Babylon (32 page)

   ‘You crazy, or what?’ asked Sasha.

   ‘Look quick, over there.’ said Tatarsky. ‘D’you see it, that concrete tower?’

   ‘What of it?’

   ‘D’you know what it is?’

   Sasha looked out of the window.

   ‘Oh, that. Azadovksy was just telling us about it. They started building an Air Defence station here. Early warning or some such thing. They got as far as building the foundations and the walls and then, you know, there was no one left to warn. Azadovsky has this plan to privatise the whole thing and finish building it, only not for a radar station - for his new house. I don’t know. Speaking for myself, I can’t stand concrete walls. What’s got you so wound up?’

   ‘Nothing,’ said Tatarsky. ‘It just looks very strange. What’s this station we’re going to called?’

   ‘Rastorguevo.’

   ‘Rastorguevo.’ Tatarsky repeated. ‘In that case, everything’s clear.’

   ‘And here it is. We’re headed for that building over there. This is the dirtiest beer-hall anywhere near Moscow. Leonid likes to drink beer here at weekends. So’s he can really appreciate what he’s achieved in life.’

   The beer-hall, located in the basement of a brick building with peeling paint not far from the railway platform, really was quite exceptionally dirty and foul-smelling. The people squeezed in at the tables with their quarter-litres of vodka matched the institution perfectly. The only ones who didn’t fit in were two bandits in tracksuits standing behind a table at the entrance. Tatarsky was amazed to see Azadovsky actually greet some of the customers - he obviously really was a regular here. Sasha Blo swept up two glass mugs of pale beer in one hand, took Tatarsky by the arm with the other and dragged him off to a distant table.

   ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about. Two of my brothers have moved up here from Yerevan and decided to set up business. To cut it short, they’ve opened an exclusive funeral parlour with top-class service. They just figured out how much mazuma there is stuck between banks up here. They’re all beginning to beat it out of each other now, so a real market niche has opened up.’

   "That’s for sure,’ said Tatarsky, glancing at the bandits by the entrance, who were drinking Czech beer out of bottles they’d brought with them. He couldn’t figure out what they were doing in a place like this - although their motives could have been the same as Azadovsky’s.

   ‘Just for friendship’s sake,’ Sasha Blo rattled on, ‘write me a decent slogan for them, something that’ll actually get to the target group. When they get on their feet they’ll pay you back.’

   ‘Why not, for old times’ sake?’ Tatarsky answered. ‘So what’s our brand essence?’

   ‘I told you - high-class death.’

   ‘What’s the firm called?’

   "The family name. The Brothers Debirsian Funeral Parlour. Will you think about it?’

   ‘I’ll do it.’ said Tatarsky. ‘No problem.’

   ‘By the way,’ Sasha went on, ‘you’ll laugh when I tell you, but they’ve already had one of our acquaintances as a client. His wife paid for a top-rate funeral before she slung her hook and split.’

   ‘Who’s that?’

   ‘Remember Khanin from the Privy Councillor agency? Someone took him out.’

   ‘That’s terrible. I didn’t hear about it. Who did it?’

   ‘Some say the Chechens, and some say the filth. Something to do with diamonds. To cut it short, a murky business. Where are you off to?’

   "The toilet,’ Tatarsky answered.

   The washroom was even dirtier than the rest of the beer-hall. Glancing at the wall covered in patches of geological damp that rose up from the urinal, Tatarsky noticed a triangular piece of plaster that was remarkably similar in shape to the diamond necklace in the photograph hanging in Khanin’s toilet. At the first glimpse of this formation the feeling of pity for his former boss that filled Tatarsky’s heart was alchemically transformed into the slogan ordered by Sasha Blo.

   When he emerged from the toilet he stopped, astounded at the view that suddenly confronted him. There must have been a double door in the corridor before, but it had been broken out and its frame, daubed with black paint, was protruding from the walls and ceiling. With its slightly rounded outline the opening looked like the frame around a television screen - so much like it, in fact, that for a moment Tatarsky thought he was watching the country’s biggest TV set. Azadovsky and his company were outside his field of view, but he could see the two bandits by the nearest table and the new customer who had appeared beside them. He was a tall, thin old man wearing a brown raincoat, a beret and powerful spectacles with earpieces that were too short. Through the lenses his eyes appeared disproportionately large and childishly honest. Tatarsky could have sworn he’d seen him somewhere before. The old man had already gathered around himself a few listeners, who looked like homeless tramps.

