The Hall of the Singing Caryatids

by Victor Pelevin

  “Imagine caryatids,” he continued, “who come to life when the client wishes, who engage him in conversation and provide him with various services of an intimate nature . . . but only if the client is interested. The rest of the time they remain petrified, they are merely a detail of an interior in which absolutely anything can happen — from a sophisticated orgy to a shareholders’ meeting. If he wishes, a client can bring his girls to this space, or even his family, and then you will have to maintain your stony immobility. Or perhaps perform a few vocal numbers to provide background music.”

  “And how are we going to maintain our stony immobility for hours on end?” asked the short-cropped blonde in the front row. “Is the Motherland going to teach us?”

  “Don’t get cute, kitten,” replied Uncle Pete. “That’s exactly what She will do, tomorrow morning. Only first She’ll get you to sign an agreement.”

  “Not to leave the country?” asked the blonde.

  Uncle Pete smiled.

  “A nondisclosure agreement. Forget those horrors from your childhood.”

  •

  There were three men waiting in the gym — one in a white coat with a beard, one a major of some dappled branch of the armed forces, and a weary-looking, bald man in a tracksuit. The doctor in the white coat looked like a good-natured Doolittle, but the major more than compensated for the doctor’s good nature — his face looked like a brick that been used to smash dozens of skulls, and it wasn’t making any promises.

  He started the meeting by forming the girls up in a line.

  “Concerning secrecy,” he said, looking down vaguely in the direction of his crotch, “I wanted to show you a film of two lousy snitches being burned alive in a furnace. My superiors wouldn’t allow it. I suggest you take my word that such things happen. Do you believe me?”

  Lena was standing first in line, so she felt she ought to answer.

  “We believe you, Comrade Major. Yesterday they really hammered all this secrecy stuff into our heads.”

  “They hammered one thing into your heads,” said the major, “but I’m hammering something else. What you go telling the glam journalists about your fancy fucks from the Rublyovka has nothing to do with me. But what I’m about to show you now is classified information, with ‘Top Secret’ stamped all over it, and you’re responsible for keeping it that way.”

  He walked over to a tennis bag lying by the wall and took out a trashy grey cardboard box — like the ones they use to pack spare parts for all sorts of boring machines. The box contained a nickel-plated injection gun and a roll of ampoules packed in plastic.

  Lena was standing close and she could see every detail: the triangular heads of the ampoules made them look like bullets, and the roll looked like a machine-gun belt. The ampoules had nothing written on them, just some little red marks on the side. The liquid in them was tea-colored.

  “This serum is called Mantis-B,” said the major. “It was developed in 1985 for the Special Forces. The comrade colonel will tell you all about it.”

  Lena was expecting the weary man in the tracksuit to speak but, to her surprise, it was Dr. Doolittle who answered to the name of Comrade Colonel. He clasped his hands together on his stomach, narrowed his eyes, and began:

  “As you have already been told girls, this serum is called Mantis-B. In Greek, ‘mantis’ means ‘prophet.’ It is also the biological name of an insect, known as the praying mantis because it holds its spiky front limbs together in front of its chest, like hands clasped in prayer. The praying mantis is a very interesting insect; the only one that can turn its head. It has numerous eyes. . . .”

  “Get to the important part, Comrade Colonel,” said the major. “You’ll exhaust us all with these zoological details.”

  “All right. Basically we’re only interested in one special feature of this insect. While lying in wait for its prey, the praying mantis can remain motionless for hours. Its coloring and form resemble a dry twig, so other insects approach it without fear. And that’s when the mantis grabs them with its spiky front limbs . . . .”

  Dr. Doolittle grabbed something invisible, raised his hands to his mouth, and loudly gnashed his teeth together. A nervous titter ran through the group, and it occurred to Lena that the doctor’s good-natured appearance served the same function as the mantis’s resemblance to a dry twig.

