Babylon (2 page)

   While he was working in the kiosk (it went on for a little less than a year), Tatarsky acquired two new qualities. The first was a cynicism as boundless as the view from the Ostankino television tower; the second was something quite remarkable and inexplicable. Tatarsky only had to glance at a customer’s hands to know whether he could short-change him and by exactly how much, whether he could be insulting to him, whether there was any likelihood of being passed a false banknote and whether he could pass on a false note himself. There was no definite system involved in all this. Sometimes a fist like a hairy water-melon would appear in the little window, but it was obvious that Tatarsky could quite safely send its owner to hell and beyond. Then sometimes Tatarsky’s heart would skip a beat in fright at the sight of a slim female hand with manicured nails.

   One day a customer asked Tatarsky for a pack of Davidoff. The hand that placed the crumpled hundred-thousand-rouble note on the counter was not very interesting. Tatarsky noted the slight, barely visible trembling of the fingers and realised his customer was a stimulant abuser. He could easily be, for instance, some middle-level bandit or businessman, or - as was often the case - something halfway between the two.

   ‘What kind of Davidoff? Standard or lights?’ Tatarsky asked.

   ‘Lights,’ the customer replied and leaned down to glance in through the little window.

   Tatarsky started in surprise - the customer was a fellow student from his year at the Literary Institute, Sergei Morkovin, one of the outstanding characters of their year. He’d hardly changed at all, except that a neat parting had appeared in his hair, and a few grey hairs had appeared in the parting.

   ‘Vova?’ Morkovin asked in astonishment. ‘What are you doing here?’

   Tatarsky couldn’t think of a good answer.

   ‘I get it,’ said Morkovin. ‘Come on, you’re out of this dump.’

   It didn’t take long for Tatarsky to be persuaded. He locked up the kiosk and, casting a fearful glance in the direction of Hussein’s trailer, followed Morkovin to his car. They went to an expensive Chinese restaurant called The Shrine of the Moon, ate dinner and did some heavy drinking, and Morkovin told Tatarsky what he’d been up to recently. What he’d been up to was advertising.

   ‘Vova,’ he said, grabbing Tatarsky by the arm, his eyes gleaming, ‘this is a very special time. There’s never been a time like it and there never will be again. It’s a gold-rush, just like the Klondyke. In another two years everything’ll be all sewn up, but right now there’s a real chance to get in on the ground floor straight off the street. You know, in New York they spend half a lifetime just trying to get to meet the right people over lunch, but here…’

   There was a lot in what Morkovin said that Tatarsky simply didn’t understand. The only thing that was really clear to him from the conversation was the outline of how business functioned in an era of primitive accumulation and the way it was interlinked with advertising.

   ‘Most of the time,’ said Morkovin, ‘it goes like this: a guy borrows money on credit. He uses the credit to rent an office and buy a Jeep Cherokee and eight crates of Smirnoff. When the Smirnoff runs out, it turns out the jeep’s wrecked, the office is awash with puke and the loan is due for repayment. So he borrows money again - three times more than before. He uses it to pay back the first loan, buys a Jeep Grand Cherokee and sixteen crates of Absolut vodka. When the Absolut…’

   ‘OK, I get the picture,’ Tatarsky interrupted. ‘So what’s the ending?’

   ‘There’s two endings. If the bank the guy owes to is one of the mafia banks, then some time or other he gets killed; and since there aren’t any others, that’s what usually happens. On the other hand, if the guy’s in the mafia himself, then the last loan gets shifted on to the State Bank, and the guy declares himself bankrupt. The bailiffs come round to his office, inventorise the empty bottles and the puke-covered fax, and in a little while he starts up all over again. Nowadays, of course, the State Bank’s got its own mafia, so the situation’s a bit more complicated, but the basic picture’s still the same.’

   ‘Aha,’ Tatarsky said thoughtfully. ‘But I still don’t see what all this has to do with advertising.’

   ‘That’s where we come to the most important part. When there’s still about half the Smirnoff or Absolut left, the jeep’s still on the road and death seems a distant and abstract prospect, a highly specific chemical reaction occurs inside the head of the guy who created the whole mess. He develops this totally boundless megalomania and orders himself an advertising clip. He insists his clip has to blow away all the other cretins’ clips. The psychology of it’s easy enough to understand. The guy’s opened up some little company called Everest and he’s so desperate to see his logo on Channel One, somewhere between BMW and Coca-Cola, that he could top himself. So just as soon as this reaction takes place in the client’s head, we pop out of the bushes.’

