Perhaps that look got confused with yet another — when she discovered me in a secluded spot, by the window to the inner courtyard. No one ever wandered by there, a thick layer of dust had settled on the floor. I sat on the window sill, horribly exposed, having pulled out that burning masculinity that wouldn’t fit in my clothes, and looked at it with an imbecilic gaze. During those years there were moments when I felt I could rape a dirty wall or a window frame. Or all of the house’s mirrors. Or the air above the hilly field. I just didn’t know what to do with it.
I didn’t hear her footsteps. I turned my head and realized she had been standing there for some time already.
“Poor thing! You don’t know what to do with yourself anymore?”
She looked at me shamelessly, taking me apart bone by bone. I couldn’t imagine how I was to go on living. In an instant she had realized my secret, learned of my great shame. She, of whose breasts, legs, and belly I would dream at night, whom I could not imagine dressed, who, in whatever clothes, would appear more naked than naked. My fantastical erotic plans collapsed in an instant; Janė became unattainable. I could no longer either buy her or catch her accidentally; now she would just laugh at me. I was eternally separated from her heavy breasts, from the secret blackness below her belly that quivered erotically underneath her clothes. Now she could only despise me. And she kept looking below, at it.
“Poor thing!” she repeated in a throaty voice. “Come to the shed after dinner. You know — where the boards are. .”
And I went to the shed; it remained a sacred place to the very end. There Janė took away my virginity. There, four years later, the Russian soldiers raped her. There my mother hung herself. There, in the summer of nineteen-forty, my grandfather built his altar of horror. Misfortune after misfortune burdened our shed; it should have broken into flame sometime of its own accord.
I see grandfather ripping off the shed door so it will be brighter inside. I see a little silver pail falling out of his hands.
“Shit!” grandfather howls. “Shitty shit!”
I already know that the Russian tanks are in Kaunas, that Lithuania has met the doom grandfather predicted.
“Shit!” grandfather roars. “The little fools — they fought with the Poles over Vilnius, only to live to see the Russkies! A shitty nation!”
Grandfather rushes headlong with the little silver bucket from the outhouse in the bushes to the shed and back again.
“Over here!” he nearly roars, “Let’s pray! I’ve built an altar!”
To me it’s both kind of awful and funny; for the time being I don’t understand anything, even though by now the stench has reached me. It floats along the ground, slowly climbs the walls, pushes through the windows, it’s no longer possible to stand it in the house; it descends to the yard, but the stink lingers there too. It seems that nightmarish stench has permeated all of Lithuania’s air; you can’t escape it anywhere. Grandfather’s already lining everyone up: Janė’s brother, who’s overslept (I cannot look at him, I’d strangle him); the frightened cook; mother looking about with horrified eyes, apparently waiting for grandfather to stop. We all turn our noses aside, but we crowd inside the narrow shed and stare, stunned, at grandfather’s altar, blinking our eyes, teary from the keenness of the stink. The altar is a cracked pig’s trough, decked with flowers, stuck with crosses made from old bunches of twigs and decorated with a yellow wax candle. The candle’s flame quivers; it flutters from the stream of poisonous stench rising from the trough.
“Kneel! Everyone kneel! Kneel in front of God!”
But no one kneels, not even grandfather himself; everyone is staring at the teeming, swarming, reeking trough. The little silver pail lies tossed to the side, as if in mockery. It’s as silent as a tomb, except that water irritatingly drips from the ceiling. I look too, gazing through fluttering spider webs, and I can’t believe my eyes. The trough is full of reeking waste; grandfather carried it here with the little silver pail. That teeming, seemingly live waste, the waste of us all, in which satiated little white worms writhe. The sight is instantly nauseating, and the hideous stink is suffocating besides. Grandfather grins wickedly, fixes his hair with his befouled hand.
“Here’s your god! A new kingdom’s come, a new government, and here — the new god of the Lithuanians. The age of Perkūnas is over, the era of Christ is over. The Russkies brought you a new god, kneel in front of him and pray. Here he is, get to know him, The Shit of Shits, now he’ll be the god of the Lithuanians! A shitty god for a shitty nation, and I’m his priest. Hosanna!”
Grandfather laughs raucously, while we stare at the trough as if in a trance. I no longer know what to think, the oppressive smell pushes the thoughts out of my brain, the air is nothing but a stench, the entire world is a stench, it’s the only thing in my head, in place of thoughts, in place of words — just the stench.
“Today is the beginning of a new epoch! A new god has come to our land, by command of a prophet by the name of Stalin Sralin. Now he’ll shit on your heads for the ages. Get used to it! Pray to him!”
A glass clinks; I see father, like a doll, drink a sip of champagne (he brought his glass with him even here). This infuriates grandfather. His eyes flood with blood like a bull’s; he’s no longer speaking, but rather hissing:
“It would have been better if a plague had overrun us, at least some survive. But we’ve been overrun with shit, and no one will stay clean! We ourselves poured shit on our own heads. Ourselves! Now we’ll live in the kingdom of shit. The slogan of the Lithuanian people: it may be shit we’re living in, but at least we’re alive! Do you have any idea what the Soviets are? They won’t leave a single person unshat upon, not a single thought unshat upon, do you understand? In the Soviet communion everyone will have to swallow a piece of fried shit. The Soviets discovered a great secret: the major part of any human being is shit, so you need to value him as shit, address him as shit, treat him like shit. This is Sralin’s doctrine of faith: you are shit and don’t even try to be anything else. Rejoice: we’ll be slaughtered; we’ll fertilize Siberia’s fields! They’ll grow bread for the Russians out of us!”
Grandfather has gotten hoarse; he jabs his finger at the trough, although he doesn’t need to jab, everyone is looking at it as if they were entranced, the white of the little writhing worms is in everyone’s eyes, the lush stench is burning everyone’s nostrils. It seems to me that the teeming shit is looking at us from the trough — pleased and sated — it’s mocking us; it knows that now will be its right and might. Horror overtakes me: suddenly I see a gigantic wave of shit relentlessly creeping towards Lithuania’s meadows and forests, its cities and villages. It creeps along like a glacier, consuming everything in its path, flooding over the earth. Little figures wave their little arms, try to defend themselves, shriek and instantly suffocate — what can they do, if even hundred-year-old firs snap like matchsticks and drown in the teeming glacier. The wave of shit doesn’t hear the moans, it has neither ears nor eyes, it’s soulless and all it knows to do is to creep forward. Everything is done for; nothing remains alive, nothing really alive. I understand now what grandfather wanted to say. I’m the first to rush outside; I suck air in and look around, as if I really could see that novel glacier. Behind me father and Janė’s brother come out, mother creeps out last of all; she looks around with eyes that see nothing, and, addressing no one, asks: