Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘What are you doing?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘l am so ashamed,’ said Kawabata. ‘I can’t carry on living after suffering such dishonour.’

He sat down on the asphalt surface, unwrapped the bundle, took out the sword and bared its blade - a glimmering patch of lilac slithered along it, reflected from the neon lamp above their heads. Serdyuk finally realized what Kawabata was about to do and managed to grab hold of his hands.

‘Stop that will you, please,’ he said in genuine fright. ‘How can you give such importance to trifles like that?’

‘Will you be able to forgive me?’ Kawabata asked emotionally, rising to his feet.

‘Please, please, let’s just forget about this stupid misunderstanding. And anyway, a love of animals is a noble feeling. Why should you be ashamed of that?’

Kawabata thought for a moment and the wrinkles on his brow disappeared.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘l really was motivated by sympathy for a tired animal, not the desire to show that I understood something better than you. There really is nothing dishonourable about that. I may have said something stupid, but I have not lost face.’

He put the sword back into its scabbard, swayed on his feet and applied himself to the bottle once again.

‘If some petty misunderstanding should arise between two noble men, surely it will crumble to dust if they both attack it with the keen edge of their minds,’ he said, handing the bottle to Serdyuk.

Serdyuk finished off what was left.

‘Of course it will,’ he said, ‘That’s as clear as day, that is.’

Kawabata raised his head and looked dreamily up at the sky.

‘And who needs words with stars up in the sky?’ he declaimed. ‘How very fine. You know, I would really like to celebrate this remarkable moment with a gesture of some kind. Why don’t we release our horses? Let them graze on this beautiful plain, and retreat into the mountains during the nights. Surely they have deserved their freedom?’

‘You’re a very kind-hearted man,’ said Serdyuk.

Kawabata walked unsteadily over to the tree, drew the sword from its scabbard and sliced off the lower branch with a movement that was almost invisible, it fell on to the asphalt of the pavement. Kawabata waved his arms in the air and shouted something loud and incomprehensible - Serdyuk realized that he was driving away the horses. Then he came back, picked up the bottle and with disappointment tipped out the last few drops on to the ground.

‘It’s getting cold,’ Serdyuk observed, looking around and instinctively sensing that any moment now the damp Moscow air would weave itself into the solid shape of a police patrol. ‘Shouldn’t we be getting back to the office?’

‘Of course,’ said Kawabata, ‘of course. And we can have a bite to eat there too.’

Serdyuk didn’t remember the way back at all. He only became aware of himself again when they were back in the same room from which their journey had started. Kawabata and he were sitting on the floor and eating noodles out of soup plates. The second bottle was already half-empty, but Serdyuk realized that he was completely sober and in a distinctly exalted mood. Kawabata must have been feeling good as well, because he was humming quietly and beating time with his chopsticks, sending slim vermicelli snakes flying off in all directions around the room. Some of them landed on Serdyuk, but he didn’t find it annoying.

When he’d finished eating, Kawabata set his plate aside and turned towards Serdyuk.

‘Now tell me,’ he said, ‘what does a man want after returning home from a dangerous journey, once he has satisfied his hunger and thirst?’

‘l don’t know,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Round here they usually turn on the television.’

‘Nah-ah,’ said Kawabata. ‘In Japan we make the finest televisions in the world, but that doesn’t prevent us from realizing that a television is just a small transparent window in the pipe of a spiritual garbage chute. I wasn’t thinking of those unfortunates who spend their whole lives in a trance watching an endless stream of swill and only feeling alive when they recognize a familiar tin can. I’m talking about people who are worthy of mention in our conversation.’

Serdyuk shrugged.

‘Can’t think of anything in particular,’ he said.

Kawabata screwed up his eyes, moved closer to Serdyuk and smiled, so that just for a moment he really did look like a cunning Japanese.

‘You remember, just a little while ago, when we set the horses loose, then forded the Tenzin river and walked on foot to the gates of Rasemon, you were talking of the warmth of another body lying beside you? Surely this is what your spirit was seeking at that moment?’

Serdyuk shuddered.

He’s gay, he thought, I should have guessed it right from the start.

Kawabata moved even closer.

‘After all, it is one of the few remaining natural feelings which a man may still experience. And we did agree that what Russia needs is alchemical wedlock with the East, didn’t we?’

‘We did,’ said Serdyuk, squirming inwardly. ‘Of course it does. I was just thinking about it only yesterday.’

‘Good,’ said Kawabata, ‘but there is nothing that happens to nations and countries that is not repeated in symbolic form in the life of the individuals who live in those countries and make up those nations. Russia, in the final analysis, is you. So if you spoke sincerely, and of course I cannot at all believe otherwise, then let us perform this ritual immediately. Let us, as it were, reinforce our words and thoughts with a symbolic fusion of basic principles…’

Kawabata bowed and winked.

‘In any case, we shall be working together, and there is nothing which brings men so close together as…’

He winked again and smiled. Serdyuk bared his teeth mechanically in response and noticed that one of Kawabata’s own teeth was missing. But there were other things that struck him as far more significant: first of all, Serdyuk remembered the danger of AIDS, and then he recalled that his underwear wasn’t particularly clean. Kawabata got up and went across to the cupboard, rummaged in it and tossed Serdyuk a piece of cloth. It was a blue cap, exactly like those shown on the heads of the men on the sake glasses. Kawabata put one on his head, gestured for Serdyuk to do the same and clapped his hands.

Immediately one of the panels in the wall slid to one side and Serdyuk became aware of a rather wild-sounding music. Behind the panel, in a small room that looked more like a broom cupboard, there was a group of four or five girls wearing long colourful kimonos and holding musical instruments. For a moment Serdyuk thought they weren’t actually wearing kimonos, but some kind of long, badly cut dressing-gowns belted at the waist with towels and tucked up so as to look like kimonos, but then he decided that dressing-gowns like that were essentially kimonos after all. The girls waved their heads from side to side and smiled as they played. One had a balalaika, another one was banging together a pair of painted wooden Palekh spoons, and another two were holding small plastic harmonicas which made a fearful, piercing squeaking noise; this was only natural, Serdyuk thought, since harmonicas like that were never actually made to play on, merely to create a happy atmosphere at children’s parties.

The girls’ smiles were a little forced and the layer of rouge on their cheeks looked a bit too thick. Their features were not even slightly Japanese, either - they were just ordinary Russian girls, and not even particularly beautiful. One of them looked like a student from Serdyuk’s year at college, a girl called Masha.

‘Woman, Semyon,’ Kawabata said thoughtfully, ‘Is by no means created for our downfall. In that marvellous moment when she envelops us in her body, it is as though we are transported to that happy land from which we came and to which we shall return after death. I love women and I am not ashamed to admit it. And every time I am joined with one of them, it is as though I…’