The Slynx

by Tatyana Tolstaya

Our town, our home sweet homeland, is called Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, and before that, Mother says, it was called Ivan-Porfirichsk, and before that Sergei-Sergeichsk, and still before that Southern Warehouses, and way back when—Moscow.

There isn’t any Slynx, it’s nothing but human ignorance. How d’ya like that? And who rips people’s veins out? Who sucks the lifeblood out of the neck? Tell me! And if you don’t know, then shut your trap.

Let us remember Dostoevsky: ‘The whole world may perish, but I want to drink tea.’

You, Book! You are the only one who won’t deceive, won’t attack, won’t insult, won’t abandon! You’re quiet—but you laugh, shout, and sing; you’re obedient—but you amaze, tease, and entice; you’re small, but you contain countless peoples. Nothing but a handful of letters, that’s all, but if you feel like it, you can turn heads, confuse, spin, cloud, make tears spring to the eyes, take away the breath, the entire soul will stir in the wind like a canvas, will rise in waves and flap its wings! Sometimes a kind of wordless feeling tosses and turns in the chest, pounds its fists on the door, the walls: I’m suffocating! Let me out! How can you let that feeling out, all fuzzy and naked? What words can you dress it in? We don’t have any words, we don’t know! Just like wild animals, or a blindlie bird, or a mermaid—no words, just a bellowing.