Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

The memory stood in front of my eyes like a large, old painting. Only the dust needed to be brushed off. It was hidden in between the real things, inside them themselves, in the ghostly forms of Gedis’s living room, quietly playing a melody heard once upon a time: the melody of some other room, some other space.

On the right a mahogany dresser, submerged in an indistinct shadow, some other gloomy low furniture. On the left, a mirror and a wall with torn wallpaper. A pale-colored runner on the floor and a window — most significant of all — a window, outside which yawns a gray void. It’s dim in the room, but it’s brighter there than it is on the other side of the grimy glass; through it, the interior is lit up by the darkness, by the drab rays of the pallid sun. Just exactly that: the darkness lights up the dimness; the blackish rays suck the last remains of the day out of the room. This picture didn’t so much as breathe; it cowered in a boundless silence, grimly waiting for me to guess its secret. On the right an old dresser and some other low furniture. . on the left a mirror, a full-sized mirror with a carved frame; an empty glass left by father. . And all of it is looking at you. All of it is looking at you. Looking without eyes. There are no eyes in the picture; there is nothing that would remind you of eyes, nothing that would even let you think of eyes. There’s nothing there; however, the picture stubbornly, annoyingly, is looking at you with the biting stare of the spiritless void. The stare of a maw entangled in yellowish vines. I do not remember who saved me from it at other times.

That evening Gediminas did the saving. He crept into the room like a thief, or perhaps like the victim of a theft — he kept glancing backwards, as if an apparition were following him. I didn’t recognize him. I couldn’t believe that indistinctly babbling figure with sunken eyes was The Great Gedis. It was some other person, frightened and enfeebled. No stray dog would rub up against a person like that. I didn’t recognize Gediminas. Someone else looked at me with a stare full of horror: “Go on, go on in yourself, you’ll see.” Lost between the dreamy breasts and the barbed eyes, everything seemed clear and inevitable. I had to get up and go into the bedroom. There I had to slowly undress and feel a strange, damp warmth rising from the bed. As if from a heap of rotting leaves. Only the smell, sugary and voluptuous, was different, entirely different. Everything was ordinary and inevitable, like the grass turning green in the spring, like the dragon’s fiery breath. The scene was satanically real, but entirely unreal — a dusky shot from a Buñuel film. In the swath of bleak light sprawled the intoxicating body of a woman, inviting me, waiting for me. She lay naked and not naked (doubly, triply naked), wrapped in strands of black hair, in a frame of shiny black snakes. The legs were outlined in long taupe stockings (those stockings hid treachery, I know that now ). The breasts fell completely to the sides and looked at me with the large, dark brown eyes of the nipples. But her eyes were even bigger, brimming with intoxicating voluptuousness and a mute invitation. Her look seductively and despairingly whispered that she is waiting for me alone, that she lives for me alone , that she surrenders all of her essence, to the very end and beyond. Just for me alone. Slightly bent knees spread open like a flower bud, enticing and brooking no delay: she had waited for me for so long. I kneeled between her legs, put my hands on her breasts (they were somewhat limp, like those others ). My fingers, it seemed, would instantly melt, disappear within her, meld with her breasts, her shoulders, her thick black hair. Her intoxicatingly scented body even rose up in the air to meet me; it clung to me, the silk of the stockings gently stroked my sides and back. In astonishment I dived into her, it instantly dived into a damp, sugary heaven; it was at once caressed, fondled, embraced by myriad tiny little hands and mouths. Her breasts thrashed and nibbled at me, the hair snakes wound about my elbows, and it constantly reveled in sweet heaven, continually climbing, climbing to a boundless height. In her body the bodies of all women intertwined, the bodies of women who could or could not possibly be, everything that could be the best in them. She was created for this alone.

I came to completely sucked dry. I wanted to flee as quickly as possible, but she didn’t let go of me; even the limp breasts rose, following my receding body, and the black hair snakes shackled my elbows and pulled me back. A single thought throbbed in my head: it can’t be this good, in this world it isn’t this good. I got up, even though a thousand gentle little hands held me back. I didn’t look at her; I knew that if I looked back I would instantly end up next to her again, inside of her, inside the damp, sugary heaven. I returned to the living room naked and sat down across from Gedis, probably repeating out loud: it can’t be that good, it’s a lie, in this world it isn’t that good. Gediminas looked at me with sad, stray dog eyes; it seemed at any moment he would lick my hand. I knew he had experienced the same thing. “Vytas, what will we do?” he mumbled quietly. “If she stays here, the two of us won’t be able to do anything else. It’s all we’ll be able to do.” “Yes,” I answered, “it can’t be that good in this world.” “She’s like a cosmic black hole, she’ll swallow us both, Vytas.” “Yes, there’s no point in useless discussion. I’m going to her.” “Who sent her, who sent her, Vytas?” “Just one more time, one little time, the last. .” “Get hold of yourself, Vytas, get hold of yourself. It’ll be the end of us!” “Yes. I’m going now. . We’re not dreaming?” I was blind, I was on the verge of falling into a trap, but Gedis saved us both. I believe he knew even then. He shoved me into a corner and blocked my way. It’s a rare person who can block my way by force. Gedis could. I was left to squat stark naked in the corner and I cried genuine tears. I cried that it could be that good, and that it could no longer be that good. Her entirely real breasts, legs, belly, damp, warm vagina (particularly that, particularly that) probably came from the Other Side, from the threefold cosmos of Nirvana, where thoughts aren’t necessary to understand the world. That had not been just a perfect act of lovemaking, that had been. .

Had been, is, could be. . If Gedis were alive, I could ask where it was he put that woman — one way or another, she wasn’t a spirit; blood coursed through her veins. Maybe he would tell me now. Then he was quiet. He expelled her by force. She left dismayed and sad — sorrowful in a pure, pure way. Cinderella in a princess’s gown, driven out from the king’s palace. Gediminas, that black-winged angel, cruelly separated us. After all, she was mine. I sat, shoved into a corner, completely crushed. And she obediently went out the door, throwing a longing glance at me. Throughout it all she never uttered a word. She just looked at me: not just with her eyes — but with her shoulders, her breasts, her knees, and with her incomparable vagina, the black hole, which shone through all her clothes, sucked me inside, and perhaps wanted to destroy me. I wanted nothing more than to be destroyed within it. I craved that sugary, damp annihilation. But Gedis was stronger; he locked me in, and when he returned he was alone.

I searched for that black-haired woman — fitfully, depending on vague instincts. It seemed to me that she would, without fail, show up at twilight, on just such a damp, murky evening, in just such a labyrinth of Old Town’s streets. I stubbornly scoured the crumbling gateways and the narrow courtyards that reeked of urine. Sometimes I would go around to the nastiest of drunken dens, where unshaven lumpens guzzle cheap wine, and then, remembering her expensive clothing, I’d tumble into one or another of the expensive dives and, to the maître d’s horror, scour the private niches. At first I probably wanted only to experience the miracle’s sugary blessing once more, and later. . Later my life was lit up in an entirely different light; I began to search for Old Town’s Circe, wanting something else. Unfortunately, she vanished like a flame. She no longer inhabited the wet streets of Vilnius, Old Town’s filthy bars, or the automobiles flying by. All that was left was Gediminas, scowling angrily, like a killer. He probably buried her underground, submerged her under water, dissolved her into the air. Or perhaps, having appeared out of nowhere, she vanished into nowhere; born of the wind, she disappeared in the wind — but here another appears, she stands in front of me, and again I want to touch her.