Empire V (16 page)

‘Had it been vampires themselves who invented all these cultures and religions, then I agree it would have been overkill,' she replied. ‘But human beings have done these things. It's all, as you said yourself, a by-product.'

‘But if the only purpose of human beings is to provide food for vampires, then human civilisation must have a very low productivity coefficient.'

‘Well, what does it matter how high or low it is? It makes no difference to us. To whom are we obliged to account for it?'

‘That's true, but … I still don't believe it. There is nothing superfluous in nature. But here everything is superfluous.'

Hera frowned. She looked angry when she did so, but I already knew that it was simply the expression her face assumed when she was concentrating her thoughts.

‘Do you know what termites are?' she enquired.

‘Yes. Blind white ants. They eat anything made of wood, from the inside. That writer, who was it, Mrakes, wrote something about them.'

‘Márquez?'

‘Could be. I haven't read it, only heard about it in Discourse. I've never seen living termites either.'

‘Same here,' said Hera. ‘But I saw a film about them. Termite communities have a king and a queen, who are protected by the ordinary termites. The king and queen stay in their cells, which they cannot leave. The worker termites constantly lick them clean and bring them food. Termites have their own style of architecture, a kind of Gothic vision on acid. They have a complex social hierarchy with a range of different professions: workers, soldiers, engineers. The thing I found most amazing was the way a new termite mound is created when a young king and queen fly away from the old one to build a new kingdom. As soon as they have arrived there, the first thing they do is gnaw off each other's wings …'

‘Are you comparing human civilisation to a termite mound?'

She nodded.

‘The very fact that you can do so,' I said, ‘proves in itself how far termites and human beings are from one another.'

‘How?'

‘Well, I don't think you're ever going to find two termites discussing whether or not their mound is similar to a Gothite cathedral.'

‘In the first place,' said Hera, ‘the word is Gothic, not Gothite. Secondly, nobody knows what termites talk about with one another. Thirdly, you didn't let me finish. In the film I saw, we were shown how there are two species of soldier termites. There are ordinary rank-and-file soldiers, who have something like a pair of pincers on their heads. And there are others who have a long sort of needle on their heads. This needle exudes a chemical irritant in the form of a jelly, an extract from a special gland. When it was discovered that this extract from a termite's pre-frontal gland is an effective cure for disease, people began to breed termites artificially so as to obtain more of the extract. Now, if you tried explaining to a horn-bearing termite from one of the artificially constructed mounds that the whole of his species' huge and complex monarchical structure, all their unique architecture and harmonious social order, had been created merely because of the accidental usefulness to some apes of the extract produced by their pre-frontal gland, he would not believe you. And if you did manage to convince him, he would see it as a monstrous, insultingly disproportionate travesty.'

‘Junior manager's pre-frontal gland extract,' I repeated. ‘A delightful comparison …'

‘Straight from Enlil Maratovich. But let's not trash the office proletariat. It's vulgar to do that. Office-wallahs are not inferior to us, it's just that we have had the luck and they have not.'

‘OK,' I said peaceably. ‘Let's make it middle management.'

We were approaching the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Hera pointed to one of the benches nearby. On the back was an inscription in smudged yellow lettering:

Christ is Yahweh for the poor.

So mixed up has culture in Russia become over the past few years that it was impossible to work out whether this was meant to be abusive of Christ or, on the contrary, praise for him … For some reason there came into mind the torn-up dollar bill Enlil Maratovich had given me. I took it out of my pocket and read what was written around the pyramid with its single eye: ‘“
Novus Ordo Seclorum
” and “
Annuit Coeptis
”. What does that mean, when it's translated?'

‘“New Order of the Ages”,' said Hera, ‘aka “New World Order”. And something like “our efforts are looked on with favour by Providence”.'

‘What's the point of it?'

‘Just some Masonic gibberish. You don't need to go into it.'

‘Probably not,' I agreed. ‘The main point was the gesture, wasn't it? The fact that he tore the note in half? Maybe there is some special technology for destroying money, some annihilation in the process of which the vital energy it contains is distilled.'

‘How could that be done, for instance?'

