Darkness and Company

by Sigitas Parulskis

  Vincentas started to feel strangely happy.

  He took a few of the toy soldiers and started playing with them. He placed some on the edge of the album dedicated to Vytautas the Great and others facing them.

  ‘Fire!’ he commanded quietly. Then he swept the little toys from the book with his palm and broke off the heads of the ones that had fired. Then, after thinking about it a bit, he broke off the heads of all the toy soldiers he could find. He poured all the little, broken-off heads into his pocket and quickly left Baltramiejus’s room.

  The door opened quietly, and Baltramiejus’s mother and sister entered. They were both dressed in black and wore black scarves on their heads.

  ‘Thank you, boys. We’ll manage now.’

  ‘Maybe we can get you a coffin … If you want, of course,’ offered Vincentas. ‘We don’t charge much.’ Then he remembered that Juozapas was gone. ‘Actually, I can even do it for free.’

  Neither Baltramiejus’s mother nor his sister said anything, they just walked around the table where the dead man lay; candles appeared from somewhere in the room, and only when they were lit did they see that Baltramiejus’s hands were wrapped in rosaries. In the flickering light of the candles it looked as though his hands were tied up with wire.

  ‘I’ll make him a coffin myself,’ he promised as he took his leave. ‘I’ll bring it tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Baltramiejus’s mother said from the doorway. His sister began to sob again and disappeared into the depths of the house.

  When they were some distance from the house Andriejus pulled out some cigarettes and offered one to Vincentas. Vincentas shook his head.

  ‘But maybe you could give me some of that … powder.’

  ‘You liked it?’ Andriejus chuckled. ‘What did I say? Everyone likes it. But it’s not for free. One dose is fifty roubles.’

  ‘For that you can eat in a restaurant and still have some left for beer.’

  ‘When you use the powder you don’t feel like eating. Pleasures aren’t cheap.’

  ‘Fine,’ Vincentas agreed and began to dig the money out of his pocket.

  ‘I didn’t know that Baltramiejus had such a pretty sister,’ said Andriejus, taking the notes.

  ‘I didn’t know that he had a sister at all. I only met him a few times. And now I’ll never see him again. He’ll melt. Like ice.’

  ‘You really are strange,’ said Andriejus more quietly. ‘Jokūbas the Elder thinks you’re a Bolshevik spy. But I think you’re just crazy.’

  ‘Can’t spies be crazy?’

  Andriejus said nothing, took a few puffs, threw down the cigarette and gave Vincentas a little bag of cocaine, then he raised his hand slightly to say goodbye and disappeared into the darkness.

  Vincentas remained standing there for a while, looking at Baltramiejus’s house. A dim light was visible in the windows; the house was surrounded by apple trees, lilacs, cedar. No one could have thought that death had come to such a homely, peaceful place. It was like a guest had taken over someone else’s house.

  Vincentas pulled the little soldiers’ heads from his pocket and threw them into the bushes.

  COFFIN MAKING

  Vincentas was able to make a coffin easily enough. When he had been about twelve Juozapas had led him to the workshop, collected some of the scraps of birch that lay by the wall, then given him a template to which the pieces should be cut. He took Vincentas’s hands in his own, turned them over and inspected them, as though they, too, were carved from wood, then nodded his head and placed a sample wedge-shaped piece of wood on the table along with a sharp, wooden-handled carpenter’s chisel. First Juozapas cut up the wood with a saw, then he used the chisel to carve one end so that it tapered and became a small wedge. Those wedges – Juozapas called them capai – were hammered into the bottoms of coffins to reinforce them. Vincentas carved a whole box of those wedges. Juozapas was satisfied. Later he taught him the art of planing. The planks came in two lengths – masculine and feminine, sizes one and two depending upon which kind of coffin was needed. First, he would cut the planks down to the standard lengths, then they had to be dried: in winter they would be placed around wood ovens, and in summer he would carry them into the yard and stack them in piles, separating each layer with crosspieces so that the wind could pass between and air-dry them. When Juozapas bought a large number of planks he would work them with the big plane – planed boards dry more easily. Then Juozapas would give him the dried plank to finish with a hand plane. Vincentas liked the repetitive movement of passing the plane back and forth, liked to think about the plank changing, becoming smoother, until, finally, it began to shine – as though that shining had been within the wood already and now, as a result of his efforts, had been liberated, freed to bring joy to our eyes.

