The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin

smiled.

    ‘It’s stuffy in here,’ he said. ‘Please allow me to show you out into the fresh air.’

    I liked his polite manner.

    We went out of the flat a different way. The steel pole I’d seen in one of the rooms turned out to lead to the ground floor. You see similar poles in fire stations and go-go bars. You can slide down a pole like that to a big beautiful fire engine and receive a medal ‘for bravery at the scene of a fire’. Or you can rub your bottom and your breasts against it erotically and receive a few moist banknotes from the audience. So many different roads through life lie before us . . .

    Fortunately, today I didn’t have to do either of these things. Beside the pole there was a narrow spiral staircase - obviously for less urgent occasions. That was the way we went down, into a dark garage where there was a fantastic black car - an absolutely genuine Maibach. There couldn’t be more than a few of those in the whole of Moscow.

    The young man stopped beside the car and raised his head - so that his nose was pointed at me - then took a powerful breath in. It looked weird. But after that his face assumed a blissful expression - as if he’d been really moved by something, in fact.

    ‘I’d like to apologize for what happened,’ he said, ‘and ask you to do me a favour.’

    ‘What sort of favour?’

    ‘I need to choose a present for a girl of about your age. I have no idea about ladies’ jewellery and I would be very grateful for some advice.’

    I hesitated for a second. Generally speaking, in situations like this, you should clear out at the first opportunity - but somehow I felt I wanted to continue the acquaintance. And I was wondering what the interior of the car looked like.

    ‘All right,’ I said.

    But the moment I got into the car I forgot all about the interior - I was so struck by the pass on the windscreen.

    I’d noticed a long time before then that the Russian authorities had a certain tendency towards kitsch: they were always attempting to issue themselves a charter of nobility and pass themselves off as the glorious descendants of empire with all its history and culture - despite the fact that they had about as much in common with the old Russia as some Lombards grazing their goats amid the ruins of the Forum had with the Flavian dynasty. The pass on the Maibach’s windscreen was a fresh example of the genre. It had a gold double-headed eagle, a three-digit number and the inscription:

    Lo and behold, this sombre carriage
Can travel everywhere in this town
A. S. Pushkin

     

    What can I say? Okay, an eagle. Okay, Pushkin. (I think it was a quotation from A Feast in the Time of Plague .) But the feeling of pride in our great country that the FSB copywriters had been counting on failed to materialize. The problem was probably a wrong choice of period for the references. They should have gone for feudal chronicles, not imperial eagles.

    ‘What are you thinking about?’

    ‘Ah? Me?’ I said, coming to my senses.

    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When you think, you wrinkle up your little nose in a very touching sort of way.’

    We were already driving along the street.

    ‘By the way, we haven’t introduced ourselves yet,’ he said.

    ‘Alexander. You can call me Sasha. I’m Sasha Sery.’ That was interesting - ‘sery’ is the Russian word for ‘grey’.

    ‘And what’s your name?’

    ‘Adele.’

    ‘Adele?’ he asked, opening his eyes wide. ‘You’re not joking?’

    I shook my head.

    ‘Incredible. There’s so much in my life that’s linked with that name! You can’t even imagine. Our meeting like this is fate. It’s no accident that you’ve ended up in my car . . .’

    ‘Do you have a fishing reel with you?’ I asked.

    ‘A fishing reel? What for?’

    ‘You can wind me on to it after you finish stringing me along.’

    He laughed.

    ‘You don’t believe me? About Adele?’

    ‘No,’ I said.

    ‘I can explain what it’s all about. If