And immediately I saw Colonel Banys himself.
Just one molecule!
It was here, she was lying right here!
She was lying on her back, very naturally, as if waiting around for Colonel Banys to solemnly step inside. Not the slightest little muscle on his face twitched. With difficulty, he kneeled down next to his daughter’s body. He looked at her for a long time, as if choosing a favorite spot. Then he determinedly pulled the knife out of the wound.
Blood gushed out onto the floor.
I didn’t see them, but I sensed quiet figures milling about. A pair stood in the bushes beyond the cottage; another figure a bit further, near the road. The black Volga’s darkened headlights stared at me indifferently.
I didn’t see the first cuts; apparently I must have been looking around at that moment. When I glanced into the cottage again, Lola was already headless. Her father was slowly, methodically slicing her into pieces, at intervals wiping his bloody hand on her belly. For some reason it occurred to me that this certainly wasn’t the first time he had done this kind of work. For a while I watched as if I had been mesmerized, without any horror — it was much too similar to a nightmarish dream. But I could pinch myself as much as I wanted. I could close my eyes and open them again. Nothing helped: it was reality. For another moment yet I saw all the details. Then I felt sick. Thank God, I didn’t scream or run off horrified through the bushes, I just threw up.
I’m pathetic; I’m the embodiment of homo lithuanicus. I didn’t think of Lola or VV, I thought only of myself. I knew that if someone ran into me here it would be the end of me. I had seen too much. I was the only one to see Colonel Banys’s deed; even all his assistants were some distance away. All I thought of was how to escape unseen. I tried to vomit as quietly as possible.
That I succeeded in.
I don’t know how many times I’ve jumped out of bed at night, always seeing the same thing in front of my eyes: Colonel Banys, methodically butchering his dead daughter. That was all I saw, even though in my dreams I probably ought to have seen a more accurate, deeper truth: Colonel Banys butchering VV alive.
That’s all I know for sure. If someone were to even suspect that I know this. . It’s awful just to think about it.
But I know it all the same.
They say even gods cannot change the past. So then who the hell needs gods like that? I demand that this be changed, erased from my memory! Can’t I demand at least one thing in my life?
I haven’t been able to shake off the feeling that I am Lolita, sprawled on the garden cottage’s floor and being cut up into little pieces. That’s the way I walk the streets of the city — being cut up, or already cut up. And slowly going out of my mind. The only reason I don’t go entirely out of my mind is because my mind is cut up into little pieces too.
An awful thing happened today: I was getting ready to write the horrible history of the garden into my secret computer disk and ran into the insolent traces of an intruder. Someone had read my secret records, my entire mlog.
I won’t explain it in detail; a non-specialist wouldn’t understand anything anyway, but believe me — the record was encrypted four ways. No one could get into it without me. It seemed that way to me. I didn’t appreciate people’s ingenuity.
But no — I did appreciate it. After all, I had entered one last marker. If the record had, in spite of it all, been read (and that, it seemed, was impossible), I would know it immediately.
And I did know it immediately. They didn’t appreciate my ingenuity, either.
So, that’s how things stand. I was saved only because I hadn’t had time to enter the horrible story of the garden. And the records in my brain, I trust, really are impossible to read.
Why am I convinced of this? If they could, they would have read it a long time ago, ergo, I would have long since been disposed of.
Devilishly logical.
Everything else is completely illogical.
Why, why, did VV murder Lolita? If it were a Shakespearean play, I’d believe everything — Will liked to throw corpses about. But this is life, after all! VV’s, Lolita’s, my life!
Yes, life has everything: absurdities, horrors, and afflictions. But I still can’t believe that this inexplicable nightmare belongs to my life too.
I must get closer to VV’s secret, to Lolita’s secret. On stinking Vilnius’s secret. I must understand them all, whatever it may cost me.
The most metaphysical object in the Universe is our office. Under no circumstances can it chance by so much as a hair’s breadth. I burst straight into the coffee break with all my horrors and questions, and I was charmed.
“I know for sure that French perfumes are going to go up in price,” Gražina immediately declared, yawning openly. “Good lord, they’re already insanely expensive.”
What does she need Dior perfume for? Explain this to me, for God’s sake.
“True, true,” Marija agreed at once. “We’ve decided to change our apartment. You know, the five of us are squeezed into two rooms. We saved up the money, found someone willing to sell. . and the Executive Committee won’t allow it.”
“What Executive Committee!?” Gražina declared mercilessly. “It should be called the Exasperation Committee. They do everything just to make things harder.”
“That’s their purpose,” Beta says enigmatically.
“The price of coffee is going up again. . And cigarettes. .”
“Yesterday I went to the studio, I look and. .”
“Rimutis says to me: Mommy. .”
And so forth, and so on. No one has been chopped into bits. No one is sitting in jail. Everything is the same as it always was, and you, Comrade Poška, are simply hallucinating.
Ever since that silly telephone conversation during my binge, Elena looks at me gently and benevolently. I answer with a polite smile, however, a holy terror grips me at the thought that she could demand something of me too.
“Martynas is in a lively mood today,” she chirps, “I’m thinking he’ll run out for a wee bit of cognac. I saw that Tallinn had these tiny little bottles. You could bring back a few. .”
Only now do I see the homemade cookies and petit fours on the table. Apparently, it’s someone’s name day. Well, okay, a little cognac is a little cognac. Why just a few bottles — I’ll stuff my pockets full.
Outside, the dog greets me immediately. He doesn’t come closer; I’d say he follows me respectfully, like an uninvited entourage. Suddenly it occurs to me it would be worth my while to talk to him. Maybe he speaks English? If he follows me the whole way, I’ll talk to him on the way back.
At the crosswalk, a roaring truck nearly runs me over. That’s weird — trucks aren’t allowed on the avenue. Some special truck. Every Soviet law has so many exceptions that no one person knows them all.
There was a line by the tiny little bottles. Apparently our office wasn’t the only one that had gotten wind of them. I take five of them; I’ll take the others home. Very handy: you open it up, suck down those four ounces, and there’s none left over; the cognac’s alcohol doesn’t evaporate.
Vilnius has been engulfed in fall by now. The sidewalks are wet, the air damp. Glum figures creep by: they’re known as Vilniutians.
The dog is waiting for me on the other side of the street; he knows I’m coming back. Unconsciously I start thinking up elegant phrases. I really must talk to him. I’ll ask him about VV.
A gigantic truck roars right by the sidewalk, it’s already turned around. Good Lord, he’s hunting me down. I’ll check out his plate number and report him to the traffic police.