Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘You see. And you said there was nothing in the world to be afraid of

‘Yeah… Right… Oh, fuck me! Listen, Volodin, this is real scary. Real scary stuff. Volodin, d’you hear me? Where’s the light? Volodin? I’m scared!’

‘And you said there was nothing in the world to be afraid of,’ said Volodin, raising his head and gazing wide-eyed into empty space, as though he’d seen something there.

‘Right then,’ he said in a changed voice, nudging Shurik and Kolyan, ‘let’s move it! Quick!’

‘Volodin, I can hardly hear you!’ Shurik yelled, swaying from side to side. ‘Volodin, I’m scared! Hey, Kolyan! Answer me, Kolyan!’

‘Me. Me. Me.’

‘Hey, Kolyan, can you see me? Just don’t go lookin’ at yourself, or it’ll turn dark. Can you see me, Kolyan?’

‘Me? Me?’

‘Move it, into the forest, quick!’ Volodin repeated, and he leapt to his feet.

‘What forest? There isn’t really any forest! ‘

‘You just run, and the forest’ll appear. Go on, run! You leg it too, Kolyan. Rendezvous at the camp-fire.’

‘Me?! Me?! Me?!!’

‘Fucking hell! I said let’s move it into the forest! Run for it!’

Even if we were to allow that the camp-fire that had been blazing in the clearing a few hours earlier really was a small universe unto itself, that universe had now ceased to exist, and all the sufferings of its inhabitants had been extinguished with it. Void and darkness were upon the face of the clearing, and there was nothing but a light smoke hanging in the air above the dead embers.

The radio-telephone in the car began to ring, and suddenly some small, startled life form began rustling in the bushes. The ringing went on for a long time, and after more than a minute its persistence was rewarded. There was a crunching of twigs in the bushes, followed by rapid footsteps. A blurred shadow flitted across the clearing towards the Jeep and a voice spoke:

‘Hello! Ultima Thule Limited? Of course I recognize you, of course. Yes! Yes! No! Tell Seryozha the Mongoloid not to get up my nose. No transfers. Cash ex-VAT and we tear up the contract. Tomorrow at ten in the office… no, not at ten, at twelve. Right.’

It was Volodin. He put down the receiver, opened up the Jeep’s boot, rummaged around until he found a spray-can, the contents of which he emptied on to the remains of the fire. Nothing happened - evidently even the embers had died completely. Then Volodin struck a match and dropped it on the ground, and a bright ball of yellow-red flame rose up into the air.

He spent several minutes collecting branches and twigs in the clearing and throwing them into the flames. When Shurik and Kolyan came wandering out of the forest towards the light, the camp-fire was already blazing away.

They appeared one at a time. Kolyan appeared first; before he emerged into the clearing, for some reason he sat for a long time in the bushes at its edge, holding his hand over his eyes as he gazed into the flames. Then he finally made up his mind, went up to the fire and sat down in his old place. Shurik arrived about ten minutes later; holding his TP with the long silencer in his hand, he slunk out into the clearing, looked Kolyan and Volodin over and tucked the pistol away under his cashmere pea-jacket.

‘Fucked if I ever puts any of that stuff in my mouth again,’ he said in a dull voice. ‘Not for any money. I emptied two clips, and I don’t have a blind idea who I was shooting at.’

‘Didn’t you like it?’ asked Volodin.

‘It was kinda okay at first,’ Shurik replied, ‘but then afterwards… Listen, what were we talking about just before the explosion?’

‘Before what explosion?’ Volodin asked in amazement.

‘That, that… Or what could you call it…’

Shurik looked up at Volodin, as if hoping that he would prompt him with the words he needed, but Volodin said nothing.

‘Okay then,’ said Shurik, ‘at the very beginning we was talking about the eternal high, I remember that. And then the spiel kinda tipped off the rails, flip-flop, and then there was this flash of fire in my eyes… And you was yelling yourself, telling us to leg it into the forest. As soon as I came round I thought the wheels must have exploded. Thought those jerks from Slav-East must have put a bomb in it. And then I thought that didn’t make sense - there was flames all right, but there wasn’t no smell of petrol. So that means it’s all in the mind.’

‘Yes,’ said Volodin, ‘that’s right. All in the mind.’

‘So was that your eternal high, then?’ asked Shurik.

‘You could call it that,’ Volodin replied.

‘What did you do to make us able to see it?’ asked Shurik.

‘I didn’t do it,’ replied Volodin, ‘it was Kolyan. He was the one who took us in there.’

Shurik looked at Kolyan. Kolyan shrugged in puzzlement.

‘Yes,’ went on Volodin, gathering up the things lying by the fire and throwing them in through the Jeep’s open door, ‘you see the way things turn out. Take a good look at your mate, Shurik. He might never have seemed too quick on the uptake, but he was the one who pulled it off. The old spiel about blessed are the poor in spirit is sure right.’

‘Are we gonna leave, or what?’ Shurik asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Volodin. ‘It’s time to go. We’ve got a shoot with Slav-East at twelve. And by the time we get there, what with one thing and another…’

‘I can’t really remember anything straight,’ Shurik summed up the conversation. ‘But I feel really odd. For the first time in my life I want to do something good. Even help someone, maybe, save them from suffering. Take everyone, the whole fucking lot of them, and save them all…’

He turned his face up to the starry sky for a second, and it took on a dreamy and exalted expression. He sighed quietly and then, obviously taking a grip on himself, he took a step towards the camp-fire, turned his back to his two companions, fiddled with something in the region of his belt, and the tongues of flame were extinguished instantly under the heavy weight of the frothing stream.

A few minutes later they were travelling along a rough country road, more like a deep trench dug through the forest. Kolyan was snoring on the back seat. Sitting behind the wheel, Volodin was gazing hard into the darkness where the headlights sliced into it, while Shurik pondered on something and bit nervously at his lower lip.

‘Listen,’ he said at last. ‘There’s something else I don’t get. You said that once the eternal high hits you it never ends.’

‘It doesn’t ever end,’ Volodin replied, frowning as he turned the steering wheel sharply, ‘not if you get in the normal way, through the front door. But you could say we climbed in through the back window. That’s why the alarm went off

‘Some heavy alarm,’ said Shurik, ‘real heavy stuff

‘That’s nothing,’ said Volodin. ‘They could easily have put us away. There are cases like that. Take that Nietzsche Kolyan was jawing about, that’s exactly what happened to him.’

‘But if they collar you there, where do they put you?’ Shurik asked with a strange note of respect in his voice.

‘On the physical plane - in the madhouse. But where they put you on the subtle plane, I don’t know. That’s a mystery.’

‘Listen,’ asked Shurik, ‘can you get there as simple as that? Like, whenever you want?’

‘Nah,’ said Volodin. ‘How can I explain it? I can’t squeeze through the gap. I’ve picked up a lot of spiritual riches in my life. And getting rid of them afterwards is harder than cleaning the shit out of the grooves on the sole of your shoe. So I usually send one of the poor in spirit on ahead so he can squeeze through the eye of the needle and open the door from the inside. Like this time. But I didn’t think that if two poor in heart got in together they would create such a rumpus.’