That was perhaps the only time in my life that I encountered Lithuanian solidarity.
For the most part, homo lithuanicus has learned one precept thoroughly: watch out for yourself, and let the other guy worry about himself. Homo lithuanicus has got it into his head that if the authorities have taken someone on, helping him is suicide. So why stick your nose out? It’s better to please the authorities. I know what I’m saying. I’ve experienced this myself.
I should be telling Lolita’s and VV’s story, and instead only heaven knows what I’m going on about. But that’s the only way an mlog can be written. I’m nothing more than a character in the mlog myself. Don’t ask too much of me. I’m happy I manage to relate anything at all.
I’ve told Riauba senior’s story because he came to be part of my great collection.
VV resembles the senior Riauba in that he too, perfectly understood the essence of our collective pretense. With him at the helm, our section does absolutely nothing, but always carries out the plans. Such paradoxes are possible only in the Ass of the Universe.
From my collection:
A friend of mine who’s already in his fifth decade confessed that all of his life he had, with particular care and diligence, carried out all of the government’s orders and directives — just think! — for reasons of sabotage. Even at home he acted by all the Soviet canons.
“Everyone should do it,” he explained heatedly. “If everyone would act that way, the system would crumble immediately, because it’s absurd. The only reason it’s still in existence is that ninety-nine percent of people don’t abide by its canons.”
He spoke in all seriousness. Only homo lithuanicus could come up with a theory like that.
It was only a few years into our friendship that I found out VV is a veteran of the prison camps. He would talk about the camp with first-rate black humor. Only a person who has gone through all of the circles of hell can mock everything in the world the way he did. He never complained or whined; more than that, he feared nothing. Many a camp veteran acquires a peculiar paranoia. He imagines he’s secretly being wronged, denied a better position, and so on. VV would only snort when I mentioned his secret dossier. It’s extremely difficult to understand this man.
His drawings were incredible. Once he showed me drawings from his time in the camp. VV has an entire collection of them. There were some really horrifying things there, but I found one portrait particularly shocking. A youngish man with a philosophic gaze stared out from the paper. Deep within his eyes lay an understanding of the True Essence. I immediately asked VV who he was.
“This one I just had to draw,” he answered. “He got twenty-five years — but only because at that time the death penalty had temporarily been abolished.”
“What did he do? What?” I nearly screamed, looking at that supernaturally deep face.
I was certain this person’s life had to reveal some impossibly important secret.
“Even in our camp he was the only one like that,” answered VV. “He killed his mother, cut her into pieces, and ate her. By the way, he knew all of Yesenin by heart.”
The worst of it is that VV landed in the camp when he was still quite young. His soul matured in the camp — in a horrifying, distorted world. It seemed to me that in our world he felt like a tourist who could be called home at any minute — behind the barbed wire again.
From the age of seventeen to the age of twenty-eight he saw women only once — during the naked revolt. They worked in one quarry, while the prisoners from the women’s camp would be driven into the neighboring one. One swelteringly hot day the wind carried an entire cloud of the inexorable smell of men over to the women’s quarry. And the women went wild. They swept the guards away together with all their dogs and submachine guns, and a eerie procession headed towards the men, undressing on the way. VV, with sincere horror, told of how they were suddenly flooded with naked women, stumbling, falling, and rolling from the quarry walls. The guards swore and shot their guns in the air, the dogs they had unleashed snarled and tore into whomever they came upon, but people paid no attention. Some coupled on the spot, others openly masturbated. VV got scared to death and hid between some rocks. He was lucky. A group of hurriedly summoned special guards, without a moment’s pause, turned machine guns on the quarry. Some of the corpses were thrown in trucks as they were, stuck together in pairs. The next day the barracks buzzed and commented on the incident. The ones who survived unharmed didn’t even remember the dead; they just bragged, one after the other, about how many women they had managed to use. VV, with a wry smile, explained that the masturbators, as always, claimed the largest number.
VV must have understood our grim world best. After all, our gigantic common prison camp is also surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by man-eating German Shepherds. For another thing, can a person who spent his best years in hell live a normal life? From an intellectual point of view, he actually lucked out — his had his learned abbot, like some Monte Cristo. He learned a great deal from his professor, but the teachings of a single person, even the wisest, will never reveal all of the world’s subtleties. After all, his Bolius viewed the world from his own tower, so he inadvertently forced VV to see the world the same way.
And how was he supposed to regard women? In high school, he was probably taught that women are delicate and gentle creatures who must be taken care of and chivalrously defended. But what did he think when he saw the naked revolt?
Everyone saw that VV looked down on women. He had them in spades, but he didn’t consider a single one human. Even Lolita frequently wept over him, ignoring her surroundings, her face buried on her desk at work. He would humiliate her in the most disgusting ways. I know. I saw this myself.
VV frequently acted like a child of perdition, but I understand him, I almost condone him. On every form, in the box about your origin and parents, he ought to write: I am an only child of the prison camps.
When Lolita showed up in our ridiculous office, it immediately occurred to me that I had seen her somewhere before. I couldn’t fall asleep at night; I kept trying to remember where I had met her. I even looked through my collection, which wasn’t all that large at the time.
I began to suspect something wasn’t quite right only later, when rumors about her husband followed her to the library. It’s not every day a famous man burns alive in Vilnius. And Žilys really was well-known. In all Vilnius, he was the only one who organized underground exhibits in his studio, ones everyone dreamed of getting into. You could say to anyone, “Yesterday I saw Žilys at the Neringa. He announced the second coming of Christ,” and no one needed explaining about who Žilys is and why he had suddenly converted to Christianity. He was a regular Vilnius preacher; he confessed all religions without confessing a single one — expect maybe for the religion of art.
And here we all find out that Lolita was his wife.
And then about a week later, I ran into Lolita at Gediminas’s, wearing his robe, with the nipples of her tiny naked breasts showing through it.
That meeting eerily reflected the past; that was why it had seemed to me I had already seen her somewhere. This happens often in Vilnius.
VV starting making moves on her immediately. Once Lolita let it slip (we had already become friends): “I’m afraid of him — you can see right off that he’s a monster. I asked my father to find his case in the archives. I’d like to know what all he’s done.”
VV got it on with her all the same. In the most disgusting manner imaginable.
I really don’t want to remember it. However, an mlog requires the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It makes me sick to remember nasty things. But I’ve become convinced that in the long run it’s no use to shut your eyes, even if you really don’t like the view. Even if it nauseates you. Even if it sickens you. Incidentally, homo lithuanicus loves to shut his eyes the minute something displeases him. Homo lithuanicus has preserved an ancient belief in magic: if you don’t see anything, no one sees you, either. With your eyes shut, it’s as if you disappear from the world for a little while.