Vilnius Poker Page 13

  Up until then I didn’t know what a woman was, I hadn’t had the time to perceive it. Janė wasn’t my woman, she wasn’t anyone’s woman; she was the live embodiment of a vagina, a mystical symbol, the goddess of a teenager’s wet dreams. Madam Giedraitienė wasn’t a woman—merely a voluptuous female, a voracious, sadistic slave driver. I didn’t have the time to know a real woman, and the camp wrecked everything for good. Months upon months, years upon years, I didn’t so much as see them. They slowly turned into mythological beings capable of anything—maybe even of bringing the dead to life. I wasn’t even able to dream of women. I would dream of gigantic birds with breasts swaying to the sides and women’s faces. Those women-birds would surround me, greedily stretching their long necks at me, wanting to peck at me, peck at me, peck out my masculinity . . . Released to freedom, every woman I met seemed miraculous but intimidating at the same time. They were all like unfathomable, unattainable beings from another world. I was afraid to go into the street because they walked there, I feared that fairy-tale world where women walked around as if it were nothing. I didn’t know how to behave, what to do; I didn’t believe it really was that way. It couldn’t be that way. It wasn’t just horrible to touch a woman, even accidentally; it was horrible to speak to her, or even look her in the eyes. Maybe I would have finally ended up in the madhouse that way, but three bitches of the ground floor snatched me in time. I don’t remember why I gave myself up to them, why I didn’t get scared they would feed on me (even they looked miraculous to me). They adroitly cured me: in place of the beings of my dreams, the goddesses of legends, I found a dirty, stinking female who wanted only money and an iron penis. I would find the money somewhere, and my thing suited them too—although it wasn’t made of iron, but rather with a copper end.

  And after all that, after a hundred months of drunkenness, Irena suddenly showed up: tall, slim, agile, with eyes as black as tar. I don’t know if she was pretty. Probably not. Could that have been of consequence? Does it matter how my Irena’s legs, breasts, or her face’s oval looked? If someone had inquired about her figure at the beginning of our life together, I would have knocked him out cold. Who would dare to analyze whether a Madonna’s body is sexy?

  I would tell her everything. That’s a huge thing—the opportunity to tell at least one person absolutely everything (now there’s no such person near). Irena wasn’t afraid of me, even though I threw out all the bile, the blackness, and the pain inside me. She got to see the disgusting wound—teeming with quivering, satiated little worms—inside me. But she didn’t retreat. She was like a spring in which I could wash my soul without polluting it. It was impossible to pollute her. She bravely took on a part of my load, and her narrow little shoulders didn’t so much as tremble. I could trust her completely. She gave birth to me.

  Life was difficult, but we were the happiest people on earth. I remember the banged-up buckets in which I carried water, because the only tap was outside. A Polish tap; grandfather wouldn’t have drunk a drop out of one like that, even if he were dying of thirst. I remember miserable, washed and re-washed duvets and sheets. But most often I remember Irena. Irena, Irena, Irena. Scores of her portraits, a secret photo album that’s invisible to everyone but me. She smiles, having calmed my rage again. She sits with her chin on her hand. She speaks in a low, somewhat throaty voice, while I listen and understand that only she can give me meaning, that she herself is that meaning. She washes her feet in a large rusty basin, and I want to kiss her everywhere, all of her. I could think only of her; I experienced a miracle that was destined for no one else. The two of us really were the two halves of an apple that had miraculously found each other.

