The Hall of the Singing Caryatids

by Victor Pelevin

  She was in two places simultaneously. One place was the Malachite Hall. It was hard to say anything definite about the other space, which was flooded with blinding sunlight. It quivered and shimmered like the picture in a kaleidoscope, stretched by some unusual optics to span a full 360 degrees, but a kaleidoscope would have been uninteresting compared to what Lena saw. If her surroundings could be compared to anything, it was the visuals that Windows Media Player created when it played MP3s. Even though this space was so bizarre, Lena took a liking to it immediately, because she experienced its waves of multicolored lights as happiness, which kept changing color and shape but never ceased to be happiness and never got boring.

  There were two Lenas. One was standing on a malachite pedestal in the corner of an empty subterranean hall, with her hands pressed against a block of stone over her head. The other was bathed in a stream of living sunlight, holding her hands folded in front of her chest. They were unusual hands, with lots of sharp little fingers sticking out at right angles, like nails protruding from a plank. The sharp points of the fingers pricked her palms pleasantly, encouraging a feeling of self-confidence.

  There was no contradiction between the two Lenas. But there was one big difference between them. In the place where Lena was human, she was a false stone idol, working a long shift in one of the auxiliary spaces of an underground brothel. But in the place where Lena was a praying mantis, she was . . . well, that was where she was a real person. At least that was the way she would have liked to put it.

  It felt as impossible to express all the thoughts that flooded through her as it was to explain exactly what it was that the Windows Media Player drew. But one thing was clear — after glimpsing that strange, sunny world, it was sad to return to the Sextine Chapel (as Kima had dubbed the Malachite Hall after their first turn on duty) — even taking into account the immense competition for a place as a Singing Caryatid and the unreal amount of money that was paid for the job.

  Lena was so engrossed in all these thoughts and feelings, she didn’t notice that that no one came into the Malachite Hall during her second shift either. This time there weren’t even any voices in the corridor or cigar smoke.

  •

  After their shift the girls went for a bite to eat in the staff cafeteria, located at the end of the corridor that passed by the dressing room. The cafeteria was the only underground area that their passes gave them access to — the corridor had many more side branches, but they were closed off by turnstiles that didn’t respond to a magnetic card with the words “Malachite Hall” on it. (Lena didn’t actually try to get in anywhere, she believed what curious Kima told her.)

  The cafeteria had a festive look, but the cheery atmosphere was rather somber somehow — the place was reminiscent of a military mess hall that someone had decided to convert into a disco. The walls were decorated with cheerful cartoon film graphics and brief texts rendered in two colors — red and blue. Red was used for various everyday aphorisms, and blue for definitions of beauty (the idea here was probably to prevent the staff from getting too laid-back and to keep them constantly measuring themselves against a high standard).

  The posters in red looked like this:

  THE SUPREME SIGNIFICANCE OF RUSSIAN LIFE IS THE CALM, PATIENT GILDING

  OF A BOUNDLESS ICONOSTASIS

  IN THE FUTURE EVERY SNAIL

  WILL REACH THE SUMMIT OF MT. FUJI

  for FIFTEEN SECONDS

  SOVEREIGN DEMOCRACY

  IS BOURGEOIS ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY

  AT THE STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT

  WHEN DEMOCRACY IS STILL DEMOCRACY,

  BUT THEY CAN EASILY F . . K YOU UP THE A . . S

  IF THEY WANT TO

  The blue maxims about beauty were mostly quotations from newsmakers of years gone by:

  “BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD.”

  – FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

  “BEAUTY SUCKS D . . K.”

  – LARRY FLYNT

  “BEAUTY IS THAT ELUSIVE QUALITY,

  ALMOST INEXPRESSIBLE IN WORDS,

  THAT ALLOWS A WOMAN TO BE A BITCH FOR A WHILE BEFORE THEY CART HER OFF

  TO THE GARBAGE DUMP.”

  – KATE MOSS

  When she saw the word “dick” written with dots, Lena wanted to ask Kima if that was counterculture, but she felt too shy. Kima doubted that Larry Flynt and Kate Moss had ever really said anything like that, but she agreed that basically there was nothing objectionable here.

  Hanging in the corner of the cafeteria was a Soviet-style wall newspaper with underground news and drawings by the staff — it was predictably called “Kthulhu and the Bear Are Listening!” and its masthead was a skinny, lilac octopus with spectacles drawn onto it so that it looked like a bald Lenin. As the line filed past, Lena tried to read what Kthulhu was thinking about. The octopus’s thoughts proved to be rather misanthropic and sometimes downright insulting. Lena was particularly horrified by this:

  The fundamental quality that a modern Moscow girl cultivates by the age of twenty is the naive readiness for elite hyperconsumption (in today’s Russian this is known as “pussyness”). Any fool knows that no one is going to let these legions of pussycats anywhere near a glamorous sugar daddy, he’ll simply mess with their heads and then dump them. Basically, that’s the way it’s always been, throughout history. But today the means you have to use to mess with a girl’s head are so crass that the reward awaiting you for this dirty, heavy work pales into insignificance. Especially since these efforts not only offend the moral feelings of a decent, Christian human being, but are also extremely expensive — and the true market price of the anticipated reward is significantly less than the bill for the first dinner in a good restaurant. And discussing the possibility of spiritual affinity with one of these Prada-wearing amoebas would simply be a waste of time . . .

  Then Lena read another article that explained the word “electoral” from the sovereignty poster:

  To call the Russian public an “electorate” is approximately the same as calling passive sexual victims in prisons “pederasts” (“lovers of boys” in Greek). What can we say? Yes, this term is indeed widely employed, consecrated by custom, and it is actually possible to find certain factual grounds for such usage. But even so, there are moments when it is hard to rid yourself of the feeling that behind this grandiloquent foreign word lurks a sinister grin, not to say a malicious lie . . .

  At first Lena had read “electoral” as “electro-oral,” and it was only when she finished this passage that she realized that what was meant was the exact opposite.

  “So people aren’t unhappy with just one thing,” she thought wearily, “they badmouth everything about our lives. Why don’t they just leave the country? . . .”

  The wall newspaper’s frankly critical attitude to the established order of things was astonishing — but Kima shrewdly explained that it was deliberate, to give the cafeteria’s patrons a feeling of complete, elite access to anything and everything.

  “A pocket dissident,” she said, “is something like an evil dwarf jester in cap and bells. In glamorous circles it’s actually regarded as rather chic to be one.”

  Lena thought Kima must be right, because for some reason no one in the line really lingered too long over Kthulhu’s secret mouthpiece.

  The cafeteria was crowded. People in technical uniforms made up most of the crowd, but there were colleagues of Lena’s too: standing in front of her were several young Atlantes in skimpy loincloths. They must have worked in some kind of classical interior, because their sculpturally defined, muscular bodies were smeared with a marble-like powder. The powder had been rubbed off the buttocks of one of them, and he had a clear handprint on his thigh. The others kept looking at him and grinning.

  The feeble small talk the girls were making gradually fizzled out. And then out of the blue Asya asked: “Did you all see it?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lena, puzzled.

  “The praying mantis.”

  Lena nodded. Vera and
Kima just glanced at each other, which made it clear that they had seen it too.

  “I think I was praying,” said Asya.

  “Because of the way your hands were folded?” asked Lena.

  “Not only that. It’s just a prayerful kind of state. All the worldly voices inside you quiet down and there’s nothing left except unity with a higher reality. That’s what prayer is. That’s what my granny taught me when she was still alive.”

  “I didn’t notice a special unity with anything higher,” said Vera. “It was certainly calm, though. And simple.”

  “That is unity,” said Asya.

  Vera chuckled.

  “Higher, lower, who can tell the difference? But did you see the pipe under your feet.”

