Kafka, understandably, couldn’t write about what Joseph K. was accused of. In his will he ordered that all of his writings should be destroyed, fearing Their revenge even after death. (Could he have foreseen Nietzsche’s tragedy?)
None of us know what we’re accused of. Their purpose can’t be described logically; only metaphors and presentiments, absurd associations, or poetic juxtapositions can be of assistance here. The majority of all definitions and terms are dictated by Them. (They really love creating terms and slogans.) Only poetic intuition can lead to The Way; it’s the only thing that penetrates through their pathological armor like smell through solid rock. The thought that asserts that a river and a snake have a common soul because both of them wind, that all of the world’s sounds hide in silence, accomplishes more than the most rational theories in the world.
Oh no, it’s no accident that the champions of kanukism — starting with Plato, ending with Stalin — so hate and fear fantasies and poetics, that they tried so hard to make everything pragmatic, to explain it, to substantiate it.
Poetry kills Them, gives Them convulsions, wrings Their guts — like boric acid does to cockroaches!
But there is no poetry around; everything is familiar and deathly boring. The post covered with peeling announcements (next to it should perch two stupefied, lame pigeons), then the wide steps to the library (and there — a degenerate dog, sniffing at the ground that’s been torn up by the construction workers, drawing strange hieroglyphics with its tail). All of this has already been or will be. And I must pay absolutely no attention to it all. I must not feel the world outside, not even my own body. Only by these means is it possible to guard against Their attack: to be a complete void, to be imbued with readiness to fend off an attack at any moment. Nothing concerns me and nothing can concern me. I am a tensed string; I am a compressed spring. I am nothing, so I am invincible.
But Martynas keeps waving his arms, flinging cigarette ashes to the sides. What does he want from me? I don’t want to see this faded movie with third-rate actors. I have more important goals; I cannot waste time uselessly. I have to protect myself from Them; I need to hoard my black knowledge. I am no longer of this world; I am long since dead.
These thoughts are always inspired by Them. Thank God, once more a bright light flashes in my head, once more I feel I love this painfully blathering little man, I even love the women in our section, I love Stefa, constantly getting underfoot. I love this entire accursed city, because without it, without these women, without Martynas and Stefa, I wouldn’t be, either. If I were to forget the others, I would be destroyed in the blink of an eye. After all, I have set out on The Way; I torture myself and go out of my mind not for my own amusement, but in their name, in the name of all the kanuked and those who still resist, however pathetic that may sound. They’re all that supports me. They and everyday life, in which you sometimes, at least briefly, succeed in forgetting the horrors and the secrets, in turning into an ordinary little person looking for a breather and amusement.
“Listen, Vytautas,” says Martynas, “Let’s go somewhere and get a drink, huh? Some place where no one will find us.”
You must not just decline, not regret in advance the time you’ll lose. You must obediently agree — when you’re balancing on a razor edge above the abyss, every meager little pleasure could be your last. You must go everywhere, wherever you’re asked: amuse yourself a bit, swim in a lake, or go mushroom hunting. You barely manage to nod, and Martynas has already reviewed the map of obscure bars in his head and unerringly picks Erfurtas: during the day it’s absolutely empty in Lazdynai. If someone like us were to show up there, they would be looking for solitude too. All that’s left is to find transportation.
With Martynas I feel more or less safe (like I do with Stefa): he’s been carefully checked out. At one time I was convinced that Martynas was a dangerous spy of Theirs. I discovered that he had filled half of our computer’s disk with some sort of text of his, which I couldn’t read. The writing was encrypted, and if that wasn’t enough, you couldn’t get near it without going through a special procedure. It was like those books in special collections — it existed, but you couldn’t get at it. If you tried to break into it directly, the writing would have been entirely erased — we’d rather die than give our information up.
An evil thought immediately began gnawing at me: They destroy every speck of our trust in other people. It’s horrible to live without trust, but it’s even more horrible when trusting no one most often turns out to be correct. That’s the sad experience of the kanukaworld. I didn’t count on Martynas a bit. I was almost convinced that he was hiding my kanukish dossier. It must exist; this is easy to prove. They keep me alive only because they aren’t omniscient. They can’t do away with me because they suspect I know too much. That’s the paradox of The Way: as long as I’m alive, I’m forced to be silent; however, it’s possible to find the means to proclaim your findings after your death. They can’t destroy me as long as they haven’t precisely ascertained how much I know and how I hid my information. My dossier in Their files is really worth a fortune. I decided Martynas was gathering data about me. I observed him and became all the more convinced he was Their agent: he touched upon dangerous themes without being punished; with Elena listening, he denigrated the most sacred topics of the Soviet religion. You must always be most on your guard around the quiet ones and their antipodes — the chatterboxes that speak boldly and insolently. These types fear nothing because They protect them. The poor guy thought he had guarded his writing by encryption, codes, and triple safeguards. He forgot the fundamental law: that which can be written can also be read. All it takes is time and intelligence.
Reading writings of that sort is even more disgusting than reading a stranger’s diary. When a person writes something down in black on white, he is aware, at least unconsciously, that a stranger’s eye might see it. Frequently he may even secretly desire this. Martynas’s writings were in essence designed for him alone. I mucked straight into someone else’s soul with dirty shoes, and by then it was impossible to erase the traces. Unfortunately, in the battle with Them it’s impossible to keep to moral standards. I had to read those writings. I certainly would not use my knowledge for evil. With an enormous effort of will, I forced myself to forget everything, to literally erase it from my brain. I must go down my Way cleanly, without the theft of a stranger’s soul. There was only one thing I didn’t forget, one thing I took note of with joy: I could rely on Martynas.