Vilnius Poker

by Ricardas Gavelis

  Here my story breaks off, because there’s no way I can think of an ending. I really can’t write stories. All I can write is an mlog.

  The Lithuanian writers immediately jump on me the moment I say that prisoners don’t commiserate with or support one another. They quote somebody’s pretty phrase: people aren’t united by common joys and victories, only by common sufferings and misfortunes. I agree, this rule holds true for some people. But it doesn’t in the least apply to the human herd. I immediately give an example from my collection.

  This took place during the time the new Brezhnev Constitution was under consideration. We all know how these considerations go. The people driven into the hall snooze off or read books, while the apathetic orators explain how wonderful everything is and how many rights we all have. But out of the blue, a scandalous incident took place at the Engineering Institute. One assistant professor of philosophy decided to actually consider the constitution project. He stated out loud that the articles of the Constitution should conform to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, he had the gall to mention that our great country had signed that declaration and was obliged to follow it. Obviously, the meeting was hurriedly called off, its minutes destroyed, and the assistant professor dealt with. All of that’s perfectly natural. That’s everyday stuff for the Ass of the Universe. But perhaps you think his colleagues secretly shook the professor’s hand and unanimously, even if quietly, supported him? Maybe deep in their hearts they were proud of him? Maybe they at least sympathized with him? No, everyone got totally furious because the Institute was immediately beset, like wasps to honey, by all sorts of commissions, so everyone had to write a million reports and plans for the future, and on the whole to tremble for their hides. Everyone sincerely cursed the poor upstart who had caused so much trouble and angrily voted to do him in. That’s what he had coming, everyone thought, you live peacefully, doing nothing, and here this guy shows up—he gets a hankering for a Declaration of Rights, the rat!

  Obviously, his defense of the Declaration wasn’t at all why the professor was fired. It was painstakingly proven that he didn’t have the proper qualifications. He didn’t understand dialectics and other subtleties of Marxism. He couldn’t nurture the younger generation. And so on.

  Incidentally, about the younger generation. The students didn’t react to this incident at all. The slogan of today’s students is: “It makes no difference to me!”

  This story also interested me because the ex-professor, after a prolonged and pointless search for work, was offered a job in a library.

  More and more, I am beginning to believe that some metaphysical secret—some secret that I haven’t grasped yet—lies hidden in libraries.

  VV and Lolita liked to walked through Old Town. To them, those few blocks substituted for all of Vilnius. I met them there more than once. “Met” isn’t the right word. They would apparently be going down the street, but in essence, they wouldn’t be there. You’d think they were walking down completely different streets, through a city they carried within, inside themselves.

  They walked through Vilnius as if through a library.

  You could put it this way. The houses and side streets of Old Town are yellowed manuscripts, full of wisdom and undeciphered mysteries. The new districts are identical, faceless political brochures or ROF leaders’ speeches that differ only in their title, and they’re as short-lived as the block construction buildings of Vilnius.

  I could go on in this vein, but I’m much less concerned about the library than I am about the readers—VV and Lolita. They could wander the streets for days on end. A strange pair: a calm giant with graying temples and a long-legged girl humming something under her breath, perhaps “The Last Tango in Vilnius.” They searched for small joys and sometimes found them: a hunched-over, lisping old woman selling the first violets; a bristling little kitten, mewing non-stop, its little pink mouth wide open; a flaming, fancifully formed autumn leaf—unique and different from all others.

  Say what you will, but it’s miraculous when two worn-out people who have been halfway to hell manage to find such small joys, the way children find fragments of colored glass in a stinking garbage dump.

  Lolita’s father, Colonel Banys, performed unbelievable experiments on her in her childhood. She was an only child, and her father wanted only a son, an heir to his ideas. He tried to raise a future apologist for terror, a secret police genius. He dreamed of a dynasty of Banys KGB men. He would take the delicate girl to interrogations; he forced her to love the smell of jail. He beat his oppressive philosophy into her head.