  “I don’t see any pipe,” said Asya. “I think it’s the branch the mantis is sitting on. And it gives me a headache, because it’s in front of me and behind me and right up close all at the same time.”

  “That’s the way a praying mantis’s eyes are arranged,” said Kima. “It sees everything on all sides. So the branch really is in front of you and behind you.”

  “And what kind of mantis is it?” asked Vera. “Where is it?”

  Kima thought for a moment and said:

  “It’s the archetypal praying mantis. Comprehensive and universal. The mommy and daddy of all praying mantises who have ever been and will be. It exists in Platonic space.”

  “And what does it do there?”

  “It prays,” said Asya. “I’m absolutely certain about that.”

  Three Mermaids came into the cafeteria: Lena had seen one of them outside the Radisson-Slavyanskaya Hotel — she recognized the mole on her cheek. The Mermaids had taken off their tails and were dressed in short, scaly t-shirts that glinted under their bathrobes, with swimming caps on their heads. Lena studied them for a while with a mixed feeling of envy (all three of them were miraculously beautiful) and superiority (Lena definitely wouldn’t have wanted wet work like that). The Mermaids kept looking at the Caryatids too, but soon got fed up with trying to stare them down, and the girls went back to their interrupted conversation.

  “Maybe we should tell Uncle Pete everything?” Lena suggested.

  “No way,” replied Vera. “There’ll be investigations, and all sorts of commissions of inquiry. . . . They’ll start looking for side effects and close down the hall. Are you tired of being paid, or what?”

  No one had any answer to that.

  Other colleagues arrived in the cafeteria. Two golden-haired kids with toy bows got in line behind the Mermaids. They were escorted by a hirsute man with silicone breasts, draped in a mantle of purple linen cloth. He had a very clear, broad love bite on his neck. Vera sized up the new customers with a sideways glance.

  “Everybody’s got work already,” she said, “we’re the only ones left . . . like brides without bridegrooms.”

  Kima giggled.

  “I asked the girls from the last shift if they’d had anyone there or not. At first they said they’d signed an agreement and told me to get lost. But then one of them, Nadka, said there had been three men who looked like government officials — they just dropped in for a few minutes. The girls took a fix on their age and started singing ‘Another Brick in the Wall.’ But the guys didn’t even look at them — they just drank a bit of vodka, ate a few mushrooms, and left.”

  “And have the other girls seen the praying mantis too?”

  “I think so,” said Kima. “Only they don’t want to talk about it. . . . Lena, stop daydreaming. Take your plate and get up to the cash register, or the Mermaids will push their way in.”

  •

  On their next shift Lena got an answer to her question — she learned that the mantis could see her too.

  Contact occurred during the fourth spread from the start of the shift (a “spread” was what the girls called the time interval between every resetting of the round table). At that moment Lena was gazing absentmindedly through her eyelashes at one of the angels on the wall (the folds of his robes hinted at an erection, which in principle shouldn’t happen to a sexless being, even in a place like this).

  It all started the same way as the last time — Lena suddenly saw her hands folded in front of her chest. And then a strange, triangular head appeared in front of her — it reminded her of a comic-strip alien. There were two large, faceted eyes set on the sides of the head, with three smaller eyes set between them. And all five eyes were gazing at Lena. The mantis also had very serious jaws. But Lena wasn’t frightened.

  “???”

  The mantis spoke to her somehow without using words, but Lena understood everything.

  “I work here,” she replied. “I’m waiting for clients.”

  “???”

  Lena realized that she too could answer without words, simply by lifting a kind of screen in her mind and letting what was behind it spill out and become accessible to the mantis. So that was what she did.

  “----”

  The mantis did the same — it removed the barrier separating its consciousness from Lena’s, and something absolutely incredible flooded into her.

  It could be described approximately as follows: whereas the last time Lena thought that the world around her had turned into something like the visualizer in Windows Media Player, now she herself became the visualizer, and the world disintegrated into a host of discrete aspects that taken separately seemed absurd, astounding, impossible, and terrifying, but together somehow balanced each other out in a calm and happy equilibrium that settled into her head.

