Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

So, the above-mentioned creature gets completely confused and turns into a nothing.

Opponents will ironically observe that homo sovieticus is exactly the same. That is a totally unscientific assertion. Homo sovieticus is a creature that lives a double life, or more accurately, two lives. Homo lithuanicus doesn’t live a single one. Homo sovieticus deciphered the structure of the Ass of the Universe and adapted to it. Homo lithuanicus didn’t adapt to anything, which is why he’s a nothing.

A real, true homo sovieticus isn’t so terribly rare among the Lithuanians. But the much more common and more interesting case is that of homo lithuanicus.

Homo lithuanicus isn’t entirely doomed. He just sleeping the sleep of hibernation, like a badger in winter. He secretly believes that one of these days the sun will shine again, the snow will melt and the flowers will bloom.

Poor, naïve homo lithuanicus !

Once again, I give grave warning: the entire world is slowly turning in the same direction. Everyone who throws out his books and stares at the television, or ruins his cousin over three thousand dollars in questionable earnings, is unconsciously laying the groundwork for that kind of existence. All it takes for the lethargy viruses to start madly multiplying is to doze off spiritually.

And then all that’s necessary is for the Ass of the Universe to slowly slither into such a snoozing, virus-infected country.

I’ve lost the main thread of my mlog again. And there is no Ariadne to offer me hers. If Ariadne was named Lolita Banytė-Žilienė, then for a guide like that, no thanks. I never did understand what fundamental quality of hers she wanted to realize.

Let’s say I haven’t managed to realize my teaching talent.

Gediminas failed to embrace the entire world: neither mathematics, nor music, nor heaven knows what else.

VV failed to realize his love.

I frequently think about what it was VV really loved. Without question, he loved his past and all of his dead — the real ones and the ostensible ones. And the same goes for himself — the young VV brimming with strength and illusions, who is long gone and could never be again. But worst of all — he loved people. I emphasize — people. Not robots, not the little worms of the Ass of the Universe, but people, who are rarer and rarer in our ancient city.

I know quite a bit about his mature life, and I’ve learned a few things about his childhood, but the worst is that I know everything about his wretched end. Not the end of his life, just about VV’s end.

Sometimes you’d give anything not to know what you know.

More and more often it occurs to me that one of the most important roots of VV’s destiny was his infertility. He and Lolita desperately needed to adopt a child.

I’m probably talking nonsense. VV needed his own and only his own son, and he couldn’t have one. When he was drunk, he kept threatening to go to Siberia to search for something he had left there. I knew very well what he had in mind.

It seems to me that all of VV’s horrifying sexuality was a futile attempt to return what had been lost to the ages. You’d think he secretly believed that sooner or later quantity would turn into quality, according to the laws of dialectical materialism.

VV was a sexual Marxist.

VV would fall hopelessly in love every week, so Stefa had to constantly suffer the torments of hell. It was even funny to hear VV’s sighs and see his misty eyes. But that youthful love would last no more than a week. To me it seems he was always waiting for Lolita; he would deceive himself for a while every time, thinking she had already come. I vaguely remember Nijolė and Aušra. And then there was Aurelija, Rolanda, and another Nijolė. But Vaiva was the one I took the most note of.

I didn’t like her from the start. A giant Afro-style haystack of hair, coarse movements, and an insolent disposition. She radiated the attractiveness of a healthy young filly. She was screaming for a good stud.

Vaiva immediately became the leader of our community of women. Even Elena would let her take the lead a bit, to tell dirty jokes and pour cognac in the coffee. Vaiva went after VV shamelessly, sometimes almost obscenely. She offered herself publicly, I’d say triumphantly.

I don’t know myself why this disgusting story sticks with me. I really don’t want to remember it, but something keeps telling me it’s significant.

I could certainly understand VV’s male desire, but I really didn’t grasp how a person that intelligent could make that filly his closest associate. She was in his office constantly and knew all of his plans. VV became nervous, rude, and I’d say stupid. This couldn’t continue for long; it ended suddenly, and in an unanticipated manner.

I became a completely unintentional witness to that affair. I stayed in the library Saturday night, as I wanted to look over some books that weren’t allowed out of the building. I had no idea that VV and Vaiva had stayed. For some reason I didn’t reveal myself when I noticed them; I stuck in the background. Perhaps unnecessarily. It would have been better if I hadn’t seen all that.

VV stood by some shelves and paged through a book, while Vaiva rubbed up against him like a giant cat. He didn’t pay the slightest attention to her, but she didn’t let up. She got on her knees and nonchalantly started undressing him: voluptuously and vulgarly, panting heavily. He just continued calmly paging through the book. Now it was too late to come up to them; my only option was to exit quietly, but, in astonishment, I continued watching them. I saw something I’d never seen before. The details really aren’t necessary. I’ll only say that when I returned home, I scrubbed my entire body some ten times under the shower, attempting to wash off an invisible slime.

And VV stood there as if it were no big deal, looking at a book!

By then it was too much for me. I wanted to run away, but I bumped into a bookshelf and several volumes fell off with a huge crash. I was so frightened I couldn’t even manage to move. The crash seemed to awaken VV from a deep sleep. He looked around with amazement at what was going on. A look of disgust appeared on his face. He suddenly went nuts.

It was horrible to see how he worked her over. I thought he’d break her arms and legs, smash her skull, and knock out her teeth.

“Kanukas!” He screamed this strange word out loud. “Kanukas!”

I didn’t even try to rescue her. I’m a coward and I know it. I had absolutely no desire to be crushed like a pear. For what? For Vaiva? For that filly? She got what she deserved.

I couldn’t understand any of it: neither her earlier triumph over VV, nor VV’s strange fading, nor that outburst of madness. Afterwards VV immediately recovered his good mood, agile wit, and sense of humor. You’d think he’d come out of some kind of fog. He didn’t remember Vaiva at all.

What did he beat and kick between the shelves that horrible night in the library? Surely not a rather vulgar young woman with an Afro hairstyle, not a real human being. But what?

By the way, right after this incident, the infamous story of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski broke. The satanic Manson, Sharon Tate’s brutal murder, and so on.

For a few days afterwards VV walked around under a black cloud and moved his lips soundlessly. It seemed Roman Polanski was his brother, or maybe Tate his sister.

I took note of this, because VV grimly predicted that Polanski would shortly meet with a vile misfortune. And that’s what happened: he was accused of raping a minor.

VV would frequently make predictions like that, and he always guessed correctly. He saw connections everywhere that were invisible to everyone else.