Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

I almost had a sensation of human feelings. All the more since the wind is blowing at my back, so I don’t smell anything. Here’s Lukiškių Square. Here’s the record store; despite the early hour there’s a crowd of teenagers milling around next to it: for several days now rumors have been going around the city that they’re going to deliver a Paul McCartney record. And on a bench next to the toilet, as pretty as you please, sit Irena Giedraitienė and Bitinas.

I don’t understand how they could have gotten here before me, but that’s not what matters most. Their faces are serene and blissful; it seems they’re looking at me: scornfully, and a bit proudly, as if they had carried out a secret mission by beating me to the punch. I don’t want to believe it, but now the wind is blowing at me from the KGB Building, so with appalling clarity I smell everything clearly.

From out of the basement, from out of Vytautas Vargalys’s cell, spreads one and only one strong scent. I know it very well; it’s always identical, even though it’s colored differently every time. But those weak hues are merely a deception, mere smoke in the eyes, because the scent is always the same. Spreading or entwined, but at the same time unique and completely ordinary. As ordinary as death.

There’s no other way it could be, because that is the smell of death.

Just now, there in the basement, Vytautas Vargalys died.

The square, the building behind my back, Vilnius in its entirety has turned into an ineffective theater set. The wind tossed the solitary leaves on the trees; the badly made-up street sweepers played the part of street sweepers. The musical teenagers played excited music-obsessed fans. The trolleybus intentionally rumbled and sped, playing a trolleybus. Every last thing here was acting — even the trees. Only Irena Giedraitienė and Bitinas continued to be unrelentingly real. As real as fate. As real as destiny itself. Their thin, doggishly quivering nostrils greedily caught at the scent they had dreamed of. Their thin faces, seemingly sculpted out of wood, shone with bliss and an evil joy. Staring at me brazenly, they got up from the little bench and waved their arms strangely. Then they awkwardly swayed their hips and took a few small steps in opposite directions. Only then did I realize they were dancing.

An unimaginably fat, mustachioed man leisurely waddled out the door to the KGB building, grasping a bluish-white lump in his hands. Squatting with difficulty, he put the lump down on the sidewalk and stroked it tenderly. Another trolleybus clanged by. Irena Giedraitienė and her companion danced slowly and ostentatiously. Straightening up, the fatty stared at them, and then earnestly clapped his plump hands. His mustache-covered mouth grinned; his palms were so plump that the clapping couldn’t be heard at all. He was completely toothless. He glanced at his watch, stroked the bluish-white lump again, and yawned. The lump unexpectedly shook itself and spread out its wings. It turned into a pigeon right in front of my eyes. And the pair of doggish sniffers kept dancing, even attracting the attention of the musical devotees.

I didn’t care about them anymore, all I saw was the bluish-white pigeon; the mustachioed fatty finally left it alone and returned to his office. I carefully ran across the boulevard and stopped in front of that oppressive bird.

It was a filthy, shabby city pigeon. Like all pigeons, it squinted at me with its deranged little eyes. But it didn’t try to fly away. It merely hobbled to the side, swaying badly. Its left foot was shorter, or maybe injured. Probably it couldn’t fly at all. Without a doubt it couldn’t; it didn’t have the right to rise up into the air; it was eternally tied to the ground. A disgusting, soiled pigeon of Vilnius, with plastered-down feathers and the eyes of a dangerous maniac.

Scent once more betrayed all and explained all.

A threatening and tangled scent, which had forced its way through the stench of congealed feathers and soiled three-toed pigeon, through the hopeless whiff of the sniffing couple’s dance, through Vilnius’s armor and deceit — it was faint, but plainly sensed, and inarguably the scent of Vytautas Vargalys: murderous and mocking, like the idiotic squinting of the pigeon’s eyes.

The mangy, insane pigeon of Vilnius’s morning smelled of Vytautas Vargalys, because it was Vytautas Vargalys.

If they’d let me choose a nightmare, I’d agree to any of them, if only I wouldn’t have to see this sight. Vytautas Vargalys in the shape of a revolting, frightening, crazy-eyed pigeon of Vilnius. Vytautas Vargalys, who knows what even I don’t know, what no one else knows. Vytautas Vargalys, who despised pigeons with a deathly hatred. That Vytautas Vargalys was standing in front of me now and glaring maliciously with its fierce little eyes. I’ll never talk to him now; I’ll never see him. I won’t even smell him — a few days will go by and his scent will fade, all that will be left will be the stench of a soiled, scruffy, lame Vilnius pigeon.

The malicious hand of the demiurge of Vilnius turned him into the one creature in the world that was the most disgusting to Vytautas Vargalys.

Apparently, those must be the rules.

Every decent dog would, sooner or later, start finding those rules oppressive.

Vilnius doesn’t stop playing a cheap comedy. Like any decent dog, I despise that old comedian. The doggishly-sniffing couple growl and wag their tails, even though they don’t have them. The city calmly awakes, yawns and stretches nonchalantly, because nothing matters to this city. It has no soul; in place of its heart hides a putrid, lethargic dragon.

I’m left completely on my own. The last person who tied me to this city has turned into a pigeon. He didn’t want to give the secret of Vilnius Poker away to me.

I don’t realize myself that I’ve sat down in the middle of the avenue and started howling. On my left looms the KGB Building, on the right the Lenin monument. And I howl like the Iron Wolf. Only just now do I realize: I am the Iron Wolf. The prophet of the New Vilnius. I sit in the very center of the city, my snout raised to the skies, and announce the news to the entire world. And the glory of Vilnius flies round the farthest lands; every place on earth resonates with my howl.

Rejoicing, the morning trolleybus comes tearing along directly at me, but I don’t budge, I just howl louder still. The trolleybus even screeches in its jubilation and flies towards me. The sullen guy at the wheel, with puffy bags under his eyes, has brightened up; he even leaned forward — he was one of those drivers who invariably speed up when they have a chance to crush a cat or a dog.

I calmly think that not a single person had the strength to do this. Neither Martynas, nor Teodoras, nor even Vytautas Vargalys. None of them committed suicide. I think calmly that perhaps I’ll manage to carry out the most human of acts, an act that is impossible for any ordinary dog, in exactly this way.

Maybe this is exactly the way I’ll manage to break all the rules.

Earthly life didn’t satisfy me, but the afterlife is even less satisfying. There has to be, there must be something more.

It’d be better, even if it takes a hundred other transmigrations, to be born a human again. With all those foolish hopes and weaknesses. Most importantly of all — with foolish hopes. It’d be better. .

Thank God, the trolleybus doesn’t let me think for long.

First, my howl is gone, then my body, but then for a long, long time my last thought, the most important insight into Vilnius Poker, remains. This thought broke out of my howling brain as a black luminary, as an explanation and an answer, even though I don’t know what it means, and now I’ll never find out: