A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories

by Victor Pelevin

  “I told you, there’s no room left.”

  “Then what is to be done?”

  “Let her tell us,” the low voice rumbled in the very center of Vera’s being. “Hey, Vera! What is to be done?”

  “What is to be done?” Vera repeated. “What do you mean what is to be done?”

  Suddenly it felt as though a wind had risen—it wasn’t real wind, but it reminded Vera of it, because she felt herself being carried off somewhere like a floating leaf.

  “What is to be done?” Vera repeated out of sheer inertia, and then suddenly understood what was happening.

  “Mmm!” the low voice growled tenderly.

  “What is to be done?” Vera screamed in horror. “What is to be done?”

  Every scream lent strength to this likeness of the wind; she hurtled through emptiness with ever-increasing speed, and after the third scream she sensed that she had entered the gravitational field of some immense object which had not existed before the scream, but which became so real after it that she found herself hurtling toward it as if falling out a window.

  “What is to be done?” she screamed for the last time, before crashing into something with terrifying force.

  She fell asleep at the moment of impact—and through her sleep she could hear a monotonous, mechanical-sounding voice:

  “...the position of assistant manager, I set the following condition: that I can start the job when I want, in a month or two, say. I want to make good use of the time off. I haven’t seen the old folks in Ryazan for five years—I’ll go visit them. Goodbye, Verochka. Don’t get up. There’ll be time tomorrow. Sleep.”

  Chernyshevsky, What Is To be Done?, Chapter XXVII:

  When Vera Pavlovna emerged from her room the following day, her husband and Masha were already packing two suitcases.

  Sleep

  At the very start of the third semester, in one of the lectures on Marxism-Leninism, Nikita Dozakin made a remarkable discovery. Something strange had been happening to him for quite some time now: as soon as the small senior lecturer with the big ears—the one who looked like a priest assailed by blasphemous thoughts—entered the lecture hall, Nikita was overcome by the urge to sleep, as though he was exhausted. And when the lecturer began speaking and pointing up at the light fixture, Nikita just couldn’t resist anymore, and fell asleep.

  At first it seemed as though the lecturer was not talking about philosophy, but about something from Nikita’s childhood—about attics, sand pits, and burning garbage dumps. Then the pen in Nikita’s hand would mount diagonally to the very top of his sheet of paper, trailing some illegible phrase in its wake, and finally his head would droop and he would plummet down into darkness—only to emerge from it a second or two later, when the same sequence of events would be repeated.

  His notes looked very odd and were totally useless for study: short paragraphs of text were cut through by long diagonal sentences about cosmonauts lost in space or a visit to Moscow by the Mongol Khan, all in small, jerky handwriting. At first Nikita was very upset by his inability to sit through a lecture in the proper fashion, but then he began wondering whether the same thing happened to the other students—and that was when he made his discovery. It turned out that almost everyone else in the hall was sleeping, but they did it a lot more cleverly than he did—with their foreheads leaning against the open palm of one hand, so that their faces were hidden. At the same time they hid their right hands behind their left elbows, so that it was quite impossible to tell whether or not they were writing as they sat there.

  Nikita tried sitting in this position and he found that the quality of his sleep changed immediately. Before he used to switch suddenly back and forth between total oblivion and startled wakefulness, but now the two states were combined—he fell asleep, but not completely, not so deeply that he was totally oblivious. His state of consciousness was like that morning drowsiness, when any thought is easily transformed into a moving colored picture that you can watch while you wait for the ring of the alarm clock you’ve set back an hour. He discovered that this new state was actually more convenient for making notes on the lectures—all he had to do was to let his hand move on its own, allowing the lecturer’s mumbling to skip straight from his ears to his fingers, but on no account allowing it to enter his brain—then Nikolai would have woken up, or fallen into a deeper sleep, losing all contact with what was happening.

  Gradually, balancing between these two states, he grew so adept at sleeping that he learned how to pay attention to several subjects simultaneously with that tiny part of his consciousness that was responsible for contact with the external world. He might, for instance, have a dream in which the action unfolded in a women’s bath house (a frequent and rather strange vision, including a number of quite astonishing absurdities: on the log walls there were handwritten posters with versified appeals to people to save bread; and thickset red-haired women holding rusty washbasins, dressed in short ballet dresses made of feathers)—at the same time he was able to follow the streak of egg yolk on the lecturer’s tie, while listening to the joke about three Georgians in space that the student next to him recited constantly.

  For several days, waking up after Philosophy, Nikita was filled with joy at his new abilities, but the self-satisfaction evaporated when he realized that as yet all he could do in his sleep was listen and write, but the other student could tell a joke while he was asleep! It was obvious from that special oily gleam in his eyes, his general pose, and a number of other small but telling details. So one day, when he fell asleep at a lecture, Nikita tried telling a joke of his own in reply. He deliberately chose the shortest and most simple one, about an international violinists’ competition in Paris. He almost got through it, but stumbled right at the very end and started talking about Dnepropetrovsk geysers instead of Dzerzhinsky’s mauser. His neighbor didn’t notice anything, though, and chortled in a deep bass when three seconds had gone by without Nikita saying anything, and it was clear the joke was over. What astonished Nikita most of all was the deep, viscous quality his voice acquired when he was talking in his sleep. But it was dangerous to pay too much attention to this, or he would begin to wake up.

  Speaking while he was asleep was hard, but possible, and the lecturer served as an example of the extent to which human mastery of this skill could be taken. Nikita would never have guessed that the lecturer was asleep too, if he hadn’t noticed that when the lecturer leaned against the tall lectern in his usual fashion, from time to time he would turn over to his left side and end up with his back to the auditorium and his face to the board (in order to justify his impolite pose he would gesture feebly in the direction of his numbered list of premises). Sometimes when the lecturer turned his back, his speech would slow down and his utterances would become so liberal, they incited a fearful joy—but he gave most of the course propped up on his right side.

  Nikita soon realized that sleeping was convenient not only in lectures, but at seminars too, and gradually he was able to manage a few simple movements—he could get to his feet without waking up and greet the lecturer, he could go up to the board and wipe it clean, and even look for chalk in the nearby lecture halls. When he was called on, at first he used to wake up, become alarmed, and start confusing words and concepts, at the same time feeling a profound admiration for the sleeping lecturer’s ability to frown, clear his throat and bang his hand on the table, all while keeping his eyes open and actually maintaining some semblance of expression. The first time Nikita managed to answer a question in his sleep it was unexpected and completely without any preparation—he simply became aware at the boundary of his consciousness that he was reciting some “fundamental premises.” At the same time he was on the upper landing of a tall bell tower, where a small wind ensemble was playing, conducted by Love, who proved to be a short, yellow-haired old woman who moved with monkey-like agility.

  Nikita was given straight A’s, and from then on he even took notes from primary sources while he was still asleep,
and only reverted to full wakefulness in order to leave the reading hall. Little by little his mastery increased, and by the end of second year he was already falling asleep as he entered the subway in the morning, and waking up when he left the same station at night.

  But something began to frighten him. He noticed that he had begun to fall asleep unexpectedly, without being aware that he was doing so. It was only when he woke up that he realized, for instance, that Comrade Lunacharksy’s visit to their institute on a carriage with three black horses wearing bells was not part of the program of ideological studies devoted to the 300th anniversary of the first Russian balalaika (the entire country was preparing for the big date at the time), but just an ordinary dream.

  It was all very confusing, and in order to be able to tell whether he was asleep or not at any particular moment, Nikita began carrying a small pin with a big, round, green head in his pocket, and whenever he was in any doubt, he pricked his thigh, and everything became clear. Then, of course, there was the new fear that he might simply dream that he was pricking himself with the pin, but Nikita drove that thought out of his mind as quite unbearable. His relations with fellow students at the institute improved noticeably—the Communist Youth League organizer Seryozha Firsov, who could drink eleven glasses of beer in his sleep without stopping, confessed that he always used to think that Nikita was crazy, or at least that there was something strange about him, but now it was clear he was a good guy. Seryozha was about to add something else, but his tongue ran away with him, and he suddenly started talking about Spartak and Salavat Yulaev’s chances in soccer this year, from which Nikita, who was dreaming at that moment about the Battle of Kursk, concluded that his friend was having a highly confused Romano-Pugachevian dream of some sort. Nikita gradually stopped being surprised that the sleeping passengers in the subway were able to swear and argue, stand on each other’s feet and hold up those heavy bags filled with toilet paper and pickled seaweed—he had learned to do all of that himself. But he was astounded by something else. As soon as they reached an empty seat, many of the passengers in the subway would immediately drop their heads on to their chests and fall asleep—not the way they had been sleeping a minute earlier, but much deeper, completely cutting themselves off from everything around them. And yet when they heard the name of their station announced through their dreams, they never woke up completely, they slid straight back with astounding precision into the state from which they had previously taken their dive into temporary oblivion.

  Nikita noticed this for the first time when a man sitting in front of him wearing a blue overall coat, who was snoring so loudly the sound filled the entire car, suddenly jerked up his head, marked his place in the book lying open on his knees with his travel-pass, closed his eyes, and fell into a state of motionless, inorganic torpor; after a while the carriage was shaken violently and the man jerked his head and began snoring again. Nikita guessed the same thing must be happening to the others, even if they weren’t snoring.

  At home he began observing his parents closely and soon noticed that he could never catch them awake, no matter how hard he tried—they were asleep all of the time. Just once his father, sitting in the armchair, let his head droop and dozed off into a nightmare: he shrieked, waved his arms about, leapt to his feet, and woke up—Nikita could tell that from the expression on his face—but then he swore, fell back asleep, and sat down closer to the television, where the blue flickering screen was purveying some historical epic of communal dozing.

  On another occasion his mother dropped the iron onto her foot, giving herself a nasty bruise and a burn. Until the paramedics arrived, she sobbed so pitifully in her sleep that Nikita couldn’t bear it any longer and fell asleep himself until the evening, when his mother was already dozing peacefully over One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The book had been brought over by a neighbor attracted by the smell of bandages and blood, an old anthroposophist by the name of Maximka, who had reminded Nikita, ever since his childhood, of a decayed biblical patriarch. Maximka was only visited very rarely by any of his numerous criminal grandchildren, and he was quietly sleeping out his life in the company of several intelligent cats and a dark-colored icon with which he argued every morning.

  After the incident with the iron Nikita’s relations with his parents moved into a new phase. It turned out to be quite easy to avoid all the scandals and misunderstandings if you simply went to sleep at the beginning of the conversation. One time he and his father discussed the state of the country, and during the discussion Nikita squirmed and shuddered on his seat because Senkievich, the smirking host of “Traveler’s Club,” had tied him to the mast of his papyrus boat and was whispering something into Thor Heyerdahl’s ear. The boat was lost somewhere in the Atlantic, and Heyerdahl and Senkievich were walking around openly in their black Masonic caps.

  “You’re showing a bit more intelligence,” said his father, gazing up with one eye at the ceiling, “only I don’t know who can have been feeding you all that rubbish about caps. They have aprons, long ones down to here,” his father demonstrated with his hands.

  And so it turned out that no matter what form of human activity Nikita tried to adjust to, difficulties only existed until the moment he fell asleep, and after that, without the slightest real involvement on his part, he did everything that was required, and so well that when he woke up he was amazed. This applied both to the institute and to his free time, which used to be something of a torment to him because it just dragged on for so long. In his sleep Nikita devoured many of the books which had previously resisted his attempts to decipher them, and even learned to read newspapers, which finally reassured his parents, who had frequently whispered their bitter disappointment about him to each other.

