Victor Pelevin - The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

‘What for?’ I asked.

‘Well . . . I’ll wear them in a locket on my chest,’ he said. ‘Take them out sometimes and smell them. Like a medieval knight.’

I smiled - his ideas about medieval knights were clearly derived from jokes. Perhaps that was the reason they were fairly close to the truth. Of course, the hairs that medieval knights carried in their medallions didn’t come from tails - who would have given them those? - but by and large the picture was accurate enough.

I noticed an unfamiliar object beside the divan - a floor-lamp in the shape of an immense Martini glass. It was a cone studded with light bulbs, set on a tall, thin leg.

‘That’s a really lovely thing. Where did it come from?’

‘It’s a gift from the reindeer-herders,’ he said.

‘The reindeer-herders?’ I said, amazed.

‘Or rather, the reindeer-herders’ leadership. Some funny guys from London. Good, isn’t it? Like a dragonfly’s eye.’

I wanted so badly to throw myself on him and hug him really tight that I could hardly keep still. I was afraid - if I took another step towards him there would be a shower of sparks between us. He clearly felt something too.

‘You’re kind of strange today. Haven’t been dropping anything, have you? Or sniffing anything?’

‘Afraid?’ I asked, glowering at him.

‘Ha,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen more frightening things.’

I started walking round him slowly. He chuckled and set off in the opposite direction round the same circle, without taking his eyes off me, as if we were a pair of fencers from one of the Japanese action movies that he liked watching so much in his lupine form, clutching on to me with his shaggy grey tail hooked over. Then we both stopped at the same moment. I took a step towards him, put my hands on his shoulder straps, pulled him towards me and, for the first time in our relationship I kissed him on the lips - the way that people kiss.

I’d never kissed anyone like that before. I mean physically, using my mouth. It was a strange feeling - wet, warm, with a gentle knocking of teeth against teeth. I put all my love into my first kiss. And a second later the transformation began.

At first everything looked exactly as usual - Alexander’s tail extended (or rather, tumbled) out of his spine, curled over, and an invisible thread of energy stretched between it and his head. After that he usually became a wolf in just a few moments. But this time something went wrong.

He jerked convulsively and fell on his back, as if his tail had suddenly become so heavy that it had pulled him over. Then he began rapidly jerking his arms and legs about in a horrible way (like people with craniocerebral injuries do), and in a few seconds he was transformed into a perfectly ordinary mongrel from the street or the local rubbish tip - a dog .

Yes, a dog. He was as big as an Alsatian, but clearly a mongrel. His plebeian proportions betrayed a mixture of numerous different breeds, and his eyes were clear and almost human in their anger, like the eyes of some wandering dogs who sleep in the entrances of the Metro with the homeless tramps. And this dog was blue-black, in fact purple-black, exactly like Aslan Udoev’s beard.

Maybe it was the colour, maybe it was the pointed ears that seemed to be straining after some distant sound but I thought I sensed something diabolical about this dog: thoughts came into my head about crows and gallows, about demonic possession ... I realize that when a creature like me says ‘thoughts came to me about demonic possession’ it sounds rather strange, but what can I do about it, if that’s the way it was. But the most macabre thing was the groan of horror that I either imagined or really did hear from every side - as if the earth itself had groaned.

I was so frightened that I started squealing. He jumped away from me, turned towards the mirror, saw, shuddered and started whimpering. Only then did I recover my wits. At that point I’d already realized that something terrible had happened to him, some kind of catastrophe, and it was my fault. The catastrophe had been caused by my kiss, by that electrical circuit of love that I had closed when I pressed my lips against his mouth.

I squatted down beside him and put my arms round his neck. But he tore himself away, and when I tried to hold him back, he bit me on the hand. Not really hard, but it started to bleed in two places. I gasped and jerked away. He dashed to the door into the other room, slammed his paws against it and disappeared inside.

He didn’t come out for an entire hour. I realized that he wanted to be left alone and I didn’t intrude on his solitude. I was terrified, afraid that any moment I would hear a shot (he had once promised to shoot himself for an absolutely trivial reason). But instead of a shot I heard music. He’d put on ‘I Follow the Sun’. He listened to the song once, then put it on again. His soul was clearly in need of oxygen.

I was left there, sitting on the carpet in front of the divan. As soon as I calmed down a little bit, I began getting ideas about what might have happened. The first thing I remembered was the deceased Lord Cricket and his lecture about the snake force descending through the tail. Naturally, once I heard the word ‘super-werewolf’, I had regarded all his theories as crazy nonsense, a garland of foul-smelling bubbles in the swamp of profane esotericism. But one aspect of what had happened lent a certain weight to what his lordship had said.

Before his transformation, Alexander had fallen on the floor, just as if someone had tugged on his tail. Or as if his tail had become incredibly heavy. In any case, something unusual had happened, something that had taken him by surprise - and it had something to do with his organ of hypnotic suggestion. And Lord Cricket had said that the transition from a wolf to what he called the ‘super-werewolf’ took place when the kundalini descended to the very tip of the tail. And as well as that . . .

This was the most unpleasant part. As well as that, he had mentioned an ‘involtation of darkness’ that was necessary for this to happen, the spiritual influence of a ‘senior demonic entity . . .’

Little me?

It was hard to believe it. But on the other hand, what the deceased lord had said could well have contained a grain of truth picked up from somewhere by that Aleister Crowley of his. All sorts of secret gatherings and mystical rituals were held in the world - it couldn’t all be absolute charlatanism, could it? One thing was certain - I had played a fatal part in what had happened. Apparently I had been the catalyst for some obscure alchemical reaction. As Haruki Murakami said, the force emanating from a woman is not very great, but it can certainly move a man’s heart . . .

The most terrible thing was the realization that what had happened was irreversible - a were-creature never makes mistakes about things like that. I could tell that Alexander would never again be the way he used to be. And it wasn’t just supposition on my part, I knew it with my tail. It was as if I’d dropped a precious vase that had shattered into a thousand fragments, and now it could never be glued back together again.

I plucked up my courage, walked over to the door through which he had disappeared and opened it.

I’d never been in there before. What I found behind the door was a small space, like a dressing room, with a table, an armchair and cupboards running right round the walls. There was a small digital recorder lying on the table. It was playing the Shocking Blue song again, promising to follow the sun until the end of time.

Alexander was unrecognizable. He had already changed his clothes - now, instead of a general’s uniform, he was wearing a dark grey jacket and a black turtleneck. I’d never seen him dressed like that before. But the most important thing was the elusive change that had taken place in his face - the eyes seemed to have moved closer together and faded somehow. And their expression had altered too - a new despair, balanced by fury, had appeared in them: I don’t think anyone else but me would have been able to separate out these components of his outwardly calm gaze. It was him, but not him. I felt afraid.