Love and Procreation

There are no women in the city of wolfmen. The population increases only in relation to the number of tourists who, passing through the city of wolfmen, suffer nonfatal attacks and stay on as citizens. Sometimes the men take lovers among themselves, though this is neither here nor there. Sometimes the wolves take lovers among themselves, meeting every full moon, though who can say whether a man transforms into the same wolf every month: perhaps the wolf is born at the first light of the moon, and grows old in ascendance with the moon, and dies at the moon’s dissolution; perhaps a man has an inexhaustible number of wolves within himself and offers each month a new wolf; perhaps the love between two wolves is like the love of a man who falls in love in a dream, and if the wolves of the same two men should fall in love again the next month, then one might say that, as a coincidence, this is only like the dream that recurs, not that the two wolves remember one another, or the sweet smell of the other’s urine, or beautiful feeling of jaws against the nape of the neck.

Ghosts

The city of wolfmen haunts itself, though it is not otherwise conventionally haunted. If a wolfman breaks into his own house one night and sees a photograph of his human shape on the mantel—smiling at a friend’s wedding, wearing a tuxedo and no beard—he will growl at it, as at an intruder. Conversely, if a man detects the odor of wet fur lingering in his hallways, he will shiver, as at the presence of dead parents in dreams. In this way there are no haunted houses in the city of wolfmen, yet every house is haunted by something that the house remembers and the tenant forgets.

Astrology and Religion

Because the moon is the only influence and the only thing, the city of wolfmen considers the ocean its brother and considers itself an ocean of wolf. The wolfmen think of their city as a magnet that attracts moon: if a city of wolfmen were erected on the moon, the moon would close in on it, snapping shut like a rattrap. Or else they think of the moon as a magnet that attracts city of wolfmen: if the moon were placed closer to Earth, the city—its buildings and streets—would detach and float airily toward it. Beautiful moon: howling is a form of prayer; dilated pupils are a form of prayer. During eclipses, the men are like dreams of themselves, and nothing anyone says makes sense.