The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin Page B

that:
    1. since a woman can pass off a reproductive mechanism as a wonderful spring flower, female nature cannot be reduced just to the bearing of children: it also includes at least the skill of brainwashing.
    2. by its very nature a wonderful spring flower is exactly the same kind of mechanism for reproduction and brainwashing, only its meat is green and it brainwashes the bees.
    3. apart from the woman, no one needs the precious setting, so it’s pointless to discuss whether she is worthy of it or not.
    4. mobile phones with inbuilt antennas have convenient shapes, but poor reception, especially in reinforced concrete buildings.
    5. mobile phones with an external antenna are inconvenient, and their reception in reinforced concrete buildings is even worse.

    Woman is a peaceful creature, she only hypnotizes her own male and inflicts no harm on birds and animals. Since she does this in the name of the supreme biological goal, that is, personal survival, the deception here is pardonable, and it’s none of our foxy business to go sticking our noses in. But when a married man who lives every moment in a dream planted in his head by his wife, complete with elements of nightmare and gothic, suddenly declares over a glass of beer that woman is simply a device for bearing children, that is very, very funny. The man doesn’t even realize how comical he is when he says that. In this particular case I’m not hinting at Count Tolstoy, whom I admire tremendously, I’m speaking generally.

    But I’m wandering from the point. I just wanted to say that woman’s hypnotic abilities are obvious, and anyone who has any doubts about that can easily lay them to rest by going into a shop that sells expensive trinkets.

    I didn’t realize until the final moment that Alexander was choosing a present for me. I simply had no reason to think anything of the kind. I assumed he needed to buy a souvenir for some glamorous little bimbo, and I gave him perfectly serious advice. So I felt quite exceptionally stupid when he finally held out the bag containing the two small cases that he had just paid for. I wasn’t expecting it. And foxes have to foresee what a man will do - if not everything, then at least the things that affect us personally. Our survival depends on it.

    The two identical small white boxes contained rings that cost 10,000 and 18,000 dollars - platinum and diamonds. The large stone was point eight of a carat, the small one point five four. Tiffany. Would you believe it - 28,000 dollars! How many times I’d have to strain my tail for that, I thought with a feeling that was almost class hatred. And the most important thing was that he didn’t want anything from me. Apart from my phone number. He said he was flying to the north and he’d call when he got back.

    It wasn’t easy buying the rings. The sales assistant wasn’t prepared to put through such a substantial transaction herself. Neither was the cashier.

    ‘I can’t do it without the manager,’ she kept saying.

    It was only when I got back home to Bitsevsky Park that I realized how tired I was - I didn’t even have the strength to check my e-mails. I slept until the middle of the next day. I had suspiciously Borgesian dreams about the defence of a fortress - something like the storming of a city during the Yellow Turban rebellion. I was one of the defenders and I was throwing heavy javelins down from the walls.

    No need to explain the symbolism to me, I can’t stand that. Back in the 1920s I used to drive romantic Red Freudians crazy by telling them dreams that I invented: ‘And then our tails fell off and they told us they were lying in a coconut hanging above a waterfall.’ If I sometimes throw javelins in a dream, it doesn’t mean I don’t take in the symbolic significance of what’s going on. And even less does it mean that I do take it in. I stopped collecting that sort of garbage a long time ago. Life’s less cluttered that way.

    After a rest, my head