White Shroud

by Anatanas Škėma

  “You came,” he repeats.

  They don’t move.

  “Why didn’t you let me in?” asks Elena. Garšva is still looking at the beloved face. The same eyes, curve of the lips, the same lipstick, layer of light powder. Standing under the light of the matt bulb she looks as though she has just returned from a lost world. A Baldovinetti Madonna. Time has turned around, the past is coming back. He no longer has to listen to the fists pounding on the closed door. The steps in the stairwell fade, a small grey woman walks along the street and disappears around the bend. The past is still coming back. Garšva puts his left arm around Elena, pulls her close and kisses her on the lips. Slowly, softly, like a mother. A miracle has occurred. And the miracle is gentle, like Elena’s lips, her face, her body, her breath. And at the same time, without looking at the control board, Garšva switches the buttons. They descend and stop on the twelfth.

  “Forgive me,” says Garšva. “I didn’t let you in. You can imagine what I felt when I didn’t let you in. And you know why. I was afraid of my illness. Forgive me. I love you. So much. I overdid it, Elena. But now I’m sure. I’ll get better. I really believe I’ll get better. And I’ll be with you. I know that I deceived your husband, I’ll speak to him again. Definitively. And you’ll be mine, I believe that you’ll be mine, if you came here, to the elevator.”

  “I’ll be yours,” says Elena, and they rise again. To the seventeenth.

  “When we meet next I’ll tell you everything. Too many thoughts. Too many shards. Too little happiness.”

  The small grey woman and uniform number 87. The bare, polished walls of the elevator shine. The past is still coming back. All the women come back. All in one.

  “You can’t imagine how worried I was. You’re ill, you don’t love me, you were taken to the hospital, you were hit by a car, you found another woman.”

  “Please, come back, come back to my room,” says Garšva and presses the handle. They swoop downward and stop on the sixth.

  “Tomorrow I’ll go to the doctor. The day after tomorrow I’m off work. Come the day after tomorrow. Early. I can’t wait to see you again. You have no idea how happy I am. The day after tomorrow we’ll drink – oh no, don’t worry, just a little, and we’ll make love a lot. And, if it isn’t enough for us, I’ll get a few days off. And… I think, I’m sorry, you have to go now. O’Casey’s a good starter, but I don’t want to abuse his kindness. It’s the second time he’s helping me out today.”

  When they arrive at the bottom, Elena asks:

  “You haven’t been to the doctor?”

  “Once. And I didn’t go back a second time, even though he insisted I must.”

  “See him tomorrow. Alright?”

  “Like I said, I’ll go to the doctor’s,” and Garšva opens the door.

  O’Casey approaches and Elena reaches out her hand.

  “I know that in America it isn’t customary to shake hands to say goodbye. But I am very grateful to you. Today…” she doesn’t finish and smiles. O’Casey takes her hand and kisses it.

  “I’m Irish, madam, so I respect European customs. I wish you all the best,” and O’Casey withdraws discreetly.

  “You’re stunning today,” says Garšva. “And your stockings are on straight.”

  “I was thinking about you. Goodbye. I’ll see you the day after tomorrow.”

  “Goodbye.”

  And Elena walks away. Down the dark red carpet. Exquisite in her fine proportions, as though she had been created by a female god. She disappears beyond the corner, and she’s gone.

  O’Casey comes up and asks, “Who is she?”

  “My fiancée.”

  “Nice woman. And very attractive.”

  “Thanks, O’Casey.”

  And O’Casey claps Garšva on the shoulder.

  “Go back to number nine, Tony. And wipe your lips. She gave you some colour.”

  Number nine rises, number nine falls. The express from the ninth to the eighteenth. Your floor, here we are, thank you, the button, thank you, here we are. The green arrow lights up, Antanas Garšva reaches out a white-gloved hand, that’s it, we’re going up. Hand on handle. And the floors twinkle above his head. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

  A splendid up ir down. This is how the departed fly around in the afterlife. Children’s kites, summer butterflies, planets, dandelion fluff. This is how a fairy tale flies, that most serious kind of nonsense, unique to humans.

  Here we are, thank you, a guest exits, hand to handle, we’re going up, someone stopped the elevator, the door opens, a guest enters, we’re going up. Going up, going up. The eighteenth, here we are. Everyone exits.

