I decided to reveal the innermost essence of things to him. This required him to master several ideas that were new to him and then use them, like steps, to ascend to the higher truth. But even explaining these initial notions was difficult.
The problem is that everybody knows the words that express the truth - and if you don’t, you can easily find them in five minutes via Google. But hardly anyone at all actually knows the truth. It’s like one of those ‘magic eye’ pictures - a chaotic jumble of coloured lines and spots that can be transformed into a three-dimensional image by focusing your vision correctly. It all seems very simple, but you can’t focus someone else’s eyes for them when they look, no matter how well-disposed you are towards them. The truth is a picture just like that. It is there right in front of everybody’s eyes, even the tailless monkeys’. But there are very few who actually see it. Although many think that they understand it. This, of course, is nonsense - the truth is like love, there is nothing to understand. And what is usually taken for the truth is some kind of intellectual dross.
One day I noticed a tiny grey pouch hanging round Alexander’s neck on a grey string. I guessed that the colour had been chosen to match a wolf’s fur - so that the pouch would not be visible when he turned into a wolf. But now it stood out against his black fur. I decided to ask him about it that evening, when he was in a benign mood.
He was in the habit of smoking a malodorous Cuban cigar before bed - a Montecristo III or Cohiba Siglo IV. I knew the names, because I had to go to get them. That was the best time to talk to him. In case you didn’t know, smoking triggers a discharge of dopamine into the brain - and dopamine is the substance responsible for a feeling of well-being: a smoker borrows this well-being against his own future and transforms it into problems with his health. That evening we settled down in the doorway of our home and he lit up (I wouldn’t allow him to smoke inside). I waited until his cigar was half burnt away and asked:
‘Tell me, what have you got in that little pouch hanging round your neck?’
‘A cross,’ he said.
‘A cross? You wear a cross?’
He nodded.
‘But why hide it? It’s okay to wear them now.’
‘It may be okay,’ he said. ‘But it burns my chest when I transform. ’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘It doesn’t really hurt. It’s just that every time there’s a smell of scorched fur.’
‘If you like, I can teach you a mantra,’ I said, ‘so that no cross will ever burn you again.’
‘Oh, sure! I’m not going to recite your infernal mantra so my cross doesn’t burn my chest. Don’t you realize what a sin that would be?’
I looked at him incredulously.
‘Hang on. So maybe you’re a believer too, are you?’
‘What of it,’ he said. ‘Of course I’m a believer.’
‘In the sense of the Orthodox Christian Cultural Heritage? Or for real?’
‘I don’t understand the distinction. In the Holy Writ it says:
“Even the demons believe and tremble!” That’s about us, and that’s what I do - believe and tremble.’
‘But you’re a werewolf, Sasha. So according to all the Orthodox precepts your road leads straight to hell. Tell me, I’d like to know, why would you choose a faith in which you have to go to hell?’
‘You don’t choose your faith,’ he said morosely. ‘Just like you don’t choose your motherland.’
‘But the reason religion exists is to offer hope of salvation. What are you hoping for?’
‘That God will forgive my evil deeds.’
‘And what evil deeds have you got?’
‘That’s obvious. I’ve lost the image of God. And then there’s you ...’
I almost choked in indignation.
‘So you don’t think I’m the brightest and purest thing in your entire lupine life, on the contrary, I’m an evil deed for which you’ll have to atone?’
He shrugged.
‘I love you, you know that. It’s not a matter of you personally. It’s just that the two of us live, you know . . .’
‘What do I know?’
He released a cloud of smoke.
‘In sin . . .’
My anger instantly evaporated. And instead I felt more like laughing than I had for a long time.
‘No, come on, tell me,’ I said, feeling the bubbles of laughter rising in my throat. ‘So I’m your sin, am I?’
‘Not you,’ he said in a quiet voice, ‘it’s that . . .’
‘What?’
‘Tailechery,’ he said in a very quiet voice and lowered his eyes.
I bit my lip. I knew that whatever I did, I mustn’t laugh - he had shared his most intimate feelings with me. And I didn’t laugh. But the effort was so great it could easily have made a new silver hair appear in my tail. So he’d even invented a term for it!
‘Don’t take offence,’ he said. ‘I’m being honest with you, saying what I feel. I can lie if you like. Only then there won’t be any point in talking to each other.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you’re right. It’s just that this is all rather unexpected. ’
We sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the tops of the prolific umbrella plants swaying in the wind.
‘And have you been . . . a believer for long?’ I asked.
‘It’s five years now.’
‘To be honest, I thought you were more into the Nordic gods. You know, Fafnir, Nagelfahr, Fenrir, Loki, Baldur’s dreams . . .’
‘That too,’ he said with a selfconscious smile. ‘Only that’s external, a shell. A sort of frame, aesthetic decoration. You know, like the sphinxes on the banks of the Neva in Petersburg.’
‘And how did you end up in this state?’
‘In my younger days I used to be keen on Castaneda. And I read in one of his books that awareness is the food of the Eagle. The way I understood it, the Eagle’s some obscure thing they have instead of God. I’m no coward, far from it. But that made me feel afraid . . . Anyway, I turned to Orthodoxy. Even though the situation was rather ambivalent. I was already a wolf then, it was three years since I’d been accepted into the pack. We still had a pack in those days. Colonel Lebedenko was still alive . . .’
He gestured helplessly.
