Page 7 (2/2)

To Sashka, a memento

Transform!

WOLF-FLOW!

Colonel Lebedenko

I closed the file and put it back under Monica, then continued with my search I wasn&039;t surprised when I found several CDs beside the music centre, all with various performances of the same opera:

RICHARD WAGNER

DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN

G?tterd?hton the floor between the wall and the divan - as if so to bed, fallen asleep and dropped it On its cover ritten:

&039;Shitman&039; Project

Top secret

Copy No 9

not to be re

At that e title and the story about the Shakespeare specialist that Pavel Ivanovich had told hts followed a different route - I decided it was yet another proof of the power of American cultural influence Superins to stereotype reality in their iht, what could Russia put up against this? The Shitov Project? Who would be willing to spend nights sweating over that for low pay? That Shitov in a poor suit had been responsible for the collapse of the Soviet ee much from one culture to another, but the huh, fails to provide one, and it calls this state of affairs spiritualityThat&039;s the reason for all the disasters

I didn&039;t even bother to open the notebook I&039;d had a horror of secret docuood and they could snow you under with probleht by several graphic works on paper that were hanging on the walls - runes that had been roughly draith either a broad brush or a paw They reraphy - the crudest andbetween two of these runes there was a branch of mistletoe - I learned that from the caption on the wall: to look at, it was sin on the carpet was curious, it showed a battle between lions and wolves - it looked like a copy of a Roman mosaic The books on the only bookshelf were mostly massive illustrated editions (The Splendour of Roin of Species and Houns) But then, I knew that the books on shelves like that had nothing to do with the taste of their owners, because they were chosen by the interior designers

Having concluded lass door on to the roof The view from there was beautiful Down beloere the dark pits of pre-Revolutionary courtyards i up above thes of the phallic architecture - an atteently into the historical landscape, and the result was that they looked as if they were smeared with some kind of personal lubricant After the up to the clouds its ancient dicks with the gold balls sewn into their tops

This daht, it&039;s terrible how badly it&039;s perverted my perception of the world But then, has it really perverted it all that h life and barely touch it, like a light shower of rain in Asia But to be a hu here is hard Take one step away froestalt, and this country will screw you over A theoreh to the end, no lamorous coverlets you spread over the daily festival of life I should know, I&039;ve seen plenty of it Why? I have o into the subject People probably aren&039;t simply born here by chance, it&039;s no accidentAnd no one is able to help anyone else Could that be the reason why Moscow sunsets always reat view fro round He was standing by the door of the lift with a tightly packed plastic bag in his hand The design on the bag was a green snake wound around a medical chalice

&039;There wasn&039;t any iodine,&039; he said anxiously, &039;they gave e I think that&039;s even better for us - it won&039;t stand out soand turned away towards theHe walked across and stood beside

&039;It&039;s beautiful here in summer,&039; he said &039;Put Zemfira on the player, watch and listen: &039;Goodbye, beloved cityI al your annalsWhat do you think shelike she&039;s been in deep shit for far too long?&039;

&039;Don&039;t try to soft-soapbetter&039;

&039;I want to go home,&039; I said

&039;But&039;

He nodded towards the plastic bag

&039;No need, thanks When they bring you in a wounded comrade, you&039;ll be able to treat him I&039;m off&039;

&039;Mikhalich will drive you&039;

&039;I don&039;t want your Mikhalich, I&039;ll e&039;

I was already at the lift

&039;When can I see you?&039; he asked

&039;I don&039;t know,&039; I said &039;If I don&039;t die, call in three days&039;

After copulation, all animals are sad - so the ancient Romans used to say Apart from foxes, I would have added And apart from women I knew that for certain now

I don&039;t mean to say that women are animals Quite the contrary - men are ive off and the sounds they make, their type of physicality and the ht for personal happiness (not to mention what they actually think of as happiness) But the ancient Roman who described his own mood after the act of love in anic sex-chauvinist that he simply failed to take woman into account, and that , there could be at least four explanations for this saying:

1 the Romans didn&039;t think woht woman was an animal, but they copulated with her in a way that really did make her sad (for instance, Suetonius tells us that the law forbade the killing of virgins by strangulation, and the executioner used to ravish the sad?)

3 the Romans didn&039;t think woman was an animal, they assus, the Roreat deal - apart, of course, froulation

4 the Romans had no penchant for either woman or metaphor, but they did for livestock cattle and poultry, who did not reciprocate and were unable to conceal their feelings

There could be an element of truth in each of these explanations - no doubt all sorts of things happened in the course of several centuries of empire But I was a happy animal

For the last fifteen hundred years I&039;d had an old s, to whose opinion I was profoundly indifferent, but within our small community of foxes It had sometimes seemed to ood grounds for these thoughts of inity in ancient ti story hat had happened to sister E - she had been set on a stake by a noony for three days She had to wait until the noood her escape into the steppe I suspected that this was the origin of the insatiable hatred for the aristocracy she had manifested for so many centuries in her most whimsical escapades

But even so I was just a little bit sad As the graues on the gael who abandons us e lose our virginity But the sadness I felt was radiant, and on the whole I was in an excellent h I had the feeling that I&039;d been treated the sa others all estion that had been planted in my mind? It was pure paranoia - we foxes can&039;t be hypnotized But there was a certain vague unease gnawing at my heart

I couldn&039;t understand the transforo a supraphysical tranforoes so far - what Alexander had done wasThere was an ancientthat foxes had already forgotten, and I knew that I would keep co tiht affect rounds for any such concerns, but irrational fear is always the hardest to shake off I kneouldn&039;t calm down until I&039;d testedwith an offer, I decided right away to go

Fro the client sounded to me like a bashful student froh money for a ritual of fareith his childhood But soainst the database I keep in my computer It turned out to be the nearestSaturday in honour of the spring - the kind of event I simply couldn&039;t stand ever since Soviet times But today I decided to enter the beast&039;s lair voluntarily

There turned out to be three cops There was no shower-room in the station, and I had to prepare myself for battle in a toilet with a cracked toilet-bowl that re the revolutionary years (they used to hold people&039;s heads down over a toilet bowl like that when they executed the blood on the floor) My fears, of course, proved entirely unfounded - all the militiamen sank into a trance just as soon as I raised one back to the equestrian co idea occurred toabout Ro Suetonius, and clearly that was the reason for enuity I reies in Capri: it mentioned the so called &039;spintrii&039;, who infla themselves three at a tiination - in my own mind I even translated &039;Splinter Cell&039; (the title of an innocent co &039;The Sect of the Splintrii&039; Now that I found myself in the co an experih I must say, I failed to understand what Tiberius found so arousing in this crude spectacle - to my mind it looked more like an illustration of the first noble truth of Buddhis and pain But I already knew that, without a triad of copulating militiamen

In the station I discovered four thousand dollars, which could-n&039;t have come at a better tie-forraphs, which I enjoyed leafing through The tendency that this genre had followed in its evolution ious consciousness was reclai the positions it had lost in the twentieth century Naturally, the nizable at first sight For instance, I didn&039;t immediately realize that the words &039;SWAT SWAT SWAT&039; tattooed under a blue cross that looked more like a German military award than a crucifixion were not eles Police Department&039;s special assault force, but the Russian phrase &039;Svyat, Svyat, Svyat&039; ( &039;Holy, Holy, Holy&039;) written in Latin letters

The photograph that est i heaven and earth Heaven was located between his shoulder-blades - the sun was shining and there were angels who looked like postal pigeons flying about The earth level looked like the official crest of Moscoith the dragon-killer mounted on his steed, except that instead of a lance, there was a bundle of different-coloured rays e froons - spiteful little ones, crooked squashed ones and so an alleyway planted with trees The whole scene was entitled &039;Saint George driving the lesbians off Tverskoi Boulevard&039;

Flicking through several pages with the traditional Stalins, Hitlers, snakes, spiders and sharks (under one of them it said &039;deep is my motherland&039;, instead of &039;broad is ), I caain: someone&039;s back decorated with a panoramic view of hell with sinners in tor devoured by wor on a bonfire in a frivolous white T-shirt with the ee showed a pale, dystrophic shoulder with the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion, in which the cap of the mushroom had been replaced by the NIKE streak with the word NUKE in it - evidently aof the spintrii in the background, all this see? Who was leading it? What was going to happen on earth in fifty years? A hundred years? My springtiood haul I&039;d made But at least my conscience was clear I didn&039;t consider that I was stealing anything - I&039;d just taken payot my money - and I&039;d never concealed the fact that ht about tattoos I like them, but I almost never have any done On foxes they don&039;t last more than twenty years And apart from that, they often blur in the weirdest way It&039;s so to do with the rather different nature of our physical being In the whole of the last century, I only had one tattoo - two lines that the poet W H Auden burned into my heart for ever, and the one-eyed tattooist Slava Kosoi inscribed temporarily on my shoulder:

I am a sex machine

And I&039;e blue tear, which for some reason e - as if the inhabitants of the shabby Soviet paradise really didn&039;t knohat it was to be sad

That tattoo caused ainst the Soviet Teddy boys - the &039;stilyagi&039; - I used to get stopped all the time by the fuzz and the public order squads, anted to knohat that inscription was in the language of the supposed eneher than this one In short, they putsleeveless dresses I still avoid theo, and the supposed enemy crept up unnoticed and became a supposed ally just as soon as the dust had settled a bit

When I got home I switched on the TV and tuned in to the BBC World Service First I watched their review of the Internet, presented by a guy who looked like an ian I could tell froood catch

&039;Today in London an attempt was made on the life of the Chechen essayist in exile, Aslan Udoev A terrorist suicide boanization tried to blow him up Aslan Udoev hiuards were killed at the scene&039;

The camera showed the cramped office of a police official who carefully un-barrel of a et close to Aslan Udoev when he was feeding the squirrels in St Jauards spotted the terrorist, he detonated his bomb&039;

A correspondent appeared on the screen - he was standing on a laith the wind ruffling his yellow hair

&039;According to other sources, the device went off preet The explosion took place at precisely twelve noon GMT However, the police have so far declined to make any comment Witnesses to the event said that before the explosion, instead of the usual "Allah u Akbar", the suicide boht!" But on this point the testihtly, possibly because of the terrorist&039;s strong Arab accent It was reported earlier that "Saht" was the naanization which has stated that its goal is to open a second front of the jihad in Europe In its ideology this group is close to the Mahdi Army of the radical cleric Mokhtad Al-Sadr&039;

The camera showed the police official squeezed into his narrow little space once again The correspondent&039;s voice asked:

&039;We know that the Chechens belong to the Sunni branch of Islam And the attacker was a Shiite In this connection, can we say, asin their commentaries, that clashes between Shiites and Sunnis are now taking place in London?&039;

&039;We are avoiding any hasty conclusions concerning the motives for the crime and whoever is behind it,&039; the police official replied &039;The investigation has only just begun And in addition, I should like to emphasize that at the present tioals of any terrorist group called "Saroups in England&039;

&039;Is it true that the terrorist had wires embedded in his head?&039;

&039;No comment&039;

Aslan Udoev appeared on the screen He alking along a hospital corridor, squinting hostilely at the caed forehead in his hand

After that they started talking about soe