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Oksan. Why do you like clubs so much?"
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I don't know… Here you feel free. You can do what you want… Everyone is your own… In general, I go to jump around.
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I guess my parents were always fighting.....
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Yeah! But they quickly got used to my personality.
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Which one is that?
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Angry. Yeah, angry. Everyone used to ask me why I broke up with my boyfriend. I'd say, "Well, would you like it when your other half comes home at 3:00 in the morning drunk?" They all said, "No." I said: "Well, he didn't like it either." – Yeah. Frankly.
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What's there is there.
She spoke from the heart. It was like a murderer in hiding who had found someone to pour her heart out to. But on the other hand, it was obvious that she was justifying herself with a view to the future. So that she wouldn't have to apologize for her behavior later, but just say, "I warned you, that's just the way I am."
Gustav hadn't met many of these, but he already knew what to do with her now, all that was left was to find out what he should do it against.
"What are you most afraid of?" – He asked.
"Thunderstorms. Thunder and lightning. I need someone to be there for me." – she sounded very serious. Clearly it wasn't the kind of fear that would paralyze her or make her lose her mind, but it was definitely the kind that would throw her off balance.
Oksana looked into his eyes again, her arms gently wrapped around his neck, the leg closest to him slowly and smoothly climbing into his lap.
"Why don't you sing something?" – The girl asked.
"No, but you know… We could go jumping."
She smiled and chuckled lightly, "Come on, Goose!"
She had told Gustav before that she knew a lot of people in clubs, and especially in this one. And this time she'd already talked to the manager, the bartender, the waitress, found out how things were going, who was where, who the DJ was, and then voiced it all out loud.
It turned out that the people she would have been happy to see were not here today. She didn't like Pablo, the new owner of the place, whose arrogance had made many people stop coming here, but she knew him well and had known him for a long time.
After dancing for a while, they sat down on one of the couches in the center of the room. After a minute, she called out to someone passing by, who came over, and they kissed lightly on the lips, after which he went on his way.
"It's Pablo," Oksana announced. It was obvious that she had had enough alcohol, and in such a state she could do obvious stupid things.
Gustav didn't bother to remind her of what she'd told him about the man five or ten minutes ago, about her attitude toward him and the epithets she'd thrown at him. It was too soon, but it was clearly a direction to go in, since she was setting herself up so cleverly.
"Ah, the owner." – Gustav said. – Why do so many people dislike him?" "Well he used to be one of his own. You know, when there was hardly any money, and everyone tried to support each other. They still do now. And he is. He just got lucky once in his life. It was an accident. He just got married. Lucky for money, I mean. He had a lot of money. Bought this club and started acting like he was better than them. And everyone remembers who he is, where he's from, what kind of man he is, what he's worth. They are used to communicating with him on equal terms, so they don't come here now. In general, it's a fairly standard story.
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So he's switched.
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Yeah. I guess so. Or maybe he's just been like that all the time and now he's just showing himself more clearly… Has money changed you?
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Not at all. It's stupid for me. Changing for money.
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Why is that?
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Because, bitch, you deserve what I'm going to do to you. – Gustav thought angrily and said. – Because it all starts with the fact that a man wants money to achieve some of his goals, and in this case money is just a means for him. Even when a person, who does not have money yet, wants to get it, he really wants something else. He wants material wealth. And this is very remote from money. Even in this case money is only a means. But when they get this means, many people get lost. They forget about what they want, forget about the goal and start thinking about money. Just money.
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Yeah. I wish there were more of them. – Oksana nodded.
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Not to lose them. Actually, to not lose them… People don't want to go back in time afterwards. So they try to get more money. As if that will take them away from the time when they were short of money.
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And why do you say that money is very remotely related to material wealth? I don't get it.
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The whole point of the word exuberance… It's different for everyone. Less and more is equally bad. You need a two-room apartment – live in it, you need a onestory house – there you go. Cars, houses – it's like the size of clothes. Don't go on a ship with 20 oars alone – you won't be able to cope, better take a small boat. That's wealth. And when a man is in real prosperity, he thinks clearly, he knows what he needs. He's just in his place. And few people know how to manage extra money.
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How is that redundant?!
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You're confused by that word in relation to money, right?
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Yes, you are.
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It confuses a lot of people. For the reason that most people don't know how to spend it.
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I disagree. People just want more than they can buy. That's all.
