Free The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin Page B

wasn’t prepared for that.

    ‘Sweetheart!’ Pavel Ivanovich screamed. ‘Sweetheart, what’s wrong? What are you doing, you snake? Militia! Anybody! Help!’

    When he started calling for the militia, I came to my senses. But it was too late - Pavel Ivanovich had received three lashes that even Mel Gibson wouldn’t have been ashamed of. And even though those three lashes were only hypnotic, the blood that had started running down his back was real. Of course, I regretted what I’d done, but that always happens a second later than it ought to. And anyway, in my heart I played another cunning trick - knowing I would be overwhelmed by repentance at any moment, and adopting the inner stance of a repentant sinner, I said in a final vengeful, voluptuous whisper:

    ‘That’s for you from Young Russia, you stupid old fart . . .’

    As I review my life now, I find many dark spots in it. But the sense of shame I feel for this is exceptionally keen.

     
     

    Many shrines in Asia surprise the traveller by the contrast between the bare poverty of their empty rooms and the multilevel splendour of their roofs - with their upturned corners, precious carved dragons and scarlet tiles. The symbolic meaning here is clear: treasure should not be stored up on earth, but in heaven. The walls symbolize this world, the roof symbolizes the next. Look at the building itself and it’s a hovel. But look at the roof and it’s a palace.

    I found the contrast between Pavel Ivanovich and his ‘roof’ - the modern Russian term for protection - equally fascinating, even though there was absolutely no spiritual symbolism involved. Pavel Ivanovich was merely a petty philological demon. But the roof over his head . . . But then, all in good time.

    The call came two days after the lashing, at eight-thirty in the morning, too early even for a client with special oddities. The number that lit up didn’t mean a thing to me. I’d been up since four o’clock and already managed to get a lot of things done, but just in case I drawled in a sleepy voice:

    ‘Hello-o. . .’

    ‘Adele?’ a cheerful voiced asked. ‘I’m ringing about your advert.’

    I’d already taken the announcement off the site, but someone could easily have saved it for future reference, clients often do that.

    ‘Let a girl get some sleep, eh?’

    ‘Triple rates for short notice. If you’re there in an hour.’

    When I heard the words ‘triple rates’, I stopped being difficult and wrote down the address. One of my Latin American sisters told me that the Panamanian general Noriega liked to drink whisky non-stop all night long, and early in the morning he would send for one of the six women who he always had around him to have sex - my sister knew this, because she was one of them. But that’s Panama - cocaine and hot blood. For our latitudes such early morning passion was a little bit strange. But I didn’t sense any danger.

    For the sake of speed I took the Metro and in fifty minutes I was already there. The client lived in the quiet centre of town. When I walked into the courtyard of the building I wanted (a tall concrete candle with pretensions to architectural originality), I thought at first that I’d made a mistake and this was the back entrance to some bank.

    There were two guards standing by the metal gates in the wall. They looked at me in glum incomprehension and I showed them the piece of paper with the address on it. Then one them of nodded towards an unobtrusive porch with an intercom on it. I walked up to the intercom.

    ‘Adele?’ the voice in the speaker asked.

    ‘In person.’

    ‘Come up to the first floor, the last door,’ said the intercom. ‘You’ll see when you get here.’

    The door opened.

    It didn’t look much like a block of flats. There wasn’t any lift, or any real stairway either. That is, there was one, but it ended on the first floor, running straight up to a black door with no spy-hole or bell, but with the tiny lens of