  The bare, polished elevator walls glisten. Adam and Eve have returned to Paradise. But there are no fantastic flowers or docile panthers, no ambiguous serpent. Between the plastic walls, under the light of the matt bulb and the floor numbers, the first two humans stand, embracing.

  We wait for a red square and a green arrow. And we go down. Going down, going down. The same ritual. Up ir down, up ir down.

  I’m an elevator angel in a uniform from an operetta. Those kinds of angels tend to be cheery. They have pink bottoms. They’ll even dare to tug at God’s coat-tails, while He is busy with the tragic problems of the universe. And God smiles benevolently. “Hey, you kids, off you go to the Holy Virgin – she’ll give you a cookie in My Name.” And the angels fly in a group, pinching each other, filling Heaven with a great racket, so that even Saint Thomas Aquinas raises his head from the letter he is writing to Jacques Maritain, explaining that the God of the Exodus is not a being but He is Being itself – as every being can either exist or not exist.

  I’m a transplanted acacia bush. My roots draw the new earth’s sap, and, though some of my branches have wilted, my crown is verdant, and a graceful bird has landed on my viscous leaves. It lifts its grey-stockinged feet up and down and cheerfully screeches a song.

  Oh, Susan Van Dusan,

  The goal of my choosin’

  She sticks to my bosom

  Like glue…

  I’m an experienced hermit sick and tired of the desert, the sackcloth, the cane, meditation and my mossy lair. I’m a hermit who travels to the big city and then remembers that there are still gold coins buried in his basement, and chats up a young girl.

  I’m a Lithuanian kaukas who has found himself a female companion. And we’ll find ourselves a master who’ll give us some new linen pants for all the jobs we do.

  I’m manikin number 87 in eight-million-strong New York.

  I’m happy.

  …

  Five past one. Garšva leaves the hotel. It’s a warm night. The advertising lights have gone out. His shoes clack on the pavement, like they did in Kaunas. The same freshness, the same stars, occasional passers-by. Kaunas has stretched up to the clouds. The skyscraper towers sway, the marshy town’s church bells have gone silent, the old ghost has slipped his willow flute under his coat and gone off to sleep somewhere on 3rd Avenue. The becalmed ocean no longer murmurs. The tugboats and ships have nestled against the coast. Sailors sleep embracing their cheap girlfriends. Tomorrow two blonde girls will jump into the blue Baltic. The glass windows of Gimbels department store are dark. Stairs, stairs, stairs. The mannequins sleep standing, like horses, and the subway echoes. A drunk sways by the door to the Men’s, talking to himself. “I’m clever. Tomorrow I’ll show him, that son-of-a-bitch!” The subway’s night crew, cleaning women and young men going home after their dates, are waiting on the platform, as is Antanas Garšva. The noise intensifies and the train careers from around the corner. Two green eyes, two red ones, a white window. Brakes screech, doors open. Beyond them – wicker benches, sleepy faces, returning home. Home. BMT Broadway Line. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow – magical words.

  Antanas Garšva gets up at nine. He shaves, washes, eats two eggs, drinks a cup of coffee. Then goes out to the store and calls Doctor Ignas.

  “Hello. I’d like
to see you.”

  “It’s about time. How are you feeling?” replies Doctor Ignas reproachfully.

  “Terrific. Yesterday everything turned upside down. Oh, forgive me. Everything turned right side up. Nevertheless, I’d like to see you.”

  “If you’re feeling alright, come at around two. Right now I have to visit some patients.”

  “Great. I’ll be there at two. After that I’ll head to work. See you later.”

  “See you.”

  Garšva goes back home. He sits down at the table. He finds a sheet of paper. Picks up a pen.

  It’s cosy in Garšva’s room this morning. A sunbeam has slipped through the window and illuminated the Chagall woman’s cloudy hair. Book dust rises and blends with cigarette smoke. The clear blue colour of the room. The chair creaks, the pen scratches. The writer’s rhythmic breath.

  True peace has finally come to me. I’m objective, I’m a medium, I don’t need to be absolutely original. My soul has found a relationship with the world. I’ll be unknown, like an ancient Chinese painter. I’ll follow in the footsteps of the great masters. And I’ll thank my God for those forgotten pieces of my life: the time I played at being a priest giving mass, the race, the foundling. I’m thankful for the young Russian. When I prayed, swam, dreamt of a child, killed a man, I was sure. I was a synthesis of body and soul. I am Jin Shengtan, who, on a clear morning after a long rain, once again hears the birds’ voices, draws open the curtains and sees the freshly bathed sun shining over the forest.

  My responses have welded together my life, my observations, my ruminations. A few little grains. A few poems. A single, tangible truth.

  I forgot that I have only one life to live. I have been living as though I were preparing for yet other lives. And I lost a great deal of time. Though, like some American said – “Life begins at forty.” A man only takes shape at forty, the Romans argued. I’m forty, and now I’ll start to live. And when death comes, I will greet it calmly: Ave Caesar, vivans te salutat!¹⁰⁰

  Lioj, ridij, augo, lepo, leputeli – trills the nightingale. A boggy marsh. Fairies whir through the air. Toads watch the universe through bulging eyes. Triangular firs, the towers of Lithuanian shrines rise to the stars. To be born, to live, to die. To climb up on to high benches. Two shabby kaukai accompany Christ. “Give us some new pants, turn the marsh waters to red wine.” In the honeycombs, the ears of wheat, the rue and the lilies, the embraces of gnarled trunks, the tangled roots, the flowing waters – You are to be found.

  Lioj. Ridij, Augo.

  I have understood myself. The shards fit together. A child observing a landscape. Road, stream, hills, deer. A serpent hugging the ground. Fairies combing their tresses. The gliding mist. Day darkens, brightness darkens. Lapwing feathers, tolling bells, dominus vobiscum.

  Antanas Garšva lights himself yet another cigarette. He feels a pain at the top of his head. “I’ve smoked too much,” he tells himself. Garšva crushes the cigarette in an ashtray. He twirls his pen ambivalently. The pain is bearable. It will go away. Like the grim past. Two o’clock – Doctor Ignas. Tomorrow – Elena? The day after? The day after tomorrow I’ll ask for time off. And, very possibly, I’ll switch hotels. Everything will be renewed. Love, poetry, people, streets.

  There will be no more need for Hear me, My Elevator. Hear me, my Childhood. Hear me, my Death, credo gloria or confiteor gloria. There will be no more need for Hear me – my Sin, my Madness. Day darkens, brightness darkens. A choir of kaukai, field and harvest gods. Lioj.

  I’ll make it in time. I promise. I will give you. A carnelian ring. A wagon in Queens Plaza. My love.

  …

  Elena is taking a bath. White foam slides down her legs and explodes into iridescent bubbles. “He will kiss my legs. Slowly. When he kisses my wrists, I’ll believe my happiness. I won’t torment him. I’ll restrain myself.”

  She gets up, a grey Aphrodite in a cast-iron tub, turns on the shower, and warm spurts of water wash off the foam.

  “I’ll ring the bell and the door will open. Faster than I can pull back my fingers. Tomorrow.”

  …

  The pain is annoying. The top of the head burns. There is no fear. But the peace is fading too. Pain and indifference. Sudden stabs, and then a deaf, rolling ball. The ball is growing and will soon escape. The pen has stopped scratching. I’m out of pills. Garšva gets up, goes to the kitchen and returns with a glass. He drinks some White Horse. Sits down again, and again picks up the pen.

  The white woman plays. O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem.¹⁰¹ Two vėlės and a harpsichord. The gilded statues run up the granite steps. The torches in their hands have gone out. And the sculptural noblemen’s heads rejoice. Ė, ridij, augo! Ė, felix culpa! I love the blue veins on your legs. Your damp eyelashes. Tristan and Isolde’s sword, the mole on your neck. Lioj.

  Amber insects creep along the sand. Towards the blue Baltic. “Vai žydėk, žydėk, balta obelėle,” sings the vėlė, wrapped in a white shroud. O felix culpa! My childhood, my life, my death. Lioj.

