Babylon (28 page)

   ‘Easy, now, Salaman, easy,’ said Berezovsky. ‘Two men with bullets in their heads at one table would be too much. Don’t get excited.’

   ‘What d’you mean, don’t get excited? You’re going to wash away every drop of piss you’ve spilled on Allah with a bucket of your blood, I’m telling you.’

   Furiously working thought was reflected in Berezovsky’s screwed-up eyes. That was what it said in the scenario - ‘furiously working thought’ - and Tatarsky couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of technology could have allowed the an-imators to achieve such literal accuracy.

   ‘Listen,’ said Berezovsky, ‘I’ll start getting worried if you keep this up. Of course my head isn’t armour-plated, that’s obvious. But then neither is yours, as you know very well. And my protection are all over the place… Aha… That’s what they told you on your radio?

   Raduev laughed. ‘They wrote in Forbes magazine that you grasp everything instantly. Looks like they were right.’

   ‘You subscribe to
Forbes[7]’

   ‘Why not? Chechnya’s part of Europe now. We should know our clientele.’

   ‘If you’re so fucking cultured,’ Berezovsky said irritably, ‘then why can’t we talk like two fucking Europeans? Without all this barbarism?’

   ‘Go on then.’

   ‘You said I would wash away every drop of piss with a bucket of my blood, right?’

   ‘Right,’ Raduev agreed with dignity. ‘And I’ll say it again.’

   ‘But you can’t wash away piss with blood. It’s not Tide, you know.’

   (Tatarsky had the idea that the phrase ‘You can’t wash away piss with blood’ would make a wonderful slogan for an all-Russian campaign for Tide, but it was too dark for him to note it down.)

   "That’s true,’ Raduev agreed.

   ‘And then, you agree that nothing in the world happens against Allah’s will?’

   ‘Yes.’

   ‘Right then, let’s go further. Surely you don’t think that I could… I could… well, that I could do what I’ve done if it was against the will of Allah?’

   ‘No.’

   ‘Then let’s go further,’ Berezovsky continued confidently. ‘Try looking at things this way: I’m simply an instrument in the hands of Allah, and what Allah does and why are beyond understanding. And then, if it wasn’t Allah’s will, I wouldn’t have gathered all the TV towers and anchormen in my three squares. Right?’

   ‘Right.’

   ‘Can we stop here?’

   Raduev stuck the barrel of the gun against Berezovsky’s forehead. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll go a bit further than you suggest. I’ll tell you what the old folks say in my village. They say that according to Allah’s original idea this world should be like a sweet raspberry that melts in your mouth, but people like you with their avarice have turned it into piss coming into contact with skin. Perhaps it is Allah’s wish that people like you should come into the world; but Allah is merciful, and so it is his will too that people like you who stop life tasting like a sweet raspberry should be blown away. After talking to you for five minutes life tastes like piss that’s eaten away all my brains, get it? And in fucking Europe they pay compensation for things like that, get it? Haven’t you ever heard of deprived adulthood?’

   Berezovsky sighed. ‘I see you prepared thoroughly for our talk. All right, then. What kind of compensation?

   ‘I don’t know. You’d have to something pleasing to God.’

   ‘For instance?’

   ‘I don’t know,’ Raduev repeated. ‘Build a mosque; but it would have to be a very big mosque. Big enough to pray away the sin I’ve committed by sitting at the same table with a man who has splashed piss on the skin of the Inexpressible.’

   ‘I’m with you,’ said Berezovsky, lowering his hands slightly. ‘And to be precise, just how big?’

   ‘I think the first contribution would be ten million.’

   ‘Isn’t that a lot?’

   ‘I don’t know if it’s a lot or not,’ said Raduev, stroking his beard pensively, ‘because we can only comprehend the notions of "a lot" and "a little" in comparative terms. But perhaps you noticed a herd of goats when you arrived at my headquarters?’

   ‘I noticed them. What’s the connection?’

   ‘Until that twenty million arrives in my account in the Islamic bank, seventeen times every hour they’ll duck you in a barrel of goat’s piss, and it’ll come into contact with your skin, and cause irritation, and you’ll have plenty of time to think about whether it’s a lot or a little - seventeen times an hour.’

   ‘Hey-hey-hey,’ said Berezovsky, lowering his hands. ‘What’s that? Just a moment ago it was ten million.’

   ‘You forgot about the dandruff.’

   ‘Listen Salaman, my dear, that’s not the way business is done.’

