Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

We walked quickly to the gate without speaking; some men with rifles sitting by one of the bonfires waved for us to join them and yelled something indistinct, and Kotovsky nervously stuck his hand in his pocket. Nobody fell in behind us, thank God, but the last few yards to the gate, when our defenceless backs were exposed to this entire drunken rabble, seemed extremely long. We went out of the gate and walked on another twenty steps or so, and then I halted. The street winding spiral-fashion down the hill was deserted: a few street lamps were burning, and the damp cobblestones gleamed dully under their calm light.

‘I will not go any further.’ I said. ‘I wish you luck.’

‘And I you. Who knows, perhaps we shall meet again some time.’ he said with a strange smile. ‘Or hear news of each other.’

We shook hands. He raised two fingers to the brim of his hat once again, and without turning to look back, he set off down the street. I watched his broad figure until it disappeared round a bend, and then began slowly walking back. I stopped at the gates and glanced in through them cautiously. The window of Chapaev’s study was in darkness. I suddenly realized why I had felt such horror at the sight I had seen in the yard - there was something about it which reminded me of the world of Baron Jungern. I did not feel the slightest desire to walk back past the bonfires and the drunken weavers.

I realized where Chapaev might be. I walked along the fence for another forty yards, then glanced around. There was no one in sight. Jumping up, I grabbed hold of the top plank, managed somehow to haul myself up and over it and jumped down.

It was dark here; the flames of the bonfires were hidden behind the dark silhouette of the silent manor-house. Feeling my way by touch between the trees still wet from the recent rain, I scrambled down the slope into the gully, then slipped and slid into it on my back. The invisible brook was babbling somewhere off to my right; I walked towards it with my hands extended in front of me and after a few steps I glimpsed the brightly lit window of the bathhouse between the trunks of the trees.

‘Come in, Petka,’ Chapaev shouted in response to my knock.

He was sitting at the familiar rough wooden table, which once again bore a huge bottle of moonshine, several glasses and plates, a kerosene lamp and a plump file full of papers; he was wearing a long white Russian shirt outside his trousers, unbuttoned to the navel, and he was already extremely drunk.

‘How’s things?’ he asked

‘I thought you were intending to resolve the problem of the weavers.’ I said.

‘I am resolving it,’ said Chapaev, filling two glasses with moonshine.

‘I can see that Kotovsky knows you very well.’ I said.

‘That’s right.’ said Chapaev, ‘and I know him very well, too.’

‘He has just left for Paris on the evening train. It occurs to me that we have made a serious mistake in not following his example.’

Chapaev frowned.

‘But desire still burns within us.’ he chanted, ‘the trains depart for it and the butterfly of consciousness flits from nowhere to nowhere

‘So you have read it too? I am very flattered,’ I said and was immediately struck by the dreary thought that the word ‘too’ was somewhat misplaced. ‘Listen, if we leave straight away, we could still catch the train.’

‘So what’s new for me to see in this Paris of yours?’ Chapaev asked.

‘I suppose just what we’ll be seeing here soon.’ I answered.

Chapaev chuckled. ‘Right you are, Petka.’

‘By the way.’ I said with concern, ‘where is Anna at the moment? It’s not safe in the house.’

‘I gave her a task to do.’ said Chapaev, ‘she’ll be here soon. You just take a seat. I’ve been sitting here all this time waiting for you - already drunk half the bottle.’

I sat down facing him.

‘Your health!’

I shrugged. There was nothing to be done. ‘Your health, Vasily Ivanovich.’

We drank. Chapaev gazed moodily into the dim flame of the kerosene lamp.

‘I’ve been thinking about these nightmares of yours,’ he said, laying his hand on the file. ‘I’ve reread all these stones you wrote. About Serdyuk, and about that fellow Maria, and about the doctors and the gangsters. Did you ever pay any attention to the way you wake up from all of them?’

‘No.’ I said.

‘Well, just try to remember, will you?’

‘At a certain moment it simply becomes clear that it is all a dream. That’s all there is to it,’ I said uncertainly. ‘When I really begin to feel too bad, I suddenly realize that in fact there is nothing to be afraid of, because-’

‘Because what?’

‘I am struggling to find the words. I would put it like this - because there is a place to which I can wake up.’

Chapaev slapped the table with his open hand.

‘Where exactly can you wake up to?’

I had no answer to that question.

‘I do not know,’ I said.

Chapaev raised his eyes to look into mine and smiled. He suddenly no longer seemed drunk.

‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘That’s the very place. As soon as you are swept up in the flow of your dreams, you yourself become part of it ail - because in that flow everything is relative, everything is in motion, and there is nothing for you to grab hold of and cling to. You don’t realize when you are drawn into the whirlpool, because you are moving along together with the water, and it appears to be motionless. That’s how a dream comes to feel like reality. But there is a point which is not merely motionless relative to everything else, but absolutely motionless, and it’s called «t don’t know». When you hit it in a dream you wake up. Or rather, the waking up pushes you into it. And then after that,’ - he gestured around the room - ‘you come here.’

I heard a staccato burst of machine-gun fire beyond the wall, followed by the sound of an explosion, and the panes of glass rattled in the window.

‘There’s this point.’ Chapaev continued, ‘that is absolutely motionless, relative to which this life is as much of a dream as all your stories. Everything in the world is just a whirlpool of thoughts, and the world around us only becomes real when you yourself become that whirlpool. Only because you know.’

He laid heavy emphasis on the word ‘know’.

I stood up and went over to the window. ‘Listen, Chapaev, I think they have set fire to the manor-house.’

‘What’s to be done, Petka?’ Chapaev answered. ‘The way this world is arranged, you always end up answering questions in the middle of a burning house.’

‘I agree,’ I said, sitting back down facing him, ‘this is all quite remarkable, this whirlpool of thoughts and so forth. The world becomes real and unreal, I understand all that quite well. But any moment now some rather unpleasant individuals are going to arrive here - you understand, I am not trying to say that they are real, but they will certainly make us feel the force of their reality in full measure.’

‘Make me?’ asked Chapaev. ‘Never. Just watch.’

He took hold of the big bottle, pulled a small blue saucer over to him and filled it to the brim. Then he performed the same operation with a glass.

‘Look at that, Petka. In itself the moonshine doesn’t have any form. There’s a glass, and there’s a saucer. Which of the forms is real?’

‘Both.’ I said. ‘Both of them are real.’

Chapaev carefully drank the moonshine from the saucer, then from the glass, and threw each of them in turn hard against the wall. The saucer and the glass both shattered into tiny fragments.

‘Petka, watch and remember,’ he said. ‘If you are real, then death really will come. Even I won’t be able to help you. I’ll ask you one more time. There are the glasses, there’s the bottle. Which of these forms is real?’