I reflected. ‘Well, let's say the money is transferred to a special account, and then destroyed in a particular way. When the money itself has all gone the vital power remains and vampires drink it …'

‘Not very plausible,' said Hera. ‘Where does this vital force come from? After all, the account can only exist in a computer system. You wouldn't be able to say exactly where it is.'

‘Or perhaps the vampires gather round the laptop from which the transfer is to be made to somewhere in the Cayman Islands. And the laptop has some kind of special vampire gizmo in its USB port.'

Hera laughed.

‘What's so funny?' I asked.

‘I'm just thinking what a good time it is for the likes of us when the banks default.'

‘By the way, that's a very good thought,' I said. ‘Maybe everything is completely centralised. The sort of thing where they devalue something by ten per cent and then live happily off the proceeds for half a year.'

Hera suddenly stopped and stood still.

‘Hold on,' she said. ‘I think …'

‘What?'

‘I think I've just understood how it's all done. Vampires don't drink human red liquid but a special infusion called
bablos
. Most likely it's made from old banknotes which are due for destruction. That's why Enlil tore one up.'

‘Where did you get that from?'

‘I've just remembered a conversation I happened to overhear. One vampire was asking Enlil when I happened to be there, if everything was ready for a
bablos
drinking session. Enlil replied that they were waiting for a consignment of old money from the Goznak mint, but it had not yet arrived. At that time I did not understand what they were talking about, but now it all falls into place.'

‘A delivery of old money from Goznak?' I said incredulously.

‘Think about it. People are constantly touching money, counting it out, putting it away in their wallets, scribbling on it, stashing it away. For them it is the most important material object there is. The result is that banknotes become saturated with humans' vital force. The longer a banknote remains in circulation, the more it gets impregnated. And when it is completely worn out and literally oozing human energy, it's taken out of circulation, and the vampires prepare their drink from it.'

I thought about it. It sounded bizarre, and not particularly appetising, but it might be more likely than my Cayman Islands theory.

‘Interesting,' I said. ‘Who was the other vampire Enlil Maratovich was talking to?'

‘He's called Mithra.'

‘Oh, so you know Mithra?' I said, surprised. ‘Although, come to think of it, of course … It was he who gave me your letter.'

‘He was saying some quite amusing things about you,' confided Hera. ‘He said that … oy …'

She bit her tongue and put her hand over her mouth as if realising she had already said too much.

‘What did he say?'

‘Oh, nothing, forget it.'

‘No, you'd better say it since you've started.'

‘I don't remember,' replied Hera. ‘Do you think we never talk about anything else but you? We have plenty of other topics, you know.'

‘What sort of other topics, if it's not a secret?'

Hera smiled.

‘He tries to chat me up.'

‘How? What sort of thing does he say?'

‘I'm not telling you. Why would I want to stifle your imagination by giving you examples? You might want to chat me up too.'

‘Do you want to be chatted up?'

‘Girls always like being paid compliments.'

‘But you're not a girl. You're a vampire. You wrote that in your letter.'

As soon as I said it, I realised I had made a mistake. But it was too late. Hera frowned. We crossed over the street. After a minute or two she said:

‘I've remembered what Mithra said. He was telling me that the late Brahma's filing cabinet was still there in the flat where you are living. All the compromising material had been taken out of it except one test tube with a preparation from the time of the Second World War. Something about Nordic sex in a zoo, I think it was. He said you had drunk it dry.'

‘Little liar,' I said angrily. ‘I did … sample it, that's true. Maybe a couple of times. But that was all. There's still some left. At least there was, if it hasn't all leaked out … But maybe Mithra, himself …'

Hera burst out laughing.

‘Why so defensive?'

‘I'm not being defensive,' I said. ‘I just don't like it when someone starts bad-mouthing others behind their backs.'

‘But what's bad about this? If it was such a bad thing to do, you wouldn't have drunk it all to the last drop, would you?

I had no answer to this. Hera advanced to the edge of the pavement, stopped there and held out her hand.

‘What's this?' I asked.

‘I'm going to catch a cab.'

‘Are you bored with me?'

‘No, not at all. Quite the opposite. But it's time for me to go.'

‘Couldn't we go on a bit further, to Gorky Park?'

‘Another time,' she smiled. ‘Make a note of my mobile number.'

