‘I just wanted to say that I know what you were doing at work. Yet I still love you.’
‘That’s the root of all my problems,’ he said in a low voice. ‘That you love me.’
I couldn’t believe my ears.
‘What? Just you say that again!’
‘I’m joking, I’m joking,’ he said hastily. ‘You’re always joking, so I thought I’d try it.’
The terrible thing was that what he’d said was absolutely true. And we both realized it. There was a heavy silence.
‘And we didn’t send Shitman to his death, we sent him to glory,’ he said after a minute. ‘And don’t you go besmirching his memory.’
He was right, we had to change the subject.
‘You mean to say he knew?’ I asked.
‘He must have, with some part of his mind.’
‘So you have nothing to reproach yourself with?’
Alexander shrugged.
‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘we have his application, the one he wrote in the insane asylum: “I want to see London and die”, dated and signed. And in the second place, we had an expert consultation on the humanitarian aspect. The consultant said everything was okay.’
‘Was that Pavel Ivanovich?’ I guessed.
Alexander nodded.
‘How did he ever come to work for you? Pavel Ivanovich, I mean.’
‘He felt it was important for him to let us know about his repentance. A strange business, of course, but why turn a man away? Especially if his repentance is sincere. We always need information, you know - about cultural stuff, so we can tell who’s with us and who isn’t. And humanitarian consultations as well. So he became part of the team . . . Okay, let’s drop it. Shitman’s in God’s hands now. That’s if the Imams are telling the truth, of course.’
After that we didn’t say a single word to each other all day until the evening - I was sulking with him and he was sulking with me: both of us had said enough. In the evening, when he was fed up with the silence, he started asking me the clues for a crossword.
That evening he was in his human body, and that made the room feel especially cozy. I was lying on a bamboo mat under a lamp and reading another of Stephen Hawking’s books - The Theory of Everything (no more and no less). Alexander’s questions distracted me from my reading, but I answered them patiently. I found some of them even more amusing than the book.
‘What’s the right spelling - hynaecological or gynaecological?’
‘Gynaecological.’
‘Gynaecological. Then it all fits. And I thought there was an “h” at the beginning.’
‘That’s because subconsciously you think of women as hyenas. ’
‘That’s not true,’ he said, and suddenly started laughing. ‘Well, look at that . . .’
‘Now what have you got there?’
‘Gynaecological stomatology.’
‘What - “gynaecological stomatology”?’
‘There are two words in a line in the crossword. “Gynaecological” and “stomatology”. If you read them together, it’s funny.’
‘You only think it’s funny because you’re ignorant,’ I said. ‘But that particular culturological concept actually exists. There’s an American writer called Camille Paglia. She had this . . . No, it’s not that she had one herself. Let’s put it this way, she operates with the concept of the “vagina dentata”. The vagina with teeth is a symbol of the formless, all-consuming chaos that opposes the Apollonian male principle, which is typified by the urge towards formal precision.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘Where from?’
‘I’ve read about that. Lots of times.’
‘In Camille Paglia?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘Nah.’
‘Where then?’
‘At the FSB Academy.’
‘Counter-brainwashing?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then where exactly?’ I persisted.
‘In the wall newspaper,’ he said reluctantly. ‘It had a humour section called “smiles of all latitudes”, and there was this joke in it: “What’s scarier than an atom bomb? A cunt with teeth.”’
I’d been expecting something of the sort.
‘But why lots of times?’
‘The wall newspaper was never changed in three years.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I get the picture.’
Evidently my tone of voice must have stung him.
‘Why do you always have to reproach me for my ignorance,’ he said irritably. ‘Of course, you know more about all these “discourses” than I do. But I’m no knucklehead either, you know. It’s just that my knowledge is in a different area, it’s practical. Which happens to make it a lot more valuable than yours.’
‘It depends how you look at it.’
‘Whichever way you look at it. Supposing I learned this Camille Paglia off by heart. Then what would I do with her?’
‘That depends on your inclinations, your imagination.’
‘Can you give me even one example of how reading Camille Paglia has helped someone in real life?’
I thought about it.
‘Yes, I can.’
‘Well?’
‘I had a client who was a spiritualist. He used to read Camille Paglia to the spirit of the poet Igor Severyanin during his spiritualist séances. And Igor Severyanin used to tell him, through the saucer, that he liked it very much and he’d always suspected something of the kind, only he’d never been able to formulate it. He even dictated a poem:
Ah, vagina dentata, this fleeting
assignation is strife.
Unforgettable is our meeting.
Clean and chaste is my life.
‘There you see,’ he said, ‘I managed to lead this clean and chaste life perfectly well without any of your gynaecological stomatology, just as a soldier. And I helped my motherland.’
‘And she paid you back, the way she usually does.’
‘That’s not something I need to be ashamed about.’
‘Nobody’s going to feel ashamed about it. Haven’t you realized yet what kind of country you are living in?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘And I never will. The world I live in is one I create for myself. By what I do in it.’
