Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

Nobody noticed my return - the corridor was empty, and my companions were asleep. A few minutes after I lay down on my bed the melodic chimes of reveille came drifting along the corridor; almost simultaneously Barbolin came in and said they were going to defumigate the ward, and so today we would be having a second session of practical aesthetics therapy.

The atmosphere of a madhouse obviously must install submissiveness into a person. Nobody even thought of expressing indignation or saying that it was impossible to spend so many hours on end drawing Aristotle. Maria was the only one to mutter something dark and incomprehensible under his breath. I noticed that he had woken in a bad mood. Possibly he had had a dream, for immediately on waking he began to study his reflection in the mirror. He did not seem to like what he saw very much, and he spent several minutes massaging the skin under his eyes and running his fingers round them.

Arriving very late in the practical aesthetics room, he made not the slightest pretence of drawing Aristotle as everyone else, including myself, was doing. Taking a seat in the corner he wound a yellow ribbon round his head, evidently intended to protect his hair against the winds raging in his psychological space, and began looking us up and down as if he had never seen us before.

There may not have been any wind in the room, but dark clouds certainly seemed to have gathered there. Volodin and Serdyuk did not pay the slightest attention to Maria, and I decided that I had been mistaken to attach so much weight to minor details. But the silence oppressed me nonetheless, and I decided to break it.

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Serdyuk, but will you not be offended if I attempt to engage you in conversation?’ I inquired.

‘Certainly not, indeed.’ Serdyuk replied politely, ‘by all means, do so.’

‘I hope very much that you will not find my question tactless, but can you tell me what it was that brought you here?’

‘Otherworldliness,’ said Serdyuk.

‘Indeed? But can one really be hospitalized for otherworldliness?’

Serdyuk measured me up with a long glance.

‘They registered it as suicidal vagrancy syndrome arising from delirium tremens. Although no one has any idea what that is.’

‘Tell me more about it,’ I asked.

‘What is there to tell? I was just lying there in a basement out on the Nagornoe road - for entirely personal and highly important reasons. I was fully and agonizingly conscious. Then this copper with a torch and an automatic appeared. Wanted to see my documents, so I showed him. Then, of course, he asked for money. I gave him all I had - about twenty roubles. He took the money, but kept on hanging about, wouldn’t go away. I should have just turned to face the wall and forgotten about him, but I had to go and start up a conversation; what d’you mean poking your porkies out at me like that, are you short of bandits upstairs or something? This pig turns out to be fond of talking -1 found out later he’d graduated from the philosophy faculty. No, he says, there’s more than enough of them up there, only they’re not disturbing the social order. What d’you mean by that, I asked him. Well, he says, your ordinary bandit, what is he? Sure, take a look at him and you can see that all he’s got on his mind is how he can find someone to kill and rob, but so what? And the guy who’s just been robbed, he’s not breaking any laws either. He just lies there with his fractured skull and thinks - so now I’ve gone and got robbed. And you’re lying down I here - he’s talking to me now - and I can see you’re thinking about something… Like you don’t believe in anything around you. Or at least you have your doubts.’

‘So what did you say?’

‘What did I say?’ echoed Serdyuk. ‘I only went and told him that maybe I did have my doubts. The sages of the East all told us that this world is an illusion - I just mentioned the sages of the East in a way he’d be able to handle, on his own primitive level. Then he suddenly goes all red and says to me: «What the hell’s going on here? I wrote my diploma on Hegel, and here you’ve read something in Science and Religion and you think you can crawl into some basement and lie around doubting the reality of the world?» In short, first they ragged me round to the station, and then round here. I had a scratch on my belly - I cut myself on a broken bottle - so I hey registered that as attempted suicide.’

‘What I’d do with anyone who doubts the reality of the world,’ Maria unexpectedly interrupted, ‘is put them away for ever. They don’t belong in the madhouse, they should be in prison. Or worse.’

‘And why’s that?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘You want an explanation?’ Maria asked in an unfriendly voice. ‘Come over here and I’ll give you one,’

Getting up from his place beside the door, he went over to the window, waited for Serdyuk and then pointed outside with his muscular arm.

‘See that Mercedes-6oo standing over there?’

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk.

‘Are you telling me that’s an illusion too?’

‘Very probably.’

‘You know who drives around in that illusion? The commercial director of our madhouse. He’s called Vovchik Maloi, and his nickname’s «the Nietzschean». Have you seen him around?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you think of him?’

‘It’s obvious. He’s a bandit.’

‘So think about it - that bandit could have killed a dozen people to buy himself a car like that. Are you telling me they all gave their lives for nothing, if it’s only an illusion? Why don’t you say something? Can’t you see where that leads?’

‘Yes, I can see.’ Serdyuk said gloomily and went back to his chair.

Maria apparently felt a sudden desire to draw. Picking up his drawing-board from the corner, he sat down beside the rest of us.

‘No.’ he said, peering through half-closed eyes at the bust of Aristotle, ‘if you want to get out of here some time, you have to read the newspapers and experience real feelings while you’re doing it. And not start doubting the reality of the world. Under Soviet power we were surrounded by illusions. But now the world has become real and knowable. Understand?’

Serdyuk went on drawing without speaking.

‘Well, don’t you agree?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ Serdyuk replied gloomily. ‘I don’t agree that it’s real. But as for it being knowable, I guessed that for myself a long time ago. From the smell.’

‘Gentlemen.’ I intervened, sensing that a quarrel was ripening and attempting to lead the conversation into neutral territory, ‘do you have any idea why it’s Aristotle we are drawing in particular?’

‘So it’s Aristotle, is it?’ said Maria. ‘I thought he looked pretty serious. God knows why. Probably the first thing they came across in the junk-room.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Maria,’ said Volodin. ‘Nothing happens by accident in here. Just a moment ago you were calling things by their real names. What are we all doing here in the madhouse? They want to bring us back to reality. And the reason we’re sitting here drawing this Aristotle is because he is that reality with the Mercedes-6oos that you, Maria, wanted to be discharged into.’

‘So before him it didn’t exist?’ asked Maria.

‘No, it didn’t.’ snapped Volodin.

‘How so?’

‘You won’t understand.’ said Volodin.

‘You just try explaining,’ said Maria. ‘Maybe I will understand.’

‘Okay, you tell me why the Mercedes is real.’ said Volodin.

Maria struggled painfully with his thoughts for a few seconds.

‘Because it’s made of iron.’ he said, ‘that’s why. And you can go up to the iron and touch it.’

‘So you’re telling me that it’s rendered real by a certain substance of which it consists?’