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Chapter Twenty-Five
 . V. Podly came out of his house carrying a rather large book. He had a leather pouch the size of a briefcase slung over his right shoulder with a strap. He walked down Krasnopresnenskaya until he came to the place where entry could be made into that part of the Zoopark to the left where the animals were housed - and into that part to the right where the picnic areas, soccer fields, wooded paths, and the large Mound that overlooked the entire Zoopark complex were situated. Podly went to the right. He was headed for the Mound. It was the night of the full moon, just after 11:00 p.m., January 18. Earlier that evening, Podly had been paid a visit at his home by his housekeeper, Elizaveta Fyodorovna's ex-husband, who brought the Housing Commissar another package of the hashish/opium compound. Therefore, by the time Podly entered the Zoopark, he was in full-blown altered consciousness, fortified as he was by the aforementioned substance and over a quart of vodka.
For about the last week, Podly's mood had been devastated. There seemed to be a rapid deterioration of his will. There seemed to be no fight left in him. He had been complaining, whinny; nasty to everyone he had contact with. His emotional level seemed slack, unstrung. He had in his possession some of the highest power in Moscow, and the enjoyment of the richest goods. And yet, he was not satisfied. And so he had decided to raise his consciousness by altering it. The infection of radical evil festered in his blood. He vowed to stop at nothing in the quest of self-realization, without inner or outer limits. He hoped the self-realization would lead him to Zina.
Podly had planned to use Anya Drugo as one way to get to Zina. Fortunately for Podly, that afternoon at the office, he learned that Ivan Drugo had been killed in the line of duty. Anya had been notified that morning. Podly had heard the news from a Cheka clerical worker who leaked news to Podly in return for housing favors. Podly immediately took a course of action. He dispatched a housing decree to Anya Drugo informing her that she would be required to have two adults and two children share her apartment in Labaznaya. It was the Cheka clerk and his family who would be moving in. Podly took Drugo's death as a sign to act. Podly was inspired to continue his experiments with hashish, opium and vodka. He was again ready to travel on the road to Zina, his prize. The image of Zina drove through his spirit like a raging fire. Where he would ultimately be led was unclear to him. But Podly was eager, even ecstatic to begin the journey.
While Podly smoked and drank at home that evening, he stimulated his mind by reading. He needed poetry to conceal his beastly nature. He began with the poetry of Zhukovsky. He knew many of the poems by heart. He felt an involuntary rising of the psychic activity of his brain. When he came to his favorite, To Her, he could hardly declaim the verses, so choked was he with emotion. Somehow he got through the poem:
"Where is there a name for you?
Mortals' art is powerless
To express your charm.
There is no lyre for you!
What are songs? A false
Echo of the late report about you!
If they could hear what is
In my heart, each feeling
Would be a hymn to you.
The charm of your life,
This fire and sacred image
I carry as a secret in my heart..."
Enraptured, he read the last stanza of Zhukovsky's Night:
"I know not when the train
Of bright inspiration will return;
But you are known to me, pure spirit,
And your star is shining for me,
My soul can still discern its radiance:
Enchantment is not dead,
The past will come to life again."
That led Podly to Goethe's Faust. Podly particularly lingered over the tragedy's sections: Night and Study -- dealing with the invocation of the spirits and Mephistopheles' first appearance to Faust. The more Podly read and consumed his mind-altering substances, the more derangement took place. It wasn't long before he had decided to go up to the Mound at the Zoopark and attempt to seek out denizens of the spirit world. The time and setting were perfect. A full moon with clear skies, the thaw that began in Moscow on January 10, continued, melting all the snow. The temperature in Moscow after midnight on January 19 was 5 degrees above freezing.
Podly's precise plan was not formulated. He was looking for hidden knowledge and he thought the spirit world could impart it to him. He had theorized previously about those matters and believed that the invisible world, the spiritual world was superior to that of material, earthbound humans. Therefore, it was a noble and courageous enterprise to communicate with that world. It raised the individual to the level of superman, or even "god." It mattered not to Podly whether the spirits in question were white or black. What mattered was whether they were aligned to him and his desires, and whether they could be made to satisfy those desires.
The book that Podly carried to the Mound was a collection of esoteric texts in Russian translation from the works of Nostradamus, Swedenbourg, Jacob Boehme, Paracelsus, and Giordano Bruno. Podly planned to leaf through that compilation in the moonshine on the Mound. There was also a section concerning the invocation of demons. Podly needed all of his strength and will to attempt to employ the contents of that section. But he increasingly felt that strength and will growing within him as he made his way to the Mound in the moonlight. And his mountainous conceit pushed him forward with a strut. From the Zoopark entrance gate to the Mound, the distance measured just over a half a mile.
