7Lithuanian folk-song fragment:
If I knew how
Then I would halve
Green patterned smocks.
8“Before leaving this plaaaa…” from the opening line of Valentin’s aria in Gounod’s 1859 opera Faust.
9See note 4.
10Folk-song fragment:
Linseed darlings, linseed dears
Linseed blossom, wheeling,
Linseed blossom, spinning –
Turning, turning – wheel!
Linseed blossom, spin!
11The German occupation of Lithuania lasted from 1941 to 1944. Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania (pop. 300,000), and was the country’s capital during the interwar period of independence. It is located at the confluence of the Neris and Nemunas rivers.
12Folk-song fragment: “Oh you, little rye, oh you, to and fro.”
13Folk-song fragment: “Hum, bee, hum, buzzee.”
14Folk-song fragment: “Buzz, dear bee, Buzz little bee!”
15Martynas Mažvydas was the author of the first printed book in Lithuanian, Katekizmo prasti žodžiai (Simple Words of the Cathechism; Königsberg, 1547).
16“Give up your kaukai, your harvest and field gods, take me and read me instead.” From the Lithuanian Preface of Mažvydas’s Catechism (1547), the first book printed in the Lithuanian language. In it, Mažvydas addresses common Lithuanians, urging them to give up pagan beliefs and embrace Christianity, which the state officially adopted in 1387.
A kaukas (plural: kaukai) is a type of brownie or gnome in Lithuanian mythology, thought to live under a house or in the ground nearby. Kaukai were thought to bring good luck or skalsa, a type of non-material wealth associated with economy and the efficient use of resources, and they might do small, useful tasks. A Lithuanian housewife traditionally left small gifts to attract one of these positive, chthonic beings to her home, even sewing a tiny garment with a single piece of thread and hiding it in a corner. Lithuanian semiotician A.J. Greimas’s analysis showed that the word kaukas is associated with water, dampness and earth. Kaukai were also associated with death, as at some points they were thought to be the spirits of stillborn children.
17“[…] take me and read me, and in reading consider this […]”, from the opening lines of the Preface to Mažvydas’s Catechism.
18From Mažvydas’s Catechism and a folk song: “Take me, dear bee, buzz little bee!”
Chapter 1
Stevens’s tavern is quiet during the day. Lively Bedford Avenue is around the corner, so incidental drinkers rarely stop by. Stevens’s – Steponavičius’s – clientele are labourers. They fill the place on evenings and weekends, and Stevens’s plump and experienced face lights up with an obliging smile. His hands move instinctively, and a joke slips out instinctively, and Stevens instinctively nods his head if he has to comfort an unhappy tippler.
When Antanas Garšva entered the dark tavern at ten that morning, Stevens was reading the Daily News. Stevens liked this slim, slightly stooped, fair-haired man who often came in during the day. He had a nice voice, and didn’t boast or complain. Stevens was happy to have a daytime customer relationship with the man. Chatting with Antanas Garšva made Stevens feel that his own life was in pretty good shape.
Antanas Garšva once again looked at the familiar objects, the familiar face. Light-coloured tables covered in reddish checked tablecloths, the floor clean for the moment, the polished and gleaming bar and mirrors, the red vinyl of the chairs, the television hanging in a corner of the ceiling. Only the old boxers’ portraits looked dusty, like neglected relics.
Antanas Garšva once again noticed the slight but pervasive smell of beer and urine, heard the rustling of the Daily News, and said:
“Hello there, Mister Stevens!”
“Hello there, Mister Garšva!”
The bar owner’s face brightened with the gentlest version of his obliging smile.
“A mother strangled her three-year-old child and then jumped from her fourth-floor window. It happened in the Bronx,” Stevens offered pleasantly.
“Not too close to here. How about some White Horse?”
“Surely you’ve got some good news, if you’re having scotch?” asked Stevens.
“Another customer will be coming by soon. We’ve got some important business to discuss.”
Garšva sat down at the bar. He saw his face in the mirrors, in the convex glass of the bottles. Fair and pallid, dark rings under his eyes, and bluish lips. A reflected mask that was begging to be ripped off and discarded.
