‘I … he … Aleksandras …’ he mumbled, trying to swallow.
‘Aleksandras? Your name is Aleksandras?’
‘No, Aleksandras told me to come by …’
‘Oh yes. He’s in the bedroom. Putting on a tie.’
‘A tie,’ he repeated automatically.
‘Yes, it’s one of those male rituals. He calls it a date with the gallows. Do you know each other? Do you play together?’
‘No … Yesterday we … by the river … I fixed his bike.’
The woman smiled. ‘Typical Aleksandras. Yesterday he met someone; today he’s taking them to the opera. You know, one time he brought home this blind beggar whose voice apparently reminded him of Caruso’s singing!’
‘No, I don’t sing,’ said Vincentas.
He unconsciously brought his hand to his neck. He had not put on a tie.
She extended her hand, her fingers sticky from plum juice. ‘Judita,’ she said, looking straight at him. He had turned his eyes to the side.
For a second their palms were stuck together.
‘Are you blushing?’ the woman asked in mock surprise.
‘No, it’s because of my waistcoat.’
‘Ah … But it isn’t red.’
‘No.’
‘Then it isn’t about the waistcoat.’
‘It’s just very warm.’
Although he desperately wanted to look at her he did not dare, but, squinting, he could see, or perhaps rather feel, her nakedness, her warmth, her attraction. He was self-conscious about looking at her directly, but the image he had seen upon entering the kitchen was still right before his eyes.
Judita said, ‘I feel warm, too. I’ll go and get ready.’
Then he finally raised his eyes towards her. It seemed to him that now she was blushing, too. She carefully covered her breasts with her left hand. Earlier she had been sitting without any shame, but now was blushing.
She got up, shook her light, shoulder-length hair, lowered her hand and smiled. He could still feel her sticky fingers in his palm, could still feel them. She was so close, he could see his reflection in her large eyes, two flustered, speechless men – that was just how he felt, split in half – and he held his fingers, sticky from the plum juice, before him as though not sure where to put them. It felt like those fingers were slowly beginning to burn.
‘I’ll just be a minute,’ said Judita quietly, almost in a whisper. ‘You can wash your hands,’ she added, nodding towards the corner of the kitchen where a pitcher of water stood next to a shining white basin.
And she passed by him – standing there in the kitchen doorway – almost brushing him with her round, dark nipples.
He stood still for a moment, then stepped towards the table and sat down in her place. Her smell lingered around the chair, juicy like the plum, an uneaten piece of which lay before him on the table. He picked up the piece of fruit, sniffed it and popped it in his mouth.
‘Hello there. I didn’t hear you come in,’ he heard Aleksandras say from the living-room. ‘So, shall we go?’
‘Where?’ he asked in surprise, hurrying to swallow the last of the plum.
‘What do you mean, where?’ countered Aleksandras with even greater surprise. ‘To the opera.’
‘Oh, yes.’ He felt as though his brain were a blackboard from which someone had erased all the important marks, leaving only a black, empty rectangle.
He couldn’t concentrate. He stared at the hundred-kilo gypsy Carmen throwing herself around on the stage but saw only Judita’s hand as it rested on her knee. He had thought that Judita would not join them at the opera, but it turned out there were three tickets.
‘The way things have turned out, Aleksandras has been feeling quite lonely,’ Judita said to him when the chance arose during the intermission. ‘We lived abroad for some time, and since we came back it has been hard to make friends. Especially since Aleksandras speaks only German and Russian, so you can imagine … Not just friends, it has been hard to find work as well. No one will take him. Aleksandras thinks it is because of his background, but I think he just needs to learn Lithuanian.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Vincentas.
‘I can see that the two of you have found something to talk about,’ said Aleksandras as he approached them. ‘I was just speaking to a colleague. It looks like I might be able to make some money this weekend. They need a pianist. It’s just a wedding, but why not, don’t you think, my love?’ And Aleksandras squeezed Judita’s hand in joy.
Feeling awkward just standing there, the three of them slowly began to walk.
‘I don’t like opera for two reasons, neither of which has to do with singing. First of all, most people who go to the opera have no intention of listening to the music. They go only because it is high culture; they feel like eighteenth- or nineteenth-century characters, from a time when honour and dignity and titles still meant something, when a person was assessed not by what he did but how he looked. Secondly, all this ghastly walking in circles; how here in Kaunas during intermissions everyone shuffles around in a circle as though they were prisoners let out of their cells to exercise in the yard. Looking at all these puffed-up peacocks it’s easy to imagine that this walking, the intermission, matters more to those attending than what happens on the stage.’
