Babylon (11 page)

   Inside, in the cramped space doubled by the mirrors on the walls, there were several long rails with various types of jeans and a long shelf of shoes, mostly trainers. Tatarsky cast a weary glance over the splendour of leather and rubber. Ten years ago a new pair of trainers brought in from abroad by a distant relative used to mark the starting point of a new period in your life - the design on the sole was a simulacrum of the pattern on the palm of your hand, from which you could forecast the future for a year ahead. The happiness that could be extracted from such an acquisition was boundless. Nowadays, to earn the right to the same amount you had to buy at least a jeep, maybe even a house. Tatarsky didn’t have that kind of money, and he didn’t expect to have it at any time in the foreseeable future. True, he could buy a whole truckload of trainers, but they didn’t gladden his heart in the same way any more. Tatarsky wrinkled up his forehead as he struggled to remember what this phenomenon was called in the professional jargon; and when he remembered, he took out his notebook and opened it at the letter ‘R’. "The inflation of happiness,’ he jotted down hastily: ‘having to pay more money for the same amount. Use in advertising real estate: Ladies and gentlemen! These walls offer you sure-fire protection against
cognitive dissonance’.
You need never even know what it is.’

   ‘What are you looking for?’ the salesgirl asked. She definitely did not like the idea of this customer writing things down in a notebook - that sort of thing ended in unannounced visits from inspectors of one kind or another.

   ‘I’d like some shoes,’ Tatarsky replied with a polite smile. ‘Something light, for summer.’

   ‘Ordinary shoes? Trainers? Gym shoes?’

   ‘Gym shoes’ said Tatarsky. ‘It’s years since I’ve seen any gym shoes.’

   The girl led him over to the shelf. "There you are.’ she said. ‘Platform soles.’

   Tatarsky picked up a thick-soled white gym shoe.

   ‘What make is it?’ he asked.

   ‘No name,’ said the girl. ‘From England.’

   ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked in astonishment.

   The girl turned the back of the gym shoe to face him, and there on the heel he saw a rubber badge with the words: ‘NO NAME’.

   ‘Do you have a forty-three?’ Tatarsky asked.

   He left the shop wearing his new gym shoes, his old shoes in a plastic bag. He was absolutely sure now that there was some meaning to the route he was following today and he was afraid of making a mistake by taking a wrong turning. He hesitated for a moment and then set off down Sadovaya Street.

   About fifty metres further on he came across a tobacco kiosk, but when he stepped up to buy some cigarettes, Tatarsky was amazed to see a wide range of condoms looking more like the display in a chemist’s shop. Standing out clearly among the Malaysian Kama-Sutra condoms with their bob-bled shafts was a strange semi-transparent device of blue rubber covered with a multitude of thick knobs, looking very much like the head of the main demon from the film
Hell-raiser.
The label underneath it said ‘re-usable’.

   But Tatarsky’s attention was caught by a neat black, yellow and red rectangle with a German eagle in a double black circle that looked like an official seal and the inscription ‘Sico’. It looked so much like a small banner that Tatarsky bought two packs on the spot. On the back of the pack it said: ‘In buying Sico condoms, you put your trust in traditional German quality control.’

   ‘Clever.’ thought Tatarsky. ‘Very clever.’

   He pondered the theme for several seconds, trying to invent a slogan. Eventually the phrase he was looking for lit up in his head.

   ‘Sico. A Porsche in the world of condoms.’ he whispered, and wrote down his invention. Then he put his notebook away and looked around. He was standing on the comer of Sadovo-Triumfalnaya Street and some other street that branched off to the right. There on the wall in front of his face was a poster with the words: "The Path to Your Self” and a yellow arrow pointing round the corner. Tatarsky’s heart skipped a beat, and then the vague realisation dawned that The Path to Your Self was a shop.

   ‘Of course, what else?’ Tatarsky muttered to himself.

   He only found the shop after weaving his way for ages through nearby yards and passages - near the end of his journey he remembered that Gireiev had mentioned this shop to him, but he’d used the abbreviated form of its name, PYS. There were no large signboards anywhere to be seen, nothing but a small board with the handwritten word ‘Open’ in the doorway of an ordinary-looking two-storey building. Tatarsky realised, of course, that things hadn’t been arranged like this through lack of foresight, but in order to induce a feeling of esoteric anticipation. Nonetheless, the method worked on him as well - as he climbed the stairs leading into the shop, he was aware of a sensation of subtle reverence.

