Vilnius Poker. Ricardas Gavelis
Her imagination was nightmarish. But enough of that . . . Of course, I didn’t understand anything, but an image of mystical innocence formed within me. A live innocence . . . Practically a little beast . . . It was so . . . sticky, without any holes or openings, hairy, and really cold—so you wouldn’t want to touch it. My six- or seven-year-old brain was full of that cold, hairy innocence, can you imagine? I’d dream of it. And how did everything turn out?”
She stops again, as if she needs to concentrate to answer, and takes a deep breath of air, Vilnius’s gray air. It smells of decay. Every evening street of Vilnius looks like a narrow path through an invisible bog. If you were to go a couple of steps to the side you’d immediately feel the sweetish breath of the swamp, the smell of peaceful decay.
“Do you know how it all ended up? Quite naturally: I began to hate any kind of innocence. If I had only understood what my mother was explaining to me, I would have lost my maidenly innocence by all possible means. I’ll tell you about my mother’s fantastic invented methods later, all right?”
I can’t be all right: we’re approaching the Narutis, approaching the lonely portal that quietly chats with Saint John’s church. There’s no talking here; I have to go by calmly, without disturbing the old smells that have seeped into the walls. And Lolita understands me, understands without a word, by now she’s standing in my room by the window and stroking the curtain. But no—she’s lying on the couch with her legs curled up under her.
Now she’s lying on the couch completely naked, her head leaning on her left hand, with her soft-skinned legs curled up under her. A secret fire burns within her—I still don’t know if she won’t set me on fire too. I only know what I see and feel now. I feel Lolita’s warmth, and I see her herself: the large, firm breasts, the belly hidden in half-shadow, the folded, twisted legs. I understand why an artist took her for a wife: he wanted to have an ideal model at hand every day. You could draw her, exclusively, your entire life. Not just her portraits—you could paint a meadow or a room: on the canvas there really will be a meadow or a room, but actually you’d draw her all the same. You can delve into her, express her, even though at that moment your paintbrush will leave an image of the Last Judgment on the canvas, or a still life of space-rending green peaches, or symmetrical gray squares. That’s just what the ordinary sight will see, but the second, true sight will invariably discern Lolita there.
“Why do I talk about it? I don’t know . . . Sometimes it seems to me that she was a genuine Lithuanian, a Lithuanian of Lithuanians—with that idea of hers, of innocence. It’s like a national illness, you know? She tried to be innocent in absolutely everything. It was practically a religious aspiration, an unrealistic yearning. Her slogan should have been: ‘Never take a step!’ And: ‘If someone comes close to you, don’t wait, don’t stand in place—run as fast as you can!’ She wanted to be innocent in absolutely everything . . . Not God’s fiancée, no, no, not that at all . . . I’d say she didn’t want to surrender to the world, or something. If it were at all possible not to do something new, something unknown, something she hadn’t experienced yet—she wouldn’t do it. Understand? . . . If she had never been somewhere, she avoided going there. She tried her best to never go beyond the borders of the smells, events, and ceremonies she had already experienced; anything new could injure her mystical innocence . . . Don’t touch that flower, she would say, don’t show it to me! . . . Don’t tell me about the sea, never, ever, tell me about the sea! We got into a horrible row the first time I secretly ran off to the sea! . . . Never mind the sea, she had never tasted lemons! A lemon could injure her innocence, you know?”
“So, it’s always about your mother. And you?”
Lolita moves her legs uneasily, rubs her cheek with a finger; bars of light slink over her chest, briefly light up her navel and the lower part of her belly, the thick, curled-up hair. Her mother intimidates me. I don’t want to hear another word about her mother. She was my age. Someone my age, obsessed with a pathological idea of innocence.
Lolita suddenly sits up, bends her somewhat spread legs and leans on her knees with her elbows, her hands hanging down, her fingers almost reaching her ankles. The halo of thick hair glows with an angry fire around her head. Her body, unusually coarse, almost vulgar, looks at me rapaciously; the plainly visible dark sexual opening irritates me. It’s only like that for a few moments. The lamp is ashamed and hides behind her back; now her face, her entire front, is in shadow, and her voice is much calmer.
“Don’t make fun of my mother. Her world was bigger than ours. Just think how much she invented about those things she never experienced, the things she denied herself . . . I envy that ideal world of hers . . . Imagine it—you invent a lemon yourself. With all the details, with a bunch of non-existent characteristics . . . Come on now, a real lemon compared to an ideal like that—nothing more than a fog, a banal yellow fruit, while yours . . . She was a theoretician, an aesthete; I went for practice and experimentation. She pounded that abstract idea of innocence into me so thoroughly that to this day I’m dying to lose my innocence in every possible sense, to try out everything immediately, to run looking who knows where, and to constantly look, to look for something never seen, never experienced, never known . . . And I like just exactly the kind of men I can’t understand, the kind I don’t know what to expect from . . . Understand?”
“And I’m that kind?”
“You understand . . .” she blurts out, and continues down the street. “You understand everything perfectly well. You’re intelligent. Besides, you have your secret, and I don’t know what it is . . . And I don’t want to know . . . If I were to know, then at least I could predict what you’ll do, how you’ll behave . . . And I don’t want that . . . I want to experience everything myself, understand?”
She gets more and more furious; her voice angrily cuts the air of Pilies Street into pieces, and then flings them in my face. It is slowly getting lighter, or it hasn’t gotten dark yet. By now we have almost gone the entire street to the end. By now she has almost gotten all of it out—earlier, now, later.
“What did you ask me to begin with?” she says sadly. “Why am I telling you this drivel?”
“You were explaining why you’re attracted to horrible people.”
“Oh . . . Because I can see only two signs in a person’s face—either unhappiness, or peace. The kind of peace that means stupidity, clean business, bacon, money, very soft furniture, fear of authority, endlessly just and moral behavior, shiny shoes that are never dirty, perfectly even dentures, a precise daily schedule, peaceful sleep . . .”
In an instant the mood changes; suddenly Lolita is quiet, and without her voice something inexplicable is going on in the dimness. I’m walking down a street of Old Town, a woman walks beside me, but I have absolutely no idea who she is—I know her name, a few of her real or invented stories, but does that really mean I know her? A completely strange, dangerous woman is walking next to me and probably wants something from me—at this moment or in general. She probably wants to use me, like all women do, or perhaps even to deceive me cruelly. An extremely graceful woman—I can’t get enough of her walk, her legs gliding as smoothly as in a dream. She’s very young; it’s not clear what she wants from me, this fairy of Vilnius. At any moment she could look at me with a magic glance and turn me into a stone, or a submissive slave. I feel I am in her power. She controls me with magical powers, or at least she could control me: if she were to look at me with her entrancing eyes I would obey, I would carry out any order. But she doesn’t look—maybe she thinks it’s still early, maybe she’s saving her authority for the critical moment. You have to guard against her; you shouldn’t admire her.
There’s practically no fog left; I see the streets, the square and the most important thing—the hill and Gediminas Castle. Here the Iron Wolf howled in Grand Duke Gediminas’s dream and promised the castle a great future. Now Vilnius itself is a dream city, a ghost city. Among the faceless figures walking the streets, the good dead of Vilnius (the old ones and the entirely new ones from the post-war period, the last Lithuanian aurochs) look much livelier. It’s not clear which is a dream—the ancient city or the Vilnius of today. Only the ancient castle in the new city is unavoidably real: a lonely tower, emerging from the overgrown