  No pain. But the ball is enormous. It no longer fits inside the brain, and yet it cannot escape through the skull. A thought struggles to be heard: “Must see Doctor Ignas.” Garšva hurriedly puts on his suit. His fingers don’t cooperate. The pant zipper chokes but he manages to get it free. A tie? Never mind. Money? There are eight dollars on the table. Enough for a taxi.

  The brown man in the elevator. I just remembered him. Is he Death? A warning from God?

  God, You see how miserable I am.

  I know I’m too late, but save me.

  I promise.

  I’ll tear up my notes, my poems.

  I won’t think in ways that offend You.

  I’ll pray.

  I’ll enter a monastery.

  God, though I am dying, help me.

  I believe that You can forgive at the very last minute.

  An entire life.

  God, oh God, I offer myself into Your hands…

  Oh no, I am a manikin, a manikin, oh God.

  Oh Gooood!...

  “Zoori, zoori,” whispers Garšva.

  Where is zoori? What is zoori? Why is zoori? I’ve lost zoori. Help me find it! Could it have flown away? Help me! Antanas Garšva whimpers. He screams. He pounds the walls with his fists. The pins pop out. The Chagall reproduction flips around and hangs backwards.

  …

  Stanley is walking along the bridge. He is weaving slightly. Having thrown the Seagram’s bottle into the East River. He finishes a cigarette, tosses it, and looks around. The bridge is empty. At the very end a man recedes. Stanley leans against the railing and stares at Greater New York. Rocks built on rocks. Skyscrapers. Ships and tugboats float by. Chimneys stick out in the distance. A train thunders on to the bridge, shaking the tracks. The clamour approaching fast.

  Carefully, Stanley lifts his legs over the railing. He doesn’t look at the water. “Idz srač,” he says, and falls silently down.

  …

  A few minutes to twelve. Garšva sits on the flowered linoleum. In paradise. By the blue hills. Surrounded by blooming flowers and giant butterflies lazily fanning their wings. Garšva feels cool, he feels good. There is a rose in his hand. A dead woman’s face. Its petals as soft as curtains. Garšva holds a sheaf of papers that he is tearing into thin strips. His face is happy. A peaceful idiot’s. He smells the paper. A chinchilla’s face.

  …

  The book dust continues to float upward. A sunbeam lights up a bare wall, the reproduction now hangs in shadow. Clear blue. Cosy.

  THE END

  1952–1954

  100See note 91, but there’s a small change: the translation here is “Hail Caesar, a living person [singular] salutes you!”

  101See note 34.

  Translator’s Note

  Any literary translation can be seen as an inherently impossible exercise, but a text that itself plays with translation and with the émigré’s movement back and forth between
languages, and does so in multiple voices, presents particular challenges. Antanas Škėma’s Balta drobulė brilliantly conveys the displaced person’s constant feeling of dislocation and cultural adjustment by mixing fragments of English and other European languages into the speech and thoughts of the main characters. This English version of Škėma’s novel attempts to preserve some of that linguistic richness by leaving several key words, as well as passages of folksong, in Lithuanian within the main body of the text, with translations and explanations provided in footnotes; the decision to leave the phrase “up ir down” as it appeared in the original was made to convey some of the blended flavour of the text, as other instances of émigré language and slang were inevitably lost in translation (e.g., “labsteriai” simply became “lobsters”). It is hoped that the end result is in the spirit of Škėma’s faith in the possibility of a synthesis between Lithuanian and other languages and cultures, and in the possibilities offered by that synthesis. This translation would not have been possible without the participation of leading Škėma scholar Loreta Mačianskaitė who provided unflagging support from the beginning of the project, Baltic Studies scholar Violeta Kelertas who read an early version of the draft, and Jurgis Vaitkūnas without whom the whole up ir down would not have been nearly as meaningful.

  A personal recollection from Jonas Mekas, American avant-garde filmmaker of Lithuanian origin

  I think it was in 1947, in the Kassel Displaced Persons camp, that myself with a couple of younger, post-Škėma generation writers, we read one of the short stories that had just came out in Škėma’s first collection of prose pieces. We were taken by one of his short stories which ended with a very clinical description of a spittoon by hospital patient’s bed. It was so minimal and so clinical like nothing before in Lithuanian literature. As much as we were critical of the writings of the generation “before us,” we admitted that Antanas Škėma was “OK.”