LITMIR.BIZ

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fluids of beauty, flow through her legs. They rise upward, to her waist, caress her flat belly and curvaceous hips, fall downward, turn a circle around the knees, slide down the calves and pour through slender heels into the delicate feet, all the way to the toes. Her legs are a work of art. It seems to me that at night they should glow, enveloped by the fluid’s tender halo. It’s dangerous for me to look at them; I ought to lower my eyes, to cover my face with my hands, to hide from myself—but I greedily eyeballed them, nearly losing consciousness.

      She felt my look; she feels everything. At intervals she would slowly raise the cup to her lips and freeze. She didn’t glance at me even once; she didn’t glare angrily. She didn’t hide from me; I was allowed to admire the barely visible wrinkles of thin material in that place where the legs secretly join the flat, even belly. Her beauty is full, it breathes with real life. It’s dangerous. She is like a live rose in this garbage-pit of deformed bodies. That’s why an ominous doubt slowly creeps into my heart. Can it possibly be, I think involuntarily, is it at all possible? Beauty should be limited; otherwise it inevitably turns into evil. This was etched into my brain by an incident from long ago, the first bell that invited me to the great spectacle. A wretched spectacle, where all of the roles are tragic and bloody; an intricate and brutal performance, whose rules will sooner or later drive me out of my mind.

      Gediminas was still alive then, and I was only forty years old. Was, is, could be . . . I don’t know if Gediminas could be alive. I don’t know if I would want him to be more alive than he is now. A person’s non-being isn’t absolute: the thread of fate breaks, but after all it doesn’t burn up, it doesn’t melt in the air; it remains among us, the living. Every one of us could seat our own dead in front of the hearth: our own Gediminas, our own grandfather, constantly griping sullenly about God and all of his creation. There shouldn’t be such a feeling on earth as “lost to the ages.” Only you yourself can be lost to the ages. Loss merely freezes a person’s existence, as if in a piece of clear ice. Now Gediminas will never turn gray or be sickly; he can’t be that way anymore. Now he’ll never climb the Tibetan peak he dreamed of; he’ll always just want to climb it. Perhaps it’s for the best, that now he can’t do what he didn’t do, say what he didn’t say, turn into that which he wasn’t (now isn’t). I don’t need to be afraid he drinks too much—he will always drink and always enjoy it, now he really won’t turn into a doddering wreck who can’t hold a glass. He won’t betray me or neglect me in misfortune. He is the way he is, now he will never change. Maybe it’s better that way: it would be better, it could be better, it will be better . . . Gediminas hasn’t vanished anywhere; even now he’s standing on the corner of the sidewalk (that evening he stood). The impassive Vilnius autumn lingers about; the air smells of damp dust—like a giant whale pulled out of a sea of dust. The evening wraps itself in a barely noticeable mist and the wet glitter of lights. No one drives by, everyone has forgotten us, Vilnius has abandoned us. A gust of wind carries off the mist, the ripples in the puddles slowly settle down, the pale reflections of the lights float again. This quietly steaming broth of autumn quietly intoxicates. On evenings like this, Vilnius, with its toothless whale-mouth, whispers hoarse, mysterious words, entices and lures you, swallows you up and spits you out—appreciably the worse for wear and soaked in the smells of the whale’s guts: vapors of wine, vodka, and rum.

      When you’ve been spat out, you see the damp, dusk-enveloped buildings of Vilnius lurking in the dark corners of the streets in an entirely different way (that evening I saw it that way). It seemed they were lying in ambush. It seemed Vilnius no longer breathed at all; it crouched and settled down, grimly waiting. The drab monuments and the dirty, smoke-ridden lindens of Vilnius waited too. Something had to happen; this the two of us, deluded into the depths of Old Town and saturated with the city’s fine rain, realized particularly well. We stood (now we stand), waiting for something to happen. For a mangy, wet dog to cling to us (all stray dogs love Gediminas; they all consider him their only leader and master). For the wind to suddenly whistle like a bird, and a vengeful moon, marked with mysterious crooked symbols, to show up in a rift in the clouds. But nothing happened; the toothless whale spat the two of us out, and forgot us.

      Gedis saw that woman first. She emerged as if from the earth, or perhaps she was born of the fall dampness—she hadn’t even managed to wipe the dew off her cheeks yet. It seemed an eddy of wind had brought her here from a gloomy side street. She swiveled to the sides, as if finding herself in this world for the first time. This can only happen in dreams or at night in Vilnius: just now, as far as you could see, the street was empty, but here a black-haired woman in an expensive elegant overcoat is standing next to you, and you aren’t in the least surprised. She’s one of yours now; she had to show up here, according to the imponderable laws of the dream of Vilnius. A gust of wind whisked the thick black hair from her face, but a shadow hid her eyes. It was the clothes I saw most clearly—the kind sewn by only the most expensive of tailors. I had no doubt she was the something we were waiting for. Vilnius’s Greek gift, immediately attracting the eye (and not just the eye). You would instantly spot a woman like that in the thickest forest or crush of people; you would see her dressed in any fashion, hidden under a dark veil, or disfigured.

      There didn’t seem to be anything special either about her oval face, or in the predatory thighs, visible even through the cloth of the coat, or in her indolent breasts. There wasn’t that mysterious harmony in her that sometimes links coarse details into a wondrous whole. However, she attracted me (attracts me) like a large, warm magnet. She wanted touching. She wanted us to think only of her. Gedis and I had just been getting ready to go somewhere, to do something, and now we stood there, forgetting all of our plans, completely stunned. The woman smiled and waited for us to come to our senses. A beautiful, long-legged, perhaps twenty-five-year-old, with dreamy breasts and hair tousled by the wind. A strange, damp warmth, like that from a heap of rotting leaves, emanated from her.

      She really did want touching. She craved this herself, she entwined us both with long, invisible arms; you wanted to obey her, but within that sweet obedience a melancholy fear flared—it seemed as if this Circe of Vilnius’s side streets could at any moment turn you into a soft, brainless being.

      An automobile, apparently lured by her, stopped next to us. Naturally and inescapably, she turned up inside it with us, naturally and inescapably, she got out at Gediminas’s building and went up to the fifth floor. She smiled the entire time. I leaned on an armchair, secretly watching her, and still she smiled; she never uttered a single word. She wasn’t made for small talk.

      In the room I finally saw her eyes. I had never seen eyes like that before: huge, enormous, velvety, inviting you closer. I had never seen hair like that before: soft black curls slid down her grayish dress all the way to her waist. Later, when I felt them, I discovered that you couldn’t squeeze them in your hand—they writhed and slipped out like a nimble black snake. Hair like that doesn’t exist in the world. Probably there was never a body like that, either: the regal clothes, supposedly designed to cover it, denied their purpose; her nakedness strained and forced its way to the surface. She couldn’t hide (maybe she didn’t want to, either) her long legs or her oval breasts that shouted for caresses. She couldn’t hide even the smallest details of her hypnotizing body. She was more naked than naked.

      I completely forgot Gediminas, and he forgot me; both of us saw only her. He sat closer, but he didn’t dare touch her; he didn’t even dare to open his mouth. I didn’t, either: it seemed words would instantly break the spell. I would never have dared, but Gedis nevertheless carefully caressed her with trembling fingers, then again and again, more and more—sensing she desired that herself, desired only that. I slouched on the other side of the table, but I knew, I felt, that she was with me—it didn’t matter who caressed her or how. She was my woman that even­ing—from beginning to end. Gedis, completely forgetting himself, caressed her with my hands. My hands slowly stroked her neck and breasts, which swayed to the sides, felt them growing heavy and full, beseeching me not to pull away. Her gigantic velvet eyes asked the same thing. I couldn’t hold their gaze, I lowered my eyes; she thought I no longer saw her. Unfortunately, I always see everything. I see in the dark, when others go helplessly blind. Looking straight ahead, I see everything around me, even what’s going on behind my back. I saw everything then too: Gedis’s groping hands—by now they had pried their way to the naked body—a trembling twofold shadow in

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