Empire V (20 page)

The last room, by contrast, was a true museum of late Soviet life with a great number of different objects preserved in it. Garish cut-crystal vases and wine glasses on a sideboard, carpets on the walls, mink coats on hangers, an enormous Bohemian glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling … In the corner stood a colour television set as big as a trunk and covered in dust. In the centre of the altar table, among old newspapers and photograph albums, was yet another telephone – this time a white plastic one, with the USSR coat of arms in gold on the disc. There was a head in the altar niche: an ordinary, unremarkable shrivelled head with a hennaed chignon piled up in a bun at the back, and big ruby earrings.

The passage did not go any further. The Hall of Mature Socialism, as I privately dubbed this altar room, ended in a steel door. On it hung a nameplate, green with age, on which was written in queerly printed old script:

Ye Greate Batte

On the wall I noticed a bell. Shifting nervously from foot to foot, I pressed it.

Half a minute passed. The lock clicked open and the door opened a few millimetres, but no further. After waiting a little more, I put my ear to the crack which had opened.

‘Girls, girls,' came a hoarse female voice, ‘conceal yourselves, now. How many times do I have to tell you: get behind the screen!'

I rang once more.

‘OK, OK,' answered the voice. ‘Come on in!'

I entered, carefully closing the door behind me.

This altar room was the same size as its predecessor, but seemed bigger because of its modern look. The walls were painted white and the floor had been paved with large sand-coloured tiles. Altogether it suggested a moderately prosperous Moscow apartment, except that the designer furniture looked more expensive than that. But there was not much of it: a red sofa and two blue armchairs. On the wall opposite the altar (so far I had not summoned up courage to look in the other direction) hung a plasma TV. Beside it was a bamboo screen with a representation
à la
Van Gogh of a French night sky, in the illimitable vastness of which burned what looked like hundreds of upturned smart cars. Evidently this was the screen behind which the girls had been told to hide themselves.

‘Greetings,' said a caressingly tender voice. ‘Why don't you turn round? Look at me; don't be afraid. You think I'm some sort of Medusa, and just one glance from me is enough to get you stoned? No, no, my boy. We're too low here to get high, ha ha. Only joking – just my little joke. Couldn't you raise your eyes and look at me?'

I raised my eyes.

The altar niche also bore traces of having been recently refurbished. They were even to be seen on skin of the bat's neck – where it touched the wall it was stained with white emulsion paint.

A woman's face was smiling at me from the middle of the recess – still, as the saying goes, with traces of her former beauty. From all appearances the head was about fifty years old, but in fact was probably more than that because even my untutored eye could see traces of numerous cosmetic procedures and rejuvenating injections. Only the mouth was smiling while the eyes, encircled by immobile skin, looked out full of doubt and alarm.

The head was crowned by an amazingly elaborate coiffure – a combination of Rastafarian ‘let's-share-a-joint' dreadlocks and the cool glamour of a Snow Queen. Below it tumbled a shock of piebald dreads into which were woven beads and bangles of various sizes, while above it the hair had been teased up into a fan of four peacock feathers linked by a shell of golden chains and threads. The tracery of this glittering polygon made one think of a crown. As a hairdo it was certainly impressive: I thought how good it would have looked in the
Alien vs. Predator
film – on the head of some sharp-toothed cosmic sow. Atop this tired and puffy female face, however, it did look rather absurd.

‘Well then, come to me. Come to Mummy,' cooed the head. ‘Let me feast my eyes on you.'

I came close up to her, and we kissed one another three times in the Russian fashion, delicately passing the lips to brush the cheek near the mouth.

I was amazed by the head's manoeuvrability. First she seemed to fly at me from one side, then instantly appear at the other, and finally back to the starting point. During the kiss I just had time to turn my eyes, no more.

‘Ishtar Borisovna,' said the head. ‘Ishtar to you. Don't imagine I address everyone like that, only boys as pretty as you, ha ha …'

‘Rama the Second,' I introduced myself.

