The Maya Pill

HAKAN

Maximus had acquired a new hobby. During the day he obediently carried out his duties at the office: verified accounts, argued with brokers and shippers, persuaded suppliers to extend deadlines and raise credit limits, read e-mail, wrote messages, and drafted contracts and reports for the management. Then, after work, he frequented used bookstores or sat at home at the computer, searching the Internet for information about the history of the Khazar Khaganate. Before long he considered himself to be an expert on the matter and even toyed with the idea of writing an essay on the Khazars.

And there were no repercussions as far as Maya went. Nobody could have been more surprised than she herself at her precipitous decision to sleep with a mid-level manager from the next office over. Her social position, her tactical, technological, and physical specifications—they all made demands Semipyatnitsky couldn’t hope to meet, as a suitor. He’d gone out to dinner with her a couple of times since that night: once at the Barf Bar, another time at the Harbin. They had indulged in empty chatter about trivialities: just friends.

Before long Maximus saw her being picked up from work in a Porsche Cayenne with a conspicuous tricolored government pass on the windshield.

But this didn’t really bother him. He had become preoccupied with Khazaria. He felt that the secrets of that ancient land would hold the key to both his own fate and that of the Fatherland, as well as to a whole range of geopolitical and national problems. At times he would feel that the truth was close at hand, but soon this discovery would get caught up in a mass of contradictory historical facts and interpretations, and slip from his grasp.

Maximus wasted no time over lunch. He could take the elevator down to the first floor, put “today’s special” on a tray, pay, eat, have a smoke, and ride the elevator back up to the office all within the space of a half hour. That left the other half of his lunch hour open.

Semipyatnitsky considered it his right to be idle during that time. He surfed the web, beginning with news sites and gradually switching to chat sites and forums, following links further and further up the Internet’s esoteric asshole.

So it happened that one time he stumbled onto a blog post by someone who signed himself Hakan, with a bearded cartoon avatar instead of a photograph.

From then on Maximus even gave up TV. He could keep up with current events by reading Hakan’s blog: a never-ending flow of opinions on all the most striking and ludicrous events in Russian public life.

When pogroms occurred in the Karelian village of Kondopoga, Hakan posted a stirring manifesto:

Maximus guffawed, startling his coworkers, when he read the above during the second half of his lunch break. But judging from the serious discussion that ensued subsequently in the comments section, the author’s readers had completely missed the article’s sardonic humor.

The indefatigable Hakan also took it upon himself to comment on a bill that had been passed allowing oil and gas monopolies to maintain their own armed security services for the defense of their facilities. Immediately after this news made its way through the media, Hakan posted another tongue-in-cheek composition on his blog, which Maximus read during his next lunch hour:

The blog was very popular. It was taken up by a couple of professional Internet publications, which posted the text under bold headlines: “Pipeline Defense Force” and “Gazprom Tanks Enter Ukraine!”

When Ramzan Kadyrov was inaugurated as president of the Republic of Chechnya, Hakan posted a joke: “Ramzan Kadyrov, the new President of the Republic of Chechnya, took his oath of office on the Holy Koran, the Constitution of the Republic of Chechnya, and the Constitution of the Russian Federation—all at the same time. If the President of the Republic of Chechnya, when taking the oath of office, placed his right hand on the Holy Koran, and his left hand on the Constitution of the Republic of Chechnya, then what did he place on the Constitution of the Russian Federation?”

Maximus read the joke, leaned back in his office chair, and heaved with silent laughter. His colleagues, engrossed in their work, cast uneasy glances in his direction. Was he losing it?

But Maximus didn’t mind seeming a bit of an oddball. When he got home at night he would turn on his computer, pull up the file with his essay on Khazaria, and enter corrections and revisions. In a couple of weeks it was finished.

We quote it here in its entirety, in the original Semipyatnitsky version, uncut, with all its long quotations intact, so as to give the reader a sense of what was brewing in the kettle of our hero’s mind during those fateful days.

TRACES OF KHAZARIA

Khazaria is a mythological, nonexistent land, a country that might never have actually existed, or if it did, then in a form we cannot conceive of today, as this was a land that left behind no unambiguous historical documentation and very little in the way of archeological evidence, only contradictory comments in the chronicles, and not a single deciphered text. Therefore, any attempt at writing its history must begin with a survey of the most applicable extant sources, all of which happen to be of a fantastical and imaginative nature—though these qualities, given our intentions, can’t be seen as defects. I speak, of course, of the references to Khazaria in literature and fiction, which are no less valuable than facts, and best capture the otherworldly flavor of this vanished nation.

I will cite just one example, for the time being. We know it from elementary school: Alexander Pushkin’s poem “The Song of the Wise Oleg.” As we all (?) recall, it begins with the lines:

Judging by these lines, Khazaria was not considered a nomadic horde: The enemy had settlements and fields, that is, plots of land cultivated with grain that had caught the eye of Prince Oleg and aroused in him these thoughts of plunder.

As for Prince Oleg himself, his real name was Helgi, and he was a full-blooded Scandinavian. The first mention of him in The Tale of Bygone Years reads as follows: “In the year 6387, Rurik died, having turned over his princedom to his kinsman Oleg, entrusting to him his son Igor’s care, for the heir was still very small.”

In the Scandinavian original, Igor’s name is Ingvar; he was a Swede as well. By all accounts Helgi governed Rurik’s princedom as a regent for the underage heir Ingvar, and in his name he made many conquests, including the capture of Kiev in the year 6390 from the Creation of the World, or 882 in the new reckoning, counting from the birth of Christ. The Tale of Bygone Years confirms Helgi’s regency during the reign of Ingvar as follows: “… and Oleg said to Askold and Dir: ‘You are not princes and not of princely blood, but I am of princely blood,’ and he showed them Igor: ‘This is the son of Rurik.’ And they slew Askold and Dir…”

It is difficult for us to understand it today, but in those distant times the legitimacy of government in the people’s consciousness was firmly based on heredity, and succession was almost always determined by reference to the dynastic bloodline. If it was difficult to prove a direct line of descent from the great ancestors, then the system required that such a connection be invented.

