Buddha's Little Finger

8

‘But just why exactly did you think they were like shadows?’ Timur Timurovich asked.

Volodin twitched nervously, but the tight straps securing his arms and legs to the garrotte prevented him from moving, There were large drops of sweat glistening on his forehead.

‘I don’t know.’ he said. ‘You asked me what I was thinking just at that moment. Well, I was thinking that if there was any external observer around there to watch, he’d probably have thought we weren’t real, that we were nothing but flickering shadows and reflections from the flames - I told you there was a camp-fire. But then you know, Timur Timurovich, it all really depends on the observer

The camp-fire in the clearing had barely begun to blaze and was not yet giving enough tight to disperse the gloom and illuminate the figures sitting around it; they appeared to be no more than blurred spectral shadows cast on an invisible screen by the branches and sods of earth lying beside the fire. Perhaps, in a certain higher sense, that is precisely what they were - but since the last of the local neo-Platonists had abandoned his shame at possessing a body shortly before the Twentieth Party Congress, there was no one to reach such a conclusion within a radius of at least one hundred miles.

It would be better, therefore, to state the facts simply - sitting in the semi-darkness around the camp-fire were three hulking brutes. Their appearance, moreover, was such that if our neo Platonist were to have survived the Twentieth Congress and all of the insights that ensued therefrom, and to have emerged from the forest and approached the fire to discuss his topic with the new arrivals, he would very probably have suffered severe physical disfigurement as soon as the word ‘neo-Platonism’ disturbed the silence of the night. The signs that suggested this to be the case were numerous.

The most significant among them was the ‘Toyota Harbour Pearl’ amphibious Jeep standing close by; another was the immense winch on its bonnet - an item of absolutely no use whatever in normal life, but frequently to be found on the vehicles of gangsters. (Anthropologists who have devoted their efforts to studying the ‘New Russians’ believe that these winches are used as rams during the settling of accounts, and certain scholars even see their popularity as an indirect indication of the long-awaited resurgence of the spirit of the nation - they believe the winches fulfil the mystical role of the figureheads that once decorated the bows of ancient Slavonic barks.) In short, it was clear that the people who had arrived in this jeep were not to be trifled with, and it would be best not to risk uttering any superfluous words in their company. They were talking quietly among themselves.

‘How many bits does it take, eh, Volodin?’ one of them asked.

‘That depends on you,’ Volodin answered as he unwrapped a paper bundle on his knees. ‘For instance, I take a hundred at a time already. But I’d recommend you start with about thirty.’

‘And that’ll do it?’

‘That’ll do it, Shurik,’ said Volodin, dividing up the contents of the bundle, a dark heap of something dry and brittle, into three unequal portions. ‘You’ll end up running all over the forest trying to find a place to hide. And you’ll be running too, Kolyan.’

‘Me?’ the third person sitting by the fire asked in a deep bass. ‘And just who am I gonna be runnin’ away from?’

‘From yourself, Kolyan. From your own self,’ Volodin answered.

‘I ain’t never run away from no one,’ said Kolyan, picking up his portion with a hand that looked like the body of a toy dump truck. ‘You better watch your mouth. Why’d I wanna run away from meself? It don’t make no sense.’

‘I can only explain it by using an example,’ said Volodin.

‘Give us an example, then.’

Volodin thought for a moment.

‘Okay, just imagine some low-life scum comes into our office, sticks all his fingers up in the air and says we should be sharing. What would you do then?’

‘I’d drop him,’ said Kolyan.

‘You what? Right there in the office?’ Shurik asked.

‘That don’t matter. They gotta pay for givin’ us the fingers.’ Shurik slapped Kolyan on the shoulder, then turned to Volodin and said reassuringly, ‘Course not in the office. We’d set up a shoot’

‘Okay,’ said Volodin. ‘So you set up a shoot, right? And then what happens? Let Kolyan answer.’

‘Clear enough,’ Kolyan responded. ‘We goes round there, and when that jerk turns up I says - right mate, give us all the dirt on yerself He starts jawin’, and I waits a minute and nods my head, like, and then I blow him away… Yeah. And then all the rest too.’

He looked at the tiny mound of dark garbage on his palm and asked, ‘Just swaller it, just like that?’

‘Chew it properly first,’ said Volodin.

Kolyan dispatched the contents of his palm into his mouth.

‘Smells like mushroom soup,’ he stated.

‘Swaller it,’ said Shurik. ‘I’ve eaten mine, no problem.’

‘So you blow him away,’ Volodin said thoughtfully. ‘So what if he gets the drop on you two first?’

Kolyan pondered for a few seconds, working his jaws, then he swallowed and said confidently, ‘Nah, he won’t.’

‘Okay, then,’ said Volodin, ‘Where are you going to drop him, right there in his wheels, from a distance, or will you let him get out?’

‘I’ll let him gerrout,’ said Kolyan. ‘It’s only woodentops as drops jerks in their wheels. Holes everywhere, blood too - why go spoilin’ a nice set of wheels? The best kind of hit is when he comes over to our wheels.’

‘Okay, so let’s take the best case, imagine he’s already got out of his wheels and comes over to yours and you’re just about to blow him away, when you see…’ Volodin paused significantly, ‘when you see it isn’t him standing there, but you. And you’ve got to blow yourself away. Don’t you reckon you might drop a marble or two?’

‘Sure I would.’

‘And when your marbles are bouncing, it’s not really chicken to kick into reverse?’

‘Course not.’

‘So you’d cut and run, because it wouldn’t be chicken?’

‘if it ain’t chicken, sure.’

‘So it turns out you’d be running away from yourself. Get it?’

‘Nah,’ Kolyan said after a pause, ‘I don’t get it. If it ain’t him, but me, then where am l?’

‘You’re him.’

‘Then who’s he?’

‘He’s you.’

‘Nah, I just don’t get it,’ said Kolyan.

‘Well, look,’ said Volodin, ‘can you imagine there’s nothing at all on every side of you, nothing but you? Everywhere?’

‘Yeah,’ said Kolyan. ‘I’ve been that way a coupla times from smack. Or after basing, don’t remember which it was.’

‘Then how are you going to blow him away, if there’s nothing around you except you? No matter which way you deal it, you end up planting lead in yourself. Dropped your marbles, haven’t you? Right. So instead of blasting him, you do a runner. So now try figuring that by numbers. Seems to me like you’ll end up running away from yourself

Kolyan thought for a long time.

‘Shurik’ll blow him away,’ he said, eventually.

‘That means he’ll hit you. You’re all there is.’

‘How come?’ cut in Shurik. ‘if I’ve still got all me marbles in place, I’ll blow the right guy away.’

This time Volodin had to think longer and harder.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t explain it that way. That’s not a good example. Just hang about a bit till the mushrooms come on, and then we’ll have another go.’

The next few minutes passed in silence. The threesome sitting by the fire opened a few cans of food, sliced some salami and drank some vodka, but it was all done without speaking, as though the words usually spoken to accompany such actions were petty and out of place against the background of something dark and unexpressed which united all present.

After the vodka the three men smoked a cigarette each, still without speaking.

‘How’d the spiel get on to that track anyway?’ Shurik suddenly asked. ‘I mean, like, about the shoot and the marbles?’

‘Volodin was sayin’ as how we would end up runnin’ away from ourselves through the wood when the mushrooms came on.’

‘Ah. Got you. Listen, why do they say that, «come on»? Where is it they come on from?’

‘You asking me?’ asked Volodin.

‘You’ll do right enough,’ answered Shurik.

‘I’d say they come on from inside,’ Volodin said.

‘How’s that then, you mean they’re sitting in there waiting all the time?’

‘Yeah, kind of. You could put it like that. And not just them, actually. We’ve got every possible high in the world inside us… Every time you down something or shoot up, all you do is set some part of it free. There’s no high in the drug, it’s nothing but powder or a few chunks of mushroom… it’s like the key to a safe. Get it?’

‘Hea-vy,’ Shurik said thoughtfully, for some reason circling his head around clockwise.

‘Yeah, real heavy,’ Kolyan agreed, and the conversation died for a few minutes.

‘Listen,’ Shurik put in again, ‘is there a lot of high down there inside?’

‘An infinite amount,’ Volodin said authoritatively. ‘An inexpressibly and infinitely large amount, there’s even a high you can’t tune into out here.’

‘Fuck me… You mean inside’s like a safe and this high’s stuck inside it?’

‘Roughly speaking, yeah.’

‘And can you blow the safe? Like, so as to get a lift outta the high inside it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How?’

‘You have to devote your entire life to it. Why do you think people go into monasteries and live all their lives there? You think they spend their time beating their heads off the walls? They’re on this incredible trip, the likes of which you couldn’t get out here from a fix for a grand in greens. And no stopping - get it? Morning, noon and night. Some of them even when they’re asleep. On and on for ever.’

‘Then what they trippin’ on? What’s it called?’ asked Kolyan.

‘It has various names. In general, I suppose you could call it grace. Or love.’

‘Whose love?’

‘Just love. When you feel it, you stop asking whose it is, what it’s for, why it exists. You just stop thinking altogether.’

‘And you’ve felt it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Volodin, ‘I’ve been there.’

‘So how’s it feel? What’s it like?’

‘It’s hard to say.’

‘Give us a rough idea. Is it like smack?’

‘Nowhere near it,’ Volodin said with a frown. ‘Compared with this smack is a heap of crap.’

‘Well then, kinda like coke, is it, or speed?’

‘No, Shurik. No, no, don’t even try comparing it. Just imagine you’ve done a bundle of speed and you’re tripping out - say you’ll be tripping for a day. You’ll want a dame and the whole works, right?’

Shurik giggled.

‘And then you’ll be coming down for a day. And you’ll probably start thinking - what the fuck did I need all that for?’

‘Yeah, it happens,’ said Shurik.

‘But with this gear, once it gets to you, it stays with you for ever. And you won’t need any dames, and you won’t get any munchies. No coming down. No cold turkey. You just keep praying for the trip to go on and on for ever. Get it?’

‘Like, heavier than smack?’

‘Way heavier.’

Volodin leaned over the camp-fire and stirred the branches around. It immediately flared up, as strongly as though petrol had been poured into the fire. The flames were strange - they gave off various-coloured sparks of unusual beauty, and the light that fell on the faces of the three men sitting there was also unusual, rainbow-coloured and soft, with an astonishing depth.

They could be seen very clearly now. Volodin was a plump, roundish man of about forty with a shaved head and a small, neat beard - his appearance was that of a civilized Central Asian bandit. Shurik was a skinny, fidgety little man with blond hair who made a lot of small, meaningless movements. He didn’t look very strong, but his constant nervous twitching betrayed something so frightening that beside him the muscle-bound Kolyan looked like a mere wolfhound puppy, in short, if Shurik typified the elite type of St Petersburg mobster, then Kolyan was the standard Moscow hulkodrome whose appearance had been so brilliantly foretold by the futurists at the beginning of the century. He seemed to be nothing but an intersection of simple geometrical forms - spheres, cubes and pyramids - and his small streamlined head was reminiscent of that stone which according to the evangelist was discarded by the builders but nonetheless became the cornerstone in the foundation of the new Russian statehood.

‘There.’ said Volodin, ‘now the mushrooms have come on.’

‘Whoah.’ Kolyan confirmed. ‘And then some. I’ve turned blue all over.’

‘Yeah.’ said Shurik, ‘that sure don’t feel like nothing. Listen. Volodin, was all that stuff for real?’

‘All what stuff?’

‘All that stuff about fixing yourself up a trip that lasts all your life… So you just stay high all the time.’

‘I didn’t say all your life. The concepts in there are different.’

‘You said yourself as you’d be tripping all the time.’

‘I didn’t say that either.’

‘Kol, didn’t he say it?’

‘I don’t remember,’ mumbled Kolyan. He seemed to have dropped out of the conversation and to be occupied with some’ thing else.

‘Then what did you say?’ asked Shurik.

‘I didn’t say all the time.’ said Volodin. ‘I said «for ever». Keep your ears open,’

‘So what’s the difference?’

‘The difference is where that high starts, there isn’t any more time.’

‘What is there then?’

‘Grace.’

‘And what else?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Can’t quite get me head round that somehow,’ said Shurik. ‘Just hanging there in empty space, is it, this grace?’

‘There’s no empty space there either.’

‘Then what is there?’

‘I told you, grace.’

‘You’ve lost me again.’

‘Don’t bother about it,’ said Volodin. ‘If it was that easy to get your head round, half of Moscow would be tripping for free right now. Just think about it - a gram of cocaine costs one hundred, and here this is free, for nothing.’

‘Hundred and fifty,’ said Shurik. ‘Nah, something’s not right here. Even if it was tough to bend yer head round, people’d still know about it and they’d be tripping. They figured out how to make speed out of nose drops, didn’t they?’

‘Use your brains, Shurik,’ said Volodin. ‘Just imagine you’re dealing cocaine, right? One gram for one hundred and fifty bucks, and you get ten greenbacks from each gram. And in a month you sell, say, five hundred grams. How much is that?’

‘Five grand,’ said Shurik.

‘So now imagine some scumball has cut your sales from five hundred grams to five. What have you got?’

Shurik’s lips moved as he quietly mumbled some figures.

