Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

“You don’t know what to do now?” he asked in a thick voice. “You don’t even want to think about what’s waiting for you? You’re tormented by obliterating stares?”

The questions were so unexpected and so well-aimed that I was at a loss for words. It seemed I should have anticipated something like this; now, however, my thoughts got confused, and I kept getting more feverish.

“You feel as if something malicious and evil is gathering about you, something you cannot explain or even decently name. You feel some kind of threat around you? A dreadful danger?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve decided to find out for yourself what it is?”

“Yes. I’m trying.”

“Strange characters keep getting underfoot more and more frequently? You want to investigate them, but you no longer know yourself if you’re shadowing them, or if they’re shadowing you?”

“Yes. I need help.”

“Help? Help? There is no help. Don’t go there, Vytie. Don’t go there!”

“Do you know the way?” My voice trembled, I shook all over, I wanted to be quiet, but I spoke all the same. “Do you know where it leads?”

“Help?” Father gave a hoarse laugh; his voice no longer asked, but angrily asserted something. “As a child you weren’t afraid of either the light or the dark; the worst thing for you was the dusk, the dimness.”

“Yes.”

“You liked to hide in the dark: in basements, in burrows, so no one would see you. You felt safe there.”

“Yes. Vilnius’s underground was my childhood paradise.”

“People were disgusting and dangerous, they didn’t at all act the way they should. This was truly horrible to you. . You felt they were controlled by something evil.”

“Yes. Probably yes.”

“You fought off these thoughts, these sensations, but they persecuted you.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t want to curse every living soul, you didn’t want to blame them. You understood that they were merely victims, that the cause was hidden somewhere else, on the outside.”

“Yes. Yes!”

“Body deformations? The strangest degradations?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Your friend transformed from the incarnation of wisdom into a dribbling idiot? A person close to you, sunk into an inconceivable swamp and trying to drag you along?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

I screamed at the top of my voice, and father fell silent. Sweat poured down my face and chest; I felt as if I had been beaten, all my bones ached. Every one of father’s questions multiplied the confusion. Earlier I could still doubt, I could blame my own excessive sensitivity, or chance, or coincidence. I could contrive a defensive wall of rational arguments. Now that wall crumbled and cracked — and I crumbled and cracked myself.

“It’s not true, Vyt. You’re imagining things,” father suddenly spoke exceedingly softly. “It’s not true. It’s a lie, Vyt. Come to your senses, look around. People are people, faces are faces. . Everything’s all right. . Everything’s all right, it’s okay. . Look around — is anyone else raving the way you do? Come to your senses, Vyt. .”

“You’re lying,” I hissed, “Why are you lying?”

He suddenly stood up and hung over me with his entire body, as if he wanted to crush me. He stuck his face, with its hot breath, right in front of my eyes. He looked at me with anger and despair. I still hoped for his help, and he looked at me like at a condemned man. I remember his eyes well. Inevitability has eyes like that.

“You don’t even suspect what kind of hell you’ve opened the door to,” he spoke quietly, swaying to the sides. “To a hell without flames, without the hot tar, the very worst hell of all: quiet, indifferent, senseless, where the victims are satisfied with their murderers. .”

Suddenly darkness fell upon me. I heard a quiet rustle and felt a soft breeze on my cheek. By the time I collected myself, both the rustling and the draft were gone. I was left alone in complete darkness. Crazed, I sprang towards the now silent rustling, began groping about and banging on the wall with my fist. I was obliged to catch up with him right away, to recover my father. I had to hug him, to kiss him, to say everything I hadn’t said. I didn’t want to save myself, not myself at all — I wanted to save father. I didn’t have the time to tell him I’m still strong. I could protect and defend him. The two of us could take on the entire world — me and my father. Why, we’re Vargalyses! We must fight together — after all, we’re branches of the same tree. I banged on the wall harder and harder, it seemed I even screamed aloud, “Give me back my father! Bring back my father!” I couldn’t even imagine I would never see him again.

The walls didn’t answer; I realized I still needed to get out of there. The way back was a live labyrinth. I slunk past repeating rooms, corridors, stairs, and covered balconies; I should have exited somewhere long before, but still there was no end. I kept returning to the same intersection of corridors, the same inner courtyards. Like it or not, I remembered the labyrinth of Babylon, whose center could be reached only by always turning to the left. But I didn’t need the center of the labyrinth, I was afraid of it. I needed either an exit, or father. It seemed to me that I felt father somewhere close by; that sensation sometimes grew weaker — I would turn somewhere else, and the sensation would grow stronger again. I wandered around as if I were playing “warmer, colder”: it was warm, then it was colder, warm again, warm, still warmer, and then it kept getting colder. It would seem father was right there, on the other side of the wall, but I wouldn’t find a door in the wall. And if I did come across a door, beyond it I would see new stairs, new corridors, and new covered balconies. I wandered without sensing time or space; I came to only when my feet began to hurt. Who knows how many kilometers I had walked. I stood in a dead-end corridor; doors leaned on both sides. I opened the nearest one on the right, beyond it ranged rooms crammed full of broken furniture. A vague presentiment told me there was a constant twilight here both day and night — as if that broken furniture devoured the light during the day and vomited it back out during the night. Standing there, my legs slowly sank into the rotten floorboards. It seemed something alive was holding me by the ankles. That corridor didn’t want to let go of me. For the first time it occurred to me that perhaps there was no way out of here. I rushed into a low gallery, ran out into yet another corridor, threw open all the doors in turn. It was the same everywhere: rooms stuffed full of broken furniture. That furniture looked like slaughtered people. An occasional door was locked, but I had neither the desire nor the strength to break them down. All I felt was the primitive fear of an animal trapped by pursuers. I tore up and down staircases and jumped over balcony rails onto the pavement of deep little courtyards. By now I heard the voices of the unseen pursuers surrounding me. I plunged through a creaking door and unexpectedly stumbled into someone’s living quarters. There were beds along the walls and an idiotic little carpet with swans hung on the wall. I was particularly reassured by a night pot with a handle set alongside a child’s bed. That was surely an object of this world. The awakened children’s dirty little faces stared at me with big eyes. A naked woman with pendulous breasts stood upright in the middle of the room, not even thinking of covering herself. Right next to me, a tiny little girl with scrawny little braids turned over on her side in bed and in her sleep clearly said: “Please ring three times.” Finally I saw a window; beyond it shone a completely normal, ordinary, dear, beloved street light. I leapt forward and half-dropped, half-fell down to the pavement. The window was rather high up, well above my head. I saw the woman, her breasts hung out in the street, close the window, unaccompanied by the slightest screaming or astonishment.