Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘Hey there! No sleeping!’

Someone shook me carefully by the shoulder. I lifted my head, opened my eyes and saw a face I did not recognize, round and plump, framed in a painstakingly tended beard. Although it wore an affable smile, it did not arouse any desire to smile in return. I understood why immediately - it was the combination of the carefully trimmed beard with a smoothly shaven skull The gentleman leaning over me reminded me of one of those speculators trading in anything they could lay their hands on who appeared in such abundance in St Petersburg immediately after the start of the war. As a rule they came from the Ukraine and had two distinguishing features - a monstrous amount of vitality and an interest in the latest occult trends in the capital.

‘Vladimir Volodin.’ the man introduced himself. ‘Just call me Volodin. Since you’ve decided to lose your memory one more time, we might as well introduce ourselves all over again.’

‘Pyotr,’ I said.

‘Better not make any sudden movements, Pyotr,’ said Volodin. ‘While you were still sleeping they gave you four cc’s of taurepam, so your morning’s going to be a bit on the gloomy side. Don’t be too surprised if you find the things or people around you depressing or repulsive.’

‘Oh, my friend,’ I said, ‘it is a long time now since I have been surprised by that kind of thing.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘what I mean is that the situation you find yourself in might seem quite unbearably loathsome. Inexpressibly, inhumanly monstrous and absurd. Entirely incompatible with life.’

‘And what should I do?’

‘Take no notice. It’s just the injection.’

‘I shall try.’

‘Splendid.’

I suddenly noticed that this Volodin was entirely naked. Moreover, he was wet and he was squatting on a tiled floor, on to which copious amounts of water were dripping from his body. But what was most intolerable in this entire spectacle was a certain relaxed freedom in his pose, an elusive monkey-like lack of constraint in the way he rested his long sinewy arm against the tiles. This lack of constraint somehow seemed to proclaim that the world around us is such that it is only natural and normal for large hairy men to sit on the floor in such a state - and that if anyone thinks otherwise, then he will certainly find life difficult.

What he had said about the injection seemed to be true. Something strange really was happening to my perception of I he world. For several seconds Volodin had existed all alone, without any background, like a photograph in a residence permit. Having inspected his face and body in their full detail, I suddenly began to think about where all this was happening, and it was only after I had done so that the place actually came into being - at least, that was how I experienced it.

The space around us was a large room covered throughout with white tiles, with five cast-iron baths standing in a row on the floor. I was lying in one of the end baths and I suddenly realized with disgust that the water in it was rather cold. Offering a final smile of encouragement, Volodin turned round on the spot and from his squatting position leapt with revolting agility into the bath next to mine, scarcely even raising a splash in the process.

In addition to Volodin, I could see two other people in the room: a long-haired, blue-eyed blond with a sparse beard who looked like an ancient Slavic knight, and a dark-haired young man with a rather feminine, pale face and an excessively developed musculature. They were looking at me expectantly.

‘Seems like you really don’t remember us.’ the bearded blond said after several seconds of silence. ‘Semyon Serdyuk.’

‘Pyotr.’ I replied.

‘Maria.’ said the young man in the far bath.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Maria, Maria.’ he repeated, obviously annoyed. ‘It’s a name. You know, there was a writer, Erich Maria Remarque? I was named after him.’

‘I have not come across him,’ I replied. ‘He must be one of the new wave.’

‘And then there was Rainer Maria Rilke. Haven’t you heard of him either?’

‘Why, certainly I have heard of him. We are even acquainted.’

‘Well then, he was Rainer Maria, and I’m just Maria.’

‘Pardon me.’ I said, ‘but I seem to recognize your voice. Was it not by any chance you who related that strange story with the aeroplane, about Russia’s alchemical wedlock with the West and so forth?’

‘Yes,’ replied Maria, ‘but what do you find so strange about it?’

‘Nothing in general terms,’ I said, ‘but for some reason I had the impression that you were a woman.’

‘Well, in a certain sense, that’s right,’ replied Maria. ‘According to the boss here, my false personality is definitely that of a woman. You wouldn’t by any chance be a heterosexual chauvinist would you?’

‘Certainly not.’ I said, ‘I am simply surprised at how easily you accept that this personality is false. Do you really believe that?’

‘I don’t believe anything at all.’ said Maria. ‘My concussion’s to blame for everything. And they keep me here because the boss is writing his dissertation.’

‘But who is this boss?’ I asked in bewilderment, hearing the word a second time.

‘Timur Timurovich,’ Maria replied. ‘The head of the department. False personalities are his line.’

‘That’s not exactly right,’ Volodin countered. ‘The title of the dissertation he is working on is «The Split False Personality». Maria here is a fairly simple and uncomplicated case and you really have to strain the term a bit to talk about him having a split personality, but you, Pyotr, are a prize exhibit. Your false personality is developed in such fine detail that it outweighs the real one and almost entirely displaces it. And I he way it’s split is simply magnificent.’

‘Nothing of the sort,’ objected Serdyuk, who had so far remained silent. ‘Pyotr’s case isn’t really very complicated. At a structural level it’s no different from Maria’s. Both of them have identified with names, only Maria’s identification is with the first name, and Pyotr’s is with the surname. But Pyotr’s displacement is stronger. He can’t even remember his surname. Sometimes he calls himself Fourply, sometimes something else.’

‘Then what is my surname?’ I asked anxiously.

‘Your surname is Voyd.’ Volodin replied, ‘and your madness is caused by your denying the existence of your own personality and replacing it with another, totally invented one.’

‘Although in structural terms, I repeat, it’s not a complicated case.’ added Serdyuk.

I was annoyed - I found the idea of some strange psychic deviant telling me that my case was not complicated rather offensive.

‘Gentlemen, you are reasoning like doctors,’ I said. ‘Does that not seem to you to represent a certain incongruity?’

‘What kind of incongruity?’

‘Everything would be perfectly fine,’ I said, ‘if you were standing here in white coats. But why are you lying here yourselves, if you understand everything so very clearly?’

Volodin looked at me for several seconds without speaking.

‘I am the victim of an unfortunate accident.’ he said.

Serdyuk and Maria burst into loud laughter.

‘And as for me,’ said Serdyuk, ‘I haven’t even got any false personalities. Just an ordinary suicide attempt due to chronic alcoholism. They’re keeping me here because you can’t build a dissertation around just three cases. Just to round out the statistics.’

‘Never mind all that,’ said Maria. ‘You’re next in line for the garrotte. Then we’ll hear all about your alcoholic suicide.’

By this time I felt thoroughly chilled; furthermore, I was unable to decide whether the explanation lay in the injection which, according to Volodin, ought to have made everything that was happening to me seem intolerable, or whether the water really was as cold as it seemed.