Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

I can sit on the bank across from the double whirlpools by the Žirmūnai bridge for hours on end. It is one of the Neris’s most dreadful spots. Every bit of straw that floats by, swallowed by the throat of the vortex, turns into a ruined human spirit. See there now, a scrap of paper floats in, thrashes, and disappears into the black funnel. Perhaps that’s Freud, who got a craving to pull Their image out of oblivion, out of the subconscious, and was instantly dealt with. What’s left of him after diving through the whirlpool? Naked biology, the libido, and sexual impulses. And perhaps that little stalk over there is Tolstoy, searching for the human in humanity, but ending in complete drivel. Or Picasso (a Spaniard!), striving to breathe spirit into art, but turned into a joker by Them . Or perhaps the little stalk will never again rise from the whirlpool; it’ll be swallowed up and left on the bottom for the ages. Then it will be one of those who never gave in, let’s say, Lorca (a Spaniard again!), snuffed out like a smoldering candle the moment he tried to hint of Them less indirectly. (Do you remember “El publico”? Do you remember the fake Juliet and the scream, “That’s not the real Juliet, They’ve tied the real one up and pushed her under the chairs”?)

I’d really like to announce my knowledge to everyone, but it’s impossible. The Neris is the only place that can safeguard my thoughts. If I name all the nameless stalks, if I give them meaning, even They won’t be able to destroy those meanings. They can’t drink up a river. The one who comes after me will understand everything. The Neris will float my memory to him. I hid everything I know in the current of the Neris. I hid it well — even They won’t decipher those signs. Only the one who will come after me can read them. The Neris is my encyclopedia, the magnum opus of my life. Heraclitus couldn’t wade into the same stream twice. He didn’t have his Neris. He didn’t have a river whose current is eternal and cyclical, where not just water flows, but thoughts and words flow too, where my cry flows. The entire river current is full of my cry; it pours into the sea. Its particles splash with the spray of ocean crests into the shores of Australia, America, or Africa. And no one, no one hears it. No one. Except maybe Them.

Only They always hear everything, that metaphysical tribe that broke off from the human family in times past, the carrier of bulging little eyes, the parasite of the spirit, the apologist of deformed bodies, Vilnius’s secret ruler. I cannot bear it anymore. It would be better if They shoved me into the Neris, so I would float downstream like someone’s recollection myself. It would be better if They strangled me in my sleep. Why do They let me live? What task of Theirs do I fulfill without being aware of it myself?

I have only one answer: They forgot their own purpose long ago. They do everything as if they were automatons, as if they were creatures driven by a pathological instinct. They themselves no longer understand the reason why they have to bear crippled bodies and kanuk everyone in sight. They themselves want to know what it all means, or if they have a purpose. And they hope it will be I who will discover it, who will read it in an old folio, or dream it, or sweat it out during some night of kanukish nightmares. If there is such a purpose at all. What is the purpose of the movement of the stars? For what purpose do we dream of white horses or stares without eyes? What is the purpose of Vilnius’s existence, the purpose of this river, the purpose of us all?

“We’re not going to finish this Judas off just any old way, but in a true Lithuanian way,” says Bitinas calmly.

He speaks ringingly, like a preacher; his voice flutters in pale yellow stripes among the thick tree trunks.

“We won’t finish him off because he’s a stribas . Not because he’s a spy for the Russkies. The NKVD tramped over our heads six times and brought dogs, but even they couldn’t sniff us out. A bit longer, and one Judas would have betrayed everyone. But that’s not why we’ll finish him off. It’ll be just because we are human beings.”

The men are standing in a small group, disheveled and shabby. Of course, they’re humans. They are human because they suffer and have hope.

“We’re neither beasts nor gods,” says Bitinas. “We’re in the middle. Animals don’t betray anyone and fight only for a mate or food. But we betray first, and then we kill. Or first kill, and then betray. It’s all because of our hunger for love, for sympathy, and for the welfare of our loved ones. Do you know how our forefathers punished a traitor? They would slit his stomach, pull out the end of his guts, and nail them to a pole. And then they would force him to walk in a circle around the pole, so that he could see his own traitorous intestines wrapping around it.”

Bitinas stands hunched over and aged, looking like a pagan priest who’s condemned a victim to the ritual of fire and knife. You still don’t believe it. You look again at the men who have assumed the names of trees; they stand there leaning as if they really were trees. They have nothing — neither sun, nor air, nor real names — only a bunker and pistonmachines.

“I wonder how our forefathers dealt with the traitors of traitors?” Bitinas asks himself. “Who turned him in?”

“Giedraitis,” answers Ash. “With all the evidence.”

“Mr. Giedraitis’s son?” Bitinas turns to you. “Your friend, Vargalys?”

“We were only neighbors,” you say, and remember the junior Giedraitis’s puppyish eyes.

“A nice neighbor! He shows up wherever someone dies — one of ours or a stribas . . It seems he’s attracted to carrion.”

Bitinas looks at you without blinking, his eyes really are like a pagan priest’s: cold, penetrating, sucking out of you what you need yourself. You sadly think of where you are and what you’re doing. Fighting for Lithuania? Seeking the dragon? You glance at Birch. He’s a human too, after all, sitting with his hands and legs tied, propped up against the trunk of a tree, his long eyelashes blinking frequently.

“We’ll pull out your intestines, you hear?” Bitinas has already decided.

“I knew where I was going,” Birch tries to keep his courage up, but his voice gives him away: it trembles and squeaks.

“You don’t know anything. There’s nothing in the head of a Russkie agent. What kind of birch are you. What kind of Lithuanian. Are you a human being, damn it? You didn’t know anything and won’t know anything. But maybe seeing your intestines you’ll find out. . You start, Vargalys!”

“No,” says your voice. “No, I can’t. I won’t stay here. I won’t even watch. I’m going back to the bunker.”

“You can,” Bitinas says calmly. “You can do anything. After all, you’re a human. After all, you’re great. You must be able to do everything. Imagine that you finally catch the dragon; you trap him in a corner of his stinking cave. And suddenly he starts crying human tears and speaks in a human voice. Don’t tell me your hand is going to start shaking? Don’t tell me you won’t slit the dragon’s stomach?”

Could you cut up a living person? If your brain were empty and your heart completely empty — perhaps you’d manage to. But then you wouldn’t be there yourself. What’s going on here? Soon it’ll be YOU whose stomach they slit and it’ll be YOUR intestines they wrap around a tree. YOU are sitting with your hands and legs tied, propped up against a tree trunk. YOU blink your long eyelashes frequently.