Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘Oh, yes. You know, of course, that business is like war. The Taira clan has an enemy, a mighty enemy - Minamoto.’

‘Minamoto?’ echoed Serdyuk, feeling a shiver run down his spine. ‘So what?’

‘Today news came that cunning treachery on the Tokyo stock exchange has allowed the Minamoto Group to acquire a controlling interest in Taira incorporated. A certain English bank and the Singapore mafia were involved, but that is not important. We are destroyed. And our enemy is triumphant.’

Serdyuk said nothing for a while as he tried to work out what this meant. Only one thing was clear, though - it didn’t mean anything good.

‘But you and I,’ said Kawabata, ‘we two samurai of the clan of Taira - surely we shall not allow our spirits to be overcast by the shifting shadows of these insignificant bubbles of existence?’

‘Er… no,’ Serdyuk answered.

Kawabata laughed fiercely and his eyes flashed.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Minamoto shall not behold our degradation and dishonour. One should leave this life as the white cranes disappear into the clouds. Let not a single petty feeling remain in our hearts at a moment of such beauty.’

He swung round sharply where he sat, turning the bamboo mat with him, and bowed to Serdyuk.

‘I wish to ask you a favour,’ he said. ‘When I rip open my belly, please cut off my head!’

‘What?’

‘My head, please cut off my head. We call this rendering the final service. And a samurai who is asked to do this may not refuse without covering himself in great dishonour.’

‘But I never… That is, before…’

‘It’s very simple. One stroke and it’s done. Wh-oo-oosh!’

Kawabata waved his hands rapidly through the air.

‘But I am afraid I won’t manage it,’ said Serdyuk. ‘l don’t have •my experience of that kind of thing.’

Kawabata pondered for a moment, then suddenly his face darkened as though he had been struck by some exceptionally unpleasant thought. He slapped his hand against his tatami.

‘It’s good that I am leaving this life soon,’ he said, looking up guiltily at Serdyuk. ‘What a coarse and ignorant brute I am!’

He covered his face with his hands and began rocking from side to side.

Serdyuk quietly stood up, tiptoed over to the screen, silently slid it to one side and went out into the corridor. The cold concrete felt unpleasant under his bare feet, and Serdyuk suddenly realized that while he and Kawabata had been wandering around dark and dubious alleyways in search of sake, his socks and shoes had been standing in the corridor by the door, where he’d left them in the afternoon; he couldn’t remember what he’d been wearing on his feet at all, just as he couldn’t recall how he and Kawabata had got out on to the street or how they’d got back in.

‘Split, I’ve got to split right now,’ he thought as he turned the corner in the corridor. ‘First I split, then there’ll be time for a bit of thinking.’

The security guard rose from his stool as Serdyuk approached.

‘And where are we off to at a time like this?’ he asked with a yawn. ‘It’s half past three in the morning.’

‘We got a bit involved,’ said Serdyuk. You know, with the interview.’

‘Okay then,’ said the security guard. ‘Let’s have your pass.’

‘What pass?’

‘To get out.’

‘But you let me in without any pass.’

‘That’s right,’ said the security guard, ‘but to get out, you need a pass.’

The lamp on the desk cast a dim glow on Serdyuk’s shoes standing over by the wall. The door was only a yard away from item, and beyond the door lay freedom. Serdyuk took a small step towards the shoes. Then another one. The security guard cast an indifferent glance at his bare feet.

‘And then,’ he said, toying with his rubber truncheon, ‘we’ve got regulations. The alarm’s on. The door’s locked until eight o’clock in the morning. If I open it the pigs’ll be round in a flash. that means hassle, official statements. So I can’t open up. Not unless there’s a fire. Or a flood.’

‘All this world,’ Serdyuk began ingratiatingly, ‘is like bubbles en the water.’

Security guard laughed and shook his head.

‘Sure, sure,’ he said. ‘We know what kind of place it is we are in. But you’ve got to understand where I’m coming from, just imagine that along with those bubbles there’s a set of instructions drifting along on the water. And just as long as it’s reflected in one of those bubbles, we lock up at eleven and open tie door at eight. And that’s it.’

Serdyuk sensed a note of uncertainty in the security guard’s voice and he tried pressing his point home a little harder.

‘Мг Kawabata will be very surprised at your behaviour,’ he answered. ‘You’re supposed be responsible for security in a series firm, and you need such simple things explained to you. It m u st be obvious that if the world is only a mirage…’

‘A mirage, a mirage,’ said the security guard in a thoughtful voice, and he focused his eyes on a point that was obviously away beyond the wall. ‘We know all about that. We haven’t jut started here, you know. And we have training sessions every week. But I’m not trying to tell you that door’s real. Shall I tell you what I think?’

‘Go on then.’

‘That way I reckon, there isn’t any substantial door at all, tlere’s nothing but a provisional totality of essentially empty elements of perception.’

‘Precisely!’ said Serdyuk, delighted, and he took another little step in the direction of his shoes.

‘But there’s no way I’m opening up that totality before eight o’clock,’ said the security guard, slapping himself on the palm with his rubber truncheon.

‘Why?’ asked Serdyuk.

The security guard shrugged.

‘Karma for you,’ he said, ‘dharma for me, but it’s all really just the same old crap. The void. And even that doesn’t really exist’

‘Ye-es,’ said Serdyuk. ‘That’s some serious training they give you.’

‘What’d you expect? The Japanese security forces run it.’

‘So what am I supposed to do?’ Serdyuk asked.

‘What can you do? Wait until eight. And ask them to write you out a pass.’

Serdyuk cast a final glance at the security guard’s burly shoulders and the truncheon in his hands, then slowly turned on his heel and started trudging back to Kawabata’s room. He had the unbearable feeling that there were words which would have made the guard give in and open the door, but that he had failed to find them. If I’d read the Sutras, I’d know what was trumps, he thought dejectedly.

‘Listen,’ the security guard called out behind him, ‘better not go walking about without your geta. The floor in here’s concrete. You’ll get a chill in your kidneys.’

When he reached Kawabata’s office again and noiselessly slid the panel open, Serdyuk noticed there was a strong smell in the room of stale drink and female sweat. Kawabata was still sitting there on the floor, his face in his hands, rocking from side to side, as though he hadn’t even noticed that Serdyuk had gone out.

‘Mr Kawabata,’ Serdyuk called quietly.

Kawabata lowered his hands.

‘Are you feeling bad?’

‘I feel terrible,’ said Kawabata, ‘I feel absolutely terrible. If I had a hundred bellies, I would slit them all without a moment’s delay. Never in my life have I felt such shame as I am feeling now.’

‘Why, what’s the problem?’ Serdyuk asked sympathetically, kneeling down to face the Japanese.

‘I made bold to ask you to render me the final service without thinking that there would be no one to render the service to you if I commit seppuku first. Such monstrous dishonour.’