From almost the very beginning of his reign, Helgi was involved in a conflict with the Khazar state, under whose protection the majority of Slavic tribes found themselves during that time.

“In the year 6392 [884], Oleg marched against the Northerners, and conquered the Northerners, and imposed a light tribute, and assured them that they need not pay tribute to the Khazars, saying: ‘I am their enemy, and there is no reason for you [to pay them].’”

“In the year 6393 [885], [Oleg] sent word to the Radimiches, asking them, ‘To whom do you pay tribute?’ And they answered, ‘to the Khazars.’ And Oleg said to them: ‘Do not give tribute to the Khazars, pay me instead.’ And they each gave Oleg a shcheliag, as they had given to the Khazars. And Oleg ruled over the Polians, and the Drevlians, and the Northerners, and the Radimiches, and waged war against the Uliches and Tivertses.”

What is important here is that Helgi imposed a light tribute on the Northerners, and demanded no more from the Radimiches than they had been paying to the Khazars. Evidently he pursued goals that were less military in nature than political: He aimed to constrain the Khazars and undercut their influence in the region.

The Tale of Bygone Years describes Oleg’s death, which gave Pushkin the plot for his poem, as follows: “And Oleg lived, ruling in Kiev, keeping peace between all the lands. And autumn came, and Oleg remembered his horse, whom he had put out to pasture, having decided never to mount him, for he had asked the soothsayers and sorcerers: ‘What will be the cause of my death?’ And one sorcerer had foretold: ‘Prince! Your beloved horse, whom you ride, will be the cause.’ Oleg took these words to heart, and he said: ‘I will never mount him, nor set eyes on him, ever again.’ And he ordered him to be fed and henceforth never to be brought to him, and he lived for several years afterward without seeing him, while he waged war against the Greeks. And when he returned to Kiev, and four years had passed, in the fifth year he remembered his horse, whom the soothsayers had prophesied would cause his death. And he summoned the master of the stables and said to him: ‘Where is my horse, whom I ordered to be fed and cared for?’ And he answered: ‘He died.’ Oleg laughed and belittled those sorcerers of old, saying: ‘The soothsayers speak falsely; it did not come to pass: The horse died, but I am alive.’ And he ordered a horse to be saddled: ‘Let me see his bones.’ And he came to the place in the field where his old steed’s bare bones and skull lay, and he dismounted, laughed, and said: ‘So this skull was to cause my death?’ And he stepped on the skull, and out of the skull crawled a snake, and bit him on the foot. And from the snakebite he took ill and died. All the people mourned for him with great laments, and bore him off, and buried him on a mountain called Shchekovitsa; and his grave is there to this day, it is known as the Grave of Oleg.”

Pushkin describes Oleg’s death similarly in his poem. So why, in considering “The Song of the Wise Oleg,” do I cite detailed passages from The Tale of Bygone Years?

With good reason, reader.

The chronicler doesn’t say a word about when, exactly, and in what circumstances, the soothsayers had spoken their prophecy about Oleg’s death. But Pushkin’s poem begins with this episode. During his eventful life, Helgi went on many campaigns, even against Byzantium. So it’s no mere whim that the chronicler situates the story of his death after the war with the Greek Christians—which was, though a glorious campaign, according to the author of the chronicle (a monk of the Kievan Cave Monastery), a sin nonetheless. But the poet, on the other hand, brings the soothsayers to Oleg before his plunderous campaign against Khazaria, which the prince justifies as an act of vengeance. Why so? The explanation lies on the surface, and it’s strange that philology hasn’t offered such an interpretation of Pushkin’s poem, at least to my knowledge.

Oleg’s death fulfills a curse; it comes as retribution for his destruction of the Khazar lands. Such is the secret message of Pushkin’s poem.

Let us now move from the episode of Oleg/Helgi’s death to the site of his grave. The Tale of Bygone Years situates it on a mountain called Shchekovitsa, which was most likely on the shore of the Dneiper River. Scholars have determined its location to be near Kiev and indeed the mountain has preserved its original name.

Popular legend, however, insists that Oleg’s grave is located in one of the mounds of Staraya Ladoga, the original historical capital of Varangian Rus. And a different ancient Russian chronicle states: “Oleg went to Novgorod and then to Ladoga… and a snake bit him in the foot, and from that he died; his grave is in Ladoga.”

On 17 July 2003, commemorating the anniversary marking 1,250 years from the founding of Staraya Ladoga, the president of Russia visited the settlement. The press reported that the president did not enter the excavation site near the grave of Oleg because it was full of snakes (!). Putin stood nearby on the riverbank for a long time, staring into the distance. The landscape in that area is indeed marvelous; well worth looking at. I have been on that kurgan, at night in fact. And there were no snakes in sight.

Apparently the snakes at the kurgans of Staraya Ladoga are discriminating in their tastes…

The news reports cited “local residents who cautioned the President’s security service about snakes,” but these reports are unconvincing. It is more likely that the sorcerers in his entourage consider Putin to be the descendent of the Varangian princes, and as such he has inherited the ancient curse that was placed upon them for destroying Khazaria. And to this day the snakes of Staraya Ladoga preserve this legacy of revenge.

Many interesting facts are associated with Staraya Ladoga and with this ancient town’s role in the history of Rus. Professor A. N. Kirpichnikov, Director of the Staraya Ladoga Archeological Expedition of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of the History of Material Culture, writes:

Even more interesting is the fact that Arabic, Byzantine, and European sources use the title “Hakan” (Khagan) to identify the rulers of Rus during the time when Staraya Ladoga was its capital. Ibn Rustah writes:

The same Arab author wrote that there were a hundred thousand people—Rus—on this island (Novgorod or Staraya Ladoga). And they all lived by preying upon the Slavic population. You might be curious to know how many Slavs there were at that time. It turns out that during the centuries after Rus, the northern lands went into decline. The desolation of the Russian lands might also have come as a result of the Khazar curse.

With the above erudite citations I hereby conclude my commentary on Pushkin’s poem.

Now let us move on to a survey of the purely historical works concerning Khazaria—though due to the dearth of reliable factual material they differ very little from the literary sources; the only difference is in their purported genre and in the ambitions of their authors, who claim to be providing reliable historical accounts. Nonetheless, an impressive number of books and articles have been written on the subject. A. A. Astaikin has compiled a bibliography of works on the history of Khazaria. I counted two hundred titles and then gave up.

According to A. P. Novoseltsev, the beginning of Khazar studies in Europe is may be traced to the well-known seventeenth-century scholar I. Burksdorf, who published a bilingual edition—the original along with a Latin translation—of the famous Khazar Correspondence. The first purely scholarly Russian (Soviet) work on the history of Khazaria was written by academician M. I. Artamonov. Abroad, the most famous work is D. M. Danlop’s The History of the Jewish Khazars.

Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov, the great Eurasian scholar and Turkophile, penned his own history of Khazaria. Along with his many other historical and theoretical achievements, he discovered Samandar, the ancient capital of Khazaria that predated even Itil. He published an account of his expedition to the area, which goes roughly as follows: The research expedition traveled in the area around the Terek, through Chechnya and Dagestan, but didn’t come across anything promising. At that point the expedition had seemed to run dry, along with its funding and the fuel for their vehicles. Then some hills come into sight, the first they had seen, and Lev Nikolaevich said: “Well look there! There it is! Samandar at last, for sure! Samandar. We will have to come back here.”

As far as I know, no one ever did go back; now the hills in those lands are completely different, and no one there has any interest in Samandar.

Actually, I love Gumilyov and respect him as an author; it’s just that it makes a lot more sense to read his books as fiction rather than history.

Whatever the case, eminent scholars have come up with a history of Khazaria that reads something like this:

Sixth to seventh centuries: the collapse of the Western-Turkish Khaganate, with Khazaria rising on its ruins, ruled by the Turkish Ashin dynasty.

Eighth to ninth centuries: war between the Khazar Khaganate and Iran; Judaism enters the region. Clashes with Varangians; alliances and divisions of spheres of influence.

Ninth to tenth centuries: Khazaria and Rus at war. The fall of Khazaria.

Eleventh to thirteenth centuries: the disappearance of Khazaria from the political map of Eurasia.

The capitals of the Khazar realm were, in order, Belendzher, Samandar, and Itil. A pattern comparable to that of the Russian capitals: Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. Other important cities include Savgar and Serkel (Belaya Vezha); the last of these was built by Byzantine engineers.

Among the political customs of Khazaria, the more interesting included: power sharing between the Khagan and the Bek; a distinctive inauguration procedure during which the Khagan was throttled with a silken thread; and the Khagan’s harem, made up of princesses taken from conquered lands and allied tribes.

During the early years, when Samandar was presumed to be its capital, the economy of Khazaria was based on agriculture, primarily viticulture, and fishing. Later, when the capital moved to Itil, transit trade began to flourish. Merchants who came from other lands noted with some surprise that the Khazars were able to thrive on trade, though they produced nothing at all in their country except for a suspicious-looking substance they called “fish paste.”

As for the appearance of the Khazar people, travelers reported that there were “white” and “black” Khazars. The “whites” were tall, blond, and blue-eyed, resembled Swedes, and represented the elite of their society. They were served by the “blacks,” who had dark hair and skin and were short of stature and were of generally unprepossessing appearance. Soviet historians expressed some doubt about this division and conjectured that the differences between the elite and the common people had nothing to do with race: Perhaps, they theorized, the Khazar proletariat just didn’t have many opportunities to bathe.

It is also known that when the Khazars besieged the Armenian capital, the latter initiated the world’s very first Halloween celebration, setting out in view of the Khazar warriors a huge pumpkin with carved-out eyes and a straw beard stuck on the bottom. They told the Khazars: “This is your Khagan!” For some reason the Khazars took offense, and the episode led to a bloodbath.

The Khazar Khaganate had an active foreign policy. They established alliances and declared wars, spread their influence and participated in the lives of both European and Asian states, leaving traces in many foreign chronicles. For example, the Byzantine emperor Mikhail III once called Photius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, a “Khazar-face.” But for all that, Khazaria didn’t leave a single written source for its future historians.

Excavation of one Khazar settlement, it’s true, unearthed a stone with written inscriptions that are presumed to be Khazar. But despite all their combined efforts, historians and linguists have been unable to decipher them.

Scholars do have access to one source that is conventionally presumed to be Khazar. This is the correspondence between a Spanish Jew known as Hasdai ibn Shaprut and the Khagan Joseph. The authenticity of the correspondence has long been challenged, skeptics arguing that if there had been no letters, then the medieval Jews would have had to invent them. The same thing can be said about the very existence of the Khazar Khaganate.

