Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

I’m just looking for a rationalization. I’m magically drawn to those damn gardens, and that’s all there is to it. I admit: by complete coincidence, I was there the day Lolita was murdered and I saw everything. I saw absolutely everything.

There! I’ve up and said it. What will happen now?

For the time being, nothing. I haven’t been struck by lightning. My pulse didn’t even speed up. That’s it; I’m getting a taxi and going.

I’ve visited those gardens many times. Several writers have plots here. One lets me live in his pseudo-folk villa during the summer. That’s how I commune with nature. Ha, ha — that’s a joke.

Today I’m nothing more than a pathetic little spy, the victim of my own dangerous whims, glancing about fearfully. Every homo lithuanicus , whatever he does, glances about fearfully: maybe I’m doing something wrong, maybe someone will get angry.

That other evening I was also going down this path towards my temporary abode. I didn’t care if I ran into the owner or not — I knew where the bottles were stashed. The owner wasn’t there; with a glass in my hand, I went out on the porch to smoke. The Banys’s garden cottage was right in front of me. The sun was already setting; it shone straight in my eyes.

But today it’s foggy and windy, the leaves blow along the little road as long as they don’t get stuck in a puddle. I turn into the Banys’s garden as if I knew exactly where I was going and why. I pause at the entrance. Next to me a gray bird, hanging upside down, serenely pecks at the wild grapes.

It’s unbelievable, but the door to the house isn’t sealed. Any curious passerby could look over the scene of the crime. And I, by the way, am an interested party.

Interested in what?

In any event, I cautiously step inside. Inside it smells of decay, of dirty, rotten leaves. Lolita’s flaming blood has soaked into the old floorboards. The marks shine like my spilled school ink once did. This is where Lolita was defiled, chopped into bits.

Suddenly an insane notion besets me: to find even the tiniest little piece of her body and take it for myself. There must, there has to be more than that congealed blood left here.

My collection contains everything. All it’s lacking is a little dried piece of Lolita’s body.

The drone of an engine drew my attention on that other damned day. A black Volga reluctantly crawled up the small hill to the Banys cottage. The two of them got out quietly. I was doubly surprised: the cottage was completely empty all summer, and Lola never rode in her father’s car. For good measure, I downed yet another glass. When I went out onto the veranda again, the Volga was no longer there, but I sensed that Lolita and VV had stayed in the cottage.

The first question: who brought them here? The father himself? His driver? If they came themselves, who drove the car away?

An elderly man sat by the cottage next door and smoked greedily. He meant nothing. He was meaningless. A gray-haired, glum little guy, with a beaten dog’s eyes.

By no means do I think he was meaningless now, because now I know it was Colonel Giedraitis sitting there.

I’ll have to arrange everything logically later. Divide all the triangles into rhombuses and pentagrams. The triangle: VV, Giedraitienė, and her son. What role did Colonel Giedraitis play in this story? After all, he and VV knew each other since childhood.

Childhood!. .

I had a desperate itch to spy on VV and Lolita. I was somewhat inebriated; a passion for spying seized me. I talked myself out of it, I believe out loud even, but I knew I was going to sneak up to the cottage window and listen to what they were saying anyway. With the purest of intentions: just for my mlog. A person finds rationalizations for just about any amoral action. Only the Marquis de Sade was conceptually amoral — for the sake of amoralism itself.

That damned night I was downright driven by the devil. I was the devil’s flunky.

To my astonishment, they were chatting very calmly and idly about Vilnius’s history, Lolita’s grandmother, the village enchantress, about breeds of dogs. Banalities or mystic poeticisms. Apparently, that was how they talked all the time. I stood there, my arms scratched by thorns, and swore a bit. I was horribly disappointed in them. It seemed to me that they were surely obliged to speak meaningfully, inhumanly, supernaturally. And there they sat making small talk. Then they leisurely started undressing. Without any heights of rapture, each one separately, very efficiently. How ordinary! VV introduced himself to Colonel Banys, and now rides in his car. Everything’s perfectly ordinary. Banys’s driver brought the two of them to the garden to make a bit of love in the arms of nature. How charming!

I went nuts. VV’s horrible and lamentable story was taken away from me — no, no, not from me, from Lithuania, from the entire world. He was no more than an ordinary, one-dimensional little figure. And I was no more than an idiot.

My fury kept growing. I decided to march over and tell them what I thought of them. Thank God, I didn’t burst in the door; I carefully glanced in through the window.

And it was then that I saw.

No ghosts have showed up yet. I crawl over the floor and look for even the tiniest little piece of Lolita’s body. I saw it: there were a lot of them, a whole lot of them; they were practically broken down into molecules. Give me at least one molecule of Lolita’s body!

At first glance, I saw everything at once; I grasped everything beyond a shadow of a doubt. VV stabbed her with a gigantic knife, just under the right breast, with the accuracy of a professional killer. He went down on his knees, holding up the falling Lolita. She was already dead when she collapsed on him. That was no outburst of insanity; he did everything with precision and a maniacal calm. The worst of it was that in the last moment of her life, Lolita did not fear him; she looked at VV with a lucid gaze and smiled. At first I thought they had agreed to commit suicide together; they had simply been delaying, and that was why they were making small talk. However, VV hadn’t the slightest intention of killing himself. He looked around and turned his gaze straight at me. He instantly jumped up and ran out.

I knew he would kill me too, but I couldn’t move. It wasn’t that I was paralyzed by fear, but by some kind of all-consuming despair. Suddenly I understood that now nothing would be the same. Neither Lola, nor VV, nor me. However, VV jumped straight into the bushes and ran off like a wild beast, breaking the branches and tearing at the leaves.

My second thought was this: he killed the devil’s seed; that is, not Lolita, but Colonel Banys’s daughter. Maybe she had told him something? Maybe the father said something to both of them? That’s probably ridiculous. It’s too primitive. People aren’t murdered on that account. However, at that moment, that was exactly what I thought.

And immediately I saw Colonel Banys himself.

Just one molecule!

It was here, she was lying right here!

She was lying on her back, very naturally, as if waiting around for Colonel Banys to solemnly step inside. Not the slightest little muscle on his face twitched. With difficulty, he kneeled down next to his daughter’s body. He looked at her for a long time, as if choosing a favorite spot. Then he determinedly pulled the knife out of the wound.

Blood gushed out onto the floor.

I didn’t see them, but I sensed quiet figures milling about. A pair stood in the bushes beyond the cottage; another figure a bit further, near the road. The black Volga’s darkened headlights stared at me indifferently.

I didn’t see the first cuts; apparently I must have been looking around at that moment. When I glanced into the cottage again, Lola was already headless. Her father was slowly, methodically slicing her into pieces, at intervals wiping his bloody hand on her belly. For some reason it occurred to me that this certainly wasn’t the first time he had done this kind of work. For a while I watched as if I had been mesmerized, without any horror — it was much too similar to a nightmarish dream. But I could pinch myself as much as I wanted. I could close my eyes and open them again. Nothing helped: it was reality. For another moment yet I saw all the details. Then I felt sick. Thank God, I didn’t scream or run off horrified through the bushes, I just threw up.