Герман Садулаев: The Maya Pill

So Saat feels that three tenths of his head, from the right ear to the crown, are for United Khazaria: this peehive is the biggest and the Khagan himself is in it or nearby. And Saat feels that two tenths of his head, the crown and half the back, are for A Just Khazaria, which is new, and also for the Khagan, but from the other side, as it were. And one tenth of his head, the part by the left ear, is for the Utmost Primordial Communal Peehive Party of Khazaria. This peehive is ancient; it has come down from his forefathers. And one half tenth of his head, behind the ear, just a scratch, really, is for the Robber Bandit Peehive of Khazaria. And this party has no more sense than a pile of rotten straw, but its leader is a bandit they call the Thrush, Solovey, and he’s a riot, so much fun! The rest of his head stayed home; it didn’t go to vow anything, didn’t elect anyone. And fine, so let half an ear come, that should be enough for the Great Kurultai.

Shamans lead a bear around the streets of Itil. The bear jingles its bell, dances. United Khazaria is the winner. Who else is there anyway? It’s all just Murzlas in the Kurultai. They’re not like Khazars: dark-skinned, curly-haired, with round eyes. There’s a saying in the bathhouses: For the Murzlas the Khagan is no law, and the shaitan spirit no brother. Though the shaitan may very well be their father. But you hear all kinds of things in the bathhouse.

Saat returns at night, collapses in his ragged tent, sinks into a deep slumber. Gets up the next day and remembers nothing! Feet all bloody, but where he has been and what he has been doing?—might as well ask the wind!

The old women whisper that every year the Itil sorcerers and shamans send out a huge cloud of foul air, filled with violet-colored dust, gathering the entire Khazar people together to vow allegiance. The ragged herdsmen come to Itil, trudging on their last legs like the living dead, and they speak their vows, vote in swarms with their voices. Afterward they have no recollection of whom they voted for, or of even voting at all. But the Khagan is eternal, and the Kurultai is with him: you swore allegiance back then, so now obey; go forth: raid, gather taxes for our coffers and maidens for our beds, bow down to the earth before us. For we are blood of your blood, flesh of your flesh and it’s all for your sake. And the Khazars live on. They carry on as they can, in their own way. And the Khagan, too, with the Kurultai. Until next spring. This is one way. And it is even a good way. Just so long as there’s no war.

Every morning around eight thirty I venture forth. The door to the apartment building closes lazily behind me on its pneumatic hinge. The first thing I hear is the croaking of ravens. They’re everywhere; they live here year ‘round. They weave their black-branched nests on the treetops in the courtyard, and subsist on a diet of human leavings gleaned from the trash bins.

Sometimes I ask myself: Why is it only the most disgusting, ugly, and nasty creatures that have adapted to live with human beings? Ravens, rats, and cockroaches are man’s constant companions in his wanderings through time. They establish their abodes either inside those of humans, or in close proximity to them. For whatever reason, human cities are devoid of proud eagles, noble deer, gorgeous butterflies, and even soft-furred beavers. Could it be that in the Creator’s plan these fauna are placed near us so as to enhance the aesthetic effect of man’s perfection, by contrast?

Or do they sense that we’re kindred spirits, grimy, low birds of a feather?

The ravens croak in the morning. Harken to where the noise is coming from. If it’s from the right, no problem. But if a raven croaks three times on your left, no good will come of it. An ancient Khazar omen.

Observe also the position of the waxing moon. If it’s on the right, all is well; on the left, you’re in trouble.

If you see a bad omen, though, all is not lost; there’s a sure way to protect yourself. Immediately spit three times over your left shoulder. Everyone knows that the devil lurks behind a man’s left shoulder; there’s an angel on the other side. So spit three times into the devil’s snout; that’ll throw him off. Then make four complete turns clockwise, that is, left to right. That’ll make the devil dizzy, and then the angel can give him one in the rear. Last, take off your coat, turn it inside out, and put it back on. It will utterly baffle the demon. And he won’t give you any more trouble.

I learned this from my Khazar grandma. She also taught me how to cast spells using a dried branch, how to undo an evil spell using nothing but water, how to draw signs to protect yourself from shape-shifters, and how to distinguish the living dead from the living living, and the living dead from the dead dead.

But I’ve forgotten just about everything from that distant time, those years when I was a schoolboy, and used to spend my summer vacations on a farm far away, on the shores of a broad, muddy river, with my wise, fairy-tale grandmother. It was so long ago, it feels like another lifetime. Or someone else’s.

A line from one of those three cassette albums.

The life I live now is completely different.

I greet the ravens, and if necessary, I spit the shoulder demon away, and head for the shopping-center parking lot. I go up to my boxy gray car, get the remote key out of my pocket, and press the button. The door locks click, and I open the driver’s side door and crawl in.

My car is a 2006 Renault Logan, ultra-economy class, designed for the Turkish market and assembled in Moldova or someplace. Bought on credit with a three-year loan with an insane interest rate. Of course the color caused no end of torment. When the bank agreed to the loan, there was too much variety on the lot: For example, instead of drab gray, you could also choose plain gray. Or drabber gray. And then, there was also plain drab gray. Well, I put a lot of thought into it and finally decided I might as well get a gray one—I liked the color so much.

We could spend some time on this. These days, a man’s social status, his identity and place in the world, everything that he has (or has not) achieved in his lifetime, can be gauged quickly and easily with one look at the car he drives.

In one of my previous lives, sometime around 1995, I was walking along the Palace Embankment past the Admiralty one warm summer night, hand in hand with a tall, ravishing brunette, talking big: “Katya, if today, right this minute, the devil came up and let me see into the future, and if I saw that I was destined to become an ordinary man like millions of others, that I would just go to work every day, come home at night and watch TV, spend my weekends shopping, and all the rest of it, and if the devil were to hand me a gun, I would shoot myself right then and there, without a moment’s hesitation!”

Over the next couple of years Katya got tired of me, of my tendency to disappear into a black hole for weeks and months on end and then suddenly turn up with no warning, “Hey, you busy tonight?” Katya married a good man. Katya has a job as a senior legal advisor, an assistant prosecutor. She might even have made prosecutor by now.

And here I am getting into my cheap Franco-Turkish car, thinking what a dirty trick it had been for the devil not to show up then and there with that movie about my future life and a loaded pistol in his clawlike hand. But what can you expect from the spawn of hell? Now he can gloat at the sight of me, the man I’ve become, a fate worse than death, the very man I swore I’d never be. On the other hand, don’t forget, I did turn him down twice when he offered his contract—my soul in exchange for a chance at something more. Gloating is all he has.