Buddha's Little Finger

by Victor Pelevin

I picked up the travelling bag and followed him out into the corridor. My thoughts were in a state of confused chaos. The man walking ahead of me frightened me. I could not understand who he was – the very last thing he reminded me of was a Red commander and yet, he very clearly was one of them. The signature and stamp on today’s order were exactly the same as those which I had seen yesterday, which indicated that he possessed enough influence to extract the decision he required from the bloody Dzerzhinsky and the shady Babayasin in the space of a single morning.

  In the hallway Chapaev halted and took down from the coat-stand a long dove-grey greatcoat with three stripes of shimmering scarlet watered silk running across the chest. Greatcoats ornamented in this manner were the latest Red Guard fashion, but normally the strip fastenings on the chest were made out of ordinary cloth. Chapaev put on his greatcoat and hat and fastened on a belt from which hung a holster with a Mauser, clipped on his sabre and turned to face me. On his chest I noticed a rather strange-looking medal, a silver star with small spheres on its points.

  ‘Have you been decorated for the New Year?’ I asked.

  Chapaev laughed good-naturedly.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘that is the Order of the October Star.’

  ‘I have never heard of it.’

  ‘If you are lucky, you might even earn one yourself,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Comrade Chapaev,’ I said, deciding to take advantage of the informal tone of our conversation. ‘I would like to ask you a question which you might find rather strange.’

  ‘I am all attention,’ he said and smiled politely, tapping the long yellow cuff of a glove against his scabbard.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, looking him straight in the eye, ‘why were you playing the piano? And why precisely that piece?’

  ‘Well you see,’ he said, ‘when I glanced into your room you were still sleeping, and you were whistling that fugue in your sleep – not entirely accurately, I am afraid. For my own part, I am simply very fond of Mozart. At one time I studied at the Conservatory and intended to become a musician. But why does this concern you?’

  ‘It is nothing of importance,’ I said. ‘Merely a strange coincidence.’

  We went out on to the landing. The keys really were hanging in the door. Moving like an automaton, I locked the apartment, dropped the keys into my pocket and followed Chapaev down the stairs, thinking that I had never in my life been in the habit of whistling, especially in my sleep.

  The first thing that I saw when I emerged on to the frosty, sunny street was a long grey-green armoured car, the same one that I had noticed the previous day outside the ‘Musical Snuffbox’. I had never seen a vehicle like it before – it was clearly the very latest word in the science of destruction. Its body was thickly studded with large round-headed rivets, the blunt snout of the motor protruded forwards and was crowned with two powerful headlights; on its high steel forehead, sloping slightly backwards, two slanting observation slits peered menacingly towards Nikitsky Square, like the half-closed eyes of a Buddha. On the roof was a cylindrical machine-gun turret, pointing in the direction of Tverskoi Boulevard. The barrel of the machine-gun was protected on both sides by two long plates of steel. There was a small door in the side.

  A crowd of boys was swarming around the vehicle, some of them with sledges, others on skates; the thought automatically came to mind that while the idiot adults were busy trying to rearrange a world which they had invented for themselves, the children were still living in reality – among mountains of snow and sunlight, on the black mirrors of frozen ponds and in the mystic night silence of icy yards. And although these children were also infected with the bacillus of insanity that had invaded Russia – this was obvious enough from the way in which they looked at Chapaev’s sabre and my Mauser – their clear eyes still shone with the memory of something which I had long ago forgotten; perhaps it was some unconscious reminiscence of the great source of all existence from which they had not yet been too far distanced in their descent into this life of shame and desolation.

  Chapaev walked over to the armoured car and rapped sharply on its side. The motor started up and the rear end of the car was enveloped in a cloud of bluish smoke. Chapaev opened the door and at that precise moment I heard a screeching of brakes behind me. An enclosed automobile drew up right beside us and four men in black leather jackets leapt out of it and disappeared into the doorway from which we had emerged only a moment before. My heart sank – I thought they must have come for me. Probably this idea was prompted by the fact that the foursome reminded me of the actors in black cloaks who had borne Raskolnikov’s body from the stage the previous day. One of them actually paused in the doorway and glanced in our direction.

