Buddha's Little Finger

by Виктор Пелевин

  My arms and legs were belted tight to the chair, and my head was resting on a pillow covered in oilcloth.

  Timur Timurovich’s thick lips materialized out of the dim half-light, approached my forehead and planted a long, wet kiss on it.

  ‘Total catharsis,’ he said. ‘Congratulations.’

  10

  ‘Eight thousand two hundred miles of emptiness.’ sang a male voice trembling with feeling from the radio, ‘and still no place to spend the night… How happy I should be if not for you, Mother Russia, if not for you, my homeland…’

  Volodin stood up and turned the switch. The music stopped.

  ‘Why’d you turn it off?’ asked Serdyuk, looking up.

  ‘I can’t bear listening to Grebenschikov,’ replied Volodin. Tie’s talented, of course, but he’s far too fond of over-complicated phrases. His songs are all just full of Buddhism - he doesn’t know how to use words in a straightforward way. You heard that song he was singing just now about the homeland - d’you know where it comes from? The Chinese White Lotus Sect had this mantra: «Absolute emptiness is the homeland, the mother is the unborn.» But he’s wrapped it all up in code so you could burst your brains trying to understand what he’s talking about.’

  Serdyuk shrugged and went back to his work. As I kneaded my Plasticine, I looked over every now and then at his quick fingers folding paper cranes out of pages from an exercise book. He performed his task with quite incredible dexterity, without even bothering to look at what he was doing. There were paper cranes scattered all around the aesthetics therapy room; many of them were just lying on the floor, although only that morning Zherbunov and Barbolin had swept a huge pile out into the corridor. Serdyuk took no interest whatsoever in the fate of his creations; once he had pencilled a number on each crane’s wing, he just tossed it into the corner and immediately set about ripping the next page out of the exercise book.

  ‘How many still to go?’ asked Volodin.

  ‘I’ve got to get them all done by spring,’ said Serdyuk, then transferred his gaze to me. ‘Listen, I’ve just remembered another one.’

  ‘Go on then.’ I answered.

  ‘Okay, it goes like this. Petka and Vasily Ivanovich are sitting boozing, when suddenly this soldier comes dashing in and says: «The Whites are coming!» Petka says: «Vasily Ivanovich, let’s leg it quick.» But Chapaev just pours another two glasses of hooch and says: «Drink up, Petka.» So they drink up. Then the soldier comes dashing in again. «The Whites are coming!» Chapaev pours another two glasses and says: «Drink up, Petka!» The next time the soldier comes running in and says the Whites are almost at the house now. So then Chapaev says: «Petka, can you see me?» And Petka says: «No.» And Chapaev says: «I can’t see you either. We’re well camouflaged.’»

  I sighed derisively and picked up a new piece of Plasticine from the table.

  ‘I know that one too, but with a different ending.’ said Volodin. ‘The Whites come bursting in, look round the room, and say: «Damn, they got away again.»‘

  ‘That one is a little closer to the truth.’ I responded, ‘but it is still very wide of the mark. All these Whites… I simply cannot understand how everything could have been distorted so grossly. Well, does anybody have another one?’

  ‘I remember one,’ Serdyuk answered. ‘Petka and Vasily Ivanovich are swimming across the Ural, and Chapaev’s clutching this attache case in his teeth… ‘

  ‘О-oh.’ I groaned, ‘Who on earth could possibly invent such nonsense?’

  ‘Anyway, he’s almost on the point of drowning, but he won’t dump the case. Petka shouts to him: «Vasily Ivanovich, drop the case, or you’ll drown!» But Chapaev says: «No way, Petka! I can’t. It’s got the staff maps in it.» Anyway, they barely make it to the other bank, and when they get there, Petka says: «Right then, Vasily Ivanovich, show me these maps we almost drowned for.» Chapaev opens up the case, Petka looks inside and sees it’s full of potatoes. «Vasily Ivanovich,» he says, «what kind of maps do you call these?» So Chapaev takes out two potatoes and says: «Look here, Petka. This is us - and this is the Whites.»‘

  Volodin laughed.

