A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories

by Victor Pelevin

  When he shook his head and opened his eyes, Sasha found himself in the same gallery with the strip of decoration on the walls that Itakin had dragged him out of, and standing there staring at him with his arms crossed on his chest was the same guard in the red caftan—Sasha made sure it was him by glancing at the lower corner of the screen, where he spotted the six triangles indicating the warrior’s vital energy.

  Sasha leapt to his feet, assumed combat position, and pulled out his sword. The warrior pulled out his own and came toward him; his gaze was so menacing that Itakin’s advice to have a talk about the meaning of life seemed like a malicious joke. Sasha swung the end of his blade through the air, preparing to strike, but the warrior suddenly struck the sword from Sasha’s hand with a swift, unexpected blow, and hit Sasha across the head with the flat of his heavy blade.

  Level 8

  Lying on the floor, Sasha opened his eyes and gazed uncomprehendingly around the twilit room. He could feel a soft carpet underneath him. An oil lamp was burning on the wall, and beneath it was an incredibly beautiful chest bound with repoussé sheets of copper. Clouds of smoke hung under the ceiling and Sasha was aware of a strange smell, like scorched feathers or burnt rubber, but rather pleasant all the same. Sasha tried to sit up, but realized that he couldn’t move—he was stitched up to the neck in a sack made of something like mattress ticking, and bound with thick rope.

  “Are you awake now, shuravi?”

  Looping himself up like a worm, Sasha turned over onto his other side. He saw the warrior in the red caftan sitting on a pile of cushions. Beside him smoke was rising from a large hookah, whose long pipe and copper mouthpiece were lying on the carpet. On the other side of the warrior lay Sasha’s bag. The warrior drew a crooked knife out of the folds of his caftan and held it up, laughing, for Sasha to inspect.

  “Don’t be afraid, shuravi,” he said, bending over Sasha. “If I didn’t kill you right away, I won’t touch you now.” The loops of rope around the sack relaxed. The warrior sat back down on his cushions and puffed thoughtfully on the hookah as he watched Sasha disentangle himself from the sack. When he had finally freed himself from it and was sitting on the carpet rubbing his swollen legs, the warrior held out the smoking hose of the hookah toward him. Sasha took it meekly and inhaled deeply. The room instantly narrowed and twisted out of shape, and suddenly he could hear the crackling of the oil in the lamp—an encyclopedic collection of different sounds.

  “I am called Zainaddin Abu Bakr Abbas al Huvafi,” said the warrior, pulling Sasha’s open bag toward himself and thrusting his hand into it. “You may call me by any of these names.”

  “My name is Alexei,” Sasha lied, without knowing why. Of all of those incomprehensible words the only one he had been able to make out was “Abbas.”

  “Are you a spiritual man, then?”

  “Me?” said Sasha, following the room’s transformations with fascination. “Yes, I suppose I am spiritual.”

  For some reason he felt quite safe.

  “I was looking here at the books you read.”

  Abbas held up John Spencer Trimmingham’s Sufic Orders in Islam, which Sasha had bought recently at the Academy book shop and had already read more than halfway through. The cover of the book bore a mystic symbol: a green tree made of interwoven Arabic letters.

  “I wanted very much to kill you,” Abbas confessed, weighing the book in his hand and gazing tenderly at the cover, “but I cannot kill a spiritual man.”

  “But why would you want to kill me?”

  “Why did you kill Maruf today?”

  “Who is Maruf?”

  “So you have forgotten already?”

  “Ah, you mean the one with the yataghan, and that feather in his turban?”

  “That one.”

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” Sasha answered. “He came straight at me, or did he? Anyway, he was already standing there at the door with his yataghan. It just all happened automatically.”

  Abbas shook his head in disbelief.

  “What do you take me for, some kind of monster?” Sasha asked, feeling quite disconcerted by this time.