   Once inside the door he knew that instinct had led him to the right place. Hanging above the counter was a black tee shirt with a portrait of Che Guevara and the inscription: ‘Rage Against the Machine’. On the piece of cardboard under the tee shirt it said: ‘Bestseller of the month!’ There was nothing surprising about that - Tatarsky knew very well (he had even written about it in one of his concepts) that in the area of radical youth culture nothing sells as well as well-packaged and politically correct rebellion against a world that is ruled by political correctness and in which everything is packaged to be sold.

   ‘What sizes do you have?’ he asked the sales assistant, a very pretty girl in a vaguely Babylonian-Assyrian style.

   "There’s only one left,’ she answered. ‘Just your size.’

   He paid, put the tee shirt in his shoulder-bag and then froze in indecision at the counter.

   ‘We’ve got a new lot of crystal balls, better buy one before they all go,’ purred the girl, and she began sorting out a pile of children’s bibs with inscriptions in runic characters.

   ‘What are they for?’ Tatarsky asked.

   ‘For meditation.’

   Tatarsky was just about to ask whether you were supposed to meditate on something through the crystal balls or something actually in them, when he suddenly noticed a small shelf on the wall - it had been hidden behind the tee shirt he had just bought. Slumbering on the shelf under a clearly visible layer of dust were two objects of an uncertain nature.

   ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what are those things up there? Is that a flying saucer or something? What’s that pattern on it?’

   ‘That’s a supreme practice frisbee.’ said the girl, ‘and what you call a pattern is a blue letter "hum".’

   ‘But what’s it for?’ asked Tatarsky, a vague memory of something connected with mushrooms and Gireiev nudging briefly at the edge of his awareness. ‘How is it different from an ordinary frisbee?’

   The girl twisted her lips into a wry expression. ‘When you throw a frisbee with a blue letter "hum", you’re not simply throwing a plastic disc, but accumulating merit. Ten minutes throwing a frisbee with a blue letter "hum" generates the same amount of merit as three hours of samadhi meditation or one hour of vipassana meditation.’

   ‘A-ha.’ Tatarsky drawled uncertainly. ‘But merit in whose eyes?’

   ‘What do you mean, in whose eyes!’ the girl said, raising her eyebrows. ‘Are you buying or do you just want to talk?’

   ‘I’m buying,’ said Tatarsky. ‘But I have to know what I’m buying. What’s that to the right of the supreme practice?’

   ‘That’s a ouija board, a classic.’

   ‘What’s it for?’

   The girl sighed. She was obviously tired of dealing with fools all day long. She took the ouija board down from the shelf and set it on the counter in front of Tatarsky.

   ‘You stand it on a sheet of paper,’ she said. ‘Or you can attach it to a printer with these clips here. In that case you put the paper in through here and set the line print speed to ‘slow’. It’s easier if you load a roll. In this slot here you put a pen - best to buy a helium one, with a reservoir. You put your hands on it like this, see? Then you enter into contact with the spirit and just let your hands move however they want. The pen will write out the text that’s received.’

   ‘Listen,’ said Tatarsky, ‘please don’t be angry, I really want to know - what spirit am I supposed to contact?’

   ‘I’ll tell you if you’re buying.’

   Tatarsky took out his wallet and counted out the money. For a piece of varnished plywood on three wheels the ouija board was refreshingly expensive - and this disproportion between price and object inspired a trust that could hardly have been generated by any explanation, no matter how profound.

   ‘There you go,’ he said, putting the banknotes on the counter. ‘So what spirit do I get in contact with?’

   ‘The answer to that question depends on your level of personal power,’ said the girl, ‘and especially on your belief in the existence of spirits. If you stop your internal dialogue using the method from Castaneda’s second volume, you enter into contact with the spirit of the abstract. But if you’re a Christian or a Satanist, you can contact a specific spirit… Which kinds are you interested in?’

   Tatarsky shrugged.

   The girl lifted up the crystal hanging on a narrow black leather strap round her neck and looked at Tatarsky through it for two or three seconds, gazing directly at the centre of his forehead.

