Victor Pelevin - The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

Evidently my tone of voice must have stung him.

‘Why do you always have to reproach me for my ignorance,’ he said irritably. ‘Of course, you know more about all these “discourses” than I do. But I’m no knucklehead either, you know. It’s just that my knowledge is in a different area, it’s practical. Which happens to make it a lot more valuable than yours.’

‘It depends how you look at it.’

‘Whichever way you look at it. Supposing I learned this Camille Paglia off by heart. Then what would I do with her?’

‘That depends on your inclinations, your imagination.’

‘Can you give me even one example of how reading Camille Paglia has helped someone in real life?’

I thought about it.

‘Yes, I can.’

‘Well?’

‘I had a client who was a spiritualist. He used to read Camille Paglia to the spirit of the poet Igor Severyanin during his spiritualist séances. And Igor Severyanin used to tell him, through the saucer, that he liked it very much and he’d always suspected something of the kind, only he’d never been able to formulate it. He even dictated a poem:

Ah, vagina dentata, this fleeting

assignation is strife.

Unforgettable is our meeting.

Clean and chaste is my life.

‘There you see,’ he said, ‘I managed to lead this clean and chaste life perfectly well without any of your gynaecological stomatology, just as a soldier. And I helped my motherland.’

‘And she paid you back, the way she usually does.’

‘That’s not something I need to be ashamed about.’

‘Nobody’s going to feel ashamed about it. Haven’t you realized yet what kind of country you are living in?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘And I never will. The world I live in is one I create for myself. By what I do in it.’

‘Get you,’ I said. ‘If your FSB pals could have heard you now, they’d probably give you another medal. So you created this place for us, did you?’

‘More like you did.’

I came to my senses.

‘Yes, I’m sorry. You’re right. Forgive me, please.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, and went back to his crossword.

I felt ashamed. I went over, sat down beside him and put my arms round him.

‘What are we arguing about, Sasha. Let’s have a howl, shall we?’

‘Not right now,’ he said, ‘tonight, when the moon rises.’

I was left sitting there beside him, with my arm round his shoulders. He didn’t say anything. After a minute or two I felt his body trembling slightly.

He was crying. I’d never seen him do that before.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked affectionately. ‘Who’s upset my little boy?’

‘No one,’ he said. ‘It’s just me. Your Camille Paglia’s to blame, with the teeth you know where.’

‘But why should she make you cry?’

‘Because,’ he said, ‘she’s got teeth there, and now I’ve got claws there.’

‘Where?’

‘You know where,’ he said. ‘When I transform. Like a fifth leg. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.’

That was when everything became clear - that new secretiveness of his, and that aura of irrational dread that surrounded him when he became a dog. Yes, everything fell into place. The poor thing, how he must have suffered, I thought. Above all, I had to make him feel that he was dear to me even like that - if he couldn’t see it for himself.

‘You silly thing,’ I said. ‘So what? Grow a cactus there if you like. As long as your tail’s safe and sound.’

‘You really don’t mind?’ he asked.

‘Of course not, darling.’

‘And it’s enough for you . . . You know, what we do?’

‘More than enough.’

‘Honestly?’

‘Well since you’ve brought it up, I’d like to swap places. So that sometimes you can be Su and I can be Chow. I’m always Su.’

‘No, I’m sorry, don’t you go trying to turn me into a queer, on top of this business with the claws . . .’

‘If you say so,’ I said, ‘I don’t insist. You asked, and I told you.’

‘Are we talking frankly now?’

I nodded.

‘Then tell me, why haven’t you given me a single blowjob all the times we’ve been in Hong Kong? Because I’m really a black dog?’

I counted up to ten to myself. After all, the fact that I couldn’t stand the word ‘blow-job’ was my problem, not his - there was no point in taking offence.

‘So you think you really are a black dog?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, ‘this black dog thinks that I really am him.’

‘And that’s why you’re so rarely human nowadays?’

He nodded.

‘I don’t even want to be. After all, I’ve got nothing left here, apart from you. Everything’s on that side now . . . And it’s not mine, it’s his. You were right when you said that words just mess with your head. So what about that blowjob?’

I counted to ten again, but I still couldn’t help myself.

‘Can I ask you please not to use that word in my presence?’

He shrugged and gave a crooked smile.

‘Now I’m not even allowed to use words. Only you can do that, is that it? You’re always putting me down, Ginger.’

I sighed. When it comes down to it, all men are the same, and they only want one thing from us. And it’s a good thing if they still want that, said one of my inner voices.

‘Okay, put the movie on. But not from the beginning, from track three . . .’

As always, following our insane and shameless Hong Kong rendezvous we took a long rest. I looked up at the ceiling, at the rough concrete lit by the electric bulb, resembling the surface of some ancient heavenly body. He lay beside me. What a sweetie, I thought, how touching his love is. After all, this is all so new to him. Compared to me, that is. It’s a tough break for the poor boy, with those claws. But I once heard something about a dog with a fifth leg . . . Only what was it exactly? I can’t remember.

‘Hey!’ he said to me. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘Did you enjoy that?’

He looked at me.

‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly.’

‘It was just the complete pizdets .’

He uttered the Russian obscene word, which was commonly used in two senses - ‘total fuck-up’ and ‘unsurpassable excellence, in some way related to a total fuck-up’. Yet it had one more rare meaning that I suddenly recalled. I sat upright.

‘That’s it, I’ve remembered!’

‘What have you remembered?’

‘I’ve remembered who you are.’

‘And who am I?’

‘I read somewhere about a dog like you with five legs. The Dog Pizdets. He sleeps up among the eternal snows, and when enemies descend on Russia in their hordes, he wakes up and . . .’

‘Treads on them with his leg?’ he asked.

‘No. He . . . He kind of happens to them. Like shit happens, you know. That’s it. And I think in the northern myths he’s called “Garm”. Have you come across him? The Nordic project’s your area, after all.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t. It’s interesting. Tell me more.’

‘He’s a truly fearsome dog. The wolf Fenrir’s double. He’ll come into his own after Ragnarek. But in the meantime he guards the house of the dead.’

‘What other information do you have?’

‘Something else a bit vague . . . Like he’s supposed to spy on men to see how they make fire and pass the secret on to women . . .’

‘Skip this,’ he growled. ‘What else?’

‘That’s all I remember.’

‘And what are the practical consequences here?’

‘Concerning Garm, I don’t know. You need to go to Iceland for a consultation. But concerning Pizdets . . . Try to happen to something.’

I said that to him as a joke, but he took my words absolutely seriously.