An inexplicable feeling riveted the man to the well, and an unattainable yearning clambered up onto his hump. The man now saw himself clearly in the light of day, his singularity and his superiority. He had something others, drowning in their small daily joys and sorrows, did not: he felt everything deeper than they did, everything that surrounded them on that full-moon night, all that eternity and infinity. And he felt sad for his own sublimeness.
The naked woman passed by the small window once more and he thought to himself that a woman’s body hides everything within itself – the lakes, the hill forts, the wells. Like two flints, the original woman and man ignited everything on earth – life and death, godliness and hell, spiritual heights and declines.
The woman passed by the window and went to turn out the light. She extinguished it quickly and what remained on the other side of the window was only the woman’s spirit, which longed for the symbol of womanliness.
Just then, behind him, he heard the voices of another woman and a man. Suddenly a woman ran out into the yard. She cried quietly and then began to sob violently. Between her sobs you could hear the chirping of crickets. A cold drop of water fell from the well lid and into the bottom of the well. The woman’s sobs were now resembling an unending moan. A terrible woman’s moan in the full-moon night, her sobs reverberating around the whole world reminding everyone that a person, having created and idealised something, will also destroy it in the most brutal way. A man’s angry and cruel words spilled out into the yard, following the woman’s sobbing.
One more cold drop of water fell to the bottom of the well and the hunchback could no longer keep hold of his protective field, and he returned instantly to this world. Hurrying, dragging his feet and stumbling against the fence, he rushed into the yard from where the sobbing was emanating. The woman was nowhere to be seen and all that could be heard was sobbing coming from under the apple tree. A man stood on the gravel path – dishevelled hair, half naked, eyes bulging. The hunchback recognised him; not too long ago the man had urged him to ‘make yourself vertical’ in the snack bar.
The hunchback stopped in front of the man, transferred his cane to his left hand and weakly raised his right hand upwards.
‘Hey, hey, hey!’ he stuttered raising his head and moving closer. ‘Hey, hey, hey…’
Then he passed by the man and ran towards the apple tree where the sobs were emanating from. There stood a woman dressed only in a shirt, which was torn, and he took a good, long look at her face – it was the same woman who had greeted him the other morning and then walked away so skilfully.
‘Hey… hey… hey…’
The hunchback wanted to say something more but not a word left his lips. The woman suddenly stopped crying.
‘What are you doing here?’
He felt anger in her voice, that horridness eternally hidden in the relations between men and women, and he wanted to scream like he was crazy, for this woman had stopped crying only out of hatred for him and not for hatred of that other man, the one who shook and hit her, who idealised her and then vilely debased her. But not a sound came out of his gaping mouth. The hunchback quickly stumbled out through the gate and raced back into his own moonlit square, stretching out and feeling something crack under his hump. In the time it took him to reach the well he twice repeated:
‘Life is brutal.’
‘Life is brutal.’
He then grasped the edge of the well-curb with one hand like a little hawk and with his other hand held onto the handle. When he had hauled the bucket back up he pulled it out using his mouth, grasping the lip of the bucket with his teeth. Water splashed all over his tattered shoes and soiled trousers and poured mercilessly onto the grass. The water appeared bluish in the moonlight. In this way he drew up three buckets of bluish water.
Translated by Medeine Tribinevicius from Juozas Aputis, Geguze ant nuluzusio berzo, Vilnius: Vaga (1986).
Juozas Aputis (1936–2010) was one of the most important short story writers in Lithuania. He also created memorable short novels. His work is distinctive in the context of Lithuanian literature of his period for its focus on the decay and changes in traditional village culture. Through his writing he conferred onto the Lithuanian novel a large dose of existential anxiety, enriched the Lithuanian short story form and expanded the bounds of psychological narrative. His short story collections Wild boars run on the horizon (Horizonte bega sernai, 1970) and Returning through evening fields (Sugrizimas vakarejanciais laukais, 1977), are classics of the short story genre.
The Earth is Always Alive
Icchokas Meras
The setting sun, red as a fire, peered into the pit from the other bank but no longer saw a single living person, though he, alive and well, stood near a long, uneven ditch that skirted the gravel pit, while his accomplices, the whole group of them, roamed about, dividing up the clothes and possessions left behind by the executed.
Standing with his legs apart, as before, with the same glassy eyes as when he fired the last shot a short hour ago, he scanned the naked corpses lying strewn in the ditch. His eyes, together with the black abyss of the barrel of his automatic, quietly traced a circle. The metal butt pressed firmly beneath his heart. He knew that it was over, that there would be no more today, but he still didn’t want to release the metal clenched tightly in his palms, the metal which, in his hands, had the capacity for murder.
Having scanned the ditch he reluctantly squinted at the red sun suspended in the sky. He then opened his eyes wide and looked at the group tussling over the pile of possessions. His glance stopped and pierced each of them separately. For a moment he forgot the haul and saw only life. His eyes glittered like glass for he wanted to pull the trigger and start shooting again, even shooting at the group below. The index finger of his right hand bent and then pressed the trigger half way…
‘If I released several rounds, I’d lay them all flat,’ he said and laughed heartily. ‘Not a single one would be left alive, I’d shoot them all.’ He imagined how they would fall with their hands outstretched, curling up with faces grimaced in pain, how the streams of blood would soak into the yellow, almost transparent sand to leave dark, quickly drying stripes.
Holding the index finger of his right hand still, he turned and looked again at the naked dead bodies lying in the ditch.
‘If they all rose right now I could shoot them again,’ he mused.
He caressed the barrel of the automatic and burned his hand. It was still hot.
He swore several times and only then heard a whisper rising from the ditch:
‘Mama, mama, mama…’
And then:
‘Open your eyes, open your eyes.’
The young girl gently stroked her mother’s hair, but her mother did not move. The mother lay with her head lowered, her legs curled up, her lips were a pale blue. Only her hands were as before, behind her back, fingers tightly entwined as though even now she was still clutching her daughter and shielding the child with her own young body.
The girl caressed her mother’s cheek. She tried to pry open her mother’s eyes with her tiny fingers, but the woman’s cheeks were getting cold and her eyelids, heavy as those of a wooden doll, would close again.
‘Open your eyes, open your eyes.’
He was delighted. He spread his legs wide again and, no longer feeling any pain in his right hand, he grasped the automatic, placed his index finger on the trigger and held the butt firmly against his chest.
The girl was unable to communicate with her mother. She stood up and climbed out of the ditch. The girl was already grown up. She was three years old. And she had the courage to ask for help because her mother wasn’t listening and did not open her eyes.
She extended her left hand and said to the man:
‘Come… Open my mother’s eyes.’
She was pale, this grown-up, three-year-old person. She was naked like the rest. Only two red stains smouldered in this whiteness: her long hair, red as a fire, that covered almo
st her entire face, and the large, red apple in her right hand.
The man who was standing at the ready, didn’t know that the girl’s apple had once been white. A white summer apple with two tiny incisions – the marks of two milk teeth. The girl had carried that large white apple all this way and had not once let go of it. She had the time to leave the two tiny incisions in the skin of the apple when everyone was lined up by the rim of the ditch and when her mother had pushed her behind her back. The apple had turned red after it had rested on her mother’s chest.
‘Come… Open my mother’s eyes.’
The girl extended her left hand.
He stood still. Then the girl extended her right hand, which held the red apple. She wanted to give him the apple so that he would come and open her mother’s eyes.
He was delighted. His chin quivered with satisfaction. He was delighted – one had risen from the ditch. He had been ready for a long time and the index finger of his right hand slowly, slowly pulled the trigger. He savoured every minute and did not want to lose it. But perhaps he had waited too long, had extended the moment too far, the moment between life and death. And when he felt the resistance of the trigger, when all that was needed was to pull harder in a final sudden movement, his eyes were dazzled. The girl’s hair was fire-red and it blinded him like the red setting sun.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them he felt that he really was looking at the sun. He closed his eyes again and now he saw the red apple.
‘Come… Open my mother’s eyes. I’ll give you the apple.’
He looked at the girl and again saw the sun, then the girl and the apple, the apple, the girl… Three circles red as a fire. Larger, smaller, larger.
He no longer knew where to aim, where to shoot, and the black abyss of the barrel traced wide, fitful arcs.
Finally, he fired.
‘Come… Open my mother’s eyes.’
Evidently, he had fired at the sun.
He fired again.
‘Come…’
At the apple?
‘No, I must fire at the largest of the red circles,’ he thought. ‘If I fire at the sun, then surely I will hit that red hair.’
He fired one round after another.
The group dividing up the clothes of the executed fell into disarray. Someone moaned. They all dropped to the ground behind the piles of clothes.
‘Stop, have you gone mad!’ they screamed.
But he kept shooting at the largest of the red circles.
‘Stop, we’ll kill you!’ they shouted.
He changed the clip and kept shooting.
Then no one was shouting anymore, and many barrels turned toward him spitting fire and bullets.
He collapsed to his knees and then fell. As he was falling, he grasped the burning barrel, but his hand no longer felt pain. His eyes bulged but they were still glassy only there was a redness under the glassiness, as though the red summer apple had painted them.
The group hastily packed the things into wagons and left.
And then the gravediggers came to the gravel pit. Young men and old – gravediggers. The shovels did not appear heavy. The sand in the gravel pit was packed evenly. But these men walked, dragging their feet, heads lowered.
They were not gravediggers. They had been ordered to be gravediggers.
Among them were a father and son. The father was a short, bent man with grizzled hair and half-closed eyes. The son was tall with wide blue eyes and thick, fair hair that always fell onto his face because of his bowed head. Both were called Ignas. The grandson, who had not yet arrived in this world, was Ignas too.
The son looked at the ditch through a shield of drooping hair and said:
‘Father, how can the earth endure this?’
The father was silent.
The son kicked a clump of earth that had fallen from the edge of the gravel pit.
‘You see,’ he said again to his father, ‘the earth is dead. It is earth and nothing else. You can kick it, stomp on it, soak it with blood. The earth is dead. It doesn’t care.’
‘No, son,’ replied the father. ‘The earth is alive. You’re young and you don’t understand.’
‘No!’ said the son. ‘Just look. They dug a pit, shot them and left. We came to cover it up. We will cover it. Yet, the earth is silent. It is dead, it doesn’t care. You can kick it, stomp on it, soak it with blood.’
‘That’s not true!’ said the father and gave his son a stern look. ‘The earth is alive, you’ll see for yourself.’
The men were ordered to cover the ditch so that no traces were left, but instead they pushed the earth, trying to form a grave. It was a long grave, stretching across the entire length of the gravel pit. They had not planned it, but each man did the same thing.
‘You see?’ the father said, thinking about the grave.
So what, if the men didn’t do what they had been told to do? The son didn’t understand. He was still young.
They were both digging at the spot where the girl was lying. The shooter who had been shot was sprawled nearby.
‘Bury the girl,’ said the father to his son.
The son put down his shovel, picked the girl up in his arms and carefully lowered her into the ditch. His eyes were half closed like his father’s so that he would not see too much. He would have closed his eyes altogether but he had to bury the girl.
After that they continued digging, avoiding the shooter as if they hadn’t seen him, even though he lay right next to the ditch. His head was hanging down on top of the executed people, his hands clenched in the sand and his legs were stretched straight out. His bulging, glassy eyes still glittered. He didn’t want to be dead.
His trousers were green and contrasted starkly with the white sand.
‘He’s in the way,’ said the father. ‘Let’s push him over.’
The son raised his shovel and was ready to push the green legs into the ditch, but his hands froze. How could he throw this green thing next to that pale girl with the red hair and the red apple?
‘Wait,’ the father said, thinking that his son had not understood him.
He did not push his shovel under the man’s legs to throw him into the ditch, but instead pushed it under his back. The only way they could lift him was out of the ditch. The son looked at his father and his eyes were radiant with joy. He also pushed his shovel under the man’s back. They spat on their palms and threw the green-clad man out of the ditch.
The other men gathered around, coming from the right and from the left. They were silent, but looking at the father and son, they all had the same thought. They lifted the shooter with their shovels and carried him out of the gravel pit.
On the other side, just past the road, there was a steep slope. Below that lay a gully that always teemed with crows. It was the city garbage dump. At the edge of the slope the men swung their burden and threw it into the gully below.
