Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

And not a word about “Vilnius Poker.” Gedis talked about this and that, gathered pebbles from the wet paths and slung them into invisible tree trunks, whistled unfamiliar melodies. It seemed he was secretly distancing himself from me, slamming shut the door that had just now been open, closing the shades, shutting the windows. I didn’t know how to hold him back, which of his hands to grab, except for that third one, which was probably no longer there. The two of us finally reached the river, descended the steps, and stopped right next to the dark stream. It had been soaked in rain for some time; the water had risen up to the very bank. Gedis squatted and dipped his hand into the muddy current.

“The river! The Neris!” he muttered, shaking invisible drops from his hand, “Why not Joyce’s riverrun? How is the Neris less than the Liffey? Why doesn’t anyone immortalize it as the current of dreams and oblivion? When you think ‘river,’ you immediately remember the Lethe and the Liffey. . Dublin and the Liffey have been forever impressed onto the world’s brains, and old man Joyce sits in the heavens and jeers. . What’s the Liffey without him — a muddy stream, and nothing more. I saw it myself. . But where’s the Neris? Where’s Vilnius? Why doesn’t the world know anything about them?”

And not a word about his concert. Probably Gedis should have played quite a bit longer, so that there would be no words left in him at all. Suddenly I felt like I wanted to swim to the other, invisible bank of the river — as if the world would be different there, as if Vilnius would be altogether different.

“A smashed-up boat full of water should bob on the bank. Forgotten by everyone — no one wants to swim across the current to the other side.” Gedis again nervously lit up a cigarette. “Have you noticed that Lithuanians have always feared and avoided water? Or more precisely, moving water: currents, rapids, ocean waves. The vital power of water horrifies them. They like standing water: Lithuanians like little lakes and swamps. Particularly swamps: the greatest victories in war were won thanks to swamps. Swamps are rotting, murky water. It’s the mythological tragedy of the nation. They couldn’t step past an unspeakable inner taboo, couldn’t overcome themselves. . Anything but a current, anything but ocean waves! What a weird horror: the Lithuanians lived on the seashore for ages upon ages and never got the urge to sail to foreign countries, to find something completely unknown, or even to dream of other shores. They only fished along the coast. Even Lithuania’s head was cut off by the current of the Nemunas. Always that mythological power of moving water. . the nation cut off its own head. Yes, yes, every country has a head, a trunk, arms and legs — like a Dogon house. The current of the Nemunas cut off Prussia and the Prussians from us. And that’s exactly where Lithuania’s head and brains were: its religion and shrines, the height of its culture and the rudiments of philosophy. It was all there. Even the ground itself is magical there: the Germans murdered or assimilated the Prussians, but they specifically drew the power for their state from Prussia. . Lithuanian culture came from there even centuries later. Even when it’s chopped off, a root sprouts. . And it was all lost by free will. No one fought for Prussia; no one wanted to sail across the current to the other side. . Explain to me why on earth we needed to rule over millions of Byelorussians and Russians, to lose and conquer some place like Vitebsk dozens of times, to drag ourselves to Moscow itself and exact tribute from it, to go chasing the Tartars across the steppes, to fatten an already fattened body, and at the same time lose the head. . That’s how it is: we’re a headless people. By now it’s been five hundred years. The evil powers deceived us and stole our brains. And it’s very easy to enslave a brainless country. . That’s what the scholars studying the Lithuanian language should think about. Let every nation, every country, thoroughly explain where it’s head is at, and then let them guard it.”

Not a word about “Vilnius Poker.” Gedis angrily spat into the water, raised his collar, and turned his back to the Neris.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he muttered brusquely. “Don’t be afraid, the river won’t follow us. I’m sure of that.”

I felt the door which had, it seemed, slammed shut, was by no means closed, and that Gedis wasn’t trying to hide; he was still leading me forward.

“The worst of all is what you could find here — the beasts of Vilnius,” he looked down a little street creeping along a curve. “The dragon of Vilnius, which needs to have its head cut off. He’s hiding here somewhere too.”

“Not here,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.

“I believe you, I believe you: you know another spot, maybe even that abandoned church. But don’t be mistaken: that beast is everywhere. A disgusting, scaly dragon, a Basilisk that kills with its gaze. There’s no hiding from it. It must, it must be beheaded. . Yeah, why ‘Vilnius Poker?’ ‘The dragon of Vilnius’ would be a hundred times better.”

My head spun and I felt faint. Without warning, Gedis had touched my most sensitive spots. He turned around carelessly and broke my glass shield. I was left stark naked; every one of his words lashed me with tongues of fire. I had never seriously thought about the dragon, and yet it had splattered me with its poisonous spray too.

“It always seems you’ll meet it any minute. It’s completely for real: gigantic, overgrown with mold, with ghastly, greenish little eyes. . Maybe it’s hunkered down in Old Town’s underground, or maybe it’s hiding in the new neighborhoods, in between the matchbox geometry. When you wake up and look out the window, it’s sprawling out there in the fog, across the new highway, spreading the smell of decay around. Content and confident in its power, in its invincibility. . Satisfied. . It’s here, it’s here somewhere. It has to be. It can’t not be. But what is it? What does it look like? Where is it? Maybe around that corner?”

“No,” I whispered to myself. “No, it won’t be there. It’s somewhere else.”

Bitinas sits with his head tilted sideways, looking at you intently. His skull, shaved bald, even shimmers. He’s the only one who didn’t take a nickname; he proudly calls himself by his real name. The only one to have the Vytis Cross, but he doesn’t put on airs at all; he pins it on only on the sixteenth of February. The exploits he plans are precise and elegant. It’s said that your group has lost the least men out of all the groups in Lithuania, and there’s a lot of them.

“Of course you want to get a pistonmachine,” Bitinas says in an icy voice. “Of course you want to fight and show your courage.”

You swallow, but you can’t manage to speak out, you just nod your head. Bitinas bewitched you long ago; you’re afraid of him.

“You won’t get a weapon. You are meant for other things.”

Bitinas’ shaved skull and small black whiskers intimidate and oppress you. He doesn’t look like an inhabitant of this earth, maybe because you’re conversing underground. Your bunker is an entire underground garrison: undetectable, unnoticeable. Bitinas even ordered the air vents run into the bark of trees; he even found a way to disguise it from the search dogs. You are moles, unaccustomed to the light of day.

“Our battle will be a long one, Vytautas. We’ll punish the settlers; we’ll punish the collaborators. The Russians must be left in a complete void, supported by no one.”

“To me that’s obvious,” you say, surprisingly boldly.

“I don’t doubt it. You’re an intelligent person. Yes, we’ll kill and be killed. A civil war is a terrible thing. It’s not Christian. But there are special tasks.”