  ‘That one lacks even the slightest glimmer of sense,’ I said. ‘In the first place, if, after another ten thousand lives you, Serdyuk, should have the chance to drown in the Ural, you may regard yourself as extremely fortunate. In the second place, I simply cannot understand where all these Whites keep appearing from. I suspect that the Cheka crew must have been at work there. In the third place, it was a metaphorical map of consciousness, not a plan of military positions at all. And they were not potatoes, but onions.’

  ‘Onions?’

  ‘Yes, onions. Although for a number of highly personal reasons I would have given a great deal for them to have been potatoes instead.’

  Volodin and Serdyuk exchanged a protracted glance.

  ‘And this is the man who wants to discharge himself.’ said Volodin. ‘Ah, I’ve remembered one now. Chapaev is writing in his diary: «Sixth of June; we have driven the Whites back-’

  ‘He did not keep any diary.’ I interjected.

  ‘«Seventh of June; the Whites have driven us back. Eighth of June; the forest warden came and drove everybody out.”‘

  ‘I see.’ I said, ‘no doubt that one was about Baron Jungern. Only he didn’t come, unfortunately. And then, he was not actually a forest warden, he simply said that he had always wanted to be a forester. I find this all very strange, gentlemen. In some ways you are really quite well informed, and yet I keep on getting the feeling that someone who does indeed know how everything really happened has attempted to distort the truth in the most monstrous fashion possible. And I simply cannot understand the reason for it.’

  Nobody broke the silence again for a while. I became absorbed in my work and started thinking through my forthcoming conversation with Timur Timurovich. The logic of his actions still remained entirely opaque to me. Maria had been discharged a week after he broke the bust of Aristotle over my head, but Volodin, who was as normal a man as any I had ever seen in my life, had recently been prescribed a new course of drug therapy. On no account, I reasoned with myself, must I think up answers in advance, because he might not ask a single one of the questions for which I might have prepared myself, and then I would be bound to throw out one of my ready-made answers at entirely the wrong moment. All that I could do was trust to chance and luck.

  ‘All right, then,’ Volodin eventually said. ‘Why don’t you give us an example of something that has actually been distorted? Tell us how it really happened.’

  ‘What exactly are you interested in?’ I asked. ‘Which of the episodes that you have mentioned?’

  ‘Any of them. Or we can take something else. Like this, for instance, I can’t imagine what could possibly have been distorted in this one. Kotovsky sends Chapaev some red caviar and cognac from Paris, and Chapaev writes back: «Thank you, Petka and I drank the moonshine, although it smelled of bedbugs, but we didn’t eat the cranberries - they stank of fish.»‘

  I laughed despite myself.

  ‘Kotovsky never sent anything from Paris. But there was indeed a rather similar incident. We were sitting in a restaurant and actually drinking cognac with red caviar - I know how bad that sounds, but they had no black caviar in the place. Our conversation concerned the Christian paradigm, and therefore we began discussing its terminology. Chapaev commented on a passage from Swedenborg in which a ray of heavenly light shines down to the bottom of hell and the spirits who live there take it for a dirty, stinking puddle. I had understood this in the sense that the light itself had been transformed, but Chapaev said that the nature of light does not change, and everything depends on the subject of perception. He said that there is no power that would prevent a sinful soul from entering heaven - but it happens that it simply does not want to go there. I could not understand how this could be the case, and then he explained that one of Furmanov’s weavers, for instance, would have taken the caviar we were eating
for cranberries that smelled of fish.’

  ‘I see,’ said Volodin, who for some reason had turned rather pale.

  I was struck by an unexpected idea.

  ‘Just a moment now,’ I said, ‘where did you say the cognac came from?’

  Volodin did not answer.

  ‘What difference does it make?’ asked Serdyuk.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘but now at last I seem to have some idea of who could be responsible for all this. It is rather strange, of course, and it does seem quite unlike him, but all the other explanations are so completely absurd…’

  ‘Listen, I’ve remembered another one,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Chapaev comes to see Anka, and she’s sitting there naked…’

  ‘My dear sirs,’ I interrupted, ‘are you not taking things just a little too far?’

