Vilnius Poker. Ricardas Gavelis
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