The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

I handed him a print-out of an e-mail letter I’d received from E Hu-Li that morning.

Hi there, Red,

I tried to reach you on the mobile, but the voice said that the ‘number is temporarily blocked’. Looks like your sponsor in uniform isn’t very generous . . .

Pursuant to our meeting (so charming!) of yesterday’s date, it appears that when we left our boys alone after Brian’s lecture and started reminiscing about old times, they had a quarrel about art. Let me tell you what happened. Brian showed Alexander photographs of some works that he is planning to exhibit jointly with the Saatchi gallery. First and foremost among them is the installation ‘The Liberation of Babylon’, which uses a model of the Gates of Ishtar as the background for Scottish bagpipers parachuting in with their kilts hiked up. These plaster figures convey their own state of sexual excitation to the viewer, attacking his perception and transforming him into another object put on display. In this way, the observer is made aware of his own physical and emotional presence in the space distorted by the gravity of that artistic object . . . Alexander liked ‘The Liberation of Babylon’, which cannot be said for all the other pieces.

Have you seen the hit of the last Venice Biennale - the haystack in which the first Belarussian postmodernist, Mikolai Klimaksovich, hid from his local police inspector for four years? Alexander called this work plagiaristic and told Brian about the similar haystack famously used before the revolution by Vladimir Lenin. Brian observed that repetition is not necessarily plagiarism, it is the very essence of the postmodern, or - to put it in broader terms - the foundation of the modern cultural gestalt, which is manifested in everything, from the cloning of sheep to remakes of old movies, for what else can you do after the end of history? Brian said it was precisely Klimaksovich’s use of quotation that made him a postmodernist, not a plagiarizer. But Alexander objected that no quotations would ever have saved this Klimaksovich from the Russian police, and history might have come to an end in Belarus, but there was no sign of it breaking down yet in Russia.

Then Brian showed Alexander a work by Asuro Keshami, one which he regards with especial affection, not least owing to the serious investment required for its production and installation. Keshami’s work, inspired by the oeuvre of Camille Paglia, of whom you must have heard, consists of an immense tube of red plastic with projections on the inside in the form of white fangs. It is proposed to install it in the open air in one of London’s sports stadiums.

And now I’m getting to the point. One of the most serious problems in the world of modern art is the invention of original and fresh verbal interpretations of a work. Literally just a few phrases are required, which can then be reprinted in the catalogues and reviews. This apparently trivial detail can often decide the fate of a piece of art. It is very important here to be able to perceive things from an unexpected, shocking angle, and your friend, with his barbarically fresh view of the world, does this quite remarkably well. Therefore, Brian would like permission to use the ideas expressed by Alexander yesterday for the conceptual support of the installation. The accompanying text which I include below is by way of being a fusion of Brian’s and Alexander’s ideas:

Asuro Keshami’s work ’VD-₄₂CC’ combines the languages of different areas - engineering, technology and science. At the base level the subject-matter is the overcoming of space: physical space, the space of taboo and the space of our subconscious fears. The languages of engineering and technology deal with the material from which the object is constructed, but the artist addresses the viewer in the language of emotions. When the viewer learns that certain people have given this little queer fifteen million pounds to stretch out a huge imitation-leather cunt above an abandoned soccer pitch, he remembers what he does in his own life and how much he is paid for it, then he looks at the photo of this little queer in his horn-rimmed spectacles and funny jacket, and experiences confusion and bewilderment bordering on the feeling that the German philosopher Martin Heidegger called ‘abandonment’ (Geworfenheit). The viewer is invited to concentrate on these feelings, which constitute the precise aesthetic effect that the installation attempts to achieve.

Brian would like to offer Alexander a fee of one thousand pounds. Of course, this is not a large sum, but this version of the accompanying text is not final, and it is not absolutely certain that it will be used. Have a word with Alexander, okay? You can reply directly to Brian at this address. I am a little miffed with him just at the moment. He is in a bad mood - last night he was refused entrance to the establishment known as ‘Night Flight’. First he was stopped by the face control (they didn’t like his sports shoes), and then some Dutch pimp emerged from the depths of this den of iniquity and told Brian to dress ‘more stylish’. Brian has been repeating the same thing all day long today: ‘Stylish? Like the one who went in just ahead of me? In a green jacket and blue shirt?’ And he is taking out his bad mood on me. Ah well, never mind:-=)))

The most important thing is, don’t forget about the pass for the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour!

Heads and tails,

Your E

Alexander read the print-out carefully. After that he folded the sheet of paper in two, then folded it in two again, and then tore it in half.

‘A thousand pounds,’ he said. ‘Ha! He obviously doesn’t understand who he’s dealing with here. You know what, you write to him. Your English is better, anyway.’

‘Thanks,’ I said modestly. ‘What shall I say? He didn’t offer enough?’

He looked me up and down.

‘Fuck him out of it from every possible angle. Only make it sound aristocratic and elegant.’

‘That’s not possible,’ I said. ‘No matter how much I’d like to.’

‘Why?’

‘In aristocratic circles they don’t fuck each other out of it. It’s just not done.’

‘Then fuck him whatever way it is done,’ he said. ‘But hard enough to crack his arse open. Go on, put in that sarcasm of yours that has corroded my soul so thoroughly. Let it do some good for once.’

Something in his tone of voice prevented me from asking exactly what good he had in mind. He was touching in his childish resentment, and part of it was transmitted to me. And if we’re being entirely honest - does a fox really need to be asked twice to fuck an English aristocrat out of it?

I sat down at the computer and started thinking. My internationalist feminist component required my reply to be structured round the phrase ‘suck my dick’, in the style of the most advanced US feminists. But the rational part of my ego told me that would not be enough in a letter signed by Alexander. I wrote the following:

Dear Lord Cricket,

Being extremely busy, I’m not sure that you can currently suck my dick. However, please feel encouraged to fantasize about such a development while sucking on a cucumber, a carrot, an eggplant or any other elongated roundish object you might find appropriate for that matter.

With kind regards,

Alexandre Fenrir-Gray

I deliberately put ‘Alexandre’, in the French manner, instead of ‘Alexander’. I came up with the surname ‘Fenrir-Gray’ at the last moment, in a fit of inspiration. It definitely had an aristocratic ring to it. Of course, it immediately brought to mind ‘Earl Grey’ tea, and that gave the signature a faint aroma of bergamot oil, but the name was only a one-off anyway.

‘Well?’ he asked.

I read the text in Russian.

‘Can we do without the “kind regards”?’

‘Then it won’t be aristocratic.’

‘Oh, all right,’ he sighed. ‘Send it off . . . and then come over here, the Grey Wolf has a proposal for Little Red Riding Hood.’

‘What would that be?’

‘We’re going to have, you know . . . A colloquium on the psychoanalysis of Russian folktales. We’re going to throw pies into Little Red Riding Hood’s basket. Unfortunately, we only have one pie today. So we’ll have to throw it into the basket over and over again.’

‘Phoo, how vulgar . . .’

‘Are you going to come here or do I have to come and get you?’

‘I’ll come. Only let’s do it real fast. It’s already time we were going. And don’t you bite through any of my clothes today, I went to a lot of trouble to buy new knickers, all right? Not all of them suit me.’

‘Uhu.’

‘And one more thing, while you can still talk . . .’

‘What?’

‘Tell me why every time you have to introduce that apologia for fatuous militant ignorance into the conversation?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Like all that about Little Red Riding Hood and psychoanalysis. It sometimes seems to me that you’re trying to shaft the whole of history and culture in my person.’

‘As far as culture goes, there’s something to that,’ he said. ‘But what’s history got to do with it? What are you, a Sphinx? Just how old are you, anyway? I’d give you sixteen years. But what’s your real age?’

I felt my cheeks getting hot, very hot.

‘Mine?’

‘Yes.’

I had to come up with something to say.

‘You know,’ I said, ‘I once read some poems by a public prosecutor in an obscure journal published by the ministry of justice. There was one about a young defender of the Motherland that began with the words “I would never have given him more than fifteen”.’

‘I get it,’ he said, ‘the son of the regiment. So what have these poems got to do with anything?’

‘I’ll tell you. When a man in your uniform says “I’d give you sixteen years”, the first thing you wonder is - under what article of the criminal code.’ And the second thing is - how big the pay off might be.’

‘If you find this uniform irritating,’ he said, ‘take off your stupid dress, and soon there’ll be soft fur instead of shoulder straps. Yes, that’s nice. What a good girl you are today . . .’

‘Listen, are you going to get them a pass for the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour?’

‘Woo-oo-oo!’

‘No? You’re right, too. We’ve just written a reply to that Brian. Although . . . Do you want to stick it to him in really aristocratic fashion?’

‘Gr-r-r!’

‘If after this letter, where you explained everything to him, you still got him a pass anyway, that would be really high class.’

‘Gr-r-r!’

‘So we’ll do it, then?’

‘Gr-r-r!’

‘Good. I’ll remind you later . . . What a fool you are, eh? I told you not to bite through anything! Buy yourself a plastic bone in the dog shop and chew it as much as you like, when I’m not here. Cutting your teeth, are you. You big bad wolf . . . And get a move on, we have to be in the forest in an hour.’

The car stopped at the edge of the forest, not far from the section-built six-storey house I had noted as my initial reference-point.

‘Where to now?’ asked Alexander.

He was acting in the condescendingly buddy-buddy manner of an adult being drawn into a meaningless game by children. That irritated me. Never mind, I thought, we’ll see what you say in an hour’s time . . .

I picked up the plastic bag with the champagne and glasses and got out of the car. Alexander said something to the driver in a low voice and got out after me. I set off towards the forest at a stroll.

In the forest it was already summer. It was that astonishing period in May when the greenery and the flowers seem immortal, as if now they are victorious for ever. But I knew that in just another two or three weeks there would be a presentiment of autumn in the air.

Instead of admiring the natural surroundings, I watched my feet - my stiletto heels were sinking into the ground, and I had to be careful where I stepped. We reached a bench standing between two birch trees. That was the next reference point. From there it was only a few short steps to the forester’s house.

‘Let’s sit down,’ I said.

We sat down on the bench. I handed him the bottle and he opened it deftly.

‘It’s nice here,’ he said, pouring the champagne. ‘Quiet. It’s still spring, but everything’s in full bloom already. Flowers . . . But up north there’s snow everywhere. And ice.’

‘Why did you suddenly remember the north?’

‘Don’t know, really. What are we drinking to?’

‘To good hunting.’

We clinked glasses. When I finished my champagne, I smashed my glass against the edge of the bench and used the sharp edge to cut through the strap of my dress above my right shoulder. He followed my movements with dour disapproval.

‘Are you going to pretend to be an Amazon?’

I didn’t answer that.

‘And listen, why are you all in black? And dark glasses? Is it a spoof on The Matrix?’

I didn’t answer that either.

‘Don’t get me wrong. Black really does suit you, only . . .’

‘I’ll go on from here on my own,’ I interrupted.

‘And what do I do?’

‘When I start to run, you can run after me. But somewhere off to one side. And I beg you, please don’t interfere. Not even if you see something you don’t like. Just keep out of it and watch.’

‘Okay.’

‘And keep your distance. Or you’ll frighten the people.’

‘What people?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘I don’t like any of this,’ he said. ‘I’m worried about you. Maybe you shouldn’t do it?’

I stood up with a determined air.

‘No more. We’re starting.’

As I have already said, the goal of chicken hunting is supraphysical transformation, and the correct preparatory procedure is very important. In order to trigger the transformation, we put ourselves in an extremely embarrassing situation, the kind in which your own idiocy is so breathtaking and you feel so ashamed you wish the earth would open and swallow you up. That is precisely what the evening dress and the high-heeled shoes are for. We take the situation to such absurd lengths that we are left with no other option but to transform into an animal. And the chicken is required as a biological catalyst for the reaction - without it the transformation is impossible. It is extremely important for the chicken to remain alive until the very end - if it dies, we rapidly resume our human shape. And so it’s best to select the bird that is healthiest and strongest.

When I reached the chicken coop, I looked at the forester’s house. The sun was reflected in the window, and I couldn’t see if there was anyone there behind the glass. But there were definitely people in the house. I could hear music coming from the open door, with stern male voices (I think it was a monks’ choir) singing: ‘The good night . . . the peace of God . . . the mantle of God above the sleeping earth . . .’

I needed to hurry.

The chicken coop was a planking hut with an inclined roof made of plywood covered with polythene. I drew back the bolt, flung open the door, which scraped across the ground, and immediately spotted my prey in the foul-smelling semi-darkness. She was a brown chicken with a white side - when all the other chickens made a dash for the corners, she was the only one who stayed put. As if she was waiting for me, I thought.

‘Co-co-co,’ I said in a hoarse, insincere voice, then quickly bent down and grabbed her.

The chicken turned out to be very meek - she twitched once to adjust a wing that was caught awkwardly, then froze. It seemed to me, as it always does at such moments, that she understood the nature of what was happening perfectly well, and her own role in it. Pressing her against my chest, I backed out of the chicken coop. One shoe got stuck in the ground, twisted over and slipped off my foot. I kicked the other one off as well.

‘Hey, daughter,’ a voice called to me.

I looked up. There was a man of about fifty, wearing a tattered, old padded work-jacket, standing on the porch. He had a thick, drooping moustache.

‘What do you think you’re up to?’ he asked. ‘Are you off your head?’

A younger man, about thirty years old, appeared behind the first. He had a moustache too - he was obviously the first man’s son. He was wearing a blue tracksuit with the large letters

‘CASC’, for ‘Central Army Sporting Club’. I noted that they were both too thickset to be fast runners.

The moment of truth was nigh. Looking at them with a mysterious smile, I opened the zip on the right side of my dress. Now it was only held on by the left shoulder-strap, and I easily slipped out of it, letting it fall to the ground. I was left in nothing but a short orange nightdress which didn’t hinder my movements at all. A light breeze caressed my semi-naked body.

A third spectator came out on to the porch - a boy of about eight, carrying a plastic sword. He stared at me without the slightest surprise - to him I probably looked like a picture from the television, come to life, and he’d seen more amazing things on TV.

‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ asked the head of the household with the droopy moustache.

He’d hit the bull’s eye there. At that moment my soul was overflowing with shame. It was no longer shame - it was disgust with myself. I felt as if I were standing at the very epicentre of global infamy and it was not only the offended chicken-owners who were looking at me - all the hierarchies of the heavens and myriads of spiritual beings were gazing at me from their fathomless worlds with furious contempt in their eyes. I began slowly backing away from the chicken coop.

The father and son exchanged glances.

‘You let go of that chicken,’ the son said and stepped down off the porch.

The boy with the sword in his hand opened his mouth in anticipation of a bit of amusement. And now I realized, not with my mind, but with every last cell in my body, that there was only one way out of this cocoon of intolerable indignity - the track leading away into the forest. And I turned and ran.

After that developments followed the classical sequence. The first steps were painful because the branches and stones stuck into my bare feet. But after a few seconds the transformation began. First I felt my fingers fusing together. It became harder to keep hold of the chicken - now I had to press it against my chest as hard as I could, and I had to avoid smothering it accidentally at the same time. Then I stopped feeling any pain in my feet. And another few seconds after that I was already rushing along on three paws without any feeling of discomfort at all.

By that stage it was impossible not to notice the changes that had taken place in me - and they had been noticed. I heard voices hallooing behind me. I glanced round and bared my teeth. Both chicken-owners, father and son, were chasing me. But they were falling a long way behind. I slowed down a bit to disentangle myself from the night-dress (it wasn’t difficult - my body had become lean and flexible), allowed them to get a bit closer and then ran on.

What makes a man run after a fox in a situation like this? Of course, it’s not a matter of trying to recover the stolen property. When the fox undergoes the supraphysical transformation, her pursuers see something that demolishes all their ideas about the world. And then what they run after is no longer the stolen chicken, but that miracle. They are pursuing the glimmer of the impossible that has illuminated their dull lives for the first time. And that is exactly what makes it so difficult to get away from them.

Fortunately, the track into the forest was empty (throughout the entire chase I didn’t meet anyone coming the opposite way). I knew Alexander was somewhere nearby - I could hear branches cracking and leaves rustling as they were parted off to one side of the path. But I couldn’t see anyone - just once or twice I thought I glimpsed a shadow through a gap between the bushes.

The older chicken-owner began falling behind. When it became clear that he would never manage to close the gap, he gave up and dropped out of the race. His son kept up a good pace for about another kilometre, and then slowed down a lot. I shifted into an easy trot, and we ran about another five hundred metres. Then my pursuer started panting for breath, and soon he had no strength to run any further - I suspect he was a smoker. He stopped, with his hands propped on his knees and his dark eyes goggling at me, and I was immediately reminded of the deceased Sikh from the National hotel. But I suppressed my personal feelings - they were inappropriate here.

If my goal had been to escape, the chase would have ended there (thus does the miraculous disappear from human life). But I had another goal - the hunt. I stopped. There was no more than twenty metres left between us.

As I have already said, if the fox releases the chicken, then a minute later, at most, all the supraphysical changes disappear. Naturally, the fox can no longer run faster than a man. And so the manoeuvre I had decided to perform was risky - but I was spurred on by the awareness that Alexander was watching what I was doing. I let go of the chicken. She took a few faltering steps across the asphalt and stopped (during the hunt they go into a special kind of trance and their reactions are inhibited). I counted to ten, grabbed her again and hugged her against my chest.

My pursuer couldn’t bear to be mocked like that - gathering all his strength, he came dashing after me again, and we ran another three hundred metres at a very good pace. I was happy - the hunt had definitely been a success.

And then something unexpected happened. As we ran past a fork in the track, where the trees were marked with blue and red arrows (probably for skiers - although I don’t know what Alexander would have thought), I heard my pursuer shout out:

‘This way! Help!’

Glancing round, I saw him waving to someone. And then two mounted militiamen rode out of the sidetrack that we had just passed.

I don’t know how to express the terror and the majesty of that moment. There’s something similar in Pushkin’s ‘Bronze Horseman’, but there was only one rider there, and here there were two of them. Like a slow-motion sequence from some terrible dream, they swung round, pointed their four faces - two belonging to the militiamen and two to the horses - at me, and came dashing in pursuit.

Why do we hate English aristocrats so much? If, for just a few seconds, you had been in my skin (and at this point I was already covered by it, but rather unevenly, in patches), you would never need to ask that question again. Cops are stupid and they do what they’re told, what can you expect from them? But how can you excuse educated people who have turned another creature’s agony into entertainment and sport? That’s why I don’t condemn my sister E - although, of course, I would never do the things that she does.

It was almost a hundred years since the last time I’d had to escape from mounted pursuers (that was near Melitopol during the Russian Civil War). But when I heard the heavy hoof-beats behind me, I immediately recalled that day. The memory was vivid and terrifying - I even thought for a moment that I had simply imagined the entire twentieth century owing the heat and the oxygen deficiency, and in reality I was still running with all my might from a group of drunk Red cavalrymen who were pursuing me along the dusty road, intent on killing me. An appalling feeling.

The fright lent me strength. And as well as that, fear made my supraphysical transformation go very far, much farther than during an ordinary hunt. At first I thought this was an advantage, since now I could run faster. But then I realized that it would be the death of me. The paw with which I was clutching the chicken to my breast changed into a normal fox’s limb, which is useless for holding anything. And I had lost control of the process. I was slipping inexorably towards the edge of the precipice: a few more seconds of agony, and I dropped the chicken. It somersaulted through the air and landed on the side of the track, clucking in outrage. I had already become an absolutely genuine fox - but now I wasn’t going to stay that way for long.

And at this point I suddenly noticed something very strange.

I suddenly realized that my tail, which wasn’t supposed to be doing anything, was working.

A fox will understand immediately what I mean, but it’s hard to explain to a human being. Alexander once told me a joke about a certain libertine whose penis was so long that he could scrape it along the windows of the nightclubs. ‘Ooh, I think I’m in love with someone . . .’ Take away the erotic connotations, and what I felt was something similar.

Apart from that, I realized that I had always done this. The clandestine stream of hypnotic energy that I was broadcasting into the world around me had not changed in such a long time that I had completely stopped being aware of it: it was like what happens to the hum of the fridge - you only notice it when it suddenly stops. I followed the direction of the beam, to see who the suggestion was aimed at - and I realized it was directed . . . at me.

BANG, as they write in the comic books.

My self-control didn’t desert me at that moment. I remained as aware as ever of what was going on - both around me and inside my own mind. One of my internal voices recited in deep bass tones the words that Laertes spoke to Hamlet after the fatal hit with the rapier: ‘In thee there is not half an hour of life . . .’

‘Why half an hour? What kind of poison was it on the rapier?’ another voice enquired.

‘It would be interesting to discuss that with the Shakespeare scholar Shitman,’ a third remarked, ‘only the poor fellow’s no longer with us . . .’

‘Then you’ll get a chance soon enough!’ barked the fourth.

I felt afraid: there’s a popular belief among foxes that before they die, they see the truth, and then all their internal voices start talking at once. Was this really it? No, I thought, any time but now . . . But I didn’t have thirty minutes, like Hamlet. I had thirty seconds at most, and they were quickly running out.

The forest came to an end. The track broke off at its edge, along which, as always, there were women from the local houses strolling with their prams. They spotted me and began squealing and screaming. With a desperate final effort I tore past the strolling women, spotted another track leading back into the forest and swerved on to it.

But my body was already betraying me. I started to feel pain in my palms, stood upright and started running on my hind legs - actually on my only pair of ordinary girl’s legs. Then I trod on an especially prickly pine cone, squealed and fell to my knees.

When they reached me, the militiamen dismounted. One of them took hold of my hair and turned me to face him. His face was suddenly contorted in fury. I recognized him - he was one of the spintrii from the militia station where I had done my ‘working Saturday’. He had recognized me too. We stared into each other’s eyes for a minute. It’s pointless even trying to tell the uninitiated what takes place between a fox and a man at a moment like that. It’s something you have to experience.

‘What a fool I am,’ I thought despairingly, ‘there’s a saying, after all - don’t screw where you live, don’t live where you screw. It’s all my own fault . . .’

‘Got you now, you bitch, haven’t I?’ the militiaman asked.

‘Do you know her?’ the other one asked.

‘I should say so. She worked a subbotnik at our place. I still can’t rid of the herpes on my arse.’

The militiaman demonstrated an inability to understand the link between cause and effect that was exceptional even for his species, but I didn’t find it funny. Everything was happening exactly the same way as that other time, near Melitopol . . . Perhaps I really was still there, and everything else was a just terminal hallucination?

Suddenly there was the deafening roar of a shot somewhere nearby. I looked up.

Alexander was standing on the track in his immaculately ironed grey uniform, with a pistol in his hand and a black bundle under his arm. I hadn’t noticed him appear there or how.

‘Both of you come here,’ he said.

The militiamen walked meekly towards him - like rabbits towards a boa constrictor. One of the horses whinnied nervously and reared up.

‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,’ I whispered, ‘he won’t eat you.’

That was actually an assumption on my part: Alexander hadn’t shared his plans with me. When the militiamen got close, he put his gun in its holster and said something in a quiet voice, I thought I heard ‘. . . report on the situation’. First he listened to them, and then he started talking himself. I couldn’t make out any more words, but it was all clear from the gesticulations. First he held out his open right hand, as if he were tossing a small object up and down on his palm. Then he turned it palm-down and made a few circular movements, flattening something invisible. This had the most magical effect on the militiamen - they turned and walked away, forgetting not only about me, but about their horses too.

Alexander looked at me curiously for a few seconds, then walked up and held out the black bundle. It was my dress. There was something wrapped in it. I unfolded it and saw the chicken. It was dead. I felt so sad that tears sprang to my eyes. It wasn’t a question of sentimentality. Not long ago we had been a single whole. And this little death seemed to be half mine.

‘Get dressed,’ said Alexander.

‘Why did you . . .’ I pointed at the chicken.

‘What, was I supposed to let it go?’

I nodded. He spread his arms in bewilderment.

‘Well, in that case I don’t understand anything at all.’

Of course, it was stupid of me to reproach him.

‘No, I’m sorry. Thank you,’ I said. ‘For the dress, and in general.’

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘don’t ever do that again. Ever.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t take offence, but you don’t look very good. I mean, when you turn into . . . I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not your thing.’

‘Why don’t I look good?’

‘You’re pretty mangy. And you could be three hundred years old at least.’

I felt myself turning red.

‘I see. Like a woman driver, is that it? Every second word you speak betrays the repulsive chauvinism of the male . . .’

‘Let’s not have any of that. I’m telling you the truth. Gender has nothing to do with it.’

I got dressed quickly and even managed to tie the cut shoulder strap in a knot above my shoulder.

‘Will you take the chicken?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

‘Then let’s go. The car will be here in a moment. And tomorrow at twelve hundred hours, be ready to leave. We’re flying up north.’

‘What for?’

‘You showed me the way you hunt. Now you can take a look at the way I do it.’

I’d never flown in any planes like the Gulfstream Jet before. I’d never even seen any - life had never taken me to the special airports for the upper rat. I felt nervous because there were so few people in the cabin - as if the safety of a flight depended on the number of passengers.

Maybe that’s true, by the way. After all, everyone has his own guardian angel, and when you get several hundred passengers crammed into an Airbus or a Boeing, if the hordes of invisible winged protectors don’t actually increase the uplift of the plane’s wings, they must at least insure it against falling. Probably that’s why there are more crashes involving the small private flights used by various newsmakers heavily burdened with evil (even if some victims don’t belong to this elite niche, they become newsmakers when they crash).

The passenger cabin was like a smoking room with leather armchairs. Alexander sat beside me. Apart from us, the only person in the cabin was Mikhalich - he’d made himself comfortable in the armchair furthest away and was shuffling through some papers or other. He hardly spoke to Alexander at all - just once he turned to him and asked:

‘Comrade lieutenant general, it says here in a document “Do you know what that means?’

Alexander thought about it.

‘I think that’s from forty kilograms of plastique and upwards. But check it out just to be sure when we get back.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Moscow floated down and away, and then it was hidden by the clouds. Alexander turned away from the window and took out a book.

‘What are you reading?’ I asked. ‘Another detective novel?’

‘No. This time I took a serious, intelligent book, on your advice. Do you want something to read too?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Then take a look at this. So you’ll understand what you’re about to see. It’s not exactly the same case, but it’s pretty similar. I brought it especially for you.’

He put a tattered volume on my knees. The title Russian Fairy Tales was written in red letters - it was the same book I’d seen on his desk.

‘The page is marked,’ he said.

The bookmark was at the story called ‘Little Khavroshka’. It was a long time since I’d held any Russian children’s books in my hands, and I noticed one strange thing immediately - because the print was so large, I perceived the words quite differently from in adult books. As if everything they denoted was simpler and purer.

The fairy tale turned out to be rather sad. Little Khavroshka was a northern clone of Cinderella, only instead of a fairy god-mother she was helped by a brindled cow. This cow did all the impossible jobs that Khavroshka was given to do by her stepmother. The wicked sisters spied on Khavroshka to see how she managed to keep up with all her work and they told the stepmother about it. The stepmother ordered the brindled cow to be slaughtered. Khavroshka found out and told the cow. The cow asked Khavroshka not to eat her meat and to bury her bones in the garden. Then an apple tree with jingling gold leaves grew out of the bones, and the tree made Khavroshka’s fortune - she managed to pick an apple, and the reward for that was a fiancé . . . I found it interesting that the stepmother and the sisters weren’t punished, they simply didn’t get any apples, and then they were forgotten about.

I had absolutely no desire to analyse this fairy tale from the positions of the asshole-amphetamine discourse or rummage about in its ‘morphology’. I didn’t need to guess what it was really about - my heart understood. It was the eternal Russian story, the final cycle of which I had witnessed only recently, at the end of the last century. As if I personally had known the brindled cow to which children complained about their woes, who worked simple miracles for them and then quietly died under the knife, only to grow out from under the earth as a magical tree - a golden apple for every boy and girl . . .

The fairy tale contained a strange truth about the very saddest and most mysterious side of Russian life. How many times that brindled cow had been slaughtered. And how many times it had returned, either as a magic apple tree or an entire cherry orchard. Only where had all the apples gone? You couldn’t find them anywhere. Except maybe by calling the office of United Fruit . . . But no, that was nonsense. ‘United Fruit’ was last century, but now any call you made would get lost in the wires on its way to some company in Gibraltar that belonged to a firm from the Falkland Islands that was managed by a lawyer in Amsterdam in the interests of a trust with an unnamed beneficiary owner. Who, of course, is known to every dog on the Rublyovskoe Highway where the upper rat lives.

I closed the book and looked at Alexander. He was asleep. I carefully took the serious, intelligent book from his knees and opened it:

No, the Money Tree looks different from the way certain frivolous writers of the last century thought of it. It doesn’t fruit with gold ducats in the Field of Miracles, as they assumed. It sprouts through the icy crust of the permafrost in a blazing fountain of oil, a burning bush like the one that spoke with Moses. But although there are many a Moses crowding round the Money Tree today, the Lord remains significantly silent . . . The reason for his silence must be that he knows the tree will not be allowed to flutter its smoky flames in freedom for long. Calculating men will haul a slaking apparatus on to the crown of fire and force the Tree’s black trunk to grow into a cold steel pipe stretching right across the Country of Fools to the port terminals, to various Chinas and Japans - so far that soon the Tree will be unable to recall its own roots . . .

After I’d read a few more paragraphs in the same fussy, obscure style, I began to feel sleepy. I closed the book and put it back on Alexander’s knees. Then I slept through the rest of the flight.

I slept through the landing as well. When I opened my eyes, there was the snow-covered airport terminal building, looking more like a railway station, drifting past outside the window of the Gulfstream as it taxied along the runway. There was a long poster hanging on the building: ‘Welcome to Nefteperegonievsck!’ There was snow everywhere, as far as the eye could see.

At the bottom of the steps we were met by several military men in winter kit without any badges of rank. They greeted Mikhalich and Alexander like old friends, but they glanced at me, or at least I thought they did, in bewilderment. Nonetheless, when Mikhalich and Alexander each received an officer’s greatcoat, I was also issued with warm clothing - a military padded jacket with a light-blue collar of synthetic fur and a cap with ear-flaps. The jacket was too big, and I literally drowned in it.

Three cars had come to meet us. They were black Geländewagens, just like the ones in Moscow, except that they were driven by soldiers. There was hardly any conversation at all when we were met: the men limited themselves to greetings and a brief discussion of the weather. It seemed like the local men knew all about why their visitors from Moscow were there.

The town that started immediately outside the airport had a rather phantasmagorical appearance. The buildings in it reminded me of cottages for the middle class outside Moscow. There was only one difference - these cottages were raised above the ground in an absurd fashion, on stilts that were like the hut’s chicken legs in the fairy tale. That was the precise association evoked by the combination of the piles hammered into the permafrost and the red crests of the tiled roofs, and it was impossible to free myself of it: the houses became rows of chickens with their hindquarters raised high to display the black openings of the doors. Evidently I was still under the impression of the previous day’s hunt and the resultant shock.

In between the ‘eurohuts’ I could see figures of street traders selling something from pieces of oilcloth spread out directly on the snow beside their Buran snowmobiles.

‘What’s that they’re selling?’ I asked Alexander.

‘Reindeer meat. They bring it from the tundra.’

‘Don’t they ship supplies up here?’

‘Yes, of course they do. It’s just that reindeer meat’s in fashion. It’s stylish. And then, it’s an environmentally clean product.’

I was very impressed by the Calvin Klein boutique, located in one of the cottages on piles. Its very presence in this place was impressive - it was probably the most northerly outpost of lesser Calvinism in the world. And apart from that, the sign over its door fulfilled several functions at once - shop name, geographical reference point and advertising concept:

NefteperegonievsCK

I couldn’t help noticing a large children’s playground crowded with structures that looked like the frameworks of tents - the children hanging on them, swaddled in warm clothing, were like fat little sloths. The playground reminded me of an ancient hunters’ camping ground preserved amongst the snow. The entrance arch was painted with snowflakes, baby animals and red-nosed clowns, and above them there was a jolly inscription:

KUKIS-YUKIS-YUPSI-POOPS!

It was hard to understand what this was:

1. a nonsense rhyme intended to put the children in a good mood.

2. a list of sponsors.

3. a protest in Aesopian language (are we coming back to that so soon?) against the oppressive tyranny of the authorities.

Everything in Russian life had shifted around so much that it was hard to reach any final conclusion. And I didn’t have the time: we didn’t slow down anywhere and soon this tapestry of the north had dissolved in the white dust behind us. The snowy expanses of evening closed in on us from all sides.

‘Put on my favourite,’ Alexander said to the driver.

He looked sullen and intense, and I thought it best not to distract him by making conversation.

An old song by Shocking Blue came on:

I’ll follow the sun

That’s what I’m gonna do,

Trying to forget all about you . . .

I couldn’t help thinking that ‘trying to forget all about you’ referred to me - the female psyche does that sort of thing automatically without bothering to consult its owner. But I thought the oath to follow the sun, confirmed by the words ‘that’s what I’m gonna do’, in the manner of the ancient Vikings, had a certain exalted beauty to it.

I’ll follow the sun

Till the end of time

No more pain and no more tears for me.

Naturally, when I heard the end of time mentioned, I recalled the caption under the picture of a wolf that I’d seen at Alexander’s place:

FENRIR: Son of Loki, an immense wolf who pursues the sun across the sky. When Fenrir catches the sun and devours it, Ragnarek will begin.

That changed the picture somewhat . . . What a child he is after all, I thought with a tenderness that I was still not consciously aware of, what a funny little boy.

Soon it started getting dark. In the moonlight the landscape outside the car window had an unearthly look - it seemed strange that people should fly to other planets, when they had places like this right here beside them. The ground only a metre away from the invisible road might well never have been touched by the foot of man, or any foot or paw, come to that, and we would be the first . . .

When we reached our destination, it was already completely dark. Outside the car there were no buildings, no lights, no people, nothing - just the night, the snow, the moon and the stars. The only thing interrupting the monotony of the landscape was a nearby hill.

‘Out we get,’ said Alexander.

It was cold outside. I raised the collar of my padded jacket and tugged the fur cap further down over my ears. Nature had not designed me for life in these parts. What would I have done there, anyway? The reindeer herders don’t seek amorous adventures among the snows, and even if they did, I doubt if I would be able to spread my tail in frost like that. It would probably freeze immediately and snap off, like an icicle.

The cars lined up so that their powerful headlights lit up the entire hill. Men began bustling about in the pool of light, unpacking the equipment they had brought with them - instruments of some kind that were a mystery to me. One man in the same kind of padded military jacket I was wearing, with a black bag in his hands, came up to Alexander and asked:

‘Can I set it up?’

Alexander nodded.

‘Let’s go together,’ he said, and turned towards me. ‘And you come with us too. The view’s beautiful from up there, you’ll see.’

We set off towards the top of the hill.

‘When did the pressure fall?’ Alexander asked.

‘Yesterday evening,’ one of the officers replied.

‘Have you tried pumping in water?’

The officer waved his hand dismissively, as if that wasn’t even worth mentioning.

‘How many times is it that the pressure’s fallen in this well?’

‘Five,’ said the officer. ‘That’s it, we’ve squeezed it dry. The reservoir, and the whole of Russia.’

He swore quietly.

‘We’ll soon see about the whole of Russia,’ said Alexander. ‘And watch your tongue, we have a lady with us, after all.’

‘Oh, a new member of the team?’

‘Something of the sort.’

‘That’s good. We can’t expect much from Mikhalich . . .’

We reached the top. I saw low buildings in the distance, pinpoints of blue and yellow electric light, latticework metal structures, smoke or steam rising in some places. The moon lit up a labyrinth of pipes extending across the surface of the ground - some of them plunged into the snow, others stretched all the way to the horizon. But all this was too far away for me to make out any details. I didn’t notice any people anywhere.

‘Are they on the line?’ Alexander asked.

‘Yes,’ the officer replied. ‘If anything happens, they’ll let us know. What are the chances?’

‘We’ll see,’ said Alexander. ‘What point is there in guessing? Let’s get ready.’

The officer put his bag down on the snow and opened it. Inside there was a plastic case about the same size and shape as a large melon. Catches clicked, the melon opened and I saw a cow’s skull that looked very old lying on red velvet. In some places it was cracked and held together by metal plates. The bottom of the skull was set in a metal frame.

The officer took a black cylinder out of the bag and opened it up to form something like one of those telescopic sticks for trekking. It had a round flange at one end. He took a swing and thrust the pointed end of the stick in the snow, then checked to make certain it was secure. It was, very. Then he picked up the skull, set its metal base over the flange on the end of the stick and connected them with a faint click.

‘All set?’ asked Alexander.

He hadn’t been following the manipulations, he was watching the distant lights and the pipelines, like a general surveying the site of an imminent battle. The officer turned the empty eye sockets of the skull towards the oilfield. I couldn’t understand what he was intending to film with this weird camera.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Alexander.

We walked down the hill towards the men waiting for us by the cars.

‘Well then, Mikhalich,’ said Alexander, ‘why don’t you go first? Give it a try. And I’ll back you up if need be.’

‘Straight away,’ said Mikhalich. ‘Just give me a couple of minutes, I’ll just pop into the car to make sure I don’t freeze my ass off.’

‘You mean you can’t manage at all without ketamine?’

‘Whatever you say, comrade lieutenant general,’ said Mikhalich. ‘Only I’d like to do it according to my own system. And I’ve already switched to injecting into the muscle.’

‘Well, do it your way then,’ Alexander muttered in annoyance. ‘Go on. We’ll see. It’s time you learned to walk without crutches, Mikhalich. Have faith in yourself! Let it all out! Wolf-flow! Wolf-flow! What will you do if your dealer gets banged up? Is the whole country going to pay the price?’

Mikhalich cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything and walked round behind the cars. As he walked by, he winked at me. I pretended not to notice.

‘One minute to go,’ said a loud voice amplified by a megaphone. ‘Everybody withdraw behind the perimeter.’

The cluster of men in the light of the headlights walked quickly away into the darkness behind the cars. The only one left standing with us was the officer who had helped Alexander install the skull on the hilltop. I didn’t know if the command meant me as well and I looked enquiringly at Alexander.

‘Have a seat,’ he said, pointing to a folding chair nearby. ‘Mikhalich is going to perform now. Just be sure not to laugh, he’s sensitive. Especially when he’s taken a shot.’

‘I remember,’ I said and sat down.

Alexander settled down on the chair next to mine and handed me a pair of field binoculars. The metal casing was searingly cold to the touch.

‘Which way do I look?’ I asked.

He nodded in the direction of the pole with the skull, which was clearly visible in the headlights.

‘Fifteen . . .’ said the megaphone behind the cars. ‘Ten . . . Five ...Start!’

For a few seconds nothing happened, then I heard a dull growl and a wolf appeared in the pool of light.

He was very different from the beast that Alexander changed into. So different, in fact, that he seemed to belong to a different biological species. He was smaller, with short legs, and entirely lacking in the dangerous charm of a deadly predator. The elongated barrel-shaped trunk of his body was too cumbersome for life in the natural wilderness, especially under conditions of natural selection. This corpulent body put me in mind of ancient outrages, of Christian martyrs and Roman emperors feeding their enemies to a wild beast. What he looked most like . . . Yes, most of all, he resembled a huge overfed dachshund with a wolf’s skin transplanted on to it. I felt frightened I wouldn’t be able to stop myself laughing. And that made everything seem even funnier. But fortunately I managed to restrain myself.

Mikhalich trudged up the hill and stopped beside the skull on the pole. He paused deliberately, then raised his face towards the moon and started howling, wagging his stiff tail like a conductor’s baton.

I got the same feeling as I did when Alexander transformed: as if the wolf’s body was a false appearance, or at best merely an empty resonator, like the body of a violin, and the mystery lay in the sound produced by an invisible string stretched between the tail and the face. The only real thing was this string and its appalling appassionato, everything else was an illusion . . . I felt my kinship with this creature: Mikhalich was doing something close to what foxes do, and his tail was helping him to do it in exactly the same way.

His howling roused a poignantly meaningful echo, first at the base of my own tail, and then in my conscious mind. There was meaning in the sound, and I understood it. But it was hard to express this meaning in human language - it resonated with such an immense number of words, that it wasn’t clear which I should choose. Very approximately, and without any claims to accuracy, I would have expressed it as follows:

Brindled cow! Do you hear, brindled cow? It is I, the vile old wolf Mikhalich, I am whispering in your ear. Do you know why I am here, brindled cow? My life has become so dark and terrible that I have abandoned the Image of God and become a pseudo-wolf. And now I howl at the moon, the sky and the earth, at your skull and all that exists, so that the earth may take pity, open up and give me oil. You have no reason to pity me, I know. But even so, have pity on me, brindled cow. If you do not have pity on me, no one in the world will. And you, earth, look on me, shudder in horror and give me oil, for which I will receive a little money. Because to lose the Image of God, become a wolf and not have money is unbearable and unthinkable, and the Lord, whom I have denied, would not allow such a thing . . .

The call was full of a strange, enchanting power and sincerity. I felt no pity for Mikhalich, but his plaint sounded perfectly justified in terms of all the central concepts of Russian life. If I can put it that way, he was not demanding anything excessive from the world, everything was logical and well within the bounds of the modern metaphysical proprieties. But nothing happened to the skull, which I was watching through the binoculars.

Mikhalich howled for another ten minutes or so, in pretty much the same vein. Sometimes his howling was pitiful, sometimes menacing - I even felt a bit afraid. But then I didn’t know what was supposed to happen, if anything - I was waiting for it, because Alexander had told me to watch the skull. But from the brief comments exchanged by Alexander and the officer, it was clear that Mikhalich had been unsuccessful.

Perhaps the reason for that was a certain unnatural, chemical tone in his howling. It wasn’t noticeable at first, but the longer he howled, the more clearly I sensed it, and by the end of his performance it was so strong that I felt an unpleasant lump low down in my throat.

The howling broke off, I lowered the binoculars and saw there was no wolf on the hill any longer. Instead, there was Mikhalich, down on all fours. He was clearly visible in the headlights - right down to the last crease in his greatcoat. Despite the cold, his face was covered with large beads of sweat. He stood up and trudged down the hill.

‘Well?’ he asked when he reached us.

The officer held a walkie-talkie to his ear, listened for a while and lowered it again.

‘No change,’ he said.

‘Because this is the fifth time we’ve worked this deposit already,’ said Mikhalich. ‘The second time round I always make it work. And the third time almost always. But the fifth . . . It’s kind of hard to think of what to howl about.’

‘Guys, we have to think of something,’ the officer said, concerned. ‘Almost all the wells in the sector are on their fourth cycle. If we don’t get the fifth moving, then NATO will cut us in three pieces in two years, the maths are as simple as that. Any ideas, Alexander?’

Alexander got up off his chair.

‘We’ll soon find out,’ he said. He stood there, looking at the skull through narrowed eyes and estimating the distance. Then he set off up the hill. Halfway to the skull he tossed the greatcoat off his shoulders and it fell in the snow with its arms outstretched.

‘Like Pushkin walking to his last duel,’ I thought, then looked at the greatcoat and thought: ‘or like Dantes . . .’

The military uniform made the second seem more accurate. I suddenly understood that Pushkin was killed by a homonimic shadow of Dante - though the coincidence of names wasn’t complete, it still looked eerie. As if one poet served another as a guide to the beyond again, I thought, this time with full board accommodation . . . But I had no time to reflect on this insight properly before Alexander reached the pole.

He cautiously set his hands on the skull and turned it through a hundred and eighty degrees so that it was staring directly at me - through the binoculars I could clearly see empty eye sockets and a metal cleat holding together a crack above one of them.

Alexander started down the hill. When he reached his greatcoat he stopped, raised his face to the sky and howled.

He started to howl when he was still a man, but the howling transformed him into a wolf faster than amorous arousal. He arched in a bow and tumbled over on to his back. The tranformation occurred so rapidly that he was almost completely a wolf when his back touched the greatcoat. Without stopping its howling even for a second, the wolf floundered in the snow for a few moments, raising a white cloud all around itself, and then got up on to its legs.

After the barrel-shaped, flabby Mikhalich, it was particularly striking just how handsome Alexander was. He was a noble and terrible beast, one that the northern gods might really be afraid of. But his howling wasn’t fearsome, like Mikhalich’s. It sounded quieter and seemed sad, rather than menacing:

Brindled cow! Do you hear, brindled cow? I know I must have lost all sense of shame to ask you for oil yet again. I do not ask for it. We do not deserve it. I know what you think of us - no matter how much you give them, Little Khavroshka won’t get a single drop, it will all be gobbled up by all these kukis-yukises, yupsi-poopses and the other locusts who obscure the very light of day. You are right, brindled cow, that is how it will be. Only, let me tell you something . . . I know who you are. You are everyone who lived here before us. Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and before that, and before that . . . You are the soul of all those who died believing in the happiness that would come in the future. And now see, it has come. The future in which people do not live for something else, but for themselves. And do you know how we feel swallowing sashimi that smell of oil and pretending not to notice the final ice-floes melting under our feet? Pretending this is the destination towards which the people have striven for a thousand years, ending with us? It turns out that in reality only you have lived, brindled cow. You had someone to live for, but we do not . . . You had us, but we have nobody apart from ourselves. But now you feel as miserable as we do, because you can no longer grow apples for your Little Khavroshka. You can only give oil to ignominious wolves, so that kukis-yukis-yupsi-poops can shell out to its lawyer and the lawyer can give the head of security a kick-back, the head of security can grease his hairdresser’s palm, the hairdresser can grease the cook’s, the cook can grease the driver’s, and the driver can hire your Little Khavroshka for an hour for a hundred and fifty bucks . . . And when your Little Khavroshka sleeps off the anal sex and pays off all her cops and bandits, maybe she’ll have enough left over for the apple that you wanted so much to become for her, brindled cow . . .

I felt as if the cow was looking at me with its empty eye sockets. And then, through the binoculars, I saw a tear well up on the edge of one of those sockets. It ran down across the skull and fell off into the snow, and then a second one appeared, and then a third . . .

Alexander carried on howling, but I couldn’t make out the meaning any more. Perhaps there no longer was any - the howling had turned into weeping. I started to weep too. We were all weeping . . . And then I realized we were howling rather than weeping - Mikhalich, the officer who had set up the pole on the hill, the men in the darkness behind the cars - we were all howling, with our faces turned to the moon, howling and weeping for ourselves and for our impossible country, for our pitiful life, stupid death and sacred hundred dollars a barrel . . .

‘Hey,’ I heard someone say, ‘wake up!’

‘Ah?’

I opened my eyes. Alexander and the officer were standing beside my chair.

‘That’s it,’ said the officer. ‘The oil’s flowing.’

‘How you howled!’ said Alexander. ‘We were simply spell-bound. ’

‘Yes,’ said Mikhalich, ‘the girl came in useful all right. I didn’t understand why you brought her at first, comrade lieutenant general.’

Alexander didn’t answer - one of the men who had stood behind the cars during the performance had come up to him. He was dressed in a military uniform without any badges of rank - just like all the others.

‘This is for you,’ he said and handed Alexander a little box. ‘The medal for Services to the Motherland. I know you have a lot of these things. We just want you to remember how highly the country values you.’

‘Thank you,’ Alexander said indifferently, putting the little box in his pocket. ‘Glad to serve.’

He took me by the arm and led me towards the car. When we’d moved away from the others, I whispered:

‘Tell me honestly, wolf to fox. Or if you prefer, were-creature to were-creature. Do you really think kukis-yukis is to blame for Little Khavroshka not getting an apple, and not that rotten fish-head that sometimes pretends to be a bull and sometimes a bear?’

He was flabbergasted.

‘What kukis? What fish-head?

It was only then I realized just how crazy what I’d just said sounded. Yes, it was stress - I’d stopped feeling the difference between the world and what I was thinking about it. Alexander hadn’t actually said anything - he had simply howled at the cow’s skull, and all the rest had been my personal interpretation.

‘And you threw in a bear too,’ he muttered.

Yes, indeed, it was really stupid of me. I hadn’t even discussed the bear and the fish-head with him.

‘It’s the fairy tales that did it,’ I said guiltily. ‘The ones I was reading in the plane.’

‘Ah. That explains it.’

However, there was one question I could ask without being afraid it would sound crazy. This time I gauged the impression my words might make in advance, before I opened my mouth:

‘You know, I have the feeling that you showed me to the skull as Little Khavroshka. Am I right?’

He laughed.

‘And why not? You’re so touching.’

‘Take a good look at me,’ I said. ‘What sort of Little Khavroshka am I?’

‘You could be Mary Magdalene,’ he said. ‘What difference does it make? It’s my job to get the oil flowing. And for that, the skull has to cry. What’s to be done if it doesn’t cry for Mikhalich any longer, even when he injects five cc’s of ketamine?’

‘But then it . . . It was a lie,’ I said, bewildered.

He chortled.

‘So you think art should be the truth?’

The only answer I gave was to blink several times. The absurd thing was that I really did think that. Suddenly I could no longer tell which of us really was the cynical manipulator of other minds.

‘You know what,’ he said, ‘you try selling that concept to the Saatchi gallery. Maybe they’ll put it on show beside the pickled shark. Or maybe Brian will buy it. The guy who offered me a thousand pounds.’

Alas, Brian couldn’t buy anything any longer . . . But then, that commonplace about someone who is dead is outmoded nowadays. Sometimes a client dies and his brokers carry on playing the stock market. And when the sad news finally reaches them, a computer program everyone has forgotten about carries speculating for a long time in cyberspace, buying and selling the pound and the yen when they reach the threshold levels . . . But Brian probably really couldn’t buy anything from me. And certainly not the idea that art should be the truth.

Moscow greeted me with the sad news. The article on the rumours.ru site, whose address had mysteriously written itself back into my home page, had the following headline:

ENGLISH ARISTOCRAT FOUND DEAD

IN CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST THE SAVIOUR

A feeling rather like nausea prevented me from reading the entire article - I only had the strength to run my eyes over it diagonally, picking out the substance from under the journalistic clichés: ‘the grimace of inexpressible terror frozen on his face’, ‘the tears of the inconsolable widow’, ‘the representatives of the embassy’, ‘investigation of the circumstances’. I wasn’t concerned about what would happen to E Hu-Li- this was all business as usual for her. The investigators of the circumstances were the ones to be concerned about - in case that grimace of inexpressible terror froze on one of their faces too.

I should have felt sorry for Lord Cricket though. I concentrated, but for some reason instead of his face, all I could recall was documentary footage of a fox hunt - a little bundle of red-brown fur dashing across a field, totally defenceless, quaking in horror and hope, and riders in their elegant caps in pursuit . . . But I recited the requiem mantra anyway.

The next thing that caught my eye was a column heading:

SICK PREDATOR TAKES REFUGE

IN BITSEVSKY PARK

This magnum opus contained one incredibly impudent paragraph that concerned me personally:

The fox, covered with numerous bald spots or, more precisely, still covered with fur in places, inspired in those who witnessed the incident not only an intense feeling of pity, but also the suspicion that there was a radioactive waste dump somewhere nearby. Perhaps the old, sick animal had come to people, hoping for the coup de grace that would put an end to its suffering. But one cannot expect even that kind of favour for free from the hardhearted Muscovites of today. Two mounted militiaman set off in pursuit of the sick animal, but how the chase ended remains unknown.

What a filthy liar, I thought, it’s obvious that none of the witnesses said anything about a radioactive waste dump, and he made it all up himself, just to have something to fill up his column. But then the Internet columnists write about everything in the same vile way - about politics, culture, and even the conquest of Mars. And this time about foxes. This particular rumour-monger had a special trick of his own. When he wanted to cover someone in shit from head to foot, he always mentioned an intense feeling of compassion. I had always been amazed by this ability to take the most exalted of all human feelings, and turn it into a poisonous barb.

But then, if you just thought about it, there was nothing surprising about that. What was an Internet columnist, after all? A creature somewhat more advanced than a prison-camp guard dog, but very, very inferior to a were-fox.

1. the similarity between an Internet columnist and a prison-camp guard dog consists in the ability to bark into a strictly defined sector of space.

2. the difference is that a guard dog cannot guess for itself which is the correct sector to bark into, but an Internet columnist is often capable of this.

3. the similarity between an Internet columnist and a were-fox is that both try to create mirages that human beings take for reality.

4. the difference is that a fox is able to do this, but an Internet columnist isn’t.

The last point is hardly surprising. Would anyone who was able to create plausible mirages work as an Internet columnist? Unlikely. An Internet columnist can’t even convince himself that his inventions are real, I thought, clenching my fists, let alone other people. That’s why he ought to sit quietly and only bark when . . .

Then I forgot about Internet columnists and prison-camp guard dogs, as the light of truth suddenly flashed in my head.

‘Convince himself that his inventions are real,’ I repeated. ‘That’s it. Why, of course!’

Quite unexpectedly for myself I had solved the riddle that had been tormenting me for ages. My mind had been creeping up on it for many days, first from one side, then from the other - and all in vain. But now something turned and clicked, and everything suddenly fell into place - as if I’d put a jigsaw together by chance.

I realized how we foxes differ from werewolves. As is often the case, this difference was no more than a mutated similarity. Foxes and wolves were closely related - their magic was based on the manipulation of perception. But the means of manipulation were different.

A brief theoretical digression is required here, or else I’m afraid what I say will be incomprehensible.

People often argue about whether this world really exists, or is something like The Matrix movie. It’s a very stupid thing to argue about. All problems of this kind derive from the fact that people don’t understand the words they use. Before discussing this subject, the first thing people ought to do is get to grips with the meaning of the word ‘exist’. Then a lot of interesting things would become clear. But people are rarely capable of correct thinking.

Of course, I don’t mean to say that all people are total idiots. There are some among them whose intellect is almost the equal of a fox’s. For instance, the Irish philosopher Berkeley. He said that to exist means to be perceived and all objects exist only in perception. You only have to think calmly about the subject for three minutes to realize that any other views on the matter are like the cult of Osiris or belief in the god Mithras. In my view, this is the only true thought that has visited the Western mind in its long and funny history: all the Humes, Kants and Baudrillards are only embroidering the canvas of this great insight in a fussy satin stitch.

But where does an object exist when we turn away and stop seeing it? After all, it doesn’t disappear, as children and Amazonian Indians think, does it? Berkeley says that it exists in the perception of God. But Cathars and Gnostics believe that it exists in the perception of the diabolical demiurge, and their arguments are no worse than Berkeley’s. From their point of view, matter is an evil that shackles the spirit. By the way, reading Stephen Hawking’s horror stories, I often used to think that if the Albigenses had had a radio telescope, they would have declared the Big Bang a cosmic photograph of Satan’s rebellion ... There is a middle way through this morass of idiocy - to believe that part of the world exists in the perception of God, and part in the perception of the Devil.

What can I say to this? From the point of view of us foxes, there never was any Big Bang, just as the Tower of Babel that Breughel painted never existed, even if there is a reproduction of the painting hanging in a room that you dream about. And God and the Devil are simply reproductions that are dreamed by some people to hang in a room of the tower on the picture hanging on the wall in a room they dream about. Berkeley assumed that perception has to have a subject, and so the coins that rolled under the cupboard and the socks that fell behind the bed were solemnly interred in the cranium of a Creator specially created for that purpose. But how do we deal with the fact that Berkeley’s God, in whose perception we exist, Himself exists mostly in the abstract thinking of certain representatives of the endangered European race? And he doesn’t exist at all in the consciousness of a Chinese peasant or a little bird which is unaware that it is God’s? How do we deal with this if ‘to exist’ really does mean ‘to be perceived’?

We don’t, say the foxes. Foxes have a fundamental answer to the fundamental question of philosophy, which is to forget this fundamental question. There are no philosophical problems, there is only a suite of interconnected linguistic cul de sacs created by language’s inability to reflect the truth.

But it is better to run into one of these cul de sacs in the first paragraph, rather than after forty years of searching and five thousand pages of writing. After Berkeley finally got the point, the only thing he wrote about was the wonder-working properties of the tincture of bitumen that he’d come across in North America. And as a result, ever since then he has been mocked by various philistines, who aren’t aware that in that distant time bitumen was produced in America from a plant called Jimson Weed, or Datura.

Religious hypocrites accuse us were-creatures of addling people’s brains and distorting the Image of God. The people who say this have a rather poor idea of the Image of God, since they mould it after their own sanctimonious mugs. In any case, talk of ‘distortion’ and ‘addling’ is too judgemental; language like that shifts the question on to the emotional plane and prevents any understanding of the real nature of the matter, which is as follows (please pay close attention to the following paragraph - I have finally reached the most important point).

Since the existence of things consists in their perceptibility, any transformation can occur by two routes - either through the perception of transformation or the transformation of perception.

In honour of the great Irishman, I would like to call this rule Berkeley’s Law. It is absolutely essential knowledge for all seekers of truth, gangsters and extortionists, marketing specialists and paedophiles who wish to remain at liberty. And so, in their practice, foxes and wolves exploit different aspects of Berkeley’s Law.

We, the foxes, use transformation of perception. We influence our clients’ perception and make them see what we want them to see. The illusion we induce becomes absolutely real for them - the scars on the unforgettable Pavel Ivanovich’s back are the best possible proof of that. But we foxes continue to see the initial reality just as, according to Berkeley, God sees it. That is why we are accused of distorting the Image of God.

This, of course, is a hypocritical accusation, based on a double standard. The transformation of perception is the basis not only of foxes’ witchcraft, but also of many marketing techniques. For instance, Ford takes the cheap F-150 pick-up truck, gives it a lovely new front grille, restyles the bodywork and calls the resultant product the ‘Lincoln Navigator’. And no one says that Ford is distorting the Image of God. I won’t say anything about politics, everything’s clear already in that area. But somehow it’s only we foxes who provoke indignation.

Unlike us, werewolves use perception of transformation. They create an illusion, not for others, but for themselves. And they believe in it so strongly that the illusion ceases to be an illusion. There’s a passage in the Bible on that subject - ‘if you have faith as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, “Move from here to there, and it shall move; and nothing shall be impossible to you.”’ The werewolves have this mustard seed. Their transformation is a kind of alchemical chain reaction.

First a werewolf makes himself believe that his tail is growing. And the emerging tail, which in wolves is the same kind of hypnotic organ as it is in foxes, exerts a hypnotic influence on the wolf’s own consciousness, convincing him that he really is undergoing transformation and so on until he is completely transformed into a beast. Technologists call this positive feedback.

Alexander’s transformation always began in the same way: his body curved over, as if some invisible cable joining his tail and his cranium were being drawn taut. Now I’d realized what was happening. While foxes directed energy at other people, wolves trained it on themselves, inducing a transformation, not in others’ perception, but in their own, and only afterwards, as a consequence, in that of others.

Can we call such a transformation real? I have never completely understood the meaning of this epithet, especially since every historical age fills it with its own meaning. For instance, in modern Russian the word ‘real’ is employed in four basic ways:

1. as a battle cry uttered by bandits and FSB agents during the ritual change-over of the roof, or protection provider.

2. a jargon term used by the upper rat and oligarchy in conversations about their offshore accounts.

3. a technical term applied to immovable property.

4. a widely used adjective with the meaning ‘having a dollar equivalent’.

The latter meaning makes the term ‘real’ a synonym for the word ‘metaphysical’, since nowadays the dollar is an occult, mystical unit based entirely on the belief that tomorrow will be like today. And mysticism is something that should be practised not by were-creatures, but by those who are professionally obliged to do it - the PR consultants, political technologists and economists. That is why I did not wish to call the werewolf’s transformation ‘real’ - if I did, it might give the impression that it involves cheap human black magic. But two things were undoubtedly true:

1. a wolf’s transformation was qualitatively different from a fox’s illusion, although it was based on the same effect.

2. the lupine metamorphosis consumed an immense amount of energy - far more than we foxes expended on a client.

That was why wolves could not remain in their bestial body for long, and folklore linked their transformation with various forms of temporal limitation - the hours of darkness, the full moon or something of that kind.

I remembered the strange sensation I had experienced while hunting - when for the first time in my life I became aware of the relict radiation from my tail, directed at myself. But exactly what suggestion had I been implanting in my own mind? That I was a fox? But I knew that without any suggestion . . . What was going on? I felt as if I were standing on the threshold of something important, something that could change my entire life and lead me, at long last, out of the spiritual impasse in which I had spent the last five hundred years. But, to my disgrace, the first thing that I thought about was not spiritual practice at all.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but the first thought that came into my mind was about sex. I remembered Alexander’s coarse grey tail and realized how to raise our erotic sensations to a totally new level. It was all very simple. The mechanisms for influencing consciousness employed by foxes and wolves were identical in all major respects - the only elements that differed were the intensity of suggestion and its target. I, so to speak, served my client champagne and it made him tipsy. Alexander swallowed an entire bottle of vodka all on his own, which made everyone else around horrified. But the effective substance, alcohol, was the same.

And so, by combining our resources, we could mix lots of very different cocktails out of champagne and vodka. After all, sex is more than just the simple conjunction of certain parts of the body. It is also a connection between the energies of two beings, a joint trip. If we could learn to combine our hypnotic impulses in order to immerse ourselves in an amorous illusion together, I thought, we could set ourselves up with our own tea for two, in which every drop would be worth its weight in polonium.

There was only one problem. First we had to agree on what we wanted to see. And not just in words - words were an unreliable prop. If we relied only on them, we could imagine the final destination of our journey very differently. Some ready-made image was required, one that would serve as the starting point for our visualization. For instance, a picture . . .

I tried to imagine an appropriate classical canvas. But unfortunately, nothing interesting came to mind - all I could recall was Picasso’s early masterpiece An Old Jew and a Boy. Many years earlier I had used a postcard of that picture as a bookmark in Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which I simply couldn’t get through, and ever since then I had remembered every detail of those two sad, dark figures.

No, pictures were no good. They didn’t give any idea of how an object appeared in the round. Videos would be much better. And Alexander has such a big television, I thought. Surely it ought to be put to good use?

There’s a kind of chewing gum that comes with cards showing pairs of loving couples in various humorous situations. These drawings are captioned ‘Love is . . .’ and I often used to see them stuck to the walls in lifts and cinemas. If I wanted to draw my own version of these cartoons, it would show a wolf and a fox sitting in front of a TV with their tails intertwined.

The technology of a miracle proved to be simpler than I was expecting. It was enough to bring our hypnotic organs together in any pose that allowed us to do it. Only our tails had to touch: we had to follow what was happening on the screen, and any closer proximity was a hindrance.

It developed into a ritual surprisingly quickly. Usually he would lie down on his side, with his legs hanging down on to the carpet, and I would sit down beside him. We set the film going and I caressed him until the transformation began. Then I put my legs up on his shaggy side, we joined our antennas together, and what began then was totally insane, something that no tailless creature could ever understand. Sometimes the feelings were so intense that I had to apply a special technique to calm myself and cool off - I looked away from the screen and recited part of the ‘Heart Sutra’ to myself, a mantra as cool and deep as a well: I could dissolve any emotional upheaval in those Sanskrit syllables. I liked to look at the way our tails combined - the red and the grey. As if someone had set fire to a rotten billet and it had been engulfed by dancing flames and sparks . . . But I never shared this simile with Alexander.

However, while the technical aspect of the whole thing proved to be elementary, the choice of a route for our outings always involved arguments. Our tastes didn’t just differ, they belonged to different universes. In his case it was hard even to speak of taste in the sense of a definite system of aesthetic guidelines. Like a schoolboy, he liked everything to be heroic and sentimental, and he made me sit for hours watching samurai dramas, westerns and something that I simply couldn’t stand - Japanese cartoons about robots. And then in our dream we played out the secondary love themes that the directors had had to use to provide at least some respite between the killing and the fighting. Actually, at first it was quite interesting. But only at first.

As an experienced professional, I soon wearied of the standard quickies - I had induced more dreams on that subject than mankind had made porn films about itself. I liked to roam through the terra incognita of modern sexuality, to explore its border regions, the backyard of social morality and mores. But he wasn’t ready for that, and although no one in the world could have witnessed our joint hallucinations, he was always stopped dead by his internal sentry.

He would either respond to my appeals to embark on some unusual journey with an embarrassed refusal or he would suggest something that was unthinkable for me. For instance, to turn ourselves into a pair of cartoon transformers who discover their attraction to each other on the roof of a Tokyo skyscraper ... How dreadful! But when I wanted to become the German major in Casablanca and take him from behind while he was the black pianist Sam playing it again, he was as horrified as if I’d been urging him to sell out the motherland.

That would have been another interesting topic for Dr Spengler: most Russian men are homophobic because the cancerous cells of the criminal code of honour are still deeply embedded in the Russian psyche. Any serious man, no matter what he does for a living, subconsciously measures himself against a prison bunk and tries to ensure that his service record doesn’t include any conspicuous violations of prison taboos that he might have to pay for with his arse in a very direct manner. This means that a Russian macho man’s life is like a permanent spiritualist seance: while the body is wallowing in luxury, the soul is doing time in the prison camps.

I happen to know why this is the way things are, and I could write a big, thick, clever book about it. Its basic idea would be as follows: Russia is a communal country, and when the Christian peasant commune was destroyed, the criminal commune became the source of the people’s morality. The proprieties of the underworld occupied the place where God used to live - or, to put it more correctly, God Himself was incorporated into the notional rules as a top criminal authority. And when the final religious prosthesis, the Soviet ‘internal Party committee’ was dismantled, a cheap guitar tuned for prison songs set the musical range of the Russian soul.

But no matter how sickening prison morality may be, there is no other morality left at all, only the simulacra produced either by FSB prison guards or sprintii journalists specializing in the propaganda of liberal values . . .

Oh. I deliberately won’t cross out that last sentence, let the reader admire it. There you have it, the vulpine mind. After all, we were-foxes are natural liberals, in pretty much the same way as the soul is a natural Christian. And what do I write? What do I write? It’s terrifying. At least it’s clear where it all came from - I got the stuff about the sprintii journalists from the FSB prison guards. And the stuff about the FSB prison guards from the sprintii journalists. There’s nothing to be done: if a fox has heard an opinion, she is bound to express it in the first person. We can’t help it. We don’t have any opinions of our own on these human-related subjects (that’s the last thing we need), but we have to live among people. So we just return the serves. Yes, it’s a good thing I don’t have to write a book about Russia after all. What sort of Solzhenitsyn would I make? But I am digressing again.

I didn’t often discuss the nature of Alexander’s homophobia with him (he didn’t like to talk about it), but I was sure its roots had to be sought in the criminal catacombs of the Russian mind. His homophobia went so far that he rejected anything that was even remotely gay.

‘Why do you dislike gays so much?’ I asked him once.

‘Because they go against nature.’

‘But it was nature that created them. So how do they go against nature?’

‘I’ll tell you how,’ he said. ‘Children are hidden in sex, like the seeds in a watermelon. And gays are people fighting for the right to eat a watermelon without seeds.’

‘Who are they fighting against?’

‘The watermelon. Everybody else stopped caring a damn long since. But a watermelon can’t exist without seeds. And that’s why I say they go against nature. Will you say they don’t?’

‘A certain watermelon I used to know,’ I replied, ‘believed that the propagation of watermelons depends on their ability to implant in man’s mind the suggestion that it’s healthy to swallow the seeds. But watermelons overestimate their own hypnotic abilities. In actual fact the propagation of watermelons takes place through a process of which the watermelons are completely unaware, because they are unable to observe it. Because this process only begins where the watermelon ends.’

‘There you go tying those fancy knots again, Ginger, I can’t follow,’ he grumbled. ‘Save it. Let’s do without all this tricky queer stuff.’

Alexander particularly disliked Luchino Visconti. Any suggestion to put on something by this director (whom I consider one of the greatest masters of the twentieth century) was taken by him as a personal insult. I still have fragments of one of our arguments on tape. While the other dialogues in my journal are reproduced from memory, this one is absolutely accurate - the conversation was accidentally recorded on a dictaphone. I include it here because I would like to hear Alexander’s voice again - I can listen to it while I type.

AS: Death in Venice. This is getting tiresome, Ginger. What do you think I am, some kind of queer?

AH: Then how about Conversation Piece?

AS: No, let’s have Takeshi Kitano. Zatoichi punishes the geisha-assassin . . . And then the geisha-assassin punishes Zatoichi.

AH: I don’t want that. Let’s try Gone with the Wind again.

AS: Come off it. That staircase is too long.

AH: What staircase?

AS: The one I have to cart you up to the bedroom. And to add to the agony you make it five times longer. I was soaked in sweat last time. Seriously. Even though we never got up off the divan . . .

AH: I have to be spoiled sometimes . . . Okay, this time we’ll have a short staircase. All right?

AS: No, let’s . . . I fancy something with shooting.

AH: Then let’s have Mulholland Drive! There’s shooting in that. Oh, please!

AS: Back to the same old thing. I won’t do it, how many times do I have to tell you? Find yourself a queer out on the avenue and watch it with him.

AH: What’s that got to do with it? It’s lesbians in the film.

AS: What’s the difference?

(Here there is a pause in the recording, during which you can hear rustling and tapping as I rummage through the video discs scattered on the floor.)

AH: Listen, there’s a film from one of Steven King’s books. Dreamcatcher. Have you seen it?

AS: No.

AH: Let’s try it. We won’t be people, we’ll be aliens.

AS: What kind of aliens are they?

AH: They have a vertical mouth full of teeth running the entire length of their bodies and eyes on their sides. Imagine how bloody a kiss could be? And cunnilingus at the same time. I think that’s the way they reproduce.

AS: Darling, I get to see enough stuff like that at work. Let’s have something more romantic.

AH: Romantic . . . Romantic . . . Here’s The Matrix-2. How would you like to screw Keanu Reaves?

AS: Not a lot.

AH: Then I can screw him.

AS: Rejected. Is the third Matrix there?

AH: Yes.

AS: There could be an interesting possibility there with those machines.

AH: Which ones?

AS: You know, those humanoid robots with people sitting in them. They use them to fight off those black octopuses. Just imagine it, one of those robots has caught a black octopus, and . . . AH: Listen, how old are you, twelve?

AS: Okay, let’s forget The Matrix. (Some kind of rustling again. I think I move on to another heap of DVDs.)

AH: How about Lord of the Rings?

AS: You’ll only come up with something weird again.

AH: Well I’m not going to spread my legs for a hobbit, that’s for sure. How come you’re so afraid of everything? Do you think they’ll find out at work? Your moral character?

AS: Why do think I’m afraid? I don’t want to, that’s all.

AH: Listen, there are some films in English here. An interesting selection.

AS: What have you got?

AH: Midnight Dancers . . . Sex Life in LA . . .

AS: No.

AH: Versace Murder?

AS: No.

AH: Why?

AS: Because.

AH: Do you know what the gays in Miami say instead of ‘vice versa’? ‘Vice Versace’. Just think of all those dark, convoluted meanings . . .

AS: First one of them shafts another up the backside, and then they swap places. That’s all your convoluted meanings.

AH: I’ll put it on then?

AS: I already told you. Go to the that cafe at Tverskaya, Gifts of the Sea or whatever they call it, find yourself a queer and have your fun.

AH: Listen, stop being such a reactionary. There are homosexual animals in wild nature, I’ve read about them. Sheep. Monkeys.

AS: As far as monkeys are concerned, I hardly think that’s an argument in favour of gays.

AH: Oh you’ve been well trained. No reforming you. What’s that disc you’ve got there?

AS: Romeo and Juliet.

(You can hear me snort contemptuously.)

AH: Bin it.

AS: Can’t we watch it just once more?

AH: How many times?

AS: Just one last little time. Come on! You’re a dead ringer for Juliet in that T-shirt.

AH: What can I do with you, Romeo? Go on. Only on one condition.

AS: What’s that?

AH: Afterwards it’s Mulholland Drive.

AS: Gr-r-r!

AH: Darling, really? So soon?

AS: Gr-r-r!

AH: Hang on, hang on. I’m putting it on. I’ll know this off by heart soon . . . ‘From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean . . .’

AS: Whoo-oo-oo!

AH: I’m not criticizing your organization, you beast. Relax. That’s Shakespeare.

Love and tragedy go hand in hand. Homer and Euripides wrote about that, so did Stendhal and Oscar Wilde. And now it’s my turn.

Until I learned from my own experience what love is, I thought of it as a specific kind of pleasure that tailless monkeys can derive from being together, in addition to sex.

