Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

Tatarsky noticed that the floor under the table was covered with a panel made from boards nailed together. Peering through a gap between them, he saw the blackness of a dark multi-storey abyss. ‘Of course,’ he recalled, ‘it’s the lift-shaft; and this is the engine room, just like the room with that render-server. Only there aren’t any automatic rifles.’ He sat at the table and gingerly placed his feet on the boards. At first he felt a bit afraid that the boards under his feet would break and that he and they would go tumbling down together into the deep shaft with the stratified garbage of the years lying at its bottom. But the boards were thick and secure.

The chamber had obviously been visited by someone, most likely the local tramps. There were freshly trampled cigarette butts on the floor, and on the table there was a fragment of newspaper with the television programmes for the week. Tatarsky read the title of the final programme before the jagged line of the torn edge: 0:00 - The Golden Room

‘What kind of programme’s that?’ he thought. ‘Must be something new.’ He rested his chin on his folded hands and gazed at the photograph of the woman running along the sand, which was still hanging in the same place. The daylight exposed the blisters and blots the damp had produced on the paper. One of the blots lay directly over the face of the goddess, and in the daylight it appeared warped, pock-marked and old.

Tatarsky drank the remainder of the vodka and closed his eyes.

The brief dream he saw was very strange. He was walking along a sandy beach towards a golden statue gleaming in the sun - it was still a long way off, but he could see it was a female torso without a head or hands. Slowly trudging along beside Tatarsky was the Sirruf, with Gireiev sitting on its back. The Sirruf was sad and looked like an ass exhausted by heavy work, and the wings folded on its back looked like an old felt saddle.

‘You write slogans,’ Gireiev said, ‘but do you know the most important slogan of all? The base slogan, you could call it?’

‘No,’ said Tatarsky, screwing up his eyes against the golden radiance.

‘I’ll tell you it. You’ve heard the expression "Day of Judgement"?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, there’s nothing really frightening about that judgement. Except that it’s already begun, and what happens to all of us is no more than a phase in a court experiment, a re-enactment of the crime. Think about it: surely it’s no problem for God to create this entire world out of nothing, with its eternity and infinity, for just a few seconds in order to test a single soul standing before him?’

‘Andrei.’ Tatarsky answered, squinting at the darned slippers in the string stirrups, ‘just leave it out, will you? I get enough shit at work. At least you could lay off.’

When they removed Tatarsky’s blindfold, he was chilled to the bone. His bare feet were suffering particularly badly from the cold stone floor. Opening his eyes, he saw he was standing in the doorway of a spacious chamber similar to the foyer of a cinema where, as far as he could judge, there was something like a buffet supper taking place. One strange thing he noticed immediately: there wasn’t a single window in the walls faced with yellow stone, but one of the walls reflected like a mirror, which meant that in the light of the bright halogen lamps the hall appeared substantially larger than it actually was. The people gathered in the hall were conversing quietly and studying sheets of paper with typewritten texts hung round the walls. Despite the fact that Tatarsky was standing in the doorway completely naked, the assembled company paid no particular attention to him, except perhaps for two or three who cast an indifferent glance in his direction. Tatarsky had seen virtually everyone in the hall many times on television, but there was no one he knew personally apart from Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin, who was standing by the wall with a wineglass in his hand. He also spotted Azadovsky’s secretary Alla, engaged in conversation with two elderly playboys - her loose washed-out blonde hair made her look like a slightly debauched Medusa. Tatarsky thought that somewhere in the crowd he caught a glimpse of Morkovin’s check jacket, but he lost sight of him immediately.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ Tatarsky heard Azadovsky’s voice say, and then he appeared out of a passage leading to some inner chamber. ‘So you’re here? Why’re you standing in the doorway? Come on in; we won’t eat you.’

Tatarsky stepped towards him. Azadovsky smelled slightly of wine; in the halogen lighting his face looked tired.

‘Where are we?’ asked Tatarsky.

‘About a hundred metres underground, near the Ostankino pond. I’m sorry about the blindfold and all the rest - that’s just the way things are supposed to be before the ritual. Traditions, fuck ‘em. You scared?’

Tatarsky nodded, and Azadovksy laughed contentedly. ‘Don’t let it bother you,’ he said. ‘It’s a load of old cobblers. Have a wander around in the meantime, take a look at the new collection. It’s been hung for two days now. I’ve got to have a word with a couple of people.’

He summoned his secretary with a snap of his fingers. ‘Alla here can tell you about it. This is Babe Tatarsky. You know each other? Show him everything in the place, OK?’

Tatarsky was left in the company of the secretary.

‘Where shall we start the viewing from?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Let’s start from here.’ said Tatarsky. ‘But where’s the collection?’

‘There it is,’ said the secretary, nodding towards the wall. ‘It’s the Spanish collection. Who do you like best of the great Spanish artists?’

‘That would be…’ Tatarsky said, straining to recall an appropriate name,’…Velasquez.’

‘I’m crazy about the old darling too,’ said the secretary, glancing at him with a cold green eye. ‘I would call him the Cervantes of the brush.’

She took a precise grip on Tatarsky’s elbow and, with her tall hip pressing against his naked thigh, she led him towards the nearest sheet of paper on the wall. Tatarsky saw that it held a couple of paragraphs of text and a blue seal. The secretary leaned shortsightedly towards the paper in order to read the fine print.

‘Yes, this is the very canvas. A relatively little known pink version of the portrait of the Infanta. What you can see is a notarised certificate issued by Oppenheim and Radler to certify that the picture really was acquired for seventeen million dollars from a private collection.’

Tatarsky decided not to show that he was surprised by anything. Anyway, he didn’t really know for certain whether he was surprised by anything or not.

‘And this one?’ he asked, indicating the next sheet of paper with a text and seal.

‘Oh,’ said Alla, ‘that’s the pride of our collection. It’s a Goya - the Maja with a fan in the garden. Acquired from a certain small museum in Castile. Once again Oppenheim and Radler certify the price - eight and a half million. Astonishing.’

‘Yes,’ said Tatarsky, ‘it is. But I must admit I find sculpture much more interesting than painting.’

‘I should think so,’ said the secretary. ‘That must be because you’re used to working in three dimensions, I suppose?’

Tatarsky gave an inquiring glance.

‘Well, three-dimensional graphics. With those stiffs…’

‘Ah,’ said Tatarsky, ‘that’s what you’re talking about. Yes, I’m used to working with them, and living with them.’

‘Well here’s a sculpture,’ said the secretary, and she dragged Tatarsky over to a new sheet of paper on which the text was a little larger than on the others. ‘It’s a Picasso. Ceramic figurine of a woman running. Not much like Picasso, you might say. You’d be right, but that’s because it’s the post-cubist period. Almost thirteen million dollars - can you imagine it?’