  It’s not hard to guess what vestiges this left in Lolita’s brain.

  However, it’s impossible to guess what vestiges his grown daughter’s behavior left in her dear father’s brain. No one could make sense of Colonel Banys’s brain.

  As far as I know, the Lord God denied having created Colonel Banys; he announced he didn’t know himself how that one got put together.

  I’m depressed by the abundance of “less:” face-less, sense-less, soul-less . . . All that garbage, mold, decay, and paralysis in my head . . . But I can’t influence anything . . . That’s the way it is . . . and will be . . . for eternity . . . Horror overtakes me, thinking it really could be this way for all eternity . . . It’s horrible . . . A sober, hard-working people like the Lithuanians, slowly turning into, or already turned into, lethargic worms of the Ass of the Universe . . . The worst of it is, we probably couldn’t live without the Ass of the Universe anymore. We’re all imprisoned for life, that’s why we don’t have the slightest idea of what we’d do if we were suddenly set free. That’s just horrible: we really wouldn’t know how to live if we suddenly got our freedom. We’ve already gotten used to being slaves and pushovers. We got used to it just like America’s blacks. Just like the blacks of the past century, we are gotten out of bed in the morning, fed, and driven out to work. In the evening, we’re fed again and allowed to sing some sad blues. And nothing needs to be decided, nothing needs to be fought for, nothing needs to be thought about. No one will let you die of starvation; they’ll always feed you . . . And nothing really awful will happen—in the worst case, you’ll get the whip . . . Well, what of it—a lot of people get it . . .

  An existence like this grows into the blood, even worse—it grows into the genes. You can no longer live any other way and no longer want to. Released into freedom, you’d probably return to the old plantation yourself and ask to be taken back into slavery . . .

  Jesus Christ—what impelled me to be born in the Ass of the Universe?

  I’d really like to be different, but there’s nothing I can do. I can only console myself with my mlog.

  But no one’s going to read it!

  Even if I were to think up a way to prevent myself from turning into a fat worm of the Ass of the Universe—by what means could I warn other people, other nations, other countries? How could I save them from this terrible fate?

  There’s no way.

  No way, no way, no way . . .

  VV doesn’t want to withdraw from my life. He sends grim messengers and intrudes into my daily routine more aggressively than ever. His not being here is far more obvious than his being here.

  Today this ghost, Giedraitienė, slunk into the library. She stank of overly sour cabbage. But she didn’t ask me for a three-ruble note; she wasn’t even drunk.

  “Vytie is completely innocent,” she announced in a smoke-ruined bass, “I’ll testify to it in any court. He killed me, not that girl. This is my fault. But it’s my rabbits that are most to blame.”

  She slumped onto a creaking chair, raised one leg over the other and gracefully supported her chin with her fingers. In amazement, I realized this woman must have been a beauty once. In the calmest of voices, she told such a bunch of humdingers that I didn’t know what to think.

  Giedraitienė raised rabbits; she made a living from them because she didn’t receive a pension and her only son didn’t conc
ern himself with her. She had names for all of her charges and would take them to graze in a meadow. The rabbits obeyed her like trained dogs. But it was their names that mattered most. One hysterical rabbit with black ears was called Hitler. A stumpy, mustachioed one was named Stalin. There would be a Beria, a Suslov, a Genghis Khan, and a Mengele. There would be—because the rabbits changed, but the names always stayed the same. VV thought them up. According to him, this was so he wouldn’t regret knocking them off. Giedraitienė herself couldn’t finish them off. She would call on VV’s help. He would take some Mengele and do it in with a single blow of his hand. At that moment, Giedraitienė would close her eyes and think about the real Mengele.

  “My profession’s depressing,” she explained in all seriousness. “Who’s going to kill them for me now? Maybe you could? Or maybe you know someone who would want to buy two hundred sixteen rabbits?”

  I felt an irresistible urge to get all two hundred and sixteen names out of her. It would be a macabre map of VV’s hatreds. I invited that witch home. I suppose Molotov was driven to invite me home by exactly the same sentiments. She gladly agreed.

  “He ordered the very ugliest, mangiest one to be named Plato,” she said, standing up. “He’d let that one die on its own—no one would buy a fur like that, anyway . . .”

  I listened to Giedraitienė’s tale until nearly dawn. The names of the rabbits got all confused; there were too many of them. Robespierre or Freud didn’t surprise me, but I was shocked by Mozart, Camus, and Beethoven. Beethoven was a large female with floppy ears who would tap the floor of its cage to the rhythm of the Fifth Symphony. Every week, VV would knock off some Kant, Picasso, or Confucius.

  Note: Giedraitienė related the following words of VV’s to me, stated as he knocked off yet another rabbit:

  “Unfortunately, they’ll all be born again. Killing makes no sense at all . . . Unless you’d murder someone in the firm belief that by dying a martyr’s death, he’ll be reborn into a better world, or a better age.”

  This thought is worth taking note of. Otherwise, Giedraitienė’s confession turned everything upside down. I found out that VV would visit her shack every week. A man who didn’t visit his own father took care of some half-witted drunk. By the way, I slowly started to suspect that she’s no half-wit at all. She eagerly handled the things in my collection, inspected them with a shrewd glance, and read the newspaper clippings and letters.

  The thought flashed through my mind that it was no accident at all that she had shown up, that she had been sent to spy out my collection and was merely distracting my attention with her stories.

  Everyone in the Ass of the Universe who has even the slightest serious little thought suffers from paranoia. It’s grown into our blood. You immediately start thinking they want to steal that thoughtlet from you, and do you in because of it. You imagine spies everywhere. When you talk on the telephone, you don’t doubt for a minute that you’re being listened to.

  If you’re even a little bit out of sorts, it even seems as if someone is secretly recording your thoughts. This type of paranoia is a fundamental characteristic of the Ass of the Universe.

  I asked, straight out, why VV was so kind to her.

  “One way or another, I am his aunt,” she answered calmly. “Actually, I’m practically his mother. Magdelė never gave a thought to Vytukas.”

  I hiccupped no less, and went into the kitchen to fix some coffee so I could digest this news. The situation was totally Vargalian. Up until now, I hadn’t even suspected he had an aunt.

  “Yes, his mother,” Giedraitienė muttered, pacing around the room. “To my little sister Magdelė, Vytas didn’t really exist. She kept forgetting his name. Her only child was of no concern to her.”

  “So what did concern her?”

  “She was a reader. All she did was read. The make-believe world of books was much more real to her than life. You know? A book can be charming, but you always understand it’s just a little pile of paper. But in her head, everything was upside down. To her the world of books was the great reality, and life—an utterly boring book you could fling away whenever you wanted. When she was reading some novel, she’d even start dressing in period costume and speak that country’s language. Sometimes I’d come by and I wouldn’t be able to talk to her: she’d be stammering in English.”

  “He just gravitated towards me,” Giedraitienė repeated, “sometimes he was closer to me than my own child. Robertas felt a morbid envy towards Vytie, but he’ll have to help him now.”

  My mlog is crawling with colonels. Here another one’s showed up—Colonel Giedraitis.

  Suddenly I realized who it was, that horrible evening, who was grunting as he scrambled through the bushes, and then walked deliberately towards the black car. I was hanging out next to the Banys’s garden cottage, and I got a good look at that graying man. It was Colonel Giedraitis. I know this now as clearly as if his name had been stamped on his forehead. He had a finger in that nightmare too.

  They had prepared everything in advance. Don’t tell me they planned Lolita’s death in advance too?

  Giedraitienė kept meandering and embroidering her ridiculous theory—supposedly, VV hadn’t killed Lolita, but her, together with all of her rabbits. And then suddenly, as if it were something everyone knew, she blurted out:

  “When I went to prison because of him . . .”

  It seemed I’d been hit by lightning. I swallowed her shoddy story as if it were a writhing snake.

  “My very existence stretched all his nerves to the limit,” she confessed sadly, “I’m the living rebuke of his past.”

  I listened to her disjointed tale, seeing it all with unusual clarity: a calm stream, its bend sheltering a few houses out beyond town, and a hollow overgrown with bushes where VV would come straight from the forest, risking his life, apparently completely unable to leave his childhood memories behind. I saw Giedraitienė’s hurriedly prepared packet of provisions: a piece of ham, three cucumbers, and two thick, fragrant pieces of bread. The flowery towel with which the naked VV dried his reddened body, not in the least self-conscious in front of his aunt. Her tale was so vivid that I believed it all.

  But Giedraitienė’s legends lacked elementary consistency. According to her, VV reigned over the neighboring forest brothers; he would give the leaders his grandfather’s instructions. I believe I’ve already mentioned that the elder Vargalys secretly coordinated the forest brothers’ actions. I can’t conceive why VV would have needed to endanger the entire unit to save his life. I’m even more confused about why he would have denounced the go-between Giedraitienė, his provider and protector. One sentence of Giedraitienė’s made me prick up my ears immediately. Robertas, after all, couldn’t have done it, she muttered indistinctly, he wouldn’t have betrayed his real mother. According to her, in a moment of weakness VV had given the entire unit away, and then disappeared for parts unknown. She was the only one who knew about his betrayal, so she was constantly gnawing at him—the living reproach of his conscience.

  I’d say two facts destroy her hogwash. First, VV really was imprisoned; there are way too many witnesses. Second, his leader Bitinas’s unit was in operation for at least several years after VV’s arrest.

  I was much more interested in the news that a couple, a brother and sister who once looked after VV’s mother, were still living quite peacefully in the village of Užubaliai.

  I’d never even dreamed there could be live witnesses. They could tell me about VV’s childhood! They could give me the link my mlog most lacks.

  My mlog, compared to life, is as orderly as the alphabet. Life is much less coherent. After listening to Giedraitienė’s ravings, I was planning to end up at VV’s mother’s nurses by early morning. But I ended up there after something like a week, because Kovarskis suddenly came to visit me and from the doorway announced that VV had visited him just before his fateful outing to the gardens.

  “He dissected my stiffs.” Kovarskis announced, “He often liked t
o amuse himself that way. Maybe he was a secret necrophiliac.”

  I didn’t believe a word he said; these fantasies are Kovarskis’s secret predilection. He thinks there are too few genuine horrors and abominations in the world, so they need to be invented too. That’s all very well for him. I suspect he doesn’t know himself which parts of his stories are true and which parts are complete fiction.

  “You mean to say VV trained himself in advance to cut people up?”

  “No,” he answered in a somber voice, “Vytas would only prepare brains. The rest of it didn’t interest him. But the key thing is that yesterday I was questioned about it by this humanized phallus.”

  I immediately knew he had the detective in mind, the one who had prowled around the library too. Kovarskis always had a knack for describing people accurately. I’d love to include Kovarskis in my collection, but he’s as slippery as a snake. Even when he’s drunk he never talks about himself. You can’t figure him out. What is he, a man of such talent, doing in that morgue?

  “That guy got nothing but shit, anyway. I told him Vytas and I would guzzle grain alcohol, and that he was terrified of corpses.”

  I looked at his twinkling eyes and wondered—is he one of us, one of theirs, or no one’s? I had to risk it: life isn’t lived without risk.

  “What, do you suppose, was VV looking for there?” I asked carefully. “In those brains.”

  “Cockroaches!” Kovarskis replied, without blinking an eye.

  I had barely managed to include Giedraitienė’s rabbits in my collection when other creatures started determinedly intruding on it too. I have cockroaches in mind.