  “Our specialists,” the doctor went on, “spent many years investigating the paranormal features of numerous animals and insects. They studied mantises in an attempt to understand how this insect can remain totally immobile for such long periods. You’ve seen movies about Japanese Ninjas, so you understand how useful this could be, for instance to a sniper waiting in ambush or a secret service agent — especially these days, when any security system includes highly sensitive motion detectors. Our research led to the isolation from the mantis’s brain and nervous system of the substance responsible for this mechanism. It is a complex protein, a rather distant analog of a toxin, or rather, repressor, consisting of a dual-domain globule of bonded disulphide . . .”

  “Comrade Colonel,” the major said reproachfully.

  The doctor nodded.

  “Well basically,” he continued, “the Mantis-B serum was created from this substance. It allows a human being to remain totally immobile for hours on end without any adverse physiological effects. Let me emphasize that — total, stony immobility.”

  “They won’t understand,” said the major.”They have to be shown. Vasyok, come over here.”

  The man in the tracksuit walked dutifully over to the major.

  “Show them your hands,” the doctor ordered.

  Vasyok held his hands out in front of him. They were trembling visibly.

  “You can put them down now.”

  The major took an ampoule out of the plastic ribbon, loaded it into the injection gun, and said edgily: “Well, crouch down already!”

  Vasyok got down on his knees. The major put the injection gun to the back of his neck and pressed the release catch. There was a sharp hiss and Vasyok said:

  “Agh! That’s cold!”

  “When injected into the occipital region, the effect is practically instantaneous,” said the doctor.

  Vasyok got to his feet.

  “Show them your hands again,” said the doctor.

  Vasyok obeyed. The fingers were now perfectly still.

  The doctor thought for a moment before parting Vasyok’s arms and raising them into the air. Then he inclined the man’s body, forcing him to lift one foot off the ground. Vasyok assumed the pose of a statue holding an amphora — leaning forward and balancing with one leg stretched out behind him — and froze.

  Lena felt the unreality of what was happening more keenly with every passing second. Despite the evident instability of the pose, Vasyok stood as still and steady as a rock — his hands and raised leg didn’t make the slightest movement. But the most astounding thing was the change that occurred in his face. Lena had just been looking at the guilty features of an alcoholic — twitchy, tense, wrinkled simultaneously into several grimaces, overlaid one on top of the other. What she now saw before her was the face of a saint, with all the muscles relaxed in an expression of absolute calm and trust, looking beautiful, despite his wrinkles.

  “Impossible. . . .” whispered one of the girls in the line.

  The colonel in the white coat smiled contentedly.

  “How long do you think he can stand like that? An hour? Two? Ha ha! Up to two and a half days! And at the same time he will remain lucidly aware of everything and capable of communicating. Only I advise you not to drink too much water before your shift. Vasyok, how are you feeling?”

  The saint opened his eyes and said:

  “Just fine, Comrade Colonel. Only my shorts are pinching a bit.”

  •

  The short-cropped blonde was named Vera. She lived near Profsoyuznaya metro station, while Lena and Asya lived quite close to each other in Belyaevo. They all rode the metro home together, go
t out at Profsoyuznaya, and set off into the street.

  “There’s something I don’t like about all this,” said Lena. “I thought it would be a high-end cabaret with special extras for exclusive clients. But this is some kind of circus. “Caryatids.”

  “You know,” Vera answered, “for this kind of money I’d work as a car-jack, never mind a caryatid. My father’s an alcoholic; at night I push my desk against the door to keep him out. I need my own apartment.”

  “And what do you think?” Lena asked Asya.

  Asya smiled her wonderful Japanese smile.

  “I think it’s quite interesting, really,” she said. “And in any case it’s certainly better than being ordinary prostitutes.”

  That sounded so artless that all three of them laughed.

  “Listen,” said Lena, “This is what I’d like to know: If we’re going to work on the Rublyovka, will they give us a place to live there?”

  “Oh sure, fat chance,” Vera replied. “Uncle Pete said something about taking us in a bus.”

  “Every day?”

  “No. We’ll be working in three shifts of four girls. Two days on, four days off. That’s why they took twelve of us.”

  “That’s fine,” said Asya. “It’s like being a conductor of a train. Girls, why don’t we ask to be on the same shift?”