I formed this impression from the numerous descriptions I had come across in poems and books. How was I to know that the writers were not describing love as it actually is at all, but constructing the verbal imitations that would look best on paper. I thought of myself as a professional of love, since I had been inducing the experience in others for so many centuries. But it’s one thing to pilot the B-29 flying towards Hiroshima, and quite another to watch it from the central square of the city.

Love turned out to be nothing like what they write about it. It was ludicrous, rather than serious - but that didn’t mean it could be dismissed out of hand. It was not like being drunk (the most popular comparison in literature) - but it was even less like being sober. My perception of the world didn’t change: I didn’t think Alexander was anything like a fairy-tale prince in his Maibach. I could see all the sinister sides of his character but, strangely enough, those things only added to his charm in my eyes. My reason even came to terms with his barbarous political views and began to discover a certain harsh northern originality in them.

Love was absolutely devoid of any meaning. But it gave meaning to everything else. It made my heart as light and empty as a balloon. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. But not because I had become more stupid - there simply was nothing to understand in what was happening. They may say that love like that doesn’t run deep. But I think that anything that is deep isn’t love, it’s deliberate calculation or schizophrenia.

I myself wouldn’t even attempt to say what love is - probably both love and God can only be defined by apophasis, through those things that they are not. But apophasis would be wrong, too, because they are everything. Writers who write about love are swindlers, and the worst of them is Leo Tolstoy, clutching his programmatic bludgeon ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’. Although I have a lot of respect for Tolstoy.

How could I have known that our romantic adventure would prove disastrous for Alexander? Oscar Wilde said: ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves . . .’ He was a writer who lived in an era of primitive anthropocentrism, hence the word ‘man’ (sexism was also easy to get away with then, especially for gays). But in everything else, he was spot on. I killed the beast, the Thing. Beauty killed the beast. And the murder weapon was love.

I remember how that day began. After I woke up, I lay on my back for a long time while I surfaced from the depths of a very good dream that I couldn’t remember no matter how I tried. I knew that in cases like that the thing to do was to lie without moving or opening your eyes, in the same position you woke up in, and then the dream might surface in your memory. And that was what happened - after about a minute, I remembered.

I had been dreaming of a fantastic garden, flooded with sunlight and filled with the chatter of birds. In the distance I could see a strip of white sand and the sea. Immediately in front of me there was a sheer cliff, and in the cliff there was a cave, sealed off with a slab of stone. I was supposed to move the slab, but it was too heavy, and there was no way I could possibly do it. Summoning up all my strength, I braced my feet against the ground and strained every muscle in my body as I pushed on the slab. It fell away to one side and the black hole of the entrance was revealed, belching out damp air and an old, stale stench. And then, rising up out of the darkness towards the sunny day, chickens appeared - one, two, three . . . I lost count, there were so many of them. They just kept on walking towards the light and happiness, and now nothing could stop them - they’d realized where the way out was. I saw my chicken among them - the brown one with the white patch, and I waved my paw to her (in the dream I had paws instead of hands, like during the supraphysical transformation). She didn’t even look at me, just ran straight past. But I wasn’t offended at all.

What an amazing dream, I thought, and opened my eyes.

There was a little patch of sunlight trembling on the wall. It was my own virtual place in the sun, acquired without any struggle at all - it was produced by a little mirror that cast the ray of light falling from above against the wall. I thought about Alexander and remembered our love. It was as certain as that yellow patch of sunlight quivering on the wall. Something incredible had to happen between us today, something truly miraculous. Without even thinking what I was going to say to him, I reached for the phone.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello. I want to see you.’

‘Come on over,’ he said. ‘But there’s not much time. I’m flying north this evening. That only leaves us three hours.’

‘That’s enough for me,’ I said.

The taxi drove me slowly, the traffic lights took an eternity to change, and at every crossroads I felt my heart would leap out of my chest if I had to wait just a few more seconds.

When I got out of the lift he removed the gauze mask from his face and took a deep sniff.

‘I’ll probably never get used to the way you smell. It seems like I remember it, and yet every time it turns out the memory in my head is nothing like it. I’ll have to pull a few hairs out of your tail.’

‘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.

‘Sasha,’ I called softly.

He looked up at me and asked: ‘Do you remember the story about the Little Scarlet Flower?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’ve only just realized what it really means.’

‘What?’

‘Love doesn’t transform. It simply tears away the masks. I thought I was a prince. But it turns out . . . This is what my soul is like.’

‘Don’t dare talk like that,’ I whispered. ‘It’s not true. You didn’t understand a thing. It has absolutely nothing to do with your soul. It’s . . . it’s like . . .’

‘It’s like hatching out from the egg,’ he said sadly. ‘You can’t hatch back into it.’

He had expressed my own feeling with astonishing precision. So the change really was irreversible. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to fall through the floor, then through the ground, and keep going to infinity . . . But he didn’t think it was my fault. On the contrary, he made it clear that he thought the cause of what had happened lay in him. What a noble heart he does have, really, I thought.

He stood up.

‘Now I’m going to fly north,’ he said, running his fingers tenderly over my cheek. ‘Come what may. We’ll see each other in three days.’

He appeared three days later.

I wasn’t expecting him that morning, and my instinct had given me no warning. The knock at the door sounded strangely weak. If it had been the militia, the fire inspectors, the public health inspectors, the district architect or any other bearers of the national idea, it wouldn’t have sounded like that - I knew how people knocked when they came for money. I thought it must be the old cleaning lady who cleaned the stand. She sometimes came to ask for hot water. I’d given her an electric kettle twice, but she still came anyway - probably out of loneliness.

Alexander was standing outside - deathly pale, with blue circles under his eyes and a long scratch on his left cheek. He was wearing a crumpled summer raincoat. I could smell alcohol on him - not old, stale fumes, but the way an open bottle of vodka smells. I’d never known him to drink before.

‘How did you find me?’ I asked.

It would have been hard to think of a more stupid question. He didn’t even bother to answer.

‘There’s no time. Can you hide me?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Come in.’

‘This place is no good. Our people know about it. Have you got somewhere else?’

‘Yes I have. Come in and we’ll talk about it.’

He shook his head.

‘Let’s go right now. Another five minutes and it will be too late.’

I realized the situation was serious.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Will we be coming back here?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Then I’ll take my bag. And my bike. Will you come in?’

‘I’ll wait here.’

A few minutes later we were already walking away from the equestrian complex along a forest path. I was pushing my bike along by the handlebars: I had an extremely heavy bag hanging over my shoulder, but Alexander didn’t make the slightest attempt to help me. That wasn’t really like him - but I sensed that he could hardly even walk.

‘Will it take much longer?’

‘About half an hour, if we don’t hurry.’

‘What sort of place is it?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Is it safe?’

‘They don’t come any safer.’

I was taking him to my own personal bomb shelter.

It often happens that preparations made in case of war are actually used by a later age for a different purpose. In the eighties many people had been expecting the Cold War to end in a hot one - there were at least three portents that indicated such a development was imminent:

1. bully beef from the strategic reserves of Stalin’s time - which were assembled in case there was a third world war - appeared on the shelves in shops (the cans were easily identifiable by the lack of any markings, the distinctive yellowish tinge of the metal, a thick layer of Vaseline and their completely tasteless, almost colourless contents).

2. the American president was called Ronald Wilson Reagan. Each word in his name contained six letters, giving the apocalyptic number of the beast - ‘666’ - a fact that was frequently mentioned with alarm by the journal Communist, where many architects of the future reform worked at the time.

3. the surname Reagan was pronounced exactly like ‘ray gun’ - a fact that I noticed myself.

It became clear several years later that these signs did not portend war, but the end of the USSR: the upper rat had chickened out, thereby fulfilling the first part of its great geopolitical mission. But at that time a war had still seemed very likely, and I was thinking about what I would do when it started.

These thoughts led me to a simple decision. I was already living close to Bitsevsky Park and in its secret depths, criss-crossed with gullies, I often came across concrete pipes, shafts and service ducts. It was clear from the different sorts of concrete that these incomplete underground structures came from various periods of Soviet power. Some were elements of a drainage system, some had something to do with underground heat pipelines and cables, and some were simply unidentifiable, but looked like something military.

Most of them were in open view. But one of these boltholes proved suitable for my purposes. It was located in impassable thickets, too remote for teenage drinkers or courting couples to use as a meeting place. There were no forest tracks leading to it, and there wasn’t much chance of anyone who happened to be out walking passing that way. This is how it looked: there was a concrete pipe about a metre in diameter protruding from the earth in the side of a gully. The bottom of the opposite slope of the ravine was only a few steps away, so it was difficult to spot the pipe from above. Under the ground it branched into two small rooms. One of them had a power distribution box hanging on the wall, and even a socket for a light bulb hanging on a spike hammered into the concrete - evidently there was an underground power cable running nearby.

When I discovered this place, there were no signs of life in it, only garbage left over from the construction work and a rubber boot with a torn top. Bit by bit I brought in a lot of canned food, jars of honey, Vietnamese bamboo mats and blankets. Only instead of war, perestroika broke out, and I had no more need for a bomb shelter. But even so I still used to inspect the place from time to time, thinking of it as my ‘bunker’.

Of course, all my reserves had rotted, but the spot itself had remained undiscovered: only once in the entire democratic period did a tramp attempt to move in (he obviously must have been crawling along the bottom of the gully in a delirious state and then clambered into the pipe). I had to give him a rather severe hypnotic session - I’m afraid the poor man forgot about plenty of other things as well as the gully. After that I hung a protective talisman at the entrance, something I usually avoid doing, since sooner or later you have to pay for magic that changes the natural course of things with your own death. But in this case the intervention was minimal.

When Alexander asked me to hide him, I realized immediately that I couldn’t possibly think of any better place than this. But getting there turned out not to be so easy - he was walking slower and slower, with frequent stops to catch his breath.

Eventually we reached the gully, which was concealed by a proliferation of hazel bushes and some umbrella-shaped plants with a name I could never remember - they always grew to a monstrous size here, almost like trees, and I was concerned that the reason might be radiation or chemical pollution. Alexander scrabbled down into the gully, bent over and climbed into the pipe.

‘Right or left?’

‘Left,’ I said. ‘I’ll just switch on the light.’

‘Oho, so there’s even light. Real luxury,’ he muttered.

A minute later I helped him take off his raincoat and laid him out on the bamboo mats. It was only then I noticed that his grey jacket was soaked in blood.

‘There are bullets,’ he said. ‘Two or three. Can you get them out?’

Fortunately, I’d put my Leatherman in the bag. And I had a bit of medical experience, although the last time I’d practised was a very long time ago, and it wasn’t bullets I removed from a man’s body, it was arrowheads. But there wasn’t really much difference.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Only don’t squeal.’

During the procedure - which proved to be rather long - he didn’t make a single sound. After one particularly clumsy turn of my instrument his silence became so oppressive, I was afraid he might have died. But he reached out for his bottle of vodka and took a swallow. Finally it was all over. I’d really hacked him about, but I’d got all three lumps of silver out - there were still black hairs embedded in two of them, and I realized he had been shot when he was . . . I didn’t know what to call his new form - the word ‘dog’ seemed insulting to me.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Now we have to bandage it up with something sterile. You lie here for a while, and I’ll go to the chemist’s. Shall I get you anything?’

‘Yes. Buy me a leash and a collar.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ he said and tried to smile. ‘I’m joking. Don’t worry about any medicine, dogs heal fast. Buy a few disposable razors and a can of shaving foam. And some mineral water. Do you have money?’

‘Yes. Don’t worry.’

‘And don’t go home. Not on any account. They’re bound to be waiting for you.’

‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ I said. ‘Listen . . . I’ve just remembered. Mikhalich has this instrument that locates things. From a sensor. What if there’s one of those sensors in my things?’

‘Don’t worry about that. He was just bragging to impress you. We don’t have any instruments like that. They found you through the cleaning lady who gets hot water from you. She’s been working for us since eighty-five.’

You learn something new every day.

When I came back a few hours later with two plastic bags full of shopping, he was asleep. I sat down beside him and looked into his face for a long time. He was sleeping as peacefully as a child. And standing on the floor was a glass, with three bloody silver buttons lying in it. It’s hard to kill a werewolf. Take Mikhalich - the more you smash him over the head, the jollier he gets. The champagne’s gone to my head, he says . . . Witty fellow. Of course this was a case of bullets, not champagne - but even so you couldn’t get my Sashenka with a little thing like that.

The myth that a werewolf can only be killed with a silver bullet is very helpful to our community.

1. the wounds never fester and no disinfection is required - silver is a natural antiseptic.

2. fewer bullets are fired at us - people economise on the expensive metal and often go out hunting with only a single bullet, assuming that any kind of hit will be fatal.

But in real life the shot is far more often fatal for the hunter. If people would just use their brains for a moment, then of course they would guess who spreads these rumours about silver bullets. People might think a lot, but they think in a perverted way, and not about the right things.

The plastic bags I had brought contained food and a few small household items. As I went down into the gully and dragged them into the pipe, I suddenly thought that basically I was no different now from thousands of Russian girls who were married and whose frail shoulders had assumed the burden of running the home. It had all happened so suddenly and it was so different from the roles that I had previously played, that I wasn’t sure yet if I liked it or not.

It is usually assumed that were-creatures are not concerned about spiritual problems. People think you turn into a fox or a wolf, howl at the moon, tear someone’s throat out, and all the great questions of life are instantly answered, and it’s clear who you are, what you’re doing in this world, where you came from and where you’re going . . . But that’s not the way it is at all. We are far more tormented by the riddles of existence than modern humans. But the cinema continues to depict us as complacent, earth-bound gluttons, nonentities who are indistinguishable from each other, cruel and squalid consumers of the blood of others.

I don’t actually think this is a conscious attempt by people to insult us. It’s more likely a simple consequence of their own limitations. They model us according to their own likeness, because they have no one else to take as a prototype.

Even the little bit that people do know about us is usually distorted and vulgarized beyond all recognition. For instance, according to the rumours about were-foxes, they live in human graves. When they hear that, people imagine bones and stench, decomposing corpses. And they think - what repulsive creatures these foxes must be if they live in a place like that . . . Something like a large coffin of worms.

Of course, this is a mistake.

A good ancient grave was a complex structure consisting of several dry, spacious rooms illuminated by sunlight, which was directed into them by a series of bronze mirrors (there wasn’t a lot of light, but it was enough to work by). A grave like that, situated far away from human dwellings, was ideally suited as a home for a being indifferent to the vanity of the world and inclined to solitary contemplation. There are almost no suitable graves left now: they’ve been ploughed up, canals and roads have been built through them. And in the modern communal apartments of the afterlife, even the dead feel cramped.

