The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

‘What Shakespeare specialist Shitman?’

‘And you don’t even remember? The one who used to do blowjobs for a cigarette . . .’

‘Listen, I reckon you’ve got psychological problems. First you have a fish head working as a bear, and then some Shitman dies, and I’m to blame for everything.’

‘I just wanted to say that I know what you were doing at work. Yet I still love you.’

‘That’s the root of all my problems,’ he said in a low voice. ‘That you love me.’

I couldn’t believe my ears.

‘What? Just you say that again!’

‘I’m joking, I’m joking,’ he said hastily. ‘You’re always joking, so I thought I’d try it.’

The terrible thing was that what he’d said was absolutely true. And we both realized it. There was a heavy silence.

‘And we didn’t send Shitman to his death, we sent him to glory,’ he said after a minute. ‘And don’t you go besmirching his memory.’

He was right, we had to change the subject.

‘You mean to say he knew?’ I asked.

‘He must have, with some part of his mind.’

‘So you have nothing to reproach yourself with?’

Alexander shrugged.

‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘we have his application, the one he wrote in the insane asylum: “I want to see London and die”, dated and signed. And in the second place, we had an expert consultation on the humanitarian aspect. The consultant said everything was okay.’

‘Was that Pavel Ivanovich?’ I guessed.

Alexander nodded.

‘How did he ever come to work for you? Pavel Ivanovich, I mean.’

‘He felt it was important for him to let us know about his repentance. A strange business, of course, but why turn a man away? Especially if his repentance is sincere. We always need information, you know - about cultural stuff, so we can tell who’s with us and who isn’t. And humanitarian consultations as well. So he became part of the team . . . Okay, let’s drop it. Shitman’s in God’s hands now. That’s if the Imams are telling the truth, of course.’

After that we didn’t say a single word to each other all day until the evening - I was sulking with him and he was sulking with me: both of us had said enough. In the evening, when he was fed up with the silence, he started asking me the clues for a crossword.

That evening he was in his human body, and that made the room feel especially cozy. I was lying on a bamboo mat under a lamp and reading another of Stephen Hawking’s books - The Theory of Everything (no more and no less). Alexander’s questions distracted me from my reading, but I answered them patiently. I found some of them even more amusing than the book.

‘What’s the right spelling - hynaecological or gynaecological?’

‘Gynaecological.’

‘Gynaecological. Then it all fits. And I thought there was an “h” at the beginning.’

‘That’s because subconsciously you think of women as hyenas. ’

‘That’s not true,’ he said, and suddenly started laughing. ‘Well, look at that . . .’

‘Now what have you got there?’

‘Gynaecological stomatology.’

‘What - “gynaecological stomatology”?’

‘There are two words in a line in the crossword. “Gynaecological” and “stomatology”. If you read them together, it’s funny.’

‘You only think it’s funny because you’re ignorant,’ I said. ‘But that particular culturological concept actually exists. There’s an American writer called Camille Paglia. She had this . . . No, it’s not that she had one herself. Let’s put it this way, she operates with the concept of the “vagina dentata”. The vagina with teeth is a symbol of the formless, all-consuming chaos that opposes the Apollonian male principle, which is typified by the urge towards formal precision.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Where from?’

‘I’ve read about that. Lots of times.’

‘In Camille Paglia?’ I asked, incredulous.

‘Nah.’

‘Where then?’

‘At the FSB Academy.’

‘Counter-brainwashing?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then where exactly?’ I persisted.

‘In the wall newspaper,’ he said reluctantly. ‘It had a humour section called “smiles of all latitudes”, and there was this joke in it: “What’s scarier than an atom bomb? A cunt with teeth.”’

I’d been expecting something of the sort.

‘But why lots of times?’

‘The wall newspaper was never changed in three years.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I get the picture.’

Evidently my tone of voice must have stung him.

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

‘It depends how you look at it.’

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

‘That depends on your inclinations, your imagination.’

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

I thought about it.

‘Yes, I can.’

‘Well?’

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

Ah, vagina dentata, this fleeting

assignation is strife.

Unforgettable is our meeting.

Clean and chaste is my life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘More like you did.’

I came to my senses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘But why should she make you cry?’

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

‘Where?’

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

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

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

‘You really don’t mind?’ he asked.

‘Of course not, darling.’

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

‘More than enough.’

‘Honestly?’

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

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

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

‘Are we talking frankly now?’

I nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

He nodded.

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

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

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

He shrugged and gave a crooked smile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He looked at me.

‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly.’

‘It was just the complete pizdets.’

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

‘That’s it, I’ve remembered!’

‘What have you remembered?’

‘I’ve remembered who you are.’

‘And who am I?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘What other information do you have?’

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

‘Skip this,’ he growled. ‘What else?’

‘That’s all I remember.’

‘And what are the practical consequences here?’

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

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

‘To what?’

I was suddenly infected with his seriousness. I ran my eyes over the surrounding space. The laptop? No. The electric kettle? The light bulb?

‘Try happening to the light bulb,’ I said.

A second went by. Then suddenly the light bulb flared up in a bright bluish glare and went out. Everything went dark. But for a few more seconds the spiral of wire, photographed by my retina, continued to illuminate my inner world with an echo of its extinguished light. When that imprint faded, the darkness became total. I got up, fumbled on the wooden crate that served us as a table to find the torch, and turned it on.

There was no one else in the room.

He didn’t come back for two days and nights. I was sick with worry and exhausted by the uncertainty. But when he came in I didn’t reproach him, not a single word. Chekhov was right: a woman’s soul is essentially an empty vessel that is filled by the sorrows and joys of her beloved.

‘Well, how was it? Tell me!’

‘What point is there in telling you?’ he said. ‘This I have to show you.’

‘Have you learned to do it?’

He nodded.

‘And what can you happen to?’

‘Why, to anything,’ he said.

‘Anything at all?’

He nodded again.

‘Even me?’

‘Well, not unless you ask me to.’

‘Can you happen to yourself?’

He gave strange sort of chortle.

‘That’s what I did first of all. Straight after the light bulb. Otherwise, what kind of Pizdets am I?’

I was intrigued and even a little frightened - after all, this was a serious metaphysical action we were talking about here.

‘And what kind of Pizdets are you?’ I asked in a voice hushed with respect.

‘Total,’ he replied. ‘Absolute, final, complete and irreversible.’

At that moment he exuded such romantic power and mystery that I couldn’t restrain myself and reached out to kiss him. He turned pale and stepped back, but then apparently realized that wasn’t the way real machos behaved, and allowed me to finish what I’d begun. Every muscle in his body tensed up, but nothing terrible happened.

‘I’m so happy for you, darling!’ I said.

Not many were-creatures know what it is to feel happy for someone else. And tailless monkeys know even less about it, all they know how to do is smile broadly in order to boost their social adaptability and increase the volume of sales. While imitating the feeling of happiness for someone else, the tailless monkey actually experiences envy or, in the best case, remains indifferent. But I really did experience that feeling, as pure and transparent as the water in a mountain stream.

‘You can’t imagine how happy I am for you,’ I repeated and kissed him again.

This time he didn’t move away.

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘But why?’

‘Because after all this time you’re in a good mood. You’re feeling better. And I love you.’

His face darkened a little.

‘I love you too. But I keep thinking that you’re going to leave me. You’d probably be better off if you did. But I won’t feel any happiness for you.’

‘In the first place, I’m not planning on going anywhere,’ I said. ‘And in the second place, the feeling you speak of isn’t love, it’s a symptom of egoism. To the male chauvinist in you, I’m merely a toy, a piece of property and a trophy status symbol. And you’re afraid of losing me in the same way a property owner is afraid of being parted from some expensive item. You can never feel happy for someone else that way.’

‘So how do you feel happy for someone else?’

‘For that you have to want nothing for yourself.’

‘You’re telling me you don’t want anything for yourself?’ he asked suspiciously.

I shook my head.

‘But why?’

‘I told you that once already. When you look inside yourself for a long time, you realize that there’s nothing there. How can you want something for that nothing?’

‘But if there’s nothing inside you, there’s nothing inside anyone else either.’

‘If you think about it properly, there’s nothing real anywhere,’ I said. ‘There’s only the choice with which you fill emptiness. And when you feel happy for someone else, you fill emptiness with love.’

‘Whose love? If there isn’t anybody anywhere, then whose love is it?’

‘That doesn’t matter to emptiness. And don’t you get hot and bothered about it either. But if you want a meaning for life, you’ll never find a better one.’

‘But love - isn’t that emptiness too?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then what’s the difference?’

‘The difference is emptiness too.’

He thought for a moment.

‘But can you fill the emptiness . . . with justice?’

‘If you start filling the emptiness with justice, you soon end up as a war criminal.’

‘You’re getting something confused there, Ginger. Why a war criminal?’

‘Well, who’s going to decide what’s just and what isn’t?’

‘People.’

‘And who’s going to decide what the people should decide?’

‘We’ll think of something,’ he said and glanced at a fly soaring past. The bluebottle dropped to the floor.

‘What are you doing, you brute? Do you want to be like them?’

I nodded in the direction of the city.

‘I am like them,’ he said.

‘Like who?’

‘The nation.’

‘The nation?’ I echoed incredulously.

I think even he was embarrassed by the pomposity of the phrase, and he decided to change his tone.

