Now I understand how lucky I was. I never again succeeded in seeing one of Their commissars, a high overlord, so close up — simply in the street, in the crush of passersby, for some reason breaking the codes of secrecy. I don’t know what I would do now, but at that time I simply froze, gasping for air with my mouth open, feeling nothing but a boundless fear and a pain in my chest. That creature stirred and slunk off along the wall, but I couldn’t budge: I was paralyzed. I had come across Their outpost, but I wasn’t prepared; I didn’t have sufficient strength to risk it. Apparently, They had undermined me too; the tree of my spirit was not exactly flourishing. However, there was still sap there, even though They believed they had already dealt with me. It wasn’t true — I was still alive. It was just that the time hadn’t come yet. Only a person who is focused and resolved to sacrifice himself can begin to do battle with Them. A person who has no other out.
. . and everyone’s lounging about as if they were at a health resort. It’s some kind of communist holiday today; for breakfast you each got a genuine roll with marmalade. You’re sitting in your nook by the garbage cans again. A couple of Russkies rummage through the refuse — today no one will yell, no one will assign you to solitary, no one will knock your teeth out. Bolius is terribly emaciated; even here it’s rare to see such a tortured face: a desiccated, sapped, disfigured face. But it’s a human face regardless. No blind strength, no hatred can wipe off the marks of a great intellect, the marks of a great heart; nothing can extinguish his eyes. You’re actually intimidated. The man who is probably the greatest intellect of Lithuania, the honorary doctor of a hundred universities, the intellect of Lithuania’s honor, is sitting next to you, talking to you and teaching you, Vytautas Vargalys, as if you alone were all of poor strangled Lithuania, waiting for his word.
“After the war the Russians took land, technology, and gold away from Germany, but they never managed to appropriate German Ordnung,” Bolius lectures. “In a German camp, the sadism is precise and refined; here the sadism is primitive and brutish. Russia is still Russia — even in a camp. .”
“You were in Russia before the war?”
“No, this is my first time here. They brought us here by train straight from Auschwitz — without switching trains, without any visas. Like in a relay race — straight from Hitler to Stalin. Not just me — all of us — millions. .”
“Why?” You ask involuntarily. “In the name of what?”
“Why me?” Bolius rephrases the question, his eyes gleam with a strange sarcasm, “You? All of us? Because we’re breathing. Because we’re alive. Lithuania without Lithuanians! You know, after all, that’s the Soviet leaders’ slogan. You know that.”
“Then why the Russians?”
“Oh, they’re just along for the ride.” Bolius grins, his crooked smile is awful. “It’s nothing, they’re used to it. It’s worse for us, because we’ve already gotten a whiff of freedom and will never be able to forget it. Blessed are the ignorant. . The Russians never experienced freedom, so they can’t even dream about it. Blessed are the. .” Bolius’ voice unexpectedly trembles. “In Auschwitz I used to secretly give lectures: about art. . about literature, philosophy. . Dozens of people risked their lives for those lectures. . They had to feel human, they couldn’t do otherwise. . But these do without it quite nicely. . They don’t need it, do you understand?”
You’re sorry for the Russians, who have never tasted freedom, who need nothing. There now, a couple of them are rummaging through the refuse, they’re happy to find a bite. Don’t tell me man was created for this, to rummage through a camp’s refuse, and then for weeks upon weeks, years upon years, to chisel out Stalin’s portrait, as big as an entire village, on the rocky slope of a mountain? You no longer know what a human is. Perhaps Vasia Jebachik is a human? He’s next to you, he’s adjusting his still, but he won’t make moonshine — it’s a tea brewer. Vasia Jebachik is the ruler of this world. Bolius looks at you, and he sees right through you.
“You think I’m not sorry for them?” he says. “You think I’m not driven to despair that I can’t do anything?. . Look around: this is what their world is. The sun shines, so they’re all happy. They each got a roll, so they’re all satisfied. . They have no doubt that things are the way they should be. . The doubting ones are long since under the ground. . Still others console themselves with the thought that it’s an unfortunate mistake, but shortly a bright future will arrive. .”
Bolius closes his eyes; he doesn’t want to show the suffering in them. He wants you to see only wisdom in his eyes, a clever Voltaire-like little smile, so that at least in your thoughts you’d forget your desecrated body and believe that the spirit can’t be fenced in with barbed wire.
“They’ll do the same thing to us,” you say suddenly. “We’ll be praying to the Shit of Shits too.”
Bolius opens his eyes in a flash, you actually recoil — the anger that flows from his gentle eyes is so unexpected.
“Son!” he spits out fiercely between clenched teeth, “You don’t know what a human is. Listen carefully: HUMAN! It’s impossible to defeat a human. You can kill him, but defeat him — never. They’ve taken everything away from me: my wife, children, freedom, love, the world, God, learning, the sun, air, hope, my body, they’ve done everything so that I would no longer be myself, but they haven’t overcome me. And they won’t! Within me lies an immortal soul, whose existence they deny!”
Bolius roars, even Vasia Jebachik lifts his eyes from his still and glares sullenly at the two of you.
“Ironsides, shut your prof up,” he says sarcastically, “He’d better be quiet. The Doc keeps staring at him, and if he takes him to the fifth block — none of his gods will help him. Neither Buddha, nor Shiva, nor that little Jew Einstein.”
Justinas was like a splinter driven into my life: I stumbled over him wherever I turned. He acted friendly with me, but somewhat from above: after all, he belonged to the cream of the party, and I was nothing more than a computer specialist. I no longer listened to what he was saying; I sensed he wouldn’t give himself away with words. I studied only his face and hands. I would look at the double roll that was forming under his chin, at his soft, indistinct features. His face was covered with a thin, barely noticeable layer of fat, but it wasn’t just an ordinary layer of fat, the result of pointless gluttony. That layer — puttied over the sharp corners, protrusions, and hollows — was a natural part of his construction. Justinas’s face couldn’t express sudden or strong emotions, that’s not what it was made for. It was designed for something like emotions, for half-feelings and a calm, stable existence. His eyes were the color of water. His hands, however, held the most meaning. A strange, unfathomable hieroglyph hid inside them. A hieroglyph of decay, stagnant water and twilight. They were pale and covered in brown freckles, with swollen joints. The fingers were stumpy, bloodless, and almost transparent. There were no veins to be seen on his hands. Those hands wouldn’t leave me alone. An irresistible desire kept coming over me: to cut into Justinas’s finger and see what would run out of the wound, what there was inside of him. Probably a continuous gray mass, a sticky bog of non-thoughts and non-feelings.