But VV was immediately charmed by him. The two of them would wander the streets of Vilnius at night and fall in love with the same women. Probably they were friends, although Lord knows I don’t know what “friend” means. That’s something no one knows.
I’m going to start talking about myself again, but there’s no other way to write an mlog. I can only tell you what’s reflected in me, like in a mirror — not a distorted one, I hope.
Now I’m reflecting the senior Riauba, Gediminas’s father. He was a true Lithuanian intellectual. They tried to eliminate people like that. But he somehow survived and even became the principal of our school. I’ve never met a more radical man. All of his decisions were strict, categorical, and implemented immediately. He became the hero of my adolescence. Riauba was the only person who took up open battle in my presence. He independently changed the teaching curriculum. At that time, this could have cost him his life. He scoffed at the cult of Stalin and taught everything his own way. He wasn’t at all naïve: when the inspectors came, we would go through a fictitious lesson we had rehearsed in advance. He taught history himself and began every school year with the legend of the Iron Wolf. We would hold our breath listening. I fell hopelessly in love with Vilnius without ever having seen it. To me, from our little town in Žemaitija, it seemed the Iron Wolf slowly cantered through the empty streets of Vilnius at night.
By the way, about the Iron Wolf. A stray dog used to hang around next to the Lithuanian Film Studio garages. He was sickly, mangy, and horribly bloated. His intestines wouldn’t hold food; as soon as he ate, he’d rush into the bushes with the runs. An awful stench emanated from those bushes. He would trot about staggering, banging into the walls, but he just wouldn’t die.
All of the Film Studio drivers called him the Iron Wolf — without irony or sarcasm, in all seriousness, and very sadly.
Riauba’s Iron Wolf was entirely different. He really did announce us to the entire world. In art class, I drew nothing but iron wolves. If we were told to draw an autumn forest, an iron wolf would surely be hiding somewhere in mine. If we were told to draw a vase, an iron wolf would be impressed on the side of mine. Once they forced us to draw a May Day demonstration. In mine, an iron wolf proudly marched at the front of people with placards and slogans. The art teacher sent me to the principal, threatening Siberia. Riauba patted my head and said:
“You might yet grow up into a human being.”
I well remember the lessons Riauba prepared for the inspectors. We would rehearse those plays at the expense of classes on the history of the VKP(b), the Communist Party. Riauba would select the actors from all the classes; he watched Russian films especially for this purpose and used them to select faces that, in his opinion, best suited the stereotype of a Soviet pupil.
“Who wants to earn extra credit?” he would ask, imperceptibly giving Kaziukas Budrys a sign.
Kaziukas Budrys was a teenager with a pudgy face and fanatically burning eyes. He was very proud to get such an important role in the play.
“We must unfailingly emphasize Comrade Stalin’s incomparable contribution to the theories of Marxism-Leninism!” he would shriek in a fanatical voice.
Then he would practically sing a text he’d learned by rote. Once an elderly inspector, listening to Kaziukas’s oratory, automatically stood up at attention. I thought he was going to salute him.
During recess, Kaziukas Budrys liked to shape busts of Stalin out of the soft part of bread. He would make the mustache out of real hair.
Perhaps Kaziukas would have been a great sculptor. But he disappeared somewhere in the expanses of Siberia.
The other outstanding soloist was this Kvedaravičius. He spoke slowly; you’d think he was weighing and pondering every word. His speech sounded unbelievably convincing; the inspectors would unconsciously start nodding their heads, approving of Kvedaravičius in their thoughts.
“A Soviet man must, of course, draw from culture,” Kvedaravičius would intone thoughtfully. I thought about it for a long time, but I never did understand what he could draw from Akhmatova’s poetry or Balys Sruoga’s scribbles.
Those performances would be rehearsed down to the smallest detail, but Riauba directed us with such inspiration that they weren’t in the least boring. Those lessons got nothing but excellent ratings from all the inspectors. Riauba quickly understood that in this system, you don’t need to be something, you just need to look like it. No one is concerned with who you really are; all that matters is what you pretend to be.
Every true homo lithuanicus thoroughly understands this open secret. A true homo lithuanicus pragmatically acts his role in the drama and carries out his duty — all the more since it’s so easy to deceive the authorities. The one on the platform acts the part of a dignitary, knowing full well that he’s just acting. A thousand in the hall applaud enthusiastically, knowing full well that he’s acting, and they are as well. And the so-called dignitary nods, knowing full well that the entire thousand are only pretending.
On the surface, homo sovieticus behaves in a similar fashion. But nevertheless, in the depths of his heart, he believes in the system’s principles; he’s full of concepts like “the misrepresentation” or “the distortion of Leninist norms,” and so on.
From the get-go, homo lithuanicus doesn’t believe in anything, but he learns, while still in school, to feign it convincingly.
Incidentally, spontaneous emotions still erupt in school. At times proclamations show up on the benches and assorted graffiti on the walls.
Lately it’s become popular to write on the walls in English. For some reason, no one paints over these graffiti. The inscription “RUSSIANS GO HOME!” has adorned the wall of my building for two months now.
VV and Gediminas Riauba complemented one another. Gediminas’s boundless ambition and snobbism were balanced by VV’s complete indifference to other people’s opinions of him. I remember when Gediminas organized a concert in an abandoned church, which the militia raided. There were maybe twenty or thirty people at that concert, but the incident instantly became covered with legends the way an ocean rock gets covered with seaweed. I was there; I saw everything with my own eyes. The musicians played something hysterical (you couldn’t even call it playing); it seemed to me that they were merely waiting to be raided so that they could become heroes, at least for a little while.
VV was absolutely delighted, and used the opportunity to break some militiaman’s jaw. Then he barely managed to hide himself in time.
To the honor of Vilnius’s snobs, I have to admit that all of the spectators, to a man, declared they didn’t know who he was. As if they had agreed in advance, they maintained that VV was some outsider, since he didn’t know a word of Lithuanian.