  There was only one thing that divided us—she liked to stare at the television. I’m afraid of it. I hate it. Television is Their magic weapon; with its help They surround you with troops, throngs, legions of hideously kanuked beings. They strive to convince you those beings are the real, normal representatives of the human race, and if you’re not like them—it’s your own fault, it’s you that’s abnormal. At that time my second eyes were only beginning to emerge. I watched those television creatures almost morbidly. Understandably, I can’t study American or Italian television, however, I firmly believe Their television traps encompass the entire world. They just subtly adapt to the country’s traditions and political system. Doesn’t an American or Frenchman experience the same fear and disgust—seeing some television beauty almost have an orgasm after taking a whiff of some toothpaste or tomato sauce—that I do? Doesn’t it arouse the most hideous suspicions in him? After all, those television beings have nothing human about them in any country; they’ve traveled here from Their soulless kingdom. Of course, our television beats them all. The announcer tries to persuade you that these are some kind of workers . . . some kind of farmers . . . some kind of writers . . . or scholars . . . There’s masses of them; they appear every hour, every second . . . planted on identical little chairs, by identical tables, frequently wearing medals or ribbons of honor, and most often with unhealthy, pudgy faces. There’s something essentially unalive in them, something inhuman, particularly the eyes—or more accurately, the place where the eyes should be: those narrow cracks without any expression, without a spark of spirit. In those cracks you can perceive the grim wasteland’s void, a pulsating swarm of innumerable cockroach legs. Those creatures repeat the same words over and over; they’re very pleased with themselves, they know everything and believe in everything. They fruitlessly try to act like people, to give their face expression . . . Probably they haven’t yet forgotten what a human should look like . . . And it’s totally irrelevant that on American television the beauties’ eyes are huge and the hosts’ faces aren’t fat—They know perfectly well how to disguise themselves . . . What matters most is the stare, the stare of the void. What matters most is that imbecilic ecstasy, no matter what provokes it in the television being—a slogan of the Russian plenary or a Japanese kitchen mixer . . . What matters is that they’re all so assured . . . So clever . . .So happy . . . Such idiots . . .

  I’m afraid of television; I’ve always been afraid of it. But Irena liked to stare at the screen—to her that spirit-crushing image was nothing more than chewing gum for the brain, as it is for most people. It doesn’t seem there’s anything so terrible about it. But for some reason everyone forgets that the brain is surely not the proper place to plaster with used chewing gum. Alas, alas . . . Every detail matters when you’re up against Them.

  Sometimes life’s time rushes along too fast. One day it struck me that I’m already forty, that Irena and I live in a new, somewhat larger apartment, and that I am a programmer. (Gedis convinced me to finish in mathematics at the university.) Everything was getting on well, it seemed; I slid smoothly down the path of life, but somewhere years upon years had disappeared as if they had never been—I remember much less from those times than I do from the Narutis period. I was stuck in a calm, healthy, everyday bliss. It seems to me that I was almost happy—Irena at my side, in the midst of intelligent books and my memories. But one morning I woke up and suddenly realized that something had happened. Something, something, had happened. I don’t know who was to blame for that. Maybe Gediminas. It was just then that he started acting strange, stranger and stranger all the time. Perhaps it was Vilnius. Just at that time it was sprouting the new, nothing neighborhoods; for the first time it occurred to me that my city had died and would never rise from the dead again. Perhaps it was Irena. I suddenly noticed her gaze was worn and dazed, that more and more often she didn’t hear what I was saying to her. Something, something, had happened; I had overlooked an incident of monumental importance and realized it only when everything began to change. I began to sense smells I’d never noticed up until then. I smelled the trees, the dust of the streets, my writing desk, and the sound of a distant airplane. I began to see things I hadn’t noticed before: a grimy cat cowering under the balcony, or a hunchbacked dwarf quietly hobbling home along the wall. An abundance of d
etails, details which had meant nothing to me earlier, mysteriously whispered something; they wanted to warn me that something fundamental and horrible had happened.

