White Shroud

by Anatanas Škėma

  “That’s right. That’s what archangel wings are like,” my father would hopelessly agree.

  “You think so? You think so? Yes, yes?”

  My mother stood, waiting for an answer. The answer would solve the mystery of the universe. She looked at my father as though he had risen from the dead and could see the afterlife.

  “I’m sure of it,” my father would reply. Suddenly my mother would calm down. And sit down. And would start speaking quite normally.

  “Don’t think that I don’t know. I know everything. You play for the German-language teacher. You play, and she thinks that she is the first one you have ever played for. But you used to play for me. She’s stupid, that German teacher of yours.”

  My mother would cackle, satisfied that she had won. The cruel prosecutor has hurled the strongest argument and the accused will be condemned, as the jury members are already thinking.

  My father would jump up. He would automatically move towards the hanging violin, but then would turn away and go towards the door.

  “You wait, wait, wait, wait! If you’re leaving and I’m no longer yours, then take your clothes – they aren’t mine, they aren’t mine!”

  Now I would press my fingers against my face. I couldn’t watch this. And I couldn’t run away either. My feet were nailed to the floor. I pressed my fingers against my face and heard the words.

  “You stick your body into her body, stick it, stick it! Here, take them, take them!”

  “Shut up, shut up!” my father shrieked.

  I listened to the duet in red darkness. This is how people being seared with hot irons must sing. Lord, why was I so weak? Why couldn’t I scream louder than they? Why couldn’t I writhe on the floor? I was crushed by the horror of it. I could only release my fingers and watch.

  My mother’s dress and underclothes were scattered on the ground. I could see the little flowers on the dress, the pink camisole, the tangled stockings. The storm had blown over, ripped off the tattered clothes and thrown a short, black coat on to my mother. The coat had a little hook at the collar. She had worn it as a young woman. My mother held it closed with her hands. My ashen-faced father stood at the door. It was quiet. The curtain opened slowly on the last act.

  This was the final scream. Of the last person on a dying Earth. And yet I could clearly see my mother’s quivering double chin. The old prima donna was hitting the high note. My father’s face would fill with blood. He would rush to the desk, pull out a nickel-plated revolver and trace the muzzle along his temple. As though using a razor.

  “I’ll shoot myself, I’ll shoot myself!” And my mother screamed. Tossing aside the revolver, my father would leap towards my mother, throw her on to the sofa and beat her with his fists. The coat would fall open and I would see my mother’s naked, flabby body. And now she was no longer screaming but howling, like an animal being harmed. And then I would run outside to get help.

  After that, everything happened in a blur. Neighbours trying to offer comfort; women dressing my mother; my father collapsed on the sofa; voices saying what a poor little boy I was.

  But the violin still hung on the wall. And the apples and pears still lay on the dining table. And the linden trees grew by our house. They were fragrant in July. My friends played cops and robbers. Charlie Chaplin entertained the townspeople in the cinema and the priest sang in a strained baritone in the church. And I was looking at girls differently, reading, dreaming. I wanted to live. Like most people.

  My father finally took action. I was the only one my mother trusted, so I was the one who executed the betrayal. I convinced her that we were going to Palanga for a summer holiday. She enjoyed the trip. Asked me a lot of questions. Went on and on about what a good son I was, how I should eat more because I was so thin. She asked me about school, books and friends. The two of us in the car, the driver had been warned, she was quiet, we were two lonely friends. She enjoyed the highway, the trees, the cottages, the woman with her buckets. She seemed perfectly normal. Towards evening we drove through some gates and stopped in front of a red-brick building marked Psychiatric Hospital.

  The driver, orderlies and I were barely able to drag my mother out of the car. She didn’t scream. She stared. Like the soul of someone recently deceased would stare upon discovering that all there was in the afterlife was hell.

  And this expression of my mother’s would haunt me whenever my teachers explained that the universe was created according to the principles of Good, Beauty and Harmony, and that man is guilty for his own misfortunes.

  *

  “I didn’t call her on my day off,” Stanley recounts.

  “Yeah. I went to her house. The door was locked. I decided to wait in the street. And I waited for two or three hours. She came home arm in arm with that clerk. I knocked him out in a couple of minutes. And then slept with her. I caught the clerk with her again, in her room. He was dressed and managed to escape. And we slept together again. Wait! I’ll remember in a second. Psiakrew. Did I pronounce it correctly?”⁷⁷

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the blood of my ancestors speaking. I still go to see her. Psiakrew. You have no idea how good she is… you understand? Kocham. Dziękuję. Yeah.”⁷⁸

  “And Mozart?”

  “Mozart? I can’t sit down to play. I want to rip out the keys and break the boards. Look – my hands are shaking. Once I got an offer to play the electric organ in a tavern. My father was sick, we needed the money. Have you ever heard one of those awful boxes? Playing requests on the electric organ. Bloody hell. Yeah. As though Bach or Handel had gone mad. Working in a tavern you quickly learn to drink. Yeah. I never went back to Mozart. Right. If I didn’t go back it must mean I wasn’t made for Mozart.”

  “But Joe…”

  “Joe? He started with Faust, but he’ll finish in some nightclub. It would be great if it were a nice nightclub. Have you listened to the timbre of his voice, when he sings in the toilet? It’s a miraculous squeaking. There’s some hope.”

  “Fine, Stanley. But forgive me if I ask – why such a firm decision?”

  “Why do I want to kill myself? I don’t believe in anything any more. I can’t do anything any more.”

  “You’re a neurasthenic.”

  “Thanks. Like I said, we’re a couple of neurasthenics.”

  “There are three of us.”

  “Who’s the third?”

  “The lady with the nuts.” Stanley laughs. A youthful laugh, with white teeth.

  “This city is going mad,” thinks Garšva.

  The writers are now leaving the cafeteria. Kafka stuffs his hands into the pockets of his extra long coat and walks out, stooped over. Oscar Wilde, waving his sunflower, also exits. Baudelaire once more glances at the watchman’s plate. It’s empty. No more Baudelaire. Smiling shyly, Rimbaud takes a virginally pink Emily by the hand, and now carries his burden a little more easily. And Verlaine staggers, miserable, nobody offered him any coffee, his genius is unappreciated. A proud Ezra Pound leaves the cafeteria. He is appreciated. In which hospital is Ezra Pound being treated? Nietzsche raises his arm in a Hitlerian gesture, shouts “I love you, Ariadne!” and leaves through a door opened by Ženia. And Garšva’s mother swims out backward, her last gaze fading.

  “Don’t jump out the window, Stanley. It isn’t necessary. Don’t be a Thomas Wolfe character. Do you know how Thomas Wolfe died? Screaming. They sliced open his skull, but couldn’t save him. Before the operation they cut off Wolfe’s hair. His sister said it was beautiful, dark hair.”

  Stanley continued, as though he hadn’t heard Garšva’s words.

  “Do you know what I’m waiting for? My youth holds me back. I live on Avenue B, on the fourth floor. The stairs are in bad shape. The rooms are dark. The toilet doesn’t flush, you have to pull the handle several times. My mother mumbles something in Polish. My father sleeps, whether he’s drunk or sober. Can you imagine how much fun it was on weekends? When I came home from my music lessons? How can you? I used to t
ake that girl to some joint on the corner. For ice cream. A dark joint. Heavenly. I can still hear Mozart. Dziękuję. But one day I’ll jump. To hell with heaven. And the bed. The clerk can have the bed.”

  “You won’t jump, Stanley.”

  “You think?”

  “You want to live, and that’s why you’re saying that you’ll jump.”

  “You don’t know America, Tony. We’re doubles who have just met. I’m not going to weigh the ‘for’ and ‘against’, like you Europeans.”

  And Stanley glances at his watch.

  “Time to go,” he says. They get up and leave.

  Can my youth save me? If I were to write a poem about it, I would probably say what others have already said. It would be a fragile, gentle nostalgia. Marshland. Spruce and birches. A fallen telegraph pole. An old horse dragging itself along a loamy road. A noble lie. Truth can’t be pinned down. But… soon I’ll crawl into the truth. And up ir down, up ir down. And here’s the ninth.

  74Telšiai: a small city in western Lithuania.

  75From Heinrich Heine’s poem, “The Shepherd Boy”: “Here the shepherd is a king,/ His throne a grassy hill,/ The golden sun a wreath / Gracing his royal head.”

  76Panstwo: ladies and gentlemen (Polish).

  77Psiakrew: Bastard (Polish).

  78Kocham: I love (Polish). Dziękuję: Thank you (Polish).

  Chapter 12

  From Antanas Garšva’s Notebooks

  I was twenty-one, living in Kaunas, studying literature, making some extra money playing billiards.

  Laisvės alėja was being modernised.⁷⁹ The round cobblestones and tracks for horse-drawn trolley buses disappeared. The street was paved with big-city asphalt. The now wealthy government erected elegant almost-skyscrapers. Red buses softly rocked bouncy-hipped ladies and pointy-whiskered, romantically inclined gentlemen with tailored shoulders as sharp as icebreakers. Artists just back from Paris tossed around French names at Konradas Café and spent hours drinking a single cup of coffee.⁸⁰ Bookstore windows displayed current art albums, magazines and books. The State Theatre experimented with lavish productions and announced famous touring performers every week. A jaded mulatto sashayed sexily at the Versalis Hotel and a well-known engineer overpaid for a night with her.⁸¹ Dandies drank and boasted, wearing loud neckties for which they had also paid too much, as they had with the mulatto.

  Asphalt ringed the mature linden trees. The most handsome policemen in the Baltics strode down the boulevard, white-coated hot-dog vendors smoked phlegmatically, and famous opera singers paraded by as though in a scene from Othello. Numerous beer halls opened, complete with slot machines and the clamour of second-rate artists, writers, functionaries.

  And amid the sparkling of the bright lights, new houses, asphalt, linden trees, policemen, hot-dog vendors and dandies, a new Juozapota, a half-mad old woman, known as Madame Kukureku, no longer paid any attention to “how many gentlefolk, how handsome they are,” but shuffled along, talking to herself.⁸²

  And when it got dark, and lanterns lit up the dark halos of the linden trees, groups of streetwalkers poured, like believers on a church feast day, on to the sidewalks, their teeth flashing the price of temptation. And high school students loitered on the sidewalks, greedily inspecting them. And the icebreaker-shouldered lovers, escorting their coiffured and fashionably Western mistresses or potential wives to American films, pretended not to notice them.

  And a long-haired poet sauntered along the boulevard, his head thrown back as though he were trying to divine the mystery of the stars. The ends of his professional cravat waved rhythmically on his unwashed shirt front, and he had stuffed cardboard into his shoes because the soles had long since worn through. In his imagination sweep-poles rose and fell, cockerels announced the dawn, and the flowering linden trees along Laisvės alėja were as fragrant as they’d have been at the edge of a field.

  I was happy that evening. A few dozen litas jangled in my pocket.⁸³ I had found a victim from Panevežys and really milked the little bald landowner – first losing, then cautiously and insecurely doing a bit better, then disastrously losing again, until, after a few successful rounds and admired by a lot of swearing bystanders, I stuffed the money into my pocket and left the bald landowner slurping his beer with trembling lips.⁸⁴

  I took a deep breath as I walked along Laisvės alėja. I had two or three days to myself, and I held my head high, savouring my success. My fingers had slithered along the green baize, my eyes measured the distances accurately, my cue had struck with precision, and impossible shots dropped into the pockets.

  Suddenly I felt something new. A faint tremor rolled in waves down my spine. I felt dizzy. A strange thought crossed my mind – “Am I changing?” I paused by the cinema. “Is Laisvės alėja changing?” I leaned against the glass. The waves were still rolling down my back. “I must be tired from playing,” I thought to myself, and then noticed Ženia. Small, clean, conscientious, a cheerful little tramp on a workday. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the shadows of an alleyway.

  “So you won today?” she asked probingly.

  “I won,” I replied.

  “Do you want me?” Ženia asked further. I didn’t reply.

  “I think that first of all you need a drink,” Ženia decided.

  “You’re right. Wait here. I’ll run into the store. Tonight we’ll drink red krupnikas.⁸⁵

  “I like you. And not just for the red krupnikas, as you know,” said Ženia frankly.

  “You’re unpretentious, and you don’t swear when you’re drunk. You’ll be my first today. I’ll make you happy, honey.”

  I fished in my pocket and pulled out a two-litas coin.

  “Take it, in case I forget. I’ve owed you for two weeks. Thanks.”

  Ženia tossed the coin into her purse.

  “No problem, honey. I’ll always lend you some if you need it.”

  She spoke these words in a warm, familiar way, and I ran my fingers through her fluffy hair.

  I was back on Laisvės alėja. The strange new feeling had passed. I went into a grocery store and purchased vodka, krupnikas, cigarettes, sprats, ham, butter, bread and chocolate.

  I remember that night. The fragrant linden trees, my light steps, Ženia’s hand which I clasped like a fiancée’s, the slim museum tower, the sky, the moon, the stars, my neighbourhood Žaliakalnis, and the key with which I unlocked the door. I made love to Ženia, and that night I loved Ženia fleetingly. This contradiction didn’t bother me. I had moved to another room and was lying to Jonė: I told her I was living with a respectable family and couldn’t invite her over. We would make love in the countryside or my friend’s room. I deceived Jonė because I was young, strong and confident. I was alive. I was sincerely happy. It wasn’t the ecstasy I had experienced in Palanga – that had been diluted with a heavy dose of acting. This was youth. And tonight – in the company of the hustler Ženia.

  I woke at ten the next morning. Ženia had left. She was good about leaving in time. A blend of odours hung in the room: alcohol, leftover food, exhaled breath. I stretched my limbs in bed. The slight pungency of copulation. I jumped up and opened the window. The sweet smell of the linden trees floated through the room and washed away the night. I grabbed a chair and pulled myself up. My wrists were shaking slightly. “Everything’s fine,” I thought to myself. I tidied up, shaved, bathed, put on a light grey suit and went out into the street.

  I have trouble recalling the final steps. I once again sensed that the world was shifting. First I was overwhelmed by details: the dirty handle of the funicular car, the woman seated facing me, something in the corner of her mouth – a breadcrumb, here a single linden blossomed alone among thousands, a bus trundling along with a piece of newspaper stuck to one of its tires, and that man used black polish on yellow shoes. And it felt strange that I had locked my room, that the key was in my pocket, that I had got into and out of the funicular. And that those several minutes were no more than the sudd
en burst of a passing instant.

  I was standing on Laisvės alėja by the window of the Maistas grocery store.

  Zoori! Give me zoori! My wallet is full, I’m nicely dressed, shop girls smile at stylish young men like me. It’s a beautiful day. I’ll buy myself a book. I’ll crack it open in the park and then continue to get to know it in my room. Today’s lectures are in the afternoon, and I don’t need to play pool tonight. I’ll go to the cinema with Jonė. A few more steps to the bookstore. It’s right there.

  Zoori! Is this the world – is this what they call the Earth? This polished glass? These houses, trees, the Soboras, the policemen, the people, are they all real?⁸⁶

  I let out a muted cry. The short sound escaped and passers-by might have thought that a young man was belching after a big night. I clenched my fists, my teeth. I could feel my facial muscles twitching. I wanted to raise my arms and scream from the bottom of my lungs. To break back into the old world.

  But I was leaning against the Maistas storefront. I could see my face in the glass. Its vague contours, greyish colour, mechanical twitching. Is this what it was like a million years ago? The sea murmurs, giant turtles crawl, my sharp nails scratch at the damp sand. An awareness of what death will be like: death is only a door to an even more horrifying world. Where there is no more body, only nightmares created on Earth live there.

  Zoori! Zoori, rescue me! I almost ran along Laisvės alėja, passing pedestrians, shoving them without apology. Zoori, zoori, the word penetrated me. Fine metal arrows whizzed in my ears. They chased me. Go, go. Details flew past me, important as in a dream. A girl’s blue eyes, a stuffed briefcase. Both the eyes and the briefcase frightened me. As though I had seen ghosts I would be forced to live with forever.

  The psychiatrist was the most famous one in Kaunas. I sat before him in a leather armchair. I was questioned, tapped, poked. I awaited his verdict. The psychiatrist’s Jewish face exuded a mysterious foreignness. He twirled his pen and had yet to write out a prescription. This pause was filled with sounds from beyond the window: car horns, pedestrians shouting, a factory whistle travelling all the way from Aleksotas.⁸⁷ “The overture,” I thought to myself. I shifted in the armchair.