Garšva pulled back the quilt, slipped off his robe, and lay down next to her. Elena’s fingers wandered over his body.
“Do you want to know what happened to the handsome young man?”
“Yes?”
“The next morning he went back to the building. He found the guard and was let in. The building had been closed for many years. He found everything as he had seen it, when he had run out. The wooden trunks were some folk sculptor’s unfinished gods. Nobody knew why he hadn’t completed them. And…”
“And?”
“I’m lying. The old Polish woman told me this story. I went to see that building. And tried to play the rotted harpsichord. Dissonant sounds. Dust. Cold. The gilded statues were in fairly good shape. Did you like this story?”
“She gets herself excited with these kinds of stories. Hoffmann resurrected in service of Eros,” thought Garšva, and said, “I remembered my mother.”
“Make love to me,” Elena said.
And again there were only the Chagall reproduction, the tidy and scattered books, the ashtray full of cigarette butts, the purse, the pile of clothes, the floating Soutine child, the wrinkled sheet, two glasses on the linoleum, and next to them a tangled quilt in a blue cover.
*
Stanley comes back with two cups of coffee.
“I’m very sorry,” they say simultaneously, smiling guiltily.
“Drink your coffee,” says Stanley, pushing one of the cups forward.
“I didn’t want to upset you, Stanley,” says Garšva.
“You see, I ask myself a lot of questions too. I’m a writer, you know. I’m glad you came back.”
“Drink your coffee,” is all Stanley can mumble. Then, after a silence, says, “My father once said to me that Poles are quite a hot-headed people. I believe him. He used to beat me, would still like to. And I would love to beat up some of our guests. On the whole I promise not to swear in Polish, but you’ll allow me to in English, I hope?”
“Go for it.”
“OK, Tony.”
“OK.”
They drink their coffee.
“You want to know what I’m waiting for?” Stanley asks suddenly, looking Garšva in the eyes.
“Not necessarily.”
“You’re polite. I have a girlfriend. The same one with the sunken belly button. Kocham.⁷³ Get it?”
“Absolutely. Because… I have a girlfriend too.”
“Aren’t we a couple of odd guys. Maybe we’re each other’s doubles.”
“There are a lot of doubles in the world. And they have girlfriends.”
“Does yours love you?”
Garšva sips his coffee. Then mutters, “I’ve lost her.”
“Why?”
“I gave her up.”
“She’s unfaithful?”
“I couldn’t love her.”
“Oh, so you…”
“Not that. I’m ill, Stanley. I fainted the last time. And I spoke to her husband. And promised him that I wouldn’t sleep with her any more. And the last time she came to see me, I didn’t let her in.”
“You still love her?”
“Very much, Stanley.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I… really don’t know. I once had my head split open. But even before that, when I was younger, I had seizures.”
“You’ve been to a doctor?”
“Yes. He told me to come one more time. But I didn’t.”
“Fucking hell,” curses Stanley, and drinks his coffee. He falls silent, then continues in a calm voice:
“I caught mine with some clerk from downtown. But I still love her; just like before.”
Now even the bellboys have left. And the woman photographer. An elderly watchman sits in a corner eating noodles. The noodles are long and he swallows them like Goya’s Saturn swallowing his children. The captain’s low bass no longer echoes. It’s quiet in the cafeteria. Like in a private apartment. The dirty red paint is even more vivid, so are the faded patches on the wall, the flickering advertising lights, and the cigarette butts, chewing gum wrappers and cigarette packages on the floor.
Kafka walks in the door. A sad Jew, his eyes full of knowledge: Jehovah wasn’t willing to grant him an audience. Kafka’s eyes say, “Why am I not Moses?” Oscar Wilde walks in the door, holding a sunflower. He looks around, as though this were the bank of the Seine and Dorian Gray’s corpse were floating by. Baudelaire walks in the door. He observes the noodles slithering into the watchman’s mouth. They are worms, and the worms are sucking on the man’s gaping mouth. Rimbaud walks through the door. He reels, his arms full of guns, swords and daggers. A drunken boat slips from his embrace. An inebriated Verlaine walks in the door. “Which kind of poem would you like – religious or piquant?” he asks obsequiously, glancing at the coffee cups. Emily Dickinson walks in the door. Faded letters pinned to her white dress. She observes Garšva and Stanley closely and says: “So, my dear gentlemen, Elysium is as far away as the room next door.” Ezra Pound walks in the door and says ironically, “Do you know what Phanopoeia is, and what are its parts? Rose white, yellow, silver; saltus, concava vallis?” And with the face of a wise Chinaman, Ezra Pound shouts “aoi! aoi!” Ženia walks in the door, accompanied by Nietzsche, who sings ecstatically, “I love you, Ariadne!” Garšva’s mother walks in the door and looks at him for the last time.
73Kocham: I love (Polish).
Chapter 11
From Antanas Garšva’s Notebooks
My mother was of noble birth. She had a coat of arms: an upright fish on a shield. But she did not like to talk about it, so I never learnt her precise genealogy. Except that she came from Telšiai.⁷⁴
My mother was my first teacher (my father taught me arithmetic). And once again we were assisted by that green-globed lamp. The ragged book spines were my own fault: when I hadn’t learnt a lesson I stretched out my answer by picking at them with my thin fingers. The notes of my mother’s voice would fall round and gentle, and it seemed to me that, if I were to fall asleep listening to them, I would have a pleasant dream.
My mother liked black velvet dresses. They accentuated her slender waist, her full bust and hips. Her fingers would caress the tablecloth and once, hypnotised by the rhythmic strokes, I almost knocked over the inkwell. The chimes of the wall clock pressed up against my heart, while the textbook letters shimmered like the hieroglyphs of a lost land.
I remember my mother’s lessons. They were the impressions of someone only briefly visiting Earth.
“The king put on his armour. The metalworkers had hammered lilies into it. The queen sobbed, and as her tears fell to the castle floor the mice and the ladies in waiting sobbed with her. The king rode off. And his squire rode off. And the knights. For another king lived in the next castle. And he too put on his armour. The metalworkers had hammered lions on to it. The queen sobbed, and as her tears fell to the castle floor the mice and the ladies in waiting sobbed with her. The king rode off. And his squire rode off. And the knights. Two kings, two squires, and two armies met on the green plain. Both kings died in the bloody battle. And both squires. And the knights returned to their castles. And pledged their allegiance to each king’s son, and vowed revenge. The queens raised the princes, the ladies in waiting – the squires, the mice – baby mice. That is the meaning of war, my son.”
And later, in the same vein, my mother would review the key events and dates. I learnt of such men as Alexander the Great, Cyrus, Nero, Attila, Charles V. But they were all kings to me, their armour merely cast with other signs and years.
The lessons would end unexpectedly. My mother would close the books and pause to think for a moment. I waited for these pauses as though they were preludes to a miracle. The room, the furniture, the lamp would begin to glow. Every speck of dust, even a fly stain, was vivid and essential. Her hands, my grandmother’s gold ring, which must never be removed. It would be like cutting off a finger.
And my mother’s eyes would moisten. She would
recite a poem. It could be a French poem, or German, Russian, or Lithuanian. This verse particularly struck me, for some reason:
Koenig ist der Hirtenknabe,
gruener Huegel ist sein Thron,
ueber seinem Haupt die Sonne
ist die grosse gold’ne Kron!⁷⁵
The royal nature of history was likely responsible.
There was also someone called Muznierovski. I don’t remember Muznierovski. Only my father’s angry words.
“I know you like Polish men. A bow, a little hand, smack, smack, false compliments, glossy whiskers, courtly admiration. When in truth it’s a transgression, a bed, a family destroyed. Muz-nie-rov-ski. You haven’t forgotten?”
My mother’s eyes beseeched. My father didn’t see me.
