‘Maybe I’ll come visit you,’ says Tula, her eyes lowered at the cracked sidewalk. She strokes my old jacket with her glove and leaves so quickly I don’t even have time to ask: when will that be?
I return plagued by the sweet torture I’d already forgotten – that’s the kind of guy I am! I was with her for a few hours, and I’m happy! Only an honourable person, only a person who loves selflessly can do that! I headed for the sanatorium’s white gates without in the least blaming myself for flagrantly breaking the rules. I sobered up quickly in the biting cold, but I chewed on some green cedar from the hedge just in case. Maybe its bitterness will overwhelm the bitterness of vermouth and chrysanthemums?
I was in luck, for the sister who smelled the reek of alcohol from the door and was already leaning forward to write my surname into the journal of miscreants, unexpectedly raised her eyes and briskly asked if I wasn’t… Domicele’s… Domicele’s cousin? I stared and asked: whose? But I immediately confirmed: aha! She really is my relative, my cousin, yes! The middle-aged sister shone with little golden wrinkles which didn’t age this woman in the least. She and Domicele had danced in the same ethnic folk dance group in exile! Oh, those were the days! Exile, of course, was an injustice but when you’re young… Domicele played there, and sang, and what a comic!… Domicele a comic? I thought. And why not? It’s just in the long run that everything atrophied – humour turned to sarcasm, irony to malice, and so forth. The sister forgot both her infamous journal and my bad smell. She reminded me of how pretty, intelligent and friendly Domicele was… But how badly things turned out for her there! Of course, no one did well, but for her? She was madly in love with an Estonian, you see, this mechanic who played the accordion. But it turned out he was already married and ridiculously stubborn. He wouldn’t agree to divorce the wife he had left somewhere on the islands – you know how it is with those Estonians. I didn’t know this dramatic detail from my relative’s life, how could I? So that’s what happened! The sister nearly cried because she was so sorry for Domicele. Even now, after so many years! She made me swear not to let anyone see me, but when I started moaning that I badly needed a little drop, she sighed and trickled a drop of pure alcohol into a beaker, diluted it with water out of a fly-splattered carafe and gave it to me: ‘Go ahead, choke!’ she said, but not angrily, not angrily…
***
Incidentally, our senior doctor, the actor’s brother with the twitching cheek, would cure the most hopeless drunks with spirits. Not everyone, of course not – just those who were brought in already flying with the pink elephants. The sisters and veterans said they were delyrikai, the dis-lyricists instead of the usual diagnosis of delirium tremens. At first I just shrugged – those guys didn’t resemble degenerate lyricists, or artists of any kind for that matter. Defined by their dazed eyes, crazed movements and endless struggles to get free, they would be tied up in the tiny sixth ward not far from the bathroom. They would tie the drunks up tightly with sheets, soaking them first so the knots wouldn’t come loose. We, the comparatively recovering ones, would take turns watching at their deathbed, moistening their dried lips with a rag and wiping the cold sweat from their brows. Furnished with an intravenous drip, continually poked and otherwise prodded, the dis-lyricists either recovered or rather quickly gave up the ghost. They’d have time to rave all kinds of nonsense, some of which really would have been worth writing down. Actually, they did manage to haul some of them off to the intensive care ward where they would bid farewell in peace to the seas of vodka and their drunken non-life.
But to my great surprise, after a few days those who returned to this terribly imperfect and disorderly world began looking longingly again at the woods beyond the wire fence and towards the noisy street where the dreary Rytas loomed – a store that sold liquor. The orderlies, and even the sisters would say, as if in their defence, that they didn’t remember anything. So you see, it was those raving under a death sentence that the doctors would water with pure medical spirits. With a sudden, well-practised movement they would open their firmly-clenched teeth and slosh in a good dollop of burning liquid, all the while holding the jawbone pressed in a way so that not a drop splashed out to the sides… I’ve held one by the feet during this operation: the poor guy thought they wanted to kill him – maybe strangle him? Lo and behold, most of the time this medicine would raise them from the dead. The revived patient would start demanding a second dose and the doctor almost always poured him some.
