From my collection:
The wife of a friend of mine had a raging temperature; death, as they say, was staring her in the face. By mistake, her frantic husband dialed the number of a special hospital. A doctor came over immediately, quickly looked the patient over and declared the situation critical. Only then did it become clear that the doctor had driven over through a mistake, and that my friend’s wife didn’t belong to the special hospital class. The doctor packed her already prepared syringe away and headed for the door. My friend begged her on his knees, even suddenly invoking the Hippocratic oath. The doctor, fittingly, looked at him like he was nuts, and calmly left.
Hippocrates with all of his oaths, and even more so all of his followers, are particularly dangerous dissidents. We must wage a fierce battle against them!
When they’re putting in a filling for you that will fall out in two weeks, knowing perfectly well that it will fall out, there’s nothing left to do but decide that Lolita didn’t love VV.
The arguments: If she loved him, why did she drag her father into this? Why did she turn poor VV’s head, why didn’t she marry him? Why didn’t she have a baby with just about anyone and then announce that it was VV’s child? He would have been delighted. Why. .
The whole thing bores me to death. I’m afraid. I don’t know what of, but I’m terribly afraid. I am as alone as the finger of God in the Ass of the Universe. Even Stefa refused to comfort me — physically at least.
Lolita didn’t love VV. She was egotistically striving for something. VV was striving to comprehend mankind, to defend it from the encroachments of the Ass of the Universe. And what of it? I’m striving for that too. And what of it? I’m not going to hand out proclamations on Broadway; I’m not going to publish my own newspaper. Even if I were to find the philosopher’s stone, no one would find out about it, because I live in the Ass of the Universe.
It’s a place where you cannot have any hope, because all hopes here are in vain. It’s a place where you won’t do anything, because it’s impossible to do anything here. It’s a place where it’s dangerous to even think, because you could suddenly hit on something good. And that’s the worst of alclass="underline" you could know an important secret and you couldn’t tell anyone about it. No news can escape into the world from the Ass of the Universe. We’re sealed up inside. Better to not know anything. At least your conscience won’t gnaw at you.
I don’t know any VV, I’ve never heard of any Lolita. I haven’t the slightest idea what the word “Colonel” means. Amen.
I’ve had it with that dog already. He’s hanging around under the windows all the time. I could swear it’s the same dog I saw by Teodoras’s studio.
Suddenly I feel like writing my will. This means I must decide two things: what I will leave behind and whom I will leave it to. The first part of the answer is obvious: I’ll leave my mlog and my collection.
But to whom?
To my son? He’s not interested in it and never will be interested. He’s generally not interested in anything. I’ll confess to a terrible secret: my son isn’t even a homo lithuanicus. He’s long since been a typical homo sovieticus.
Of course, I could have left the results of my lifetime efforts to VV, but even that’s no longer possible. I look out the window at my shitty neighborhood. The street is just the same as anywhere else. Everything’s exactly the same as it is anywhere else. This isn’t even Vilnius, who the hell knows what this is. At least the color of the buildings could be different in each neighborhood, or at least some minor detail. But oh, no! The Ass of the Universe doesn’t need any differences, much less my legacy.
Anywhere else, absolutely anywhere else, I would find someone to bequeath my legacy to. Just not here. Just not in Vilnius. Just not in the Ass of the Universe. Damn it, and I’m an atheist to boot, so I can’t expect to be judged and rewarded even after death, in the other world.
I’m not going to throw a stone at that horrible dog. He’s just the one I’ll going to leave my collection and my mlog to.
I threw him a piece of sausage, but he didn’t even deign to sniff at it. I felt ashamed, no less. Lord knows that’s not the kind of dog you should throw slop to. That’s a completely different kind of dog.
That’s my heir.
Son of a bitch, it should be possible to at least save the children. It takes my breath away to see what’s being made out of them.
The ideology of the Ass of the Universe declares that no human can oppose the inevitable progress of history. If that’s the way it really is, then Lord knows it’s best not to bring children into the world at all. And even better not to be born yourself.
But what can you do, if you’ve already been born?
I’m going to go get drunk.
After two shots: it’s still the same.
After four shots: it’s absolutely the same.
After six shots: I remember I sat here once with VV. On a day of incredible miracles, when our store was visited by the great emissary of the ROF, Suslov.
Have you noticed how I never even mention any Lithuanian masters? They mean nothing. They’re zeroes.
That’s why I keep on talking about all sorts of Molotovs, Suslovs, and other similar Leodead Brezhnevs.
We don’t even have our own masters!
It was at this very bar, the Erfurtas, that this disheveled little guy with a pistol under his jacket glommed on to us. He kept intruding; probably he’d noticed right away that we didn’t give a shit. In turn, he let us know it meant nothing to him to fill the two of us full of lead.
“Just try to escape!” he emphasized, waving a crooked, drunken finger.
He badly wanted to make a deep impression on us.
”Yes, Suslov is as scared as a rabbit,” he mused, commanding his tongue with difficulty. “Do you know why? He’s visited you here twice and kept having to run for it. The first time, in Kaunas, there was a boxing championship, your guy beat ours up, but the judges of course declared ours the winner. Your guys got angry and sent the militia packing. The boss had to flee in a special airplane. He came calling a second time — that guy of yours poured gasoline on himself and burnt himself up. Another riot. Now he’s sticking his neck out for the third time. He’s shaking like an aspen leaf, but he’s still sticking his neck out. Why?”
“Criminals always return to the scene of the crime,” VV snarled, but the guy didn’t understand him, he only understood Russian.
“Hey guys!” he roared, “I’m all right, believe me. I’m a sharpshooter and I love to hunt. I up and shot a forester. So, what came of it? Five years of hard labor, or you’re welcome to come work for us. Now I’m a gorilla. And so be it! I’ll eat caviar and drink champagne for breakfast. What other choice do I have?”
The gallant agent downed a glass of champagne in one gulp and instantly passed out. He was hit by an alcoholic stupor. VV suddenly got up and hurried down the stairs. I followed behind. I follow behind someone way too often. We got into the store without a hitch. Inside, Suslov really was shuffling around with his entourage. VV unexpectedly dived into the workroom and returned with a giant, maybe two-foot-long knife. I saw a murderous gleam in his eyes. I jumped in front of him without hesitating. You’ll laugh, but I used to play rugby. I smacked him in the stomach with my head and pushed him back into the workroom. VV lost his breath momentarily, however, he could have recovered at any instant. There was a pile of pineapples standing next to us; I grabbed the biggest one and smacked him on the head. I’ve never hit anyone on the head with a pineapple before. I’d never even tasted them. VV was more astonished than stunned. I grabbed the knife away from him, threw it into the refrigerator, and blocked the door with my body.