“Coward! Coward!” she screamed. “You’ll never find out anything that way!”
At that point I thought it was, one way or another, the end for me. However, for a long time They left me alone — I don’t know why. You’ll never understand what They do or why. This uncertainty is one of Their worst weapons. I could only guess that maybe Giedraitienė snuck over to Gedis’s apartment alone, on her own initiative; that she had confused and deceived even Them—this gave me a slight hope that it was nevertheless possible to deceive Them.
I had fingered and felt the slimy octopus of Vilnius, the murderous flashing of the eyes of the Basilisk of Vilnius, but I wasn’t able to grasp its meaning. I saw what They did, I saw the dreadful effects of Their work, but I still couldn’t grasp what all of this was for.
Do I really have to say that an absolute meaninglessness is the great meaning of it all?
Only one answer could save me: my meaning is to follow Their footsteps to the very end, wherever that should lead. Even if the world itself hungered for destruction, I was obliged to prevent it. I had barely thought of this when, at once, oppressive fetters fell from my brain. It wasn’t worth torturing myself over Their meaninglessness; my own meaning was enough for me. Even if the world itself sought destruction, I was obliged to prevent it.
I know this for sure: as long as at least one person thinks this way, everything is not yet lost.
I dragged an old sofa into my hiding place between the library’s bookshelves. I lived between books in the literal sense of the word. Unconsciously, books became everything to me. They smelled like flowers and thundered like storm clouds, caressed me like a woman and hurt me deeply like the vilest of enemies. Every last thing was an open book. A full-breasted beauty, glaring at me in a cafe, was no more than the leather cover of an old book; you could open it, inspect it, and then rudely toss it aside.
If it were possible for me to write books myself, I would know what to do. Unfortunately, genuine secrets cannot be trusted to either paper or to magnetic disks — as naïve Martynas thinks. The only way is to hold everything in your head, in the worst and most insecure place. It’s the easiest to destroy, but nothing can be stolen from it. What matters is that I know, and if I know, ergo it’s possible to know, ergo, sooner or later someone else will realize it, the one who will come after me. (I left him signs in the river!) That hope is all I live by — that I’m not really alone, that there are others who have studied this even more deeply, who have sensed everything more acutely. There must be. You won’t overcome all of us that easily, even though we’re forced to hide ourselves and to go it alone; we keep accumulating information, the murmurs of the heart, dreams — anything that will save mankind from the cosmic jellyfish, from the colorless pincers of the Vilnius Basilisk, which secretly entangle you, me, that green-eyed beauty there, the lame cat in the dirty courtyard, all of us.
Once I searched for traces of Their work in books. Now I couldn’t escape them. I found them everywhere. Everything was marked with Their signs. We live in a world where They alone rule. I yearned to find at least one meager historical period, some more significant event, in which people would have arranged everything themselves. I searched for a book in which, having read it, I wouldn’t find any hints about Them. In vain! The whole lot screamed of Them—from the history of the Inquisition to Hitler and Stalin’s duet. Their commissars manifested themselves everywhere, attired in the masks of philosophers or politicians. I searched in vain for a country, a place where They hadn’t encroached. They quietly crept into music, art, and philosophy. I read books and I saw how playfulness, fantasy, and metaphysics disappeared from European literature — the kanukized throngs demanded block-headed descriptions of everyday life. Painful and tragic dreams disappeared; their place was taken up by idiotic realia, a hundred Zolas and Dickenses. The throng was concerned about bread, so literature had to write about bread. The soul slowly disappeared from it, the body came to rule over everything: how some character is dressed, what house he lives in, how much money he has. After Vivaldi, improvisation disappeared from music; music slowly lost its depth of meaning. Hegel, drowning in alcohol, blathered about his trinomial dialectic, and Europe immediately fell behind a thousand years, since even the dialectic of the ancient Chinese I Ching is many times more complex and real. With horror, I followed how They strangled God, and in his place proposed fictions in Their favor: the Progress of Science and Historical Materialism. I saw how the iron Moloch’s hold on man grew ever stronger; the automobile became a hundred times more important than a line of poetry. The idle rich had yachts and heaps of free time, but they didn’t advance either souls or art, like the wealthy of ancient times; they merely competed to see who could internalize the most dolce far niente. They didn’t hurry, but functioned effectually. The soul was irrevocably driven out of people. They intruded everywhere.
But my most nightmarish discovery was this: They exceed humans in their knowledge. I understood this when I researched my darling Stalin. One way or another, he was the closest to me; his hairy hands had once caressed me too. The strangest thing in the mustachioed Georgian’s work was his implacable appetite to destroy millions, entire nations. Over and over again I researched all sorts of revolutions, the reigns of the cruelest tyrants. A dozen times I looked over the theories of Their great commissar Machiavelli. I sniffed out the logic of Robespierre’s terror. And I kept getting more confused. All tyrants murder thousands; they all destroy real and imagined enemies. I understood almost all of it — thanks to maestro Machiavelli and his impeccable reasoning. But not a single autocrat murdered millions the way my darling did. What was he after? I’d stare at Stalin’s portrait, as if by such mystical contemplation I could revive him and make him speak up. I myself was revived; I suddenly remembered a trusty old rule: if you want to discover the hidden motivation of someone’s work, find out what he is most afraid of.
The macabre Georgian vigorously devastated the study of genetics. Therefore, he was afraid that it could reveal something. The conclusion was so obvious and simple that at first I didn’t believe it myself. Stalin understood genetics perfectly. He murdered millions particularly consciously and scientifically; he genetically changed the entire human race! Wholesale, he snuffed out anyone who was the least bit bolder, smarter, or more determined — anyone who could get in Their way. The Father of Peoples thoroughly changed the genetic code of his empire and lost no time in accomplishing a great deal. The slightest suspicion that a person has a gene for intelligence, courage, or stubbornness dictated a death sentence. If an entire nation was known through the ages for its resiliency and originality — the entire nation needed to be destroyed. (I probably could take pride that the Lithuanians belonged among the nations to be destroyed.) The tyrants of earlier times simply didn’t understand — it wasn’t enough to destroy your true enemies, you needed to burn out the entire genetic field with fire. The worst of it is that Stalin profoundly understood genetics at a time when humanity knew almost nothing about it. They always surpass our science and manage to appropriate the newest ideas first. They make deft use of our caution and laziness. Individual geniuses don’t save humanity; the gray throng snuffs them out. While the throng greedily chews on Their discarded charity, They leisurely smother anyone trudging The Way. Their most popular methods are insanity and incurable illnesses. Earlier They selected tuberculosis or syphilis. They never work crudely; they strive to make their work look as unavoidable as fate, as eternal and unchangeable as the movement of the constellations. Although sometimes they enjoy more macabre methods too. Roman Polanski barely attempted to hint of Their work’s superficial characteristics; he merely created a few films in which Their scent was discernible, but that was enough. No, They won’t drown you, or crush you with an automobile. They’ll send you, say, some sort of Manson, to slice open your pregnant wife’s belly. Everyone, everyone who tried to stand up against Them was destroyed, crushed, sacrificed their life, and didn’t change anything. At least you know about the famous ones, but how many thousands of nameless ones have perished on The Way? I am one of them.