‘Get you,’ I said. ‘If your FSB pals could have heard you now, they’d probably give you another medal. So you created this place for us, did you?’
‘More like you did.’
I came to my senses.
‘Yes, I’m sorry. You’re right. Forgive me, please.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said, and went back to his crossword.
I felt ashamed. I went over, sat down beside him and put my arms round him.
‘What are we arguing about, Sasha. Let’s have a howl, shall we?’
‘Not right now,’ he said, ‘tonight, when the moon rises.’
I was left sitting there beside him, with my arm round his shoulders. He didn’t say anything. After a minute or two I felt his body trembling slightly.
He was crying. I’d never seen him do that before.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked affectionately. ‘Who’s upset my little boy?’
‘No one,’ he said. ‘It’s just me. Your Camille Paglia’s to blame, with the teeth you know where.’
‘But why should she make you cry?’
‘Because,’ he said, ‘she’s got teeth there, and now I’ve got claws there.’
‘Where?’
‘You know where,’ he said. ‘When I transform. Like a fifth leg. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.’
That was when everything became clear - that new secretiveness of his, and that aura of irrational dread that surrounded him when he became a dog. Yes, everything fell into place. The poor thing, how he must have suffered, I thought. Above all, I had to make him feel that he was dear to me even like that - if he couldn’t see it for himself.
‘You silly thing,’ I said. ‘So what? Grow a cactus there if you like. As lo
ng as your tail’s safe and sound.’
‘You really don’t mind?’ he asked.
‘Of course not, darling.’
‘And it’s enough for you . . . You know, what we do?’
‘More than enough.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Well since you’ve brought it up, I’d like to swap places. So that sometimes you can be Su and I can be Chow. I’m always Su.’
‘No, I’m sorry, don’t you go trying to turn me into a queer, on top of this business with the claws . . .’
‘If you say so,’ I said, ‘I don’t insist. You asked, and I told you.’
‘Are we talking frankly now?’
I nodded.
‘Then tell me, why haven’t you given me a single blowjob all the times we’ve been in Hong Kong? Because I’m really a black dog?’
I counted up to ten to myself. After all, the fact that I couldn’t stand the word ‘blow-job’ was my problem, not his - there was no point in taking offence.
‘So you think you really are a black dog?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said, ‘this black dog thinks that I really am him.’
‘And that’s why you’re so rarely human nowadays?’
He nodded.
‘I don’t even want to be. After all, I’ve got nothing left here, apart from you. Everything’s on that side now . . . And it’s not mine, it’s his. You were right when you said that words just mess with your head. So what about that blowjob?’
I counted to ten again, but I still couldn’t help myself.
‘Can I ask you please not to use that word in my presence?’
He shrugged and gave a crooked smile.
‘Now I’m not even allowed to use words. Only you can do that, is that it? You’re always putting me down, Ginger.’
I sighed. When it comes down to it, all men are the same, and they only want one thing from us. And it’s a good thing if they still want that, said one of my inner voices.
‘Okay, put the movie on. But not from the beginning, from track three . . .’
As always, following our insane and shameless Hong Kong rendezvous we took a long rest. I looked up at the ceiling, at the rough concrete lit by the electric bulb, resembling the surface of some ancient heavenly body. He lay beside me. What a sweetie, I thought, how touching his love is. After all, this is all so new to him. Compared to me, that is. It’s a tough break for the poor boy, with those claws. But I once heard something about a dog with a fifth leg . . . Only what was it exactly? I can’t remember.
‘Hey!’ he said to me. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘Did you enjoy that?’
He looked at me.
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘It was just the complete pizdets.’
He uttered the Russian obscene word, which was commonly used in two senses - ‘total fuck-up’ and ‘unsurpassable excellence, in some way related to a total fuck-up’. Yet it had one more rare meaning that I suddenly recalled. I sat upright.
‘That’s it, I’ve remembered!’
‘What have you remembered?’
‘I’ve remembered who you are.’
‘And who am I?’
‘I read somewhere about a dog like you with five legs. The Dog Pizdets. He sleeps up among the eternal snows, and when enemies descend on Russia in their hordes, he wakes up and . . .’
‘Treads on them with his leg?’ he asked.
‘No. He . . . He kind of happens to them. Like shit happens, you know. That’s it. And I think in the northern myths he’s called “Garm”. Have you come across him? The Nordic project’s your area, after all.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t. It’s interesting. Tell me more.’
‘He’s a truly fearsome dog. The wolf Fenrir’s double. He’ll come into his own after Ragnarek. But in the meantime he guards the house of the dead.’
‘What other information do you have?’
‘Something else a bit vague . . . Like he’s supposed to spy on men to see how they make fire and pass the secret on to women . . .’
‘Skip this,’ he growled. ‘What else?’
‘That’s all I remember.’
‘And what are the practical consequences here?’
