Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

The shagfelted Siberian dogs didn’t chew through the backbone of his spirit. There he is, walleyed Stepanas, nicknamed Carp. He’s pestering the Russkie commies again:

“You’re like those carp! Carp! They’re frying you in a skittle, and you’re writhing and singing a hymn to the chef! It’s Stalin that’s cooking you, Stalin — don’t you understand? Are you as stupid as a carp?”

He raises his arms to heaven and thunders as if he were on stage:

“I’m ashamed that I’m a Russian! Ashamed! I’ll never be a carp!”

You look at him, and it’s easier for you to breathe, easier to bear it, easier to wait for your doom. No incisorfanged Siberian huskies will bite through the backbone of his spirit. To you Carp is beautiful, even his crossed eyes don’t spoil his face. If you have a spirit, you’re beautiful.

Martynas is probably right: I don’t have a past. It’s like a boundless country, one I’m destined to never find myself in. On long winter evenings I fruitlessly attempt to remember my own past. Memory willingly recreates sights and sounds, but those talking pictures aren’t my past. What of it, if those episodes once happened? That jumble of people and things doesn’t change anything in my life, doesn’t explain anything. It cannot become my past. All of that probably happened to someone else, not to me at all. That’s not the way my Vilnius night was, not the way my camp’s fence was barbed, not the way my sweat smelled. The real past couldn’t stay so impassive, it has to be your own : recognizable and tamed. It’s like the nails with which your present is constructed. There are no nails holding mine together. I do not have a past, although there were many things in my life. It seems all I have is a non-past. In the great ALL there are no episodes that once were, and are now past; inside it everything is still happening .

That’s why I took note of Martynas’s unexpected unveiling and his ideas, though they’ve been heard elsewhere many times before. That’s why the image, yet another vision of my non-past, engraved itself: Martynas, the thin little deity of all those with crew cuts, stands leaning sadly against the wall; cigarette ashes billow indifferently at his feet, and walleyed Carp tiptoes outside the window, stinging my tired non-heart.

It was all too much for me already: the morning’s half-witted pigeons, the Russian Orthodox churches, the girls in cocoa-colored coats, Vilnius’s stray dogs, the flat kanukish faces. That day (if that was one day) had tired me to death. A crushing, stunningly lucid despair came over me. All I wanted was to die on the spot. Nothing in heaven or on earth had the power to drown out that desire.

All there is left to do at moments like that is to wait. To wait for who knows what, because there is no hope whatsoever. It’s as if you were sprawled all alone in a broken-down dinghy with your legs and arms paralyzed, and a mountain stream was quickly carrying you closer to a waterfall; not a soul about — only steep rocky shores and the thunder of water plunging into the nearby abyss. The spray from the waterfall hangs above the foaming rapids, the end is near, and you can’t even roll out of the boat and sink to the bottom with a rock, to finish everything in an instant. You have to suffer until the chasm snatches your body for itself: the stream of the waterfall will smash it against the splinters of sharp rocks, and then cast you, still alive, into the boiling cauldron of the gray vortices. You’re already dead, but you can think; that’s the worst of it: you grasp everything.

Danger hid everywhere, just about anything could determine the outcome: the grim, hunched-over laborer on the scaffolding, the books on the shelves, the smell of linoleum. They watched me all the time, themselves invisible, inaudible, indiscernible. I was absolutely alone, but I couldn’t for a moment be by myself ; I couldn’t avoid Their hellish guardianship.

It seemed to me that the office was slowly widening, that the walls were receding from me — or perhaps I was the one cowering and shrinking and growing ever smaller. I knew I was sitting in my office, that the wide dirty window yawned behind me, but the inner vision was stronger: the room slowly turned into a desert, a scorched, sallow expanse where no plants grow and no animals wander. This landscape of gloom was more real than the view of the real office. It was empty inside of me, so the surroundings became empty too. I was suffocating; I was so alone and unhappy that all that remained was to die immediately. I was already on the verge of dying. Some life, even the most miserable desert creature, could have saved me — anything. But the desert was absolutely empty — only a distant thunder reminded me that the thunderlord is also always alone.

It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t thunder, but just a knock at the door. Somebody’s knuckles ordered me to come to my senses, tapped to a swinging rhythm, one of many of Gediminas’s swinging rhythms. Creaking, the door opened; Lolita stood on the threshold.

“May I come in?”

She carefully closed the door, awkwardly fixed her hair, and smiled guiltily:

“If you only knew how sick I am of those women. . Is it okay if I sit with you for a bit?”

Somewhat flustered, she settled on the sofa, stretched out her long legs and leaned back, lowering her eyes. She probably expected that her pose, her slender waist, and her loose hair would explain everything on their own. She had never been to see me like this before; we rarely exchanged so much as a word. But there she sat on the sofa with her eyes lowered; with her forefinger she gently caressed her other hand. That defenseless caress completely did me in. Lolita, it seemed, begged me to sit down next to her, to help her, so she wouldn’t have to caress herself. She showed up just in time; she came true, the way an intoxicating dream comes true. A moment ago I really could have died. She saved my life. My dream came calling on me, even though I had never dared to summon it.

And I stood there like a blockhead and got even more breathless. The silliest of all possible thoughts ran through my head: it’s not proper for a boss to turn red like a teenager in front of his employee. That was how much was left of my intellect. I was probably hallucinating. Her appearance was much too unexpected, entirely impossible. It was a miracle, although she sat there in an exceptionally earthy and ordinary way: a somewhat irregular oval face, not particularly symmetrical features, legs that had blundered their way out of my dreams, rather large, upright breasts. But the brown eyes, always turned in towards herself, towards her own inner being, suddenly looked at me. They spoke to me of plain and simple things, so plain and simple that I couldn’t believe it. I ought to have rushed to kiss those nearly unfamiliar (so familiar, so wished for and dreamed of!) woman’s hands, to tell her everything — not silly words of love, no — to scream that she is everything to me, that she had saved me from death. . that I had conceived her during sleepless nights. . That without her the world wouldn’t exist, the stars would stop moving. . I ought to lick her feet, to crawl in front of her. . I needed to at least temporarily go out of my mind and risk it, but I stood there like a statue and felt I would ruin that miracle myself. I didn’t believe the signs in her eyes. I believe in nothing.

I probably gave her a terrible look — she bit her lip and again smiled guiltily. Unfortunately, my eyes don’t give away any feelings, they simply look. At the very best they frighten or insult. She fidgeted as if she were sitting on hot iron, then suddenly leaned forward with her entire body, closed her eyes, and murmured despairingly: