Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

Once more, I go over my finger joints, my knees, and the muscles between my thighs. No, I am not a kanukas; I am a human. For the time being I’m still human. Kovarskis lied, intimidated me with his frozen corpses, but for the time being I am still alive.

I descend from Karoliniškės towards Žvėrynas — so many places and neighborhoods fit into a single day, a day that’s always the same, or maybe the very same day. The air is indescribably clear — even the contours of the forest looming beyond the city aren’t at all hazy. Everything tries to exceed itself, to brighten its features; it desperately wants to convince me it really exists. The filthy pigeons of Vilnius in particular are doing their best. They’re everywhere. They peck at non-existent crumbs on both sides of the road; an enormous flock of them rages above my head. They’re following me. They pretend to eat (at that moment another flock rages above my head), and when I pass by and go off a bit, they quickly take off and fly ahead of me in a large arc, glaring at me with their empty little eyes. I turn in one direction, in another, intentionally stomp around in places where there really is nothing for them to feed on, but they don’t desert me. That gang of atrocities really is following me. It seems as if the dragon of Vilnius himself is slithering from behind, choosing a spot to devour me. I hate pigeons. They’re the most disgusting birds on earth. Any ornithologist will tell you that only a pigeon (like a human) can peck a member of its own species to death. Then what’s there to be said about the pigeons of Vilnius !? They want me to turn into a kanukas regardless. I whip around Žvėrynas’s crooked, unpaved little streets, trying to use the trees as cover, but I cannot get away. Crawl underground if you like. I no longer recognize the misshapen little streets, the passersby here are strange, I’m lonely and uneasy, for some reason I get the urge to knock on the door of one of the squat little houses and shout at the top of my voice: “I’ve gotten lost, save me!” I’m delighted to see the asphalt of a wider street; I rush into it at a trot and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s Vytauto Street; a few dozen steps away looms the closed Russian Orthodox Church. The street is empty as far as you can see, not a single person about, but that’s not what’s most striking. I feel as if instead of meeting a live, active acquaintance, I’ve met a walking corpse. The life on my namesake’s street has vanished somewhere: the leaves on the trees don’t stir, dirty cats don’t slink along the walls, there’s no fluttering of laundry hung out to dry in the courtyards. Even the church seems more inert, more forsaken than usual. I look at the shabby cupolas, the Orthodox cross; I’m already about to lower my head when suddenly I see a sight that could make you go blind. Two pigeons hang in the air next to the highest cross. They don’t flap their wings, they don’t move at all; they hang helplessly, as if they had stumbled into a giant, invisible cobweb. One, apparently, was getting ready to perch on the cross; the other, its wings folded, was probably gliding downwards. And both are transfixed, hanging in the air, neither moving nor falling down, as if time had suddenly stopped.

Time, rushing forward headlong since morning, has really stopped. I still don’t want to believe it; gasping for breath, I go down towards the river and pause by the bridge. . I want to close my eyes, but I can’t. I want to cry, but there are no tears. I want to save Lola, but I don’t know how.

The water of the river stands still, the eddies and whirlpools frozen in place. It resembles a grimy, knotted rug. On the other side of the bridge, I see motionless cars and the small figures of people. Only now do I believe it: All of Vilnius has stopped. I no longer hear my heart; I’m probably no longer breathing. Absentmindedly, I brush my hand against my forehead and rub my eyes. I’m moving.

It’s horrible to move when the rest of the world has stopped .

I’ve ended up in the very center of a boundless torpor. The worst nightmare couldn’t compare to my reality. It’d be better if everything exploded or went up in flames; it’d be better if Vilnius were washed over by a wave of some new deluge or crushed by a cosmic catastrophe. It’d be better if everything crumbled, cracked, and crashed down. But around me stretches a dead landscape; a ringing silence encases the city, and an uncontrollable horror grows within me. What is this, I ask myself. No signs of an apocalypse, no bloody glow. Vilnius had come to a stop in an off-hand and routine way.

The crystal-clear air clouded up like muddy water. Tiny dust motes hung suspended in the air; it seemed the sky was slowly mingling with the earth. And absolutely everything stands stock still. The reflections of the street in the glass of the windows aren’t moving. The cars sit frozen in the middle of the avenue; you can clearly see that a gray Lada jumped into the intersection even though the light was already red. People are as rigid as statues, but don’t resemble them in the least. There is nothing artistic or symbolic in them; they have turned to stone in a single instant, in the most unsuitable poses. At that moment a disheveled, pimply teenager spat; the flow of spit hardened, stuck to his lips. A balding fatso, with a sweaty forehead, twisted backwards, apparently he’d glanced to see if his trolleybus was coming and stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk. He should have fallen, but was frozen instead, still falling, his hands thrown out to the sides. Two women who had paused to chat came to a standstill that way, with their mouths wide open. It’s the inanimate things that look the worst: the leaves of trees standing on end on the sidewalk; petrified streams of water, splashed from under the wheels of a car; a crumpled piece of paper hanging over the opening to a garbage can. It isn’t at all like a photograph or even a stop-motion film — in those there is life; here nonexistence has pervaded everything.

They stopped, dammit, they stopped! The gallery of expressionless faces froze; an inner cold locked the joints of Vilnius’s beast. Is this the end already? Maybe I’m to blame for this? Many times I’ve fought down the urge to shout out loud at them: stop it, quit running around pointlessly, just calm down and think for a second! Freeze!. . Settle down!. . And here they’ve done it.

“Vilnius has stopped,” I say out loud to the transfixed statues, I say to the building cornices and the dried-up lindens, I say to myself — I must drive off the all-piercing silence. “This is how the true Necropolis looks. The Necropolis of the spirit.”

I do not smell any scents — they’re inert too. If I were to eat something, I wouldn’t sense the flavor. Vilnius has become absolutely tasteless and soundless. I can only see. Shivers go down my spine when I realize what I would never have figured out by cold logic: my perceptions have no meaning if there is nothing to smell, touch, or taste. A person can be ideal and perfect, but if the world has no need for it, all perfection will go for naught. What should a person like this do? Without thinking, I lick the sweaty, trembling palm of my hand and feel salt on the tip of my tongue. I can only taste myself. I can smell only my own smell, hear only my own words and the hollow echo of my footsteps. Kneeling, I carefully touch splatters of splashed water. The water runs down, but when it separates from my fingers, the drops hang in the air again. I take one and slowly let it down. That’s how it stays standing, barely touching the shiny street tiles, not even moistening the dust.

Could I perhaps touch people? Animate them?

I almost stretch my hand out to a raw-boned man leaning against a tree, but fear restrains me. I’m afraid the person I touch will crumble like a castle of damp sand dried by the sun. And even more I fear that in touching him I would turn into stone myself. Everything is lifeless, but fear remains — it’s the hardiest. I do not know the rules of this changed world; I fear everything here.