Giedra Radvilaviciute - Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again

To Vitia — you can depend on him — our little caper will seem somewhat archaic. Once upon a time, he made deals with the living, not the dead — and for far more money than the twenty-five thousand litai he saved himself by agreeing to participate in this plan. Which is exactly why his past doesn’t correspond to his present. But his profession is archaic, too. Nowadays deals are done with the dead all the time — we’re just spared the gruesome bits. Virtual or half-virtual wars are going on all over the world. Airplanes fly without pilots, or else, if you happen to get one that still has human beings aboard, they litter the ground with their bombs, they drop them on top of factories that supposedly contain centrifuges for concentrating uranium, and on cities and villages too, all the while looking at an electronic schematic glowing in the dark of their cabins. You can make a killing off of killing a thousand people without ever seeing a single tear or drop of blood. Without even looking behind you to see how prettily your explosives slide through the air to the ground below.

You will accompany my pseudo coffin to Rokantišk s together with everyone else: my daughter, R ta, Margarita, her Juozas, some of my other friends … I don’t, as you know, have any close family left, daughter aside … And when “my” coffin, not weighing more than it should (inside will be the two bundles of books I stored in your basement, along with my grandmother’s Singer), descends into the pit, I know you’ll cheer up. Because you’ll be watching it all in the same way you watched the last good movie you didn’t see twenty years ago. “And the ship sails on …” you’ll think. You’ll even get the urge to have some brandy. And then, one of my most “feminine” friends, the kind of woman you particularly dislike — R ta perhaps, who’s already managed to daub her so-carefully-conserved Eden perfume behind my ears during the viewing — will say, “Excuse me, I’ve been wanting to ask … Who on earth put her in that awful dress? So short, and so very tasteless! She never wore anything like that before.” And through your clenched teeth you’ll say, “It’s Coco Sinel.”

At that very moment, Petrarka will already be in a van, driving me — and not even speeding — back to my hometown. To a pit still being dug. Vitia and two young men will remain inside the van until the grave is ready. One of the young men will doze off. The other will be constantly tapping out text messages, but not about what’s going on. (Not that he actually knows too much about what’s going on.) The irregularly dug pit, intentionally without straight edges — as if intended for nothing more than burying a stinking heap of trash — won’t be finished until evening. It’s being dug by locals, but the coffin will be buried by Petrarka’s group. In the woods by the river. Just about three kilometers from the spot where my grandfather’s house once stood. And where, now, a few wooden cottages built by Vilnius Bank skulk in its place. Before easing in my coffin, Vitia will ask to have a peek. He needs to be in control at all times. He’ll shine in a flashlight. But it’s not necessary. I really will be in the coffin. Just the same as when they put me there. My face will be fair and smooth, and there won’t be any wrinkles on my forehead. In fairy tales they would say, “skin like alabaster.” That’s the way skin should be in the fog by the river.

That evening, all three, excluding Vitalijus, will get drunk. For the time being, using their own money. Sometime around seven o’clock the following morning, Vitia will be the first at the hotel to wake up, kick away the scattered shoes and socks, boil water for tea in the dusty pot on the table, and then drive to the site of last evening’s festivities to take, as Russian professional assassins say, a “control shot,” to make sure the objective has been achieved. The ground will be cleared of yesterday’s pine needles and trash. Taking his time, watching the swift river, he will smoke a cigarette. It will be almost quiet. Anyway, Vitia won’t hear anything. Maybe just a train passing, very far away. A jay, a woodpecker. Tuk, tuk … But me — I’ll hear something else entirely.

… Underground, my godmother’s wine glass set with those hunting scenes will tinkle very faintly. I’ll see the bird cherry blossoms falling on Vitia’s thin leather jacket, clinging together, blown then into a white mass on the riverbank, resembling a scarf woven on a board rimmed with nails. For an instant, I’ll even imagine that Vitia came into the world, into my mirror apartment, out of Rudokien ’s belly. And then, deep in the ground, perhaps perched on the root of a tree, the carpenter who told me never to repeat his story will be working on his prosthetic leg. (Tuk, tuk …) He’ll have propped the other leg, the remaining one, against who knows what. Maybe he’ll stick it into some ground water. And Vitia will glance at the river again. Me too. But, as ever … we’ll see completely different things. He’ll notice the brown seaweed, still not recovered from the winter, waving in the current. But me — I’ll see the sheepskins my grandfather tanned after the war bobbing there in the water, spreading out to the sides. The river, to me, is like a vein through which my childhood flowed. After stubbing out his cigarette on his heel, Vitia will check the soil density by kicking at it with his shoe. Then he’ll get into the van and drive straight to an ATM. “In a jacket sprinkled with bird cherry blossoms, and smelling of a corpse,” he’ll approach the machine and take out two hundred litai for gas and miscellaneous. And will have no idea that — through the slot of the cash machine, supposedly from Vilnius Bank, but in reality straight from an old, demolished cottage — the money is being handed to him by my sleepy grandfather, wakened too early.

On the trip back, like on the way there, all four will ride in silence. Near Ukmerg , Vitia will take pity on Petrarka. Because he’ll remember past hangovers of his own. Instead of driving straight down the freeway to Vilnius, he’ll turn off by Ukmerg . In the café they’ll drink Švyturys stout, likewise silently. In the silence, somewhere not far away, two shots will ring out. And this will be enough to surprise Petrarka, for once, and so he’ll finally open his mouth: “It used to be that these stupid hicks would sit around shooting crows because they had nothing better to do, but now they’ve gone nuts because of the bird flu …” And it won’t occur to any of them that it might have been shotgun fire, and that it might have been intended for a rat. Probably by some man whose instinct to defend, to guard his children and his woman, as well as his innate marksmanship, had been handed down through the centuries. After climbing back into the van, Petrarka will take the wheel and start to speed … Well, what of it? He’s been driving with Vitia from the day he got his driver’s license, but he’s never gotten a ticket when they were stopped yet. He speeds just to speed, not because he’s eager to get anywhere. Everyone will have been told a long time ago that they’ll be paid back in Vilnius. But it’s precisely now, during the drive, that Petrarka will find the time to be bored to death by the previous day’s work. His thoughts will scatter; it will become impossible for him to concentrate. Besides, the scraped knuckles on his right hand will hurt … What had been the connection between Vitia and that lady next door? he’ll wonder. It’s all pretty unclear. Probably just money, or the craziness of some distant kinship, given the way families stick together in clans in Lithuania, because she was old and not pretty. Petrarka himself wouldn’t have gotten involved in all this, certainly not for so little money, if it hadn’t been for that eternal debt of his. Which you couldn’t even call a debt. He had reminded Vitia of it a thousand times when they were drinking. Once, Vitia had even suggested that he shut the hell up. Fifteen years ago, you see, next to the Tyzenhauz Palace, four men had knocked Petrarka to the ground. They kicked him till they had broken two ribs and a collarbone, and his liver started pouring out the corner of his mouth. Anyway, that’s how it felt. When he woke up in the hospital, that’s just what he told the doctor: “My liver is leaking out.” The nurse on duty started laughing, because they had indeed needed to put a bandage over the ripped skin at the corner of his mouth. But the thing was, if Vitia hadn’t shown up at the gate at the right moment … well, no one would have. Sure, Petrarka’s scattered, hungover thoughts, jumping around like a cloud of midges in the sun, could — if you really wanted to — be brought together into a coherent form. (Every line of thought must be controlled.) In essence, though without knowing it, Petrarka is thinking precisely the same thing that Victor Pelevin once wrote. Even though he hasn’t so much as seen a single copy of the famous writer’s books, not even from afar. I mean the thought that might even look appropriate painted on the recently plastered blind wall that you’ll find up beyond my extra door: “Happiness is reminiscence.”