   Tatarsky liked the sound of that ‘we’ very much.

   ‘The situation’s like this.’ Morkovin went on. ‘There are only a few studios that make the videos, and they’re desperate for writers with nous, because these days everything depends on the writer. The job itself works like this: the people from the studio find a client who wants to get himself on TV. You take a look at him. He tells you something. You listen to what he wants to say. Then you write the scenario. It’s usually about a page long, because the clips are short. It might only take you a couple of minutes, but you don’t go back to him for at least a week - he has to think you’ve spent all that time dashing backwards and forwards across your room, tearing your hair out and thinking, thinking, thinking. He reads what you’ve written and, depending on whether he likes the scenario or not, he orders a video from your people or gets in touch with someone else. That’s why, as far as the studio you work for is concerned, you’re the top man. The order depends on you. And if you can hypnotise the client, you take ten per cent of the total price of the video.’

   ‘And how much does a video cost?’

   ‘Usually from fifteen to thirty grand. Say twenty on average.’

   ‘What?’ Tatarsky asked in disbelief.

   ‘O God, not roubles. Dollars.’

   In a split second Tatarsky had calculated what ten per cent of twenty thousand would be. He swallowed hard and stared at Morkovin with dog-like eyes.

   ‘Of course, it’s not going to last,’ said Morkovin. ‘In a year or two, everything’s going to look entirely different. Instead of all these pot-bellied nobodies taking loans for their petty little businesses, there’ll be guys borrowing millions of bucks at a time. Instead of jeeps for crashing into lamp-posts there’ll be castles in France and islands in the Pacific. Instead of five hundred grammes the former party secretaries will be demanding five hundred grand. But basically what’s going on in this country of ours won’t be any different, which means that the basic principle of our work will never change.’

   ‘My God,’ said Tatarsky. ‘Money like that… It’s kind of frightening.’

   ‘Ifs Dostoievsky’s old eternal question.’ Morkovin said, laughing. ‘Am I a timid cowering creature or have I got moral rights?’

   ‘Seems to me you’ve already answered that question.’

   ‘Yes,’ said Morkovin, ‘I reckon I have.’

   ‘And what is your answer?’

   ‘It’s very simple. I’m a timid cowering creature with inalienable rights.’ The next day Morkovin took Tatarsky to a strange place called Draft Podium (after several minutes of intense mental effort Tatarsky abandoned the attempt to guess what that meant). It was located in the basement of an old brick-built house not far from the centre of town. Entry was via a heavy steel door, which led into a small office space crammed with equipment. Several young men were waiting there for Tatarsky. Their leader was a stubble-cheeked guy by the name of Sergei, who looked like Dracula in his younger days. He explained to Tatarsky that the small cube of blue plastic standing on an empty cardboard box was a Silicon Graphics computer that cost one hell of a lot of money, and the Soft Image program that was installed on it cost twice as much. The Silicon was the most important treasure in this subterranean cave. The room also contained a few more simple computers, scanners and some kind of VCR with lots of dials and lights. One detail that made a great impression on Tatarsky was that the VCR had a wheel on it with a handle, like the wheel on a sewing machine, and you could use it to wind on the frames on the tape by hand.

   Draft Podium had a certain very promising client in its sights. ‘The mark’s about fifty,’ said Sergei, dragging on a menthol cigarette. ‘Used to work as a teacher of physics. Just when things started coming apart he set up a co-operative baking bird’s milk’ cakes and in two years made so much money that now he rents an entire confectionery plant in Lefortovo. Recently he took out a big loan. The day before yesterday he went on the sauce, and he usually stays on it about two weeks.’

   ‘Where do you get that kind of information?’ Tatarsky asked.

   ‘His secretary.’ said Sergei. ‘So anyway, we have to get to him with the scenario now, before he has time to sober up. When he sobers up, he gets greedy. We’re meeting tomorrow at one in his office.’

