Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

I was so affected by my trip to the Vargalyses’ past that I even forgot VV’s most recent exploits. I no longer dreamed of Lolita with her disheveled hair, or that wretched house in the garden. I took up an interest in the past.

I don’t get along with my subconscious. It interferes with writing my mlog. My brain’s probably full of cockroaches. Or maybe it’s simply gotten overgrown with fat. It must be that Lithuania cannot give birth to an mlog genius.

Beset by these kinds of thoughts, I ran into Šapira, an old Jew and VV’s former neighbor. VV called him Ahasuerus. That was irony, apparently. Quite the Eternal Jew — the embodiment of austere elegance and stable business. Šapira’s shoes shine even in the worst slush, his suit never gets wrinkled, and his hair doesn’t get disheveled. He looks half the age he really is. Šapira is a walking calculator, a walking clock, and a walking encyclopedia of the black market. VV used to play chess with him, even though he didn’t otherwise care for chess.

“Such a clever head for playing, and he fritters his time away,” Šapira used to say regretfully when he lost.

He would beat everyone else, so he would invite VV to a duel over and over again.

“Fool,” he would say, losing yet again. “You should honor a gift from God. With that kind of talent, you could be a millionaire.”

I don’t think Šapira was really all that mercenary. He merely thought that if you had an aptitude for that kind of business, you should use it.

Šapira turned out to be virtually the only person in Vilnius who didn’t in the least believe VV could cut a person into bits.

“If I were in the investigator’s shoes, I’d check out all the Narutis thugs,” he mused sadly. “Comrade Vargalys used to like hanging out there, but he turned into a normal person later. I’d think the dregs of Narutis hated him for that. It could have been their revenge.”

Šapira is always right. I had no right to leave out an object of such significance as the Narutis. VV was always attracted by its characters. He felt like a pig in shit at the Narutis.

What pig, in what shit?

In the old days I used to go there myself, out of curiosity. I would drink some dreadful slop with this ex-security agent Mackus. After Beria was shot, Mackus was responsible for the destruction of NKVD documents. He burned everything he was supposed to, but he kept the files on several acquaintances for his own amusement. He showed me the record of VV’s interrogation. That’s the type that attracted VV to the Narutis.

The Narutis wasn’t a bit changed. The same grotesque figures drinking the same grotesque slop by the tumblerful. I never felt comfortable there. I spat out the last gulp of wine straight into the tumbler and got up, but someone commandingly put a hand on my shoulder. Turning around, I should have gasped, but I just smiled wryly.

“Let’s go for a walk,” the drab detective said hollowly. “It’s not at all far.”

He didn’t explain anything, didn’t ask anything. To tell the truth, it was all obvious to both of us; we were too lazy to pretend. He took me to Teodoras Žilys’s studio.

We turned into a gloomy side street; he went first. It occurred to me that this detective was ideally faceless. No one could paint his portrait in words. You could describe his walk, his gestures, you could even characterize his smell — but not his face, not his eyes. He had no face; he didn’t even wear a mask. I don’t think he was human at all.

He was a bleeding hemorrhoid of the Ass of the Universe.

It’s difficult not to be astonished when a hemorrhoid starts pontificating.

“We’re walking in the same footsteps,” the detective’s back said to me. “God has hitched us both to the same wagon.”

The Old Town pigeons cowered at his words; cats in the gateways arched their backs in fear.

“What are you looking for? What are you looking for, my man?” the hemorrhoid’s back continued. “Was he your friend? Buddy? Lover? What are we looking for in this world, pal? Why are we tracking down these cold leads?”

I followed in his footsteps, even though nothing was forcing me to act that way. I could have spat at the hemorrhoidal back and gone on my way. I could have flown off together with Vilnius’s grimy pigeons. But I followed behind him. Some excited women were shoving by the shoe store: apparently, something had been delivered.

“Maybe we’re looking for his diary? His notes? A tape recording? A sign?” The detective turned into a gloomy gateway without even glancing to see if I was following. With commanding movements, he marched up some creaking stairs. He spent an instant picking the lock.

”No man’s land,” he announced, finally turning around. “The studio doesn’t really belong to the wife, but no one’s agreed to move into a dead man’s quarters. What are you staring at? Come on in. I’ll use you like litmus paper. Like an indicator.”

Teodoras’s artist’s quarters didn’t look at all forsaken. Obviously, Lola and VV stopped in here. The bunk squeezed between the sculptures was unmade; if you wanted to, you could see the marks of a naked body on it. At the head of the bunk loomed Teodoras’s famous Iron Wolf. I winced when I saw its head had been taken off. The headless symbol of Vilnius. And we are all Vilnius’s headless wolf cubs.

I stared in wonder at the nude drawings of Lola; all the walls were covered with them, from floor to ceiling. It was only Lola here; she reigned supreme. The studio was overflowing with her divine nudity.

“You’ve slept with her yourself?” the detective asked brusquely.

There’s no way I can devote myself to my mlog. Now I’m hindered by a disgusting mortification I simply cannot forget.

Lola was visiting me at the time, like always, sitting with her fabulous legs stretched out. Things were particularly difficult for her: VV had fallen into one of his deep crises, and at those times he wouldn’t spare even Lola. She looked like a mangled bird. I simply felt terribly sorry for her. I kneeled down next to her and stroked her head like a little sister’s; all I wanted by it was to console her. She raised her eyes and fixed her penetrating, hypnotizing gaze on me.

“I understand,” she said after a moment, “I understand everything.”

Slowly, lazily, she stretched out her hand and ran it over my short hair. I never thought a person’s hand could be so soft.

“Oh, you, lambkin, my little lambkin,” she said in a strange, sharp voice. “Do you think I’m blind? You think I don’t feel anything? You think I’m a hyena, tearing off pieces of live meat for my own amusement? Don’t worry, I understand, I understand everything.”

I, the fool, still didn’t get what she was talking about. I’m not naïve or a complete idiot; I was simply lulled by her penetrating gaze.

“I understand that you’re melting, swooning, and sighing with love, my dear lambkin. You’ve earned sainthood; you could walk into heaven alive. You knew your love wouldn’t be requited. You didn’t have the slightest hope, but you sacrificed yourself for me anyway, helped me, saved me. You’ll be rewarded — here and now. And later, whenever, the moment you want it.”

Speechless, I watched as she began a nymph’s striptease. At first her bare toes began to stir, to wave, then the feet, shins, knees. The lightweight summer skirt appeared to slowly rise by itself. The buttons on her blouse slipped out of their holes themselves. She rocked her hips dreamily, caressed her thick hair and didn’t shut her mouth for a minute:

“This is all I can give you, but believe me, it’s no small matter. It’s a great deal, Martis. I’ll be your slave; I’ll be as obedient as death. You’ll be my ruler — for a while, a very short while, but you will be, really you will.”