‘A limp prick, that’s what,’ he answered.

‘Exactly. You could take your whore to McDonald’s one time, but as for snorting anything yourself - forget it. So what would you do with a scumball who set you up like that?’

‘Blow him away,’ said Shurik. ‘Obvious.’

‘So now do you see why nobody knows about it?’

‘You reckon the dope pushers keep things tight?’

‘There’s far more to it than just drugs,’ said Volodin. ‘There’s much bigger bread tied up in this. If you break through into this eternal high, then you don’t need any wheels, or any petrol, or any advertisements, or any porn, or any news. And neither does anyone else. What would happen then?’

‘Everything’d be fucked,’ said Shurik, glancing around him. ‘All of culture and civilization. Clear as day, that is.’

‘So that’s why nobody knows about the eternal high.’

‘But who controls the whole business?’ Shurik asked after a moment’s thought.

‘It works automatically. It’s the market.’

‘Don’t you go giving me any spiel about the market,’ Shurik said with a frown. ‘We’ve had it all before. Automatic. Yeah, well it’s automatic when that suits, or you can make it single-shot. Or you can put the safety catch on. Someone’s got all the trumps, that’s all. Maybe we’ll find out who later, in about forty years, not before.’

‘We’ll never find out,’ said Kolyan, without opening his eyes. ‘Come on. Just think about it. When a guy’s got a million greenbacks, he just sits back and takes it easy, and anyone who starts to spread the dirt about him gets dropped straight off. And the guys who’re holdin’ trumps or got the real power are way heavier than that! The most we can do is take out some hulk, or torch some office, and that’s it. Nothin’ but garbage men, we are, clean up the small stuff. But those guys can bring in the tanks if they can’t fix anythin’ by spielin’. And if that don’t do it, they’ve got planes, an atom bomb if that’s what it takes. Just look what happened when the Chechens stopped shellin’ out, came down on them like a ton of bricks, didn’t they? If they hadn’t copped on at the last moment, they wouldn’t be able to shell out for nothin’ no more. And remember the White House. How could we ever come on to Slav-East like that?’

‘You give over with yer White House,’ said Shurik. ‘Dopey bastard. We’re not talking politics. We’re talking about the eternal high… Listen… Really now… They said on the box that all of them in the White House were going around stoned out of their skulls. Maybe they twigged about this eternal high? And they wanted to tell everyone about it on the telly, so they went after Ostankino, only the cocaine mafia wouldn’t let them through… Nah, now me marbles is slipping.’

Shurik put his hands around his head and fell silent.

The forest around them was filled with trembling, mysterious rainbow lights, and the sky above the clearing was covered with mosaics of incredible beauty, unlike anything a man encounters in his gruelling, normal everyday existence. The world around them changed, becoming far more meaningful and animated, as though it had finally become clear why the grass was growing in the clearing, why the wind was blowing and the stars were twinkling in the sky. But the metamorphosis affected more than just the world, it affected the men sitting by the fire as well.

Kolyan seemed to recede into himself. He closed his eyes and his small square face, which normally wore an expression of gloomy annoyance, no longer bore the imprint of any feeling at all and looked more than anything like a swollen lump of old meat. The standard-issue chestnut crew cut on top of his head also seemed to have softened, so that it looked like the fur trimming of some absurd cap. In the dancing light of the camp-fire his double-breasted pink jacket resembled some ancient Tartar war costume, with the gold buttons on it like decorative plaques from a burial mound.

Shurik had become even skinnier, more fidgety and terrifying. He was like a frame cobbled together out of rotten planks of wood, on which many years ago someone had hung out their rags to dry and then forgotten about them; in some inexplicable fashion a spark of life had been kindled in the rags, then taken such firm hold that it made life thoroughly uncomfortable for almost everyone else anywhere in the neighbourhood. He bore little resemblance to a living being, and his cashmere pea-jacket only made him look like the electrified dummy of a sailor.

No sudden changes had taken place in Volodin. Some invisible chisel seemed to have smoothed out all the sharp corners and irregularities of his material exterior, leaving nothing but soft lines that flowed smoothly into each other. His face had become a little paler, and the lenses of his spectacles reflected rather more sparks than were flying into the air from the camp-fire. His movements had also acquired smoothness and precision - in short, it was clear from many signs that he had eaten mushrooms a good many times before.

‘Whoah, hea-vy,’ said Shurik, breaking the silence, ‘but heavy! Kol, how’re you doing?’

‘Nothin’ much,’ said Kolyan without opening his tightly glued eyelids. ‘Some kind of lights.’

Shurik turned to Volodin and after the fluctuations produced in the ether by his sharp movement had settled down, he said:

‘Listen, Volodin, d’you know how to switch on to this eternal high yourself?’

Volodin said nothing.

‘Nah, I’ve got it now,’ said Shurik. ‘Seems like I’ve realized why no one knows and why no one’s allowed to spiel about it. But you tell me, ah? I ain’t no lunk. I’ll just s p e n d my time quietly tripping out at the dacha, that’s all.’

‘Stop that,’ said Volodin.

‘Nan, you mean you don’t trust me, for real? Think I’ll cause trouble?’

‘No,’ said Volodin, ‘that’s not it. It’s just that nothing good would come of it.’

‘Aw, come on,’ said Shurik, ‘don’t be such a tight-wad.’

Volodin took off his spectacles, wiped them carefully with the hem of his shirt and put them back on again.

‘The main thing is you’ve got to understand,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know how to explain… You remember our talk about the inner public prosecutor?’

‘Yeah, I remember. The guy who can put you away if you step over the line. Like Raskolnikov when he topped that dame, and he thought his inner prosecutor’d let him go on the nod, only it didn’t work out that way.’

‘Exactly. And who do you think the inner prosecutor is?’

Shurik pondered the question.

‘I dunno… probably it’s me myself, some part of me. Who else?’

‘And the inner brief who gets you off?’

‘Probably me as well. Only it sounds a bit odd, me taking a case against myself and then getting myself off.’

‘Nothing odd about it. That’s the way it always is. Now try imagining this inner prosecutor of yours has arrested you, all of your inner briefs have screwed up, and you’ve been put away in your own inner lock-up. Then imagine that there’s some other guy, a fourth one, who never gets dragged off anywhere, who you can’t call a prosecutor, or the guy he’s trying to get behind bars, or a brief. Who’s never involved in any cases at all.’

‘Okay, I’ve imagined it.’

‘Right, then this fourth guy is the one that goes tripping on the eternal high. And there’s no need to explain anything to him about this high, get me?’

‘Who is this fourth guy, then?’

‘No one.’

‘Can I get to see him somehow?’

‘No way.’

‘Maybe not see him then, but feel him at least?’

