Vilnius Poker Read online

  Of course he’ll get it into his head: besides logic and music, Gedis also worshipped speed. In the middle of the night he’d get up from his work table and go tearing around, who knows where, with his Opel. He always drove like a god.

  I waited for him for an hour, then another and another. Calling over and over, I slowly aligned the most important observations. They spy on you with pathological attentiveness, even when they really can’t see anything hidden or meaningful. They hysterically avoid publicity and openness; They are always obscure, sodden, and colorless. (Then what about the Old Town Circe?) I carefully prepared for my visit with Gediminas: in discourse he recognized only logic; he left emotions to music, and ecstasy—to speed. I gathered theses for a simple introductory lecture. First: we have all experienced that oppressive evening mood, when we’re compelled to pull curtains over the windows. We say “it’s more comfortable that way,” but actually we’re unconsciously hiding ourselves from Them, from the empty expanse of the evening’s stare. Second, how many times have we heard Vilnius’s impotent intelligentsia complaining: “Oh, I can tell when the KGB is following me.” How many times have I had the urge to irritably reply: stop posturing, you just want to convince everyone that you’re aren’t a nothing, that you’re secretly fighting for justice—after all, The KGB is supposedly interested in you. Now those complaints were illuminated in an entirely new color. That evening everything colored itself in different colors, the true colors.

  Gedis didn’t come home; neither at ten, nor at eleven. I got dressed and went out to wander the streets. Something inside of me forced me to take just exactly that route, pushed me along like a doll. Vilnius turned into an empty, meaningless labyrinth in which you could wander until you died without ever understanding there is no exit, that this is an absolute labyrinth. The kind where you’d never come across a dead end—that’s how gigantic it is. But you will never get to freedom. I walked aimlessly; I didn’t even go by Gedis’s apartment—even though his phone could simply have been out of order. The streets grew narrower all the time, they kept pressing in on me more and more from both sides. At first I didn’t pay any attention to this (I didn’t pay attention to anything); then I was astounded. A ceiling had appeared above my head; the labyrinth’s burrow did lead to a dead end after all. Something incomprehensible was going on: the narrow little streets turned into corridors and bloody, beaten figures sat along the walls. It seemed some of them had no eyes or noses. I tried not to look at them. Someone tried to restrain me, demanding something. Horror slowly came over me. I didn’t understand where I was; I started suspecting that something evil was going on. I doubted whether I was still in the real world—there was nothing recognizable left around me. I kept hearing a strange noise—something like the shoving of paper cartons, like the whispering of giant lips. Someone spoke to me (or I spoke to someone); then a young woman led me somewhere (or I led her somewhere).

  I came to my senses in a small, uncomfortable room. The intent stare of a man in a white coat brought me back to reality.

  “You’ve found out already?” he asked, somewhat surprised.

  The man was impossibly lean. A bearded head, overgrown with curly hair, was stuck on his thin neck as if on a pole. An ascetic, truly Semitic face, the face of a man who had gone through the desert and fed on the manna of heaven. And in it—an ideally straight Grecian nose and bright, bright eyes.

  “Kovarskis is what I go by,” the man blurted out, “Remember my name, we may meet again sometime. I’m Kovarskis.”

  His gaze studied me for a long time, at last he decided (I saw it in his bright eyes), that he could tell me the truth.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. He’s ground into a mush. I don’t understand how there could be that much vitality in him. His heart and lungs are still working. His Opel was smashed by a run-down old MAZ truck without a license plate. It drove off. The strangest thing is that no one saw a driver—you’d think the MAZ was driving itself. Without any plates.”

  It was only then I understood he was talking about Gedis.

  “How long?” I believe I asked. “A week, a day?”

  “Until the first infection. Then there’ll be pneumonia—and the end.”

  “Lord willing that happens as soon as possible,” I answered.

  It was imperative I see Gedis. I don’t remember how I convinced the doctor. Probably he thought I was in a hurry to give Gedis that redeeming infection as quickly as possible. Once more I was led down narrow corridors between bloody, bandaged figures. A young nurse shot glances at me curiously from below. I’d like to know what I looked like then.

  Gedis was lying in a room by himself. He resembled a giant spider: wires were strung from him on all sides; he was joined to the shining machines. It seemed he was feeding those metallic contraptions with his own blood, his own fluids. At first sight, I wanted to rush and tear out all the wires. Gedis couldn’t be trusted to machines. Gedis was never a machine; even his body wasn’t a machine. I procrastinated for a few seconds, weighing how to push the people in white coats out. Gediminas himself stopped me. He suddenly raised his right hand and waved convulsively.

  “The remains of his motor reactions,” Kovarskis muttered.

  He understood nothing. Gediminas moved his hands, writhed like a bug pinned to a board. A well-known bug. With his finger he perfectly repeated the movements of a smashed cockroach.

  I didn’t ask anything; I didn’t jump up to pull out the wires. I didn’t stay in the room for a second. I calmly walked out and went home. The facts stubbornly pounded in my head, but still I resisted. The facts can be arranged in various ways, particularly when they are incomplete. I avoided grasping everything in the only possible way.

  While I was still wandering the labyrinth of Vilnius that had led me to the hospital, I remembered with amazement and horror an interesting item that could have become yet another introductory (and not just introductory!) thesis of my lecture on Them.

  From Marshall Zhukov’s memoirs about Stalin.

  He was never likable, not even for a second. Everyone who saw him up close noticed his stare: rude, biting, pricking the visitor’s softest spots. You would go into his office as if you were going into a torture chamber. Anyone who had been there could testify: you left there sucked dry, debilitated—as if you had left part of your strength behind with him.

  I rode home completely on edge. I was prepared to at last see through everything, all I needed was a sign, a crucial stimulus. I began to understand what a terrifying game I had become embroiled in. The first naïve conclusions scattered like fog. It seemed to me I awoke from an oppressive dream (it seemed to me like an oppressive dream) in order to clearly see that it was merely a respite before the real nightmare. I began to understand a thing or two. They don’t exist just so, of their own accord. They are the product of our dismal existence and at the same time its cause. During the twenty-minute trip many things became clear to me, although I just couldn’t fathom Their purpose, the great worldwide purpose. Now I know it. Many things that people value or fear appear equally insignificant to me.

  The night trolleybus was practically empty; I had a good view of all the riders. The stage was set, the only thing lacking was the lead actor. It didn’t take long for him to show up: a young, perhaps twenty-year-old imbecile. I craved an answer, anything could turn into an answer, so I attentively examined his round head, stuck right onto his shoulders, and his fleshy nose, which was reminiscent of a beak. Overall he looked like a large, swollen bird. His fleshy, markedly bloated face shone with a friendly smile. I was just waiting for a sign; I stared at him with a pathological hope. Perhaps he was the one who was to send that sign. Perhaps he himself was that sign. He behaved sweetly and excessively politely, almost perversely so. He loitered between the seats and spoke to the riders. With impeccable pronunciation he asked what time it was; he asked nearly everyone where they were going. His urgent craving to socialize, his desire to please everyone, was revolting. He spoke to the
riders by a strange logic which apparently only he understood—not in turn, but not in random order, either. He knew what he was doing. By no means did he appear wronged by nature or God; more as if he was just exactly the way he should be. The irritated riders, scowling as soon as he gently reminded one of them it was time to get off, were less convincing. The imbecile’s inner satisfaction grew right before your eyes, it shone in the pudgy, full-cheeked face. There was no room for sadness or pain in that face, it could only show a cretinish impassivity or bliss. Its owner was satisfied with himself and others, he loved himself and others . . . and the trolleybus, and the rain outside the window, and the trashed bus stops—he loved the entire world without discrimination. He wanted for nothing, everything was clear to him. His pronunciation annoyed me most of all; it nearly drove me out of my mind. He spoke exceedingly properly—like the linguists on a television show. His lumbering body at times even twitched from the effort, he fawned so violently. But I saw a strange fear hiding in him too. That he could even have those kinds of feelings surprised me, but I quickly figured it out. He was afraid to be left forgotten and alone, to fail to attract others’ attention for even a second. Every person who still has a thing or two left inside is able to be alone with himself. There was nothing inside this lumbering figure that could be relied on. He no longer had himself, so a secret fear constantly gnawed at him.