The most energetic scholars of Khazar history tend to concern themselves with questions related to Judaism, being either Zionists or anti-Zionists. It’s clear why. For a people scattered across the face of the earth, the existence of an empire in which their beliefs served as the official state religion (?) was (is) of great significance. After ancient Israel and before modern-day Israel there have been only two such experiments with the Jewish nation as a state, both of them on the territory of what is now Russia: the Khazar Khaganate in the Volga delta and the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East, with its capital in the city of Birobidzhan.

Special mention should be made of the book by noted Hungarian and Jewish writer Arthur Koestler entitled The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage. The author had an eventful life. Here, in brief, are the highlights of his biography:

Koestler was born on September 5, 1905 in Budapest. From 1926 to 1929 he served as a Near East correspondent for a German publishing concern; he spent 1929–30 working in Paris. In 1931 he flew to the North Pole on the dirigible Graf Zeppelin. Subsequently he traveled around Central Asia, and spent a year living in the Soviet Union. At the end of his life he argued on behalf of the Exit movement, which defends the right of people to take their own lives; he put this idea into practice in London on March 1, 1983 by taking a lethal dose of a soporific (?) drug.

Arthur Koestler prefaces The Thirteenth Tribe with a quote from the Arab writer Al-Muqadassi: “In Khazaria, sheep, honey, and Jews exist in large quantities.”

The Russian translator of Koestler’s book includes the entire quotation, not without a certain ridicule: “Al-Khazar is a vast region beyond the Caspian Sea. Impassable mud, great quantities of sheep, honey, and Jews.”

One is forced to admit that, with some exceptions, very little has changed since those days. Modern akyn bard Boris Grebenshikov has a song about the modern country that occupies the territory of what used to be the Khazan Khaganate:

The main thesis of Koestler’s book, which he argues very effectively, is that the so-called Western Jews are not even Semitic in origin; they came not from the Near East, but from Khazaria.

Studies on the history of Khazaria provide us with an entire palette of different and often contradictory conclusions. The major axes of the “Khazar polemics” in their present form are as follows:

First axis: Khazaria and Judaism. First: Were they Jewish or not? The majority of scholars agree that they were. In other words, Khazaria adopted Judaism as a state religion. Views differ, though, as to the dates, circumstances and implications of this religious reform. Authors inclining toward Zionism identify the earliest plausible date, arguing that Khazaria adopted Judaism just before it reached its peak as a state, and attributing its success directly to the conversion. Authors inclined toward anti-Semitism argue for a later date, one that immediately precedes the fall of the Khazar Empire. Naturally they consider Judaism the cause for the empire’s decline and fall.

Academic historians who are relatively unbiased concerning this question incline toward the view that only the elite converted to Judaism and that this change did not have a major influence on the lives of the masses or on the fate of the state.

Second axis: origins. Distinguished scholar A. A. Tiunyaev offers the least disputable version of the origin of the Khazars: “The Khazars, a nomadic people belonging to a so-called Turkish tribe that initially dwelled between the Caspian and Black Seas, appeared in Eastern Europe in the fourth century after the invasion of the Huns.” However, even as scholars repeat this phrase, “appeared… after,” they maintain an enigmatic silence as to its meaning. Either the Huns who settled in these parts began to be called Khazars, or some other kind of invasion took place. All scholarship on the subject retains this ambiguity: Whenever mentioning the origin of the Khazars, they resort to the phrase: “appeared… after.”

Third axis: the dispute as to heritage. If the existing scholarship is uniformly unsatisfying regarding the origin of the Khazars, there is a clear surplus of theories about the heirs to that culture’s historical glory. The abovementioned Koestler considers all European Jews, the Ashkenazi, to be descendants of the Khazars. Lev Gumilyov, after carefully studying data on the skull shapes and average height of the Terek Kazaks, identified them as heirs to the Khazar ethnicity. God Himself decreed that the Crimean Karaites would succeed the Khazars. But the Altai peoples also claim this legacy, citing common language features. The Russians, too, are in the fray: Some scholars modestly remind their readers that Slavs made up the majority of the Khaganate’s population and hence held the rightful claim to Khazaria. Others simply assert that the Khazars were in fact Russians, and that there were no Turks in sight. For my part, I’ve found quite a bit of evidence that the Khazars were Chechens.

To sum up: According to data gathered and verified by historians, the Khazar Khaganate was a state either of Turks, or Jews, or Slavs, or Caucasians, or, in general, of Swedes. The Khazars appeared from somewhere. Or they always were present, but under a different name. During the Khazar Khaganate or in the sixth, or the eighth, or eleventh century they adopted Judaism. Judaism was adopted either by a small group in the highest social elite, or by the masses; it either influenced the fate and culture of the Khaganate or did not; it either enabled its rise or hastened its collapse, or was never adopted at all. After the disappearance of the Khazar Khaganate, the heirs to its culture and traditions were either Crimean Karaites, or European Jews, or Altais, or there were no heirs whatsoever.

Thus, my research has lead me to three precise and definitive conclusions:

• The Khazar Khaganate existed in the past in some territory or other; or,

• The Khazar Khaganate existed and continues to exist, but in a different dimension, some kind of parallel reality; or,

• The Khazar Khaganate never existed anywhere. It is a model or plan, devised at some point in history, that is destined to, or simply might happen to, come into being sometime in the future.

INAUGURATION

And the time came for the great celebration of the entire Khazar people. In the bazaars entertainers played flutes and told funny stories. Sorcerers kindled fires, sending clouds of heady smoke into the sky. Colorful rags fluttered in the breeze over the rooftops, frightening the feathered creatures of the air. Crippled veterans of righteous wars were served leftover dead groundhogs for the glory of the Khagan and the Bek—let them, too, rejoice! And the Khagan’s palace filled with people; the entire Khazar elite—the beau monde—gathered there. Faces white, silks rustling, emeralds and rubies sparkling; if all the lamps in the palace had been extinguished, it would still be full of light from all the precious stones. Brilliant of mind and pure of soul! What are you next to them? The elite has gathered, the elite will feed its face. What a feast! Tables laden with victuals, fine drinks glittering in silver carafes, you could drown in them. The palace buzzed like a nest of wasps, everyone eating and drinking, drinking and eating. Now into the center of the hall strode the Great Bek. His jewel-encrusted platinum staff thundered against the floor and the sound reverberated through the great hall!

All fell silent. A portable throne was brought out and the crowd cried out, summoning the new Khagan:

“Khagan! Khagan! Kha-gan!”

The Great Bek roused the crowd:

“You call that a chant? The Khagan will not come forth, there will be no celebration, unless you let him hear you!”

And they shouted louder:

“Kha-gan! Kha-gan! Kha-gan! Grandfather Kha-gan!”

Someone poked Saat lightly on the back, and he emerged from the secret room into the great hall.

“Hurra-a-a-a-a-a-ah!”

The crowd roared, and loud music filled the hall. And Saat, embarrassed and blushing bright red like a fish from the Itil, approached the throne and took his seat. Oh, it’s hot in the hall, so hot! Hot as a skillet!

The Bek spoke:

“Here he is, great Khazars, sovereign people, our new Khagan, Osya the Thirteenth! Let us be loyal to him, as we were loyal to his forebears, ancient Khagans from the beginning of time!”

“We will be loyal!” shouted the people. “We will!”

And again the Great Bek pounded the floor with his crook: silence!

“First we must observe our ancient tradition and test the new Khagan, to determine the duration of his rule.”

From behind the Khagan’s back emerged an executioner arrayed in camouflage from head to toe, branches sewed onto his clothing, his face covered with a black stocking with holes cut for the eyes. Now this was a surprise! No one had said anything to Saat about this.

The executioner came up behind Saat and wound a fine silken noose around his neck. So this is the end. It wasn’t your destiny to fall and rot on the field of battle, nor were you fated to end your days in poverty and starvation; no, Saat, in celebration and revelry are you to perish, in peacetime, amid sweet feasting, to the sound of joyful music. Such is human life: There is no escaping death!

Saat thought this thought, then stood calmly, prepared to meet his eternal rest. But the Great Bek came up before him.

He spoke:

“Tell us, Saat, son of Nattukh, how long will you rule as Khagan of Khazaria? The executioner will begin to strangle you, and you will speak the numbers—count up from one, leaving no number out! And when you can go on no longer, lift your right hand and speak, say you have had enough. Then we will know.”

And the Great Bek gave a sign to the executioner, then stepped to one side. The executioner pulled the silken noose lightly toward himself. Saat began counting:

“One, two…”

The executioner pulled tighter on the silk string, oh, how it hurt!

“Three, four…”

And now Saat’s strength was failing; he couldn’t go on, the light went dark, the crowd multiplied and oscillated before his eyes; the people flailed about in a demonic dance. But Saat strained with all his might:

“Five, six, seven…”

And he felt that he could not possibly go on; he was drained. Death was upon him. He lifted his hand and rasped out: “Enough!”

The executioner immediately released the noose; servants rushed forth to pour water over the Khagan, to fan him, to rub his neck gently with fine oil.

“Glory to the Khagan!” howled the Khazar elite.

And the Great Bek spoke:

“You have spoken, O Khagan! Your time on the throne ruling the land of the Khazars is to be seven terms. And after that your body will be hewed into seven pieces, and into every piece will enter the sins of the Khazar land, one piece for every year of your rule, and we will curse and revile you, and will burn the pieces of your body. Now, though, you are to give no thought to yourself, for it is clear what is to be your fate. Your mind is free for the concerns of the realm!” Touched, the Great Bek shed a tender tear. And Saat rose from the throne and blessed his people. And a sweet fog billowed up and filled the air of the hall. And a ringing sound… a ringing sound filled every corner… but where was the sound coming from?

IT’S IN THE WATER

In Saat’s… uh, Maximus’s, apartment, the alarm clock was emitting a metallic ringing sound. Recently an entire delegation of his neighbors in the apartment building had presented him with a formal request that he keep the volume down in the morning. How they had managed to persuade him, Semipyatnitsky would not reveal, but now he had to use an ordinary alarm clock to waken him into this reality so that he could get himself to work on time.

His first order of business every morning was to solve the problem of his identity, that is, to answer two questions: Who was he, and why did he have to get up this exact minute and go out somewhere? The answer to the second question was to flow naturally from the answer to the first.

Maximus said to himself: I am a middle manager in the Import Department of the Cold Plus Company, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Tenant in an apartment located at 6-66 Dybenko Street. Debtor, signatory on three different loans. Hence, whether I want to or not, I must quit my bed now, hasten to the bathroom, and shave. And then get dressed and go to the office. There is no other option.

Semipyatnitsky thought it would make sense to write this mantra down on a piece of paper and simply read it out loud to himself every morning. Or, even better, record it on tape and set it to play… wait, a tape player wouldn’t work; it would bring on the neighbors again.

The neighbors… they were such pests! Not just the neighbors; people everywhere were generally just as bad. But only God is perfectly beautiful, anyway. As it says in the Hadith: “Allah is beautiful and loves beauty.” And if that’s the case, then He doesn’t love people. Why should he? And why should I?

Preoccupied with these and other deep thoughts, Semipyatnitsky somehow made his way to work. He was desperately thirsty. He tossed his briefcase and car keys onto his desk and headed for the break room, where employees who couldn’t even afford the Barf Bar could sit and eat the snacks or lunch that they had packed and brought from home.

