Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

In the meantime the family doctor had raised one hand in a gesture of greeting, and Tatarsky noticed he was holding a short plastic straw.

‘Join the club,’ he said in a dull voice.

‘We’re old members,’ Morkovin replied.

Morkovin’s response was evidently the usual one in this place, because the owner of the office nodded his head indulgently.

Morkovin took two straws from the table, handed one to Tatarsky and then lay down on the carpet. Tatarsky followed his example. Once seated on the carpet he looked inquiringly at the owner of the office, who smiled sweetly in reply. Tatarsky noticed he had a watch on his wrist with a bracelet made of unusual links of different sizes. The winding knob was decorated with a small diamond, and there were three diamond spirals set round the face of the watch. Tatarsky recalled an editorial about expensive watches he’d read in some radical youth magazine and he gulped respectfully. The owner of the office noticed his gaze and looked at his watch.

‘You like it?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ said Tatarsky. ‘A Piaget Possession, if I’m not mistaken? I think it costs seventy thousand?’

‘Piaget Possession?’ The young man glanced at the dial. ‘Yes, so it is. I don’t know how much it cost.’

Morkovin gave Tatarsky a sideways glance.

‘There’s nothing that identifies someone as belonging to the lower classes of society so clearly as knowing all about expensive watches and cars. Babe,’ he said.

Tatarsky blushed and lowered his eyes.

The section of carpet immediately in front of his face was covered in a pattern depicting fantastic flowers with long petals of various colours. Tatarsky noticed that the nap of the carpet was thickly covered with minute white pellets like pollen, as though with frost. He glanced across at Morkovin. Morkovin stuck his small tube into one nostril, closed the other nostril with one finger and ran the free end of the tube across the petal of a fantastical violet daisy. Tatarsky finally got the idea.

For several minutes the silence in the room was broken only by the sound of intense snorting. Eventually the owner of the office raised himself up on one elbow. ‘Well?’ he asked, looking at Tatarsky.

Tatarsky tore himself away from the pale-purple rose that he was absorbed in processing. His resentment had completely evaporated.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Simply excellent!’

He found talking easy and pleasurable; he might have felt a certain constraint when he entered this huge office, but now it had disappeared without trace. The cocaine was the real thing, and hardly cut at all - except perhaps for the very slightest aftertaste of aspirin.

‘One thing I don’t understand, though,’ Tatarsky continued, ‘is why all this fancy technology? It’s all very elegant, but isn’t it a bit unusual!’

Morkovin and the owner of the office exchanged glances.

‘Didn’t you see the sign on our premises?’ the owner asked:

‘The Institute of Apiculture?’

‘Yes,’ said Tatarsky.

‘Well then. Here we are, making like bees.’

All three of them laughed, and they laughed for a long tune, even when the reason for laughing had been forgotten.

Finally the fit of merriment passed. The owner of the office looked around as though trying to recall what he was there for, and evidently remembered. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s get down to business. Morky, you wait with Alla. I’ll have a word with the man.’

Morkovin hurriedly sniffed a couple of paradisaical cornflowers, stood up and left the room. The owner of the office got to his feet, stretched, walked round the desk and sat down in the armchair.

‘Have a seat,’ he said.

Tatarsky sat in the armchair facing the desk. It was very soft, and so low that he fell into it like falling into a snowdrift. When he looked up, Tatarsky was struck dumb. The table towered over him like a tank over a trench, and the resemblance was quite clearly not accidental. The twin supports decorated with plates of embossed nickel looked exactly like broad caterpillar tracks, and the picture in the round frame hanging on the wall was now exactly behind the head of the office’s owner, so it looked like a trapdoor from which he had just emerged - the resemblance was further reinforced by the fact that only his head and shoulders could be seen above the desk. He savoured the effect for a few seconds, then he rose, leaned out across the desk and offered Tatarsky his hand:

‘Leonid Azadovsky.’

‘Vladimir Tatarsky,’ said Tatarsky, rising slightly as he squeezed the plump, limp hand.

‘You’re no Vladimir; you’re called Babylen,’ said Azadovsky. ‘I know all about it. And I’m not Leonid. My old man was a wanker too. Know what he called me? Legion. He probably didn’t even know what the word means. It used to make me miserable too, at first. Then I found out there was something about me in the Bible, so I felt better about it. OK then…’

Azadovsky rustled the papers scattered around on his desk.

‘Now what have we here… Aha. I’ve had a look at your work, and I liked it. Good stuff. We need people like you. Only in a few places… I don’t completely believe it. Here, for instance; you write about the "collective unconscious". Do you actually know what that is?’

Tatarsky shuffled his fingers as he tried to find the words.

‘At the unconscious collective level,’ he answered.

‘Aren’t you afraid someone might turn up who knows exactly what it is?’

Tatarsky twitched his nose. ‘No, Mr Azadovsky,’ he said, ‘I’m not afraid of that; and the reason I’m not is that for a long time now everyone who knows what the "collective unconscious" is has been selling cigarettes outside the metro. One way or another, I mean. I used to sell cigarettes outside the metro myself. I went into advertising because I was sick of it.’

Azadovsky said nothing for a few seconds while he thought over what he’d just heard. Then he chuckled.

‘Is there anything at all you believe in?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Tatarsky.

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Azadovsky, taking another look into the papers, this time at some form with columns and sections. ‘OK… Political views - what’s this we have here? It says "upper left" in English. I don’t get it. What a fucking pain - soon every form and document we have’ll be written in English. So what are your political views?’

‘Left of right centrists,’ Tatarsky replied.

‘And more specifically?’

‘More specifically… Let’s just say I like it when life has big tits, but I’m not in the slightest bit excited by the so-called Kantian tit-in-itself, no matter how much milk there might be splashing about in it. That’s what makes me different from selfless idealists like Gaidar…’

The phone rang and Azadovksy held up his hand to stop the conversation. He picked up the receiver and listened for a few minutes, his face gradually hardening into a grimace of loathing.

‘So keep looking.’ he barked, dropped the receiver on to its cradle and turned towards Tatarsky. ‘What was that about Gaidar? Only keep it short, they’ll be ringing again any minute.’

‘To cut it short,’ said Tatarsky, ‘I couldn’t give a toss for any Kantian tit-in-itself with all its categorical imperatives. On the tit market the only tit that gives me a buzz is the Feuerbachian tit-for-us. That’s the way I see the situation.’

"That’s what I think too.’Azadovksy said in all seriousness. ‘Even if it’s not so big, so long as it’s Feuerbachian…’

The phone rang again. Azadovsky picked up the receiver and listened for a while, and his face blossomed into a broad smile.

‘Now that’s what I wanted to hear! And the control shot? Great! Good going!’