Vilnius Poker - Ricardas Gavelis

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him. The man’s hair was the color of straw and the pupils of his bloodshot eyes were colorless. He stood unsteadily on his feet; he kept pulling up his falling pants with his left hand. With his right he pressed a puppy, a few weeks old and blinking in fright, to his chest. A drunk like thousands of other drunks, selling stolen pedigree pups or flowers from someone’s garden. But I immediately realized it was a disguise. I abruptly turned around and hastened to catch the glance of his pallid eyes. My past and my future lurked inside them. Inside them hid the last drop, the critical link that joined all the connections. I finally saw through it all. The long, narrow cones of pale light protruding from the man’s colorless eyes instantly vanished, but it was too late. I understood him. I looked at him for an endlessly long moment, the kind of moment that escapes the real world’s time. Somewhere else, in some other time, it lasts for centuries on centuries. During those centuries of divine clarity, my intellect surpassed its own self; for a short time it turned into not just intellect. Even the most perfect logic doesn’t reveal the kind of connections that opened themselves up to me. Suddenly I understood what Saul heard on the road to Damascus. What Mahomet saw during the short moment before the water poured out of the overturned jug. I experienced that myself.

      In the meantime, the straw-haired man looked about, frightened; from him, as important evidence, emanated the smell of rot, like from a damp pile of old leaves. Suddenly he flung the puppy aside and galloped off into the gateway, not staggering in the least.

      It seems to me I saw Ahasuerus that time too. I could swear that at that moment he was shambling over the nearest roofs. I really do remember; he had taken his shoes off, and he carried them in his hand. He was walking around the roofs barefoot, but proudly and at the same time respectfully, as if he were walking through a palace hall. I believe he looked me over from above.

      At that moment he wasn’t what was on my mind. I realized I had to find Gedis right away, and not waste a second. The fateful spectacle’s curtains opened wide; I saw everything with the second sight, with pupils narrowing from an invisible light. Facts, incidents, dreams arranged themselves into a harmonious system (an excessively harmonious system); every thought, every detail strengthened my conviction. I hurried; I was in a huge hurry to see Gediminas. I didn’t know yet that it was already too late.

      When discovered, They immediately change tactics. There are numerous means of damage, a host of methods of crushing a person, within Their power. It’s impossible to surround Them, to trap Them in a corner, to push Them up against a wall—it’s They who surround you, who hold you in a siege like a live castle, whose walls, alas, are pathetically weak. A human being can’t withstand a siege. He can hold out for a month, a year, a decade; but sooner or later he breaks, at least temporarily. He doesn’t even feel when and how They break into his inner being, crawling inside like omnipotent cockroaches.

      I had found Their ghostly organization. I am surely not the only such investigator. There are no unique things in the world, just as there are no unique people. Certain books prove that I am not completely alone. That is all that upholds me in moments of absolute despair.

      When defending yourself from Them, even thinking about Them, you cannot give in to feelings—fear in particular. The most important thing is to not allow yourself to be lulled or intimidated, to keep your hold on cold reason. The only way to save yourself from Them is with the constant vigilance of reason. In a certain sense, They behave logically—true, according to their own peculiar logic, which is nearly impenetrable to man, but they behave logically regardless. It’s probably Their only weak spot (if they have a weak spot at all). Only facts deserve attention; it’s worthless to trust in feelings or speculations. A clear head, cold logic, and caution. A clear head, cold logic, and threefold caution. That’s what keeps me alive.

      At least now I’m alive; until my great insight I merely vegetated, passed the days like everyone else, knew what everyone else knew, was doomed like everyone else was. Although no, I wasn’t doomed in any case, my Lithuanian luck was different. Nothing in this world happens accidentally. Only a complete idiot, a completely blind person, could suppose that I saw that straw-haired man by accident, that I discovered the link between his and the black-haired Circe’s gaze by accident; after all, it’s possible it would never have happened if I hadn’t paused by the Russian Orthodox church on Basanavičiaus Street that day and stayed to watch that furtive cat. No! All of that had to happen, a crack had opened in Their harmonious system, and it was exactly my fate to break in. Years upon years, entire decades went by, unconsciously preparing themselves for that moment. Only great insights give meaning to a person’s existence. I’ve already justified my existence: I discovered Their system. My life at last took on meaning when I took up my clandestine investigations. Let me die, even if today—all the same in the book of fate it will be written: he was able to understand, he fought until the end. He tried.

      For the sake of my clandestine investigations, I got employment at the library. It’s convenient to have the necessary books at hand. I say “necessary” even though I don’t myself know (no one knows), which ones they are. There are not, and cannot be, specialized studies about Them. This sort of knowledge has to be gathered by the grain. Not only that, but egoism and vanity keep whispering that I am the first to uncover the configuration of the world. The structure of Good and Evil. This is the most dangerous blunder a person walking The Way can make. It isn’t possible that The Way has gone undiscovered for thousands of years. There are hints of it in many books—hints that are perhaps excessively vague, sometimes almost incomprehensible, however, those quiet warnings and lessons are essential to someone who has begun clandestine investigations. Numerous names have been lost to the ages, but one or another survived. Saint Paul, Bosch, and Blake tried to warn humanity about Them—each one differently; de Sade, Nietzsche, and Socrates all paid for their daring in different ways. I am convinced that there have been direct studies of Their organization as well. Fires in the most magnificent libraries, the auto-da-fé of well-known books, manuscripts, and papyruses, weren’t accidental. We can only speculate about the real role of Herostratus in the history of the world. They know perfectly well what they’re burning every time, which of a thousand burning treatises had revealed Their secret. Their logic is truly ghastly: They don’t destroy one or several books; They understand perfectly well that this would give them away, attract attention. Sensing the danger, They destroy everything at once; They can destroy a city of millions on account of a single person who has grasped the Essence. The demise of Atlantis and the tragedy of Sodom and Gomorrah carry the traces of Their work to this day.

      And how is someone supposed to bear it all alone, seeing the wisdom of millennia going up in flames, hearing the moaning of millions of innocent people?

      When I found myself back at the library, Martynas instantly cornered me. He announces himself, without fail, the moment I want to be left alone. A short Vilnius thinker: hair shaved in a crew cut, sharp eyes, and the pale tongue of an invalid. He blocked my way, apparently emerging from the dusky corridor wall. A shabby pale blue couch and a crooked little table protruded from the wall; an ashtray made of bent tin, full of cigarette butts, billowed dust from the table. Tufts of hair and dust dirtied the linoleum floor; distorted, cheerless rays fell inside through the grimy windows. Scattered pieces of boards and little piles of brick dominated the world outside the window. The only thing that drew attention was a lonesome, miserable dog: a horrible mutt with a big, square head, a long rat-like body, and a thick tail dragging on the ground. He was snuffling at the earth; this he did so diligently, so devotedly, that the thought came to me automatically: he’s shamming. He’s sensed that I’m watching him, so he’s acting as if he has nothing to do with anything, that he’s idling about without any purpose. He vaguely reminded me of something—not some other dog, but an object, or an incident, or even a person.

      Martynas was the only male in my absurd group of programmers who didn’t have a computer. And the only one to study the humanities. According to someone’s sometime plans, we were supposed to eventually computerize the library catalog. Martynas would have been the one to prepare the index, bibliography, and classifications of literature. Under that pretext, he scurried about writers’ homes, ostensibly for consultations, but really just wanting to meet them and chew the fat. Like all of us, he essentially did nothing. In my eyes, he had no firm answers, but he craved an explanation for absolutely everything. His very life was an attempt

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