“You remember, eh? Muznierovski, eh? Muznierovskian whiskers? There I was, working twenty hours a day to support this family. I come home, and – sir and madam! Panstwo.⁷⁶ Did you do it with Muznierovski?” shrieked my father, and my heartbeat drowned out all the ticking clocks. Fistfuls of sharp-edged stones sank to the bottom of the murky pond. My father filled both of his pockets. In one sparkled diamonds, the other was heavy with rocks. And my mother would quietly leave the room. I tried to read a book, but its words merged with my father’s. “…It was another era. People were different back then, they lived differently. With hair wax, hair wax, ax ax waxxxx. The land was more fertile, the forest full of game and fowl, and people were stronger, more vigorous. Muznie-rovski – did you do, doooooo it with him? Another youngster is sneering, smack, smack, hair wax, old people, who, enterprising…”
My eyes watered, my nose ran, I wiped it with my fist and the words in the book bulged as though I were reading through a magnifying glass.
“Go to bed!” my father would shriek, and I would shrink into a little ball.
The Muznierovski affair… Once, as I lay in bed, she crept in, white and calm, adjusted my blanket, and whispered:
“I loved someone, Antanukas. And left him. I stayed with your father. For you. For… the family. When you grow up, you’ll understand me. And your father.”
“I’ll always love you, Mummy,” I said.
“Keep loving me, my darling. But sleep now. Goodnight.”
She never talked about it again, as much as I tried to persuade her to.
Was the torture over Muznierovski the beginning of her illness? It’s hard to say. A famous psychiatrist was certain that my mother had inherited schizophrenia. And that the end was inevitable. The tragedy was that my father didn’t do anything when the illness first manifested itself.
I can no longer remember the precise date. That’s what happens. My healthy mother became a future fantasy, my ill mother – the perpetual present.
At the time my father was playing Wieniawski variations for the German-language teacher. The teacher was a mature widow, stocky and bow-legged, with a nose like Goethe’s and wiry black hair. Her oily skin glistened, so she reminded me of an old clothes brush. But somehow, she was prettier than my mother. I don’t understand how it happened. What happened to the long oval face, the fair hair, the large, damp eyes, the thick eyelashes, the narrow waist, the full yet firm breasts? What happened to the fluid, relaxed gypsy movements, the soft blur at the edge of painted lips, the hypnotic fingers, each one following the last like galloping notes written by a composer in love with music. Long before, my father had brought home a large photograph of my mother and hung it on the wall. And my mother blushed, looked at my father with a strange expression, and then – for the first and last time in my presence – my father embraced her and kissed her on the lips.
Now she was a hag. The skin sagged. The forehead, cheeks and breasts drooped like wet underclothes. The thickened, callused lips. The sluggish body swayed heavily on swollen legs. The fair hair hung in witchlike tufts. Her neglected teeth – skull-like black holes.
And despite it all she tidied rooms, mended clothes, tried to kiss me at bedtime. Her speech deteriorated. She moved and worked like a convict who knows he will die in prison. Her imagination returned during her fits. These happened unexpectedly, so that each time my father and I thought it was the first time. At first they coincided with her periods, and some provincial doctor promised us that the fits would end when these ceased. Perhaps it was this promise, or perhaps residual sentiment, that held my father back from making a decision.
A fit. At first, a moment of lucidity. A lost gentleness reappeared in my mother’s eyes. As though she felt a general relief. Like an old woman remembering her youth. We watched as she tried to say something amiable and searched for the necessary words. My father and I were frightened by this effort. We waited. It was coming, it would happen, now nothing could stop it.
“Fish. Beautiful fish. Silver,” my mother would say, her fingers moving. An aged, heavy ballerina demonstrating that she had once been graceful. Her gaze pierced my father. With piercing insistence, so that he was forced to answer. My father tried to be casual.
“What kinds of fish, Mother?”
“Silver ones. Swimming. Remember?” My mother would give a restrained, mysterious snicker.
“I always said that she doesn’t know how to make strawberry jam. The berries always fall apart. Not enough sugar. Am I right?”
“Absolutely, Mother,” said my father colourlessly.
“Ha, ha. I’m right, I am, I am, ha, ha. Archangelsk isn’t right either. It has to be Angelsk. There is only snow and lace there. Archangels’ wings are like this.”
My mother would stand and hold up her embroidery. She had been working on it for about two years. A dirty piece of cloth, small red crosses that failed to make a pattern. It was supposed to become a small tablecloth for a night table.
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