He knows his place in this world order. In every camp there is another camp, and in that camp another little camp. And in that little camp there is another tiny camp. And so on forever. Everyone has to choose which little camp of camps he will command. Otherwise you’ll just be a prisoner everywhere. If you don’t choose anything, you’ll be the prisoner of all of those little camps of camps simultaneously.
Is it at all possible to escape from the very largest camp’s fences, or is the entire world a camp, and you’ll never escape it?
“Let’s try once more,” says the king, sitting on his throne again.
“Drink, you puppy, lap it up,” the beanpole roars.
“He’s iron,” says Goga.
“You see how much I love you,” says the Korean with the tips of his fingers.
“Let’s try once more,” says the king.
“It’s like some endless piece of gum,” says Goga.
The beanpole, angered, splashes the bucket in your face. The salty liquid burns your eyes, drips off your nose. You stink all over.
“Ass!” says the king. “He has to drink it himself. Himself, get it? He has to drink it like the finest wine. And thank us too.”
“This is some kind of idiocy,” says the beanpole. “It’d be better if we showed him his chopped-off head.”
The king chews his lips again, chews them for a long time and unexpectedly smiles. His smile is handsome; he could be a movie star.
“He can’t see his own chopped-off head. But he can see something else. Come on, take his pants off! Beanpole, you tossed it out, now piss some more yourself.”
“But I can’t anymore.”
“For this cause,” says Goga, lighting up unexpectedly, “for this cause I can make an effort.”
He takes the dented bucket, unbuttons himself, and assiduously lets a thin stream inside. The beanpole fumbles around inside your fly and pulls out the musty, sweaty thing.
“Not an ordinary one,” he says, “But it kind of looks like it’s been chewed.”
“The girls chewed on it,” Goga smiles sweetly and pulls out his famous razor. “Now you’ll drink anything for me, bro. Now I’ll be able to piss straight into your mouth.”
“Understand?” the king asks. “Do you understand, finally, that we can do anything? Do you understand who has the upper hand?”
The razor approaches like a little glinting beast. Below, you feel cold and the prick of the blade.
“You’ll be left with nothing. Your beard won’t grow. You’ll be as fat as a pig and you’ll speak with a woman’s voice. You’ll be a big, fat, disgusting old woman. Okay, let’s cut. Drink!”
Taking aim, you kick the bucket with your foot. They won’t piss anymore today. They won’t have anything to make it from.
The king leaps from his throne like a beast, shoves Goga aside. The razor catches anyway; you feel warm blood below. King Vaska Jebachik looks at you insistently.
“Don’t you understand? You’re not sorry?”
“It’s just flesh,” says your voice, appearing out of nowhere.
“Just listen to him! Listen! His prick is just flesh! Do you understand what you’re saying? Are you in your right mind?”
“Let’s chop off his head and throw it in the politicals’ barracks. Now, that would be a laugh!” says the beanpole.
“Flesh? Flesh, you say? And what else might you be?” says the king. “All right, I’ll cut off your prick. I’ll poke out your eyes. I’ll chop off your arms and legs. Tear out your tongue. And what will be left, what more will be left of you?”
“Me. I, myself. Who hasn’t drunk piss.”
“He’s a psycho,” says the beanpole in his lame little voice. “Let’s cement him into the foundation and be done with it.”
Goga’s unhappy; he’s getting unhappier all the time. He snaps the razor: now folding it, now unfolding it. The sun is shining, that’s the worst. Through the barracks window you see a little tree. A puny, little green tree. If they cement you into the foundation, maybe you’ll be a little tree.
I found out quite a bit:
1. Teodoras went down The Way and was burnt to death;
2. Gediminas went down The Way and was crushed to death;
3. The Basilisk of Vilnius is still hiding in its lair;
4. I am going down The True Way and I am the closest target for its murderous gaze.
The only thing I didn’t know was how They would take me on. I look at Stefanija with pity — she kept trying to help me, but mostly she just got in the way and was underfoot. I look at Lolita with horror — she doesn’t even realize that she’s become a hostage.
I didn’t have children on purpose, so They couldn’t take them hostage. But now I have Lolita.
I looked at Gediminas in hope — he was the only one who could have helped me. Gediminas saw a great deal and knew a great deal. Innumerable cities, hordes of people, were tucked away inside him. He cruised the streets of Greenwich Village and drank beer with farmers in Montana. Caught shrimp with Japanese fishermen. Clambered around the Mayan pyramids. Gediminas was my eyes; he saw things I will never lay eyes on. I have only Vilnius, while he wanted to take in all the continents. The borders of his camp were much wider than those of mine. Paris and Amsterdam fit inside them, the world’s tallest towers jutted up in them — not just the stumpy, powerless phallus of Vilnius. People swarmed and teemed inside of him, people whom he had met far away and spoken to — in hope of finding an El Dorado of the human spirit, a place where Their proboscises don’t reach. It’s terrible, but he never did find those people or that miraculous place. People are the same everywhere, he would say after every trip; they aren’t safe anywhere. At the time I didn’t understand what he had in mind. People are the same everywhere. There are no chosen nations that are safe from Them. It’s actually even worse for people who live in free countries than it is for us. Our very life, our very surroundings force us to search for answers, because it’s so obviously bad here — nauseatingly bad. It’s very easy, Gedis kept saying, for the others to blissfully snooze off.
I will never fully understand who he was — that jazzman mathematician plowman. Who was this Gediminas? A lone warrior, or the leader of a legion? A fearless investigator, or a novice barely taking his first steps on The Way? Sometimes he’d be so much like his father, the patriarch of a Lithuanian village who had become one with his farm and his land. Gedis wandered a great deal through the world, but he kept returning to the shabby, ulcerated Iron Wolf. Apparently, it’s only in Vilnius that you can uncover the great secrets. In a city turned into a province of provinces by force, in a city on the edge between Russia and Western Europe and infused with both one and the other spirit. Only in Vilnius, in the farthest bastion of the Catholic church, the city of the many-headed, multilingual dragon, of the oppressive Basilisk, of the fog of oblivion.