Vilnius Poker

by Ricardas Gavelis

  “Let’s stop in here, Stefutė, come on,” he waves his arm nervously at the Neringa. “Don’t leave me by myself. I can’t stand looking at those mugs anymore.”

  “Mugs”—that’s Lord’s Corner, a little collection of retirees and near-retirees, the last intellectuals of Vilnius’s cafés; in a while even these will be gone, they’ll smoke them out of here—who needs those geezers criticizing the government under their breath—although maybe they won’t touch the old guys.

  “Here, Stefutė, here, we’ll sit with our backs to those mugs,” Vargalys’s father shuffles, stirs, runs to order champagne, smiles pathetically from a distance.

  I won’t listen to what he says, it’s been a long time since he was a sorcerer, it’s been a long time since he had anything to say and I know how to grouse myself; everyone’s gulping coffee and eating crepes. Vilnius goes on as if nothing has happened; these people don’t burn up, don’t drown, don’t fall off mountains and don’t chop their lovers to bits—that’s what’s most important. I see the old man’s writhing lips, his wrinkling forehead, his tired eyes, how old is he anyway, seventy at least—wasn’t it last year or so that we celebrated Vargalys’s fiftieth? Vargalys’s father will never find out we already met twenty years ago, that day when I finally got up my nerve to visit their decrepit villa, when I stepped inside barefoot, climbed the creaking stairs, opened doors, startling the spiders, rats, and bats, shaking all over, coming across the strangest things: a skull, an opened bottle of wine, the butchered skeleton of a goose. No one had been there for years and years; our folks feared that cursed house like fire, and the Lithuanians had been deported a long time before—Užubaliai had sunk into the earth. A heavy black dust had settled everywhere, it crunched between my toes; little tracks of rat footprints meandered here and there, from time to time some frightened rodent would squeak irritably and get in my way, but I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore, I felt like the owner of the house, that was how Vasilis had taught me. I really did feel like the owner of all of that treasure—nothing had been looted, neither the clothes, nor the dishes, nor the books; now everything belonged to me, because I was the first to dare to step over the forbidden boundary, to go into the cursed house; I came across Vargalys’s father on the second floor, in a big room whose walls were hung with pictures, weird pictures: they were covered by an undisturbed layer of gray dust, they were all equally mute and dead. I thought he was a ghost, because there weren’t any footprints in the dust; he was unbelievably huge, already starting to lose his hair, the dried-up chair creaked beneath him when he waved his hand at me:

  “Come closer, little girl. Tell me where my son is. He has disappeared, vanished, but he’s alive, I feel it. Maybe you know? I’ll give you everything: the pictures, the crystal, the silver, even the books. It will all be yours, just find my son.”

  Now he sits across from me and grimaces like a clown—what kind of world is this, where sorcerers turn into clowns, heroes into impotents, and geniuses burn up alive? I found his son for him—that’s the weirdest thing—I really was the first to run into Vargalys, I carried out his father’s wish, but where are all those paintings, silver, and books now? You’d think it had all sunk straight down into the earth like the village of Užubaliai; the champagne really is good, my heart doesn’t even feel so heavy anymore, Lord, I understand drunks—you drink, and nothing bothers you, but I don’t have time, I need to pull a fast one on Vargalys’s father, otherwise he’ll get it into his head to come with me; I’ll pretend I’m going to the bathroom, the Neringa’s curtains are heavy, he won’t see: I ran away that time too, even though he kept repeating:

  “Don’t go, little girl: imagine you’re my daughter. Don’t you want to be my daughter? Imagine you’re my daughter and you’re looking for your brother. You must find your brother who’s wandering somewhere in the wide world. Don’t you want to find your brother?”

  I ran away, I didn’t want to learn the Vargalyses’ horrible secret, it was whispered by the walls of the Vargalys house, murmured in the webbed wings of the bats, squeaked by the rats, woven into the cobwebs by the spiders, but the Vargalys legend overtook me, merged with me; that evening I turned into part of the Vargalys history myself, it penetrated into me and hasn’t left me yet, it’s always with me, like the Lord God.

