Victor Pelevin - The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

When I first read about this, I felt envious that I didn’t have any similar practice in my life. But after I met Pavel Ivanovich I realized that now I did.

Pavel Ivanovich was an elderly scholar of the humanities who looked like a melted-down, hairy pink candle. Formerly he had been a right-wing liberal (I didn’t understand what this outrageous word-combination meant), but following the common trend he had repented to such an extent that he had assumed personal responsibility for all the woes of the motherland. In order to soothe his soul, he had to take a flogging once or twice a week from Young Russia , which he had condemned to poverty by forcing it to earn a living by flogging old perverts instead of studying in university. And so he was caught in a closed circle, which I might possibly have pondered on more deeply, if only he hadn’t masturbated during the session. That destroyed all the mystery.

If he’d had a real sex worker from somewhere in Ukraine as his own Young Russia , she would never have agreed to be paid only 50 dollars for a one-hour session. Flogging someone is hard work, even when the procedure is merely a hypnotic suggestion. However, I began going to Pavel Ivanovich’s place not just for the sake of the money, but also because he irritated me quite incredibly, provoking uncontrollable spasms of wild fury in me. I had to summon up all my willpower to keep myself in hand. For sheer practical reasons I ought to have gone for richer sponsors, but character has to be trained during the difficult periods of life, when the meaning of doing it is not obvious. That’s when it does the most good.

So that I could understand my part in what was going on, Pavel Ivanovich gave me a detailed account of all the reasons for his repentance. I was going to take another 50 dollars an hour for this understanding, and I was just waiting for the moment to come when I could bring up the matter of the extra charge. But it never came - Pavel Ivanovich spoke at exceptional length:

‘Between 1940 and 1946, my dear, the volume of industrial output in Russia fell by twenty-five per cent. And that was with all the horrors of war. But between 1990 and 1999 it slumped by over half . . . worse than Genghis Khan and Hitler taken together. And that’s not just commie propaganda and lies. It’s what Joseph Stieglitz writes - the chief economist of the World Bank and a Nobel Prize winner. Have you read Globalisation and its Discontents ? What a terrifying book! And America doesn’t even need the atom bomb, because it has the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund . . .’

I actually began to forget what I was doing there in his apartment, and only the leather knout lying on the table between us reminded me of it. It soon emerged that Pavel Ivanovich’s repentance was total, embracing not only the economic aspect of the Russian reforms, but also the cultural history of the last few decades.

‘Did you know,’ he said, staring keenly into my eyes, ‘that the CIA actually financed the beatnik movement and the psychological revolution? The goal was to create an attractive image of the West for our youth. They wanted to pretend that America has fun. So they did - and for a while they even believed it themselves. But the funniest thing of all is that all these children of LSD generals who tried KGB and strove so hard to copy the beatniks really were doing just what the CIA wanted, that is, they were committing the very sin the Party accused them of! And they were the future intelligentsia, the nerve system of the nation . . .’

In speaking of the intelligentsia’s debt of guilt to the nation, he kept using two terms that I thought were synonyms - ‘intelligentsia’ and ‘intellectuals’. After a while I just had to ask:

‘But what difference is there between a member of the intelligentsia and an intellectual?’

‘There’s a very big difference,’ he replied. ‘I can only try to explain it allegorically. Do you understand what that means?’

I nodded.

‘When you were still very little, there were a hundred thousand people living in this city who were paid for kissing the ass of a loathsome red dragon - which you probably don’t even remember . . .’

I shook my head. Once in my young days I really had seen a red dragon, but I’d already forgotten what it looked like - the only thing I could remember was my own fear. It was unlikely that Pavel Ivanovich had that incident in mind.

‘Of course, those hundred thousand people hated the dragon, and they dreamed of being ruled by the green toad who fought against the dragon. So, anyway, they came to an arrangement with the toad, poisoned the dragon with lipstick that they got from the CIA and started living a new life.’

‘But what have the intell -’

‘Wait,’ he said, raising his hand. ‘At first they thought that under the toad they would be doing exactly the same as before, only they’d get ten times as much money for it. But it turned out that instead of a hundred thousand ass-kissers there was only a demand for three professionals working in three eight-hour shifts to give the toad a never-ending royal blowjob. And which of the hundred thousand those three would be, would be decided by an open competition, in which candidates would not only have to demonstrate their advanced professional skills, but also the ability to smile optimistically with the corners of their mouths while they were at work . . .’

‘I’m afraid I’ve lost the thread.’

‘Well, this is the thread. Those hundred thousand people were called the intelligentsia. And those three are called intellectuals.’

I have one quirk that is rather hard to explain. I can’t stand it when anyone uses the word blowjob in my presence - outside the context of work, at least. I don’t know why, but it just drives me wild. And in addition, Pavel Ivanovich’s explanation seemed like such a crude, boorish hint at my own profession that I even forgot about the additional fee I’d been planning to ask for.

‘Are you talking about a blowjob so that I can understand? On the basis of my experience of life?’

‘Of course not, my dear,’ he said patronizingly. ‘I explain things in those terms because then I start to understand the point myself. And the point here is not your experience of life, but mine . . .’

The next time he started reading a magazine during his flogging. That was insulting enough. But when he started prodding the article with his finger and muttering, ‘Why don’t you just keep your mouth shut, you bastard,’ I began to get annoyed and interrupted the procedure, that is, I planted the suggestion of a pause in his mind.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked in surprise.

‘Tell me, are we doing a flagellation here, or is this a library day?’

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said, ‘this interview’s outrageous. It’s absolutely incredible!’

He slapped his fingers down on the magazine.

‘I’ve got nothing against detective novels, but I can’t stand it when the people who write them start explaining how we ought to arrange things in Russia.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s just like some underage prostitute who’s been given a lift by a long-distance truck driver so she can give him a blowjob suddenly stops work, looks up and starts giving him instructions about how to flush the carburettor in a frost.’

Pavel Ivanovich clearly didn’t understand just how insulting that sounds in a conversation with a sex worker. But I became aware of my upsurge of rage before it overwhelmed me, so that my soul was immediately flooded with a calm joy.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ I asked in a perfectly natural voice. ‘Maybe she’s serviced so many truckers that she’s picked up all the subtle points and now she really can teach him how to flush his carburettor.’