Babylon (26 page)

   He prodded at the keys and a window with a progress indicator appeared at the bottom of the screen. It also had several incomprehensible messages in English in it:
memory used
5184 M,
time elapsed 23:11:12
and something else in very fine script. Then the pathway selected appeared in large letters:

   
C:/oligarchs/berezka/excesses/field_disgr/slalom.prg.

   ‘I see,’ said Morkovin. ‘It’s Berezovsky in Switzerland.’

   Small squares containing fragments of an image began covering the screen, as though someone was assembling a jigsaw. After a few seconds Tatarsky recognised the familiar face with a few black holes in it still not rendered - he was absolutely astounded by the insane joy shining in the already computed right eye.

   ‘He’s off skiing, the bastard,’ said Morkovin, ‘and you and me are stuck in here breathing dust.’

   ‘Why’s the folder called "excesses"? What’s so excessive about skiing?’

   ‘Instead of those sticks with flags on them the storyboard has him skiing round naked ballerinas,’ Morkovin replied. ‘Some of them have blue ribbons and some of them have red ones. We filmed the girls out on the slope. They were delighted to get a free trip to Switzerland. Two of them are still doing the rounds over there.’

   He turned off the control monitor, closed it and pushed the unit back into place. Tatarsky was suddenly struck by an alarming thought. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you say the Americans are doing the same?’

   ‘Sure. And it started a lot earlier. Reagan was animated all his second term. As for Bush - d’you remember that time he stood beside a helicopter and the hair he’d combed across his bald patch kept lifting up and waving in the air? A real masterpiece. I don’t reckon there’s ever been anything in computer graphics to compare with it. America…’

   ‘But is it true their copywriters work on our politics?’

   ‘That’s a load of lies. They can’t even come up with anything any good for themselves. Resolution, numbers of pixels, special effects - no problem. But it’s a country with no soul. All their political creatives are pure shit. They have two candidates for president and only one team of scriptwriters. It’s just full of guys who’ve been given the push by Madison Avenue, because the money’s bad in politics. I’ve been looking through their election campaign material for ages now, and it’s dreadful. If one of them talks about a bridge to the past, then a couple of days later the other one’s bound to start talking about a bridge to the future. For Bob Dole all they did was rewrite the Nike slogan from "just do it" to "just don’t do it". And the best they can come up with is a blow job in the Oral Office… Nah, our scriptwriters are ten times as good. Just look what rounded characters they write. Yeltsin, Zyuganov, Lebed. As good as Chekhov.
The Three Sisters.
Anyone who says Russia has no brands of its own should have the words rammed down their throat. With the talent we have here, we’ve no need to feel ashamed in front of anyone. Look at that, for instance, you see?’

   He nodded at the photograph of Gagarin. Tatarsky took a closer look at it and realised it wasn’t Gagarin at all, but General Lebed in dress uniform, and it wasn’t a dove in his hands but a white rabbit with its ears pressed back. The photograph was so similar to its prototype that it produced a kind of
trompe I’oeil
effect: for a moment the rabbit in Lebed’s hands actually seemed to be an indecently obese pigeon.

   ‘A young miner did that,’ said Morkovin. ‘It’s for the cover of our
Playboy.
The slogan to go with it is: " Russia will be glossy and sassy". For the hungry regions it’s spot on, a bull’s eye - instant association with "sausage". The young guy probably only used to eat every other day, and now he’s one of the top creatives. He still tends to focus on food a lot, though…’

   ‘Hang on,’ said Tatarsky, ‘I’ve got a good idea. Let me just write it down.’

   He took his notebook out of his pocket and wrote:

   
Silicon Graphics amp; big tits - new concept for the Russian market. Instead of a snowflake the outline of an Immense tit that looks like its been filled out with a silicon implant (casually drawn with a pen, for ‘graphics’). In the animation (the clip) an organic silicon worm crawls out of the nipple and curves itself into a $ sign (model on Spedes-II). Think about it.

   ‘A rush of sweaty inspiration?’ Morkovin asked. ‘I feel envious. OK, the excursion’s over. Let’s go to the canteen.’

   The canteen was still empty. The television was playing away with no sound, and their two glasses and unfinished bottle of Smirnoff Citrus Twist were still standing on the table below it. Morkovin filled the glasses, clinked his own glass against Tatarsky’s without saying a word and drank up. The excursion had left Tatarsky feeling vaguely uneasy.

   ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘there’s one thing I don’t understand. OK, so copywriters write all their texts for them; but who’s responsible for what’s in the texts? Where do we get the subjects from? And how do we decide which way national policy’s going to move tomorrow?’

   ‘Big business,’ Morkovin answered shortly. ‘You’ve heard of the oligarchs?’

   ‘Uhuh. You mean, they get together and sort out things? Or do they send in their concepts in written form?’

   Morkovin put his thumb over the opening of the bottle, shook it and began gazing at the bubbles - he obviously found something fascinating in the sight. Tatarsky said nothing as he waited for an answer.

   ‘How can they all get together anywhere,’ Morkovin replied at long last, ‘when all of them are made on the next floor up? You’ve just seen Berezovsky for yourself.’

   ‘Uhuh,’ Tatarsky responded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, of course. Then who writes the scripts for the oligarchs?’

   ‘Copywriters. All exactly the same, just one floor higher.’

   ‘Uhuh. And how do we decide what the oligarchs are going to decide?’

   ‘Depends on the political situation. "Decide" is only a word, really. In actual fact we don’t have too much choice about it. We’re hemmed in tight by the iron law of necessity. For both sets of them. And for you and me too.’

   ‘So you mean there aren’t any oligarchs, either? But what about that board downstairs: the Interbank Committee…?’

   ‘That’s just to stop the filth from trying to foist their protection on us. We’re the Interbank Committee all right, only all the banks are intercommittee banks. And we’re the committee. That’s the way it is.’

   ‘I get you,’ said Tatarsky. ‘I think I get you, anyway… That is, hang on there… That means this lot determine that lot, and that lot… That lot determine this lot. But then how… Hang on… Then what’s holding the whole lot up?’

   He broke off in a howl of pain: Morkovin had pinched him on the wrist as hard as he could - so hard he’d even torn off a small patch of skin.

   ‘Don’t you ever,’ he said, leaning over the table and staring darkly into Tatarsky’s eyes, ‘not ever, think about that. Not ever, get it?’

   ‘But how?’ Tatarsky asked, sensing that the pain had thrown him back from the edge of a deep, dark abyss. ‘How can I not think about it?’

   "There’s this technique,’ said Morkovin. ‘Like when you realise that any moment now you’re going to think that thought all the way through, you pinch yourself or you prick yourself with something sharp. In your arm or your leg - it doesn’t matter where. Wherever there are plenty of nerve endings. The way a swimmer pricks his calf when he gets cramp. In order not to drown. And then gradually you build up something like a callus around the thought and it’s no real problem to you to avoid it. Like, you can feel it’s there, only you never think it. And gradually you get used to it. The eighth floor’s supported by the seventh floor, the seventh floor’s supported by the eighth floor; and everywhere, at any specific point and any specific moment, things are stable. Then, when the work comes piling in, and you do a line of coke, you’ll spend the whole day on the run fencing concrete problems. You won’t have time left for the abstract ones.’

   Tatarsky drained the rest of the vodka in a single gulp and pinched his own thigh several times. Morkovin gave a sad laugh.

   ‘Take Azadovsky,’ he said, ‘why d’you think he winds everyone up and comes on heavy like that? Because it never even enters his head that there’s something strange in all of this. People like that are only born once in a hundred years. He’s got a real sense of life on an international scale…’

   ‘All right,’ said Tatarsky, pinching his leg again. ‘But surely someone has to control the economy, not just wind people up and come on heavy? The economy’s complicated. Doesn’t it take some kind of principles to regulate it?’

   ‘The principle’s very simple,’ said Morkovin. ‘Monetarism. To keep everything in the economy normal, all we have to do is to control the gross stock of money we have. And everything else automatically falls into place. So we mustn’t interfere in anything.’

   ‘And how do we control this gross stock?’

   ‘So as to make is as big as possible.’

   ‘And that’s it?’

   ‘Of course. If the gross stock of money we have is as big as possible, that means everything’s hunky-dory.’

   ‘Yes,’ said Tatarsky, ‘that’s logical. But still someone has to run everything, surely?’

   ‘You want to understand everything far too quickly,’ Morkovin said with a frown. ‘I told you, just wait a while. That, my friend, is a great problem - trying to understand just who’s running things. For the time being let me just say the world isn’t run by a "who", it’s run by a "what". By certain factors and impulses it’s too soon for you to be learning about. Although in fact. Babe, there’s no way you could not know about them. That’s the paradox of it all…’

   Morkovin fell silent and began thinking about something. Tatarsky lit a cigarette - he didn’t feel like talking any more. Meanwhile a new client had appeared in the canteen, one that Tatarsky recognised immediately: it was the well-known TV political analyst Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin. In real life he looked a bit older than he did on the screen. He was obviously just back from a broadcast: his face was covered with large beads of sweat, and the famous pince-nez was set crooked on his nose. Tatarsky expected Farseikin to dash over to the counter for vodka, but he came over to their table.

   ‘Mind if I turn on the sound?’ he asked, nodded towards the television. ‘My son made this clip. I haven’t seen it yet.’

   Tatarsky looked up. Something strangely familiar was happening on the screen: there was a choir of rather dubious-looking sailors standing in a clearing in a birch forest (Tatarsky recognised Azadovsky right away - he was standing in the middle of the group, the only one with a medal gleaming on his chest). With their arms round each other’s shoulders, the sailors were swaying from side to side and gently singing in support of a yellow-haired soloist who looked like the poet Esenin raised to the power of three. At first Tatarsky thought the soloist must be standing on the stump of a gigantic birch tree, but from the ideally cylindrical form of the stump and the small yellow lemons drawn on it, he realised it was a soft drinks can magnified many times over and painted to resemble either a birch tree or a zebra. The slick image-sequencing testified that this was a very expensive clip.

   ‘Bom-bom-bom,’ the swaying sailors rumbled dully. The soloist stretched out his hands from his heart towards the camera and sang in a clear tenor:

   My motherland gives me

   For getting it right

   My fill of her fizzy,

   Her birch-bright Sprite!

   Tatarsky crushed his cigarette into the ashtray with a sharp movement.

   ‘Motherfuckers.’ he said.

   ‘Who?’ asked Morkovin.

   ‘If only I knew… So tell me then, what area do they want to move me into?’

   ‘Senior creative in the
kompromat
department; and you’ll be on standby when we have a rush on. So now we’ll be standing, shoulder to shoulder, just like those sailors… Forgive me, brother, for dragging you into in all this. Life’s much simpler for the punters, who don’t know anything about it. They even think there are different TV channels and different TV companies… But then, that’s what makes them punters.’

   It happens so often: you’re riding along in your white Mercedes and you go past a bus stop. You see the people who’ve been standing there, waiting in frustration for their bus for God knows how long, and suddenly you notice one of them gazing at you with a dull kind of expression that just might be envy. For a second you really start to believe that this machine stolen from some anonymous German burgher, that still hasn’t been fully cleared through the customs in fraternal Belorussia but already has a suspicious knocking in the engine, is the prize that witnesses to your full and total victory over life. A warm shiver runs up and down your spine, you proudly turn your face away from the people standing at the bus stop, and in your very heart of hearts you know that all your trials were not in vain: you’ve really made it.

   Such is the action of the anal wow-factor in our hearts; but somehow Tatarsky failed to experience its sweet titillation. Perhaps the difficulty lay in some specific after-the-rain apathy of the punters standing at their bus stops, or perhaps Tatarsky was simply too nervous: there was a review of his work coming up, and Azadovsky himself was due to attend. Or perhaps the reason lay in the increasingly frequent breakdowns of the social radar locating unit in his mind.

   ‘If we regard events purely from the point of view of image animation,’ he thought, glancing round at his neighbours in the traffic jam, ‘then we have all our concepts inverted. For the celestial Silicon that renders this entire world, a battered old Lada is a much more complicated job than a new BMW that’s been blasted with gales for three years in aerodynamic tunnels. The whole thing comes down to creatives and scenario writers. But what bad bastard could have written this scenario? And who’s the viewer who sits and stuffs his face while he watches this screen? Most important of all, could it all really only be happening so that some heavenly agency can rake in something like money from something like advertising? Certainly looks like it. It’s a well-known fact that everything in the world is based on similitudes.’