   ‘What kind of job are you in?’ she asked. ‘What do you do?’

   ‘Advertising,’ Tatarsky answered.

   The girl slipped her hand under the counter and took out an ordinary exercise book with squared paper and spent some time leafing through pages covered with tables in which the columns were completely filled with fine handwriting.

   ‘It would be best for you,’ she said at last, ‘to regard the text received as a free discharge of subconscious psychic energy facilitated by the motor skills of writing. A kind of spring-cleaning for an advertising man’s personal Augean stables. That approach will be less offensive to the spirits.’

   ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Tatarsky, ‘do you mean to tell me that the spirits will be offended when they find out I work in advertising?’

   ‘Yes, I think so. So the best protection against their wrath would be to doubt their existence. When it comes down to it, everything in this world is a matter of interpretation, and a quasi-scientific description of a spiritualist seance is just as correct as any other. And then, any enlightened spirit will readily agree that he doesn’t exist.’

   ‘Interesting. But how will the spirits guess that I’m in advertising? Is it written on my forehead or something?’

   ‘No,’ said the girl. ‘It’s written in the adverts that came out of your forehead.’

   Tatarsky was about to take offence at that, but after a moment’s consideration he realised that he actually felt flattered.

   ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, ‘if I need a consultation on spiritual matters, I’ll come to you. You don’t mind, do you?’

   ‘All things are in the hands of Allah,’ the girl answered.

   ‘I don’t know about that,’ said a young man with dilated pupils, swinging round from the huge crystal ball into which he had been gazing to face the girl. ‘All things? What about Buddha-consciousness? The hands of Allah only exist in Buddha-consciousness. You won’t argue with that, will you?’

   The girl behind the counter smiled politely.

   ‘Of course not,’ she said. "The hands of Allah only exist in Buddha-consciousness. The catch is that Buddha-consciousness still lies in the hands of Allah.’

   ‘As Isikawa Takuboku wrote,’ interrupted a gloomy-looking customer of a Mephistophelean appearance, who had approached the counter in the meantime, ‘"leave off, leave off this vain dispute"… I was told you had Swami Zhigalkin’s brochure "Summer Thoughts of a Samsaric Being". Do you think you could have a look for it? It’s probably up on that shelf, no, no, over there, to the left, under the tibial flute…’

   On the table the ouija board looked like a tank on the central square of a small European town. The bottle of Johnny Walker standing beside it reminded Tatarsky of the town hall, and so in his mind the red wine he was drinking was fitted into the same pattern. Its vessel, a long narrow bottle, was like a Gothic cathedral occupied by the Communist Party committee, and the void within the bottle was reminiscent of the ideological exhaustion of communism, the senselessness of bloodshed and the general crisis of the Russian idea. Setting the mouth of the bottle to his lips, Tatarsky finished what was left of the wine and tossed the bottle into the waste-paper basket. ‘The velvet revolution,’ he thought.

   Sitting at the table in the tee shirt with the inscription: ‘Rage Against the Machine’, he finished reading the manual for the ouija board. The helium pen he’d bought in a kiosk by the metro fitted into the slot without any effort and he secured it in place with the screw. It was suspended on a small spring that was supposed to press it against the paper. The paper - an entire pile of it - was already lying under the ouija board. He could begin.

   He glanced around the room and was just about to place his hands on the board, when he rose nervously to his feet, walked across the room and back again and drew the blinds over the windows. After another moment’s thought, he lit the candle standing on the table. Any further preparations would simply have been laughable. In actual fact, even the ones he had made were ridiculous.

   He sat down at the table and set his hands on the ouija board. ‘OK then,’ he thought, ‘so now what? Should I say something out loud or not?’

   ‘I summon the spirit of Che Guevara. I summon the spirit of Che Guevara,’ he said, and immediately thought that he ought not just to summon the spirit; he ought to ask it a question. ‘I’d like to know… mmm, let’s say, something new about advertising, something that wasn’t in Al Rice or comrade Ogiivy,’ he said. ‘I want to understand more than anybody else.’

   At that very instant the ouija board began jerking epileptically beneath his spread palms and the pen set in the slot traced out a string of large capital letters at the top of the sheet of paper: