Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

The wheels in which Enkidu’s threads end are also worth some consideration. They bear the likeness of an eye inscribed in a triangle. Here we have the intersection of the real with the mythical: the wheels of ancient Sumerian war chariots actually were secured by a triangular bronze plate attached to the wheel externally, and the form drawn on the plate, which is similar to the outline of an eye, symbolises the spindle on which the golden thread was wound. The wheel is a symbol of movement; thus we have the self-propelling spindle of the god Enki (cf. for instance Ariadne’s thread or the many-eyed wheels in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel). The power of the name ‘Enki’ is such that although originally there was only one such spindle, it might have come to seem to people that their numbers were beyond count.

Tatarsky noticed a glimmering in the semi-darkness of the room. Thinking it must be the reflection of some light in the street, he stood up and looked out of the window, but there was nothing of any interest going on outside. He caught sight of his own orange divan reflected in the glass and was amazed to observe that, seen in mirror inversion, the tattered couch he had so often felt like throwing out on to the dump and burning was the finest part of an unfamiliar and quite amazingly beautiful interior. Returning to his seat, he glimpsed the glimmering light again out of the corner of his eye. He looked round, but the light shifted too, as though its source was a spot on his iris. ‘OK,’ Tatarsky thought happily, ‘so now we’re into the glitches.’ The focus of his attention shifted to the spot and rested there for only the briefest of moments, but that was enough for his mind to record an event that began gradually unfolding as it surfaced in his memory, like a photograph in a bath of developing fluid.

It was summer, and he was standing on a city street lined with identical small houses. Towering up above the city was something between a conical factory chimney and a television tower - it was hard to tell what it was, because mounted on the summit of the chimney-tower was a blinding white torch, blazing so brilliantly that the haze of hot air obscured the outline. He could see its lower section was like a stepped pyramid, but higher up, in the white radiance, it was impossible to make out any details. Tatarsky thought the construction was probably something like the gas flares they have at oil refineries, except that the flame was so bright. There were people standing motionless at the open windows of the houses and on the street - they were gazing upwards at the white fire. Tatarsky turned his eyes in the same direction, and immediately felt himself jerked upwards. He could feel the fire drawing him towards itself and he knew that if he didn’t turn his eyes away the flame would drag him upwards and consume him completely. Somehow he knew a lot about this fire. He knew many had already entered it ahead of him and were drawing him after them. He knew there were many who could only enter it after him, and they were pressing at his back. Tatarsky forced himself to close his eyes. When he opened them, he saw the tower had moved.

Now he could see it wasn’t a tower - it was an immense human figure, towering up over the town. What he had taken for a pyramid now looked like the folds of a garment resembling a cloak or a mantle. The source of the light was the conical helmet on the figure’s head. Tatarsky could clearly see the face, with some kind of gleaming battering ram in the place of a beard. It was turned towards him, and he realised he could only see the face and the helmet instead of the flame, because the flame was looking at him, and in reality there was nothing human about it. The gaze directed towards Tatarsky expressed anticipation, but before he had time to think about what he actually wanted to say or ask, or whether he really wanted to say or ask anything at all, the figure gave him its answer and turned its gaze away. The same intolerably bright radiance appeared where the face had been and Tatarsky lowered his eyes.

He noticed two people beside him, an elderly man in a shirt with an anchor embroidered on it and a boy in a black tee-shirt: they were holding hands and gazing upwards, and he had a feeling they had almost completely melted and merged with the bright fire, and their bodies, the street around them and the entire city were no more than shadows. Just a moment before the picture faded, Tatarsky guessed the bright fire he’d seen wasn’t burning high in the sky, but down below, as though he’d glimpsed a reflection of the sun in a puddle and forgotten he wasn’t looking at the actual position of the sun. Where the sun actually was, and what it was, he didn’t have time to find out, but he did manage to understand something else, something very strange: it wasn’t the sun that was reflected in the puddle, but the other way round; everything and everybody else - the street, the houses, the other people and he himself - were all reflected in the sun, which was entirely uninterested in the whole business, because it wasn’t even aware of it.

This idea about the sun and the puddle filled Tatarsky with such a feeling of happiness that he laughed out loud in his joy and gratitude. All the problems of life, all those things that had seemed so unsolvable and terrifying, simply ceased to exist - for an instant the world was transformed in the same way as his divan had been transformed when it was reflected in the window pane.

When Tatarsky came round he was sitting on the divan, holding between his fingers the page that he still hadn’t turned. There was an incomprehensible word pulsating in his ears, something like ‘sirrukh’ or ‘sirruf. It was the answer the figure had given him.

‘Sirrukh, sirruf,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t understand.’

The happiness he had been feeling only a moment before was replaced by fright. He suddenly felt it must be unlawful to learn anything like that, because he couldn’t see how you could live with the knowledge. ‘And I’m the only one who knows it,’ he thought nervously; ‘how can I be allowed to know it and still stay here and keep on walking around in this world? What if I tell someone? But then, who is there to permit it or forbid it, if I’m the only one who knows? Just a second, though - what can I actually tell anyone anyway?’

Tatarsky started thinking about it: there really was nothing in particular he could tell anyone. What was the point of telling a drunken Khanin it was the puddle that was reflected in the sun, and not the sun that was reflected in the puddle? Of course, he could tell him, but then… Tatarsky scratched the back of his head. He remembered this was the second revelation of this kind in his life: after gorging himself on fly-agarics with Gireiev, he’d understood something of equal importance. But then he’d completely forgotten it. All that remained in his memory were the words that were supposed to convey the truth: ‘There is no death, because the threads disappear but the sphere remains.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ he muttered, ‘how difficult it is to bring anything at all back here…’

‘That’s exactly right,’ said a quiet voice. ‘Any insight of true breadth and profundity will inevitably be reduced to words. And the words will inevitably be reduced to themselves.’

Tatarsky thought the voice sounded familiar. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked, looking round the room.

‘Sirruf has arrived,’ the voice replied.

‘What’s that, a name?’

"This game has no name,’ the voice replied. ‘It’s more of an official position.’

Tatarsky remembered where it was he’d heard the voice - on the military building site in the woods outside Moscow. This time he could see the speaker, or rather, he was able to imagine him instantly and without the slightest effort. At first he thought it was the likeness of a dog sitting there in front of him - something like a greyhound, but with powerful paws with claws and a long vertical neck. The beast had an elongated head with conical ears and a very pleasant-looking, if slightly cunning, little face crowned by a coquettish mane of fur. There seemed to be a pair of wings pressed against its sides. After a short while Tatarsky realised the beast was so large and so strange that the word ‘dragon’ would suit him best, especially since he was covered in shimmering rainbow scales (but then, just at that moment almost every object in the room was shimmering with every hue of the rainbow). Despite its distinctly reptilian features, the being radiated goodwill so powerfully that Tatarsky wasn’t at all frightened.