I had just finished typing in her number when a yellow taxi drew up and stopped. I held out my hand to her. She grasped my thumb in her palm.

‘You're sweet,' she said. ‘And very nice. But please don't wear that jacket any more. And don't put gel on your hair.'

Bending down, she kissed my cheek, butted my neck enchantingly with her head, and said:

‘Mwah, mwah.'

‘Mwah, mwah,' I said in turn. ‘Glad to know you.'

When the taxi had driven off, I felt something damp on my neck. I wiped it with my hand and saw a tiny patch of red liquid on the palm, no more than if I had been bitten by a mosquito.

I felt like chasing after the taxi and smashing my fist through the rear window as hard as I could, or even kicking it in so that the shards of glass would fly in all directions. But it was already too far away.

THE CHALDEANS

Over the next few days I did not see any vampires. I was reluctant to speak to Hera on the telephone; I was even afraid she might ring me, because now she had bitten me I felt exposed not merely as an emperor with no clothes but as a stripped bare pretender with a rude word tattooed on his back. I was especially ashamed of having been caught trying to grandstand before her.

In my mind I kept going through what she would have been able to see: how the photographic image of myself as a world-weary demon with a signet ring had been achieved, a memory which now made me writhe. Then I had only to think of how, at the same time, I had used her photograph, to begin shaking with anguish.

‘Mwah, mwah,' I muttered to myself, ‘bloody mwah mwah to the lot of you.' So intense was my suffering that as often happens, the resultant catharsis, when it came, proved to be emotionally valuable, shining a light not just on the source of my pain but on the whole context that had brought it about. I wrote in my notebook:

The compulsion to relentless and pointless posturing is a widespread Russian disease to which vampires also are not immune. It stems not so much from the vulgarity of our national character as from a combination of European refinement and Asiatic oppression, a combination in which is to be found the essential characteristic of our life. The Russian, in carpeting the area with his airs and disgraces, is not trying to show that he is better than the people to whom he struts his stuff. It's just the opposite. He is calling out, ‘See! I'm just like you! I also have a claim on happiness. You must not despise me because life has been so cruel to me!' Only through compassion is it possible to gain a true understanding of this condition.

My words about compassion came, of course, from rhetorical inertia. Compassion was an emotion that surfaced only rarely in me – although, like all vampires, I was sure that I fully deserved it from others. Alas, in common with human beings, we are bad at seeing ourselves from the outside.

I spent the time mooching about, visiting restaurants and clubs. Once or twice I bought drinks for girls I did not know, and tried to engage them in deeply meaningful conversation, but each time I lost interest in the proceedings when it was clearly time to progress to a more specific stage.

This may have been because I was not yet ready to put Loki's instructions into practice. But more likely it was because none of them looked enough like Hera … This led me to reflect whether, supposing I were to meet a girl who did remind me enough of Hera, I would in fact act as Loki had taught me. In short, so confused was I on the personal front that I probably ought to have consulted a psychotherapist.

As often happens, I compensated for my inner turmoil by going on an excessive buying spree. In those few days I purchased a pile of schmutter in Archetypique Boutique and even, having correctly guessed the make of car – a yellow Lamborghini Diablero – featured in ‘
Wheelbarrow No. 2
', went so far as to qualify for a discount on a ‘Days of the Week 7-Pack Top Executive' set of silk ties.

All this time I was filled with a premonition that I was soon to face a new ordeal, one more serious than its predecessors. As soon as the premonition had acquired sufficient density and bulk, it materialised in the shape of Mithra. He arrived in the morning, with no preliminary telephone call. By this time most of my anger towards him had evaporated.

‘I didn't expect this of you,' I said. ‘Why did you tell Hera all that?'

He was taken aback.

‘All what?'

‘About the “Rudel ZOO” preparation. You told her I drank it all.'

‘I didn't say that at all,' said Mithra. ‘We were talking about various unusual preparations, and I mentioned it as one you had inherited. Regarding you scoffing the lot, she worked that out for herself. Hera is extraordinarily perceptive.'

‘You had no business saying anything to her about it at all. Couldn't you see that?'

‘I do now. Forgive me, I wasn't thinking.'

‘What is it you want?'