  It was past midnight when he heard a light knocking on the window of his basement flat. His heart began to beat like crazy. Only misfortune comes to one’s home that late at night. Or a beloved.

  Judita was sullen; she held some kind of paper in her hand.

  He embraced her and pressed her against his breast. He had missed her a great deal; she had not appeared for a few days.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said again and once more leaned towards her lips.

  She stepped back, casually pulled the scarf off of her head, sat down on a stool in the corner. Her fingers shook so intensely that it seemed she wanted to shake off the letters blackening the piece of paper, which she still held like an errant traveller with a forged ticket.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘What am I to do? I should be with them. With all of them …’

  He took the paper from her hand.

  Residents of the Jewish race are prohibited from walking on the pavements. Jews are obliged to walk only in the road, in single file.

  Residents of the Jewish race are prohibited from walking in any gardens, parks or squares or from resting on benches in these areas.

  Residents of the Jewish race are prohibited from driving or using any means of public transportation, including taxis, coaches, buses, steamboats, etc.

  Owners of means of public transportation are obliged to display a sign reading ‘Jews Not Allowed’ in a prominent position.

  All residents of the Jewish race, of both genders, are required to wear gold stars of 8–10 cm on the left breast and on the back.

  Residents of the Jewish race are prohibited from leaving their homes between 2000 and 0600.

  Jews are prohibited from hiring non-Jewish individuals or allowing them to sleep in their homes.

  Those failing to comply with this decree will be severely punished.

  Between 15 July and 15 August of this year all Jewish individuals living within city boundaries, regardless of gender or age, must move to …

  He threw the paper on to the planks prepared for the coffin, approached her, put his arms around her.

  ‘Stay with me. Live with me, and we’ll sort everything out.’

  ‘You can’t protect me. The deadline will soon come, and they’re saying 90 per cent of Jews are already living in the ghetto.’ Judita sighed heavily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was driven out of my home quite some time ago. I’ve been staying with a girlfriend, but there isn’t enough room.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why?’

  She looked at him silently, her eyes slowly becoming overcast.

  ‘Are you with them?’ Judita asked quietly. ‘Are you with them? Tell me.’

  ‘I’m with you.’

  Vincentas kneeled down and kissed one of her bare knees. Then the other one. He had known about this decree for quite a while, but it had not seemed important. He realized only now that he did not think of Judita as a Jew.

  ‘Don’t,’ she whispered, then stood up, walked back and forth across the room several times. ‘Did I interrupt you? What is this?’ She indicated the planks he had assembled to build Baltramiejus’s coffin.

  ‘There’s something I need to
do. For a friend. A last service.’

  ‘Oh.’ Judita once more sat down on the stool. ‘I really want to smoke. I don’t have a single damned cigarette.’

  He pulled out a packet, and she carefully took one, her fingers now shaking less. He lit it for her, and Judita inhaled deeply and suddenly broke out in tears. ‘Thank you, you’re so good,’ she finally said through the sobs.

  ‘I’m not actually good. Or if I am, then it’s like someone is being good on my behalf. And when I’m bad, I’m being bad on behalf of someone else.’ He fell silent. He thought that the powder might be talking for him. He took the plane and began to smooth a plank for Baltramiejus’s coffin. The cocaine was still working, he had energy, his head was light and clear.

  ‘I don’t understand what you are trying to say.’

  ‘Judita, darling, sometimes I’m horrified that I don’t know what I’m saying any more, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it.’

  ‘Come here, I’ll look after you.’ She stretched out her hand.

