I understand everything. I don’t blame those poor Lithuanians. Hell, after all, I’m exactly like them. I’m not blaming; I’m merely stating the facts.
Elena didn’t talk about meat. She went on about newfangled bibliographic indexes, which from now on will replace the flawed ones VV had thought up. I had completely forgotten that our office was preparing a computerized card catalog. I mean, can you really be expected to remember what excuse they’re using to pay you that beggarly salary?
I immediately replied that our card catalog ought to be like a layer cake. After all, the largest part of the collection is accessible only with special permission. And a significant part of it — only with special, special permission. So it’s essential to invent special, layered indexes, which would immediately show who can read what. So the first thing you need to do is create special, indoctrinated computers, ones that would give out permission themselves. The problem is difficult. However, Soviet technology is, one way or another, the best in the world; no stumbling block is too difficult.
I was driven out of her office because of this brief monologue. And, by the way, I wasn’t being in the least bit sarcastic. The Lenin Library’s collection in Moscow is the largest in the world. It’s a fact. Another fact: ninety percent of that collection isn’t accessible to an ordinary citizen. Question: this being the case, what is a computer supposed to do? Hundreds of censors will have to sit there anyway, and judge the books — are they allowed, or are they part of the special collection? There’s only one solution — to design an indoctrinated computer that would take the place of those censors too. That’s not a joke. It’s a general concept.
It’s too bad Elena didn’t let me finish my monologue.
For the thousandth time, listening to the divine Elena, I thought about whether homo lithuanicus really differs all that much from homo sovieticus: is it permissible to consider the former a separate anthropomorphous species, or is it merely a subspecies of the latter? Once more I decide it’s permissible. Homo lithuanicus has characteristics that are absolutely atypical of the species homo sovieticus. Homo lithuanicus says “they,” homo sovieticus says “we.” Homo lithuanicus considers only Lithuania his country. To him the remaining parts of the USSR are as distant and as foreign as Mars. Homo sovieticus considers the entire USSR his home country. Just look at the Russians living in Vilnius or Tbilisi. They feel at home, in their own place; from their point of view, all these Lithuanians and Georgians aren’t quite where they belong. Homo sovieticus doesn’t sense any difference between Mogilyov, Ryazan, or Dnipropetrovs’k. (And by the way, there is none.) According to homo lithuanicus’ understanding, Vilnius is as different from Saratov as the sky from the earth.
If a former homo lithuanicus quietly goes off to live in Moscow or Kiev — he’s changed his skin. Then he says “we,” and not “they.”
In our office, only Elena says “we.” Such converts are an intermediate product. Homo sovieticus talks in an Orwellian newspeak in which all the normal, age-old concepts are turned inside out and changed. The converts, like Elena, only speak newspeak from the rostrum. In other circumstances, they start talking in normal, human language despite themselves. They unconsciously drop their fake skin so the real one can breathe, for a while at least. They simply forget themselves.
This type isn’t completely done for. True, you won’t turn them back into humans anymore, but they’re not yet genetically ruined. You can at least try to turn their children around.
Incidentally, on the subject of the converts’ children. One rather highly-placed gentleman’s wife told me, in horror, of an incident that embellished my collection:
Her son, a four-year-old philosopher, thoughtfully looked at Vilnius’s identical buildings and unexpectedly asked:
“Mama, Lithuanians live in Lithuania, right?”
“Yes, my sweetheart.”
“And the French in France?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
“And Americans in America?”
“Yes, of course, who else.”
The philosopher looked around once more, listened to the passersby talking, sighed, and asked:
“Mama, then why are there so many Russians living in Lithuania? They’ve lost Russia, haven’t they? They don’t have anywhere else to live, right?”
His communist mother told me this in horror. Her opinion was that someone had maliciously taught this to her child.
She was a convert, so she couldn’t grasp that there was simply still some good sense inside the child’s head.
The first priority is to beat every scrap of good sense from people’s heads as early as possible. In preschool, or in the first grades at the very latest. Comrade Molotov himself explained this to me. Yes, yes, the Iron Ass, Stalin’s right hand. When I met him in Moscow, he was some eighty years old. I was running from one high office to another and fighting for my dissertation, while he had come by to pay his Party dues.
He paid his Party dues regularly, even though he had long ago been shouldered out of the Communist Party. But the Iron Ass will most certainly be returned to the ranks of honor! At least after he dies. If Comrade Molotov isn’t returned to the ranks within the next five years, I’ll go into shock.
I have no fear that he’ll die too soon. I suspect that the Iron Ass will live to be at least a hundred and twenty.
Incidentally, the Iron Ass told me a sacred phrase:
“You Lithuanians never did understand anything!”
VV has his human ideal — the great ideologue Suslov. My eternal love is the Iron Ass.
On that occasion, he was suddenly overcome with sentiment for Lithuanians. When he found out that I was a Lithuanian, he took me home with him.
I must emphasize that in this respect the Iron Ass differs from the majority of Russians. He knew what Lithuania is, and didn’t confuse Lithuanians with Latvians. The majority of Russians don’t bother distinguishing Lithuanians from Latvians or Estonians. The name of their concocted generalization for all of them is pribalt, the people by the Baltic. In the minds of the majority of Russians, even Lithuanians themselves don’t particularly distinguish who they are — Estonians or Latvians. The Russians always like to combine everything. Besides “pribalt,” they’ve come up with other new races, for example, “caucasites.”
The Iron Ass stated right away that inaccuracies of that sort irritate him. And then he added one more sacred phrase:
“You Lithuanians always got terribly in the way of the inevitable progress of history.”
I’ll explain for those who don’t know what “the inevitable progress of history” is. That means the annexation of Lithuania and then the deportation of Lithuanians to Siberia — in short, freeing up the land for those who are more worthy of it. The Iron Ass didn’t doubt in the least that this process was only temporarily halted.
I’ll never understand why he took me to his home. Maybe the Iron Ass is assembling a collection too, one analogous to mine? He was extremely interested in pedagogy. I myself can bring home a shabby, grizzled bum, even though I’ll have to disinfect all the furniture afterwards. It makes no difference to me, as long as the bum adds to my collection.
I didn’t recognize him at first. Nasty suspicions arose when I saw a militiaman, who jumped up and saluted the master of the house, in the entrance lobby of the building on Granovsky Street. It slowly started dawning on me. When I took a better look, I could have bet it was Molotov. True, not for a lot of money.