‘I know. Sit down. No, wait a moment. How about a little cognac to celebrate our meeting?'

‘Ishtar Borisovna, you're not to have any more today,' protested a severe young female voice from behind the screen.

‘Oh, it's only to toast our acquaintance,' said the head. ‘Five grams apiece, that's all. Don't worry, the young man will help me.'

She nodded towards the altar table.

Here total disorder reigned. The marble slab was piled high with glossy magazines, all muddled up with cosmetic jars and bottles of expensive liquor. Right in the middle of the chaos bulked a massive, heavy laptop computer, the kind one could use as a replacement for a desktop. I noticed that the printed matter on the table was not confined to unadulterated glamour: among the magazines were titles such as
Your Property
and
Refurbishment in Moscow
.

‘There's the cognac,' said Ishtar. ‘And wee glasses too. Don't worry, they're clean …'

From the table I took the bottle of Hennessy XO, whose shape reminded me of the stone females from the early altar rooms I had seen, and poured some cognac into the large cut-crystal goblets the head had referred to as ‘wee glasses'. To me they looked more like vases than glasses – they took just about the whole bottle. No objection was raised to this.

‘Good,' said Ishtar. ‘You do the clinking yourself … and then help Mummy.'

I tinkled one glass against the other and held one out, not knowing what I should do next.

‘Tip it up, don't be afraid …'

I inclined the glass and the head deftly dived down below it to catch the yellow-brown stream. Not a single drop reached the floor. It made me think of midair refuelling. Instead of a neck, Ishtar had a furry, sinewy stem more than a metre long, which made her look like an animated tree-growing mushroom.

‘Sit down,' she said, indicating the blue armchair placed beside the altar. I sat on the edge of it, sipped a little cognac and put the glass on the table.

The head smacked its lips once or twice and closed its eyes in contemplation. I had enough experience of vampires to know what this meant. I passed my hand over my neck and looked at my fingers – and there, sure enough, was a tiny red spot. Obviously she had managed to bite me as we kissed. Opening her eyes, she fixed them on me.

‘I don't like it,' I said, ‘when someone …'

‘Well, I do like it,' interrupted the head, ‘especially when I have a drink. I'm allowed … Well, you know … Hello Rama. Roma as was. You had a difficult childhood, you poor, poor boy.'

‘Why difficult?' I replied, embarrassed. ‘It was a childhood like any other.'

‘You're right, a childhood like any other. That's why it was difficult. Everyone in our country has a difficult childhood. It's so as to prepare a person for life as a grown-up. Which is going to be so difficult it will totally screw you up.'

Ishtar sighed and again smacked her lips. I could not work out whether she was savouring my red liquid, or the cognac, or both at the same time.

‘You don't like being a vampire, do you, Rama?' she concluded.

‘Why do you say that? It's pretty good, really.'

‘When people like it, they don't live as you do. They want to spend every day as if it was a jolly Halloween holiday. Like your friend Mithra. But you … You were thinking about your soul again two nights ago, weren't you?'

‘I was,' I conceded.

‘What do you think a soul is?'

‘I don't know,' I answered. ‘Our people have already asked me that.'

‘So how can you think about it when you don't know what it is?'

‘Well, you can see that for yourself.'

‘Certainly … Listen, do you think about the meaning of life as well?'

‘Sometimes,' I replied, embarrassed.

‘About how the world came into being? And about God?'

‘That too. Yes, I have done.'

Ishtar frowned, as if trying to decide what was to be done with me. A tiny wrinkle appeared on the smooth surface of her forehead. Then it disappeared and all was smooth again.

‘I do understand you,' she said. ‘And I do a lot of thinking too. Especially just recently … But I have reasons to. Concrete reasons. You though? You're so young, you ought to be living and enjoying yourself. Not like us pensioners!'

It occurred to me that this was how older women often talked, women who had been born under Stalin and who had preserved within themselves a cache of state-sponsored optimism which their schooldays had drummed into their frightened souls. There had been a time when I too had accepted the blister raised by such a burn as the stigmata of the sacred flame. But my course of degustations had cured me of this misapprehension.

