Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

Jesus Christ — what impelled me to be born in the Ass of the Universe?

I’d really like to be different, but there’s nothing I can do. I can only console myself with my mlog.

But no one’s going to read it!

Even if I were to think up a way to prevent myself from turning into a fat worm of the Ass of the Universe — by what means could I warn other people, other nations, other countries? How could I save them from this terrible fate?

There’s no way.

No way, no way, no way. .

VV doesn’t want to withdraw from my life. He sends grim messengers and intrudes into my daily routine more aggressively than ever. His not being here is far more obvious than his being here.

Today this ghost, Giedraitienė, slunk into the library. She stank of overly sour cabbage. But she didn’t ask me for a three-ruble note; she wasn’t even drunk.

“Vytie is completely innocent,” she announced in a smoke-ruined bass, “I’ll testify to it in any court. He killed me, not that girl. This is my fault. But it’s my rabbits that are most to blame.”

She slumped onto a creaking chair, raised one leg over the other and gracefully supported her chin with her fingers. In amazement, I realized this woman must have been a beauty once. In the calmest of voices, she told such a bunch of humdingers that I didn’t know what to think.

Giedraitienė raised rabbits; she made a living from them because she didn’t receive a pension and her only son didn’t concern himself with her. She had names for all of her charges and would take them to graze in a meadow. The rabbits obeyed her like trained dogs. But it was their names that mattered most. One hysterical rabbit with black ears was called Hitler. A stumpy, mustachioed one was named Stalin. There would be a Beria, a Suslov, a Genghis Khan, and a Mengele. There would be — because the rabbits changed, but the names always stayed the same. VV thought them up. According to him, this was so he wouldn’t regret knocking them off. Giedraitienė herself couldn’t finish them off. She would call on VV’s help. He would take some Mengele and do it in with a single blow of his hand. At that moment, Giedraitienė would close her eyes and think about the real Mengele.

“My profession’s depressing,” she explained in all seriousness. “Who’s going to kill them for me now? Maybe you could? Or maybe you know someone who would want to buy two hundred sixteen rabbits?”

I felt an irresistible urge to get all two hundred and sixteen names out of her. It would be a macabre map of VV’s hatreds. I invited that witch home. I suppose Molotov was driven to invite me home by exactly the same sentiments. She gladly agreed.

“He ordered the very ugliest, mangiest one to be named Plato,” she said, standing up. “He’d let that one die on its own — no one would buy a fur like that, anyway. .”

I listened to Giedraitienė’s tale until nearly dawn. The names of the rabbits got all confused; there were too many of them. Robespierre or Freud didn’t surprise me, but I was shocked by Mozart, Camus, and Beethoven. Beethoven was a large female with floppy ears who would tap the floor of its cage to the rhythm of the Fifth Symphony. Every week, VV would knock off some Kant, Picasso, or Confucius.

Note: Giedraitienė related the following words of VV’s to me, stated as he knocked off yet another rabbit:

“Unfortunately, they’ll all be born again. Killing makes no sense at all. . Unless you’d murder someone in the firm belief that by dying a martyr’s death, he’ll be reborn into a better world, or a better age.”

This thought is worth taking note of. Otherwise, Giedraitienė’s confession turned everything upside down. I found out that VV would visit her shack every week. A man who didn’t visit his own father took care of some half-witted drunk. By the way, I slowly started to suspect that she’s no half-wit at all. She eagerly handled the things in my collection, inspected them with a shrewd glance, and read the newspaper clippings and letters.

The thought flashed through my mind that it was no accident at all that she had shown up, that she had been sent to spy out my collection and was merely distracting my attention with her stories.

Everyone in the Ass of the Universe who has even the slightest serious little thought suffers from paranoia. It’s grown into our blood. You immediately start thinking they want to steal that thoughtlet from you, and do you in because of it. You imagine spies everywhere. When you talk on the telephone, you don’t doubt for a minute that you’re being listened to.

If you’re even a little bit out of sorts, it even seems as if someone is secretly recording your thoughts. This type of paranoia is a fundamental characteristic of the Ass of the Universe.

I asked, straight out, why VV was so kind to her.

“One way or another, I am his aunt,” she answered calmly. “Actually, I’m practically his mother. Magdelė never gave a thought to Vytukas.”

I hiccupped no less, and went into the kitchen to fix some coffee so I could digest this news. The situation was totally Vargalian. Up until now, I hadn’t even suspected he had an aunt.

“Yes, his mother,” Giedraitienė muttered, pacing around the room. “To my little sister Magdelė, Vytas didn’t really exist. She kept forgetting his name. Her only child was of no concern to her.”

“So what did concern her?”

“She was a reader. All she did was read. The make-believe world of books was much more real to her than life. You know? A book can be charming, but you always understand it’s just a little pile of paper. But in her head, everything was upside down. To her the world of books was the great reality, and life — an utterly boring book you could fling away whenever you wanted. When she was reading some novel, she’d even start dressing in period costume and speak that country’s language. Sometimes I’d come by and I wouldn’t be able to talk to her: she’d be stammering in English.”

“He just gravitated towards me,” Giedraitienė repeated, “sometimes he was closer to me than my own child. Robertas felt a morbid envy towards Vytie, but he’ll have to help him now.”

My mlog is crawling with colonels. Here another one’s showed up — Colonel Giedraitis.

Suddenly I realized who it was, that horrible evening, who was grunting as he scrambled through the bushes, and then walked deliberately towards the black car. I was hanging out next to the Banys’s garden cottage, and I got a good look at that graying man. It was Colonel Giedraitis. I know this now as clearly as if his name had been stamped on his forehead. He had a finger in that nightmare too.

They had prepared everything in advance. Don’t tell me they planned Lolita’s death in advance too?

Giedraitienė kept meandering and embroidering her ridiculous theory — supposedly, VV hadn’t killed Lolita, but her, together with all of her rabbits. And then suddenly, as if it were something everyone knew, she blurted out:

“When I went to prison because of him. .”

It seemed I’d been hit by lightning. I swallowed her shoddy story as if it were a writhing snake.

“My very existence stretched all his nerves to the limit,” she confessed sadly, “I’m the living rebuke of his past.”

I listened to her disjointed tale, seeing it all with unusual clarity: a calm stream, its bend sheltering a few houses out beyond town, and a hollow overgrown with bushes where VV would come straight from the forest, risking his life, apparently completely unable to leave his childhood memories behind. I saw Giedraitienė’s hurriedly prepared packet of provisions: a piece of ham, three cucumbers, and two thick, fragrant pieces of bread. The flowery towel with which the naked VV dried his reddened body, not in the least self-conscious in front of his aunt. Her tale was so vivid that I believed it all.