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.

I’d like to have a sleigh too, and a fur coat, and . . . And that’s all Freethinking.

And it did die. The fire, that is. Ahh, hard to figure it all out. A mystery. And where there’s mystery—there’s government service.

So sometimes you have a good fight, even to the death, or you just break a few arms and legs, punch out an eye or something. Because it’s your neighbor.

You people eat mice and worms, and then you’re surprised to see so many mutants.”

You can understand the cook. He probably hides the carcasses, takes the best pieces home to his kids.

He also thought: Since there aren’t any lids, everyone will have a secret longing: If only I had a lid for my pot! Life is better when you’ve got a dream, and sleep is sweeter.

“A fable is a directive rendered in a simplified form for popular consumption.”

“Even if it’s a thousand, it hardly matters. You don’t really know how to read, books are of no use to you. They’re just empty page-turning, a collection of letters. You haven’t learned the alphabet of life. Of life, do you hear me?”

Social protest is what’s needed now, not Tolstoyism.

And why is it that spiritual life is called a higher life? It’s because you put books up as high as you can, on the top floor, on a shelf, so that if misfortune strikes and the vermin get into the house, the treasure will be safer. That’s why!

I only wanted books—nothing more—only books, only words, it was never anything but words—give them to me, I don’t have any!