Vilnius Poker - Ricardas Gavelis

Скачать книгу

to talk to him, even though I didn’t know what I needed to question him about. I simply tried to earn his confidence, to encourage him to chat freely. I would fix the coffee and make toast myself, leaving Justinas in the room with her. I would secretly listen to what the two of them talked about. But he didn’t give himself away: not a word about Old Town, the Narutis neighborhood, or the courtyard passageways.

      Justinas immediately made himself completely at home; it seemed entirely natural to hug my wife in a friendly (or not just friendly) way, or to pat her on the knee. Once, when I had stayed a bit longer in the kitchen and returned quietly, I caught him pressing her breasts in his hands. We were all a bit drunk. I pretended I hadn’t noticed, but before going to bed I threw a jealous fit. I was stunned by her reaction. Suddenly she got really nasty and launched into an attack. I was the one who was to blame. I had invited Justinas over. I had created an unhealthy atmosphere. I alone. I listened to her croaking voice, looked at the pimply face, the deformed fingers, the bloated breasts, the globs of flesh between her thighs, which she hid under a thick nightgown but weren’t difficult to infer; I looked and I couldn’t help but be charmed. This time she played the part perfectly. She smeared her face all over with mascara, writhed like a snake, and heaved in the most disgusting convulsions of kanukism. She truly had not lost the talents with which she had deceived me our entire life together.

      She didn’t lose her ability to disappear, either. It seemed I should have given up my useless stalking long ago, but my determination never knew any limits. Determination sooner or later pays off. One time, as usual, I lost sight of her and aimlessly went in circles around the neighborhood of the Narutis; finally I went out into Didžiosios Street, stopped, and lit up a smoke. Apparently, the tension was already accumulating within me; the second sight was already emerging. I sensed that I had to look to the right; I sensed this command coming from within. First I saw her; then that creature too. She slowly crept towards him; without turning his head he muttered something to her and continued to stand there, as if he were rooted to the spot. She hunched over even more, and, obediently, as if she had received a blessing, hobbled off. She no longer concerned me; I fixed my eyes only on him. He was stocky and square. He stood by the wall next to the door of a store. Next to the scurrying, rushing figures he looked like a hole in a colorless carpet. He had no neck at all. His massive head was set directly onto his shoulders; if he wanted to look to the side, he had to turn his entire body. But he didn’t turn; he merely devoured everything with his eyes. That neckless thing had grown into the paving stones, into the grim walls, into Old Town’s close air. Passersby would slow when they passed him; it seemed they forgot for a moment where they were going. But this didn’t interest him; he simply stood there and devoured everything with his eyes. He riveted my attention, riveted even my willpower. The eyes in his pudgy, flat face were like two holes—if it’s possible to imagine holes in a hole. His face was completely expressionless, but it was just this lack of expression that broadcast his oppressive menace, his universal scorn, and his firm belief that this was his domain. Superficially, he looked like an imbecile, but I didn’t doubt for a second that inside him an iron, dispassionate intellect was working like a machine. His head jutted out of his shoulders and was bent somewhat forward; he seemingly charged forward, but at the same time remained as unmovable as a rock. He was like a wolf poised just before a leap, but firm in the knowledge that it would be unnecessary to pounce—the victim would climb into his jaws on its own. A pathological threat, indescribable in words, was hidden inside him. It was only possible to feel it; it penetrated my innards like a plague bacilli, like a sense of impending doom. At intervals, faceless figures would approach him for a blessing; he would growl something, and they would slink off again. I saw he was the secret king here, whom everyone obeyed without knowing whom they were obeying, and naïvely thought that they were acting independently. He held all the strings in his hands (whose strings, what strings?); he loomed above Old Town like a gigantic octopus, connected by innumerable threads to the mass of drab figures who were crawling here and there. His proboscises reached everywhere; they reached my innards too—my chest was encompassed by a torpid weakness. I felt I had already found it, but I still couldn’t understand what I had found. I was alone—frightened and helpless. I was and I remained alone.

