And then it felt as though the rod were alive, pulsing in his hand; he glanced down and saw a man lying there, twisted, his face distorted in agony, the rod poking out of his back like a wing, like what is left of a wing when the feathers have been ripped off. That’s what a fallen angel looks like, he thought, and he couldn’t move, didn’t know what to do. It struck him that it would have been good to have had his camera with him. That he could have hidden behind it. What he felt floundering in his hand was the man’s life. The last vestiges of it. But you can’t photograph things like that. And he didn’t want to photograph them. He had got so used to being on the other side of a lens, to hiding behind his camera, to separating himself from reality with a thin strip of film. The rod gradually stopped pulsing.
Vincentas stood in the crowd and felt his extremities slowly melting, as though they had been cast in ice. As though he had, in fact, grabbed the rod sticking out of the dead man’s back and that piece of iron had turned him into a pillar or a block of ice. He began to retreat slowly and then bolted; he wanted to run as far as he could from that yard to wipe out the feeling of the pulsing metal. Iron is never weak. You can never hear it beat. An iron heart beating in his hand. And that imaginary and yet horribly real feeling made him want to throw up.
Judita began to moan, kneading Vincentas’s torso with her feet as though trying to squeeze all she could from him, and they were falling together … plunging … two angels, two wingless angels with rods of sin … sticking out from their backs …
He lit up once more. Now with some relief.
‘I want some, too.’ Judita reached out her hand, carefully took the cigarette from his mouth, pursed her lips around it, took a drag, then another, placed the half-smoked, smouldering cigarette back in his mouth, leaned back on the pillow and blew the smoke out loudly.
They always smoked after making love, often sharing a cigarette. It was like an extension of pleasure, a distant echo of orgasm that returned now to the chest, then escaped with the smoke to freedom.
She lay on her back, her legs crossed, the dark tuft below her abdomen looking like a wound, like congealed blood.
He thought he knew every centimetre of her body, but did he know anything of her soul? Could he have said anything about even the tiniest part of her soul, he wondered to himself, but said nothing.
He placed his palm on her breast. Drew his palm across it as though across sand. As though he were smoothing out ridges in the sand. Warm gentle sand, glistening in the sun.
He had barely closed his eyes and the old man once again leaped out before him, grabbed the hose and turned it towards the two still, lying bodies and shouted, ‘I christen you with water – so that you will convert, but another, more powerful, will come after me. I’m not worthy even to kiss his shoes, and he will christen you with fire!’
Fire. Better the smell of burning meat than rotting.
Then the old man suddenly turned the hose around and lashed at Vincentas, as though whipping him, and then laughed, tilting his long, sweaty, blood-flecked beard up to the sky. Then the old man set off at speed, and Vincentas ran, too, his legs heavy, as though stuffed with wadding, until he lost his breath and again felt like throwing up.
Judita is asleep; he’s sitting in the kitchen looking out of the window. The sky is gradually brightening. The summer nights are short. He can’t sleep. Here and there the occasional shot echoes. Who were those men? Why were they killed? Communists? Secret police? Who was that old man, that bearded lunatic? Why did the old man look at Vincentas as though he knew him? And that very real feeling of metal: in his mouth, his hands. The taste of iron, the taste of blood. He did not tell Judita about it. There’s enough talk about it already. The Jews are being rounded up, being beaten and shot in the streets.
He’s sitting in the kitchen, watching the light outside the window grow gradually. Like a photograph brightening in developer fluid. You never know what you will see in it. It’s like dreaming the same dream a second time. You’ve already seen it, that image, that piece of reality, but when you see it again now it will be different. The same but completely different. Like it has tasted a bit of you. A moment that only you saw, only you, and now you want to show it to others. When photographs of this day are developed – who will be on the other side of the lens, who will come to christen us with fire and water? Whose body, which poison, will this era taste of? He doesn’t show it, but he can’t deceive himself – he, too, is frightened; he sits half naked in the kitchen while Judita sleeps, smoking, quivering like an aspen leaf. He’s frightened, he’s very frightened, as though he were really holding a metal rod in his hand, a rod that had skewered a man like an insect on a mounting board, pinned down his existence like a butterfly on the page of death. May Our Lady of the Gates of Dawn protect me, most Holy Virgin, pray for us now and in the hour of our death, amen, whispered Vincentas through stony lips and felt a little better.
Judita went home in the morning. Although he tried to convince her to stay she was determined – she would go and wait for Aleksandras to return.
‘It’s awful to get home and find it empty,’ she said and left.
He scanned his empty room, took a deep breath, filling his lungs with air that was still full of Judita.
PONTIUS PILATE
When they came to get them the Russian was in the corner of the cell, shitting. The man had lain there all night facing the wall; it had occurred to Vincentas that he might be dead, but then morning came, and he just got up, pulled down his trousers and began emptying his bowels. Jokūbas the Elder and Simonas, who was called Petras, because there was another Simonas – Vincentas would learn their names later – stood in the entrance to the guard-house and looked mockingly at the Russian. The prisoner was barefoot, his filthy trousers pushed down over his bent knees, his shirt bloodied. His face was swollen, with the kind of black eyes that come from heavy blows to the nose.
Vincentas reckoned he couldn’t look quite as bad as the Russian.
‘Bloody hell, he’s still shitting!’ Simonas Petras was in a good mood. ‘Come on, Ivan, let’s go. And have pity, oh Lord, on your shitty soul. And you, too, Mr Photographer. We’re going to take one last picture.’
The prisoner wiped his backside with a handful of straw in a leisurely fashion and pulled his trousers back up. Simonas Petras marched out holding his weapon before him; Jokūbas the Elder had stuffed his pistol into his belt.
‘He was a lieutenant in charge of a cannon,’ explained Simonas, who was called Petras, to Jokūbas the Elder. ‘They were supposed to cover boats travelling down the river Nemunas … Only one bridge was left standing, the others had been blown up. The stupid Russians were shooting all over the place. Sometimes the anti-tank cannon went off, but it wasn’t much of a threat. On the other hand, if those German aeroplanes hadn’t shot out of the clouds who knows how it all would have ended? The Russian was probably knocked out by a shockwave. A bomb must have fallen near him. Do you have any idea how that feels? It’s like having the flu with a fever of forty-one. There’s a buzzing in your head, you see double, you lose your coordination. The Russian was the only one left by the overturned gun. At first he tried to right it, but it takes more than one man to do that. What the hell, we stopped the Russian units from crossing the river, but it looks like they went upstream instead, towards the east.
‘We watched him and waited to see if any others would turn up. Nobody wanted to go near there. He was crawling around that wrecked cannon like an insect … Like my grandmother used to say, a castrated beetle. Then I leaped towards him and shouted “Ruki vierch”, but he just stared at me with his mouth open like a dying carp.’
‘How about you shut up?’ interrupted Jokūbas the Elder. ‘Men died there, and you’re coming out with all this bullshit.’
‘I know, I know men died there, and I could have died there,’ Simonas Petras shot back but then stopped talking. He liked to talk. There are people who, when they start talking, you can’t stop them. They w
ill talk about anything – anything to avoid being silent, like they are afraid that silence might lock their jaws for all eternity and they might never open their mouths again.
Simonas Petras glanced at Vincentas and, without saying a word, hit him in the ribs with his rifle butt. Vincentas doubled up in pain, and Simonas Petras hissed, ‘Take that, you Bolshevik bastard! Forward!’ he said, shoving Vincentas before he had a chance to catch his breath.
During the first days of the war the radio had broadcast news incessantly. He sat, still sleepy from the night before – he had slept badly, had dreamed of the bearded old man in his shepherd’s clothes, then Judita had insisted on going home to wait for Aleksandras. Vincentas went to his mother’s for breakfast, sat in her kitchen barefoot in an undershirt, picking at some black bread with butter and pressed cottage cheese and chewing on some spring-onion leaves as he read the paper.
Lithuanian brothers and sisters!
The fateful moment of our final reckoning with the Jews has arrived. Lithuania must be freed not only from bondage to the Asiatic Bolsheviks but also from Jewry’s long-standing yoke.
The bearded old man in his shepherd’s clothes, the glistening black hose in his hands, flashed through his head.
The ancient right of sanctuary granted to the Jews during the time of Vytautas the Great is now completely and permanently rescinded.
Each Jew, without exception, must hereby withdraw from Lithuanian lands without further delay.
All those Jews who are clearly guilty of betraying the Lithuanian state and persecuting, torturing or harming Lithuanian nationals will be held individually accountable and will receive the appropriate punishment. If it emerges that during this hour of Lithuania’s reckoning and rebirth Jews guilty of severe crimes find ways to escape, it will be the responsibility of every loyal Lithuanian to take personal action to detain said Jews and, if necessary, to punish them.
And again he saw before him the previous day’s scene of execution: the bloody pavement, the dead bodies, the people watching the act of vengeance, the faces filled with horror and secret satisfaction, enjoyment, confusion, and fear, and disgust, and the thrill of vengeful retribution.
The new Lithuanian state will be restored through the strength, effort, heart and wisdom of members of the Lithuanian nation. Jews are banished completely for all time. If a single one of them should dare to think that he will find some sort of sanctuary, let him be aware from today of the irreversible verdict upon the Jews: in the newly restored Lithuanian state not a single Jew will possess either civic rights or the possibility of earning a living. In this way the mistakes of the past and Jewish baseness will be corrected. In this way a strong foundation for our Aryan nation’s future success and happiness will be laid.
Thus we must all prepare for battle and victory – for the sake of the freedom of the Lithuanian nation, the cleansing of the Lithuanian nation, an independent Lithuanian state and a bright and happy future.
His mother entered the dining-room from the bedroom, turned up the radio and went back to the bedroom where the moribund Juozapas lay. The dictator’s elevated voice reached his ears.
The Provisional Government of the newly awakened Lithuania hereby proclaims the restoration of the free and independent Lithuanian state.
Before the clear conscience of the entire world, the young Lithuanian state enthusiastically pledges to contribute to the reorganization of Europe on a new foundation.
