A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories

by Victor Pelevin

  “So that?”

  “Maybe so that I can go outside in the evening and breathe the air in deep and feel that I’m a part of the universe, a blade of grass in the concrete, you might say—It’s a pity I’m not often moved to the core like that nowadays. It’s probably because of that up there.”

  He raised his hand and pointed to the immense moon blazing in the sky, and then realized that his companion was walking in front of him and couldn’t possibly see his gesture. But the companion must have had something like an eye in the back of his head, because he mimicked Pyotr Petrovich’s gesture almost simultaneously, stretching up his arm in exactly the same way.

  “At moments like that I ask myself what I do all the rest of the time in my life,” said Pyotr Petrovich. “Why do I so rarely see everything the way I do then? Why do I always make the same choice, to sit in my chamber and stare into its darkest corner?”

  The unexpected precision of these final words gave Pyotr Petrovich a certain bitter satisfaction. But then he stumbled, throwing his arms up in the air, and the theme of the conversation went completely out of his head. Keeping his balance with a monkeylike twist of his torso, he clutched at the wall with one hand, while his other hand almost broke the glass in a window close beside him.

  On the other side of this window there was a small room illuminated by a red night light. It looked as though it was in a communal apartment—the furniture included a refrigerator, and the bed was half-hidden by a wardrobe, so that nothing could be seen of the sleeper in it except the skinny naked legs. Pyotr Petrovich’s gaze fell on the wall above the night light, which was covered by a large number of photographs. There were family snapshots, photographs of children, grownups, old men, old women, dogs; right at the very center of the exhibition was a photograph of the graduating class at some institute, with the faces set in white ovals, making the whole thing look like a carton of eggs cut in half longways. For the single second Pyotr Petrovich was looking into the room, a person turned yellow by the passage of time smiled at him out of each of the ovals. All the photographs looked very old, and they all exuded such a strong odor of vanished life that Pyotr Petrovich suddenly felt nauseous. He quickly turned away and walked on.

  “Yes,” he said after a few steps, “Yes. I know what you’re going to say: so better just keep quiet. Exactly. Experience of life. We simply lose the ability to see anything else around us except the dusty photographs of the past suspended in space. We gaze and gaze at them, and then we wonder why the world around us has turned into such a garbage dump. And then, when the moon comes out, you suddenly realize that the world’s not to blame at all, it’s you that’s changed, and you don’t even know when or why.”

  There was silence. Pyotr Petrovich had been very badly affected by what he saw in the room, especially by the yellow-yolk faces. Taking advantage of the fact that it was dark and nobody could see him, he stuck out his tongue and grimaced so that his eyes bulged out, transforming his face into the likeness of an African mask—the physical sensation distracting him for a few brief seconds from his sudden ennui. The desire to talk instantly disappeared—worse than that, even, it was as though their hours-long conversation had been illuminated only by the dull red light of the night light, appearing quite stupid and unnecessary. Pyotr Petrovich glanced at his companion, thinking that he was not in the least bit intelligent and too young.

  “I don’t even understand what you and I are talking about now,” he said in an exaggeratedly polite tone.

  His companion said nothing.

  “Maybe we should keep quiet for a little while?” Pyotr Petrovich suggested.

  “Let’s keep quiet,” muttered his companion.

  II

  The farther Pyotr Petrovich and his companion went, the more beautiful and mysterious the world around them became. There really was no need to talk at all. The narrow path beneath their feet gleamed in the moonlight; the wall that kept changing color sometimes marked their right shoulders, sometimes their left, and the windows drifting by were dark, exactly like the ones in the poem that Pyotr Petrovich had quoted. Sometimes they had to walk uphill and sometimes just the opposite, downhill, and sometimes by unspoken agreement they would suddenly stop and stand still for a long time, their gaze fixed on something beautiful. The lights in the distance were particularly beautiful. Several times they stopped to look at them and each time they looked for a long time, ten minutes or even longer. Pyotr Petrovich was thinking something vague, almost inexpressible in words. The lights did not appear to have any particular connection with human beings, they were a part of nature—either a particular stage in the development of rotting tree stumps, or stars that had retired from the sky. In any case, the night was genuinely dark, and the red and yellow spots on the horizon somehow defined the dimensions of the world around them—if not for them there would have been no way of knowing where life was running its course, or whether there was any life at all. Every time he would be roused from his thoughtfulness by his companion’s footsteps. When his companion started off again, Pyotr Petrovich woke from his reveries and hurried after him. Soon the photographs from the window they had passed were forgotten completely, his heart felt light and happy once again, and the silence began to bother him. “And another thing,” Pyotr Petrovich thought, “I don’t even know his name. I ought to ask.” He waited for a few seconds and then said very politely:

  “Hmm, I’ve just had a thought. He we are, walking along all this time and talking together, and I don’t believe we’ve even introduced ourselves.”

  His companion said nothing.

  “But then, of course,” Pyotr Petrovich said in a conciliatory tone when enough time had passed to make it clear that there would be no answer, “what’s in a name, eh? It is but empty sound—After all, if you know someone and they know you, then there’s really nothing for you to talk about. You’ll just keep on wondering what he’s going to think about you, and what he’s going to say about you afterward. But when you don’t know who you’re talking to, you can say anything you like; the brakes are off. How long is it you and I have been talking, two hours now, isn’t it? And just look, I’m doing almost all the talking. I’m usually a quiet kind of person, and now it seems like the dam’s burst. Perhaps to you I don’t seem very intelligent and so on, but I’ve been listening to myself all this time, especially where the statues were, remember? When I was talking about love—and when I listen to myself I’m amazed. Do I really know and understand as much about life as that?”

  Pyotr Petrovich raised his face to the stars and sighed deeply; his face seemed overlaid by a shadow from the invisible wing of some unearthly smile as it flew past. Suddenly he glimpsed an almost imperceptible movement to his left, shuddered and came to a halt.

  “Hey,” he called to his companion, whispering now, “Stop! Be quiet! You’ll scare it off. I think it’s a cat—Yes, there it is over there. See it?”

  The hood turned to the left, but for all his efforts Pyotr Petrovich failed once again to see the face of his companion, who seemed to be looking in the wrong direction.

  “Over there!” Pyotr Petrovich whispered in exasperation. “See, where the bottle is? Half a yard to the left. It’s still twitching its tail. On the count of three? You go left, I’ll go right. Like the last time.”

  His companion shrugged indifferently, then nodded reluctantly.

  “One, two, three!” counted Pyotr Petrovich, and flung his leg over the low iron barrier gleaming dully in the moonlight. His companion followed him in an instant, and they rushed forward together. God only knows how many times that night Pyotr Petrovich had experienced a sense of happiness. Now it came over him again, and he ran under the night sky, free of all care and torment; all the problems which had made his life unbearable a day or two earlier had suddenly disappeared, and even if he had wanted to he couldn’t have recalled a single one of them.

  Three shadows rushed across the black surface beneath his feet—one, dense and short, was cast by the
moon, and the two others, hazy and asymmetrical, were cast by other sources of light, probably windows. Flanking to the left, Pyotr Petrovich saw his companion flanking to the right, and when the cat was somewhere between them, he turned toward it and accelerated. The figure in the black hood instantly executed a similar maneuver—their movements were so closely synchronized that Pyotr Petrovich felt a pang of vague suspicion, but there was no time for that just now.

  The cat was still sitting in the same place, which was strange, because they didn’t usually allow anyone to get so close. The last one, for instance, the one they had chased forty minutes ago, just after the statues, hadn’t let them come within ten yards. Sensing some kind of trick, Pyotr Petrovich slowed to a walk, and then stopped moving altogether, still several steps away from the cat. His companion repeated all of his movements and halted at exactly the moment he did, about three yards away. What, from a distance, Pyotr Petrovich had taken to be a cat, turned out to be a gray plastic bag with a torn handle that was swaying in the wind—that was what he had thought was a tail.

  Pyotr Petrovich’s companion stood facing him, but still his actual face remained invisible—the moon was in Pyotr Petrovich’s eyes, and all he could see was the familiar dark pointed silhouette. Pyotr Petrovich leaned over (his companion leaned down at the same time, and their heads almost bumped) and pulled on a corner of the bag (his companion pulled on another corner). The bag swung over and something soft tumbled out of it and plumped onto the asphalt. It was the half-rotten corpse of a cat.

  “Ugh, what rotten garbage,” Pyotr Petrovich said, turning away. “We might have known.”

  “We might have known,” echoed his companion.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Pyotr Petrovich, and he set off towards the tin border around the blacktop field.

  III

  They had been walking in silence for several minutes. The dark back was swaying in front of Pyotr Petrovich’s face once again, only now he was by no means certain that it really was a back, and not a chest. To help him gather his thoughts, he half-closed his eyes and looked down. All he could see was the track of silver beneath his feet. The sight of it calmed him and even hypnotized him slightly, and gradually his consciousness was flooded with a not quite sober clarity, and thoughts began rushing through his mind of their own accord—or rather, it was the same single thought about time past which constantly plagued him.

  “Why does he always repeat my movements?” Pyotr Petrovich wondered. “And everything he says always echoes my last phrase. He really does act exactly like a reflection. But there are so many windows around here! Maybe it’s just an optical illusion, and because I’m a little bit agitated, it seems as though there are two of us? After all, so many of the things that people once used to believe in can be explained by optical illusions! Almost everything, in fact.” This thought unexpectedly cheered Pyotr Petrovich up and lent him confidence. “That’s what it is,” he thought, “moonshine, the reflection of one window in another and that provocative scent of flowers—we mustn’t forget that it’s July now—they could create this effect. And when he speaks, it’s simply an echo, a still, quiet echo. Of course, that’s it! He always repeats the words that I’ve just spoken!”

  Pyotr Petrovich cast a glance at the back of the figure swaying regularly in front of him. “And what’s more,” he thought, “I’ve read in many places that if someone frustrates you or embarrasses you in some way, it’s always likely not to be another person at all, but yourself. When you stay still or perform any kind of repetitive, monotonous action without any particular meaning like walking or thinking, then your reflection can always pretend to be an independent being. It can start moving a little bit out of step, and you still won’t notice it. It can start doing something you’re not doing—provided, of course, that it’s not anything substantial. Finally, it can become really rebellious and start believing that it really does exist, and then turn against you. As far as I can recall, there’s only one way of checking whether it is a reflection or not—you have to make some sudden and quite unambiguous movement, so that the reflection has to repeat it quite obviously, because it still is a reflection and it has to obey the laws of nature, or at least some of them. That’s it then, I have to try to distract him with conversation and then come out with something sudden and unexpected and see what happens. I can speak about anything at all, as long as I don’t start thinking about it.” He cleared his throat and said:

  “It’s a good thing that you’re so tight-lipped. There’s an art in listening. Making the other person reveal themselves and keep on talking... They do say silent types make the very best friends. Do you know what I’m thinking about now?”

  Pyotr Petrovich waited a moment for an answer, but none came, so he went on:

  “About why I love the summer night so much. Of course, it’s dark and quiet. Beautiful. But that’s not the main thing. sometimes it seems to me there is a part of the soul which sleeps all the time and only wakes for a few seconds on summer nights, in order to peep out and remember something as it used to be long ago, in a different place—dark blue skies... stars... mystery...”

  IV

  Soon it became noticeably harder to walk. This was because, after turning yet another corner, they found themselves on the dark side, where the moon was hidden behind the roof of the opposite house. Pyotr Petrovich was immediately overwhelmed by weariness and uncertainly. He kept talking, even though pronouncing the words had become a repulsive torment. Something similar seemed to be happening to his companion as well, because he stopped contributing even his brief replies to the conversation—he would just occasionally mutter something incomprehensible. Their steps became shorter and more cautious.

  From time to time the companion walking ahead would even stop to spy out the right direction—he always made the decision, and all Pyotr Petrovich had to do was to follow behind. A triangle of dense moonlight appeared on the wall ahead, cast through a gap between the houses opposite. Raising his eyes once again from the path of dulled silver beneath his feet, Pyotr Petrovich saw in the triangle the thick shaft of an electric cable dangling against the wall. His mind instantly formed a plan which seemed to him extremely natural, and even to possess a certain humor.

  “Aha,” he thought, “that’s what I can do. I can grab hold of that thing and push hard off the wall with my feet. If he really is a reflection or a shadow, he’ll have to reveal himself. That is, he’ll have to do the same, only in the opposite direction. Or even better—that’s it!—why didn’t I think of it before? I can just clock him; take a really good swing. And if the bastard really is some kind of reflection...”

  Pyotr Petrovich did not finish verbalizing what would happen then, but it was quite clear that this was a way he could either confirm or dispel the suspicions that were tormenting him. “The main thing is, it must be unexpected,” he thought, “I have to take him by surprise!”

  “Anyway,” he said, smoothly changing the subject of a conversation that was already far behind them, “water skis are all right in their own way, but what’s most amazing is that even in the city you can move closer to the world of nature, you just have to distance yourself slightly from the bustle. Of course, we’re not likely to be able to manage it—we’re too conservative. But I assure you, children do it every day of the week.”

  Pyotr Petrovich paused to give his companion a chance to say something, but once again he remained silent, and Pyotr Petrovich continued:

  “I mean their games. Of course, they are often ugly and cruel; sometimes you can get the impression that they spring out of the filth and poverty children grow up in nowadays. But it seems to me that poverty has nothing to do with it. It’s not because they can’t afford to buy themselves all those motorcycles or skates. For instance, they’re all crazy about that thing they call the Tarzan swing. Have you heard about it?”

  “I have heard,” mumbled his companion.

  “It’s a rope they tie to a tree, to a thick branch, the
higher the better,” Pyotr Petrovich continued, staring at the triangle of moonlight and thinking it would take them less than a minute to reach it now. “Especially if the tree stands on the edge of a steep drop. The main thing is, it has to be steep. By water is even better, then you can dive in. It’s named after Tarzan; there was a film called that, where this guy Tarzan spent all of his time swinging on lianas. It’s very simple, you take hold of the rope, push off with your feet, and swing out in a long, long curve, and if you like you can let go and go flying head first into the water. To be honest, I’ve never tried a Tarzan swing like that, but I can easily imagine the moment of that stunning impact with the surface, and then slowly sinking into the rippling silence, into the cool peace—Ah, if only we knew just where those boys fly away to on their lianas.”

  His companion stepped into the space drenched in moonlight. Pyotr Petrovich stepped over the boundary of the moonlight after him.

  “Do you know why I can imagine it?” he continued, obsessively measuring the distance to the cable with his eyes. “It’s very simple. I remember how once when I was a child I jumped into a swimming pool from the diving tower. Of course, I hurt my belly on the water, but at that moment I understood something important—so important that when I surfaced I kept repeating to myself: ‘Don’t forget, don’t forget.’ But when I got out of the water, the only thing I could remember was those words, ‘don’t forget.’”

  At this moment Pyotr Petrovich drew even with the cable. He slopped and tugged on it to make sure it was firmly attached.

  “Even now sometimes,” he said, getting ready to jump, his voice calm and sincere, “I’d like to be able to take off somehow. It’s stupid, of course, infantile, but I still have the feeling I might manage to understand something or remember something. So here goes, with your permission.”