Vilnius Poker

by Ricardas Gavelis

  Vilnius has been engulfed in fall by now. The sidewalks are wet, the air damp. Glum figures creep by: they’re known as Vilniutians.

  The dog is waiting for me on the other side of the street; he knows I’m coming back. Unconsciously I start thinking up elegant phrases. I really must talk to him. I’ll ask him about VV.

  A gigantic truck roars right by the sidewalk, it’s already turned around. Good Lord, he’s hunting me down. I’ll check out his plate number and report him to the traffic police.

  Suddenly I spot Šapira on the other side of the street. I even get a pang in my chest. I must have secretly been hoping to run into him, because suddenly I realize what I have to ask him. I know now: it’s just one little thing. Everything is unexpectedly falling into a harmonious scheme. If VV . . .

  I quickly stuff the bottles into my pockets and jump into the street at an angle. Šapira could disappear at any minute, he’s always in a hurry. I see his old face, his wise eyes. I know now what I’ll ask, I almost know the answer too, I hear a horrible roar from the left, I turn and

  PART THREE

  TUTEIŠA

  Miss Stefanija Monkevičiūtė. October 30, 197. . .

  The best thing would be to buy a heap of gauze and cut it up, like I did that time in Palanga: everyone was running to all the sundries stands, bitching and griping, while I, as pretty as you please, bought myself a roll of gauze, cut it up, and it was first-class; this always happens when you’re at a resort or on the road, where there’s neither the conditions nor friends, nor even a good place to get washed up, you go around stinking like a barrel of herring, it seems everyone’s turning their nose away, although men probably don’t smell it, only dogs, like this one: raising his crooked snout up, his doggy balls hanging, it’s so embarrassing, you could just sink into the ground—you probably should go to the veterinary pharmacy, sometimes they have some sitting there.

  When they picked him up all bloody, the street got blurry, I couldn’t see the people anymore, his gray tweed jacket was all bloody, the guy with the mustache was emptying his pockets, pulling out one little bottle of cognac after the other, and everyone nodded their heads: see, he was drunk; but I knew for sure that he was stone-cold sober, I wanted to say something, but the mustachioed guy emptied the last pocket and everyone shut up, because at the very bottom of the pocket was a finger, a real, live human finger, I swear to God, just like in Vasilis’s hut in the swamp: fingers of corpses, faded bundles of herbs and dried bats all hanging on strings; he went out for ten minutes and you find him run over, with a human finger in his pocket. I’m not afraid of death, I’ve seen lots of them, but I can’t be calm like that young miss: a light blue miniskirt with patch pockets, a Dior handbag on her shoulder, looking down indifferently and chewing gum, she doesn’t think it at all horrible, she’s a genuine Vilniutian, but I’ll never understand this city as long as I live, I’ll live like I did in my village cottage in rotten, stinking Bezriečjė; you won’t resurrect Martis, but I would like to so much, I never wanted to resurrect anyone that much, except maybe my cat Tomas, when Stadniukas crushed his skull, and I cried and rubbed dirt into my eye—later Vasilis washed it with a potion of herbs and cussed quietly, I kept saying: poison Stadniukas, poison him, but Vasilis answered gloomily: he’s poisonous himself, poison wouldn’t touch him; Stadniukas was the live embodiment of the Soviet government in our area, he did away with both people and cats. Martis was as independent as a cat, but as modest as a teenager, he always had to turn out the light beforehand, and he’d get terribly flustered if I squeezed that thing for him, but afterwards he wasn’t a bad little guy, true, not large, but is size what matters; now he’s lying there dead like an executed forest brother—how many of those I saw in my childhood; they would lay them in the village square: maybe someone who recognized them would gasp or start crying, then they could send them off to Siberia. That’s why I don’t cry or gasp now, I’ve seen too many of them, I’ve built up a reflex, like dogs do; that dog has gone completely nuts, he keeps getting underfoot with his snout raised—shoo, shoo, you monster, get lost, I’m not a bitch, I’m a member of the human race, even though Vargalys would sometimes say: you’re not entirely of the human race. Lord only knows what he had in mind, no one could understand him.

  No one could understand any of the Vargalyses; their and the Giedraitises’ villas stood a bit outside of the village, by a bend in the creek; they were genuine Lithuanians, but who knows what the rest of us were, tuteiša, tuteiša, the men repeated during the registration after the war when they were asked for their nationality, in other words, we’re locals, but what could they say: to this day I don’t know what part of me is Polish, what part Belarusian, or how much Lithuanian blood there is in me, now I think in Lithuanian, but maybe I thought some other way earlier. I threw a last glance at Martis, if they ask me to come identify the corpse, I won’t go, because I always remember that early morning in the town square; father rattled off to get a spot at the market, and I said I wanted to go pee-pee, but that wasn’t what was on my mind at all, I stayed in the square because there were four of them laid there, and not a living soul about. I was terribly interested in that growth between men’s legs, I knew I’d never have one, I kept grabbing boys in that spot, but how are you going to feel up a grown man, and here they were, four of them no less; I knew they were sleeping and wouldn’t wake up, I could take a look at them in peace, the morning was cool, their clothes and faces didn’t concern me at all, I unbuttoned the one on the edge, felt around with a trembling little palm, but I didn’t find anything, I spread the slit and saw there really wasn’t anything there—just a gaping bloody clot. All four of them were like that; I ran away like crazy, screaming daddy, daddy, but I couldn’t explain anything, I just kept repeating: they’re lying, they’re lying there, father stroked me and whispered: you can’t go there, don’t go near them, or else you’ll be taken away.

  I really need to go to the veterinary pharmacy, the trolleybus would be the best way to go, but I can’t stand Vilnius’s trolleybuses: in the old days they were attractive and mysterious; it seemed that climbing into them you were surrendering to that quietly growling creature, it opened up and swallowed you, you’d melt inside of it, melt . . . Now I find trolleybuses disgusting, I’m a genuine Vilniutian by now, I’ve already gotten spoiled, better take a taxi, even if I’d rather not spend the money, never mind Elena if it should take awhile; when Vargalys was here you could run around wherever you liked, he would do everything for everyone himself, but that one instituted a regime, we all sit there like sardines in a can. Beta tilts her little head with her bangs and straightens the lace trim at her breasts, the stuff they brought her from Czechoslovakia, well, I don’t know if it’s all that nice, it’s kind of show-offy, although Martis likes lace underwear, he always says . . . liked, liked, said, said—I can’t get used to the idea that Martis is gone forever, funny crew-cut Martis—for sure he’d pick at Beta’s lace now, he’d stick a finger between her breasts like it was an accident, but Martis is no more, nor his finger, just that other little finger in his pocket; Beta’s pocket’s lacy too, Lord, what a show-off, whatever you say, and she asks for five-fifty too—you could go out of your mind.

  Marė sits there like the cat got her tongue, Lord, just like a wax doll, you’d think she’d flown off somewhere and left her body behind. Vargalys would often stand there like that. He could stop and fall asleep in the middle of the street: shake him as much as you want, you wouldn’t wake him up. The whole family was weird; Vasilis liked to tell stories about them, as if those Vargalyses didn’t live right next door, but off somewhere off in the wild blue yonder, back in the days when people still understood the language of birds; their house looked like a fairy tale castle where ghosts live, black blood flows down crooked corridors, and at dusk the obscene bird of night chatters. Many times I made up my mind to secretly look over the House of Horrors, but I never got up the nerve, I was afraid to meet Vargalienė on the creaking stairs with a k
nife in her hand, or Vargalys’s naked father, putrefied like Lazarus. When I saw him again many years later, he was a bald fatty, he panted constantly, guzzled beer, and blathered nonsense, even I knew it was nonsense, while Vytas Vargalys frowned and fumed, his father whiningly begged for money; his pension wasn’t enough, he spends it all sitting at the Neringa, tiresomely cursing the government, a government, which, by the way, didn’t short-change him like it did other people, it gave him a pension for a few years of lecturing at the University; maybe someone changed places with him, the sorcerer Vargalys was left to live in his house and he deliberately sent a bald fatty, a foolish womanizer, out in his place; he even tried to seduce me—and just think, there was a time when he had god-like powers, mornings the village girls would secretly run around the bend in the creek, Vargalys’s naked father would come there, stand on the shore looking at the current, and the girls would gasp and elbow each other in the side: look, look, you’ll never see another one like that in your life, no matter how long you look, there isn’t another like it, ones like that don’t exist. It’s horrible what age does to a person. Marė surely has some, she even buys flour in reserve, but how are you going to ask; there should be a special stockpile: whoever buys some puts it in the stockpile, and then everyone can use it, after all, everyone needs it; it really would be nice, but now wrack your brains and stink like a bucket of dishwater.

  I can’t stand any stench, instantly I remember the wash, scads of dirty underwear soaking in a wooden barrel whose sides leaked, mother’s red, swollen hands, kneading the stinking, wet bundle: it would slurp and burble, steaming at the sides—and even the steam spread an overwhelming stench, like those who were lying in the town square, right next to the churchyard. It’s no fluke that they say the Germans boiled soap out of corpses; maybe ours was from corpses too, even if it wasn’t German—its stench would cover even the stink of sweat. I hated all the soap in the world, it was only later, in Vilnius, that I washed myself with my roommate’s soap and I was amazed: my underarms were fragrant, my skin too, even my crotch spread a soft aroma—and again I thought Vilnius really is a city of miracles. But our swamp stank of a bloody past, of tears and rotting trees, people said that once the stribai surrounded and drove an entire platoon of forest brothers into the swamp, they got stuck and one by one drowned in the watery peat, while the stribai stood on the shore and watched the others disappearing into the black quagmire: only Vytas Vargalys escaped alive and brought out his leader, who was as bald as a rock, with horrible burning eyes, his gaze made birds freeze mid-flight and fall to the ground like stones—the swamp stank because of those forest brothers, it didn’t want to take their bodies, at night it kept pushing one or the other up to the surface; lots of times in the mornings the shepherd boys would see one stretched out on the black water, and then sinking back again, condemned to journey that way for the ages: up, down, up, down, giving birth to the unforgettable smell of the mire. I can tell immediately if someone is from our area just by smelling them. Vargalys never smelled that way, that stench didn’t stick to him, he was steeped in a completely different one, a musty basement smell—he’d say that’s the way the prison camp smelled. He’d get furious if I forgot and started smelling his chest, his arms, his knees; he didn’t want to be reminded of those other times, but every one of the cells in his body had soaked up that smell, it couldn’t be washed away, rubbed away, or obliterated. I kept secretly smelling Vargalys anyway; that smell seemed to represent his past, which I knew nothing about, because he never told me anything, you’d think he had been born when he returned from the camp. It’s drizzling outside the window, what a pain, I really won’t get there on foot, it’s weird even, how much I’ve started to love walking by myself, for no reason at all—before I’d run around with my pants on fire, looking for some tasty morsel or something for Vargalys, and then all of a sudden I had oodles of free time, right after that long-legged woman showed up. Lord, I’m talking like a fool, like legs had something to do with it; she bought him off with other things, with her youth first, then probably luxury. Rain or not, I need to get out of here—it’s afternoon already, in a minute everyone will start zooming around the stores looking for meat, they’ll leave me and Beta to mind the shop, see, we don’t have husbands, so we don’t go looking for meat, they sigh and say they envy us, but really they think we envy them; they think it’s better to have any husband than not to have one at all, even if the husband is worn-out and useless, like Marė’s, even if he drinks day and night, like Gražina’s, even if he collects branched horns, like Elena’s; no, if you’re going to take one, then only a Martis or a Vargalys, those two were up in the clouds, but I couldn’t fly, maybe I’m too heavy—Lord knows, I need to lose weight, it doesn’t seem I eat all that much, but the rolls on my stomach keep getting bigger. Vargalys would bite them and quite seriously offered to sauté me—when was that, it’s terrible to remember. As soon as I think of Vargalys, something stirs in my crotch, not a nice feeling, particularly today, I’ll really start gushing blood, but as soon as I remember—it stirs: Vargalys was right to say that women think with that place. There’s some kind of program on the desk, command lines, GOTO, RETURN, why on earth did I start up with those computers, why aren’t I a knitter or a seamstress, I remember I sewed Gražkė a jumper, a loose one out of brown corduroy with big patch pockets and appliqués—it turned out rather nice, Gražkė was even surprised; she’s often surprised, there’s nothing but surprise on her face, as if she can’t understand why she has to live in this world; I don’t understand, either, but I don’t show this to anyone, even Vargalys never understood me. I was sent to Vilnius to investigate this city, to investigate it using myself like some kind of guinea pig; it’s been a long time since I’ve been to Bezriečjė, a long time since I saw Vasilis, he’s gotten completely decrepit, he doesn’t recognize me, he sent me to Vilnius, but now he’ll never explain why; age does you in, although the old Vargalys was some hundred years old and his eyes still flashed, he did nothing but swear at the food, that it didn’t taste good, at the girls, that they were ugly, and he called me a Polish spy, he kept suggesting that he and Vargalys gang rape me, and you could believe the old man could do it. Vargalys Senior, the king of the Jews: they say he stole some thousand Jews from the ghetto and hid them in the villages; mostly children—all the Jews of Vilnius would lift their hats to him, but later they left for Israel, while old Vargalys stayed here and gave lectures on the history of Vilnius; tons of people would cram in, but then they banned him from lecturing because he was always insulting the Poles, and after all, we have the brotherhood of nations. We’re all such friends that it stinks to high heaven: the Russians hate the Lithuanians, the Lithuanians the Poles, and everyone despises the black Muslims at the market who sell pears, melons, and pomegranates out of season; the Russians hate the Jews who haven’t left yet too, but, most of all, everyone to a man hates the Russians, but I myself don’t know who to hate; I’m a mongrel, so one part of me should hate the others: the Polish part the Russian, and the Lithuanian the Polish, but I don’t know how to divide it up so accurately, I don’t even know what I am—a tuteiša, that’s all, even though I think in Lithuanian. It’s too bad Martis is gone, we’d be sitting in a bar somewhere now, sipping vermouth, and he would tell me about some new thing in his collection. The first time I saw it, I thought he speculated in clothing, there was so much stuff piled in his room; he was doing an inventory and his son sat in the corner and gave us dirty looks. His son hates Martis, the son is as straight as an arrow, he’s a terrible Communist Youth leader, I always wanted to seduce that little hottie, corrupt him, so he wouldn’t be so straight; he despises women, riches too; he just hungers for power. I can’t stand it when teenagers preach, and that one was always teaching his father how to live, like from some textbook or a newspaper editorial, and Martis would listen with one ear, even though after his son left he would glumly call him the junior dictator; I’ve never seen a young man who was so ambitious for po
wer, heaven only knows about those apples falling from the tree, no one could make sense of it—the father so intelligent, and the son a Communist Youth activist, a hypocrite and a good-for-nothing. Thank goodness I don’t have any children, I’m horrified by my memory of that evening—when Vargalys begged me, on his knees, to keep his fetus. He insanely wanted a son, and I refused, I said, I’ll abort it, and later I almost agreed, but suddenly I miscarried—God himself saved me; if kids really turn out so inside-out, like Martis’s, then Vargalys’s son would have to be some kind of slobbering sadist, like Stadniukas—he’d strangle cats and dogs, since they don’t let you strangle people anymore—as it was, Martis’s son was there to see, it’s all as clear as day, Vargalys is under arrest, Martis, Gedka, Tedka are gone; maybe I really should go back to the village, even old age isn’t bad there, no one pays attention to age there, in general there’s neither age nor time there, I only sensed time when I ran away to Vilnius. It’s just terrible to remember how amazed and flustered I was when I landed on this ant hill; everyone was moving, hurrying somewhere, they had a purpose, and I couldn’t even talk to them, I stuttered a mixture of several languages, I wanted first of all to find a miraculous translator in Vilnius who would translate not just my speech, but all of me into this city’s language; that wish came true, however strange it may be, all of the others came true too, just not at all like I had imagined, maybe that’s the worst of it—if they didn’t come true, you can at least hope they still will, the worst is if they do come true, but not in the right way. Tedis grabbed me in the middle of the street and thunderously declared he had to sculpt me; I didn’t understand a thing, I didn’t even know that there are people like that, who do nothing but make sculptures, but I believed it all immediately, because Vilnius is a city of miracles; I undressed for him without hesitation, while he smacked his lips, kneaded his clay or plasticine, smacked his lips again, carefully stroked my side or even my breasts, he would go off a bit and come closer again, but I wasn’t in the least bit shy, I stood there stark naked and felt only pride; later Tedis said he wanted me