Empire V (15 page)

‘How can someone who works down a mine be doing so just in his head?'

‘Very easily. A continuous process of abstract thinking goes on in Mind “B” which is condensed down to a pecuniary concentrate. This concentrate is the difference between the two Mercedes. It bears the same relationship to money as the leaves of the coca plant do to cocaine. Another way of putting it is that money is the purified and refined product of Mind “B”.'

‘Could this monetary distillate be the same thing as Glamour?' asked Hera.

‘Good thinking,' replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘But there are more inputs into our money distillate than Glamour alone. Almost any perception in the city of today is convertible into money. Nevertheless, some kinds of concentrate lend themselves to the output of a larger monetary yield per unit of information than others. In this context Glamour is miles out in front of the competition. That is why modern man is surrounded by so much gloss coating and hype. It's like clover for cows.'

‘Does Glamour exist all around the globe?' I asked.

‘Certainly, it's everywhere. But it's also different everywhere. In New York it's a Ferrari and clothes from Donna Karan. In a village in Asia it's a mobile phone with a big screen and a t-shirt with a Mickey Mouse USA Famous Brand logo. But essentially they are the same thing.'

Hera looked at my legs. I noticed that my trouser bottoms had fallen down, that is to say up, exposing my socks whose elasticated tops were embellished with labels in the shape and design of the Union Jack.

‘And what is the role of Discourse in all this?' I asked quickly.

‘Pasture has to be enclosed,' replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘You must have a fence so that the stock doesn't straggle away.'

‘Who is outside the fence?'

‘We are. Who else could be?'

I remembered Jehovah having said the same thing to me, almost word for word.

Hera sighed.

Enlil Maratovich laughed.

‘Were you expecting more from life, then?' he said. ‘You shouldn't.'

‘What happens to people who refuse to consume the concentrate and produce money?' asked Hera.

‘I am the Good Shepherd,' replied Enlil Maratovich, ‘so I won't come down too hard on you. But do just stop and think for a moment: how do you think a cow is going to set about refusing to produce milk? The only way she could do that would be to stop eating.'

‘But surely people could, if they wanted to, produce something other than money? As they used to in the Soviet Union?'

Enlil Maratovich's eyebrows shot up.

‘A good question … I can put it in a nutshell like this – animal husbandry can be aimed at producing both meat and dairy products. When it stops being for dairy, it changes to being for meat, and vice versa. Periods of transition are a combination of both. No third possibility has yet been discovered.'

‘But what, in this context, is meant by raising stock for meat?'

‘It means this,' said Enlil Maratovich. ‘You can drink milk, and you can eat meat. There is a resource which people provide while they are alive, and there is a resource which they provide when they die … Happily, those dreadful practices have been condemned and are safely buried in the past, so we do not need to concern ourselves with them.'

‘You mean wars?' asked Hera.

‘Not only,' replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘Although war does have a role to play. There are different kinds of war. Sometimes vampires from various countries start it like children playing a game, except that instead of toy soldiers they use people. It can also happen that vampires from the same clan play games against one another with their toy soldiers at home, on their own territory. Of course, we usually try to divide the resources in an equitable manner. But we do not always succeed.'

‘Why don't people just get rid of these beef and dairy cattle breeders?' asked Hera.

‘Yes,' I echoed her. ‘Tear down the walls? Return to their natural environment?'

‘Don't forget, you yourselves are now numbered among the breeders. Otherwise you would not be hanging upside down here. I understand how you feel. I am myself by nature kind and compassionate. But you must get it into your heads once and for all that cows, pigs and people can never be liberated. Even if it were possible to devise some way of letting this happen for cows and pigs, it could never be done for human beings because in essence they are merely extensions of our digestive tract. There is no natural environment for them to live in, only an artificial one, because they themselves are fundamentally artificial. Humans have been bred to live only as they do. But there is no need to shed tears over their fate. In place of liberty they have
freedom
, and this is a wonderful thing. We tell them: go and graze wherever you like! The more freedom you have, the more money you will produce. That's not so bad, is it?'

Enlil Maratovich chuckled contentedly.

‘I don't understand the most important thing of all,' I said. ‘The entire flow of money from start to finish is controlled by people. How do vampires collect and use the money?'

‘That is a whole different story,' replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘You will learn about it later. But now I think we should stop talking for a while …'

Silence fell. I closed my eyes, enjoying simply being able to hang upside down and not think about anything. Soon I descended into a pleasant state akin to sleep, but not exactly sleep, more a crystal-clear state of abstraction. Iggy Pop must have known something of the sort when he sang: ‘The fish doesn't think, because the fish knows everything …' Quite possibly in this state I too knew everything but it was too much of a problem to verify, since to do so I would have had to start thinking, and emerge from my state of bliss.

I cannot say how much time elapsed. Presence of mind returned with a loud clap of the hands. I opened my eyes.

‘Reveille!' announced Enlil Maratovich briskly.

Taking hold of the hoop he nimbly lowered himself to the floor with an agility surprising in someone so corpulent. It was clear the audience was at an end. Hera and I followed suit to join him on the floor.

‘Still,' I said, ‘what you were saying about how vampires use money. Couldn't you just give us a hint?'

Enlil Maratovich smiled. Taking a wallet from the pocket of his sports trousers, he extracted a one-dollar bill, tore it in half and presented me with one of the halves.

‘There's your answer,' he said. ‘And now, quick march. It is time to leave here.'

‘Where to?' enquired Hera.

‘There is a lift here,' replied Enlil Maratovich. ‘It will take you straight up to the garage of my house.'

HERA

The car exited from the underground concrete bunker, passed the security booth and out through the gates. Pine trees flashed past the car windows. I did not even catch a glimpse of Enlil Maratovich's house, or indeed anything else except the three-metre high wall. It was already noon – evidently we had been hanging in the hamlet all night and all morning. I could not imagine where all the time could have gone.

Sitting beside me, Hera laid her head on my shoulder.

I was stunned. But the truth was she had merely fallen asleep. I closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep myself, and allowed my hand to fall on her open palm. We sat like that for a quarter of an hour or so, after which she awoke and removed her hand from mine.

Opening my eyes, I looked out of the window and yawned, simulating emergence from sleep. We were approaching Moscow.

‘Where to now?' I asked Hera.

‘Home.'

‘Let's get out in the centre. We could go for a walk.'

Hera looked at her watch.

‘All right. But not for long.'

‘Can you take us to Pushkin Square, please?' I said to the driver.

He nodded.

We did not speak again for the rest of the journey; I did not want to talk in front of the driver, who glanced at us from time to time in the mirror. He looked like an actor playing the role of an American President in a medium-budget disaster movie: sober dark suit, red tie, strongly featured face lined with fatigue. It was rather flattering to be driven by such an impressive specimen.

‘Where shall we go?' asked Hera when we got out of the car.

‘Let's walk along Tverskoi Boulevard.'

Past the fountain, avoiding the noxious petrol fumes suffocating the statue of Pushkin, we descended into the subway pedestrian crossing. I thought back to my first bite. It had happened not far away – as they say, the murderer is always drawn back to the scene of his crime. Could this be why I had asked the driver to drop us here?

But it would be a bad idea to bite Hera, I thought. It would almost certainly put an end to our expedition. I'll have to do without a crib in this exam … A lack of confidence bordering on physical weakness gripped me, and I decided the best way to overcome it would be to make some telling remark, an insight testifying to my acuteness of observation and brilliance of mind.

‘Interesting, isn't it?' I said. ‘When I was small, this subway used to have separate stalls all over the place. Then gradually there were more and more of them, so that now they're all combined into one complete row …'

I nodded towards the glass front of what was now in effect a shopping mall.

‘Yes,' Hera assented placidly. ‘They've rather gone over the top with them now.'

We came up on the other side of the street and walked on to Tverskoi Boulevard. As we passed the stone urns at the edge of the stairs it was on the tip of my tongue to point out that they were always full of rubbish and empty bottles, but decided not to offer any further demonstrations of my mental acuity. It was still necessary to say something, however; the silence was getting embarrassing.

‘Penny for your thoughts,' I said.

‘I was thinking about Enlil,' said Hera, ‘or rather the way he lives. A hamlet perched over a precipice. A bit pretentious, of course. But very stylish as well. There aren't many people who could afford it.'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘And the way you hang on a ring, not a beam. Something rather philosophical about that.'

Luckily Hera did not ask me what was particularly philosophical about that, because I could have got myself into considerable difficulties trying to account for it. She laughed, evidently taking what I had said as a joke.

