerged with baths secured to the floor, with this Volodin squatting naked and wet like a toad on the floor beside one of them. I felt as though I were just on the point of recalling something else, but then the trumpets sounded in the yard, the regimental drum boomed out, and the choir of weavers that I remembered so well from that night on the train roared out:

The deadly black baron and the white hussars

Want us to bow to the throne of the Tsars,

But from Siberia to the North British Sea

The strongest of all is the Red Army.

‘Idiots,’ I whispered, turning my face to the wall and feeling tears of helpless hatred for the world welling up in my eyes. ‘My God, the idiots… Not even idiots - mere shadows of idiots… Shadows in the darkness…’