Babylon (27 page)

   The traffic jam finally began to ease. Tatarsky lowered the window. His mood was completely spoiled; he needed live human warmth. He pulled out of the stream of cars and braked at the bus stop. The broken glass panel in the side of the shelter had been patched over with a board carrying an advertisement for some TV channel showing an allegorical representation of the four mortal sins holding remote controls. An old woman was sitting motionless on the bench under the shelter with a basket on her knees, and sitting beside her was a curly-headed man of about forty, clutching a bottle of beer. He was dressed in a shabby, padded military coat. Noting that the man still seemed to possess a fair amount of vital energy, Tatarsky stuck out his elbow.

   ‘Excuse me, soldier,’ he said, ‘can you tell me where the Men’s Shirts shop is around here?’

   The man looked up at him. He must have understood Tatarsky’s real motivation, because his eyes were immediately flooded with an ice-cold fury. The brief exchange of glances was most informative - Tatarsky realised that the man realised, and the man realised Tatarsky realised he’d been realised.

   ‘ Afghanistan was way heavier,’ said the man.

   ‘I beg your pardon, what did you say?’

   ‘What I said was’, the man replied, shifting his grip to the neck of the bottle, ‘that Afghanistan was way heavier. And don’t you even try to beg my pardon.’

   Something told Tatarsky the man was not approaching his car in order to tell him the way to the shop, and he flattened the accelerator against the floor. His instinct had not deceived him - a second later something struck hard against the rear windsow and it shattered into a spider’s web of cracks, with white foam trickling down over them. Driven by his adrenalin rush, Tatarsky accelerated sharply. ‘What a fucker,’ he thought, glancing round. ‘And they want to build a market economy with people like that.’

   After he parked in the yard of the Interbank Committee, a red Range-Rover pulled up beside him - the latest model, with a set of fantastical spotlights perched on its roof and its door decorated with a cheerful drawing of the sun rising over the prairie and the head of an Indian chief clad in a feather headdress. ‘I wonder who drives those?’ Tatarsky thought, and lingered at the door of his car for a moment.

   A fat, squat man wearing an emphatically bourgeois striped suit clambered out of the Range-Rover and turned round, and Tatarsky was amazed to recognise Sasha Blo - fatter than ever, even balder, but still with that same old grimace of tormented failure to understand what was really going on.

   ‘Sasha,’ said Tatarsky, ‘is that you?’

   ‘Ah, Babe,’ said Sasha Blo. ‘You’re here too? In the dirt department?’

   ‘How d’you know?’

   ‘Elementary, my dear Watson. That’s where everybody starts out. Till they get their hand in. There aren’t all that many creatives on the books. Everyone knows everyone else. So if I haven’t seen you before and now you’re parking at this entrance, it means you’re in
kompromat.
And you’ve only been there a couple of weeks at most.’

   ‘It’s been a month already,’ Tatarsky answered. ‘So what’re you doing now?’

   ‘Me? I’m head of the Russian Idea department. Drop in if you have any ideas.’

   ‘I’m not much good to you" Tatarsky answered. ‘I tried thinking about it, but it was a flop. You should try driving around the suburbs and asking the guys on the street.’

   Sasha Blo frowned in dissatisfaction.

   ‘I tried that at the beginning,’ he said. ‘You pour the vodka, look into their eyes, and then it’s always the same answer:

   "Bugger off and crash your fucking Mercedes." Can’t think of anything cooler than a Mercedes… And it’s all so destructive…’

   ‘That’s right,’ sighed Tatarsky and looked at the rear window of his car. Sasha Blo followed his glance.

   ‘Is it yours?’

   ‘Yes it is,’ Tatarsky said with pride.

   ‘I see’ said Sasha Blo, locking the door of his Range-Rover; ‘forty minutes of embarrassment gets you to work. Well, don’t let it get you down. Everything’s still ahead of you.’

   He nodded and ran off jauntily towards the door, flapping a fat, greasy attache case as he went. Tatarsky gazed after him for a long moment, then looked at the rear window of his car again and took out his notebook. "The worst thing of all’, he wrote on the last page, ‘is that people base their intercourse with each other on senselessly distracting chatter, into which they cold-bloodedly, cunningly and inhumanly introduce their anal impulse in the hope that it will become someone else’s oral impulse. If this happens, the winner shudders or-giastically and for a few seconds experiences the so-called "pulse of life".’

