Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

‘A pity. In one of his novels there was an old man called Zosima who was horrified by intimations of the material fire. It’s not clear quite why he was so afraid. The material fire is your world. The fire in which you burn has to be maintained. And you are one of the service personnel.’

‘Service personnel?’

‘You are a copywriter, aren’t you? That means you are one of those who force people to gaze into the consuming fire.’

‘The consuming fire? But what is it that’s consumed?’

‘Not what, but who. Man believes that he is the consumer, but in reality the fire of consumption consumes him. What he receives in return are certain modest joys. It’s like the safe sex that you all indulge in ceaselessly, even when you are alone. Environmentally friendly garbage incineration. But you won’t understand it anyway.’

‘But who’s the garbage, who is it?’ Tatarsky asked. ‘Is it man?’

‘Man by nature is almost as great and beautiful as Sirruf.’ the Sirruf replied. ‘But he is not aware of it. The garbage is this unawareness. It is the identity that has no existence in reality. In this life man attends at the incineration of the garbage of his identity…’

‘Why should man gaze into this fire if his life is burning in it?’

‘You have no idea of what to do with these lives anyway; and whichever way you might turn your eyes, you are still gazing into the flames in which your life is consumed. There is mercy in the fact that in place of crematoria you have televisions and supermarkets; but the truth is that their function is the same. And in any case, the fire is merely a metaphor. You saw it because you ate a pass to the garbage incineration plant. All most people see in front of them is a television screen…’

And with that he disappeared.

‘Hey there,’ Tatarsky called.

There was no reply. Tatarsky waited for another minute before he realised he’d been left alone with his own mind, ready to wander off in any direction at all. He had to occupy it with something quickly.

‘Phone,’ he whispered. ‘Who? Gireiev! He knows what to do.’

For a long time no one answered. Eventually, on the fifteenth or twentieth ring, Gireiev’s morose voice responded.

‘Hello.’

‘Andrey? Hello. This is Tatarsky.’

‘Do you know what time it is?’

‘Listen,’ Tatarsky said hastily, ‘I’m in trouble. I’ve done too much acid. Someone in the know tells me it was five doses. Anyway, to cut it short, I’m coming apart at all the seams. What can I do?’

‘What can you do? I don’t know what you can do. In cases like that I recite a mantra.’

‘Can you give me one?’

‘How can I give you one? It has to be conferred.’

‘Aren’t there any you can just give me without any conferring?’

Gireiev thought. ‘Right, just hang on a minute,’ he said, and put the receiver down on the table.

For several minutes Tatarsky tried to make sense of the distant sounds borne to him along the wires on an electric wind. At first he could hear fragments of conversation; then an irritated woman’s voice broke in for a long time; then everything was drowned out by the abrupt and demanding sound of a child crying.

‘Write this down,’ Gireiev said at last. ‘ Om melafefon bva kha sha. I’ll give you it letter by letter: o, em…’

‘I’ve got it,’ said Tatarsky. ‘What does it mean?’

‘That’s not important. Just concentrate on the sound, OK? Have you got any vodka?’

‘I think I had two bottles.’

‘You can drink them both. It goes well with this mantra. In an hour it’ll be all over. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Thanks. Listen, who’s that crying there?’

‘My son,’ Gireiev answered.

‘You have a son? I didn’t know. What’s his name?’

‘Namhai,’ Gireiev replied in a disgruntled voice. ‘I’ll call tomorrow.’

Tatarsky put down the receiver and dashed into the kitchen, rapidly whispering to himself the incantation he’d just been given. He took out a bottle of Absolut and drank it all in three glassfuls, followed it up with some cold tea and then went into the bathroom - he was afraid to go back into the room. He sat on the edge of the bath, fixed his eyes on the door and began to whisper:

‘ Om melafefon bva kha sha, om melafefon bva kha sha…’

The phrase was so difficult to pronounce, his mind simply couldn’t cope with any other thoughts. Several minutes went by and a warm wave of drunkenness spread throughout his body. Tatarsky had almost relaxed when suddenly he noticed the familiar glimmering on the periphery of his field of vision. He clenched his fists and began whispering the mantra more quickly, but it was already too late to halt the new glitch.

Something like a firework display erupted at the spot where the bathroom door had just been, and when the red and yellow blaze died down a little, he saw a burning bush in front of him. Its branches were enveloped in bright flame, as though it had been doused in blazing petrol, but the broad dark-green leaves were not consumed in the fire. No sooner had Tatarsky studied the bush in detail than a clenched fist was extended towards him from out of its heart. Tatarsky swayed and almost fell backwards into the bath. The fist unclenched and on the palm extended in front of his face Tatarsky saw a small, wet, pickled cucumber covered in green pimples.

When the bush disappeared, Tatarsky could no longer recall whether he had taken the cucumber or not, but there was a distinctly salty taste in his mouth. Perhaps it was blood from a bitten lip.

‘Oh no, Gireiev, this mantra of yours isn’t doing the business,’ Tatarsky whispered, and went into the kitchen.

After drinking more vodka (he had to force it down), he went back into the room and turned on the television. The room was filled with solemn music; the blue spot on the screen expanded and transformed itself into an image. They were broadcasting some concert or other.

‘Lord, hear Thou my plea,’ sang a man with a powdered face, wearing a bow tie and a shot silk waistcoat under black tails. As he sang he rolled his goggling eyes and sawed at the air with his open hand in a strange manner, as though he was being borne away on a current of celestial ether.

Tatarsky clicked on the remote and the man in the bow tie disappeared. ‘Maybe I should pray?’ he thought. ‘It might do some good…’ He remembered the man from the bas-relief with his arms upraised to the starry sky.

He went out into the centre of the room and knelt down with some difficulty, then crossed his arms on his chest and raised his eyes to the ceiling.

‘Lord, hear Thou my plea,’ he said quietly. ‘I have sinned greatly against Thee. I live a bad life, a wrong one. But in my soul there are no abominable desires, cross my heart. I’ll never eat any of that junk again. I… I only want to be happy, and I just can’t manage it. Perhaps it’s what I deserve. I can’t do anything else except write bad slogans. But for Thee, oh Lord, I’ll write a good one - honest I will. You know, they do position Thee quite wrongly. They haven’t got a clue. Take that latest clip, where they’re collecting money for that church. There’s this old woman standing there with a box, and first someone driving an old jalopy puts in a rouble and then someone driving a Mercedes drops in a hundred bucks. The idea’s clear enough, but in terms of positioning it’s way off beam. The guy in the Mercedes wouldn’t wait in the queue of jalopies. A blind horse could see it. And the target group we need is all those guys in their Mercedes, because in terms of yield one Mercedes is worth a thousand jalopies. That’s not the way to do it. Here…’

Managing somehow to scramble upright, Tatarsky struggled over to the desk, picked up a pen and began writing in a jerky, spiderish scrawl: