Empire V by Victor Pelevin

Author:Victor Pelevin [Pelevin, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2015-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

AGGREGATE ‘M-5’

Enlil Maratovich’s study was a large, serious, oak-lined room. Against the wall was a relatively modest desk with a swivel chair. Contrasting with it, rearing up in the middle of the room, was an antique wooden seat with arms and a high, carved back. The wood had been finished in now-faded gilt, and it occurred to me this was how the first electric chair in history might have looked, invented by Leonardo da Vinci on one of his rare days off when he was not busy protecting Mary Magdalene’s mummy from the agents of the depraved Vatican. Presumably this stool of repentance would be where Enlil Maratovich would seat erring vampires before castigating them from behind his desk.

A picture hung above the desk. It depicted a strange scene, apparently a treatment being carried out in a Victorian lunatic asylum. Before a blazing fire sat five men in frock coats and top hats. They were tied hand and foot to their chairs, their torsos strapped in with thick leather belts as if in some primitive aeroplane. Each man had a stick in his mouth, held in place by a handkerchief tied round the back of the head. It was like the piece of wood forced between the teeth of an epileptic suffering a seizure, to prevent him biting through his tongue. The artist had caught in masterly fashion the reflection of the flames in the black nap of the top hats. Elsewhere in the picture could be seen a man in a long, dark red robe, but he was in shadow and only the outline of his body could be made out.

Two prints hung on the other wall. In the first a vigorously brushed dark green shadow floated above the darkened earth. This picture was entitled Alan Greenspan’s Last Flight. The other showed a triple projection of a red carnation sticking out of the barrel of a machine-gun, with a caption in bold type:

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