   Azadovsky and Morkovin had been sitting in the viewing hall since early morning. Outside the entrance several people were walking backwards and forwards, sarcastically discussing Yeltsin’s latest binge. Tatarsky decided they must be copywriters from the political department practising corporate non-action. They were called in one by one; on average they spent about ten minutes with the bosses. Tatarsky realised that the problems discussed were of state significance - he heard Yeltsin’s voice emanate from the hall at maximum volume several times. The first time he burbled:

   ‘What do we want so many pilots for? We only need one pilot, but ready for anything! The moment I saw my grandson playing with Play Station I knew straightaway what we need…’

   The second time they were obviously playing back a section from an address to the nation, because Yeltsin’s voice was solemn and measured: ‘For the first time in many decades the population of Russia now has the chance to choose between the heart and the head. Vote with your heart!’

   One project was wound up - that was obvious from the face of the tall man with a moustache and prematurely grey hair who emerged from the hall clutching a crimson loose-leaf folder with the inscription ‘Tsar’. Then music began playing in the hall - at first a balalaika jangled for a long time, then Tatarsky heard Azadovsky shouting: ‘Bugger it! We’ll take him off the air. Next.’

   Tatarsky was the last in the queue. The dimly lit hall where Azadovsky was waiting looked luxurious but somewhat archaic, as though it had been decorated and furnished back in the forties. For some reason Tatarsky bent down when he entered. He trotted across to the first row and perched on the edge of the chair to the left of Azadovsky, who was ejecting streams of smoke into the beam of the video-projector. Azadovsky shook his hand without looking at him - he was obviously in a bad mood. Tatarsky knew what the problem was: Morkovin had explained it to him the day before.

   ‘They’ve dropped us to three hundred megahertz,’ he said gloomily. ‘For Kosovo. Remember how under the communists there were shortages of butter? Now it’s machine time. There’s something fatal about this country. Now Azadovsky’s watching all the drafts himself. Nothing’s allowed on the main render-server without written permission, so give it your best shot.’

   It was the first time Tatarsky had seen what a draft - that is a rough sketch before it’s been rendered in full - actually looked like. If he hadn’t written the scenario himself, he would never have guessed that the green outline divided by lines of fine yellow dots was a table with a game of Monopoly set up on it. The playing pieces were identical small red arrows, and the dice were two blue blobs, but the game had been modelled honestly - in the lower section of the screen pairs of numbers from one to six flickered on and off, produced by the random number generator. The players themselves didn’t exist yet, though their moves corresponded to the points scored. Their places were occupied by skeletons of graduated lines with little circles as ball-joints. Tatarsky could only see their faces, constructed of coarse polygons - Salaman Raduev’s beard was like a rusty brick attached to the lower section of his face and a round bullet scar on his temple looked like a red button. Berezovsky was recognisable from the blue triangles of his shaved cheeks. As was only to be expected, Berezovsky was winning.

   ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in Mother Russia, Monopoly’s a bit dicey. You buy a couple of streets, and then it turns out there are people living on them.’

   Raduev laughed: ‘Not just in Russia. It’s like that everywhere. And I’ll tell you something else, Boris: not only do people live there; often they actually think the streets are theirs.’

   Berezovsky tossed the dice. Once again he got two sixes.

   "That’s not quite how it is.’ he said. ‘Nowadays people find out what they think from the television. So if you want to buy up a couple of streets and still sleep well, first you have to buy a TV tower.’

   There was a squeak, and an animated insert appeared in the corner of the table: a military walkie-talkie with a long aerial. Raduev lifted it to his head-joint, said something curt in Chechen and put it back.

   ‘I’m selling off my TV announcer,’ he said, and flicked a playing piece into the centre of the table with his finger. ‘I don’t like television.’

   ‘I’m buying,’ Berezovsky responded quickly. ‘But why don’t you like it?

   ‘I don’t like it because piss comes into contact with skin too often when you watch it,’ said Raduev, shaking the dice in the green arrows of his fingers. ‘Every time I turn on the television, there’s piss coming into contact with skin and causing irritation.’

   ‘You must be talking about those commercials for Pampers, are you? But it’s not your skin, Salaman.’

   ‘Exactly,’ said Raduev irritably, ‘so why do they come into contact in my head? Haven’t they got anywhere else?’

