Intra-barrel anti-infantry Carnation. Standard equipment for CNN military frogmen, BBC-SAS, Telewaffen landing detachments and other psy-ops units of NATO countries.
There were no other objects of particular interest in the study, except for a model in metal on Enlil Maratovich’s desk of the first Sputnik to encircle the earth, and beside it a silver paperweight in the shape of a frock-coated and top-hatted Pushkin reclining on his side. He was propping up his peacefully benevolent face on his fist, exactly like a dying Buddha. Underneath Pushkin was a pile of clean white sheets of paper, and next to him a souvenir pen in the shape of a small sword. There was a lingering smell of coffee in the room, but no coffee machine to be seen – perhaps it had been put out of sight in the cupboard.
The clinical cleanliness of the place evoked somehow a disagreeable feeling, as though someone had recently been killed there, the body removed and the red liquid mopped up. Such were the associations produced in my mind by the dark stone floor with its prominent black fissures between the tiles: there was definitely something ancient and forbidding about it.
Enlil Maratovich motioned me to the chair in the middle of the room, and seated himself at his desk.
‘So,’ he said, raising his eyes to meet mine, ‘you’ve already heard something about bablos?’
I nodded.
‘What do you know about it?’
‘Vampires collect used banknotes that are impregnated with human life-force,’ I replied. ‘Then they do something with them. Probably distil an alcohol infusion of their spirit. Or perhaps boil them.’
Enlil Maratovich laughed at this.
‘Have you been talking to Hera? We’ve already heard this version. Rather clever, original and, as you would say nowadays, Gothic. But way off target. Used banknotes are not impregnated with energy, all they are impregnated with is human sweat. And seething with germs. I would not drink a decoction made from them even if personally ordered to by Comrade Stalin. Banknotes do certainly play a role in our rituals, but it is a purely symbolic one and has nothing whatever to do with nectar of the gods. Another go?’
I thought that if Hera’s theory had been so wrong, mine might be nearer the truth.
‘Maybe vampires do something with the money in bank accounts? Build up a large sum somewhere offshore, and then … in some way distil it into liquid form?’
Again Enlil Maratovich broke into laughter. Our conversation was obviously affording him considerable pleasure.
‘Rama,’ he said, ‘do you really think vampires are able to use financial resources in a completely different way from human beings? Money, after all, is simply an abstraction.’
‘A pretty concrete one,’ I said.
‘Yes. But you must agree that money has no existence outside the limits of the human mind.’
‘I don’t agree,’ I replied. ‘As you are so fond of telling everyone, there was a period in my life when I worked unloading trucks at a supermarket and got a wage for it. And I can tell you for a fact that what they paid me came from outside my mind. If I had been able to get it from inside my own head, why would I have got up and gone to work in the mornings?’
‘But if you had passed on your wages to, let us say, a cow, she would not have understood what you were doing – and not just because you were being paid such a pitifully small amount. To her your wages would have meant nothing but a heap of crumpled paper. There is no such thing in the world as money independent of human beings. There is only the activity of the human mind in its preoccupation with it. Do remember this: money is not a real substance, it is an objectification.’
‘What’s an objectification?’
‘I’ll give you an example. Imagine a prisoner incarcerated in the Bastille for having committed some dreadful crime. One day at dawn he is put into a carriage and taken to Paris. On the way he realises that he is being taken to execution. On the square there is great crowd of people. He is led up to the scaffold, where the sentence is read to him. He is strapped into position beneath the guillotine … a strike of the blade, and his head flies into the basket …’
Enlil Maratovich clapped his knee with his palm.
‘And?’ I enquired nervously.
‘At that moment he wakes up and remembers that he is not after all a prisoner but a supermarket unloader, and a big heart-shaped fan fell down from the wall onto his neck while he was asleep.’
‘It wouldn’t have fallen,’ I said quietly. ‘It was glued on.’
Enlil Maratovich paid no attention to my retort.
‘In other words,’ he went on, ‘something can occur in reality which a man cannot understand because he is asleep. However, he cannot completely ignore it. His sleeping mind therefore creates a convoluted and detailed dream-explanation for it. This dream is called an objectification.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘What you’re saying is that money is a colourful dream that people see in an attempt to explain something of which they have an inkling but do not actually understand.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But I believe,’ I said, ‘that people understand it all very well.’
‘They think they understand.’
‘But to understand, after all, means to think. And to think means to understand.’
Enlil Maratovich looked at me searchingly.
‘Do you know what goes on in the mind of a cow which has been milked all her life by an electric milking machine?’
‘A cow doesn’t think.’
‘Oh yes, she does. Just not as people do. Not with abstract concepts but with emotional reflexes. And on her level she also understands perfectly well what goes on.’
‘How?’
‘She believes that human beings are her deformed offspring. Hideous and misshapen though they are, nevertheless they are her dear little children, and they must be fed because otherwise they will suffer hunger. For that reason she eats her fill of clover every day and tries to give them as much milk as she can …’
Enlil Maratovich’s phone rang. He flipped it open and brought it to his ear.