I remembered that her photograph had reminded me of a picture posted by a LiveJournal user. Perhaps it really was her I had seen, and she had an account with LJ? I had one myself, and even had about fifty friends (with whom, needless to say, I did not share all the details of my life). This seemed a suitable conversational topic.

‘Say, Hera, didn't I see your user pic on LiveJournal?'

‘You couldn't have,' came the reply. ‘I don't indulge in any of that blog squittering.'

It was an expression I had not heard before.

‘Why so severe?'

‘Not severe at all. It's a scientific fact. Presumably Jehovah explained to you why people go in for blogging?'

‘I don't remember anything about that,' I said. ‘Why do they?'

‘The human mind these days is subject to three main influences. They are: Glamour, Discourse and so-called News. When over a long period a man lives on a diet consisting of advertising, assorted punditry and so-called news stories, he starts wanting to become a brand, a pundit, and a source of news stories himself. That is the reason for the existence of these mental latrines we call Internet blogs. Blogging is the defensive reflex of a mutilated psyche which continually spews out Glamour and Discourse. We shouldn't mock it, but it is rather degrading for a vampire to crawl about in these sewers.'

And she laughed. Her way of laughing was rather curious – loud, but short, as if the amusement was allowed to burst out from her for just a second before the valve closed again. It was like sneezing, except with laughter. And when she smiled elongated dimples appeared in her cheeks – two furrows really, more than dimples.

‘Actually,' I confided, ‘I hardly ever write anything on my LJ page. It's just that I don't read newspapers and I don't watch television. The LJ is where I keep up- to-date with the news. You can get a professional opinion on just about anything; all the experts have blogs nowadays.'

‘Reading experts' blogs rather than newspapers,' she said, ‘is like feeding on butchers' excrement instead of eating meat.'

The thought made me gag.

‘Interesting. Where did you get that from?'

‘I didn't get it from anywhere. I thought of it myself.'

‘If you were to write a phrase like that in LiveJournal,' I said, ‘you'd have to put a smiley after it.'

‘A smiley is a visual deodorant. It usually means that the user is afraid you might think he's made a bad smell and wants you to know that really he smells like a rose.'

I suddenly wanted to stop aside and check that I wasn't exuding BO. We continued in silence to the end of the Boulevard. By that time I had worked up a pretty fair rage, but had been unable to come up with a suitable retort. Inspiration struck while I was looking up at the statue of Timiryazev.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘you're pretty good at Discourse. But as for Glamour – well, perhaps I'm out of date? Is that the latest fashion these days, to dress like Tom Sawyer?'

‘What does that mean, dressing like Tom Sawyer?'

I looked her up and down, at her faded black t-shirt, at her dark trousers – they also, presumably, had at one time been black as well – and at her trainers.

‘Well, as if you're just off to paint a fence.'

This was, of course, below the belt; it was no way to talk to a girl. At least I hoped it was below the belt. It was meant to be.

‘You think I'm badly dressed?' she asked.

‘Well, not
badly
exactly. Working-class clothes are fine. They even suit you, as a matter of fact. The only thing is, for a serious vampire it's not really the style …'

‘Just a minute there,' she said. ‘You really think
I'm
the one wearing working clothes? Not you?'

True, there was a tear in my jacket and soot stains in a few places, but even so I felt confident that I was pretty impeccably dressed. I had bought the whole ensemble of jacket, trousers, shirt and shoes in LovemarX, taking it as a job lot from a display mannequin on the sales floor – all, that is, except the socks, which I bought separately. The advantage of the matching display was that it enabled me to cover up my problems with Glamour. As a tactic it was successful: Baldur personally approved my outfit, telling me that I looked like a Greenland queen on heat.

‘Let's put it like this,' I replied. ‘If I was going out to work on my vegetable patch I would wear different clothes. Clothes have after all a ritual significance, and rituals should be respected. They demonstrate status. Everyone ought to dress according to his or her position in society. That's the nature of the social code. In my opinion the vampire has a very elevated status. Not just very elevated, the topmost status of all. And we should dress appropriately.'

‘And how exactly does dress reflect the social status?'

This was my chance to show that I too was quite advanced in Discourse.

‘Generally speaking, in all epochs one sees the same simple principle at work,' I expounded. ‘It is what is known as “industrial exemption”. The clothes a man wears signal his freedom from heavy physical labour. For instance, long sleeves extending beyond the fingers, as in “My Lady Greensleeves”. You know that song?'

She nodded.

‘It's obvious,' I went on, ‘that a lady who wears clothes of this sort is not going to be scrubbing out saucepans or feeding the pigs. The same applies to lace cuffs round the wrists, elegant shoes with high heels and winkle-picker toes, various non-functional details of one's attire such as baggy breeches, codpieces, all manner of frippery additions. But these days it's, umm, any kind of expensive clothing, tastefully chosen. Anything to make it clear that the person is not going off to paint a fence.'

‘The theory is correct,' said Hera, ‘but the way you are applying it in practice is way off beam. Your office uniform doesn't remotely suggest that its wearer has freed himself from the degrading labour of painting fences. Quite the opposite. It sends a signal that at 10 a.m. you have to be at your desk in the office, where you must equip yourself with a virtual bucket of paint and busy yourself until 7 p.m. – excluding a short break for lunch – painting a virtual fence inside your head. Your senior manager must be happy with the progress of your work, which he will assess by reference to the optimistic expression on your face and the healthy glow of your cheeks.'

‘Why does it necessarily …' I began.

‘How appalling!' she interrupted. ‘And this is a vampire speaking? Rama, you look like a clerk waiting to go for a job interview with a Human Resources officer. Anyone would think you've got a short CV in your inside pocket, folded into four, which you don't dare take out to check in case you make the letters run with your nervously sweating palms. And you have the nerve to criticise me, on a day when I have specially put on our national costume to celebrate a great event?'

‘What national costume?' I asked, dumbfounded.

‘Black is vampire national dress. In the twenty-first century, “industrial exemption” style is when you couldn't give a stuff what the captain of the galley in which you are chained to the oars thinks about your jacket. Everything else is working clothes. Even if you're wearing a Rolex. Especially if you're wearing a Rolex.'

I did as it happened have a Rolex, not a particularly flash one but it was real. It suddenly felt unbearably heavy, and I drew my wrist back into my sleeve. I was beginning to feel as if I had been dropped over the Niagara Falls in a barrel.

We crossed over New Arbat. Hera stopped in front of a shop window, carefully looked herself over and took out a tube of bright red lipstick, which she applied to her lips. It made her look exactly like a vampire girl out of a comic.

‘Lovely,' I said ingratiatingly.

‘Thank you.'

She returned the lipstick to her pocket.

‘Tell me, do you really believe vampires bred human beings?' I asked.

She shrugged.

‘Why not? People bred pigs, didn't they? And cows.'

‘But that's completely different,' I said. ‘People aren't simple livestock. They have created wonderful cultures and civilisations. I find it very hard to believe that all this has been achieved purely to produce food for vampires. Just look around you …'

Hera took me at my word. Standing still, with comic deliberation, she looked all round, at a stretch of the New Arbat, the Art Film Cinema, the Ministry of Defence and the Arbatskaya Metro Station, resembling a Mongol mausoleum in the middle of the steppe.

‘Why don't
you
look around?' she said, pointing to an advertisement hoarding just in front of us. The advert was for a lavatory pan bearing the legend ‘9,999 roubles' in enormous letters, and a strapline that said: ‘Eldorado – no one beats
our
prices!'

‘I could suggest another strapline: “Freud's Gold”,' I said. ‘No, on second thoughts that would be better as a title for an action film.'

The toilet began to move, breaking up into separate vertical strips. I realised that the hoarding itself consisted of a series of triangular columns. When they moved round one step, a new advertisement came into view, this one promoting telephone tariffs. It was executed in joyful yellow and dark blue colours, and announced: ‘$10 free! Sign up for your ten dollars reward!'

After another couple of seconds the columns turned once more, and the following image appeared in severe black lettering on a white background:

I am the Lord thy God,
thou shalt have none other Gods but Me.

‘Wonderful culture and civilisation,' said Hera, echoing my words.

‘Well, what of it?' I said. ‘All it is, some Protestants have rented this hoarding and are using it to advertise their account book – I mean, the Bible. I don't deny that much that surrounds us is ludicrous. But even so I can't believe that human languages and religions, merely to list which would fill an entire encyclopaedia, are simply the by-product of a vampire Food Supply Programme.'

‘What is it that bothers you about it?'

‘The disproportionate relationship between idea and result. It would be like building a huge metallurgical plant to produce … oh I don't know … paper clips.'