like a stallion, but didn’t dare to even touch me—I was so proud and pure, that’s why even now art seems pure and unpolluted to me, although that’s probably rubbish. Let it be rubbish, I myself am a slowly fattening bit of rubbish with rolls of fat on my stomach, a wrinkling face, and I’m running like a broken bloody faucet today too, but it’s an honor to be even the rubbish of Vilnius, particularly if you’re an alien from a stinking swamp, from the kingdom of frozen time; once a year I return to my home town and hurry back as fast as I can: my parents are gone, Vasilis doesn’t recognize me, and my brothers and sisters are so foreign, they stink so bad of manure and moonshine, and they talk so strangely that I need a translator again, like I did before. To hell with it—if my underwear’s soaked through, I’m done for; I don’t have an extra pair. There’s no help for it, purse over my shoulder and I’m off for the restroom, its growing stench is inviting me, one look at our restroom would be enough for men to lose their sexual drive for three months: toilets covered with poop and bloody balls of gauze on the floor, women pretend and preen their pretty feathers only in front of men, left on their own they get three times as disgusting, so that later they can convincingly blush at men’s filthy talk, which, compared to their own secret filth, is no worse than baby talk. One, two, three, I change the tampon quickly, my last one, thank God, my underwear’s clean, one, two, three, and out of here as fast as possible, back into the corridor; Lolka didn’t use our restroom at all, she’d hold it in until lunch or run home, I respected her for that alone, she really was clean, not just for show. She was always a bright, long-legged little girl with an insolently protruding little fanny, maybe that’s why she died, I remember her genuine naïveté when Tedka started to win her over and she was charmed by his sculptures and the daring of his unofficial shows, she fluttered her long eyelashes and was on cloud nine; I’m probably the most to blame for her getting mixed up in the business of men like that, she followed behind me; I rushed headlong into Vilnius like into an ocean of wonders, and she was still a child—it’s not right for a sixteen-year-old girl to be in the company of avant-garde artists, or maybe it’s exactly right, who knows. That time she asked me with maddening naïveté: Tedis wants me very much, what should I do; I felt like her older sister, Lord knows, I didn’t say anything, my tongue was tied, but my hands of their own accord opened up my purse and handed her a packet of pills. You always act first and think about it only afterwards, men do exactly the same, it’s just that afterwards they prove to themselves and everyone else that they’ve done everything correctly and sensibly, while we just torment ourselves—maybe they really do think more, but only afterwards, when everything’s over and done with. If Martis could respond from the other side, he’d for sure prove, with impeccable logic, that it was particularly intelligent of him to get under that truck, that it couldn’t be any other way: that’s the way men are. Even in our village they’d sit next to a huge bottle of moonshine in the evenings and start jabbering, nothing that happened could disturb those rituals—neither flood, nor fire, nor someone dying. The library corridor is like a tunnel; it wasn’t that long ago that Lolka and I would smoke here, hour after hour we’d chatter about everything or be quiet, it was here she admitted she was sleeping with Gedka Riauba and didn’t know how to tell her husband about it—I even gasped, thinking of how much that sixteen-year-old innocent had changed in a few years; she looked at me coolly and repeated: I gave in to him by mistake, and now I can’t escape, maybe they should fight it out or cast lots, it’s too hard for me with both of them. Why is it too hard, I asked like a fool, and she answered: for some reason men want all of me, it’s not just that they don’t want to share me with others—they won’t even leave me to myself, and I haven’t yet met a man who was worth giving myself up to hook, line, and sinker; listen, Stef, maybe it’s better to make love to yourself, to give up men entirely? I never considered men an unnecessary appendage of mine, it’s more like I felt that I’m their appendage, I always got involved with the ones who needed me, I could have had ten of them at a time, I don’t begrudge them, I’m generous, Lord knows, generous; I never bother about what use it’ll be to me, what I’ll get out of it, I’ve never held on to anyone if they wanted to leave, I never got insulted if they found someone else, I never thought that they used me or took away a part of my essence—a woman should be generous.