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Ooooh, look here! Brothers! He was imprisoned too. Fantastic! Simply FANTASTIC! These must be the NATURAL ASSESTS OF THE SLAVS? Tell me, how could this Russian of yours have testified to one truly secret meeting in the dungeons of Madrid? Who informs you, so arrogantly and incautiously, about our secret plans and visits that we keep in highest confidence? Yet, was this Russian of yours aware that it happened one night in October? No? I can see that he did not mention this fact in his report. Amateur report. The only thing that mattered to him was that his Lord was QUIETE. Very, very Slav. Grin and bear it! Oh well, how naive I am, why would your God be different from yourselves. Like every great and eternal HE, I was there. And, naturally, it was very important to us for the meeting to take place in the autumn. Had it not been so arranged, your young man who was so sensitive and fond of theater would not have come. Autumn in the streets of Madrid is alluring. It was that hour of the night in nature, when everything gives and then, as quickly as your Lord, sheltered by the curtain of night and dark streets of Madrid, disappears. We knew he would like to be identified with Nature. That is why it had to be in October. It worked, of course. Have you ever, even as a priest, an interpreter of religion, asked yourself where your Lord went that night while the fruitful Autumn draped a cape over his shoulders. And he was NOT QUIET. Do you know Pavel Alexandrovich that he spoke? I heard the whole conversation. You know nothing about it?" "You are asking why we wish to get out of this animal's den?! So, listen carefully. When I was brought here I was sixty-five. They took me away from theater performance. Away from my theater. Straight from the director's chair into this disgrace." "So, they should. You were cheating the "people's government". You are a born actor, and you worked as a director. Didn't I say this was your own choice? The directing made them angry. The acting would have been amusing. Had you been acting, nothing would have happened. But, dear gentlemen all that had happened so many years ago. Do you think there is anybody there, on your OUTSIDE, who would be interested in all this? You don't understand a thing. Here, you are real martyrs. And there? Outside? Don't you see that every one of you as soon as you speak out is enveloped by a luminous aura around your earthly foreheads? Holy martyrs. Fantastic. But, HERE. You are sitting in the middle of the sea and as you are telling each other about your roles, everything is shimmering with an unusual grace of slavery, an amazing reality and, believe me, some quite visible light. Outside, nobody is interested in it anymore, nobody would be able to notice it. There, in the normal daylight, in which only simple people crawl in the direction where they can earn their daily bread and, if it at all possible, a pair of warm gloves, you would be able to play these roles only once. Well, maybe two times. No more. Later, everybody would run away from you. There, outside, there is nothing. If Outside was so, so interesting, why would I take trouble to make such a long journey to come and see you, to find you who got lost long ago as, believe me, outside you are forgotten. Neither is your White Sea marked on the maps nor somebody talks about it. Finally, if there were anything worthwhile outside, why would I come here? So imprisoned, you think, that Outside everything is teeming with life, that things are happening. If only you knew what a wasteland was there, you would think that you had spent centuries in here and that in the meantime the whole world has emptied, that the life you knew has disappeared. And it really has. Gentlemen, what you left behind when you came here, has all but gone. When I see this glow of yours and think about the whitewash and emptiness of the day which is carrying on outside, I am inclined to believe that only you are free, whereas there are prisons and an overall emptiness outside. My God, aren't you lucky?! Your personal fate and quite obvious dedication gives you a glow. But, it cannot be helped, masochists remain masochist. You would now prefer to be living an ordinary tasteless insipid day, in a traffic jam, humiliated by the life in those cramped offices, quarreling with your wives over a broken jug or glass, squabbling over each cigarette or a sip of brandy, painful aware that you have nothing in common with your children, not even the nose, the genetic symbol, which in your case was smashed long ago. It is true, there are warm baths there. That wonderful, never fully defined fragrance of laundry ironed by hands of plump women clad in always unbuttoned dressing gowns from which, mixing with the smell of clean bed linen, suddenly flashes quivering whiteness of breasts as the iron touches the seam of their husbands' underpants. While from somewhere comes an overwhelming dizziness of unspoken secrets of people's homes, like hidden embers of the hearth, the softness of a stomachs appears briefly and already forgotten warmth, born with a sweet shiver, from below, from where her thighs meet. However, all this is far below your present standing. Worst of all, that white and ordinariness has forgotten that you exist. If some of you ever leave this place, which I doubt very much, remember never to mention what happened here. NEVER." (Translated by M & J & M) |