Understandably, up to a certain point.
No one can be relied upon completely. I can walk this earth only as long as They merely suspect me. If I were to tell someone everything I know — I’d be dead the same instant.
Probably I’ll perish one way or another. Perhaps They are restrained only by mysterious kanukish rituals or the commandments of some unknown religion. Or maybe it’s quite simply because my turn has not come yet; maybe They are extremely scrupulous and pedantic.
We were set up royally in the bar: no one flitted in front of us. A single fellow next to us was drowning himself in drink: he’d order two drinks at a time, toast himself by banging the two glasses together, and in one gulp down the right-hand one. Then he’d sit there like a ghost for a long time, and suddenly coming alive, down the second one. Then he would order two more. He was a stocky, somewhat overweight man of uncertain age with coarse black hair. His hands were thick-fingered and clumsy and overgrown with thick fur. It hardly seemed he could have been sent to spy on us: he’d already been sitting there for quite some time. Besides, he didn’t pay the least attention to us. The bartender was another story — a lively, elegant swell. His forehead, underneath his thickly curled hair, was unnaturally white. I acutely sensed him secretly squinting at us as he snuggled up behind a column. I wanted to go to a different bar, but a gulp of cognac settled me down somewhat. I looked around carefully, trying to sense what was hiding in the bar’s twilight. The mood of a bar frequently testifies to what has gone on there once upon a time, and sometimes it even gives away what is only still to be. Places designed for human gatherings speak a strange language when they’re deserted. This bar was just silent and waiting. A drunken couple made their way out of the restaurant, newcomers no doubt. From some Moscow or another: provocatively fashionable clothes, glaring make-up on the girl, and something essentially alien about them — the movements weren’t right; the expressions weren’t right; they had an unpleasant intrinsic vulgarity. People like that think they’re masters everywhere and at all times. (Gedis explained that this is characteristic of Americans too.) The guy casually looked over the bar, shooting insolent looks at both of us. The bored girl leaned against his shoulder, embracing his hips. Unexpectedly nimbly, Thickfingers jumped off the barstool and, with a lynx-like step, stalked over to the newcomers. The guy looked at him as if he were an empty spot. I observed their strange pantomime attentively: Thickfingers authoritatively explained something to them, the guy tried to argue, but suddenly the newcomers quieted down as if they’d been shut off and obediently turned back to the restaurant. The victor, with a strange smile, returned to the bar and immediately grabbed a drink.
“You’re Lithuanians!” he declared unexpectedly, turning to the two of us and pronouncing the word as if it were a curse — I had heard that tone a million times in the camp. “I can tell right off. This is my third time in Vilnius.”
He spoke Russian carefully, enunciating his words — the way people talk who are accustomed, even after five drinks, to doing their work and demonstrating that alcohol doesn’t affect them at all. He immediately turned away again.
“Thank God,” the bartender accommodatingly hovered over us. “I was starting to think that you were from there too.”
“From where?” Martynas inquired belligerently.
“That guy over there isn’t letting anyone out of the building,” the bartender announced furtively. “He’s KGB. There’s a pistol under his arm. He’s stopping everyone going to work and checking them out. Maybe it’s one of their conventions?”
“Stop it,” Martynas boldly shot back. “They hold their conventions in ruins and garbage dumps.”
“Well, thank God,” the bartender smiled indulgently, “At least there’s a couple of normal people.”
He walked off to the battery of bottles and then hid himself behind the column again. I was disappointed. The bartender was an innocent bystander, and Thickfingers was just an ordinary KGB agent, the type that serves Them without even knowing who they’re serving. Vilnius thrusts total solitude on you when you don’t want it, but snatches away any hope of hiding when that’s what you’re after. It will invariably stick you with a girl who brazenly pokes you with her breasts, or a depressing citizen who insistently treats you to drinks you don’t like. And sometimes it plants a KGB agent with a pistol under his arm next to you.
“The worst of it,” Martynas spoke up sadly, “is that the Lord God is a humorist. At one time I considered God a madman, a sadist, and a criminal. Then I decided he suffers from an inferiority complex; that’s why he tries to deride people as much as possible, so he can feel how great he is in comparison. But I’ve caught on at last. God is a global comedian. There’s no need to search for meaning or depth in the world. The world is a black comedy, whose ONLY purpose is to make God laugh.”
I wanted, for at least a little while, to believe that all the forced labor camps are nothing more than a giant comedy, that all of Vilnius is just a giant comedy, a silly joke in honor of God. But for some reason I kept seeing the children of the camps: it seemed at any moment sickly children with shaven heads would start climbing out from under the bar, from behind the brown curtains, from underneath the carpet, begging for help with their toothless mouths.
“Maybe that God of yours is a criminal, anyway, if he finds suffering and blood amusing?”
“No!” Martynas kept getting sadder. “You have to understand God! It’s all just a comedy to him. A theater show! There are no victims, no blood, it’s all fictitious. God laughs his head off when he hears little people making majestic pronouncements and then acting out pure stupidity. The way they honor morality before going out to butcher one another. He knows that the blood is squeezed from beets, that the torture sessions are intentionally laid on thick and senseless so that they’d be sillier, and that those who are supposedly burned at the stake shake off the ashes and are already preparing for the next scene. . It’s really sad to know that all of your painful work, all your aspirations have only one purpose — to make the Lord laugh. . When you start INTENTIONALLY playing in the comedy of the absurd, it’s easier. . Let’s drink!”
He poured the whole drink into his mouth and made a horrible face: Martynas never knew how to drink, which you wouldn’t say about our neighbor with the pistol. He apparently was of the type that sobered up as they drank. He slowly moved over to us and fixed his gaze on me.
“Calm down!” he declared, smiling wryly, “I’ve come in peace.”
He seemed to be ready to explode from self-assurance and self-satisfaction. I saw his eyes and I was amazed. They were not at all what I had expected. The beautiful light blue irises moved enigmatically; there was most definitely no emptiness behind those eyes.
“Lithuanians!” He rolled the word out again, practically spitting it. “And what is it you want, you Lithuanians? What do you expect? Who are you? I want to understand. To understand! I’ve always wanted to understand every variety of human, even the most pathetic.”
He ostentatiously lit up a cigarette and carefully looked me over again, then Martynas. His jacket under his left arm really was bulging. From close up his fingers didn’t look all that thick.