The Dedalus Book of Lithuianian Literature

by Almantas Samalavicius

  ‘The message, the message is the most important thing,’ Bruno kept repeating with his eyes shut. ‘I’d make up the kind of message so the whole world would drop everything and come running to us. But I have nothing to write with and nothing to write it on.’

  The men’s heads drooped to the ground, although they were light as feathers. All their faces looked the same, and their eyes were the same, revealing the effort to force out at least one idea.

  And the clouds kept floating and floating in the same direction, as if showing them the way, if not to freedom then at least to life.

  To speak would have meant to remember at once that which had been forgotten only with the greatest effort, that which had been exiled from the memory, chained and thrown into the deepest hole, perhaps the abyss. It would have forced them to see again that rambling, brown stump like a bull’s head that had gripped his hand with its teeth, the frost and the blizzard – or first the blizzard and then the frost – and the men repeatedly falling into the snow banks, their faces all the same, all equally ashen and expressionless, quite unlike the ones that Alexis had drawn with a blunt pencil, though once upon a time they had really looked like that: Valius, Zenka from Kaunas, the two foreigners, Francis, and all the others. They had stood in a circle around the thin, solitary candle on the table in his room. He and Alexis did not want to remember them, all the nameless and the faceless. They did not and could not dare to do so. In silence they would down a shot, then another, they would empty the ritual bottle neatly and a sighing Alexis would say, ‘I’m off to feed Elena’. (His wife hadn’t left her bed for several years now. Little Elena, one more forbidden memory: the womb frozen by the black snow, the hands that had made fabulous sausages. Elena, the ant with her legs pulled off.)

  Alexis and his Elena disappeared and Ona did not reply or give any kind of sign. Vytautas’s daughters fought daily with their husbands before making up again. Sometimes they asked if their father needed anything and if he could use some help. What did he have need of? He was sturdy and not especially old, he could even help others including his daughters if the need should arise. Summer was at its peak, but Vytautas Handless liked Vilnius: the old, hot streets were dearer to him than the quiet solace of the lakes back home.

  Desire ambushed him, stung him like a snake biting a naked, unprotected leg. The poison dispersed throughout his body immediately, fogged up his brain and even disturbed his dreams. The poisonous desire pulsed in his heart together with his blood; maybe the blood itself became the desire, his heart, kidneys, liver and his entire body became it. The strange temptation to conquer himself burned like an icy fire. Vytautas Handless suddenly felt that he had not dared to admit to himself throughout his life who he really was – he had pretended to others and tried to fool himself. He had devastated an important part of his soul, without which he was not the real Vytautas Handless; he went on existing like some other person – someone with a different face, name and soul. The cock having crowed scarcely three times, he had denied himself, he himself was Jesus and the apostle Peter. He had to recover himself, return to himself at least before he died.

  The thought struck him that perhaps Ona didn’t answer because he had kept his essence from her. He hadn’t told her about his hand, wandering the world, or perhaps the heavens. Now the hand was calling him.

  His grandfather Raphael had once advised him: if you’re ever confused, cast a spell or better yet wait for a sign, but not from this crucified God. Wait instead for one from the oaks, from the altar place, from the current of the sacred river, from the cry of the sacred wolf; simply go on living, he’d say, don’t be afraid that you’ll miss seeing it or hearing it. No, when it appears – and it will appear – you’ll recognise it right away, it will speak to you in a loud voice and you’ll know everything. You won’t be able to deny understanding it – choose a holy place and wait. Vytautas Handless did just that, wandering the Vilnius streets (after all, Vilnius is also a dreary kind of temple), looking at the mouldings on the cornices of the old roofs, inhaling the odour of the city, which perspired gasoline, all the while secretly listening to the conversations of passers-by. He wasn’t in any hurry for he knew the fateful sign was looking for him and was searching with equal tenacity, and that inevitably they would run into each other.

