Vilnius Poker

by Ricardas Gavelis

  During recess, Kaziukas Budrys liked to shape busts of Stalin out of the soft part of bread. He would make the mustache out of real hair.

  Perhaps Kaziukas would have been a great sculptor. But he disappeared somewhere in the expanses of Siberia.

  The other outstanding soloist was this Kvedaravičius. He spoke slow­­ly; you’d think he was weighing and pondering every word. His speech sounded unbelievably convincing; the inspectors would unconsciously start nodding their heads, approving of Kvedaravičius in their thoughts.

  “A Soviet man must, of course, draw from culture,” Kvedaravičius would intone thoughtfully. I thought about it for a long time, but I never did understand what he could draw from Akhmatova’s poetry or Balys Sruoga’s scribbles.

  Those performances would be rehearsed down to the smallest detail, but Riauba directed us with such inspiration that they weren’t in the least boring. Those lessons got nothing but excellent ratings from all the inspectors. Riauba quickly understood that in this system, you don’t need to be something, you just need to look like it. No one is concerned with who you really are; all that matters is what you pretend to be.

  Every true homo lithuanicus thoroughly understands this open secret. A true homo lithuanicus pragmatically acts his role in the drama and carries out his duty—all the more since it’s so easy to deceive the authorities. The one on the platform acts the part of a dignitary, knowing full well that he’s just acting. A thousand in the hall applaud enthusiastically, knowing full well that he’s acting, and they are as well. And the so-called dignitary nods, knowing full well that the entire thousand are only pretending.

  On the surface, homo sovieticus behaves in a similar fashion. But nevertheless, in the depths of his heart, he believes in the system’s principles; he’s full of concepts like “the misrepresentation” or “the distortion of Leninist norms,” and so on.

  From the get-go, homo lithuanicus doesn’t believe in anything, but he learns, while still in school, to feign it convincingly.

  Incidentally, spontaneous emotions still erupt in school. At times proclamations show up on the benches and assorted graffiti on the walls.

  Lately it’s become popular to write on the walls in English. For some reason, no one paints over these graffiti. The inscription “RUSSIANS GO HOME!” has adorned the wall of my building for two months now.

  VV and Gediminas Riauba complemented one another. Gediminas’s boundless ambition and snobbism were balanced by VV’s complete indifference to other people’s opinions of him. I remember when Gediminas organized a concert in an abandoned church, which the militia raided. There were maybe twenty or thirty people at that concert, but the incident instantly became covered with legends the way an ocean rock gets covered with seaweed. I was there; I saw everything with my own eyes. The musicians played something hysterical (you couldn’t even call it playing); it seemed to me that they were merely waiting to be raided so that they could become heroes, at least for a little while.

  VV was absolutely delighted, and used the opportunity to break some militiaman’s jaw. Then he barely managed to hide himself in time.

  To the honor of Vilnius’s snobs, I have to admit that all of the spectators, to a man, declared they didn’t know who he was. As if they had agreed in advance, they maintained that VV was some outsider, since he didn’t know a word of Lithuanian.

  That was perhaps the only time in my life that I encountered Lithuanian solidarity.

  For the most part, homo lithuanicus has learned one precept thoroughly: watch out for yourself, and let the other guy worry about himself. Homo lithuanicus has got it into his head that if the authorities have taken someone on, helping him is suicide. So why stick your nose out? It’s better to please the authorities. I know what I’m saying. I’ve experienced this myself.

  I should be telling Lolita’s and VV’s story, and instead only heaven knows what I’m going on about. But that’s the only way an mlog can be written. I’m nothing more than a character in the mlog myself. Don’t ask too much of me. I’m happy I manage to relate anything at all.

  I’ve told Riauba senior’s story because he came to be part of my great collection.

  VV resembles the senior Riauba in that he too, perfectly understood the essence of our collective pretense. With him at the helm, our section does absolutely nothing, but always carries out the plans. Such paradoxes are possible only in the Ass of the Universe.

