Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘Tell me, baron, why are they all sitting apart, without visiting each others’ fires?’

‘You try walking over to one of them.’ said Jungern.

The distance to the nearest camp-fire, where five or six people seemed to be warming themselves, was no more than fifty paces. I looked quizzically at Jungern.

‘Walk over,’ he repeated.

I shrugged and began walking, without feeling any special or unusual sensation. Probably I had been walking for a minute or two before I realized that I had not moved any closer to the point of bright light towards which I had set off. I glanced around. Jungern was standing by the flames, three or four steps behind me, and watching me with a mocking smile.

‘The fact that this place seems similar to the world which you know.’ he said, ‘does not at all mean that it is the same world.’

I noticed that the two frozen figures had vanished from beside the fire, and all that remained were two dark stains on the ground.

‘Let’s get away from here,’ Jungern said. ‘After all, we wanted to pay a visit to my lads, didn’t we?’

I clutched at his sleeve and the camp-fires went hurtling past us once again - our speed was now so great that they extended into blurred zigzags and dotted lines. I was more than half certain that it must all be some kind of illusion, for I could not feel any wind upon my face; it was as though when the baron began to move, it was not us, but the world around us that was set into motion. I became completely disoriented and lost all concept of the direction of our movement. Sometimes we would halt for a few seconds and I could examine the individuals sitting round the nearest camp-fire - for the most part they were men with bushy beards and rifles who all looked very much like one another, and as soon as we approached they would throw themselves to the black ground beneath our feet. Once I was struck by the fact that they held spears instead of rifles, but our halt was too brief for me to be absolutely certain. After a while I realized what our manner of movement reminded me of: these crazy, unpredictable zigzags were precisely the movements of a bat flying in the darkness.

‘I hope you understand, Pyotr,’ the baron’s voice rumbled in my ear, ‘that you and I are not at present in a place where it is possible to lie? Or even not to be completely honest?’

‘I understand.’ I said, feeling my head beginning to spin from the flashing yellow and white streaks and broken lines.

‘Answer me one question.’ said the baron. ‘What do you want more than anything else in life?’

‘Me?’ I queried and began thinking.

This was a question which was hard to answer without telling a lie. I thought for a long moment about what I should say, but I couldn’t think of anything, and then suddenly the answer came by itself.

‘I want to find my golden joy.’ I said.

The baron laughed loudly. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘But what does that mean to you - your golden joy?’

‘The golden joy.’ I replied, ‘is when a peculiar flight of free thought makes it possible to see the beauty of life. Am I making myself clear?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the baron. ‘If only everyone expressed themselves so clearly and so much to the point. How did you arrive at such a precise formulation?’

‘It comes from my dream,’ I replied, ‘or rather, from my nightmare. I remembered the strange phrase by heart because it was written in a notebook from a mental home which I was leafing through in the dream - I was leafing through it because there was supposed to be something very important about me in there.’

‘Yes,’ said the baron, turning to the right at which the carousel of flames around us performed a movement like a side-somersault. ‘I’m very glad that you mentioned this yourself. The reason you are here is that Chapaev asked me to explain something to you. In essence, of course, he didn’t ask me to explain anything special that he couldn’t have told you himself. He has already told you it all before - the last time was during your journey here. But for some reason you still seem to think that the world of your dreams is less real than the space in which you get drunk with Chapaev in the bathhouse.’

‘You are correct.’ I said.

The baron came to a sudden halt, and immediately the camp-fires stopped dancing around us. I noticed that the flames had taken on a strangely alarming reddish tinge.

‘But why do you think so?’ he asked.

‘Well, if only because eventually I return to the real world.’ I said. To the place, as you put it, where I get drunk with Chapaev in the bathhouse. On the intellectual level, of course, I understand perfectly well what you are trying to say. More than that, I have even noticed that when I am actually dreaming the nightmare it is so real that there is absolutely no way of knowing that it is a dream. I can touch objects in the same way, I can pinch myself

‘But then how do you distinguish your dream from the waking world?’ the baron interrupted.

‘By the fact that when I am awake I have a clear and unambiguous sense of the reality of what is happening. As I have now.’

‘So you have that feeling now?’ the baron asked.

‘In general, yes, I do.’ I said, somewhat bemused. ‘Although I must confess that the situation is somewhat unusual.’

‘Chapaev asked me to take me you with me so that for once j at least you would find yourself in a place which has absolutely no relationship either to your nightmare about the mental home or to your nightmares about Chapaev.’ said the baron. ‘Take a good look around you - both of your obsessive I dreams are equally illusory here. All I have to do is leave you by one of the camp-fires and you will understand what I mean.’

The baron was silent for a moment, as though allowing me time to savour the full horror of such a prospect. I looked around slowly at the blackness studded with an infinite number of unattainable points of light. He was right. Where were Chapaev and Anna? Where was that fragile night-time world with the tiled walls and the busts of Aristotle that crumbled into white dust? They were nowhere now, and furthermore I knew with absolute certainty that there was no place where they could exist, because I myself, standing here beside this strange man - if he was indeed a man - constituted the only possibility of being, the exclusive means by which all these psychiatric clinics and civil wars came into the world. And the same applied to this gloomy limbo, to its terrified inhabitants and its tall, stern sentry - all of them existed only because I existed.

‘I think I understand.’ I said.

Jungern looked at me doubtfully. ‘What exactly do you understand?’ he asked.

Suddenly there was a wild shouting from behind us: Me! Me! Me! Me!’

We both turned together at the sound.

Not very far away a camp-fire was burning, but it was quite unlike all the others. The colour of the flame was quite different - it was pale and gave off smoke - and something was crackling in the fire, with sparks flying off in all directions. Furthermore, this camp-fire was not aligned with the strict linear pattern of the others: it was quite obviously burniIng in a place where it should not be.

‘Right, let’s go and take a look.’ Jungern muttered, tugging me sharply by the sleeve.

The men sitting by the fire were quite unlike the baron’s other charges. There were four of them, of whom the most agitated was a big, burly fellow in a poison-pink jacket with a stiff crew-cut brush of chestnut hair on the top of his head that reminded me of a small cannon shell. He was sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped tightly around himself, as though his own body inspired him with an obscene passion.

‘Me! Me! Me!’ he kept roaring again and again.