  He found the hardcover booklet in a passageway. He flipped through it before his quivering hand stuck it in his pocket. Suddenly he felt the urge to run away from himself, to hide in a gloomy forest, dig himself into the ground and burn the book because he already knew that this booklet was the sign. He knew this with certainty, just as that other time when he had picked up a ring of sausage from the damp ground between the barbed wire. It was a genuinely delicious Lithuanian sausage. Without any hesitation he had recognised the smell of home wrenching his soul. Then, as now, he cursed his abominable fate, feeling that any freedom of decision or choice had disappeared and that just as he had once been guided by fate in the form of a sweet-smelling sausage, now he was being led by a slightly damp booklet. It was leading him into the unknown, into perdition, or maybe even into non-existence. His fate was always decided by the strangest or most shockingly trivial things.

  Winter in that land lasted eight months, but the river never froze completely even in the depths of winter. As if alive, its current had to breathe air and be able to see the world. It surrendered to no frost; it was invincible, like the common current of the lives of all the people who had been relocated to its banks. Tens, hundreds, thousands could perish, but there was no power that could destroy every single one of them.

  They brought the twenty-six of them to an abandoned logging camp. There were supposed to have been twenty-five, but at the last minute the supervisor of the zone had shoved Vytautas Handless over by the others.

  (‘Your odour gave you away, boy,’ he said in an almost matey manner. ‘You smelly thief, you.’

  Handless was still aware of the bitter taste of garlic and rosemary, the scent of juniper smoke, the smell and taste of home, when the zone superintendent crept along the row like a dog sniffing each one of them. He had nothing doglike about him; rather, his appearance was that of a tired geography teacher. But he was approaching Handless like death, like Giltine, the mythological goddess of death. Instead of the scythe, he grasped a polished riding crop.)

  The guards swore out loud, wading those few kilometres from the rusted-out tracks of the branch line. No one had cut timber here for several years. The file of men dragged along silently; only Alexis, when he first got off, muttered: ‘The sausage was mine. Elena is only in exile, she sent it to me. And as usual they filched it. Did it taste good?’

  Here the snow didn’t crunch at all; people’s voices momentarily froze into ice and fell into the snow banks without a sound. Around them stood trees that one could only dream of; many of them were probably two centuries old. They were painfully beautiful but at the same time sombre, as though they existed in a frightening fairy tale with no happy ending. Looking at them you were overcome by the fear that nothing else existed in the universe, that these stern and soulless trees had overtaken the entire earth. (They have no soul, Bruno was to shout later. Oak has a soul, ash can have one, even aspen – but not these ghastly giants.) The men clambered over the snow banks, each with his own sign, his own angel overhead. Bruno was being followed by his gaunt Dzukish muse, Alexis by the image of his Elena, while above Vytautas Handless’s head floated only the spirit of fragrant Lithuanian sausage, shining like a halo.

  Finally, the abandoned logging camp lay before them. Satisfied, the guards stamped their feet, shaking the snow from their boots as if they had arrived home. The camp was impossible to take in with one glance; in this country everything was inhuman, you would think that once upon a time giants had lived here. But the giants had long ago disappeared. Only the guards remained, and they kept stamping their feet, almost like they were testing the ground’s durability. But the ground here was harder than steel, a steel earth.

&nbs
p; ‘Tomorrow we’ll bring the rations,’ one said in a hoarse voice.

  ‘By tomorrow we’ll escape!’ snapped Zenka from Kaunas. He was the only one who felt good.

  The guards didn’t bother replying or even to shrug their shoulders. In winter no man could move more than twenty or so kilometres in this country – not even on skis or being armed with a gun. Even seasoned hunters didn’t stray too far from their cabins. No one and nothing could escape from here including the animals and birds. The clouds that kept drifting and drifting in the same direction were the only possible exceptions.

  ‘Are they going to leave us alone?’ said Bruno in amazement. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘In the Land of Miracles anything can happen. Anything!’ shot back Zenka.

  For some reason everyone called that part of the country, the valley of that river, the Land of Miracles.

  ‘We’ll bring food tomorrow, food for the whole two weeks,’ boomed the guard, walking away.

  He played with the hardcover booklet like a cat with a mouse, even though he understood perfectly well that it was the book which was playing with him, making him suffer, entrancing him like a boa constrictor hypnotises a rabbit petrified with fear. It burned his fingers, but as soon as he would fling it down, he’d pick it up again, open it, look over the face in the small photograph for the hundredth time. It reminded Vytautas Handless of Ona’s face: the wide lips, protruding cheekbones and the large, dark eyes. The woman in the photograph looked kind and tired; she was probably a champion milker, or perhaps a weaver. For some days he debated with incredible seriousness which would be more likely, as if this had any meaning at all. Only the document itself was important, the miserable little book whose owner gazed at Vytautas Handless with kind, sad eyes – Ona’s eyes – understanding and justifying him, allowing him to act as he saw fit. She offered her help without his asking. She didn’t begrudge him the booklet with hard covers, that respectful testimony, which gave its owner rights and privileges – after all, she was an ordinary woman, a milker or weaver. Maybe she wasn’t even aware of the privileges that he needed so much – needed briefly, not forever, just for the trip there and back for an ineluctable journey into the forbidden, dangerous past. He had to find his past and look it in the face. A man who has forgotten his past and renounced it is nothing but a wind-up doll.

  He didn’t ask himself anymore why the desire existed – he only wanted to comprehend why it arose now of all times, earnestly believing that neither his retirement nor all the spare time it created had anything to do with it; after all, painful thoughts had always tortured him, taken away his breath and suffocated him, had howled in the deepest closed-off subterranean passages, knocking at the iron door. But he had never broken down the door, had never even attempted to break it down. Why now in particular? His life had finally settled down quite nicely: a job in an enormous artel with responsibilities of a sort; certificates of merit and a medal of seniority; and two beloved daughters as well as other relatives and friends. Nothing reminded him of that which he himself didn’t want to remember, if anything it helped to keep shut the subterranean door. Why now in particular? Why not right after Ona’s death? Why not some other day or week or minute of those thirty-five years?

  Having thought it all over calmly, he decided that there was no reason for it, but he felt that the pressing desire would still win and had already won over him. It seemed like some other Vytautas Handless had occupied his soul, but a different one from the one who through all those years had lived, worked and strived harmoniously and correctly. The first version always knew how to force the world to be the way it was supposed to be. He could put his things and thoughts in their proper places, while this one, the new one, sowed confusion and ruin not only in himself but in the whole world. In his mind, the sun didn’t rise in the east and set in the west, odours changed to tastes, ideas to clouds, always drifting and drifting over the frozen earth. Suddenly the world lost its harmony, each item existed in isolation and it could mean whatever one wanted – now this, and in the blink of an eye, that. But what was worst was that this new Vytautas Handless could remember that which had been forgotten for eternity, that which perhaps had never even existed. The world fell apart and would not go together again. Vytautas Handless had felt this way only once in his lifetime – during the great council of the nineteen men who were all that was left of the original twenty-six. Once he caught himself talking to the hook-nosed neighbour’s cat, asking for his childhood friend Martin’s advice. He realised that the unquenchable desire had overcome him for good. He had to stop stalling on his commitment or go out of his mind.

  ‘It’s like a desert in my head. Camels are grazing, nibbling the sand.’

  ‘The raft won’t hold two. It won’t even hold one. It won’t hold anything.’

  ‘Did Elena’s sausage taste good? Did it?’

  ‘Men, the famine and cold have shocked our spirits. Our thoughts don’t belong to us anymore. Men, pull yourselves together, think of something very ordinary. Don’t do it, don’t do what you’ve decided to do. Come to your senses! How are you going to live afterwards, if you survive?’

  ‘It’s the voice of God! Whatever comes into everyone’s head at the same time is the voice of God!’

  ‘I have many heads. And they’re all so empty, so light. Men, listen, I have many heads. And each one of them talks in its own way.’

  ‘An idea of greatest lucidity. Of the greatest clarity. A mighty idea. Great lucidity. Great clarity. A great raft. The great message.’

  ‘Do you agree, Handless?’

  ‘Did Elena’s sausage taste good? Tell me, was it good?’

  ‘I’m a doctor. Everything is going to be okay, no pain. I have a medical degree.’

  Carefully, Vytautas Handless tore the picture of the kind and tired woman off the document, having previously apologised to her out loud for his grandfather Raphael had always taught him that at least a tiny part of man’s soul was hidden in his image – it could hear, understand and sympathise. He kept repeating to himself that he was making the document for himself, wishing only to find himself. He wasn’t aiming to become another person or to steal anything from the woman he didn’t know. The honourable certificate was only a key, a magic phrase like ‘open, sesame’ – only in the cave that was perhaps about to open neither gold nor emeralds were waiting for him, but rather himself: gaunt and malnourished, thirty years younger, he himself in the shape of a dragon, his jaws open wide, greedy for victims, the last of twenty-six men. Vytautas Handless, the last of twenty-six men, holding in his hands the document with a woman’s last name, while in the pocket next to his chest was the picture of the real owner of the document, so similar to pictures of Ona.

  Suddenly it struck him as incredibly funny that he was setting off on the most important feat of his life under the cover of a woman’s name. He choked with laughter until the tears came, tears that turned into the most real bitter tears, although Vytautas Handless didn’t understand for whom he was crying – whether it was for himself, the woman, Ona or for the future journey. He only knew that no one would notice the woman’s name; from previous times he knew that there, far beyond the Urals, in the former Land of Miracles, no one recognises or remembers Lithuanian first names or even last names.

  The snowstorm stopped raging just as suddenly as it had started roaring. And all at once an eerie frost set in. Not one of the twenty-six men could remember such a frost. The storm released its fury for two or three days. No one could say how many nights of terror there had been in the shaking shed. Several of the men became totally confused.

  The frost pressed down relentlessly for several days. It seemed that even the air would soon turn to ice and start to crack. The entire world froze: only the river and the twenty-six shabby men did not surrender. They kept the fire going day and night, as only a few matches remained. In that land fire and life often had the same meaning. The men mostly kept silent. Only Bruno constantly muttered, repeating that they wer
e little male vestal virgins and would survive if they threw just the tiniest piece of oak into the fire. But oak had not grown here since time immemorial. Bruno kept getting up to search for the holy wood, and the men would hold him down sullenly but without anger.

  The last leftovers of the January rations were running out. Some of them went out into the forest and returned with bark and pine cones, and tried to bite into them. Others shovelled snow, kept the fire going outside and attempted to dig out some miraculous roots. But the frozen ground here was stronger than human patience. At least twice a day volunteer scouts would wade out to look for the train tracks without any luck. There were no tracks; they had disappeared forever together with the guards and their dogs. All that was left were waist-high banks of snow and the ethereal frost, which caused the trunks of live trees to crack. Then there was the river; as if alive its current had to breathe air and view the world. It refused to surrender even to this eerie frost; it was invincible, like the common current of the lives of all the people who had been relocated on its banks. Ten could die, all twenty-six, thousands of others could. But there was no power that could make every single one of them disappear.

  They came up with idea of building rafts, but the ghostly tree giants did not wish them well. The axes and saws fractured and crumbled like glass. Though the men constantly returned to the fire of the shelter and patiently heated the helpless iron, the steel of the trees was more durable. Even the most patient ones, sacrificing almost all the axes, produced only a small raft; it wouldn’t have carried even the lightest of them.

  Toward the middle of the second week the men started to rave. One of them, screaming at the top of his lungs, would constantly rush out of the shed into the unknown. Some of them never returned. Those who retained at least a little common sense were still able to comprehend that one should not leave the fire. No one knew in which direction to go or where to seek help. They had only one good axe. Only a few matches remained, and the men were secretly afraid that even those might not light. They chewed on pieces of their clothing, bark and woodchips. A few had collapsed into a heap in the far corner of the shed and were raving deliriously, as if they were communicating in a secret language or were singing ghostly chorales. Francis knocked out Vaclov’s remaining teeth when all he had done was mention that someone was bound to come looking for them – after all, they were human beings. Valius held up the most steadfastly. If it hadn’t been for him, the men would long ago have waded out into the unknown in the direction of an indifferent death. Valius wouldn’t say anything, he’d only glance at those who’d gotten up with his fathomless eyes, which were sculpted into the shabby face of a saint, and the men would suddenly become hesitant. But there were some that even he could not restrain, and they were increasing in number. The men’s conversation had long since lost its meaning. One of them claimed to be flying, another told the same story about a fox hunt over and over again, and a third was possessed by naked women. This couldn’t go on. Something had to be done.