Babylon

by Виктор Пелевин

  ‘You talk to him, will you, Farsuk?’ said Azadovksy. ‘He knows everything anyway, without us telling him.’

  ‘What do you know, I wonder?’ Farseikin asked.

  ‘Just a few bits and pieces,’ answered Tatarsky. ‘For instance, that jagged sign in the centre of the slab. I know what it means.’

  ‘And what does it mean?’

  ‘"Quick" in ancient Egyptian.’

  Farseikin laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s certainly original. New members usually think it’s M amp;M chocolate. Actually it’s a symbol that indicates a certain very ancient and rather obscure dictum. All the ancient languages in which it existed have been dead for ages, and even translating it into Russian is difficult - there aren’t any appropriate glosses. But English has an exact equivalent in Marshall MacLuhan’s phrase: "The medium is the message." That’s why we decode the symbol as two ‘M’s joined together. And we’re not the only ones, of course - altars like this are supplied with all render-servers.’

  ‘You mean the slab isn’t genuine?’

  ‘Why not? It’s absolutely genuine,’ answered Farseikin. ‘Three-thousand-year-old basalt. You can touch it. Of course, I’m not sure this drawing always meant what it means now"

  ‘What’s that Venus fly-trap plant between the goddess and the dog?’

  ‘It’s not a Venus fly-trap; it’s the Tree of Life. It’s also the symbol of the great goddess, because one of her forms is a tree with three roots that blossoms in our souls. This tree also has a name, but that is only learned at the very highest stages of initiation in our society. At your stage you can only know the names of its three roots - that is, the root names.’

  ‘What are these names?’

  Farseikin solemnly pronounced three strange long words that had absolutely no meaning for Tatarsky. He could only note that they contained many sibilants.

  ‘Can they be translated?’

  ‘It’s the same problem of there being no appropriate glosses. The root names can only be rendered very approximately as "oral", "anal" and "displacing".’

  ‘Uhuh,’ said Tatarsky. ‘I see. And what society’s that? What do its members do?’

  ‘As if you really don’t know. How long have you been working for us now? All that is what its members do.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Once long ago it was called the Chaldean Guild,’ Farseikin replied. ‘But it was called that by people who weren’t members and had only heard about it. We ourselves call it the Society of Gardeners, because our task is to cultivate the sacred tree that gives life to the great goddess.’

  ‘Has this society existed for a long time?’

  ‘For a very, very long time. They say it was active in Atlantis, but for the sake of simplicity we regard it as coming to us from Babylon via Egypt.’

  Tatarsky adjusted the mask that had slipped from his face. ‘I see.’ he said. ‘So did it build the Tower of Babel?’

  ‘No. Definitely not. We’re not a construction firm. We’re simply servants of the great goddess. To use your terminology, we watch to make sure that Phukkup doesn’t awaken and attack; you understood that part right. I think you understand that here in Russia we bear a special responsibility. The dog sleeps here.’

  ‘But where exactly?’

  ‘All around us,’ replied Farseikin. ‘When they say he sleeps among the snow, that’s a metaphor; but the fact that several times this century he has almost awoken isn’t.’

  ‘So why do they keep cutting back our frequency?’

  Farseikin spread his hands and shrugged. ‘Human frivolity,’ he said, going over to the altar and picking up the golden chalice. ‘Immediate advantage, a short-sighted view of the situation; but they’ll never actually cut us off, don’t worry about that. They watch that very closely. And now, if you have no objections, let us proceed with the ritual.’

  He moved close to Tatarsky and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Kneel down and remove your mask.’

  Tatarsky obediently went down on his knees and removed the mask from his face. Farseikin dipped a finger into the chalice and traced a wet zigzag on Tatarsky’s forehead.

  ‘Thou art the medium, and thou art the message,’ he said, and Tatarsky realised that the line on his forehead was a double ‘M’.

  ‘What liquid is that?’ he asked.

  ‘Dog’s blood. I trust I don’t need to explain the symbolism?’

  ‘No,’ said Tatarsky, rising from the floor. ‘I’m not an idiot; I’ve read a thing or two. What next?’

  ‘Now you must look into the sacred eye.’

  For some reason Tatarsky shuddered at this, and Azadovsky noticed it.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ he put in. ‘Through this eye the goddess recognises her husband; and since she already has a husband, it’s a pure formality. You take a look at yourself in the eye, it’s clear you’re not the god Marduk, and we calmly get on with business.’

  ‘What god Marduk?’

  ‘Well, maybe not Marduk, then,’ said Azadovsky, taking out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter; ‘it doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean anything in particular. Farsuk, you explain to him; you’ve got it all taped. Meanwhile I’ll take a trip to Marlboro country.’

  ‘It’s another mythologeme,’ said Farseikin. "The great goddess had a husband, also a god, the most important of all the gods, to whom she fed a love potion, and he fell asleep in the shrine on the summit of his ziggurat. Since he was a god, his dreaming was so powerful that… In general, it’s all a bit confused, but all of our world, including all of us, and even the goddess, are apparently his dream. And since he can’t be found, she has a symbolic earthly husband, whom she chooses herself.’

  Tatarsky cast a glance in the direction of Azadovsky, who nodded and released a neat smoke ring through the mouth-hole of his mask.

  ‘You guessed,’ said Farseikin. ‘At the moment it’s him. For Leonid, it’s naturally a rather tense moment when someone else looks into the sacred eye, but so far it’s been all right. Go on.’

  Tatarsky went up to the eye on the stand and knelt down in front of it. The blue enamel iris was separated from the pupil by a fine gold border; the pupil itself was dark and reflected like a mirror. In it Tatarsky could see his own distorted face, Farseikin’s crooked figure and Azadovsky’s bloated knee.

  ‘Turn the light this way,’ Farseikin said to someone. ‘He won’t be able to see like that, and he has to remember for the rest of his life.’

  A bright beam of light fell on the pupil, and Tatarsky could no longer see his own reflection, which was replaced by a blurred golden glimmering, as though he had just spent several minutes watching the rising sun, then closed his eyes and seen its imprint lost and wandering through his nerve endings. ‘Just what was it I was supposed to see?’ he wondered.

  Behind him there was a rapid scuffle, something metallic clanged heavily against the floor and he heard a hoarse gasp. Tatarsky instantly leapt to his feet, sprang back from the altar and swung round.

  The scene that met his eyes was so unreal that it failed to frighten him, and he decided it must be part of the ritual. Sasha Blo and Malyuta, wearing fluffy white skirts, with golden masks dangling at their chests, were strangling Azadovsky with yellow nylon skipping ropes, trying to keep themselves as far away from him as possible, while Azadovsky, his sheep’s eyes staring out of his head, was pulling the thin nylon rope with both hands towards himself with all his might. Alas, it was an unequal struggle: blood appeared on his lacerated palms, staining the yellow string red, and he fell first to his knees and then on to his belly, covering his fallen mask with his chest. Tatarsky caught the moment when the expression of dumbfounded astonishment disappeared from the eyes gazing at him and was not replaced by any other. It was only then he realised that if this was part of the ritual, it was an entirely unexpected part for Azadovsky.

  ‘What is this? What’s happening
?’

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Farseikin. ‘Nothing’s happening any more. It’s already happened.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Tatarsky.

  Farseikin shrugged. ‘The great goddess had grown weary of her mismatch.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘At the sacred divination in Atlanta the oracle foretold that in our country Ishtar would have a new husband. We’d been having problems with Azadovsky for ages, but it took us a long time to figure out who the new husband could be. All that was said about him was that he was a man with the name of a town. We thought and thought about it, we searched, and then suddenly they brought in your file from the first section. Everything adds up: you’re the one.’

  ‘Me???’

  Instead of replying, Farseikin gave a sign to Sasha Blo and Malyuta. They went over to Azadovsky’s body, took hold of his legs and dragged him out of the altar room into the changing room.

  ‘Me?’ Tatarsky repeated. ‘But why me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ask yourself that one. For some reason the goddess didn’t choose me. How fine it would have sounded: "He who has abandoned his name"…’

  ‘Abandoned his name?’

  ‘I come from a Volga German background; but when I was due to graduate from university, an order came in from state TV for a nig-nog to be their Washington correspondent. I was the Komsomol secretary, which meant I was first in line for America. So they changed my name for me in the Lubyanka. Anyway, that’s not important. It’s you that’s been chosen.’

  ‘And would you have accepted?’

  ‘Why not? It certainly sounds impressive: husband of the great goddess! It’s a purely ritual post, no responsibilities at all, but the opportunities are absolutely immense. No limits at all, you could say. Of course, it all depends on how imaginative you are. Every morning the deceased here had his cleaning-lady scatter cocaine across his carpet from a bucket; and he built himself a bunch of dachas, bought a load of pictures… And that was all he could think of. As I said: a mismatch.’

  ‘And can I refuse?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Farseikin.

  Tatarsky glanced through the open door, behind which there was something strange going on. Malyuta and Sasha Blo were packing Azadovsky into a container in the form of a large green sphere. His body, hunched over in an unnatural fashion, was already in the container, but one hairy leg with a red flip-flop still protruded from the container’s small door and stubbornly refused to fit inside.

  ‘What’s the sphere for?’

  ‘The corridors here are long and narrow,’ answered Farseikin. ‘Carrying him would be the devil’s own job; and when you roll it outside, nobody takes the slightest notice. Semyon Velin thought it up before he died. What a designer he was… And we lost him because of this idiot as well. I wish Semyon could see all this!’

  ‘But why is it green?’

  ‘I don’t know. What difference does it make? Don’t go looking for symbolic significance in everything. Babe - you might regret it when you find it.’

  There was a quiet crunching sound in the changing room and Tatarsky winced.

  ‘Will they strangle me some time too?’ he asked.

  Farseikin shrugged: ‘As you’ve seen, the consorts of the great goddess are sometimes changed, but that goes with the job. If you don’t get too full of yourself, you could easily reach old age. Even retire. The main thing is, if you have any doubts about anything, you just come to me; and follow my advice. The first thing I’d advise you to do is get rid of that cocaine-polluted carpet. There are rumours going round town. That’s something we can do without.’

  ‘I’ll get rid of the carpet; but how do we explain to all the others about me moving into his office?’

  ‘No need to explain anything to them. They understand all right, or they wouldn’t be working for us.’

  Malyuta put his head out of the changing room. He was already changed. He glanced at Tatarsky for a moment then looked away and held out Azadovsky’s mobile phone to Farseikin.

  ‘Shall we roll it out?’ he asked briskly.

  ‘No,’ said Farseikin. ‘Roll it in. Why d’you ask such stupid questions?’

  Tatarsky waited until the metallic rumbling in the long burrow of the corridor had died away and asked in a low voice:

  ‘Farsuk Karlovich, will you tell me something, in confidence?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who actually controls all of this?’

  ‘My advice to you is not to stick your nose in,’ said Farseikin. ‘That way you’ll stay a living god for longer; and to be honest about it, I don’t know. Even after all the years I’ve been in the business.’

  He went over to the wall beside the altar, unlocked a small concealed door, bent down and went in through the opening. A light came on beyond the door and Tatarsky saw a large machine that looked like an open black book flanked by two vertical cylinders of frosted glass. The flat black surface facing Tatarsky bore the word ‘Compuware’ in white and some unfamiliar symbol, and standing in front of the machine was a seat rather like a dentist’s chair with straps and latches.

  ‘What’s that?’ Tatarsky asked.

  ‘A 3-D scanner.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘We’re going to scan in your image.’

  ‘Do I have to go through with it?’

  ‘Absolutely. According to the ritual, you only become the husband of the great goddess after you’ve been digitised - converted, as they say, into a sequence of visual images.’

  ‘And then I’ll be inserted into all the clips and broadcasts? Like Azadovsky?’

  ‘That’s your main sacramental function. The goddess really doesn’t have a body, but there is something that takes the place of her body. Her corporeal nature consists of the totality of all the images used in advertising; and since she manifests herself via a sequence of images, in order to become godlike, you have to be transformed. Then it will be possible for you to enter into mystical union. In effect, your 3-D model will be her husband, and you’ll be… a regent, I suppose. Come over here.’

  Tatarsky shifted his feet nervously and Farseikin laughed:

  ‘Don’t be afraid. It doesn’t hurt to be scanned. It’s like a photocopier, only they don’t close the lid… At least, not yet they don’t… OK, OK, I’m only joking. Let’s get on with it; they’re waiting for us upstairs. It’s a celebration - your coming-out party, so to speak. You can relax in a circle of close friends.’

  Tatarsky took a last look at the basalt slab with the dog and the goddess before plunging decisively through the doorway beyond which Farseikin was waiting for him. The walls and ceiling of the small room were painted white and it was almost empty - apart from the scanner it contained a desk with a control panel on it and several cardboard boxes that had once held electronic goods standing over by the wall.

  ‘Farsuk Karlovich, have you heard of the bird Semurg?’ Tatarsky asked as he sat in the armchair and set his forearms on the armrests.

  ‘No. What kind of a bird is it?’

  ‘There was an oriental poem,’ said Tatarsky; ‘I haven’t read it myself, only heard about it. About how thirty birds flew off to search for their king Semurg and then, after all kinds of different tests and trials, at the very end they learned that the word "Semurg" means "thirty birds".’

  ‘So?’ Farseikin asked, pushing a black plug into a socket.

  ‘Well,’ said Tatarsky, ‘I just thought, maybe the entire Generation "P", that is the one that chose Pepsi - you chose Pepsi when you were young as well, didn’t you?’

  ‘What other choice was there?’ Farseikin muttered, clicking switches on the control panel.

  ‘Yes, well… I had this rather frightening thought: that dog with five legs - maybe it’s all of us together? And now we’re all on the attack, sort of.’

  Farseikin was clearly too absorbed in his manipulations to ta
ke in what Tatarsky had said.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘now hold dead still and don’t blink. Ready?’

  Tatarsky gave a deep sigh.

  ‘Ready,’ he said.

  The machine began to hum and whirr and the frosted white lamps at each side of it lit up with a blinding brilliance. The structure that looked like an open book began slowly rotating around its axis, a ray of white light struck Tatarsky in the eyes and he was blinded for several seconds.’

  ‘I bow before the living god,’ Farseikin said solemnly.

  When Tatarsky opened his eyes, Farseikin was kneeling in front of the armchair with his head bowed, holding out to him a small black object. It was Azadovsky’s phone. Tatarsky took it gingerly and examined it: the phone looked like an ordinary small Phillips, except that it had only one button, in the form of a golden eye. Tatarsky wanted to ask if Alla knew what was happening, but he had no chance: Farseikin bowed, rose to his feet, walked backwards to the exit and tactfully closed the door behind him.

  Tatarsky was left alone. He got up from the chair, walked over to the door and listened. He couldn’t hear anything: Farseikin must already be in the changing room. Tatarsky moved across into the farthest comer of the room and cautiously pressed the button on the phone.

  ‘Hello,’ he said quietly into the handset. ‘Hello!’

  ‘I bow before the living god,’ Alla’s voice replied. ‘What are your instructions for today, boss?’

  ‘None yet,’ Tatarsky replied, amazed to sense that he could play his new part without the slightest effort. ‘Although, you know what. Alla, there will be a few after all. Firstly, have the carpet in the office taken up - I’m fed up with it. Secondly, make sure that from today on there’s nothing but Coca-Cola in the buffet, no Pepsi. Thirdly, Malyuta doesn’t work for us any more… because he’s about as much use to us as a fifth leg to a dog. All he does is spoil other people’s scenarios, and then the mazuma has to go back… And you. Alla my love, remember: if I say something, you don’t ask "why?", you just jot it down. You follow? That’s all right then.’