Dominus vobiscum, said Garšva.
Et cum spiritu tuo, came the reply.
Gloria, Gloria.
Deo gratias, amen, amen.
Son – Redeemer of the world.
Asperges me, gloria ad Confiteor.
His missal was a fat book called Advice for Cooks. He repeated by heart the Latin words, mysterious and beautiful to him in their foreignness.
Credo gloria,
asperges gloria,
Oh God.
Confiteor gloria,
Et cum spiritu tuo.
Amen.
Dominus vobiscum.
Amen.
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Amen.
And when young Garšva couldn’t remember any more Latin words, he added his own to the prayer.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, hear our prayers.
Father, God in Heaven,
Holy Spirit,
God.
Credo gloria,
confiteor gloria.
Amen.
Et cum spiritu tuooo…, he sang forth. Young Garšva had run out of prayer. He threw off his father’s coat, blew out the candle, wrapped the towel around his neck, raised his head even higher and sang out at the top of his lungs.
The falcon comes soaring, above the green woooo…
*
Palanga. A quiet summer resort. The wide, flat, yellow beach, where the poet Maironis still strolled. The small, crooked pines, distant relatives of the conifers that once dripped yellow sap capturing insects for all time. The motionless Ronžė River. The wooden villas and the smaller houses calling themselves villas. The pebble-strewn paths. The Lourdes of fake caves eternalised by photographers. The Kurhauzas leftover from tsarist times, where dances were held in the evenings, where they picked a king for the season, usually some actor, dance instructor or wrestler. The seaside restaurant, whose steps reached down to the sea, writers, artists, couples and the odd single person lounging at its small tables. Count Tiškevičius’s decaying stately palace stands proud in its antiquity, the red roses, and a stone Christ blesses the roses.⁹⁵ On a wooden platform in the pine forest, a military brass band plays a medley from La Traviata, “In a Persian Market” or especially energetic military marches, all arranged by a red-cheeked, round-bellied conductor who was fond of jokes, women and vodka. The little chapel on Birutė’s Hill, the sparse pines on Swedes’ Hill.⁹⁶ Famous spots familiar in the finest detail, the same every summer but missed and longingly rediscovered by the same holidaymakers summer after summer. And the sun, slicing open a strip of horizon on calm evenings, paints it in blood, just as a calm sunset ought to. And the moon’s night-time path to the other side, to that land once inhabited by blonde, bearded Vikings. And the sea’s soft moans, and the sea’s fierce whispers. And the stars, the same ones, of course, as those seen by embracing lovers. And the sand. On the shore, the dunes, the paths. Shaken out of shoes, brushed off bodies, the dry and damp, yellow and brown sands of Palanga. The million grains that one would like to take back to the city. So as not to forget Palanga, the most peaceful summer resort in Northern Europe. And the pier.⁹⁷
That summer, the one during which Garšva orated, sang, danced, and stared at the tree, he also swam around the end of the pier. It was the final heat. The L-shaped structure shimmered with multicoloured robes, bathing suits, girls’ hair ribbons, rubber caps, sparkling eyes. The sun exploded above all of their heads. There had been a storm the day before, and though the wind had died down, substantial waves still crashed between the eroded posts supporting the pier, broke once, frothing, and then, diminished, rolled diagonally towards the women’s beach. Garšva glanced at the open sea. It was painful to look at the glistening foam. The horizon crawled towards Sweden. The first, barely visible waves disappearing in the sky. Garšva wanted to turn around, but then he heard the girls’ voices, and was left staring at the spraying waters, at the waves’ determination to erode the wooden bridge posts.
“Garšva won’t win,” said a high-pitched voice.
“He’s so thin.”
“Yeah,” agreed a lower voice.
“Mažeika will win. Garšva will come in second or third.”
“I don’t think Garšva will be able to handle it – when he gets around the end of the pier and has to battle the waves,” the lower voice concluded.
Garšva turned his head. Two blonde girls, tanned and ruthless with their sparkling white teeth, stood nearby. Two tall girls, solid and proud in their awareness of their own bodies. Garšva puffed out his chest and walked by.
