Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘No, it’s not a spot,’ said the baron. ‘It’s Ignat’s hat.’

‘Ah, the raging winds have torn it off? The winds from the East?’

‘It’s a genuine pleasure to talk with you, Pyotr.’ said the h.iron, ‘you do understand everything so well. Would you like to keep it as a memento?’

I bent down and picked it up. The hat was exactly my size. I wondered for a while what I should do with my own - I couldn’t think of anything better than simply dropping it on I he ground.

‘In reality I understand very far from everything.’ I said. I or instance, I simply cannot understand at all where an elephant like that could appear from in this forsaken spot.’

‘My dear Pyotr,’ said the baron, ‘there are quite incredible numbers of invisible elephants wandering around us all the time, please take my word for it. They are more common in Russia than crows. But allow me to change the subject - it’s time for you to be getting back, you see, so permit me to tell you one more thing before you go. Perhaps the most important one of all.’

‘What is it?’

‘It is about the place a person goes to when he manages to ascend the throne that is nowhere. We call that place «Inner Mongolia».’

‘Who are «we»?’

‘You can take me to mean Chapaev and myself.’ the baron said with a smile. ‘Although I hope that in time we will also be able to include you in our number.’

‘And where is it, this place?’

‘That’s the point, it is nowhere. It is quite impossible to say that it is located anywhere in the geographical sense. Inner Mongolia is not called that because it is inside Mongolia. It is inside anyone who can see the void, although the word «in side» is quite inappropriate here. And it is not really any kind of Mongolia either, that’s merely a way of speaking. The most stupid thing possible would be to attempt to describe to you what it is. Take my word for this, at least - it is well worth striving all your life to reach it. And nothing in life is better than being there.’

‘And how does one come to see the void?’

‘Look into yourself.’ said the baron. ‘I beg your pardon for the unintentional pun on your name.’

I pondered for several seconds.

‘May I be honest with you?’

‘Of course,’ Jungern replied.

‘The place we have just visited - I mean the black steppe with the camp-fires - seemed rather gloomy to me. If the Inner Mongolia of which you speak is anything similar, then I would hardly wish to be there.’

‘You know, Pyotr.’ Jungern said with a chuckle, ‘when, to take an example, you unleash mayhem in a drinking-den like the «Musical Snuffbox», you may perhaps reasonably assume that what you see is approximately the same as what the people around you see - although even that is far from certain. But in the place where we have just been, everything is very individual. Nothing there exists, so to speak, in reality. Everything depends on who is looking at it. For me, for instance, everything there is flooded in blinding light. But my lads here’ - Jungern nodded in the direction of the little figures in the yellow astrakhan hats who were moving around the camp-fire - ‘see the same things around themselves as you do. Or rather, you see the same things as they do.’

‘Why?’

‘Are you familiar with the concept of visualization?’ the baron asked. ‘When so many believers begin to pray to some god or other that he actually comes into existence, in the precise form in which they have imagined him?’

‘I am familiar with it,’ I said.

‘The same applies to everything else as well. The world in which we live is simply a collective visualization, which we are taught to make from our early childhood. It is, in actual fact, the only thing that one generation hands on to the next. When a sufficient number of people see this steppe, this grass and feel this summer wind, then we are able to experience it all together with them. But no matter what forms might be prescribed for us by the past, in reality what each of us sees in life is still only a reflection of his own spirit. And if you discover that you are surrounded by impenetrable darkness, it only means that your own inner space is like the night. It’s a good thing you’re an agnostic, or there would be all manner of gods and devils roaming about in this darknoss.’

‘Baron…’ I began, but he interrupted me:

‘Please do not think that there is anything in any way demeaning to you in all this. There are very few who are prepared to admit that they are exactly the same as everyone else. But is not this the usual condition of man - sitting in the darkness beside a camp-fire kindled through someone else’s compassion and waiting for help to arrive?’

‘Perhaps you are right,’ I said. ‘But what is this Inner Mongolia?’

‘Inner Mongolia is precisely that place from which help arrives.’

‘And so…’ I asked, ‘you have been there?’

‘Yes.’ replied the baron.

‘Then why did you return?’

The baron nodded without speaking in the direction of the ramp-fire, where the silent Cossacks were huddled.

‘And then,’ he said, ‘I never really did come back from there. I am still there now. But it really is time for you to be getting back, Pyotr.’

I glanced around.

‘But where to, precisely?’

‘I’ll show you.’ said the baron.

I noticed that he was holding a heavy burnished-steel pistol, and I shuddered at the sight.

The baron laughed. ‘Pyotr, Pyotr. What’s the matter? You really should not be so very mistrustful of people.’

He thrust his other hand into his pocket and took out the package which Chapaev had given him. He unwrapped it and showed me a perfectly ordinary ink-well with a black stopper.

‘Watch carefully.’ he said, ‘and do not look away.’

With that he tossed the ink-well into the air and when it was about two yards away from us, he fired.

The ink-well was transformed into a cloud of blue spray and minute fragments which hung in the air for a moment before scattering across the table.

I staggered backwards, and in order to avoid falling from my sudden dizziness, I braced myself against the wall with one hand. I was facing a table covered with a hopelessly stained map, beside which Kotovsky was standing, his mouth wide open. Glycerine from the shattered lamp was dripping on to the floor.

‘Right then.’ said Chapaev, toying with his smoking Mauser, ‘now you understand what mind is, Grisha, eh?’

Kotovsky covered his face with his hands and ran out of the room. It was clear that he had suffered a powerful shock. The same, indeed, could have been said of myself.

Chapaev turned towards me and looked at me closely for a while. Suddenly he frowned. ‘What’s that on your breath?’ Chapaev barked. ‘Well, well, less than a minute goes by, and he’s drunk already. And why are you wearing a yellow hat? Trying to get yourself court-martialled are you, you bastard?’

‘I only had one glass’

‘Qui-et! Quiet, I tell you! The weavers’ regiment is here, we have to settle them in, and you’re wandering around drunk! Want to put me to shame in front of Furmanov, do you? Go and sleep it off! And if I catch you pulling tricks like this again, it’s a court-martial, straight off! Do you want to know what my court-martials are like?’

Chapaev raised his nickel-plated Mauser.

‘No, Vasily Ivanovich, I do not.’ I answered.

‘Sleep!’ Chapaev repeated. ‘And on your way to bed don’t you dare breathe on anyone.’

I turned on my heels and walked to the door. When I reached it I glanced around. Chapaev was standing by the table and following my movements with an expression of menace.

‘I have just one question,’ I said.