   ‘Do you want to pay another ten for the smell of sweat?’ Raduev asked, shaking his automatic. ‘Do you?’

   ‘No, Salaman,’ Berezovsky said wearily. ‘I don’t want to pay for the smell of sweat. Tell me, by the way, who is it filming us with that hidden camera?’

   ‘What camera?’

   ‘What’s that briefcase over there on the window sill?’ Berezovsky jabbed his finger towards the screen.

   ‘Ah, spawn of Satan,’ Raduev muttered and raised his automatic.

   A white zigzag ran cross the screen, everything went dark, and the the lights came on in the hall.

   Azadovsky exchanged glances with Morkovin. ‘Well, what do you think?’ Tatarsky asked timidly. ‘Tell me, where do you work?’ Azadovsky asked disdainfully. ‘In Berezovsky’s PR department or in my dirt squad?’

   ‘In the dirt squad,’ Tatarsky replied.

   ‘What were you asked for? A scenario of negotiations between Raduev and Berezovsky, with Berezovsky giving the Chechen terrorists twenty million dollars. And what’s this you’ve written? He’s not giving them money! You’ve got him building a mosque! A fucking good job it’s not the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. If we didn’t produce Berezovsky ourselves, I might imagine you were being paid by him. And who’s this Raduev of yours? Some kind of professor of theology? He reads magazines even I’ve never heard of.’

   ‘But there has to be some development of the plot, some logic…’

   ‘I don’t want logic, I want dirt. And this isn’t dirt, it’s just plain shit. Understand?’

   ‘Yes.’ replied Tatarsky, lowering his eyes.

   Azadovsky softened slightly.

   ‘But in general.’ he stated, ‘there is a certain healthy core to it. The first plus is that it makes you hate television. You want to watch it and hate it, watch it and hate it… The second plus is that game of Monopoly. Was that your own idea?’

   ‘Yes,’ Tatarsky said, more brightly.

   "That works. Terrorist and oligarch dividing up the people’s wealth at the gaming table… The punters’ll go raging mad at that.’

   ‘But isn’t it a bit too…’ Morkovin put in, but Azadovsky interrupted him.

   ‘No. The most important thing is to keep brains occupied and feelings involved. So this move with the Monopoly is OK. It’ll improve the news rating by five per cent at least. That means it’ll increase the value of one minute at prime time…’

   Azadovsky took his calculator out of his pocket and began to press tiny buttons.

   ‘…by nine thousand,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘So what does that mean for an hour? Multiply by seventeen. Not bad. We’ll do it. To cut it short, let them play Monopoly and you tell the producer to inter-cut it with shots of queues for the savings bank, miners, old women, hungry children, wounded soldiers - the works. Only take out that stuff about TV anchormen, or else we’ll have to create a stink over it. Better give them a new piece for their Monopoly - a TV drilling tower. And have Berezovsky say he wants to build these towers everywhere so they can pump out oil and pump in advertising at the same time. And do a montage of the Ostankino TV tower with a rock drill. How d’you like it?’

   ‘Brilliant,’ Tatarsky readily agreed.

   ‘How about you?’ Azadovsky asked Morkovin.

   ‘I’m for it one hundred per cent.’

   ‘Yeah, right! I could replace the lot you all on my own. Right, listen to the doctor’s orders. Morkovin, you give him that new guy who writes about food for reinforcements. We’ll leave Raduev basically the way he is, only give him a fez instead of that cap of his; I’m sick of it already. That means we get in a poke at Turkey as well. And then I’ve been meaning to ask for ages about his dark glasses. Why’s he always wearing them? Are we saving time on rendering the eyes or something?’

   ‘That’s right,’ said Morkovin. ‘Raduev’s always in the news, and dark glasses cut down the time by twenty per cent. We get rid of all the expressions.’ Azadovsky’s face darkened somewhat.

   ‘God grant, we’ll get this business with the frequency sorted out. But give Berezovsky a boost, OK?’

   ‘OK.’

   ‘And do it now, urgent material.’

   ‘We’ll do it,’ answered Morkovin. ‘As soon as the viewing’s over we’ll go back to my office.’

   ‘What have we got next?’

   ‘Ads for televisions. A new type.’

   Tatarsky rose halfway out of his chair, but Morkovin put out a hand to stop him.

   ‘Get on with it,’ Azadovsky said with a wave of his hand. ‘There’s still twenty minutes to go.’

