"Victor Pelevin. Babylon (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

already empty.
'Is there any more?' he asked.
'There, you see,' said Gireiev, 'what did I tell you?'
He stood up, left the room and came back with an open newspaper
scattered with dry pieces of sliced fly-agaric mushrooms. Some of them still
had scraps of red skin with little white blots, while others had shreds of
newspaper with the mirror-images of letters clinging to them.
Tatarsky tossed a few pieces into his mouth, chewed them and swallowed.
The taste of the dried fly-agarics reminded him a little of potato flakes,
except that it was nicer - it occurred to him that they could be sold in
packets like potato chips, and this must be one of the secret routes to a
bank loan, Grand Cherokee jeep, advertisement clip and violent death. He
started pondering what the clip might be like, tossed another portion into
his mouth and looked around him. It was only at this stage that he actually
noticed several of the objects decorating the room. For instance, that sheet
of paper hanging in the obvious place on the wall - there was a letter
written on it, maybe Sanskrit, maybe Tibetan, resembling a dragon with a
curved tail.
'What's that?' he asked Gireiev.
Gireiev glanced up at the wall. 'Hum/ he said.
'What d'you need it for?'
'That's how I travel.'
'Where to?' asked Tatarsky.
Gireiev shrugged. 'It's hard to explain/ he said. 'Hum. When you don't
think, lots of things become clear.'
But Tatarsky had already forgotten his own question. He was overwhelmed
by a feeling of gratitude to Gireiev for inviting him here. 'You know/ he
said/ I'm going through a difficult period right now. Most of the time I
associate with bankers and other scum who want advertising. The stress is
just incredible. But out here with you ... I feel just as though I've come
back home.'
Gireiev seemed to understand what he was feeling. 'It's nothing/ he
said, 'Don't even think about it. A couple of those bankers came to see me
last winter. Wanted to expand their consciousness. Afterwards they ran off
barefoot across the snow. Why don't we go for a walk?'
Tatarsky was happy to agree. Once outside the garden gate, they set off
across a field criss-crossed by freshly dug ditches. The path led them to a
forest and began winding between the trees. The itching and trembling in
Tatarsky's hands was getting stronger, but it still wasn't reaching his
fingers. Noticing there were lots of fly-agarics growing on the ground among
the trees, he dropped behind Gireiev and picked several of them. They
weren't red, but dark brown and very beautiful. He ate them quickly and then
caught up with Gireiev, who hadn't noticed anything.
Soon the forest came to an end and they came out into a large open
space, a collective farm field bounded on its far side by the river.
Tatarsky looked upwards to where motionless clouds towered up into the sky
above the field in the last orange rays of one of those inexpressibly sad
sunsets that autumn sometimes produces outside Moscow. They walked on for a
while down the track along the edge of the field and sat down on a fallen
tree.