Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘The monad itself.’ replied, determined to maintain a grip on myself.

Good, said Chapaev, screwing up his eyes in a cunning fashion, well talk about who later. But first, my dear friend, let us deal with where. Tell me, where’s it live, this gonad of yours.’

‘In my consciousness.’

‘And where is your consciousness’

‘Right here, I said, tapping myself on the head.’

‘And where is your head?’

‘On my shoulders.’

‘And where are your shoulders?’

‘In a room.’

‘And where is the room?’

‘In a building.’

‘And where is the building?’

‘In Russia.’

‘And where is Russia?’

‘In the deepest trouble, Vasily Ivanovich.’

‘Stop that,’ he shouted seriously. You can joke when your commander orders you to. Answer.’

‘Well, of course, on the Earth.’

‘And where is the Earth?’

‘In the Universe.’

‘And where is the Universe?’

I thought for a second.

‘In itself.’

‘And where is this in itself?’

In my consciousness.’

‘Well then, Petka, that means your consciousness is in your consciousness, doesn’t it?’

‘It seems so.’

‘Right,’ said Chapaev, straightening his moustache. ‘Now listen to me carefully. Tell me, what place is it in?’

‘I do not understand, Vasily Ivanovich. The concept of place is one o the categories o consciousness, and so…

‘Where is this place? In what place is this concept of place located?’

‘Well now, let us say that it is not really a place. We could-’ I stopped dead. Yes, I thought, that is where he is leading me. If I use the word reality, he will reduce everything to my own thoughts once again. And then he will ask where they are located. I will tell him they are in my head, and then… A good gambit. Of course, I could resort to quotations, but then, I thought in astonishment, any of the systems which I can cite either sidesteps this breach in the logic of thought or plugs it with a couple of dubious Latinisms. Yes, Chapaev was very far indeed from being simple. Of course, there is always the foolproof method of concluding any argument by pigeon-holing your opponent - nothing could be easier than to declare that everything he is trying to demonstrate is already well known under such-and-such a name, and human thought has advanced a long way since then. But I felt ashamed to behave like some self-satisfied evening-class student who has leafed ahead through a few pages of the philosophy textbook during breaks. And had not I myself only recently told some St Petersburg philosopher, who had launched into a drunken discussion of the Greek roots of Russian communism, that philosophy would be better called sophisilly?

Chapaev laughed.

‘And ust where can human thought advance to?’ he asked.

‘Eh?’ I asked in confusion.

‘Advance from what? Where to?’

I decided that in my absent-mindedness I must have spoken out loud.

‘Vasily Ivanovich, let us talk about all that when we are sober. I am no philosopher. Let us have a drink instead.’

‘If you were a philosopher, said Chapaev, ‘I wouldn’t trust you with anything more important than mucking out the stables. But you command one of my squadrons. At Lozovaya you understood everything just fine. What s happening to you? Too afraid, are you? Or maybe too happy?’

‘I do not remember anything,’ I said, once again experiencing that strange tension in all my nerves. ‘I do not remember.’

‘Ah, Petka.’ Chapaev sighed, filling the glasses with moonshine. ‘I just don’t know what to make of you. Understand yourself first of all.’

We drank. Mechanically I reached for an onion and bit out a large chunk.

‘Perhaps we should go for a breath of air before bed?’ asked Chapaev, lighting up a papyrosa.

‘We could,’ I replied, replacing the onion on the table.

There had obviously been a brief shower of rain while I was sleeping and the slope of the gully that rose towards the manor-house was damp and slippery. I discovered that I was absolutely drunk - having almost reached the top, I slipped and tumbled back down into the wet grass. My head was flung back on my neck and I saw above me the sky full of stars. It was so beautiful that for several seconds I simply lay there in silence, staring upwards. Chapaev gave me his hand and helped me to my feet. Once we had scrambled out on to level ground, I looked up again and was suddenly struck by the thought that it must have been ages since I had last seen the starry sky, although it had been there all the time right above my head, and all I had to do was look up. I laughed.

‘What’s up?’ asked Chapaev.

‘Nothing special,’ I said and pointed up at the sky. ‘The sky is beautiful.’

Chapaev looked upwards, swaying on his feet.

‘Beautiful?’ he queried thoughtfully. ‘What is beauty?’

‘Come now,’ I said. ‘What do you mean? Beauty is the most perfect objectivization of the will at the highest possible level of its cognizability.’

Chapaev looked at the sky for another few seconds and then transferred his gaze to a large puddle which lay at our feet and spat the stub of his papyrosa into it. The Universe reflected in the smooth surface of the water suffered a momentary cataclysm as all its constellations shuddered and were transformed into a twinkling blur.

‘What I’ve always found astounding.’ he said, ‘is the starry sky beneath our feet and the Immanuel Kant within us.’

‘I find it quite incomprehensible, Vasily Ivanovich, how a man who confuses Kant with Schopenhauer could have been given the command of a division.’

Chapaev looked at me with dull eyes and opened his mouth to say something, but at this point we heard a clatter of wheels and the whinnying of horses. Someone was driving up to the house.

‘It is probably Kotovsky and Anna.’ I said. ‘It would seem, Vasily Ivanovich, that your machine-gunner has a penchant for strong personalities in Russian shirts.’

‘So Kotovsky’s in town, is he? Why didn’t you say so?’

He turned and walked quickly away, completely forgetting about me. I plodded slowly after him as far as the corner of the house and then stopped. The carriage stood by the porch, while Kotovsky himself was in the act of assisting Anna out of it. When he saw Chapaev approaching, Kotovsky saluted and went to meet him and they embraced. This was followed by a series of exclamations and slaps of the kind that occur at every meeting between two men who both wish to demonstrate how well they are able to keep their spirits up as they wander through the shifting sands of life. They wandered in the direction of the house, while Anna remained beside the carriage. Acting on a sudden impulse I set off towards her -on the way I almost fell again when I stumbled over an empty shell crate, and I had a brief presentiment that I would regret my impetuousness.

‘Anna, please! Do not go!’

She stopped and turned her head towards me. My God, how beautiful she was at that moment!

‘Anna,’ I blurted out, for some reason pressing my hands to my breast as I spoke, ‘please believe me when I say… I low badly I feel just thinking about my behaviour in the restaurant. But you must admit that you did give me cause. I understand that this unremittingly self-assertive suffragism is not the real you at all, it is nothing more than conformity to a certain aesthetic formula, and that is merely the result-’

She suddenly pushed me away.

‘Get away from me, Pyotr, for God’s sake,’ she said with a frown. ‘You smell of onions. I’m willing to forgive you everything, but not that.’

I turned and rushed into the house. My face was burning so hotly that one could probably have lit a cigarette on it, and all the way to my room - I have no idea how I managed to find it in the darkness - 1 roundly cursed Chapaev with his moonshine and his onions. I flung myself on to the bed and fell into a state close to coma, no doubt similar to the state from which I had emerged that morning.