KREMLIN WALLS
And it’s all useless. They were not deceived, there was just silence in reply. The invalids, brought in in wheelchairs, — the final generation of the Empire — refused to speak their final word. Why?
If I had known for certain that with my incursions I would burn, crush and mutilate their final months and weeks, the silence of their pharmaceutically adjusted sleep, the predictable orchestration of their lives, would I have turned my horde back, called off my dogs? No, of course not. There’s no pity. And there are many reasons. One of them is that the truth of the iron generation had long ago petrified into a polished, unassailable obelisk of calm and silence. And year after year, we lay siege to a city that no longer existed.
Perhaps this is no coincidence, and our patriarc
