Vilnius Poker. Ricardas Gavelis
An organ of pseudo-powers that hasn’t been able to get aroused in a long time. A red three-story tower, a phallic NOTHING, shamelessly shown to everyone, Vilnius’s image of powerlessness. The great symbol of a castrated city, of castrated Lithuania, stuck onto every postcard, into every photo album, every tourist brochure. A perverted, shameless symbol: its impotence should be hidden, not acknowledged, or it should at least pretend it’s still capable of a thing or two. But the city has long since lost everything—even its self-respect. Only lies, absurdity, and fear remain.
For some reason I’m sitting in the break room again, someone’s tossed me into a room with peeling plaster and set women around me. Besides myself, there’s only one man here—Martynas Poška, our library’s sad little chatterbox, a weird variety of crew-cut deity, a pathetic searcher for justice, and a collector of absurdities. At one time I even thought he was walking at least in parallel on The Way; I was shocked by his thin, long face, his eyes brimming with horror, his spineless whispers: “They don’t need it . . . it was done intentionally . . . a Satanic system . . .” But you scarcely start to think Martynas could be one of your own, when he brushes his hand across his face, suddenly changing it for another, and again I see the sneering crew-cut Martynas, the library’s sad little chatterbox. Someone like that can’t walk The Way, thank God, he can’t be Their spy, either: in whatever company, he’s the one that talks the most. And I always listen. I don’t disdain any conversation, any company. He who knows The Way doesn’t have the right to disdain people who have been kanuked; he knows all too well that his great discoveries and advantages are just a matter of fate, and only his mistakes are truly earned. You cannot condemn those around you; the desire to demean others is inspired by Them. Everyone should be viewed with secret hope, and their words examined for expression of a strong spirit. Almost no one is completely kanuked.
Take Martynas: some spiritual organ of his secretly manufactures anti-kanukas hormones; I’ve been convinced of this many times. Inside of him hides a deep protest against Them, although unfortunately, he hasn’t an inkling of Their existence.
Martynas was always a person of faith. He had faith in the power of reason. He thought the majority of our misfortunes proliferate because there aren’t enough virtuous, stubborn, and talented young men to sacrifice themselves and fix at least the biggest idiocies of our life. Martynas feels he himself is one of those young men. He dedicated his dissertation to the study of education, although its scope was much larger. He even flushed out a few substantial things. It wasn’t just a standard dissertation, but two full-scale treatises. One was philosophical for the most part, written like Spinoza: axioms, theorems, and their proofs. The other was almost sociological: a lot of rich documentation confirming the already proven theorems. Martynas carried out a titanic labor: he began it in his sophomore year and labored over it twenty-five hours a day for an entire eleven years. He was even left without a wife or children. Martynas Poška was a scholarly fanatic.
He painstakingly studied the path of the Soviet citizen from preschool to a university degree, and with mathematical precision proved that everywhere and at all times the only thing taught is how to swallow ready-made propositions, lifeless tropes, and barren constructions. Nowhere is thinking taught. No one is taught to create images for himself, to find propositions, to arrange logical schemes. No one is taught to search for truth, no one is taught to doubt. And worst of all—no one is taught the fundamentals of morals and humanity. In a word, we raise imitators, talking parrots, soulless automatons—but not Homo sapiens. Martynas always had a boundless respect for the concept of Homo sapiens. In the second part of his opus he scattered a bouquet of the most dreadful examples—from moronic educational programs to young killers spouting off: they had murdered just for the hell of it—not even out of anger, nor out of any dark instinct, but merely because they hadn’t grasped the simplest rudiments of human morality.
When his dissertation immediately stumbled on every rung of the bureaucratic ladder, Martynas understood nothing. He still believed in the power of the intellect. After all, an educational system like that ruined absolutely everything: the economy, politics, people’s souls; in a word, his dissertation bolstered the entire country. But no one, absolutely no one, would even consider speaking of its shortfalls or merits. A multitude of identical faces and identical voices vaguely muttered, “Come on, now, how can you, you understand yourself, after all, you understand everything.”
Force is neither Their only nor Their basic method. Treachery, deceptive persuasion, and a peculiar hypnotism are far more significant, far better suited to Their purposes. It’s always Their bywords:
“Come on now, you understand, you surely understand everything yourself!”
“The time hasn’t come yet for ideas like that!”
“Is it worth your while to be in such a hurry?”
They don’t try to merely break your spirit, but to force you to break it yourself. Obviously, They must occupy key positions in the educational system. It’s particularly important for Them to start with children as soon as possible.
For the love of God, guard the children!
Martynas refused to understand this. He still believed in the power of intellect. Besides, he was a sufficiently bold and brazen young man. He marched on Moscow itself, camped overnight in the reception rooms of the masters, took Olympus by a long-term siege. He climbed quite high; the only thing higher was the very apex, the banquet table of the gods.
One sad evening Martynas, well into his cups, leaned over to me and whispered enigmatically: “That muckety-muck talked to me for two hours! I understood it all . . . they don’t need it . . . it was done on purpose . . . you can’t imagine what a Satanic system it is!” He spoke in a whisper, casting furtive glances at the corners of the empty room. It was then I thought he probably was walking right next to me on The Way. Alas, alas.
On his return from Moscow, he quickly went through all the bureaucratic offices, collecting copies of his opus. That’s when remarkable things started happening. He didn’t find a single one. All of the offices claimed they never had a copy. The manuscript he had left at home vanished without a trace. Then they fired him from his post, quite officially, for not having defended his dissertation on time. He couldn’t manage to find other work. Openings would mysteriously disappear as soon as he approached the personnel department’s door. At last, late one evening, an unfamiliar voice telephoned him and suggested he apply at the library. That was how he ended up: without a wife, without children, without his great work. But he didn’t fall into hysterics, didn’t drink himself to death, and didn’t start fearing his own shadow.
On the contrary, he started expressing dreadful heresies out loud—the way people sing as loud as they can when they’re going through a haunted forest. I suspect Martynas sees apparitions too. Even now he almost never shuts his mouth. For some reason we’re sitting at the coffee break table again and talking about something. And again it repeats itself: more and more often, my time turns in circles and returns to the same spot.
Leodead Brezhnev’s portrait listens indifferently. An abundance of the usual conversational themes: Lithuanians and Russians, the food that isn’t, rising prices, Russia as the kingdom of idiots, America as a paradise where dollars grow on trees, the decrepit government, youth has no ideals, the world’s ecological system is disintegrating, we were born Lithuanians, will there be a war?
Now the theme approaches the eternal circle, which is nearly impossible to escape from: the absurdities of propaganda, what are they blathering, who do they think we are? The theme has been discussed and dissected to death, but Martynas is still pontificating:
“They actually know no one will listen to them. No one will hear what they say. So there’s no need to put even a speck of logic into what they’re spouting off about. It would be a useless waste of effort. Besides, they’re concerned about people’s health. Imagine what would happen if a political commentator suddenly said something intelligent. A catastrophe! Fifteen hundred people would get a heart attack. Three thousand would go into nervous shock from the unexpectedness of it. At least several dozen would start prophesying: they’ll decide the end of the world is coming . . .”
“Comrade Martynas, Comrade Martynas