‘Not that either.’

‘So that means he don’t really exist?’

‘If you really want to know,’ said Volodin, ‘all these prosecutors and briefs don’t really exist. And you really don’t exist either. If anyone really does exist, then it’s him.’

‘I still don’t catch your drift. Why don’t you just tell me what I have to do to switch on to this eternal high?’

‘Nothing,’ said Volodin. ‘That’s the whole point, you don’t have to do anything. Just as soon as you start doing anything, the court’s in session, right? That’s so, isn’t it?’

‘Seems to make sense all right.’

‘You see. And once the court’s in session, that means prosecutors, briefs and the whole works.’

Shurik fell silent and became quite motionless. The energy that lent him life passed momentarily to Kolyan, who seemed to be suddenly roused from sleep - he opened his eyes and glared with hostility at Volodin, then he bared his teeth, revealing a gleaming palladium crown.

‘You sold us a line, Volodin, with that inner prosecutor of yours,’ he said.

‘Why’s that? ‘ Volodin asked in amazement.

‘Because. Afterwards Vovchik Maloi gave me this book with it all laid out straight down the line. Nietzsche it was wrote it. The bastard’s tied it all up in knots so’s no normal person can suss I ‘I, but it all adds up right enough. Vovchik hired this hungry prof, special and sat him down with a young guy as talks the spiel, and in a month the two of them sorted the whole thing so’s all the brothers could read it. Translated it into normal language. Turns out all you gotta do is take out that inner pig of yours, and (hat’s it. Then no one don’t finger no one, get it?’

‘Ah, come on, Kolyan,’ Volodin protested gently, almost pityingly. ‘Think what you’re saying. D’you know what you’ll get for taking out the pig?’

Kolyan laughed loudly.

‘Who from? The rest of the inner pigs? That’s the whole idea, you take them all out.’

‘Okay, let’s just suppose you’ve dropped all the inner pigs. I hat just means the inner swat team gets on your ass.’

‘I can see where you’re comin’ from a mile away,’ said Kolyan. ‘Next you’ll be givin’ me the inner State Security, and then the «Alpha» team, and on and on. What I’m sayin’ is you gotta take them all out and then make yourself internal president.’

‘Okay,’ said Volodin, ‘let’s assume you’ve made internal president. Then if you have any doubts, what do you do about it?’

‘No problem,’ said Kolyan. ‘Put them down and move on down the line.’

‘So you still need the internal pigs for putting down your doubts? And if the doubts are a bit bigger, will it be the internal State Security?’

‘They’ll be working for me now,’ said Kolyan. ‘I’m my own internal president. And you all ain’t shit!’

‘Yes, Vovchik Maloi did a good job on you. Okay, let’s assume you’ve made internal president and you’ve got your own internal pigs and a huge internal security service with all those Tibetan astrologers and the works.’

‘That’s it,’ said Kolyan. ‘So’s no one can even get close.’

‘So then what’re you going to do?’

‘Whatever I wanna,’ said Kolyan.

‘Like for instance?’

‘Like for instance I take a dame and split for the Canaries. ‘

‘What do you do there?’

‘Like I said, whatever I wanna. If I feel like swimmin’ I go swimmin’, if I feel like screwin’ the dame I screw her, if I feel like it I smoke dope.’

‘Aha,’ said Volodin, and the red tongues of flame glinted in his spectacles. ‘You smoke dope. Doesn’t dope put ideas in your head?’

‘Sure.’

‘So if you’re president, that means you have state ideas, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then I’ll tell you what happens next. The first dope you smoke fills your head with state ideas and your internal president ends up facing internal impeachment’

‘We’ll break through,’ said Kolyan, ‘I’ll bring in the internal tanks.’

‘How are you going to bring them in? Who was it got all the ideas? You. That means you impeach your own internal president. So then who’s going to bring in the tanks?’

Kolyan thought in silence for a moment.

‘Straight away you’ll have a new president,’ said Volodin. ‘And I hate to think what the internal security service will do to the old one so they can get in with the new one. ‘

Kolyan pondered.

‘Well, what of it?’ he said uncertainly. ‘So there’s a new president. ‘

‘But you were the old one, weren’t you? So now who ends up in the inner Lubyanka for the rubber-hosepipe kidney treatment? Got no answer? You do. So now you tell me which is best - for the inner pigs to take you in for doing the old woman, or to wind up with the inner State Security Services as ex-president?’

Kolyan wrinkled up his brow and held his fingers up in a fan shape as he prepared to say something, but at that point he obviously had an unpleasant idea, because he suddenly dropped his head limply.

‘Yeah, yeah…’ he said. ‘It’s probably best not to stick your head up. It’s tricky all right…’

‘Now the inner pigs have got you,’ Volodin stated. ‘And you tell me, Nietzsche, Nietzsche… D’you know what happened to that Nietzsche of yours?’

Kolyan cleared his throat. A gob of spittle like a tiny bull terrier separated from his lips and plopped into the fire.

‘You’re a real bastard, Volodin,’ he said. ‘You’ve screwed my head up again. I just saw this film on the video, Pulp Fiction, about the American brothers. I felt so good after it! Like I knew now how to carry on livin’. But talkin’ with you’s like getting flushed down into some ditch full of shit… I’ll tell you this - I ain’t never come across none of your inner pigs. If I do, then I’ll waste them, or I’ll call in the shrink to get me off on an insanity plea.’

‘Why d’you want to waste the inner pigs?’ Shurik put in. ‘Why bother, when you can just cut them in?’

‘You mean the inner pigs are on the take too?’ Kolyan asked.

«Course they’re on the take,’ said Shurik. ‘Haven’t you seen The Godfather 3? Remember Don Corleone? To get out from under his inner pigs, he sent the Vatican six hundred million greenbacks. Got off with parole, even with all the guys he’d wasted.’

He turned to face Volodin.

‘Maybe you’re gonna tell us the inner pigs ain’t on the take?’

‘What difference does it make if they’re on the take or not?’

‘That’s right,’ said Shurik, ‘that’s not where the spiel was at. It was Kolyan started taking out the pigs. Where was we at? We was talking about the eternal high, yeah? And about some fourth guy who goes tripping on the eternal high while you’re getting things together with the internal prosecutors and briefs.’

‘That’s right. It doesn’t matter how you settle up with the inner pigs - you can take them out or cut them in or write a confession. None of the pigs or the guys who pay them off or the guys who confess actually exist. It’s just you pretending to be each of them by turns. I thought you’d understood all that.’

‘Not so very much.’

‘Remember how you and Kolyan used to work down by Red Square before democracy? When he sold hard currency and you came over with a pig’s pass and confiscated it, and took away the client? Remember how you used to say that if you didn’t believe for just a moment that you were a pig, then the client wouldn’t believe it either and he wouldn’t walk? So you used to feel like a pig.’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘And maybe you actually became one?’

‘Volodin,’ said Shurik, ‘you’re a mate of mine, but I mean it, you watch your mouth.’

‘This entire spiel’s down to me, you just listen. D’you see what we’ve got here? You yourself can believe for a while that you’re a pig. Now just imagine that you do the same thing all your life, only it’s not the client you’re fooling, it’s yourself, and all the time you believe your own show. Sometimes you’re a pig, and sometimes you’re the guy he’s fingering. Sometimes you’re the prosecutor, sometimes you’re the brief. Why d’you think I said they don’t really exist? Because when you’re the prosecutor - where’s the brief? And when you’re the brief - where’s the prosecutor? Nowhere. So it turns out like you’re dreaming them, get me?’

‘Okay, okay, I get you.’

‘And then apart from the pigs, you’ve got so many other assholes standing in line that life’s not long enough for you to be all of them. The queue waiting for you inside is longer than any of those queues for sausage under the commies. And if you want to understand the eternal high, you have to wipe out the whole queue, get me?’

Shurik thought about it for a while.

‘Ah, who needs it,’ he said at last. ‘I’d better do five grams of coke than go crazy. Maybe this eternal high won’t give me no trip anyway - just like weed don’t do nothing for me.’

‘That’s why no one knows about the eternal high,’ said Volodin. ‘That’s precisely why.’

This time the silence that followed was a long one. Volodin began breaking branches and throwing them into the fire. Shurik took a flat metal flask with an embossed image of the Statue of Liberty out of his pocket, took several large gulps from it and handed it to Kolyan. Kolyan drank too, handed it back to Shurik and began spitting into the fire at regular intervals.

The branches in the flames cracked like gunfire - sometimes single shots, sometimes short bursts. The camp-fire seemed like an entire universe in which tiny beings, whose scarcely visible shadows flickered between the tongues of flame, squirmed and struggled for a place beside the gobs of spittle falling on the hot embers, in order to escape for at least a few moments from the intolerable heat. The fate of these beings was a sad one - even if anyone were to guess at their spectral existence, how could he possibly explain to them that in actual fact they didn’t live in a fire, but in the middle of a forest filled with the coolness of the night, and if they would only stop struggling for a place by the gobs of a mobster’s spittle, then all of their sufferings would be at an end? Probably he couldn’t. Perhaps the neo-Platonist who used to live in these parts could have managed it - but then the poor man had died without even living to see the Twentieth Congress.

‘Verily,’ Volodin said sadly, ‘this world is like unto a burning house.’

‘Never mind a burning house,’ Shurik replied readily. ‘It’s a fire in a bloody brothel during a fucking flood.’

‘So what d’you do? You gotta live.’ said Kolyan. ‘Tell me, Volodin, d’you believe in the end of the world?’

‘That’s a purely individual question,’ said Volodin. ‘If some Chechen or other blows you away, that’s the end of your world.’

‘We’ll see who blows who away,’ said Kolyan. ‘What d’you reckon, is it true all the Orthodox believers are in line for pardon?’

‘When?’

‘At the Last Judgement,’ Kolyan said quickly in a half-whisper.

‘You don’t mean you believe in all that garbage?’ Shurik asked disbelievingly.

‘Dunno if I believe it or not,’ said Kolyan. ‘Once I was on my way home from this kill, I felt real miserable, I had all these doubts - you know, when you feel your spirit getting weak. And there’s this kiosk with these icons and these pamphlets and stuff. So I bought one of them - «Life Beyond the Grave» it was called. I read about what happens after you’re dead. It was all such dead familiar stuff, honest. I recognized it all straight off. Holding cell, trial, pardon, time, article. Dying’s like movin’ from jail to the camps. They send the soul off to this heavenly transit jail, tribulations it’s called. Everything done right, two armed escorts and all the whole works, punishment cell downstairs, upstairs - the good life. And while you’re in this transit jail they slap the charges on you - your own and everybody else’s too - and you gotta get yourself off on every article, one after the other. The main thing is, you gotta know the criminal code. But if the big boss feels like it, he’ll stick you in solitary anyway. ‘Cause under his criminal code you’re fitted up under half the articles from the day you’re born. For instance, there’s this article says you answer for all your spiel. Not just when you mouth off out of line, but the whole thing, every single word you ever said. You get that? No matter which way you twist it, there’s always somethin’ they can put you away for. If you got a soul, you’re in for the tribulations. But the big boss can slim your time down, especially if you call yourself a worthless heap of shit. He likes that. And he likes it when you’re afraid of him. Wants everyone to be afraid of him and feel like shit. And there he is with this big-time radiance, and these big wings fanned out wide, bodyguards, angels - the whole works. He looks down at you - what you gotta say now, you lump of shit? Get the picture now? I’m ieadin’ it and I remember - a long time ago, when I was trainin’ to be a weightlifter and it was perestroika, they printed some-thin’ like it in Ogonyok. And when I remembered it, I broke out in a sweat. Turns out life under Stalin was like life after death is now!’

‘l don’t get you,’ said Shurik.

‘Well, look, under Stalin after death there was atheism, but now there’s religion again. And accordin’ to religion, after death everyone lives like they did under Stalin. Just you figure it the way it was. Everybody knows there’s this window lit up in the Kremlin at night, and He’s there behind it, and He loves you like a brother, and you’re shit-scared of Him, but you’re supposed to love Him with all your heart as well. It’s just like in religion. The reason I remembered Stalin is I began wonderin’ how you can be shit-scared of someone and love him with all your heart at the same time.’

‘And what if you’re not scared?’ Shurik asked.

‘That means you’ve no fear of God. And that means the punishment cell.’

‘What punishment cell’s that?’

‘There wasn’t much written about that. The main thing is it’s dark and there’s this gnashin’ of teeth. After I read it I was wonderin’ for half an hour what kind of teeth the soul has… nearly lost my marbles over it. Then I started readin’ some more, and I realized that if you call yourself a pile of shit soon enough, or not just call yourself one but believe it for real, then you’ll get a pardon - and then they’ll let you into heaven, to see Him. The way I made it out, the main thing they have to get off on is looking at Him all the time while he’s taking the parade from up on (op of the tribune. And they don’t need anythin’ else, because for them it’s either that or grindin’ their teeth down in the shit-hole, and that’s it. That’s the bastard thing about it, there can’t be anythin’ else - it’s either up on the top bunk or down in the punishment cell. I figured out the whole system, top to bottom. I just couldn’t figure out who dreamed up such a heavy deal. What d’you reckon, Volodin?’

‘You remember Globus?’ Volodin asked.

‘The one who became a banker? Sure,’ Kolyan answered.

‘I remember him too.’ said Shurik, sipping the liberating liquid from his flask. ‘Became a real big wheel before he died. Drove around in a Porsche, wore all these chains at five thousand bucks a pop. He was on television too - a sponsor, no fucking less, the whole works.’

‘Yes.’ said Volodin, ‘and when he went to Paris for that loan, know what he did? He went to a restaurant with one of their bankers for a heart-to-heart, and he got plastered, just like he was in the Slavyansky Bazaar and started yelling - «Garcon, two pederasts and a bucket of your strongest tea!» He wasn’t gay himself, but what do you do when there’s no other ass in sight for twenty years?’

‘No need to explain that. So what happened next?’

‘Nothing. They brought the tea. And they brought the queers too. They’ve got the market system there.’

‘And did they give him the loan?’

‘It doesn’t matter whether they gave him the loan or not. But just think about it. If he ended his life with ideas like that still in his head, it means he never really left the prison camps at all He just got so big that he started driving around them in a Porsche and giving interviews. And then he even found his own Paris in the camps. So if Globus, with his jailhouse queers and his prison tea, had started thinking about life after death, what kind of thoughts do you think he would have had?’

‘He never gave a thought to that stuff in his life.’

‘But what if he had started thinking about it? If he doesn’t know anything but the camps, but he’s drawn to higher things, like any other man, then what would he have imagined?’

‘I don’t get you. What you drivin’ at? His only high was dope.’

‘I get you,’ said Shurik. ‘If Globus had started thinking about life after death, he’d have come up with exactly that pamphlet. And not just Globus, neither. Just think about it, Kol - the entire country was one big labour camp from the day we was born, and it’ll always be a camp. That’s why God’s the way he is, with all them flashing lights and sirens. Who believes in any other kind round here?’

‘Don’t you like our country, or what?’ Kolyan asked in a seri ous voice.

‘Course I do. Parts of it.’

Kolyan turned towards Volodin.

‘Listen, though. Did they give Globus the loan that time in Paris?’

‘I think they did.’ said Volodin. ‘The banker enjoyed the show, he really liked it. Queers have never been any problem for them there, but they’d never tried tea quite like that. It became all the ige, they called it the a la russe nouveau.’

‘Listen.’ Shurik said suddenly, ‘I just had a thought… Agh… Fucking hell…’

‘What?’ asked Kolyan.

‘Maybe that’s not the way it really is. Maybe it’s not because we live in a camp that our God is like a big boss with flashing lights, but just the opposite - we live in a camp ‘cause we chose a God like a mobster with a police siren. All that garbage about the teeth and the soul, about the stove where they burn the down-and-outs, and that armed escort up in the sky - it was all dreamed up centuries ago! And here they decided to build heaven on earth. And they did build it, too! Built it for real, from all the plans! And when they built heaven it turned out it wouldn’t work without hell, because what kind of heaven can there be without hell? It wouldn’t be heaven at all, just boring as fuck. So… Nah, I’m afraid to carry on thinking like that.’

‘Maybe in places where people produce less shit, God’s kinder too. In the States maybe, or in Japan,’ said Kolyan.

‘What d’you reckon, Volodin?’ Shurik asked.

‘What do I reckon? As it is above, so is it below. And as it is below, so is it above. And when everything’s bottom up, how can you explain that there isn’t any above or below? As they say round here - at night your ass gives the orders.’

‘That’s some heavy trippin’,’ said Kolyan. ‘Enough to make you jealous. How much did you eat?’

‘You not tripping yourself, then?’ asked Shurik. ‘You just tripped all the way across the world beyond the grave, and you took us along for the ride. Turns out you got more than just a pig and a brief tucked away inside there, you got the entire Holy Synod as well.’

Kolyan held his hand out in front of him and studied it carefully. ‘There.’ he said. ‘I’ve gone blue again. Why do these mushrooms keep turnin’ me blue?’

‘You spoil too quickly,’ said Shurik and he turned to face Volodin. ‘Listen, fuck you. This spiel’s bouncing about like we’d lost our marbles. We started talking about the eternal high and now look where we’ve ended up.’

‘Where have we ended up?’ asked Volodin. ‘Seems to me we’re still sitting where we started. The fire’s burning, the cocks are crowing.’

‘What cocks? That’s Kolyan’s pager.’

‘Ah… Never mind, they’ll crow all right.’

Shurik chuckled and took a sip from his flask. ‘Volodin,’ he said, ‘I still wanna know who that fourth guy is.’

‘Who?’

‘The fourth guy. Haven’t forgotten, have you? What we started off talking about - that there’s this inner prosecutor and this inner brief and the guy who gets off on the inner high. Only I don’t get why he’s the fourth. That makes him the third.’

‘You’ve forgotten the accused, haven’t you?’ asked Volodin. ‘The one they’re all trying? You can’t shift straight from being your own prosecutor to being your own brief. You have to be the accused for at least a second or two. He’s the third guy. But the fourth guy isn’t in on any of those deals. There’s nothing he needs except this eternal high.’

‘And how does he know about the eternal high?’

‘Who said he knows about it?’

You said so yourself

‘I never said that, I said there was no need to tell him anything about the eternal high - but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about it. If he knew anything’ - Volodin laid a heavy stress on the word ‘knew’ - ‘then he’d be a witness at your inner trial.’

‘You mean I got witnesses inside me as well? Explain that to me.’

‘Well then, imagine you’ve done some foul shit. The inner prosecutor says you’re a scumball, the accused stares at the wall, and the inner brief mumbles something about a difficult childhood.’

‘Well?’

‘But for the trial to begin, you have to remember the shit you’ve done, don’t you?’

‘That’s obvious enough.’

‘So when you’re remembering it, you become a witness.’

‘From listening to you,’ said Shurik, ‘I must have the entire courtroom inside me.’

‘Why, what else did you expect?’

Shurik said nothing for a short while, then he suddenly slapped his hands against his thighs.

‘Ah!’ he yelled abruptly. ‘Now I’ve twigged it! I’ve twigged how to switch on to that eternal high! You’ve got to turn into that fourth guy, right? Like being the prosecutor or the brief

‘That’s right. Only how are you going to turn into him?’

‘Dunno, I s’pose you have to want to.’

‘If you want to be the fourth guy, you won’t turn into him, you’ll just be someone who wanted to be him. And that’s a big difference. You don’t turn into the prosecutor when you want to be him, but only after you really say to yourself in your heart, «Shurik, you’re a real shit.» And then afterwards your inner brief realizes that a moment ago he was the prosecutor.’

‘Okay,’ said Shurik. ‘Then tell me, how can you turn into that fourth guy if you don’t want to?’