  “What for?”

  “We live near each other,” said Asya. “We can get the bus to come to Profsoyuznaya station, instead of trudging all the way over to the Slavyanskaya Hotel.”

  “That’s an idea,” Vera agreed. “But we’ll have to find someone else who lives here.”

  “Look at that!” said Lena. A car appeared from around the corner — a long, white stretch limo. It was so long, it could hardly even negotiate the bend, and its dark-tinted windows excluded any hope of penetrating them to infringe upon someone else’s privacy. The limousine was like a reconnaissance craft that had descended from some happy empyrean realm into a low orbit below dark clouds, into the grey world of economic expediency, efficiency, and the gnashing of teeth. It was obvious that the reconnaissance mission would soon come to an end, and the craft would fly back to where it had come from. But its appearance was more than a mere hint at other people’s prosperity and happiness, it also inspired a timid hope: the roof was adorned with two gold rings that looked like a radar locator.

  Lena ran her gaze over the black windows and white enameled door, then lowered her eyes to the glittering nickel-plated hubcaps, surrounded by black rubber. She realized these were the very same wheels of love that she had sung about at the audition.

  “The important thing now is not to hit any flat notes,” she murmured.

  “What?” asked Vera.

  “Nothing,” said Lena. “Just something I remembered.”

  •

  The fourth to join their shift was a black girl called Kima. She lived near the next metro stop, Akademicheskaya, and agreed to meet the others at Profsoyuznaya.

  Kima turned out to be the best educated and brightest of the girls. Almost too bright, really. After talking to her a couple of times, Lena was quite disgruntled to realize her own ignorance in matters of contemporary culture: before they met, she had genuinely believed that the artist Kulik had earned a fortune by chirping like a bird, and that “shvydkoi” was a Ukrainian term of abuse with a vile anti-Semitic aftertaste, not the surname of the head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography.

  And on top of all that, Kima had a funny way of saying hello — she struck herself on her left shoulder with her right fist and said:

  “Putin morgen!”

  Meeting at Profsoyuznaya was convenient, because the black Mercedes minibus with the placard that said “semiotic signs” set off at seven in the morning. It would have been a pain to get up early enough to catch it somewhere in the center of town.

  On the first trip, they were all nervous. Kima seemed particularly somber.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” she said when the minibus set off. “I think we’ve been duped. This is some kind of crap, not a serious project.”

  “Why?” asked Asya.

  “Well, take that notice in the window,” said Kima. “Semiotic signs. That’s already enough to give me the shakes. Semiotics is the science of sign systems, we covered it at university. Translate it into normal Russian and you get ‘sign signs.’ That’s enough to make anyone with an education laugh.”

  “Aha,” muttered Asya, who was also in a foul mood. “So it would be better if they wrote ‘whorish prostitutes?’”

  Lena frowned.

  “We’re not prostitutes, she said. “We’re more like geishas, really. We sing. We recite.”

  “Oh yeah, not just a plain glory hole,” said Asya. “There’s a pair of earphones and a soundtrack as well. So the price is different.”

  Kima raised her finger.

  “Thanks for reminding me. Uncle Pete’s personal assistant called yesterday, he said to put together a list of songs, so they could set up a recording session. For the accompaniment, I mean — they won’t let us lip-synch. He said all they needed was twenty to thirty numbers. We’ll have just enough time to do it on the way.”

  The driver turned out to have a datebook with weekly pages, and he allowed them to tear out a few clean ones. Incredibly enough, all four of them had “Wheels of Love” in their sets.

  Lena had prudently brought the printout of her repertoire, as prepared for the audition, so she didn’t have to write anything. She could relax.

  She took the driver’s well-thumbed copy of Eligible Bachelors of Russia magazine. Inside it was another slim, badly tattered magazine, titled Counterculture. It wasn’t clear if this was a separate publication or simply a supplement. Counterculture was printed on poor quality newsprint and looked very dubious, even sordid, but Vera explained that that was deliberate.