‘We are bidden to go to see Enlil Maratovich. Today is a busy day, and night as well. In the afternoon you are to be presented to the Goddess. In the evening there will be a party.'

‘What sort of party?'

‘It's a ritual evening celebrating the friendship between vampires and Chaldeans. To put it in a nutshell, cunning and inhuman creatures organise a get-together at which each side tries to persuade the other that they are filled with open-hearted goodwill to which no human feeling can be a stranger …'

‘Who will be there?'

‘Of those whom you know, your teachers. Oh, and also your classmate. I'm sure you're missing her.'

‘You mean Hera's going to be there?' I asked nervously.

‘What's Hera got to do with it?'

‘Whom are you referring to then?'

‘Loki's going to bring along his rubber woman … Oh, goodness, what a look! I'm all shrivelled up, ha ha! Not for you, you fool, it's just tradition. Sort of a joke. You'd better go and get changed now.'

Leaving Mithra in the sitting room, I went into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe. Since my walk with Hera, the matching outfits I had bought from the mannequin aroused a feeling of revulsion in me. I now looked on them as a themed exhibit from a museum of Darwinism: the mating feathers of a parrot that had failed to make the natural selection cut. I dressed completely in black with a cotton t-shirt under my jacket.

I'm actually quite pleased Hera isn't going to be there
, I thought.
She might run away with the idea she has too much influence over my taste …

Mithra's verdict was encouraging.

‘You look like a real vampire now,' was his comment.

He too was dressed in black, but with considerably more chic than I. Under his tuxedo he had on a black shirt front and a tiny scarlet moiré bow tie. He smelled fragrantly of ‘New World Odour' eau de cologne from Gap. The combined effect was of a gypsy baron who had graduated from Yale.

Down below the same car that had brought Hera and me from Enlil Maratovich's house was waiting for us – a black limousine of unknown make. I recognised the chauffeur behind the wheel. When we got in to the car he gave me a polite smile in the mirror. We set off, and Mithra pressed a button to make the glass screen rise up, cutting us off from the driver.

‘Who are the Chaldeans?' I asked.

‘Members of an organisation which functions as an interface between the world of vampires and the world of people. Their official title is “The Chaldean Society”.'

‘Why do we need them?'

‘Human beings have to be kept on a tight rein. That's what the Chaldeans do. They are our enforcement agency. They have been doing the job for thousands of years.'

‘Do they control people?'

‘Yes. Through the organs of the power structure, which they infiltrate. Chaldeans control all the levers of social status. No one can rise further than their allotted career level without their say-so.'

‘I see. A Masonic conspiracy? World government?'

‘Something like that,' smiled Mithra. ‘Human conspiracy theory is actually extremely useful to us. People are aware that somewhere out there, there exists some kind of a secret society that controls everything. But who and what exactly this society is, has been hotly debated since time immemorial. And as you will appreciate, the arguments will continue for ever and a day.'

‘Why do Chaldeans submit to the authority of vampires?'

‘Tradition. Things have always been like that.'

‘Is that all?' I asked, surprised.

‘How else could it be? The power of any king depends entirely on the fact that he was also king yesterday. When he wakes up in bed in the morning, he has no levers of power or strings in his hand that he can pull. Any servant coming into the bedroom can wring his neck.'

‘Do you mean people could … wring our necks?'

‘Theoretically, yes,' replied Mithra. ‘But in practice it's very unlikely. All fundamental values would vanish along with us. Humanity would be left without a skeleton.'

‘Values, skeletons … that's all just talk,' I said. ‘You can't keep people down with restraints like that today. Don't we have any real control?'

‘In the first place, tradition. That is a very real medium of control, believe me. Secondly, we keep the Chaldeans on a lead, and we control their red liquid. We are privy to all their thoughts, and that creates an indelible impression on people. They cannot hide anything from us. Human beings are suckers for all kinds of inside information. We can, so to speak, bring it to the outside for them. This is the basic material we trade with human beings in return for their services.'

‘How is it that people know nothing of this?'