“This is a good bar, Stevens. I’d buy one like this.”
“Save up, and I’ll sell you it,” said Stevens as he poured scotch from a gurgling bottle.
A hurried gulp and quick breathing, red circles on the cheekbones. “This guy is in bad shape,” thought Stevens.
“If it goes well, I’ll ask to be a partner,” said Antanas Garšva. “Pour me some.”
“OK. Sure…”
Squares of sunlight spread across the floor. The round lid of the jukebox glistened – a magician’s crystal ball containing the tavern’s warped interior and expanded perspective, the doors and street now farther away. And in this oblique instability, the furniture and the other people froze. Antanas Garšva swallowed a second mouthful. His face fogged up in the mirror and his eyes glittered. “He’s overexcited; I don’t like how he’s rubbing his hands on the bar,” Stevens observed. Outside a white mongrel loitered by the door and then ran off, its tail up. Dimes and nickels rested on the bar; change waiting to return to a pocket.
“Nice weather,” Garšva said.
“Yea. Not so hot any more,” agreed Stevens.
Elena’s husband opened the tavern door. Wide shoulders, dark hair, blue eyes, worn grey suit, polo shirt, protruding chin, determined and sad, he looked like a lost centaur. He lingered at the door. Garšva slid off his chair. Elena’s husband waited, leaning forward somewhat, his stiff short hair aggressively erect. Garšva took a few steps. They stood facing each other until their eyes agreed they would not shake hands. “If there’s a fight, Garšva’s finished,” Stevens decided.
“Let’s sit down,” said Garšva. They chose a table by the jukebox.
“What will you have?”
“What are you drinking?”
“White Horse. Can I get you one?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Two,” Garšva raised two fingers.
“And two glasses of seltzer.”
The mongrel returned, lingered by the tavern doors and disappeared. Stevens brought over the scotch and the seltzer, and returned behind the bar to pick up his Daily News. For a moment, the rustling of the newspaper and Garšva’s rapid breathing were the only sounds in the tavern. Elena’s husband poured some scotch into his seltzer.
“I’m not trying to interfere,” stressed Garšva.
“I know,” replied Elena’s husband.
Garšva looked up.
“Elena told me.”
“She spoke about me?”
“She told me everything.”
Elena’s husband sipped his drink calmly.
“I was going to kill you.”
“You were going to?”
“I was. But I changed my mind. Love is stronger than death, isn’t it? You should know, you’re the poet.”
“This is a ridiculous situation. I asked you to come… because I hold the opposite view.”
Elena’s husband put his glass down on the table suddenly. Several drops of his drink fell on to the reddish tablecloth.
“Death is stronger than love,” said Garšva.
“I’m just an engineer,” said the engineer. “And I don’t understand this kind of obscurity. Explain yourself.”
“If there’s a fight, I’ll help Garšva out,” Stevens decided.
“I saw my doctor yesterday.”
“I know. You fainted yesterday.”
“She really did tell you everything.”
Garšva downed a third swig,
wiped his lips with his palm. He looked at the engineer as though he were a priest giving him his penance. “I don’t like to see Garšva afraid,” thought Stevens angrily, opening a page of the Daily News. A shabby, unshaven tramp entered the tavern and asked for a glass of beer. The silence was dispersed. The whir of the distant cars on Bedford Avenue reverberated.
“I wanted Elena. She didn’t agree. We talked through the whole night. Don’t worry, she’s faithful to you. She loves you.” Garšva played with his empty whisky glass. He turned it in his fingers like a top that won’t start spinning.
“I’m sorry that it happened this way,” he added quietly.
“Do you love Elena?” asked the engineer, sipping his drink once again.
“Very much,” Garšva confessed even more softly.
“Are you seriously ill?”
“I’m going back to the doctor. I’ll find out then.”
Now the engineer raised two fingers, and Stevens brought glasses of scotch and seltzer. “It looks like my guy knows how to turn a phrase. The gentleman is already giving in,” thought Stevens, and he returned behind the bar to pour the dozing tramp a free glass of beer.
“What will you do?”
Garšva looked hesitantly at the full glass of scotch. He didn’t have anything to play with.
“I’m not a romantic. So I won’t jump from the thirty-fifth floor. I’m an aesthete, so even if I wouldn’t see it myself, I wouldn’t want others to see me unaesthetically crushed.”
“Stop joking. What will you do?” asked the engineer, mixing his scotch into the seltzer with precision.
Garšva smoothed the tablecloth with his fingers. He focused on the beer-drinker’s back, his hands and toes felt cold, and he wanted to hear Elena’s voice. He knew that if he had a fourth drink he’d say something soft and helpless.
“I’m going to wait.”
“Damn, why is he shaking?” Stevens got upset and poured himself some beer.
“You and I started off badly,” said the engineer, watching Garšva with steady eyes. “This way we’ll end up spending several hours talking without resolving anything. You have your say, and I’ll go next – then we’ll sum up.”
“I haven’t prepared a speech. Maybe I shouldn’t have even asked you to come here. Elena and I had decided. I was going to ask you to divorce her. But... you know what happened. I once had to give up another woman for the same reason. I’ll have to give up Elena. It will be my final retreat. We probably shouldn’t have met. Forgive me. Some sort of atavistic sense of responsibility made me do it. And... I think we can take our leave now, if you have no objection.”
And Garšva raised his glass.
“Put that down! Don’t drink it,” the engineer said sternly, and Garšva complied.
“You need help. Will you go into hospital?”
“I don’t know. The doctor will decide. He just said I had to quit my job.”
“Elena and I will visit you. In the hospital or at home. Send us a note.”
The engineer finished Garšva’s scotch, washed it down with his own, and got up. He teetered towards the bar, glanced at the slumbering tramp, and said, “Passed out first thing in the morning?”
“Just some bum,” explained Stevens.
“I’ll pay for everything.”
The engineer returned to the table and stretched his hand out to Garšva.
“Get better. Take care. See you soon.”
“Goodbye.”
They shook hands. Happy to have discovered the path to the grove, the centaur thanked the slender, charming fawn. The sun’s rays had now reached the bar, the bottles reflected in its mirrors glowing like ancient minarets.
The engineer let go of Garšva’s hand and left. Garšva stood by the bar. “Now there’s a story, and it didn’t even come to a fight!” marvelled Stevens.
“Did the business go OK?” he asked.
“Yes, OK. I’m going to go now.”
“Bye. Come by on Saturday. There’ll be lobster. My treat.”
“Thanks. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Garšva went out into the street and stopped, looked around for a moment. Where did the little dog disappear to, the one that had been rubbing against the door, wagging its tail?
*
Five minutes to start time. Antanas Garšva leaves the stall. He looks in the mirror. The baritone has disappeared. Mine is not a painterly face. But there are signs. Green strips along the side of the nose. But I can still move my eyes and I don’t feel too bad. El Greco’s cardinal has nothing on me. The red of his vestment is more dreary than my uniform’s. I’ve cheered up, and don’t care any more about the atmosphere Elena engenders. And her scent? Elena’s or another woman’s – in the end, what’s the difference? And the swaying.
Antanas Garšva walks along the corridor to the “back” elevator. The swaying. And your acrid smell and face no longer matter. That smell that barbers get sick of: powder, hair creams, sweaty necks. You are not my beloved. You are a compliant and fetid swaying. I despise your animal magnetism. You are a shrunken anus. You are forgotten. Even though you knocked on the door and pounded it with your fists. Now you’re like any other woman to me, because I am an old bachelor who chooses nutty dames rather than streetwalkers. I’m careful. Isolde? I’m just a poet. And you are material for my new poems. About Vilnius. I will write elegant legends. About Vilnius. I’ll stop repeating your name. To the tempo of a French waltz. To Zola’s tempo. Na na na, Na na na, Na na na, Na na naa. Elena, it’s been two weeks since I had you.
Antanas Garšva is going up. The “back” elevator is packed. Black women in white smocks, Puerto Ricans with tattooed arms and the room service man with five gold stars on his uniform cuff. Every five years he’s granted the honour of sewing on a star. An unnamed constellation twinkles on his green cuff. Water gurgles in the room service man’s knees. When he retires, a still-spry German with two stars will jump into his place. Antanas Garšva is now upstairs. In a narrow corridor he punches another card: two minutes to start time precisely. He opens the doors.
