Victor Pelevin: Helmet of Horror

IsoldA

What gibberish.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

That’s way over the top.

Monstradamus

But really, Romeo and Isolde, what made you think you were close to each other?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Everything around us is the same.

Nutscracker

What exactly? Bushes? Bushes are the same everywhere.

Monstradamus

Especially the word ‘bushes’ on two different screens.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Even the soil under our feet is the same colour. Beige.

Monstradamus

Beige – what colour is that?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

How do you mean, what colour?

Monstradamus

Can you describe it some other way?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Dark-brown.

IsoldA

What’s that – dark-brown? Beige is light yellow-grey!

Nutscracker

Right. So now we know. Romeo set off to meet Isolde and bumped into Juliet. Isolde set out to meet Romeo and ended up in Tristan’s clutches. If we imagine that Juliet and Tristan are the same person … Although in this case we can hardly call it a real ‘person’. More like an empty mask. Or maybe a ‘helmet’?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Listen, you xxx linguist, shut your mouth!

Nutscracker

It’s certainly a frightening metaphor. There’s nothing new about succubuses and incubuses, of course, but in this appalling dimension we have the spectral manifestation of a certain Julietristan who manages to take the place of not just one partner, but both at once.

UGLI 666

And not only in this dimension. Why is fornication such a detestable sin? The Church teaches us it’s because the fornicator blinded by lust is really copulating with the laughing devil.

Organizm(-:

Romeo, did you hear any laughter from behind the wall?

Nutscracker

How very instructive. The Helmholtz doesn’t even know who he’s xxx. Or who’s xxx him. A drawing on the wall, a few flickers in the eyepieces of the helmet, but the true recipient of his passion remains profoundly anonymous.

Organizm(-:

I don’t quite get it. How does the Minotaur manage to take the place of both partners at once? Are you saying he xxx himself?

Nutscracker

No. With Romeo he’s Isolde, and with Isolde he’s Romeo. But what you said is an even more interesting idea. Well worth thinking about. Well, lady and gent, pardon my lack of modesty, but what exactly did happen in the pavilion? My imagination blushes and fails me. Nothing that comes to mind is worthy of the emotions that we have observed. ‘Oh, it’s very hard to come with your finger up your bum’ or the last tango in Paris. I’m thinking in banal terms, of course. Romeo, can you elaborate?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Yes, I can. If you stick your nose into our lives once more, I’ll find you and xxx you so hard your brains will be thinking their filthy thoughts across the wall, understand?

Nutscracker

I wonder exactly how you plan to find me? I’m not Isolde – there’s no trapdoor between us. There wasn’t even one between you two, as it happened …

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Just remember that if I look hard enough I might just find one.

Nutscracker

I don’t understand what you’re getting so het up about. Did the knife slip when they were circumcising your cochiba ? It wasn’t me, you half-wit, it was your Julistan.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

That’s it. Nutcracker, I’m on my way to kill you.

Nutscracker

I couldn’t give a xxx. I’m wearing a helmet of horror.

Ariadne

There’s no need to be like that.

Organizm(-:

Julistan – it sounds like the name of some small but highly malevolent state located at the very centre of the axis of evil.

Ariadne

By the way, I’ve seen that word – Julistan.

Monstradamus

Where?

Ariadne

In that place where I was asking the dwarf questions. The archive.

Monstradamus

You didn’t say anything about that.

Ariadne

When the dwarf ran off, I was left in the archive alone. At first I went on sitting at the table, waiting for him to come back. But he was gone for ages and ages. Then I got up and went over to look at the shelves of files along the walls. There were all sorts of different things on them. Depositions from the Minotaur’s defeated enemies. Interrogations of Minotaurs by other Minotaurs. An entire shelf full of records of cross-examinations of Minotaurs by themselves – they were called ‘Alone Together’. They must have been thinking of the horns, right? But the biggest number of files was filled with answers to the so-called eternal questions like the ones you and I were asking. They were all old and yellow with age and covered in dust. Do you know what paper covered with writing smells like when the people who wrote on it are already dead?

Monstradamus

Do you remember anything?

Ariadne

I have a whole pile of pages here from various files. When I woke up they were lying beside the dwarf ’s answers. There’s not much new in them. The eternal questions haven’t got any cleverer – that’s why they’re eternal.

Monstradamus

Read us something.

Ariadne

Question:

‘Why does the existent exist?’

Answer:

‘To pass the time more pleasantly.’

Question:

‘Why heap up so many events and beings to pass the time if in any case nowhere exists except in the helmet of horror?’

Answer:

‘Events and beings also cannot be accumulated anywhere except in the helmet of horror, so Mesdameset Messieurs are requested not to be concerned.’ What’s next … About the separator labyrinth … ‘But who …’ Right, that’s it: ‘Who else is produced there?’ A couple of pages from some review of historical chronicles. An analysis of contradictions. One text says the Minotaur himself is the builder of the labyrinth. Another claims the labyrinth was built by eighteen thousand Minotaurs divided into two columns. A third claims these columns should be understood metaphorically and the labyrinth is created by the two mental nodules or hemispheres, which are symbolised by the two horns. And so on. And here at the end there are a few pages about this Julistan. They look quite different, really ancient and faded. Many of them are so old I can hardly make anything out. Covered with strange, beautiful handwriting. They’re translations of inscriptions from the Julistan caves. The actual inscriptions were destroyed long ago, together with the caves themselves, and all that’s left are copies of copies. Fragmentary translations. Some are short and incoherent, some are a bit longer. Shall I read some?

Monstradamus

Certainly.

Ariadne

‘One may begin with whatever one likes, without worrying about it at all …’

Monstradamus

Begin what?

Ariadne

You seem to be worrying about it already. Wait, that’s not the right page. Here’s the beginning: ‘Asterius is everything that is before us and within us, especially “before” and “within”. Irrupting into the mind he simulates this world and our own reason with all its voices, which dispute so convincingly with each other. To understand this means to see Asterius. One may begin with whatever one likes, without worrying about it at all …’