But sometimes even now nostalgia still drives me to a nearby cemetery - simply to stroll along the avenues and ponder the eternal. I look at the crosses and the stars, read the names, gaze at the faces on the faded photographs and feel so sorry for all these people I never met. Mr Keufer understood so much about life . . . And Mr Solonyan understood even more then Mr Keufer ... And Mr and Mrs Yagupolsky understood even more then Solonyan and Keufer taken together . . . They understood everything, apart from what is most important. And the most important thing was so inexpressibly close. Sad.

Long before I came to Russia I lived for several hundred years in a Han period grave not far from the spot where the great city of Luoyang once used to stand. The grave had two spacious chambers in which various items had been preserved - beautiful gowns and shirts, a harp, a flute and lots of different kinds of dishes - basically, everything that was necessary for a home and a modest life. And people were afraid to approach the grave, since it was rumoured that a fierce and vicious demon lived there. Which, if you set aside the superfluous emotional assessment, was quite true.

In those days I practised my spiritual exercises intensively and associated on a regular basis with a number of learned men from the villages round about (Chinese students usually lived in rural areas with their families, travelling to the city to sit their exams and later, after serving their term as an official, they returned to the family home). Several of them knew who I was and they would pester me with questions about the ancient times - were there any errors in the chronology, who had organized the palace coup three hundred years earlier, and so on. I had to strain my memory and answer them, because in return the scholars would give me old texts which I sometimes needed to check my spiritual practice.

Others, bolder in spirit, used to visit me for a little wanton lechery among the ancient graves. The Chinese artists and poets valued a secluded rendezvous with a fox, especially in a state of intoxication. And in the morning they liked to wake up in the grass beside a mossy gravestone, jump to their feet and scream in horror as they ran to the nearest shrine with their hair fluttering loose in the wind. It was very beautiful - I used to watch from behind a tree and laugh into my sleeve . . . And a couple of days later they would come back again. What exalted, noble, subtle people there used to be then! Often I didn’t even take money from them.

Those idyllic times flew past quickly, and they left me with the very best of memories. Wherever life cast me up after that, I always felt slightly homesick for my cosy little grave. And so for me it was a delight to move into this little nook in the forest. I thought the old days had come back. Even the floor plan of the double burrow in which we lived reminded me of my ancient refuge although, of course, the rooms were smaller and now my days were not spent in solitude, but with Alexander.

Alexander quickly grew accustomed to the new place. His wounds healed - it was enough for him simply to turn into a dog for one night. In the morning he stayed like that and went off for a walk along the gully. I was glad he wasn’t ashamed of this body - he seemed to find it entertaining, like a new toy. What he liked was evidently not the form itself, but its permanent stability: he could only be a wolf for a short while, but now he could be a dog for just as long as he wanted.

Apart from that, this black dog could even speak after a fashion, although the way it pronounced the words was very funny and at first I used to laugh until I cried. But Alexander didn’t take offence, and I soon got used to it. During the early days he ran around in the forest a lot, getting to know the surrounding area. I was concerned that his ambitions might lead him to mark too large a sector of the forest, but I was afraid to wound his pride by telling him so. And if anything happened, we could stand up for ourselves. ‘We’ . . . I simply couldn’t get used to that pronoun.

It was probably because our home reminded me of the place where I had spent so many years striving for spiritual self-improvement that I felt the desire to explain to Alexander the single most important of all things that I had understood in life. I had to try at least - otherwise what was my love worth? How could I possibly abandon him alone in the glacial glamour of the progressively advancing hell that began just beyond the edge of the forest? I had to offer him my tail and my hand because, if I didn’t do it, no one else would.

I decided to reveal the innermost essence of things to him. This required him to master several ideas that were new to him and then use them, like steps, to ascend to the higher truth. But even explaining these initial notions was difficult.

The problem is that everybody knows the words that express the truth - and if you don’t, you can easily find them in five minutes via Google. But hardly anyone at all actually knows the truth. It’s like one of those ‘magic eye’ pictures - a chaotic jumble of coloured lines and spots that can be transformed into a three-dimensional image by focusing your vision correctly. It all seems very simple, but you can’t focus someone else’s eyes for them when they look, no matter how well-disposed you are towards them. The truth is a picture just like that. It is there right in front of everybody’s eyes, even the tailless monkeys’. But there are very few who actually see it. Although many think that they understand it. This, of course, is nonsense - the truth is like love, there is nothing to understand. And what is usually taken for the truth is some kind of intellectual dross.

One day I noticed a tiny grey pouch hanging round Alexander’s neck on a grey string. I guessed that the colour had been chosen to match a wolf’s fur - so that the pouch would not be visible when he turned into a wolf. But now it stood out against his black fur. I decided to ask him about it that evening, when he was in a benign mood.

He was in the habit of smoking a malodorous Cuban cigar before bed - a Montecristo III or Cohiba Siglo IV. I knew the names, because I had to go to get them. That was the best time to talk to him. In case you didn’t know, smoking triggers a discharge of dopamine into the brain - and dopamine is the substance responsible for a feeling of well-being: a smoker borrows this well-being against his own future and transforms it into problems with his health. That evening we settled down in the doorway of our home and he lit up (I wouldn’t allow him to smoke inside). I waited until his cigar was half burnt away and asked:

‘Tell me, what have you got in that little pouch hanging round your neck?’

‘A cross,’ he said.

‘A cross? You wear a cross?’

He nodded.

‘But why hide it? It’s okay to wear them now.’

‘It may be okay,’ he said. ‘But it burns my chest when I transform. ’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘It doesn’t really hurt. It’s just that every time there’s a smell of scorched fur.’

‘If you like, I can teach you a mantra,’ I said, ‘so that no cross will ever burn you again.’

‘Oh, sure! I’m not going to recite your infernal mantra so my cross doesn’t burn my chest. Don’t you realize what a sin that would be?’

I looked at him incredulously.

‘Hang on. So maybe you’re a believer too, are you?’

‘What of it,’ he said. ‘Of course I’m a believer.’

‘In the sense of the Orthodox Christian Cultural Heritage? Or for real?’

‘I don’t understand the distinction. In the Holy Writ it says:

“Even the demons believe and tremble!” That’s about us, and that’s what I do - believe and tremble.’

‘But you’re a werewolf, Sasha. So according to all the Orthodox precepts your road leads straight to hell. Tell me, I’d like to know, why would you choose a faith in which you have to go to hell?’

‘You don’t choose your faith,’ he said morosely. ‘Just like you don’t choose your motherland.’

‘But the reason religion exists is to offer hope of salvation. What are you hoping for?’

‘That God will forgive my evil deeds.’

‘And what evil deeds have you got?’

‘That’s obvious. I’ve lost the image of God. And then there’s you ...’

I almost choked in indignation.

‘So you don’t think I’m the brightest and purest thing in your entire lupine life, on the contrary, I’m an evil deed for which you’ll have to atone?’

He shrugged.

‘I love you, you know that. It’s not a matter of you personally. It’s just that the two of us live, you know . . .’

‘What do I know?’

He released a cloud of smoke.

‘In sin . . .’

My anger instantly evaporated. And instead I felt more like laughing than I had for a long time.

‘No, come on, tell me,’ I said, feeling the bubbles of laughter rising in my throat. ‘So I’m your sin, am I?’

‘Not you,’ he said in a quiet voice, ‘it’s that . . .’

‘What?’

‘Tailechery,’ he said in a very quiet voice and lowered his eyes.

I bit my lip. I knew that whatever I did, I mustn’t laugh - he had shared his most intimate feelings with me. And I didn’t laugh. But the effort was so great it could easily have made a new silver hair appear in my tail. So he’d even invented a term for it!

‘Don’t take offence,’ he said. ‘I’m being honest with you, saying what I feel. I can lie if you like. Only then there won’t be any point in talking to each other.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you’re right. It’s just that this is all rather unexpected. ’

We sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the tops of the prolific umbrella plants swaying in the wind.

‘And have you been . . . a believer for long?’ I asked.

‘It’s five years now.’

‘To be honest, I thought you were more into the Nordic gods. You know, Fafnir, Nagelfahr, Fenrir, Loki, Baldur’s dreams . . .’

‘That too,’ he said with a selfconscious smile. ‘Only that’s external, a shell. A sort of frame, aesthetic decoration. You know, like the sphinxes on the banks of the Neva in Petersburg.’

‘And how did you end up in this state?’

‘In my younger days I used to be keen on Castaneda. And I read in one of his books that awareness is the food of the Eagle. The way I understood it, the Eagle’s some obscure thing they have instead of God. I’m no coward, far from it. But that made me feel afraid . . . Anyway, I turned to Orthodoxy. Even though the situation was rather ambivalent. I was already a wolf then, it was three years since I’d been accepted into the pack. We still had a pack in those days. Colonel Lebedenko was still alive . . .’

He gestured helplessly.

‘Awareness is the food of the Eagle?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Alexander. ‘That’s what the magicians of ancient Yucatán believed.’

What a little boy he still is, really, I thought tenderly.

‘Silly boy. It’s not awareness that’s the food of the Eagle. It’s the Eagle that’s the food of awareness.’

‘Which Eagle exactly?’

‘Any. And the magicians of ancient Yucatán too, with all their business seminars, workshops, videodiscs and ageing Naguals. Every last one of them is the food of awareness. Including you.’

‘How’s that?’ he asked.

I took his cigar and blew out a cloud of smoke.

‘You see that?’

He watched as it swirled and evolved.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Are you aware of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘A werewolf is like that cloud of smoke. He lives, changes his form, his colour and volume. Then he disappears. But when the smoke dissipates, nothing happens to awareness. Something else just appears in it instead.’

‘But where does awareness go after death?’

‘It doesn’t have to go anywhere,’ I said. ‘You’re not going anywhere, are you? You’re sitting there, you’re smoking. And it’s the same.’

‘But what about heaven and hell?’

‘They’re smoke rings. Awareness doesn’t go anywhere. On the contrary, anything that does go anywhere immediately becomes its food. Like that smoke there. Or like your thoughts.’

‘But whose awareness is it?’ he asked.

‘That’s the food of awareness as well.’

‘No, you don’t understand the question. Whose is it?’

‘And that too,’ I said patiently.

‘But there has to be -’

‘And that,’ I interrupted.

‘Then who . . .’

At this point he suddenly seemed to get it - he took his chin in his hand and stopped talking.

It’s really difficult trying to explain these things in abstract terms. You can get tangled up in the words: ‘In perception there is neither subject nor object, but only the pure experience of the transcendent nature, and this experience is everything - both physical objects and mental constructs, which include the ideas of a perceived object and a perceiving subject . . .’ After the first three words you can’t tell what it’s all about any more. But with an example it’s easy - one good puff of smoke and that’s it. So now he understood. Or almost understood.

‘Then what do you reckon this is, all around us?’ he asked, taking back his cigar. ‘Is it like The Matrix?’

‘Almost, but not quite.’

‘So what’s the difference?’

‘In The Matrix there’s an objective reality - a warehouse outside town with the bodies of the people stacked in it. Otherwise the portfolio investors wouldn’t have put up the money for the film, they’re very strict about that sort of thing. But in fact everything’s like in The Matrix, only without that warehouse.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘There’s a dream, but there isn’t anybody dreaming it. That is, they’re part of the dream too. Some say the dream dreams itself. But strictly speaking there isn’t any “itself”.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘In The Matrix everybody was connected by wires to something real. But in actual fact everybody’s connected to the same kind of pipedream as they are themselves. And since all the dreamers see more or less the same, this pipedream is also a joint dream, and that’s why people call it real. The dream only lasts for as long as the connection continues. But once it stops, there’s no hardware left behind for the court bailiffs to inventorize. Or any body for them to bury.’

‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said with a grin. ‘More often than not, that’s exactly what does happen.’

‘You know what they say - leave the virtuals to bury their virtuals. The buriers and the buried are only real in relation to each other.’

‘How can that be possible?’

‘Take a look around.’

He thought for a while without saying anything. Then he nodded sullenly.

‘A pity you weren’t around to explain that. And what good is it now . . . It’s too late to change my life now.’

‘Yes, you’re really stuck, you poor sod,’ I sighed. ‘Why don’t you try moving your assemblage point in the position of holy life?’

‘Are you laughing at me?’ he asked. ‘Well laugh, Ginger, go on. It’s stupid, I don’t deny it. Do you believe in God yourself?’

I was really taken aback by that.

‘Do you believe?’ he repeated.

‘Foxes respect the religion of Adonai,’ I replied diplomatically.

‘Respect isn’t where it’s at. Can you tell me if you believe or not?’

‘Foxes have their own faith.’

‘And what do they believe in?’

‘The super-werewolf.’

‘The one Lord Cricket talked about?’

‘Lord Cricket was way off beam. He didn’t have a clue about the super-werewolf.’

‘But who is the super-werewolf?’

‘There are several levels of understanding. At the most primitive one, he is the messiah who will come and tell all the were-creatures what the score is. This interpretation has been influenced by human religion, and the central profane symbol corresponding to it was also taken from people.’

‘And what is this central profane symbol?’

‘An inverted five-pointed star. The humans don’t understand it correctly. They draw a goat’s head into it with the horns at the top. They like to see the devil everywhere, except in the mirror and on TV.’

‘So what does this star really mean?’

‘It’s the vulpine crucifix. Something like the St Andrew’s Cross with a crossbar for the tail. Of course, we have no intention of crucifying anyone, we’re not people. All this signifies a symbolic atonement for the sins of foxes, of which the most important is ignorance.’

‘And how is the super-werewolf going to atone for the sins of foxes?’

‘He will give foxes the Sacred Book of Werewolf.’

‘What kind of book is that?’

‘The general belief is that it will reveal the central mystery of all were-creatures. Every were-creature who reads it will be able to comprehend this mystery five times.’

‘And what’s this book going to be called?’

‘I don’t know. Nobody does. They say its title will be a magical pentagrammaton, a spell that annihilates all obstacles. But all this is no more than legend. The concept of the super-werewolf has a true meaning that has nothing to do with all these fairy tales.’

I was expecting him to ask about this true meaning, but instead he asked about something else.

‘What does that mean - you’ll “be able to comprehend this mystery five times”. Once you’ve understood something, why do you need to understand it another four times? You’re already in the know, aren’t you?’