   The next day Morkovin arrived at Tatarsky’s place early. He brought with him a large, bright-yellow plastic bag containing a maroon jacket made of material that looked like the fabric they use for Russian army greatcoats. The intricate crest gleaming on the breast pocket was reminiscent of the emblem on a packet of Marlboro cigarettes. Morkovin said it was a ‘club jacket’. Tatarsky didn’t understand what he meant, but he did as he was told and put it on. Then Morkovin took a foppish notebook in a leather cover out of the bag, together with an incredibly thick ballpoint pen with the word ‘Zoom’ on it and a pager - at that time they’d only just appeared in Moscow.

   ‘You have to hang this thing on your belt,’ he said. ‘You’re meeting the client at one, and at twenty past one I’ll give you a call on the pager. When it beeps, take it off your belt and look at it like it’s something important. All the time the client’s talking, keep making notes in the notebook.’

   ‘What’s it all for?’ Tatarsky asked.

   ‘It’s obvious enough, isn’t it? The client’s paying big money for a sheet of paper and a few drops of black ink out of a printer. He has to be absolutely certain plenty of others have paid money for the same thing before him.’

   ‘Seems to me,’ said Tatarsky, ‘all these jackets and pagers are just the thing to raise doubts in his mind.’

   ‘Don’t go complicating things,’ said Morkovin with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Life’s simpler and stupider than that. And then there’s this…’

   He took a slim case out of his pocket, opened it and held it out to Tatarsky. It contained a heavy watch that was almost beautiful in a repulsive kind of way, made of gold and steel.

   ‘It’s a Rolex Oyster. Careful, you’ll chip off the gold plate; it’s a fake. I only take it out on business. When you’re talking with the client, flash it around a bit, you know. It helps.’

   Tatarsky felt inspired by all this support. At half past twelve he emerged from the metro. The guys from Draft Podium were waiting for him not far from the entrance. They’d arrived in a long black Mercedes. Tatarsky had already learned enough about business to know the car had been hired for about two hours. Sergei was unshaven as ever, but now there was something sullenly stylish about his stubble - probably due to the dark jacket with the incredibly narrow lapels and the bow tie. Sitting beside him was Lena, who looked after contracts and kept the books. She was wearing a simple black dress (no jewellery and no make-up) and in her hand she was holding an attache case with a golden lock. When Tatarsky climbed into the car, the three of them exchanged glances and Sergei spoke to the chauffeur.

   ‘Drive on.’

   Lena was nervous. All the way there she kept giggling as she told them about some guy called Azadovsky - apparently her friend’s lover. This Azadovsky inspired her with an admiration that bordered on rapture: he’d arrived in Moscow from Ukraine and moved in with her friend, got himself registered in her flat, then invited his sister and her two children up from Dnepropetrovsk. He’d registered them in the flat and immediately, without the slightest pause, swapped the flat for a different one through the courts and dispatched Lena’s sister to a room in a shared apartment.

   ‘He’s a man who’ll really go far!’ Lena kept repeating.

   She was especially impressed by the fact that, once the operation had been completed, the sister and her children were immediately banished back to Dnepropetrovsk; there was so much detail in the way the tale was told that by the end of the journey Tatarsky began to feel as though he’d lived half his life in the flat with Azadovsky and his nearest and dearest; but then, Tatarsky was just as nervous as Lena.

   The client (Tatarsky never did find out what his name was) looked remarkably like the image that had taken shape in Tatarsky’s mind following the previous day’s conversation. He was a short, thickset little man with a cunning face, from which the grimace of a hangover was only just beginning to fade - evidently he’d taken his first drink of the day not long before the meeting.

   Following a brief exchange of pleasantries (Lena did most of the talking; Sergei sat in the corner with his legs crossed, smoking) Tatarsky was introduced as the writer. He sat down facing the client, clanging the Rolex against the edge of the desk as he did so, and opened up his notebook. It immediately became clear that the client had nothing in particular to say. Without the assistance of a powerful hallucinogen it was hard to feel inspired by the details of his business - he droned on most of the time about some kind of oven-trays with a special non-stick coating. Tatarsky listened with his face half-turned away, nodding and doodling meaningless flourishes in his notebook. He surveyed the room out of the corner of his eye - there was nothing interesting to be seen there, either, if you didn’t count the misty-blue reindeer-fur hat, obviously very expensive, that was lying on the upper shelf in an empty cupboard with glass doors.