‘And what if you’re not scared?’ Shurik asked.
‘That means you’ve no fear of God. And that means the punishment cell.’
‘What punishment cell’s that?’
‘There wasn’t much written about that. The main thing is it’s dark and there’s this gnashin’ of teeth. After I read it I was wonderin’ for half an hour what kind of teeth the soul has… nearly lost my marbles over it. Then I started readin’ some more, and I realized that if you call yourself a pile of shit soon enough, or not just call yourself one but believe it for real, then you’ll get a pardon - and then they’ll let you into heaven, to see Him. The way I made it out, the main thing they have to get off on is looking at Him all the time while he’s taking the parade from up on (op of the tribune. And they don’t need anythin’ else, because for them it’s either that or grindin’ their teeth down in the shit-hole, and that’s it. That’s the bastard thing about it, there can’t be anythin’ else - it’s either up on the top bunk or down in the punishment cell. I figured out the whole system, top to bottom. I just couldn’t figure out who dreamed up such a heavy deal. What d’you reckon, Volodin?’
‘You remember Globus?’ Volodin asked.
‘The one who became a banker? Sure,’ Kolyan answered.
‘I remember him too.’ said Shurik, sipping the liberating liquid from his flask. ‘Became a real big wheel before he died. Drove around in a Porsche, wore all these chains at five thousand bucks a pop. He was on television too - a sponsor, no fucking less, the whole works.’
‘Yes.’ said Volodin, ‘and when he went to Paris for that loan, know what he did? He went to a restaurant with one of their bankers for a heart-to-heart, and he got plastered, just like he was in the Slavyansky Bazaar and started yelling - «Garcon, two pederasts and a bucket of your strongest tea!» He wasn’t gay himself, but what do you do when there’s no other ass in sight for twenty years?’
‘No need to explain that. So what happened next?’
‘Nothing. They brought the tea. And they brought the queers too. They’ve got the market system there.’
‘And did they give him the loan?’
‘It doesn’t matter whether they gave him the loan or not. But just think about it. If he ended his life with ideas like that still in his head, it means he never really left the prison camps at all He just got so big that he started driving around them in a Porsche and giving interviews. And then he even found his own Paris in the camps. So if Globus, with his jailhouse queers and his prison tea, had started thinking about life after death, what kind of thoughts do you think he would have had?’
‘He never gave a thought to that stuff in his life.’
‘But what if he had started thinking about it? If he doesn’t know anything but the camps, but he’s drawn to higher things, like any other man, then what would he have imagined?’
‘I don’t get you. What you drivin’ at? His only high was dope.’
‘I get you,’ said Shurik. ‘If Globus had started thinking about life after death, he’d have come up with exactly that pamphlet. And not just Globus, neither. Just think about it, Kol - the entire country was one big labour camp from the day we was born, and it’ll always be a camp. That’s why God’s the way he is, with all them flashing lights and sirens. Who believes in any other kind round here?’
‘Don’t you like our country, or what?’ Kolyan asked in a seri ous voice.
‘Course I do. Parts of it.’
Kolyan turned towards Volodin.
‘Listen, though. Did they give Globus the loan that time in Paris?’
‘I think they did.’ said Volodin. ‘The banker enjoyed the show, he really liked it. Queers have never been any problem for them there, but they’d never tried tea quite like that. It became all the ige, they called it the a la russe nouveau.’
‘Listen.’ Shurik said suddenly, ‘I just had a thought… Agh… Fucking hell…’
‘What?’ asked Kolyan.
‘Maybe that’s not the way it really is. Maybe it’s not because we live in a camp that our God is like a big boss with flashing lights, but just the opposite - we live in a camp ‘cause we chose a God like a mobster with a police siren. All that garbage about the teeth and the soul, about the stove where they burn the down-and-outs, and that armed escort up in the sky - it was all dreamed up centuries ago! And here they decided to build heaven on earth. And they did build it, too! Built it for real, from all the plans! And when they built heaven it turned out it wouldn’t work without hell, because what kind of heaven can there be without hell? It wouldn’t be heaven at all, just boring as fuck. So… Nah, I’m afraid to carry on thinking like that.’
