‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Hello. I want to see you.’
‘Come on over,’ he said. ‘But there’s not much time. I’m flying north this evening. That only leaves us three hours.’
‘That’s enough for me,’ I said.
The taxi drove me slowly, the traffic lights took an eternity to change, and at every crossroads I felt my heart would leap out of my chest if I had to wait just a few more seconds.
When I got out of the lift he removed the gauze mask from his face and took a deep sniff.
‘I’ll probably never get used to the way you smell. It seems like I remember it, and yet every time it turns out the memory in my head is nothing like it. I’ll have to pull a few hairs out of your tail.’
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘Well . . . I’ll wear them in a locket on my chest,’ he said. ‘Take them out sometimes and smell them. Like a medieval knight.’
I smiled - his ideas about medieval knights were clearly derived from jokes. Perhaps that was the reason they were fairly close to the truth. Of course, the hairs that medieval knights carried in their medallions didn’t come from tails - who would have given them those? - but by and large the picture was accurate enough.
I noticed an unfamiliar object beside the divan - a floor-lamp in the shape of an immense Martini glass. It was a cone studded with light bulbs, set on a tall, thin leg.
‘That’s a really lovely thing. Where did it come from?’
‘It’s a gift from the reindeer-herders,’ he said.
‘The reindeer-herders?’ I said, amazed.
‘Or rather, the reindeer-herders’ leadership. Some funny guys from London. Good, isn’t it? Like a dragonfly’s eye.’
I wanted so badly to throw myself on him and hug him really tight that I could hardly keep still. I was afraid - if I took another step towards him there would be a shower of sparks between us. He clearly felt something too.
‘You’re kind of strange today. Haven’t been dropping anything, have you? Or sniffing anything?’
‘Afraid?’ I asked, glowering at him.
‘Ha,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen more frightening things.’
I started walking round him slowly. He chuckled and set off in the opposite direction round the same circle, without taking his eyes off me, as if we were a pair of fencers from one of the Japanese action movies that he liked watching so much in his lupine form, clutching on to me with his shaggy grey tail hooked over. Then we both stopped at the same moment. I took a step towards him, put my hands on his shoulder straps, pulled him towards me and, for the first time in our relationship I kissed him on the lips - the way that people kiss.
I’d never kissed anyone like that before. I mean physically, using my mouth. It was a strange feeling - wet, warm, with a gentle knocking of teeth against teeth. I put all my love into my first kiss. And a second later the transformation began.
At first everything looked exactly as usual - Alexander’s tail extended (or rather, tumbled) out of his spine, curled over, and an invisible thread of energy stretched between it and his head. After that he usually became a wolf in just a few moments. But this time something went wrong.
He jerked convulsively and fell on his back, as if his tail had suddenly become so heavy that it had pulled him over. Then he began rapidly jerking his arms and legs about in a horrible way (like people with craniocerebral injuries do), and in a few seconds he was transformed into a perfectly ordinary mongrel from the street or the local rubbish tip - a
dog
.
Yes, a dog. He was as big as an Alsatian, but clearly a mongrel. His plebeian proportions betrayed a mixture of numerous different breeds, and his eyes were clear and almost human in their anger, like the eyes of some wandering dogs who sleep in the entrances of the Metro with the homeless tramps. And this dog was blue-black, in fact purple-black, exactly like Aslan Udoev’s beard.
Maybe it was the colour, maybe it was the pointed ears that seemed to be straining after some distant sound but I thought I sensed something diabolical about this dog: thoughts came into my head about crows and gallows, about demonic possession ... I realize that when a creature like me says ‘thoughts came to me about demonic possession’ it sounds rather strange, but what can I do about it, if that’s the way it was. But the most macabre thing was the groan of horror that I either imagined or really did hear from every side - as if the earth itself had groaned.
I was so frightened that I started squealing. He jumped away from me, turned towards the mirror, saw, shuddered and started whimpering. Only then did I recover my wits. At that point I’d already realized that something terrible had happened to him, some kind of catastrophe, and it was my fault. The catastrophe had been caused by my kiss, by that electrical circuit of love that I had closed when I pressed my lips against his mouth.
I squatted down beside him and put my arms round his neck. But he tore himself away, and when I tried to hold him back, he bit me on the hand. Not really hard, but it started to bleed in two places. I gasped and jerked away. He dashed to the door into the other room, slammed his paws against it and disappeared inside.
He didn’t come out for an entire hour. I realized that he wanted to be left alone and I didn’t intrude on his solitude. I was terrified, afraid that any moment I would hear a shot (he had once promised to shoot himself for an absolutely trivial reason). But instead of a shot I heard music. He’d put on ‘I Follow the Sun’. He listened to the song once, then put it on again. His soul was clearly in need of oxygen.
I was left there, sitting on the carpet in front of the divan. As soon as I calmed down a little bit, I began getting ideas about what might have happened. The first thing I remembered was the deceased Lord Cricket and his lecture about the snake force descending through the tail. Naturally, once I heard the word ‘super-werewolf’, I had regarded all his theories as crazy nonsense, a garland of foul-smelling bubbles in the swamp of profane esotericism. But one aspect of what had happened lent a certain weight to what his lordship had said.
Before his transformation, Alexander had fallen on the floor, just as if someone had tugged on his tail. Or as if his tail had become incredibly heavy. In any case, something unusual had happened, something that had taken him by surprise - and it had something to do with his organ of hypnotic suggestion. And Lord Cricket had said that the transition from a wolf to what he called the ‘super-werewolf’ took place when the kundalini descended to the very tip of the tail. And as well as that . . .
This was the most unpleasant part. As well as that, he had mentioned an ‘involtation of darkness’ that was necessary for this to happen, the spiritual influence of a ‘senior demonic entity . . .’
Little me?
It was hard to believe it. But on the other hand, what the deceased lord had said could well have contained a grain of truth picked up from somewhere by that Aleister Crowley of his. All sorts of secret gatherings and mystical rituals were held in the world - it couldn’t all be absolute charlatanism, could it? One thing was certain - I had played a fatal part in what had happened. Apparently I had been the catalyst for some obscure alchemical reaction. As Haruki Murakami said, the force emanating from a woman is not very great, but it can certainly move a man’s heart . . .
The most terrible thing was the realization that what had happened was irreversible - a were-creature never makes mistakes about things like that. I could tell that Alexander would never again be the way he used to be. And it wasn’t just supposition on my part, I knew it with my tail. It was as if I’d dropped a precious vase that had shattered into a thousand fragments, and now it could never be glued back together again.
I plucked up my courage, walked over to the door through which he had disappeared and opened it.
I’d never been in there before. What I found behind the door was a small space, like a dressing room, with a table, an armchair and cupboards running right round the walls. There was a small digital recorder lying on the table. It was playing the Shocking Blue song again, promising to follow the sun until the end of time.
Alexander was unrecognizable. He had already changed his clothes - now, instead of a general’s uniform, he was wearing a dark grey jacket and a black turtleneck. I’d never seen him dressed like that before. But the most important thing was the elusive change that had taken place in his face - the eyes seemed to have moved closer together and faded somehow. And their expression had altered too - a new despair, balanced by fury, had appeared in them: I don’t think anyone else but me would have been able to separate out these components of his outwardly calm gaze. It was him, but not him. I felt afraid.
‘Sasha,’ I called softly.
He looked up at me and asked: ‘Do you remember the story about the Little Scarlet Flower?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’ve only just realized what it really means.’
‘What?’
‘Love doesn’t transform. It simply tears away the masks. I thought I was a prince. But it turns out . . . This is what my soul is like.’
‘Don’t dare talk like that,’ I whispered. ‘It’s not true. You didn’t understand a thing. It has absolutely nothing to do with your soul. It’s . . . it’s like . . .’
‘It’s like hatching out from the egg,’ he said sadly. ‘You can’t hatch back into it.’
He had expressed my own feeling with astonishing precision. So the change really was irreversible. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to fall through the floor, then through the ground, and keep going to infinity . . . But he didn’t think it was my fault. On the contrary, he made it clear that he thought the cause of what had happened lay in him. What a noble heart he does have, really, I thought.
He stood up.
‘Now I’m going to fly north,’ he said, running his fingers tenderly over my cheek. ‘Come what may. We’ll see each other in three days.’
He appeared three days later.
I wasn’t expecting him that morning, and my instinct had given me no warning. The knock at the door sounded strangely weak. If it had been the militia, the fire inspectors, the public health inspectors, the district architect or any other bearers of the national idea, it wouldn’t have sounded like that - I knew how people knocked when they came for money. I thought it must be the old cleaning lady who cleaned the stand. She sometimes came to ask for hot water. I’d given her an electric kettle twice, but she still came anyway - probably out of loneliness.
Alexander was standing outside - deathly pale, with blue circles under his eyes and a long scratch on his left cheek. He was wearing a crumpled summer raincoat. I could smell alcohol on him - not old, stale fumes, but the way an open bottle of vodka smells. I’d never known him to drink before.
‘How did you find me?’ I asked.
It would have been hard to think of a more stupid question. He didn’t even bother to answer.
‘There’s no time. Can you hide me?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Come in.’
‘This place is no good. Our people know about it. Have you got somewhere else?’
‘Yes I have. Come in and we’ll talk about it.’
He shook his head.
‘Let’s go right now. Another five minutes and it will be too late.’
I realized the situation was serious.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Will we be coming back here?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Then I’ll take my bag. And my bike. Will you come in?’
‘I’ll wait here.’
A few minutes later we were already walking away from the equestrian complex along a forest path. I was pushing my bike along by the handlebars: I had an extremely heavy bag hanging over my shoulder, but Alexander didn’t make the slightest attempt to help me. That wasn’t really like him - but I sensed that he could hardly even walk.
‘Will it take much longer?’
‘About half an hour, if we don’t hurry.’
‘What sort of place is it?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘They don’t come any safer.’
I was taking him to my own personal bomb shelter.
It often happens that preparations made in case of war are actually used by a later age for a different purpose. In the eighties many people had been expecting the Cold War to end in a hot one - there were at least three portents that indicated such a development was imminent:
1. bully beef from the strategic reserves of Stalin’s time - which were assembled in case there was a third world war - appeared on the shelves in shops (the cans were easily identifiable by the lack of any markings, the distinctive yellowish tinge of the metal, a thick layer of Vaseline and their completely tasteless, almost colourless contents).
2. the American president was called Ronald Wilson Reagan. Each word in his name contained six letters, giving the apocalyptic number of the beast - ‘666’ - a fact that was frequently mentioned with alarm by the journal
Communist
, where many architects of the future reform worked at the time.
3. the surname Reagan was pronounced exactly like ‘ray gun’ - a fact that I noticed myself.