‘Awareness is the food of the Eagle?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Alexander. ‘That’s what the magicians of ancient Yucatán believed.’
What a little boy he still is, really, I thought tenderly.
‘Silly boy. It’s not awareness that’s the food of the Eagle. It’s the Eagle that’s the food of awareness.’
‘Which Eagle exactly?’
‘Any. And the magicians of ancient Yucatán too, with all their business seminars, workshops, videodiscs and ageing Naguals. Every last one of them is the food of awareness. Including you.’
‘How’s that?’ he asked.
I took his cigar and blew out a cloud of smoke.
‘You see that?’
He watched as it swirled and evolved.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Are you aware of it?’
‘Yes.’
‘A werewolf is like that cloud of smoke. He lives, changes his form, his colour and volume. Then he disappears. But when the smoke dissipates, nothing happens to awareness. Something else just appears in it instead.’
‘But where does awareness go after death?’
‘It doesn’t have to go anywhere,’ I said. ‘You’re not going anywhere, are you? You’re sitting there, you’re smoking. And it’s the same.’
‘But what about heaven and hell?’
‘They’re smoke rings. Awareness doesn’t go anywhere. On the contrary, anything that does go anywhere immediately becomes its food. Like that smoke there. Or like your thoughts.’
‘But whose awareness is it?’ he asked.
‘That’s the food of awareness as well.’
‘No, you don’t understand the question. Whose is it?’
‘And that too,’ I said patiently.
‘But there has to be -’
‘And that,’ I interrupted.
‘Then who . . .’
At this point he suddenly seemed to get it - he took his chin in his hand and stopped talking.
It’s really difficult trying to explain these things in abstract terms. You can get tangled up in the words: ‘In perception there is neither subject nor object, but only the pure experience of the transcendent nature, and this experience is everything - both physical objects and mental constructs, which include the ideas of a perceived object and a perceiving subject . . .’ After the first three words you can’t tell what it’s all about any more. But with an example it’s easy - one good puff of smoke and that’s it. So now he understood. Or almost understood.
‘Then what do you reckon this is, all around us?’ he asked, taking back his cigar. ‘Is it like
The Matrix
?’
‘Almost, but not quite.’
‘So what’s the difference?’
‘In
The Matrix
there’s an objective reality - a warehouse outside town with the bodies of the people stacked in it. Otherwise the portfolio investors wouldn’t have put up the money for the film, they’re very strict about that sort of thing. But in fact everything’s like in
The Matrix
, only without that warehouse.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘There’s a dream, but there isn’t anybody dreaming it. That is, they’re part of the dream too. Some say the dream dreams itself. But strictly speaking there isn’t any “itself”.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘In
The Matrix
everybody was connected by wires to something real. But in actual fact everybody’s connected to the same kind of pipedream as they are themselves. And since all the dreamers see more or less the same, this pipedream is also a joint dream, and that’s why people call it real. The dream only lasts for as long as the connection continues. But once it stops, there’s no hardware left behind for the court bailiffs to inventorize. Or any body for them to bury.’
‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said with a grin. ‘More often than not, that’s exactly what does happen.’
‘You know what they say - leave the virtuals to bury their virtuals. The buriers and the buried are only real in relation to each other.’
‘How can that be possible?’
‘Take a look around.’
He thought for a while without saying anything. Then he nodded sullenly.
‘A pity you weren’t around to explain that. And what good is it now . . . It’s too late to change my life now.’
‘Yes, you’re really stuck, you poor sod,’ I sighed. ‘Why don’t you try moving your assemblage point in the position of holy life?’
‘Are you laughing at me?’ he asked. ‘Well laugh, Ginger, go on. It’s stupid, I don’t deny it. Do you believe in God yourself?’
I was really taken aback by that.
‘Do you believe?’ he repeated.
‘Foxes respect the religion of Adonai,’ I replied diplomatically.
‘Respect isn’t where it’s at. Can you tell me if you believe or not?’
‘Foxes have their own faith.’
‘And what do they believe in?’
‘The super-werewolf.’
‘The one Lord Cricket talked about?’
‘Lord Cricket was way off beam. He didn’t have a clue about the super-werewolf.’
‘But who is the super-werewolf?’
‘There are several levels of understanding. At the most primitive one, he is the messiah who will come and tell all the were-creatures what the score is. This interpretation has been influenced by human religion, and the central profane symbol corresponding to it was also taken from people.’
‘And what is this central profane symbol?’
‘An inverted five-pointed star. The humans don’t understand it correctly. They draw a goat’s head into it with the horns at the top. They like to see the devil everywhere, except in the mirror and on TV.’
‘So what does this star really mean?’
‘It’s the vulpine crucifix. Something like the St Andrew’s Cross with a crossbar for the tail. Of course, we have no intention of crucifying anyone, we’re not people. All this signifies a symbolic atonement for the sins of foxes, of which the most important is ignorance.’
‘And how is the super-werewolf going to atone for the sins of foxes?’
‘He will give foxes the
Sacred Book of Werewolf
.’
‘What kind of book is that?’
‘The general belief is that it will reveal the central mystery of all were-creatures. Every were-creature who reads it will be able to comprehend this mystery five times.’
‘And what’s this book going to be called?’
‘I don’t know. Nobody does. They say its title will be a magical pentagrammaton, a spell that annihilates all obstacles. But all this is no more than legend. The concept of the super-werewolf has a true meaning that has nothing to do with all these fairy tales.’