‘Maybe in places where people produce less shit, God’s kinder too. In the States maybe, or in Japan,’ said Kolyan.
‘What d’you reckon, Volodin?’ Shurik asked.
‘What do I reckon? As it is above, so is it below. And as it is below, so is it above. And when everything’s bottom up, how can you explain that there isn’t any above or below? As they say round here - at night your ass gives the orders.’
‘That’s some heavy trippin’,’ said Kolyan. ‘Enough to make you jealous. How much did you eat?’
‘You not tripping yourself, then?’ asked Shurik. ‘You just tripped all the way across the world beyond the grave, and you took us along for the ride. Turns out you got more than just a pig and a brief tucked away inside there, you got the entire Holy Synod as well.’
Kolyan held his hand out in front of him and studied it carefully. ‘There.’ he said. ‘I’ve gone blue again. Why do these mushrooms keep turnin’ me blue?’
‘You spoil too quickly,’ said Shurik and he turned to face Volodin. ‘Listen, fuck you. This spiel’s bouncing about like we’d lost our marbles. We started talking about the eternal high and now look where we’ve ended up.’
‘Where have we ended up?’ asked Volodin. ‘Seems to me we’re still sitting where we started. The fire’s burning, the cocks are crowing.’
‘What cocks? That’s Kolyan’s pager.’
‘Ah… Never mind, they’ll crow all right.’
Shurik chuckled and took a sip from his flask. ‘Volodin,’ he said, ‘I still wanna know who that fourth guy is.’
‘Who?’
‘The fourth guy. Haven’t forgotten, have you? What we started off talking about - that there’s this inner prosecutor and this inner brief and the guy who gets off on the inner high. Only I don’t get why he’s the fourth. That makes him the third.’
‘You’ve forgotten the accused, haven’t you?’ asked Volodin. ‘The one they’re all trying? You can’t shift straight from being your own prosecutor to being your own brief. You have to be the accused for at least a second or two. He’s the third guy. But the fourth guy isn’t in on any of those deals. There’s nothing he needs except this eternal high.’
‘And how does he know about the eternal high?’
‘Who said he knows about it?’
You said so yourself
‘I never said that, I said there was no need to tell him anything about the eternal high - but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about it. If he knew anything’ - Volodin laid a heavy stress on the word ‘knew’ - ‘then he’d be a witness at your inner trial.’
‘You mean I got witnesses inside me as well? Explain that to me.’
‘Well then, imagine you’ve done some foul shit. The inner prosecutor says you’re a scumball, the accused stares at the wall, and the inner brief mumbles something about a difficult childhood.’
‘Well?’
‘But for the trial to begin, you have to remember the shit you’ve done, don’t you?’
‘That’s obvious enough.’
‘So when you’re remembering it, you become a witness.’
‘From listening to you,’ said Shurik, ‘I must have the entire courtroom inside me.’
‘Why, what else did you expect?’
Shurik said nothing for a short while, then he su
ddenly slapped his hands against his thighs.
‘Ah!’ he yelled abruptly. ‘Now I’ve twigged it! I’ve twigged how to switch on to that eternal high! You’ve got to turn into that fourth guy, right? Like being the prosecutor or the brief
‘That’s right. Only how are you going to turn into him?’
‘Dunno, I s’pose you have to want to.’
‘If you want to be the fourth guy, you won’t turn into him, you’ll just be someone who wanted to be him. And that’s a big difference. You don’t turn into the prosecutor when you want to be him, but only after you really say to yourself in your heart, «Shurik, you’re a real shit.» And then afterwards your inner brief realizes that a moment ago he was the prosecutor.’
‘Okay,’ said Shurik. ‘Then tell me, how can you turn into that fourth guy if you don’t want to?’
‘It’s not a matter of whether you want to or you don’t. The point is that if you want something, then for sure you’re not the fourth guy, but somebody else. Because the fourth guy doesn’t want anything at all. Why should he want anything when he’s surrounded by the eternal high?’
‘Listen, why d’you keep on being so mysterious about it? Can’t you just tell me in normal words who this fourth guy is?’
