Vilnius Poker

Every seeker needs direction. Their secret lingers everywhere—in the constellations of the stars and in the morning fog of a dream that hasn’t dispersed, in the pavement of every Vilnius side street and inside the most disgusting slut’s vagina. Their secret cannot be coded into any one sign, any one scent, or any one dream. It hides everywhere—like the name of God—you just need to know how to read it. The blond-haired girl slowly going down the evening street carries Their mark within her. If you could understand her completely, you would solve Their secret too. The fissured wall of an old house most certainly conceals Their hieroglyph; perhaps if you overlaid a drawing of those cracks on a map of Vilnius you would see Their secret pathways. But it’s the river that matters most.

  The river is paramount. I cannot write anything down on paper (They destroy papers). I cannot encrypt anything (Their pathologic deciphers everything). I cannot carry everything in my head (They will rip my head off). The river is the only place my information can survive. I whisper my secret prayer, every day, only to the river: do not try to name Their purpose, because there are no words for that; do not identify Them with any government, any system, any organization—that’s just what They are waiting for, for you to attack particulars instead of universals.

  I have offered the Neris hundreds of my prayers, most often at night. Night and the dark always guard me. In the dark you are invisible; the oppressive stares of the kanukai don’t reach you. The river’s current saved me from the unbearable weight of knowing. The Neris is Vilnius’s ear; it heard me.

  Now I walk along the bank and for the hundredth time arrange the secret signs, checking to see that none have gotten lost. The Neris flows in from the unknown, from the depths of the ages—just as They did. No one has yet determined the epoch when Their development turned aside from humanity’s development, no one has researched Their evolution or Their history, although all of that should be tucked away somewhere deep within every person’s memory. In their genetic memory—no wonder They try so hard to change humanity through genetics. Lithuania without Lithuanians! The Crimea without Tatars! Europe without Jews! Vilnius without a memory! The genes of memory hide in the Neris’s current too; there’s extinct nations flowing there, and death factories, and witch hunts. Across from Žirmūnai’s first bend there is a small patch of land dotted with multi-colored stones. Every little stone there has its own hidden meaning. The two giant boulders—they’re the two great geneticists, Hitler and Stalin. I can sit on either one of them. The boulders stand opposite each other. The one on the left, without doubt, is Hitler; I seem to see that famous shock of hair, fallen on his forehead, or maybe the little kanukish eyes, or maybe I hear the hysterical voice. That rock is Hitler. The second sits there more quietly, sunk into the ground; he weaves his plans in secret. When I’m standing here, I’m afraid to turn my back on him. It seems he’ll start moving any moment, deftly crawl over and sink his poisonous teeth into my ankles. I’m still afraid of that rock, of his Georgian mustache, of his sticky fingers. But he is just a rock, both of them are just rocks. Never get distracted by politics and government leaders, they don’t matter as much as the ordinary backyard kanukas who’s devouring everyone with his stare. All politicians are just robots; police intelligence organizations—second-rate robots; government officials—third-rate robots. Don’t look for answers in the system of government. I know Them, believe me. I look over the huge number of little stones rolling under my feet. There must be millions of them lying here. The six million Jews Hitler finished off; Stalin tried to better this number, but he didn’t make it, he didn’t make it. Why Jews (dark gray smooth little stones) in particular? Perhaps they really did transmit secrets no one else knows through the ages? But it’s impossible to look for the logic in Their doings—take that pile of white stones looming over there. Several million Ukrainians, starved to death by Stalin. So it turns out Ukrainians also know something they shouldn’t? And what do the Crimean Tatars have to do with it? Questions without answers. And a continually growing suspicion that it’s all done for no reason whatsoever. Why does a river flow? Because it flows. Sometimes They act with the particular inevitability and senselessness characteristic of inanimate nature. If Hitler’s death factories had reached their planned capacity, they would have destroyed more people in a year than were born in all of Europe. Thanks to Their secret doings the world’s countries have stored up more weapons than are needed to destroy all of humanity.

  A withered bush juts out beyond the garden of stones. There I hid yet another thought of mine, one born in a difficult, nightmarish dream: Their dialectic isn’t the world’s dialectic. Their doings unravel the world’s harmony. The bush’s branches are dead; the rotten leaves hang on crooked stalks. They can only kanuk a human; neither rivers nor trees submit to Them. When sucking out people’s souls, They, willingly or not, contradict nature. The community of soulless humans destroys nature by its very breathing, even with its thoughts. Particularly thoughts. That’s how ecological disasters happen. That’s how the one that still awaits us all will happen. The ancient Chinese knew very well that a person’s spirit, his thoughts, and his morals affect nature directly. A human spirit changes air, fire, water, the origins of the cosmos, and cosmic harmony. When the spirit fails, so does the great harmony. Futurologists delving into ecological balance with computers are ridiculous. They count external symptoms, but they don’t know the deeper reason. They have no idea what I’ve encrypted into this poor, puny bush. They can’t see a bush like that right in front of their eyes. They don’t live in Vilnius. They are blind—I was like that too, not so very long ago. If we want to save ourselves, we don’t need to count the smoke coming out of factories, but rather the remains of the human spirit.

  Why, what’s it all for? Why do They need it? Why did the kanukai metropole settle into Vilnius in particular? Why not in Bangkok, Port-au-Prince, or a nameless valley of snakes in Burma? Don’t tell me They are attracted by the Neris’s broad banks and the high-rise building boxes that are slowly wading into the stream? Vilnius really could drown; the houses could, in a sad row, crawl into the water. Unfortunately, the Neris is too shallow.

  I can sit on the bank across from the double whirlpools by the Žirmūnai bridge for hours on end. It is one of the Neris’s most dreadful spots. Every bit of straw that floats by, swallowed by the throat of the vortex, turns into a ruined human spirit. See there now, a scrap of paper floats in, thrashes, and disappears into the black funnel. Perhaps that’s Freud, who got a craving to pull Their image out of oblivion, out of the subconscious, and was instantly dealt with. What’s left of him after diving through the whirlpool? Naked biology, the libido, and sexual impulses. And perhaps that little stalk over there is Tolstoy, searching for the human in humanity, but ending in complete drivel. Or Picasso (a Spaniard!), striving to breathe spirit into art, but turned into a joker by Them. Or perhaps the little stalk will never again rise from the whirlpool; it’ll be swallowed up and left on the bottom for the ages. Then it will be one of those who never gave in, let’s say, Lorca (a Spaniard again!), snuffed out like a smoldering candle the moment he tried to hint of Them less indirectly. (Do you remember “El publico”? Do you remember the fake Juliet and the scream, “That’s not the real Juliet, They’ve tied the real one up and pushed her under the chairs”?)

  I’d really like to announce my knowledge to everyone, but it’s impossible. The Neris is the only place that can safeguard my thoughts. If I name all the nameless stalks, if I give them meaning, even They won’t be able to destroy those meanings. They can’t drink up a river. The one who comes after me will understand everything. The Neris will float my memory to him. I hid everything I know in the current of the Neris. I hid it well—even They won’t decipher those signs. Only the one who will come after me can read them. The Neris is my encyclopedia, the magnum opus of my life. Heraclitus couldn’t wade into the same stream twice. He didn’t have his Neris. He didn’t have a river whose current is eternal and cyclical, where not just water flows
, but thoughts and words flow too, where my cry flows. The entire river current is full of my cry; it pours into the sea. Its particles splash with the spray of ocean crests into the shores of Australia, America, or Africa. And no one, no one hears it. No one. Except maybe Them.

  Only They always hear everything, that metaphysical tribe that broke off from the human family in times past, the carrier of bulging little eyes, the parasite of the spirit, the apologist of deformed bodies, Vilnius’s secret ruler. I cannot bear it anymore. It would be better if They shoved me into the Neris, so I would float downstream like someone’s recollection myself. It would be better if They strangled me in my sleep. Why do They let me live? What task of Theirs do I fulfill without being aware of it myself?

  I have only one answer: They forgot their own purpose long ago. They do everything as if they were automatons, as if they were creatures driven by a pathological instinct. They themselves no longer understand the reason why they have to bear crippled bodies and kanuk everyone in sight. They themselves want to know what it all means, or if they have a purpose. And they hope it will be I who will discover it, who will read it in an old folio, or dream it, or sweat it out during some night of kanukish nightmares. If there is such a purpose at all. What is the purpose of the movement of the stars? For what purpose do we dream of white horses or stares without eyes? What is the purpose of Vilnius’s existence, the purpose of this river, the purpose of us all?

