Vilnius Poker

by Ricardas Gavelis

  But I can’t be free, I must devote myself to something every day, every hour, every minute—to men, to Vilnius, to the air or the stars, that’s my nature, that’s my essence, that’s the way Vasilis taught me; Lord may he gain the kingdom of heaven, or maybe he’s long since there by now—I don’t remember when I last visited Bezrečjė.

  But the village is stalking me, it even gives me the shudders. Madam Giedriatienė, Vargalys’s eternal escort, his good or evil spirit, his grandfather’s like-minded friend, is slowly approaching with a dignified air; it looks like St. John’s Church is sliding down the hill right at me. Madam Giedraitienė is very close; she raises her serious, piercing eyes at me and says in an impatient voice:

  “We’re going to my place, Stefanija. I’ve something serious to talk about.”

  “He hung himself,” suddenly bursts out of me, “he hung himself in the solitary cell.”

  “I’m just coming from there,” Giedraitienė shoots back, as cool as a cucumber. “He’s as healthy as he could be. Healthier than ever.”

  She turns and walks into the gateway next to the Narutis, climbs the creaking stairs, unlocks the door, she’s already taking off her coat and stepping into her slippers, she’s dignified and noble, dresses conservatively, now she’s wearing sleeves with crinoline, her hair’s tied back with a shiny barrette, she drinks endless cups of coffee and chain-smokes Marlboros, her son Robertas is a diplomat who works in West Berlin.

  “What’s this you’ve thought up, you silly thing,” Madame Giedraitis mutters angrily, “You should put a sock in it.”

  “Šapira said so.”

  “And you listen to a Jew’s rubbish. Some black marketeer hung himself. And he heard about it and decided it’s Vargalys. No Vargalys ever killed himself.”

  The Giedraitises were never either witches or werewolves. Giedraitis Junior, they say, joined up with the stribai, his mother even disinherited him and went to Siberia to find out where Vargalys was confined; she made peace with her son only after fifty-three, when people started coming home, and Robertas, after sufficient breast-beating, went off to study at the International Relations Institute.

  “I’ve mustered all my acquaintances and connections,” says Madame Giedraitis, pouring coffee out of a thermos. “He can be saved. It all needs to be thoroughly investigated. Vytautas couldn’t have done it.”

  He’s alive, he’s alive—what should I do with my knowledge, what should I do with that wretched sight: Vargalys slowly stands up, straightens himself out and looks down with a wooden expression, looks at the hideously dismembered body; it’d be better to see something else. If you could look right through the walls, you’d see Tedka’s studio, it’s right nearby: gloomy, piled up with sculptures, the walls covered with my portraits: me naked and me dressed; me with black hair, blonde hair, and even bald; me, sorrowful and saintly. Lolka was terribly jealous of those portraits, but Tedis was immovable—I continued to be his painting muse, even though Lolka shoved me out in real life. Lolka, Lolka, monster Lola, disgusting Lolita, she always had to push you aside, step past you, then ruin and humiliate you; she always had to take whatever it was that belonged to you alone—not because she really needed it, but just so she could humiliate you. It wasn’t enough that things were good for her, she needed it to be bad for others too; no, she wasn’t like that at first, she turned that way slowly, it seemed she siphoned up the worst she found in everyone—from both Tedis and Gediminas, even from Vargalys. The old lady’s head shakes a bit, but her speech is clear and articulate:

  “They even took his medical file, looking for mental deviations. I didn’t think there would be anything to it—after all, Vytautas was so tough. It turns out he was constantly looking for diseases—I would never have imagined it. He got checked out at the clinics and at the oncologists, looking for cancer. They didn’t find any. He even had himself checked for . . . well, I can tell you . . . he had his semen checked, to see if he wasn’t infertile. Everything was hunky-dory. In short, his medical file is as fat as a Lithuanian novel, but there was only one answer: Vytautas is as healthy as a horse. Mentally as well.”

  Well then, Kovarskis was full of it too; all you need to do is mention Vargalys and it starts raining legends—that he hung himself, that he was ill with cancer, that he was impotent—apparently you can’t say anything definite about him.

  “Do you understand what’s at stake here?” I suddenly ask. “He chopped Lola to bits. That’s a fact. If they don’t send him to prison, they’ll shut him up in an insane asylum. Forever.”

  “Not forever, Stefanija, not forever.” To my surprise, Madam Gied­raitienė visibly rallies. “There’s treatment, be it real or fictitious, and most of all—time for everything to at least quiet down a bit.”

  “Well, what of it?”

  “You don’t know what it means to have powerful connections,” Madam Giedraitienė says proudly. “Connections mean everything. They elevate and ruin. They turn black into white, and white bloody. If they don’t kill Vytautas, we’ll get him off.”

  I almost start believing her, even though I’m immediately horrified: if Vargalys shows up again in this world, if he touches me again, I’ll probably go out of my mind, I’ll remember what I saw and did in that damned garden that damned day; Madam Giedraitienė shuts up, smokes maybe her tenth Marlboro, maybe; I feel stupid, even though it’s so understandable to a woman: forgive me, perhaps ma’am . . . you know how these things are . . . I know, it’s awkward . . . Madam Giedraitienė’s best quality is that she’s never surprised at anything, doesn’t condemn anyone, and doesn’t gossip about anyone. After a minute she comes back with a nearly empty package of sanitary napkins, proudly hands it to me; it’s still something, even if it’s only enough for today.

  “It’s been lying there for awhile already,” says Madam Giedraitienė. “I can’t just throw it out. I was ready to use them, and it turned out I didn’t need to anymore. A horrible feeling. I had to hide it from the old guy. Vytautas’s grandfather was potent up until the very end.”

  I run to the bathroom, make it just in time: everything’s soaked through, the first day is always awful; I look down and I’m amazed; that stinking, bleeding cavity is what all men are after, and if that wasn’t enough, everything that’s alive comes out of it, although no one came out of mine and maybe won’t now: cover it up, hide it, squeeze it shut, and suffocate everyone hiding in there. Now it seems to me they’re all holed up in there: Tedis splattered with clay, and Gedka whistling jazz, and even Martis with the woman’s pinky finger in his pocket. But they’ve died, they’re gone, I’m all alone—oh Jesus, just don’t think about it, think about anything—just not about that; oh, Vargalys’s grandfather was potent right up until he died—well, she’s full of it, he was a hundred maybe when he died; I remember his funeral perfectly well, just about all of the ancient Jews of Vilnius came, you heard ten times more Yiddish around than Lithuanian. The Jews came to honor their rescuer, one even tried to give a speech: he compared him to Wallenberg, that’s some Swede who saved Jews too, and Vargalys kept fuming that the deceased’s last wishes hadn’t been carried out, the others pleaded with him every which way—who could carry it out? The old guy told him to set a silver bucket full of excrement next to his casket and to hang a sign reading, “Death to the Poles.”

