Vilnius Poker

by Ricardas Gavelis

  “Which ones? Those who played, or those who listened?”

  “All of them.”

  “I’m not sorry,” Gedis answered without wavering. “To waken someone isn’t a crime, it’s a service.”

  That was all he said about his playing. The two of us went down the street (I will walk here with Lolita), smoking cigarette after cigarette (Lolita will tell me about her mother and innocence manias).

  “An abandoned church!” Gedis finally spoke. “A true metaphor. The place where a dead God is laid to rest. Not Christ, of course, and not the bearded Sabaoth with the holy doves under his arm. The dead God of Lithuania. Every Lithuanian should go to an abandoned, desecrated church on a daily basis. After all, it’s a reflection of our spirit: the remains of former majesty, along with trash, debris, dust. We need to see every day that all of our gods are dead. So that even in complete despair we won’t have anywhere to turn. After all, we stopped believing in anything a long time ago. Only idiots can believe in the Kremlin these days; fanatics—in Christ; paranoids who consider the current state of affairs desirable—in the spirit of the Lithuanian people. Only fools, unfortunately, believe in the power of intellect. We’re not even destined to believe in the power of money, because our money is shit. You won’t buy yourself anything with it—not even freedom . . . Maybe some Englishman or Frenchman doesn’t believe in anything, either, but that’s something totally different . . . Other enslaved peoples at least believe in their liberation, Lithuanians stopped believing in anything a long time ago. Not even in that absolute lack of belief of theirs. They don’t even know how to be genuine cynics. Lithuania is a void, stuffed with rotting memories . . . there’s nothing, nothing, nothing left—only the language. But a language can’t be an object of faith. A thousand intelligent men all over the world analyze the Lithuanian language because it’s incredibly interesting, practically unique. But who analyzes Lithuanians? It’d be better if one of those thousand analyzed Lithuanian’s spiritual history, all that drivel, that nameless heartache and hopeless, grotesque attempts at living. I swear—they’d understand where humanity has been and where it’s going! . . . Oh! I don’t know what to do. Shoot at the political commentators on the TV screen? Listen, Vyt, let’s start our own sect, huh? The soul searchers’ sect. For sermons we’ll read music or mathematical formulas. And you’ll tell stories about the camp, about your father and grandfather . . . And when everyone asks what’s our purpose, what our sect is after, where is it leading to, we’ll answer: look, listen, smell—we’ve already told you everything; played it, wrote it, drew it. All that’s left is for you to feel and understand it . . . and believe . . .”

  And not a word about “Vilnius Poker.” Gedis talked about this and that, gathered pebbles from the wet paths and slung them into invisible tree trunks, whistled unfamiliar melodies. It seemed he was secretly distancing himself from me, slamming shut the door that had just now been open, closing the shades, shutting the windows. I didn’t know how to hold him back, which of his hands to grab, except for that third one, which was probably no longer there. The two of us finally reached the river, descended the steps, and stopped right next to the dark stream. It had been soaked in rain for some time; the water had risen up to the very bank. Gedis squatted and dipped his hand into the muddy current.

  “The river! The Neris!” he muttered, shaking invisible drops from his hand, “Why not Joyce’s riverrun? How is the Neris less than the Liffey? Why doesn’t anyone immortalize it as the current of dreams and oblivion? When you think ‘river,’ you immediately remember the Lethe and the Liffey . . . Dublin and the Liffey have been forever impressed onto the world’s brains, and old man Joyce sits in the heavens and jeers . . . What’s the Liffey without him—a muddy stream, and nothing more. I saw it myself . . . But where’s the Neris? Where’s Vilnius? Why doesn’t the world know anything about them?”

  And not a word about his concert. Probably Gedis should have played quite a bit longer, so that there would be no words left in him at all. Suddenly I felt like I wanted to swim to the other, invisible bank of the river—as if the world would be different there, as if Vilnius would be altogether different.

  “A smashed-up boat full of water should bob on the bank. Forgotten by everyone—no one wants to swim across the current to the other side.” Gedis again nervously lit up a cigarette. “Have you noticed that Lithuanians have always feared and avoided water? Or more precisely, moving water: currents, rapids, ocean waves. The vital power of water horrifies them. They like standing water: Lithuanians like little lakes and swamps. Particularly swamps: the greatest victories in war were won thanks to swamps. Swamps are rotting, murky water. It’s the mythological tragedy of the nation. They couldn’t step past an unspeakable inner taboo, couldn’t overcome themselves . . . Anything but a current, anything but ocean waves! What a weird horror: the Lithuanians lived on the seashore for ages upon ages and never got the urge to sail to foreign countries, to find something completely unknown, or even to dream of other shores. They only fished along the coast. Even Lithuania’s head was cut off by the current of the Nemunas. Always that mythological power of moving water . . . the nation cut off its own head. Yes, yes, every country has a head, a trunk, arms and legs—like a Dogon house. The current of the Nemunas cut off Prussia and the Prussians from us. And that’s exactly where Lithuania’s head and brains were: its religion and shrines, the height of its culture and the rudiments of philosophy. It was all there. Even the ground itself is magical there: the Germans murdered or assimilated the Prussians, but they specifically drew the power for their state from Prussia . . . Lithuanian culture came from there even centuries later. Even when it’s chopped off, a root sprouts . . . And it was all lost by free will. No one fought for Prussia; no one wanted to sail across the current to the other side . . . Explain to me why on earth we needed to rule over millions of Byelorussians and Russians, to lose and conquer some place like Vitebsk dozens of times, to drag ourselves to Moscow itself and exact tribute from it, to go chasing the Tartars across the steppes, to fatten an already fattened body, and at the same time lose the head . . . That’s how it is: we’re a headless people. By now it’s been five hundred years. The evil powers deceived us and stole our brains. And it’s very easy to enslave a brainless country . . . That’s what the scholars studying the Lithuanian language should think about. Let every nation, every country, thoroughly explain where it’s head is at, and then let them guard it.”

  Not a word about “Vilnius Poker.” Gedis angrily spat into the water, raised his collar, and turned his back to the Neris.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he muttered brusquely. “Don’t be afraid, the river won’t follow us. I’m sure of that.”

  I felt the door which had, it seemed, slammed shut, was by no means closed, and that Gedis wasn’t trying to hide; he was still leading me forward.

  “The worst of all is what you could find here—the beasts of Vilnius,” he looked down a little street creeping along a curve. “The dragon of Vilnius, which needs to have its head cut off. He’s hiding here somewhere too.”

  “Not here,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “I believe you, I believe you: you know another spot, maybe even that abandoned church. But don’t be mistaken: that beast is everywhere. A disgusting, scaly dragon, a Basilisk that kills with its gaze. There’s no hiding from it. It must, it must be beheaded . . . Yeah, why ‘Vilnius Poker?’ ‘The dragon of Vilnius’ would be a hundred times better.”

  My head spun and I felt faint. Without warning, Gedis had touched my most sensitive spots. He turned around carelessly and broke my glass shield. I was left stark naked; every one of his words lashed me with tongues of fire. I had never seriously thought about the dragon, and yet it had splattered me with its poisonous spray too.

  “It always seems you’ll meet it any minute. It’s completely for real: gigantic, overgrown with mold, with ghastly, greenish little eyes . . . Maybe it’s hunkered down in Old Town’s unde
rground, or maybe it’s hiding in the new neighborhoods, in between the matchbox geometry. When you wake up and look out the window, it’s sprawling out there in the fog, across the new highway, spreading the smell of decay around. Content and confident in its power, in its invincibility . . . Satisfied . . . It’s here, it’s here somewhere. It has to be. It can’t not be. But what is it? What does it look like? Where is it? Maybe around that corner?”

  “No,” I whispered to myself. “No, it won’t be there. It’s somewhere else.”

  Bitinas sits with his head tilted sideways, looking at you intently. His skull, shaved bald, even shimmers. He’s the only one who didn’t take a nickname; he proudly calls himself by his real name. The only one to have the Vytis Cross, but he doesn’t put on airs at all; he pins it on only on the sixteenth of February. The exploits he plans are precise and elegant. It’s said that your group has lost the least men out of all the groups in Lithuania, and there’s a lot of them.

  “Of course you want to get a pistonmachine,” Bitinas says in an icy voice. “Of course you want to fight and show your courage.”

  You swallow, but you can’t manage to speak out, you just nod your head. Bitinas bewitched you long ago; you’re afraid of him.

  “You won’t get a weapon. You are meant for other things.”

  Bitinas’ shaved skull and small black whiskers intimidate and oppress you. He doesn’t look like an inhabitant of this earth, maybe because you’re conversing underground. Your bunker is an entire underground garrison: undetectable, unnoticeable. Bitinas even ordered the air vents run into the bark of trees; he even found a way to disguise it from the search dogs. You are moles, unaccustomed to the light of day.

  “Our battle will be a long one, Vytautas. We’ll punish the settlers; we’ll punish the collaborators. The Russians must be left in a complete void, supported by no one.”

  “To me that’s obvious,” you say, surprisingly boldly.

  “I don’t doubt it. You’re an intelligent person. Yes, we’ll kill and be killed. A civil war is a terrible thing. It’s not Christian. But there are special tasks.”

  Bitinas opens an iron box, takes a photograph out of it, and carefully lays it in front of you. His hands are majestic; they spread a crushing calm. You won’t escape from hands like those.

  “Take a good look!”

  In the photograph there’s a bony-faced man, probably not a Lithuanian. You don’t see anything special, maybe just that his hair is particularly unruly; it’s standing on end. You take a good look at his eyes. There’s no gaze in them; they’re like buttons set in his eye sockets.

  “Who is he?”

  “The executioner of the Lithuanian nation. Remember his name: Suslov, from the word ‘susas.’ He really is rather mangy.”

  Bitinas smiles wryly, and scores of little veins in your temples start pounding; anger and mortification flood through your chest. They’ll make a spy out of you, but you want to do battle. That’s why you came here.

  “He’s the emissary from Moscow. Sent here to deal with the Lithuanian nation. He has introduced two slogans. The first—finish off Lithuanian-German fascism. Pay attention—it’s the Lithuanians who are monsters, but he’s not. The second basic slogan—Lithuania without Lithuanians! No colonizers have ever introduced anything like that before.”

  “I won’t be able to do it,” you answer, your voice trembles from that incalculable pounding.

  “If we’re in the position where we’re forced to kill, we must first punish those who have truly earned punishment. Muravyov the Hangman, compared to Suslov, is no more than a babe in arms. He hung maybe a hundred, while Suslov’s counter has ten thousand as its smallest unit. He is a dragon. A dragon that must be beheaded. His head has to end up on top of a flagpole in place of the Soviet flag.”

  Your head spins, you see the spike, and on it—a dried-up head. But not the man in the photograph, not the head of the dragon. Shudders shake you, but even with your eyes closed you see Bitinas’s head on the spike. A flashing bare skull and black whiskers. The prophetic vision is so strong that despite yourself you step backwards, while the live Bitinas’s ghastly head watches you attentively.

  “We’ve selected ten men from various groups all over Lithuania, whose purpose is to track down the dragon. I picked you, Vytautas. I won’t give you a weapon. You don’t have the right to die in a ridiculous firefight. You’re meant for other things.”

  You’re wracked by shudders, because you have to talk to the transfixed head of a dead man. There are gloomy tunnels about; vague flames flicker in them; they commune with Bitinas’s angrily flickering eyes.

  “I believe if anyone can get to the dragon, it’ll be you. The dragon must be destroyed. The widows and orphans cry for it. Hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians in the snows of Siberia pray for it.”

  “But why me?”

  “You’re an exceptional person, Vytautas,” answers the head on the pike. “I can see it in your eyes: you’ll manage. That creature has no right to live. He’s driven us, the masters of our country, underground, and dares to breathe Lithuanian air himself.”

  You want to answer that underground is a place of sobriety and safety, that it’s only here that you have nothing to fear, but you’re quiet, since the dead man’s bald head won’t believe it.

  “I’m inexperienced. Why not you . . . or some other old soldier?”