‘I can say anything you like, but there’s no point.’
‘Well, try it anyway.’
‘Well, for instance, you could say he’s the son of God.’
While these words still hung in the air, the three men by the fire suddenly heard the crowing of cocks on every side - which was very odd, if you think about it, because there hadn’t been any chickens kept in that district since the Twentieth Party Congress. Be that as it may, the crowing came again and again, and the ancient sounds gave rise to terrible thoughts, perhaps about witchcraft and devil-worship, or perhaps about the Chechen mounted cavalry breaking through to Moscow, hurtling across the steppe with their Stingers all poised for launching, crowing like cocks to send military intelligence off on a false trail. This latter supposition seemed to be supported by the fact that the cries always came in threes, and were followed by a brief pause. It was very mysterious indeed. For a while they all listened, entranced, to this forgotten music, and then the crowing either faded away or mingled so completely with the background noise that it no longer held their interest. No doubt they simply thought to themselves that anything can happen when you’re on mushrooms. The conversation picked up again.
‘You just keep on trashing my brains over and over again,’ said Shurik. ‘Can’t you just tell me straight out how I turn into him?’
‘I told you, if you could just turn into him like that, then everybody would have been tripping long ago. The problem is that the only way to become the fourth guy is to stop turning into all the others.’
‘You mean you have to turn into no one?’
‘You have to stop being no one too. You have to not become anyone and stop being no one at the same time, get it? And the moment you’re in there, you’re off tripping, quicker than a flash. And it’s for ever.’
Kolyan gasped quietly. Shurik gave him a sideways glance. Kolyan was sitting motionless, as though he had turned to stone. His mouth had turned into a triangular hole, and his eyes seemed to have turned inwards.
‘You sure pile it on, for real,’ said Shurik. ‘I’ll start leaking marbles any moment.’
‘Let them leak,’ Volodin said gently. ‘What do you need those marbles for anyway?’
‘Nan, that’s no good,’ said Shurik. ‘If I drop all my marbles, then you soon won’t have no marbles either.’
‘How’s that?’ asked Volodin.
‘Just you remember who your cover is. Me and Kolyan, isn’t it? Isn’t that right, Kol?’
Kolyan didn’t answer.
‘Hey, Kolyan!’ Shurik shouted.
Again Kolyan didn’t answer. He sat there by the fire with his back held straight up, gazing straight ahead, but not looking at Shurik sitting there in front of him, or Volodin slightly to his left. It was obvious that he wasn’t looking at them at all, he was gazing into nowhere. But the most remarkable thing of all was that a column of light had appeared above his head, reaching far up into the heavens.
At first glance the column looked like no more than a narrow thread, but the instant Shurik and Volodin started paying attention to it, it began expanding and growing brighter - and yet somehow it didn’t illuminate the clearing or the men sitting by the fire, it only illuminated itself. Then it took in the fire and the four people sitting round it, and suddenly they were surrounded by this light, and there was nothing else around them at all,
‘Fuck me!’ The sound of Shurik’s voice came from every side.
In reality, there weren’t any sides at all, or any voices either, instead of the voice there was a certain presence, which announced itself in a way that made it clear it was Shurik. And the meaning of the announcement was such that the best words for expressing it were clearly ‘fuck me!’.
‘For real. Volodin, can you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ Volodin answered from everywhere.
‘Is this the eternal high then?’
‘Why are you asking me? Look for yourself. You know everything now, you can see everything.’
‘Yeah… What’s this stuff all around us? Ah, yes, that’s it… of course. But where’s everything else gone to?’
‘It hasn’t gone anywhere. Everything’s where it should be. Try looking a bit harder…’
‘Oh, yeah. Kolyan, where are you? How you doing?’
‘Me!’ came the response from the glowing void. ‘Me!’
‘Hey, Kolyan! Answer me!’
‘Me!!! Me!!!’
‘So that’s how it all really is, eh? Who’d have thought it?’ Shurik went on, excited and happy. ‘I’d never have guessed. Listen, Volodin, don’t even bother to answer, I’ll get it myself… Who could ever have imagined it? No way could anyone ever imagine this! No way, not ever! No way, no how!’