‘I was just thinking, maybe I ought to go to work. To find out how things are going.’

I was staggered.

‘Are you serious? Aren’t three bullets enough for you? You want more?’

‘You get these misunderstandings in our profession.’

‘What misunderstandings?’ I groaned. ‘It’s the system! You thought the system needed bright individuals, did you? It needs everyone grunting along together!’

‘If necessary, I’ll grunt with the rest. You just think, what are we going to do when the money runs out?’

‘Oh, that’s not a problem. Don’t worry about that. When I go to the shop I can do some streetwalking.’

He knitted his eyebrows in a frown.

‘Don’t you dare talk like that!’

‘And don’t you dare say “don’t you dare” to me, all right?’

‘My girl’s going to sell herself . . . I can’t get my head round that.’

‘“My girl, my girl . . .” Exactly when did you privatize me?’

‘Are you going to earn money from prostitution? And feed us with it? Like something out of Dostoevsky.’

‘Oh fuck your Dostoevsky,’ I exploded. ‘And I have.’

He looked at me with interest.

‘Well, how was it?’

‘Nothing special.’

We both laughed. I don’t know what he was laughing at, but I had a good reason. I won’t include it in these pages, out of respect for Russian literature, but let me just say that the red spider in The Possessed once crawled across the hem of my sarafan ... Ah, all the titans of the spirit to whom I have given my amusing little gift! My only regret is that I never raised to Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov’s lips the goblet that he described so magnificently. But in Soviet times leaving the country was a problem. Let this be yet another villainous outrage on the conscience of the baleful communist regime.

Fortunately the nascent quarrel had ended in laughter. I had almost made a mistake - you should never directly contradict a man, especially if he is tormented by doubts about his own worth. I ought to have found out what was on his mind first.

‘Do you want to go back to pumping oil?’ I asked.

‘No, not there. Mikhalich does the howling there now.’

I guessed that during his absence he had been in contact with the outside world - he might have seen someone or spoken with them on the phone. But I didn’t show the slightest curiosity about that.

‘Mikhalich? But when he howled, the skull didn’t cry.’

‘They’ve come up with a new technology. Take five ccs of ketamine, add two ccs of pervitine, inject and then apply an electric current.’

‘To the skull?’

‘To Mikhalich.’

‘The perverts.’

‘Too true,’ he said. ‘It’ll be curtains in a year like that.’

‘For Mikhalich?’

‘Nah, it makes no difference to Mikhalich. Curtains for the skull. It’s already covered in cracks from all those tears . . . Caliphs for an hour . . . As long as the oil’s flowing, the money’s rolling in, they’re doing fine. But nobody wants to think about what’s going to happen tomorrow.’

‘Listen, what kind of skull is that?’ I said, finally asking a question that had been tormenting me for ages.

‘That’s something I can’t tell you,’ he said, suddenly turning sombre. ‘It’s a state secret. And in general, don’t talk about my job.’

I wasn’t surprised that he still thought of the old firm as his work. There are some jobs you can’t resign from of your own free will. But I hadn’t expected him to want to go back to the people who had put three silver bullets in him. Although I did-n’t know what had really happened then - he never shared it with me.

‘Where will you go, if not to the oilfield?’ I asked.

‘They’ll find something for a super-werewolf to do.’

‘What?’ I said with a frown. ‘What super-werewolf?’

‘Me,’ he replied, surprised.

‘Since when did you become a super-werewolf?’

‘Since when? As if you haven’t seen.’

‘You think you’re a super-werewolf?’

‘What do you mean - think? I know.’

‘From what?’

‘From this,’ he said. ‘Watch.’

Another fly zooming along just below the ceiling dropped to the floor. It was strange to watch - the flies didn’t drop vertically, they followed parabolic curve, continuing their forward motion, and they looked like microscopic kamikaze planes, nose-diving at the enemy from on high.

‘Stop showing off,’ I said. ‘What does one thing have to do with the other?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Well, let’s accept you can kill these flies. Let’s accept that you’re Pizdets and Garm. But why have you suddenly decided that on top of all that you’re the super-werewolf as well?’

‘Then who is the super-werewolf, if not me?’

‘I told you already,’ I said. ‘The super-werewolf is a metaphor. To call some individual creature the super-werewolf means to descend to a very primitive level.’

‘Okay, then I’ll be him on that primitive level,’ he said in a conciliatory tone. ‘You got a problem with that, Ginger?’

‘No, we can’t leave things like that. Let’s analyse this question properly.’

He sighed.

‘Go on, then.’

‘Imagine I buy myself a uniform on Arbat Street and start walking round town in it, making out that I’m a general in the FSB. You tell me I’m not a general, and I say, ah, go on, let me be a general for a bit, what’s your problem?’

‘That’s an entirely different matter. The rank of general is awarded by a specific structure.’

‘Right. That’s what I’m talking about. Now think how you found out about the super-werewolf. You didn’t hear it from Mikhalich, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Then there’s probably some system of values that the word came from. Super-werewolf is the same kind of rank as general. Only it’s awarded by tradition. And you have about as much to do with that tradition as I do with your firm. Do you understand that, grey one?’

‘And I suppose you, Ginger, do have something to do with this tradition, right?’

‘Not only do I have something to do with it,’ I said. ‘I’m the carrier of the tradition. The line holder, to use the correct term.’

‘What line’s that?’

‘The line of transmission.’

‘You mean you’re the absolute authority here as well?’ he asked. ‘Straining yourself a bit, aren’t you? Think you’ll be able to hold up the roof?’

He seemed to be genuinely irritated - he even used an expression from the criminal jargon used by bandits and the FSB.

‘Don’t confuse a mystical tradition with the Shangri-La casino,’ I said. ‘The line holders are called that because they hold on to the line, not because they hold it up.’

My answer seemed to puzzle him.

‘But what is that - a line of transmission?’ he asked. ‘What’s transmitted along it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What?’

‘Like I said. Nothing. I’ve explained that to you so often, this kettle will understand it soon.’

‘Then what is it they’re holding on to, these line holders?’

‘In the line of transmission there is nothing you can hold on to.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There’s nothing there to understand, either. Seeing that clearly is exactly what holding the line means.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘then tell me this, in words of one syllable. Does anyone in the world have the formal right to call himself the super-werewolf according to this tradition? Even at the most primitive level?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And who’s that?’

I lowered my eyes modestly.

‘Who?’ he repeated.

‘I know this will be a blow to your vanity,’ I said. ‘But we did agree only to tell each other the truth . . .’

‘You again?’

I nodded. He swore under his breath.

‘And who does this line of transmission run from?’

‘I’ll tell you about it sometime later.’

‘No, let’s have it right now. So you won’t have time to invent anything.’

Well, okay, I thought, the truth cannot be concealed. He’ll find out sometime anyway.

‘All right. Then listen and don’t interrupt. One evening, about one thousand two hundred years ago, in the country that is now called China, I was riding from one town to another in my palanquin. It is of absolutely no importance now which towns they were and why I was travelling. What is important is that on that evening we halted outside the gates of a monastery on the Yellow Mountain . . .’

Sometimes in ancient China there used to be misty evenings when the world seemed to reveal the face it wore in its infancy, at the very beginning. Everything all around - the houses, the walls, the trees, the groves of bamboo, the poles with lamps burning on them - changed in the most miraculous fashion, and it began to seem as if you yourself had cut all this out of coloured paper and carefully arranged it all around, and then started to pretend that it really was a big wide world through which you could roam . . . On just such an evening twelve centuries ago, I was sitting in my palanquin in front of the gates of a monastery on the Yellow Mountain. The world around me was beautiful, and I was gazing through the window in melancholy delight, and there were tears in my eyes.

It was music that had affected me so deeply. Somewhere close by a flute had been singing for a long time - singing of the very feelings that were in my heart. As if once in our childhood we had lived in a huge house and played magical games. And then we had become so lost in our games that we began to believe in our own inventions - we had gone out to have fun walking among the dolls and lost our way, and now there was no power that could lead us back home if we did not remember that we were simply playing games. But it was almost impossible to remember that, so spellbinding and horrifying had the game turned out to be . . .

I do not know if music can be ‘about something’ or not - the dispute over that is an ancient one. The first conversation on that theme that I can recall took place in the time of Qin Shi Huang. And many centuries later, when I came to Yasnaya Polyana in the guise of a nihilist girl student, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy mocked the idea all the way through supper, berating Beethoven with especial disdain - why, he asked, was it the moonlight sonata? On the whole, I would not claim that the sounds of the flute contained precisely that meaning. Or even that there was any meaning in them at all. But I realized that I had to talk to the flute-player straight away.

Of course, from the point of view of common sense, I ought not to have got out of the palanquin at all. When a flute plays beautifully somewhere nearby, it is best simply to listen to its sounds and not seek the company of the flautist. You cannot tell if he will say anything that is interesting or new to you, but you can be sure that he will stop playing. But all are wise in hindsight. Especially we foxes - by virtue of our anatomy.

There was mist all around: the people were in their houses, and I was not anticipating any particular danger to myself. Jumping out of the palanquin, I set off towards the source of the sound, stopping occasionally and literally squeezing my tail tight against myself at the astounding, incomparable beauty of the evening. There have been no evenings like that since the eighteenth century - they say that the chemical composition of the air has changed. Or perhaps it is something more serious than that.