  He had to build the coffin.

  ‘If I were hungry, would you not feed me? Would you not offer me water if I were thirsty? Don’t thank me, because you don’t know who you’re thanking.’

  Judita frowned. She didn’t like that kind of talk.

  Vincentas thought about Jokūbas the Elder – he might have said something just like that. It made him sick.

  He panted as he built the coffin, he stopped talking and just planed and planed the surface of the board, pressing down hard on his tool, and that which had been rough became smooth, and that which had been wood now became a bed, Baltramiejus’s last resting place.

  Judita sat and watched as he worked, shavings as thin as cigarette paper falling and curling up by her feet.

  He finally finished the planing. He sat down next to Judita, ran his hand through her hair.

  ‘It’s good that you don’t look like a Jew.’

  Her face darkened. ‘I look like a person.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry isn’t enough here.’

  ‘It isn’t enough. I was wrong.’

  ‘You’re such a pig.’

  Vincentas turned up his hands in helplessness. ‘But at least a dear pig?’

  Judita was not in the mood for jokes.

  Then he painted the coffin. The box would dry overnight; tomorrow Baltramiejus would try it out, and then he would go on his final journey.

  When Vincentas lay down next to Judita he could feel that she was tense. He touched her delicate, rounded shoulder. She flinched and withdrew even further.

  ‘You shouldn’t be walking around at night. It could end badly.’

  ‘It’s all going to end badly one way or another.’

  ‘Believe me, it could be even worse,’ said Vincentas and closed his eyes. Children being tossed into a pit. They fall on to their dead mothers’ bodies, shrieking, howling, moaning, and they don’t stop until the shots silence them. A soldier’s boot kicks a child, who flies through the air and squawks like a seagull. Flying and flying and somehow never falling to the ground. One of the soldiers taking part in the shooting looked at the pit and said it was like a cake. Vincentas only now understood what he had meant. Old people, men, women, children – a four-layer cake.

  ‘Look,’ said Vincentas and touched Judita’s shoulder. She turned around.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Magic powder.’

  ‘Cocaine?’

  ‘I think it might do us some good right now.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. All right.’

  For a while they lay on their backs next to each other. An inexorable feeling of pleasure gradually overwhelmed Vincentas, then the desire to multiply, increase, intensify that feeling.

  ‘Let me take a look at her,’ he said.

  She’s smiling. A mysterious, bewitching smile, and her gaze is more than a gaze, it radiates from a depth, from the past, from unfamiliar latitudes and forgotten times. True, she did not look like a Jew, but only to an undiscerning eye. If you look closer you see her eyes, and they are different, they are not from here, they reflect a very different sky, a very different sun falls and rises in them and different stars shine in them when night falls. The eyes always give it away.

