Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘So I just cut and that’s all?’

‘Hang on a second. I’ll be right with you.’

Kawabata ran across the room and picked up his big sword, then came back to Serdyuk and stood behind him.

‘You don’t have to cut very deep. I’ll have to cut deep though. I won’t have a second to assist. You’re lucky. You must have lived a good life.’

Serdyuk smiled wanly.

‘Just an ordinary life,’ he said. ‘Like all the others.’

‘But then, you are dying like a true warrior,’ said Kawabata. ‘I’ m all set. Let’s do it on the count of three. ‘

‘Okay,’ said Serdyuk.

‘Take a deep breath,’ said Kawabata, ‘and we’re off. One… Two… two and a half… And three!’

Serdyuk stuck the sword into his belly.

The paper jammed tight against the T-shirt. It wasn’t particularly painful, but the blade felt extremely cold.

The fax machine on the floor began to ring.

‘That’s it,’ said Kawabata. ‘And now up and to the right. Harder, harder… That’s it, that’s right.’

Serdyuk’s legs began to tremble.

‘Now a quick turn in towards the centre and push it into yourself with both hands. That’s it, that’s it… That’s right… Now just an inch more…’

‘I can’t,’ Serdyuk said with a struggle, ‘everything’s on fire!’

‘So what did you expect?’ said Kawabata. ‘just a moment’

He skipped over to the fax machine and picked up the receiver.

‘Hello! Yes! That’s right, this is the place. Yes, a 1996 model, it’s done two thousand miles.’

Serdyuk dropped the sword on the floor and pressed his hands to his bleeding belly.

‘Quickly!’ he wheezed. ‘Quickly!’

Kawabata frowned and gestured for him to wait.

‘What?’ he yelled into the receiver. ‘What do you mean, three and a half thousand is too much? I paid five thousand for it only a year ago!’

The light in Serdyuk’s eyes slowly faded and went out, like the lights in a cinema just before the film. He began slowly slumping over to one side, but before his shoulder reached the floor, all awareness of his body had disappeared; there was nothing left but an all-consuming agony. Through a red, pulsating mist he heard Kawabata’s voice:

‘What d’you mean damaged? Where’s it damaged? You call two scratches on the bumper damage? What? What? Arsehole yourself! You shit, you fucking wanker! What? You can go fuck yourself!’

The receiver clanged back into place and the fax machine immediately began ringing again.

Serdyuk noticed that the space in which the telephone was ringing and Kawabata was swearing and everything else was happening was somewhere very far away from him; it was such an insignificant segment of reality that he had to focus with all his strength to follow what was going on there. At the same time, there was absolutely no sense in this act of concentration: Serdyuk realized that this concentration was life, it turned out that his entire, long existence as a human being, with all its longings, hopes and fears, had been nothing more than a fleeting thought that had momentarily attracted his attention. And now Serdyuk - although it was not really Serdyuk at all - was drifting through a qualityless void and he sensed he was coming close to something huge that radiated an intolerable heat. The most terrible thing was that this immense thing that breathed fire was approaching him from behind, which meant that it was impossible for him to see what it actually was. The sensation was quite unbearable, and Serdyuk began feverishly searching for the spot where he had left behind the old, familiar world. By some miracle he found it, and Kawabata’s voice sounded in his head like the tolling of a bell:

‘On the islands they didn’t believe at first that you would manage it. But I knew you would. And now, allow me to render you the final service. Huh-u-up!’

For a long time after that there was nothing at all - although it was not really even correct to say that it was a long time, because there was no time either. And then there was a cough, «md a squeaking of floorboards and Timur Timurovich’s voice said:

‘Yes, Senya. They found you there like that by the heater with the neck of a broken bottle in your hand. Who were you really drinking with, can you remember?’

There was no answer.

‘Tatyana Pavlovna.’ said Timur Timurovich, ‘two cc’s please. Yes, now.’

‘Timur Timurovich,’ Volodin said unexpectedly from the corner, ‘they were spirits, you know.’

‘Oh yes?’ Timur Timurovich asked politely. ‘Who were spirits?’

‘All of them from the House of Taira. I swear they were. And he behaved with them like he wanted to die. Probably he really did want to.’

Then why is he still alive?’ asked Timur Timurovich.

‘He was wearing that T-shirt with the Olympic symbols. You remember the year they held the Olympic Games in Moscow, don’t you? Lots and lots of those little symbols, right? He was cutting through the T-shirt.’

‘What of it?’

‘Well, we should think of them as magic hieroglyphs. I read in a book about a case in ancient times when they drew protective symbols all over this monk, but they forgot about his ears. And when the spirits of Taira came, they took his ears, because as far as they were concerned everything else was invisible.’

‘But why did they come to him? I mean, to the monk?’

‘He played the flute very well.’

‘Ah, the flute,’ said Timur Timurovich. ‘Well, that’s logical enough, I suppose. But don’t you find it odd that these spectres are «Dynamo» fans?’

‘There’s nothing surprising about that,’ Volodin replied. ‘Some spectres support «Spartak», others support the Army Club. Why shouldn’t some of them support «Dynamo»?’

‘Dinama! Dinama! Where the fuck you goin’?’

I leapt up from my bed. A man was chasing a horse around the yard and yelling: ‘Dinama! Where d’ya think you’re off to? Come ‘ere, yer bugger!’ There were horses snorting and whinnying under my window; looking out, I saw a huge jostling crowd of Red Army I men who had not been there the day before. I could only actually tell that they were Red Army men from their ragamuffin appearance: they were clearly dressed in the first garments that had come to hand, for the most part in civilian garb, and it seemed that their preferred method for equipping themselves must have been pillage. Standing in the centre of the crowd was a man wearing a pointed Red Army helmet with a crookedly tacked-on red star, waving his arms about and issuing some kind of instruction. He bore a striking resemblance to the weavers’ commissar, Furmanov, whom I had seen at the meeting in front of the Yaroslavl Station in Moscow, except that now he had a crimson scar from a sabre cut across his cheek.

I did not, however, waste long contemplating this motley crew, for my attention was drawn to the carriage standing in the very centre of the yard. Four black horses had been harnessed to a long open landau with pneumatic tyres, soft leather seats and a frame made of expensive timber which still bore lingering traces of gilt. There was something quite unhearably nostalgic in this object of luxury, this fragment of a world which had disappeared for ever into oblivion; its inhabitants had naively supposed that they would be riding into the future in vehicles just like this one. In the event, it was only the vehicles which had survived their jaunt into the future, and only then at the cost of transformation into parodies of Hunnish war chariots - such were the associations triggered by the sight of the three Lewis machine-guns tied together by a metal beam which had been installed in the rear section of the landau.

As I moved back from the window I suddenly remembered that in Russian the soldiers called this kind of chariot I tachanka. The origins of this word were mysterious and obscure, and although I mentally reviewed all of the possible etymologies as I pulled on my boots, I could not find one that really suited the case. I did, however, come up with a humorous play on words in English: tachanka - ‘touch Anka’. But since the memory of my declaration of feelings the previous day to the lady in question was enough to bring a sullen flush to my cheeks, I felt unable to share my joke with anyone.