  From my collection:

  A friend of mine who’s already in his fifth decade confessed that all of his life he had, with particular care and diligence, carried out all of the government’s orders and directives—just think!—for reasons of sabotage. Even at home he acted by all the Soviet canons.

  “Everyone should do it,” he explained heatedly. “If everyone would act that way, the system would crumble immediately, because it’s absurd. The only reason it’s still in existence is that ninety-nine percent of people don’t abide by its canons.”

  He spoke in all seriousness. Only homo lithuanicus could come up with a theory like that.

  It was only a few years into our friendship that I found out VV is a veteran of the prison camps. He would talk about the camp with first-rate black humor. Only a person who has gone through all of the circles of hell can mock everything in the world the way he did. He never complained or whined; more than that, he feared nothing. Many a camp veteran acquires a peculiar paranoia. He imagines he’s secretly being wronged, denied a better position, and so on. VV would only snort when I mentioned his secret dossier. It’s extremely difficult to understand this man.

  His drawings were incredible. Once he showed me drawings from his time in the camp. VV has an entire collection of them. There were some really horrifying things there, but I found one portrait particularly shocking. A youngish man with a philosophic gaze stared out from the paper. Deep within his eyes lay an understanding of the True Essence. I immediately asked VV who he was.

  “This one I just had to draw,” he answered. “He got twenty-five years—but only because at that time the death penalty had temporarily been abolished.”

  “What did he do? What?” I nearly screamed, looking at that supernaturally deep face.

  I was certain this person’s life had to reveal some impossibly important secret.

  “Even in our camp he was the only one like that,” answered VV. “He killed his mother, cut her into pieces, and ate her. By the way, he knew all of Yesenin by heart.”

  The worst of it is that VV landed in the camp when he was still quite young. His soul matured in the camp—in a horrifying, distorted world. It seemed to me that in our world he felt like a tourist who could be called home at any minute—behind the barbed wire again.

  From the age of seventeen to the age of twenty-eight he saw women only once—during the naked revolt. They worked in one quarry, while the prisoners from the women’s camp would be driven into the neighboring one. One swelteringly hot day the wind carried an entire cloud of the inexorable smell of men over to the women’s quarry. And the women went wild. They swept the guards away together with all their dogs and submachine guns, and a eerie procession headed towards the men, undressing on the way. VV, with sincere horror, told of how they were suddenly flooded with naked women, stumbling, falling, and rolling from the quarry walls. The guards swore and shot their guns in the air, the dogs they had unleashed snarled and tore into whomever they came upon, but people paid no attention. Some coupled on the spot, others openly masturbated. VV got scared to death and hid between some rocks. He was lucky. A group of hurriedly summoned special guards, without a moment’s pause, turned machine guns on the quarry. Some of the corpses were thrown in trucks as they were, stuck together in pairs. The next day the barracks buzzed and commented on the incident. The ones who survived unharmed didn’t even remember the dead; they just bragged, one after the other, about how many women they had managed to use. VV, with a wry smile, explained that the masturbators, as always, claimed the largest number. />
  VV must have understood our grim world best. After all, our gigantic common prison camp is also surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by man-eating German Shepherds. For another thing, can a person who spent his best years in hell live a normal life? From an intellectual point of view, he actually lucked out—his had his learned abbot, like some Monte Cristo. He learned a great deal from his professor, but the teachings of a single person, even the wisest, will never reveal all of the world’s subtleties. After all, his Bolius viewed the world from his own tower, so he inadvertently forced VV to see the world the same way.

  And how was he supposed to regard women? In high school, he was probably taught that women are delicate and gentle creatures who must be taken care of and chivalrously defended. But what did he think when he saw the naked revolt?

  Everyone saw that VV looked down on women. He had them in spades, but he didn’t consider a single one human. Even Lolita frequently wept over him, ignoring her surroundings, her face buried on her desk at work. He would humiliate her in the most disgusting ways. I know. I saw this myself.

  VV frequently acted like a child of perdition, but I understand him, I almost condone him. On every form, in the box about your origin and parents, he ought to write: I am an only child of the prison camps.

  When Lolita showed up in our ridiculous office, it immediately occurred to me that I had seen her somewhere before. I couldn’t fall asleep at night; I kept trying to remember where I had met her. I even looked through my collection, which wasn’t all that large at the time.

  I began to suspect something wasn’t quite right only later, when rumors about her husband followed her to the library. It’s not every day a famous man burns alive in Vilnius. And Žilys really was well-known. In all Vilnius, he was the only one who organized underground exhibits in his studio, ones everyone dreamed of getting into. You could say to anyone, “Yesterday I saw Žilys at the Neringa. He announced the second coming of Christ,” and no one needed explaining about who Žilys is and why he had suddenly converted to Christianity. He was a regular Vilnius preacher; he confessed all religions without confessing a single one—expect maybe for the religion of art.

  And here we all find out that Lolita was his wife.

  And then about a week later, I ran into Lolita at Gediminas’s, wearing his robe, with the nipples of her tiny naked breasts showing through it.

  That meeting eerily reflected the past; that was why it had seemed to me I had already seen her somewhere. This happens often in Vilnius.

  VV starting making moves on her immediately. Once Lolita let it slip (we had already become friends): “I’m afraid of him—you can see right off that he’s a monster. I asked my father to find his case in the archives. I’d like to know what all he’s done.”

  VV got it on with her all the same. In the most disgusting manner imaginable.

  I really don’t want to remember it. However, an mlog requires the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It makes me sick to remember nasty things. But I’ve become convinced that in the long run it’s no use to shut your eyes, even if you really don’t like the view. Even if it nauseates you. Even if it sickens you. Incidentally, homo lithuanicus loves to shut his eyes the minute something displeases him. Homo lithuanicus has preserved an ancient belief in magic: if you don’t see anything, no one sees you, either. With your eyes shut, it’s as if you disappear from the world for a little while.

  I’m not allowed to close them; the mlog obliges me to look at absolutely everything with wide-open eyes.

  That Sunday I got ready to go visit Gediminas. We’d arranged this earlier. He had brought me books from Paris. In the Ass of the Universe that’s a normal thing—even the tiniest crumb of truth has to be brought in from outside as contraband. It was a wonderful morning. The sun warmed gently, but it wasn’t hot. The entire city was merry and playful. Vilnius likes to put a person into this kind of mood when it’s setting him a horrifying trap. Vilnius brings to mind the hangman who treats his unsuspecting victim to bonbons before the execution.

  No one opened the door, but it wasn’t locked. In the front hall, your nostrils were struck by the smell of some strange herb or incense; I actually got a bit dizzy.

  Lolita emerged from the bedroom wearing only black stockings and a narrow little garter belt. That was the only time in my life I saw her naked. That could have been a heavenly sight, but instead it was revolting, downright nauseating. Lolita was completely out of it; her tiny breasts were bitten all over and her pubic hair was disgustingly gummed up with sperm. She glanced at me with glassy eyes, got a cigarette, and returned to the bedroom, where an exhausted Gediminas was lolling about on the couch. It was only then that I saw VV sitting in the armchair, stark naked. He was totally tanked, or maybe he had snorted some drugs. Either way, he was talking to the angels.

  “Circe, the black Circe,” he said, sounding like a sleepwalker. “Who sent her?”

  Then he swayed off to the bedroom, where Gediminas was already bonking Lolita. I don’t know if they had planned that filth in advance, or just simply went on a rampage. The two of them defiled her by turns all night, or maybe at the same time too. They could do something like that! They broke her down, crushed her, turned her into trash. I know she loved Gediminas, and that was how he thanked her for her love.

  I will never forget the look she gave me on Monday morning when she came into the office. There was despair and pleading in her eyes; she remembered it all. Unfortunately, she remembered it all.

  Lolita started showing a strange kindness towards me after that wretched Sunday. Perhaps because the two of us were unexpectedly allied by the blackest black of blacks.

  Perhaps it will seem to some that with a beginning of that sort VV could only have finished the way he did. No, things are by no means that simple. The two of them fell in love later, much later. It was always possible to fall in love with Lolita as if she were an innocent girl. No dirt could smear her. She was divine. VV understood this. So he was obliged to defile that divinity, as he was obliged to destroy every deity. But later he inevitably had to fall in love with Lolita. Did he consider that she would have to love him too? Love him, remembering all of his depravities?

  VV really didn’t worry about others’ opinion of him. In this respect (as in many others), he was the complete antipode of the creature known by the name of homo lithuanicus. This type strives to not stand out in the least, so what others think of him matters a great deal to him. Similar objectives are typical of many nations, of all civilizations. An American will invariably install himself a swimming pool no worse than his neighbor’s. His car must be a model no worse than his neighbors’. But while an American tries not to be left behind, homo lithuanicus just tries not to stick out. The percentage of Lithuanians who are maniacs or fanatics is the smallest in the world.

  I’ve digressed from the subject matter again. Evidently, it’s because I’m afraid to assert anything categorical about Lolita. It’s difficult to comprehend any woman, but this one is particularly difficult. What did VV, the great monster of Vilnius, use to charm her? Why did she willingly suffer the torments of hell, surrendering to his will?

  When she came to visit me, Lolita liked to sit right on the carpet, leaning up against the sofa with her divine legs folded up, blinking her innocent eyes. She used to talk a lot, but even more often she would be quiet.

  “Martis,” she would say sadly, “a person really is the author of his own misfortune. I sank into this mess myself. No one is forcing me into it, Martis. If I were being forced, everything would be much easier.”

  She was right. If you are forced into doing something, you are in all respects a victim of spiritual tyranny. It’s much worse if they give you freedom and you continue to do what you’ve been doing. If homo lithuanicus were to suddenly get his freedom, he wouldn’t know what to do with it. If you want to know what to do with it, you can’t be a homo lithuanicus.

  Lolita would come to visit me to cry and talk things out. Not that
I was her confidant; to her, I was simply a blank spot. That was the only reason she told me so much—the way you talk to a dog, a mirror, or the empty walls of a room.

  Why was it me she chose to visit? Maybe because the two of us were connected by yet another blackest black of blacks.

  I never imagined I would carry deadly secrets around, ones I wouldn’t be able to reveal to anyone—except perhaps my mlog.

  I was born and raised in a small town in Žemaitija. My parents were ordinary civil servants and my fortune wasn’t marked by any preordain­ed events. My fate wasn’t influenced by any planets, or metals, or signs of the Zodiac. When I was born, the stars had temporarily gone out.

  Every proper homo lithuanicus could say the same about himself.

  I doubt if I will ever finish my mlog. After all, if you want to study wolves, you can’t be a wolf yourself. If you want to study fish, you can’t be a fish. Homo lithuanicus can only be described by someone who isn’t a homo lithuanicus himself.

  And I really cannot say that about myself.

  I am an idiot. What else can you call a person who threw away his family, his future, and even his career to write a dissertation that absolutely no one needs? And now writes an mlog dedicated to no one. To the void. Or to the decrepit Lithuanian God, who lives in a tree and lays rotten eggs. He stopped thinking about anything or doing anything a long time ago; he just bolts down those eggs of his and empties his bowels.

  If you should go out looking for him, watch out so he doesn’t fall over on you in his sleep.

  But perhaps the will of a God like that could explain things, if nothing more than VV and Lolita’s story. This Lithuanian God, gorged on moldering eggs, started to crap, whine, and flail his arms around in his tree, forgetting that every one of his movements, every sound coming out of his mouth, determines people’s fates, their lives, and their deaths. It was exactly this meaningless flailing and whining that determined Lolita’s and VV’s story.