   ‘You guys,’ he was saying in a thin voice full of astonishment, ‘you’ll never believe it! There I was picking up half a litre in the vegetable shop at the Kursk station, you know. I’m queuing up to pay, and guess who comes into the shop? Chubais! Fuck me… He was wearing this shabby grey coat and a red mohair cap, and not a bodyguard in sight. There was just a bit of a bulge in his right pocket, as though he had his rod in there. He went into the pickles section and took a big three-litre jar of Bulgarian tomatoes - you know, the green ones, with some green stuff in the jar? And he stuck it in his string bag. I’m standing there gawping at him with my mouth wide open, and he noticed, gave me a wink and hopped out the door. I went across to the window, and there was this car with a light on the roof, winking at me just like he did. He hops in and drives off. Bugger me, eh, the things that happen…’

   Tatarsky cleared his throat and the old man looked in his direction.

   "The People’s Will,’ Tatarsky said and winked, unable to restrain himself.

   He pronounced the words very quietly, but the old man heard. He tugged on one of the bandits’ sleeves and nodded in the direction of the gap in the wall. The bandits put down their half-finished bottles of beer on the table in synchronised motion and advanced on Tatarsky, smiling slightly. One of them put his hand in his pocket, and Tatarsky realised they were quite possibly going to kill him.

   The adrenalin that flooded through his body lent his movements incredible lightness. He turned, shot out of the beer-hall and set off across the yard at a run. When he reached the very middle of it he heard several loud cracks behind him and something hummed by him very close. Tatarsky doubled his speed. He only allowed himself to glance around close to the comer of a tall log-built house that he could hide behind - the bandits had stopped shooting, because Azadovsky’s security guards had come running up with automatics in their hands.

   Tatarsky slumped against the wall, took out his cigarettes with fingers that refused to bend and lit up. "That’s the way it happens,’ he thought, ‘just like that. Simple, out of the blue.’

   By the next time he screwed up the nerve to glance round the comer his cigarette had almost burnt away. Azadovsky and his company were getting into their cars; both the bandits, their faces beaten to pulp, were sitting on the back seat of a jeep with the bodyguards, and the old man in the brown raincoat was heatedly arguing his case to an indifferent bodyguard. At last Tatarsky remembered where he’d seen the old man before - he was the philosophy lecturer from the Literary Institute. He didn’t really recognise his face - the man had aged a lot - so much as the intonation of astonishment with which he once used to read his lectures. ‘The object’s got a pretty strong character,’ he used to say, throwing back his head to look up at the ceiling of the auditorium; ‘it demands disclosure of the subject: that’s the way it is! And then, if it’s lucky, merging may take place…’

   Tatarsky realised that merging had finally taken place. "That happens too,’ he thought and, taking out his notebook, jotted down the slogan he’d invented in the beer-hall:

   DIAMONDS ARE NOT FOR EVER!
THE BROTHERS DEBIRSIAN FUNERAL PARLOUR

   ‘They’ll probably fire me,’ he thought, when the cavalcade of cars disappeared round a bend. ‘Where now? God only knows where. To Gireiev. He lives somewhere just around here.’

   Gireiev’s house proved surprisingly easy to find - Tatarsky recognised it from the garden with its forest of unbelievably tall dill umbrellas, looking more like small trees than large weeds. Tatarsky knocked several times on the gate and Gireiev appeared on the verandah. He was wearing trousers of an indefinite colour, baggy at the knees, and a tee shirt with a large letter ‘A’ in the centre of a rainbow-coloured circle.

   ‘Come on in,’ he said, ‘the gate’s open.’

   Gireiev had been drinking for a few days, drinking away a fairly large sum of money, which was now coming to an end. This was the deduction that could be drawn from the fact that there were empty bottles from expensive brands of whisky and brandy standing along the wall, while the bottles standing closer to the centre of the room were from various kinds of vodka bootlegged from the Caucasus, the kinds that had romantic and passionate names and were sold around the railway stations. In the time that had elapsed since Tatarsky’s last visit the kitchen had hardly changed at all, except for becoming even dirtier, and images of rather frightening Tibetan deities had appeared on the walls. There was one other innovation: a small television glimmering in the comer.

   When he sat down at the table, Tatarsky noticed the television was standing upside down. The screen was showing the animated titles from some programme - a fly was buzzing around an eye with long lashes thickly larded with mascara. The name of the programme appeared -
Tomorrow - at
which very moment the fly landed on the pupil and stuck fast, and the lashes began to wrap themselves around it like a Venus fly-trap. The anchor man appeared, dressed in the uniform of a jail guard - Tatarsky guessed that must be the insulted response of a copywriter from the seventh floor to the recent declaration by a copywriter from the eighth floor that television in Russia is one of the state power structures. Because the anchor man was inverted, he looked very much like a bat hanging from an invisible perch. Tatarsky was not particularly surprised to recognise him as Azadovsky. His hair was dyed jet-black and he had a narrow shoelace moustache under his nose. He grinned like a halfwit and spoke:

   ‘Very soon now in the city of Murmansk the nuclear jet-powered cruiser
The Idiot
will slide down the slipway. Its keel was laid to mark the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoievsky. It is not clear as yet whether the government will be able to find the money needed to lay the keel of another ship of the same kind, the
Crime and Punishment.
Book news!’ - Azadovsky produced a book with a cover depicting the holy trinity of a grenade-thrower, a chain-saw and a naked woman - ‘Good needs hard fists. That’s something we’ve known for a long time, but there was still something missing! Now here is the book we’ve been waiting for all these years - good with hard fists and a big dick:
The Adventures of Svyatoslav the Roughneck.
Economic news: in the State Duma today the make-up was announced of the new minimum annual consumer goods basket. It includes twenty kilogrammes of pasta, a centner of potatoes, six kilogrammes of pork, a padded coat, a pair of shoes, a fur cap with earflaps and a Sony Black Trinitron television. Reports from Chechnya…’

   Gireiev turned off the sound.

   ‘Did you come to watch the television, then?’ he asked.

   ‘Course not. It’s just strange - what’s it doing upside down?’

   "That’s a long story.’

   ‘Like the one with the cucumbers, is it? Has to be properly conferred?’

   ‘No, not that,’ Gireiev said with a shrug. ‘It’s open information, but it’s part of the practice of true dharma, so if you ask someone to tell you about it, you take on the karmic obligation to adopt the practice yourself. And I don’t think you will.’

   ‘Maybe I will. Try me.’

   Gireiev sighed and glanced at the tall umbrellas swaying outside the window.

   ‘There are three Buddhist ways of watching television. In essential terms, they’re all the same way, but at different stages of training they appear different. First you watch television with the sound turned off. About half an hour a day, your favourite programmes. When you get the idea they’re saying something important and interesting on the television, you become aware of the thought at the moment it arises and so neutralise it. At first you’re bound to give way and turn on the sound, but gradually you’ll get used to it. The main thing is not to allow a feeling of guilt to develop when you can’t restrain yourself. It’s like that for everybody at first, even for lamas. Then you start to watch the television with the sound switched on but the picture off. And finally you start watching the television completely switched off. That’s actually the main technique and the first two are only preparatory. You watch all the news programmes, but you don’t turn the television on. It’s very important to keep your back straight while you do this, and it’s best to fold your hands across your belly, right hand underneath, left hand on top - that’s for men; for women it’s the other way round - and you mustn’t be distracted even for a second. If you watch the television like that for ten years at least an hour a day, you can come to understand the nature of television. And of everything else as well.’

   ‘So then why do you turn it upside down?’

   "That’s the fourth Buddhist method. It’s used when you really do need to watch the television after all. For instance, if you want to know the dollar exchange rate, but you don’t know exactly when or how they’re going to announce it - whether they’ll read it out loud or show one of the boards outside the bureaux de change.’

   ‘But why turn it upside down?’

   "That’s another long story.’

   ‘Try.’ Gireiev ran his palm across his forehead and sighed again.

   He seemed to be searching for the right words.