The monastery consisted of numerous buildings crowded together beside the main gates, which were huge, red and very costly. These gates were not set in a wall. Learned monks had explained to me that this was an allegorical expression of the sect’s doctrine: the gates symbolized a journey leading back to where it starts, and starting from anywhere. The gates that weren’t gates, the total openness and radiant space on all sides, I could even remember the hieroglyphs saying that. But I assumed there had simply not been enough money for walls. Just let someone donate the money for a wall, I thought, and changes would be introduced into the doctrine.

The flute was being played in the main building, which housed the Hall of the Transmission of the Teaching. It would never have entered my head to stick my face in there, despite the romantic lilac mist, but the music lent me courage.

If you fear tigers, do not go into the mountains, I thought - so come what may . . .

Raising the skirts of my gown so that my tail would be ready for any surprises, I walked on. In ancient China all garments were wide and spacious, and so I was in no danger from a chance encounter with one or two idle passers-by, especially in the mist.

As a general rule I did not induce any special illusion - I showed the same world that was all around, but without little A Hu-Li in it. Whenever someone saw me, their eyes would usually pop out of their heads at the sight of my ginger pride, but the next second they would be completely baffled at what could have set them trembling so badly - there was nothing anywhere nearby, only the bare, empty field, with the wind swirling the dry leaves in the air above it . . . This sounds simple, but in fact it is difficult, one of the most advanced of a fox’s tricks, and if you encounter more than three people, there are problems. By the way, that is why, from the times of Sun Tzu, in time of war it was customary to place at least four guards at the entrance to a fortress: they feared my sisters, and with good reason.

In the main building one window was lit. That was where the flute was playing, there could be no mistake about that. It was a corner room on the first floor, and climbing into it presented no difficulty. I had to jump up on to the tiled canopy and follow it past the dark windows. This I did with no difficulty - I am light-footed. The shutters were raised at the window behind which the flute was playing. I squatted down on my haunches and cautiously glanced inside.

The flute-player was sitting on the floor with his back to me. He was wearing a robe of blue silk, and on his head he had a small conical straw hat. I could see that his head was shaved, although his style of dress was not like a monk’s. He had broad shoulders and a lean body, light and strong - I sense such things immediately. On the floor in front of him I saw a teacup, a brush and a pile of paper. There were two oil lamps burning on the wall.

Evidently, I thought, he was engaged in calligraphy, and then decided to rest and took up his flute . . . I wonder what I shall say to him?

I had no plan at all - only some vague ideas swirling around in my head: first have a heart-to-heart talk, and then hypnotize him, that was the only way to deal with people. Although, if I had thought about it calmly for a moment, I should have realized that it would not work: no one would talk to me openheartedly, knowing that afterwards I would hypnotize them in any case. And if I were to hypnotize them from the very beginning, then what openheartedness could there possibly be?

But I was not allowed to think the matter through - the light of torches glimmered below me, I heard footsteps and voices. There were about ten men - I could not cast a spell on so many all at once. Pondering for no more than a second, I leapt in through the window.

I decided I would quickly bewitch the flute-player, then hide and, when the men had gone away, go back to my palanquin, since fortunately it was already almost dark outside. I landed on all fours without making a sound, raised my tail and called out quietly to the man sitting in the room.

‘Most honourable sir!’

He calmly put his flute down and turned round. I immediately tensed my tail and focused all the power of my spirit at its tip - and then something quite new and unexpected happened. Instead of the pliable fizzy jelly which is how my tail perceives the human mind (it is pointless to attempt to explain this to someone who has never experienced it for themselves), I encountered absolutely nothing at all.

I had met many people who were strong or weak in spirit. Working with them was like drilling through walls made of different materials: everything can be drilled, only in different ways. But here I discovered nothing to which I could apply the willpower focused in the fine strands crackling with electricity above my head. In my astonishment I literally lost my balance and slumped to the floor like a fool, with my tail squeezed between my legs, which were exposed in front of me in an unseemly manner. At that moment I felt like a fairground juggler whose balls and ribbons have all fallen plop into the liquid mud.

‘Hello, A Hu-Li,’ the man said, and inclined his head in polite greeting. ‘I am very glad that you have found a moment to call in and see me. You may call me the Yellow Master.’

The Yellow Master, I thought, drawing in my legs. Probably from the Yellow Mountain on which the monastery stands. Or perhaps he is aiming to be emperor.

‘No,’ he said with a smile, ‘I do not wish to be emperor. But you are right about the Yellow Mountain.’

‘What, did I say it aloud?’

‘Your thoughts are reflected so clearly on your sweet little face, that it is quite easy to read them,’ he said with a laugh.

Embarrassed, I covered my face with my sleeve. And then I remembered there was a tear in my sleeve, and began to feel completely ashamed - I covered one arm with the other. My robe at the time was a beautiful one, an imperial concubine’s cast-off, but no longer new, and there were holes in it here and there.

But my embarrassment was, of course, a pretence. In actual fact I was feverishly searching for an exit, and I deliberately hid my face so that he would not read in it what I was thinking. It was not possible that I could be defeated by one man on his own. I could not feel his mind anywhere. But that did not mean that his mind did not exist at all. Clearly he knew some cunning magical trick . . . Perhaps he was showing himself in a place which was not where he really was? I had heard about such things. But he was not the only one who knew some tricks.

We foxes have a method that we can use to transmit an illusion in all directions at once, instantly subduing a human being’s will. When we do this, we do not attune ourselves to a specific client, but become, so to speak, a large, heavy stone that falls on to the smooth mirror of the ‘here and now’, sending out in all directions ripples that make people’s heads spin. And then the disoriented human mind grasps at the very first straw offered to it. This technique is called ‘Storm above the Heavenly Palace’.

I applied it straight away - jumping up on to all fours, pulling up my robe and shaking my tail furiously above my head. It is not the tip of the tail, but its root that has to be shaken, that is, the point from which it grows, and therefore this action appears both indecorous and suggestive, especially with one’s robe pulled up. However, we foxes overcome our innate modesty because the man has no time to see anything properly.

I mean a normal man. The Yellow Master not only saw, he laughed offensively as well.

‘How very pretty you are,’ he said. ‘But do not forget that I am a monk.’

Refusing to capitulate, I strained my will to its very limit: and then, frowning as if he had a headache, he removed the hat from his head and flung it at me. The black string of the hat caught on my tail and the hat pinned it to the floor - as if it were not a simple cone of dry straw, but a massive millstone.

The Yellow Master followed that by picking up two sheets of paper covered with hieroglyphs, rolling them up and flinging them at me as well. Before I had time to think, they had pinned my wrists to the floor, like two shackles of iron. I tried to reach one of the sheets with my teeth (when we are badly frightened, the same thing happens to us as during a chicken-hunt - our human face grows longer and is transformed for a few seconds into a pretty, sharp-toothed little muzzle), but I could not. This, of course, was some sort of sorcery. I managed to read a few of the hieroglyphs written on the paper - ‘there is no old age and death . . . and also no deliverance from them . . .’

My heart felt a little lighter at that - it was the Buddhist Heart Sutra, which meant this man before me was not a Taoist. Everything might yet be all right. I stopped thrashing about and calmed down.

The Yellow Master lifted his cup of tea and took a sip from it, looking me over like an artist surveying a picture that is almost finished and pondering where a final flourish of ink is required. I realized I was lying on my back and the entire lower part of my body was indecently exposed. I even blushed at such humiliation. And then I started to feel afraid. Who could tell what was on this sorcerer’s mind? Life is terrible and pitiless. Sometimes, when people manage to catch one of my sisters, the things they do to her are so terrible, it is better not even to recall them.

‘I warn you,’ I said in a faltering voice, ‘that if you are intending to violate a virgin, the earth and the heavens will shudder at such a sin! And in your old age you will know no peace.’

He laughed so heartily that the tea splashed out of his cup on to the floor. In my unbearable shame, I turned my head away and once again I saw the hieroglyphs on the sheet of paper shackling one of my hands. This time it was the other sheet, and the hieroglyphs on it were different: ‘having taken as a support ... and there are no obstacles in the mind . . .’

‘Shall we talk?’ the Yellow Master asked.

‘I am not a singer from the bawdy quarter, I do not converse with my skirt hem pulled up,’ I retorted.

‘But you pulled it up yourself,’ he said imperturbably.

‘Perhaps I did,’ I replied, ‘but now I am unable to pull it down again.’

‘Do you promise that you will not attempt to run away?’

I mimicked an expression of agonizing internal struggle. Then I sighed and said: ‘I promise.’

The Yellow Master quietly muttered the final phrase of the Heart Sutra in Chinese. All the men of learning that I knew claimed that this mantra should only be recited in Sanskrit, since that was the way the voice of the Victorious One had first pronounced it. But nonetheless, the hoops round my wrists instantly released their grip and were transformed into two ordinary sheets of crumpled paper.

I adjusted my hem, sat up on the floor in a dignified pose and said:

‘How instructive! The gentleman uses the same sutra as the lock and the key. Or does the meaning here lie in the fact that this mantra truly does bring relief from all suffering, as the Buddha promised?’

‘Have you read the Heart Sutra?’ he asked.

‘I have read a smattering,’ I replied. ‘Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.’

