“Oh, you, lambkin, my little lambkin,” she said in a strange, sharp voice. “Do you think I’m blind? You think I don’t feel anything? You think I’m a hyena, tearing off pieces of live meat for my own amusement? Don’t worry, I understand, I understand everything.”
I, the fool, still didn’t get what she was talking about. I’m not naïve or a complete idiot; I was simply lulled by her penetrating gaze.
“I understand that you’re melting, swooning, and sighing with love, my dear lambkin. You’ve earned sainthood; you could walk into heaven alive. You knew your love wouldn’t be requited. You didn’t have the slightest hope, but you sacrificed yourself for me anyway, helped me, saved me. You’ll be rewarded—here and now. And later, whenever, the moment you want it.”
Speechless, I watched as she began a nymph’s striptease. At first her bare toes began to stir, to wave, then the feet, shins, knees. The lightweight summer skirt appeared to slowly rise by itself. The buttons on her blouse slipped out of their holes themselves. She rocked her hips dreamily, caressed her thick hair and didn’t shut her mouth for a minute:
“This is all I can give you, but believe me, it’s no small matter. It’s a great deal, Martis. I’ll be your slave; I’ll be as obedient as death. You’ll be my ruler—for a while, a very short while, but you will be, really you will.”
She finally shut her mouth and froze; she finally realized what my eyes, my entire pose, was screaming. But she wasn’t flustered in the least, she just shrugged her shoulders and buttoned up her blouse.
“I wanted to do what was best,” she uttered hollowly. She nimbly jumped up from the floor. “Don’t see me out, I’ll find my way.”
She hurried off just in time—in another minute I would have slapped her and forcibly thrown her out. I was boiling all over, until I was overcome by a boundless mortification and disappointment. Disappointment with the entire human race.
She dared to think that I’m a sighing lover, of all things! She dared to imagine that I’m swooning and spiritually masturbating while I’m looking at her!
Blows like that happen to a person once in a lifetime.
What let her think that? Perhaps I did love her in my own way—like a younger sister. Perhaps I was a bit afraid of her; I didn’t dare to drive her out when she got too tiresome.
However, I never gave her cause to humiliate me like that! I was accused of being a cat with its mouth vainly watering in front of some out-of-reach bacon.
I lost faith in the entire human race. People can’t believe anymore that it’s possible to help someone without expecting a concrete reward. People don’t believe in any honorable feelings anymore. People are despicable.
After that evening, Lord knows I almost started despising her. I tried to find excuses for her, but an angry feeling kept winning out. Even if she considered me a swooning ninny, she could have rewarded me some other way. She could have offered at least a smidgeon of human warmth and closeness, she could have trusted me with some sacred secret, with anything but her defiled body, even if it was a nymph’s body. I hated her.
Only her death settled everything at once. Death demands objectivity. I had put that undeserved wrong out of my mind until that faceless detective reminded me of it.
The detective spent a long time turning a roll of canvas, which he’d pulled out of the Iron Wolf, in his hands; he even sniffed at it. He started tracing over that canvas with a finger, as if he were reading a missive—line by line. I snuck a glance over his shoulder: it was a painting, a peculiar painting—countless tiny little faces in identical frames, very tidily arranged and painstakingly painted. All of them different, and at the same time unbelievably similar.
“The dispatch has been found,” the detective muttered indistinctly.
I was totally confused. The detective rolled up the canvas and stuck it into an inner coat pocket. It seemed he only now remembered I was there.
“Let’s go, pal,” he said in his usual brusque voice. “Let’s get out of here. And not a word about it to anyone.”
We went down the creaking stairs and through the crooked little yard. In a corner by the gate, some grubby kids were playing store. The five-year-old saleswoman was arguing furiously with customers of the same age.
“I told you, they didn’t bring it!” she yelled in a shrill voice. “I’m the only one here, and there’s lots of you! You should try working in my place!”
The detective stopped and with his hand outstretched announced very loudly:
“My sense of smell is no worse than that dog’s!”
Who knows how good that dog’s sense of smell was, but his body was horrific. Extended along the ground, deformed, of an indescribable color. His ears dragged; it looked like he’d step on them any minute. But that dog’s eyes were intelligent. They weren’t the eyes of an ordinary doggish intelligence.
While I was staring at that degenerate, the detective disappeared. I saw his back off in the distance already. He paused in front of a store and apparently exchanged words with some hunchbacked dwarf hanging around the entrance. That was a remarkably strange detective.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I didn’t have the slightest idea of where he had materialized from, or who he was. He didn’t show anyone any identification. Homo lithuanicus’s frightened respect for the authorities is so powerful that he’s immediately speechless as soon as some brazen guy casts a commanding eye. In amazement, I came to the conclusion that I have no reason whatsoever to consider him a representative of the KGB or the public prosecutor.
Absolutely no reason. Who knows who he was.
Behind my back, the children continued to skillfully imitate a Soviet store’s irritations and quarrels. If you want to get to know a country, then carefully observe what the children there play.
The children of the Ass of the Universe unfailingly play the Ass of the Universe.
The detective nonchalantly showed up a few days later at the library. He wasn’t in the mood to so much as greet me.
Stefa’s glommed on to me again. I’ve spent many lonely bachelor nights with her, so I can’t just rudely push her away. You might ask—why did I lay my hands on her? You need to get by somehow. If a person can’t stand all kinds of sexualizing, it doesn’t mean that . . . Besides, it doesn’t have any greater significance for my mlog.
So, Stefa glommed on to me. She mysteriously rolled her eyes and whispered in a muffled voice:
“What do you think, would my testimony save Vytas? I know everything. I saw everything. Even though she’s dead, that slut wants to hurt him.”
The quieter two women’s fight over a man is on the surface, the meaner and crueler it is. I dampened Stefa’s heat somewhat. I decided to invite her over to my place after work.
“Don’t even ask, I can’t!” Stefa shot back, and turned her insulted little fanny at me. “You’re not at all concerned about Vytas!”
If she only knew how concerned I am about Vytas! He’s all I’m concerned about. I wanted to straighten her out, but I restrained myself.
I always did want to straighten everyone out. The last gasp of an educator’s talent hasn’t left me yet. I’m dying to teach children and grownups. I want to teach cats and dogs. I’m a teaching maniac. If I lived in a normal country, I would found my own sect.
What would I teach?
I would lecture everyone on the history of homo lithuanicus; I’d explain that creature’s composition and structure. I’d attempt to elucidate why he doesn’t hunger for freedom. After all, everyone, absolutely everyone, seeks freedom. A bird struggles to escape its cage. A dog tries to break its leash. Even amoebae try to drift freely. It’s an instinctive desire. You have to have a brain, an intellect, to be able to destroy it. Only humans manage to do this. And homo lithuanicus manages best of all. That’s why it’s imperative to research this creature thoroughly. Perhaps he shows us all of mankind’s future. Perhaps in understanding his structure, we’ll realize what’s unavoidably awaiting all the rest.
And so forth, and likewise.
Thank God I live in an abnormal country, where it’s forbidden to found any organizations. My sect would dissolve after a month or so.
I’d bet no one would want to listen to me.
How is homo lithuanicus produced? Starting early in childhood—best of all, still in the cradle—is of prime importance. The core of this process is its essential three-pronged approach. The government teaches one thing and real life teaches something entirely different. And in addition, the parents, shutting the door, tell sad legends about some Lithuania, a nation, an honorable past, and similar oddities.
Opponents could maintain that such a situation is characteristic of all the nations of the Ass of the Universe. By no means. The Russian past can be praised out loud, without the door shut—and that’s where the essential difference lies.
So, the junior homo lithuanicus grows up in triplicity. He’s told about a nation, but the kid doesn’t find one. He’s told about socialism, but the kid can’t see it anywhere. He’s told to make a buck, but the authorities plant him in jail for that.
So, the above-mentioned creature gets completely confused and turns into a nothing.
Opponents will ironically observe that homo sovieticus is exactly the same. That is a totally unscientific assertion. Homo sovieticus is a creature that lives a double life, or more accurately, two lives. Homo lithuanicus doesn’t live a single one. Homo sovieticus deciphered the structure of the Ass of the Universe and adapted to it. Homo lithuanicus didn’t adapt to anything, which is why he’s a nothing.
A real, true homo sovieticus isn’t so terribly rare among the Lithuanians. But the much more common and more interesting case is that of homo lithuanicus.
Homo lithuanicus isn’t entirely doomed. He just sleeping the sleep of hibernation, like a badger in winter. He secretly believes that one of these days the sun will shine again, the snow will melt and the flowers will bloom.
Poor, naïve homo lithuanicus!
Once again, I give grave warning: the entire world is slowly turning in the same direction. Everyone who throws out his books and stares at the television, or ruins his cousin over three thousand dollars in questionable earnings, is unconsciously laying the groundwork for that kind of existence. All it takes for the lethargy viruses to start madly multiplying is to doze off spiritually.
And then all that’s necessary is for the Ass of the Universe to slowly slither into such a snoozing, virus-infected country.
I’ve lost the main thread of my mlog again. And there is no Ariadne to offer me hers. If Ariadne was named Lolita Banytė-Žilienė, then for a guide like that, no thanks. I never did understand what fundamental quality of hers she wanted to realize.
Let’s say I haven’t managed to realize my teaching talent.
Gediminas failed to embrace the entire world: neither mathematics, nor music, nor heaven knows what else.
VV failed to realize his love.
I frequently think about what it was VV really loved. Without question, he loved his past and all of his dead—the real ones and the ostensible ones. And the same goes for himself—the young VV brimming with strength and illusions, who is long gone and could never be again. But worst of all—he loved people. I emphasize—people. Not robots, not the little worms of the Ass of the Universe, but people, who are rarer and rarer in our ancient city.
I know quite a bit about his mature life, and I’ve learned a few things about his childhood, but the worst is that I know everything about his wretched end. Not the end of his life, just about VV’s end.
Sometimes you’d give anything not to know what you know.
More and more often it occurs to me that one of the most important roots of VV’s destiny was his infertility. He and Lolita desperately needed to adopt a child.
I’m probably talking nonsense. VV needed his own and only his own son, and he couldn’t have one. When he was drunk, he kept threatening to go to Siberia to search for something he had left there. I knew very well what he had in mind.
It seems to me that all of VV’s horrifying sexuality was a futile attempt to return what had been lost to the ages. You’d think he secretly believed that sooner or later quantity would turn into quality, according to the laws of dialectical materialism.
VV was a sexual Marxist.
VV would fall hopelessly in love every week, so Stefa had to constantly suffer the torments of hell. It was even funny to hear VV’s sighs and see his misty eyes. But that youthful love would last no more than a week. To me it seems he was always waiting for Lolita; he would deceive himself for a while every time, thinking she had already come. I vaguely remember Nijolė and Aušra. And then there was Aurelija, Rolanda, and another Nijolė. But Vaiva was the one I took the most note of.
I didn’t like her from the start. A giant Afro-style haystack of hair, coarse movements, and an insolent disposition. She radiated the attractiveness of a healthy young filly. She was screaming for a good stud.
Vaiva immediately became the leader of our community of women. Even Elena would let her take the lead a bit, to tell dirty jokes and pour cognac in the coffee. Vaiva went after VV shamelessly, sometimes almost obscenely. She offered herself publicly, I’d say triumphantly.
I don’t know myself why this disgusting story sticks with me. I really don’t want to remember it, but something keeps telling me it’s significant.
I could certainly understand VV’s male desire, but I really didn’t grasp how a person that intelligent could make that filly his closest associate. She was in his office constantly and knew all of his plans. VV became nervous, rude, and I’d say stupid. This couldn’t continue for long; it ended suddenly, and in an unanticipated manner.
I became a completely unintentional witness to that affair. I stayed in the library Saturday night, as I wanted to look over some books that weren’t allowed out of the building. I had no idea that VV and Vaiva had stayed. For some reason I didn’t reveal myself when I noticed them; I stuck in the background. Perhaps unnecessarily. It would have been better if I hadn’t seen all that.
VV stood by some shelves and paged through a book, while Vaiva rubbed up against him like a giant cat. He didn’t pay the slightest attention to her, but she didn’t let up. She got on her knees and nonchalantly started undressing him: voluptuously and vulgarly, panting heavily. He just continued calmly paging through the book. Now it was too late to come up to them; my only option was to exit quietly, but, in astonishment, I continued watching them. I saw something I’d never seen before. The details really aren’t necessary. I’ll only say that when I returned home, I scrubbed my entire body some ten times under the shower, attempting to wash off an invisible slime.
And VV stood there as if it were no big deal, looking at a book!
By then it was too much for me. I wanted to run away, but I bumped into a bookshelf and several volumes fell off with a huge crash. I was so frightened I couldn’t even manage to move. The crash seemed to awaken VV from a deep sleep. He looked around with amazement at what was going on. A look of disgust appeared on his face. He suddenly went nuts.
It was horrible to see how he worked her over. I thought he’d break her arms and legs, smash her skull, and knock out her teeth.
“Kanukas!” He screamed this strange word out loud. “Kanukas!”
I didn’t even try to rescue her. I’m a coward and I know it. I had absolutely no desire to be crushed like a pear. For what? For Vaiva? For that filly? She got what she deserved.
I couldn’t understand any of it: neither her earlier triumph over VV, nor VV’s strange fading, nor that outburst of madness. Afterwards VV immediately recovered his good mood, agile wit, and sense of humor. You’d think he’d come out of some kind of fog. He didn’t remember Vaiva at all.
What did he beat and kick between the shelves that horrible night in the library? Surely not a rather vulgar young woman with an Afro hairstyle, not a real human being. But what?
By the way, right after this
incident, the infamous story of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski broke. The satanic Manson, Sharon Tate’s brutal murder, and so on.
For a few days afterwards VV walked around under a black cloud and moved his lips soundlessly. It seemed Roman Polanski was his brother, or maybe Tate his sister.
I took note of this, because VV grimly predicted that Polanski would shortly meet with a vile misfortune. And that’s what happened: he was accused of raping a minor.
VV would frequently make predictions like that, and he always guessed correctly. He saw connections everywhere that were invisible to everyone else.
I saw that Polanski, in one of his own films, The Tenant. Lord knows, he somehow reminded me of a much smaller version of VV.
A hundred, a thousand times I’ve thought: God surely could have made VV smaller: his size, his passions, his edginess, his . . .
It seems to me that someone already undertook narrowing a person’s soul. Was it Dostoevsky perhaps?
It’s an extremely dangerous pursuit. Extremely. The ROF also undertakes this narrowing of souls. Apparently, cutting off even some evil or ugly human characteristic can’t be done—it’d be better to cut off an arm or leg. Even without some appendages, a person’s essence remains. But without a part of his brain, a person instantly turns into a worm of the Ass of the Universe.
I either have to admit that VV could have been the way he is and only the way he is, or not talk about him at all.
I agree: sometimes he was horrible. I agree: Lolita met a particularly hideous end. But apparently it couldn’t be any other way. Otherwise, there would never have been a VV, either.
I ran into Giedraitienė again today. She was hanging around Lenin Square and constantly glancing at the KGB building, looming on the other side of the street.
Vilnius Poker Page 47