“Kanukas!” He screamed this strange word out loud. “Kanukas!”
I didn’t even try to rescue her. I’m a coward and I know it. I had absolutely no desire to be crushed like a pear. For what? For Vaiva? For that filly? She got what she deserved.
I couldn’t understand any of it: neither her earlier triumph over VV, nor VV’s strange fading, nor that outburst of madness. Afterwards VV immediately recovered his good mood, agile wit, and sense of humor. You’d think he’d come out of some kind of fog. He didn’t remember Vaiva at all.
What did he beat and kick between the shelves that horrible night in the library? Surely not a rather vulgar young woman with an Afro hairstyle, not a real human being. But what?
By the way, right after this incident, the infamous story of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski broke. The satanic Manson, Sharon Tate’s brutal murder, and so on.
For a few days afterwards VV walked around under a black cloud and moved his lips soundlessly. It seemed Roman Polanski was his brother, or maybe Tate his sister.
I took note of this, because VV grimly predicted that Polanski would shortly meet with a vile misfortune. And that’s what happened: he was accused of raping a minor.
VV would frequently make predictions like that, and he always guessed correctly. He saw connections everywhere that were invisible to everyone else.
I saw that Polanski, in one of his own films, The Tenant. Lord knows, he somehow reminded me of a much smaller version of VV.
A hundred, a thousand times I’ve thought: God surely could have made VV smaller: his size, his passions, his edginess, his. .
It seems to me that someone already undertook narrowing a person’s soul. Was it Dostoevsky perhaps?
It’s an extremely dangerous pursuit. Extremely. The ROF also undertakes this narrowing of souls. Apparently, cutting off even some evil or ugly human characteristic can’t be done — it’d be better to cut off an arm or leg. Even without some appendages, a person’s essence remains. But without a part of his brain, a person instantly turns into a worm of the Ass of the Universe.
I either have to admit that VV could have been the way he is and only the way he is, or not talk about him at all.
I agree: sometimes he was horrible. I agree: Lolita met a particularly hideous end. But apparently it couldn’t be any other way. Otherwise, there would never have been a VV, either.
I ran into Giedraitienė again today. She was hanging around Lenin Square and constantly glancing at the KGB building, looming on the other side of the street.
“Hello there!” she wheezed. “I’m waiting for Robertėlis. He’ll save Vytelis. I’m going to testify in court.”
All of VV’s female acquaintances have decided to testify at his trial, which most likely won’t ever happen. However, this one didn’t appear to be brimming with resolution; rather, she seemed confused. In the meantime, a sullen, gray-haired little guy who resembled an alcoholic carpenter darted out the side door of the KGB building. I had seen this guy before. Alas, I had seen him before.
Colonel Giedraitis got terribly frightened. It seemed he simply couldn’t think of how to escape. Lord knows what a particularly elegant meeting between a mother and her son that was. The conversation didn’t last long, maybe a minute. In the end, Colonel Giedraitis gave his mother a rather hard shove and instantly disappeared into the opening of the door. Giedraitienė, rubbing her injured side, smiled widely and muttered in a low voice:
“He’ll listen to his mommy. Robertėlis is a good son. He was always an obedient child.”
The detective stopped zooming around the library, but I run into him suspiciously often in the street. He’s dressed differently every time. It’s rather strange — a normal Vilnius male simply doesn’t have that many different clothes.
A ridiculous idea came into my head: you’d think he was copying a character in Teodoras Žilys’s painting — the one that was always dressed differently, staring out of a bunch of identical little frames.
Who knows if it’s at all possible to help VV. Without Lolita he won’t last a month. I can swear that there won’t be any trial — he’ll pine and fade away much earlier. It’s a shame you can’t write in our jails and leave the world your last opus.
Son of a bitch — that would be some opus!
Unfortunately, for the time being I have to make do with my mlog and my collection. Incidentally, the latter is rarely replenished anymore. Here’s the latest record:
I went to the clinic to fix my teeth and listened to the conversation of two old coat check ladies. Both of them were Russian — that’s why their chatter attracted me.
They discussed Brezhnev’s health. They concurred that he had no more than a year or two to live. They discussed his possible heirs.
“Poor old man,” one lamented. “And he’ll be replaced with another old man.”
“No, no,” the other one disagreed. “This time it’ll be a younger one.”
“It won’t, it won’t,” the first one glumly replied. “Now all those old men have to be in power for a while. Just think about it: they killed so many people, they were literally bathing in blood. So now they have to rule at least!”
What would a homo lithuanicus have to say on this topic? He wouldn’t discuss it in the first place. It’s absolutely the same to him who from the ROF will die or which leader will replace another.
There’s only one area in which homo lithuanicus expresses his true feelings. That’s in athletic contests.
From my collection:
An international basketball contest was held in Vilnius. There were several strong teams playing: U.S. students, the Spanish I believe, and some others besides. Plus a USSR team and — lord love a duck — a separate Lithuanian team. Someone from the central Sports Committee overshot himself terribly.
Truly beautiful things were going on inside the Hall of Sports. When the USSR team played, the crowd unanimously cheered for their opponents, whoever they might be. There was thunderous cheering when the Russians missed. Quite understandably, this didn’t last long. Militiamen started guarding the entrances to the Hall of Sports. They dealt with it quite simply: they’d take the ticket away from anyone whose expression they didn’t like. Anyone who tried to protest was taken straight to jail. I myself paid a ten-ruble fine. See, I tried grumbling that they didn’t have the right.
The free spaces that opened up were filled by workers chosen for that purpose, Russians, of course. They supported the USSR team quite harmoniously.
Sincerity can still be found at sporting competitions. Less and less often.
Lord knows VV should have played basketball. That’s the only chance for a Lithuanian.
They’re fond of passionately telling us that a Harlem black’s best chance is basketball or boxing. In this respect, all Lithuanians are black. Lithuanians aren’t allowed to occupy high posts in the hierarchy of the Ass of the Universe. They aren’t allowed to rule themselves, much less others. Basketball is all that’s left.
We’re all basketball players, resignedly plotting mind-boggling plays, gracefully tossing balls into a dead-end, tied-up basketball hoop.
Lolita never loved VV. That’s the kind of conclusion you invariably come to when you find yourself in a dentist’s chair. It’s impossible to explain to a civilized human being what a Soviet dentist’s chair is like. It’s impossible to explain what Soviet medicine is like.
It’s not just our life, our wants, and our minds that the ROF seeks to control. They have to control our life and death too. The medicines ROF representatives get are absolutely off-limits to a normal person. You’re left to quietly die of something that special medicines cure in two weeks.