On the way back, the father said to the younger Ignas:
‘The earth is alive, it is always alive.’
The son looked at his father’s half-closed eyes that had seen many things and bowed his head. They resumed their digging and finally a long grave, neatly formed by work-hardened hands, extended along the length of the gravel pit.
Translated by Ada Valaitis from Icchokas Meras, Stotele vidukelej, Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishers (2004).
Icchokas Meras (born 1934) lost his parents in the Holocaust and was rescued and raised by a Lithuanian woman. He became famous after the publication of his novels A Stalemate Lasts But a Minute (Lygiosios trunka akimirka, 1963) and What the World Rests On (Ant ko laikosi pasaulis, 1965) in which he tells narratives of the Holocaust and examines Lithuanian-Jewish relations using romantic ballads, parables, and mythological narrative forms. Meras later works – the novels Striptease, or Paris-Rome-Paris (Striptizas arba Paryzius-Roma-Paryzius, 1976) and Sara (2008) – appeared after the author moved to Israel and reflect a surreal narrative style, which is unusual in
Lithuanian prose.
Lady Stocka
Antanas Ramonas
Lady Jadvyga Stocka possessed a manor estate with five hundred registered souls in the Kaunas Governorate. She was married to Kazimir Stockis, who was much older than her and a former chamberlain. Lord Stockis liked vodka with cherries, fatty food and hunting. The wooden manor house with four columns, that back then were green and built during the times of Stanislaw August, stood on the high, beautiful shores of the Virvyte river. On the southern side, alongside the terraces, there was a small park with maple and linden trees. A moss-covered Apollo Belvedere sculpture stood in an oval flower bed opposite the grand entrance. The enormous manor gardens also stretched along a slope on the right side, next to the park, gradually disappearing into the undergrowth of hazelnut trees and osier shrubs near the shore.
Lady Stocka was descended from the minor gentry. Her father, Kristof Saudargas, had many daughters and many debts, but what he had the most of was haughtiness. Jadvyga, who was the youngest, was lucky. She was taken in by a rich aunt when she was still a child. Jadvyga learned good manners, how to speak fluent Polish and a little French, to sew a little and to play around on the piano a bit. Her aunt would spend the winter in Vilnius where her husband had a house on Rudninku Street. It was there that Jadvyga became acquainted with a distant relative of her aunt’s husband, the old-fashioned Lord Stockis, who still wore a kontush and red shoes. He seemed ridiculous to her, but when he proposed Miss Jadvyga agreed – of course only after taking the council of her aunt. What else could she do, a girl without a dowry? And she departed to Lord Stockis’ secluded manor estate in Samogitia.
Life ran its course at the Brevikiai Estate; to be more precise, it stood still like pond water, as if there had been no Napoleonic wars and no uprisings that had laid waste to the entire region. The peasants performed their required tasks and Lord Stockis hunted, drank, played cards, and on Sundays and during holidays he went to church diligently where he would fall asleep on the prie-dieu after the first chords from the organ. Lord Stockis smelled of tobacco, vodka and dog. The young madam ordered fashion magazines from Paris, made efforts to play the piano, which Lord Stockis, though he sighed about it because of the expense, ultimately did buy, and visited the neighbours. But the neighbours, of course, were no different than Lord Stockis: they talked about the profits of the breweries, hunting and the beastly peasants. Lady Stocka understood nothing and kept quiet, smiling melancholically. The piano was out of tune and a tuner had to be called from Kaunas. Lord Stockis never could understand such trivial matters, but after being nagged by his wife one day he brought home Joshke the Jew, who played the fiddle at the village inn in Siaudine. The Jew turned a few things, slid a finger across the keys, accepted a silver half-rouble and left; the piano remained in the same state it started out in. The magazines from Paris would arrive, Lady Jadvyga would flip through them in bed in the morning, admiring the dresses and hats before sighing: who will sew things like that here? She played the ramshackle piano less and less, and she rarely sewed anymore. She just walked through the park and gardens reading the same French novel. She filled out and her curves became more evident. But what could she do, for life was so boring, so monotonous.
The Dedalus Book of Lithuianian Literature Page 11