The Mound had historically been a place of extraordinary, ritualistic, and often grossly illegal and amoral occurrences. In the pre-Christian era prior to the 9th Century, the pagan Nordic and Slavic peoples who coexisted in the region held their ceremonies and sacrifices there. During the reigns of the early rulers of Moscow, descended from the quasi-legendary Riurik, tortures and executions carried out by government officials that were too hideous, or too experimental for routine public observation that were normally held in Red Square, were carried out on the Mound. That was particularly true for the reign of Ivan Grozny who often carried torture to new lows in the development of human behavior. The Mound in those days was hidden in a dense forest, accessible only to adepts who knew the paths and who were not afraid of the possibility of any spirits who might be lurking there. The area of the Mound was approximately two square acres.
Podly walked to where he thought the center of the Mound was located. He looked around in all directions. He was alone. The moon, which was almost directly above him, caused the entire visible area to glow with bright yellow light. He put the book down. He deposited the contents of the leather pouch onto the ground next to the book. On his way to the Mound he had gathered an assortment of rocks and branches. He was perspiring heavily. His body was like a live wire, charged with electricity of opium, hashish and vodka. With the rocks and branches, he prescribed a circle with a diameter of about 45 feet. He proceeded to walk around the circumference of that circle while declaiming various incantatory phrases historically designed to conjure spirits. Podly was no expert in demonology. He was employing a variety of methods to summon what he sought. Fortified as he was with artificial stimulants, he was less receptive to the reality of the spirit world, and more receptive to the phantoms within his own mind.
About 1:30 in the morning, Podly, sitting on the ground next to the open book in the middle of his circle, weary from walking around the circle for over an hour, and dry-mouthed from the continuous incantations, began to hear a sustained sound that he perceived was in the distance somewhere below the height of the Mound. Soon, he thought he heard the sound coming closer. A most ferocious growling grew in volume. He sat very still and listened as carefully as he could. No other sounds were audible. The approach of the sound was very slow, and after about 15 minutes, Podly grew somewhat impatient and lost his concentration. Then...
Podly stood up and looked around in all directions. He seemed to be searching for the sound. He became angry with himself. He equated losing his patience and concentration with losing the sound. He swore profusely! Immediately after the profanities were shouted, Podly suddenly shook with fear as the sound returned with vengeance. It seemed to be just beyond his circle, and Podly imagined that a thousand wagons had been running together on paved stones. That's how he perceived the sound. The sound increased until Podly could bear it no more. He screamed, closed his eyes, and held his hands over his ears. He fell to the ground. "How have I reached this spot: up out of the earth, or down out of the air?" he said out loud. Lying on his back, he opened his eyes when the sound suddenly stopped. What looked to Podly like a large flaming tongue was suspended above him at what seemed to be a height of about twelve feet. The tongue began to flap about as if speaking. Hybrid syllables seemed to result from the motion of the tongue, combinations of sounds and meaning lost in the borderland between Russian and Greek, telling a strange and secret story of years past and future that swarmed in Podly's blood and pounded at the gates of his memory. Podly shook all over from fear. He tried to cry out but could not. The flapping of the tongue became faster. The tongue wound itself into a globe, burning all the while. From its initial size of a soccer ball, it began to descend slowly toward Podly. With all his might he forced himself to roll over, and out of the direct path of the descending globe. He got to his feet and tried to run, but he could not exit from the circle of rocks and branches he had prescribed. He frantically ran around the inside of the circle but he could not go outside of it. The globe finally reached the ground where Podly had been lying. A hideous hissing sound ensued as the flaming globe, now about six feet in diameter, burned a hole equivalent to its size down into the ground. The globe burst open, and sprang up in height to the shape of a fiery woman. The beast moved quickly to the rim of the circle and began to race around and around at an incredible speed, flaming all the while. Flames grew up around the circle to a height of about fifteen feet. Then they spread inward completely filling the contents of the circle with fire. The circle, soon a flaming globe, ascended and slowly shrank to the size of a soccer ball. Then it unwound into the flapping fiery tongue. The tongue was replaced by the sound of a thousand wagons running together on the paved stones moving off the Mound into the distance.
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