I felt an irrepressible urge to talk things over. I had to try to save Martynas too.
I talked to him about Stepanas Walleye, told him about his nation, made up of five Russian writers, about the zone boss’s boots, which always shone — in whatever weather, at whatever time of year, as if he hadn’t touched the ground, and about the pen where Bolius grazed.
“The worst of it,” I got naïvely hot-headed, “is that what he says seems like the truth: they, the brownshirts, committed hideous crimes against humanity; they have to suffer retribution. But he condemns those hundred scumbags in hiding, and doesn’t say a thing about the quarter of a million of the same kind of scumbags who continue to live quite peacefully next door to him, and don’t even think of going into hiding. What may be may be, but he knows it! Because of his sufferings in the German camps he can feel like he’s a part of mankind demanding retribution. For his sufferings in the Gulag no one will let him feel a part of humanity, they won’t even let him mention it, and he obediently agrees to that. He’s betrayed us all! He, Stepanas Walleye! The invincible! He himself agreed that he’s a nothing. He did it himself, that’s what matters most.”
That, or something similar, was how I reasoned, attempting to understand something, but I only felt that absolutely everything was covered by a sticky layer, a cosmic jellyfish. I felt that I had to help all the people, before it was too late, while the trees still turn green and you can hope to find something alive beyond the lazy hills, as long as somewhere there still are all kinds of Swiss or Swedes, who at least already know that it’s inadmissible to admit, even for a second, that you are NOTHING. And to save them too is essential, because they have too much faith in themselves, they think there’s no way the fate of Spain in the Middle Ages or Atlantis could happen to them. Those naïve people!. . They don’t sense the pulsating of the cosmic jellyfish, or, feeling it, they run to a psychoanalyst, thinking it’s just something broken inside of them and everything around them is all right. They must be saved quickly! Gedis’s beloved dogs scampering around Vilnius must be saved, and the warbling birds, and the smell of flowers, and little girls’ smiles, and that part of all humans that’s called. . that’s called. . it doesn’t matter what it’s called, but it must be saved!
It was only then I realized I had been quiet for some time. The brakes engaged without my will; I didn’t say what I had no right to say out loud. Martynas was quiet too; he even turned off the television set despite the basketball game. The two of us were quiet, because that was perhaps the only means to communicate to some extent. Through long centuries humanity lost the habit of speaking straightforwardly, sensing that They could overhear everything. It’s only the voiceless conversation of two minds and four eyes that they cannot invade. The most difficult thing in the world is to communicate somehow. (I feel, I believe, I want to believe, that Lolita and I communicate this way.)
At last Martynas sighed and insensibly stared at the city outside the window. Then he turned to me and in all seriousness asked:
“Vytautas, has it ever occurred to you that Vilnius is God’s outhouse? That this is merely where he urinates and empties his bowels? Have you ever thought that we, even you and I, are nothing more than God’s excrement?”
You’d think Vilnius itself, its gray eyebrows dourly compressed, had asked me that, had asked me what I take it for — a beast or a cosmic jellyfish. Outside the window Vilnius was cloaked in dusk. Buried in a ravine, it seemed to be sinking deeper every minute. Only solitary church towers attempted to escape from under the earth, from out of the drabness. The towers of the churches and the short, stumpy phallus of Vilnius. Vilnius looked at me. Its stumpy, powerless phallus looked at me (looked, because a male sexual organ is an eye, while a vagina is a mirror). Your soul abandons you when Vilnius looks at you that way. You can feel you’re already a dead man if Vilnius starts talking to you.
I felt tiny, utterly tiny, and horrible — a monstrous dwarf, a midget of the soul, hiding all the horrors of the world within. I felt terrible because I know; I know everything (but at the same time I know nothing). I was physically ill; I was nauseated. Outside the window, Vilnius sank below ground for the night, the toothless children of the camp crowded around me, and there I was in the middle of them — a disgusting midget with no right to live. It’s impossible to live knowing everything; at least the tiniest bit of deceit, a sugary dream of drabness, is imperative. What should I have done? What should I do now? I should have grabbed everything (like those Jewish children) and carried it all away to a safe place. But I, the midget, was pierced through with a numbing premonition that there are no safe places.
I rushed to the toilet. I threw up green spit and a few gulps of dry wine. My life was like that reeking, vomited wine. I already knew a great deal and sensed a great deal, but I hadn’t saved anyone in my life. I didn’t save mother, or Janė, or Irena. I didn’t save Bolius, Walleye, or Gedis. I didn’t slay the Dragon. I only saved three large-eyed little Jews.
You’re sitting in ruins that smell of death next to St. John’s Church; the dark, as always, protects you from evil. Everything is evil now: the crooked streets of Vilnius, the murky air, even the bland hum of silence. Even silence itself is evil. Your city has been injured again — who can count all of its injuries, all of the notches left on the old pavement by the boots of foreigners.
You’re not allowed to sit here; at dusk you can no longer sit anywhere — only at home. But as soon as the clock strikes the commandant’s curfew, you sneak out into the city’s labyrinth. No one misses you. Father is gone. Mother is gone. Grandfather falls asleep right in his armchair.
The emptied city is particularly beautiful; it’s not marred by people’s bodies. That beauty is geometrical and oppressive — as befits a labyrinth. You know you’ll be able to hide in it. This is your city; you sense all of its nooks and crannies the way you sense your arms and legs; you rule this labyrinth. (All rulers are unhappy.) You could be its Minotaur, but you have no need for innocent maidens. To you it’s important to feel the breath of the mute void and the quivering of the pained air; it’s important to feel that this labyrinth, unknown to others, belongs to you. German patrols crawl through its corridors constantly, like worms. They’re aliens here; they wander aimlessly. They’ll never find the center of the labyrinth, where you sit in safety. You hate them, and the city hates them. Who can come to terms with foreign conquerors? Rats, toads, and cockroaches. But you are a human.
You don’t know what it is you’re seeking of the Vilnius night. Perhaps you simply can’t leave it alone with the Germans, you must suffer along with it. With the two of you together, it’s more comforting and encouraging.
You sit in the ruins and look at the illuminated street. Light is bad, it’s the kingdom of the German worms, while the ruins and the crooked, pale blue moon protect you. Just now the quiet was ripped like a finger piercing an engraving of ancient Vilnius; you heard shots and shouts of “Halt!” You wait for the runaways to show up in the illuminated corridor of the street; you still don’t know what you’ll do then.