Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

I could not understand where we were. The hills and the summer breeze had completely disappeared; we were surrounded by intense darkness, and scattered all around us in it, for as far as the eye could see, were the bright spots of camp-fires. They were arranged in an unnaturally precise pattern, as though they stood on the intersections of an invisible grid which divided the world up into an infinite number of squares. The distance between the fires was about fifty paces, so that if you stood at one it was impossible to see the people sitting at the next one; all that could be made out were vague, blurred silhouettes, but how many people there were, and whether they were people at all, was impossible to say with any degree of certainty. The strangest thing of all, however, was that the ground beneath our feet had also changed beyond recognition, and we were now standing on an ideally level plane covered with something like scrubby, shrivelled grass, but without a single projection or depression anywhere on its surface - that much was clear simply from the absolutely perfect patterning of the fires.

‘What is all this?’ I asked in confusion.

‘Aha!’ said the baron. ‘Now, perhaps, I think you can see.’

‘I can.’ I said.

‘This is one of the branches of the world beyond the grave.’ said Jungern, ‘the one for which I am responsible. For the most part the people who find their way here were warriors during their lifetimes. Perhaps you have heard of Valhalla?’

‘Yes, I have,’ I said, feeling an absurdly childish desire welling up in me to grab hold of the baron’s robe.

‘Well, this is it. Unfortunately, however, it’s not only warriors who find their way here, but all kinds of other trash who have gone in for shooting. Bandits, murderers the range of scum we get is amazing, which is why I have to make the rounds and check on things. Sometimes I even feel as though I were employed here in the capacity of a forest warden.’

The baron sighed.

‘But then, as I recall,’ he said, with a faint note of sadness in his voice, ‘when I was a child I wanted to be a forester. I tell you what, Pyotr, why don’t you take a good grip on my sleeve? It’s not so simple to walk around here.’

‘I do not quite understand,’ I answered with relief, ‘but by all means, if you say so.’

1 took a tight hold on the cloth of his sleeve and we began moving forward. One thing immediately struck me as strange; the baron was not walking particularly fast, certainly no quicker than he was before the world had been so horrifyingly transformed, but the camp-fires past which we made our way receded behind us at a quite startling rate. It was as though he and I were walking at a leisurely pace along a platform which was being towed at incredible speed by a train, and the direction in which the train moved was determined by the direction in which the baron turned. One of the camp-fires appeared ahead, came rushing towards us and then stopped dead at our very feet when the baron stopped walking.

There were two men sitting by the fire. They were wet and half-naked, and they looked like Romans, with only short sheets wrapped around their bodies. They were both armed, one with a revolver and the other with a double-barrelled shotgun, and they were covered all over with repulsive bullet wounds. No sooner did they catch sight of the baron than they fell to the ground and literally began trembling with an overwhelming, physically palpable terror.

‘Who are you?’ the baron asked in a low voice.

‘Hit men for Seryozha the Mongoloid,’ one of them said without raising his head,

‘How did you get here?’ the baron asked.

‘We was topped by mistake, boss.’

‘I’m not your boss,’ said the baron, ‘and no one gets topped by mistake.’

‘Honest, it was by mistake,’ the second man said in a plaintive voice. ‘In the sauna. They thought Mongoloid was in there signing a contract.’

‘What contract?’ asked Jungern, raising his eyebrows in astonishment.

‘We had to pay back this loan. Slav-East Oil transferred the money on an irrevocable letter of credit, and the invoice didn’t go through. So these two hulks from Ultima Thule came down…’

‘Irrevocable letter of credit?’ the baron interrupted. ‘Ultima Thule? I see.’

He leant down and breathed on the flame, which immediately shrank to a fraction of its size, changing from a hot roaring torch into a pale tongue only a few inches in height. The effect this produced on the two half-naked men was astounding - they stiffened into complete immobility, and their backs were instantly covered in hoarfrost.

‘Warriors, eh?’ said the baron. ‘How do you like that? The people who find their way into Valhalla these days. Seryozha the Mongoloid… It’s that stupid rule about having a sword in your hand that’s to blame.’

‘What has happened to them?’ I asked.

‘Whatever was supposed to happen,’ said the baron. ‘I don’t know. But I can take a look.’

He blew once again on the barely visible blue flame and it flared up with its old energy. The baron stared into it for several seconds with his eyes half-closed.

‘It seems likely they will be bulls in a meat-production complex. That kind of indulgence is rather common nowadays, partly because of the infinite mercy of the Buddha, and partly because of the chronic shortage of meat in Russia.’

I was astounded by the camp-fire, now that I had the time to study it in detail. In fact, it could not really be called a camp-fire at all: there was no sign of firewood in the flames instead they sprang from a fused opening in the ground shaped like a star with five narrow points.

‘Tell me, baron, what is this pentagram beneath the flames?’

‘A strange question,’ said the baron. ‘This is the eternal flame of the compassion of Buddha. And what you call a pentagram is really the emblem of the Order of the October Star, Where else should the eternal flame of mercy burn, if not above that emblem?’

‘But what is the Order of the October Star?’ I asked, peering at his chest. ‘I have heard the phrase in the most varied of cir cumstances, but no one has ever explained to me what it means.’

‘The October Star?’ Jungern replied. ‘It’s really very simple It’s just like Christmas, you know - the Catholics have it in December, the Orthodox Christians have it in January, but they’re all celebrating the same birthday. This is the same sort of thing. Reforms of the calendar, mistakes made by scribes - in other words, although it’s generally believed to have happened in May, in actual fact it was in October.’

‘But what was?’

‘You astonish me, Pyotr. it’s one of the best-known stories in the world. There was once a man who could not live as others did. He tried to understand what everything meant - all the things that happened to him from day to day; and who he himself was - the person to whom all those things were happening. And then, one night in October when he was sitting under the crown of a tree, he raised his eyes to the sky and saw a bright star. At that moment he understood everything with such absolute clarity that to this day the echo of that distant second

The baron fell silent as if he were seeking for words to express himself, but was unable to find anything appropriate.

‘You’d better have a talk with Chapaev.’ he concluded. ‘He enjoys telling people about it. The main thing though, the essential point, is that ever since that second this flame of compassion has been burning for all living beings, a flame which cannot be completely extinguished even in the line of administrative duty.’

I looked around. The panorama surrounding us was truly magnificent. I suddenly felt that I was viewing one of the most ancient pictures in the world - an immense horde which has set its camp-fires for a night halt in the open field, with warriors squatting at each of the fires, dreaming avidly into the flames, where they see the phantom forms of gold, cattle and women from the lands that lie in their path. But where was this horde moving, and what could its men be dreaming of as they sat beside these camp-fires? I turned to Jungern.