Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘You know, I was just thinking… People go on and on about the tragedy of the artist, the tragedy of the artist. But why the artist in particular? It is really rather unfair. The fact is, you see, that artists are very visible individuals and therefore the troubles that they encounter in life are bandied about and exposed to the public eye… but does anyone ever think about… Well, no, they might well remember an entrepreneur… Let us say, an engine-driver? No matter how tragic his life might be?’

‘You’re coming at the question from the wrong side entirely, Pyotr.’ said Volodin.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re getting your concepts confused. The tragedy doesn’t happen to the artist or the engine-driver, it takes place in the mind of the artist or the engine-driver.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Granted, granted,’ Volodin purred and turned back to his drawing-board.

It was several seconds before Volodin’s words sank in and I realized what he meant. But the mental listlessness induced by the injection completely blocked out any response.

Turning back to my sheet of cardboard, I drew in several columns of thick black smoke above the field, using up all my charcoal. Together with the dark spots of the shrapnel-bursts, they lent the picture a certain air of menace and hopelessness. I suddenly felt unwell, and I dedicated myself to covering the horizon with small figures of horsemen galloping through the wheat to cut off the attackers.

‘You missed your vocation - you should have been a battle artist,’ observed Volodin. From time to time he would look up to glance at my sheet of cardboard.

‘A fine comment, coming from you.’ I replied. ‘After all, you are the one who keeps drawing an explosion in a camp-fire.’

‘An explosion in a camp-fire?’

I pointed to the wall where the drawings hung.

‘If you think that’s an explosion in a camp-fire, then I have nothing more to say to you,’ replied Volodin, ‘nothing whatsoever.’

He seemed to have taken offence.

‘What is it, then?’

‘It’s the descent of the light of heaven,’ he answered. ‘Can’t you see that it comes down from on high? It’s drawn like that deliberately.’

My mind raced through several consecutive conclusions.

‘Can I assume, then, that they’re keeping you here because of this heavenly light?’

‘You can,’ said Volodin.

‘That’s hardly surprising,’ I said politely. ‘I sensed immediately that you were no ordinary man. But what exactly have they charged you with? With having seen that light? Or with attempting to tell others about it?’

‘With being the light,’ said Volodin. ‘As is usual in such cases.’

‘I must assume that you are joking,’ I said. ‘But seriously?’

Volodin shrugged.

‘I had two assistants,’ he said, ‘about your age. You know, garbage men - they were very useful for cleaning up reality, you can’t do business without them these days. They’re in the drawing here, by the way - see, those two shadows. Well, to cut it short, I made it a rule to discuss such exalted subjects with them. And then one day we happened to go into the forest and I showed them - I don’t even know how to explain it - the way everything is. I didn’t even show them - they saw it all for themselves. That’s the moment shown in the drawings. And it had such an effect on them that a week later they ran off and turned me in. Stupid idiots, each of them had a dozen stiffs to answer for, but they still reckoned that was nothing compared with what they had to report. Modern man has the very basest of instincts, let me assure you.’

‘Indeed you are right,’ I replied, thinking of something else entirely.

For lunch Barbolin led us to a small dining-room rather like the room with the baths, except that the place of the baths was taken by plastic tables situated next to a serving-hatch. Only one of the tables was laid. We hardly spoke at all during the meal. When I had finished my soup and begun eating my gruel I suddenly noticed that Volodin had pushed away his plate and was staring hard at me. At first I tried not to pay any attention, but then I could stand it no longer, and I looked up and stared boldly into his eyes. He smiled peaceably - in the sense that there was nothing menacing in his expression, and said:

‘You know, Pyotr, I have the feeling that you and I have met in circumstances that were extremely important - for me, at least.’

I shrugged.

‘Do you by any chance have an acquaintance with a red face, three eyes and a necklace of skulls,’ he asked, ‘who dances between fires? Mm? Very tall, he was. And he waves these crooked swords around.’

‘Maybe I do.’ I said politely, ‘but I cannot quite tell just who it is you have in mind. The features you mention are very common, after all. It could be almost anybody.’

‘I see,’ said Volodin, and he went back to his plate.

I reached out for the teapot in order to pour some tea into my glass, but Maria shook his head.

‘Better not.’ he said. ‘Bromide. Takes away your natural sexuality.’

Volodin and Serdyuk, however, drank the tea without appearing in the slightest manner concerned.

After lunch we went back to the ward and Barbolin immediately disappeared off somewhere. My three companions were obviously accustomed to such a routine and fell asleep almost as soon as they had laid down on their beds. I stretched out on my back and stared at the ceiling for a long time, savouring the state, rare for me, of an entirely empty mind, which was possibly a consequence of the morning’s injection.

In fact, it would not be entirely correct to say that my mind was empty of all thoughts, for the simple reason that my consciousness, having entirely liberated itself of thought, continued nonetheless to react to external stimuli, but without reflecting upon them. And when I noticed the total absence of thoughts in my head, that in itself became already a thought about the absence of thoughts. Thus, I reasoned, a genuine absence of thoughts appeared impossible, because it cannot be recorded in any way - or one might say that it was equivalent to non-existence.

But this was still a marvellous state, as dissimilar as possible from the routine internal ticking of the everyday mind. Incidentally, I have always been astounded by one particular feature typical of people who are unaware of their own psychological processes. A person of that kind may be isolated for a long period from external stimuli, without experiencing any real needs, and then, for no apparent reason, a spontaneous psychological process suddenly arises within him which compels him to launch into a series of unpredictable actions in the external world. It must appear very strange to anyone who happens to observe it: there is the person lying on his back, he lies there for an hour, for two, for three, and I hen suddenly leaps up, thrusts his feet into his slippers and sets out for goodness knows where, simply because for some obscure reason - or perhaps without any reason at all - his I fain of thought has gone dashing off in some entirely arbitrary direction. The majority of people are actually like that, and it is these lunatics who determine the fate of our world.

The universe that extended in all directions around my bed was full of the most varied sounds. Some of them I recognized - the blows of a hammer on the floor below, the sound of a shutter banging in the wind somewhere in the distance, the cawing of the crows - but the origin of most of the sounds remained unclear. It is astonishing how many new things are immediately revealed to a man who can empty out the fossilized clutter of his conscious mind for a moment! It is not even clear where most of the sounds that we hear actually «ome from. What then can be said about everything else, what point is there in attempting to discover an explanation tor our lives and our actions on the basis of the little that we believe we know! One might just as well attempt to explain the inner life-processes of another individual’s personality through the kinds of phantasmagorica I social constructs employed by Timur Timurovich, I thought, and suddenly remembered the thick file on my case that I had seen on his desk. Then I remembered that when he left, Barbolin had forgotten to lock the door. And instantly, in a mere split second, an insane plan had taken shape in my mind.