‘Perhaps you even know the meaning of these words?’

I gauged the distance to the window with a glance. It was two leaps away. Well, I thought, even if he were an imperial body-guard, he would never catch me.

‘Of course I do,’ I said, gathering myself into a tense spring. ‘For instance, the fox A Hu-Li is sitting here before you. She appears to be quite genuine, she has form. But look closely, and there is no A Hu-Li before you, for she is an empty void.’

And with those words I made a sudden dash for the dark square of freedom already scattered with stars.

Anticipating later events, I should say that this was the experience that subsequently helped me to understand Kazimir Malevich’s picture Black Square. I would just have drawn in a few tiny bluish-white dots. However, Malevich, although he called himself a supremacist, remained faithful to the truth of life - for most of the time there is no light in the Russian sky. And there is nothing left for the soul to do but produce invisible stars from within itself - that is the meaning of his canvas. But these thoughts only came to me many centuries later. Just at that second I collapsed to the floor, overwhelmed by an absolutely unbelievable, unbearable sense of shame. It hurt so badly that I could not even cry out.

The Yellow Master had removed the shackles from my hands. The window was very close. But I had forgotten about the hat that was pinning my tail to the floor.

No physical or even moral pain can possibly compare with the suffering that I experienced. Everything that anchorites endure in years of repentance was packed into a single second of incredibly intense feeling - as if a flash of lightning had lit up the dark corners of my soul. I felt myself crumble like a handful of dust, and a stream of tears gushed from my eyes. There in front of my face was a crumpled page of the Heart Sutra with its indifferent hieroglyphs gazing out at me, telling me that I, my failed attempt to escape, and the inexpressible torment I was suffering at that moment were nothing but empty appearance.

The Yellow Master did not laugh, he even looked at me with an expression of something like compassion, but I could tell he was barely able to restrain his laughter. That made me feel even sorrier for myself, and I kept on and on crying, until the hieroglyphs that my tears were falling on blurred and dissolved into formless blots.

‘Is it that painful?’ the Yellow Master asked.

‘No,’ I replied through my tears, ‘I feel . . . I feel . . .’

‘What do you feel?’

‘I am not accustomed to talking frankly to people.’

‘In your trade that is hardly surprising,’ he laughed. ‘But even so, why are you crying?’

‘I feel ashamed . . .’ I whispered.

I felt so dreadful at that moment that I was not thinking of any cunning tricks, and the sympathy showed to me by the Yellow Master seemed undeserved - I knew very well what the due reward for my deeds was. If he had started skinning me alive, I believe I should not have objected greatly.

‘What are you ashamed of?’

‘Of all the things that I have done . . . I am afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘I am afraid that the spirits of retribution will send me to hell,’ I said in a very low voice.

It was the honest truth - one of the fleeting visions that had just flashed before my inner eye was this: a black wheel was turning inside an icy stone cell, winding my tail on to itself, tearing it out of my body, but the tail would not tear away, it kept on growing and growing, like the silk thread emerging from a spider’s belly, and every second of this nightmare brought me intolerable torment. But the worst thing of all was the realization that it would go on like that for all eternity . . . No fox could imagine a more terrible hell.

‘Do foxes really believe in retribution?’ the Yellow Master asked.

‘We do not have to believe or not believe. Retribution comes every time our tails are tugged sharply.’

‘Ah, so that’s it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘So I should have tugged on her tail . . .’

‘Whose tail?’

‘A few years ago a highly cultured fox from the capital came here to pray for forgiveness of her sins. Unlike you, she had no fear of hell at all - on the contrary, she asserted that absolutely everybody would find their way there. She reasoned like this: even people are sometimes kind, and how greatly the mercy of heaven transcends earthly mercy! It is clear that the Supreme Ruler will forgive absolutely everybody and send them immediately to heaven. People themselves will turn heaven into hell - exactly as they have done to the earth . . .’

I am usually curious, but at that moment I was in such a terrible state that I did not even ask who that fox from the capital was. But her argument sounded convincing to me. Swallowing my tears, I whispered:

‘Then does that mean there is no hope at all?’

The Yellow Master shrugged.

‘The realization that everything is created by the mind demolishes even the most terrible hell,’ he said.

‘I understand this idea already,’ I replied. ‘I have read the sacred books and my grasp of them is really quite good. But it seems to me that I have a wicked heart. And a wicked heart, as that fox from the capital said so correctly, will always create hell around itself. No matter where it might be.’

‘If you had a wicked heart, you would not have followed the sound of my flute. Your heart is not wicked. Like all foxes’ hearts, it is cunning.’

‘And can a cunning heart be helped?’

‘It is believed that if its owner lives a righteous life, a cunning heart can be cured in three kalpas.’

‘And what is a kalpa?’

‘It is the period of time that passes between the appearance of the universe and its destruction.’

‘But no fox will ever live for so long!’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘A cunning heart is difficult to cure by forcing it to follow the rules of morality. Precisely because it is cunning, it will always seek a way to circumvent all these rules and make fools of everyone. But in three kalpas it can come to understand that it is only fooling itself.’

‘But can it not be done any faster?’

‘It can,’ he replied. ‘If the desire is strong and the will is determined. ’

‘How?’

‘The Buddha gave many different teachings. They include teachings for people, teachings for the spirits, and even teachings for the gods who do not wish to be cast down into the lower worlds. There is also a teaching for magical foxes treading the path above the earth, but will you place any credence in it if you are told of it by a man?’

I assumed a highly respectful attitude and said: ‘Believe me, I hold human beings in great esteem! If it sometimes happens that I sap their life-force, it is only because that is the way nature has made me. I could not have obtained sustenance for myself otherwise. ’

‘Very well,’ said the Yellow Master. ‘By a happy coincidence, I am familiar with the secret teaching for immortal foxes, and am prepared to transmit it to you. Indeed, I am obliged to do so. I shall soon leave this world, and it would be a pity if this marvellous knowledge were to disappear with me. But it is unlikely I shall meet another fox in time.’

‘But what of your visitor from the capital? Why did you not transmit the teaching to her?’

‘E Hu-Li is not suitable,’ he said.

So that was the fox from the capital! She had come here in secret to atone for her sins in prayer. But in conversation she would not even admit that sins existed.

‘Why is my sister E Hu-Li not suitable?’ I asked. ‘You told me yourself that she came to repent of her misdeeds.’

‘She is too sly. She repents when she is plotting a dark deed that is utterly wicked. She seeks to lighten the burden of her soul, so that it may accommodate more evil.’

‘I am also capable of such things,’ I replied honestly.

‘I know,’ said the Yellow Master. ‘But at the same time, you will remember that you are intending to commit a crime, and so your deception will come to nothing. But E Hu-Li, having planned her next act of villainy, can repent so sincerely of the previous one, that she will indeed lighten the burden of her soul. She is too cunning ever to enter into the Rainbow Stream.’

He pronounced the last two words with emphasis.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘The Rainbow Stream,’ he repeated.

‘And what is that?’

‘You say that you have read the sacred books. Then you should know that life is a promenade through a garden of illusory forms that seem real to the mind which does not see their true nature. A mind that loses its way may find itself in the world of the gods, the world of the demons, the world of human beings, the worlds of animals, the world of hungry spirits or hell. Having passed through each these worlds, the Victorious Ones left their inhabitants a teaching on how finally to cure themselves of death and rebirth . . .’

‘I beg your pardon,’ I interrupted, wishing to demonstrate my learning - ‘but it says in the sutras that a human birth is the most precious of all, since only a human being can attain liberation. Is that not so?’

The Yellow Master smiled.

‘I would not reveal this secret to humans but, since you are a fox, you should know that the same assertion is made in all the worlds. In hell they say that only an inhabitant of hell can attain liberation, since in all the other places the beings spend their lives in the pursuit of pleasures, of which there are almost none in hell. In the world of the gods, on the contrary, they say that none but the gods can attain liberation, because the leap to freedom is shortest of all for them, and their fear of falling into the lower worlds is the strongest. The inhabitants of every world are told that it is the most propitious for salvation.’

‘But what about animals? They are not told that, are they?’

‘I am speaking of those worlds in which the inhabitants posses the concept of salvation. But where there is no such concept, it follows of itself that there is no need to save anyone.’

I see, I thought. As smart as a fox.

‘And the salvation of which you speak - is it the same for all the worlds, or different in each one?’

‘For human beings liberation is to enter nirvana. For those who live in hell liberation is to merge with the lilac smoke. For an asura-demon, it is to take possession of the sword of emptiness. For the gods, it is to dissolve into the diamond effulgence. When we speak of form, salvation is different in every world. But in its inner essence, it is the same everywhere, because the nature of the mind that dreams all these worlds never changes.’

‘And how do matters stand with foxes?’

‘Formally speaking, were-creatures do not fit into any of the six categories of which I have spoken of. You are a special case. It is believed that sometimes a mind born into the world of demons takes fright at its cruelty and goes to live on its outer perimeter, where the demonic reality borders on the world of people and animals. Such a being does not belong to any one of these worlds, since it migrates between all three - the worlds of humans, animals and demons. It is to this category that magical foxes belong.’

‘Yes,’ I said sadly, ‘that is how it is. We fall between three stools and all because of our horror at life. Then is there a way out for us?’

‘There is. The Buddha and his disciples were once fed a delicious meal by a fox, who was not, in fact, acting entirely without self-interest and had designs on the disciples. But the Buddha was very hungry, and in gratitude he left this fox a teaching for were-creatures that is capable of bringing them to liberation in a single lifetime - taking account of the fact that were-creatures live for up to forty thousand years. The Buddha was pressed for time, and therefore the teaching was brief. But since it was given by the Victorious One himself, it nonetheless possesses magical power. If you follow it, A Hu-Li, you can not only save yourself, you can also show the way to liberation for all were-creatures living on the earth.’

My head started to spin in excitement. I had dreamed of something like this all my life.

‘Of what does this teaching speak?’ I asked in a whisper.

‘Of the Rainbow Stream,’ the Yellow Master replied, also in a whisper.

I realized that he was making fun of me, but I was not offended.

‘So what is this Rainbow Stream?’ I asked in a normal voice.

‘It is the ultimate goal of the super-werewolf.’

‘And what is the super-werewolf?’

‘It is a were-creature who succeeds in entering the Rainbow Stream.’

‘And what else is it possible to know about the super-werewolf? ’

‘Outwardly it is the same as other were-creatures, but inwardly it is different. Only there is no way the others can tell that from its external appearance.’

‘And how is it possible to become one?’

‘You must enter the Rainbow Stream.’

‘But what is that?’

The Yellow Master raised his eyebrows in astonishment.

‘I have already told you. The ultimate goal of the super-werewolf. ’

‘And is it possible to describe the Rainbow Stream in some way? In order to have some idea of which way to direct one’s aspiration?’

‘It is not. The nature of the Rainbow Stream is such that any descriptions will only serve as a hindrance by creating a false idea of it. It is not possible to say anything certain about it, it is only possible to be there.’

‘But what must a super-werewolf do, in order to enter the Rainbow Stream?’

‘He must do only one thing. Enter it.’

‘But how?’

‘By any means that allow him to do so.’

‘But surely there must be some instructions that the superwerewolf receives?’

‘They consist precisely of this.’

‘And that is all?’

The Yellow Master nodded.

‘So it turns out that a super-werewolf is one who enters the Rainbow Stream, and the Rainbow Stream is what the superwerewolf enters?’

‘Precisely.’

‘But that means that the former is defined in terms of the latter, and the latter is defined in terms of the former. What meaning is there in all this?’

‘A most profound one. Both the Rainbow Stream and the path of the super-werewolf lie out of this world and are beyond the reach of the everyday mind - even a fox’s. But they are directly related to each other. Therefore, it is only possible to speak of the former in relation to the latter. And of the latter in relation to the former.’

‘And is it possible to add anything more to this?’

‘It is.’

‘What?’

‘That the Rainbow Stream is not a stream at all, and the superwerewolf is not a werewolf at all. One should not become attached to words. They are only required as fleeting footholds. If you attempt to carry them with you, they will drag you down into the abyss. Therefore, they should be cast off immediately.’

I took a little time to think about what I had heard.

‘It is intriguing. It turns out that the supreme teaching for foxes consists of only two words that are related only to each other and are not amenable to any explanation. And in addition, even these words have to be cast off once they have been spoken ... It would seem that the fox who fed the Buddha did not have very good karma. And did she herself succeed in entering the Rainbow Stream?’

The Yellow Master nodded.

‘However, that only happened quite recently. And she did not leave behind any instructions for other were-creatures. That is why I am obliged to transmit the teaching to you.’

‘It is hard to believe in the truth of such a teaching.’

‘The higher teachings are called higher because they differ from those to which you are accustomed. And if something appears true to you, you may already regard it as false.’

‘Why?’

‘Because otherwise you would have no need of any teachings. You would already know the truth.’

That was logical. But his explanations reminded me of those philosophical syllogisms that are primarily intended to confound the mind.

‘But even so,’ I persisted, ‘how can a teaching consist of only two words?’

‘The higher the teaching, the fewer the words on which it leans for support. Words are like anchors - they appear to provide a reliable grasp on a teaching, but in reality they only hold the mind in captivity. That is why the most perfect teachings dispense words and symbols.’

‘Of course, that is so,’ I said. ‘But even in order to explain the superiority of a wordless teaching, you have had to speak many words. How can only two words be enough for someone to guide himself through life?’

‘The higher teachings are intended for beings with higher abilities. And for those who lack them, there are volumes upon volumes of nonsense, in which they can rummage for the whole of their lives.’

‘And do I have higher abilities?’ I asked in a quiet voice.

‘You would not be sitting here otherwise.’

That altered the situation somewhat.

‘And are there many super-werewolves in the world?’

‘Only one. Now that is you. If you wish, you can enter the Rainbow Stream. But you will need to make an effort.’

Who would not feel flattered on hearing that she has higher abilities? And the prospect of becoming a unique being was something that completely took my breath away. I thought about it.

‘And the fox who succeeded in entering the Rainbow Stream, what is known about her?’

‘Very little,’ the Yellow Master said. ‘Your predecessor lived in a little mountain village, practised extreme asceticism and completely forswore all contact with human beings.’

‘How did she feed herself?’

‘She used her tail to convince a pumpkin patch that spring had come. And then she absorbed the life-force of the pumpkins ...’

‘How terrible,’ I whispered. ‘And what happened to her?’

‘One day she simply disappeared, and that’s all.’

‘And she did not leave any writings?’

‘No.’

‘That was rather egotistical of her.’

‘Perhaps you will leave some.’

‘But do I really have to switch from men to vegetables?’

‘The Buddha did not leave any instructions on that score. Listen to what your heart tells you. And do not swerve from the path.’

I bowed twice.

‘I promise to strive obstinately for the goal, if you will grant me the transmission of which you have spoken.’

‘You have already received the transmission.’

‘When?’ I asked.

‘Just now.’

‘Is that all?’

I must have looked very perplexed.

‘It is quite enough. All the rest would only introduce confusion into your ginger head.’

‘Then what am I to do?’

The Yellow Master sighed.

‘If you were a human being, I would simply smack you across the forehead with my stick,’ he said, nodding towards his knotty staff, ‘and send you to work in the garden. There is nothing higher than this teaching and some day you will understand that. But the path of the super-werewolf is a special one. And since you are so persistent in asking me what you must do, I will tell you. You must find the key.’

‘The key? To what?’

‘To the Rainbow Stream.’

‘And what kind of key is it?’

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

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

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

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

‘Of course.’

‘And what is it?’

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

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

‘You could say that,’ I replied.

‘What did it look like?’

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

‘So what is it?’

‘It’s you.’

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

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

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

‘What can you do?’

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

‘What, did he die?’

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

‘And what does that mean?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

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

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

He thought about it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I’m the super-werewolf.’

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

‘It’s me.’

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

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

‘What?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Why?’

‘Because that nothing can become anything at all.’

‘How’s that?’

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

‘Okay, probably,’ he said.

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

‘Not entirely.’

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

‘I remember.’

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

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

‘I’m glad you appreciate that.’

‘And how do I become it?’

‘There’s no way.’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘Think about it.’

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

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

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

‘No.’

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

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

‘Then whose is it?’

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

‘Are you talking about the brain?’

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

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

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

‘That’s what economists do think.’

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

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

‘Only the chosen are supposed to know it.’

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

‘No.’

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

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

‘One?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘one in all, and all from one.’

‘Then who are these chosen ones?’

‘The chosen ones are those who understand that any worm or butterfly, or even a blade of grass at the edge of the road, are chosen ones just like them, only they don’t know about it for the time being, and you have to take great care in order not to offend any one of them accidentally.’

‘I still don’t understand what mind is,’ he said.

‘Nobody understands that. Although, on the other hand, everybody knows it. Because it is precisely mind that is listening to what I say right now.’

‘Aha,’ he said. ‘I get it now . . . Maybe not everything, from beginning to end, but the way I understand it, there isn’t any end to all this anyway . . .’

‘That’s it!’ I said. If only that was always the way.

‘Okay, let’s say we’ve figured out the super-werewolf. But what’s the Rainbow Stream?’

‘Simply the world around us,’ I said. ‘You see the colours - blue, red, green? They appear and disappear in your mind. That is the Rainbow Stream. Every one of us is a super-werewolf in the Rainbow Stream.’

‘You mean, we’ve already entered the Rainbow Stream?’

‘Yes and no. On the one hand, the super-werewolf is in the Rainbow Stream from the very beginning. But on the other, it is not possible to enter it at all, because the Rainbow Stream is simply an illusion. But this is only an apparent contradiction, because you and this world are one and the same.’

‘Aha,’ he said. ‘Interesting. Okay, carry on.’

‘The real super-werewolf is a heavenly being. A heavenly being never loses her connection with the heavens.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘In this world there is nothing but dust. But when a heavenly being sees the dust, she remembers the light that makes the dust visible. While a tailless monkey only sees the dust on which the light falls. That’s why, when a heavenly being dies, she becomes light. But when a tailless monkey dies, he becomes dust.’

‘Light, dust,’ he said, ‘so there is something there after all! There is some kind of individual personality. You’ve definitely got one, Ginger. I’ve felt that pretty strongly just recently. Or will you tell me I’m wrong?’