Battered by the savage Bolshevik terror, the Lithuanian nation is determined to build its future around principles of national unity and social justice.
He had heard this from the very first days of the war, as German bombers conducted night raids on Alytus, Kėdainiai, Šiauliai, Kaunas and Riga, all of which had Soviet army garrisons. German army units were attacking Russian border posts and penetrating the Lithuanian border. It all looked very serious. It was war. Germany against the Soviet Union. The biggest explosions could be heard from the direction of Aleksotas Airport and the suburb of Šančiai, where the Reds had established a garrison.
‘Battered by the savage Bolshevik terror, the Lithuanian nation …’ he said to himself under his breath, his mouth full of cottage cheese. These words were not inspired solely by ecstatic joy. The Bolsheviks had indeed earned the hatred of several generations. Terrifying news was constantly circulating about people who had been arrested or shot – sure, at first the Soviets had left things as they had been, people said it was so their victims would stop being vigilant, but by autumn they had begun to close government offices, reorganize, arrest and persecute. Commissars, usually Jews, had turned up in every organization and pestered people with their pledges, socialist contests and other nonsense. With such unqualified people in charge life began to break down, shortages of clothing and other essential items grew and then the mass arrests and deportations had begun. Most people worried that they might be on the lists. You couldn’t be sure of anything. People were saying that sixty to eighty thousand people had been arrested. The charges were usually trumped up – counter-revolutionary activity or enemy of the people, although the secret police didn’t bother explaining what that meant.
The radio played the Lithuanian national anthem, shots echoed throughout the city, a machine-gun hammered near Vytautas Bridge. The Russians were withdrawing from Užnemunė, Lithuanian territory to the west of the Nemunas, and were trying to cross the Nemunas in small boats. They had destroyed the bridges themselves and were now caught in their own trap.
In the end Vincentas gave in, grabbed his camera and went out into the street.
It looked as though the Great Flood had begun, and all those who could were rushing to save themselves in Noah’s Ark. It was mostly Jews – they ran down the streets clutching suitcases and boxes, as though they were not people carrying burdens but burdens carrying people, caught up in the swirling current of time. Those who were not planning to escape stood in long lines by the shops. People pressed against the buildings because a bomb could go off anywhere at any time, leaving plumes of smoke and injured passers-by.
A soldier on horseback appeared unexpectedly in the street; he looked as pathetic as he might have a year ago, when hordes of filthy, scruffy Bolsheviks occupied the country. A Russian bomber flew over, and the soldier raised his arms triumphantly and began to wave, but the bomber crew did not have time to take note of what was happening on the ground. Two German fighters shot out of the clouds, and a few seconds later the Russian bomber disappeared beyond the river, trailing a black line of smoke, followed by a dull explosion.
Vincentas raised his camera and took several photographs. The young cavalryman smiled sadly at him and waved gallantly – it wasn’t clear whether he was encouraging himself or saying goodbye. Then suddenly he drew his sword and waved again, but now more threateningly and aggressively, as though challenging someone. Gunshots popped, and the cavalryman galloped off down the street followed by several armed men.
‘Let him who is without sin cast a stone at me, shoot me! I am not God, and I cannot take another man’s life because it is not I who gave him that life, but nor can I allow that man to take my life because he did not give me mine!’ shouted a long-haired man in a black suit from the middle of the street. The madman was barefoot and wore an enormous wooden cross around his neck. He kept waving his arms in the air as he repeated his litany, ‘Let him who is without sin cast a stone at me …’
Vincentas wanted to photograph the madman, but he suddenly ran off after the disappearing horseman and his pursuers. All of this was rather strange and alarming. At the end of the street the horseman swayed to the side, fell across the horse’s neck, then slowly leaned back as the horse disappeared around the corner.
Vincentas saw a group of men in a bizarre mix of clothing, military and civilian, the only thing identifying them as a unit being the white armbands that most of them were wearing. They were hurriedly dragging someone to a dark alley off Donelaitis Street between the ironmonger’s and the cobbler’s.
He wondered what was going on. He walked as far as the alley and stopped by the corner of the building, looked in but did not see anything. He stepped into the alley, looked around cautiously and did not see anything suspicious, except that somewhere, further in, he could hear muffled men’s shouts and the short but deep cries of a woman. Vincentas took a few more steps. The day was cloudy, and dusk clung to the alley, which wasn’t even a street, just a gap between buildings, a narrowing gap with a large lilac bush growing at the end of it. The voices were coming from behind the bush. He approached as close as he could, saw the backs of two men and through their legs a woman’s white calves raised high, the soles of her feet bare and filthy, one bleeding slightly, then he saw a man’s bare buttocks between the raised calves, banging furiously, the woman’s moans weakening with every movement.
A shard of glass must have cracked under his feet because one of the men turned and looked him straight in the eye.
‘What kind of a whore are you?’ asked the shorter, crop-haired man, aiming his gun and taking a few steps towards him.
‘I’m …’ replied Vincentas, thrown off track, as he suddenly realized this would not end well for him. ‘I’m just a photographer … I … I’m leaving, I thought someone was crying for help, but it seems not. Forgive me.’
Darkness and Company Page 4