  What if I really was Vargalys’s sister? After all, I slept with him and even carried his child; as soon as I think of it I want to be a man—like Vargalys’s mother did, that witch with the mannish haircut who did men’s work and practiced jujitsu every day with the giant Julius. She kept saying that Lithuanian men were completely sissified, all that was left was for her to take their place, to turn into a man, or else Lithuania would be doomed; most of all she liked to break in wild horses (where did she get them from?), they say she’d fly into our village on the back of some crazed mustang, driving the border policeman nuts, he was always meaning to arrest her for crossing the border illegally, but he was afraid to even get near her; everyone was scared of her, even our village boys. She would beat them, cruelly and unmercifully, with all of her jujitsu mastery. And the sorcerer Vargalys didn’t pay the slightest attention to people, all he was concerned with was the spiritual and monetary system, they say it was thanks to him alone the litas was so stable; many times people saw him leading the dazed servant girl Janė, his connection with the other world, around the yard. The mother raised Vargalys like a girl, made fun of him and humiliated him, called him a little sissy, little girl, girly-girl, yet one more woman among Lithuania’s womanish men, she would undress him and yank him by that thing, saying it was a fake, a worthless appendage, it would be best to rip it off and throw it away; she hated her son, hated him with a passion; after all, she wanted to be a man, and men can’t give birth, the son would instantly remind her there’s a womb inside her, which had already given birth and could give birth again; probably that’s why such a giant body had such a pathetic, helpless, tiny little thing, I’ve never seen anything like it; it shrank from the mocking and humiliation in his childhood, that’s why Vargalys tried, all his life, to prove to himself and everyone else that he was a real man, a man of all men. I’ve never met such a rude, pompous, snarling person whose insides were so vulnerable and frail, no man ever stroked my hands and cheeks that way, no man ever kissed my feet that way, but only when we were alone—in front of others he would instantly turn coarse, cruel, and unmerciful. He didn’t want to come to terms with aging; he wanted to always stay young and powerful, although he never was powerful, that drooping little thing of his got smaller every day, it kept shrinking—phooey, what am I going on about, he was the only one I never compared to anyone in that respect; he was a Vargalys, that says everything. I want to howl, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to start howling right here, next to the Central Committee building, or better yet, inside—but they won’t let me in; a militiaman with a pistol glances at the passersby suspiciously, even though he’s never had to shoot and never will: everyone’s calm, quiet, and obedient, and dressed alike: I’ve gone down nearly the whole boulevard and I’ve met maybe three ladies with smarts, so what if it’s silly, but it’s smarts all the same; on the face of it, everyone seems to dress differently, but so alike that you can blink as much as you want but you can’t even tell yourself apart; you try and try and all the same you look as alike as peas in a pod; here, take this one: a shabby, nothing coat, a rumpled, nothing hat; oh Lordee, it’s Šapira, it’s not right to talk about Šapira that way, he’s special, you can’t figure him out, you’d think he was trying to look different every day, as if he were an actor on the stage, one day suited up like a gentleman, the next dressed in rags like some bum, he wanders the streets of Vilnius, looks, listens, and knows everything; they say he’s secretly writing a book, the great history of Vilnius: a genuine eccentric, sometimes I get the urge to make fun of him, but you just look at him and you see he’s smarter than you are, he surely knows what he’s doing, even though no one knows what that is.

  �
��At one time I used to play cards with Vytautas’s grandfather,” says Šapira approaching, “he’d always beat me. He was smarter than any Jew, that’s what strange. Strange, because he lived foolishly. I kept suggesting we trade, let him be a Jew, and I’ll be a Lithuanian.”

  We go past Gražina’s haberdashery, I planned to take a look at the gloves, well, Optica doesn’t concern me, for the time being I get by without glasses—oh, I didn’t stop at the pharmacy on Totorių Street, but what of it: if they had them, women with bags would be running around, all the ministries would be rushing to lay in a supply.

  “Vytautas was a smart guy too,” Šapira mumbles, “A poor guy, a smart guy, a martyr. His mother tormented him, that girl tormented him, his own thoughts tormented him. He should have been giving sermons on the mount, but instead he hid from everyone. He brought Vilnius to a stop, but he still didn’t discover anything. He thought he could achieve victory just by being on the defensive. Do you know he hung himself in solitary? Or maybe someone hung him?”

  I grab Šapira by the sleeve, but all I do is catch at the air, the old man’s gone, it’s always like he’s dreamt up a bunch of stuff and he always reports some misfortune; don’t tell me it’s true, don’t tell me I won’t need to decide, don’t tell me my knowledge, my testimony, is worthless now. Once more I see Vargalys slowly standing up, straightening out, and looking down with a wooden expression, looking at the mutilated body just as he had looked once before—on that horrible night when I was born.

  He found his dismembered mother on our hill: he knelt by the mutilated body in the exact same way, then in the exact same way he stood up and straightened out, in the exact same way he glanced downwards with a wooden expression—I didn’t see it the first time, but I saw the second. On that day in forty-four when the Russians came back his mother went completely crazy, she rushed to go to battle; none of you men have balls, she would scream, none of you have balls, I’m the only one who’s a real man, then she started saying she was Lithuania itself and she was standing to battle immediately; in the evening she secretly escaped from the family’s care and stood to that battle, all alone against the entire Russian army; apparently she really felt she was Lithuania itself. Vasilis saw that battle of hers, as always, he stood there aloof and watched: she met the first Russian soldiers and attacked them like a she-wolf; they were provisioners, they didn’t even carry automatics, and their hands were full, they were dragging soap, as much as they could carry; they had come across a warehouse the Germans had abandoned and were whistling happily because they’d finally gotten some soap, they thought they’d finally wash up like human beings, all they were dreaming about was a sauna, and suddenly they met a she-wolf. There were maybe six of them, but Vargalys’s mother scattered them in all directions, kicked them, trampled them, tore their faces with her nails, she even forgot her jujitsu mastery, but the Russians slowly came to their senses—stunned, humiliated, with bloody, harrowed faces; a few more emerged from the forest, and that was it for Vargalys’s mother: the soldiers chopped her up with shovels, they didn’t even have any other weapons, they didn’t just kill her, but chopped her to bits; blinded by an inhuman anger, they chopped at her brutally and for a long time. Vasilis said that pieces of her body were strewn everywhere, and they kept chopping until they tired. Only then did they come to their senses: they got horrified themselves, or maybe they only just then realized they were mutilating a woman; they ran off, some even crossing themselves, scattering pieces of soap. All of that happened on our nameless hill. Sometimes it seems to me that all of my childhood happened on that bare hill. Gediminas Hill looms over Vilnius, but nothing’s happened on it for a long time now, the exhausted castle pokes out like some worthless addition to the city; inside the knights’ armor, Lithuanian swords, and silver ornaments are sleeping, they’re sleeping and will sleep through the ages, and we’re dozing right alongside; a slight mist covers the castle, like an aged coquette’s veil; I was inside only once, with Gedka and Vargalys, this alcoholic artist worked there as the museum’s night watchman, we partied all night long in the middle of all that armor, those cannons and swords, but the spirit of the old Grand Dukes didn’t wake up, anyway: it couldn’t even manage to get insulted; enough about the castle, on the other side of the street is the corner of miracles, a bit of paradise, the kingdom of dreams, on the other side of the street is—the dollar store. I simply can’t believe a world like that even exists, that’s the way I’d feel when Martis would listen to that radio from the other side: I’d hear people’s voices, they would utter completely understandable words, but as soon as I’d try to imagine them sitting in some room, to imagine that there are streets outside their window, that trees grow there too, and cars zoom around—it would never work. They’re like Martians to me. Apparently they exist, but they don’t, they’re imaginary, like this Martian store, Ali Baba’s cave: you say, Open Sesame, and like hell it’ll open; they just yell—a foreign passport and dollars! Only Martians come here; once I lived in the swamp, from there even Vilnius looked like a Mars of some sort, but now I’m a bit Martian myself, when I go back home, that’s just how everyone looks at me. But after all, I could have been like them, if not for Vasilis, the great phantom Vasilis, my teacher and creator. He lit a spark in me that I didn’t have when I was born, turned me into a human and a woman, opened up a world for me that I didn’t even suspect existed; all I knew was our village life, it seemed there couldn’t be any other. You know, it really is comfortable not to know anything: when you don’t know anything, you don’t want anything either, the wheel of life turns evenly and smoothly, nothing changes, nothing worries you; it really is awful to find out you can live some other way, that knowledge is devastating, but Vasilis managed to patiently nurse my spirit, so I went out into the world prepared to oppose it fearlessly.

  Vasilis loved and respected all forms of life, be it ants or wolves. Once I saw a louse crawling through the hair on his chest, I wanted to smash it, but he didn’t let me: it’s God’s creation too, he said, it’s needed too, it’s needed under God’s canopy, honor every living thing, this louse matters just as much as a star, or Gediminas Castle, and you don’t, after all, put out stars or wreck Gediminas Castle; lice, tigers, goats, and cats live among people too—and it’s forbidden to destroy a single one, all of them are equally important, a louse could still turn into a tiger, or a cat into a flea, what matters most is to want something, to want something very, very, badly. Then he kept telling me about Vilnius, that city would appear in my dreams as a land of miracles, where people, tigers, cats, fleas, and elephants live together, all of them get along, socialize, turn into one another, and there’s music playing everywhere, the towers stretch to the sky, plants of paradise you’ve never seen before sway in the breeze; I wonder who this babe is—she’s sewed herself a poncho out of Scottish plaid and walks around that way—a mouse, a cow, or maybe a magpie? I found the real Vilnius to be different, completely different, but no less amazing; it seems to me that Vilnius enters my body like a man, my eternal man, who will give me sons; God almighty, I should have had children, I desperately needed to have children, a lot of children—they could have had so many fathers. I keep remembering Gediminas, his scholarly language, that music of his that made my teeth hurt; I probably loved him, but I loved Tedis too, and Martis; Lord knows, one heart is not enough for me, I should have been born with a couple of them; I didn’t love Vargalys, he’s not a creature of this earth, I was afraid of him, but at the same time I respected him, maybe respect and fear are inseparable things. His child, a son of course, fell out of me himself, committed suicide before he was born, I’m afraid to even think of what he would have been like, what marks of the Vargalyses he’d carry, that accursed family, who, according to Vasilis, was perhaps destined to save Lithuania: maybe it was because of his family’s importance that Vargalys wanted children so badly, after all, he left his wife because she was infertile. I know Irena quite well, occasionally we call each other, go out somewhe
re to sit; I don’t visit her at home, she lives too luxuriously, her new husband is a black marketeer—a Volvo, carved furniture, and a Japanese television—the realization of the Soviet man’s dreams. I don’t know what it was that tied me to Vargalys—huge and miserable, unhappy and terrible; no, I didn’t love him, not even in the beginning, and certainly not later, when that business with Lolita started, so that’s why I suddenly feel so free now. If Šapira’s right . . .