Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

I propped myself up on my elbow. My movement evidently took Anna entirely by surprise - she dropped her book on the floor and stared at me in confusion.

‘Where am I?’ I asked, sitting up in bed.

‘For God’s sake, lie down,’ she said, leaning towards me. I very thing is all right. You are safe.’

The gentle pressure of her hands forced me back down on to the bed.

‘But may I not at least know where I am? And why it is suddenly summer?’

‘Yes.’ she said, going back to her chair, ‘it is summer. Do you not remember anything at all?’

‘I remember everything perfectly well,’ I said. ‘I simply cannot understand how it happens that one moment I was ruling in a train and now suddenly I find myself in this room.’

‘You began talking quite often while you were delirious.’ she said, ‘but you never once came round fully. Most of the time you were in a coma.’

‘What coma? I remember that we were drinking champagne, and Chaliapin was singing… Or was it the weavers. And then that strange gentleman… Comrade… In short, Chapaev. Chapaev uncoupled the carriages.’

Anna must have stared doubtfully into my eyes for an entire minute.

‘How strange,’ she said at last.

‘What is strange?’

‘That you should remember precisely that. And afterwards?’

‘Afterwards?’

‘Yes, afterwards. For instance, do you remember the Battle of Lozovaya Junction?’

‘No.’ I said.

‘Or what came before that?’

‘Before that?’

‘Yes, before that. At Lozovaya you were already commanding a squadron.’

‘What squadron?’

‘Petya, at Lozovaya you distinguished yourself. If you had not moved in from the left flank with your cavalry squadron, they would have wiped us all out.’

‘What is the date today?’

‘The third of June.’ she said. ‘I know that such instances do occur in cases of head wounds, but… I could understand it if you had lost your memory completely, but this strange selectivity is quite astonishing. But then, I am not a doctor. Perhaps this is also part of the normal order of things.’

I raised my hands to my head and shuddered - it was as though my palms had touched a billiard ball that had sprouted short stubble. I had been completely shorn, like a typhus case. And there was also something strange, some kind of hairless projection running through the skin. I ran my fingers along it and realized that it was a long scar lying diagonally right across my skull. It felt as though a section of a leather belt had been glued to my scalp with gum arable.

‘Shrapnel.’ said Anna. ‘The scar is impressive, but it is nothing to worry about. The bullet only grazed you. But the concussion is apparently rather more serious.’

‘When did it happen?’ I asked.

‘On the second of April.’

‘And since then I have not recovered consciousness?’

‘Several times. But for just a few moments, no more.’

I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a memory of at least some of what Anna had spoken about. But the darkness into which I gazed held nothing except the streaks and spots of light that appeared behind my eyelids.

‘I do not remember a thing,’ I said, and felt my head again. ‘Absolutely nothing. I can only remember a dream I had that in some dark hall in St Petersburg I am being beaten on the head with a bust of Aristotle, and every time it shatters into fragments. But then it happens all over again - pure Gothic… But now I understand what was going on.’

‘Your ravings were really quite intriguing.’ said Anna. ‘You spent half of yesterday remembering some Maria who had been hit by a shell. It was a rather incoherent tale, though, and I never did understand just what relationship you had with the girl. I suppose you must have been thrown together by the whims of war?’

‘I have never known anyone called Maria. Excluding, that is, a recent nightmare.’

‘Please do not be concerned,’ said Anna, ‘I have no intention of being jealous.’

‘That is a shame.’ I replied, then I sat up and lowered my legs to the floor. ‘Please, do not think that I am trying to shock you by talking to you in nothing but my underwear.’

‘You must not get up.’

‘But I feel perfectly well,’ I replied. ‘I would like to take a shower and get dressed.’

‘Quite out of the question.’

‘Anna,’ I said, ‘if I command a squadron, I must have an orderly.’

‘Certainly you have one.’

‘While you and I are talking here, he is most probably swinishly drunk yet again. Do you think you could send him to me? And another thing - where is Chapaev?’

The strange thing was that my orderly (he was a taciturn, yellow-haired, stocky individual with a long body and the short, crooked legs of a cavalryman - a ridiculous combination which made him look like an inverted pair of pincers) really was drunk. He brought me my clothes: a greyish-green military jacket with no shoulder-stripes (but with one sewn on to (he arm for my wound), blue breeches with a double red stripe down the side and a pair of excellent short boots made of soft leather. Also thrown on to the bed were a fuzzy black astrakhan hat, a sabre with the inscription ‘To Pyotr Voyd for valour’, a holster containing a Browning and Vorblei’s travelling bag, the very sight of which suddenly made me feel unwell. All of its contents were still in place, except that there was a little less cocaine in the tin. In addition, I discovered in the bag a small pair of binoculars and a notebook about one-third lull of writing which was undoubtedly my own. I found most of the notes quite incomprehensible - they dealt with horses, hay and people whose names meant nothing to me. But apart from that, my eyes did encounter a few phrases which resembled those which I had been in the habit of noting down:

‘Christianity and other religs. can be regarded as a totality of variously remote objects radiating a certain energy. How blindingly the figure of the crucified God shines! And how stupid it is to call Chr. a primitive system! If one thinks about it, it was not Rasputin who plunged Russia into revolution, but his murder.’

And then, two pages further on:

‘In life all «successes» have to be measured against the period of time over which they are achieved; if this interval is excessively long, then most achievements are rendered meaningless to a greater or lesser degree; the value of any achievement (at least, any practical achievement) is reduced to zero if the effort extends throughout the length of one’s life, because after death nothing any longer has any meaning. Do not forget the inscription on the ceiling.’

Despite this last exhortation, I seemed to have forgotten the inscription on the ceiling quite irretrievably. There had been times when I would use up an entire notebook every month on jottings of this kind, and every one of them had seemed genuinely significant and filled with a meaning which would be required in the future. But when this future arrived, the notebooks had been misplaced, life outside had completely changed, and I had found myself on the dank and miserable Tverskoi Boulevard with a revolver in my coat pocket. It was a good thing, I thought, that I had happened to meet an old friend.

Once I was dressed (the orderly had not brought any foot-bindings, and I was obliged to tear up the sheet to make some) I hesitated for some time before eventually donning the astrakhan hat - it smelt of something rotten - but my shaven head seemed to me to present an extremely vulnerable target. I left the sabre on the bed, but extracted the pistol from its holster and hid it in my pocket. I cannot bear to upset people’s nerves with the sight of a weapon, and in any case it made it easier to reach the weapon quickly if necessary. When I took a look at myself in the mirror above the wash-basin I was quite satisfied - the astrakhan hat even lent my unshaven face a certain crazed haughtiness.