Vilnius Poker - Ricardas Gavelis

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sofa with her eyes lowered; with her forefinger she gently caressed her other hand. That defenseless caress completely did me in. Lolita, it seemed, begged me to sit down next to her, to help her, so she wouldn’t have to caress herself. She showed up just in time; she came true, the way an intoxicating dream comes true. A moment ago I really could have died. She saved my life. My dream came calling on me, even though I had never dared to summon it.

      And I stood there like a blockhead and got even more breathless. The silliest of all possible thoughts ran through my head: it’s not proper for a boss to turn red like a teenager in front of his employee. That was how much was left of my intellect. I was probably hallucinating. Her appearance was much too unexpected, entirely impossible. It was a miracle, although she sat there in an exceptionally earthy and ordinary way: a somewhat irregular oval face, not particularly symmetrical features, legs that had blundered their way out of my dreams, rather large, upright breasts. But the brown eyes, always turned in towards herself, towards her own inner being, suddenly looked at me. They spoke to me of plain and simple things, so plain and simple that I couldn’t believe it. I ought to have rushed to kiss those nearly unfamiliar (so familiar, so wished for and dreamed of!) woman’s hands, to tell her everything—not silly words of love, no—to scream that she is everything to me, that she had saved me from death . . . that I had conceived her during sleepless nights . . . That without her the world wouldn’t exist, the stars would stop moving . . . I ought to lick her feet, to crawl in front of her . . . I needed to at least temporarily go out of my mind and risk it, but I stood there like a statue and felt I would ruin that miracle myself. I didn’t believe the signs in her eyes. I believe in nothing.

      I probably gave her a terrible look—she bit her lip and again smiled guiltily. Unfortunately, my eyes don’t give away any feelings, they simply look. At the very best they frighten or insult. She fidgeted as if she were sitting on hot iron, then suddenly leaned forward with her entire body, closed her eyes, and murmured despairingly:

      “Vytautas! Vytautas, t . . . t . . . touch me . . .”

      Some sort of gigantic bubble instantly burst, splattering me with its hot spray. My gigantic bubble of fear and absurd doubts. In that instant, I understood everything I should I have understood some time ago. A difficult, hysterical happiness took my breath away. Why, she had been searching for me for some time already, searching for me herself! She would wait in the corridor for me to pass by, aim to stand as near as possible, to catch my glance with all of her body. Why, she had been searching for me herself: suddenly I saw her breast heaving in fear and her hands desiring caresses with entirely different eyes. That divine woman was desperately searching for me! Crazy circles swam before my eyes, and when they cleared, I saw her smile, Lolita’s familiar, dear smile. Everything was so plain and simple that I was mortified, and felt some other, nameless sensation—perhaps shame. After all, she had walked next to me for a year, for two, for three; I saw her a long time ago, but I was blind and an idiot, and a coward, and . . .

      “Lord of mine,” I squeezed out by force, “Lord of mine . . . A hundred times, a thousand times . . . What nonsense . . .”

      “Jesus. At last . . .” She kept smiling; that smile cut me like a scourge, punished me for the lost time, for my blindness and my wretched fear.

      I still didn’t believe that her hands, her lips, her breasts finally belonged to me, that she was perhaps even happier than I . . . that here she is . . . that here is Lolita . . . that I, wretched fool, could have ruined everything today as well . . .

      I didn’t hear what she said afterwards. She glanced archly with her brown eyes and spoke as if we were old lovers who had no end of common memories, as if no wall had been left between the two of us for quite some time. And still I feared that I was only imagining it all, that I had concocted that miracle while sitting in the sallow, empty office, trying to save myself from death, that I had put my faith in a hallucination and would soon pay for it dearly . . .

      But Lolita was as real as my pain, as my despair; she laughed soundlessly, throwing back her long chestnut hair.

      “Jesus, Jesus,” she kept repeating, “all this time! . . . And if I hadn’t happened for no reason whatsoever to . . .”

      Again she laughed soundlessly, as if the heaviest of rocks had rolled off her chest, while I, in horror, sensed the sallow desert, the dirty city pigeons, the flat faces of the kanukai, Ahasuerus, and the Orthodox Church receding and disappearing—the whole lot slowly receding and disappearing. I sensed an empty hope reviving within me, a hope I’d lost many times before; the desire to do nothing but caress and kiss Lolita was strangling me—but my heart was knocking a warning to Gediminas’s beloved swinging rhythm.

      Now I stand completely naked in front of the mirror—my body’s chilled, but I stubbornly look at myself—for an hour now, or a day, or a week. My dusky, tanned skin stands out from the red wallpaper in the background; the portrait in the mirror, painted in excessive detail, stands motionless, hinting of a slick kitschy spirit: the overly pretentious red color of the background and affectedly smooth lines. Something here’s not real, not believable, as if the painter had merely sought a cheap effect. Or perhaps he was seeking a genuine effect, but inadvertently overdid it: the portrait’s particularly fatalistic stare . . . the convulsively clenched fists . . . the coarsely emphasized sex . . . the theatrical pose . . .

      I myself am in the frame of the mirror, but at the same time it’s not me, it’s some he, looking at me with angry eyes. Sometimes he rubs his temple with a finger or brushes his palm across his chest. You would think he was ashamed of his nakedness. What could Lolita have found seductive about this person in the mirror? What attracted her to this mistrustful person with edgy nerves and an enigmatic martyr’s smile?

      I still cannot convince myself that she was really searching for me. I looked through her file at work: she is exactly half my age. If I were rich, or at least a minister, I could understand. If she were some awful old maid I could understand. But her body, her eyes, her mystery would seduce any man. And she picked an old geezer. I see all of him; he won’t hide anything from me. That man really is large and powerful, tall, and broad-shouldered: a person accustomed to pushing others aside by force. He really doesn’t look even slightly aged, or exactly twice as old as somebody. His smooth skin is nicely tanned, his muscles aren’t flabby, there isn’t an ounce of fat on his waist. His body’s still very firm (outwardly firm); a truly rare firmness in these days of flabby bellies. So far, he’s not even graying: only the hair on his temples and chest is scattered with silver dust. A peculiarly attractive, mostly older youngish Apollo, who apparently knows his own worth very well. A male by no means beset with infirmity, a voracious predator grinning with healthy little white teeth. The Vargalyses’ teeth don’t rot. That brazen man in the mirror almost believed he could catch the eye of a beauty half his age. But why doesn’t he calm down, why doesn’t he leave the mirror?

      Merely because he’s afraid. He’s afraid of losing, afraid of being left disappointed. Afraid of falling into a trap, but most of all he fears that all his faith in himself is no more than a pathetic deception.

      I do not love this person. He isn’t repulsive or unpleasant, but I don’t see the light in his eyes, the light that indicates a healthy spirit. I don’t sense the strength in him to give anything to others, even to Lolita. His gaze, brimming with rage, is the gaze of a prisoner who has been sentenced to death. Don’t tell me Lolita doesn’t see his eyes, doesn’t understand the despair in the blackened irises?

      True, Lolita is, in any case, a woman. Women hate abstractions; they place more value on tangible things. I’m sufficiently cynical; I can spit the disgusting truth in his face, explain what most attracts and astounds Lolita. It senses this as well: that thing hanging threateningly under his belly, that abnormally large organ of love, full of seductive, beastly power. His masculinity isn’t like others’— convulsively crooked with the foreskin always pulled completely back and deep scars marring (or decorating?) the head—signs of a brutal duel in a soft, one-eyed face. A man by the name of Stadniukas burned those scars in for eternity. He wanted to cripple it, but instead he strangely improved it: that scarred beast, instead of frightening women, awakens a tripled desire. So that’s how I would cynically explain to him what most attracts and astounds

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