   The lights went out again. A small, pretty Japanese woman in a kimono appeared on the screen. She was smiling. She bowed and then spoke with a distinct accent:

   ‘You will now be addressed by Yohohori-san. Yohohori-san is the oldest employee at Panasonic, which is why he has been given this honour. He suffers from a speech impediment due to war wounds, so please, dear viewers, forgive him this shortcoming.’

   The young woman moved aside. A thickset Japanese man appeared, holding a sword in a black scabbard. At his side there was a black streamlined television looking like an eye ripped from the head of some huge monster - the comparison occurred to Tatarsky because the background was scarlet.

   ‘Panasonic presents a revolutionary invention in the world of television,’ said the Japanese. "The first television in the world with voice control in all languages of the planet, including Russian. Panasword V-2!

   The Japanese stared into the viewer’s eyes with an intense hatred and suddenly pulled his sword from its scabbard.

   ‘Sword forged in Japan!’ he yelled, setting the cutting edge up against the camera lens. ‘Sword that will slit the throat of the putrefied world! Long live the Emperor!’

   Some people in white medical coats fluttered across the screen - Mr Yohohori was ushered off somewhere, a pale-faced girl in a kimono began bowing in apology and across all this disgrace appeared the Panasonic logo. A low voice-over commented with satisfaction: ‘Panasodding!’

   Tatarsky heard a telephone trill.

   ‘Hello,’ said Azadovsky’s voice in the darkness. ‘What? I’m on my way.’

   He stood up, blocking out part of the screen.

   ‘Ogh,’ he said, ‘seems like Rostropovich’ll get another medal today. They’re about to call me from America. I sent them a fax yesterday telling them democracy was in danger and asking them to raise the frequency two hundred megahertz. They finally seem to have twigged we’re all in the same business.’

   Tatarsky suddenly had the impression that Azadovsky’s shadow on the screen wasn’t real, but just an element of a video recording, a black silhouette like the ones you get in pirate copies of films shot from the cinema screen. For Tatarsky these black shadows on their way out of the cinema, known to the owners of underground video libraries as ‘runners’, served as a special kind of quality indicator: the influence of the displacing wow-factor drove more people out of a good film than a bad one, so he usually asked for the ‘films with runners’ to be kept for him; but now he felt almost afraid at the thought that if a man who’d just been sitting beside you could turn out to be a runner, it could mean you were just another runner yourself. The feeling was complex, profound and new, but Tatarsky had no time to analyse it: humming a vague tango, Azadovsky wandered over to the edge of the screen and disappeared.

   The next video began in a more traditional manner. A family - father, mother, daughter with a pussy cat and granny with a half-knitted stocking - were sitting round a fire in a hearth set in a strange mirror-surface wall. As they gazed into the flames blazing behind the grate, they made rapid, almost caricatured movements: the granny knitted, the mother gnawed on the edge of a piece of pizza, the daughter stroked the pussy cat and the father sipped beer. The camera moved around them and passed in through the mirror-wall. From the other side the wall was transparent: when the camera completed its movement, the family was overlaid by the flames in the hearth and bars of the grate. An organ rumbled threateningly; the camera pulled back and the transparent wall was transformed into the flat screen of a television with stereo speakers at each side and the coy inscription ‘Tofetissimo’ on its black body. The image on television showed flames in which four black figures were jerking in rapid movements behind metal bars. The organ fell silent and an insidious announcer’s voice took over:

   ‘Did you think there was a vacuum behind the absolutely flat Black Trinitron’s screen? No! there’s a flame blazing there that will warm your heart! The Sony Tofetissimo. It’s a Sin.’

   Tatarsky didn’t understand very much of what he’d seen; he just thought that the coefficient of involvement could be greatly improved if the slogan was replaced by another reference to those Sex-Shop Dogs or what-d’you-call-them: Go Fumes.

   ‘What was that?’ he asked, when the lights came on. ‘It wasn’t much like an advertisement.’

   Morkovin smiled smugly.

   ‘It’s not; that’s the whole point,’ he said. ‘In scientific terms, it’s a new advertising technology reflecting the reaction of market mechanisms to the increasing human revulsion at market mechanisms. To cut it short, the viewer is supposed gradually to develop the idea that somewhere in the world - say, in sunny California - there is a final oasis of freedom unconstrained by the thought of money, where they make advertisements like this one. It’s profoundly anti-market in form, so it promises to be highly market-effective in content.’

   He looked to make sure there was no one else in the hall and began talking in a whisper.