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve had such a request,’ she says and turns towards Vincentas. He looks at her, and it’s as though he’s observing the scene from the outside: Judita, turned towards him on her side, the basement lit by a weak red bulb, which he used to use when developing photographs, a Tino Rossi record playing right there but sounding like it is coming from far away, then he starts to see the view from higher up. He sees the house he lives in, the city full of soldiers, whores, rage, death and oblivion, a Europe overrun by war, black and white, red and brown, everything looks so simple and everything is so mysterious, he feels fear and joy, uncertainty and blessing, and the only real thing is here next to him, before him, reclining on a bed. You are my only reality, Judita had said at the beginning of the war, and she, too, is his only reality, her left leg bent at the knee, he turns her to the side, she brushes the dark tuft of her groin with her right hand, then lowers her fingers a bit further, her index finger barely grazing the dark-brown, almost black lips. Look, she says quietly, and her voice is full of secret joy, for a while they are both silent, breast and groin so full of desire that it takes the breath away, Judita looks sleepy, warm, smelling of earth after the rain, he wants to melt inside of her, to forget everything, everything – Baltramiejus, the photographs, the smell of lime, he whispers, and again that strange feeling won’t go away, that he can hear his own words almost as if they were spoken by someone else, that everything that is happening is happening not only here and now but elsewhere, too, somewhere near by, or maybe it has already happened or is yet to happen, but somehow those two images, those two people that he sees, are both here, and also somewhere else. You can’t imagine how many men there are in the world who haven’t seen her, she about whom they spend so many days and nights dreaming until they can finally get a taste, and they taste with their entire body and all of its fluids, just not their eyes, they never marvel at her with their eyes because they’re ashamed that that about which they have fantasized all their days and nights, to all intents and purposes, is just a little hole, A dear little hole, Judita says again with the same voice, a strange voice, at once dear and distant and smelling of distant, exotic lands. Your voice is full of secret joy, he says, is it true, he asks, I don’t know what’s true, says Judita, I don’t hide anything from you, I’m exactly as I have been since I was born, as I have been since the creation of the world, having just left Eden, surrounded by living creatures and fruits, damp and surprised at my ability to feel pleasure and to share it with a man, Brown Eve or Red Eve, or Elena or Beatričė, men themselves don’t even know that they have different names for the same thing, the same little hole, he bends over, gets closer, and dives into the damp reddish poppy blossom, it’s damp and somewhat cold and slightly salty, like an angel had just cried over it, had descended from the heavens, from heights of brilliant cold and shining truth, had bent over and cried for the entire human race and for them, lying here in this bed where it smells of planed wood and black adhesive paint and the mixture of paint, alcohol and resin that was made to paint the coffin that stands in the middle of the room, waiting for its passenger, like a boat tied to a shore, waiting for him so that it can transport him across the dark waters of forgetting to the shore of eternity. What a nice little cave, he whispers in Judita’s ear, we all emerge from that cave, from the dark dampness to the bright light, and then we struggle to get back in, searching for our extension … pleasure … oblivion … the darkness and warmth we lost long ago – birth, the strangest mystery … that we die is not strange; the body gets worn out, breaks down, ages, it needs to die off, everything that comes into existence has to die off, but why it comes into being, this we don’t know, why does all of it need to come into being, to hurt and to
reek, be tortured and torture others … Why, oh Lord my God, I ask many days and nights and You don’t reply … Surely it can’t just be because this little hole is sweeter than wine, more fragrant than all perfumes? Yes, it drips honey and milk, tar and fire, blood and pus …

  ‘Calm down,’ says Judita. ‘Calm down and don’t agonize over strange questions. I’m here, right next to you, and as long as I’m with you nothing can happen to you …’

  ‘You don’t know, you don’t know anything,’ Vincentas tells her, and again it feels as though he’s not saying it but that someone is using his voice, his throat, his eyes and his hands, you don’t know what happened to Baltramiejus today, it’s strange, but I feel safe with you, but when I see armed men it’s like I am naked. And I don’t want to know, says Judita, I believe in you, that everything that you’re doing is right, because it’s unavoidable … or the reverse – it’s unavoidable because it’s right … Take me, take me, she says, and it’s the one request that he can’t refuse, that he can’t shy away from, push away or make wait. You take me, too, eat me, he says to Judita, eat like you have fasted for forty days and nights, like I am but locusts and wild-heather honey, as though I am a wild mead that must be extracted from the depths, take me, suck me up, and she sucked as though she were a leech, like a snake, like a plaster on a wound, first touching just with the edges of her lips, then diving until she hits the end, until she collapses with her entire body, as though fighting with his desire, with her own desire, with her sensuality and abandon, with her holiness and innocence, I look at you and my heart rejoices, just don’t look at other men, woman, because if you do you will betray me, you would do better to rip out your eye and throw it aside if it urges you to trespass, but don’t cheat on me because that I won’t be able to bear, thinks Vincentas, again feeling that he is rising upwards, rising and rising, and again sees the city, the streets, the continents and the oceans, as though they were all coloured maps or coloured stereoscope pictures that change at a crazy speed and then, clanging and whirring, vanish …