Vilnius Poker. Ricardas Gavelis
just crave demeaning him, but her as well. After all, she has never seen or experienced that thing. She hadn’t seen it when she started searching for me; she hasn’t seen it even now, as I stand in front of the mirror and pointlessly torment myself.
But what, what, did she see in me?
Grandfather sits hunched over in a deep armchair in the middle of the room, as always scowling angrily, soundlessly muttering curses on the entire world. Through the open window yellow and red leaves have fallen inside; they move as if they were alive, striving to get back to freedom. They are afraid of grandfather.
“So, you’re fourteen,” says grandfather. “Seven times two.”
He beckons with his finger; you must come closer. The dry leaves angrily rustle below your feet; for some reason it’s uncomfortable, almost frightening. Everyone avoids grandfather. When he shuffles down the little street of Užubaliai village, people quickly close their windows. Even the leaves of the trees fear him.
“So, you’re fourteen . . .”
Again you hear the rustle of dry leaves: grandfather’s big dog, as black as coal, is sitting next to the armchair and staring at you with an impenetrable stare. Grandfather stretches out a withered hand and starts feeling you over. With his fingers he kneads your shoulders and your elbows, squeezes harder on your upper arm, and despite yourself you stiffen your muscles.
“All right,” grandfather mutters. “Rock and earth . . . Copper and flint . . . Everything is all right . . .”
His words are strange, while his hand probingly explores your body. At last he has poked around all over you, you think you’ll be able to go now, but suddenly you break out in a sweat. Grandfather thoroughly prods everything there too, and angrily blurts out:
“Unbutton it . . . Give it here!”
You feel sick; you don’t want to obey, but the dog growls threateningly and you give in immediately. Frightened, you take out that thing, throbbing and flinching from every touch. Maybe grandfather has gone completely insane; but no, he’s as serious and intense as if he were praying. You look at the leaves on the floor, at the fire in the fireplace, and suddenly it starts to seem as if all of this has already been; at some other time you stood in front of a gray old man with long hair down to his shoulders and a wild beast as black as night. You’ve already waited for them to inspect you all over and give their blessing.
Grandfather carefully turns your masculinity over in his hand, weighs it in his palm, squeezes its head.
“A good pecker!” he says at last. “A genuine Vargalys pecker. With a copper end.”
He hides it and buttons you up; probably he realizes you’ll keep standing there, completely dumbfounded. The dog gets up and rustles the red and yellow leaves, while tears gather in your eyes: grandfather is grandfather, but why did he have to show everything to that angry black beast?
“You know, my child, you can have a woman already, any woman,” says grandfather. “Every Vargalys can have any woman. Even your shitty father.”
You’re dumbfounded again, because grandfather is smiling. That’s impossible, grandfather doesn’t know how to smile, he doesn’t have the section of the brain that creates a smile. Even now, hardly born, the smile dies.
“Go on!” says grandfather in his usual brusque voice. “And remember—you’re a Vargalys now. Persevere, my child, being a Vargalys is no kind of luck. And don’t try to understand yourself. No Vargalys has ever understood himself.”
You walk out as if you’re dreaming, turn back once more, and see grandfather in the midst of the red and yellow leaves scattered about the floor, already muttering curses under his breath. He curses everything by turns: first Żeligowski and the Poles of Vilnius, then all the Poles in the world, the Russians and the Germans, life, God, the sun and the moon, father and mother, the Milky Way and every last galaxy.
Unfortunately, she has never seen or experienced me at all; all she knows is the Vytautas Vargalys who walks the corridors of the library or the streets of Vilnius. Then what did she choose, who is that person who is twice as old as she is? Is it me, or not me? This person in the mirror, or maybe the phantom of her dreams, whom not even the real I could equal?
If she really chose that person in the mirror, the one who has lost all hope, I must warn her, restrain her, before it’s too late. I don’t even know what’s more important to me—to help her, or to harm her, to take revenge (revenge for what?) on that mean-eyed man, attentively inspecting my nakedness. Surely she sees, surely she understands that beneath that solid-looking exterior hides a body that disobeys its master, a body living an independent life? That’s a dangerous body, the husk of an unnamable creature, into which my innards have been forcibly stuffed. You can look at that husk for hours upon hours, but you’ll see nothing real. I’m not there; there’s only that sad person of the mirror. Even I’m not able to penetrate his depths. And thank God for that!
I have an inkling of what would happen if you were to worm your way even a bit deeper, if the exterior armor were to open itself up and uncover the weedy undergrowth and cobweb-caked corners inside. What would go on, if, somewhere in the world, there were a torch you could use to light up all of the little nooks of the spirit, or better yet—to scorch the bestiaries of the interior, so that all of the inner creatures, all of those abominations, would start clambering out in fright. It would be appropriate to classify people based just on the monstrosities crawling about inside them, on the basis of their profusion, types, and variety. All you would need to do is invent that torch, and nuns with modestly lowered eyes would instantly be stuck all over with warty toads, and holy martyrs would be covered in swarms of poisonous mosquitoes. So then what would it tell us about all the others?
I know that naked person of the mirror well; I know what a procession of hellish monsters would swarm out of him. Creatures with the bodies of toads and the eyes of birds, lurching along on short little legs, twisted long-nosed heads with deranged stares, old women with swollen bellies splattered with warts, greenish slimy faces, fish-human servants of Satan with the snouts of mice, birds with hairy beaks and transparent guts in which pieces of human flesh were being digested, round glassy eyes without pupils, rotting bodies overgrown with tree bark, gigantic breasts with pimply, bloody nipples, spreading a hideous stench with every movement, clumsy dwarves belching waste, innocent girls run through a meat grinder and put together again into a single thing, smiling little figures pierced with needles, and then women, women, women, embracing the rot of tree trunks, with pockmarked frogs greedily mouthing at their crotches and blood-sucking bats stuck to their bellies, women distorting their faces in pleasure, giving themselves to long-bristled boars in lacy beds . . . And that’s just the edges of the gray hell, the good-natured periphery; the most essential thing is to see how he himself, that motley crew’s leader, appears, to see what he himself is up to . . .
I stand completely naked in front of the mirror and almost admire him. His body has gone completely numb, but he patiently (and probably insolently) continues to stand against the bloody background, defying me. Suddenly I realize he sees straight through me too. I confess: I like those kind of people.
Only those who have lost their spirit fear the monsters of the interior. Only those who have lost their balance pretend their insides are pure and refined. You can only become truly great by joining your heaven with your hell. All of the good in people is the same, but the kingdom of evil is different in everyone. I truly think this way, but could I confess this to Lolita? Does she have even the slightest idea of what’s going on inside of me, of what a quagmire she’s stepping in to? Wouldn’t she be frightened, seeing even one of my billions of Bosch-like inner landscapes? And how could I show them to her?
Maybe I have to stand completely naked against a bloody background in front of her too, stand for hours upon hours, so that she could scrutinize my graying temples, my nearly pupil-less eyes with their darkened irises, my scarred masculinity—so she could look until she saw the headless monsters inside of me (or see me myself as a headless monster), until she could hear my inner music, until she could sense my true scent . . .
No, all the same I do not understand