Victor Pelevin: Helmet of Horror

Romeo-y-Cohiba

What’s the point of us listening to all this?

Monstradamus

Please, don’t interrupt. What happened after that, Ariadne?

Ariadne

After that I made my way to the main street. There was a long line of palm trees in tubs along the middle of it. I remember that what was most astonishing was that there were yellow leaves everywhere, it was autumn, and then here were these palm trees.

Nutscracker

You started off with pink flowers. Now suddenly it’s autumn, with yellow leaves.

Ariadne

Yes, autumn set in while I was following the dwarf. I thought he must have done that on purpose to spoil my mood and prevent me catching up with him. There was no one in the main street. I came to a large square with a fountain with bronze statues standing in it. From their style I thought they must be just as ancient as the city, but their subjects were more like something from a Japanese cartoon film – naked teenagers being strangled by tentacles twined around their bodies. Or snakes …

Nutscracker

What have Japanese cartoons got to do with anything?

IsoldA

She’s talking about mangas , young girls who are raped by demons with their tentacles. It’s a persistent theme in Japanese virtual porn.

Monstradamus

It’s an expression of the repressed subconscious frustration resulting from defeat in the Second World War. The schoolgirl raped in these cartoons symbolises the Japanese national spirit, and the monster that sprouts these multiple phallic tentacles represents the modern western-style corporate economy.

Nutscracker

Or maybe they’re just octopuses?

Monstradamus

Octopuses? How original. I’d never have thought of that.

Organizm(-:

Hey, who is this Isolde? Someone new?

IsoldA

Yes.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Welcome to our little world, Isolde. We’re very pleased to meet you.

IsoldA

Thank you, Romeo.

Organizm(-:

Are you pretty?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Get a grip, Organism.

Nutscracker

Isolde, can you add anything to the sum of our experience?

IsoldA

No.

Monstradamus

Then, if no one has any objections, Ariadne can continue.

Ariadne

I realised I had to go over to the fountain and then I would see both dwarves. Only don’t ask me how I realised it; it was suddenly clear, that’s all. When I reached the fountain I turned my back to it and leaned against the wall. Opposite me there was a building with a colonnade – a massive, depressing building with ugly superstructures on the roof. It occurred to me somehow that a long time ago it had been burnt down, and nothing was left but the stone skeleton, and since then a lot of attempts had been made to repair it and restore it to life. But you could still see the traces of the catastrophe through the restoration work and the paint, and you could tell the building was dead and empty …

Romeo-y-Cohiba

I’d say we need an entire committee of psychiatrists for this spiel. Or we could ask Monstradamus, he’s got a good handle on this stuff. What was that phrase he used – corporate frustration?

Monstradamus

Romeo, please, be patient just a moment longer.

Ariadne

Suddenly I noticed one of the dwarves standing beside me – the one with the side of his hat bent up. I didn’t see how he got there. He was really close to me, but I couldn’t see his face under the hat. I remember he was wearing medieval-style pointed shoes in red and white stripes. He began speaking without raising his head, and what he said was very strange. He said the master he served was the creator of everything I saw around me, and a great many other things too. The way I understood it, this master of his was not a man. Or not just a man. His name was Asterisk …

Monstradamus

Are you sure you heard correctly?

Ariadne

I think so. The way the dwarf explained it, Asterisk is some boundlessly and infinitely powerful being. I asked whether he didn’t mean God, and he said that God was merely Asterisk’s errand boy. I asked how that was possible. The dwarf told me not even to try to understand. He said it was a great mystery, and repeated this several times. I asked him what was the correct name to use for someone who is mightier than God. Any name you like, the dwarf replied – the word ‘Asterisk’, or any other that can be spoken – they’re no more than loose dust covers, they make no difference at all. That was what he said, honestly …

Romeo-y-Cohiba

What absolute gibberish.

Ariadne

The way I understood it, Asterisk is angry with people because at some time in the past they killed him. Or because they will kill him at some time in the future – the dwarf expressed himself in such a complicated manner, you could take his meaning any way at all. Since that time – or until that time – people have to pay tribute to Asterisk by sending him people to join in his games and die in his arena. Like us, for instance …

Nutscracker

Well, there you go then.

Ariadne

But the dwarf said there was no need to be upset, because the people Asterisk sacrifices to himself have already been born, and dying in the arena is the common fate that nobody escapes. I tried to ask in that case what was the point of the sacrificial tribute, but the dwarf began getting nervous and said, ‘Look, he’s coming, now you can see him for yourself.’ I looked up. Two figures had appeared in front of the burnt-out building. Striding along solemnly in front was a dwarf holding a flag with the Merrill Lynch symbol on it – you remember it, they have that jolly little bull – and the inscription ‘Be Bullish!’ But I didn’t feel like laughing at all, the figure following it looked so terrifying. I don’t even know what to call him. He wasn’t like a man. He was absolutely massive, and I thought for a moment he was a monstrously overgrown mushroom with a big cap of blackish-green metal. Then I took a closer look at him. He was wearing a long loose robe that reached right down to the ground, dark-coloured and not particularly clean either, but not the same kind of tattered rags as the dwarves. And on his head he had a bronze helmet, like a gladiator’s mask – a headpiece with a wide brim and a plate with holes in it where the face would be. There were two horns on the helmet …

Monstradamus

Like a bull’s horns?

Ariadne

They were much more massive and they didn’t stick out to the sides, they ran backwards, merging into the helmet to form a single block. If I could compare them with anything, they looked a lot like the silencers of a bronze motorbike, curving along the rim of the headpiece with the round crown. There were lots of little rods and tubes on the helmet as well, all made of bronze, and they linked all its different parts together, so the whole thing looked a bit like an antique rocket engine.

Nutscracker

Did he say anything?

Ariadne

No, I didn’t see him for very long. I only had just enough time to think the two dwarves were dressed so strangely because they were trying to look like him. Beside him they looked absolutely tiny. And there seemed to be something wistful or sad and lonely about him, like someone who’d been banished by the emperor. Or just the opposite, as though he was an emperor who had been left all alone because he had banished everyone else.