| following a brief exchange of pleasantries (lena did most of the talking; sergei sat in the corner with his legs crossed, smoking) tatarsky was introduced as the writer. he sat down facing the client, clanging the rolex against the edge of the desk as he did so, and opened up his notebook. it immediately became clear that the client had nothing in particular to say. without the assistance of a powerful hallucinogen it was hard to feel inspired by the details of his business - he droned on most of the time about some kind of oven-trays with a special non-stick coating. |
| tatarsky listened with his face half-turned away, nodding and doodling meaningless flourishes in his notebook. he surveyed the room out of the comer of his eye - there was nothing interesting to be seen there, either, if you didn't count the misty-blue reindeer-fur hat, obviously very expensive, that was lying on the upper shelf in an empty cupboard with glass doors. as promised, after a few minutes the pager on his belt rang. tatarsky unhooked the little black plastic box from his belt. 'is it from video international?' sergei asked from the comer. 'surely he doesn't think we're that desperate for his business . meanwhile the client was scowling thoughtfully at his reindeer-fur hat in the glass-fronted cupboard. they were locked together, and his thumbs were circling around each other as though he was winding in some invisible thread. |
'aren't you afraid that it could all just come to a full stop?'
tatarsky asked. 'you know what kind of times these are. what if everything suddenly collapses?' the client frowned and looked in puzzlement, first at tatarsky and then at his companions. his thumbs stopped circling each other.' five minutes later the conversation was over. |
sergei took a sheet of the client's headed notepaper with his logo - it was a stylised bun framed in an oval above the letters 'lcc'. they agreed to meet again in a week's time; sergei promised the scenario for the video would be ready by then. 'have you totally lost your marbles, or what?' sergei asked tatarsky, when they came out on to the street.' the mercedes took all three of them to the nearest metro station. when he got home, tatarsky wrote the scenario in a few hours. it was a long time since he'd felt so inspired. the scenario didn't have any specific storyline. it consisted of a sequence of historical reminiscences and metaphors. the tower of babel rose and fell, the nile flooded, rome burned, ferocious huns galloped in no particular direction across the steppes - and in the background the hands of an immense, transparent clock spun round. |
| 'one generation passeth away and another generation cometh,' said a dull and demonic voice-over (tatarsky actually wrote that in the scenario), 'but the earth abideth for ever.' but eventually even the earth with its ruins of empires and civilisations sank from sight into a lead-coloured ocean; only a single rock remained projecting above its raging surface, its form somehow echoing the form of the tower of babel that the scenario began with. the camera zoomed in on the cliff, and there carved in stone was a bun and the letters 'lcc', and beneath them a motto that tatarsky had found in a book called inspired latin sayings: mediis tempestatibus placidus calm in the midst of storms lefortovo confectionery combine in draft podium they reacted to tatarsky's scenario with horror. |
| 'rip off the image-sequence from a few old films, touch it up a bit, stretch it out. but you tell me what it is you want. a prize at cannes or the order?' a couple of days later lena took the client several versions of a scenario written by somebody else. they involved a black mercedes, a suitcase stuffed full of dollars and other archetypes of the collective unconscious. the client turned them all down without explaining why. in despair lena showed him the scenario written by tatarsky. she came back to the studio with a contract for thirty-five thousand, with twenty to be paid in advance. she said that when he read the scenario the client started behaving like a rat from hamlin who'd heard an entire wind orchestra. 'i could have taken him for forty grand/ she said.' the money arrived in their account five days later, and tatarsky received his honestly earned two thousand. sergei and his team were already planning to go to yalta to film a suitable cliff, on which the bun carved in granite was supposed to appear in the final frames, when the client was found dead in his office. |
| someone had strangled him with a telephone cord. the traditional electric-iron marks were discovered on the body, and some merciless hand had stopped the victim's mouth with a nocturne cake (sponge soaked in liqueur, bitter chocolate in a distinctly minor key, lightly sprinkled with tragic hoar-frosting of coconut). 'one generation passeth away and another generation cometh/ tatarsky thought philosophically, 'but thou lookest out always for one.' and so tatarsky became a . he didn't bother to himself to of old bosses; he simply left the keys of kiosk on the porch of trailer where hussein hung out: there were rumours that chechens demanded serious compensation when anyone left one of businesses. it didn't take him long to new acquaintances and he started working for studios at same time.. .. |
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