‘What do you mean, people know nothing of it? Of course they know, and have done for a very long time. For instance, for many centuries the Privy Counsellors of the Kings of England were known as “Lord-Tasters” – now you understand what the phrase means. They're even mentioned in the history textbooks. Of course, what is written there is ridiculous, that they were supposed to have tasted the King's food to make sure that it hadn't been poisoned. Nice job for a Lord. Might as well make a bit of extra cash cleaning up the loo … We know it's impossible to dam up every single leak of information, but what we can do is make sure that it is scrambled so as to be unintelligible. People think we are far more supernatural beings than we really are. That helps. Proximity to the abyss seems to addle their brains. The funny thing is that by comparison with the abyss people have themselves fallen into, ours is quite shallow …'

I thought back to the chasm over which I had flown during the Great Fall. Which was in fact deeper – the black well of Heartland at the point where I had just begun to descend into it, or the yawning pit of the supermarket where I had worked as an unloader? It wasn't just a matter of the supermarket – any life choice available to a young person of my age was a rabbit hole leading straight to the dark pit below. The only variation was in the steepness of the corridor's decline. If one really thought it out, it was people, not vampires, who were hanging upside down, and what they thought of as height was in reality the abyss …

‘Chaldeans,' I muttered, ‘Chaldeans … I seem to remember something about them in Discourse … weren't they the inhabitants of Babylon? Or are they what criminals call a waiter?'

‘I don't know about waiters. But you're right about Babylon. The Chaldean society arose in Babylon, and that is where its name comes from. They have existed since the time of the New Babylon Kingdom, at which time the town was ruled by the Chaldean dynasty. Incidentally, it is in this same Near Eastern tradition that we find the first mention of the Tree of Life.'

‘Tree of Life? What is that?'

‘It is where the Great Goddess lives. Different religions have different opinions about which part of it she actually lives in – the trunk or the branches, but every country has such a tree.'

‘You mean, it is imported to each country from somewhere else?'

‘The exact opposite. Every individual human nation takes root where there is a Tree of Life – around it, so to say – together with its language and culture. At the same time, however, all Trees of Life are one and the same tree.'

‘And who is the Great Goddess?'

Mithra laughed. ‘You'll find out this evening,' he said. ‘I can promise you she will make a very strong impression on you.'

I felt a tremor of alarm, but decided not to show it.

‘All the same,' I said, ‘I still can't understand how it is that a secret company of people who control society's upward mobility are content to work for vampires. Why would they work for anyone except themselves?'

‘I told you. Their souls are an open book to us.'

‘Oh, come on! All it would take is one St Bartholomew's Night and nobody anywhere will ever read anything again. If the Chaldeans have enough power to control this whole nuclear-financial snake pit, why should they bow the knee to anyone? People nowadays are very pragmatic. The higher they haul themselves up by exercising their levers of power, the more pragmatic they become. Respect for tradition doesn't drive anything much these days.'

Mithra sighed.

‘You understand it all very well. Nevertheless, the people at the very top of the human chain protect the Great Goddess, and their reasons are entirely pragmatic. Pragmatism, you see, can be defined as concentrating attention on the practical achievement of a goal. Without a goal, there can be no such thing as pragmatism. And it is thanks to the Great Goddess that the goal becomes visible to people.'

‘In what way?'

‘Enlil Maratovich will explain that to you.'

‘What's
bablos
? Could you at least tell me what that consists of?'

Mithra winced as if in pain.

‘To Enlil!' he called out and waved his arms about furiously, as if warding off a host of bats.

The driver glanced back, evidently having heard something through the glass divide or seen Mithra's movements. I turned and looked out of the window.

Behind the window passed, repassed and disappeared block after block of eighteen-storey apartment buildings, the construction boom sites of the Soviet era's sunset. I had arrived in the Soviet Union just as it was preparing finally to fade from view. I was too small to understand what was happening, but I could still remember the sounds and colours of the time. Soviet power had brought these buildings into existence, shipped in the people to live in them, and then suddenly ceased to be. The whole process seemed to embody a kind of tentative plea for forgiveness.

What was odd, however, was that the people were still there in the same old concrete boxes of their Soviet homes. But broken now were the invisible threads that used to bind them to each other, and following years of zero-gravity drifting, they were being drawn into another, very different pattern. The world was now an unrecognisable place, even though there was no technological device capable of tracking the changes that had taken place. I found something stupendous about this. If such things could take place before my very eyes, why should I be so astounded by what Mithra was saying?