  ‘Quickly,’ shouted Chapaev from inside the armoured car. ‘You will let the cold in.’

  I tossed in my travelling bag, clambered in hastily after it and slammed the door behind me.

  The interior decor of this engine of doom enchanted me from the very first glance. The small space separated from the driver’s cabin reminded me of a compartment in the Nord-Express; the two narrow leather divans, the table set between them and the rug on the floor created a cosy, if rather cramped, atmosphere. There was a round hole in the ceiling, through which I could see the massive butt-stock of the machine-gun in its cover; a spiral staircase ending at something shaped like a revolving chair with footrests led up into the turret. The whole was illuminated by a small electric bulb, by the light of which I could make out a picture fastened to the wall by bolts at the corners of its frame. It was a small landscape in the style of Constable – a bridge over a river, a distant thundercloud and romantic ruins.

  Chapaev reached for the bell-shaped mouthpiece of the speaking tube and spoke into it: ‘To the station.’

  The armoured car moved away gently, with scarcely any sensation of motion inside. Chapaev sat on a divan and gestured to me to sit opposite him.

  ‘A magnificent machine,’ I said in all sincerity.

  ‘Yes,’ said Chapaev, ‘this is not at all a bad armoured car. But I am not very fond of machinery in general. Wait until you see my horse…

  ‘How about a game of backgammon?’ he asked, putting his hand under the table and taking out a board.

  I shrugged. He opened up the board and began setting out the black and white pieces.

  ‘Comrade Chapaev,’ I began, ‘what will my work consist of? What questions are involved?’

  Chapaev adjusted his moustache with a careful gesture. ‘Well, you see, Pyotr, our division is a complex organism. I expect that you will gradually be drawn into its life and find your own niche, as it were. As yet it is still too early to say exactly what that will be, but I realized from the way you conducted yourself yesterday that you are a man of decisive character and at the same time you have a subtle appreciation of the essential nature of events. People like you are in great demand. Your move.’

  I threw the dice on to the board, pondering on how I should behave. I still found it hard to believe that he really was a Red commander; somehow I felt that he was playing the same insane game as myself, only he had been playing longer, with greater skill and perhaps of his own volition. On the other hand, all my doubts were founded exclusively on the intelligent manner of his conversation and the hypnotic power of his eyes, and in themselves these factors meant nothing at all: the deceased Vorblei, for instance, had also been a man of reasonable culture, and the head of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, was quite a well-known hypnotist in occult circles. And then, I thought, the very question itself was stupid – there was not a single Red commander who was really a Red commander; every one of them simply tried as hard as he could to emulate some infernal model, pretending in just the same way as I had done the previous day. As for Chapaev, I might not perceive him as playing the role suggested by his military garb, but others evidently did, as was demonstrated by Babayasin’s order and the armoured car in which we were riding. I did not know what he wanted from me, but I decided for the tim
e being to play according to his rules; furthermore, I felt instinctively that I could trust him. For some reason I had the impression that this man stood several flights above me on the eternal staircase of being which I had seen in my dream that morning.

  ‘Is there something on your mind?’ Chapaev asked as he tossed the dice. ‘Perhaps there is some thought bothering you?’

  ‘Not any more,’ I replied. ‘Tell me, was Babayasin keen to transfer me to your command?’

  ‘Babayasin was against it,’ said Chapaev. ‘He values you very highly. I settled the question with Dzerzhinsky.’

  ‘You mean,’ I asked, ‘that you are acquainted?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps, comrade Chapaev, you are acquainted with Lenin as well?’ I asked with a gentle irony.

  ‘Only slightly,’ he replied.

  ‘Can you demonstrate that to me somehow?’ I asked.

  ‘Why not? This very moment, if you wish.’

  This was too much for me to take in. I gazed at him in bewilderment, but he was not embarrassed in the slightest. Moving aside the board, he drew his sabre smoothly from its scabbard and laid it on the table.

