Homo lithuanicus wasn’t created by the Lord God, just by Lithuania’s history and the ROF.
So I didn’t move my tent an inch. What’s more, I grabbed my binoculars, which I had just happened to bring along. I spied on their hermit-like existence; I even forgot to unpack my fishing rods. I was always interested in what it was that pushed Lolita into Gediminas’s arms. Perhaps Lolita, in her shock, saw a reflection of her husband in his friend. Perhaps Gediminas provoked her; perhaps he deliberately took her to Teodoras’s favorite places and used his sayings. Gediminas Riauba could do that. All his life that hardened bachelor and pervert went after women by means both fair and foul.
“Gedutis didn’t love me,” Lolita would say, sitting on my rug with her long legs stretched out.
She always called Riauba Gedutis.
“He was too immersed in mathematics, in music, but by way of all that — in only himself. To him, the whole world was just part of himself: I was too, and the clouds, and even his beloved dogs. I hated him, and that’s why I lived with him.”
At the time, I felt very sorry for her. Only much later did it occur to me that men only imagine or pretend to rule women. Actually, the women always lead us by the nose. Even if they really do submit to our will, they do it consciously — they have purposes we cannot grasp. Lolita was like that too. She just played with Gediminas as long as he was of use to her. And poor Gedutis rejoiced that he had supposedly enslaved her.
In our life, absolute victories always turn into absolute defeats.
It fell to me to witness the finale of such a defeat at that wretched lake in Ignalina. Towards evening, I suddenly heard a scream. I immediately knew it was Lolita shrieking. She was virtually howling. To this day, I don’t know what he was doing to her, and now I’ll never know. The screaming suddenly stopped. An instant later, a stark-naked Lolita staggered out of the tent, and behind her — a smiling Gediminas. As if nothing were wrong, the two of them kissed affectionately. Then, naked, they climbed into a rowboat and rowed out to the middle of the lake. The shores of Ignalina’s lakes are hardly reminiscent of a deserted island. Some kids on the other shore happily waved their arms and made obscene remarks, but the two of them didn’t pay any attention. The forest ranger in his yard stared at them through binoculars (I saw the sun glint off of its lenses). Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and he got on his bike and pedaled around to our side, apparently prepared to fine them for disturbing the public order. I just threw him a quick glance, and when I turned to the rowboat again, Gediminas was already floundering in the water.
I spoke with the investigator looking into Gediminas’s sudden death. Lolita had told him she absolutely couldn’t swim, and she hadn’t stretched out the oar because she was in shock. The investigator believed her. I would have believed her too, if I hadn’t seen her face at that moment. She watched Gediminas choking and still floundering in the water, and smiled wryly. Her expression was furious and scornful. It seemed death rays were emanating from her eyes. It wasn’t a human expression; it wasn’t a human smile. I don’t know whose — God’s or the devil’s — but not a human’s. Lolita drowned Gediminas without even touching him. Such are the paradoxes of Vilnius — the great snob Gediminas, with his grand intentions of understanding all sorts of essential things about the world, swam like a rock.
I remembered that moment’s horror a few years later. Our office is very fond of arranging outings by the Žaliųjų Lakes, with little rowboats, water bicycles, and a modest picnic. Unconsciously, I would keep an eye on Lolita. It seemed she really was afraid of water. She’d wade in up to her thighs, wash herself off and leap back on shore again.
But once I needed to relieve myself in a hurry. I found myself some out-of-the-way bushes by the shore; what I saw there knocked me off my feet. In a remote backwater, hidden from everybody, I saw Lolita swimming. She swam with firm strokes, without raising any spray. She swam like a fish.
I’ve thought up a thousand premises, a million fantasies on this subject, but I can’t set them out here. The mlog accepts only indubitable facts. Unfortunately, only facts. Thank God, only facts.
I’ve come up with a theory explaining why horrible things must always happen in Vilnius. It could be called the balance of passions theory. It occupies a significant place in my general theory called “What is the Ass of the Universe.” I think the universal dullness of Vilnius is terribly lacking in deep human passions. The majority of Vilniutians’ passions boil and bubble in a glass of water. Writers overdose themselves with sleeping pills when they don’t get a new upgraded apartment. Engineers take to drink if they aren’t promoted at work. When there aren’t any truly important objectives, passions flare up over comical trifles that a normal person wouldn’t pay the slightest attention to.
My theory asserts that the world (even Vilnius) cannot exist without genuine human passions. To keep the world in balance, it must fall upon at least one real human to be an example to a thousand homo lithuanicus. Unfortunately, in order to supplement the passions raging in the glass of water, his own passions have to be inhuman. He rages, laments, and raves enough for us all. He lives enough for us all! That’s why every one in Vilnius who even remotely resembles a real human being burns up alive, is drowned by his own great love, or cuts her into pieces himself.
I think that Vilnius has reached such a level of general soullessness that a single human can no longer compensate for it by normal, civilized methods. Those who try to climb out of the general manure pile inevitably step over the permissible boundaries.
From my collection:
“Oh, Lithuanians. . what will tear you out of your lethargy? Oh unhappy country, worthy of compassion in these days. . What do you need? A dangerous revolution, total rearrangement, a terrible shock. . stagnation can no longer be overcome by civilized methods, fire is necessary in order to burn out the gangrene eating you.”
That’s a bit of mystification. The text actually starts with “Oh, Italians” and its author is Casanova.
I intend this quote for the skeptics who think that the theory of the Ass of the Universe and the balance of passions is suited to only one puny object — our poor little Lithuania. This quote proves that theories like this have universal validity too.
From my collection:
“Neither the crushing force of the civilized state, nor the teachings of mutual hatred and merciless struggle that come adorned with the attributes of science from obliging philosophers and sociologists, can root out the feeling of human solidarity deeply lodged in man’s consciousness and heart, because this feeling has been nurtured by all of our preceding evolution.”
The author of this text is Prince Kropotkin, the famous anarchist.
I’d like to believe, at least in my dreams, that someone will show solidarity with homo lithuanicus and attempt to save him from destruction.
My citomania has begun to express itself. I swear: no more quotes.
I wonder if I’ll hold out for long.
In my thoughts, I always envision Lolita in one of two guises. Sometimes she’s sitting in my room, right on the rug, leaning against the sofa, silent. But much more often, she’s swimming towards me through black waters, propelling herself with impeccable strokes, rudely pushing aside other thoughts of mine afloat in those boundless waters. Swimming and swimming straight at me, with a strange smile on her lips, maybe wanting to drown me too, because I know too much.
She and VV fell in love like a pair of nineteenth-century teenagers, even though both of them had gone through several circles of hell — each his own — before then.