Борис Бахметьев
The Metamorphosis 2.0: Cactus Vasilich

Tribute to Vasilich

The faith in miracles never fades;

Without magic, life degrades.

Be sharp, Vasilich, wherever you are —

That prickly cactus reaches far.

January 29, 2026

Vasilich, the Transformation

After Franz Kafka’s «The Metamorphosis»

Vasilich worked in a dull office in Moscow, whose main task was essentially rewriting, reshuffling, and forwarding papers that came from other offices. But Vasilich never lost heart and approached his work with unwavering enthusiasm. While some of his colleagues were repelled by the stale smell of the office cubicles, Vasilich felt like a fish in murky bureaucratic waters – he had sniffed them out, grown accustomed to them, and suffered not at all, since he himself was hardly fresh.

Vasilich wasn’t distinguished by outstanding intellectual abilities. Then again, they weren’t particularly important for his job. What he did have was a unique bureaucratic memory: he remembered perfectly where each document was kept, how many pages it had, and what instructions were scribbled on it.

Vasilich also had another remarkable trait. Outwardly, he looked very much like the chief executive of the entire office. He rarely saw the man in person, mostly from a distance. More often, he saw him in a portrait hanging in the office of a lower-ranking boss. Sometimes it seemed to Vasilich that the portrait resembled him more than it did the original. Occasionally, rather immodest thoughts crossed his mind. He imagined that he could easily stand in for the chief at meetings in his office – where one didn’t need to speak much, but only lend a solemn and stern air to the discussion. Vasilich especially enjoyed it when new employees, encountering him in the office corridors, blushed with embarrassment and bowed respectfully.

And then came that ill-fated evening that so drastically changed Vasilich’s life – a life filled with a sense of his own importance and grandeur. That evening, he had to stay late in his office, waiting for the chief executive to scribble a suggestion on a very important document, which then had to be sent to all the other offices. After the guideline was signed, a red light on Vasilich’s desk was supposed to flash – the signal that he should rush to the chief’s office. Vasilich waited, but the light never came on. Suddenly, he was startled by a sharp ring of the telephone: the chief’s secretary told him to come to the office immediately to receive instructions…

…After spending more than two hours in the boss’s office, Vasilich no longer felt either fear or pleasure. The chief executive still hadn’t appeared. Just before Vasilich arrived, he had suddenly rushed off to an urgent meeting at an even more important office. Waiting for his return, sipping the now-cold tea from the special canteen, and barely even worried anymore, Vasilich mentally reconstructed the contents of the five-page document on which the chief was supposed to write a suggestion. This task eventually exhausted Vasilich so much that he didn’t notice falling asleep, his head slumping onto the very table where the chief held meetings…

…Vasilich was awakened by a bright ray of sunlight piercing through the drawn white curtain. To his surprise, the chief executive was in the office but paid him not the slightest attention. Suddenly, the boss called his secretary and asked her to bring a glass of water. Vasilich wanted to remind him about the important document, but for some reason couldn’t utter a word. The next moment, he was stunned and nearly choked: the boss poured the glass of water directly onto him. Vasilich tried to shake himself off, but couldn’t do it. It turned out that he was half-buried in soil inside some tight clay pot – right on the spot on the table where he had fallen asleep the night before.

And then the boss finally spoke to him:

«Vasilich, how prickly you are! And why do you bloom so rarely? Only once every four years. You just swell up and swell up with importance. Do you really think you’re more important than me? You don’t look like me at all. Don’t forget that you’re just a cactus. Even if you do work in an office. And from this morning on – in the boss’s office…»

To be continued…

June 24, 2025

Vasilich, the Transformation. Continuation

Vasilich gradually got used to his unexpected new state – being a cactus in the office of the top executive. Thanks to his innate optimism, he tried to find advantages in his current situation. After all, he was quite a handsome cactus. The employees treated him with respect and always greeted him. Sometimes he even caught admiring glances from the girls in the executive’s office, who wondered how to make him bloom faster. Surely they couldn’t wait four years!

There was a poet working in the office – Boris. He used to write speeches for the top executive. Later, after suffering from emotional burnout, he switched to writing boring reports and poetry. He dedicated poems to Vasilich. Vasilich particularly liked these lines:

“Vasilich has outgrown himself,

Enjoying gratitude and wealth.

Long has he moved among the high,

And all the crows feeling fright.

Vasilich – a firm part indeed

To hold state power in need.”

The executive, too, treated Vasilich very warmly. He shared his thoughts with him, sometimes the most intimate ones – about how turbulence was growing in the world, about reports arriving at the office from all directions, each cancelling out the other, and about how hard it was to work under such conditions. There were too many idiots saying the right words. Because approved plans were not being fulfilled, they had to constantly approve new, even more ambitious ones… Only now did Vasilich begin to grasp the full wisdom of running the office.

