The Doomed City

by Arkady Strugatsky

But in a country where the main newspaper is called Truth precisely because it is crammed to overflowing with lies, there comes a point at which science fiction is transformed into a means for at least hinting at the true state of affairs.

“Once upon a time in a little town there lived two night-soil men—father and son. There weren’t any sewers there, only pits full of slurry. And they scooped that shit out with a bucket and poured it into their barrel, and what’s more, the father, as the more experienced specialist, went down into the pit, and the son handed the bucket down to him from above. Then one day the son lost his grip on the bucket and dumped it back on his old man. Well, his old man wiped himself down, looked up at him, and said bitterly, ‘You’re a total screwup, a real lunkhead. No good for anything. You’ll be stuck up there your whole life.’”

“Have you heard? There’s a scheme for a final solution to the problem of crime. They’re abolishing the police! To replace them they’re going to let the crazies out on the streets at night. It’s the end for the bandits and the hooligans—now only loonies will go outside at nighttime!”

I’ve turned into a hopeless liar. I have to assure him of Fritz’s eternal affection for Elsa. I have to assure him of the inexorable demise of international Jewry. I have to assure him of the implacable advance of the forces of the great Reich to his greengrocer’s shop . . . I’ve got totally tangled up in it all myself, and I think I’ve driven him completely insane. I feel guilty, after all: I’m driving an insane old man into total insanity. Just now he asked me, What are these baboons supposed to mean? And without even thinking, I blurted out, ‘It’s an Aryan assault force, a cunning trick.’ You wouldn’t believe it—he hugged me and smooched me like he was sucking on a bottle.”

We’ll show these drooling liberals how to work. In friendship, Your Fritz

“So there wasn’t an assassination attempt, then?” “Good Lord, Colonel!” Andrei said, pouring the whiskey. “This isn’t Palestine, after all.”

“So he outfoxed us after all. Cunning old slant-eye outfoxed us. The Jew of the Far East . . .”