There was only one person there, a girl nibbling at a thin sandwich, chasing down every piece with a sip of watery instant coffee from the office stash, which was kept in a giant economy-size bag on the counter. This was the very same coffee that was left over in the form of a fine powder after the best beans—according to the ads for this particular brand—were taken from the unfortunate Africans.

Maximus politely initiated a conversation.

“Morning! Still asleep?”

“Yes, I could barely get myself to work this morning. All I wanted to do was stay in bed.”

As if anyone actually wanted to come to work! Maximus himself, no matter how he tried, couldn’t come up with any convincing arguments for it, except for the threat of being kicked out of his apartment and losing his car and starving to death. On a practical level, these arguments made perfect sense, but philosophically speaking they were inadequate. Maximus launched into a tirade:

“For a man of our day and age the Shakespearian question ‘to be or not to be’ is no longer of any relevance. To be—of course, what’s the alternative? For some extremists, like the skinheads, the question becomes ‘to beat or not to beat,’ but they got their answer long ago, which is why they decided to shave their heads. But they’re the minority. For the majority of people, the key existential question today is: ‘to go to the office or to let it all go to hell?’ Considering the fact that society won’t allow you to live for free, once you’ve dispensed with office work you’re left with the following options: You can become a prostitute on the street, in a salon, or in a virtual chat room. You can become a drug dealer: sit at home in your apartment, aka drug den; poke around on the Internet and the client will show up on his own. You can get into direct sales—Herbalife or vacuum cleaners that cost as much as used cars. Or you can sign a contract with the devil, and he’ll make you a rock star, a popular writer, a celebrity, or some other brand of high-profile parasite. And in return you sign over your soul. What your soul is, and why you need it—you don’t know yourself. But the devil, well, the devil knows who needs it and why…”

The girl hastily gulped down her coffee and muttered nervously, “That’s not what I meant. I like my job. It can be very interesting. And the pay isn’t bad. It’s just that I got to bed a little late last night. Other than that, everything’s fine, really. Right, then, gotta go. I’ve got some… data to enter… reports, too.”

She grabbed her purse and evaporated.

There you have it, yet again. No one understands anything.

Maximus got his yellow mug out of the cupboard and filled it to the brim with water from the big upside-down plastic bottle on the cooler. You know those coolers, there’s one in every office now, with a red tab for hot water and a blue one for cold. Office managers everywhere, even the stingiest ones, cover the costs for regular, year-round delivery of drinking water. Transparent twenty-five liter bottles are delivered in special vans and brought up to the office by mute guys in blue uniforms.

Semipyatnitsky downed his water in one long swig and immediately remembered the things he had to do this morning. His mind filled with work-related thoughts, phrases from correspondence, numbers, facts, and figures. He even felt a sudden zeal for accomplishing these tasks.

Still holding the empty cup, Maximus reflected briefly on this sudden change in his consciousness, and, rooted to the spot, erupted in wild, demonic laughter:

“But of course! How could I not have guessed? The pills! They dissolve the Dutch pills into the office water supply: PTH, Positive Thinking! Of course, it’s chemistry! Otherwise, why would anyone bother to come to work? All of the pills must have the same basic ingredients, but the formula can be modified for each individual office, based on employers’ requests. Or maybe not, maybe it’s all one standard formula that adapts to the specifics of each individual brain. The effect varies depending on the interaction between the chemicals and the neurons of the manager in question, which are configured for the needs of his company’s business and his own particular job. It’s cheaper that way, of course!”

Praise be to Allah, no one else came into the break room, and so Semipyatnitsky’s moment of enlightenment went unheard.

ESCAPE

Maximus went back to his desk and settled into his work. Whatever task you take on, you should do well. This simple maxim was one of the few principles that he adhered to in his life. There’s no need to burn with childish enthusiasm or demonstrate excessive passion for your work. In fact, that approach isn’t very conducive to quality results. Simply fulfilling your duties calmly, whether you like them or not, is quite a different matter; that does produce results, and without causing any extra trouble. Karma yoga, pure and simple! Purposeful activity undertaken in an enlightened state of mind, combined with a renunciation of the fruits of such labor.

If you want to partake of the fruits of your efforts, even the tiniest little morsel, be aware that every company has its own security department, every country has an economic police service, and hell has demons waiting for you. They’re down there brandishing hot frying pans, or whatever they use these days, undoubtedly something more technologically advanced—microwave ovens, maybe. They’ll grab you by the arm and give you what you deserve. They’ll rip those fruits out of your mouth and jam them up a different orifice.

Maximus knew, as everyone did, that the buyers for the stores that carried Cold Plus products operated through bribery. Nowadays there are more eloquent words for it: bonus, incentives. In an extreme case—kickbacks. The Criminal Code, though, still defines it as “commercial bribery.”

They were driving past Maximus’s office window this very moment, in their Audis and Nissans paid for with cash, not credit. They can even afford to own their own apartments. Girls fall in love with them; simple office workers envy them. Books are published about their lives, and in those books they are so sensitive, so spiritual, and they have such good taste. Even their cynicism is endearing.

Blue-collar workers from the company’s warehouses regularly spewed angry accusations at Maximus and his colleagues at the office, calling them bastards and thieves. But Maximus only snickered in response. Compared with the other contract he’d been offered and had rejected multiple times, all of this was petty stuff.

The devil takes no kickbacks. Hell doesn’t work on commission. The managers of sin and perdition have only one bonus, one incentive system: your eternal soul, all of it, along with its complete set of transcendental viscera.

Just keep on doing what you’re doing, Maximus told himself, just do your job. Give no thought to success or victory, expect no rewards.

Plus, can you really call this work?

Maximus understood that he wasn’t really doing anything. Not creating anything, not changing anything. At least in the real world. All his manipulations of the keyboard weren’t going to increase the number of frozen crab-paste claws in the universe, not by one measly package. Only the hands of Chinese women, earning a dollar an hour, could accomplish that. Though actually it was considerably less than a dollar an hour.

Maximus earned his keep on a completely different order of magnitude. All he did was stare into a computer monitor, occasionally tapping something on his keyboard as though playing some kind of computer game, never having to leave his comfortable office or hoist his ever-widening backside up out of his chair. That’s how his job would look to those Chinese women as they labored away, crouching in rows by a shipping container, or to the dockworkers as they those dragged frost-covered cartons back and forth day in, day out.

Like millions of others of his kind, Maximus performed his sacred rituals in the World of Information. But that is the way, in fact the only way, surplus value is created in today’s world. Because the price of a crab-paste claw, assembled out of fish-processing waste products, chemical additives, and other shit, was practically the same as the price of the initial raw material, that same shit before it was mixed together. And only by dispatching the product through all the circles of the information inferno, from the exporting country’s customs service to the importing country’s customs service, through the veterinary inspection, marketing analysis, and all the incentive systems designed to motivate workers at home and abroad, could that very same shit end up in the form of a food product on a supermarket shelf, with a price exceeding its initial shitty value many times over.

So Maximus avoided thinking about the fact that he was eating his own yeast-free healthy vitamin-fortified bread on the backs of others. Though he was fully aware of the cost to himself. Maximus had long ago realized that he wasn’t being paid for work; it wasn’t really work, after all. Rather, his salary represented rent that he was paid for his individual consciousness, for allowing himself to be turned into a computer chip in the great processor of commercial information.

Semipyatnitsky recalled a movie where the handsome actor Keanu Reaves had allowed his brain to be used as a vehicle for smuggling pirated programs. In order to avoid paying customs duties, some businessmen had loaded this program in Reaves’s head and had sent him across the border, where other businessmen downloaded the program. Pure fantasy of course. But an office worker lives in a far worse nightmare: His brain isn’t merely a chip for storing information; it actually processes it as well, on an ongoing basis, like a computer. So Reaves’s mission as a courier in some anti-utopia was trivial in comparison with the daily ordeal of a mid-level manager.

Whatever he does—eat, sleep, walk down the street, watch TV, or screw his girlfriend—through it all, the processor hums and works. Assessing the status of the system. Making adjustments. Wake a mid-level manager up in the middle of the night, and he will tell you how many containers are scheduled to be unloaded this week at the transit port, what paperwork needs to be completed, and what still has to be done to initiate the letter of credit.

Even your average, clueless CEO spends all his time thinking about this stuff. A clever business owner, though, even as he signs his annual contract with a major client, is only thinking about how he’s going to get fellated tonight by some glamorous new whore. There’s no reason for him to worry about the details of his business deals. All the necessary programs have been loaded into the brains of mid-level managers specially hired for that purpose. It’s called “delegating authority.”

It is quite convenient, really. The new-generation “Mid-Level Manager Processor IV” comes in on his own accord, hooks himself into the system, connects to the other processors, disconnects as necessary, maintains himself at his own expense during his free time, and at the end of his life, when he’s all used up, removes himself from the system. The ideal device!

All the corporation needs to do is protect him from viruses.

Because although innumerable resources exist to keep the system functioning smoothly—magazines, books, and TV shows that provide processors with useful information about how to keep themselves in working order, how to improve their productivity and even how to find meaning and take satisfaction in their work—you never know when some dangerous new malware might pop up out of nowhere, making your processor suddenly start thinking about itself, about the server through which he works, about his ISP, and other matters that ought not trouble anyone beneath the rank of SysAdmin.

But even then, countermeasures exist to combat that eventuality: the Security Service, the Institute for Family Values, and the Holy Sanhedrin.

Maximus understood all of this, but he was powerless to change the system. He could only allow himself one little act of deceit: Given the fact that his individual operating system allowed for multitasking, he was able to launch several programs at once, some of them performing the operations for which he was being paid, and others—or, say, just one—allowing him to meditate upon forbidden topics.

Everything is fine so long as you can close the subversive windows in time.

Maximus had already figured out the Khazar problem, more or less. But his study of the history of the Khaganate had spawned another problem for his inquisitive mind: the problem of the elites, how they replenished their ranks, and the basis for their legitimacy. He would have written an essay on this topic as well, but his new virtual friend Hakan spared him the unnecessary labor. On Hakan’s site Semipyatnitsky discovered a lengthy manifesto that answered all his questions about the secrets of the elect.

This manifesto was so much like Maximus’s own thoughts on the subject that it even seemed to him that he could have written it himself.

And maybe he had.

Maximus had already reached the end of this lyrical manifesto when the Cold Plus security officer materialized behind his office chair.

“Semipyatnitsky! You are in violation of Cold Plus company policy, which prohibits use of the Internet for non-work-related purposes.”

Maximus didn’t have time to close the blog window. And he wouldn’t have tried to anyway. It would’ve been demeaning, and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

“Your violations have been systematic in nature.”

The security officer had brought a printout with him—a report from IT—and he laid it on Maximus’s desk. It listed all of his transgressions against Office Policy: the addresses of websites, along with the times he’d visited them, and even the exact volume of his traffic, in megabytes.

“We have no other option but to fine you, in accordance with the Sanctions Policy, one hundred dollars for every instance of wrongful personal Internet use, plus ten dollars for every downloaded megabyte.”

Maximus thought, that’s just stupid. If the Internet didn’t exist, these corporate fascists would have needed to invent it. The Internet is the ideal place for employees to pour out all their irritation, anger, and negativity, to let off steam.

