Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

“Well, lie down, you’ll warm up.”

You stretch out carefully, not touching her. You insanely want to caress her breast or her slender leg. You want it to the point of pain — and what would she do? But after all, she won’t kill you. You slowly move your hand closer, infinitely slowly, it’ll move that way for weeks and months. But afterwards, after those weeks and months, you’ll touch her at last — and what will happen then? She’ll draw back and cry out, and you’ll crush, squeeze, squeeze her breasts, squeeze. . She sighs aloud, moves strangely, you get scared and close your eyes again. She probably sensed your horrible desires.

“Vytuk, I’m so hot and lazy. . My blood’s not moving at all. Be good, massage me, will you?. . Press hard, you hear?”

You may touch her, she said so herself! You kneel with your knees secretly nuzzling her hip, slowly stroke her stomach, knead with your fingers, and stroke in circles again. You know what a massage is; if she’d let you, you’d massage her a hundred times a day. Her eyes are closed; you can look at her as much as you want. Your masculinity swells, raises its head — what will happen if she opens her eyes and sees it? Let her just say so — you’d lick the bottoms of her feet and between her toes. . One by one, you’d lick every one of the barely visible little hairs on her calves. . With your fingers, no, with your lips, you’d clean out the most horrible places — if she’ll just lie with her eyes closed and smile.

“Lower, lower,” she whispers, “Still lower. .”

You rub your fingers in circles, twist and turn them around as best you can, and she moves her belly strangely, raising it, maybe you’re not doing something right.

“Lower!” she orders hoarsely.

But there’s nowhere lower to go! Your fingers tangle in the hair; you don’t know what to do. Her long slender legs slowly spread out, the thighs separate from one another, and there, in the hair, something is showing by now, something you don’t dare look at. She opens her eyes, her glance is angry, almost furious — in a minute she’ll slap you and drive you away.

But she doesn’t drive you away, instead, angrily, horribly, she grasps your swollen masculinity and rapaciously pulls it to herself, scarcely getting her fingers around it. It seems your insides will tear in half any minute, but she yanks at you without easing up, pulls at it and smiles wryly, horribly.

“Enough! Come on now!” she orders in a croaking, drinker’s voice. “Just don’t pretend you haven’t tried it!”

The old woman reeked, overwhelmingly and irredeemably. Was it possible Giedraitienė was somewhere close by all the time? Maybe I’d even run into her, looked at her without recognizing her?

“I knew you’d come. . I waited. .” It seemed an old, rusty mechanism creaked out the words. “I knew. .”

“You. . you live here?”

“What do you need here?” She didn’t listen to me; she just continued to croak her strange sing-song. “Haven’t you noticed the smell? Haven’t you seen those hands with the swollen joints?”

I recoiled involuntarily: that live pit of offal was impossible to bear.

“Don’t run off, this is just the beginning,” the old woman croaked patiently. “No, I don’t live here, I came just because of you. I live in the house of cheer, the cheeriest house in Vilnius. .”

She laughed; her laughter had survived intact: hoarse and seductive, and at the same time unconstrainedly free — like music. It sounded in the middle of Gedis’s living room in place of the dead piano. That was all I found here. When was the last time I had heard that laugh? The summer of the night trains of cattle cars, or the same one, but different already — the summer of the insolent swastikas and bored SS men? I stood in Gedis’s dusty, dead living room, while across from me in a leather armchair sat Giedraitienė, as alive as could be, mockingly staring at me with her crooked irises. A hideous, oppressively reeking old woman with sagging cheeks and matted, greasy hair was looking at me.

”Do you know where you’re heading, my child?” she spoke again. “Have you ever seen leeches suck out a mouse that’s been thrown into the water? Have you seen it?. . At first they latch on by the neck and under the belly. . The mouse struggles, it fights like mad. It tries to throw off the leeches. . It rushes around in the water, raising a terrible spray. . But for some reason it doesn’t go towards shore, that’s what’s odd: it thrashes, splashing terribly, but it stays in the water. . The leeches don’t get alarmed; they’re never alarmed. . The mouse’s struggles change nothing; the water just slowly turns reddish. And the mouse keeps getting calmer and calmer. That’s particularly beautiful — how it keeps getting calmer. It slowly realizes that’s the way it should be, that it’s the essential truth of the world. . It’s unbearably beautiful. . It’s like absolute knowledge. . Or coming closer to God. . Have you ever seen that, Vytuk?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Too bad you’ve never sensed that beauty, that your blood is still calm and cold. . But I feel it, I’m a mouse like that myself. . What are you after, my God, what are you after? What are you looking for here: don’t you understand yet that everything in these rooms has been changed? Even the books on the shelves aren’t the same anymore, and the papers in the drawers aren’t the same. .”

It was all unreal. Outside the window a heavy, black rain was falling, but swirls of dust still spun in the corners of the courtyard. Reflections flashed on the wall, as if the old woman, disgusting old Giedraitienė, was glowing. Even the dust-covered room was impossible, its shapes twisted and corner-less. The paintings had disappeared from their frames; empty, barely painted canvases stared at me. The old woman was like a crumpled, rotten rag, on which someone had fixed a crumpled, rotten, inhuman face. Drool gathered in the corners of her lips; she continually brushed it away with the back of a hand that was covered in age spots.

I had to squeeze everything, as much possible, out of her. Across from me sat a creature of Their species — for the first time this close. I sensed that without a doubt, the way you sense a familiar smell, or grasp cold or warmth with your fingers. They had erred greatly in sending me Giedraitienė. They make mistakes too. The answer, the live answer, was in front of me; there was only one thing I couldn’t understand: why did the secret smell so bad?

I don’t very well recall how I grabbed her and shoved her into the armchair, how I squeezed her crackling neck and stared at her protruding eyes with malice; I don’t very well recall what it was I was preparing to get out of her. I looked at her like an executioner waiting for his victim to release his last breath, and I just couldn’t understand what was obstructing me more and more. Only after a few long seconds did I realize she was laughing , choking and suffocating in my grip, laughing soundlessly, and in the protruding eyes there was only a strange fascination and the smirk of a condescending, superior being. I let go, involuntarily wiped my palms on my pants, while she coughed, choked, and laughed, wiping away the tears that gathered in the drooping face’s wrinkles.

“So you’re still a madman,” she finally choked out. “Why, you’ll strangle me, Vytuk. And where will you put the corpse? You’re still the same; grab someone by the throat and don’t ask a thing. . Ask first! I’ll answer!”

“Where did you come from?” I was amazed that my voice was so weak and tired. “What hole did you crawl out of?”