“I broke my saxophone,” the alto player complained, carefully picking the cobwebs off his jacket. “I was almost. . almost climbing out of that hellhole already. . but suddenly someone grabbed me by my coattails and pulled me back. . and I couldn’t play a single intelligent note anymore. . nothing but holes around me, and no notes. . horrors. .”
“Let’s get out of here,” Gedis suddenly jumped up. “You can’t hear this. If you’ve listened to the music, you can’t hear how it was done. They’ll recover in a minute and one after the other start sharing their impressions. Come on! We’ll go out into the street, and then we’ll walk and walk, right up to the river.”
The old street had a difficult time penetrating the fog. Fall leaves rolled underfoot — fragments of Gedis’s vision. No one was ever as close to me as Gedis was that night. I had no idea what I should do: console him or console myself, tell him about the camp, about the people with no brains, or ask him something. I couldn’t remain silent, but I didn’t know what to say. Any words seemed meager compared to the scream welling up inside me. I was no longer alone; I felt that Gedis would always be next to me. Our closeness was reaclass="underline" people aren’t united by common victories or joys — only a common loss, a common despair, can unite them.
“You’re really not sorry for them?” I asked.
“Which ones? Those who played, or those who listened?”
“All of them.”
“I’m not sorry,” Gedis answered without wavering. “To waken someone isn’t a crime, it’s a service.”
That was all he said about his playing. The two of us went down the street (I will walk here with Lolita), smoking cigarette after cigarette (Lolita will tell me about her mother and innocence manias).
“An abandoned church!” Gedis finally spoke. “A true metaphor. The place where a dead God is laid to rest. Not Christ, of course, and not the bearded Sabaoth with the holy doves under his arm. The dead God of Lithuania. Every Lithuanian should go to an abandoned, desecrated church on a daily basis. After all, it’s a reflection of our spirit: the remains of former majesty, along with trash, debris, dust. We need to see every day that all of our gods are dead. So that even in complete despair we won’t have anywhere to turn. After all, we stopped believing in anything a long time ago. Only idiots can believe in the Kremlin these days; fanatics — in Christ; paranoids who consider the current state of affairs desirable — in the spirit of the Lithuanian people. Only fools, unfortunately, believe in the power of intellect. We’re not even destined to believe in the power of money, because our money is shit. You won’t buy yourself anything with it — not even freedom. . Maybe some Englishman or Frenchman doesn’t believe in anything, either, but that’s something totally different. . Other enslaved peoples at least believe in their liberation, Lithuanians stopped believing in anything a long time ago. Not even in that absolute lack of belief of theirs. They don’t even know how to be genuine cynics. Lithuania is a void, stuffed with rotting memories. . there’s nothing, nothing, nothing left — only the language. But a language can’t be an object of faith. A thousand intelligent men all over the world analyze the Lithuanian language because it’s incredibly interesting, practically unique. But who analyzes Lithuanians? It’d be better if one of those thousand analyzed Lithuanian’s spiritual history, all that drivel, that nameless heartache and hopeless, grotesque attempts at living. I swear — they’d understand where humanity has been and where it’s going!. . Oh! I don’t know what to do. Shoot at the political commentators on the TV screen? Listen, Vyt, let’s start our own sect, huh? The soul searchers’ sect. For sermons we’ll read music or mathematical formulas. And you’ll tell stories about the camp, about your father and grandfather. . And when everyone asks what’s our purpose, what our sect is after, where is it leading to, we’ll answer: look, listen, smell — we’ve already told you everything; played it, wrote it, drew it. All that’s left is for you to feel and understand it. . and believe. .”
And not a word about “Vilnius Poker.” Gedis talked about this and that, gathered pebbles from the wet paths and slung them into invisible tree trunks, whistled unfamiliar melodies. It seemed he was secretly distancing himself from me, slamming shut the door that had just now been open, closing the shades, shutting the windows. I didn’t know how to hold him back, which of his hands to grab, except for that third one, which was probably no longer there. The two of us finally reached the river, descended the steps, and stopped right next to the dark stream. It had been soaked in rain for some time; the water had risen up to the very bank. Gedis squatted and dipped his hand into the muddy current.
“The river! The Neris!” he muttered, shaking invisible drops from his hand, “Why not Joyce’s riverrun? How is the Neris less than the Liffey? Why doesn’t anyone immortalize it as the current of dreams and oblivion? When you think ‘river,’ you immediately remember the Lethe and the Liffey. . Dublin and the Liffey have been forever impressed onto the world’s brains, and old man Joyce sits in the heavens and jeers. . What’s the Liffey without him — a muddy stream, and nothing more. I saw it myself. . But where’s the Neris? Where’s Vilnius? Why doesn’t the world know anything about them?”
And not a word about his concert. Probably Gedis should have played quite a bit longer, so that there would be no words left in him at all. Suddenly I felt like I wanted to swim to the other, invisible bank of the river — as if the world would be different there, as if Vilnius would be altogether different.
“A smashed-up boat full of water should bob on the bank. Forgotten by everyone — no one wants to swim across the current to the other side.” Gedis again nervously lit up a cigarette. “Have you noticed that Lithuanians have always feared and avoided water? Or more precisely, moving water: currents, rapids, ocean waves. The vital power of water horrifies them. They like standing water: Lithuanians like little lakes and swamps. Particularly swamps: the greatest victories in war were won thanks to swamps. Swamps are rotting, murky water. It’s the mythological tragedy of the nation. They couldn’t step past an unspeakable inner taboo, couldn’t overcome themselves. . Anything but a current, anything but ocean waves! What a weird horror: the Lithuanians lived on the seashore for ages upon ages and never got the urge to sail to foreign countries, to find something completely unknown, or even to dream of other shores. They only fished along the coast. Even Lithuania’s head was cut off by the current of the Nemunas. Always that mythological power of moving water. . the nation cut off its own head. Yes, yes, every country has a head, a trunk, arms and legs — like a Dogon house. The current of the Nemunas cut off Prussia and the Prussians from us. And that’s exactly where Lithuania’s head and brains were: its religion and shrines, the height of its culture and the rudiments of philosophy. It was all there. Even the ground itself is magical there: the Germans murdered or assimilated the Prussians, but they specifically drew the power for their state from Prussia. . Lithuanian culture came from there even centuries later. Even when it’s chopped off, a root sprouts. . And it was all lost by free will. No one fought for Prussia; no one wanted to sail across the current to the other side. . Explain to me why on earth we needed to rule over millions of Byelorussians and Russians, to lose and conquer some place like Vitebsk dozens of times, to drag ourselves to Moscow itself and exact tribute from it, to go chasing the Tartars across the steppes, to fatten an already fattened body, and at the same time lose the head. . That’s how it is: we’re a headless people. By now it’s been five hundred years. The evil powers deceived us and stole our brains. And it’s very easy to enslave a brainless country. . That’s what the scholars studying the Lithuanian language should think about. Let every nation, every country, thoroughly explain where it’s head is at, and then let them guard it.”