One day the senior doctor called me in. A week had already gone by since the meeting on the Boulevard and the visit in the café – don’t tell me they’d sniffed out something? I waited all that week for Tula to show up but she didn’t come. On my way to drink tea I’d glance at the intersection, loiter in the gateway, sit around on the bench next to the registry office – but no, she’s not coming.
The senior doctor took my blood pressure and listened to my heart. I saw how he loathed these procedures. Then he punched me and his eye twitched, maybe even more than usual.
‘You see,’ he began, ‘my brother told me everything… well, you know, that you’re… this vagrant.’ He tried to giggle. ‘Forty-five days have passed already, it’s actually even more now…’
I looked at him silently. That’s how long the course of treatment takes, as determined by the specialists – forty-five days.
‘I’m releasing you,’ the good man decided. ‘Tomorrow. Stay somewhere for a week, okay? Well, drink or not, whatever works out for you. It’d be better not to, of course! Then come again on Monday, I’ll take you in. You can stay today.’
He only wished me well, this neurasthenic who, as I later discovered, was an unhappy man in his own right, but he wasn’t omnipotent, either. I used to see that type, men and women with folders and briefcases, dashing into his office, some of them waving their hands in the doorway or even wagging a finger. No, not omnipotent. Apparently even he fails to carry out some responsibility or another, or treatment plans, or maybe even the percentage of cures is too small. So there you have it, he has worries up to his ears! Maybe even serious vexations. But to me he only complained that his brother hadn’t gotten the lead role again. Instead, he’ll be standing there again with a halberd, like a stuffed dummy! He tried to smile. This time he almost succeeded.
I went out into the yard, smoked a cigarette under a brown chestnut, and from a distance saw Tula hurrying along the gravel pathway. She ran straight for the horribly green office door. So she wasn’t here to see me. My heart beat calmly again, my blood pressure returned to normal. Not to see me. Just to the office. I gave a shout. She turned, squinted and recognised me. She waited for me to come up to her. She looked thoroughly irritated, maybe even angry, even though she spoke in a half-whisper like she always did. She needed some paperwork from the hospital office.
‘Wait a bit, if you want,’ she said. ‘If you want,’ she emphasised again, or maybe it just seems that way to me now, suspiciously assigning significance to everything? Possibly.
What paperwork could she need there? To travel out of the country? Hardly likely! Or maybe she is leaving, what do I know. After all, anyone travelling beyond the cordon has to show that they’re not insane – the insane asylum bureau searches through its extensive card catalogue and if you aren’t in their archive, they give out a certificate that maybe you won’t pull any tricks and you can go… I waited for you for a good half-hour. Coming out you looked even more grim and angry. Not a word about paperwork. No polite questions about how I, the patient, was feeling. We quietly headed off to that same Rytas for a coffee. I climbed the stairs and stood in line while she ran into the store and said something to a woman standing in another line. It was only as I finished slurping the coffee that I suddenly realised it was Tula’s mother. I was itching to ask her what the two of them were doing here, what they needed here. I barely restrained myself. Tula was no longer in a hurry. The muscles in her face composed themselves, her lips seemed more seductively swollen than ever. The wrinkles n
ext to her lips relaxed and straightened out. Apparently her mother had agreed to wait somewhere for her. There was surely a great deal I didn’t know. We went out into a cool sunny day. When I suggested a smoke, she nodded vigorously: let’s go!
Manoeuvring between the cars, we ran across the inhumanly wide Olandu Street. On its opposite side the comfortable two-storey townhouses that had earlier belonged to Polish military officers had been completely renovated some time ago. Their entire grey and brown neighbourhood nestled in what was once a quiet and remote area next to Vilnius. The main road seethed, roared and wheezed now; the cars, it seemed, climbed atop one another as if marked with the sign of death. To me, at least, they resembled those pedestrians I had seen – barely animated drunks, bodies just pulled from the water.
There were no doors left anywhere and the two of us entered a narrow corridor and then went into the former kitchen. A smashed gas stove still stood there. I picked up the air-vent frame – the glass had been smashed out – that had fallen from the air vent and raised it to the hole that was once the window.
‘The frame,’ you muttered, ‘what a beautiful little frame!’
I immediately noticed the writing in black paint on the wall, which for some reason was in German: Wir sind ein okkupiertes Land! Oh well, at least it was there, in those Polish ruins. It should be photographed and sent to Der Spiegel, I said, and I translated it: ‘We are an occupied country!’ But it seemed occupation didn’t much concern you, Tula; you sniffed your little nose and that was all. I even remember what we smoked then as we sat on a fragrant stack of boards – it was Salem, long cigarettes smelling of menthol and packaged in Finland according to some kind of licence. It was you, Tula, who had them. You even gave me a couple of those cigarettes; I smoked them later, thinking about this strange meeting of ours. It was completely different from the other one, the meeting in the café.
It was as clear as day that she hadn’t gone there with her mum to visit me. But it wasn’t because of that fictional paperwork, either. And what of it, if after so many years I know the truth: you, Tula, were supposed to be committed to the First Ward with the milder cases and the losers tortured by romantic depression. But your mum, when she found out that my sullen shadow dragged itself around even here – you never did, after all, hide anything from her? – she immediately dropped the idea. Yes, Tula, it was only because of me that you evaded milk soup for supper, MGB in the vein, the silly interns with their psychological test folders – all of that merry madhouse. And after you left I was there hardly a half a day! Maybe something else really would have happened? You know, patients are like family. Maybe something would have changed? Changed where? Well, in our relationship, maybe even to our fates, what do I know? Maybe we would have been together after all, smoking fragrant Salems, spicy Ronhills or ordinary Primas, turning endless circles in the madmen’s lanes, climbing the wooded slopes, snuggling in the cold shade or even wandering as far as Butterflies Cemetery? You always did want to see it, at least once. I had filled your ears talking about it. Maybe we would have laid down there ourselves?
I put an arm around your shoulders and you didn’t so much as stir. I quickly pecked your cold, bloodless cheek and for some reason jumped back, but you sat there like a stone. Only the hand with the smoking Salem cigarette slowly swung down as you blew out a column of white smoke before swinging up again. You greedily inhaled, the cigarette shortening by nearly a centimetre.
‘Nothing would have turned out well for us anyway, nothing at all!’ you suddenly shouted so angrily that I cringed and slid off onto the ground. It was the first time I had heard your low voice so angry, Tula. It was so different from all the tones, nuances and modulations I had heard up until then! I wanted to ask: what wouldn’t have turned out well? Or maybe I was already asking, what should have happened? How badly I wanted to be disappointed in you then! Certainly all it would have taken was a single glance full of scorn or disgust, or even a carelessly thrown ‘drunkard!’ No, no, nothing of the sort! You sat there as before and from the little tip of your nose a clear drop trickled.
You sniffed, wiped it off with your plaid sleeve and laughed: ‘You see, I’m crying! You should be pleased!’
You announced this so solemnly, so seriously, that I was astonished – you weren’t putting on an act, you weren’t mocking me? I didn’t even suspect what it was that threatened you, but you already knew: from the Second City our militant, organised family had already raised its wings to move to somewhere near the border with Belarus… But even if I had known! Everything was already decided, as if it had been precisely drafted on a white piece of paper. This was the plan and I know this now: the daughter would rest in the hospital, and when she had recovered she would go straight to the refuge of the peaceful, natural surroundings of the small town of Pagude. There were too many ghosts of all sorts in the Second City. That’s the story!
I was powerless, but you, Tula, were even more so. Anyone observing us from outside would probably have said: run as far as you can from one another, you’re doomed! I’m already doomed as it is, I would have said to any such prognosticator, but what would you have answered, Tula? After all, you still suffered and how! But no one asked anyone anything. We stubbed out our cigarette butts and went out the opening into the suddenly gloomy street. Goodbye!
You went off without turning around even once, a grey knitted hat pulled over your head. Back then half of Lithuania wore hats like that. Some peevish guy who came out behind us started yelling – all the scum that come around here! – but I continued to watch you, silently. You walked faster and faster. All I saw was a woman come out from behind a dogwood bush – your mum, that time I recognised her. You linked arms and immediately disappeared from view. I didn’t even see where the two of you turned off. And how could I foresee that the next week I’d finally fall into the hands of the bluecoats, that after rotting in a temporary holding cell they wouldn’t release me into the sodden autumn but instead take me straight to the Drunkard’s Prison? Actually it was called by a much more innocent name. I didn’t foresee either that I wouldn’t see you, Tula, for three whole years or that when we did see each other again it really would be the last time. No premonition. Only an emptiness in my heart and completely normal blood pressure. All I knew then was that I wouldn’t be returning here on any Monday. Or any Tuesday, either.
Having made up my mind about this, I slowly crossed the roaring racecourse of Olandu Street and it was there that I was stopped by a writer I knew who was wearing dark glasses, a white coat that reached to his ankles and the elaborate walrus moustache. He was the one who was actually preparing to travel past the cordon; to West Germany no less, or the ‘moneyland’ as he himself called it. So it was he who had gotten that piece of paper, Tula. Even I was certain this guy wasn’t going to raise a stink while he was away; he’d know how to use both a bathroom and a fork. That type doesn’t disappoint. ‘Wir sind ein okkupiertes Land!’ – the writing on the wall in the Polish townhouse’s kitchen came to mind…
Translated by Elizabeth Novickas from Jurgis Kuncinas, Tula, Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishers (1993).
Jurgis Kuncinas (1947–2002) began his literary career as a poet, but later became one of the most prominent prose writers of his generation, as well as a respected translator from German. His novels Glison’s Noose (Glisono kilpa, 1992), Tula (1993) and Movable Röntgen Stations (Kilnojamos Rontgeno stotys, 1998), and his short story collections, including Good Morning, Mr. Enrike (Laba diena, pone Enrike, 1996), are notable not only for their plots, but also for the copious histories that flow from his narrators’ memories. His prose works, which are full of humour and irony, most often depicted Soviet era Vilnius through restless, bohemian characters who cannot adapt to the rhythms of official life.
* * *
1* A pood is a unit of measure used in the Russian Empire equal to about 36 pounds.
When the Weapons are Silent
Herkus Kuncius
Stub
born battles persisted in the mountains. Yet here, in the division, the storms of war were distant. About to ascend into his fifth decade, the chief of the division’s political branch, Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Kazimyrovich Pak, returned from work every day at six in the evening, changed into a comfortable tracksuit and lay down on the couch.
‘You’re tired today, Afanasy,’ his beautiful wife Nadezhda Pak would say. He had brought her back from the Kuril Islands.
‘Hardly,’ said Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy and he’d wave his hand. ‘People get really tired over there,’ he’d say and his wife Nadezhda Pak understood that her husband was referring to the battles in the mountains.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Kazimyrovich Pak, chief of the division’s political branch, longed for a transfer to the mountains. He wanted action. This was an understandable desire, because for the warrior Afanasy a life lived in peace behind a desk passes by without purpose. Afanasy tried everything: he wrote reports to the leaders of the division and the military district; he even flew to meet personally with Army General Nursultan Genrikhovich Mitrofanov – they were well acquainted from their days at the military academy.
But it was all in vain.
The laconic response was always the same: ‘Request denied’.
Afanasy Kazimyrovich Pak was vexed; he even began doubting his military prowess. He was a descendant of a renowned military dynasty – his great-grandfather served under Denikin, his grandfather wore the budenovka, his father, First Lieutenant Kazimierz Lionginovich Pak, fell fighting the counter-revolutionaries during the Budapest revolt. The men of the Pak family were all heroes, having shed more than their share of blood in the fields of battle. And here was Afanasy – a failure, a disgrace to the family.
The Dedalus Book of Lithuianian Literature Page 18