“Well, someone’s sure of himself!” he heard the lower voice say.
Mažeika was leaning against the railing, waiting. The champion three seasons in a row. A typical swimmer, with a broad chest, lumps of muscle in his arms, legs and back. His brown hair was faded from the sun, and his humped nose, bristly eyebrows, square chin and the black amber in his silver ring all stood out aggressively. The third contender sat on the ground massaging his legs. A handsome, dark-haired young man. Well-proportioned, rounded, his flowing muscles still covered by a layer of childish fat.
“On your marks!” shouted the referee.
The threesome got into position. A shot, and they jumped into the waves. Garšva used the crawl, a stroke his opponents had not yet learned. They were swimming on the side of the open sea, the perpendicular section of the bridge pier lay parallel to the shore. It was possible to swim the crawl. He just had to dive through the occasional wave to avoid being thrown against the posts. Garšva’s opponents were swimming breaststroke and, without realising it, he reached the end of the pier, turned around, and started back in the opposite direction. Now the real battle began. The crawl was no longer an option. He had to plough into the waves with his chest as they mercilessly dragged him towards the beach.
Garšva looked up. On the pier, at the rails, stood the spectators, a multicoloured band in the blinding glitter of the sun. Garšva thought that he could see the blonde girls standing nearby, waving their arms. Garšva swam breaststroke, breathing deeply and rhythmically, bowing his head when a wave that had broken through the posts tried to carry him to the shore. He glanced back. Mažeika was getting closer. When Garšva had rounded the end of the pier, Mažeika had been so far away, and now, suddenly, he was approaching. “My arm muscles aren’t strong enough,” the thought flashed through his mind. Garšva felt fear – the childish kind, and the kind he had felt while looking at the tree. And then he saw the band of spectators break up. A brown body hung in the air. The round boy was being hauled up with a rope. He couldn’t make it. Garšva looked back once again. Only Mažeika was left behind him.
Garšva squinted. He ploughed forward, towards his goal, towards the ladder that one climbs to get up on to the pier. He no longer felt his arms, legs or abdomen. Only his head and his heavy, slowing breath. And the longing to lose. By turning to the right and shouting “Rope, rope!” But Garšva kept swimming. How far was the ladder – that one climbs to get back up on to the pier? It was far away. An eternity away.
He felt a sudden stab in his brain. To his left, right alongside him, swam Mažeika. Muscles dove in and out of the water and foam, and Garšva could clearly see the open mouth, the whites of the eyes. While Garšva floated in place, Mažeika swam. Terribly slowly. The head, armpits and ribs crept forward, then the orange trunks, and then the legs, spreading out and back together like scissors. “He’s passing me,” thought Garšva. He raised his head. The ladder was just ahead. Maybe ten metres away.
Then Garšva took a deep breath and plunged down into the water. The realisation hit him. He does have arms and legs. He scissored rapidly, the water pressing down on him. Then he would breathe out a little and scissor again. The layers of water became even heavier, there was no air left in his lungs, and then Garšva came up. The ladder was in front of him. He grabbed it, but didn’t have the strength to climb up. Someone prodded him. Mažeika was hanging there next to
him.
“Can’t you go up?” he asked.
Garšva wanted to say “No,” but he couldn’t even do that. There was no air left in the world, and his heart pounded in his chest. Mažeika put his arm around him and they climbed up the ladder together.
Now back up on the wooden boards of the pier, Garšva took several deep breaths. Someone covered him in a robe. The world was nauseously green and Garšva wanted to sleep, to stop existing. His body shook in a delicate quiver. Someone shoved a silver statue of a woman into his hands and said something. And then, only after a few minutes, did he understand that he had won, that he had beaten Mažeika by half a body length.
He walked home with two assistants, a blonde girl on each arm. And Garšva told them all about the crawl, the newest style of swimming. If the sea had been calmer he would have beaten Mažeika by fifty metres. His bare feet dug into the warm sand of the dunes and he realised that winning is great fun. He put his arms around the girls’ shoulders, smiled charmingly, and said:
“Maybe you two would like me to train you?”
