I don’t want to, I don’t want to believe it. I can’t. Once more a vivid image rises before my eyes: an old house, entangled in wild grape vines in the depths of a garden, and yellow leaves fluttering in the wind. For an instant it seems as if I am watching myself from outside. That I approach the garden cottage where I am sprawling helplessly. Finally I remember where I saw this image. I saw it this morning, when I woke up: it began my day. Something inside of me knew I would end up here today. What can that dream, which foretold the future, mean? Sitting up, I quickly light a cigarette, and don’t immediately realize I’m moving again. Even the smoke doesn’t block out Lolita’s enchanting scent. Her gaze pierces me. It seems that pale, narrow strips of light emanate from her pupils.
I grasp it all in a torturously slow manner, like swallowing barbed wire. She lured me to my doom. It’s all very simple. That was Their plan. They feared liquidating me because I could leave secret notes. There was only one way left — to penetrate my inner being. Do I know what I’ve chattered about in my sleep, lying with Lolita? Perhaps while conversing with her I gave away my most secret thoughts. Perhaps I gave myself away precisely by trying not to give myself away. The ancient Chinese would interrogate a person for several days and nights. If the prisoner would stubbornly avoid some topic, or a place, or a word, or a hieroglyph, it would be obvious that the secret hid precisely there.
She’s the one who’s most to blame. I should rip a confession out of her: slit her throat, slice open her chest, pull the confession out of her guts. Cut it out with the blackened knife in the kitchen.
“I could cut you up into pieces and eat you up,” she suddenly says in a covetous voice. “I totally understand women who used to keep their loved one’s heart in a jar.”
I have to talk as if there’s nothing amiss. It’s not time yet, it’s not time. She could get suspicious.
“You’d probably keep something else.”
“Your blazing brain. I want to turn into you. At night I dream I’m you. My grandmother told me that if you ate someone’s brain, raw, you’d turn into him. If you ate a wolf’s brain, you’d take on a wolf’s power. A fox’s would give you his cunning and cleverness. All the warriors used to eat the brains of aurochs.”
“And you’d eat mine?”
“I’d eat all of you.” She slinks closer; I see her eyes, which have absorbed the revengeful red of the sun. “Your fingers, your knees, your chest with all its little graying hairs. But first of all — that scarred beast of yours, that’s a bit indisposed today.”
She bites me, by no means playfully, but the pain is merely invigorating. All of the objects in the room quiver; dust motes scurry about in the air in leaps and bounds. She pulls away, but sits down next to me with her legs crossed, Indian-style. It seems like she’s trying to bend herself into an arch, to push her swollen lower lips, emerging from the hair, ever closer.
“Or you eat me. Whatever you want. Even all of me.”
The girl in Kovarskis’s morgue had a gaping black hole with even sides in that spot. That’s where I need to start, and then the long, blackened knife plunges into Lilita’s belly, cleaves the traitor’s soft skin and subcutaneous fat, uncovers the pink, pulsating flesh. There’s practically no blood to be seen; it blends with the revengeful red of the sun. There should be nothing inside of her, or else some inexplicable mechanism. However, there are coiled intestines, and a striped liver, and something else, probably the spleen. Lilita is made the same way we are: this merely cheers me. The strangest thing is how easily the knife plunges, how easily it cleaves the still living flesh. Bitinas felt this sensation too. It’s the symphony of a warm knife; bloody music, spreading the strong, enchanting smell of the sacrificial altar. I turn the handle of the knife to the left, to the right; the ribs crackle like dry twigs. But there’s no need to hurry, there’s no need to listen to the scream, this isn’t a rush job, this is music. The liver can be divided into two, then divided again. .
“They’ve beset you again?”
She’s still sitting the same way; her eyes look out of the dusk gently and comfortingly. Not the slightest kanukish sign — only my Lolita. My own, my own Lolita. And I wanted to. .
“Who are they? What are they?” I don’t recognize my own voice.
“The ones I don’t know. The ones who torture you at night. Whose traces show up deep inside your pupils. Who carve the expression of suffocation on your face. Do you know that sometimes you look like a drowning man letting out his last gasp of air? That’s what you look like now. They’ve beset you again?”
She knew, she knew everything. She felt it with her entire essence. And she never asked about anything, never pried, never tried to worm anything out of me. She simply walked beside me and tried to help as best she could. And I suspected her. In my thoughts I picked up the blackened kitchen knife. Now I really am suffocating, really drowning. How far can fear take you? I’ll never atone for my guilt, even if I were to lick her feet to the end of my days. No punishment would suffice.
The sun glimmers through the window in farewell; I glance at it and encounter an angry, narrow-eyed stare. The long face is familiar to me, but I simply cannot grasp whose it is.
“See?” I shout out loud, my hand outstretched, “See?”
Lolita flinches, turns around and freezes; she recognizes that face too. But I’m already running, bursting through the door, rushing through the dry leaves in bare feet, ripping the wild grape vines with my bare shoulder. The long-suppressed fury has erupted like a volcano; I’m not feeling as much as grasping intellectually that I’m stark naked and catching painfully on the branches. I want to finally catch Them, to beat them shitless. Not a trace of fear remains. It never was. I don’t fear anything! I’m Vytautas Vargalys!
It seems that I see the narrow-eyed watcher’s shadow; I battle with the branches and stumble in the flower beds, but he’s probably more light-footed. The nooks of the garden are misleading; the hunched-over form flashes now here, now there, but too far away — I can’t even say whether it’s a man or a woman. An automobile rumbles somewhere close by; probably the figure has escaped, but I can’t stop anymore. I run and run, until I’m entirely out of breath. At last I realize I’m naked and getting colder by the second. I ought to go back. But the cottages are so identical, and the orchards and gardens between them are identical. Identical currant and gooseberry bushes, and apple trees, and even the chrysanthemums in the flower beds are identical. I wander among the cottages, looking for the only sight that matters to me. An old house in the darkened depths of a garden, entangled in wild grape vines. Yellow unraked leaves that the wind carelessly scatters, even though the twigs of the bushes don’t so much as stir. In that house Lolita waits. I have to hurry; this isn’t the sort of place where you can leave her alone. Perhaps They lured me outside deliberately? I have to find her as soon as possible. It seems I hear the fading throbbing of her heart. It seems I hear gasping breath. But I don’t know where to go. By now I want to shout, but suddenly I sense a faint, enchanting scent, Lolita’s scent today. I go on like a beast, constantly stopping and sniffing carefully. Soon I no longer need to keep stopping, the scent itself draws me closer. The old house is engulfed in the darkness; the leaves are no longer yellow, but rather gray. And there’s no wind anymore. It’s calm around, and calm on my heart. By now a light is burning in the room. I’ll tell Lolita everything about Them. I will no longer be alone; we’ll be together.