  It’s time to move on, you could describe all of our lives that way: time to move on; Madam Giedraitienė politely escorts me to the door, I go down the stairs, at last escape into the air. Didžiosios Street finishes rising here, well, how can you not love Vilnius, it’s so big and sad, and comfortable at the same time: even Didžiosios Street is a only few yards wide, the houses on either side stretch out their hands to each other and quietly sigh. I go past Tedis’s studio, try not to think about him, but my eyes turn to the left on their own, look over the clothing store too, and the leather repair shop, and the famous beer kiosk, the Mecca of Old Town’s drunks, until at last I see the buildings of Bokšto Street; the street dives
down so suddenly it seems the houses are half buried under the earth—the strange houses of Bokšto Street, which bring back gloomy memories. The time Stadniukas appeared on our hill with two truckloads of soldiers; Lord knows, all the most important things happened on that hill; Stadniukas walked about puffed up like a rooster, choosing which village to start with, he called it collectivization, the soldiers smoked cigarettes and yawned, they knew they wouldn’t need to shoot, they were NKVD and didn’t mind anything. Stadniukas went down the hill to our side, there was no need to summon people, everyone was milling around at the foot of the hill anyway; sign up for the collective farm, Stadniukas yelled without any introduction, or else—but he didn’t need any or else, our village was obedient, Stadniukas was disappointed, he wanted to beat, to cut, to burn, but no one resisted; but he got his wish in the Lithuanian village, his eyes shone no less than they did when he wanted to rape me, he was delighted because the Lithuanians glared at him from under their lowered eyes and had no intention of signing up for that collective, Stadniukas finally got to do some beating, he particularly liked to kick children, and in about two hours all the people were gathered into a row. Covered trucks appeared out of nowhere and roared off towards the railroad station at dusk. That morning in the village the cows still lowed, geese cackled, children screamed, but after that night Užubaliai was left voiceless; the open doors to the cottages yawned like eyes that had been poked out, the smell of people still drifted from inside, coals still glowed in the fireplaces, but the village was gone, only Stadniukas was left: he was the first to go around the cottages, he collected the valuables and roared away in his black car; it was only afterwards, following the government’s example, that our folks fell upon the cottages in Užubaliai too; they carried off everything: bedding, clothing, furniture—after all, the others hadn’t had time to pack anything up, they had to leave almost everything behind. I was only five years old, everything seemed like a fairy tale—there was a village, and then the village was gone—I crept around in those empty cottages too, but I didn’t take anything, really, I didn’t take anything, even though I badly wanted those wonderful rag dolls, there was one in every cottage; I could only dream of things like that, I wanted them badly, but I didn’t take them, and everyone was dragging clocks, wagon wheels, even benches and chairs over the hill, until the village idiot Piotrusis joyously hobbled over the hill, screaming horribly: “The houses knelt down, the houses knelt down.” At first no one understood, then no one believed him; it was only on the third or fourth day that the men of the village gathered to talk it over: Užubaliai village was steadily sinking into the ground. At first just the doors seemed to get lower, and it was still possible to doubt that the village was sinking, but slowly the windows ended up even with the ground, then they sank even further, were half hidden, disappeared completely: our folks didn’t just stop looting, they were afraid to even go near those sinking houses, only the kids, ignoring their parents, climbed around on the straw roofs that ended up entirely underfoot, hooted down into the chimneys, and teased the astonished stork—you could reach its nest just by jumping up; I wandered around there too, with a terrible heartache I watched all the rag dolls disappearing beneath the ground, they vanished like that, together with whole houses; for a while a stork’s nest, built on a wheel, stuck above the grass, then it sank into the ground too. There was just a bare space left where the village once was, people erased it from their memories, and the village was erased from the surface of the earth. That vision stands before my eyes when I look at the houses of Bokšto Street now; they’re slowly sinking downwards and no one’s worried about it, the men standing next to them calmly drink beer, it means nothing to them that all of Vilnius could sink beneath the ground any minute, nothing will remain but a bare space—the castle and the very tallest buildings will sink too; for a while the television tower will continue to stick out, like a sign that there was a city here once. A puffy face turns towards me from the beer stand and stares at me: he resembles Stadniukas, the way he was then, already relieved of his duties, hanging around the village, ordering the chickens and the goats around, killing the dogs and cats. When he looked me over, I got terribly scared; I complained to Vasilis, he nodded his head sympathetically and gave me a dagger, a strange, exotic weapon with a three-sided blade on which was written SACRUM—just pull it out, you only need to pull it out, he taught me, and turn the blade in the light, all the Stadniukases in the world will avoid you forever; I made it just in time, maybe a day or two later Stadniukas caught me, cornered me by the double trunk of an old willow, and grinning vengefully, grabbed me by the breasts; I didn’t scream, I didn’t resist, that unnerved him a bit, but just for a little while, he immediately saw fear and hate in my eyes—that which he needed most—he