Ishtar glanced at my glass and then at me, pulled a sour face, then winked and stretched her mouth into a smile. The whole pantomime took less than a second – her grimaces were so quick they were more like a nervous tic.

I understand what was required. Getting up, I took my glass from the table and we repeated the aerial refuelling procedure. Ishtar made no sound by which anyone sitting behind the screen could interpret what was going on. I took my seat again. Ishtar knitted her brow with an air of martyrdom and expelled a deep sigh.

‘Well,' she said, ‘this is how matters stand. I am a Goddess all right, but that does not mean I shall be able to give you any intelligent answers to your questions. You see, the realm in which I am a Goddess is a very constricted one. What you should do is this. You should seek out a vampire by the name of Osiris. He is the guardian of traditional lore. Tell him I sent you. He will explain everything to you.'

‘How will I find him?'

‘Ask someone. Only don't mention it to Enlil. They are brothers, and have been in a quarrel for many years. I've also fallen out with Osiris, you might say.'

‘What about?'

‘It wasn't really about anything specific. It's just that he lost contact with me. He's a Tolstoyan.'

‘A Tolstoyan?' I repeated.

‘Yes. Do you know anything about them?'

‘No. Never heard of them.'

‘Tolstoyan vampires appeared at the beginning of the last century,' said Ishtar. ‘The ideas of Count Tolstoy were very fashionable then. The simple life. The sufferings of the people, return to basic truths, all that sort of thing. Some of our people were also attracted to it and were tempted to follow the simple life. But how is a vampire going to simplify his life? They decided not to suck
bablos
any more and go back to pure red liquid. But without killing anybody, because after all they were Tolstoyans. So there aren't many left now, but Osiris is one of them.'

‘How did he get into it?'

‘Drugs – that's what I think, if I'm honest. Narcotics and all sorts of stupid books. You'll have your fill of talk if you speak with him. He can fuck your brains as well as Enlil can, only from the other direction …'

She laughed. I got the impression that the brandy she had drunk was already having its effect.

‘What is
bablos
?' I asked

‘Didn't Enlil tell you anything about it?'

‘He started to. About the life-force a man radiates into space whenever he thinks about money. Aggregate “M-5”. But he said I would learn the rest … here. If I am considered worthy.'

‘Oy, give me a break,' groaned Ishtar. ‘Considered worthy, my foot. Double checking, triple checking. I have no secrets from anybody. If you want to know something, just ask me.'

‘
Bablos
– does the word come from
bablo
, the Russian slang for money?'

Ishtar tittered, and I heard the girls behind the screen laughing as well.

‘No,' she said. ‘
Bablos
is a really ancient word. It may be the very oldest which has come down to us. It has the same root as “Babylon”, and that in turn comes from the Akkadian word “
bab-ilu
” which means “the gates of God”.
Bablos
is a sacred drink that turns vampires into gods.'

‘Is that why we have names like we do?'

‘Yes. Sometimes
bablos
is called “red liquid”. But Enlil goes all scientific when he speaks of it: Aggregate “M-5”, the ultimate condition of money. It's condensed human life-force.'

‘Does one drink
bablos
?'

‘One drinks cognac. One sucks
bablos
. There's not much of it.'

‘Hold on a moment,' I said. ‘I think there's a bit of confusion here. Enlil Maratovich told me that “red liquid” is the correct term for human …'

‘Blood,' broke in Ishtar. ‘With me you can call it that.'

But by now I was finding it difficult to say the word.

‘He was saying that vampires stopped drinking red liquid when they developed human beings to the point where they could produce money.'

‘Quite correct,' said Ishtar. ‘But we are still vampires, so we cannot entirely do without blood. Otherwise we would lose our identity and our roots. What is money? It is the symbolic blood of the world. Everything depends on it, both for humans and for us. But the manner in which we depend on it is different, because we live in the real world whereas human beings live in the world of illusions.'

‘Why do they? Surely they cannot all be so stupid?'