Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

‘But the name really is appalling.’

‘Just who are you trying to please, them or yourself?’

Khanin was right; and Tatarsky felt doubly stupid when he remembered how he had explained the very same idea to the guys in Draft Podium at the very beginning of his career.

‘What about the concept in general?’ he asked. ‘There’s a lot of other stuff in it.’

Khanin turned over another page. ‘How can I put it? Here’s another bit they’ve underlined, at the end, where you go on about shares again… I’ll read it:

Thus the answer to the question ‘where to invest is ‘in America’, and the answer to the question ‘who to invest with’ is ‘with everyone who didn ’t invest in the various pyramid schemes, but waited until it was possible to invest in America’. This is the psychological crystallisation following the first stage of the campaign - note that the advertising should not promise to place the investors’ funds in America, but it should arouse the feeling that it willhappen…

‘So why the hell did you underline that? Really smart that, is it? OK, what comes next…

The effect is achieved by the extensive use in the image sequence of stars and stripes, dollars and eagles. It is proposed that the main symbol of the campaign should be a sequoia tree, with hundred-dollar bills instead of leaves, which would evoke a subconscious association with the money tree in the story of Pinocchio…’

‘So what’s wrong with that?’ asked Tatarsky.

‘The sequoia is a conifer.’

Tatarsky said nothing for a few seconds while he explored a hole he had suddenly discovered in his tooth with the tip of his tongue… Then he said: ‘Never mind that. We can roll up the hundred-dollar bills into tubes. You know, it could be even better because it could result in a positive psychological crystallisation in the minds of a signi-’

‘Do you know what "schlemazl" means?’ Khanin interrupted.

‘No.’

‘Me neither. They’ve written here in the margin that they don’t want this "schlemazl - that’s you - to be let anywhere near their orders again. They don’t want you.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Tatarsky. ‘So they don’t want me. And what if a month from now they change their name? And in two months they start doing what I suggested? Then what?’

‘Then nothing,’ said Khanin. ‘You know that.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Tatarsky with a sigh. ‘And what about the other orders? There was one for West cigarettes in there.’

‘Another wash-out,’ said Khanin. ‘You always used to do well with cigarettes, but now…’

He turned over a few more pages. ‘What can I say… Image sequence… where is it now?…there it is:

Two naked men shot from behind, one tall and one short, arms round each other’s hips, hitch-hiking on the highway. The short one has a pack of West in his hand, the tall one has his arm raised to stop a car - a light-blue Cadillac that’s coming down the road. The hand of the short man holding the pack of cigarettes is set in the same line as the uplifted arm of the tall man, thereby creating another layer of meaning -’choreographic’: the camera seems to have frown a single moment in a passionately emotional dance, filled with the anticipation of approaching freedom. Slogan: Go West.

‘That’s from a song by those Sex-Shop Dogs, the one they made from our anthem, right? That part is OK. But then you have this long paragraph about the heterosexual part of the target group. What did you write that for?’

‘No, well, I… I just thought if the customer raised the point he would know we’d covered it…’

‘The customer raised a point all right, but not that one. The customer’s an old-time hood from Rostov who’s been paid two million dollars in cigarettes by some Orthodox metropolitan. In the margin beside the word "heterosexual" he’s written - the bandit, that is, not the metropolitan: "Wots he on abowt, queers?" And he turned the concept down. Pity - it’s a masterpiece. Now if it had been the other way round - if the bandit was paying back the metropolitan - it would all have gone down a treat. But what can you do? This business of ours is a lottery.’

Tatarsky said nothing. Khanin rolled a cigarette between his fingers to soften it and lit up.

‘A lottery,’ he repeated with emphasis. ‘Just recently you haven’t been doing too well in the draw, and I know why.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Well, now,’ said Khanin, ‘it’s a very subtle point. First you try to understand what people will like, and then you hand it to them in the form of a lie. But what people want is for you to hand them the same thing in the form of the truth.’

That was not at all what Tatarsky had been expecting.

‘What’s that? What do you mean by "in the form of the truth"?’

‘You don’t believe in what you do. Your heart isn’t in it.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Tatarsky. ‘Of course it isn’t. What do you expect? Do you want me to give my heart to Tampako? There’s not a single whore on Pushkin Square would do that.’

‘OK, OK, just drop the pose,’ said Khanin, frowning.

‘No, no,’ said Tatarsky, calming down, ‘don’t get me wrong. We’re all in the same frame nowadays; you just have to position yourself correctly, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So why do I say not a single whore would do it? Not because I’m disgusted. It’s just that a whore always collects her money every time - whether she pleased the client or not - but I have to… You know what I mean. And the client only makes his mind up afterwards… There’s no way any whore would work on those terms.’

‘A whore might not,’ Khanin interrupted, ‘but we will, if we want to survive in this business. And we’ll go even further than that.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tatarsky. ‘I’m not absolutely convinced.’

‘Oh, yes we will. Babe,’ said Khanin, and looked straight into Tatarsky’s eyes.

Tatarsky tensed. ‘How do you know my name’s not Vova, but Babe?’

‘Pugin told me. And as far as positioning is concerned… Let’s just say you’ve positioned yourself and I get where you’re coming from. Will you come and work for me full-time?’

Tatarsky took another look at the poster with the three palm trees and the promise of never-ending metamorphoses.

‘What as?’ he asked.

‘A creative.’

‘Is that a writer?’ Tatarsky asked. Translated into ordinary Russian?’

Khanin smiled gently.

‘We don’t need any fucking writers here,’ he said. ‘A creative, Babe, a creative.’

Out on the street, Tatarsky wandered slowly in the direction of the centre.

He wasn’t feeling particularly overjoyed at finding himself employed so unexpectedly. One thing was really bothering him: he was sure he’d never told Pugin the story of his real name; he’d always just called himself Vladimir or Vova. Of course, there was just an infinitesimal chance that he’d blurted it out when they were drinking and then forgotten about it - they had got very drunk together a couple of times. Any other possible explanations drew so heavily on genetically transmitted fear of the KGB that Tatarsky dismissed them out of hand. Anyway, it wasn’t important.

‘This game has no name,’ he whispered, and clenched his fists in the pockets of his jacket.

The uncompleted Soviet ziggurat rose up in his memory in such minute detail that he felt the forgotten tingling sensation of the fly-agaric run through his fingers several times. The mystic force had gone a bit over the top this time in presenting so many signs at once to his startled soul: first the poster with the palms and the familiar line of text, then the words ‘tower’ and ‘lottery’ that Khanin had used several times in a few minutes as though by chance, and finally the name ‘Babe’, which had alarmed him more than anything else.