Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

“Enough,” says Ash. “Leave the kid alone. I’ll do it myself.”

Petrified, you watch him lumber over to Birch, bend down on one knee, and tear the clothes from his belly. You should have been the one doing this. You’d calmly unfold a short, crooked knife and, without hurrying, cut through the ropes around his legs. Pausing a bit, you’d deftly slit Birch’s belly; you’d pull out an intestine, hooking it with a bent finger (inside of it, under the slimy membrane, something would move). You would push Birch over on his knees and nail the end of the gut to the old tree trunk, nailing it in simply with your fist, with several angry blows.

“So how did our forefathers force them to walk?” Ash asks. “Maybe we should finish him off and be done with it?”

You see everything clearly; the evening glow is at its height now. It seems a long, whitish worm crawled out of Birch’s stomach and bit into the tree trunk.

“You didn’t understand a thing,” Bitinas nods his head. “Death threatens us, the warriors for a sacred cause, every day. While this slime bag. .”

You don’t want to; you fight it, but unavoidably you turn into Bitinas. Your knuckles slowly become gnarled and your head bald. You start scowling just like he does; you become more and more gaunt. But most important — your thoughts turn into Bitinas’s thoughts (or his thoughts turn into yours).

You hate yourself and love Birch. And that which we love we must kill. To feel the sacrificial knife plunging into the body of love, its handle transmitting the pulse of another’s life to you, the blade easily slitting the live flesh. You turn him on his back, no, you can’t. . you turn Birch on his back, no, you just can’t. . you turn him on his back, Bitinas forces him on his back and slashes his entire belly with the knife. The woods smell of sap, the men and the trees have stiffened, while Birch’s belly grins a wide, bloody smile. Inside are the intestines; there are lots of them, they teem like worms, you never thought there were so many. You don’t run, something inside you attracts you to the dreadful smile of the slashed belly, now you almost want to be in Bitinas’s place, to plunge your hands into Birch’s warm guts and squeeze them with your fingers. Can there be any greater way of being so close to someone? Bitinas cuts the guts into pieces, at first he hurries like he’s being driven, but later he can barely move. Birch’s legs slip out from under Bitinas’s knees, he convulses as if he’s dancing, then he moans and quiets down. He looks at you with surprise and regret. Only with surprise and regret.

Suddenly you ask yourself what Bitinas is doing here, what has he already done. Blood rushes to your face; you recoil, but by now it’s too late to run. You also TOOK PART. What happened here? How will God punish you all? What will you all turn into now? You should poke out your eyes, because you watched everything. Bitinas slowly stands up, wipes his hands on a clump of grass. He slowly raises his head. He no longer has a gaze, the eyes have disappeared from his face, there are no eyes.

“Stick those guts into a bag,” says Bitinas grimly, “and take them to that junior Giedraitis.”

Where did the birds go?

The same smell of rotting leaves hovers over the city again. On the way to work I’m again accompanied by the exact same stares. The day is exactly the same again (or maybe it is the same?). Two stupefied pigeons should perch next to the announcement post across from the library. Today is marked by their three-toed feet, a heap of yellowish leaves, and the dusty intestine of the library’s corridor. And Lolita’s exhausted face — a memory or reality? When was this already? When was it exactly the same (or maybe the same ) day? The bright bluish-gray sun outside the window and Lolita divining with cigarette smoke? Her legs are truly a work of art. Her breasts are every man’s dream. Beauty must be limited; otherwise it inevitably turns evil.

Evil? I don’t know what evil is. They are not evil; perhaps They are an inevitable part of the world, without which it couldn’t exist at all.

I look at Lolita and for the hundredth time it occurs to me that I never have guessed her secret. Lolita, Lilita, the ruler of demons. “Lilith” means a devourer. What is my Lolita Lilita devouring?

An evil premonition presses at my heart, presses convincingly — shouldn’t I take some drops? But instead of drops, coffee awaits me. Stefa has already stuck her head in the door; she smiles charmingly and bumps me with her plump hip as she goes by. Powerful hips and three rolls of fat on the stomach. Giedraitienė’s hips and flat belly, the hips of all the world’s women, the common body of all the world’s women sprawling in front of me — it’s faceless; I hid its face myself, because I wanted to have all the women in the world at the same time. Stefa flies forward: today everything is speeded up, time itself hurries, as if it wanted to reach a secret boundary and suddenly come to an end. Even the current of the Neris is probably speeded up, the murky water, with its last strength, attempts to wash away, to destroy my encyclopedia. Lolita smiles at me, her teeth are even and as white as can be. Teeth hungering to bite. I fruitlessly try to remember what I dreamed of today before I woke up, what image the day began with, what inaudible morning chord should be ringing in my head.

No, today the city doesn’t ring — by now I’m going down the street, by now I’m smoking a bitter cigarette and counting the slovenly pigeons of Vilnius.

At what moment did the birds show up again?

Are the pigeons of Vilnius the dirty spirits of the dead, or simply Their disgusting envoys? No other bird would dare perch on your windowsill and pierce you with the hideous stare of their glassy eyes. There really is something kanukish about pigeons.

The streets of Vilnius are kanukish today too. The sun shines, it’s bluish-gray, like cigarette smoke, like the star Metallah, which will smash into the earth any moment and shatter into a thousand fragments, poisoning all of weary Vilnius’s streets. Or maybe it’s already poisoned them, since it’s so empty everywhere — only a miserable dog apathetically trots over the pavement. In all likelihood he was once the Iron Wolf. Or maybe I was once the Iron Wolf myself, but now I’m walking all alone and the wind angrily glues muddy tree leaves onto my face. Although no, I’m not alone, Gedis is walking next to me and whistling one of his rondos of Vilnius.

I have no itinerary. Gedis and I have no itinerary today. Perhaps that wet day has returned again, maybe in an instant the black-haired Circe will appear from around the corner, grab us both, and force us to forget everything: grandfather, father and mother, the camp and Bolius, my church and the Narutis, everything and everybody — even Lolita.

But how would she suck the Neris dry — could her vagina really manage to devour my entire flowing, whirling, stinking encyclopedia?

The wind blew passersby from out of a gateway; no, Vilnius hasn’t died yet, it still shows its convulsively distorted face. Why is there such a plethora of old people in Lukiškių Square? Why did they choose today to crawl out of their slovenly, cobweb-ridden holes? Probably something really does have to happen today. I walk down the boulevard, but it seems I’ve stumbled into a museum of wax figures. The old people’s faces are unmoving, almost dead; even the wind doesn’t stir their sparse gray hair. Wouldn’t you think they’ve gathered for a secret convention, where no speeches are made and no one socializes, they just sit for a while and stand for a while, without even looking at one another?