But one day, during one of these confessions, Vasilich learned the tragic details of his recent fate.

“Do you know why you’re called Vasilich?” the executive asked. Vasilich politely remained silent. The executive continued: “We once had a diligent employee, Yevgeny Vasilyevich. They say he looked a bit like me. We even considered appointing him chief paper copier. But he had one flaw: he didn’t wear glasses. And I issued an office order stating that all paper copiers must wear glasses to better decipher my handwriting and avoid mistakes… But that’s not what I’m talking about now… Such is human fate… Yevgeny Vasilyevich had a cup of tea from our special cafeteria in the evening. Right where you’re standing now. And he never woke up… That’s why we named you Vasilich – in his memory.”

Sometimes, amid growing turbulence, the executive worried about the future of the office. Even then, he cared about Vasilich.

“Don’t be afraid if they shut us down. I won’t leave you to your fate,” he promised. “Though I can’t take you home. I have a wife… You know, sometimes I think she’s a witch. She can summon a thunderstorm or a rainbow in the sky. But I love her!.. She got a big black cat named Hippo. He’s always fighting cacti, giving them no peace! He knocks them over with his paw, despite the thorns… If anything happens, I’ll arrange for you at the Apothecary Garden. They have a whole spacious room for cacti in the greenhouses there. I have connections in Moscow’s Central District – we’ll work something out…”

“Well,” thought Vasilich, “I’m ready for any twists of fate. After all, I’m still on duty and don’t belong to myself.”

Let us note that, despite his conscious readiness to continue dutifully bearing the cross that had fallen upon him, Vasilich had no idea what new and unexpected turns fate had in store for him…

To be continued…

June 25, 2025

Vasilich to Face a New Transformation

Cactus Vasilich was present at a meeting in the office of the company’s top executive – a meeting held by his deputies, in the absence of the Boss himself. The reason was urgent: the boss had been hospitalized at the Central Clinical Hospital the day before with an acute heart attack. The doctors’s prognoses were gloomy. Even if the post-infarction surgery went well, a long rehabilitation would be required – with no guarantee of a full return to active duty.

The deputies were deeply alarmed. If the boss didn’t recover, a new one might be appointed. Or the entire office might be disbanded for lack of need. It was unclear which would be worse.

Then the first deputy summed up: “We can’t lose him…” What Vasilich heard next made him involuntarily swell up and bristle with all his spines…

The first deputy went on: “Do you remember that Evgeny, I think… Yes, Evgeny Vasilyevich. He used to walk around the office corridors with a folder, unsettling the young staff with his resemblance to the top boss…”

“Yes, we remember,” another deputy replied, “but he’s… well, he didn’t wake up after having tea from our special cafeteria…”

The first deputy, who was more informed, said: “He didn’t die, just fell into a coma, unconscious. The doctors say it was an unexpected acute allergic reaction to chamomile tea.”

“And what do you propose?” asked the other deputy.

“I think,” the first continued, “that it would be a good idea to bring Evgeny Vasilyevich back to his senses. Train him a bit. Make him grunt, cough in a characteristic way, twitch his foot while sitting in the chair. And then present him as the boss! Even our own people would be too afraid to suspect anything. The main thing is to keep the other offices from sniffing anything out.”

“But what about the real boss?” the other deputy wondered.

The first deputy smiled broadly: “Let him rest after the surgery, if he survives, in a closed-type sanatorium. And then, as God wills…”

“But will Evgeny Vasilyevich agree to this?” the other pressed on.

“After waking up from his blackout, he won’t remember anything. We’ll just convince him that he is the boss,” the first deputy reassured him.

Vasilich once again experienced a quiet shock! So his body lay lifeless, while his soul dwelt in a cactus. But they wanted to resuscitate his body – to use it as a replacement for the top boss. Vasilich felt afraid. Now, on the contrary, he shrank inward – yet bristled even more at the prospect of his own future…

June 25, 2025

Vasilich, New Business Proposals

I’ve been missing my acquaintance, Cactus Vasilich – I didn’t see him while I was on vacation. But recently I visited him again and found out what was new with him…

Let me briefly recap his complicated, dramatic story. Vasilich is a cactus in the office of the top executive at a certain Moscow company. One fateful evening, the spirit of a modest but very diligent employee, Yevgeny Vasilyevich, inhabited him. Yevgeny resembled the boss in appearance. It happened when Yevgeny was waiting in the boss’s office to get approval on a document. While waiting impatiently, he drank a glass of chamomile tea from the company’s special cafeteria and, due to an unexpected allergic reaction, fell into a coma. When he woke up the next morning, he found himself on the boss’s desk – as a cactus…

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