  A chill suddenly pierced me; then in horror I felt a nearly inexplicable stitch, a strange stab that wounded the most tender, delicate places of my being. The stench of rotting leaves emanated from the imbecile; it seemed the danger signal that had sounded inside me before was recurring. Involuntarily I thought: so it’s They who sucked out this person’s soul; the kanukai kanuked him. Once he was human. The spectacle was probably over, the sign given, even though the actor was still standing on the miserable stage. Gediminas’s final convulsions, the black Circe’s gaze, all of the horrifying pictures were numbered and almost explained. Everything was much too clear—I actually felt faint on account of that purity and clarity. But what of it—I didn’t know what should be done. No one knows what should be done.

  But still the spectacle continued. The imbecile, with his piggish little eyes, stared at a girl who was sitting not far away. Apparently she had emerged from underground, or appeared out of nowhere. She sat quite close to me, daydreaming and completely forgetting herself, and looked at the rainy window glass. Both her coat and skirt buttoned up the front and had spread out somehow obscenely—they uncovered her long thin legs and the lace of her underwear; under them the dark, warm triangle of hair was apparent. Her dreamy face and that voluptuous, dangerous tunnel extending between her thighs straight to the tempting, damp mystery was horrifyingly incongruous, but all the more enticing. The imbecile felt it too; he carefully sat down on the neighboring seat, quickly stuffed his hands into his pockets and froze as if he’d had been paralyzed. I was completely done in by that girl’s involuntary voluptuousness, the imbecile’s fingers moving hysterically in his pants pockets, and his face, which he suddenly turned towards me. He looked at me as if I was one of his own, smiled knowingly, and turned back again to the sugary damp tunnel. Strings of slimy saliva dripped from the corners of his lips. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and intently stretched them towards the girl’s legs. Slowly, carefully, he thrust them into the tunnel between her thighs. I swear, at that moment there wasn’t a drop of fear left in his face.

  I jumped out of the trolleybus; I thought I heard the horrified yell of the girl as she was awoken from her daydreams. There was just one thing on my mind—that my apartment was right near by, and I had to get to it. I doubted I would succeed in returning home alive. Afterwards, an interval of several days disappeared from my consciousness.

  Thank God, Stefa took care of me. Thank God, the Academy of Science took care of Gediminas’s funeral. Thank God—after all, like me, he lived all alone. And he died all alone (as I am destined to do). It’s just that the Academy of Science, which suddenly honored the eternally chastised Gediminas Riauba after his death, won’t bury me.

  In Lithuania, truly great people are valued, if at all, only after their death. In the very best case.

  That live skeleton crawls on all fours through the pen and nibbles at the grass. That skeleton of a tall man with a toothless mouth and bloody gums rips out a dried-up clump and slowly chews it. There is nothing left in his eyes; Plato and Einstein are dead, Nietzsche and Shakespeare are dead. In his eyes a void remains, a boundless, bare expanse. You know this man. You know his name. You’ve spent hundreds of nights talking together. Vasia Jebachik sprawls next to you and giggles. If they should catch us, we could end up in the pen ourselves. The man suddenly stops and spreads his legs. It seems some kind of thought flickers on his face. He strains to think, tries to remember something, while between his legs hangs a thick sausage of waste. It dangles for a long time and finally falls down. Your heart wants to jump out of your throat, but you can’t pull your eyes away from him.

  “Bolius!” you say in despair.

  He doesn’t hear. That human animal no longer knows his own name; he turns around and sniffs at his waste. He calmly leans over and chomps the steaming, reeking sausage with his toothless mouth. He chews it blissfully, with his head thrown back no less. You know this person.

  “They’ve done your prof in, Ironsides,” Vasia Jebachik grins, “And there’s another one.”