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Yeah. "Want" is a very interesting word… It's a very capricious word. You see how many people are walking around with iPhones? With a $30,000 salary? What do they need it for? It's just a toy. Or what they drive. 2 or 3 million, 2 or 3 million cars on credit. It's the same toy, only bigger. And they are not able to think how much they overpay for a loan or repair of an expensive car… They just wanted to buy "it". I liked the model… People always buy what they have enough to buy, and then try to justify themselves to themselves and others that they did the right thing.
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You talk like you see right through people. What if they didn't? What if they really wanted to buy it?
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Of course they did. That's the difference. The difference between "want" and "need." You notice it when you see it in large quantities. Then it's grotesque. I was once at an air show in France. I was paid to consult on military equipment, deals with it and, most importantly, to make sure that these deals were profitable. I had to help an Arab sheikh buy multi-purpose helicopters. He didn't hire me. In Saudi Arabia, despite the seemingly monolithic nature of the government and the system, they have their own groups inside. It's not that they're rivals, but they have different economic interests. They are of the same kind, but, conventionally, in different places, as if they were pockets. One of these groups was working with Lockheed Martin and was paying me to talk him into buying their helicopters specifically. You see, he was given the job of just picking the best ones, he didn't know anything about them. And I convinced him that Lockheed Martin was the best. And he agreed with that. But he wanted, he wanted to buy another one.
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So he didn't buy the one you recommended?
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He didn't buy helicopters at all. He liked the NURS, Russian-made unguided rocket systems. Just impressed. And he signed a large shipment for them. He only bought 10 LM helicopters instead of the 70 he needed.
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Yeah. That's weird.
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Yes, it is. But what's weirder is that a lot of purchases are stupidly made that way. Because they just like it. And the bigger the deal, the more they try to prove that it was necessary… Hence the distance between money and wealth. It confuses the mind. – Gustav, of course, didn't say the most important thing. That it was he who advised to perform the installation from Riyadh only nominally, to show everyone who is the master in the house. Upon arrival home, the prince was in disgrace, and his influence was taken by someone who was under the cap of the Irishman for more than a year. Thus Gustav got himself a share of the transportation and logistics market in another Arab country.
At that moment Pablo walked past them once more in the opposite direction and stood at the opposite wall. There was no doubt that he was looking at Oksana, and his beastly feeling, his desire to possess someone at that moment, was coming out, coloring his eyes with the acrid glittering color of those who feel like hunters. In Oksana's case, Gustav felt a vivid emotion – a drunken inertia to give herself to someone, someone who would take her now, and take her aggressively, so that there was no thought of resisting.
"Let's go dancing, Goose," said the girl.
Gustav didn't even look at her; as if he wasn't really interested, as if she should have suggested something else: "Dance, Oksan. I'll sit for a while. I'll rest a bit." It was noisy as a nightclub should be; everything was rattling, and the whole atmosphere called for nothing but shutting off your brain. Everything was so loud and foggy.
Oksana got up from the couch and headed to the dance floor. Her movements and her manner of being in the crowd to the constantly changing rhythm of the music showed that such an environment was not only familiar to her, but also very pleasant. She could dance in such a way that I wanted to hug, cuddle and feel her movements on me.
After half a minute, Pablo moved toward her, and with his arm around her back, he kissed her lips. As if he wanted to suck her emotions and the euphoria that made her jump on the dance floor. Then he just pulled his hand away and moved away, toward the bar.
The girl's reaction turned out to be nothing – from afar it was visible that she smiled, wiped saliva from her lips with the back of her hand and continued dancing.
"Ready beauty. We're good to go." – Gustav decided and, having put a large bill of money into the wine menu, walked leisurely to the exit. There was no doubt about the result of all the following actions – no matter what it all came to this night, the former model's mood in the morning would be disgusting, and, most importantly, she would blame herself for everything in the world: that feeling when you want to apologize and fix everything, but there is so much to do that you can't get your hands up to start with something, because whatever you do, you'll get all over it.
***
A minute later, Gustav was already behind the wheel. When you find yourself not only in silence but also in your own car after such noise, a sense of peace comes along with a tremendous sense of self, as if you had changed out of someone else's clothes and into your own.
The time was 4 a.m., and it was not yet light; the city still felt like night. When he left the club, Gustav drove onto Southwestern Avenue and headed into the region, an hour and a half to his house behind the Small Regional Ring on the Southwestern Highway.
It was good to think at times like this. About what was, what will be, what is now.
He liked what was happening to people now. The era when mass society began to create one common stream of thought for everyone. Everyone thought in their own way, while thinking like everyone else. This game with the subconscious mind inside a huge number of people.