  “And why not? In our villages, shuravi, they frighten the children with your name. And this very Maruf, whose throat you cut, came to me this morning and said: ‘Farewell, Zainaddin Abu Bakr. I feel in my heart that today the shuravi will come...’ I thought he had taken too much hashish, but this afternoon they brought him to the guardroom with his throat cut.”

  “Honestly, I didn’t really want to...”

  “Perhaps you wanted and perhaps you didn’t want. Every man has his fate, and Allah holds all the threads in his hand. Is this not so?”

  “Indeed it is,” said Sasha, “precisely so.”

  “I once spent five days here drinking with a Sufi from Khorasan,” said Abbas, “and he told me a little story—I don’t remember now exactly how it all happened, but someone had his throat cut by mistake, and afterwards it turned out he was a murderer and a thief, and at that very moment he was preparing to commit the most horrible atrocities. I enjoy drinking with spiritual men; and so I remembered this story and thought perhaps you might know some stories as well.”

  Abbas went over to the trunk and took out a bottle of White Horse whisky, two plastic cups, and a handful of crumpled cigarettes.

  “Where did you get those from?” Sasha asked in amazement.

  “The Americans,” Abbas replied. “Humanitarian aid. When they started putting computers into your ministries, they started helping us as well. And they also trade for hashish.”

  “And you mean to say the Americans aren’t monsters too?”

  “They are all different,” Abbas replied, filling the two plastic cups. “But at least it is possible to come to an understanding with them.”

  “Come to an understanding? How?”

  “It is very simple. Whenever you see one of the guards, you just press the key, then he’ll pretend to be dead and you can carry on your way.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Sasha, taking a plastic cup.

  “How should you know,” asked Abbas, raising his own cup in salute to Sasha, “when all of your games have been broken open and you have no instructions? But you could have asked, couldn’t you? I even came to believe the shuravi didn’t know how to talk.”

  Abbas drank and sighed loudly, then suddenly began to speak in quite a different tone of voice.

  “You know, you have something called the Moscow Housing Construction Office,” he said, “and in that place there is a certain Semyon Prokofievich Chukanov—a short, fat little swine, a nasty piece of work. He comes into the first level, but he’s too afraid to go any further because of the traps. He just stops and waits for our men. You know how things are on our side—no matter what you might think about it, it’s your duty and you just go in and do it—and what experience have the boys got down there, they’re still nothing but kids? So he kills five men a day. He has his norm—he goes in, kills a few, and then withdraws. Then he does the same thing all over again. But you know, if he should ever get to the seventh level!”

  Abbas set his hand on the handle of his sword.

  “Do the Americans supply you with weapons?” Sasha asked in order to change the subject.

  “They do.”

  “Can I have a look?”

  Abbas went over to his chest, took out a small scroll of parchment, and tossed it over to Sasha. When Sasha unrolled it he saw a short column of microassembler commands written in an ornate, curly hand in black ink.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “A virus,” answered Abbas, pouring them another drink.

  “Well, well... and I was wondering what it was that keeps wiping out our system. What file is it sitting in?”

  “All right, now,” said Abbas, “enough of this nonsense. It’s time to tell your story.”

  “What story?”

  “One with a moral. You’re a spiritual man, aren’t you? So you must know one.”<
br />
  “But what about?” Sasha asked, squinting at the long sword lying on the carpet close beside Abbas.

  “Whatever you wish. The important thing is, it must have wisdom.”

  In order to gain time to think, Sasha picked up the hookah from the carpet and inhaled deeply several times in rapid succession, trying to recall what he had read in Trimmingham’s book about Sufi stories. Then he closed his eyes for a minute.

  “Do you know the story of the Maghrib prayer carpet,” he asked Abbas, who had prepared himself to listen.

  “No.”

  “Then listen. A certain vizier had a small son by the name of Yusuf. One day he left his father’s estates and went off walking until he came to a deserted road where he loved to walk alone, and set off along it, gazing around him on all sides. Suddenly he saw an old man dressed in the robes of a sheik, wearing a black hat on his head. The boy greeted the old man politely and the old man stopped and gave him a sweet sugar cockerel. When Yusuf had eaten it, the old man asked: ‘Boy, do you like stories?’ Yusuf liked stories very much indeed, and he said so. ‘I know a certain story,’ said the old man, ‘it’s the story of a Maghrib prayer carpet. I would tell you it, but it’s much too terrible.’

  “But the boy Yusuf, of course, said that he was not afraid of anything, and he made himself ready to listen. Then suddenly there was a sound of bells ringing loudly and shouting from the direction of his father’s estate—that always happened when anybody arrived. The boy immediately forgot all about the old man in the black hat and dashed away to see who had arrived.

  “It turned out to be only one of his father’s junior subordinates, and the boy ran back as fast as he could, but the old man was no longer there on the road. Yusuf was very upset and went back to the estate. Choosing his moment carefully, he went up to his father and asked: ‘Father! Do you know anything about a Maghrib prayer carpet?’ His father suddenly turned pale, began shaking all over, fell down on the floor and died. At this the boy was frightened and he ran to his mother. ‘Mother!’ he shouted. ‘A terrible thing!’ She came up to him, smiled, put her hand on his head and asked: ‘What is it, my son?’ ‘Mother,’ cried the boy, ‘I went to father and asked him about something, and he suddenly fell down dead!’ ‘What did you ask?’ she said with a frown. ‘About a Maghrib prayer carpet!’ he answered, and suddenly she also turned deadly pale, shook all over, and fell down dead.

  “The boy was left all alone, and soon his father’s powerful enemies had seized the estate and driven him out into the wide world. For a long time he wandered the length and breadth of Persia until finally he found himself in the khankah of a renowned Sufi and became his pupil. Several years went by, and Yusuf approached this Sufi when he was alone, bowed and said: ‘Teacher, I have studied with you now for several years. May I ask you one question?’ ‘Ask it, my son,’ said the Sufi with a smile. ‘Teacher, do you know anything about a Maghrib prayer carpet?’ The Sufi turned pale, clutched at his heart, and fell down dead.

  “Then Yusuf fled as fast as his legs would carry him and became a wandering dervish who walked through Persia in search of renowned teachers. But all those he asked about the Maghrib carpet fell down on the ground and died. Gradually Yusuf grew old and feeble. He began to be tormented by the thought that soon he would die, and leave no trace behind him on the earth.

  “One day, when he was sitting in a tea house and thinking of all of this, he suddenly saw the same old man in the black hat. The old man was exactly the same as before; the years had done nothing at all to age him. Yusuf ran up to him, sank to his knees, and implored him: ‘Most venerable sheik! I have sought you all of my life! Tell me about the Maghrib prayer carpet!’ The old man in the black hat said: ‘Very well. Have it your own way.’ Yusuf prepared himself to listen. The old man sat opposite him, sighed deeply, and died. For a whole day and night Yusuf sat in silence facing his corpse. Then he got up, took the black hat from the old man’s head, and placed it on his own. He had a few small coins left, and before leaving he used them to buy a sugar cockerel from the owner of the tea house.”

  Abbas said nothing for a long time, then he asked:

  “Tell me the truth, are you a hidden sheik?”

  Sasha didn’t answer.

  “I understand,” said Abbas. “I understand everything. Tell me, are you certain the old man’s hat was black?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it was green? I think it might have been the Green Khidr.”

  “And what do they know here about the Green Khidr?” Sasha asked. He hadn’t read about this person in Trimmingham’s book yet, and he was curious.

  “Everybody says different things. For instance, the dervish from Khurasan that I drank with. He said that the Green Khidr rarely appears in his own form, he assumes the appearance of others. Or he puts his words into the mouths of different people—and anybody who wishes to may hear him speaking all the time, even when they are talking with idiots, because some of their words are spoken for them by the Green Khidr.”

  “That is true,” said Sasha. “Tell me, Abbas, who is it that plays the flute here?”

  “Nobody knows. Time and again we have combed the labyrinth from end to end, but all in vain.”

  Abbas yawned. “It’s time I was at my post,” he said. “I have to set out the jars. The Americans will be here soon. I don’t know how to thank you... except... perhaps you would like to have a look at the princess?”

  “I would,” answered Sasha, draining what was left in his cup at a single gulp.

  Abbas stood up, took a bunch of big, rusty keys from a nail on the wall, and went out into the dimly lit corridor. Sasha followed him. The door of the room where they had been sitting was painted to match the wall, and as Abbas closed it, Sasha realized that he would never have suspected that this dead end—he had been in hundreds of dead ends just like it—was actually a disguised door. They walked in silence as far as the exit to the following level, which proved to be very close.

  “Just be quiet,” said Abbas, handing Sasha the keys, “or else you’ll frighten our men.”

  “Shall I give you the keys back afterwards?”

  “Keep them. Or throw them away.”

  “But won’t you need them?”

  “If I need them,” said Abbas, “I’ll take them off the nail. This is your game. I have my own. If you want anything, just drop in.”

  He held out a piece of paper with something written on it.

  “It is written here which way to go,” he said.

  Level 12

  The climb to the upper level took no more than ten minutes, and if Sasha had managed to get the key into the keyhole immediately, it would have taken even less. A narrow servants’ staircase set into the thickness of the stone walls led from one level to another. It was very difficult to tell what kind of stone it was—it was very crudely defined, and it didn’t exist for very long—but when the final door closed behind Sasha, reality once again acquired precise outlines and clear colors. In front of him Sasha saw a wall towering up in the distance, with the same kind of cornices he had recently scrambled up toward his encounter with Abbas. He automatically stepped forward, jumped, and reached up.

  Suddenly remembering that he was carrying the keys, he screamed in exasperation, came back down, and then for no reason at all jumped straight at the blank wall. Colliding with the stone surface, he collapsed, jumped again, and fell again. He tried to stand up normally, but instead he jumped, and hung, shuddering, in the air for a second with his hands extended above his head. Only then did he come to his senses and think shamefacedly to himself: “This time I really overdid it!” This was the final level, and the servants’ staircase ended here. Sasha ran down the long gallery with torches and bronze rings—it seemed to him as though someone had stuck them where there ought to be flags—and after a while he ran into a carpet hanging on the wall.

  Turning around, he ran in the opposite direction, winding his way through corridors and galleries until he cam
e up against a heavy metal door like the ones that led from one level to another. He bent down toward it, holding the keys at the ready, but the door had no lock. The princess should have been behind this very door, but in order to open it he would have had to wander for ages through the vast warren of the twelfth level, with the risk of breaking his neck at every step. He found the other entrance ten minutes later when he glanced behind the carpet hanging in the dead end of the corridor: the black staring pupil of a keyhole was visible in one of the slabs. Sasha pushed the smallest key from the bundle into it and a tiny iron door opened, no larger than a manhole. Sasha squeezed through with some difficulty.

  He was facing a hall with a tall vaulted ceiling; on the walls there were lighted torches and carpets, and at the far end he could see a raised portcullis, beyond which began a dimly lit corridor. In another wall there was a heavy metal door—the one which had no keyhole—through which Sasha would have entered if he had reached this level on his own. He recognized this place—this was where he had seen the princess when she occasionally appeared on the screen. Rut she wasn’t here now, and neither were the carpets with the pillows, or the potbellied sand clock or the palace cat. There was nothing but the bare floor. The raised portcullis in the wall was something Sasha had not seen before—that part of the hall never appeared on the screen when the princess was shown. He set off toward it. The corridor behind the portcullis unexpectedly ended in an ordinary wooden door like those that lead into the bathroom or toilet in a communal apartment, and Sasha felt his heart fill with unpleasant foreboding. He pulled the door toward himself.