The mantis got right down to business, as if their previous conversation had never been interrupted.
“In order to become one of us,” he said, “you’ll have to do this. . . .”
And its three central eyes showed Lena a cartoon film that was appalling but absolutely clear, while the two big faceted eyes watched her reactions closely.
Lena had been prepared for anything at all, but not this.
Now she realized what the mantis had meant when it talked about transgressing the bounds of human morality. It turned out that it hadn’t been exaggerating at all.
“Never,” said Lena.
“I’m not coercing you,” the mantis replied.
“No,” Lena repeated in horror. “I’ll never be able to do that.”
“It’s one of the laws of the world of praying mantises.”
“Do you even understand what you just suggested?” asked Lena. “It’s absolutely beastly.”
“It’s not beastly,” the mantis replied solemnly. “It’s insectly. We’ve been doing it for almost half a billion years. And not just praying mantises, either.”
“Who else?”
The mantis’s head moved so close that it almost touched her, and its big faceted eyes looked deep into her soul.
“For instance, Pisaura mirabilis. During the nursery web spider’s amorous intercourse, the female eats a fly caught for her by the male. And the female Oecanthus niveux sucks the juice out of a special gland in the male tree cricket’s body. The female Lystrocteisa myrmex eats food regurgitated by the male jumping spider straight out of his mouth — which, by the way, is how your human kiss developed, though two hundred million years later. Only people, as usual, have done away with the substantial part and left just the PR. Praying mantises simply take the most radical approach to the problem. . . .”
“How do you know all these Latin words?” asked Lena.
“It’s not me, it’s you. All this is what you know.”
“I’ve never heard anything of the kind.”
“Once, by chance, you happened to run your eyes over an article on this subject,” said the mantis, “and your brain remembered it all. You’re just not aware that you know it. That kind of thing could never happen to a mantis.”
Suddenly the mantis disappeared, as if something had frightened him away.
And the next moment Lena saw Mikhail Botvinik entering the Malachite Hall.
•
Botvinik was accompanied by his two usual bodyguards in double-breasted suits and Uncle Pete, who had found time to change into a black t-shirt that said:
ADIHIT
Below the inscription was the Adidas triangle, split into its trademark bands — but only two instead of the usual three, which made the triangle look like Hitler’s toothbrush moustache.
The bodyguards stayed over by the doors while Botvinik and Uncle Pete walked into the hall.
Botvinik was trying to prove a point to Uncle Pete, continuing the conversation started outside:
“ . . . that’s why I say the fresco’s faggoty. Pure faggot. He wrote about it in his poems. I don’t remember exactly where, I was young when I read it. For instance, he has this poem where he screws a little Greek boy, like Lord Byron. And then slits him with his knife . . . with this superhuman Nietzschian laughter . . .”
“Where’s that part?” asked Uncle Pete.
“Now, how does it go?” Botvinik muttered, frowning as he tried to remember. “ ‘And then I laugh, and suddenly the beloved Anapaest flies off my pen. . . .’ Actually, Anapaest’s the only faggot here, you can’t really charge the author with anything. But from certain other little verses you can. He wasn’t interested in young girls, he was just pretending so people wouldn’t realize who he really was: five-eighteen, there’s a jackdaw flying past . . . The nobles had a distinctive code of honor too.”
“I don’t know,” said Uncle Pete. “When it comes to poetry, I prefer Esenin.”
“And what do you like him for?”
“For his style,” answered Uncle Pete. “ ‘You are my Chardonnay, my Chardonnay . . .’ Divine.”
Botvinik crossed himself and spat.
“Know what Oscar Wilde said? Style is the last refuge of the faggot.”
“Probably,” Uncle Pete agreed timidly. “So did Lord Byron really . . . you know, with his little Greeklings . . . Greek kids?”
“What do you think?” replied Botvinik. “He even kept a diary. Okay, I’m not some lecturer from the Knowledge Society.”
He glanced around the room and spotted Lena.
“Hi there, Greeny!” he said with a smile. “See, I came — just like I promised. I’ve got half an hour.”
Behind Botvinik’s back, Uncle Pete made wild eyes, swinging his chin downwards. Lena realized that meant she should get down off her pedestal. She tried to do this as gracefully as possible, jumping down onto the floor, absorbing the impact with her knees, and sinking into a courteous but highly dignified curtsey.
“Well, you’re a great gymnast, Greeny,” Botvinik murmured.
“I’ll be going then,” said Uncle Pete, “you can sort things out here for yourselves. Music, girls!”
He walked to the door. Vera started singing “The Wheels of Love” and Asya and Kima purred along, imitating the instrumental accompaniment — it was a number they’d put together a long time ago, with Lena singing the second voice part. She wasn’t singing now, but even without her it sounded pretty good.
Botvinik took off his robe, leaving him in just his shorts — black boxers, exactly what the last Russian macho ought to wear. Lena saw the tattoo on his shoulder, the famous bat.
Then the praying mantis returned.