  Then I had a terrifying dream. In this dream I sluggishly made love with a plump, overripe beauty. I didn’t feel the least pleasure, but she kept pestering me, embracing me, virtually sucking me dry. At last I escaped by force, withdrew my penis in relief from the sodden damp space, and abruptly went into shock when I looked at it. It was studded all over with dark, moving spots; it was crawling, teeming, with disgusting brown cockroaches. There were hordes of them. They twitched their thin whiskers and rolled their unseeing eyes. My penis was covered with cockroaches, the way a rotten banana is covered with fruit flies. Hysterically I tried to shake them off, to clean them off, to pick them off one by one, but in vain. I had fallen into a trap; the cockroaches were in control. Meanwhile the plump, overripe beauty glanced at me sullenly; sharp, leaden barbs protruded from her eyes. When I awoke, I got really scared that something, something, had happened. I didn’t feel like myself all day. Lord knows, I went to the toilet several times and determinedly searched for marks on my masculinity. Of course, I found only the old scars Stadniukas had burned on it, but that didn’t reassure me. I went home early and waited for Irena, anxious to talk it over with her; finally I saw her through the window, but I didn’t feel the slightest joy, much less relief. Something, something, had happened. Irena wasn’t what she had been until then, even her walk was strangely altered. She didn’t notice me; she didn’t notice black Jake, either, the neighbors’ dog, and our family’s great friend. He ran up to Irena, sniffed her knees, and suddenly barked at her sharply. His entire pose showed horrified disgust and fear at the same time. I didn’t get it: Jake? Irena? She stopped and fixed the dog with a serious gaze. She didn’t pet him, but she didn’t raise her arm, either; however, Jake instantly jumped back, curled up pathetically, and started to whine, as if he wanted to warn the entire building, his entire doggy world, about something horrible and sinister. He announced a great danger. I thought Jake had simply gone nuts. Irena continued to calm him with a serious look and smiled wanly. That was not her smile. She went on walking in that unfamiliar manner. Jake has gone nuts, I kept repeating to myself, but I didn’t believe it. Irena was radically different. Her thighs rubbed together revoltingly under her dress. The joints of her fingers were unnaturally thickened and pale.

  Suddenly I realized that the poor dog didn’t recognize Irena’s scent. She no longer smelled like herself. Jake barked at a strange, intimidating intruder, whose stench aroused a boundless doggy horror in him. But it was far worse that suddenly I didn’t recognize Irena myself. I didn’t say anything to her, I didn’t complain. I merely began to secretly observe her.

  All the gods in the world know how difficult it was for me: I was spying on the person who was closest to me—not just her behavior, but she herself, even her body. I didn’t know which direction to turn, what to look for. I feared giving myself away inadvertently, I feared hurting Irena. I was still afraid of hurting her. I was afraid of many things, most often myself. It’s always easier to be ignorant; the search for truth is fraught with mortal dangers. Something is invariably lost—either faith, or happiness, or the past. Or everything at once.

  I started with what seemed like insignificant details. Visiting (I never did understand why we visited all those people), or at home when her so-called friends came over, I secretly listened to what she was talking about when she thought I didn’t hear her. I was overcome with horror. Her melodious voice grew hoarse; it was left dull and hollow, like an echo in a mossy old cellar. It lost its colors and hues; it became a monotone, like tapping on a torn drum. But her speech was far more shocking. I had never heard such things from Irena’s lips: she prattled on about clothing fashions and furniture, about wages and responsibilities. Explained that she had pulled me out of the quagmire. Complained about prices, about my lack of a career. With a strange malice she smeared friends who weren’t there, and when they showed up, she would take apart those who had just left. Maybe it wasn’t so terrible—she was exactly the same as others are. But Irena couldn’t talk that way. I glanced at her through the crack in the door many times, risking discovery. She was the one talking, all right. I didn’t understand where her real words had gone—her talk about heights and precipices, about man crushed and man defeated, her naïve attempts to understand all the wisdom of ancient and modern times—where everything I had loved her for had gone. True, even now she spoke to me in exactly the same way she had before. However, I immediately realized that she was lying to me, and speaking the truth there. The dull, monotone voice was ideally suited to those other words. It occurred to me that if I looked into her throat, there, deep, deep, inside that pink pipe, I would see a woven knot of little worms. Something was strangling and suffocating her, but at the same time she was becoming dangerous herself. She was intentionally playing a role for me. This dull-voiced woman probably had been playing my Irena for a long time; the latter was gone, vanished or degenerated. And until then I had felt nothing—I was deaf and blind. I was truly horrified. I grew three times as careful, three times as watchful, I feared inadvertently giving myself away. After all, she lived right here, next to me; I needed to hide my knowledge from her. Hide it from everyone. Who could I complain to? Except maybe Gedis.

  I didn’t discuss it with Gedis. I decided to act on my own, and I made one of my many irrevocable mistakes.

  I began to follow her even more closely. Her skin turned gray and grew coarse; she wandered lazily through the rooms or the kitchen, doing pointless things: she ironed the same clothes several times, moved them from one shelf to another and then back again, and ceaselessly watered the flowers. Mostly she did nothing at all, just stared vacantly in one and the same pose, turning some object over in her hands. She didn’t read books; she just stared at her television. True, as before, she would take my books and pretend she was reading them at work. Later, supposedly charmed, she would praise them, but I already knew they had been stuck in a kitchen cabinet all week, gathering dust. I just couldn’t understand when I had missed what. After all, that transformation couldn’t have happened overnight. I was deaf and blind: my Irena had been exchanged for another, and I hadn’t even felt it. Everything in her was artificial: her ingratiating voice, and the words stolen from Irena, and her purported deep gaze. I didn’t love her, I avoided her, sometimes I loathed her—and she didn’t even feel it, didn’t notice it! She’d drag me to bed even more often than Irena did. However, love play, that miraculous kingdom, suddenly turned into an oppressive, soulless exercise. It seemed to me that at any moment I would break into tears or start howling—she knew all of Irena’s erotic games, you could almost confuse the two of them. She sucked my penis inside in exactly the same way, pressed it and caressed it with hidden little muscles, as if there, deep inside, were scores of tiny little hands. Against my will I would forget for a short time, I’d nearly feel a climax, but quickly, breaking into a cold sweat, I would get hold of myself. She destroyed my Irena and crawled into her skin, but couldn’t play the part to the end. I was making love to a stuffed doll. Horror would come over me. To save myself I searched for differences. Thank God, the two were still different, even in bed. She always tried to end up on top (Irena didn’t like positions like that). In addition, she pathologically avoided light, she made love only in semi-darkness—Irena would turn on all the lamps, even in the middle of the night. For a long time I wracked my brains over this, but the mystery was completely ordinary: she was afraid that I would see her. She was afraid that I would see her body.

  Now, carefully, gropingly, I explore her body (I’ve already explored it a hundred times). The night spreads a somewhat bitter smell; not far off a dog barks gruffly. I practice seeing in the dark—not with my eyes, but rather with my fingers, my fingers turn into eyes, I see all of her in a halo of pale light. I see her for the hundredth time, but all the same I cannot control my disgust. T
hat woman’s breasts are swollen, three hideous rolls lie pressed together below. It seems that if you ran your finger over them, you’d clean a tangle of cobwebs and putrefaction out from those wrinkles. The waist has disappeared somewhere; square thighs stick out immediately below the bulging breasts. Between the legs, almost from the knees up, sprout fat globs of flesh—something like thick ropes. They rise right up to the hair below her belly; it seems that they twist themselves straight into that woman’s innards and pierce her through. Under that woman’s arms upright globules of fat converge. Coarse tufts of hair curl on her nipples and even between her breasts. I see only the threatening parody of a body; the separate parts don’t suit one another—it seems she could crack apart at any moment, disassemble like a matrioshka doll. And from her entire body, from every pore in her skin, a sour smell spreads; the smell of night’s blunt knife, the smell of mold. It intensifies my disgust; I realize that what I’m seeing is no laughing matter. It isn’t her frivolous twaddle, or her husky voice; it’s real and tangible. A mysterious deformation is ravaging that woman. It’s not some kind of illness; the bristling mane of our neighbors’ black Jake proves it’s not an ordinary illness, one that medicine can cure. It’s something else, entirely, completely, something else, something mysterious and somber, connected to mold . . . to cockroaches . . . to oppressive smells . . . connected to me, to my life . . . perhaps earmarked for me, aimed at me, destroying me first of all . . .