Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

We pause at one more iron-clad door and go inside. Just the sight I expected: anatomy tables. On one there’s a young girl who is only half dissected. Her head hangs to the side; the glassy eyes gaze at us intently. She’s waiting for me. The girl’s right side is slit from her armpit to her hip, her legs are disgustingly spread; it appears she’s lewdly, all aquiver, awaiting a man. It’s just that a man wouldn’t find anything to do here: her crotch has been dissected up to the very uterus. There are no lips, no vulva, no vagina — just a straight-edged hole with even sides. One breast has slid to the side, the other stands upright; apparently it hasn’t relaxed yet. From the side I look at her spread legs, at the line of her thighs, and suddenly I feel attracted to her.

“You’ve probably heard yourself many times that it’s only alcoholics who’ve been exiled to the basement and hardened necrophiliacs who work here. That’s partly true,” Kovarskis announces nonchalantly. “Only the necrophilia is imaginary. Our poor, worn-out little doctors have nothing to do with it. It’s the babes who are to blame. Just the babes. . You wouldn’t believe the sorts who show up wanting to get screwed here. You just wouldn’t believe it! Babes — the most disgusting and obscene creatures on earth. Working here, you get to know women a bit. You wouldn’t get to examine them this closely even if you drilled a hole in the women’s toilet. You perhaps respect women?”

“One.”

“It’s a hopeless business. Look at this one. Even dead she lies there with her legs spread. The symbol of women. You just need to put a brain into that hole between the legs. They THINK with that place.”

“Usually it’s impotent men who talk that way,” I say, a bit angered.

“True,” Kovarskis agrees. “Or queers. Anyway, it’s all rubbish. Yes, there are a few alcoholics and semi-necrophiliacs here; there are a few boys who hope, after working here, to then operate like gods. But the most important thing here is me.”

His tone is enough to make you shudder. The Lord God could use a tone like that to announce: this world was made by ME! Once more I look over the bearded relic and meet a calm, searching gaze.

“So, what brought you here?”

I understand it’s my turn to talk. But I don’t know why I came here. Ahasuerus dragged me here; he promised I would find something important here. Maybe that girl? She reminds me of something. Maybe Janė, raped by the Russian soldiers? She lay there the same way, completely unable to press her knees together.

Kovarskis sits down on the corner of the table, chews a cigarette, and looks at me. He looks at my eyes, searching for something in them.

“Once I asked Šapira to bring me someone. Maybe a year ago. He brought you. You’re the first. . No, brother, I’m not looking for a soul. More like a disease. A disease with my name. . Even in my earliest childhood, I was determined to find a disease with my name. Kovarskis’s disease, which no one had discovered yet. That’s my mania, my idée fixe. You’re not a medical man, maybe you don’t quite understand what it means in our times to find a REAL, BIG disease no one has discovered yet. That’s exactly why I cut little bones up into pieces and pull nerves out one at a time. I’ve looked for it everywhere. I am a walking encyclopedia of pathology. . I’ve discovered dozens of specific anomalies, minor deviations, but I needed a DISEASE. A hundred times I completely lost hope. . But God finally enlightened me. If you want to find an essentially HUMAN disease, he said to me once while I was perched on the shitter, research the brain. Because a person is a brain and only a brain. Everything else is a mechanism. . Come here!”

He nimbly jumps off the table and goes over to a refrigerated cabinet. The girl, her head tilted, attentively watches him from behind.

“Do you know why she stares like that?” Kovarskis throws over his shoulder. “Because her brain hasn’t been taken out. You wouldn’t believe how a stiff’s face immediately loses its expression and its gaze as soon as you take out the brain.”

He finally manages to work the locks and opens the heavy door; I see hundreds of brains arranged on shelves: some larger, some smaller, a few with spots, still others with horrible growths.

“There you are,” Kovarskis announces grimly. “Although you don’t see much here.”

“And you? What do you see?”

He suddenly turns to me, burning me with a terrible look, and then unexpectedly stares at his own hands. Without looking, he pulls out a brain and weighs it in his palm. Now he resembles a pagan priest, or more likely a sorcerer.

“Everything. When I look at a brain, I see a human. It grows around that brain; it’s born out of emptiness. At first I see a face and eyes. . Then the neck, shoulders, and arms show up. . The torso and the legs. . The sex shows up last of all. The women slowly grow breasts; a man’s penis shoots up like some kind of sprout. . I see everything. But that’s not what matters most. What matters most is that expression. . That expression. .”

Sunk into thought, he throws the brain back into the cabinet and slams the door. The girl’s left breast suddenly thrashes and slides down.

“Everything goes by the expression,” says Kovarskis as if to himself. “It won’t give me any peace. I dream of it at night. . I hear it in music. I read it between the lines of books. . And I keep meeting people with that expression in the street. . you see, it’s the expression of a stiff with its brains taken out. An indescribable expression! As if all the features had become rounded and distorted. As if the hieroglyph of the face had become hazy, indistinct. . I don’t know how to describe it. . And just imagine — I see that expression on the faces of live people. I saw it first in the hospital, then right in the middle of the city. . I found it, dammit, I FOUND IT!”

He’s nearly screaming, the veins on his neck strain, no sign is left of his Semitic seriousness. Astounded, I watch him stack frozen brains on the table, pile them every which way, hurriedly put them on the girl’s stomach, on her breasts; he’s even panting.

“I have hundreds of examples to prove it! Hundreds!” Kovarskis hisses, “Here, look! You see? See? See?”

He pokes the frozen brains with a finger, but I don’t see anything special — just a gray mass, convoluted wrinkles and the girl’s body. The nipples of her breasts have reddened and distended.

“I don’t see anything.”

This works like a magic charm. He suddenly calms down; taking off his gloves, he rubs his forehead with a finger and smiles for the first time. No, he’s no madman. Let him, when he’s looked at a brain, see an entire person, but I can spot the smile of a madman instantly. No, he’s no madman. Matters are much worse than that.

“Well, now. . well, now. . Look here. Here, here, by the hypothalamus. No, right here. You see that little lump? That barely visible growth that resembles a bug? A bug devouring the brain? Huh?. . And on these brains, do you see? And on these? There you have it — there SHOULDN’T BE a lump like that.” By the triumph and horror in his voice I understand we’re getting to the heart of the matter. “And here’s a good brain. See, no lump. And this one’s good. And this one. . I named this the Vilnius Syndrome.”

“Vilnius? Not Kovarskis?”

“I couldn’t refuse to share the discovery with Vilnius.”

“A syndrome? A syndrome is a particular complex of symptoms.”

“Clever man! Well-educated! And you think a lump like that right by the hypothalamus doesn’t raise, as you say, ‘a particular complex of symptoms’? I found it. It’s Kovarskis’s disease, which gives rise to Vilnius Syndrome.”