Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

You’re not allowed to sit here; at dusk you can no longer sit anywhere — only at home. But as soon as the clock strikes the commandant’s curfew, you sneak out into the city’s labyrinth. No one misses you. Father is gone. Mother is gone. Grandfather falls asleep right in his armchair.

The emptied city is particularly beautiful; it’s not marred by people’s bodies. That beauty is geometrical and oppressive — as befits a labyrinth. You know you’ll be able to hide in it. This is your city; you sense all of its nooks and crannies the way you sense your arms and legs; you rule this labyrinth. (All rulers are unhappy.) You could be its Minotaur, but you have no need for innocent maidens. To you it’s important to feel the breath of the mute void and the quivering of the pained air; it’s important to feel that this labyrinth, unknown to others, belongs to you. German patrols crawl through its corridors constantly, like worms. They’re aliens here; they wander aimlessly. They’ll never find the center of the labyrinth, where you sit in safety. You hate them, and the city hates them. Who can come to terms with foreign conquerors? Rats, toads, and cockroaches. But you are a human.

You don’t know what it is you’re seeking of the Vilnius night. Perhaps you simply can’t leave it alone with the Germans, you must suffer along with it. With the two of you together, it’s more comforting and encouraging.

You sit in the ruins and look at the illuminated street. Light is bad, it’s the kingdom of the German worms, while the ruins and the crooked, pale blue moon protect you. Just now the quiet was ripped like a finger piercing an engraving of ancient Vilnius; you heard shots and shouts of “Halt!” You wait for the runaways to show up in the illuminated corridor of the street; you still don’t know what you’ll do then.

By now the tromping of heavy boots is close by; you plainly sense the inhabitants of the nearest houses secretly peeking through the windows. You’d think you would have gotten used to people being hunted long ago. By now the runaways are close, any minute they’ll emerge into the dimly-lit street. They must emerge — there’s no other way. You know all of the burrow holes of the labyrinth.

There they are, they’ve already dashed into the pale lake of light.

First some kind of hunchback staggers in, barely dragging himself along; at once his retinue shows up too. Hunchback can’t hurry. He’s followed by three Lilliputians; sweating, they work their disgusting, short little legs. He can’t hurry — he looks back, it seems he keeps dragging them along by invisible strings. The traveling circus of Vilnius: the leader and three trained Lilliputians. No Lilliputian tricks will save them now: the street is illuminated; the German worms will detect them. Now you are their lord: you can let them die against your will, but you can save them too.

However, that’s just the way it looks in your foolish lordly head. You can’t choose anymore, because you’re already standing on the edge of the street, right under the lantern, you’re already waving to them, never mind that the patrol worms could show up any minute, spitting little leaden pieces of death. You’re risking your life, but in these times life doesn’t matter. You’re used to that by now. Meaning that your own life doesn’t matter, either. You wave to them, beckon them into the ruins; they instantly obey you — the ruler of the Vilnius night. You quickly dive through disintegrated corridors, descend invisible crumbling stairs, step over chunks of stone: anyone would get lost here, but you know where to go. You know all there is to know about night in Vilnius.

At last you stop; the breathless hunchback stops too, and the three hideous Lilliputians huddle against the damp walls and melt into the darkness. The man’s face is old and wrinkled; glasses hang on his nose and flash eerily in the moonlight. That man is some three times your age and maybe half your size. He catches his breath with difficulty; an unpleasant smell of sweat emanates from him.

“You’re a Lithuanian!” he says with conviction in a heavy, heavy, Jewish accent. “What are you doing here, my boy? Don’t stand there, lead us on! Let’s run!”

“These are my ruins, my underground,” you answer firmly. “The Germans will get lost in my labyrinth. They couldn’t explore all of my underground in time for the Day of Judgment.”

“You’ve read the Revelations, my boy?” the hunchback asks in surprise and his accent gets still thicker, “And you know how to hide from the beast whose number is six hundred sixty and six?”

That’s the way the Vilnius night is: there you can meet even a hunchbacked, bespectacled Jew and three degenerate Lilliputians, runaways from death, declaiming about the Revelations of St. John next to St. John’s Church.

“It’s safe in my underground. In the dark it’s always safe. Light is more dangerous.”

You don’t know what else to say. They won’t listen to you, anyway. Jews only listen to their rabbi. As a child you once snuck into the old synagogue. They sat with their heads covered and read something from the Torah. You didn’t understand any of it, while they all sat motionless and stared at their Jewish infinity.

”Why were they chasing you?” you ask, but immediately understand it’s a foolish question. You are a naïve fool, like all gods.

“Because we’re Jews,” the hunchback answers and gets nervous: “What if they bring dogs?”

You could answer him that you are the Minotaur, that the dogs won’t smell you, but he doesn’t need an answer. His thoughts grow confused; he speaks again from another angle:

“We’re from the ghetto. Do you know where the ghetto is?”

“Where are you running to?”

“Nowhere. Through the ages we Jews run to the void, because the Promised Land is only in our heads.”

“Why the Lilliputians?”

He looks at you in surprise, and then he snaps his fingers as if he were summoning an obedient dog. The Lilliputians separate from the wall — it’s three children, large-eyed little Jews, dirty and disheveled. They are as sickly as the Lithuanian pensive Christ; their eyes gaze defenselessly in the moonlight. There’s no telling whether they’re boys or girls.

“Save them,” the hunchback says proudly, without begging. “Save them, if nothing else. I won’t go anywhere now, my end was written a long time ago in the books of fate. Remember — every human is an entire universe, and a child is a universe of universes. Save them, my boy, and you’ll save a countless number of worlds.”

“What do I have to do?”

“You’re the Lithuanian. In the villages they secretly take in our children. Lead them out of Vilnius. I have faith in you, my boy.”

You feel that now you are their God. You can read to them from your own Torah; they will listen to you, gazing at your infinity. But what can you do? How are you going to take three little Jews, the most Jewish in the world, through the entire city? It’s no good to have children, you shouldn’t have children.

“You say that the dark loves you? Hide them in the dark, take them out to a village.”

“Not today, it’ll be light soon.”

He no longer has the strength to stand; he suddenly collapses on the stones’ sharp edges. He doesn’t feel the pain, though the sharp edges pierce him in the thigh, into live flesh. Now he looks like Moses in grandfather’s picture. All the old Jews of Vilnius look like Moses on the verge of delivering a great sermon. The three large-eyed children suddenly fall on their knees in front of you. They don’t stretch their arms out to you, they don’t cry, they don’t beg — they kneel as motionless as statues, their eyes have turned to silts of silver in the moonlight.