Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

I had already raised a leg to take a step, but suddenly I froze. I had expected it, waited for it, but the sight still caught me by surprise: around the corner a black limousine quietly hums; two (or three?) pudgy faces, with large vacuous eyes, stare from inside. The faces of priests who were never ordained.

“Don’t pay attenshion,” a wheezing voice suddenly says.

I jerk back, but the speaker has already shuffled off. An old, old Jew — Lord knows, there aren’t any like that left these days. You’d think he’d climbed out of a Chagall painting or a Sholom Aleichem book. Just now he was walking on the roofs, or perhaps even flying; barely a second ago he put away his flea-ridden, dirty wings. His face is nothing but wrinkles and the round glasses with fractured lenses on his nose; his clothes are practically from the last century. A genuine eternal Jew. Maybe he really is Ahasuerus. I’ve seen him somewhere before. He approached and mumbling horribly, said:

“Don’t pay attenshion!”

The automobile suddenly roars and screeches, tearing off down the street. Only now do I realize this is the same place, maybe even the same time, the same fear, the same despair. The Russian Orthodox Church sullenly waits for something; on the left darts a girl with a cocoa-colored raincoat. The morning image of the old house I’d never seen before has unlocked the fateful day’s fettered box. Today the birds, grandfather pressing his soiled hands to his cheeks, Lolita’s divine legs, eternal Ahasuerus in the middle of moribund Vilnius, and the pudgy faces of unordained priests were hidden inside it. Now the box is left empty, because I myself am as empty as a dry well. I have arrived at the critical juncture; beyond it is the final stretch. I begin the inevitable race to doom. A race with myself; in it, the faster you run, the more you try to stop. Lord, give me secret powers, give me strength and reason. Strength and cold reason.

I began on The Way against my will. I had already settled down and forgotten all the quests for meaning. Even chest pains no longer upset me — it was just the first ones that were frightening. I no longer tormented myself if I didn’t feel the slightest desire when I saw an ideally sexy woman. I was forty-three years old.

I remember the day and the place very well. The same place : across from the Russian Orthodox Church on Basanavičiaus Street. The day was sunny and clear — not just externally, but also on the inside. A brilliant clarity ruled in my soul. On days like that your intellect works smoothly and gracefully; you suddenly understand a number of things you hadn’t even tried to grasp for months. Perhaps it’s only on days like those that you sense you have a soul at all, not just a computer of brains crammed with neurons.

I made careful note of the date: it was the eighth of October, the height of Indian summer. I sensed that something particularly important was about to happen. My internal clarity allowed me a brief glimpse of the future, to see that which was yet to be. It was probably the first time it occurred to me that there is no past and no future, there is only one great ALL. To the left, a girl in a cocoa-colored raincoat kept darting by. Lazy cobwebs — witch’s hair — floated in the calm sea of the sky. Every single thing was infinitely significant. Every single thing brought the climax closer; it was inevitable. Everything had already been determined before I was born.

Suddenly I felt a strange stab; it hurt the most tender, delicate places of my being. A keen danger signal flew from the deepest nooks of my soul. I quickly looked around, but all I saw was a grimy cat, furtively crouched by the Orthodox Church’s stairs. The piercing danger signal resounded louder still. I felt brazen proboscises shoving their way into the very core of my being, there, where there is no armor. I automatically looked about for the limp-breasted woman of the dusk, the Circe of Old Town: at that time, I still naïvely believed that only she could have such proboscises.

Instead I saw that man. The sight changed my entire existence; however, I can’t relate anything particular about him. The man’s hair was the color of straw and the pupils of his bloodshot eyes were colorless. He stood unsteadily on his feet; he kept pulling up his falling pants with his left hand. With his right he pressed a puppy, a few weeks old and blinking in fright, to his chest. A drunk like thousands of other drunks, selling stolen pedigree pups or flowers from someone’s garden. But I immediately realized it was a disguise. I abruptly turned around and hastened to catch the glance of his pallid eyes. My past and my future lurked inside them. Inside them hid the last drop, the critical link that joined all the connections. I finally saw through it all. The long, narrow cones of pale light protruding from the man’s colorless eyes instantly vanished, but it was too late. I understood him. I looked at him for an endlessly long moment, the kind of moment that escapes the real world’s time. Somewhere else, in some other time, it lasts for centuries on centuries. During those centuries of divine clarity, my intellect surpassed its own self; for a short time it turned into not just intellect. Even the most perfect logic doesn’t reveal the kind of connections that opened themselves up to me. Suddenly I understood what Saul heard on the road to Damascus. What Mahomet saw during the short moment before the water poured out of the overturned jug. I experienced that myself.

In the meantime, the straw-haired man looked about, frightened; from him, as important evidence, emanated the smell of rot, like from a damp pile of old leaves. Suddenly he flung the puppy aside and galloped off into the gateway, not staggering in the least.

It seems to me I saw Ahasuerus that time too. I could swear that at that moment he was shambling over the nearest roofs. I really do remember; he had taken his shoes off, and he carried them in his hand. He was walking around the roofs barefoot, but proudly and at the same time respectfully, as if he were walking through a palace hall. I believe he looked me over from above.

At that moment he wasn’t what was on my mind. I realized I had to find Gedis right away, and not waste a second. The fateful spectacle’s curtains opened wide; I saw everything with the second sight , with pupils narrowing from an invisible light. Facts, incidents, dreams arranged themselves into a harmonious system (an excessively harmonious system); every thought, every detail strengthened my conviction. I hurried; I was in a huge hurry to see Gediminas. I didn’t know yet that it was already too late.

When discovered, They immediately change tactics. There are numerous means of damage, a host of methods of crushing a person, within Their power. It’s impossible to surround Them , to trap Them in a corner, to push Them up against a wall — it’s They who surround you, who hold you in a siege like a live castle, whose walls, alas, are pathetically weak. A human being can’t withstand a siege. He can hold out for a month, a year, a decade; but sooner or later he breaks, at least temporarily. He doesn’t even feel when and how They break into his inner being, crawling inside like omnipotent cockroaches.

I had found Their ghostly organization. I am surely not the only such investigator. There are no unique things in the world, just as there are no unique people. Certain books prove that I am not completely alone. That is all that upholds me in moments of absolute despair.

When defending yourself from Them , even thinking about Them , you cannot give in to feelings — fear in particular. The most important thing is to not allow yourself to be lulled or intimidated, to keep your hold on cold reason. The only way to save yourself from Them is with the constant vigilance of reason. In a certain sense, They behave logically — true, according to their own peculiar logic, which is nearly impenetrable to man, but they behave logically regardless. It’s probably Their only weak spot (if they have a weak spot at all). Only facts deserve attention; it’s worthless to trust in feelings or speculations. A clear head, cold logic, and caution. A clear head, cold logic, and threefold caution. That’s what keeps me alive.