Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

Azadovsky’s dacha created a strange impression. Most of all it resembled the Cathedral of St Basil the Holy Fool, doubled in size and overgrown with a multitude of domestic accretions. The corkscrew attics and garrets were decorated with little balconies with balustrades of short fat columns, and all the windows above the second floor were hidden completely behind shutters. There were several Rottweilers strolling around the yard and a ribbon of blue-grey smoke was rising from the chimney of one of the extensions (evidently they were stoking up the bath-house). Azadovksy himself, surrounded by a small entourage including Sasha Blo and Malyuta, was standing on the steps leading up into the house. He was wearing a Tyrolean hat with a feather, which suited him very well and even lent his plump face a kind of bandit nobility.

‘We were just waiting for you.’ he said when Tatarsky and Morkovin walked up. ‘We’re going out among the people. To drink beer at the station.’

Tatarsky felt an urgent desire to say something his boss would like.

‘Just like Haroun el-Raschid and his viziers, eh?’

Azadovsky stared at him in amazement.

‘He used to change his clothes and walk around Baghdad.’ Tatarsky explained, already regretting he’d started the conversation. ‘And see how the people lived. And find out how his rating was doing.’

‘Around Baghdad?’ Azadovsky asked suspiciously. ‘Who was this Haroun guy?’

‘He was the Caliph. A long time ago, about five hundred years.’

‘I get it. You wouldn’t do too much strolling around Baghdad these days. It’s just like here, only you have to take three jeeps full of bodyguards. Right, is everyone here? Wagons roll!’

Tatarsky got into the last car, Sasha Blo’s red Range-Rover. Sasha was already slightly drunk and obviously feeling elated.

‘I keep meaning to congratulate you.’ he said. ‘That material of yours about Berezovsky and Raduev - it’s the best kompromat there’s been all autumn. Really. Especially the place where they plan to pierce the mystical body of Russia with their television-drilltowers at the major sacred points. And those inscriptions on the Monopoly money: ‘In God we Monopolise!’ And putting that Jewish prayer cap on Raduev - that must have taken some thinking up…’

‘OK, OK,’ said Tatarsky, thinking gloomily to himself:

"That jerk Malyuta was asked not to touch Raduev. Now the mazuma goes back. And I’ll be lucky if they didn’t have the meter running on it.”

‘Why don’t you tell me when your department’s going to throw up a decent idea?’ he asked. ‘What stage is the project at?’

‘It’s all supposed to be strictly secret. But without getting specific, the idea’s coming on, and it’ll make everyone sick as parrots. We just have to think through the role of Attila and polish up the stylistic side - so we have something like an ongoing counterpoint between the pipe organ and the balalaika.’

‘Attila? The one who burnt Rome? What’s he got to do with it?’

‘Attila means "the man from Itil". In Russian, a Volga man. Itil is the ancient name for the Volga. D’you get my drift?’

‘Not really.’

‘We’re the third Rome - which, typically enough, happens to lie on the Volga. So there’s no need to go off on any campaigning. Hence our total historical self-sufficiency and profound national dignity.’

Tatarsky sized up the idea. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s neat.’

Glancing out of the window, he caught sight of a gigantic concrete structure above the edge of the trees, a crooked spiral rising upwards, crowned with a small grey tower. He screwed up his eyes and then opened them again - the concrete monolith hadn’t disappeared, only shifted backwards a little. Tatarsky nudged Sasha Blo so hard in the ribs that the car swerved across the road.

‘You crazy, or what?’ asked Sasha.

‘Look quick, over there.’ said Tatarsky. ‘D’you see it, that concrete tower?’

‘What of it?’

‘D’you know what it is?’

Sasha looked out of the window.

‘Oh, that. Azadovksy was just telling us about it. They started building an Air Defence station here. Early warning or some such thing. They got as far as building the foundations and the walls and then, you know, there was no one left to warn. Azadovsky has this plan to privatise the whole thing and finish building it, only not for a radar station - for his new house. I don’t know. Speaking for myself, I can’t stand concrete walls. What’s got you so wound up?’

‘Nothing,’ said Tatarsky. ‘It just looks very strange. What’s this station we’re going to called?’

‘Rastorguevo.’

‘Rastorguevo.’ Tatarsky repeated. ‘In that case, everything’s clear.’

‘And here it is. We’re headed for that building over there. This is the dirtiest beer-hall anywhere near Moscow. Leonid likes to drink beer here at weekends. So’s he can really appreciate what he’s achieved in life.’

The beer-hall, located in the basement of a brick building with peeling paint not far from the railway platform, really was quite exceptionally dirty and foul-smelling. The people squeezed in at the tables with their quarter-litres of vodka matched the institution perfectly. The only ones who didn’t fit in were two bandits in tracksuits standing behind a table at the entrance. Tatarsky was amazed to see Azadovsky actually greet some of the customers - he obviously really was a regular here. Sasha Blo swept up two glass mugs of pale beer in one hand, took Tatarsky by the arm with the other and dragged him off to a distant table.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about. Two of my brothers have moved up here from Yerevan and decided to set up business. To cut it short, they’ve opened an exclusive funeral parlour with top-class service. They just figured out how much mazuma there is stuck between banks up here. They’re all beginning to beat it out of each other now, so a real market niche has opened up.’

"That’s for sure,’ said Tatarsky, glancing at the bandits by the entrance, who were drinking Czech beer out of bottles they’d brought with them. He couldn’t figure out what they were doing in a place like this - although their motives could have been the same as Azadovsky’s.

‘Just for friendship’s sake,’ Sasha Blo rattled on, ‘write me a decent slogan for them, something that’ll actually get to the target group. When they get on their feet they’ll pay you back.’

‘Why not, for old times’ sake?’ Tatarsky answered. ‘So what’s our brand essence?’

‘I told you - high-class death.’

‘What’s the firm called?’

"The family name. The Brothers Debirsian Funeral Parlour. Will you think about it?’

‘I’ll do it.’ said Tatarsky. ‘No problem.’

‘By the way,’ Sasha went on, ‘you’ll laugh when I tell you, but they’ve already had one of our acquaintances as a client. His wife paid for a top-rate funeral before she slung her hook and split.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Remember Khanin from the Privy Councillor agency? Someone took him out.’

‘That’s terrible. I didn’t hear about it. Who did it?’

‘Some say the Chechens, and some say the filth. Something to do with diamonds. To cut it short, a murky business. Where are you off to?’

"The toilet,’ Tatarsky answered.

The washroom was even dirtier than the rest of the beer-hall. Glancing at the wall covered in patches of geological damp that rose up from the urinal, Tatarsky noticed a triangular piece of plaster that was remarkably similar in shape to the diamond necklace in the photograph hanging in Khanin’s toilet. At the first glimpse of this formation the feeling of pity for his former boss that filled Tatarsky’s heart was alchemically transformed into the slogan ordered by Sasha Blo.