Vilnius Poker

by Ricardas Gavelis

  No, today the city doesn’t ring—by now I’m going down the street, by now I’m smoking a bitter cigarette and counting the slovenly pigeons of Vilnius.

  At what moment did the birds show up again?

  Are the pigeons of Vilnius the dirty spirits of the dead, or simply Their disgusting envoys? No other bird would dare perch on your windowsill and pierce you with the hideous stare of their glassy eyes. There really is something kanukish about pigeons.

  The streets of Vilnius are kanukish today too. The sun shines, it’s bluish-gray, like cigarette smoke, like the star Metallah, which will smash into the earth any moment and shatter into a thousand fragments, poisoning all of weary Vilnius’s streets. Or maybe it’s already poisoned them, since it’s so empty everywhere—only a miserable dog apathetically trots over the pavement. In all likelihood he was once the Iron Wolf. Or maybe I was once the Iron Wolf myself, but now I’m walking all alone and the wind angrily glues muddy tree leaves onto my face. Although no, I’m not alone, Gedis is walking next to me and whistling one of his rondos of Vilnius.

  I have no itinerary. Gedis and I have no itinerary today. Perhaps that wet day has returned again, maybe in an instant the black-haired Circe will appear from around the corner, grab us both, and force us to forget everything: grandfather, father and mother, the camp and Bolius, my church and the Narutis, everything and everybody—even Lolita.

  But how would she suck the Neris dry—could her vagina really manage to devour my entire flowing, whirling, stinking encyclopedia?

  The wind blew passersby from out of a gateway; no, Vilnius hasn’t died yet, it still shows its convulsively distorted face. Why is there such a plethora of old people in Lukiškių Square? Why did they choose today to crawl out of their slovenly, cobweb-ridden holes? Probably something really does have to happen today. I walk down the boulevard, but it seems I’ve stumbled into a museum of wax figures. The old people’s faces are unmoving, almost dead; even the wind doesn’t stir their sparse gray hair. Wouldn’t you think they’ve gathered for a secret convention, where no speeches are made and no one socializes, they just sit for a while and stand for a while, without even looking at one another?

  “Young man, come wit me!” a ringing, remarkably familiar voice suddenly says.

  Once again I see the Ahasuerus of Vilnius, wrapped up in a moth-eaten scarf, rhythmically tapping the worn-down ends of his shoes. His shrewd eyes blink frequently; his gap-toothed smile sends me a secret message.

  “Here, vere da bronze Lenin now stands, der vas a market square once,” this guide of mine explains, “And even earlier, or maybe later, I don’t remember anymore, gallows stood here . . . Dis square is magical. Dose who tink dat ghosts appear in Vilnius’s underground are wrong. Dey’re not dere!”

  “I know. I’m familiar with Vilnius’s underground.”

  “Ja, ja, dey’re not dere! People are wrong to search for secrets at da extremes. Black und white! Underground und up in heaven! Black und white aren’t vat’s most important, it’s gray! Neither da roots nor da top are da most important, it’s da trunk! Don’t search underground, don’t search in da heavens, search on earth . . .”

  I begin to remember him; his name is Šapira. He’s already been part of my life, before he turned into an Ahasuerus—but what? I might remember, except that he keeps hurrying more and more, dragging me along; we’re a really fine pair. A broad-shouldered, nearly six-foot-five man with a haggard gaze and a shabby Jew, two heads shorter, with bright little eyes. Yes, it’s Šapira; once upon a time we drank wine at the railroad station. But where are we going now?

  “Far! Very far!” he shoots back. “To hell!”

  Ahasuerus flies with the wind (or against the wind?), holding on to his slumping hat. But I still can’t get those old waxen men in the square, with their somnolent eyes and the gray stubble on their unshaven cheeks, out of my head. Maybe I’ve turned into an old man with trembling hands myself; maybe that’s why I’m panting, why I can’t keep up with that flyer? I want to grab him by his flapping scarf, but he’s already turning to the right, brushing the sidewalk with his coattails, then suddenly turning to the left, maneuvering between leafless bushes. I know these little paths well; we’ve come to the clinics. What will he show me here? Dying people, deformed bodies? Yet another grandfather of mine, come down from the heavens? But by now Ahasuerus has dragged me inside, he’s weaving through the corridors, descending all the stairs, climbing only downwards, heading towards hell; finally he leans against an iron-clad door with all his weight, bursts into a cramped little room, and, not even winded, fires out:

  “I’ve brought someone, you’ll find you have tings to talk about.”

  Šapira and I really did know each other. I’ll have to ask Stefa.

  The man sitting at the table slowly turns to me; instead of a greeting he says in a low, distinct voice:

  “Just don’t ask me if I’m Jewish. I don’t even know myself. My name sounds Polish—Kovarskis. But I learned Polish when I was already grown. I don’t know Yiddish, not to mention Hebrew. You can consider me a Lithuanian or a citizen of the universe, if that improves things. Do you believe in God?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a hopeless business. I don’t believe, either. Without a doubt God exists, but I see no reason to pollute the brain with the idea of God. Do you smoke?”

  I take the proffered cigarette and finally get a good look at the room’s owner. He’s impossibly thin: nearly my height and probably weighs half as much. On a long neck perches a proud face overgrown with a beard and hair—an ascetic, truly Semitic face. The face of a man who’s crossed the desert and fed on the manna of heaven, who’s been persecuted and suffered for thousands of years. And on that face—an ideally straight Roman nose and pale, pale, barely visible gray pupils. I look around uneasily, but my guide has disappeared.

  “Šapira’s always like that,” the light-haired Semitic face says calmly. “He emerges from underground at the most unexpected moment and always vanishes without saying goodbye.”

  He speaks as if we’ve already known each other forever. I have seen him, I have heard his name. And I’ve seen this room, but not in this world—in a vision or a dream. I’ve been lured into a trap, a trap of my own visions. On the walls (it seems to me even on the ceiling) hang glass cabinets; inside them, neatly arranged, are countless nameless torturer’s instruments. Glistening lancets with mirrored blades are lined up by size; the smallest is the size of a match and the largest is designed to disembowel giants. But all those knives are merely a small part of the horror show; there is still an infinity of saws upon saws, sharp pincers, and needles upon needles. You could hide the tiniest little saw in a coin, like a prisoner; with the big one it would be possible, with two quick thrusts, to cut a live person in half. A bit further on glitter pliers upon pliers, hooks, and little hatchets. Whether I want to or not, I see them covered in blood, sticking into a live body. That’s what they’re made for: they scream for blood and live flesh. Those instruments are arranged carefully, with love. A strange love lurks within them. There are scores of them, there’s no end to them; I look around and suddenly realize this many cannot fit into such a small room. I’ve been lured into a trap. Unconsciously, I retreat backwards and quickly turn around, but behind my back is the iron-clad door. Knives upon little knives, sharp pincers to rip intestines apart, everything shines and glitters, everything streams blood. I quickly turn to the door and see that it has no handle. How simple it all is! I’ve ended up where I had to end up sooner or later; they’ll carry me out of here ripped to pieces and feed me to the pigeons of Vilnius.

  “Yes, you could call me an anatomic pathologist,” the low distinct voice suddenly says. “I dissect the stiffs and announce the final diagnosis. I earn buckets of cognac if my enlightened colleagues were mistaken. Five mistaken diagnoses, that I will refute, and someone’s career is over. Do you like cognac?”

  The light-haired Semite finally moves, casually opens a cabinet door
. I take the proffered glass and take a sip without sensing the taste.

  “I see you don’t care for instruments of destruction,” the owner says calmly and pushes open another door. Beyond it, I see a tangle of glass tubes and hoses, instruments with a number of little handles and numeric indicators. “Maybe it’ll be more comfortable in here?”

  “An entire laboratory,” I say—feeling better that I’ve recovered my voice, that the cognac has a taste again, that I’m still alive. For the time being still alive.

  “It’s a hopeless business. The number of times I’ve demanded an basic spectroscope! But what of it . . . And I need a spectro­meter. I need a laser . . . For cryogenics . . . I knock around all of Vilnius with a piece of someone’s ass. They fear me in every laboratory, in every institute. I’m a beggar . . . But let’s not whine. You’re not afraid of corpses?”

  I could tell him about how I hid out in Vilnius’s underground. My quarters were piled up with a gigantic stack of corpses. It was summer and they stank hideously. It was even more unpleasant when they started heaving from the gas. Maybe they were Lithuanians shot by the retreating Russians, maybe Jews murdered by the SS—I didn’t have the time to investigate. And for the most part we didn’t bother one another. We were each engaged in our own business: I in hiding, they—in decomposition.

  And he asks me if I’m afraid of corpses.

  “I see,” the light-haired Semitic face states, looking at me carefully. “Just put on a gown. And gloves. Stick your fingers somewhere you shouldn’t and your fingers will have to be cut off. A classic thing it is, dissecting fingers. Reducing them to little pieces. When you disassemble a single lone finger, when you arrange all of the veins, muscles, cartilage on the table, your eyes can’t take it all in at once. You just can’t believe that so many parts of all sorts fit into such a small mechanism . . . And actually, it’s not just fingers I’ve dismantled, I’ve done an entire man. Every little piece of him. I’ve reduced a man to a million bits, strings, lumps . . . it’s an unbelievable sight, I’d never even suspected it myself . . . The laboratory absolutely full of ONE MAN: thousands of glass jars with little pieces of flesh or splinters of bones, a dozen or more flasks of various liquids . . . And you just keep reducing it and reducing it, reducing it again and again . . . If I was a hero of Dostoevsky’s, I’d probably announce that’s how I’m looking for where a man’s soul hides . . . That shitty soul . . . But I’ve always just cut up the dead; maybe that’s why I still haven’t found a soul. It’s already flown off to heaven. I need to cut up LIVE people. Good Lord, how I’d love to see how the entire mechanism works . . .”

  We pause at one more iron-clad door and go inside. Just the sight I expected: anatomy tables. On one there’s a young girl who is only half dissected. Her head hangs to the side; the glassy eyes gaze at us intently. She’s waiting for me. The girl’s right side is slit from her armpit to her hip, her legs are disgustingly spread; it appears she’s lewdly, all aquiver, awaiting a man. It’s just that a man wouldn’t find anything to do here: her crotch has been dissected up to the very uterus. There are no lips, no vulva, no vagina—just a straight-edged hole with even sides. One breast has slid to the side, the other stands upright; apparently it hasn’t relaxed yet. From the side I look at her spread legs, at the line of her thighs, and suddenly I feel attracted to her.

  “You’ve probably heard yourself many times that it’s only alcoholics who’ve been exiled to the basement and hardened necrophiliacs who work here. That’s partly true,” Kovarskis announces nonchalantly. “Only the necrophilia is imaginary. Our poor, worn-out little doctors have nothing to do with it. It’s the babes who are to blame. Just the babes . . . You wouldn’t believe the sorts who show up wanting to get screwed here. You just wouldn’t believe it! Babes—the most disgusting and obscene creatures on earth. Working here, you get to know women a bit. You wouldn’t get to examine them this closely even if you drilled a hole in the women’s toilet. You perhaps respect women?”

  “One.”

  “It’s a hopeless business. Look at this one. Even dead she lies there with her legs spread. The symbol of women. You just need to put a brain into that hole between the legs. They THINK with that place.”

  “Usually it’s impotent men who talk that way,” I say, a bit angered.

  “True,” Kovarskis agrees. “Or queers. Anyway, it’s all rubbish. Yes, there are a few alcoholics and semi-necrophiliacs here; there are a few boys who hope, after working here, to then operate like gods. But the most important thing here is me.”

  His tone is enough to make you shudder. The Lord God could use a tone like that to announce: this world was made by ME! Once more I look over the bearded relic and meet a calm, searching gaze.

  “So, what brought you here?”

  I understand it’s my turn to talk. But I don’t know why I came here. Ahasuerus dragged me here; he promised I would find something important here. Maybe that girl? She reminds me of something. Maybe Janė, raped by the Russian soldiers? She lay there the same way, completely unable to press her knees together.

  Kovarskis sits down on the corner of the table, chews a cigarette, and looks at me. He looks at my eyes, searching for something in them.

  “Once I asked Šapira to bring me someone. Maybe a year ago. He brought you. You’re the first . . . No, brother, I’m not looking for a soul. More like a disease. A disease with my name . . . Even in my earliest childhood, I was determined to find a disease with my name. Kovarskis’s disease, which no one had discovered yet. That’s my mania, my idée fixe. You’re not a medical man, maybe you don’t quite understand what it means in our times to find a REAL, BIG disease no one has discovered yet. That’s exactly why I cut little bones up into pieces and pull nerves out one at a time. I’ve looked for it everywhere. I am a walking encyclopedia of pathology . . . I’ve discovered dozens of specific anomalies, minor deviations, but I needed a DISEASE. A hundred times I completely lost hope . . . But God finally enlightened me. If you want to find an essentially HUMAN disease, he said to me once while I was perched on the shitter, research the brain. Because a person is a brain and only a brain. Everything else is a mechanism . . . Come here!”

  He nimbly jumps off the table and goes over to a refrigerated cabinet. The girl, her head tilted, attentively watches him from behind.

  “Do you know why she stares like that?” Kovarskis throws over his shoulder. “Because her brain hasn’t been taken out. You wouldn’t believe how a stiff’s face immediately loses its expression and its gaze as soon as you take out the brain.”

  He finally manages to work the locks and opens the heavy door; I see hundreds of brains arranged on shelves: some larger, some smaller, a few with spots, still others with horrible growths.

  “There you are,” Kovarskis announces grimly. “Although you don’t see much here.”

  “And you? What do you see?”

  He suddenly turns to me, burning me with a terrible look, and then unexpectedly stares at his own hands. Without looking, he pulls out a brain and weighs it in his palm. Now he resembles a pagan priest, or more likely a sorcerer.

  “Everything. When I look at a brain, I see a human. It grows around that brain; it’s born out of emptiness. At first I see a face and eyes . . . Then the neck, shoulders, and arms show up . . . The torso and the legs . . . The sex shows up last of all. The women slowly grow breasts; a man’s penis shoots up like some kind of sprout . . . I see everything. But that’s not what matters most. What matters most is that expression . . . That expression . . .”

  Sunk into thought, he throws the brain back into the cabinet and slams the door. The girl’s left breast suddenly thrashes and slides down.

  “Everything goes by the expression,” says Kovarskis as if to himself. “It won’t give me any peace. I dream of it at night . . . I hear it in music. I read it between the lines of books . . . And I keep meeting people with that expression in the street . . . you see, it’s the expression of a stiff with its brains take
n out. An indescribable expression! As if all the features had become rounded and distorted. As if the hieroglyph of the face had become hazy, indistinct . . . I don’t know how to describe it . . . And just imagine—I see that expression on the faces of live people. I saw it first in the hospital, then right in the middle of the city . . . I found it, dammit, I FOUND IT!”

  He’s nearly screaming, the veins on his neck strain, no sign is left of his Semitic seriousness. Astounded, I watch him stack frozen brains on the table, pile them every which way, hurriedly put them on the girl’s stomach, on her breasts; he’s even panting.

  “I have hundreds of examples to prove it! Hundreds!” Kovarskis hisses, “Here, look! You see? See? See?”

  He pokes the frozen brains with a finger, but I don’t see anything special—just a gray mass, convoluted wrinkles and the girl’s body. The nipples of her breasts have reddened and distended.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  This works like a magic charm. He suddenly calms down; taking off his gloves, he rubs his forehead with a finger and smiles for the first time. No, he’s no madman. Let him, when he’s looked at a brain, see an entire person, but I can spot the smile of a madman instantly. No, he’s no madman. Matters are much worse than that.

  “Well, now . . . well, now . . . Look here. Here, here, by the hypothalamus. No, right here. You see that little lump? That barely visible growth that resembles a bug? A bug devouring the brain? Huh? . . . And on these brains, do you see? And on these? There you have it—there SHOULDN’T BE a lump like that.” By the triumph and horror in his voice I understand we’re getting to the heart of the matter. “And here’s a good brain. See, no lump. And this one’s good. And this one . . . I named this the Vilnius Syndrome.”