Tatyana Tolstaya - The Slynx

In thickets of brittle August horsetail he found a mirror of dark water, and took another good look at his reflection. He touched his ears. Regular ears. The family's talking nonsense. Nonsense. He patted his cheeks-his palms were covered with pus from the burst blisters. His palms were normal too, rough; across his entire palm and his fingers was a wide callus from the hook. He took off one of his lapty and checked his feet. His feet were just plain feet too: white on top and dark underneath from the dirt, that's what a foot is for. He checked his stomach. Rear end. No tail or…

Wait. Just a minute. The tail. There had been a tail. Jeez, there was a tail. But people weren't supposed to have… So what did that?…

He vomited again, more canaries. No, I'm not the Slynx. No!!!

… No, you're the Slynx.

No!

… Just think about it…

No! I don't want to! That's not the way things happen! I'll go back right now, I'll run home to my bed, to my rumpled warmth, to my beautiful books, to my books where there are roads, steeds, islands, conversations, children with sleds, verandahs of colored glass, beauties with clean hair, birds with pure eyes!

"Ah, Benedikt, why did you eat meat patties made from my white body?"

I didn't mean to, no, no, no, I didn't mean to, they just kept stuffing me, I only wanted spiritual food-they stuffed me full, caught me, confused me, stared at my back! It was all the… it never rests… It crept up behind me-and its ears were flattened, and it was crying, and it wrinkled up its pale face, and licked my neck with its cold lips, and searched with its claw, looking to hook the vein. Yes, it's the Slynx! It ruined me, aaa… aaa… aaa, ruined me! Maybe I'm only imagining, maybe I'm really lying in my own izba in a fever, in Mother's izba; maybe Mother is leaning over me, shaking me by the shoulder: wake up, wake up, you were screaming in your sleep, Good Lord, you're all wet, wake up, son!

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! Look, see, I don't have any! Look, I'm naked, barefoot, I'm standing before you-nothing in my pants pockets, nothing under my shirt or under my arm! They're not stuck in my beard! Inside-look-there aren't any inside either- everything's been turned inside out, there's nothing there! Only guts! I'm hungry! I'm tormented!…

What do you mean there's nothing? Then how can you talk and cry, what words are you frightened with, which ones do you call out in your sleep? Don't nighttime cries roam inside you, a thudding twilight murmur, a fresh morning shriek? There they are, words-don't you recognize them? They're writhing inside you, trying to get out! There they are! They're yours! From wood, stone, roots, growing in strength, a dull mooing and whining in the gut is trying to get out; a piece of tongue curls, the torn nostrils swell in torment. That's how the bewitched, beaten, and twisted snuffle with a mangy wail, their boiled white eyes locked up in closets, their vein torn out, backbone gnawed; that's right, that's how your pushkin writhed, or mushkin-what is in my name for you?-pushkin-mushkin, flung upon the hillock like a shaggy black idol, forever flattened by fences, up to his ears in dill, the pushkin-stump, legless, six-fingered, biting his tongue, nose in his chest-and his head can't be raised! -pushkin, tearing off the poisoned shirt, ropes, chains, caftan, noose, that wooden heaviness: let me out, let me out! What is in my name for you? Why does the wind spin in the gully? How many roads must a man walk down? What do you want, old man? Why do you trouble me? My Lord, what is the matter? Ennui, oh, Nina! Grab the inks and cry! Open the dungeon wide! I'm here! I'm innocent! I'm with you! I'm with you!

Soaking wet from his head to his soggy shoes, Benedikt banged on the doors of the Red Terem, knowing they wouldn't let him in, that they'd deliberately bolted the doors, that they knew how to get to him. It was pouring, as it does only in August, in a stormy, foamy surge that washed the yards clean of trash, kindling, and peelings. The murky foam swirled with rags and carried them under the gates to the streets and out of the settlement. Way up high Olenka opened a window, screamed a curse, threw out a dozen books-there, go read!-and slammed the shutters. Benedikt rushed to save them, he picked them up and wiped them off-he ought to kill the bitch. But then another window opened and this time Terenty Petrovich, the Minister of Oil and Refineries, tossed out pristine white books with pictures bound with thin, delicate paper over them, the rarest of books… Benedikt couldn't grab them all and the treasures splatted into the swirl of rubbish, squelched, and floated off, spinning… and then Kudeyar Kudeyarich began to fling other incomparable items to their death from the top floor, one after the other. Benedikt didn't wait for the end, there was no end in sight; the flattened faces of Bubble and Concordia already hung out of the window, the children held packets of journals in their hands; Mother-in-law loomed behind them holding their sashes. He got it. He understood. It's a choice. Come on, now, who would you save from a burning building? He made his choice right away.

The dill had been weeded out hither and yon, the square raked clear, the pushkin's pedestal was surrounded with brushwood and rusht, and they'd tucked logs in and around it. Up high, Nikita Ivanich was bound with rope to our be all and end all, back to back. After the downpour the air was clean and it was easy to breathe. That is, it would have been easy if not for the tears.

Benedikt stood in the front of the crowd with his hat off. A breeze played with the remains of his hair and blew the moisture from his eyes. He felt sorry for both of them-Nikita Ivanich and the pushkin. But the old man went and offered himself up voluntarily, so to speak. Almost completely voluntarily. He displayed an understanding of the moment. Of course, Benedikt had explained everything to him straight and clear: You have to. You have to, Nikita Ivanich. Art is in peril, it's perishing all around us. The honor of sacrifice, so to speak, has fallen to you, Nikita Ivanich. You always wanted to preserve all facets of the past? Well then, be a dear and show everyone an example of how it's done.

Of course, no one's forcing you, you know. You don't have to go. But then the decree will be signed and go into effect, because as soon as a decree is signed, there's no way around it. And there'll be a section reserved for art.

It was an unpleasant conversation. Unpleasant. Of course, Nikita Ivanich could go on living his life. How long he had been allotted couldn't be known. But life requires choices. Are you for art or against it, life asks, and that's it. The time has come to answer. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

Having cried his eyes out on the hill amid the horsetail, having talked it through with himself-just like someone else was there, but that was just a regular sort of illusion-Benedikt's spirits rose and his head cleared. Or his reason. He observed everything with much greater calm-and in books they write that's a sign of maturity. He used to want everything himself! Himself! To be higher than the Alexander column! The second man in the government! I sign decrees! Decrees are all fine and well, but somehow, in the shadow of the table, or maybe the bed, Petro-vich-san grew unnoticed, that scum, that stinking animal. Before they could turn around he was in charge of everything. How did that happen? Why? Benedikt used to have a close relationship with Papa, that is, Father-in-law. They worked and played together. They swore an oath. Now Petrovich-san had all the keys, all the chits, the guzzelean, and now he had art too. And he gave you that rotten look, and smiled with those shiny yellow teeth, not like other people's; and he's even proud of those teeth and says: "I put the yellow stuff in ages ago, and it's still there."