  “We’re not going to finish this Judas off just any old way, but in a true Lithuanian way,” says Bitinas calmly.

  He speaks ringingly, like a preacher; his voice flutters in pale yellow stripes among the thick tree trunks.

  “We won’t finish him off because he’s a stribas. Not because he’s a spy for the Russkies. The NKVD tramped over our heads six times and brought dogs, but even they couldn’t sniff us out. A bit longer, and one Judas would have betrayed everyone. But that’s not why we’ll finish him off. It’ll be just because we are human beings.”

  The men are standing in a small group, disheveled and shabby. Of course, they’re humans. They are human because they suffer and have hope.

  “We’re neither beasts nor gods,” says Bitinas. “We’re in the middle. Animals don’t betray anyone and fight only for a mate or food. But we betray first, and then we kill. Or first kill, and then betray. It’s all because of our hunger for love, for sympathy, and for the welfare of our loved ones. Do you know how our forefathers punished a traitor? They would slit his stomach, pull out the end of his guts, and nail them to a pole. And then they would force him to walk in a circle around the pole, so that he could see his own traitorous intestines wrapping around it.”

  Bitinas stands hunched over and aged, looking like a pagan priest who’s condemned a victim to the ritual of fire and knife. You still don’t believe it. You look again at the men who have assumed the names of trees; they stand there leaning as if they really were trees. They have nothing—neither sun, nor air, nor real names—only a bunker and pistonmachines.

  “I wonder how our forefathers dealt with the traitors of traitors?” Bitinas asks himself. “Who turned him in?”

  “Giedraitis,” answers Ash. “With all the evidence.”

  “Mr. Giedraitis’s son?” Bitinas turns to you. “Your friend, Vargalys?”

  “We were only neighbors,” you say, and remember the junior Giedraitis’s puppyish eyes.

  “A nice neighbor! He shows up wherever someone dies—one of ours or a stribas . . . It seems he’s attracted to carrion.”

  Bitinas looks at you without blinking, his eyes really are like a pagan priest’s: cold, penetrating, sucking out of you what you need yourself. You sadly think of where you are and what you’re doing. Fighting for Lithuania? Seeking the dragon? You glance at Birch. He’s a human too, after all, sitting with his hands and legs tied, propped up against the trunk of a tree, his long eyelashes blinking frequently.

  “We’ll pull out your intestines, you hear?” Bitinas has already decided.

  “I knew where I was going,” Birch tries to keep his courage up, but his voice gives him away: it trembles and squeaks.

  “You don’t know anything. There’s nothing in the head of a Russkie agent. What kind of birch are you. What kind of Lithuanian. Are you a human being, damn it? You didn’t know anything and won’t know anything. But maybe seeing your intestines you’ll find out . . . You start, Vargalys!”

  “No,” says your voice. “No, I can’t. I won’t stay here. I won’t even watch. I’m going back to the bunker.”

  “You can,” Bitinas says calmly. “You can do anything. After all, you’re a human. After all, you’re great. You must be able to do everything. Imagine that you finally catch the dragon; you trap him in a corner of his stinking cave. And suddenly he starts crying human tears and speaks in a human voice. Don’t tell me your hand is going to start shaking? Don’t tell me you won’t slit the dragon’s stomach?”

  Could you cut up a living person? If your brain were empty and your heart completely empty—perhaps you’d manage to. But then you wouldn’t be there yourself. What’s going on here? Soon it’ll be YOU whose stomach they slit and it’ll be YOUR intestines they wrap around a tree. YOU are sitting with your hands and legs tied, propped up against a tree trunk. YOU blink your long eyelashes frequently.

  “Enough,” says Ash. “Leave the kid alone. I’ll do it myself.”

  Petrified, you watch him lumber over to Birch, bend down on one knee, and tear the clothes from his belly. You should have been the one doing this. You’d calmly unfold a short, crooked knife and, without hurrying, cut through the ropes around his legs. Pausing a bit, you’d deftly slit Birch’s belly; you’d pull out an intestine, hooking it with a bent finger (inside of it, under the slimy membrane, something would move). You would push Birch over on his knees and nail the end of the gut to the old tree trunk, nailing it in simply with your fist, with several angry blows.

  “So how did our forefathers force them to walk?” Ash asks. “Maybe we should finish him off and be done with it?”

  You see everything clearly; the evening glow is at its height now. It seems a long, whitish worm crawled out of Birch’s stomach and bit into the tree trunk.

  “You didn’t understand a thing,” Bitinas nods his head. “Death threatens us, the warriors for a sacred cause, every day. While this slime bag . . .”

  You don’t want to; you fight it, but unavoidably you turn into Bitinas. Your knuckles slowly become gnarled and your head bald. You start scowling just like he does; you become more and more gaunt. But most important—your thoughts turn into Bitinas’s thoughts (or his thoughts turn into yours).

  You hate yourself and love Birch. And that which we love we must kill. To feel the sacrificial knife plunging into the body of love, its handle transmitting the pulse of another’s life to you, the blade easily slitting the live flesh. You turn him on his back, no, you can’t . . . you turn Birch on his back, no, you just can’t . . . you turn him on his back, Bitinas forces him on his back and slashes his entire belly with the knife. The woods smell of sap, the men and the trees have stiffened, while Birch’s belly grins a wide, bloody smile. Inside are the intestines; there are lots of them, they teem like worms, you never thought there were so many. You don’t run, something inside you attracts you to the dreadful smile of the slashed belly, now you almost want to be in Bitinas’s place, to plunge your hands into Birch’s warm guts and squeeze them with your fingers. Can there be any greater way of being so close to someone? Bitinas cuts the guts into pieces, at first he hurries like he’s being driven, but later he can barely move. Birch’s legs slip out from under Bitinas’s knees, he convulses as if he’s dancing, then he moans and quiets down. He looks at you with surprise and regret. Only with surprise and regret.

  Suddenly you ask yourself what Bitinas is doing here, what has he already done. Blood rushes to your face; you recoil, but by now it’s too late to run. You also TOOK PART. What happened here? How will God punish you a
ll? What will you all turn into now? You should poke out your eyes, because you watched everything. Bitinas slowly stands up, wipes his hands on a clump of grass. He slowly raises his head. He no longer has a gaze, the eyes have disappeared from his face, there are no eyes.

  “Stick those guts into a bag,” says Bitinas grimly, “and take them to that junior Giedraitis.”

  Where did the birds go?

  The same smell of rotting leaves hovers over the city again. On the way to work I’m again accompanied by the exact same stares. The day is exactly the same again (or maybe it is the same?). Two stupefied pigeons should perch next to the announcement post across from the library. Today is marked by their three-toed feet, a heap of yellowish leaves, and the dusty intestine of the library’s corridor. And Lolita’s exhausted face—a memory or reality? When was this already? When was it exactly the same (or maybe the same) day? The bright bluish-gray sun outside the window and Lolita divining with cigarette smoke? Her legs are truly a work of art. Her breasts are every man’s dream. Beauty must be limited; otherwise it inevitably turns evil.

  Evil? I don’t know what evil is. They are not evil; perhaps They are an inevitable part of the world, without which it couldn’t exist at all.

  I look at Lolita and for the hundredth time it occurs to me that I never have guessed her secret. Lolita, Lilita, the ruler of demons. “Lilith” means a devourer. What is my Lolita Lilita devouring?

  An evil premonition presses at my heart, presses convincingly—shouldn’t I take some drops? But instead of drops, coffee awaits me. Stefa has already stuck her head in the door; she smiles charmingly and bumps me with her plump hip as she goes by. Powerful hips and three rolls of fat on the stomach. Giedraitienė’s hips and flat belly, the hips of all the world’s women, the common body of all the world’s women sprawling in front of me—it’s faceless; I hid its face myself, because I wanted to have all the women in the world at the same time. Stefa flies forward: today everything is speeded up, time itself hurries, as if it wanted to reach a secret boundary and suddenly come to an end. Even the current of the Neris is probably speeded up, the murky water, with its last strength, attempts to wash away, to destroy my encyclopedia. Lolita smiles at me, her teeth are even and as white as can be. Teeth hungering to bite. I fruitlessly try to remember what I dreamed of today before I woke up, what image the day began with, what inaudible morning chord should be ringing in my head.