Виктор Пелевин - Buddha's Little Finger

‘I see,’ said Volodin, who for some reason had turned rather pale.

I was struck by an unexpected idea.

‘Just a moment now,’ I said, ‘where did you say the cognac came from?’

Volodin did not answer.

‘What difference does it make?’ asked Serdyuk.

‘Never mind,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘but now at last I seem to have some idea of who could be responsible for all this. It is rather strange, of course, and it does seem quite unlike him, but all the other explanations are so completely absurd…’

‘Listen, I’ve remembered another one,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Chapaev comes to see Anka, and she’s sitting there naked…’

‘My dear sirs,’ I interrupted, ‘are you not taking things just a little too far?’

‘It wasn’t me that made it up,’ Serdyuk replied insolently, tossing another paper crane into the corner of the room. ‘So anyway, he asks her: «Why haven’t you got any clothes on, Anka?» And she says to him: «I haven’t got any dresses to wear.» So he opens the wardrobe, looks inside and says: «What’s all this then? One dress. Two dresses. Hi there, Petka. Three dresses. Four dresses.’»

‘Really,’ I said, ‘I ought to just punch you in the face for saying such things - but somehow instead it brings back a deep feeling of melancholy. In actual fact it was all quite different. It was Anna’s birthday, and we had gone out for a picnic. Kotovsky immediately got drunk and fell asleep, and Chapaev began explaining to Anna that a human personality is like a wardrobe filled with sets of clothes which are taken out by turns, and the less real the person actually is, the more sets there are in the wardrobe. That was his present to Anna on her birthday - not a set of dresses, but his explanation. Anna was stubborn and she refused to agree with him. She attempted to prove that what he said was all very well in theory, but it did not apply to her, because she always remained herself and never wore any masks. But Chapaev simply answered everything she said by saying: «One dress… Two dresses…» and so on. Do you understand? Then Anna asked, if that was the case, who was it that put on the dresses, and Chapaev replied that there was nobody to put them on. That was when Anna understood. She said nothing for a few seconds, then she nodded and looked up at him, and Chapaev smiled and said, «Hello there, Anna!» That is one of my most precious memories,. But why am I telling you all this?’

I had suddenly been overwhelmed by a veritable whirlwind of thoughts and ideas. I remembered Kotovsky’s strange smile at our parting. I do not understand, I thought, he could have heard about the map of consciousness, but how would he know about the camouflage? He had left just before that… Then I suddenly remembered what Chapaev had said about Kotovsky’s fate.

In an instant everything became absolutely clear. Kotovsky, however, had failed to take one important factor into account, I thought, feeling the malice seething within me, he had forgotten that I could do exactly the same thing that he had done. And if that cocaine-riddled lover of trotters and secret freedom had condemned me to the madhouse, then…

‘Now I would like to tell a joke,’ I said.

The feelings that had taken possession of me must have been visible in the expression on my face, because Serdyuk and Volodin glanced at me in genuine alarm; Volodin even shifted his chair a little further away from me.

Serdyuk said, ‘Just don’t get yourself upset, all right?’

‘Are you going to listen or not?’ I asked. ‘Right, then. Now… Aha, I have it. Some savages have captured Kotovsky and they say to him: «We are going to eat you, and then make a drum out of your bald scalp. But now you can have one last wish.» Kotovsky thought for a moment and said: «Bring me an awl.» They gave him an awl, and he took it and jabbed it into the top of his head over and over again. Then he yelled: «So much for your drum, you bastards!»‘

I laughed ferociously, and at that very moment the door opened and the moustachioed face of Zherbunov appeared. He glanced warily round the room until his gaze came to rest on me. I cleared my throat and straightened the collar of my dressing-gown.

‘Timur Timurovich wants to see you.’

‘Straight away,’ I replied, getting up from my chair and carefully placing the unfinished bagel of black Plasticine on the table that was cluttered with Serdyuk’s toy cranes.

Timur Timurovich was in an excellent mood.

‘I hope, Pyotr, that you understood why I called what happened to you at the last session total catharsis?’

I shrugged non-committally.

‘Well then, consider this,’ he said. ‘I explained to you once that misdirected psychic energy may take on the form of any kind of mania or phobia. To put it in rather crude terms, my method consists in approaching such a mania or phobia in terms of its own inner logic. For instance, you say you are Napoleon.’

‘I do not say anything of the sort.’

‘Let us assume that you do. Well then, instead of trying to prove to you that you are mistaken, or administering an insulin shock, my answer is: «Very well, you are Napoleon. But what are you going to do now? Land in Egypt? Declare a continental blockade? Or perhaps you will abdicate the throne and simply go back home to your Corsican Lane?» And then, depending on how you reply to my question, all the rest will follow. Consider your colleague Serdyuk, for instance. That Japanese who supposedly forced him to slit open his belly is quite the most vital element in his psychological world. Nothing ever happens to him, not even when Serdyuk himself suffers symbolic death, in fact in his imagination he even remains alive after Serdyuk is dead. And when he comes round again, he can think of nothing better to do than make all those little aeroplanes. I am sure they advised him to do it in some new hallucination. In other words, the illness has affected such extensive areas of his psyche that sometimes I even contemplate the possibility of surgical intervention.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I only mention Serdyuk for purposes of comparison. But now consider what has happened to you. I regard it as a genuine triumph for my method. The entire morbidly detailed world that your clouded consciousness had constructed has simply disappeared.’dissolved into itself, and not under any pressure from a doctor, but apparently by following its inner own laws. Your psychosis has exhausted itself. The stray psychic energy has been integrated with the remaining part of the psyche. If my theory is correct - and I would like to believe that it is - you are now perfectly well.’

‘I am sure that it is correct.’ I said. ‘Of course, I do not understand it in all of its profundity-’

‘There is no need for you to understand it.’ Timur Timurovich answered. ‘It is quite sufficient that today you yourself represent its very clearest confirmation. Thank you very much, Pyotr, for describing your hallucinations in such detail, not many patients are capable of doing that. I hope you will not object if I make use of excerpts from your notes in my monograph?’

‘I should regard it as a signal honour.’

Timur Timurovich patted me on the shoulder affectionately.

‘Come now, no need to be so formal. I’m your friend.’

He picked up a rather thick file of papers from his desk.

‘I just want to ask you to fill in this questionnaire, and to take the job seriously.’

‘A questionnaire?’

‘A pure formality,’ said Timur Timurovich. ‘They’re always thinking up something or other in the Ministry of Health - they have so many people there with nothing to do all day long. This is what they call a test for the assessment of social adequacy. There are all sorts of questions in it, with different possible answers provided for each. One of the answers is correct, the others are absurd. Any normal person will catch on immediately.’