19. The Death of Oral Tradition

Это перевод на английский рассказа "Смерть устной традиции" из сборника "Устная традиция".

I have already mentioned that the sacred space in which our family traditions, we ourselves, and the landscape around us coexisted began shrinking in the late 1950s, like the Aral Sea. It dried up imperceptibly, gradually, without meeting anyone's protest, and suddenly it turned out that where there had once been a warm, fish-filled body of water teeming with life—who remembers that pristine paradise of Ascension Island from school geography? — there were now only isolated patches of brine.

Soon even those were gone.

Now there is a desert in their place. Wind, dust, and mirages wander across it: Harry Potter, hobbits, orcs. Disney characters and cowboys have already been pushed out to the periphery, although they are still hanging on.

Where are you, then, my Foxy, Wolf, Crane, Cossacks, Baptized Jews, Kombats?

They have been gone for a long time. They disappeared.

And I am still here, the bearer of their memory.

…

Once I read a very sad chapter in a book about the conquest of America. At first, the Spaniards did not actually destroy the Inca aristocracy. They baptized them, taught them to read and write, married them to Spanish women, entrusted them with important positions in the administration. And the ruins of the Inca Empire did not disappear all at once.

It was only later that the Spaniards realized that their efforts had been wasted, that they had been backing the wrong horse. But that is not what I am talking about.

I am talking about how one Spanish conquistador, and memoirist describes a baptized Inca, one of the former princes, showing him the burial place of the Great Incas. All the mummies are still in their places in the niches, sitting with their arms wrapped around their knees, dressed in their brightly colored garments. There are fourteen of them, and the prince knows all their many-generation names, all their great deeds.

After all, these are his ancestors, his history.

One could still find their knotted books somewhere, and a few people capable of reading them.

Soon that entire world disappeared.

I walk along the East River during my lunch break. That is what it is called here: lunch break. I look across at Manhattan, with the United Nations building, and the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building flanking it on either side.

More than fifty years ago, having read my first science-fiction novels, Griada and Callisto, I stood on the fence around our yard and looked east. Beyond the government-owned orchard, private houses were being built at a brisk pace on what had until then been empty land. Above them rose the foothills, still covered with collective-farm orchards of the now-vanished "aport" apple. Beyond them was a mountain then called Virigina, the one now known as Kok-Tobe, with a triangulation tower on its summit.

Back then, the rivers still had "marinka" in them, and I actually got to eat that marinka.

I stood there looking and kept waiting: any moment now a spaceship would land on the mountain, and I would be among the first to run out to meet the extraterrestrials. They would come toward me, beautiful, happy, kind. They would bring us unknown knowledge that would lead us all to prosperity.

I used to think: what if I leave, and then they arrive without me? Someone else would meet them, and how bitter that would be!

How I hoped. How I waited.

And now I have lived to see it.

…

Now I remind myself of that Inca prince, leading a conquistador on an excursion through the graves of his ancestors.

Perhaps, as a child, he too had stared into the distance, waiting for visitors from elsewhere, and along with them—for change.

Well, the changes came.

And what did he become?

I too, like him, lived on the boundary between eras.

One of them is historical. It has Troy, Ancient Rome, Rus, the Battle of Uzun-Agach, the annexation of Kokand by Russia, the World War, myths, heroes, various artifacts so close to our hearts.

The other is the present-day world without borders, an inexhaustible ocean of information, an unimaginable degree of freedom such as no previous century had ever known, an abundance of money, a kind of global show modeled on Hollywood and Broadway, where everything is unreal, but everything sparkles and looks better and more authentic than the real thing.

There is no room in this world for myths, heroes, or monuments. There is no history there either. There are only commercial fantasies and TV shows.

In this version of history, the ancient Persians look like punks, and the siege of Troy lasts a week.

…

Walk through Times Square. Wander through the million-strong crowd. Look at the buildings that have become displays; they change every day.

They aren't even buildings anymore. They are scenery.

Feel yourself to be nobody.

And relax.