Of course, Botvinik didn’t notice anything. Lena had already figured out that she could talk to the mantis right in front of Botvinik and he would never know. And what’s more, her communication with the mantis took place at such great speed that she and the mantis had already discussed quite a lot of things in the time it took Botvinik to walk over and take her by the hand. The mantis moved its head close to her, and its three central eyes played a rerun of the animated film showing what she had to do.
It didn’t seem so terrible to Lena now.
“But why the head?” she asked.
“It’s a general law of the universe,” the mantis replied. “The eating of the male always begins with tearing off the head by any means available. As if you didn’t know, heh-heh, it’s what all your women’s magazines train you to do. And it affects sex, from the physiological point of view. When the braking mechanisms are removed, the amplitude of spasmodic reflex movements is maximalized. For instance, if you block a frog’s higher nerve centers, it spontaneously makes frictive copulative movements Tearing off the head is a metaphor, which is realized quite literally in the world of mantises. . . .”
“Where did you learn to talk like that?” Lena asked. “For instance, how do you know the word ‘metaphor’?”
“I’ve already explained that once before,” replied the mantis. “You’re the one who knows all these words — I merely use them.”
“But I don’t understand even half of what you say,” said Lena. “It definitely didn’t come out of my head.”
“Have you got a computer?” asked the mantis.
“Yes,” said Lena.
“What do you think, would you recognize all the pictures you can find with it?”
“Of course not.”
“This is the same thing. Don’t get distracted. Make up your mind quickly.”
Lena sensed that she really did have to make up her mind now: Botvinik was already leading her over to the sofa.
“I’d like to ask the girls’ advice,” she told the mantis, but then realized she was asking the impossible.
However, strangely enough, the impossible turned out to be possible: all three of her friends instantly appeared in her lower field of vision — like interpreters on TV, translating into three different sign languages. Vera was
singing about the wheels of love, Kima was purring the accompaniment, and Asya was looking straight at Lena, only moving her lips for the sake of appearances.
“Asya,” Lena called to her, “can you talk?”
Asya nodded.
“Do you know what he wants me to do?” asked Lena. “I mean the mantis, not Botvinik.”
Asya nodded again.
“He’s been working on me too, since the first time we met.”
“But why didn’t you say anything?”
Asya lowered her eyes guiltily.
“I thought I was the only one with that kind of craziness in my head. I was ashamed, because it seems really bizarre. But when I got home, I looked in the encyclopedia and read that it was true. The female praying mantis really does eat the male immediately after . . . you know what. She tears his head off and eats him.”
Lena turned to Vera.
“I didn’t know at first either,” said Vera. “But then I looked it up in the internet. She does eat him, it’s true. Entomologists even joke about it, they say it’s obvious why the mantis prays. He’s praying for the forgiveness of his sins.”
It was strange how, even while she was talking to Lena, Vera kept singing “The Wheels of Love.” Perhaps this conversation with her friends was just a hallucination, but anyway, the moment Lena thought about that, the girls disappeared from her field of vision and the question ceased to be relevant.
Especially since there were only three steps left to the sofa.
The praying mantis appeared in front of Lena again.
“Well?”
“I don’t know,” Lena said and burst into tears.
But she was only crying in the dimension in which she communed with the mantis. Where she was walking toward the sofa with Botvinik, probably only a fraction of a second had gone by.
“What’s bothering you?” asked the mantis. “Why are you crying?”
“I promised to do the very best thing possible for him.”
“For who?” asked the mantis.
“For Botvinik in the photograph. That’s why he came to me. But this is so cruel . . .”
“You think it’s cruel?”
“What else can you call it?”
The mantis became sad. Lena sensed that he would go away forever now, and there would be nothing left in the world but the divan drawing closer and closer, and an old song by Nautilus Pompilius.
“Wait,” she said. “There must be something I don’t understand. Maybe you can explain?”
“Look into my eyes,” said the mantis.
Lena saw the short cartoon film again.
She was looking at something like a meadow flooded with sunlight — a blinding, trembling, shimmering space, distorted (or perhaps rectified) by the insect’s faceted eyes. There were two praying mantises sitting in this meadow, but Lena understood that this was a pure formality. What she was actually seeing before her was the endless river of life with which she was already familiar, flowing through the mantises, through the sun in the sky, and through her as well.
This river did not rest on anything, it was absolutely free and not constrained by anything. It existed in and of itself. And yet in some way its existence was contingent upon the praying mantises and Lena.
She suddenly realized quite clearly that all living things — flowers, insects, birds, animals, and even people — didn’t just exist for themselves, for no particular reason, but for one single, solitary purpose: to provide a channel for this great river. All living things were this channel. But at the same time they were also the river which, in some mysterious and inexpressible way, flowed through itself, unlike the way earthly rivers flowed.
Lena saw the channel being constructed. It all happened right in front of her eyes: two praying mantises united with each other to initiate new life. And when the sacrament was completed, one of them did the very best thing that it could for the other — by setting it free. And then the part of the great river that had been flowing through that mantis was liberated and began flowing through itself, and this was the greatest possible happiness. Lena had no more doubts about that now.
“I understand,” she whispered. “Now I understand. So it’s not cruel at all, quite the opposite?”
“Cruelty,” the mantis replied, “is keeping someone here for too long. To be alive is to dig the channel. To depart is to become the river that flows along it.”
“But why don’t any people know about this?” asked Lena. “I have to go back and tell everyone!”
“In the first place,” the mantis replied soberly, “anyone who wants to know will find out without you. And in the second place, it’s better not to tell everyone you meet about it. That’s a bad thing to do. Stupid and absurd.”
“Why?”
“Surely you can see why? Because the great river knows what it is without you. But sometimes, for a little while, it wants to be a prostitute, or a cat, or a geranium in a vase. Or even take a peek into a place like your city. So why should you explain to it what it really is? You’ll ruin all the fun of the outing.”
“I understand,” whispered Lena. “So praying mantises simply help each other to go back home. And this is the very best thing that one creature can do for another? Exactly what I promised?”
“Of course,” the mantis said in a soulful voice. “That’s the reason why our lovemaking ends in this noble gesture. The female does it for the male, because he has fulfilled his duty, and from now on he is free. Naturally, the male would be glad to do the same for the female, but she still has to care for their offspring.”
That sounded convincing.
“I won’t have the strength to do it.”
“Yes you will. I’ll help.”
Just then Lena and Botvinik finally reached the divan. Botvinik sat her down on the soft silk, and at that moment the praying mantis Lena had been talking to disappeared, but Lena noticed that Botvinik himself had become a mantis.
He was ash-colored, with a narrow little head and expressionless faceted eyes. His three central eyes were dead and looked like plaques of dried-up skin, and he had an expansive abdomen, bloated and taut, which pulled him backward and made all his movement clumsy and ridiculous.
“Greeny, you’re kind of strange,” said the grey mantis. “As if you’re not really here, but somewhere else. Are you high on something?”
“No,” Lena answered. “Let’s not talk, Misha.”
“Fine,” the grey mantis agreed.
And they started dancing the dance that engenders new life.
As soon as it was over, Lena followed the promptings of the ageless wisdom. She squeezed Botvinik’s head tightly between her spiky hands and tugged hard.
“Are you crazy?” the stupid grey mantis hissed and started flailing at her with its feeble little forelegs. But Lena’s body was covered with a strong chitinous shell and she didn’t feel their touch. The grey mantis’s head was hard to tear off, because its neck was very thick, but Lena could feel an insuperable, steely strength in her hands, and she knew that sooner or later she would finish the job.
The girls started singing the national anthem of the USSR in English — the Paul Robeson version. Uncle Pete was fond of saying that there was something boundlessly orgiastic about this rendering, and praised it as the best possible background music for VIP intimate relations. Lena heard three frightened voices singing:
Strong in our friendship tried by fire,
Long may our crimson flag inspire . . .
They were singing exactly like Paul Robeson — they’d learned the number from his old recording — articulating the r in “fire” and “inspire” forcefully, in a way that is rarely done in English. Somehow it was that rolling r that helped: Lena braced herself and twisted the grey mantis’s head as sharply as she could.
“Ee-ikh,” the grey mantis whispered, the central sinew of his being yielded, and he went limp forever.
Lena saw how the part of the great river that had been locked inside him was relea
sed in a jet of dark smoke, like car exhaust fumes — it was instantly swept somewhere downwards. Lena followed it in her mind and sensed a swirling, somber crimson space, with grim voices rumbling remorselessly: “Who do you think you’re calling a faggot, you cunt? Who are you telling to get fucked?” There were other voices too — quiet, shrewdly insinuating, and really creepy, saying things like: “Spiralwise with cabbage, sixteen, forty-two . . .” That gave Lena a bad feeling, and she stopped following the smoke’s descent. She now had to hurry, and started twisting the grey mantis’s head from side to side as rapidly as she could.
Botvinik’s head had still not come away from his body when Lena realized she had passed the exam: once again she saw the happy meadow, flooded with trembling, shimmering sunlight. Two large praying mantises were hurrying toward her to assist in making the crossing. They were clutching two special chattering sticks in their forelegs, using them to help her shrug off her human body forever. Although it was a bit painful, she knew the pain would disappear forever with the body.
“I wonder what’s inside me?” she thought. “Could it really be that same grey, stinking stuff? Well, now we’ll find out. . . . No, it’s not the same. There, look at it. It’s bright . . . luminous . . . pure. . . . It’s so very beautiful. . . .”
Copyright © 2008 Victor Pelevin
Translation copyright © 2011 Andrew Bromfield
Copyright © 2011 New Directions
“The Hall of the Singing Caryatids,” originally published in Russia as “Зал поющих кариатид,” appeared in Pelevin’s 2008 collection П5: прощальные песни политических пигмеев Пиндостана [P5: Farewell songs of the political pygmies of Pindostan] by arrangement with the author and the Nicole Aragi Agency.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
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