Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

Meanwhile Kawabata finished pushing his brush around the sheet of paper, blew on it and showed it to Serdyuk. It was a large chrysanthemum drawn in black ink.

‘What is it?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘Oh,’ said Kawabata, ‘it’s a chrysanthemum. You understand, when a new member joins us, it is such a great joy for the entire Taira clan that it would be inappropriate to entrust it to marks on paper. In such cases, we usually inform our leaders by drawing a flower. What’s more, this is the very flower of which we were just speaking. It symbolizes your life, which now belongs to the Taira clan, and at the same time it testifies to your final awareness of its fleeting ephemerality…’

‘I get it,’ said Serdyuk.

Kawabata blew on the sheet of paper once more, then set it in the crack of the fax machine and began dialling some incredibly long number.

He got through only at the third attempt. The fax hummed into life, a little green lamp on its corner lit up and the page slowly slid out of sight into the black maw.

Kawabata stared fixedly at the fax machine, without moving or changing his pose. Several long and weary minutes went by, and then the fax began to hum again and another sheet of paper slid out from underneath its black body. Serdyuk understood immediately that this was the reply.

Kawabata waited until the full length of the page had emerged and then tore it out of the fax, glanced at it and looked slowly round at Serdyuk.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘my sincere congratulations! The reply is most propitious.’

He held out the sheet of paper to Serdyuk, who took it and saw a different drawing - this time it was a long, slightly bent stick with some kind of pattern on it and something sticking out from it at one side.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘lt’s a sword,’ Kawabata said solemnly, ‘the symbol of your new status in life. And since I never had any doubt that this would be the outcome, allow me to present you, so to speak, with your passport.’

With these words Kawabata held out the short sword he had bought earlier in the tin-plated pavilion.

Perhaps it was Kawabata’s fixed, unblinking stare, or perhaps it was the result of some chemical reaction in his own alcohol-drenched metabolism, but for some reason Serdyuk became aware suddenly of the significance and solemnity of the moment. He almost went down on his knees, but just in time he remembered that it was the medieval European knights who did that, not the Japanese - and not even the knights, if he thought about it, but only the actors from the Odessa film studios who were playing them in some intolerably dreary old Soviet film. So he just held out his hands and took a cautious grip on the cold instrument of death. There was a design on the scabbard that he hadn’t noticed before: it was a drawing of three cranes in flight - the gold wire impressed into the black lacquer of the scabbard traced a light and dashing contour of exceptional beauty.

‘Your soul,’ said Kawabata, gazing into Serdyuk’s eyes again, ‘lies in this scabbard.’

‘What a beautiful drawing,’ said Serdyuk. ‘You know, it reminds me of a song I know, about cranes. How does it go, now? «… And in their flight I see a narrow gap, perhaps that is a place for me…»‘

‘Yes, yes,’ Kawabata cut in. ‘And why would a man need any greater gap? The Lord Buddha can easily fit the entire world with all its problems into the gap between two cranes. Why, it would be lost in the gaps between the feathers of either of them… How poetical this evening is! Why don’t we have another drink? For the place in the flight of cranes which you have finally occupied?’

Serdyuk thought he sensed something ominous in Kawabata’s words, but he paid no attention, because Kawabata could hardly have known the song was about the souls of dead soldiers.

‘Gladly,’ said Serdyuk, ‘in just a while. I…’

Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door. Kawabata turned and shouted something in Japanese, the panel slid to one side and a man’s face, also with southern features, appeared in the gap. The face said something and Kawabata nodded.

‘I shall have to leave you for a few minutes,’ he said to Serdyuk. ‘It seems there is some serious news coming in. If you wish, please look through any of the print albums while you are waiting,’ - he nodded in the direction of the bookshelf-’or simply amuse yourself

Serdyuk nodded. Kawabata quickly left the room and closed the panel behind him. Serdyuk went over to the shelves and glanced at the long row of different-coloured spines, then went over to the corner of the room and sat down on a bamboo mat, leaning his head against the wall. He had no appetite left for all those prints.

It was quiet in the building. He could hear someone hammering on a wall somewhere above him - they must be installing a metal door. Behind the sliding panel he could hear the whispers of the girls swearing at each other; they were very close, but he could hardly make out any of their obscenities, and the muffled voices mingled together to produce a gentle, calming rustling sound, as though there were a garden behind the wall and the leaves of the blossoming cherries were murmuring in the wind.

Serdyuk was woken by a low moaning. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been asleep, but it must have been quite a long time - Kawabata was sitting in the centre of the room, already changed and shaved. He was wearing a white shirt and his hair, so recently tousled and untidy, was combed back neatly. He was the source of the moaning that had woken Serdyuk - it was some kind of mournful melody, a long-drawn-out dirge. Kawabata was holding the long sword in his hands and wiping it with a white piece of cloth. Serdyuk noticed that Kawabata’s shirt was unbuttoned, and his hairless chest and belly were exposed.

Kawabata realized that Serdyuk had woken up and turned to face him with a broad smile.

‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.

‘I wasn’t exactly sleeping,’ said Serdyuk, ‘I just…’

‘Had a doze,’ said Kawabata, ‘I understand. All of us are merely dozing in this life. And we only wake when it ends. Do you recall how we forded the brook when we were walking back to the office?’

‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk, ‘that stream coming out of the pipe,’

‘Pipe or no pipe, that is not important. Do you recall the bubbles on the surface of that brook?’

‘Yes. They were big ones all right.’

‘Truly,’ said Kawabata, raising the blade to the level of his eyes and gazing at it intently, ‘truly this world is like bubbles on the water. Is that not so?’

Serdyuk thought that Kawabata was right, and he wanted very much to say something so that his companion would realize how well he understood his feelings and how completely he shared them.

‘Not even that,’ he said, raising himself up on one elbow. ‘It’s like… let me think now… It’s like a photograph of those bubbles that has fallen down behind a chest of drawers and been gnawed by the rats.’

Kawabata smiled once again.

‘You are a genuine poet,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt at all about that.’

‘And what’s more.’ Serdyuk went on, inspired, ‘it could well be that the rats got to it even before it had been developed.’

‘Splendid,’ said Kawabata, ‘quite splendid. This is the poetry of words, but there is also the poetry of deeds. I hope that your final poem without words will prove a match for the verses that have brought me so much delight today.’

‘What d’you mean?’

Kawabata carefully set his sword down on a bamboo mat.

‘Life is uncertain and changeable,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In the early morning no one can say what awaits him in the evening.’

‘Has something happened, then?’