  “It’s just like you’ve been reborn!” said his mother, who loved a pompous turn of phrase. This phrase was usually pronounced in the kitchen, while the borscht was being prepared. As the beets fell into the water, Nikita would begin dreaming of something out of Herman Melville. The smell of fried seaweed would fly out through the window, and mingle with the bovine lowing of a French horn. Then the music would fade away and the radio voice would begin speaking: “Today at seven o’clock we present for your attention a concert by master artists which sounds, so to speak, the final chord of the symphony of festivities devoted to the 300th anniversary of the Russian balalaika!”

  In the evening the family gathered round the blue window into the universe. Nikita’s parents had a family favorite: “The World in the Eye of the Camera.” His father came out to see it dressed in his gray striped pajamas and curled up in the armchair. His mother came in from the kitchen with a plate in her hand, and for hours at a time they would sit there enchanted, following the landscapes drifting across the screen through half-closed eyes.

  “If you long to try the taste of fresh bananas and wash them down with coconut milk,” said the television, “if you long to delight in the roaring of the surf, the golden warmth of the sands and the gentle sunshine, then...”

  At this point the television paused intriguingly. “...then that means you long to be among the bananas and lemons of Singapore.”

  Nikita snored along with his parents. Sometimes the name of the program would reach him, refracted through the prism of his dreams, and the content of his dreams would assume the form of a screen. Several times during the program “Our Garden,” Nikita dreamed about the inventor of a popular sexual perversity; the French marquis was dressed in a cranberry-red robe with gold lace trimming, and he was inviting Nikita to go with him to some women’s hostel.

  Sometimes everything deteriorated into total confusion and the archimandrite Julian, an essential participant for any self-respecting “round table,” would peer out of his long Zil with the flashing light on the top and say: “Till we meet again on the airwaves.”

  As he spoke he would jerk his finger upwards in a frightened manner toward the empty heavens. One of his parents would change the channel, and when Nikita half-open
ed his eyes he would see on the screen a major wearing a light-blue beret, standing in a hot mountain ravine.

  “Death?” the Major would say with a smile. “You’re only afraid of that at the beginning, just for the first few days. Serving here has really been an education for us—we’ve taught the spirits, and the spirits have taught us...”

  The off-switch would click, and Nikita would go to his own room to sleep under a blanket on the bed. In the morning, when he heard footsteps in the corridor or the alarm clock ring, he would open his eyes carefully, taking his time to adjust to the daylight, then get up and go to the bathroom, where various thoughts usually came into his head and his nightdreams gave way to the first of his daydreams.

  “How very lonely a human being really is,” he would think, twisting the toothbrush in his mouth. “I don’t even know what my parents are dreaming about, or what the passersby on the street or old grandpa Maximka are dreaming about. I wish I could at least ask someone why we’re all asleep.”

  Then he would panic at the thought of how impossible it was to discuss the question. Not even the most brazen of the books that Nikita had read had so much as mentioned it, and he had never heard anyone speak about it aloud. Nikita could guess what the problem was. This was not one of the ordinary things that simply go unspoken, it was a kind of universal joint on which people’s entire lives turned. Even if someone shouted out that they should tell the whole truth, it wasn’t because he really hated things being left unspoken, but because he was forced to by this most important thing in existence being left unspoken.

  Once, when he was standing in a slow-moving line for seaweed that tilled half the supermarket, Nikita even had a special dream on this subject. He was in a vaulted corridor, where the ceiling was decorated with moldings of vine leaves and snub-nosed female profiles, and the floor was covered with a red runner of carpet. Nikita set off along the corridor, turned several corners, and found himself in a dead end that ended with a painted-over window. One of the doors in the short cul-de-sac opened and a plump man in a dark suit peeped out. His eyes gleamed happily and he waved Nikita in.