Victor Pelevin - Helmet of Horror

Translate from the Latin, will you?

Monstradamus

There’s quite a profound thought here. He’s trying to say the helmet of horror is the contents of the mind, which attempt to supplant the mind by proving that they – the contents – exist, and the mind in which they arise doesn’t. Or that the mind is no more than its function.

Nutscracker

Who are they trying to prove it to?

Monstradamus

Themselves. Certainly not the mind. The mind, as Sartrik puts it, couldn’t give a xxx.

Nutscracker

And where are they trying to prove it?

Monstradamus

What d’you mean, where? In the mind. Where else?

Nutscracker

This climb’s a bit too high without a bottle. For me at least.

Sartrik

Listen, Monstradamus, you’re some guy! The way you put that! I even understood it myself. Some mess, eh? If you think that thought through all the way to the end, all those English astrophysicists and the entire xxx Academy of Sciences should be thrown in the slammer!

Monstradamus

Why bother putting them away? Who cares about those buffoons.

Sartrik

Oho! You’re a hard case, aren’t you? Theseus, you’re Theseus, no two ways about it.

Nutscracker

You’re a real Theseus too, Sartrik. Maybe you’ve even found the way out?

Sartrik

A long time ago. Only there are these snakes crawling around in front of it. But when they crawl away I’ll leave.

:-(( ))

Monstradamus

Ariadne! Good morning?

Ariadne

Good morning.

Monstradamus

Did you see the dwarf?

Ariadne

Yes.

Monstradamus

Tell me about it.

Ariadne

I was in the building on the square in front of the fountain. You remember, I told you about it. It looked dark and oppressive, as though there was a fire there a long time ago and afterwards they tried several times to fix it up, but they hadn’t been able to. It was the same inside. It felt like a camouflaged smouldering ruin. I can’t even say what it was that gave me the feeling. Everything was new, expensive and chic – like in those glass palaces they rent out for offices. The air was cool and clean, there wasn’t the slightest smell of burning in it at all. But somehow I felt if you took the oak panels off the walls you’d see all the stonework was blackened with smoke.

Monstradamus

How did you know it was the same building?

Ariadne

I went across to the window and looked out. Down below me was the fountain with the snakes where I saw Asterisk for the first time. There was a wide street with palms standing in tubs leading away from the fountain. The street ran out to the very edge of the city and ended at a huge triumphal arch strewn with yellow leaves. Standing on the ground in front of the arch was a bronze head that must have been the size of a truck. There was a stepladder leaning against its ear, and it had a gold star on its forehead with an inscription: ‘The Tomb of the Unknown Helmholtz’.

Nutscracker

How could you see all that through the window?

Ariadne

I just looked in that direction.

Nutscracker

And you could read the words at that distance?

Ariadne

What distances are there in a dream? There aren’t any except the ones you dream about. I dreamed there was that inscription on the monument’s forehead. I didn’t dream about any distances.

Monstradamus

That’s clear enough. What else did you see?

Ariadne

The further away from the main street, the fewer houses there were. The city boundary was a circular wall, and outside that there was a desert in various tones of beige. Further away still there were dark-blue mountains, or perhaps they were clouds in the sunset. I didn’t have time to look at anything else, because then one of the dwarves appeared in the corridor. He was in a hurry to get somewhere and looking quite aggressive – his loose robe was caught in with a belt that had a little sabre dangling on it. He didn’t stop, just gestured for me to follow him. We began climbing the stairs. I asked him a question, but he told me to keep quiet. He said his master was under threat – they wanted to kill him. And so all questions and answers were now being strictly documented. I asked who wanted to kill his master, but he muttered that the reply to that question had to be documented as well. We came to a large open area with identical shelves of files on all the walls – it looked like some kind of archive. There was a kind of double round table in the centre – about fifty centimetres above the table-top there was a smaller disc of wood that could rotate. They used to have something of the sort in old canteens so that people could move any dish within reach by turning the upper disc. The dwarf sat down at the table and pointed to the place opposite him. I sat down. On the table in front of me there was an inkwell with a genuine goose-quill pen and a file containing sheets of paper. The dwarf had an identical inkwell and file. He told me to write down my question and put the sheet of paper on the wooden disc. I wrote: ‘Who wants to kill the Minotaur?’ The quill actually wrote very easily, with a fine line. Meanwhile the dwarf took a sheet of paper out of his file and wrote something himself. We put the sheets of paper on the rotating wooden disc, the dwarf turned it through a hundred and eighty degrees, then he had my question in front of him and I had his answer. It was brief: ‘You already know’. And it was written on paper headed with a crest. Apparently he didn’t even need to read my question, he already knew it.

Nutscracker

Paper headed with a crest? What was the crest like?

Ariadne

A little star framed in laurel leaves. It looked very impressive, you could even feel it with your fingers. Embossing. There was a motto under the crest: ‘per aspera ad asterisk’. And there were watermarks in the paper. And as well as all that, there was a three-figure number in the upper right corner of the page – the blank sheets were numbered. Monstradamus, I wanted to ask you, what do those words mean?

Monstradamus

There is an expression ‘per aspera ad astra’, meaning ‘through difficulties to the stars’. And so this version means …

Organizm(-:

Through xxx to the xxx.

Monstradamus

Well, that’s not exactly a poetic translation. What came next, Ariadne?

Ariadne

Next I wrote a question and he wrote an answer. Why don’t I type them all out together from the sheets of paper?

Monstradamus

What do you mean, ‘type them out’? Have you got the sheets there?

Ariadne

Yes.

Monstradamus

How did you get hold of them?

Ariadne

I don’t know. When I woke up they were lying beside the bed. Perhaps the people who tidy up the room brought them.

Monstradamus

And you didn’t notice anything?

Nutscracker

Monster, you’re like a man who’s turned into a bull and is amazed to find he has a bell on his tail.

Monstradamus

Is that bit about the bull some kind of a hint?

Ariadne

Let me answer your questions and get something to eat, okay? Then you can talk among yourselves.