Victor Pelevin - The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

‘The key? To what?’

‘To the Rainbow Stream.’

‘And what kind of key is it?’

‘I have no idea. I am not a super-werewolf. I am a simple monk. And now be on your way - your palanquin is waiting for you.’

‘And ever since then I have continued on my way,’ I said, and stopped speaking.

My story seemed to have made a strong impression on Alexander.

‘Well?’ he asked me. ‘Have you found the key?’

‘Of course.’

‘And what is it?’

‘A correct understanding of your own nature. Everything that I tried to explain to you.’

‘So you’ve already entered the Rainbow Stream?’

‘You could say that,’ I replied.

‘What did it look like?’

‘First you have to understand what the super-werewolf is.’

‘So what is it?’

‘It’s you.’

‘That’s what I keep telling you,’ he said plaintively. ‘But you confuse me. You say it’s really you. You everywhere.’

‘Again you don’t understand. You think you’re the superwerewolf because you can break light bulbs and knock flies down by just looking at them . . .’

‘Not only flies,’ he said. ‘And not only by looking at them. You can’t even imagine what I can do.’

‘What can you do?’

‘I don’t even have to look, get it? I only have to think it. For instance, yesterday evening I happened to the General Customs Inspector.’

‘What, did he die?’

‘What for? He just muttered in his sleep and turned over on to his other side. I wiped him clean out.’

‘And what does that mean?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘It means he’ll get some obscure job in some foundation and will sit there until he fades into the wallpaper. And all his kickbacks will go to the right people now. I mean, to the honest people with clean hands.’

‘What a tough guy you are,’ I said. ‘And how do you do it?’

He thought about it.

‘It’s like sex, only the other way round. It’s hard to explain. You know yourself, it’s all in the tail. But I haven’t figured out the details yet ... So you admit I am the super-werewolf after all?’

‘You don’t understand anything properly,’ I said. ‘Just because you can swat flies and customs officials, that doesn’t make you a super-werewolf. You don’t even have any right to think you’re a super-werewolf yet.’

‘And you do have the right to think so, do you?’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said modestly, but firmly.

‘Seems to me you’re coming on a bit too strong altogether, Ginger. There’s no place left in the world for me any more.’

‘This whole world is yours. Just understand who you really are.’

‘I’m the super-werewolf.’

‘Right. But what is a super-werewolf?’

‘It’s me.’

‘There you go again. I thought you were a keen-eyed lion, but you’re a blind dog.’

He shuddered as if he’d been lashed with a whip.

‘What?’

‘It’s just a teaching about the gaze of the lion,’ I explained hastily, sensing that I’d said too much. ‘They say that if you throw a stick to a dog, it will watch the stick. But if you throw a stick to a lion, it will keep its eyes fixed on the thrower. It’s a formal turn of phrase that was used in debates in ancient China when an opponent started clutching at words and stopped seeing what was really important.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s drop it. So maybe you’ll tell me what the super-werewolf is?’

‘The super-werewolf is the one you see when you look deep inside yourself for a long time.’

‘But you said there’s nothing in there.’

‘That’s right. There isn’t anything there. That is the superwerewolf. ’

‘Why?’

‘Because that nothing can become anything at all.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Look. You’re a werewolf, because you can turn into, erm, a wolf. I’m a were-creature, because I’m a fox who pretends to be a human being. But the super-werewolf becomes you, me, this bag of apples, this cup, this crate - everything that you look at in turn. That’s the first reason why it’s called the super-werewolf. Besides, any were-creature can be caught by the tail, figuratively speaking.’

‘Okay, probably,’ he said.

‘But the super-werewolf can’t be caught by the tail. Because it doesn’t have a body. And that’s the second reason why it’s called that. Do you understand?’

‘Not entirely.’

‘Remember, when we were flying back from the north, you told me that when you were a child, you used to dream about a diving suit in which you could land on the sun, dive to the bottom of the ocean, jump into a black hole and come back out?’

‘I remember.’

‘Well then, that’s exactly the kind of diving suit the superwerewolf wears. It’s simply a void that can be filled with anything. Nothing can stick to this void. Nothing can touch it or stain it, because you only have to take away what it’s been filled with, and it will be the same as it was before. There’s nowhere for the local cop to put a registration stamp on it, and nothing for your Mikhalich to attach his bugs to.’

‘I get it. Now I get it,’ he said, turning pale. ‘That’s really impressive. No security service could ever catch someone like that!’

‘I’m glad you appreciate that.’

‘And how do I become it?’

‘There’s no way.’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘Think about it.’

‘Because there can only be one super-werewolf, and it’s already you? Do I understand things right now, Ginger?’

‘No, Grey One, no. You can’t become it, because you have always been it. The super-werewolf is your own mind, the same one you use from morning till night to think all sorts of nonsense. ’

‘So I’m the super-werewolf after all, am I?’

‘No.’

‘But it’s my mind, isn’t it? Then what’s the problem?’

‘The problem is that your mind isn’t actually yours.’

‘Then whose is it?’

‘It’s not possible to say that it is anybody’s at all. Or what it’s like and where it is. All these concepts arise within it, that is, it precedes everything else without exception. Do you understand? Whatever you imagine, consider, believe or know for sure, the mind’s what will do it.’

‘Are you talking about the brain?’

‘No. The brain is one of the concepts that exist in the mind.’

‘But the mind arises because there is a brain,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Those villains have really brainwashed you out of your wits,’ I sighed. ‘People have no idea what mind is. Instead they study the brain, or the psyche, or Freud’s love letters to Einstein. And scientists seriously believe that mind is the product of certain chemical and electrical processes in the brain. That’s the same as thinking that a TV set is the cause of the film showing on it. Or that a salary is the cause of human existence.’

‘That’s what economists do think.’

‘Right. Well, let them think it. Let them generate their electrical impulses, steal tranches of credit, make official protests, measure the amplitude and the velocity, give the blowjob and take the derivative coefficient, and then determine their rating. Fortunately for this world, we foxes are here in it, as well as all those clowns. We know the secret. And now you know it too. Or you almost know it.’

‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘And who else knows it, apart from foxes?’

‘Only the chosen are supposed to know it.’

‘And you’re not afraid to reveal it to me?’

‘No.’

‘Why? Because I’m one of the chosen too?’

‘Because only the mind can know this secret. And the mind has no one to hide it from anyway. It is one.’

‘One?’