  ‘It wasn’t me that made it up,’ Serdyuk replied insolently, tossing another paper crane into the corner of the room. ‘So anyway, he asks her: «Why haven’t you got any clothes on, Anka?» And she says to him: «I haven’t got any dresses to wear.» So he opens the wardrobe, looks inside and says: «What’s all this then? One dress. Two dresses. Hi there, Petka. Three dresses. Four dresses.’»

  ‘Really,’ I said, ‘I ought to just punch you in the face for saying such things - but somehow instead it brings back a deep feeling of melancholy. In actual fact it was all quite different. It was Anna’s birthday, and we had gone out for a picnic. Kotovsky immediately got drunk and fell asleep, and Chapaev began explaining to Anna that a human personality is like a wardrobe filled with sets of clothes which are taken out by turns, and the less real the person actually is, the more sets there are in the wardrobe. That was his present to Anna on her birthday - not a set of dresses, but his explanation. Anna was stubborn and she refused to agree with him. She attempted to prove that what he said was all very well in theory, but it did not apply to her, because she always remained herself and never wore any masks. But Chapaev simply answered everything she said by saying: «One dress… Two dresses…» and so on. Do you understand? Then Anna asked, if that was the case, who was it that put on the dresses, and Chapaev replied that there was nobody to put them on. That was when Anna understood. She said nothing for a few seconds, then she nodded and looked up at him, and Chapaev smiled and said, «Hello there, Anna!» That is one of my most precious memories,. But why am I telling you all this?’

  I had suddenly been overwhelmed by a veritable whirlwind of thoughts and ideas. I remembered Kotovsky’s strange smile at our parting. I do not understand, I thought, he could have heard about the map of consciousness, but how would he know about the camouflage? He had left just before that… Then I suddenly remembered what Chapaev had said about Kotovsky’s fate.

  In an instant everything became absolutely clear. Kotovsky, however, had failed to take one important factor into account, I thought, feeling the malice seething within me, he had forgotten that I could do exactly the same thing that he had done. And if that cocaine-riddled lover of trotters and secret freedom had condemned me to the madhouse, then…

  ‘Now I would like to tell a joke,’ I said.

  The feelings that had taken possession of me must have been visible in the expression on my face, because Serdyuk and Volodin glanced at me in genuine alarm; Volodin even shifted his chair a little further away from me.

  Serdyuk said, ‘Just don’t get yourself upset, all right?’

  ‘Are you going to listen or not?’ I asked. ‘Right, then. Now… Aha, I have it. Some savages have captured Kotovsky and they say to him: «We are going to eat you, and then make a drum out of your bald scalp. But now you can have one last wish.» Kotovsky thought for a moment and said: «Bring me an awl.» They gave him an awl, and he took it and jabbed it into the top of his head over and over again. Then he yelled: «So much for your drum, you bastards!»‘

  I laughed ferociously, and at that very moment the door opened and the moustachioed face of Zherbunov appeared. He glanced warily round the room until his gaze came to rest on me. I cleared my throat and straightened the collar of my dressing-gown.

  ‘Timur Timurovich wants to see you.’

  ‘Straight away,’ I replied, getting up from my chair and carefully placing the unfinished bagel of black Plasticine on the table that was cluttered with Serdyuk’s toy cranes.

  Timur Timurovich was in an excellent mood.

  ‘I hope, Pyotr, that you understood why I called what happened to you at the last session total catharsis?’

  I shrugged non-committally.

  ‘Well then, consider this,’ he said. ‘I explained to you once that misdirected psychic energy may take on the form of any kind of mania or phobia. To put it in rather crude terms, my method consists in approaching such a mania or phobia in terms of its own inner logic. For instance, you say you are Napoleon.’

  ‘I do not say anything of the sort.’