‘On the contrary. In most cases, if you’ve already comprehended something, you’ll never be able to comprehend it again, precisely because you think that you know everything already. But in the truth there isn’t anything that can be understood once and for all. Since we don’t see it with our eyes but with our minds, we say “I understand”. But when we think we’ve understood it, we’ve already lost it. In order to possess the truth, you have to see it constantly - or, in other words, comprehend it over and over again, second after second, continuously. And that’s a very rare ability.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I understand.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you’ll understand it in two days’ time. You’ll be left with the dead husks of words, and you’ll think there’s still something wrapped up in them. That’s what all the humans think. They seriously believe that they possess spiritual treasures and sacred texts.’

‘So what you’re saying is that words can’t reflect the truth?’

I shook my head in confirmation.

‘Two times two is four,’ he said. ‘That’s the truth, isn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, for instance, you’ve got two bollocks and two nostrils. Two times two. But I don’t see any four in that.’

‘What if we add them up?’

‘How are you going to add nostrils to bollocks? Leave that sort of thing to humans.’

He thought about it. Then he asked: ‘And when’s the superwerewolf supposed to come?’

‘The super-werewolf comes every time you see the truth.’

‘And what is the truth?’

I didn’t answer.

‘What is it?’ he repeated.

I didn’t say anything.

‘Eh?’

I rolled my eyes up. That’s a facial gesture that really suits me.

‘I asked you a question, Ginger.’

‘Surely it’s clear enough? My silence is the answer.’

‘But can you answer in words? So that I could understand?’

‘There’s nothing there to understand,’ I replied. ‘When you’re asked the question “what is truth?” there’s only one way you can answer it without lying. You must see the truth within yourself, on the inside. But on the outside you must keep silent.’

‘And do you see this truth within yourself?’ he asked.

I said nothing.

‘All right, I’ll put it a different way. When you see this truth within yourself, what exactly do you see?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Nothing? And that’s the truth?’

I said nothing.

‘If there’s nothing there, then why do we talk about truth at all?’

‘You’re confusing the cause and the effect. We don’t talk about truth because there’s something there. On the contrary, we think there must be something there because the word “truth” exists.’

‘Exactly. The word exists, doesn’t it? Why?’

‘Just because. Forever wouldn’t be long enough to untangle all the cunning tricks words play. You can think up an infinite number of questions and answers - you can put the words together this way and that way, and every time some kind of meaning will stick to them. It’s pointless. That sparrow over there doesn’t have any questions for anybody. But I don’t think he’s any further away from the truth than Lacan or Foucault.’

I thought he might not know who Lacan and Foucault were. Although they supposedly had that counter-brainwashing course . . . But in any case I knew I ought to express myself more simply.

‘In short, it’s all because of words that the humans are stuck up shit creek. And the were-creatures with them. Because even though we are were-creatures, we speak their language.’

‘But words exist for a reason, don’t they?’ he said. ‘If people really are stuck up shit creek, we need to understand why, don’t we?’

‘When you’re up shit creek, there are two things you can do. First - you can try to understand why you’re up there. Or second - you can get out of there. The mistake that individuals and entire nations make is to think these two actions are somehow interconnected. But they aren’t. And getting out of shit creek is a lot easier than understanding why you’re stuck up it.’

‘Why?’

‘You only have to get out of shit creek once, and after that you can forget about it. But to understand why you’re stuck up it takes a lifetime. Which you’ll spend stuck up there.’

We sat in silence for a while, gazing into the darkness.

Then he asked: ‘But even so. What do people have language for, if it gives them nothing but grief?’

‘In the first place, so they can lie. In the second place, so they can wound each other with the barbs of venomous words. In the third place, so they can discuss what doesn’t exist.’

‘And what does exist as well?’

I raised one finger.

‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘Why are you giving me the finger?’

‘I’m not giving you the finger, I’m pointing. There’s no need to discuss what does exist. It’s right there in front of you anyway. It’s enough just to point to it.’

We didn’t talk any more that evening, but I knew the first seeds had fallen on fertile ground. All I could do now was wait for the next opportunity.

In case anyone thinks our way of making love is a perversion (tailechery, he’d called it eh? You couldn’t forget that in a hurry) I advise them to take a closer look at what people do to each other. First they wash their bodies and remove the hairs from them, then they spray liquids on themselves to kill their natural smell (I remember Count Tolstoy was particularly outraged by that) - and all in order to make themselves fuckable for a short while. And after the act of love they immerse themselves once again in the humiliating details of personal hygiene.

Even worse than that, people are ashamed of their own bodies or dissatisfied with them: men pump up their biceps, women go to any lengths to lose weight and they have silicone breast implants put in. The plastic surgeons have even invented an illness, ‘micromastia’ - that’s when the breasts are smaller than a pair of watermelons. And they’ve started elongating men’s penises and selling special tablets so that they’ll still work afterwards. If there were no market in illnesses, there wouldn’t be any market in medicines - that’s the Hippocratic secret that doctors swear a solemn oath never to reveal.

Human amorous is an extremely unstable feeling. It can be killed by a few stupid words, a bad smell, sloppily applied make-up, a chance intestinal spasm, or absolutely anything at all. Moreover, this can happen instantaneously, and no human being has any control over it. And this impulse typically contains - to an even greater degree than everything else that is human - a bottomless absurdity, a tragicomic abyss, which the mind only finds so easy to bridge because it doesn’t even see it.

The best description I ever heard of this abyss was given by a certain red commander in autumn 1919 - after I fed him the magic mushrooms that I had collected right beside the wheels of his armoured train. He put it this way: ‘Somehow I can’t understand any more why it is that just because I like a girl’s beautiful and soulful face I have to fuck her wet, hairy cunt!’ It’s put in a coarse, peasant fashion, but the essential point has been grasped precisely. And by the way, before he ran off forever into the rain-soaked expanse of autumn fields, he expressed another interesting thought: ‘If you think about it, a woman’s attractiveness has less to do with her hairstyle or the lighting than with my balls.’

But people still indulge in sex - although, of course, in recent years mostly through a little rubber sack, to prevent anything encroaching upon their solitude. This sport, which was dubious enough to begin with, has now become like a downhill slalom: the risk to your life is about the same, except that it’s not the twists and turns in the piste that you have to watch, you have to make sure your ski-suit doesn’t come off. I find anyone who indulges in this activity absurd in the role of a moralist, and it’s not for him to judge what’s perverted and what isn’t.

Were-creatures’ attraction to each other is less dependent on impermanent external allure. But of course, it does play a part. I guessed that what had happened to Alexander would affect our intimate relations. But I didn’t think the trauma would go so deep. Alexander was as caring with me as ever, but only within strict limits: it was as if a barbed-wire fence had been erected at the point where formerly his affection had spilled over into intimacy. He evidently thought that in his new form I didn’t find him attractive. He was partly right - I couldn’t say that this black dog aroused the same feelings in me as the mighty northern wolf, one glimpse of which was enough to take my breath away. The dog was very cute, it’s true. But no more than that. It could count on my affection. But not my passion.

Only that was simply not important. We had abandoned vulgar human-style sex when we realized how far we could be transported into a fairy-tale fantasy by our intertwined tails. And so his metamorphosis was no more serious an obstacle to our passion than, say, the black underwear that he started wearing instead of grey. But he didn’t seem to understand this, imagining that I identified him with his physical receptacle. Or perhaps the sense of shock at what had happened and his irrational feeling of guilt were so intense that he had simply forbidden himself to think about pleasure - after all, men, with or without tails, are far more psychologically vulnerable than we are, for all their show of toughness.

I didn’t take the initiative. But not because I didn’t find him attractive any more. It’s always nice when the man takes the first step, and I instinctively followed that rule. Perhaps, I thought, he’s feeling miserable, and he needs time to come round. But one day he asked a question that allowed me to guess where his problems lay.

‘You were talking about that philosopher Berkeley,’ he said. ‘The guy who thought that everything only exists when it’s perceived. ’

‘Yes, I was,’ I agreed.

I really had tried to explain it to him, and I thought I’d achieved a certain degree of success.

‘So then sex and masturbation are the same thing?’

I was dumbfounded.

‘Why?’

‘If everything only exists by virtue of perception, then making love to a real girl is the same as imagining that girl.’

‘Not entirely. Berkeley said that objects exist in the perception of God. The idea of a beautiful girl is simply your idea. But a beautiful girl is God’s idea.’

‘Both of them are ideas. Why is it good to make love to God’s idea, and bad to make love to your own idea?’

‘And that’s Kant’s categorical imperative.’

‘I see you’ve got all the bases covered,’ he muttered, disgruntled, and walked off into the forest.

After that conversation I realized he was in urgent need of my help. But I had to help him without wounding his pride.

When he came back from his walk in the forest and lay down on a bamboo mat in the corner of my room, I said:

‘Listen, I was going through the DVDs we managed to bring with us. It turns out we have a film that you haven’t seen.’

‘And what are we going to watch it on?’ he asked.

‘On my notebook. It’s a small screen, but the quality’s good. We can sit close.’

‘What’s the film?’

‘In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wai. A pastiche of nineteen-sixties Hong Kong.’

‘And what’s it about?’

‘It’s all about us,’ I said. ‘Two people living in rooms next door to each other. And gradually they start feeling fond of each other.’

‘Are you kidding?’

I picked up the box of the DVD and read the brief blurb out loud:

‘“Su and Chow lived in neighbouring rooms. Su’s husband and Chou’s wife are away all the time. Chow recognizes Su’s handbag, a gift from her husband. His wife has one just like it. And Su recognizes Chow’s tie, a gift from his wife. Her husband has one just like it. Though they say nothing, they realize that their marriage partners are being unfaithful with each other. What should they do? Perhaps they should simply surrender to the sweet music of the mood for love?”’

‘I didn’t understand a thing,’ he said. ‘All right then, let’s surrender ...’

I put the laptop on the floor and put the DVD in the disc drive.

For the first twenty minutes or so he watched the film without saying anything or reacting in any way. I knew the film off by heart, and so I didn’t really watch it, I watched him instead - out of the corner of my eye. He looked relaxed and calm. When I got the chance, I moved closer to him, sank my hand into his fur and turned him over on to his side, so that he was lying with his tail towards me. He growled quietly, still watching the screen, but didn’t say anything.

That’s a fine little phrase - ‘he growled quietly, but didn’t say anything’. But that’s the way it was. Trying not to startle him, I lowered my jeans, freed my tail and . . .

Ah, what an evening that was! Never before had we plunged so deep into the abyss. During our previous erotic hallucinations I had always remained conscious of what was happening and where. But this time the feelings were so intense that there were moments when I completely lost all idea of who I really was - a Hong Kong woman with the Russian name Su, or a Russian fox with the Chinese name A Hu-Li. There were several occasions when I felt genuinely afraid, as if I’d bought a ticket for a roller-coaster that was too fast and too steep.

The reason for this lay in Alexander - the hypnotic fluence that emanated from him now was so powerful that I was unable to resist it. If only for a short while, I myself fell victim to suggestion and became completely immersed in the illusion. Once he bit me gently on the lobe of my ear and said:

‘Don’t scream.’

I hadn’t even realized I was screaming . . . In short, it was a total blast. I realized now what our clients went through every time we put our tails to work. People had good reason to be wary of us. On the other hand, if I’d known what far-out feelings we gave them, I would have charged at least twice as much.

When it was all over, I was left lying beside him on the bamboo mat, gradually coming round. It felt like I had pins and needles all over my body - I had to wait for the circulation to restore itself. Eventually I felt strong enough to speak. By that time he had already become human.

‘Did you like it?’ I asked.

‘Not bad. Good surveillance work. I mean, camera work. And the director’s no slouch either.’

‘No, I didn’t mean the film.’

‘What did you mean then?’ he asked, raising one eyebrow.

I realized he was feeling more cheerful.

‘You know what, Sasha, you know what.’

‘If you mean you know what, then I liked the song a lot. Let’s put it on again, shall we?’

‘Which song exactly?’

‘About the bandit Los Dios.’

I wrinkled up my forehead.

‘What?’

‘It’s got this name in it,’ he said in a slightly embarrassed voice. ‘Maybe this Los Dios is not a bandit, I just thought so for some reason.’

‘Bandit Los Dios? Where’s that? Ah, I understand: “Y asi pasan los dias y yo desperando . . .” That’s Spanish. “And so the days pass by, and I am in despair . . .”’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes. I can see now how people get prison terms in this country.’

‘Just can’t help teasing, can you,’ he said amiably. ‘So are we going to put it on? Or maybe we should watch the whole film again?’

The next day we watched the film again, then again and again. And every time that maelstrom reduced my soul to the same sweet desolation as the very first time. We lay side by side for a long time, resting. We didn’t talk, there was nothing to talk about, and we had no strength left.

I liked to put my feet on him when he curled up into a big, black doughnut - sometimes he growled for effect, but I knew that he liked it just as much as I did. How fondly I recall those days now! It is wonderful when two beings find a way to bring each other happiness and joy. And what a prude you have to be to condemn them for not being like everybody else!

How many of those blissful moments were there, when we lay on the bamboo mat, relaxing, unable even to move? I think they add up to infinity. On every occasion, time simply disappeared, and we had to wait for it to work back up to its usual speed. How wisely life is arranged, I used to think in lazy contentment, as I listened to Nat King Cole singing our favourite song. He used to be so big, grey and rough. He was going to devour the sun. And he probably would have. But now there was a placid black dog lying at my feet, calm and quiet, and asking me not to tease him. Behold the ennobling influence of the female guardian of hearth and home. Such was the beginning of civilization and culture. And I had never even suspected that I could find myself playing this role.

Ah, dear Sasha, I used to think, you’ve never mentioned it. And I can’t bring myself to ask about it . . . But you don’t miss your old life as a wolf - so lonely and rootless, do you? You’re happier with me than on your own - aren’t you, darling?

Eh?

... Y tú, tú contestando:

Quizás, quizás, quizás . . .

I often wondered what sort of dog this was, as far removed from a wolf as a wolf from a fox. There were numerous mythological parallels, but I myself had never come across such a strange variety of were-creature. This blue-black canine seemed to be an inoffensive creature, but I had a gut feeling that there was some terrible secret concealed within him. The truth eventually emerged by accident.

The day had begun with a slight quarrel. We went out into the forest for a walk and sat down on a fallen tree, and I decided to amuse him by singing Li Bo’s old Chinese song ‘The Moon Above the Mountain Frontier Post’. I actually sang it quite well only, perhaps, in too high a voice - in ancient China that was prized especially highly. But my skill took a tumble at the cross-cultural barrier - when I’d finished singing, he shook his head and muttered:

‘How did a Russian officer ever end up living like this?’

I was so offended I could feel myself flush.

‘Don’t give me that, what kind of Russian officer are you? You’re the captain of the hitmen’s brigade.’

‘We don’t kill anybody who’s innocent,’ he said icily.

‘And who was it that sent the Shakespeare specialist Shitman to his death? Do you think no one knows?’