‘This personality, with all its quirks and stupidities simply dances like a doll in the clear light of my mind. And the more stupid this doll’s quirks, the clearer the light that I recognize over and over again.’

‘Now you’re saying “my mind”. But you only just said it’s not yours.’

‘That’s the way language works. It’s the root from which infinite human stupidity grows. And we were-creatures suffer from it too, because we’re always talking. It’s not possible to open your mouth without being wrong. So you shouldn’t haggle over words.’

‘All right. But the personality that dances like a doll - that’s you, isn’t it?’

‘No. I don’t think of this personality as me, because I’m very far from being a doll. I am the light that makes it visible. But the light and the doll are only metaphors, and you shouldn’t clutch at them.’

‘Yes, Ginger,’ he said. ‘You’ve certainly been studying these questions for a long time . . . So tell me, how old are you really?’

‘Old enough,’ I said and blushed. ‘And about the dog and the lion - don’t be offended, please. It’s a classical allegory, and a very ancient one, honestly. The dog watches the stick, but the lion watches the person who threw it. By the way, when you understand that, it makes it much easier to read our press . . .’

‘I understand about the dogs and the lions, you needn’t have told me again,’ he replied sarcastically. ‘And I know about the press without you. Better tell me which way foxes look.’

I smiled guiltily.

‘We foxes keep one eye on the stick and the other on the person who throws it. Because we’re not very strong creatures, and we don’t just want to improve our souls, we want to live for a while too. That’s the reason we’re slightly cross-eyed ...’

‘I’ll have to toss a couple of sticks your way and see which way you look.’

‘You’re in good form today, comrade lieutenant general.’

Alexander scratched his chin.

‘Right, where’s the main conclusion?’ he asked.

‘What conclusion?’

‘You know, how to control all this? So that we can benefit from it.’

‘It’s rather hard to control,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘You’ll run yourself ragged trying to find the controller.’

‘Yes, it looks that way all right,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I like it.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘The Rainbow Stream, the super-werewolf - that’s all fine. Let’s say we’ve dealt with control too. But I still don’t understand the most important thing. Who creates the world? God?’

‘We do,’ I said. ‘More than that, we create God too.’

‘That’s taking things a bit far, Ginger,’ he chuckled. ‘You’ll do anything to get by without God. What do we create the world with? Our tails?’

I froze on the spot.

It’s hard to describe that second. All the surmises and insights of recent months, all my chaotic thoughts, all my presentiments - they all suddenly came together into a blindingly clear picture of the truth. I still didn’t understand all the consequences of this epiphany, but I already knew that now the mystery was mine. I was so excited, my head started spinning. I must have turned pale.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’

‘No,’ I said, and forced myself to smile. ‘I just need to be alone for a while. Right now. Please don’t distract me. It’s very, very important.’

The world works in a mysterious and incomprehensible fashion. Wishing to protect frogs from children’s cruelty, adults tell children not to crush them because that will make it rain - and the result is that it rains all summer because the children crush frogs one after another. And sometimes it happens that you try with all your might to explain the truth to someone else, and suddenly you understand it yourself.

But then, for foxes the latter case is probably the rule rather than the exception. As I’ve already said, in order to understand something we foxes have to explain it to someone. This results from the specific qualities of our intellect, which is specifically designed to imitate human personalities, and is capable of mimicking the features of any culture. To put it more simply, it is our essential nature to constantly pretend. When we explain something to others, we are pretending that we have already understood it all. And since we are very clever creatures, we usually really do have to understand it, whether we wish to or not. They say that’s what makes the silver hairs appear in our tails.

When I pretend, I am always acting in a perfectly natural manner. And so I always pretend - that way everything turns out far more plausibly than if I suddenly start behaving sincerely. After all, what does behaving sincerely mean? It means expressing your essential nature directly in your behaviour. And if it is my essential nature to simulate, then for me the only path to genuine sincerity lies through simulation. I don’t mean to say by this that I never behave spontaneously. On the contrary, I simulate spontaneity with all the sincerity that I have in my heart. But words are proving tricky again - I am talking about something very simple, but it makes me seem like a dishonest creature with a double bottom. But it’s not like that. I actually don’t have any bottom at all.

Since a fox can pretend to be anything at all, she attains to the highest truth at the very moment when she pretends she has attained to it. And the best way to do this is in discussion with a less-developed being. But when I was talking to Alexander, I was not thinking about myself at all. I really was trying as hard as I could to help him. But as it turned out, he helped me. What an astonishing, incomprehensible paradox . . . But this paradox is the principal law of life.

I had approached the truth gradually:

1. as I observed Alexander, I realized that a werewolf directs his hypnotic impulse at his own mind. The werewolf suggests to himself that he is turning into a wolf, and after that he really does turn into one.

2. during the chicken hunt I noticed that my tail was directing its fluence at me. But I did not understand exactly what I was suggesting to myself: I thought it might be some kind of feedback loop that made me into a fox. I was already only two steps away from the truth, but I still couldn’t see it.

3. in the course of my explanations, I told Alexander that he and this world were one and the same thing. I had everything I needed for final enlightenment. But I still needed Alexander to speak out and call things by their real names. It was only then that I attained to the truth.

I and the world are one and the same thing . . . What was it that I was suggesting to myself with my tail? That I was a fox? No, I realized in one blinding second, I was suggesting this entire world!

When I was left alone, I sat in the lotus position and withdrew into a state of profound concentration. I don’t know how much time passed - perhaps several days. In a state like that there is no particular difference between a day and an hour. Now that I had seen the way things were, I understood why I had failed to spot this uroborus before (how apt that I had repeated that word all the time). I had not seen the truth because I was not seeing anything but the truth. The hypnotic impulse that my tail was directing at my mind was the entire world. Or rather, I had taken this impulse for the world.

I had always suspected that Stephen Hawking did not understand the words ‘relict radiation’ that occur on every second page of his books. Relict radiation is not a radio signal that can be captured using complex and expensive equipment. Relict radiation is the whole world that we see around us, no matter who we are, were-creatures or human beings.

Now that I had understood exactly how I was creating the world, I had to learn to control this effect somehow. But no matter how hard I focused my spiritual energy, I got nowhere. I ran through all the techniques that I knew - from the shamanic visualizations that are current among the mountain barbarians of Tibet to the sacred fire of the microcosmic orbit practised by the followers of the Tao. Nothing worked - it was like trying to move a mountain by pushing against it with my shoulder.

And then I remembered about the key. Yes indeed, the Yellow Master had mentioned a key . . . I had always thought that it was simply a metaphor for the correct understanding of the hidden nature of things. But if I’d blundered so terribly concerning the most essential point, I could have been mistaken here as well, couldn’t I? What could it be, this key? I didn’t know. So I still didn’t understand anything, then?

My concentration was disrupted and my thoughts started to wander. I remembered about Alexander, who was waiting patiently in the next room - during my meditation he hadn’t made a single sound, apprehensive of disturbing me. As always, the thought of him provoked a warm wave of love.

And then at last I understood what was absolutely the most vital point:

1. there was nothing in me that was stronger than this love - and since I was creating the world with my tail, there was nothing stronger in the entire world.

2. in the stream of energy that radiated from my tail, and which my mind took for the world, love was totally absent - and that was why the world appeared to me in the way that it was.

3. love was the key that I had been unable to find.

How had I failed to understand that immediately? Love was the only force capable of displacing my tail’s relict radiation from my mind. I concentrated once again, visualized my love in the form of a little red, blazing heart and began slowly lowering it towards my tail. When I had lowered the heart of fire almost as far as its base, suddenly . . .

Suddenly something incredible happened. Inside my head, somewhere between the eyes, a shimmering rainbow of colour appeared. I did not perceive it with my physical vision - it was more like a dream that I had managed to smuggle in to the waking state. The shimmering was like a stream in the sunshine of spring. It sparkled with every possible shade of colour, and I could step into the caress of that kindly light. In order for the shimmering rainbow to engulf everything around me, I had to lower the flaming heart of love further, taking it beyond the point of the Great Limit that is located just three inches from the base of a fox’s tail. I could have done it. But I sensed that afterwards, among those streaming torrents of rainbow light, I would never again be able to find this tiny city and Alexander who had been left behind in it. We had to leave this place together - otherwise what was our love worth? After all, he was the one who had given me the key to a new universe - without even knowing it . . .

I decided to tell him everything immediately. But it wasn’t easy to get up - while I was sitting in the lotus position, my legs had become numb. I waited until the circulation was restored, struggled to my feet and walked towards the other room. It was dark in there.

‘Sashenka,’ I called. ‘Hey! Sasha! Where are you?’

Nobody answered. I walked in and turned on the light. The room was empty. There was a sheet of paper lying on the wooden crate that served us as a table. I picked it up and, screwing up my eyes against the harsh electric light, I read this:

Adele!

I took no notice of the fact that you were concealing your age, although recently I’d begun to suspect you were more than seventeen - you’re far too smart. So what, I thought, maybe you were just well preserved and really you were already twenty-five or even almost thirty, and you had a complex about it, like most girls. I was prepared for you to be a little more than thirty. I could probably even have come to terms with forty. But one thousand two hundred years! It’s best if I just tell you straight out - I can never have sex with you again. Forgive me. And I’ll forgive you for that blind dog thing. Maybe I am blind compared to you. But we can’t help the way we are.

