“We’re not going to finish this Judas off just any old way, but in a true Lithuanian way,” says Bitinas calmly.
He speaks ringingly, like a preacher; his voice flutters in pale yellow stripes among the thick tree trunks.
“We won’t finish him off because he’s a stribas. Not because he’s a spy for the Russkies. The NKVD tramped over our heads six times and brought dogs, but even they couldn’t sniff us out. A bit longer, and one Judas would have betrayed everyone. But that’s not why we’ll finish him off. It’ll be just because we are human beings.”
The men are standing in a small group, disheveled and shabby. Of course, they’re humans. They are human because they suffer and have hope.
“We’re neither beasts nor gods,” says Bitinas. “We’re in the middle. Animals don’t betray anyone and fight only for a mate or food. But we betray first, and then we kill. Or first kill, and then betray. It’s all because of our hunger for love, for sympathy, and for the welfare of our loved ones. Do you know how our forefathers punished a traitor? They would slit his stomach, pull out the end of his guts, and nail them to a pole. And then they would force him to walk in a circle around the pole, so that he could see his own traitorous intestines wrapping around it.”
Bitinas stands hunched over and aged, looking like a pagan priest who’s condemned a victim to the ritual of fire and knife. You still don’t believe it. You look again at the men who have assumed the names of trees; they stand there leaning as if they really were trees. They have nothing — neither sun, nor air, nor real names — only a bunker and pistonmachines.
“I wonder how our forefathers dealt with the traitors of traitors?” Bitinas asks himself. “Who turned him in?”
“Giedraitis,” answers Ash. “With all the evidence.”
“Mr. Giedraitis’s son?” Bitinas turns to you. “Your friend, Vargalys?”
“We were only neighbors,” you say, and remember the junior Giedraitis’s puppyish eyes.
“A nice neighbor! He shows up wherever someone dies — one of ours or a stribas . . It seems he’s attracted to carrion.”
Bitinas looks at you without blinking, his eyes really are like a pagan priest’s: cold, penetrating, sucking out of you what you need yourself. You sadly think of where you are and what you’re doing. Fighting for Lithuania? Seeking the dragon? You glance at Birch. He’s a human too, after all, sitting with his hands and legs tied, propped up against the trunk of a tree, his long eyelashes blinking frequently.
“We’ll pull out your intestines, you hear?” Bitinas has already decided.
“I knew where I was going,” Birch tries to keep his courage up, but his voice gives him away: it trembles and squeaks.
“You don’t know anything. There’s nothing in the head of a Russkie agent. What kind of birch are you. What kind of Lithuanian. Are you a human being, damn it? You didn’t know anything and won’t know anything. But maybe seeing your intestines you’ll find out. . You start, Vargalys!”
“No,” says your voice. “No, I can’t. I won’t stay here. I won’t even watch. I’m going back to the bunker.”
“You can,” Bitinas says calmly. “You can do anything. After all, you’re a human. After all, you’re great. You must be able to do everything. Imagine that you finally catch the dragon; you trap him in a corner of his stinking cave. And suddenly he starts crying human tears and speaks in a human voice. Don’t tell me your hand is going to start shaking? Don’t tell me you won’t slit the dragon’s stomach?”
Could you cut up a living person? If your brain were empty and your heart completely empty — perhaps you’d manage to. But then you wouldn’t be there yourself. What’s going on here? Soon it’ll be YOU whose stomach they slit and it’ll be YOUR intestines they wrap around a tree. YOU are sitting with your hands and legs tied, propped up against a tree trunk. YOU blink your long eyelashes frequently.
“Enough,” says Ash. “Leave the kid alone. I’ll do it myself.”
Petrified, you watch him lumber over to Birch, bend down on one knee, and tear the clothes from his belly. You should have been the one doing this. You’d calmly unfold a short, crooked knife and, without hurrying, cut through the ropes around his legs. Pausing a bit, you’d deftly slit Birch’s belly; you’d pull out an intestine, hooking it with a bent finger (inside of it, under the slimy membrane, something would move). You would push Birch over on his knees and nail the end of the gut to the old tree trunk, nailing it in simply with your fist, with several angry blows.
“So how did our forefathers force them to walk?” Ash asks. “Maybe we should finish him off and be done with it?”
You see everything clearly; the evening glow is at its height now. It seems a long, whitish worm crawled out of Birch’s stomach and bit into the tree trunk.
“You didn’t understand a thing,” Bitinas nods his head. “Death threatens us, the warriors for a sacred cause, every day. While this slime bag. .”
You don’t want to; you fight it, but unavoidably you turn into Bitinas. Your knuckles slowly become gnarled and your head bald. You start scowling just like he does; you become more and more gaunt. But most important — your thoughts turn into Bitinas’s thoughts (or his thoughts turn into yours).
You hate yourself and love Birch. And that which we love we must kill. To feel the sacrificial knife plunging into the body of love, its handle transmitting the pulse of another’s life to you, the blade easily slitting the live flesh. You turn him on his back, no, you can’t. . you turn Birch on his back, no, you just can’t. . you turn him on his back, Bitinas forces him on his back and slashes his entire belly with the knife. The woods smell of sap, the men and the trees have stiffened, while Birch’s belly grins a wide, bloody smile. Inside are the intestines; there are lots of them, they teem like worms, you never thought there were so many. You don’t run, something inside you attracts you to the dreadful smile of the slashed belly, now you almost want to be in Bitinas’s place, to plunge your hands into Birch’s warm guts and squeeze them with your fingers. Can there be any greater way of being so close to someone? Bitinas cuts the guts into pieces, at first he hurries like he’s being driven, but later he can barely move. Birch’s legs slip out from under Bitinas’s knees, he convulses as if he’s dancing, then he moans and quiets down. He looks at you with surprise and regret. Only with surprise and regret.
Suddenly you ask yourself what Bitinas is doing here, what has he already done. Blood rushes to your face; you recoil, but by now it’s too late to run. You also TOOK PART. What happened here? How will God punish you all? What will you all turn into now? You should poke out your eyes, because you watched everything. Bitinas slowly stands up, wipes his hands on a clump of grass. He slowly raises his head. He no longer has a gaze, the eyes have disappeared from his face, there are no eyes.
“Stick those guts into a bag,” says Bitinas grimly, “and take them to that junior Giedraitis.”