Darkness and Company

by Sigitas Parulskis

  THE LOST SHEEP

  He and Judita agreed to meet near the bus station. The buses were packed, so they walked.

  ‘I like walking,’ said Vincentas. He wanted to add ‘with you’, of course, but did not dare.

  ‘Me, too,’ smiled Judita, and their hands inadvertently touched.

  He could have walked like that for a thousand kilometres.

  At least twenty thousand people had gathered. The mood was elevated, women admiring the soldiers, and the soldiers, feeling their gazes, standing even taller. Mass began, said by a bishop surrounded by a bevy of priests. From a distance they looked like insects: one of them finds something and the rest scurry to carry off a little piece of it.

  ‘The priests are like ants,’ he commented. ‘Each one carries a tiny piece of Christ’s body.’

  Before that he and Judita had been silent. He knew that he should say something, but his desire to say something was so great that he was speechless. And his head was as empty as yesterday’s paper.

  ‘The people are like ants, too. They bring all of their sins to the church,’ he continued. ‘The priests collect them, all of those horrible, mortal sins of ours, and take them to God.’

  He felt that he had overdone it. Priests, sin – he was talking complete nonsense, not at all what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t help himself.

  Judita laughed. ‘And what does God do with them? Wash them out?’

  The idea of God doing laundry made Vincentas laugh, too. ‘He soaks them in a huge bucket and waits until they become soft and clean and turn into virtues.’

  Judita did not say anything. Once more he tried to get her to talk. ‘No? Maybe not. But what do you think – what happens to those sins that have been forgiven? Are the priests like holy tea-strainers of mercy and forgiveness through which the sins pass before going back into to the world in the form of virtues? After all, sin and virtue are related – they are both born of man.’

  ‘I’m not religious,’ Judita said suddenly, ‘but your theory is nice. I like ants. Quite a bit more than I like priests.’

  Vincentas fell silent and felt an icy regret within his chest. He didn’t dare say anything else. And yet he had to say something. ‘I don’t like the Church or priests, but as for God … I like to feel His presence. I like to think that there is something greater than me. If He didn’t exist, the politicians and bankers would be very quick to call themselves gods.’

  ‘“Oh, leader of our nation – your thoughts are our deeds” – is that what you had in mind?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  He wondered if their president was in any way like God and quickly decided he was not. He lacked gravitas. He was not convincing. God is He who has no equals, who is unsurpassable, swifter than the wind, thought, death.

  She took his hand and squeezed it hard. A fever pierced through him from his heart to his feet. He could think about nothing, only that she, for whom he longed so intensely, was there beside him.

  The troops were lined up in three echelons at the airfield, some distance from the honorary grandstand. The president, together with General Raštikis, heard mass. Then the president, riding in a carriage drawn by two black steeds, began an inspection of the units, with Generals Raštikis and Adamkevičius accompanying him on horseback.

  From a distance they could hear President Smetona greet the army regiments, ‘Good day, men,’ and then a thundering, unified reply, ‘Good day, sir!’ A large infantry band passed by them playing a pounding march. The band came to a halt in front of the grandstand where all the dignitaries were seated, and then the parade began – the officers’ academy, two infantry battalions, the communications battalion and then the motorized units: the anti-aircraft artillery, the anti-aircraft machine-gun unit, the pontoon battalion, several Vickers tanks and armoured companies and a hundred aeroplanes or more darkened the sky.

  But the people – and it was being said that at least twenty thousand had gathered – the great audience of spectators, and especially the women, were waiting for the cavalry. As soon as the artillery display, their tanks also pulled by horses, was over, the crowd stirred. The entire Lithuanian cavalry was participating in the horsemen’s parade: Grand Duke Jonušas Radvilas’s First Hussar Regiment, Grand Duchess Birutė’s Second Uhlan Regiment, the Third ‘Iron Wolf Dragoon Regiment, two Riflemen’s Union Mounted Squadrons and a Mounted Artillery Division, and the people’s eyes glittered from the horsemen and their mounts, from the hussars’ red hats, the uhlans’ white ones with raspberry trim and the dragoons’ bright-canary-yellow, from the little flags on the lances, and the ground thundered from thousands of hooves, and the weapons clanged, and it seemed that the air itself hummed from the mass of moving animals.

  Judita, standing half a step in front of him, turned back to Vincentas. ‘Isn’t it great?’

  ‘Yes … bloody hell.’ And suddenly he realized that he was jealous. And did not even know of whom. The horses, the flags, the handsome young men sitting as though nailed to their saddles and flying by to who knows where – to a grand future, to glory, as if to a greater and more noble joy than the assembled viewers, whom the apostles had only granted legs, whom nature and the laws of destiny had locked to the ground.