‘It’s not a matter of whether you want to or you don’t. The point is that if you want something, then for sure you’re not the fourth guy, but somebody else. Because the fourth guy doesn’t want anything at all. Why should he want anything when he’s surrounded by the eternal high?’

‘Listen, why d’you keep on being so mysterious about it? Can’t you just tell me in normal words who this fourth guy is?’

‘I can say anything you like, but there’s no point.’

‘Well, try it anyway.’

‘Well, for instance, you could say he’s the son of God.’

While these words still hung in the air, the three men by the fire suddenly heard the crowing of cocks on every side - which was very odd, if you think about it, because there hadn’t been any chickens kept in that district since the Twentieth Party Congress. Be that as it may, the crowing came again and again, and the ancient sounds gave rise to terrible thoughts, perhaps about witchcraft and devil-worship, or perhaps about the Chechen mounted cavalry breaking through to Moscow, hurtling across the steppe with their Stingers all poised for launching, crowing like cocks to send military intelligence off on a false trail. This latter supposition seemed to be supported by the fact that the cries always came in threes, and were followed by a brief pause. It was very mysterious indeed. For a while they all listened, entranced, to this forgotten music, and then the crowing either faded away or mingled so completely with the background noise that it no longer held their interest. No doubt they simply thought to themselves that anything can happen when you’re on mushrooms. The conversation picked up again.

‘You just keep on trashing my brains over and over again,’ said Shurik. ‘Can’t you just tell me straight out how I turn into him?’

‘I told you, if you could just turn into him like that, then everybody would have been tripping long ago. The problem is that the only way to become the fourth guy is to stop turning into all the others.’

‘You mean you have to turn into no one?’

‘You have to stop being no one too. You have to not become anyone and stop being no one at the same time, get it? And the moment you’re in there, you’re off tripping, quicker than a flash. And it’s for ever.’

Kolyan gasped quietly. Shurik gave him a sideways glance. Kolyan was sitting motionless, as though he had turned to stone. His mouth had turned into a triangular hole, and his eyes seemed to have turned inwards.

‘You sure pile it on, for real,’ said Shurik. ‘I’ll start leaking marbles any moment.’

‘Let them leak,’ Volodin said gently. ‘What do you need those marbles for anyway?’

‘Nan, that’s no good,’ said Shurik. ‘If I drop all my marbles, then you soon won’t have no marbles either.’

‘How’s that?’ asked Volodin.

‘Just you remember who your cover is. Me and Kolyan, isn’t it? Isn’t that right, Kol?’

Kolyan didn’t answer.

‘Hey, Kolyan!’ Shurik shouted.

Again Kolyan didn’t answer. He sat there by the fire with his back held straight up, gazing straight ahead, but not looking at Shurik sitting there in front of him, or Volodin slightly to his left. It was obvious that he wasn’t looking at them at all, he was gazing into nowhere. But the most remarkable thing of all was that a column of light had appeared above his head, reaching far up into the heavens.

At first glance the column looked like no more than a narrow thread, but the instant Shurik and Volodin started paying attention to it, it began expanding and growing brighter - and yet somehow it didn’t illuminate the clearing or the men sitting by the fire, it only illuminated itself. Then it took in the fire and the four people sitting round it, and suddenly they were surrounded by this light, and there was nothing else around them at all,

‘Fuck me!’ The sound of Shurik’s voice came from every side.

In reality, there weren’t any sides at all, or any voices either, instead of the voice there was a certain presence, which announced itself in a way that made it clear it was Shurik. And the meaning of the announcement was such that the best words for expressing it were clearly ‘fuck me!’.

‘For real. Volodin, can you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ Volodin answered from everywhere.

‘Is this the eternal high then?’

‘Why are you asking me? Look for yourself. You know everything now, you can see everything.’

‘Yeah… What’s this stuff all around us? Ah, yes, that’s it… of course. But where’s everything else gone to?’

‘It hasn’t gone anywhere. Everything’s where it should be. Try looking a bit harder…’

‘Oh, yeah. Kolyan, where are you? How you doing?’

‘Me!’ came the response from the glowing void. ‘Me!’

‘Hey, Kolyan! Answer me!’

‘Me!!! Me!!!’

‘So that’s how it all really is, eh? Who’d have thought it?’ Shurik went on, excited and happy. ‘I’d never have guessed. Listen, Volodin, don’t even bother to answer, I’ll get it myself… Who could ever have imagined it? No way could anyone ever imagine this! No way, not ever! No way, no how!’

‘Me!!!’ responded Kolyan.

‘Turns out there’s nothing to be afraid of in the world,’ Shurik went on. ‘Absolutely nothing at all. I know everything, I can see everything. I can see and understand anythin’ you like. Why, even… Well, well, well… Listen, Kolyan, we didn’t ought to have wasted Kosoy that time. He never took the dough. It was… So it was you took it, Kolyan!’

‘Me!!! Me!!! Me!!! Me!!!’

‘Cut the spiel,’ Volodin interrupted, ‘or we’ll all get thrown out.’

‘Why, the rotten bastard,’ yelled Shurik, ‘he threw everyone a curve.’

‘Cut it out, I said. This isn’t the time. Better take a look at yourself.’

‘What self?’

‘So who’s that talking now? Take a look at him.’

‘At myself? Oh… Right… Whoah…’

‘You see. And you said there was nothing in the world to be afraid of

‘Yeah… Right… Oh, fuck me! Listen, Volodin, this is real scary. Real scary stuff. Volodin, d’you hear me? Where’s the light? Volodin? I’m scared!’

‘And you said there was nothing in the world to be afraid of,’ said Volodin, raising his head and gazing wide-eyed into empty space, as though he’d seen something there.

‘Right then,’ he said in a changed voice, nudging Shurik and Kolyan, ‘let’s move it! Quick!’

‘Volodin, I can hardly hear you!’ Shurik yelled, swaying from side to side. ‘Volodin, I’m scared! Hey, Kolyan! Answer me, Kolyan!’

‘Me. Me. Me.’

‘Hey, Kolyan, can you see me? Just don’t go lookin’ at yourself, or it’ll turn dark. Can you see me, Kolyan?’

‘Me? Me?’

‘Move it, into the forest, quick!’ Volodin repeated, and he leapt to his feet.

‘What forest? There isn’t really any forest! ‘

‘You just run, and the forest’ll appear. Go on, run! You leg it too, Kolyan. Rendezvous at the camp-fire.’

‘Me?! Me?! Me?!!’

‘Fucking hell! I said let’s move it into the forest! Run for it!’

Even if we were to allow that the camp-fire that had been blazing in the clearing a few hours earlier really was a small universe unto itself, that universe had now ceased to exist, and all the sufferings of its inhabitants had been extinguished with it. Void and darkness were upon the face of the clearing, and there was nothing but a light smoke hanging in the air above the dead embers.

The radio-telephone in the car began to ring, and suddenly some small, startled life form began rustling in the bushes. The ringing went on for a long time, and after more than a minute its persistence was rewarded. There was a crunching of twigs in the bushes, followed by rapid footsteps. A blurred shadow flitted across the clearing towards the Jeep and a voice spoke:

‘Hello! Ultima Thule Limited? Of course I recognize you, of course. Yes! Yes! No! Tell Seryozha the Mongoloid not to get up my nose. No transfers. Cash ex-VAT and we tear up the contract. Tomorrow at ten in the office… no, not at ten, at twelve. Right.’

It was Volodin. He put down the receiver, opened up the Jeep’s boot, rummaged around until he found a spray-can, the contents of which he emptied on to the remains of the fire. Nothing happened - evidently even the embers had died completely. Then Volodin struck a match and dropped it on the ground, and a bright ball of yellow-red flame rose up into the air.

He spent several minutes collecting branches and twigs in the clearing and throwing them into the flames. When Shurik and Kolyan came wandering out of the forest towards the light, the camp-fire was already blazing away.

They appeared one at a time. Kolyan appeared first; before he emerged into the clearing, for some reason he sat for a long time in the bushes at its edge, holding his hand over his eyes as he gazed into the flames. Then he finally made up his mind, went up to the fire and sat down in his old place. Shurik arrived about ten minutes later; holding his TP with the long silencer in his hand, he slunk out into the clearing, looked Kolyan and Volodin over and tucked the pistol away under his cashmere pea-jacket.

‘Fucked if I ever puts any of that stuff in my mouth again,’ he said in a dull voice. ‘Not for any money. I emptied two clips, and I don’t have a blind idea who I was shooting at.’

‘Didn’t you like it?’ asked Volodin.

‘It was kinda okay at first,’ Shurik replied, ‘but then afterwards… Listen, what were we talking about just before the explosion?’

‘Before what explosion?’ Volodin asked in amazement.

‘That, that… Or what could you call it…’

Shurik looked up at Volodin, as if hoping that he would prompt him with the words he needed, but Volodin said nothing.

‘Okay then,’ said Shurik, ‘at the very beginning we was talking about the eternal high, I remember that. And then the spiel kinda tipped off the rails, flip-flop, and then there was this flash of fire in my eyes… And you was yelling yourself, telling us to leg it into the forest. As soon as I came round I thought the wheels must have exploded. Thought those jerks from Slav-East must have put a bomb in it. And then I thought that didn’t make sense - there was flames all right, but there wasn’t no smell of petrol. So that means it’s all in the mind.’

‘Yes,’ said Volodin, ‘that’s right. All in the mind.’

‘So was that your eternal high, then?’ asked Shurik.

‘You could call it that,’ Volodin replied.

‘What did you do to make us able to see it?’ asked Shurik.

‘I didn’t do it,’ replied Volodin, ‘it was Kolyan. He was the one who took us in there.’

Shurik looked at Kolyan. Kolyan shrugged in puzzlement.

‘Yes,’ went on Volodin, gathering up the things lying by the fire and throwing them in through the Jeep’s open door, ‘you see the way things turn out. Take a good look at your mate, Shurik. He might never have seemed too quick on the uptake, but he was the one who pulled it off. The old spiel about blessed are the poor in spirit is sure right.’

‘Are we gonna leave, or what?’ Shurik asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Volodin. ‘It’s time to go. We’ve got a shoot with Slav-East at twelve. And by the time we get there, what with one thing and another…’

‘I can’t really remember anything straight,’ Shurik summed up the conversation. ‘But I feel really odd. For the first time in my life I want to do something good. Even help someone, maybe, save them from suffering. Take everyone, the whole fucking lot of them, and save them all…’

He turned his face up to the starry sky for a second, and it took on a dreamy and exalted expression. He sighed quietly and then, obviously taking a grip on himself, he took a step towards the camp-fire, turned his back to his two companions, fiddled with something in the region of his belt, and the tongues of flame were extinguished instantly under the heavy weight of the frothing stream.

A few minutes later they were travelling along a rough country road, more like a deep trench dug through the forest. Kolyan was snoring on the back seat. Sitting behind the wheel, Volodin was gazing hard into the darkness where the headlights sliced into it, while Shurik pondered on something and bit nervously at his lower lip.

‘Listen,’ he said at last. ‘There’s something else I don’t get. You said that once the eternal high hits you it never ends.’

‘It doesn’t ever end,’ Volodin replied, frowning as he turned the steering wheel sharply, ‘not if you get in the normal way, through the front door. But you could say we climbed in through the back window. That’s why the alarm went off

‘Some heavy alarm,’ said Shurik, ‘real heavy stuff

‘That’s nothing,’ said Volodin. ‘They could easily have put us away. There are cases like that. Take that Nietzsche Kolyan was jawing about, that’s exactly what happened to him.’

‘But if they collar you there, where do they put you?’ Shurik asked with a strange note of respect in his voice.

‘On the physical plane - in the madhouse. But where they put you on the subtle plane, I don’t know. That’s a mystery.’

‘Listen,’ asked Shurik, ‘can you get there as simple as that? Like, whenever you want?’

‘Nah,’ said Volodin. ‘How can I explain it? I can’t squeeze through the gap. I’ve picked up a lot of spiritual riches in my life. And getting rid of them afterwards is harder than cleaning the shit out of the grooves on the sole of your shoe. So I usually send one of the poor in spirit on ahead so he can squeeze through the eye of the needle and open the door from the inside. Like this time. But I didn’t think that if two poor in heart got in together they would create such a rumpus.’

‘What rumpus?’

Volodin was busy negotiating a complicated section of the road and didn’t answer. The Jeep shuddered once, then again. For several seconds its engine roared strenuously as it clambered up a steep hillock, then it turned and drove on along an asphalt surface, quickly picking up speed. An old Zhiguli came hurtling towards them, followed by a column of several military trucks. Volodin switched on the radio, and a minute later the four people sitting in the Jeep were enveloped in the old, familiar world whose every detail was clear and familiar.

‘So what rumpus was that you was talking about?’ Shurik asked again.

‘Okay,’ said Volodin, ‘we’ll run through all that later. You’ll have some homework to do. But for now let’s think about what we’ve got to show Slav-East.’

‘You think about it,’ said Shurik. ‘We’re only the cover round here. You’re the one pushes the wheels round.’

He was silent for a few seconds.

‘All the same, I just can’t get my head round it,’ he said. ‘Just who is that fourth guy?’