If he were in the elves’ place, he would even have funded a couple of special websites himself—for extremists and anti-establishment types. Let all these workplace philosophers type away at their blogs, where they can insult anyone they want to—the authorities, corporations, and one another—to their hearts’ content. That way they can feel as though they’re part of an Opposition, without posing any real threat to the existing order. And when the time comes for an actual revolution, the only people who’ll show up will be half-dead retirees who don’t have Internet access, and maybe a dozen or so anarchists—completely insane, of course. Some revolution: nothing a few billy clubs in the hands of helmeted OMON “cosmonaut” riot police couldn’t deal with.

Maybe the riot police themselves might sponsor such sites. Maybe they already do.

So mused Maximus. But he said nothing. The security chief turned and left. Maximus took out a clean piece of white paper and wrote:

When he finished writing, Maximus placed the Declaration on his desk, on top of the IT report. He raked all the coins out of his desk drawer and tossed them into his briefcase. Picked up his car keys. Walked out.

On the other side of the security point he ripped his smart card in two and tossed the pieces into the nearest trash can.

Outside at last, Maximus gazed, enchanted, at the world around him and breathed in deep lungfuls of the intoxicating air of freedom and the unknown.

PILLS AGAIN

Wait!

That’s not all.

I admit I was tempted to end not just Part III, but the whole book, with that elegant if slightly clichéd turn of phrase about “freedom and the unknown.”

What happened next? You might well ask. Maximus quit his job; the part of his life during which he functioned as a contributing member of society was over. He made his choice. He left, and brought his story to an aesthetically satisfying conclusion. The story is over, the protagonist’s fate has been decided, the curtain has come down… The house lights come on in the dark theater. The audience rises to their feet; the folding seats snap back into place. Empty plastic soda bottles lie conveniently “forgotten” on the floor, together with cardboard boxes half full of cold, soggy popcorn.

But no!

There’s still some unfinished business.

Maximus realized this the moment he stepped outside.

How could he have forgotten?

Given all the fuss, all of his discoveries and worries, such inattention is understandable, but still: How could he have forgotten about the pills?

Peter had taken the pills to the hotel with him. When Maximus met him there, Peter didn’t have the pills, only his small carry-on bag. After their visit to the Tribunal, Peter hadn’t gone back to the hotel. Maximus had taken him to the train station himself.

So where were the pills?

Maximus got in his car, started the engine, and—following instinct—turned onto Nevsky. Semipyatnitsky muscled his way through the traffic to the Nevsky Palace, then pulled up halfway onto the sidewalk. Ignoring the prominent No Parking sign with its eloquent silhouette of a tow truck at work, he turned off the engine and climbed out.

Maximus walked up to the hotel entrance and stood there for a couple of minutes. Then, still in the grip of the same subconscious impulse, he headed for the Fontanka Embankment. He turned onto the embankment and descended the granite ramp to the canal. At the water’s edge he thought, “What am I doing here?” and glanced around.

The answer to his question was immediately obvious. A scrap of paper was stuck on the granite wall on the Fontanka side—part of a label from a carton. The letters were still legible: a big PTH followed by some other letters and numbers.

Interesting. How much time had passed since the Dutch partners’ visit? A few weeks at least. But the label, which the waves had pasted onto the granite wall, was still there; it hadn’t washed away, hadn’t dissolved in the acidic-alkaline solution of the Fontanka canal wastewater. As though it had been placed there for some special purpose, for Maximus himself to come and find it. To find it, to see it, to learn the truth.

And, indeed, as if to confirm Semipyatnitsky’s conjecture, the scrap of paper suddenly peeled off the granite, dropped into the water, and disappeared into the cold black depths of the canal.

So Peter had simply dumped the pills in the nearest canal! Tossed them in, box and all! A disaster!

Maximus had a rough idea of how the water circulation system works in a big city: The water goes through a complete cycle. It flows into the sewer pipes, and from there to the wastewater plants where it’s purified and sent back into the water supply. Today’s urine is tomorrow’s tea, and the day after tomorrow it’s urine again.

The sanitation process captures the majority of pollutants and toxins and destroys microbes with chlorine, but it was highly unlikely there were any filters effective against PTH. Someone needed to notify the Ministry of Emergency Situations! Warn people of the imminent danger!

Semipyatnitsky’s impulse to sound the alarm subsided within a couple of minutes. He climbed back up the steps onto the embankment and took a fresh look at the city around him.

Neon advertisements gleamed on the walls of the surrounding buildings, and the shop windows emitted blinding light; weirdly shaped metal conveyances sped along on the streets with pompous-looking passengers inside, while people strutted by on the sidewalks flaunting their designer clothing. Everyone looked happy. Or almost. At least they knew what had to be done to achieve the happiness they desired. And were highly motivated to take the next step on that path.

Maximus felt sad and relieved at the same time. There was nothing he could do. The pills had already permeated the city’s air and the people’s blood long before Peter’s visit. A couple dozen kilograms more or less wouldn’t make any difference. People would stay the same. They wouldn’t be willing to return to a life without the narcotic. It made no sense to try and fight it.

There was only one thing left to do: go home and go to bed. Dream dreams. If no more dreams of Khazaria came, then there would be others; Maximus could be sure of that.

So this really is the end.

Our story is over.

But the reader will note that the book doesn’t end here; there are a few more pages. What else is there to tell?

Sometimes an author and his readers find it hard to part with characters they’ve come to know and love. And I’ve gotten quite attached to Maximus. What about you?

I’d be curious to know what happened after Semipyatnitsky left the office. Besides which, it looks like my contract stipulates a higher word count. Seriously now, only the exterior, visible part of the story has ended. The most important thing still lies ahead. So let us turn the page…