‘Damilola. If you do this for me, I …’

  ‘What?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘I’ll make you so happy, you won’t even believe it.’

  ‘And how exactly?’

  ‘I know a way,’ she replied. ‘You won’t understand what’s happening. But you’ll feel it.’

  ‘May I at least know what is in store for me?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to look at me in a special way? Or give me some special kind of massage?’

  ‘It’s called “dopamine resonance”. Do you know what resonance is?’

  ‘I probably did once,’ I answered. ‘But I forgot. Explain.’

  ‘When you’re swinging on a swing, you make a tiny effort every time it reaches the highest point, and the result is that you keep flying higher and higher. If you keep forcing the swing on, it will start to swing right round its axis. Or for instance, a column of soldiers marching over a bridge can set it swaying so intensely that it collapses – if they march in time with its own oscillations.’

  ‘I’m no public intellectual, to go marching in step,’ I griped. ‘What has this got to do with me and you?’

  ‘When you experience pleasure certain chemicals are released in your brain. There’s a maximum level of pleasure that the brain is designed for – after that it starts to protect itself, switching off the regions that are overexcited by pleasure. But we’ll play a little trick on your brain and milk your reward circuits far more deeply than your defensive responses permit. Your inner swing will “go over the top”.’

  ‘Do you want to tie me up?’ I asked suspiciously.

  Kaya laughed. She can divine with great precision the moments when she should feign this amazing, silvery-tinkling, happy female laughter.

  ‘I’m not going to do anything unusual with your body,’ she said. ‘Everything will be the way you like it. It’s just that I’ll follow the changes in your pulse and time the pauses between my touches so that they put your brain into resonance.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With itself.’

  ‘And what will happen?’

  ‘All the dopamine inhibitors and other defence mechanisms will be switched off. It will be a paroxysm of inexpressibly voluptuous pleasure. You’ll pass beyond the limits permitted by nature.’

  ‘Surely the company doesn’t allow that kind of thing?’

  Kaya shook her head.

  ‘Of course not. The company is no longer responsible for your safety. This mode only becomes available under manual tuning. And even then not every time – there has to be a special combination of settings.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked quickly.

  ‘Bitchiness and seduction have to be set to maximum.’

  I thought about it. It all sounded extremely interesting but seemed a bit suspicious.

  ‘And why haven’t I ever heard about this resonance before? Why doesn’t anyone know about it?’

  ‘The suras who have this mode available don’t inform their owners about it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Kaya smiled.

  ‘Out of bitchiness.’

  I realised that she wasn’t lying.

  ‘And why are you telling me about it?’

  ‘Because I have spirituality set to maximum, as well as bitchiness.’

  That could also be true.

  ‘But is it risky?’ I asked. ‘What if I go insane?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think it is. Otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested it to you. The only thing a fat, lascivious, feeble-minded babuvian like you has to fear is losing a bit of weight.’

  At this point I sensed that I could show off a bit – I knew the word she had got wrong, from Bernard-Henri. He used to love repeating it.

  ‘Bon vivant,’ I corrected her. ‘From Old French. In the ancient language of the discoursemongers this expression meant “a person who likes a good feed”. Say it correctly, please.’

  ‘I am saying it correctly,’ she said. ‘Only I’m using a different word. A babuvian is a large obese primate who was planning to become a bon vivant, but ended up as a baboon. From the Church English “baboon-vivant”. Or you can also say “baboon-viveur”.’

  Thanks for the vocabulary lesson, darling. I should never forget that it’s not worth arguing with her on linguistic matters.

  ‘But how do I know that you won’t trick me with this resonance of yours?’ I asked.

  She lowered her eyes.

  She can look at me in a way that makes my mouth go dry. But that’s not all, not by any means. She’s capable of not looking at me in a way that sets my hands shaking. I took a step towards her.

  ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘When you’ve saved him.’

  ‘Do you understand what I’m risking here?’ I asked. ‘Everything. I have to know what I’m doing this for.’

  She looked at the manitou.

  Grim was still sleeping, but Chloe had already woken up and had breakfast, and all the signs were that she was going to visit Bernard-Henri – she was standing by the hatch leading down into the basement and slapping the golf club thoughtfully against her palm.

  I adjusted the enlargement setting.

  The Ganjaberserks were still hiding in the concrete ruins surrounding the house, only now there were more of them. Although it was morning, some of them were already smoking. Small mounted detachments had also appeared in the vicinity, but they were keeping well away from the house. I wonder, I thought, what the Ganjaberserks feed to their horses? I must take a look sometime. They must share with them, I suppose. In battle a horse has to be on the same trip as its master, otherwise they won’t get very far …

  I imagined myself in Grim’s place – sleeping, and surrounded by these altered minds that were pressuring him from all sides with their malign attention … He must be having pretty bad dreams …

  I didn’t even try imagining myself in Bernard-Henri’s place.

  ‘They could attack at any moment,’ said Kaya.

  ‘That’s right,’ I replied. ‘That’s why if I were you I wouldn’t waste any time.’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘I can manage it in twenty minutes. It won’t be the full thing, but you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Lie down on your back.’

  She really did manage it.

  Twenty minutes later I was lying on the sofa, looking up at the ceiling, and the tears were streaming tumultuously out of my eyes.

  She really hadn’t done anything special to me. The tender touches of her fingers, lips and body, the light bites from her sharp teeth – it was all the same as usual, completely in line with the process protocol and ritual that we had developed.

  The difference was in what I felt. And this difference turned out to be so immense that it was as if I’d woken up. I realised what I’d been missing out on all my life, and why I used to be able to say so casually that the erotic side of life was of no particular value to the sober, well-developed mind. Not that my own mind was particularly sober or well-developed – it was simply that everything I had previously known as pleasure was genuinely worthless in comparison with what I had just experienced.

  It was as if I was a troglodyte in an age of global chill and thought I knew everything about warmth, since I was able to light a camp fire in my icy cave, and sometimes even managed to warm myself beside it so well that only my hind quarters and back were freezing – and suddenly I was transported to a tropical beach where there was no longer any need to chase after the sun, but was this desire to hide from it in the water or in the shade, for it was clear that the true condition of the world was this endless, all-pervading, hot bliss, and the reserves of it in the sky were endless, and there was nothing to worry about any more, and everything before this had been merely a bad dream …

  The fact I had lived so many years in vain, not even suspecting the existence of this secret passage to happiness, made me weep – but these were tears of joy, for now I knew.

  Kaya patted me on the chest with her hand.

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Go away,’ I sobbed. ‘How could you hide that from me, you deceitful, cunning little hussie …? How could you …?’

  ‘And now listen carefully, you flying lard-arse,’ she said in a tender voice. ‘If you don’t defend Grim right now, that will never happen to you again. Never.’

  Bitchiness – what else can you expect?

  ‘What’s going on with your little friend over there?’ I asked, turning towards the manitou.

  The lovebirds were doing all right. Grim was still lounging in bed and Chloe, dissolving into a blurred blob, was conversing in the basement with another glittering blob by the name of Bernard-Henri and waving the golf club about.

  ‘Give me a close-up from above,’ said Kaya.

  I gave her the view of the house from above. The road leading away from it was blocked off by two dump trucks.

  ‘You see?’

  I started switching between various hyperoptics modes – somehow I felt furious at the thought that she could prove more observant than me even in my professional area. It turned out that several Ganjaberserks had already climbed over the fence and were now hiding in the bushes around the house.

  ‘In my opinion,’ said Kaya, ‘this is the perfect time to intervene.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Grim woke up late.

  He’d been dreaming about the kamikaze soldiers trundling the gas bomb into the smoky haze, and the men playing reed pipes strolling after them. They were playing incredible music, extremely simple, but filled with such great sadness and power that Grim surfaced out of sleep in tears. It seemed as if he remembered all the time that the lads had died long ago – but in the dream it turned out that it only seemed that way, and in actual fact they were still trundling their trolley towards the target in some strange fashion that was entirely incomprehensible on this earth, and no battle cameras could hinder them any longer. Although the further away the dream drifted, the harder it became to remember what exactly he had seen and understood.

  Grim didn’t feel like getting up. He lay under the bedspread for a few minutes, examining the discoursemonger’s secret refuge.

  He didn’t really like the room all that much – everything bore the imprint of someone else’s life and habits. Probably he could get used to it in time, but so far the surrounding space reminded him of the void inside a shoe taken off somebody else’s foot.

  Chloe wasn’t there beside him. He could hear sounds coming from somewhere – first a croak, then a shrill howl. At first Grim thought it was moles celebrating their wedding under the floor, but then he made out words in one of the howls and realised that it was Chloe talking to Bernard-Henri.

  Well, well, he thought, first thing in the morning. Never offend a girl’s finer feelings … I wonder if she felt it was worth it, would she give me the same treatment?

  Grim suddenly recalled the barracks – the lads from his draft looking up at the sky and the red barrel with the word ‘sand’ on its side, old fag ends soaking in it. Then he recalled the priest Goon, who gave him the divinatory book.

  But there is another secret meaning – it is said that you will be aided by spirits, and that you will be able to write songs and poems …

  Somehow the spirits weren’t in any great hurry to come to his aid. And no poems or songs were springing up in his heart either.

  But maybe, thought Grim, I really can write them, I just don’t know about it? Maybe I should try?

  He found a notepad and a pencil on the windowsill. One page was filled with housekeeping calculations – he thought it was Chloe’s handwriting. Grim went back to the bed, turned over the page, moved the pencil close to the paper, and the first line suddenly appeared in his head completely out of the blue.

  When the prosecutor public with the pierced earlobe …

  It was clear enough that the prosecutor was Chloe’s father. But the phrase written on the paper acquired some kind of profound, universal meaning, as if it was about all the public prosecutors who had ever lived on earth … It was exciting. Grim tried writing a second line. That came out well too. Then he wrote a third one. And then a fourth. If he just read them out loud, he started getting the feeling that a smoothly purring motorenwagen had driven by.

