Vilnius Poker

  What can they do to me?

  1. Kill me one way or another. They could have done that a long time ago. Apparently, that isn’t enough for Them.

  2. Break me spiritually, turn me into an imbecile. It won’t work. I’m invincible.

  3. Take hostages and blackmail me with them. It won’t work. That’s exactly the reason why I didn’t have children, ignoring even my family’s curses.

  4. Accuse me of an imaginary crime. Rubbish. I’m accustomed to prison. You can continue on The Way while sitting in a camp.

  5. Lock me up in a secret psychiatric hospital. It’s a popular alternative, but you can escape from it.

  6. Inject me with drugs and get everything I know out of me. It won’t work. I’ve been preparing for a long time. They will hear only incoherent ravings, but nothing important.

  7. Do nothing concrete. Wait and intimidate. Torture me with the unknown. That’s practically the worst. Only I can demoralize myself.

  It’s no use guessing. There’s only one thing I want: to see Lolita as soon as possible. The world is no more, I am no more; only Lolita is left. Maybe They intend to take on Lolita?

  For the time being, They haven’t started on Lolita. She stands next to me and smiles entrancingly. I see an old house, entwined in wild grape vines and set in the depths of a garden, with a shriveled apple tree off to the right. A gust of wind comes tearing along from the left, the yellow unraked leaves rise from the grass and silently tumble in the air. The wind carries the leaves of the trees easily, but it doesn’t stir even the smallest twigs of the bushes. This is my first time here, but I’ve seen this before—both the leaves flying in the air and the old wooden house—perhaps in a dream or a vision.

  “My parents’ garden plot. One of the first collective gardens in Vilnius. No one looks after it now.”

  I simply don’t believe she’s really here. Just now I was wandering the streets of Vilnius, bumping into the passersby, frightening children and dogs. All the streets smelled of autumn cobwebs. Yes, it’s the height of Indian summer now. Lolita emerged from around a corner and walked straight up to me, as if we had agreed to meet at just that spot. For some reason it occurred to me that it was my own destiny coming towards me. She walked gracefully, her head raised proudly, and then suddenly threw her arms around my neck, as if she had thought she’d never see me alive again. She said she didn’t know why she had acted that way.

  Did she really not know? Why did she unexpectedly lead me here, to her parents’ garden plot? The gust of wind has died down, but the leaves still flutter in the air. Other small houses are lined up nearby; a gray-haired man sits smoking a cigarette on the nearest porch steps.

  “A neighbor?”

  ”Yes. The neighbors here are incredible. It’s a magic spot. On the right, there’s a lieutenant colonel of the KGB. On the left, that gray-haired man—a KGB colonel. Colonel Giedraitis.”

  The name pricks my heart like a needle. I try to remember what Gied­raitis Junior looked like then, but only Bitinas stands before my eyes, his bald head and narrow lips spitting out the words: take him this offal.

  “He’s always sitting there like that and smoking,” Lolita says hoarsely, “Just sitting and smoking, all the time . . . Probably remembering his victims . . . In a minute, you’ll ask what his eyes are like. Colorless, expressionless. His gaze is like a beaten dog’s.”

  A portrait of the junior Giedraitis. I should go over there and check it out, but there have been enough ghosts for today. The gray-haired man doesn’t even turn his head in our direction, and Lolita keeps smiling; she’s strange today. All of Vilnius, moving again, is new and strange, as if it had only just now been born.

  Inside the little house everything is tidy, it’s even been dusted, but the room is lifeless—a clean, nicely fixed-up corpse. The air is thick with the smell of the people who used to live here. Neglected houses always smell that way.

  “You should marry me or something,” says Lolita, completely out of the blue, “We’d get along nicely. During the day, we’d discuss what we’ll think up for dinner. And in the evening, after eating, we’d stare at the television. And all our days would be exactly the same—right up until death. Is that such a bad way to go?”

  “Better to die suddenly. I don’t find a slow suicide appealing.”

  “You need to kill yourself somehow. Slowly isn’t so bad. You don’t even notice yourself fading.”

  The gray-haired man is visible through the window too; he really does smoke without stopping. It seems he’s slowly smoldering himself. The yellow leaves have risen from the ground again; they want to soar through the closed windows. A wind, awakened by the thundering cattle cars, rages over the entire world. This time those trains aren’t going to Siberia. But where? Where did grandfather go to, with the dish of excrement in his hand, where did mother, hanging with her shaven head, and father’s drawings go?

  “And I’d make you a pack of kids. A thousand little Lithuanian ants, who would continue to multiply and propagate. After all, the only way you can retaliate for your miserable life is by taking it out on the children—let them experience all this insanity too.”

  Today she is too physical. I haven’t felt her body this intensely in a long time; it seemed to have disappeared, dissolved into something else: into her eyes, her speech, or her thoughts. Today I sense it with all of my essence. I even smell her sweat, which smells of old grass. I see the beauty fluids pulsating beneath the sleek skin of her legs. My Lolita sits in a sagging armchair; she cannot exist without me. Without me, those girlish breasts would wither and her face would be furrowed with wrinkles. She would age instantly. I am the source of her life and youth.

  “It just seems to you that you’re thinking of me,” she says in a hoarse voice and closes her eyes. “I see your thoughts. I’m not there.”

  “What is there, then?”

  “My ghost, a bloodless, transparent Lolita . . . My legs, but for some reason they’re shining . . . And then there’s a strange hallucination of a city. Not even Vilnius, just some city. Clouded over and frozen stiff. A city that has lost everything, even its name.”

  “And what else? What?”

  “Twilight. An opaque dusk, where something is panting, giving off an unpleasant warmth and the oppressive smell of rotting leaves.”

  If I were a believer, I’d start crossing myself. How did she know that? Who is she, this inexplicable woman? All my perceptions insist she knows much more about me than I do about her. Perhaps she knows too much. How? After all, there’s no one, no one, I can reveal myself to. All the underground movements of all time seem ridiculous to me. Only I know what a real, absolute underground is. I cannot talk about it, even to Lolita. But how did she read my thoughts? Who is she, this inexplicable woman? Who sent her?

  I look over the interior of the house. A cramped little kitchen is visible beyond a rickety door. A gas burner, dented pots, and a huge knife on the table. Nothing of interest, except maybe for that blackened knife. Lolita sinks deeper into the armchair, only her legs keep sliding forward. Her dress keeps pulling up higher; her legs emerge from the darkness as if they were alive, darting hopeful glances at me. Lola knows full well where my eyes are looking; she enjoys my gaze.

  “It’s starting to get dark,” she says mysteriously, as if she were telling a fairy tale. “The setting sun is looking at us. It’s the time of charms, the time of miracles. Don’t take your eyes off of me, just don’t take your eyes off me, and you’ll be mine forever. Ajingi! Nothing will worry you anymore, only me! Ajingi!”

  Today she is an enchantress. All of the corners of the room are lit by the fading glow. By now the light is dying, but the darkness has not yet been born. Stunned, I watch as Lola stands up and slowly lifts her dress; she is wearing nothing underneath it. I look at her belly and the thick hair covering her sex, and desire rises in me like a threatening wave. I sit before her as if before a pagan goddess.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to forget everything?�
�� she says quietly, quietly, but I hear her. “Is it worth it to think of other women . . . other things . . . a different life? . . . Come to me, come to me . . .”

  She slowly, slowly, slips out of her dress; the last rays of the sun redden her body. She stands there blindingly beautiful, and as unapproachable as death.

  “Do you know what the celebration of the body is?” she whispers, “The ancient, genuine celebration of the body?”

  I can’t make sense of anything anymore: she spreads her lower lips with her fingers, smears the open pink slit with a sugary smelling lotion. I don’t even know how I end up naked next to her; I kneel motionless and look at that slit of scents pulling me closer, raising the desire to plunge into it fully. There’s probably a city there too, and a library, and a labyrinth, and wind fluttering the yellow leaves of the trees. Probably everything I’ll need to say goodbye to is there. I want her, insanely. Lolita falls on me, writhes, rumples my hair and moans, that enchanting smell fills my nostrils; I’ve never smelled anything like that before. My joints soften and melt. I want her insanely, but I can’t do a thing—you’d think the short, stumpy, and powerless phallus of Vilnius had turned up between my legs.

  I crave her like death, but my penis hangs helplessly. Blood doesn’t gush to it; it doesn’t want to look at anything. It doesn’t belong to me anymore. The eternal mark of the Vargalyses has deserted me. I’m done for: I can’t anymore.

  I slowly slide off, stretch myself out on the old carpet, and long to cover the shameful phallus of Vilnius, but I can’t. I long to close my eyes, but I can’t. She looks at me, smiling. She understood everything; you’d think she’d been waiting just for this. Long fingers gently caress me, tangle in the hair below my stomach, and grab the shrunken mark of the Vargalyses. I’m done for.

  “We’re small and tired,” Lolita murmurs, “The terrible spells frightened us. We want protection and love.”

  I’m helpless; I obey her completely. It isn’t just this moment she rules me; she’s long since ruled my every desire, every thought, every action. And now she acts like a ruler: she kneels firmly on her legs, her breasts pressing on her knees, greedily opens her mouth and bites me, voluptuously consuming all of the former mark of the Vargalyses, as if she wants to swallow it. I want nothing, except to die. I’m done for. While she devours me, choking, growling in satisfaction, I lie there as if I were shackled; I can only look at Lolita, Lolita, the ever-changing ruler of demons, who has taken away my last weapon. But most of all I’m driven out of my mind by the glance from her closed eyes: imperious and mocking, following my slightest movement, my slightest thought. Outside the window darkness is already falling, but I sense, inexorably sense, thousands of beady little eyes looking at me, sucking out my fluids; the multifaceted Lilita is merely leading that thousandfold throng of kanukai, she’s directing the choir, suddenly I clearly see pudgy little faces pressed up against the window glass.

  “I want to bite it off,” Lolita whispers harshly. “I’ll bite it off. I want it.”

  She laughs a hoarse, cannibalistic laugh; her eyes already closed, her hair disheveled. The pudgy little faces quickly jump back from the window. I lie on my back and feel only cold: in my chest, in my belly, in the tips of my fingers. None of my muscles obey me anymore, even though I feel my hands, my legs, and my limp joints. Maybe it’s paralysis, or maybe now I’ve stopped, the way Vilnius had stopped. Horror takes away my breath; I can’t even scream. Although who would I call—save perhaps for Lolita. Lolita or Lilita? Can I still call her? I sprawl there, slowly suffocating, while she walks around the room naked, glancing at me occasionally. She’s not surprised; she expected my paralysis, maybe she intentionally immobilized me. She despises me. A bitter scent emanates from her, one I’ve never smelled before. What were those kanukai doing outside the window? I saw at least three of them. The horror slowly recedes, I try to move my fingers again, but only my brain stirs. I feel it writhing about in my head. I was intentionally brought to an out-of-the-way place. They don’t like a scene. But why just now? After all, I’ve learned nothing new—except that They are forced to kanuk people. That’s how They reproduce; to Them it’s a biological necessity.

  I don’t want to, I don’t want to believe it. I can’t. Once more a vivid image rises before my eyes: an old house, entangled in wild grape vines in the depths of a garden, and yellow leaves fluttering in the wind. For an instant it seems as if I am watching myself from outside. That I approach the garden cottage where I am sprawling helplessly. Finally I remember where I saw this image. I saw it this morning, when I woke up: it began my day. Something inside of me knew I would end up here today. What can that dream, which foretold the future, mean? Sitting up, I quickly light a cigarette, and don’t immediately realize I’m moving again. Even the smoke doesn’t block out Lolita’s enchanting scent. Her gaze pierces me. It seems that pale, narrow strips of light emanate from her pupils.

  I grasp it all in a torturously slow manner, like swallowing barbed wire. She lured me to my doom. It’s all very simple. That was Their plan. They feared liquidating me because I could leave secret notes. There was only one way left—to penetrate my inner being. Do I know what I’ve chattered about in my sleep, lying with Lolita? Perhaps while conversing with her I gave away my most secret thoughts. Perhaps I gave myself away precisely by trying not to give myself away. The ancient Chinese would interrogate a person for several days and nights. If the prisoner would stubbornly avoid some topic, or a place, or a word, or a hieroglyph, it would be obvious that the secret hid precisely there.

  She’s the one who’s most to blame. I should rip a confession out of her: slit her throat, slice open her chest, pull the confession out of her guts. Cut it out with the blackened knife in the kitchen.

  “I could cut you up into pieces and eat you up,” she suddenly says in a covetous voice. “I totally understand women who used to keep their loved one’s heart in a jar.”

  I have to talk as if there’s nothing amiss. It’s not time yet, it’s not time. She could get suspicious.

  “You’d probably keep something else.”

  “Your blazing brain. I want to turn into you. At night I dream I’m you. My grandmother told me that if you ate someone’s brain, raw, you’d turn into him. If you ate a wolf’s brain, you’d take on a wolf’s power. A fox’s would give you his cunning and cleverness. All the warriors used to eat the brains of aurochs.”

  “And you’d eat mine?”

  “I’d eat all of you.” She slinks closer; I see her eyes, which have absorbed the revengeful red of the sun. “Your fingers, your knees, your chest with all its little graying hairs. But first of all—that scarred beast of yours, that’s a bit indisposed today.”

  She bites me, by no means playfully, but the pain is merely invigorating. All of the objects in the room quiver; dust motes scurry about in the air in leaps and bounds. She pulls away, but sits down next to me with her legs crossed, Indian-style. It seems like she’s trying to bend herself into an arch, to push her swollen lower lips, emerging from the hair, ever closer.

  “Or you eat me. Whatever you want. Even all of me.”

  The girl in Kovarskis’s morgue had a gaping black hole with even sides in that spot. That’s where I need to start, and then the long, blackened knife plunges into Lilita’s belly, cleaves the traitor’s soft skin and subcutaneous fat, uncovers the pink, pulsating flesh. There’s practically no blood to be seen; it blends with the revengeful red of the sun. There should be nothing inside of her, or else some inexplicable mechanism. However, there are coiled intestines, and a striped liver, and something else, probably the spleen. Lilita is made the same way we are: this merely cheers me. The strangest thing is how easily the knife plunges, how easily it cleaves the still living flesh. Bitinas felt this sensation too. It’s the symphony of a warm knife; bloody music, spreading the strong, enchanting smell of the sacrificial altar. I turn the handle of the knife to the left, to the right; the ribs crackle like dry twigs. But there’s
no need to hurry, there’s no need to listen to the scream, this isn’t a rush job, this is music. The liver can be divided into two, then divided again . . .

  “They’ve beset you again?”

  She’s still sitting the same way; her eyes look out of the dusk gently and comfortingly. Not the slightest kanukish sign—only my Lolita. My own, my own Lolita. And I wanted to . . .

  “Who are they? What are they?” I don’t recognize my own voice.

  “The ones I don’t know. The ones who torture you at night. Whose traces show up deep inside your pupils. Who carve the expression of suffocation on your face. Do you know that sometimes you look like a drowning man letting out his last gasp of air? That’s what you look like now. They’ve beset you again?”

  She knew, she knew everything. She felt it with her entire essence. And she never asked about anything, never pried, never tried to worm anything out of me. She simply walked beside me and tried to help as best she could. And I suspected her. In my thoughts I picked up the blackened kitchen knife. Now I really am suffocating, really drowning. How far can fear take you? I’ll never atone for my guilt, even if I were to lick her feet to the end of my days. No punishment would suffice.

  The sun glimmers through the window in farewell; I glance at it and encounter an angry, narrow-eyed stare. The long face is familiar to me, but I simply cannot grasp whose it is.

  “See?” I shout out loud, my hand outstretched, “See?”