The immensity of eight-million-strong New York fits into the main-floor lobby: an architect’s model created for tourists. The mathematically designed hall – the apotheosis of reinforced concrete urban real estate – is held up by square columns, painted dark red to indicate the hotel’s serious intentions, a carpet of the same colour to handle cigarette butts, armchairs upholstered in red vinyl and arranged like a waiting room for surgeries in which hundreds of doctors examine, operate, mortify. Matt bulbs shine, and tubes of “sunlight” paint visitors’ faces as though they’d been resurrected from the Valley of Josaphat. A poisonously green Plymouth stands in the middle of the space – you can win it by throwing a twenty-five-cent ticket into an urn next to which sits a very cheerful young lady, groomed and coiffured like an expensive dog, her cheek muscles hurting from hours of smiling, the violet plaster of the ceiling moulding reflected in the stone on her ten-dollar ring. The blue-uniformed concierges with slicked-back hair, plucked eyebrows and a perfect ability to understand the client, walk around slavishly proud, while the black-suited manager, balding and vigilant, a regulation white carnation in his silk lapel, runs past. Tonight, a well-known band is playing at the Café Rouge, as indicated in the framed posters – stilt-like notes arranged around the French heading, around letters stencilled on to a reddish background.
On the right side of the lobby stand polished wood partitions and behind them, white-shirted – short cut, brush cut, regular cut – clerks and dark-skirted girls, endlessly accommodating to clients and furious with their neighbours, why didn’t he let me use the typewriter. One thousand eight hundred and forty three hooks are installed behind a freckled clerk. That’s how many rooms there are in the hotel. Nearby, in a glade of ficus and bay trees, stands a sort of pulpit that could have been ripped out of a wooden church, and a supremely elegant head concierge (grey-tufted ears, sharp nose, red bitten lips) making announcements in a muffled bas
s. Miss Alison is waiting for Mister Crampton, be so kind, Mister Crampton, be so kind – Miss Alison is waiting!
A row of shops stands on the left side of the lobby. The window of the first one is stuffed with souvenirs. Chinese mandarins stand side by side with Japanese geishas, painted and costumed Europeans, artificial Far Eastern characters from the immortal opera Madama Butterfly, clay “German” beer mugs with tangled parodies of Hals and Dürer, Dutch hats – the sighs of an Americanised Dutchman, varnished Negro masks that would make someone from the Congo or Sudan laugh Homerically, Indian-patterned tablecloths carefully woven by modern looms, countless porcelain knick-knacks. Next is a window of men’s accessories. Each shirt, tie or pair of boxers embroidered with the hotel emblem: a roaring, somewhat English lion, and the hotel’s name. The same lion appears next door, embroidered on the women’s accessories. And the hotel’s greatest source of pride – the watch display case in the centre of the lobby. Contemplating it can inspire a panicked sense of one’s own commonness – a very simple, thousand-dollar watch bracelet, a fine string of pearls, mother-of-pearl earrings, small, barely visible rings studded with shimmering diamonds.
The main-floor lobby contains a drugstore that serves tasty fishcakes. And a coffee shop for the more humble clientele. The ageing waitress will be let go tomorrow; she was chewing gum on the job and the assistant manager noticed. You can also find a news and tobacco kiosk in the main-floor lobby; the bald, grey owner, a member of a sect with only eight hundred followers, plays the flute on Sundays. A few steps down, still within the main-floor lobby, is a spacious restaurant with samples of imported wine bottles arranged on a granite stand like multicoloured candles on a gigantic cake. In the main-floor lobby you can get a haircut or a shoeshine, or stop by the Ladies’ or Gentlemen’s and have a pleasant chat with an attractive black man or woman whose skin makes the white towels stand out. You can buy cigarettes from a girl in a low-cut dress who walks around with a tray hanging from her neck, and if you’re in a rush she’ll call a friend who sells herself as if it were a spring discount. Here you can complete various monetary transactions, and even go mad – an experienced doctor will rush down from the tenth floor.
White Shroud Page 3