Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

“Do this, my boy,” Moses begins his sermon.

“Let them hide themselves,” you order, “And let them stay here, no matter what happens. Until I return.”

The Jew says something in his language; the large-eyed children suddenly vanish. You know that they’re here, you even feel their breathing — but they’ve disappeared. They’ve crept into the cracks of the disintegrating walls, blended into the piles of bricks, turned themselves into muddy drops dripping from the ceiling. Hunchback Moses has bewitched them, has turned them into a part of the ruins.

“I won’t thank you, my boy,” says Moses in a dying voice. “I’ll say just one thing. However many years should go by, wherever you should be, when you meet a Jew, look him straight in the eye. Don’t say anything, don’t ask for anything — just look at him intently, straight in the eye. He’ll understand everything — if he’s a real Jew. He’ll understand and he’ll help you. . And now lead me out of here. If they find me, they’ll start looking for the children too. Lead me out of here.”

Without saying anything you lead him through the ruined, wrecked labyrinth. Exiting into the air right by the Dominican Church, you push Moses down a side street where the patrol worms aren’t crawling, and you yourself climb the stairs, proud and happy, until you see that your door is open. Open doors in the Vilnius night can only mean something bad.

“Listen, Herr Vargalys,” you hear a voice with a horrible German accent, “we’re all Europeans. You Lithuanians are almost Aryans. What are these Slavs to you? You should help us.”

“But I don’t know anything about the Polish secret service,” grandfather says calmly.

“Herr Vargalys, we’ve inspected your old dossier. . We’re grown adults, we’re professionals. Don’t tell me I’ll have to threaten you? By the way, the Armia Krajowa is opposed to the Lithuanians too.”

Through the crack you see a German neck and a protruding Adam’s apple. The German smokes a cigarette with a gold-plated cigarette holder and looks at grandfather with inhuman eyes. He doesn’t need to threaten; he’s scary just as he is. He’s like a mummy who’s lain in a pyramid for three thousand years; now it’s arisen and in vengeance wants to put everyone six feet under.

“We’re both professionals. Who’d believe the Lithuanian secret service’s resident spy in Vilnius doesn’t know anything. .”

Yes, grandfather knows everything: about the Polish secret service, the counterintelligence, Mikołajczyk, Sviderski — whatever you want. He’s even told you about some things that aren’t terribly secret. Grandfather knows everything, and in this world, it’s bad to know a lot.

“How unfortunate that I don’t know anything worthwhile,” grandfather repeats pleasantly.

“You love the Poles?”

”God forbid. I’ve fought them all my life.”

“Then help us!”

“Unfortunately, it’s not within my power to do so.”

“I intentionally came at night, so that no one would see us or know anything. We know how to disguise the sources of our information. No documents, no commitments. Just information. Perhaps you’re afraid of those measly Poles?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” grandfather says firmly, and you know he’s not bragging.

“Then help us!”

“It’s out of the question!” grandfather smiles gently and pleasantly, like he’s sitting at a diplomatic reception. “I’m so sorry. .”

“I thought we would converse like colleagues,” the SS officer says indifferently. “Sorry? It really is too bad. You’re as stupid as a genuine Lithuanian. What do you want, you Lithuanians? What do you expect? You think you’ll recover your independence?. . That’s just a hallucination. Your destiny is planned out for a thousand years in advance. Don’t tell me you can’t tell the difference between a hallucination and reality? You should act rationally; you need to come to terms with reality. To finally understand that you don’t exist and never will. And what does the lot of you do?. . Some give lectures that doom the university, and end up at Stutthof themselves. Another sits with his mouth shut and won’t tell us what we need to know. What’s all that for? After all, it’s all so obvious. Where does this superiority complex come from, this thought that you’re somebody? You won’t accomplish anything. We won’t let you accomplish anything! Everything will be the way it is, and only that way, through the ages, through the entire thousand-year Reich. . No, it’s impossible to understand you. It looks like the boss was right: you’re doomed to extinction.”

“It’s such a pity, Herr Standartenführer, that we, Europeans, can’t help each other out this time.”

“It’s a pity,” says the uninvited guest, standing up, “I really wanted to help you. . Well, others will speak to you. They’ll torture you. And for what — for some Poles. For Slavs!”

Two cross-eyed SS officers drag grandfather right by you, nearly bumping into you. You flatten yourself against the wall and think about how much grandfather must hate the Germans if he can sacrifice himself like that on account of the detested Poles.

Their footsteps echo down the stairs, then it’s quiet. Now you are left entirely alone. (All rulers are lonely.) You don’t need Vilnius anymore. And Vilnius doesn’t need you anymore. However, you still have a house on what was the border between Lithuania and Poland. The Russians haven’t taken it yet; Janė and Julius are still sheltering there. A long journey awaits you tomorrow night. You’ll have to take a lot of food, since you’ll be bringing three pairs of giant Jewish eyes.

After Carp’s horrifying downfall I couldn’t recover for a long time. They couldn’t buy him, they couldn’t convince him — nicely or not. There was only one explanation: the pupil-less kanukai’s stares had slowly drained him: They had cleaned out his brains. It wasn’t Stepanas Walleye sitting inside the television set, but a nameless kanuked creature. That meant a great deal. That meant that the stare of the void is worse than the barbed wire of the camp, worse than the bonfires of the Inquisition — worse than anything. Unfortunately, like it or not, we have to live in the glare of that stare — there’s nowhere to hide from it. The drab spell of that stare ravages a person more thoroughly than the strongest radiation — you won’t protect yourself from it with a suit of lead; no dosimeter measures its effects. No one knows how many doses of kanukism they’ve gotten by now, or if a fatal dose is still a long way off.

I needed an assistant, a person I could depend on. Martynas wasn’t suitable, he was too intelligent and too curious. I was completely sick of Stefa ‘accidentally’ getting under foot all the time, but she had already served her purpose. I needed a person who would help without asking too many questions, whom I could satisfy with vague stories about a dissertation or some scholarly work. Vilnius didn’t want to give me that kind of person. An impossibly damp time had settled in; the city’s red and yellow trolleys crawled through the streets half-blind with their windows fogged over. Even their drawn-out, irritating clattering was muffled. Vilniutians wrapped themselves in their raincoats and huddled, but the city’s damp hands nevertheless penetrated wherever they wanted. I saw clearly how every passerby dragged himself along, pressed by damp, slimy fingers. All of Vilnius coughed and sneezed. The women of the department looked like plucked hens (Lolita wasn’t working with us yet). And suddenly the heavens sent me a rookie by the name of Vaiva. She stung my menagerie to the core. For an entire three days they all came to work in new clothes, carefully made up. On the fourth day Vilnius won out: the collars of the new clothes frayed and their hair-dos came undone. Vilnius always wins.