Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Mr Shaker, an American, was one of those people who could be called ‘a man of his time’, the right man in the right place at the right time, one of those people with whom our modern world abounds; those numerous stars, artists, pop singers, male and female, those con men and bullshit artists, those gurus who hoodwink us daily, those numerous prophets, swindlers and ‘designers’ of our lives in whose power we choose to place ourselves.

Long ago, this seventy-five-year-old had used his small inheritance to purchase a Chinese man’s run-down drugstore together with a vast number of vitamin preparations that were passed their sell-by date. Mr Shaker had stuck new, alluring labels on the old bottles and the vitamins were selling like hot cakes. At first Mr Shaker had not believed that people were so naive, but after the cheerful clink of the first cash, he came to believe not only in people but also in the fact that he was a man with an important mission in this world. And Mr Shaker’s mission could be condensed into a simple slogan: Pump it up! To cut a long story short, with time Mr Shaker had grown into the king of an industry of magical powders and potions, bearing the label food-supplement. Those whose job it is to monitor such products had long since realised that it was better for these things to be sold legally, because otherwise they were only going to be sold illegally. From vitamins that had passed their sell-by date, Mr Shaker moved on to mixtures, or, to put it another way, he moved from fiction to science fiction, from grammar to mathematics, from physics to metaphysics. Like every successful tradesman, what Mr Shaker actually sold was ideological hot air, in this case the hot air of metamorphosis. His products suggested to frogs that they would turn into princesses. His customers believed that the body was a divine temple, that his magical powder was the sacred host and that only a transformed body was a valid visa for a life in paradise on earth. Mr Shaker’s advertising slogans contained the words nutrition, transformation, form, reform, shape, reshape, model, remodel, tone and tighten – suggesting that the human body was a heap of Lego pieces, and that it could therefore become its owner’s favourite toy. Mr Shaker activated the acupuncture point of the archetypal dream that slumbers in each of us, a dream in which, with the aid of a magic potion, the dreamer can become as small as a poppy seed, pass through any keyhole, become invisible, be transformed into a giant, vanquish a terrible dragon and win the heart of a beautiful princess. More by chance than design, Mr Shaker had put his finger on the fundamental obsession of our age, which explained his success. In the absence of all ideologies, the only refuge that remains for the human imagination is the body. The human body is the only territory which its owner can control, thin, reduce, pump, increase, shape, firm and adapt to its ideal, whether that ideal is called Brad Pitt or Nicole Kidman. Yes, Mr Shaker successfully milked that obsession.

While the contents of Mr Shaker’s preparations stirred respect (creatine monohydrate, creatine phosphate, alpha-lipidic acid, glycogen, taurine, argol, aminogens), their names evoked real reverence: AS, C-250, Powermax, Aminomax, Myo Maxx, Trans-XX, Volume 35, Sci X, Iso X, WPC, Ultra AM, GLM, ALC, CLA, HMB, HMB Ultra, Carni Tec, Mega AM, Uni Syne, Yohimbe, Gro Now, Carbo Boost, Cyto For, Hyper M, Cy Pro, Cyto B, Animal Mass.

Mr Shaker’s kingdom began gradually to implode when the newspapers published a few dubious reports, and then serious articles as well, suggesting that his powders may have helped pump up muscles, but their hormonal ingredients reduced potency. Mr Shaker watched in despair as everything he had built up over the years deflated like a balloon. And that was how he had ended up here, to kill several birds with one stone: to soothe his nerves and at the same time have a good sniff round the post-communist market, to see whether there were any crumbs for him there, and if there were, to drive the ‘easterners’, stodgy with beer, yellow with smoking and bloated with alcohol, to reshape their bodies from what had been commercially incompatible to what was compatible.

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