  The sabre, it should be said, was rather strange. It had a long silver handle covered in carvings showing two birds on either side of a circle containing a hare, with the rest of the surface covered in the finest possible ornament. The handle ended in a jade knob to which was tied a short thick cord of twisted silk with a purple tassel at the end. At its base was a round guard of black iron; the gleaming blade was long and slightly curved. Strictly speaking, it was not even a sabre, but some kind of Eastern sword, probably Chinese. However, I did not have time to study it in detail, because Chapaev switched off the light.

  We were left in total darkness. I could not see a single thing, I could only hear the low, level roaring of the engine (the soundproofing on this armour-plated vehicle, I noticed, was quite excellent – not a single sound could be heard from the street), and I could feel a slight swaying motion.

  Chapaev struck a match and held it up above the table. ‘Watch the blade,’ he said.

  I looked at the blurred reddish reflection that had appeared on the strip of steel. There was a strange profundity to it, as though I were gazing through a slightly misted pane of glass into a long illuminated corridor. A gentle ripple ran across the surface of the image, and I saw a man in an unbuttoned military jacket strolling along the corridor. He was bald and unshaven; the reddish stubble on his cheeks merged into an unkempt beard and moustache. He leaned down towards the floor and reached out with trembling hands, and I noticed a kitten with big sad eyes cowering in the corner. The image was very clear, and yet distorted, as though I were seeing a reflection in the surface of a Christmas-tree ball. Suddenly a cough rose unexpectedly in my throat and Lenin – for undoubtedly it was he – started at the sound, turned around and stared in my direction. I realized that he could see me. For a second his eyes betrayed his fright, and then they took on a cunning, even guilty look. He gave a crooked smile and wagged his finger at me threateningly.

  Chapaev blew on the match and the picture disappeared. I caught a final glimpse of the kitten fleeing along the corridor and suddenly realized that I had not been seeing things on the sabre at all, I had simply, in some incomprehensible fashion, actually been there and I could probably have reached out and touched the kitten.

  The light came on. I looked in amazement at Chapaev, who had already returned the sabre to its scabbard.

  ‘Vladimir Ilyich is not quite well,’ he said.

  ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  Chapaev shrugged. ‘Lenin,’ he said.

  ‘Did he see me?’

  ‘Not you, I think,’ said Chapaev. ‘More probably he sensed a certain presence. But that would hardly have shocked him too much. He has become used to such things. There are many who watch him.’

  ‘But how can you…In what manner…Was it hypnosis?’

  ‘No more than everything else,’ he said, and nodded at the wall, evidently referring to what lay beyond it.

  ‘Who are you really?’ I asked.

  ‘That is the second time you have asked me that question today,’ he said. ‘I have already told you that my name is Chapaev. For the time being that is all that I can tell you. Do not try to force events. By the way, when we converse in private you may call me Vasily Ivanovich. “Comrade Chapaev” sounds rather too solemn.’

  I opened my mouth, intending to demand further explanations, when a sudden thought halted me in my tracks. I realized that further insistence from my side would not achieve anything; in fact, it might even do harm. The most astonishing thing, however, was that this thought was not mine – I sensed that in some obscure fashion it had been transferred to me by Chapaev.

  The armoured car began to slow down, and the voice of the driver sounded in the speaking tube:

  ‘The station, Vasily Ivanovich!’

  ‘Splendid,’ responded Chapaev.

  The armoured car manoeuvred slowly for several minutes until it finally came to a halt. Chapaev donned his astrakhan hat, rose from the divan and opened the door. Cold air rushed into the cabin, together with the reddish light of winter sunshine and the dull roar of thousands of mingled voices.

  ‘Bring your bag,’ said Chapaev, springing lightly down to the ground. Screwing up my eyes slightly after the cosy obscurity of the armoured car, I climbed out after him.

  We were in the very centre of the square in front of the Yaroslavl Station. On every side we were surrounded by an agitated, motley crowd of armed men drawn up in the ragged semblance of a parade. Several petty Red commanders were striding along the ranks, their sabres drawn. At Chapaev’s appearance there were shouts, the general hubbub grew louder and after a few seconds it expanded into a rumbling ‘Hoorah!’ that resounded around the square several times.