didn’t hurry; quite the opposite, he enjoyed it, that introduction of horror was what mattered most to him; he slowly pulled down my skirt, even more slowly bared one breast like on some Amazon, but I didn’t think about the horror awaiting me, or about any rapes, there was just one thing on my mind: what would be if everything would happen and then I’d give birth to a child, Stadniukas’s child, whom I would have to strangle before its first cry, a child of hell, who would have to be drowned, buried underground, burned up. Stadniukas slowly moved his hands towards my crotch, giggling foolishly, sucking on his teeth, while I secretly pressed the handle of the dagger and repeated to myself: now, when his fingers reach the mole on my thigh; now, when he touches the triangle of hair; now, when he lasciviously squeezes that hair: now it will be enough. But I resolved to do it only when he started unbuttoning his fly; his hands were busy for an instant, and I stabbed him—I didn’t turn the blade of the dagger in the light, I didn’t intimidate him, I didn’t warn him; I stabbed at him at once without picking a spot—if I had hit the right spot, Stadniukas would never have strangled cats again. I remember Gedka half tried to take me by force the first time and was struck speechless when he saw the dagger, the three-sided blade with SACRUM written on the side, in my hand. I pulled it out automatically, not thinking of anything or planning to do anything; that instant it was simply an extension of my hand, to me it was like a bee’s stinger, an inseparable part of my body, and Gedka was so stunned he wasn’t able to do anything more that evening. The Stadniukas-like mug finally turns away, thank God, all I need is to attack someone, better calm down, look around. Well, now, I’ll go in the consignment store to gawk at the leather coats, even though I’ll never buy one like that: what can you buy with our pathetic little salaries, just let an Englishman or American try to get by in Vilnius, he’d walk around ragged, hungry, and finally go out of his mind, while we manage just fine; one thousand two hundred, thank you very much, and this one’s eight-fifty, that’s more like it, but all the same. Lolka always ran around decked out in leather and pretended to be my friend; she kept offering to give me something to wear like I was some kind of beggar, she always pretended we were friends, even when she started beating Vargalys away from me—oh, what didn’t she try, she about crawled out of her skin, the outfits she changed: Vargalys cost her at least several thousand, if not more. She changed her feathers, but Vargalys didn’t pay the slightest attention to her, that’s the way he was: a person could be running around under his nose for ten years, and Vargalys, meeting him on the street, wouldn’t recognize him; darts at the chest, pleats gathered on top, tiny lapels—let’s see, an even thousand, an entire half-year of your pathetic salary, Stefanija, plus some; don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t breathe for half a year, and you’ll be dressed like Lolka; those eyes, those wretched eyes of hers, I can’t forget them, like that time I went over to Gedka’s and found her there for the first time: I unlock the door, smell a strange scent and I’m furious already, and Lolka crawls out into the corridor stark naked, totally shameless, not feeling guilty, just smiles a bit, calmly lights a cigarette and puts on a robe, my robe, staring at me all the time with shameless, fierce eyes, as if that’s the way it had to be, as if that’s the way it alway
s was, as if it couldn’t be any other way: Gedka didn’t look me in the eye for some two weeks, and she goggled her pretty eyeballs at me as coolly as can be, invited me to lunch and, as if nothing was the matter, chattered on about her great new dress. No, dear friends, I’m outta here, the prices here are horrendous; Martis put it well: we don’t get wages, we get unemployment compensation, for that compensation all we can do is not work, which is what we do. Martis’s crushed body stands before my eyes again, the gloomy guy turns the woman’s little finger over in his hands and I know whose finger it is, Martis is gone, the finger’s owner is gone too; Martis was the only one she didn’t steal from me, the honorable Martynas; I remember I was at Gedka’s, I don’t know how it happened, I never made love with two at the same time again, but that time it turned out that way; they pulled long black stockings on me, Gedka ran around the rooms, yelling that I’m the Circe of Vilnius, that I’ve turned them into beasts, and suddenly Martis came by, he came to borrow some books or something, I was so out of it I barely knew what was going on anymore, I stumbled into the living room with those black stockings on and only then did I come to my senses: Martis was adorably flustered, he tried not to look at me, and when he couldn’t control himself and glanced at me sideways, I saw so much suffering in his eyes that Lord knows I came to completely. He was embarrassed, even I got embarrassed, he couldn’t understand that I am like the earth and I belong to everyone, it was the only time I was ever sorry I’m not a prude and monogamous; poor straight arrow Martis wanted to create the great museum of Lithuania, year after year he collected exhibits, and then they took everything away from him, destroyed his museum; Martis searched for justice for a long time, he even went all the way to Moscow, there he was accused of being a nationalist and nearly arrested, probably he was a nationalist—as long as he was listening no one could say anything at all bad about Lithuanians, Martis would immediately start arguing about it, even fight about it; listening to him, you’d think Lithuanians don’t have any shortcomings or flaws at all—then he started collecting a museum in his house, he didn’t care about anything, losing his job, or his wife leaving him, I even envy him, I always envy people who believe in something. Poor Martis, Martis the little corpse, children were his other mania, he would sit in the courtyard and chat with the kiddies, and then he’d write down their wisdom in a notebook—don’t tell me we really are destined to lose—loving children the way he did, the son disappointed his father terribly by turning into a careerist. Horrors, I only just now realized it so clearly: not a single one of them had children, only Martis—and the one he had was like that. My God, there’s nothing left of them anymore, not even their seed is left, there’s no seed of theirs left even inside me, the earth mother; I feel myself slowly stiffening in horror, I’m probably turning into a rock, I’m no longer living; it takes my breath away, thinking there’s no sign left of them all, not a trace—how is that, what’s to blame for it? The cupola of the Orthodox church gleams with brand-new gold paint, there’s so many Russian Orthodox churches in Vilnius, four at least, and how many of those Russians were there here earlier, there were a hundred times more Jews and only one synagogue, although it’s all the same to me, I don’t know my nationality, I don’t even know my faith, I don’t know what I am—probably the profligate earth; after all, the earth belongs to everyone, it doesn’t have a nationality, doesn’t profess any religion or professes them all at the same time; I’m like the earth, I can shelter and comfort anyone—that dejected little hook-nosed Jew too, who’s standing there deep in thought with his hands in his pockets, he’s probably thinking of his little Jewess—I can comfort everyone, although maybe not today; I’m a human, after all, not the earth—the earth doesn’t bleed and doesn’t go looking for gauze to plug up its little hole. I’m not the earth anymore, I don’t have anyone to comfort, that’s what’s the most horrifying—so why did Vasilis send me to Vilnius, what was I supposed to find here or do here, why did I have to desert my village and become an exile, an exile’s fate is always hard; in a new place he feels foreign, unnecessary, and I was terribly envious too, I brought that envy with me from Bezrečjė like a dreadful disease, I envied the Lithuanians their streets, their houses, ideas, manners, language, looks, clothes, love, food. Why, why, I kept asking myself, how can they be that way, who gave them the right, why are they that way, so I’m forced to envy them, and yet they’re still unhappy about something, they constantly bitch and moan about the government; my God, if I were like that and had that much of everything, I’d pray to that government; they should try to live in our village, they should try to live somewhere in the middle of Russia, I’d count them as something then; it’s terrible to remember, I so wished them ill, a hundred times I did—to Tedis, and Gediminas, particularly Gediminas; he was so great and so out of reach with those mathematical articles of his, his concert piano, and the letters Sartre wrote him; he was a giant, and I was an ant, but Vasilis, seeing me off, said: that dagger is miraculous, it’s meant for you too, if you feel the dragon of evil rising up inside you, remember the dagger. I remembered it too, when I felt that wretched envy I would stab myself in the left thigh, even now there’s a bunch of little scars on it—I wasn’t fooling, stabbing my left thigh, really: you envy Lolka her outfits, take this! Take this! You envy Gražkė her trip to Paris—take this! And this! You envy Gedka his ability to feel at home everywhere—take this! Take that! I spilled a lot of blood before I overcame my envy, before I became what I am: the humble earth that knows its eternal purpose. I fell in love with Gediminas first; he liked to be consoled like a fragile little missy, but he was a real man when he had to face some serious business, work or war. But I fell in love with him just because of his fragility and shyness; I’d comfort him with tears in my eyes, he’d be clinging to the piano, banging its black lacquered surface with his fist in despair. All his life he wanted to learn how to play in some special way, all his life he tried to create special mathematics; he’d work at night, and in the mornings he’d rip up the written pages, nothing was enough for him, being the youngest professor in Lithuania meant nothing to him, he was seeking something beyond reach, that’s why he was unhappy: Gedka was a demigod, but he thought he was a failure, that was the most beautiful thing about him. He really loved this ruined square across from City Hall, true, the monument to Kapsukas didn’t perch here yet then; Gedka would sit here, smoke, and think up his fantastic stories about everything under the sun; he was always longing for something, some other life, as if a mysterious city stood somewhere, his real city: Gedka’s family would live there, his children, his real friends and companions, and there was no way he could get there, he felt he had lost all of that forever. Once he even let it slip that he longed for death, the kingdom of death as the house of his birth, perhaps he sensed what was already waiting for him in that canyon in Tian Shan? Tedis really did sense it, a week before he died in that fire he suddenly turned pale and glum, sculpted nothing but wolves; his studio was stuffed to the gills with all kinds of wolves, there almost wasn’t room left for anything else, just my portraits hanging on the walls: me with dark hair and blonde hair, me without breasts or without a head; sometimes I think that Lolka set fire to him, wretched Lolka, stepping over corpses until she became a corpse herself, tyrannizing the best men in Vilnius—I hate her full lips, her shameless gaze, her long, too thin legs. Going through that many men, she hated them all, feared them too; that was why she didn’t give herself to anyone—she’d take them all herself, she said, even making love she always tried to stay on top; she didn’t give anything to anyone, she just took, plundered, pillaged. I am the earth, and she was a leech, but I was friends with her all the same—and who can say why?