‘No, not yet. It will be some time. Keep going with current business for now. Do the casting of the lots later.’
Closing the phone, he replaced it in his pocket.
‘Well now,’ he said. ‘All that now remains for you to do is to assemble the various bits into the whole picture. Do you think you can do that?’
I shook my head.
‘Think hard about it!’ said Enlil Maratovich, raising his finger significantly. ‘I have brought you right to the threshold of our world. You are standing before the door. But you cannot open it. Never mind open it, you can’t even see it … Our world is so completely hidden that if we do not drag you physically into it by the hand you will never know that it exists. This, Rama, is what is meant by total camouflage.’
‘Perhaps,’ I offered, ‘I am just too stupid.’
‘Not only you. Everyone. And the cleverer they are, the more stupid they are. The human mind is either a microscope through which a man examines the floor of his room, or a telescope through which he looks at the stars in the sky outside his window. But the one thing he never sees is himself in the right perspective.’
‘And what is the right perspective?’
‘This is precisely what I am talking about, so listen very carefully. Money is simply an objectification needed by people to account for the spasms of the money gland – those mental contractions that Mind “B” continually experiences. And as Mind “B” is constantly at work, it follows that …’
I suddenly had a wild thought.
‘Do vampires milk people remotely?’ I breathed.
Enlil Maratovich beamed.
‘Well done! Of course!’
‘But … things don’t happen like that,’ I said, dismayed.
‘Think. How do we get honey?’
<
br /> ‘All right,’ I said. ‘The bee herself brings the honey. But to do that she has to fly into the hive. There is no way honey can be transmitted in the air.’
‘Not honey, no. But life-force can be.’
‘How?’ I asked.
Enlil Maratovich took the pen from the table, took a sheet of paper, and drew this diagram on it:
‘Do you have a clear idea of what a radio wave is?’ he asked.
I nodded, then thought a little more, and shook my head in denial.
‘I’ll try to keep it simple,’ said Enlil Maratovich. ‘A transmitter is a piece of equipment that excites electrons to rush about in a metal rod to and fro in a sine wave. The rod is the antenna. It produces radio waves, which travel at the speed of light. In order to capture the energy of these waves, a second antenna is needed. Both antennae must be of a length proportionate to the length of the wave, because the energy is transmitted on a resonating principle. I expect you know that when you strike one tuning fork, another one placed near it will begin to sound. But for the second one to ring in response, it must be identical to the first one. In practice, of course, it is all rather more complicated: in order to transmit and receive energy, the waves must be concentrated in a particular cluster of rays, the antennae must be correctly positioned spatially in relation to one another, and so on. But the principle is the same … now let me draw you another diagram …’
Enlil Maratovich turned over the sheet of paper and drew the following:
‘You mean, Mind “B” is the transmitting antenna?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘And what is the person thinking while the transmitter is working?’
‘Difficult to say. It depends what kind of person he is: a corporate manager or a guy with a fruit stall by a Metro station. But the inner dialogue of any contemporary urban dweller will fall essentially into one of two alternative patterns. In the first he thinks: “I’m winning! I’m getting there! I’ll show the lot of them! I’m going for the throat! I’ll screw all the money I can out of this shitty world!”’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘that makes a lot of sense.’
‘And there is another pattern where he thinks: “I’m drowning! I’ll never make it! I’m in deep shit! I’m a hopeless loser and will die dirt poor!”’
‘That can happen too,’ I confirmed.
‘In any given consciousness these two processes take hold and turn about, and may be considered a single stream of thought altering direction cyclically. It’s like an alternating current radiating from an antenna, transmitting the person’s life-force into space. But human beings are not capable of capturing or registering this radiation. It can be captured only by a living receiver, not by any mechanical device. People sometimes refer to this energy as the “biofield”, but exactly what that might be no human being understands.’
‘Supposing a man doesn’t say either “I’m a winner” or “I’m a loser”?’
‘He has to be saying one or the other. What else is there for him to say? All other processes that occur in the conscious mind are soon extinguished. That’s the job of Glamour and Discourse.’
‘But not everyone is driven by ambition to achieve something,’ I said. ‘Some people aren’t interested in Glamour and Discourse. Homeless people, alcoholics – they couldn’t give a stuff.’
‘It only seems like that because their world has different parameters of achievement,’ replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘But everyone has their Fuji, however small and disgusting it may be.’
I sighed. I was getting tired of all these references to experiences in my former life.