  They were walking along the river. Judita suggested they sit down right by the water as she wanted to have a cigarette.

  ‘Why is it that women don’t like to smoke while walking?’ asked Vincentas, wanting to hear her voice. For a while Judita remained silent as Vincentas tried to start a conversation. She seemed to be trying to figure something out.

  ‘Only whores smoke while walking,’ Judita explained.

  ‘So that’s it. So if I see a woman who is smoking while walking, I can assume that she –’

  ‘But don’t forget that there are exceptions,’ she interrupted him. ‘Give me a light.’

  He lit her cigarette.

  ‘And you?’ asked Judita.

  ‘I smoke only occasionally, most of all I like to … after making love,’ he said, watching for Judita’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.

  She said nothing and smiled. More to herself than to him. He was flirting, and it was going well. At least he had not been openly rebuffed.

  They silently observed the flowing river.

  ‘I recently had the opportunity to circulate among diplomats and a war attaché. Interesting crowd,’ Judita finally said.

  ‘Were they the kinds of stuffed shirts that we saw today at the parade?’

  ‘I mainly make money working as a translator. Either through a bureau or by contract.’

  ‘Interesting work.’

  ‘Not really. You know, maybe it’s all those images from the military parade … You see something and it suddenly triggers very different memories, sometimes completely unrelated … Does that ever happen to you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I recently heard the German war attaché Köstring speaking about the Red Army, about how it is now like a giant strongman whose head has suddenly been lopped off. That gigantic torso miraculously survives, it’s capable of striking out at those directly in front of it but not of more complex actions.’

  ‘You could be a spy. A female spy can turn a man’s head in a second.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  She continued to smoke in silence, then suddenly threw the cigarette butt in the water, turned to him and said, ‘We are right in front of that giant – Lithuania is. Right under its feet.’

  He so wanted to kiss her, to hold her, to press her hard to his chest. For a moment it seemed that she wanted that, too, but as he hesitated she suddenly turned away, stood up, took several quick steps, turned around and said, ‘Do not accompany me. Not today.’

  ‘All right. Whatever you say.’

  He stood there, flustered, a lump in his throat. As in childhood, when he had wanted to cry following some upset. His chest was about to explode from a strange feeling he had not felt for a long time, perhaps not ever.

&nbs
p; He began to walk slowly along the river. It was deserted, barely one or two passers-by were visible in the distance. A broken branch floated along the current, a faded whitish rag caught on it. Just as he felt a flag of surrender raised above his tiny state of ‘I’. Priests as ants? What a disaster – what kind of idiotic nonsense had he been coming out with all day? To be with a woman like that and go on about cassocks. He should be shot.

  Suddenly he heard steps behind him.

  She approached him, her head slightly cocked, smiling guiltily, as though confused. For a while they continued to walk side by side in silence. Then, without turning her head, she said, ‘I would like to smoke … together with you.’

  When they reached his home Judita stopped, took his hands, looked him in the eyes and said, ‘Let’s say that I stopped by looking for my cat. After all, it isn’t decent if a woman comes to a man’s house when she barely knows him, no?’

  ‘This is already our fifth meeting,’ said Vincentas.

  ‘Really? That must be a record.’

  He put on a concerned face, clasped his hands behind his back and tilted his head so that he would look like a concerned old man. In a thin, shaky voice he asked, ‘What kind of cat are you looking for, madam?’

  Judita laughed. ‘It isn’t very big, sir. A female, white with a black spot by one ear.’

  Vincentas lived in a basement flat. It had once been his stepfather’s workshop, but Juozapas eventually moved up to the first floor, where he also received clients. Some rope, a little bit of metal, some nails, horseshoes, horseshoe nails, wooden spoons, ladles, rolling pins, salt cellars, door and window furniture, locks, shovels, rakes, scythes, whetstones, hammers, axes, augers, saws, butcher’s knives, kitchen knives and various other treasures. Vincentas would sometimes cover for Juozapas, but it was mostly his mother who helped out in the shop. She liked to chat with the customers. Not only liked to but knew how to. Especially the men. She had still not lost the charm she had developed as a dancer and singer. Of course, she had danced and sung mainly in public houses, but when a woman reaches a certain age her past gives her a kind of dignity, while minor details become so small as to be invisible.

  It was not so easy to get to his flat. First one had to climb several steps from an entrance in the yard, then go along a corridor, go back into a yard and only then, after circumventing a strange, buttress-like protrusion in the wall, did one come to the steps leading down to his dwelling. During winter a permanent dusk hung over the space, but in summer there was always enough light, even though the windows faced a blank wall just a few metres away.