‘Me!!!’ responded Kolyan.
‘Turns out there’s nothing to be afraid of in the world,’ Shurik went on. ‘Absolutely nothing at all. I know everything, I can see everything. I can see and understand anythin’ you like. Why, even… Well, well, well… Listen, Kolyan, we didn’t ought to have wasted Kosoy that time. He never took the dough. It was… So it was you took it, Kolyan!’
‘Me!!! Me!!! Me!!! Me!!!’
‘Cut the spiel,’ Volodin interrupted, ‘or we’ll all get thrown out.’
‘Why, the rotten bastard,’ yelled Shurik, ‘he threw everyone a curve.’
‘Cut it out, I said. This isn’t the time. Better take a look at yourself.’
‘What self?’
‘So who’s that talking now? Take a look at him.’
‘At myself? Oh… Right… Whoah…’
‘You see. And you said there was nothing in the world to be afraid of
‘Yeah… Right… Oh, fuck me! Listen, Volodin, this is real scary. Real scary stuff. Volodin, d’you hear me? Where’s the light? Volodin? I’m scared!’
‘And you said there was nothing in the world to be afraid of,’ said Volodin, raising his head and gazing wide-eyed into empty space, as though he’d seen something there.
‘Right then,’ he said in a changed voice, nudging Shurik and Kolyan, ‘let’s move it! Quick!’
‘Volodin, I can hardly hear you!’ Shurik yelled, swaying from side to side. ‘Volodin, I’m scared! Hey, Kolyan! Answer me, Kolyan!’
‘Me. Me. Me.’
‘Hey, Kolyan, can you see me? Just don’t go lookin’ at yourself, or it’ll turn dark. Can you see me, Kolyan?’
‘Me? Me?’
‘Move it, into the forest, quick!’ Volodin repeated, and he leapt to his feet.
‘What forest? There isn’t really any forest! ‘
‘You just run, and the forest’ll appear. Go on, run! You leg it too, Kolyan. Rendezvous at the camp-fire.’
‘Me?! Me?! Me?!!’
‘Fuc
king hell! I said let’s move it into the forest! Run for it!’
Even if we were to allow that the camp-fire that had been blazing in the clearing a few hours earlier really was a small universe unto itself, that universe had now ceased to exist, and all the sufferings of its inhabitants had been extinguished with it. Void and darkness were upon the face of the clearing, and there was nothing but a light smoke hanging in the air above the dead embers.
The radio-telephone in the car began to ring, and suddenly some small, startled life form began rustling in the bushes. The ringing went on for a long time, and after more than a minute its persistence was rewarded. There was a crunching of twigs in the bushes, followed by rapid footsteps. A blurred shadow flitted across the clearing towards the Jeep and a voice spoke:
‘Hello! Ultima Thule Limited? Of course I recognize you, of course. Yes! Yes! No! Tell Seryozha the Mongoloid not to get up my nose. No transfers. Cash ex-VAT and we tear up the contract. Tomorrow at ten in the office… no, not at ten, at twelve. Right.’
It was Volodin. He put down the receiver, opened up the Jeep’s boot, rummaged around until he found a spray-can, the contents of which he emptied on to the remains of the fire. Nothing happened - evidently even the embers had died completely. Then Volodin struck a match and dropped it on the ground, and a bright ball of yellow-red flame rose up into the air.
He spent several minutes collecting branches and twigs in the clearing and throwing them into the flames. When Shurik and Kolyan came wandering out of the forest towards the light, the camp-fire was already blazing away.
They appeared one at a time. Kolyan appeared first; before he emerged into the clearing, for some reason he sat for a long time in the bushes at its edge, holding his hand over his eyes as he gazed into the flames. Then he finally made up his mind, went up to the fire and sat down in his old place. Shurik arrived about ten minutes later; holding his TP with the long silencer in his hand, he slunk out into the clearing, looked Kolyan and Volodin over and tucked the pistol away under his cashmere pea-jacket.
Buddha's Little Finger Page 30