In Vilnius nothing has progressed, in Vilnius everything has merely crumbled and shattered. Perverted old exhibitionist Vilnius doesn’t in the least try to hide its blunt, powerless phallus. My eyes hurt. Vilnius jangled my nerves. My brains were exhausted from impressions.
“Let’s transform Vilnius into a city of outstanding order!”
“The Party’s June Plenum resolution — to life!”
“Everything the Party has planned — we’ll accomplish!”
I needed someone. I needed someone who could see and hear with me. I couldn’t take it alone anymore. I desperately needed someone, but no one could help in this search. No art, no philosophy advises you how to find someone. Great minds take up great subjects, but no one explains this — the most ordinary, but most important of things.
How was I supposed to look for someone? Where? By what: scent, shape, words?
Unfortunately, I don’t have any advice, either. I don’t know how I found Lolita. I found her in parts: first her body, and then — slowly, with enormous difficulty — her soul too. She doesn’t even know that she has to take the place of all of my dead and even of disgusting, beloved Vilnius. She doesn’t know that sometimes she has to take my own place for me. And thank God she doesn’t know. If she knew, she’d probably be frightened at such a horrifying responsibility.
Now I no longer stand naked in front of the mirror; I don’t keep asking myself what she sees in me. But I still doubt it’s me she really needs. We’ve never become completely intimate; an invisible wall looms between us. Sometimes I want to break it down, to smash it to pieces, but I hardly clench my fist before I suddenly take fright. In this world fulfilled happiness isn’t possible. With all the walls broken down, becoming one with Lolita, I would either have to die, or to kill her. Maybe it’s a good thing that her spirit keeps escaping and hiding itself in a cave, like a frightened little animal. From behind that wall she surprises me with the weirdest stories and with her unpredictable behavior.
“I’d like to be your sister,” she says unexpectedly, looking out the window at the slanting rain. “I’d like to feel we’re part of the same seed. . Although I’m more to you than a sister. . We’re doing something forbidden; we’re enjoying spiritual incest. It’d be better if I really were your sister. At least I’d know what it was I’d decided on. . Now I don’t know anything anymore. . It’s bad enough that we both are, each of us on our own. But it’s a hundred times worse that we’re together. . When I touch you, I melt completely. To me it seems like you’re my death. . We’re doing something God has forbidden. We’re closer than a brother and a sister. . We shouldn’t be together. . I know I’ll pay dearly for it, but I want you anyway — more than anything in the world. And at the same time I want to run away from you, run, run, run, as far away as possible. .”
She wants to leave me, because I am her love and her death. These enigmatic horrors aren’t even necessary — she could simply leave me for another. That possibility alone drives me out of my mind. Our love itself is insane. Suddenly I want something terrible to happen to Lolita. I long for her to break her legs and spine, for her face to be mutilated, so that no one, absolutely no one, would need her. So that everyone who saw her would feel pity for her, or better yet — revulsion. No one, no one would need her anymore — but I would need her no matter what shape she was in. Only then, when the entire world has turned away from her, will she understand how much I love her. I literally relish the insanity of this desire, before my eyes I see a Lolita who belongs to me alone—inseparable, for ages upon ages. And somewhere, at the very bottom, writhes a disgusting, stinking worm: my insanity calmly confirms that I could do this myself, mutilate her myself. All it would take. .
She finally turns from the window and looks at me with her deep brown eyes. My supposed insanity bursts like a soap bubble. A stinking soap, boiled from the corpses of the camp. What right do I have to seize her for myself? What right?
Can a person want God to belong to him alone?
“We talk too much,” she says. “We try to be too intelligent. . Why can’t we do whatever we want and not worry about it? Why do people want to justify their existence so badly, why can’t they simply be, and that’s it?”
I could tell her what happens when a person longs to simply be. In the labor camp we all wanted to simply be, to simply survive. They are preparing an existence like that for us all. I could tell her why I can’t stand Beckett, the most moral writer of our times. (I can’t stand Beckett, even though picking up a book of his I feel a quiver of respect. He is perhaps the only one who was able to look at man with God’s indifferent eyes. He quite honestly showed the sorry state of the kanuked man the way it really is. He showed that which is, but refused to even hint at why it’s that way, who is to blame for it. He categorically refused to make even vague mentions of Them. He left man on his own, because he looked at him with God’s eyes. You need to look at a human with a human’s eyes!)
Lolita stands in front of me like a dream come true. I don’t know if I want to pray to her, but I really do want to kiss her feet. How pathetic I am compared to her! She needs someone much more pure, more worthy, more powerful. I’ll find her someone else myself, someone who would be worthy of her. I’ve practically no will of my own anymore. I merely catch at the slightest hint of her desires; I literally no longer am, I want only to please her, to do whatever she may want. I really no longer am — there’s nothing I want for myself anymore; I am nothing but her reflection. I don’t see anything anymore — just her. She takes up the entire world for me, she herself has become the entire world, and Lord knows, that is my good fortune. A dangerous fortune — one person isn’t allowed to take the place of the entire world.
But we’re already going down the street, so nothing matters — neither the wet sidewalks, nor the rain, nor the long-bodied bow-legged dog, my old acquaintance, sticking to the two of us. Her wet hair shines like blocks of coal; under her raincoat the sturdy hips move furiously. I do not know this woman in her entirety. She doesn’t talk about her former husband. She refuses to move in with me, much less — to marry me. She categorically does not want to have children — best not to even mention it to her. But she won’t explain why. She hides from me.