‘A person occupies himself ceaselessly with the question of money,’ went on Enlil Maratovich. ‘But the process takes many different and often indistinct forms. To all appearances a fellow may be lying on the beach doing absolutely nothing and wanting absolutely nothing. But in fact he is thinking about that yacht out there on the horizon, how much it cost, and what he would have to do with his life to get enough money to buy one like it. His wife, meanwhile, looks at the woman on the next sunbed and tries to figure out whether her handbag and sunglasses are genuine, how much her Botox injections cost, and how much an equivalent liposuction job on her own arse would be, and which of their bungalows is more expensive. At the core of all such psychic vortices is a central abstraction – the idea of money. And every time these vortices erupt in a man’s consciousness, there follows a milking of the money-teat. The art of consumption, favourite brands, decisions based on taste and style – these are just the surface. Concealed below them is one fact and one fact only: a man has eaten a wiener schnitzel and is busy transmuting it into Aggregate “M-5”.’
It was an expression I had not heard before.
‘Aggregate “M-5”?’ I repeated. ‘What is that?’
‘In economics, aggregates are various aspects of the overall money supply. “M-0”, “M-1”, “M-2”, “M-3” are forms of cash, financial instruments and financial obligations. Aggregate “M-4” includes verbal agreements about discounts, and kickbacks are also known as “M-Che” in honour of Ernesto Che Guevara and Anatoly Chubais. But all of these are simply mirages; they exist solely in people’s minds. “M-5” is in principle something entirely different, a special kind of psychic energy produced by people in their struggle to acquire the first four aggregates. Aggregate “M-5” really exists. The others are merely objectifications of this energy.’
‘Hold on, hold on,’ I said. ‘First you said that there is no such thing as money in nature. Now you’re talking about Aggregate “M-5” which, apparently, does exist. So sometimes money exists and sometimes it doesn’t?’
Enlil Maratovich pushed over to me the sheet with the first diagram.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘The human brain is a device which produces for us what we call the world. This device is capable not only of receiving signals but of transmitting them. If we were to tune all such devices identically and concentrate the attention of all human beings on one and the same abstraction, all these transmitters would radiate energy on a single wavelength. That wavelength is money.’
‘Money is a wavelength?’ I queried.
‘Yes. One cannot actually say of a wavelength that it exists, because it is simply a construct of the mind, therefore outside of the mind there is no such thing. And yet it is equally impossible to state that a wavelength does not exist, because any wavelength can be measured. Now do you understand?’
‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘Money is different in different countries. If a Muscovite is given a brown envelope full of dollars, does that mean he sends his vital energy to America?’
Enlil Maratovich laughed.
‘Not quite. Money is money, no matter what it is called and what colour it may be. It’s just an abstraction. Its wavelength therefore remains constant. But any signal possesses not only frequency but form, and that form can alter fundamentally. Have you ever wondered why there are different languages, nations and countries in the world?’
‘Just the way the cookie crumbles,’ I shrugged.
‘Cookies may crumble. Everything else has a mechanism. Throughout the world there are sovereign communities of vampires. The national culture to which a person belongs is like a brand on a steer. It’s like a key for a lock, or an access code for a door. Each vampire community can milk only its own cattle. Accordingly, although the process by which money is produced is the same the world over, its cultural objectification can differ sharply.’
‘Do you mean to suggest that this is the whole point of human culture?’ I asked.
‘No, why should it be? It can have other elements as well.’
‘What sort of other elements?
Enlil Maratovich thought for a while.
‘Well, how can I put it? … Imagine a man sitting in a bare concrete cage producing electricity. Let’s say there are metal handles protruding fro
m the wall which he slides to and fro, backwards and forwards. He’s not going to be able to stand doing that for long, is he? He’s going to start thinking: What am I doing here? Why do I spend all day, from morning to night, sliding these handles back and forth? Why don’t I get the hell out of here? That’s going to occur to him at some point, don’t you think?’
‘Could be,’ I agreed.
‘Now suppose a plasma screen is suspended in front of him, showing a video of scenes of Venice and the handles are made in the shape of oars in a gondola sailing down the canal … and then, for two weeks a year, the handles have a new shape like ski poles, and the screen shows Courchevel … our oarsman won’t have any more questions. The only thing he will worry about is losing his place at the oars. So he carries on rowing with redoubled enthusiasm.’
‘Won’t he notice that the same scenes keep coming round on the screen?’
‘Oh yes,’ sighed Enlil Maratovich. ‘Solomon had something to say about that. You know, in the Bible. For that reason the length of the human lifespan was calculated so that people would not have time to draw significant conclusions from what’s going on.’
‘Another thing I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Surely, anything at all could be shown on the plasma screen. Venice if you like, or the City of the Sun. Who decides what the gondolier is going to look at?
‘Who? Why, they do. They decide themselves.’
‘Themselves? Well, then, why ever do people go on, year after year, looking at this … at this …?’
Enlil Maratovich shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘as the saying goes, whatever floats your boat … Why should we care about it as long as they believe there is a boat and don’t want to risk missing it?’
I sighed and turned my attention to the first diagram, then turned over and looked at the second. The empty space on its right-hand side seemed mysterious, even frightening.
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