Victor Pelevin: The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

I could have got rich, if I earned my living dishonestly. But a virtuous fox must support herself only by prostitution and never, under any circumstances, exploit her hypnotic gift for other purposes - such is the law of heaven, which it is not permitted to transgress. Of course, sometimes you have to. I myself had only just fuddled the brains of two security guards. But you can only do that kind of thing when your life and freedom are in danger. A fox should not even think about gullible money couriers. And if the temptation becomes too great, you have to inspire yourself with examples from history. Jean-Jacques Rousseau could have been swimming in money, but how did he earn a living? By copying out music.

Getting a spot in another hotel wasn’t easy, and for the foreseeable future I could only see two alternatives: streetwalking and the Internet. The Internet seemed more attractive, after all, it was at the cutting edge of modern progress, and selling myself on its fibre-optic sidewalks would be stylishly futuristic. How interesting, I thought, everybody’s always going on about progress. And what does it all mean? Just that the oldest professions acquire an electronic interface, that’s all. Progress doesn’t alter the nature of the fundamental processes.

The driver spotted my gloomy mood.

‘What’s up,’ he asked, ‘someone upset you, love?’

‘Aha,’ I said.

He’d been the last person to upset me, when he named a price of three hundred and fifty roubles for the journey.

‘Don’t you pay ’em any heed,’ said the driver. ‘You know how many times a day people upset me? If I thought about it every time, my head would be like a great big balloon full of shit. Pay ’em no heed, I tell you. By tomorrow you’ll have forgotten all about it. And life’s a long business, you know.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But how do you do that - pay no heed?’

‘Just don’t, that’s all. Think about something you enjoy instead.’

‘And where do I get that from?’

The taxi-driver squinted at me in the mirror.

‘Isn’t there anything you enjoy in your life?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Yes I do.’

‘All nothing but suffering, is it?’

‘Yes, and so’s yours.’

‘Well, now,’ the taxi-driver laughed, ‘you can’t know about that.’

‘Yes, I can,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t be sitting here otherwise.’

‘Why?’

‘I could explain. Only I don’t know if you’d understand.’

‘Well, get you!’ the driver snorted. ‘Do you think I’m more stupid than you are? I reckon I ought to be able to understand, if you can.’

‘All right. Do you understand that suffering is the material out of which the world was created?’

‘Why?’

‘That can only be explained with an example.’

‘Well, give me an example then.’

‘Do you know the story of Baron Münchhausen, who pulled himself out of a bog by his own hair?’

‘I do,’ said the driver, ‘I’ve even seen the film.’

‘The foundations underlying the reality of this world are very similar. Only you have to imagine Münchhausen suspended in a total void, squeezing his own balls as hard as he can and screaming in unbearable pain. Look at it one way and you feel kind of sorry for him. But look at it a different way, and he only has to let go of his own balls and he’ll immediately disappear, because by his very nature he is simply a vessel of pain with a grey ponytail, and if the pain disappears, then he’ll disappear as well.’

‘Did you learn that at school?’ the driver asked. ‘Or at home?’

‘Neither,’ I said. ‘It was on the way home from school. It’s a long journey, I get to see and hear all sorts of things. Did you understand the example?’

‘Sure I did,’ he replied. ‘I’m not stupid. So why’s your Münchhausen afraid to let go of his balls?’

‘I told you, then he’ll disappear.’

‘Maybe it would be better if he did? Who the hell needs a life like that?’

‘A good point. And that’s precisely why the social contract exists.’

‘Social contract? What social contract?’

‘Every individual Münchhausen can decide to let go of his own balls, but . . .’

I remembered the Sikh’s crayfish eyes and stopped. One of my sisters used to say that when a client slips off the tail during an unsuccessful session, for a few seconds he sees the truth. And for a man this truth is so unbearable that the first thing he wants to do is kill the fox responsible for revealing it to him, and then he wants to kill himself . . . But other foxes say that in that brief second the man realizes that physical life is a stupid and shameful mistake. And the first thing he tries to do is to thank the fox who has opened his eyes. And after that he corrects the error of his own existence. It’s all nonsense, of course. But it’s clear enough how these rumours get started.

‘But what?’ the driver asked.

I remembered where I was.

‘But when there are six billion Münchhausens holding each others’ balls arm over arm, the world is in no danger.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s very simple. Münchhausen can let go of himself, as you so correctly observed. But the more someone else hurts him, the more he hurts the two that he’s holding on to. And so on for six billion times. Do you understand?’

‘Shee-it,’ he said and spat, ‘only a woman could come up something like that.’

‘I have to disagree with you again,’ I said. ‘It’s an extremely male picture of the universe. I’d even call it chauvinistic. There’s no place in it for a woman at all.’

‘Why?’

‘Because women don’t have any balls.’

We drove on in silence.

No point in denying it, sometimes it happens that you lay something heavy on someone, and your own heart feels lighter for it. Why is that? It’s a mystery. Never mind, let him think a bit, it’s never done anyone any harm.

The next morning the business with the Sikh was in the news. It wasn’t what I went onto the net for, but some lousy worm had set my home page to ‘rumours.ru’ and I’d never got around to changing it. I forced myself to read the article right through to the end:

BUSINESSMAN FROM INDIA KILLS HIMSELF IN FRONT OF SECURITY GUARDS

The public will soon start thinking of the National hotel as a high-risk zone. With the terrorist attack that took place right outside its door still fresh in the memories of Muscovites, another alarming incident has just taken place: yesterday a forty-year-old businessman from the Indian state of Punjab killed himself by jumping from a fifth floor window. At least that’s the story of the two security guards employed by the hotel who were with him at the time the tragedy occurred. They claim that the guest from India summoned them by pulling the special alarm cord, and then when they entered the room, for no apparent reason he took a run and jumped out of the window. He was killed instantly when he hit the surface of the road. It has been established that shortly before his death the businessman had received a visit from a female denizen of the demi-monde.

Why the fifth floor, I wondered, when his suite was number 319? Ah yes, they had that swanky European way of numbering the rooms - the first two floors didn’t count, so number three nineteen was on the fifth floor . . .

Then my thoughts moved on to that mysterious French word ‘demi-monde’ - the ‘half-world’. Why, I wondered, wasn’t it the quarter-world? If you followed that method of word formation, consistently you could define the precise depths to which a woman had fallen. After two thousand years my denominator would probably have been pretty impressive . . .