Alas, They are everywhere, in every country, in every system. They are and were in every epoch — sometimes they were in control, more often they hid, but they always waited for their chance. My head spins from all the data about kanuked people, nations, and even civilizations. In the encyclopedia of the kanuked, the Roman Empire would nestle next to Plato, the first of Their world commissars. The kanukas of kanukai, Stalin, would end up in the encyclopedia next to the ruin of the Mayan civilization. Alas, even entire civilizations are kanuked, the same way people are. To this day scholars haven’t managed to properly explain why all the old civilizations, without exception, came to ruin, or what laws of death govern them. After all, they don’t die biologically, the way people do. Where did Greece and Egypt’s power and wisdom disappear to, even though Greece and Egypt still exist? Where are the ancient Chinese, Mayans, or Aztecs? Researchers seize on any and all arguments, even co-opting space aliens, but They don’t raise the slightest red flag. They, only They, are to blame! What other evidence do you need? Scholarly conjectures sometimes drive me into a rage. It’s known that a civilization died over the lifespan of several generations, that it encountered no epidemics or cataclysms. And they vaguely babble on about some social reasons or who knows what else. How can they be so blind? It’s always Their pupil-less eyes peering out of the ruins of a civilization. No, They don’t control nature’s powers or kingdoms, however, they manage to destroy what matters most — people’s spirit. They penetrate into every person’s brain, and then calmly retreat. Nothing more needs to be done. The kanuked destroy themselves.
But it isn’t the study of individual nations that matters most to me, I’m most interested in the activities of individual people who have gone down The Way. It’s not an idle curiosity or a desire to delve into strangers’ fates. Oh, if only I could restrain my distant, secret friends, if only I could guard them from destruction! Alas, they are distant not just in space, but in time too. But their fatal mistakes are actually warnings of incalculable value. I can avoid those mistakes. It’s not for me to die in a car crash like Camus (like Gedis). It’s not for me to be stuffed into prison, like Jean Genet, or guillotined, like de Sade (the poor revolutionary Marquis — they made him into nothing more than a symbol of sexual deviation). Better to balance on the edge of the abyss, as Ortega y Gasset does, practically the only one in modern times who dares to survey Their methods. (Deception is possible here too: They could have purposely cracked the cover open a bit, calculating that reasoning about the revolt of the kanuked masses is useful to Them. On the other hand, Ortega duped them anyway: he showed how art has been stolen from the Western world — that’s one of Their biggest achievements.) Alas, those who have protected themselves, like Ortega, are few, wretchedly few. Rummaging about in the lives of like-minded thinkers, I risk turning into a necrophiliac: there’s so many corpses, madmen, and suicides there. Even Nietzsche, the divine, poetic Nietzsche! A man who dared to publicly declare that sooner or later we’ll succeed in triumphing over Them, in healing kanuked man and in cultivating a true, inspired, Übermensch who doesn’t submit to Them. It’s awful to even remember Nietzsche’s lot. In life he was destroyed, forced into insanity and suicide, deceived and misrepresented. But even that wasn’t enough. They don’t leave even the dead in peace. Their Satanic calculations are horrifying: Nietzsche’s music of the heavenly spheres, his divine poetry, was handed over to one of the worst maniacs of the twentieth century. The dream of an unkanuked man, in the hands of the Great Kanukas, turned into butchery and labor camps. Is it possible to think up a worse method of discrediting someone? Millions of people, hearing Nietzsche’s name, involuntarily remember Hitler and the Nazis. Yes, it isn’t just that books give me support — at the same time they destroy me by degrees, and constantly deepen my despair. On some level it begins to seem we’ll never succeed in penetrating Their secrets, much less in surmounting Them. I know only one thing for sure: whatever you do, you must always leave an escape route open. You can never burn all of your bridges. One of Their key pathological methods is to drive a person (or even an entire nation) into a real or imaginary situation with no escape route, so all that remains is a single, unguarded step straight into Their prepared trap. Convincing a person it’s the only way is of utmost importance. It’s the only way to reach the height of kanukism, to reach Their paramount sphere of prowess: a man accepting slavery as if it were a stroke of luck — a self-satisfied slave. (Once, well in his cups, our zone boss condescended to chat with us, the “incorrigibles”; he told us that in the mountains, twenty kilometers away, there was some sort of tunnel being dug, that people were digging it without a roof over their heads, practically without food, and without warm clothes.
“A tunnel’s easy to guard,” I observed. “Cover the opening with barbed wire, tie a couple of man-eating dogs to it — and that would do it.”
“My boy,” the zone boss edifyingly pronounced, “Wake up. There’s no wire, no dogs, no guards. Why waste money if you can get by without spending anything? Those idiot Communist Youth are digging the tunnel. They are looked after and guarded by their own idiotic enthusiasm.”)
Stalin’s ultimatum to Lithuania is a classic example of Their pathologic: either Lithuania will let the Soviet Army divisions in to guard the Soviet Army divisions that are already in Lithuania, or the Soviet Army divisions will march into Lithuania without Lithuania’s compliance. Total freedom to pick whatever your heart desires. The implied alternative — forceful resistance — circumspectly annihilated: the leader of Lithuania’s army has long since been bought off. Lithuania was ruined when it let the first five Russian soldiers in, when Vilnius, thanks to the generous father of the people, Stalin, rode into Lithuania like a giant Trojan horse.
Vilnius, it’s Vilnius again!
Bookcases; there are bookcases around me again. Breathing in the heavy dust of the books, I occasionally turn around and throw a word to Gedis over my shoulder. I feel a burning weakness when I realize once again that he is no more. The loss is irreparable. All losses are irreparable. I had a mother, but I no longer have her. I had a father — he showed up and disappeared again. I had a beloved wife—They snatched her for themselves. I had a friend—They killed him. What will They do to Lolita?