  Vincentas often saw cats in the yard. They loitered, waiting for pigeons to land. They slunk, froze, then slunk again. Perfect photographic models.

  He rummaged through a stack of photographs, found a few with cats lying in wait for their prey.

  ‘Here, madam, take a look. Is the one you’re looking for among these good-for-nothings?’

  She laughed. She did not want to play the game any longer.

  ‘Can I smoke?’ she asked.

  ‘You can.’

  She smoked again, but he did not. He rearranged the photographs from one stack to another.

  ‘I like them,’ she said. ‘But there aren’t enough people – why aren’t there more people?’

  ‘People like to look at mirrors not photographs.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ she said. ‘I’ve never thought about a photograph being like a mirror.’

  ‘A mirror is a moving photograph.’

  ‘Like film?’ she laughed.

  ‘Except that movement spoils everything.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think so … Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe all true things have to be simple, clear. And things that are complicated, tangled, always changing form and shape … Truth is as simple as a stone. A stone doesn’t move.’

  Again he felt uncomfortable. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to start going on about priests and ants again.

  She said nothing in reply. A moment later she reached out her hand and stroked his cheek, his neck, his shoulder. She moved closer, leaned over and kissed him.

  ‘And I think that moving objects can also be very nice. Even rather pleasant.’

  She nestled against him and for a moment sat there unmoving. He did not know what to do. They had known each other barely a couple of weeks. They were still strangers – and at the same time surprisingly close. She was a few years older, married, experienced, but it seemed as if he had known her for a very long time, not externally, but from the inside, that he knew by heart everything that she was behind those dark deep eyes. It was hard to explain, and he didn’t try. She sat there, nestled against him, he could feel her warm, barely quivering body through her thin dress. Once, she had been somebody’s wife, lived somewhere without him, lived her life – unknown, forbidden, unreachable to him – and in that second he felt that she was now here. That she was right next to him, that there was nothing preventing him from touching, embracing, taking her. He could feel her scent, her quivering transferred to him, or maybe it was his trembling that was being absorbed by her and he was feeling the echo of his own excitement, they were like a single vessel in which tiny ripples suddenly become huge waves. He felt strong and helpless, all-powerful and paralysed by uncertainty, as though he were a glass boxer; as a child he had seen one in a shop window, a boxer who could be shattered by the slightest blow, and yet blows were his trade, his life, his fate, and he had to enter a fateful ring and face the greatest demon, his greatest foe – himself.

  He took her hand, searching for those same feelings that had overcome him when he had first seen her, half naked, plum juice running down her cheek, a single drop, almost invisible but caught by the light, shining on her dark nipple.

  He was still lying in bed smoking; she was collecting her clothes in silence.

  ‘I would like to photograph you.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘Just as I saw you in the kitchen, the first time we met.’

  ‘And what if I should be embarrassed?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be.’

  ‘You couldn’t show them to anyone.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be the end of the world. Just like sin. If you don’t reveal it, it gnaws at you from the inside, like a worm …’

  There they were, the ant-priests once again flashed through his mind.

  ‘Those Catholic jokes bother me a bit,’ she said.

  What could he have expected.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’ve got a thing about priests. My stepfather, Juozapas, was very religious. Now he’s dying.’

  Even better – now he was going to start talking about sick people and death.

  ‘I understand,’ nodded Judita. ‘Aleksandras and I … how can I explain it to you? Do you remember when we went on that picnic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was talk about Vincennes …’ Judita sighed. ‘He’s been acting strangely of late. He doesn’t want to make love any more. Or rather … In Paris he would talk me into making love in those kinds of places … dangerous places … the Bois de Boulogne, for example.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘So, near a path where people would be walking. He feels bad about being much older than me. He thinks that he doesn’t satisfy me any more. When it’s him who is unsatisfied by everything lately. He’ll be forty soon, and he’s still just a promising musician.’

  He said nothing. Then he took Judita’s hand, brushed his lips against it.

  ‘Well, I’m not so very mature …’

  Judita laughed. ‘Well, I’m not a saint, but I’m not quite ready to undress in front of a camera.’

  ‘It’s not quite the same thing.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. But there’s something. An association.’

  ‘Getting caught with your knickers down by the side of the road – and a photograph?’

  Judita la
ughed so hard she held her stomach. Then she lay down on her back and stretched her arms out to the side.

  ‘OK, give me a cigarette. That’s what I came for after all.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To have a cigarette with you.’

  Her voice was as sweet as – as what? When you eat a pear and the juice runs through your fingers, then your fingers become sticky, as though they have been soaked in blood. It’s pleasant while you’re eating, but after you have swallowed the last bite that stickiness begins to bother you and annoy you.