   The upper section of Berezovsky’s face was covered by a rectangle with a pair of eyes rendered in detail. They squinted in concern at Raduev and blinked a few times, then the rectangle disappeared.

   ‘Anyway, just whose piss is it?’ Raduev asked as if the idea had only just entered his head.

   ‘Drop it, Salaman,’ Berezovsky said in a reconciliatory tone. ‘Why don’t you take your move?’

   ‘Wait, Boris; I want to know whose piss and skin it is coming into contact in my head when I watch your television.’

   ‘Why is it my television?’

   ‘If a pipe runs across my squares, then I’m responsible for the pipe. You said that yourself. Right? So if all the TV anchormen are on your squares, you’re responsible for TV. So you tell me whose piss it is splashing about in my head when I watch it!’

   Berezovsky scratched his chin. ‘It’s your piss, Salaman,’ he said decisively.

   ‘How come?’

   ‘Who else’s can it be? Think it out for yourself. In Chechnya they call you "the man with a bullet in his head" for your pluck. I don’t think anyone who decided to pour piss all over you while you’re watching TV would live very long.’ ‘You think right.’ ‘So, Salaman, that means it’s your piss.’ ‘So how does it get inside my head when I’m watching TV? Does it rise up from my bladder?’

   Berezovsky reached out for the dice, but Raduev put his hand over them. ‘Explain,’ he demanded. "Then we’ll carry on playing.’

   An animation rectangle appeared on Berezovsky’s forehead, containing a deep wrinkle. ‘All right,’ he said,’ I’ll try to explain.’

   ‘Go on.’

   ‘When Allah created this world.’ Berezovsky began, casting a quick glance upwards, ‘he first thought it; and then he created objects. All the holy books tell us that in the beginning was the word. What does that mean in legal terms? In legal terms it means that in the first place Allah created concepts. Coarse objects are the lot of human beings, but in stead of them Allah’ - he glanced upwards quickly once again - ‘has ideas. And so Salman, when you watch advertisements for Pampers on television, what you have in your head is not wet human piss, but the concept of piss. The idea of piss comes into contact with the concept of skin. You understand?’

   ‘More or less,’ said Raduev thoughtfully. ‘But I didn’t understand everything. The idea of piss and the concept of skin come into contact inside my head, right?’

   ‘Right.’

   ‘And instead of things, Allah has ideas. Right?’

   ‘Right,’ said Berezovsky, and frowned. An animation patch appeared on his blue-shaven cheeks, showing his jaw muscles clenched tightly.

   ‘That means what happens inside my head is Allah’s piss coming into contact with Allah’s skin, blessed be his name? Right?’

   ‘You probably could put it like that,’ said Berezovsky, and the insert with the wrinkle appeared again on his forehead (Tatarsky had indicated this point in the scenario with the words: ‘Berezovsky senses the conversation is taking a wrong turning.’)

   Raduev stroked the rusty brick of his beard.

   ‘Al-Halladj spoke truly,’ he said, ‘in saying that the greatest wonder of all is a man who sees nothing wonderful around him. But tell me, why does it happen so often? I remember one time when piss came into contact with skin seventeen times in one hour.’

   "That was probably to settle up with Galiup Media,’ Berezovsky replied condescendingly. ‘The customer must’ve been a tough guy. So they had to account for his money before his protection could account for them. But what of it? If we sell the time, we show the material.’

   Raduev’s skeleton swayed towards the table. ‘Hang on, hang on. Are you telling me that piss comes into contact with skin every time they give you money?’

   ‘Well, yes.’

   Raduev’s skeleton was suddenly covered with a crudely drawn torso dressed in a Jordanian military uniform. He put his hand down behind the back of his chair, pulled out a Kalashnikov and pointed it at his companion’s face.

   ‘What’s wrong, Salaman?’ Berezovsky asked quietly, automatically raising his hands.

   ‘What’s wrong? I’ll tell you. There’s a man who gets paid for splashing piss on the skin of Allah, and this man is still alive. That’s what’s wrong.’

   The insert with the Jordanian uniform disappeared, the thin lines of the skeleton returned to the screen and the Kalashnikov was transformed into a wavering line of dots. The upper section of Berezovsky’s head, at which this line was pointed, was concealed by an animation patch with a Socratean brow covered with large beads of sweat among sparse hair.