  The second shaved head is much younger; he doesn’t crawl, he reclines with a pained expression on his face. He still has a human face. The older one suddenly yowls. You’re wracked by spasms, because you know this person’s name. All of Lithuania knows his name. You want to kill someone, because it’s impossible to go on living. Whom should you kill? Perhaps Bolius? Or maybe yourself? It’s the fundamental question of philosophy: do you kill someone else, or yourself? God was killed a long time ago.

  “The other one’s supposedly a Swede,” Vasia whispers. “Balenberg, or something . . . Ha! Do you see a Swede? He’s the King of the Jews! I’d recognize a Jew a mile away!”

  Your hands shake, your heart no longer beats, you’ve died already. You no longer are, there is only an all-encompassing NOTHING, which has no meaning nor objective, no purpose, which looks with a multitude of invisible eyes, gorges with a multitude of invisible mouths, and blankets the entire earth—it has no cracks, no weak spots; it’s invincible, eternal, unchanging. Under it cities disappear, people disappear, the whole lot disappears, Bolius disappeared, you’ll disappear in a minute, sooner or later nothing will be left—just that nothing, existing for itself and because of itself, but it’s almost all the same to you, since you no longer are. You’re dead already.

  “Let’s get lost, Ironsides,” Vasia Jebachik blurts out. “If they catch us here, it’s all over for us. They’re hiding that Swede like you wouldn’t believe!”

  For two or three days I lay in a fever, then suddenly I came to my senses—with a dull head and an empty heart. I felt somewhat like the only life left among the dead. Everything in the world appeared to be as usual, left standing in the same place and the same way. But everything was illuminated in a new light, arousing the second, the true sight. It’s not difficult to get used to obvious, tangible changes. It’s much more difficult when things seemingly haven’t changed, but mean something else entirely. If you were to try to reconcile the old and the new perspectives, you could go out of your mind. I saved myself simply by not even attempting to remember the old world; I accepted the new without any stipulations. I saw it clearly, like a finished painting, like the dragon’s fiery breath.

  All of Their subspecies—from the commissars of gray powers down to the last peon, all of the beasts marked by Their sign, seek the same thing. They suck, devour, and ingest your essential powers, the inner strength, thanks to which you are human. They devour people, but leave them looking perfectly healthy on the outside. They suck out just the insides, leaving an ashen emptiness inside. They suck out fantasy, inspirations
and intellect, as if it were everyday food or a refreshing drink. They are able to adjust to circumstances better than any other living creature. It’s impossible to avoid Them; They are everywhere. It’s They who fixed things so that in the eternal war between the darkness and the light a soulless gloom always wins. They discovered the near truth, which is worse than the blackest lie. If the human race really is doomed to extinction, it will be solely thanks to Them.

  A hundred times I tried to logically refute Their existence. But I reached the opposite goal—I unarguably proved that They really exist. The simplest proof—an argument ad absurdum. Let’s say They don’t exist. There is no such subspecies of live creatures whose sole purpose is to kanuk people, to take away their intellectual and spiritual powers; that kingdom of sullen, flat faces doesn’t exist. Let’s say none of that exists.

  Then how can you explain humanity’s structure, all the world’s societies, all human communities, their aspirations and modes of existence? How can you explain that always and everywhere, as far as you can see, one idiot rules a thousand intelligent people, and they quietly obey? Whence comes the silent gray majority in every society? Would a person who wasn’t kanuked think of vegetating in a soulless condition and say that’s the way everything should be? Why is it always enough to arrest a thousand for the just cause of a million to be doomed? Who raises and sets all governments on the throne, who hands the scepter to Satan’s servants—to all sorts of Stalins, Hitlers or Pol Pots? How do thousands, even millions of people disappear in the presence of all, and the others supposedly don’t even notice? How does humanity manage to forget its history and repeat that which has already caused catastrophe more than once? Where does everyone’s intelligence and memory disappear to at such moments? What instills the tendency in a human to betray the seekers of justice, knowing perfectly well that they are seekers of justice? Where does that secret desire come from, when a person is up to their neck in shit, to use all his strength to drown another who’s still trying to scramble out? How could censorship, whose sole purpose is to hide the truth, exist in a human society that hasn’t been kanuked?