Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

It’s still possible to save me from myself by remembering Lolita — but not in moments of love, not when she’s surrounded in beauty, but rather in the most banal, everyday situation.

Lolita is standing next to me, so I’m fine. She really does perform miracles. A moment ago, there was a terribly irritating desolation here, and now everything’s changing. We’re standing in a line for sausages. I cannot bear the sight — chains of sullen, exhausted figures. They stand in silence, their eyes fixed on the ground. But today I’m at peace, because Lolita is next to me. She changes the world. If she touches wilted flowers, their petals straighten out, fill with the fluids of life and start to give off a soft scent. If she pets a dog, a human expression shows up in its eyes. And now something is starting to happen to the entire store, to all the figures; they’ve raised their hanging heads — someone even cracked a joke. Decrepit, irritable old women slowly turned into lively, red-cheeked grannies. The faded, dirty curtains glistened in brighter colors and the saleswomen smiled at everyone. Everyone felt a miraculous change, but only I know the reason: Lolita changed everything.

In front of me, a skinny old lady with a strange Russian accent wails: these Lithuanians, these damned Lithuanians! The government did the right thing when it sent them North, oh, they did the right thing! She clams up for a bit and then starts in again: those Lithuanians wrong us, oh, they wrong us! The long, gray hairs on her upper lip quiver like petals tossed by the wind. I’m sorry for the old lady; I’d like to help her somehow. She’s a poor thing, it’s not her fault: she ended up here, this isn’t the place for her — maybe her children dragged her along with them. She can’t get used to different people and a different lifestyle, and her poisoned brains don’t help her any — unless by whispering to her that a good government would send all the Lithuanians to hell, so they wouldn’t get in her way. But she’s not to blame; it’s the fault of the kanukai magistrates, the dragon Suslov most of all. Poor old lady, I think, and I smile, because I think of how I would perceive her if Lolita wasn’t next to me: that disgusting Stalinist witch with gaping lips, seething with murderous ideas, quivering with lust the moment she can destroy someone. But, thank God, Lolita is standing next to me, so the old lady slowly calms down, stops whining, turns to me and gently asks: tell me, my son, what kind of sausage did they bring today — is it for two-twenty or two-eighty, I can’t make it out.

Shortly we’ll separate, but after an hour or two we’ll meet again — maybe at my place, or maybe in the streets of Vilnius. The two of us have allocated the streets and squares according to mood: Cathedral Square when we’re a bit tired, but not irritable; the square by City Hall — nervous but promising fulfillment; University Square — thoughtful and in the mood to reveal secrets. We don’t even discuss where and when to meet, we’ll both sense the time and the place, neither one of us will have to wait. It’s a shame that a person has to eat, to sleep, to carry out incomprehensible duties; just walking through Vilnius with Lolita, going from one street to another, from one mood to another, would be perfect. That would really be living — the two of us and the streets: from one street to another, from one mood to another, from one dream to another, from one old hurt to another, from one renewal to another. . That would really be living. .

But the only certain thing in my life now is fear. I stepped over the last boundary a long time ago. Up until that evening I had still hoped for something. I remember I was over at Martynas’s; he was driving me nuts with his television. An important basketball game was on, but I was in constant fear that a talking kanukas head was going to leap out onto the screen. Half of Lithuania was waiting for a crucial move on the part of the Zalgiris team; Martynas jumped up and down in his chair with every shot, while completely unexceptional things were happening on screen. It could have been predicted in advance. Zalgiris needed only one last step, but the basketball players, unfortunately, were Lithuanians too; at the very last second they were losing — hopelessly and completely idiotically. Martynas chewed his nails and cursed in Russian, while I thought about the Darius and Girenas complex, our age-old complex, originated by Vytautas the Great when he lost the Lithuanian crown at the very last moment, when everything, it seemed, had already almost happened. It really is our authentic complex; it’s not borrowed from anyone. It was exactly the same with Darius and Girenas flying across the Atlantic first — they did everything, heroically overcame all the difficulties, and smashed into the ground three steps away from home. The basketball players acted exactly the same way now — they had flown over their own Atlantic, overcome all the difficulties, and suddenly lacked the spirit one step away from the goal. We all lose our crown at the last minute; we always smash into the ground three steps from home. That’s the misfortune of our fate.

They announced a timeout, and a talking head really did show up on the screen. In my surprise I didn’t even turn off the television. I recognized the long face with the bristling eyebrows and the uneven, piercing gaze of the eyes: it was Stepanas Walleye, nicknamed Carp, my talisman, my great hope, the symbol of human resistance. I was at a loss for words; I thought — maybe they mixed up the programs, maybe by mistake some other program’s sound track was connected. I watched Carp’s lips hopefully, but their movements matched the text. It couldn’t be; all my guts, filled with that long face, told me it couldn’t be. It could be anyone else — just not Carp, not walleyed Stepanas! But it was him. It seemed I had turned up in a world where rabbits devour snakes, flowers fly from bee to bee, and stars shine brightly in the middle of the day.

“The new Party Plenum’s resolutions,” Carp’s low voice monotonously intoned, “express the deep hopes and wishes of the working people. We, the working people, indubitably know that the Party always was, and always will be, the conscience and wisdom of our epoch. We will greet the new resolutions with even greater triumphs of work and creative achievements.”

I knew he couldn’t be saying words like that. I knew that any minute he would turn around, wink at me, and say: that’s how carp talk, now listen to how real people talk. But he didn’t stop talking; he just changed the subject for some reason:

“Yes, I have had to go through this hell. Not a single criminal should elude the retribution he deserves. Reactionary regimes hiding those who had a hand in the horrors of the Fascist concentration camps commit crimes against humanity. As a former prisoner at Auschwitz, I agree with our government’s appeal with particular zeal.”

“What is he talking about?” I asked, totally at a loss.

“They’ve found another escaped Auschwitz participant in Paraguay,” Martynas answered. “We, as the most humanitarian country in the world, hasten to lodge a protest.”

The eyelid of Carp’s walleye twitched — that hadn’t changed in over thirty years. The last time I saw him in the camp, he was in a pit where we used to dig gravel. He stood there, huge and run-down, with his head bloodied, staggering heavily, and, coughing blood, spit out through his teeth:

“Never! Never! Remember, guys: never!”

And now Carp, my sacred hope, my talisman, sat inside the television set and babbled something in the language that brings on despair, the language that has nothing in common either with the Russian language or in general with whatever human language: the drab jargon of the kanukai, which speaks itself , without a human being, in incomprehensible words of satanic absurdity. It seemed to me that I had seen Carp just this morning, passing under the library’s windows; just this morning I had prayed to his soul like it was some kind of holy relic.