Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

“Stop!” says Lolita. “It’s my fault, I provoked you. Out of curiosity. I really want to know everything about you. Absolutely everything. But it’s just ordinary curiosity. You won’t be angry if I admit it? You’re as white as a sheet.”

I look at her; now I see well. The drab fog has disappeared; once more sounds are no longer hollow. Lolita smells of milk and grass. . and something else sugary. . But I have to ask; I warned her I’d ask, even though I’m sorry for her. I have to ask. It won’t leave me alone. I have to know everything. Practically every strange death is Their work.

“Tell me about your husband.”

“I didn’t think you’d be interested. I thought it might even be unpleasant. Why should I talk about some third person?”

“I’m interested,” I say, as if I wanted to hurt her on purpose. “Five sentences. Who he was and why he’s gone.”

“He was an artist. A sculptor. Probably not a genius.” She puts the words on the table in front of me carefully, one at a time. I clearly see how they tremble, how pained they are. “He died. An unfortunate accident. You haven’t heard about it? It’s a well-known story.”

“Sort of: that he drowned or something.”

“Let’s not talk about him,” Lolita asks. “I don’t know what I could say. . He was. . he’s gone. . It’s sad. .”

I don’t hear the siren of danger; I don’t feel the pang there, deep inside, in the very softest spot. It’s calm everywhere, even too calm. Every unexpected death piques me, but this one didn’t bother me at all. Lolita didn’t say anything stinging anyway, but I do see her eyes, I smell her scent, I even sense her bio-energy fields — I would notice danger at once. I want to sense it, but apparently it isn’t there.

“It really is a sad story,” is all I say.

Outside the window sprawls filthy, messy Vilnius: the new city collapsed on the old one. An inexplicable presentiment suffocates me, perhaps flowing from the future, since there is no stimulus for it from the present or the past. But it’s not frightening, because Lolita is, and in her there is both a body and a spirit. A glass, and a noble drink within. Do I love her because of the way she is, or is she that way because I love her? Does she make me better, or have I already made her so? Is she that way because she knows I love her, or because she doesn’t know how much I love her?

And again: do I really love her?

Vilnius, again and again: the old houses, cowering, trying to crawl underground, and the new multi-storied buildings insolently sticking out. The old ones are afraid; this is no place for them, they belong in Bologna, Padua, or Prague. The churches bend their spires down to the ground — they’re afraid to be so different. I go down the street and don’t even try to guess who’s devouring me with their eyes today. No spy intimidates me anymore: neither the men with massive heads, nor the fine-featured women with short-cut hair, nor the straw-haired lumpens with puffy faces and colorless eyes, sullenly staring out of the gateways, out of the doorways, through fly-stained windows. They have all become a customary part of the landscape. The daily routine of the continually siphoned-off and kanuked human being. Getting on the trolleybus, I’m actually amazed if I don’t find a hunched figure somewhere in a corner, glaring at me with the eyes of the meaningless void. I’ve known for a long time that the ones you see don’t matter. The ones that matter hide in secret cracks, like cockroaches. Cockroaches ought to be Their organization’s symbol, Their totem, Their heraldic sign — cockroaches on a greenish, moldy background, on the background of beloved, despised Vilnius — with all of its sounds and smells, which never abandon me. It’s like a beloved woman whose body has been eaten away by syphilis and leprosy. But you love her anyway; that love is eternal, even though nothing is left of her body but ruins, rot, and reeking wounds. You stroke the reeking ulcers, your hand dives into the abscesses, but you see the divine body it once was. Love doesn’t fade, it only grows stronger; you love even the wounds, because you know what that woman (that city) once was, what it could be. What it should be.

Vilnius, again and again: a narrow, little Old Town street, smelling of oblivion and wet leaves. With an uneven arc it turns to the right, no one knows where it ends or where it leads. Probably to nonbeing, to the void. An old wall overgrown with lichens should surround it, and above the paving stones a single light blowing in the wind should dangle. But the wall is evenly painted with bright paints and the lantern, merely pretending to be old, shines calmly and steadily. Everything here is unreal, like in a burned-down theater, and no one worries if you’ll believe the acting. Everything is soaked in cheap pretense — no one knows why, or for whom. (Pretense is Their ploy too. They consider it extremely important that a person pretend to be something other than what he really is. They consider it extremely important that a person should sing about how full and happy he is, even though he’s a half-starved slave. It’s not enough for Them that a person is quiet; they need him to sing merrily. And the worst of it is that people really do sing.) In an ornamented gateway, a trio of teenagers loiter with their fists jammed into their windbreaker pockets. They spit constantly and swear every other word. They glare at me with wolfish glances and turn away: an easier target will show up.

You couldn’t say Vilnius is suffocating in emptiness. It’s full, that is, full of emptiness, the worst form of emptiness. Pure emptiness is an ideal, a type of divinity. They aren’t worried about emptying; what They need most is simply to extract and embalm, and then to stuff the free space with surrogates. That’s the only way to bring in the new order: an ostensible man, a kanukaman. That’s the only way to create a new conglomerate: an ostensible city, a kanukacity. That’s how an ostensible world shows up, a kanukaworld, where God has been exchanged with the Shit of All Shits, time has been turned into eternal stagnation, and space becomes despair. A kanukaman’s virtue turns into the art of pretense, and honor becomes scorn. Even the blackest passions turn into oppressive drivel, while love becomes an erotic hymn of bodies. . I saw it ; that scene still stands in front of my eyes, but I do not want to name it or talk about it.

The kanukacity oppresses me; Vilnius annoyingly repeats itself: its sounds and smells, its people and animals. The faces are all the same; it’s rare to come across a more interesting one. Although here’s one that’s really worth noticing: a thin, unshaven little face with cracked round eyeglasses. The face of an exhausted tramp, although the little guy is arrayed like he’s on parade: there’s even a bow-tie with red polka dots tied around his neck. I’ve seen him before; perhaps I’ve seen him many times. He’s like the ghost of Vilnius — a short little Jew, so Jewish it’s quite striking. A Vilnius Jew: not a banker, nor a sharp-eyed cheat, rather a small businessman or a craftsman, but brimming with archaic Jewish wisdom, able to cite from the Torah, the Kabbalah, or Hassidic teachings for hours on end. He slowly totters by, glances at me, and suddenly, quite clearly, says:

“It’s a dangerous road. Oy, a dangerous road!”

Don’t tell me we know one another? Surely he doesn’t know where I’m going? Surprised, I stop, while he totters on unconcerned, easily climbs up the creaking metal stairs, and in an instant is already balancing on the edge of the roof, merrily waving at me from above.