Suddenly I spot Šapira on the other side of the street. I even get a pang in my chest. I must have secretly been hoping to run into him, because suddenly I realize what I have to ask him. I know now: it’s just one little thing. Everything is unexpectedly falling into a harmonious scheme. If VV. .
I quickly stuff the bottles into my pockets and jump into the street at an angle. Šapira could disappear at any minute, he’s always in a hurry. I see his old face, his wise eyes. I know now what I’ll ask, I almost know the answer too, I hear a horrible roar from the left, I turn and
PART THREE. TUTEIŠA
Miss Stefanija Monkevičiūtė. October 30, 197. .
The best thing would be to buy a heap of gauze and cut it up, like I did that time in Palanga: everyone was running to all the sundries stands, bitching and griping, while I, as pretty as you please, bought myself a roll of gauze, cut it up, and it was first-class; this always happens when you’re at a resort or on the road, where there’s neither the conditions nor friends, nor even a good place to get washed up, you go around stinking like a barrel of herring, it seems everyone’s turning their nose away, although men probably don’t smell it, only dogs, like this one: raising his crooked snout up, his doggy balls hanging, it’s so embarrassing, you could just sink into the ground — you probably should go to the veterinary pharmacy, sometimes they have some sitting there.
When they picked him up all bloody, the street got blurry, I couldn’t see the people anymore, his gray tweed jacket was all bloody, the guy with the mustache was emptying his pockets, pulling out one little bottle of cognac after the other, and everyone nodded their heads: see, he was drunk; but I knew for sure that he was stone-cold sober, I wanted to say something, but the mustachioed guy emptied the last pocket and everyone shut up, because at the very bottom of the pocket was a finger, a real, live human finger, I swear to God, just like in Vasilis’s hut in the swamp: fingers of corpses, faded bundles of herbs and dried bats all hanging on strings; he went out for ten minutes and you find him run over, with a human finger in his pocket. I’m not afraid of death, I’ve seen lots of them, but I can’t be calm like that young miss: a light blue miniskirt with patch pockets, a Dior handbag on her shoulder, looking down indifferently and chewing gum, she doesn’t think it at all horrible, she’s a genuine Vilniutian, but I’ll never understand this city as long as I live, I’ll live like I did in my village cottage in rotten, stinking Bezriečjė; you won’t resurrect Martis, but I would like to so much, I never wanted to resurrect anyone that much, except maybe my cat Tomas, when Stadniukas crushed his skull, and I cried and rubbed dirt into my eye — later Vasilis washed it with a potion of herbs and cussed quietly, I kept saying: poison Stadniukas, poison him, but Vasilis answered gloomily: he’s poisonous himself, poison wouldn’t touch him; Stadniukas was the live embodiment of the Soviet government in our area, he did away with both people and cats. Martis was as independent as a cat, but as modest as a teenager, he always had to turn out the light beforehand, and he’d get terribly flustered if I squeezed that thing for him, but afterwards he wasn’t a bad little guy, true, not large, but is size what matters; now he’s lying there dead like an executed forest brother — how many of those I saw in my childhood; they would lay them in the village square: maybe someone who recognized them would gasp or start crying, then they could send them off to Siberia. That’s why I don’t cry or gasp now, I’ve seen too many of them, I’ve built up a reflex, like dogs do; that dog has gone completely nuts, he keeps getting underfoot with his snout raised — shoo, shoo, you monster, get lost, I’m not a bitch, I’m a member of the human race, even though Vargalys would sometimes say: you’re not entirely of the human race. Lord only knows what he had in mind, no one could understand him.
No one could understand any of the Vargalyses; their and the Giedraitises’ villas stood a bit outside of the village, by a bend in the creek; they were genuine Lithuanians, but who knows what the rest of us were, tuteiša, tuteiša, the men repeated during the registration after the war when they were asked for their nationality, in other words, we’re locals, but what could they say: to this day I don’t know what part of me is Polish, what part Belarusian, or how much Lithuanian blood there is in me, now I think in Lithuanian, but maybe I thought some other way earlier. I threw a last glance at Martis, if they ask me to come identify the corpse, I won’t go, because I always remember that early morning in the town square; father rattled off to get a spot at the market, and I said I wanted to go pee-pee, but that wasn’t what was on my mind at all, I stayed in the square because there were four of them laid there, and not a living soul about. I was terribly interested in that growth between men’s legs, I knew I’d never have one, I kept grabbing boys in that spot, but how are you going to feel up a grown man, and here they were, four of them no less; I knew they were sleeping and wouldn’t wake up, I could take a look at them in peace, the morning was cool, their clothes and faces didn’t concern me at all, I unbuttoned the one on the edge, felt around with a trembling little palm, but I didn’t find anything, I spread the slit and saw there really wasn’t anything there — just a gaping bloody clot. All four of them were like that; I ran away like crazy, screaming daddy, daddy, but I couldn’t explain anything, I just kept repeating: they’re lying, they’re lying there, father stroked me and whispered: you can’t go there, don’t go near them, or else you’ll be taken away.
I really need to go to the veterinary pharmacy, the trolleybus would be the best way to go, but I can’t stand Vilnius’s trolleybuses: in the old days they were attractive and mysterious; it seemed that climbing into them you were surrendering to that quietly growling creature, it opened up and swallowed you, you’d melt inside of it, melt. . Now I find trolleybuses disgusting, I’m a genuine Vilniutian by now, I’ve already gotten spoiled, better take a taxi, even if I’d rather not spend the money, never mind Elena if it should take awhile; when Vargalys was here you could run around wherever you liked, he would do everything for everyone himself, but that one instituted a regime, we all sit there like sardines in a can. Beta tilts her little head with her bangs and straightens the lace trim at her breasts, the stuff they brought her from Czechoslovakia, well, I don’t know if it’s all that nice, it’s kind of show-offy, although Martis likes lace underwear, he always says. . liked, liked, said, said — I can’t get used to the idea that Martis is gone forever, funny crew-cut Martis — for sure he’d pick at Beta’s lace now, he’d stick a finger between her breasts like it was an accident, but Martis is no more, nor his finger, just that other little finger in his pocket; Beta’s pocket’s lacy too, Lord, what a show-off, whatever you say, and she asks for five-fifty too — you could go out of your mind.
Marė sits there like the cat got her tongue, Lord, just like a wax doll, you’d think she’d flown off somewhere and left her body behind. Vargalys would often stand there like that. He could stop and fall asleep in the middle of the street: shake him as much as you want, you wouldn’t wake him up. The whole family was weird; Vasilis liked to tell stories about them, as if those Vargalyses didn’t live right next door, but off somewhere off in the wild blue yonder, back in the days when people still understood the language of birds; their house looked like a fairy tale castle where ghosts live, black blood flows down crooked corridors, and at dusk the obscene bird of night chatters. Many times I made up my mind to secretly look over the House of Horrors, but I never got up the nerve, I was afraid to meet Vargalienė on the creaking stairs with a knife in her hand, or Vargalys’s naked father, putrefied like Lazarus. When I saw him again many years later, he was a bald fatty, he panted constantly, guzzled beer, and blathered nonsense, even I knew it was nonsense, while Vytas Vargalys frowned and fumed, his father whiningly begged for money; his pension wasn’t enough, he spends it all sitting at the Neringa, tiresomely cursing the government, a government, which, by the way, didn’t short-change him like it did other people, it gave him a pension for a few years of lecturing at the University; maybe someone changed places with him, the sorcerer Vargalys was left to live in his house and he deliberately sent a bald fatty, a foolish womanizer, out in his place; he even tried to seduce me — and just think, there was a time when he had god-like powers, mornings the village girls would secretly run around the bend in the creek, Vargalys’s naked father would come there, stand on the shore looking at the current, and the girls would gasp and elbow each other in the side: look, look, you’ll never see another one like that in your life, no matter how long you look, there isn’t another like it, ones like that don’t exist. It’s horrible what age does to a person. Marė surely has some, she even buys flour in reserve, but how are you going to ask; there should be a special stockpile: whoever buys some puts it in the stockpile, and then everyone can use it, after all, everyone needs it; it really would be nice, but now wrack your brains and stink like a bucket of dishwater.