Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘l don’t get you,’ said Shurik.

‘Well, look, under Stalin after death there was atheism, but now there’s religion again. And accordin’ to religion, after death everyone lives like they did under Stalin. Just you figure it the way it was. Everybody knows there’s this window lit up in the Kremlin at night, and He’s there behind it, and He loves you like a brother, and you’re shit-scared of Him, but you’re supposed to love Him with all your heart as well. It’s just like in religion. The reason I remembered Stalin is I began wonderin’ how you can be shit-scared of someone and love him with all your heart at the same time.’

‘And what if you’re not scared?’ Shurik asked.

‘That means you’ve no fear of God. And that means the punishment cell.’

‘What punishment cell’s that?’

‘There wasn’t much written about that. The main thing is it’s dark and there’s this gnashin’ of teeth. After I read it I was wonderin’ for half an hour what kind of teeth the soul has… nearly lost my marbles over it. Then I started readin’ some more, and I realized that if you call yourself a pile of shit soon enough, or not just call yourself one but believe it for real, then you’ll get a pardon - and then they’ll let you into heaven, to see Him. The way I made it out, the main thing they have to get off on is looking at Him all the time while he’s taking the parade from up on (op of the tribune. And they don’t need anythin’ else, because for them it’s either that or grindin’ their teeth down in the shit-hole, and that’s it. That’s the bastard thing about it, there can’t be anythin’ else - it’s either up on the top bunk or down in the punishment cell. I figured out the whole system, top to bottom. I just couldn’t figure out who dreamed up such a heavy deal. What d’you reckon, Volodin?’

‘You remember Globus?’ Volodin asked.

‘The one who became a banker? Sure,’ Kolyan answered.

‘I remember him too.’ said Shurik, sipping the liberating liquid from his flask. ‘Became a real big wheel before he died. Drove around in a Porsche, wore all these chains at five thousand bucks a pop. He was on television too - a sponsor, no fucking less, the whole works.’

‘Yes.’ said Volodin, ‘and when he went to Paris for that loan, know what he did? He went to a restaurant with one of their bankers for a heart-to-heart, and he got plastered, just like he was in the Slavyansky Bazaar and started yelling - «Garcon, two pederasts and a bucket of your strongest tea!» He wasn’t gay himself, but what do you do when there’s no other ass in sight for twenty years?’

‘No need to explain that. So what happened next?’

‘Nothing. They brought the tea. And they brought the queers too. They’ve got the market system there.’

‘And did they give him the loan?’

‘It doesn’t matter whether they gave him the loan or not. But just think about it. If he ended his life with ideas like that still in his head, it means he never really left the prison camps at all He just got so big that he started driving around them in a Porsche and giving interviews. And then he even found his own Paris in the camps. So if Globus, with his jailhouse queers and his prison tea, had started thinking about life after death, what kind of thoughts do you think he would have had?’

‘He never gave a thought to that stuff in his life.’

‘But what if he had started thinking about it? If he doesn’t know anything but the camps, but he’s drawn to higher things, like any other man, then what would he have imagined?’

‘I don’t get you. What you drivin’ at? His only high was dope.’

‘I get you,’ said Shurik. ‘If Globus had started thinking about life after death, he’d have come up with exactly that pamphlet. And not just Globus, neither. Just think about it, Kol - the entire country was one big labour camp from the day we was born, and it’ll always be a camp. That’s why God’s the way he is, with all them flashing lights and sirens. Who believes in any other kind round here?’

‘Don’t you like our country, or what?’ Kolyan asked in a seri ous voice.

‘Course I do. Parts of it.’

Kolyan turned towards Volodin.

‘Listen, though. Did they give Globus the loan that time in Paris?’

‘I think they did.’ said Volodin. ‘The banker enjoyed the show, he really liked it. Queers have never been any problem for them there, but they’d never tried tea quite like that. It became all the ige, they called it the a la russe nouveau.’

‘Listen.’ Shurik said suddenly, ‘I just had a thought… Agh… Fucking hell…’

‘What?’ asked Kolyan.

‘Maybe that’s not the way it really is. Maybe it’s not because we live in a camp that our God is like a big boss with flashing lights, but just the opposite - we live in a camp ‘cause we chose a God like a mobster with a police siren. All that garbage about the teeth and the soul, about the stove where they burn the down-and-outs, and that armed escort up in the sky - it was all dreamed up centuries ago! And here they decided to build heaven on earth. And they did build it, too! Built it for real, from all the plans! And when they built heaven it turned out it wouldn’t work without hell, because what kind of heaven can there be without hell? It wouldn’t be heaven at all, just boring as fuck. So… Nah, I’m afraid to carry on thinking like that.’

‘Maybe in places where people produce less shit, God’s kinder too. In the States maybe, or in Japan,’ said Kolyan.

‘What d’you reckon, Volodin?’ Shurik asked.

‘What do I reckon? As it is above, so is it below. And as it is below, so is it above. And when everything’s bottom up, how can you explain that there isn’t any above or below? As they say round here - at night your ass gives the orders.’

‘That’s some heavy trippin’,’ said Kolyan. ‘Enough to make you jealous. How much did you eat?’

‘You not tripping yourself, then?’ asked Shurik. ‘You just tripped all the way across the world beyond the grave, and you took us along for the ride. Turns out you got more than just a pig and a brief tucked away inside there, you got the entire Holy Synod as well.’

Kolyan held his hand out in front of him and studied it carefully. ‘There.’ he said. ‘I’ve gone blue again. Why do these mushrooms keep turnin’ me blue?’

‘You spoil too quickly,’ said Shurik and he turned to face Volodin. ‘Listen, fuck you. This spiel’s bouncing about like we’d lost our marbles. We started talking about the eternal high and now look where we’ve ended up.’

‘Where have we ended up?’ asked Volodin. ‘Seems to me we’re still sitting where we started. The fire’s burning, the cocks are crowing.’

‘What cocks? That’s Kolyan’s pager.’

‘Ah… Never mind, they’ll crow all right.’

Shurik chuckled and took a sip from his flask. ‘Volodin,’ he said, ‘I still wanna know who that fourth guy is.’

‘Who?’

‘The fourth guy. Haven’t forgotten, have you? What we started off talking about - that there’s this inner prosecutor and this inner brief and the guy who gets off on the inner high. Only I don’t get why he’s the fourth. That makes him the third.’

‘You’ve forgotten the accused, haven’t you?’ asked Volodin. ‘The one they’re all trying? You can’t shift straight from being your own prosecutor to being your own brief. You have to be the accused for at least a second or two. He’s the third guy. But the fourth guy isn’t in on any of those deals. There’s nothing he needs except this eternal high.’

‘And how does he know about the eternal high?’

‘Who said he knows about it?’

You said so yourself