‘Concerning Garm, I don’t know. You need to go to Iceland for a consultation. But concerning Pizdets . . . Try to happen to something.’
I said that to him as a joke, but he took my words absolutely seriously.
‘To what?’
I was suddenly infected with his seriousness. I ran my eyes over the surrounding space. The laptop? No. The electric kettle? The light bulb?
‘Try happening to the light bulb,’ I said.
A second went by. Then suddenly the light bulb flared up in a bright bluish glare and went out. Everything went dark. But for a few more seconds the spiral of wire, photographed by my retina, continued to illuminate my inner world with an echo of its extinguished light. When that imprint faded, the darkness became total. I got up, fumbled on the wooden crate that served us as a table to find the torch, and turned it on.
There was no one else in the room.
He didn’t come back for two days and nights. I was sick with worry and exhausted by the uncertainty. But when he came in I didn’t reproach him, not a single word. Chekhov was right: a woman’s soul is essentially an empty vessel that is filled by the sorrows and joys of her beloved.
‘Well, how was it? Tell me!’
‘What point is there in telling you?’ he said. ‘This I have to show you.’
‘Have you learned to do it?’
He nodded.
‘And what can you happen to?’
‘Why, to anything,’ he said.
‘Anything at all?’
He nodded again.
‘Even me?’
‘Well, not unless you ask me to.’
‘Can you happen to yourself?’
He gave strange sort of chortle.
‘That’s what I did first of all. Straight after the light bulb. Otherwise, what kind of Pizdets am I?’
I was intrigued and even a little frightened - after all, this was a serious metaphysical action we were talking about here.
‘And what kind of Pizdets are you?’ I asked in a voice hushed with respect.
‘Total,’ he replied. ‘Absolute, final, complete and irreversible.’
At that moment he exuded such romantic power and mystery that I couldn’t restrain myself and reached out to kiss him. He turned pale and stepped back, but then apparently realized that wasn’t the way real machos behaved, and allowed me to finish what I’d begun. Every muscle in his body tensed up, but nothing terrible happened.
‘I’m so happy for you, darling!’ I said.
Not many were-creatures know what it is to feel happy for someone else. And tailless monkeys know even less about it, all they know how to do is smile broadly in order to boost their social adaptability and increase the volume of sales. While imitating the feeling of happiness for someone else, the tailless monkey actually experiences envy or, in the best case, remains indifferent. But I really did experience that feeling, as pure and transparent as the water in a mountain stream.
‘You can’t imagine how happy I am for you,’ I repeated and kissed him again.
This time he didn’t move away.
‘Really?’ he asked. ‘But why?’
‘Because after all this time you’re in a good mood. You’re feeling better. And I love you.’
His face darkened a little.
‘I love you too. But I keep thinking that you’re going to leave me. You’d probably be better off if you did. But I won’t feel any happiness for you.’
‘In the first place, I’m not planning on going anywhere,’ I said. ‘And in the second place, the feeling you speak of isn’t love, it’s a symptom of egoism. To the male chauvinist in you, I’m merely a toy, a piece of property and a trophy status symbol. And you’re afraid of losing me
in the same way a property owner is afraid of being parted from some expensive item. You can never feel happy for someone else that way.’
‘So how do you feel happy for someone else?’
‘For that you have to want nothing for yourself.’
‘You’re telling me you don’t want anything for yourself?’ he asked suspiciously.
I shook my head.
‘But why?’
‘I told you that once already. When you look inside yourself for a long time, you realize that there’s nothing there. How can you want something for that nothing?’
‘But if there’s nothing inside you, there’s nothing inside anyone else either.’
‘If you think about it properly, there’s nothing real anywhere,’ I said. ‘There’s only the choice with which you fill emptiness. And when you feel happy for someone else, you fill emptiness with love.’
‘Whose love? If there isn’t anybody anywhere, then whose love is it?’
‘That doesn’t matter to emptiness. And don’t you get hot and bothered about it either. But if you want a meaning for life, you’ll never find a better one.’
‘But love - isn’t that emptiness too?’
‘Sure.’
‘Then what’s the difference?’
‘The difference is emptiness too.’
He thought for a moment.
‘But can you fill the emptiness . . . with justice?’
‘If you start filling the emptiness with justice, you soon end up as a war criminal.’
‘You’re getting something confused there, Ginger. Why a war criminal?’
‘Well, who’s going to decide what’s just and what isn’t?’
‘People.’
‘And who’s going to decide what the people should decide?’
‘We’ll think of something,’ he said and glanced at a fly soaring past. The bluebottle dropped to the floor.
‘What are you doing, you brute? Do you want to be like them?’
I nodded in the direction of the city.
‘I am like them,’ he said.
‘Like who?’
‘The nation.’
‘The nation?’ I echoed incredulously.
I think even he was embarrassed by the pomposity of the phrase, and he decided to change his tone.
‘I was just thinking, maybe I ought to go to work. To find out how things are going.’
The Sacred Book of the Werewolf Page 28