  ‘Let us assume that you do. Well then, instead of trying to prove to you that you are mistaken, or administering an insulin shock, my answer is: «Very well, you are Napoleon. But what are you going to do now? Land in Egypt? Declare a continental blockade? Or perhaps you will abdicate the throne and simply go back home to your Corsican Lane?» And then, depending on how you reply to my question, all the rest will follow. Consider your colleague Serdyuk, for instance. That Japanese who supposedly forced him to slit open his belly is quite the most vital element in his psychological world. Nothing ever happens to him, not even when Serdyuk himself suffers symbolic death, in fact in his imagination he even remains alive after Serdyuk is dead. And when he comes round again, he can think of nothing better to do than make all those little aeroplanes. I am sure they advised him to do it in some new hallucination. In other words, the illness has affected such extensive areas of his psyche that sometimes I even contemplate the possibility of surgical intervention.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I only mention Serdyuk for purposes of comparison. But now consider what has happened to you. I regard it as a genuine triumph for my method. The entire morbidly detailed world that your clouded consciousness had constructed has simply disappeared.’dissolved into itself, and not under any pressure from a doctor, but apparently by following its inner own laws. Your psychosis has exhausted itself. The stray psychic energy has been integrated with the remaining part of the psyche. If my theory is correct - and I would like to believe that it is - you are now perfectly well.’

  ‘I am sure that it is correct.’ I said. ‘Of course, I do not understand it in all of its profundity-’

  ‘There is no need for you to understand it.’ Timur Timurovich answered. ‘It is quite sufficient that today you yourself represent its very clearest confirmation. Thank you very much, Pyotr, for describing your hallucinations in such detail, not many patients are capable of doing that. I hope you will not object if I make use of excerpts from your notes in my monograph?’

  ‘I should regard it as a signal honour.’

  Timur Timurovich patted me on the shoulder affectionately.

  ‘Come now, no need to be so formal. I’m your friend.’

  He picked up a rather thick file of papers from his desk.

  ‘I just want to ask you to fill in this questionnaire, and to take the job seriously.’

  ‘A questionnaire?’

  ‘A pure formality,’ said Timur Timurovich. ‘They’re always thinking up something or other in the Ministry of Health - they have so many people there with nothing to do all day long. This is what they call a test for the assessment of social adequacy. There are all sorts of questions in it, with different possible answers provided for each. One of the answers is correct, the others are absurd. Any normal person will catch on immediately.’

  He leafed through the questionnaire. There must have been twenty or thirty pages of it.

  ‘Sheer bureaucracy, of course, but we get the official circulars here the same as everywhere else. This is required for discharge. And since I can
’t see any reason for keeping you here any longer, here’s a pen, and off you go.’

  I took the questionnaire from him and sat down at the desk. Timur Timurovich tactfully turned away to face the bookshelves and took down a thick, heavy volume.

  There were a number of sections in the questionnaire: ‘Culture’, ‘History’, ‘Politics’ and a few others. I opened the section on ‘Culture’ at random and read:

  32. At the end of which of the following films does the hero drive out the villains, waving a heavy cross above his head?

  a) Alexander Nevsky

  b) Jesus of Nazareth

  c) The Death of the Gods

  33. Which of the names below symbolizes the all-conquering power of good?

  a) Arnold Schwarzenegger

  b) Sylvester Stallone

  c) Jean-Claude Van Damm

  Struggling not to betray my confusion, I turned over several pages at once to a point somewhere in the centre of the history section:

  74. What was the target at which the cruiser Aurora fired?

  a) the Reichstag

  b) the battleship Potyomkin

  c) the White House

  d) the firing started from the White House

  I suddenly recalled that terrible black night in October 1917 when the Aurora sailed into the estuary of the Neva. I had raised my collar as I stood on the bridge, smoking nervously, staring at the distant black silhouette of the cruiser. There was not a single light to be seen on it, but a vague electrical radiance trembled at the ends of its slim masts. Two people out for a late stroll halted beside me, an astonishingly beautiful young schoolgirl and a fat governess chaperoning her, who looked like one of those stout columns intended for displaying posters in the street.

  ‘Look at it, Miss Brown!’ the young girl exclaimed in English, pointing towards the black ship. ‘This is St Elmo’s fires!’