  “It’s counterculture,” she said, as if the word explained everything.

  “And what’s that?” Lena asked.

  “That’s when they use dirty words on cheap paper,” Vera explained. “So they can badmouth the glossies. It’s hot shit nowadays.”

  Asya frowned.

  “That’s not right,” she said, “it doesn’t have to be on cheap paper, sometimes the paper’s expensive. Counterculture’s . . .” She hesitated for a moment, as if she was trying to recall a phrase that she’d heard somewhere. “It’s the aesthetic of anti-bourgeois revolt, expropriated by the ruling elite, that’s what it is.”

  “But how can you expropriate an aesthetic?” Vera asked.

  “No problem,” replied Asya. “Nowadays, everyone who’s got a competent PR manager is a rebel. Any dumb bitch on TV can say she’s on the run from the FSB. . . . I don’t get you girls; I don’t see why we should have any complexes about the job. Because everyone’s a prostitute nowadays, even the air — for letting the radio waves pass through it.”

  “You take such an emotional view of everything, seeing it all with your heart,” said Kima. “You won’t last long like that. And anyway, that’s not what counterculture is.”

  “Then what is it?” asked Asya.

  “It’s just a market niche,” Kima replied with a shrug. “And not just here, it’s the same all over the world. Think of it — ‘counter’ — counterculture is any commodity someone’s hoping to sell big-time, so they put it on the checkout counter. Lena, why are you so quiet?”

  “I’m reading,” Lena replied. “I don’t understand why they use dotted lines for profanity, if they’re in revolt.”

  “That’s to attract more readers.”

  “Aha. And here they write: ‘a brilliant intellectual, experimenting within the mainstream . . .’ Is that counterculture?”

  “No,” said Asya. “That’s one cute guy on the make and another one doing his PR.”

  Lena didn’t ask any more questions, but she was still wondering what counterculture really was, and decided to read right through the supplement.

  She half li
stened to the girls with one ear as she read the lead article: “The 100 Most Expensive Wh…s in Moscow (with Phone Numbers and Addresses)” — followed by the comments on it (one commentator wrote in to ask why was that Drozdovets, the host of the popular talk show “Hats Off!,” wasn’t in the list — was it because of a sudden moral transformation or a temporary decline in his ratings?). Then she frowned at a strange advertisement (“Weary of the hustle and bustle of the city? In just two minutes, you can be in a pine forest. Washing lines from the Free Space factory!”), leafed through an article about the singer Shnurkov (“Why, of all the warriors doing battle against the dictatorship of the manager, was this sophisticated Che Guevara, known to many well-to-do gentlemen for his scintillating songs at exclusive corporate events, the first to point out that he was no slouch when it came to picking up on the ringtone? Because he realized that these days it’s the only way to get his ringtone playing on your iPhone, dear manager!”), then Lena read an interview with Shnurkov himself (“The composer of ‘Ham . . r that C . . t’ and ‘D . . k in a Con . . m’ reflects on the trends and metamorphoses of contemporary Russian cinema”), and then — probably because of the tiresome countercultural profanities — she started feeling depressed and lonely, so she closed the supplement and dived into the quiet, glossy waters of Eligible Bachelors of Russia.

  Immediately she came across a large article titled “The Last Russian Macho.” It was devoted to the oligarch Botvinik, whom it called “Russia’s No. 1 Eligible Bachelor.” Lena peered, gimlet-eyed, at the photo of a stocky, chubby individual with an unnatural, bright blush right across his cheeks — as if she were trying to drill a fishing hole in the glossy surface and hook the key to some kind of secret code out of it.

  “Could you love someone like that?” Asya asked, glancing into the magazine.

  “Why not?” replied Lena. “You can always find something good in anyone. And when someone has a few billion dollars, you can find an awful lot of something good. You just have to look for it.”

  Kima got up off her seat to take a look at the photo.

  “Try talking to him with your thoughts,” she said. “I heard that you can attract someone by looking at his photo and talking to it. But you have to promise him something that will make him want to see you too. Then you’re bound to meet in real life.”