Victor Pelevin - Helmet of Horror

IsoldA

A girl right across the whole wall?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

No, the fresco. Some kind of garden full of wonderful plants and birds. And the girl was at the very centre, life-size. Absolutely naked, but it suited her really well. She had green hair that looked like grass, fluttering in the painted breeze. And green eyelashes too. She was lying in a mother-of-pearl shell, barely concealing the lower part of her belly with a bouquet of flowers. There was one strange thing, though – the edge of the shell above her head was covered with projections that looked like horns. And there were black rubber handles attached to them. That is, the projections were painted, but the handles were real, like in a bus. I touched them and I could tell it really was possible to hold on to them. But I couldn’t understand what for.

IsoldA

How could you touch them? You said there were bars between the door and the fresco.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

That’s right. But it was easy enough to slip between the bars. So that’s what I did. They probably weren’t meant to keep out people.

IsoldA

Describe this girl.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

I suppose she was about eighteen, but she didn’t look any older than fourteen. I’d describe her pose as brazen, but entirely natural. What I mean is, the pose would have been absolutely brazen, if she’d been lying there like that, knowing that she was being watched. But if she lay around like that at home, especially if it was hot, then of course, there wouldn’t be anything brazen about it. But on the other hand, she was looking straight out of the picture at the spectator, which in this case meant straight at me. She had her eyes half-closed, as though she could see me and was taunting me, and she was smiling. And her eyes were as green as could be. I began to understand what the artist was trying to say. Either she’d posed like that knowing she was being watched, which meant she was absolutely shameless, which I didn’t want to believe. Or she’d been lying like that because she thought there was no one around, and she was smiling at the spectator simply out of inertia, because she’d only just noticed him. In that case the artist was a real genius, because he’d caught the precise moment when her brain had already given the command to scream, but the command still hadn’t reached the muscles of her throat. In that case, for as long as I carried on examining her, I was free of shame myself, so free in fact that it was actually arousing. In a word, genuine art. An absolutely enigmatic masterpiece. But I didn’t have time to study her properly, because the bouquet she was using to conceal the lower part of her belly trembled and started sliding downwards. And it wasn’t just the lower part of her belly she’d been hiding, but the lowest part of all, so low you can’t get any lower, only higher …

IsoldA

All right, Romeo, I get the idea.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

There must have been some kind of mechanism in the wall. The arm that was holding the bouquet began turning from the elbow, like the hand of a clock. But I didn’t get a chance to see what was behind the bouquet, because the light began to fade and soon it was completely dark. I went up to the wall and began feeling it with my hands. Where the bouquet had been quite a big gap had appeared. I put my hand into it carefully and suddenly felt something soft and alive that jerked away from me. I think it was another hand. I cried out in surprise and suddenly there was a spray of something acrid from the ceiling, like tear gas. I jumped back. The light started coming on. When it was bright enough to see, the bouquet was already back in place. My eyes were stinging really badly and I ran out of the room like it was a gas chamber.

IsoldA

Do your eyes still hurt?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Not any more.

IsoldA

Now I see.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

What do you see, Isolde?

IsoldA

It seems I discovered the same amusement arcade from the other side. After the giant with the sun-mask disappeared, I went to the pavilion. The door was locked. And the windows too. I broke a window, lifted the latch and opened it. Behind the first door was the beginning of a dark, winding corridor like the one you told me about. From there I found my way into a large room with a light and no windows, just like you did. Instead of pictures it had mirrors painted over with white paint. Standing in the middle of the room was an absolutely huge steel ring as tall as the ceiling, with nylon mesh attached all around its edge – it hung down from the ring and trailed across the floor like a seine net. On the door there was a plaque about keeping silent, just like on yours. And on the wall behind the ring there was a mural, only it was very different from yours. It was a picture of something like the Grand Canyon. Through the mist I could make out the desert floor far below me. And on the edge of the red cliff, right up in front of the spectator’s eyes, there was a car with a cloud of painted dust settling around it. It all looked just as though the car had braked after a steep turn and stopped at the very last moment, with its wheels hanging over the edge of the precipice. It was a Rolls-Royce jeep, in perfect profile, like a photo in an advert.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Are you sure it was a Rolls-Royce?

IsoldA

Of course. It had the initials ‘RR’ and a little Oscar with wings on the radiator, like they all have.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Then it wasn’t a jeep. Rolls-Royce don’t make jeeps.

IsoldA

Romeo, I can tell my SUV from my elbow. I even saw the name of the model – ‘Full Drive Shadow’ I think it was. That’s the whole point. It was an artist’s fantasy, but it was so convincing I could see straight away that if Rolls-Royce decided to make an SUV they’d have to make the car that was painted there; circumstances would simply force them to do it. The jeep was made of gold and steel, like an exquisite watch. To say it looked impressive gives you no idea. If the space shuttle and the most expensive diamond necklace in the world could together produce a son, then it would probably look just like that when it grew up. In front of the jeep was a platform with steps. I mean the platform wasn’t in the picture, it was on the floor of the room, real, made of wooden boards. And the jeep’s windows were real too, tinted glass that looked black and there were skis and a surfboard on its roof.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Real ones?

IsoldA

The skis and the board were painted. But the rack they were attached to, or that they looked as if they were attached to in the painting, was real, made of steel and gold.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

What kind of rack?

IsoldA

I don’t know what its proper name is – the kind they make so you can tie on what you carry on the roof. There were loops of black leather hanging from it, like the ones used for doing gymnastics; they were real as well. And, apart from that, the door handles and the hub-caps were real – and they were made of steel and gold too.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Did you try opening the door?

IsoldA

I told you, there weren’t any doors, only handles. But I didn’t even get a chance to touch them. The moment I took a couple of steps towards the jeep, its window began slowly winding down. Some kind of mechanism must have switched on. I really wanted to find out what was behind the glass, but the light began to fade, and a few seconds later it was dark. Exactly the same thing as happened to you, in fact. I climbed up on the platform and touched the wall where the window of the jeep had been. There was a gap there now. I ran my hand round its edge. It really felt like a car window. But the window hadn’t opened all the way and the gap wasn’t big enough to climb through the wall. There was a slight draught from the window, as if there was an air-conditioner working inside. And I thought I caught a faint glimpse of light. I leaned down to look inside, but as soon as my face was level with the opening something bumped against my cheek and I heard a terrible howl. I leapt back, lost my balance and fell off the platform on to the floor. The light came on – dim at first, then brighter and brighter, like in the cinema after a film. By the time it got really light, the jeep’s window was already closed again. I went back out through the corridor into the open air and came back here. I was shaking all over at first, but I started feeling better on the way. It’s funny to think about it now.