      Now I understand how lucky I was. I never again succeeded in seeing one of Their commissars, a high overlord, so close up—simply in the street, in the crush of passersby, for some reason breaking the codes of secrecy. I don’t know what I would do now, but at that time I simply froze, gasping for air with my mouth open, feeling nothing but a boundless fear and a pain in my chest. That creature stirred and slunk off along the wall, but I couldn’t budge: I was paralyzed. I had come across Their outpost, but I wasn’t prepared; I didn’t have sufficient strength to risk it. Apparently, They had undermined me too; the tree of my spirit was not exactly flourishing. However, there was still sap there, even though They believed they had already dealt with me. It wasn’t true—I was still alive. It was just that the time hadn’t come yet. Only a person who is focused and resolved to sacrifice himself can begin to do battle with Them. A person who has no other out.

      . . . and everyone’s lounging about as if they were at a health resort. It’s some kind of communist holiday today; for breakfast you each got a genuine roll with marmalade. You’re sitting in your nook by the garbage cans again. A couple of Russkies rummage through the refuse—today no one will yell, no one will assign you to solitary, no one will knock your teeth out. Bolius is terribly emaciated; even here it’s rare to see such a tortured face: a desiccated, sapped, disfigured face. But it’s a human face regardless. No blind strength, no hatred can wipe off the marks of a great intellect, the marks of a great heart; nothing can extinguish his eyes. You’re actually intimidated. The man who is probably the greatest intellect of Lithuania, the honorary doctor of a hundred universities, the intellect of Lithuania’s honor, is sitting next to you, talking to you and teaching you, Vytautas Vargalys, as if you alone were all of poor strangled Lithuania, waiting for his word.

      “After the war the Russians took land, technology, and gold away from Germany, but they never managed to appropriate German Ordnung,” Bolius lectures. “In a German camp, the sadism is precise and refined; here the sadism is primitive and brutish. Russia is still Russia—even in a camp . . .”

      “You were in Russia before the war?”

      “No, this is my first time here. They brought us here by train straight from Auschwitz—without switching trains, without any visas. Like in a relay race—straight from Hitler to Stalin. Not just me—all of us—millions . . .”

      “Why?” You ask involuntarily. “In the name of what?”

      “Why me?” Bolius rephrases the question, his eyes gleam with a strange sarcasm, “You? All of us? Because we’re breathing. Because we’re alive. Lithuania without Lithuanians! You know, after all, that’s the Soviet leaders’ slogan. You know that.”

      “Then why the Russians?”

      “Oh, they’re just along for the ride.” Bolius grins, his crooked smile is awful. “It’s nothing, they’re used to it. It’s worse for us, because we’ve already gotten a whiff of freedom and will never be able to forget it. Blessed are the ignorant . . . The Russians never experienced freedom, so they can’t even dream about it. Blessed are the . . .” Bolius’ voice unexpectedly trembles. “In Auschwitz I used to secretly give lectures: about art . . . about literature, philosophy . . . Dozens of people risked their lives for those lectures . . . They had to feel human, they couldn’t do otherwise . . . But these do without it quite nicely . . . They don’t need it, do you understand?”

      You’re sorry for the Russians, who have never tasted freedom, who need nothing. There now, a couple of them are rummaging through the refuse, they’re happy to find a bite. Don’t tell me man was created for this, to rummage through a camp’s refuse, and then for weeks upon weeks, years upon years, to chisel out Stalin’s portrait, as big as an entire village, on the rocky slope of a mountain? You no longer know what a human is. Perhaps Vasia Jebachik is a human? He’s next to you, he’s adjusting his still, but he won’t make moonshine—it’s a tea brewer. Vasia Jebachik is the ruler of this world. Bolius looks at you, and he sees right through you.

      “You think I’m not sorry for them?” he says. “You think

Скачать книгу