“We would, we would!” cried the higher voice.
“We’ll meet tomorrow at one on the bridge, okay?” decided the lower voice, taking the statue from Garšva because it was awkward for him to carry it.
“Very good,” Garšva agreed, sounding like an old master.
Three blonde heads swimming at Palanga. A peaceful summer resort.
…
There were quiet nights in Kaunas as well, in June, when barely a couple of hours separate dusk from dawn. On one of those nights, having seen Jonė home, Antanas Garšva was walking back along Laisvės alėja. The lights in the shop windows had already gone out. Halos radiated from the boulevard’s lanterns, the mature linden trees lit up like women who’ve put on their make-up. The policemen’s colourful uniforms faded, the white-coated sausage sellers rolled their carts and the Soboras dominated the slowly brightening sky. Garšva’s shoes clacked on the pavement. Snubbed prostitutes sadly scanned the alleys. Two unlucky drunks climbed up to the Rambynas beer hall only to be shoved back down by a broad-shouldered bouncer. The morning’s roses waited in the flower store’s dark display window, and the lanterns like an alchemist’s hands turned the roses into little glass statues and you could see dead women’s faces in their blooms. A distinguished gentleman in a light-coloured suit stood on Mickevičius Street, smoked a cigarette and waited for a bus.
The Soboras drew nearer. In the sky, stars that had barely begun to burn faded. Antanas Garšva did not turn into Mickevičius Street. He decided to climb up Vytautas Hill to get a view of Kaunas at dawn. He skirted the Soboras. The stone mass flattened itself against the ground. On this unreal night, this sister of the white nights of the North, the Byzantine force, the arcs of Mongolian swords, and the sleepiness of Russian monasteries were a heavy and divided God who saw only conspiracy amongst his subjects. The carpet of Laisvės alėja led up to the Soboras and Kaunas’s diminutive buildings carried it gifts as if it were a khan of the Golden Horde recently converted to Christianity. The granite steps, the heavy doors, the columns and cupolas, the cross. A golden cube, where both Moscow and Rome prayed.
Antanas Garšva walked along the boulevard and came to Vytautas Hill – dark and fragrant with summer. Flashes of empty benches. Neighbouring rows of two-storey houses. Beyond the promenade, the avenue became a street from a posh summer resort. Garšva heard someone crying and didn’t immediately understand where the sound was coming from. On such a night it could have been a ghost. Garšva was young and his imagination easily evaded the pincers of reason. High tones, full and rhythmic, cut through the silence at the foot of the hill. An old ghost blew into a willow flute, holding the pauses, and the flute moaned. Garšva stopped. “It’s a theme,” he thought. “I don’t care who is crying. In one of these houses there’s an open window, a child has woken up in its crib, but for me it’s an old ghost, from the times when a sturdy castle stood where the Nemunas and the Neris meet. The ghost’s loved ones have died off. His beloved fairy drowned herself because her golden tresses had become frayed and thin. The field god hung himself in the castle ruins because they took away his fields, and he had so loved this fertile triangle. A brave and cruel grand duke’s soul strangled himself with a silk scarf, his steel armour melted, and he could no longer burn crusaders’ souls at the stake. And the spirit of the grand duke’s daughter, the one so beloved by one of Šarūnas’s warriors, went mad. She wandered down to Raudonė Castle, wrapped herself in a white shroud, and walked through the linden tree park singing the same song.
Vai žydėk, žydėk,
Balta obelėle –
Vai žydėk, žydėk,
Sausa be lapelių!
Vai kaip man žydėt,
Baltai obelėlei, –
Vai kaip man žydėt,
Sausai be lapelių? ⁹⁸
The cry came from nearby. Antanas Garšva glanced at the last bench on the Avenue. Something white lay there. It was a baby. The manikin was wrapped in a dirty cotton apron. The yellowish face wrinkled in the starlight. “Clever trick, to leave the child in a rich neighbourhood.” Garšva took the baby in his arms. In the coolness of the dawn Garšva felt his arms warming up. The foundling stopped crying. “He must have been nursed recently, was just missing his mother’s warmth. But what do I do with him? Could he be a gift from an old ghost? Don’t be silly. This is serious.” Garšva remembered that there was a police station nearby, on Gediminas Street. He went back in that direction, carefully holding the now calmly breathing manikin. “I’ll have one of these when I marry Jonė. When I’m a famous poet and receive a national award. He’ll stop crying when I pick him up. That’s not bourgeois. It’s mystical. It took a long time for the earth, the grass, the dinosaurs and Laisvės alėja to take shape. It’s inexplicable and true. I’ll love Jonė, and I’ll hear cries and I’ll hear laughter. I’ll see my child’s face, full of wisdom. Wise, because he doesn’t yet know anything. A little bubble who’ll inspire optimistic poems. I might even be original, and become famous. To become famous these days you have to write optimistic poems.”
Antanas Garšva walked into the police station. The policeman on duty was writing something.
“I found this,” said Garšva, holding the little person right in front of his face, as though he were a cracked porcelain vase. “On a bench, near Vytautas Hill.”
“What the hell!” exclaimed the policeman. “That’s the second one tonight. Another Jewish girl in trouble from some soldier. Put him over there, on the table. We’ll fill out a report.”
By the time Antanas Garšva returned to the street, day was breaking. He chose the most direct route home. He climbed up Aušra Lane.⁹⁹ Kaunas lay below. The cathedral rose above the bluish dusk. He saw the chimneys of the Tilmans textile mill, the bends of the Nemunas, the Linksmadvaris embankment, the sky’s pink rebirth. Rotting leaves crackled. White plastered cottages poked out of the trees, the day continued to brighten. Garšva paused at the top of Aušra Lane. He leaned against the wobbly railing and said to himself, “I want to marry Jonė. I want a child. I want poems. I want money. I want honour. I want to be happy. I want to live,” as though he’d released a golden fish from his net and it had decided to fulfil his wishes instantly.
95A lavish neo-Romantic estate built for the wealthy Lithuanian-Polish Tiškevičius (Tyszkievicz) aristocratic family.
96A neo-Gothic chapel that was built in 1898 on Birutė’s Hill, overlooking the sea. The site, on the grounds of the Tiškevičius estate, was a pagan sanctuary and it is thought that during the fourteenth century the priestess Birutė, mother of Grand Duke Vytautas, lived and was buried there.
97A long, L-shaped wooden pier jutting out from the beach in the centre of the resort town, the Palanga pier is a popular place to walk and enjoy the scenery.
98Lithuania folk song:
Bloom, oh bloom,
My white apple tree –
Bloom, oh bloom,
Yet dr
y without leaves!
And how am I to bloom,
A white apple tree, –
And how am I to bloom,
Yet dry without leaves?
99Aušra: dawn (Lithuanian).
CONCLUSION
Antanas Garšva opens the door and lets out a girl in a painfully red dress, and then he sees Elena. She’s wearing the familiar grey suit, the veil from her grey beret is lowered over her face, and her stockings have been put on properly. She’s speaking with O’Casey.
“Elena!” shouts Garšva. They hear him and come towards the elevator. O’Casey asks, smiling:
“Not too many passengers, eh, Tony?”
“Not too many,” Garšva replies moving his lips but barely making a sound.
“I’m taking number nine out temporarily. Take number seven and have a talk. I’ll give you a shout when there’s work.”
“Thank you, O’Casey,” whispers Garšva.
“Thank you, Mister O’Casey,” says Elena.
“Always at your service, madam,” and he opens number seven.
“But just in case – keep riding, Tony. You know, if the manager…”
“I understand. Thanks.”
Garšva gives the handle a push, and they start going up.
“It’s a nice elevator,” says Elena.
“Yes. Because it’s a nice hotel.”
“My ears are ringing a bit.”
“They’re fast elevators,” says Garšva, and stops the elevator on the seventeenth floor. He doesn’t open the door. He looks at Elena.
“You came. That’s good. You came. Lift up the veil.”
And Elena lifts up the veil, and it lies back on the top of the beret. Garšva stares at the familiar face.
White Shroud Page 18