Hard to Be a God by Arkady Strugatsky Page A

and a well-known politician too.
    How rotten when the day starts with Don Tameo. Rumata sat up and hugged his knees under his splendid torn blanket. That’s the kind of thing that gives you a feeling of leaden hopelessness and makes you want to mope around and ponder how you are weak and helpless in the face of circumstances. This didn’t occur to us on Earth. Over there, we are healthy, confident men who have gone through psychological conditioning and are ready for anything. We have excellent nerves; we know how not to flinch when faced with beatings and executions. We have amazing self-control; we’re capable of putting up with the blathering of the most hopeless idiots. We’ve forgotten how to be fastidious—wecan make do with dishes that, according to the custom, have been licked by dogs and then wiped with a dirty hem for the sake of beauty. We’re fantastic impersonators—even in our dreams we do not speak the languages of Earth. We have a foolproof weapon—the basis theory of feudalism, developed in quiet offices and laboratories, at dusty archaeological digs, in thoughtful discussions.
    Too bad that Don Reba has never heard of this theory. Too bad that the psychological conditioning peels off like a sunburn, that we fall into extremes, that we’re constantly forced to remind ourselves: grit your teeth and remember that you’re a god in disguise, they know not what they do, almost none of them are to blame, and therefore you must be patient and tolerant. It turns out that the reservoirs of humanism in our souls, which seemed bottomless on Earth, dry up at an alarming rate. Holy Míca, we were true humanists over there, on Earth. Humanism was the backbone of our personalities; in our worship of Man, in our love of Man, we even approached anthropocentrism—and here we are suddenly horrified to catch ourselves thinking,
Are these really humans? Is it possible they are capable of becoming humans, even with time?
And then we remember about people like Kira, Budach, Arata the Hunchback, and we feel ashamed— and this, too, is unfamiliar and unpleasant and, most important, completely useless.
    I shouldn’t think about this, thought Rumata. Not in the morning. Curse that Don Tameo! There’s a sour taste in my soul, and there’s no way to get rid of it in such loneliness. That’s exactly right, loneliness! Did we, so healthy, so confident, ever think that we’d be lonely here? No one would believe it!
Anton, my friend, what’s happening to you? To the west of you, a three-hour flight away, is Alexander Vasilievich,
a kind, wonderful man; to the east is Pashka, with whom you shared a school desk for seven years, a merry, loyal friend. You’re just feeling depressed, Toshka. It’s too bad, of course; we thought you were hardier, but who hasn’t felt this way? The work is hellish, I understand. You’ll go back to Earth, have a rest, do some theoretical work, and then we’ll see.
    Alexander Vasilievich, by the way, is a true dogmatist. If basis theory doesn’t allow for the grays (In
my fifteen years of work, dear boy, I haven’t noticed such deviations from theory …
), I must be imagining them. Since I’m imagining things, I must be having a nervous breakdown, and I should be forced to take a vacation.
Well, all right, I promise, I’ll take a look for myself and give you my opinion. But in the meantime, Don Rumata, I beg you, nothing extreme.
And Pavel, childhood friend, a polymath, a scholar, a treasure trove of information—he dives headfirst into the history of the two planets and gives a trivial proof that the gray movement is nothing more than a commonplace rebellion of the city residents against the barony.
Although one of these days I’ll come see you, take a look. To be honest, I feel kind of uncomfortable about Budach.
And thank you for that! That’ll do! I’ll busy myself with Budach, since