I’m going back to work tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll regret this decision. Or not even have time to regret it. But if everything goes the way I intend, the first thing I’ll do is clarify a few issues that have come up in our department. And then I’ll start clarifying the issues that have come up in all the other places. I shall devote the glorious power you have inadvertently helped me to obtain to the service of my country. Thank you for that - from me and our entire organization, against which you are so unjustly prejudiced. And thank you for all the amazing things that you have helped me to understand - although probably not completely and not for long. Time will show who the real superwerewolf is. Goodbye for ever. And thank you for calling me Grey One to the very end.

Sasha the Black

I remember that second. There was no confusion. I had always understood I couldn’t keep him near me for ever, that this moment would come. But I hadn’t thought it would be so painful.

My little moonchild . . . Play then, play your games, I thought in tender resignation. Some day you’ll come to your senses all the same. But what a shame you will never learn the most important mystery from me. Although . . . Perhaps I should leave you a note? It will be longer than yours, and when you read it to the end you’ll understand exactly what it was I didn’t get a chance to tell you before you left. How else can I possibly repay you for the freedom that you have unwittingly given me.

Right then, I thought. I’ll write a book, and sooner or later it’s bound to reach you. You’ll learn from it how to liberate yourself from icy gloom in which the oligarchs and the public prosecutors, the liberals and conservatives, the queers and straights, the Internet communists, werewolves in shoulder-straps and portfolio investors wail and gnash their teeth. And perhaps not just you, but other noble beings who have a heart and a tail will be able to learn something useful from this book . . . But in the meantime, thank you for revealing to me what the real score is. Thank you for love . . .

I couldn’t hold back any longer - the tears gushed in a torrent down my cheeks and I cried for a long, long time, sitting on the wooden crate and looking at the white square of paper with the neat lines of his words on it. Until the very last day I had called him the grey one, afraid of hurting him. But he was strong. He didn’t need any pity.

That was it. Two lonely hearts met among the pale blossoms of the Moscow spring. One told the other she was older than the city around, the other confessed that he had claws on his dick. For a short while they twined their tails together, spoke of the highest truth and howled at the moon, then went on their way, like two ships passing at sea . . .

Je ne regrette rien. But I know that I shall never again be as happy as I was in nineteen-sixties Hong Kong on the edge of the Bitsevsky forest, with a carefree bliss in my heart and his black tail in my hand.

When this book was almost finished, I met Mikhalich while I was out riding my bike. I was tired of turning the pedals, and I’d sat down for a rest on one of the massive log benches standing in the empty lot beside the Bitsevsky forest. My eye was caught by the kids jumping off the ramp on their bikes, and I spent a long time watching them. For some reason the saddles on all their bikes were set very low. Probably special bikes for jumping, I thought. But in every other way they were ordinary mountain bikes. When I turned away from the jumpers, Mikhalich was standing beside me.

He had changed a lot since the last time we’d seen each other. Now he had a fashionable haircut, and he was no longer dressed in retro-gangster gear, but wearing a stylish black suit from Diesel’s ‘rebel shareholder’ collection. Under the jacket he had a black T-shirt with the words ‘I Fucked Andy Warhol’. A gold chain peeped out from under the T-shirt - not really thick, and not really thin, just exactly right. A simple round, steel watch, black Nike Air trainers like Mick Jagger’s on his feet. What a very long way the security services had come since those times when I used to travel to Yezhov’s dacha for the latest Nabokov . . .

‘Hi there, Mikhalich,’ I said.

‘Hello, Adele.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘With the instrument.’

‘You haven’t got any such instrument. Don’t give me that. Sasha told me.’

He sat down beside me on the bench.

‘I do have an instrument, Adele, I do, my girl. It’s just that it’s secret. And the comrade colonel general was following instructions when he spoke to you. I disobeyed those instructions when I showed it to you. And the comrade colonel general put me right afterwards, is that clear? As it happens, I’m disobeying instructions again now when I say that I do have an instrument. But the comrade colonel general always follows them very strictly.’

I couldn’t tell any longer which of them was lying.

‘And does the cleaning lady from the equestrian complex really work for you?’

‘We have many different methods,’ he said evasively. ‘We couldn’t manage otherwise. It’s a very big country.’

‘That’s true.’

We sat there in silence for a minute or two. Mikhalich observed the kids jumping off the ramp with interest.

‘And how’s Pavel Ivanovich?’ I asked, to my own surprise. ‘Still consulting?’

Mikhalich nodded.

‘He came to see us just the other day. He recommended a book, now what was it . . .’

He took a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and showed it to me. I saw the words: Martin Wolf: Why Globalisation Works written on it in ballpoint pen.

‘He said things weren’t really all that bad after all.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Well, that’s really great. I was starting to worry. Listen, I’ve been wanting to ask this for a long time. All those well-known figures, Wolfenson from the World Bank, Wolfovitz from the Defence Department - or maybe it was the other way around - were they all, you know, as well?’

‘There are all sorts of wolves, just like people,’ Mikhalich said. ‘Only now they can’t even come close to us. Our department’s stepped up to a completely new level. There’s only one Nagual Rinpoche in the world.’

‘Who?’

‘That’s what we call the comrade colonel general.’

‘How is he, by the way?’ I couldn’t help asking.

‘Well.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘He’s snowed under with work. And after work he sits in the archive. Analysing past experience.’

‘Whose experience?’

‘Comrade Sharikov’s.’

‘Ah, him. The one Bulgakov wrote about in A Dog’s Heart?’

‘Don’t talk about things if you don’t know anything,’ Mikhalich said sternly. ‘There are all sorts of lies going round about him, slanderous rumours. But no one knows the truth. When the comrade colonel general first turned up for work in his new uniform, the oldest members of staff even shed a few tears. They hadn’t seen anything like it since nineteen fifty-nine. Not since comrade Sharikov was killed. It was after that everything fell to pieces. He was the one holding it all together.’

‘And how was he killed?’

‘He wanted to be the first to fly into space. And he went, just as soon as they made a cockpit big enough for a dog to fit into. You can’t hold someone like that back . . . The risk was immense - during the early launches every second flight crashed. But he made his mind up anyway. And then . . .’

‘The idiot,’ I said. ‘The vain nonentity.’

‘Vanity has absolutely nothing to do with it. Why did comrade Sharikov fly into space? He wanted to happen to the void before the void happened to him. But he didn’t get the chance. He was just three seconds of arc short . . .’

‘And Alexander knows about Sharikov?’ I asked.

‘He does now. I told you, he spends days at a time in the archives.’

‘And what has he said about it?’

‘The comrade colonel general has said this: even titans have their limitations.’

‘I see. And what questions do the titans have for me?’

‘None, really. I was ordered to convey a verbal communication to you.’

‘Well, convey it, then.’

‘Seems you’re putting it about that you’re the super-werewolf.’

‘Well, and what of it?’

‘I’ll tell you what. This is a unique country we live in, not like the rest of the world. Here everybody has to know who they answer to. People and werewolves.’

‘And how am I interfering with that?’

‘You’re not. But there can only be one super-werewolf. Otherwise, what kind of super-werewolf is he?’

‘That trivial kind of understanding of the word “super-werewolf”, ’ I said, ‘smacks of prison-camp Nietzcheanism. I -’

‘Listen,’ said Mikhalich, raising his open hand, ‘I wasn’t sent here to jaw. I’m here to tell you.’

‘I understand,’ I sighed. ‘And what am I supposed to do now? Hit the road?’

‘No, why? Just leave it out. Remember who’s the super-werewolf around here. And never put your foot in it again. So there’s no confusion in anybody’s mind . . . Get it?’

‘I could take issue with you,’ I said, ‘over whose minds are filled with confusion. First of all -’

‘We’re not going to argue about it,’ Mikhalich interrupted again. ‘As Nagual Rinpoche says, if you meet the Buddha, don’t kill him, but don’t let him take you for a ride.’

‘Okay then, if we’re not going to argue, we’re not. Is that all?’

‘No, there’s one more question. A personal one.’

‘What is it?’

‘Marry me.’

That was unexpected. I realized he wasn’t joking and looked him over carefully.

The man sitting in front of me was in his fifties, still in robust health, braced for his final headlong rush at life, but he still had-n’t understood (fortunately for him) just how that rush ended. I’d seen off plenty like him. They always see me as their last chance. Grown men, and they don’t understand that they themselves are their last chance. But then, they aren’t even aware what kind of chance it is. Sasha had understood something at least. But this one . . . Hardly.

Mikhalich was looking at me with insane hope in his eyes. I knew that look too. What a long time I have spent in this world, I thought sadly.

‘It would be like living on your own island,’ Mikhalich said in a husky voice. ‘Or you could really live on your own island if you like. Your very own coconut Bounty bar. I’ll do everything for you.’

‘And what’s this island called?’ I asked.

‘How do you mean?’

‘An island has to have a name. Ultima Thule, for instance. Or Atlantis.’

‘We can call it whatever you like,’ he said with a grin. ‘Is that really a problem?’

It was time to wind up the conversation.

‘Okay, Mikhalich,’ I said. ‘This is a serious decision. I’ll think about it, okay? For a week or so.’

