Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

I keep comparing Vytautas Vargalys to the weakened, tormented vegetation of Vilnius. I search for universals in his life. Vytautas Vargalys grew exactly the same way the trees or grasses of Vilnius grow. Or maybe the foliage of Vilnius took over the principles of his growth. First, an unhealthily lively and luxuriant youth, a voluptuous branching. Then a prison camp of gas exhaust and power plant coal dust. All of Vilnius’s trees start out longing to escape to an invigorating freedom. But slowly a gloomy resignation is born: the trees stand there submissively, and their branches are continually clipped and clipped. I know what’s awaiting them, but there’s nothing I can do about it. The biggest mistake our beginners make is to presume it’s possible to fix a lot from the other side. I’m no longer a beginner. By now I know we’re destined only to assess, but not to change. We can record and know, but we cannot condemn. I don’t condemn Vytautas Vargalys, whatever he may have done. One way or another, here we know that death is not annihilation at all, rather just a change of form. So, it’s all quite natural. Lolita was born only to die young.

Today there are an unusual number of people on the streets. Today Vilnius is unusually dead. A real, true necropolis; a profusion of the dead creep around the narrow little streets. What else is there left for corpses to do?

Perhaps some other thinking dog once looked at me in exactly the same way. Looked at me and considered me a dead man. Why, for what? I wasn’t a corpse. I was just quiet, because it’s impossible to speak out loud in Vilnius — otherwise you won’t last. Sometimes it seems to me that I’m only allowed to wander freely through the city because I’m always quiet. Probably the power of the dragon of Vilnius reaches our world on the other side too.

Wandering the dismal little streets, I sink into oblivion more and more often. More and more often Vilnius recedes, disappears into the mists. Earthly matters worry all of us less and less, even though I do my utmost not to forget it. But I have to inhale through my nose for a long, long, time before I sense the city’s smells again. The sad shoes of a sad person slowly approach from the left, pause, and go around me. I smell everything again. The sad person smells of hysterical goodness. From the nearest window drifts the smell of many days of drinking. It’s a bit sad that we dogs can’t get drunk. My pelt is damp from the fog. I nervously shake myself from my ears to the tip of my tail. In the sluggish mists sway all the Vargalyses, Poškas, and Banytės. They don’t scream, struggle, or call for me. More and more often I reflect: are they really all that significant and important? Is their fate really worth my attention? Everything intertwines in the cramped dream of Vilnius; then it seems I wake up and once more feel the bitterness of a truly doggish life, but it hampers me less and less. Sometimes I’m more sorry for the trees of Vilnius than for the humans of Vilnius. And I should be sorry for them both, at least equally.

Probably solving even a single problem is too much, not just for a person’s life, but for a thinking dog’s life too. We can’t even recognize other aliens. I’ve tried many times to associate with the more dubious of Vilnius’s dogs. I’ve tried giving them signs, but without success. Perhaps they were ordinary dogs. Or maybe they didn’t want to start up with me. You can’t make sense of anything in this world, much less in the other. My non-life crumbled into pieces. There are many pieces of meaningless, aimless trots through Vilnius. Between them, like wandering rocks, float mysterious and doubtlessly particularly meaningful episodes. Sometimes it seems to me that they are different every time, that they change, like dreams seen many times.

Here’s Vytautas Vargalys, walking slowly towards the Narutis and disappearing in an entranceway. Before vanishing, he smelled of pure hate and revenge — that biting smell still burns my nostrils. And just now I saw, right here in the gateway, Vytautas Vargalys’s father; the two of them passed each other as if they didn’t know each other, even though they almost crashed into one another. Vytautas Vargalys’s father smelled of pure hate and of revenge as well. Vytautas’s father — an economist or a physicist, a retiree or a ghost, or the doorman of a Druskininkai restaurant — who is he really? To me that’s not what’s important, there isn’t any “really” for us; he really did smell like Vytautas Vargalys’s father, that’s enough for me. I sit in the gateway and shiver — and not just from the dampness and the cold. I find it horrifying that a son might kill his father, or a father his son. But I haven’t yet managed to gather my senses when I see the third player. I see, and I can’t believe my eyes, because I mostly rely on my nose now. Irena Giedraitienė slowly creeps towards the Narutis. I recognize her smell; I can’t be mistaken. She smells of herself, but she doesn’t at all look like Madam Giedraitienė. She has a completely different appearance. It’s as if she changed into a stranger’s skin. No human would recognize her, but you can’t fool us thinking dogs: she forgot to change her scent, or maybe she couldn’t. What does Madam Giedraitienė, who is seemingly now no longer Madam Giedraitienė, intend to do here? She smells of indolence and erotism — could they all be gathering here to make love? Giedraitienė/not Giedraitienė pauses next to me, rummages around in her purse, and throws me a cold sausage. Then she determinedly sets off behind the Vargalyses. I pant with my tongue hanging out; suddenly breaking out in a sweat, I sniff at the stairs they all climbed, but the scent of their feet isn’t there. It’s unfathomable, everything loses its meaning; if only I could return to the so-called heavens, but from there, I’d hurry back to Vilnius again.

It’s autumn in Vilnius now. Almost all of the trees have dropped their leaves and an annoying rain often falls. All scents weaken in the fall: because of the dampness in the air, because of the vegetation’s apathy, because of the sad drowsiness of animals and people. Sluggish people smell differently than lively ones. Sleeping people smell different still. They smell of dreams. The intoxicating scents of dreams are not for me. Only house dogs enjoy them. All I can do is smell the dream of some traveler dozing in the railroad station. But even that’s out of bounds. Some drunken militiaman might shoot me. I hide from the rain in the gateway and try to remember everything. To gather the floating islands of the more important episodes into a whole.

What was Vytautas Vargalys always hiding, and what is he continuing to hide?

I clearly remember his fear and its numerous forms. I saw it when I was still alive and smelled it as a dog; even thinking back on it, I can actually feel it, literally grasp it.

Fear is always growing in Vilnius; even the autumn dampness doesn’t cover its scent. I was always afraid myself. I’m afraid even now, as a dog: it’s terrifying that someone might kill me or injure me. In other world cities dogs aren’t so fearful. And what was I afraid of as a human? Fear in Vilnius is multifaceted. You fear the future most of all, because it doesn’t exist.

I never liked mathematics, but I was a topologist because that was the safest and most convenient thing to be. That’s the reason I always returned to wretched, despicable Vilnius. I was afraid that if I stayed abroad, I’d suddenly realize that I could have, that I should have, been something else entirely, but it was already too late. I was afraid to look about and see my true possibilities, the ones I’d lost. That’s why I kept coming back to Vilnius, where the only thing I could be was a mathematician. But in Vilnius an even more intense fear would overtake me: I feared irretrievably losing yet another of my possible futures. But I was afraid to leave Vilnius, because I would instantly come across a profusion of my own long-lost futures, droves of lost possibilities, abroad.