Twenty years ago, there was a consumer society where everyone just had to get a "thing". Then this thing was made old, and the hunt for a new "thing" began.
Now this is not enough. There is a crisis in the consumer society.
Everyone needs to be something, to be someone, to mean something to the world. Or at least to consider yourself as such, to believe that you mean something. Maybe it's because of the demand for complex labor. Maybe it's because things have become freer and more colorful in the sociocultural space. Maybe it was because everything became accessible to almost everyone through the information revolution made by the Internet. But the new subspecies of man was very different from all those that had preceded him.
Man playing. A post-materialistic basis of worldview, where the game concept of life does not just push a person forward, but makes him enjoy what he does. And it is not enough that everything works out – it is necessary to make it look beautiful, to create a creative image.
Of course, not without obvious disadvantages. And the new "Avgian stables" are a culture shock, where there is no outline of stability, the very stability that is simply a comfort zone in its essence; but there is zero competence, calling everything into question and the need for one's own trajectory, which requires constant reflection.
Having broken free from the shackles of his own limitations, once built to protect himself from his own stupidity, a man found himself in front of a mirror in an empty field, believing that it was better, and not realizing what it would lead to. Like those countries that possess nuclear weapons; with hysterics, blood and tears they have sought them until the very moment of obtaining them and with trembling and heaviness in their souls since the moment of their possession, having earned a huge responsibility for innocent people all over the world and a timid desire to return everything as it used to be for everyone, with the usual bloodthirsty all-killing wars and primitive understanding of human life as such.
All this led to the phrase "No knowledge now is knowledge in the 'old sense' where 'to know' is to be certain." And politicians especially liked it.
The world, consisting entirely of assumptions, allowed you to build these assumptions for yourself regardless of actions – in fact, you could do anything at all, as long as it was properly presented. Exactly presented. Twenty or fifty years ago, you had to prove or justify something, but now it was enough just to present it, to present it in such a way that it would be perceived as you needed it to be. Gustav was much more interesting in this atmosphere. People who are more responsible for themselves are much more difficult to destroy, to bring to a state of despair, to take away the last thing. After all, a person no longer has a single pillar of all things, as it happens with believers or nationalists. When a person attributes everything that happens to him only to his own zone of responsibility, when he knows the price of a mistake, when he is ready to correct this mistake as soon as he notices it, then he becomes not just a man, but a life-sustaining machine for achieving the goal. He becomes a goal-oriented willful hunter in life. And even with Gustav's abilities and centuries of experience, he had to act more and more unconventionally, as if clinging to the strings of other people's mistakes, and it was more and more dragging than before.
Katherine, for example, was the easiest to deal with, although she was initially supposed to be the tough nut, but she was simply let down by her attitude towards animals.
Natalie, whom Gustave had recently killed, lived up to expectations, showing a willingness to rely too much on a strange man, believing in some "signs" in her destiny, while constantly remembering how many people she had wiped her feet on before simply because she could do so with impunity, and did so with a satisfaction in her own beauty that was incomprehensible to her.
Vladimir Arkadyevich was experienced, but old. There was no need to "read" him or to invent combinations. One just had to wait for his mistake, like the one that forms in anyone if you don't sleep for a long time or do everything yourself. And his main enemy, fatigue, would never show up directly and remind him of himself. Such an enemy is always at the ready, and therefore always wins.
The only one of the latter with whom one could act according to standards was Oksana. But that's just luck with alcohol. When alcohol is involved, there is no longer any room for the person playing, or responsibility for one's image and ability to have a point. It's as if a person goes into the stone age of primal needs and comes back from there as if from a cesspool, unsure not only of whether he will be accepted back, but whether he himself deserves it.
"Requests" for such a return were expected by Gustav sometime in the afternoon or nearer the evening, but certainly on this day.
By five in the morning the Irishman had reached the regional center. His house was located in a dense forest on the road from the cottage village "Grafskaya Usadba". Initially he had considered the possibility of settling there, in the elite part, where the houses stood almost in the forest, separated by frequent trees and separated from the other part of the settlement by three ponds, but he was slightly shaken by the inevitable fact of being in the neighborhood with people. Having once been in France in the first half of the 18th century, he was living in a suburb of Paris. Opportunities for seduction at court were plentiful, and the romance of the time, was deeper and more refined in its essence. One of his lovers, left with a broken heart, did not kill himself at home poison or drown himself in the Seine, and hanged himself right in front of his house and so that it was clearly visible to all. Of course, there were no consequences for him, although a day later the girl's relatives, having found out what the matter was, came to his house, intending to tear him to pieces and hang him in the same place where she had hung herself. By that time Gustav had already left, having remembered well that in his case it was necessary to live separately from everyone else, or at least in a place where neighbors would be closed off from each other by concrete walls of a stone jungle. This time he chose the first option and was very satisfied: he had his own house with autonomous power supply and water purification system, only two floors with 4-meter ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows so that from the second floor you could look into the forest with a hunter's eyes. On the edges of the house were two outbuildings. Actually, they were the most important part of the whole complex: the first was a tower, the top floor of which reached such a height that from the panoramic windows you could see the tops of the trees going away like a green sea, sprouting in the wind – such a view inspired Gustav with new thoughts, new possibilities. Besides, it was here that Gustav could most enjoy other people's suffering, remember the right steps, the goals achieved, and the edges of the trees seemed to agree with him, nodding their heads and confirming every thought. The second building looked no bigger than a barn from the outside, but it was just an entrance. Underground there were two more floors, both black as night and full of all sorts of equipment. The minuscule second floor was a single room with a black leather chester couch in the center. It was a good place for solitude, when some process just needed to wait or think of something new, because dungeons gave the most exquisite and extraordinary ideas and ways of their realization, and sometimes it was even surprising how much difference in the course of thought could be only because of where this thought was born – the darkness made the thought richer, freer and allowed it to do anything.
And I also needed this bunker for treatment, and I had to treat it thoroughly… Headaches. When it happened, your brain would just explode and you could go crazy. And it could last a day or several days in a row, or a week, and when it was over, it was hard to think or think about anything, to think at all, or to move from place to place, as if you had to learn it all over again.
The reason was the same as Gustav's need, only in reverse. He couldn't live without the suffering of others, objectively built on their own inner guilt, but that suffering didn't have to be too much. Like an overdose or alcohol poisoning, like an overabundance of vitamins or an allergy to a favorite food he once consumed inordinately. And it was precisely when Gustav's successes were out of proportion that he himself began to ache. Of course, it was not the soul, or the emptiness in his chest, or hopelessness, or the loss of the meaning of life, but this pain in his head became more real and natural than the sun rising in the morning or the freezing cold for a polar bear.
He noticed this peculiarity of his organism a long time ago: in 1648, when a German village celebrated the end of the Thirty Years' War, the first all-European conflict. Gustav alternately seduced and drove to suicide eight girls in just two days – the general rejoicing was so great that everyone wanted his own happiness, so everything turned out much easier and faster than usual. After a day Gustav began to have white spots in his eyes, that is, his eyes were all right, only in the place where they looked, there was a white spot. And a strange feeling of weakness, as if the body had weakened on purpose, about to surrender to the ailment. Then the former stains passed, and the pain began – it seemed that it was time to die, it seemed that the punishment had finally arrived, and everything would be over. And it was over – the pain was over, and Gustav realized that it was only the price of greed, of time to be reckoned with; that even for him there were limits and a certain line. He knew it well now, though he didn't know the exact boundaries of what was permissible – maybe someone else's suffering was deeper, or maybe the suffering of someone else's death was greater than the suffering of his own loss.
Gustav didn't know how to measure it, and sometimes he just wanted more, so he broke his own prohibitions, suffering from satiety himself. There was a bunker for that.
After putting the car in the garage built into the main building, Gustav went up to the second floor. When he saw his new Carlo Pasolini shoes, he remembered how recently the Labrador puppy he had given to Catherine yesterday had been lying in them, waiting for him. It was the first animal that had ever lived in the same room with him for any length of time. His attitude to animals was somewhat different than to people – animals always show their intentions directly, completely devoid of the concepts of truth and untruth, having only "given", that is, "as it is": to love, to hate, to attack, to defend, to want to eat or sleep, or maybe to play. Animals hide nothing and show everything, and only in proportion to what they are actually experiencing. For this the Irishman respected them very much. While he had been in the house, he had done nothing but try to please him, and during the whole time he had been away he had chewed only on the one shoe that had been set aside for that purpose, and had not touched anything else. Gustav knew what it was like for animals at an early age, what it was like when they were teething, their main weapon, and how important it was for them, especially at that age, not to be left alone. Especially since this chestnut-colored female puppy was the friendliest and most lonely Labrador in the world.
