Then the Jew bribed some Christians he knew, and they denounced Fish Eye to the Holy Inquisition. The Khazar was accused of trafficking with the devil, and someone even claimed to have found a contract with the Enemy of Humanity in his house, with all its terms spelled out in great detail and sealed with an imprint of the Khazar’s ring, inked with his blood.
The Khazar was led out to the great cleansing fire. When bound to the stake he raised his arms to the heavens and cursed: “Woe upon ye, inhabitants of Venice and of all cities! Ye will yet come to know the power of the stolen delights, the seductions of the Prince of this world! And ye will lose your eternal souls!”
Before he perished in the flames, Fish Eye had experienced the rack and a multitude of other contrivances utilized by the Holy Church for the purposes of taming the flesh and saving the souls of sinners who had strayed from the path. But whether the Khazar gave up the secret recipe and whether the Jew who had betrayed him got the secret from the church officials—on that subject nothing is known.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
A Western pop singer wails on MTV. I can’t remember her name; if I get curious I can watch the whole clip; eventually a credit will show up at the bottom of the screen giving her name and the titles of the song and of the album it’s from. But I’m not that curious. I’m not much of a connoisseur, frankly. I just listen. I just keep it on out of boredom.
The credit is sure to be there at the end of the clip. Like a label, like a toe tag at the morgue.
“Earthly glory is like a toe tag on a corpse.”
Some Buddhist lama said that, I think. I don’t remember his name either. But I do remember the quote, more or less. I like it. I didn’t even bother to write it down in my special notebook (you have one of those too, don’t you?); it just stuck in my mind. And it’s true. A man dies, and all that’s left is a slab with his name and the high points of his biography: He was born, studied somewhere, got married, won eight Oscars, and then died.
This hag should have kicked the bucket long ago. Or left show business and spent her final days sitting on a bench in front of her house, or puttering around in her garden. Anything but gyrating up there on stage in front of everyone. She’s an old lady, same age as Marilyn Monroe would be now, probably, but Marilyn died at the right time. This one, though, just keeps on singing. Won’t shut up. Dances too.
I can’t wrap my head around that. You’ve already shown what you’ve got, said everything you can say, and earned huge piles of money; why keep on writhing around on stage like a clown? Go over your bank statements, count your money, and enjoy the rest of your life.
I always liked Britney Spears. Now there’s someone who did it right! I recall her debut. A nymphet, a pedophile’s dream, in a school uniform and flimsy little white skirts. She danced on a dock by the sea. Sang words of love, first love, pure, timid, and innocent love. And the planet quivered, pierced through by an ultrasound wave of unprecedented force—the sound of men’s balls buzzing, the whole world over.
She made it big, became a superstar, sold millions of albums, earned millions of dollars, got up on stage with the whole world watching and sucked face with Madonna. And then sent everything to the devil.
Started having babies, eating sandwiches, getting fat, and vandalizing cars in parking lots, pounding on their hoods like a madwoman.
Of course, malevolent critics will remind you, before this she bombed in the movie Crossroads, ruined her personal life, started in on alcohol and drugs. But, hey, up theirs. They’re just jealous.
No, Britney isn’t like that old bag, who will cling to the stage till the day she dies. Look at her, a veritable cyborg! After all the plastic surgery, liposuctions, and implants, there’s nothing left of her original body. Like the robot cop from that movie. Robocop, that’s it. Robo-singer.
The Russian stage has its share of this particular brand of mutant. When they come out on stage for the Police Day concert, it’s downright terrifying. These aren’t real people, they’re some sort of pale zombie who’ve risen up from their dank graves, called forth by some voodoo sorcerer who fed them a poisonous powder. Or pills, maybe.
To hell with that kind of career! Everyone has to die someday. Sure, you have to be in the right place at the right time to strike it rich. But you also have to know when to make your exit.
Every year new stars appear on the stage. What happens to the old ones? Nothing—they’re still up there too. If things keep going on like this, there won’t be any room left for the living; all the space will be taken up by walking corpses. The devil should definitely reconsider the terms of his standard contract.
There’s no place for the living among the dead, just as there’s no place for the dead among the living. I learned that from my wise old grandmother.
What the hell is this song about, anyway? I can’t get it out of my head. The zombie is howling mournfully. What is she really trying to say? Probably something like.
Like, say, her love is over, but she has to go on living. I will survive. So many songs by women can be boiled down to that one idea. But what I hear is:
Yes, that’s more like it. And I do believe:
Love that lasts till death, to the grave, is a fairy tale, an illusion, a lie. Love after the grave, though—that’s real, it gives me hope. Lines from my own song, something I wrote when I was sixteen:
I think that I sang that song once, drunk, to a one-eyed old man, shitface drunk himself, on Zayachy Island near the Peter and Paul Fortress. And he shoved a piece of paper into my hand with his phone number on it, told me to call, promised that he would find me a band, would set up an audition, would make me a star.
Of course I didn’t call. People say all kinds of things when they’re drunk.
Or, no, maybe what she means is exactly what she’s saying:
If so, it’s clearly autobiographical; the song must be about her experiences after the zombie master hauled her out of the grave.
Though I died too, in a certain sense. I died for the world of advanced capitalism and industrial-trade corporations, the day I walked out of Cold Plus.
The heroes of my favorite books always had “something in reserve” waiting for them before they told everyone to go to hell and set out to pursue their own destinies. Something to “tide them over” for a while.