  The armoured car was standing beside a wooden platform decorated with crossed flags, which resembled, more than anything else, a scaffold. There were several military men standing on it, engaged in conversation: when we appeared they began applauding. Chapaev quickly ascended the squeaky steps; I followed him up, trying not to lag behind. Exchanging hurried greetings with a pair of officers (one of them was wearing a beaver coat criss-crossed with belts and straps), Chapaev walked over to the railing of the scaffold and raised his hand with the yellow cuff in a gesture calling for silence.

  ‘Now, lads!’ he shouted, straining his voice to make it sound hoarse. ‘Y’all know what you’re here for. No bloody shilly-shallying about the bush…You’re all stuck in there and you’ve got to get your fingers out…Ain’t that just the way of things, though? Once you get down the front you’ll be up to your neck in it and get a bellyful soon enough. Didn’t reckon you was in for any spot of mollycoddling, did you…’

  I paid close attention to the way Chapaev moved – as he spoke, he turned smoothly from side to side, incisively slicing the air in front of his chest with his extended yellow palm. The meaning of his ever more rapid speech escaped me, but to judge from the way in which the workers strained their necks to hear and nodded their heads, sometimes even grinning happily, what he was saying made good sense to them.

  Someone tugged at my sleeve. With an inward shiver, I turned round to see a short young man with a thin moustache, a face pink from the frost and voracious eyes the colour of watered-down tea.

  ‘Fu fu,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked him.

  ‘Fu-Furmanov,’ he said, thrusting out a broad hand with short fingers.

  ‘A fine day,’ I replied, shaking the hand.

  ‘I’m the co-commissar with the weavers’ regiment,’ he said. ‘We’ll b-be working together. If you’re go-going to speak, k-keep it short if you can. We’re boarding soon.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  He glanced doubtfully at my hands and wrists. ‘Are you in the p-p-party?’

  I nodded.

  ‘For long?’

  ‘About two ye
ars now,’ I replied.

  Furmanov looked over at Chapaev. ‘An eagle,’ he said, ‘but he has to be watched. They s-s-say he often gets c-c-carried away. But the s-s-soldiers love him. They understand him.’

  He nodded at the silent crowd above which Chapaev’s words were drifting. ‘You’ve got to go, no two ways round it, and here’s my hand-deed to you as a commander on the nail…and now the commissar’s going to have a word.’

  Chapaev moved back from the railing.

  ‘Your turn, Petka,’ he ordered in a loud voice.

  I walked over to the railing.

  It was painful to look at those men and imagine the dark maze woven by the pathways of their fates. They had been deceived since childhood, and in essence nothing had changed for them because now they were simply being deceived in a different fashion, but the crude and insulting primitiveness of these deceptions – the old and the new – was genuinely inhuman. The feelings and thoughts of the men standing in the square were as squalid as the rags they wore, and they were even being seen off to their deaths with a stupid charade played out by people who were entirely unconnected to them. But then, I thought, was my situation really any different? If I, just like them, am unable to understand, or even worse, merely imagine I understand the nature of the forces which control my life when I do not, then how am I any better than a drunken proletarian sent off to die for the word ‘Internationalism’? Because I have read Gogol, Hegel and even Herzen? The whole thing was merely a bad joke.

  However, I had to say something.

  ‘Comrade workers!’ I shouted. ‘Your commissar comrade Furmanov has asked me to be as brief as I can, because boarding is due to begin any moment. I think that we shall have time to talk later, but now let me simply tell you of the flame that is blazing here in my heart. Today, comrades, I saw Lenin! Hoorah!’

  A long roar rumbled across the square. When the noise had died down, I said:

  ‘And now, comrades, here with his parting words is comrade Furmanov!’

  Furmanov nodded gratefully to me and stepped towards the railing. Chapaev was laughing and twirling his moustache as he talked about something with the officer in the beaver coat. Seeing me approach, he clapped the officer on the shoulder, nodded to the others and climbed down the steps from the tribune. Furmanov began speaking: