Babylon (24 page)

   ‘Just take a Mercedes, even,’ he thought feebly. ‘A great car, no denying that. But somehow the way life’s arranged round here all you can do with it is ride from one heap of shit to another…’

   He leaned his head against the glass and looked down at the car park, where he could see the white roof of the secondhand Mercedes he’d bought a month earlier that was already starting to give him trouble. ‘Second-hand,’ he thought. ‘A good name for a prosthesis shop…’

   He sighed and mentally switched round the
‘c’ and
the ‘d’ to make ‘Merdeces’.

   ‘But it doesn’t really matter,’ his train of thought ploughed on wearily, ‘because if you keep riding around in these heaps long enough, you turn into such a shit yourself that nothing around you leaves any kind of mark on you. Of course, you don’t turn into a shit just because you buy a Mercedes-6oo. It’s the other way round: the reason you can afford to buy a Mercedes-6oo is that you turn into a shit…’

   He looked out of the window again and jotted down: ‘Merde-SS.

   In the sense of the occult group or movement.’

   It was time he got back to work. Or rather, it was time he started work. He had to write an internal review on the Gold Yava advertising campaign, then on the Camay soap and Gucci male fragrances scenarios. The Yava job was a real pain because Tatarsky hadn’t been able to work out whether or not they were expecting a positive review from him, so he wasn’t sure which way he should direct his thoughts So he decided to start with the scenarios. There were six pages of the soap text, filled with close-set writing. Opening it at the last page with a gesture of squeamish disgust, Tatarsky read the final paragraph: ‘It’s getting dark. The heroine is falling asleep and she dreams of waves of bright, gleaming hair greedily drinking in a blue liquid pouring down on them from the sky, full of proteins, vitamin B-5 and infinite happiness.’

   He frowned, picked up the red pencil from his desk and wrote in above the text: ‘Too literary. How many times do I have to tell you: we don’t need writers here, we need cre-atives. Infinite happiness can’t be conveyed by means of an image sequence. Scrap it!’

   The scenario for Gucci was much shorter:

   
Opening shot - the door of a country lavatory. Flies buzzing. The door slowly opens and we see a skinny man with a horseshoe moustache who looks as though he has a hangover squatting over the hole. Caption onscreen: ‘‘Literary critic Pavel Bisinsky’. The man looks up towards the camera, and as though continuing a conversation that’s been going on for a long time, says: ‘The argument over whether Russia is a part of Europe is a very old one. In principle a real professional has no difficulty in telling what Pushkin thought on this matter at any period of his life, within a few months either way. For instance, in a letter of
1833
to Prince Vyazemsky he wrote…’

   
At this point there is a loud cracking sound, the boards beneath the man break and he plunges into the cesspit. We hear a loud splash. The camera closes in on the pit, rising higher at the same time (camera movement modelled on the aerial shot of the Titanic) and shows us the surface of the dark sludge from above. The literary critic’s head emerges at the surface, he looks upwards and continues where he was interrupted by his sudden tumble.

   
‘Perhaps the origins of the debate should be sought in the division of the church. Krylov had a point when he said to Chaadaev: "Sometimes you look around and it seems as though you don’t live in Europe, but in some kind of’…"‘

   
Something jerks the critic violently downwards, and he sinks to the bottom with a gurgling sound. There is silence, broken only by the buzzing of the flies. Voice-over:

   
GUCCI FOR MEN BE A EUROPEAN: SMELL BETTER.

   Tatarsky took up his blue pencil. ‘Very good.’ he wrote in under the text. ‘Approved. But replace the flies with Michael Jackson/Sex-Shop Dogs, change the critic for a new Russian and Pushkin, Krylov and Chaadaev for another new Russian. Cover the walls of the lavatory with pink silk. Rewrite the monologue so the speaker is recalling a fight in a restaurant on the Cote d’Azur. It’s time to have done with literary history and think about our real clientele.’

   The scenario had inspired Tatarsky and he decided finally to settle accounts with Yava. He picked up the item to be reviewed and looked it over closely once again. It was a pack of cigarettes with an empty cardboard box of the same dimensions glued to it. There was a bird’s-eye view of New York on the cardboard, with a pack of Gold Yava swooping over it like a missile warhead. The caption under the picture was:

   ‘Counter-Strike’. Tatarsky pulled over a clean sheet of paper and hesitated for a while over which pencil to choose, the red or the blue. He laid them side by side, closed his eyes, waved his hand around above them and jabbed downwards with his forefinger. He hit the blue one.

   
We must certainly acknowledge that the use in advertising of the idea and the symbolism of the counter-strike is a fortunate choice. It suits the mood of the broad masses of the lumpen intelligentsia, who are the primary consumers of these cigarettes. For a long time already the mass media have been agitating for some healthy national ‘response’ in opp-position to the violent domination of American pop culture and Neanderthal liberalism. The problem is to locate the basis of this response. In an internal review not intended for outsiders’ eyes, we can state that it simply doesn’t exist. The authors of this advertising concept attempt to plug this semantic breach with a pack of Gold Yava, which will undoubtedly trigger a highly positive crystallisation in the potential consumer. It will take the form of the consumer unconsciously believing that every cigarette he smokes brings the planetary triumph of the Russian idea a little closer…

   After a moment’s hesitation Tatarsky changed the first letter of ‘idea’ to a capital.

   
On the other hand, we have to take into account the overall impact of all the symbolism that is incorporated in the brand essence. In this connection it would seem that the combination of the slogan ‘Counter-Strike’ with the logo of British-American Tobacco Co., the company that produces these cigarettes now, could induce a kind of mental short-circuit in one section of the target group. The question that quite logically arises is whether the pack is descending on New York or actually being launched from there. If the latter is the case (and this would appear to be the more logical assumption, since the pack is shown with its lid upwards) it is not clear why this is a ‘counter-strike’.

   Outside the window the bells in the tower of a small church nearby began chiming rapidly. Tatarsky listened thoughtfully for several seconds and then wrote:

   
The consumer might be led to conclude that Western propaganda is superior in a general sense, and that it is impossible for an introverted society to compete with an extroverted one in the provision of images.

   Re-reading the last sentence, Tatarsky saw that it stank of the Slavophilic complex. He crossed it out and rounded off the theme decisively:

   
However, only the least materially well-off section of the target group is capable of drawing such analytical conclusions, and therefore this slip is unlikely to have any adverse effect on sales. The project should be approved.

   The phone on his desk rang and Tatarsky picked up the receiver: ‘Hello.’

   "Tatarsky! On the boss’s carpet at the double" said Morkovin.

   Tatarsky told the secretary to type up what he’d written and went downstairs. It was still raining. He pulled his collar up and dashed across the yard to the other wing of the building. The rain was heavy and he was almost soaked through before he’d run as far as the entrance to the marble hall. ‘Surely they could have built an internal connection.’ he thought irritably. ‘It’s the same building, after all. Now I’ll make a mess of the entire carpet.’ But the sight of the guards with their sub-machine guns had a calming effect on him. One of the guards with a Scorpion on his shoulder was waiting for him by the lift, toying with a key on a chain.

   Morkovin was sitting in Azadovsky’s reception room. When he saw that Tatarsky was soaked, he gave a laugh of satisfaction. ‘Nostrils flaring are they? Forget it. Leonid’s away; there won’t be any bee-keeping today.’

   Tatarsky sensed something was missing in the reception room. He looked around and saw the round mirror and golden mask had disappeared from the wall.

   ‘Where’s he gone then?’

   ‘ Baghdad.’

   ‘What for?’

   ‘The ruins of Babylon are near there. He got some kind of idea into his head about climbing that tower they still have there. Showed me a photo. Real heavy stuff.’

   Tatarsky gave no sign of being affected in any way by what he’d just heard. Trying to make his movements look normal, he picked up the cigarettes lying on the desk and lit one.

   ‘What makes him so interested in that?’ he asked.

   ‘Says his soul’s thirsting for the heights. Why’ve you gone so pale?’

   ‘I haven’t had a cigarette for two days.’ said Tatarsky. ‘I was trying to give up.’

   ‘Buy a nicotine patch.’

   Tatarsky was already back in control of himself.

   ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘yesterday I saw Azadovsky in another two clips. I see him every time I turn on the TV. One day he’s dancing in the corps de ballet, the next he’s reading the weather forecast. What does it all mean? Why’s he on so often? Does he just like being filmed?’

   ‘Yeah,’ said Morkovin, ‘it’s a weakness of his. My advice to you is not to stick your nose into that for the time being. Some time maybe you’ll find out all about it. OK?’

   ‘OK.’

   ‘Let’s get down to business. What’s the latest on our Kalashnikov scenario? Their brand manager was just on the phone.’

   ‘Nothing new. It’s still the same: two old guys shoot down Batman over the Moskvoretsky market. Batman falls on to this kebab brazier and flaps his webbed wing in the dust; then he’s hidden by this group of old women in sarafans dancing and singing folk songs.’

   ‘But why two old guys?’

   ‘One has a short-barrel version and the other has a standard. They wanted the whole range.’

   Morkovin thought for a moment.

   ‘Probably a father and son would do better than just two old guys. Give the father the standard and the son the short barrel. And let’s have not just Batman, but Spawn and Nightman and the whole fucking gang. The budget’s huge; we have to cover it.’

   ‘Thinking logically,’ Tatarsky said, ‘the son should have the standard and the father should have the sawn-off.’

   Morkovin thought again for a moment.

   "That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘Good thinking. Only we won’t have the mother with a holster, that would be overkill. OK, that wasn’t what I called you over for. I’ve got some good news.’

   He paused tantalisingly.

   ‘What news is that?’ Tatarsky asked with feeble enthusiasm.

   ‘The first section has finally checked you out. So you’re being promoted - Azadovsky told me to put you in the picture. So I’ll do that right now.’

   The canteen was empty and quiet. The television hanging on a pole in the corner was showing a news broadcast with the sound turned off. Morkovin nodded for Tatarsky to sit at the table by the television, then went over to the counter and returned with two glasses and a bottle of Smirnoff Citrus Twist.

   ‘Let’s have a drink. You’re soaked; you could catch a cold.’

   He sat down at the table, then shook the bottle with some special kind of movement and gazed for a long time at the small bubbles that appeared in the liquid.

   ‘Well, would you believe it!’ he said in astonishment. ‘I can understand it in some kiosk out on the street… But even in here it’s fake. I can tell for sure it’s homebrew out of Poland… Just look at it fizz! So that’s what an upgrade can do…’

   Tatarsky realised that the final phrase referred not to the vodka, but the television, and he switched his gaze from the opaque bubbly vodka to the screen, where a ruddy-faced, chortling Yeltsin was sawing rapidly at the air with a hand missing two fingers.

   ‘Upgrade?’ queried Tatarsky. ‘Is that some kind of cardiac stimulator?’

   ‘Who on earth spreads all of those rumours?’ said Morkovin, shaking his head. ‘What for? They’ve just stepped up the frequency to six hundred megahertz, that’s all. But we’re taking a serious risk.’

   ‘You’ve lost me again,’ said Tatarsky.

   ‘It used to take two days to render a report like this; but now we do it in a single night, which means we can program more gestures and facial expressions.’

   ‘But what is it we render?’

   ‘We render him,’ said Morkovin with a nod in the direction of the television. ‘And all the rest of them. 3-D.’

   ‘3-D?’

   ‘Three-dimensional modelling, if you want the precise term. The guys call it "fiddly-dee".’

   Tatarsky gaped at his friend, trying to work out whether he was joking or serious. His friend withstood his gaze in silence.

   ‘What the hell is all this you’re telling me?’

   ‘I’m telling you what Azadovsky told me to tell you. I’m putting you in the picture.’

   Tatarsky looked at the screen. Now it was showing the rostrum in the Duma, occupied by a dour-looking orator who seemed to have just surfaced from the agitated and murky millpond of folk fury. Suddenly Tatarsky had the impression that the Duma deputy really wasn’t alive: his body was completely motionless; only his lips and occasionally his eyebrows moved at all.

   ‘Him as well,’ said Morkovin. ‘Only his rendering’s coarser; there’s too many of them. He’s episodic. That’s a dummy.’

   ‘What?’

   ‘Oh, that’s what we call the Duma 3-Ds. Dynamic video bas-relief - the appearance is rendered always at the same angle. It’s the same technology, but it cuts the work down by two orders of magnitude. There’s two types - stiffs and semi-stiffs. See the way he moves his hands and head? That means he’s a stiff. And that one over there, sleeping across his newspaper - he’s a semi-stiff. They’re much smaller - you can squeeze one of them on to a hard disk. Yes, by the way, our legislature department recently won a prize. Azadovsky was watching the news from the State Duma, and all the semi-stiffs were saying how television’s whorish and calculating, all that kind of stuff. Naturally, Azadovsky took offence - he heard the word "calculating" and thought that they were trying to poke their noses into our business. So he decided to get to the bottom of this. He even got as far as picking up the phone and he was already dialling the number when he remembered there was nothing to get to the bottom of! We must be doing a good job if we manage to impress ourselves.’