  This equilibrium permeated everything. For instance, Lena still didn’t know who it was in front of her — an individual mantis or the spirit of all mantises. But that didn’t matter at all, because if it was a spirit she was looking at, it lived in every mantis, and if it was a simple mantis, the spirit spoke through it. The two possibilities were simply opposite poles of what was actually happening.

  In exactly the same way, it was not clear what happened at the moment when their minds fused — whether she became the praying mantis, or the mantis became her. But that didn’t matter either, because the being that arose between these conceptual opposites couldn’t care less who had become whom.

  The mantis didn’t ask itself questions like this. It didn’t think in terms of words or images at all. It simply was. It was a drop in an infinite river that flowed from one vastness to another. Every drop in this river was equivalent to the entire river as a whole, and so the mantis had no concerns about anything. It knew all about the river, or rather, the river of life knew all about itself. It flowed through the praying mantis which, by becoming Lena, had allowed her to catch a brief glimpse of this miracle forgotten by man.

  The miracle also consisted of a balance of opposites. It could be said, for instance, that the mantis knew everything — insofar as its five eyes even saw the beginning of the world and its end (Lena was afraid to look in that direction, it made her feel too dizzy). But it could also be said that the mantis didn’t know anything, and that would also have been the simple truth, since it really didn’t know anything itself — infinity was simply reflected in it, as the whole world is reflected in a drop of water. In fact, she could have guessed all this without the praying mantis, there had been a time in her childhood (or even before that) when she knew it — but now this self-evident thing had been forgotten, because the daily itineraries followed by the adult mind were located on an entirely different plane. But here, with the praying mantis, it was impossible not to remember it.

  Lena was so enthralled by all these experiences that she stopped being aware of where she really was.

  Now she knew why the praying mantis had five eyes. The small eyes set on the front of its head, between the feelers, saw the past, the present, and the future — that was why there were three of them. And the two big faceted eyes on the sides of the head were simply appendages to the eye that saw the present — they perceived its form and color (the past and the future didn’t have these qual
ities, but the mind extrapolated them). It was such a simple and rational arrangement, Lena felt surprised that everything was so different in human beings.

  The eye of the mantis that was directed toward the past saw the black abyss of nonexistence (it wasn’t black, and it wasn’t an abyss — but that was how it was reflected in consciousness). The eye directed toward the present saw the Malachite Hall with its four green caryatids. And the eye directed toward the future saw Uncle Pete.

  He was wearing a red t-shirt that Lena hadn’t seen before. It said “DKNY,” decoded as “Divine Koran Nourishes You.”

  •

  Uncle Pete really did come to the meeting in a t-shirt with the four letters on it:

  DKNY

  That proved that during the last shift, Lena really had seen the future. Only the future had changed somewhat in the meantime: Uncle Pete’s t-shirt was blue, not red, and the decryption under the four-letter code was different — “Definitely Kthulhu, not Yahweh.”

  Uncle’s Pete’s face was red, though.

  Everything became clear once he started to speak.

  “Yesterday,” he said in the voice of a newscaster announcing the start of a war, “at eleven forty-two in the evening, an act of terrorism was averted in our complex. Averted at the very last moment. Ekaterina Simoniuk — born 1990 and employed as an erotic decorative element in the blue billiard room — attempted to blow herself up. Shortly before that she had had plastic surgery. In fact the operation was plastic in more than one sense — instead of silicone Ms. Simoniuk had modified gelatiniform plastic explosives, produced in Pakistan, implanted in her breasts. She intended to detonate the charge using a device disguised as a lipstick. This attempted terrorist act occurred when two Category A clients were playing billiards. If the guards had not shot her . . .”

  Uncle Pete squeezed his eyes shut and ran one hand over his bald cranium. Lena noticed that although his head still seemed to be smeared with cigar ash, there were more white flecks in the ash than dark ones; just recently he had acquired more grey hairs.