Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

It’s always because I am a homeless thinking dog, because I don’t know what I really am, because I was Gediminas Riauba, and now I’m nothing.

I’m a dog in any case, a hungry puppy — without rights, without friends, without a future. I never did get used to living without the fear of death. I’m not immortal, but I know, after all, that I won’t die; in the worst case, I’ll change my form.

There’s nothing genuine in Vilnius anymore. Who can say if those two huddled figures are genuine, or if they’re only Vilnius’s morning trick? One figure is a woman, the other a man; the two of them creep along the wall as if they were looking for something in the dark.

I know the woman’s scent. She’s drastically changed her appearance again, but she won’t fool me. I can smell her very well; it’s a regenerated Irena Giedraitienė: a quite young, slender witch in the semidarkness of a Vilnius morning. What is she doing this early in the morning, in an empty street dominated by sleepy street sweepers? I run up closer; she gazes at me intently, looks into my eyes, and smiles.

“A spy?” asks the hunched-over man in a hoarse voice.

“No, it’s just a little dog,” she answers melodiously. “It’s just a little lost dog, it doesn’t know itself what it’s looking for.”

She chats on and on, smiling and smiling. It bodes ill when witches smile, but that’s not what disturbs me most. Irena Giedraitienė smells me: she greedily pulls my scent into her nostrils and sways her head, as if she were trying to remember something.

“Let’s knock him off, and be done with it,” says the tall man angrily. He smells like a holy man who has murdered his own God, and also of a profound intelligence and an unspeakable sin, and of old age too, a profound old age; he’s maybe a hundred years old.

“Stop it, Bitinas,” Giedraitienė calms him. “After all, this isn’t the dog of hell. That one’s supposed to have three heads, isn’t it?”

Bitinas angrily waves his hand; the two of them slowly slink off along the wall, carefully sniffing at the air. The two of them sniff at everything, as if they were large, hunched-over dogs.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen people sniffing like that. Incidentally, those sniffers don’t resemble humans at all. Lord knows what they resemble. Their heavy, blocky heads are grown right into their shoulders, their fingers are crooked, their joints swollen, their gaze is strange and insane. Lord knows what they resemble.

In any case, they really don’t resemble today’s Giedraitienė and her Bitinas. Those two are slender, with long necks and straight fingers. But they can smell too!

Only now do I suddenly realize that all the sniffers must inevitably fathom Vilnius’s lying.

“You know, he smells of a human,” she says suddenly.

“If an owner slowly begins to smell like his dog, why can’t a dog smell of his master?” Bitinas thoughtfully answers, his head, as bald as the back of your heel, tilts to the side.

“Maybe, maybe,” she continues. “But why is he following us?”

I’m no longer following now; I quickly turn into Rūdninkų, while they prowl on down Vokiečių Street. Evil ghosts have beset morning Vilnius: Giedraitienė and her Bitinas have ruinous intentions. If I were a human, I’d be completely unnerved; I’d probably break into a sweat, I’d be short of breath out of impatience and fear. Everything would worry me enormously. But now practically nothing bothers me. We thinking dogs don’t even break out in sweat. I nonchalantly sniff at trees my fellows have peed on and trot off, I don’t know myself where. I just feel horribly depressed. I want to be a human again.

I so want to turn into a human again.

I want to fear again, and to thrive in a horrible unknown, to doubt and to hope, again and again. I want Irena Giedraitienė’s changes to shock me and Vytautas Vargalys’s tragedy to move me to tears; I want to know again that I will die, and to desperately try not think of it. I want to be a human again: flawed, lost, and weak.

It’s a really weird nostalgia that’s tormenting me. I don’t long for my country, not even my past: I pine for a human form. It’s too difficult and pointless to be a thinking dog. Too difficult and too pointless. I finally felt a tiny little twinge of feeling inside me. It’s like some little wavering flame in my non-existent doggy soul.

I need to become even more human. I would give up all of my life after death just so I could laugh and cry.

Lord knows, I’d gladly exchange my life after death for one more human one.

My doggy brain works furiously. Irena Giedraitienė and Bitinas distend through it like a black knot of thoughts. I’m beginning to fathom Vilnius’s fateful system, all of Vilnius’s insane jazz. Giedraitienė wandering around here is no accident. When a person is connected to every episode, to all of your acquaintances — apparently by chance, apparently for no reason — that person himself is the cause as well as the essence. Irena Giedraitienė was creeping around everywhere, all the time; her scent almost never faded from my nostrils. Could she have been the secret manager of Vilnius Poker, could she have dealt marked cards to the players?

There’s street sweepers toiling next to the Cvirka monument too. Good Lord, an inhabitant of some other planet, seeing Vilnius for the first time this morning, would suppose it’s a city of street sweepers, that all Vilniutians dress only in orange jackets. A bit further, on the boulevard, the first trolleybuses are already rumbling. Vilnius is brazenly awakening.

And I keep running at a steady trot, as if I had a clear purpose. But what could my purpose be? Life after death doesn’t offer any purpose. You thank the nonexistent God that at least you have the right to visit your own Vilnius.

Of course, everyone’s Vilnius is completely different.

My Vilnius is Vilnius. In this respect, I have precedence over many of the dead.

And now I’m running at a trot, not knowing where, not knowing why. Although no — I’m rushing to see Vytautas Vargalys. I’m rushing to warn him, and most important of all — to ask him. He’ll answer me: via scent, sound, or something else besides. Now I’ll understand him, whatever he may do. I’ve suddenly begun feeling the secret jazz rhythm of this city of sweepers. It pulses in my veins; some piece that would allow me to put it all together is still missing, but thank God, I know the key to the cipher. It’s called Vytautas Vargalys. Only now do I realize his importance. Every act of his, every word, was significant. In my human life, he was my pal, my drinking buddy, and later even my friend, but I never understood him completely. For that I had to die and spend several years in a dog’s hide. Only this morning did I begin to grasp that Vytautas Vargalys isn’t just a human — like I was, and maybe will be again sometime. All of his family’s memory and understanding lurk within him. The Vargalyses somehow managed to connect their human lives with their after-death ones. What one Vargalys experienced after death, all of the Vargalyses — if even only the tiniest bit — felt in their own lives. It’s been that way for generation after generation.

We desperately need to make contact, to talk a bit. It’s not true that a dog is so helpless. I can write with my paw in the damp sand by the sea. I could even type on a typewriter, if someone would outfit it with a special keyboard. Thank God I didn’t turn into a fly or something. I’m a dog, I can answer questions by barking — at least “yes” and “no.” I can. .

I can do anything, if I just want to. And I’ve wanted to for a long time now.

I’ve even gotten a bit out of breath running, but the destination is close by. Here’s Pamėklių Hill, here’s the most disgusting building in Vilnius, and here I am — breathless, irritable, but happy.