  “Too many people know me and the others. A young man is what’s needed, a man no one knows. You see—you’re the son of working people. You’ve learned Russian at night, after backbreaking labor, studying Stalin’s writings, for which you could have been shot. You will need to play your role well.”

  “It’s that hard to find the dragon’s lair?”

  “Don’t tell me you have no inkling of how afraid he is? He’s afraid of us. He’s afraid of his staff. He’s afraid of the whole world. He doesn’t show his face anywhere. He sleeps only sealed up in a tank: we got this from a reliable source.”

  The bald head lights a cigarette, and you breathe easier: the flame of the match lit up his waist and broad shoulders. There is no pike. Even Bitinas’s sad grimace calms you. Creaking, the cover of the tank stopped by the forest opens, and out of the hatch the dragon’s head emerges. It looks around and, just in case, releases a plume of fire into the nearest bushes.

  “What do you think—who established the destroyer units in Lithuania? They didn’t even look for a nicer name. Destroyer units, that’s all. Sonderkommand. What do you think, whose idea was that?

  “The dragon’s?”

  “You’ve guessed it.” Bitinas smiles grimly, and you are stunned, because his eyes open wide and you see how much he’s suffering: you sense the pain gripping him, him—the iron man with the icy voice. “As you know, after a battle our soldiers’ bodies are gathered and laid out in the village and town squares. Just so that everyone who brushes away a tear while passing by can be seized immediately and sent to Siberia. Whose elegant idea was that, you think?”

  “The dragon’s,” I answer firmly now. “The dragon’s.”

  You know that you won’t escape from Bitinas’s sticky fingers. It will be your lot to face the dragon barehanded, and no one is promising you a princess or half a kingdom. No one is promising you anything.

  “How do you blow up a tank?” you suddenly ask.

  The mothers stubbornly drag the children to the front, but the children aren’t in any hurry; they look around. They want to see everything, feel everything, and understand everything—not just that bug-eyed drunk, but the shape of the trees’ branches and the construction of the trolleybus. It’ll be worse when they want to understand themselves. Or that young woman there with the sickly, dark bags under her eyes:

  “I can’t stand it anymore! I feel like a caveman. Yesterday they were selling decent pork—two Russian women in the line got into a fight. They drew blood!”

  “That’s the way it should be. As long as there’s nothing in your head except a hunger for
meat and winter boots, you’re a proper Soviet citizen. What would happen if we had everything in spades? You’d start—God forbid!—to think. You’d become dangerous.”

  A thirty-year-old homegrown philosopher with a shock of hair. He glances around to see if anyone hears how brave he is. Every establishment, every café is full of people like that. If all of their words would turn into matter, it would fill the streets and cover the tallest houses: Vilnius would be destroyed by empty words. Besides, that speaker is terribly naïve. If having everything could save you from Them, the world would long since be a different place. A McCarthy suddenly shows up even in the wealthiest societies. Even Hitler can be chosen in a free election. You might think a thriving Englishman immediately rushes off to think about the Universe and the structure of human society. Not at all; one collects neckties, another—diamonds. Each according to his means. Not for God, but for Mammon. They let you have a lot of gold—if you renounce your soul.

  At one time I had decided that Their credo is a dictate of pure reason: They merely calculated that a society of kanuked creatures provides the most stability. If an anthill is the most stable way of life, then you need to construct human anthills. There can be no talk of the individual, freedom, or the soul; all of that just gets in the way. Their great commissar Plato described a state of that sort. It’s worth reading—it’s the germ of Their pathologic. Stalin attempted to bring a society like that into being. People aren’t necessary—every member of society is nothing more than a function. He lives by his function alone, thinks only of his function, dreams only of his function. Dzerzhinsky dearly loves children, but his function is to be an executioner, hence he becomes an executioner. Hess adores music, but his function is to kill the Auschwitz Jews, so he murders Jews. (Just thumb through Soviet books, look at the films—how many odes and thunderous apologias there are for people who sacrificed themselves and their inner beings to the functions thrust on them.) Every morning the only newspaper in the country announces what is to be done today, and everyone meekly obeys. Orwell described the life of such an anthill of the kanuked in detail.