He spilled all of this out to Aleksandras when the latter once again asked what he thought about opera. The funniest thing was that the two of them were, in fact, just at that moment shuffling along in the circular promenade, as it was the first intermission. Although Vincentas had rehearsed his speech all evening, when he finally expressed his views on opera he did not feel entirely confident – he had heard a visitor to the photographer’s studio say something similar. Some people like to philosophize when they are sitting before a camera lens. Of course, there are also those who are completely stunned and don’t say a word, even after the photograph has been taken.
‘Did you hear that?’ said Aleksandras, smiling and glancing at Judita.
She nodded.
Aleksandras wriggled, as though someone had poured ants down his back. ‘But that is not what is needed,’ he said.
‘What is not needed?’ asked Vincentas, confused.
‘Protesting against the bourgeoisie – it needs to be destroyed, not complained about.’
‘That’s Bolshevism,’ said Judita.
‘Better Bolshevism than opportunism,’ replied Aleksandras.
For a while they walked on in silence. Judita excused herself and disappeared into a crowd of well-dressed ladies. The two of them continued walking in the circle with all the others.
‘What do you think about Don Juan?’ Aleksandras asked suddenly.
He was not sure what to reply. ‘I thought we were watching Carmen …’
‘Well Carmen …’ muttered Aleksandras.
‘I don’t know much about opera. The other day an acquaintance was talking about how, during Aida, one of the trumpet-players was completely drunk. It was a fantastic show. It seems there were four trumpet-players, and one of them …’ Again the ‘acquaintance’ was a client at the studio, a lively poet who had just published his first collection of poems. He had told the story of the drunken trumpet-player so humorously that Vincentas had not been able to concentrate on his work.
‘I’m not asking about Mozart,’ interrupted Aleksandras, ‘and not about today’s performance, which is quite adequate apart from Carmen herself, who looks a cow being led to the slaughterhouse.’
‘Some men like heavy women.’
Vincentas immediately thought about Judita. She was not heavy, even if she was slightly plump. A figure of gentle, even lines rather than sharp contours. It was the gentleness of those lines that gave her an air of true, appealing femininity.
Aleksandras looked at him seriously through his round glasses, which made him look like an ageing owl. ‘I recently read that the character of Don Juan embodies the male desire to sleep with all the women of the world. And only because that ma
n is very insecure, so Don Juan can be said to be the embodiment of male fear.’
Vincentas felt unsafe. He still did not know why, but clearly sensed that it was something to do with the plum. With the sticky palm. With Judita. A sweet weakness filled his chest. ‘It’s human to fear. One should be wary of people who aren’t afraid of anything.’
Aleksandras looked at him in silence. It seemed as though he was expecting concurrence but was not getting it. Vincentas shrugged.
Then Aleksandras explained, ‘All of his sexual adventures, his desire to sleep with all women, merely reveal that he is driven by a constant fear of incapacity. He embodies the fear of impotence.’
The couple walking in front of them exchanged glances, the woman whispered something in the man’s ear, the man turned around and looked at them with contempt. ‘Stinking Bolsheviks,’ he muttered under his breath and turned away. Vincentas and Aleksandras slowed their pace somewhat to increase the gap between themselves and the couple.
‘You know, that Don Juan … maybe he just had certain abilities or attributes … For example, maybe his cock was such that women just couldn’t resist.’
‘That’s just another legend created by men – that women are obsessed with the size of men’s instruments.’
‘Yes, but what if it really was … impressive?’
‘Women don’t care about that. It’s the emotional connection that matters most to them.’
‘Aleksandras, how many women have you met who have told you that nonsense about emotional connection? How many women have told you that in all honesty, without being pushed into it?’
He once again saw opera lovers’ concerned glances directed at them and nudged Aleksandras. ‘We should talk more quietly, or they’ll be ripping off their own trousers right here.’
Aleksandras laughed merrily. He laughed loudly, but as if he were laughing to himself, did not want to share his joy with anyone. Then suddenly he fell silent, as though that joy had never existed.
They walked on in silence. Vincentas did not give a damn if an awkward silence hung between them. He felt good because he was thinking about Judita. He thought of her sitting at the table with the half-eaten plum in her hand. He moves towards her, she places the plum on the table, pulls him to her with his belt, then puts her hand in there and holds him with her fingers all sticky and sweet from plum juice, and he becomes harder and harder, is bursting out of his fly, and …
‘What’s with you?’ he heard Aleksandras’s voice reaching out to him from somewhere far away.
‘Nothing.’
‘Thinking about Don Juan?’
‘No!’
‘You don’t feel well?’
‘I couldn’t feel better.’
‘Forgive me, then. I’m especially good at getting on people’s nerves.’
‘Maybe it has something to do with that Austrian doctor …’ Vincentas could not remember his name.
‘Mr Freud? No, I don’t know,’ said Aleksandras, shaking his head. ‘Although Freud is a very popular subject of conversation in certain circles, barely anyone has read any of his books, even though they have strong opinions about them. It’s strange, don’t you think?’
Because Vincentas belonged to the camp of the non-readers, he shrugged his shoulders – nothing strange about it. Very human.
Aleksandras clasped his hands behind his back and began to speak, looking straight ahead.
‘I’m more interested in the Commander, the Stone Guest in Pushkin’s version of the story, a man who has lost love, whose passion has died. Why was Don Juan successful with women? Is it because all women are whores? No. It’s simply because they’re married to old men who are both physically and creatively weak, because women live with men who have turned to stone, who have died. In times past that was common. So Don Juan, who was the embodiment of the youthful drive to fertilize everything, did not have much difficulty getting close to those women.’
‘Yes, but not all women are married to much older men.’
‘No, of course not. But a few years of marriage often make someone an old man. They suck out the passion, it vanishes. It all vanishes.’
Vincentas looked more closely at Aleksandras’s face and noticed that he was much older than he had seemed yesterday. He may be much older than thirty, could even be forty. And then he suddenly thought about Judita – poor Judita! She was living with a stone man.
‘What’s vanishing?’ he heard Judita ask, and Aleksandras waved his hand.
‘Let’s go. The intermission is over. If we get in quickly now we won’t have to push our way past those bags of mothballs in hats.’ He turned to Vincentas and whispered, ‘It would be good to continue these pleasant discussions.’
Although Vincentas nodded he was thinking about something else.
For a few days he didn’t know what to do with himself. Wherever he went, whatever he did, all he saw before him was that drop of juice hanging off Judita’s right nipple.
They did not meet often. He worked in the studio so was free only after work. The owner of the studio, Handke, let him leave during work hours only reluctantly and then threatened to dock his pay or to shop him to Juozapas.
The three of them went to a concert together, returned once to the opera, then went for a bicycle ride outside the city. Having found a quiet glade near a small lake they settled down for a rest. Judita took cheese, vegetables, fruit and a bottle of wine out of a basket. Vincentas felt quite ambivalent. On the one hand he had unexpectedly gained new, interesting friends, but on the other the friendship was compromised by his powerful attraction to Judita. He felt increasingly that he could barely control himself. He was further agitated by the fact that he could not tell from Judita’s behaviour whether or not she felt anything similar towards him.
‘When we lived in Paris we would drive out to the Bois de Vincennes,’ she said.
‘It isn’t as dull as Bois de Boulogne … It’s wild, real, mysterious,’ added Aleksandras as he tried unsuccessfully to uncork the bottle.
‘Yes, mysterious,’ said Judita without looking at Aleksandras. It seemed to Vincentas that he could detect a note of disappointment, even reproach, in her voice. He looked first at her then at Aleksandras, who was still struggling with the cork.
‘Pass it here,’ said Vincentas, opening the wine with ease.
Aleksandras lay down on the grass, his hands locked behind his head. ‘I like to watch the clouds floating by. If I look at one for a long time it feels as though it’s not the cloud that’s moving but that I’m flying. It’s like dreaming with your eyes open, although some Buddha worshipper would say that it’s simply meditation. Ugh!’ he cried suddenly and sat up. ‘How disgusting!’
With a movement full of revulsion Aleksandras swept an insect off his sleeve, stood up and began to pace up and down.
‘Aleksandras, stop it, sit down,’ said Judita.
‘How barbaric – as though I were some piece of carrion,’ sputtered Aleksandras.
‘He would like nature to be like a musical score,’ said Judita to Vincentas with a smile, making excuses for her husband.
‘Nature’s order and man’s order are two very different worlds. Even though there are always points where they intersect, concord. Birth, death …’ Aleksandras said, agitated. ‘I recently read a story by Franz Kafka about a man who one day wakes up as an insect.’
‘A real insect?’ asked Vincentas. ‘That’s pretty good.’
‘Yes, an insect. Not bad, eh? You wake up and you’re an insect. Enormous, the size of a man. Well, maybe a little smaller, but still – gigantic.’
‘And is everyone else an insect?’
‘No, the rest are still human. But they behave terribly, like rats. Do you read German? You must read it, you really must. One’s imagination needs to be challenged. And I don’t think that it’s funny. It’s tragic to feel like an insect among men – or the reverse.’
Vincentas nodded, but he was thinking about something else. He saw Judita�
��s hands cutting vegetables, the neckline of her dress, could feel the smell of her skin, maybe it was only an illusion, but he was sure that he could detect the scent of her body, feel the taste of her skin on his tongue.
When they returned to the city and were saying their goodbyes, Vincentas proposed that they go to watch the military parade the following week.
Aleksandras frowned, but Judita laughed. ‘I would be happy to,’ she said, ‘but definitely not Aleksandras. Soldiers make him nauseous.’
‘Spare me,’ said Aleksandras, waving his hands. ‘There’s nothing more ridiculous than watching people showing off their skills at killing.’
Darkness and Company Page 7