“Vera Pavlovna’s Ninth Dream” is a dream narrative by Viktor Pelevin about lavatory attendants in the Moscow transit system. Much of this piece focuses on the perspective of storytellers, including but not limited to the observations of attendant Vera and her colleague Manyasha. The voice of the narrator in this text is also Vera but expressed as she looks back on her dream. Understanding perspective is important in determining the intentions of certain characters within this piece. For example, Pelevin characterizes Manyasha as “Vera’s oldest friend” and “mentor” (Pelevin 37). Manyasha is superior to Vera that gives her guidance. Small epithets like these are vital because they establish characters in relation to one another.

There is a group of characters that Pelevin does not characterize at the beginning of the piece. This stylistic choice implies ambiguity and leads us to believe that they are irrelevant, having no relation to Vera. However, they nonetheless strike Vera’s interest. Pelevin describes the leveler that they bring with them as “one of those special things on a tripod stand” (41). We get this roundabout description simply because “Vera didn’t know what it was called” (41). This is the first hint that Vera is also the narrator of this story; the narrator does not know the name for the level because Vera does not know the name for it, and it is perhaps because the narrator is Vera. Pelevin initially foreshadows this connection amidst this scene of ambiguous men.

I question the relationship between ambiguity and greater truth in this piece. I think it interesting that such an under-characterized scene causes Vera to express not only her position in this narrative but also display Vera’s perceptiveness to the “smiles on” the men’s “faces” (41). Before this, Vera’s interactions with Manyasha and the proletarians did not do much in terms of characterization (38, 39). She had simply listened to her superior and reacted to the bathroom fight amongst the men. Those specific references had not left much space for Vera’s characterization, while Vera’s observations of the ambiguous men reveal both Vera’s ultimate identify, and express Vera’s perceptive side, rather than simply labeling her as a listener/reactor.