‘Do that,’ he said. ‘Only bear this in mind. In the first place, now I’m the big shot in the apparat when it comes to oil. That’s a fact. It’s my stopcock all those oligarchs suck their oil out of. And they’d suck the other thing too, if I so much as frowned. And in the second place, just remember this. You like wolves, don’t you? I know about that. I’m a wolf, a real wolf. But the comrade colonel general . . . Of course, he holds a superior post, with immense responsibility. The whole department idolizes him. But just between you and me, my thing is twice as big.’

‘Please don’t go into detail.’

‘Okay then, no detail. But you think about it anyway - maybe it’s better with a decent detail after all? You know all about the comrade colonel general anyway . . .’

‘I do,’ I said.

‘And bear in mind that he’s vowed never to turn back into a man as long as the country has any external or internal enemies. Like comrade Sharikov did before . . . The whole department was in tears. But to be honest, I don’t think the enemies have anything to do with it. He just gets bored now being a man.’

‘I understand, Mikhalich. I understand everything.’

‘I know.’ He said. ‘You’re a clever one.’

‘All right. You go now. I want to be alone for a while.’

‘Why don’t you teach me that thing,’ he said wistfully, ‘you know, the tailechery . . .’

‘He told you about that as well?’

‘Nah, he didn’t tell me anything. We’ve got no time to waste on you now. We’re up to our eyes in work, you ought to understand that.’

‘And what sort of work is it?’

‘The country needs purging. Until we catch all the offshore fat cats, there’s no time for yapping.’

‘How are you going to catch them, if they’re offshore?’

‘Nagual Rinpoche has a nose for them. He can smell them through the wall. And he really didn’t tell me anything about the tails. I heard it on the instrument. You were arguing about them, about ... e-egh ... the best way to twist them together.’

‘You heard it on the instrument, I see. Okay, go now, you shameless wolf.’

‘I’ll be waiting for your call. You be sure to keep in touch with us. Don’t forget what country you live in.’

‘As if I could.’

‘All right then. Call me.’

He got up and walked towards the forest.

‘Listen, Mikhalich,’ I called to him when he was already a few metres away.

‘Eh?’ he asked, looking back.

‘Don’t wear that T-shirt. Andy Warhol died in nineteen eighty-seven. It makes it too obvious that you’re getting on a bit.’

‘I heard you have a few problems in that area yourself,’ he said imperturbably. ‘Only I still like you anyway. What difference does it make to me how old you are? Not going to shag your passport, am I? Especially since it’s a fake.’

I smiled. I had to admit that he did have charm - a werewolf is a werewolf.

‘Right Mikhalich, not the passport. You’ll be shagging dead Andy Warhol.’

He laughed.

‘Personally speaking, I’ve got nothing against it,’ I went on. ‘But it dismays me to think that you’re looking for him in me. Even though I like you so much as a human being.’

I had hit him with the most terrible insult possible in our circles, but he simply roared with laughter. The dumb stud was probably totally impervious.

‘So don’t wear that T-shirt, Mikhalich, really. It positions you as a gay necrophile.’

‘Can you say that in Russian?’

‘Sure. A stiff-shagging faggot.’

He chuckled, stuck his tongue out, waved the end about suggestively in the air and repeated:

‘Call, I’ll be waiting. Maybe we’ll get the entire department to think up an answer for you.’

Then he swung round and set off towards the forest. I watched the black square of his back until it dissolved into the greenery. Malevich sold here . . . But then, who needed these allusions any more.

I only have a very little left to say. I have lived in this country for a long time and I understand the significance of accidental meetings like this, of conversations ending with advice to keep in touch with the security services. I spent a few days sorting out my old manuscripts and burning them. In fact, the only sorting I did was to run my eye diagonally over the pages covered with writing before I threw them into the flames. I had accumulated an especially large number of poems:

She’s not a wingless fly on someone’s Thule,

He’s not a one who fears the night around.

The two night prowlers are the fox A Hu-Li

And her dark friend, the sudden Pizdets hound.

It saddened me most of all to burn the poems: I never had a chance to read them to anyone. But what can I do - my dark friend is too busy. I have only one task left to carry out now, and that is already close to completion (which is why my narrative is shifting from the past tense into the present). It is the task of which the Yellow Master spoke to me twelve centuries ago. I must reveal to all foxes how they can attain freedom. In effect, I have almost done this already - it only remains to draw together everything that has been said into clear, precise instructions.

I have already said that foxes use their tails to implant the illusion of this world in their own minds. This is expressed symbolically by the sign of the uroborus, round which my mind has been circling for so many centuries, sensing the great mystery that is concealed within it. A snake biting its own tail . . .

The inviolable link between the tail and the mind - that is the foundation on which the world as we know it stands. There is nothing that can intervene in this circle of cause and effect and disrupt it. Except for one thing. Love.

We werefoxes are significantly superior to people in all respects. But like them, we almost never know true love. And therefore the secret path leading out of this world is hidden from us. But it is so simple that it is hard to believe: the circuit of self-hypnosis can be broken by a single movement of the mind.

I shall now transmit this unsurpassed teaching in the hope that it may serve as the cause of the liberation of all those who possess a heart and a tail. This technique, lost since time immemorial, has been discovered anew by me, the fox A Hu-Li, for the good of all beings, under the circumstances described in this book. Here is a full and complete exposition of the secret method of ancient foxes known as ‘tail of the void’.

1. First the werefox must comprehend what love is. The world that we create by inertia day after day is full of evil. But we cannot break out of the vicious circle because we do not know how to create anything else. The nature of love is entirely different, and that is precisely why there is so little of it in our lives. Or rather, our lives are like that because there is so little love in them. And in most cases what people take for love is physical attraction and parental instinct, multiplied by social conceit. Werefox, do not become like a tailless monkey. Remember who you are!

2. When a werefox comprehends what love is, she can leave this dimension behind. But first she must settle all remaining accounts: thank those who have helped her on the way and help those who need help. Then the werefox must fast for ten days, pondering on the inscrutable mystery of the world and its infinite beauty. In addition, the werefox must recall her evil deeds and repent of them. She must remember at least the ten darkest deeds she has committed and repent of each of them. While the werefox does this, genuine tears must well up in her eyes at least three times. This is not a matter of banal sentimentality - crying purges the psychic channels that will be brought into play at the third stage.

3. When the preliminary practice has been completed, the werefox must wait for the day after the full moon. On that day she must rise early in the morning, perform ablutions and withdraw to a remote spot out of sight of all people. There, having freed her tail, the werefox must sit in the lotus position. If the werefox cannot sit in the lotus position, it does not matter - she can sit on a chair or a tree stump. The important thing is that the back must be straight and erect and the tail must be relaxed and free of restraint. Then the werefox must breathe in and out several times, engender in her heart love of the greatest possible power and, shouting out her own name in a loud voice, direct the love as deeply as possible into her own tail.

Any werefox will immediately understand what is meant by the words ‘direct the love into her own tail’. But this is such a bizarre and inconceivable thing to do, such a gross violation of all the conventions, that I might be regarded as insane. Nonetheless, this is exactly the way things are - this way lies the secret road to freedom. The result will be similar to what happens when an air bubble gets into a blood vessel leading to the heart. It will be enough to stall the engine of the self-reproducing nightmare in which we have been wandering since the beginning of time.

If the love engendered was genuine, then following the shout, the tail will cease creating this world for a second. This second is the moment of freedom, which is more than enough to leave this realm of suffering behind for ever. When this second arrives, the werefox will know quite certainly what she should do next.

The same technique can be used by werewolves and pizdets hounds while in their lupine form.

I have also attained to comprehension of how tailless monkeys can escape from this world. At first I intended to leave detailed instructions for them too, but I do not have enough time. I will therefore briefly mention the most important elements. The key points of this teaching are the same as in the above. First the tailless monkey must engender love in his soul, beginning with its most simple forms and gradually ascending to the genuine love that knows no subject and no object. Then he must review his entire life and grasp the futility of his goals and the villainy of his ways. And since his repentance is usually false and short-lived, he must shed tears for his own dark deeds at least thirty times. And finally, the monkey must perform a magical action similar to the one described in point three, but amended to take account of the fact that he has no tail. The tailless monkey must therefore first grasp how he creates the world and in what way he imposes the illusion on himself. This is all rather simple, but I have absolutely no time left to dwell on it.

Let me say something more important. If any werefox, walking the Way, should discover a new road to the truth, she should not disguise it in all sorts of confusing symbols and tangled rituals, as the tailless monkeys do, but must immediately share this discovery with other were-creatures in the simplest and clearest form possible. But she should remember that the only true answer to the question ‘what is truth’ is silence, and anyone who opens his mouth simply doesn’t know the score.

Well then, I think that is all. Now Nat King Cole will sing and I shall go. It will happen like this: I shall finish typing this page, save it, throw my laptop into my rucksack and get on my bike. Early in the morning there is never anybody at the ramp on the edge of the Bitsevsky forest. I’ve been wanting to jump from it for a long time, only I didn’t think I’d be able to land. But now I’ve realized how to do it.

I shall ride out into the very centre of the empty field, gather all my love into my heart, pick up speed and go flying up the slope. And as soon as the wheels of my bicycle leave the ground, I shall call out my own name in a loud voice and cease to create this world. There will be an astonishing second, unlike any other. Then this world will disappear. And then, at last, I shall discover who I really am.