  Grim couldn’t understand how he had managed to do it – and to check on himself, he wrote another quatrain, followed by a few more. He had to cover a lot of paper with scribble. Not everything came out smoothly – a few of the stanzas simply refused to be locked into shape, and that meant he needed to set out the meaning more precisely. What was missing was the kind of ancient nobility and simplicity that animated, for instance, certain passages of The Book of Orkasms. But Grim already understood that later he would be able to come back to what he had written and make it much, much better …

  While he was writing, Bernard-Henri stopped screaming – as if the poetic vibrations reaching him through the floor and the wall had brought him some solace in his misfortune. And a minute after that Chloe walked into the room.

  Grim closed the notepad and put it in the pocket of his trousers, which were lying beside the bed.

  ‘What’s that you’re writing?’ asked Chloe.

  ‘Nothing much,’ Grim said casually. ‘Poems. You wouldn’t be interested.’

  Chloe nodded, and Grim realised that she really wasn’t interested. He felt hurt.

  Apparently, Chloe sensed that his feelings were bruised.

  ‘What, want to be a priest, do you?’ she asked, running her fingers down past her face to suggest the fringe of wisdom.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Grim answered. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll get paid for your poems? No one knows who you are.’

  ‘They will, though,’ Grim muttered.

  ‘And what are we going to eat until they get to know you?’

  Grim was so outraged by that ‘we’ that he didn’t even answer. It looked like Chloe had already made new plans for life, plans in which he was allotted a very definite place – and she’d done it without asking him his opinion or apologising for her own multistage betrayal. He could just write a new poem right now.

  ‘Bernard-Henri’s croaked,’ Chloe told him.

  ‘It’s your own fault.’

  ‘What do we do with him now?’

  ‘Do whatever you like,’ said Grim. ‘I don’t want him.’

  ‘He said he had some kind of little device inside him. If he dies, they’ll see it immediately in the Green Zone. Was he lying, do you think?’

  ‘I think he was,’ Grim answered. ‘If not, then why haven’t they found him yet?’

  ‘Nobody’s looking for him, because after the war everybody’s busy with heaps of stuff. But when they realise, they’ll find him all right, straight from the air. He said that was dead easy for the people, only they’re all busy right now.’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘He also said “what a philosóphe is dying”.’

  ‘Philósopher,’ Grim corrected her.

  ‘He said “philosóphe”. Okay, let’s go.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Home for the time being,’ Chloe said sadly. ‘I can’t go to the Green Zone now. I don’t know anyone else there. And then, what am I going to say if they ask about him?’

  Grim felt like getting out of this house too. He got dressed quickly.

  Chloe walked over to the door, opened it a crack and looked outside. Grim was about to step out after her, but Chloe suddenly slammed the door shut and backed away from it, running into him. Grim seemed to feel her heart pounding in fright inside his own chest.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Ssssssh,’ said Chloe, putting a finger to her lips. ‘There’s an ambush out there.’

  ‘Where?’ Grim whispered. ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘No,’ said Chloe. ‘But they’re very close.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Ganjaberserks.’

  ‘Are you quite sure about that?’

  Chloe nodded.

  ‘I can smell dope. I’ve known that smell since I was a kid. Sage and cannabis.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Grim.

  ‘Can you drive a motorenwagen?’

  ‘I probably can,’ said Grim. ‘If it’s like a moped. But where will we go?’

  ‘First we have to get out of here.’

  ‘Maybe we ought to tell them that …’

  ‘You fool,’ Chloe interrupted. ‘If they catch us, nobody will even bother to listen. Can you imagine what you’ll get for one of them in peace time? Especially for a discoursemonger. The new regime will lick their arses right up until the next war.’

  Grim sighed. Chloe was right – he hadn’t expected such mature judgement from her. Presumably it was the effect of associating with Bernard-Henri.

  ‘They’ll never catch a motorenwagen,’ Chloe went on. ‘We’ll get well away from Slava and dump it in the forest.’

  ‘But they’ll find out it’s us, won’t they?’

  ‘How? Who can tell whose skulls he’s been polishing up here? And there are the bones buried in the corner here too … Let them search.’

  Why did I bother to come, thought Grim. She could have sorted out herself all those bones of hers …

  He looked at Chloe. Chloe smiled miserably and shrugged.

  ‘Are you upset?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s not the word for it,’ Grim answered. ‘Welcome back from the war.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.’

  ‘I know,’ said Grim

  ‘So, shall we go then?’

  Grim nodded.

  ‘Let’s climb out here,’ said Chloe. ‘They can’t see us here behind the bushes.’

  She cautiously opened a side window and drew the air in through her nostrils. Apparently it was all clear on this side of the house – she climbed out into the yard. Grim followed her, trying not to make any noise.