erved him a bit, but just for a little while, he immediately saw fear and hate in my eyes — that which he needed most — he didn’t hurry; quite the opposite, he enjoyed it, that introduction of horror was what mattered most to him; he slowly pulled down my skirt, even more slowly bared one breast like on some Amazon, but I didn’t think about the horror awaiting me, or about any rapes, there was just one thing on my mind: what would be if everything would happen and then I’d give birth to a child, Stadniukas’s child, whom I would have to strangle before its first cry, a child of hell, who would have to be drowned, buried underground, burned up. Stadniukas slowly moved his hands towards my crotch, giggling foolishly, sucking on his teeth, while I secretly pressed the handle of the dagger and repeated to myself: now, when his fingers reach the mole on my thigh; now, when he touches the triangle of hair; now, when he lasciviously squeezes that hair: now it will be enough. But I resolved to do it only when he started unbuttoning his fly; his hands were busy for an instant, and I stabbed him — I didn’t turn the blade of the dagger in the light, I didn’t intimidate him, I didn’t warn him; I stabbed at him at once without picking a spot — if I had hit the right spot, Stadniukas would never have strangled cats again. I remember Gedka half tried to take me by force the first time and was struck speechless when he saw the dagger, the three-sided blade with SACRUM written on the side, in my hand. I pulled it out automatically, not thinking of anything or planning to do anything; that instant it was simply an extension of my hand, to me it was like a bee’s stinger, an inseparable part of my body, and Gedka was so stunned he wasn’t able to do anything more that evening. The Stadniukas-like mug finally turns away, thank God, all I need is to attack someone, better calm down, look around. Well, now, I’ll go in the consignment store to gawk at the leather coats, even though I’ll never buy one like that: what can you buy with our pathetic little salaries, just let an Englishman or American try to get by in Vilnius, he’d walk around ragged, hungry, and finally go out of his mind, while we manage just fine; one thousand two hundred, thank you very much, and this one’s eight-fifty, that’s more like it, but all the same. Lolka always ran around decked out in leather and pretended to be my friend; she kept offering to give me something to wear like I was some kind of beggar, she always pretended we were friends, even when she started beating Vargalys away from me — oh, what didn’t she try, she about crawled out of her skin, the outfits she changed: Vargalys cost her at least several thousand, if not more. She changed her feathers, but Vargalys didn’t pay the slightest attention to her, that’s the way he was: a person could be running around under his nose for ten years, and Vargalys, meeting him on the street, wouldn’t recognize him; darts at the chest, pleats gathered on top, tiny lapels — let’s see, an even thousand, an entire half-year of your pathetic salary, Stefanija, plus some; don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t breathe for half a year, and you’ll be dressed like Lolka; those eyes, those wretched eyes of hers, I can’t forget them, like that time I went over to Gedka’s and found her there for the first time: I unlock the door, smell a strange scent and I’m furious already, and Lolka crawls out into the corridor stark naked, totally shameless, not feeling guilty, just smiles a bit, calmly lights a cigarette and puts on a robe, my robe, staring at me all the time with shameless, fierce eyes, as if that’s the way it had to be, as if that’s the way it always was, as if it couldn’t be any other way: Gedka didn’t look me in the eye for some two weeks, and she goggled her pretty eyeballs at me as coolly as can be, invited me to lunch and, as if nothing was the matter, chattered on about her great new dress. No, dear friends, I’m outta here, the prices here are horrendous; Martis put it welclass="underline" we don’t get wages, we get unemployment compensation, for that compensation all we can do is not work, which is what we do. Martis’s crushed body stands before my eyes again, the gloomy guy turns the woman’s little finger over in his hands and I know whose finger it is, Martis is gone, the finger’s owner is gone too; Martis was the only one she didn’t steal from me, the honorable Martynas; I remember I was at Gedka’s, I don’t know how it happened, I never made love with two at the same time again, but that time it turned out that way; they pulled long black stockings on me, Gedka ran around the rooms, yelling that I’m the Circe of Vilnius, that I’ve turned them into beasts, and suddenly Martis came by, he came to borrow some books or something, I was so out of it I barely knew what was going on anymore, I stumbled into the living room with those black stockings on and only then did I come to my senses: Martis was adorably flustered, he tried not to look at me, and when he couldn’t control himself and glanced at me sideways, I saw so much suffering in his eyes that Lord knows I came to completely. He was embarrassed, even I got embarrassed, he couldn’t understand that I am like the earth and I belong to everyone, it was the only time I was ever sorry I’m not a prude and monogamous; poor straight arrow Martis wanted to create the great museum of Lithuania, year after year he collected exhibits, and then they took everything away from him, destroyed his museum; Martis searched for justice for a long time, he even went all the way to Moscow, there he was accused of being a nationalist and nearly arrested, probably he was a nationalist — as long as he was listening no one could say anything at all bad about Lithuanians, Martis would immediately start arguing about it, even fight about it; listening to him, you’d think Lithuanians don’t have any shortcomings or flaws at all — then he started collecting a museum in his house, he didn’t care about anything, losing his job, or his wife leaving him, I even envy him, I always envy people who believe in something. Poor Martis, Martis the little corpse, children were his other mania, he would sit in the courtyard and chat with the kiddies, and then he’d write down their wisdom in a notebook — don’t tell me we really are destined to lose — loving children the way he did, the son disappointed his father terribly by turning into a careerist. Horrors, I only just now realized it so clearly: not a single one of them had children, only Martis — and the one he had was like that. My God, there’s nothing left of them anymore, not even their seed is left, there’s no seed of theirs left even inside me, the earth mother; I feel myself slowly stiffening in horror, I’m probably turning into a rock, I’m no longer living; it takes my breath away, thinking there’s no sign left of them all, not a trace — how is that, what’s to blame for it? The cupola of the Orthodox church gleams with brand-new gold paint, there’s so many Russian Orthodox churches in Vilnius, four at least, and how many of those Russians were there here earlier, there were a hundred times more Jews and only one synagogue, although it’s all the same to me, I don’t know my nationality, I don’t even know my faith, I don’t know what I am — probably the profligate earth; after all, the earth belongs to everyone, it doesn’t have a nationality, doesn’t profess any religion or professes them all at the same time; I’m like the earth, I can shelter and comfort anyone — that dejected little hook-nosed Jew too, who’s standing there deep in thought with his hands in his pockets, he’s probably thinking of his little Jewess — I can comfort everyone, although maybe not today; I’m a human, after all, not the earth — the earth doesn’t bleed and doesn’t go looking for gauze to plug up its little hole. I’m not the earth anymore, I don’t have anyone to comfort, that’s what’s the most horrifying — so why did Vasilis send me to Vilnius, what was I supposed to find here or do here, why did I have to desert my village and become an exile, an exile’s fate is always hard; in a new place he feels foreign, unnecessary, and I was terribly envious too, I brought that envy with me from Bezrečjė like a dreadful disease, I envied the Lithuanians their streets, their houses, ideas, manners, language, looks, clothes, love, food. Why, why, I kept asking myself, how can they be that way, who gave them the right, why are they that way, so I’m forced to envy them, and yet they’re still unhappy about something, they constantly bitch and moan about the government; my God, if I were like that and had that much of everything, I’d pray to that government; they should try to live in our village, they should try to live somewhere in the middle of Russia, I’d count them as something then; it’s terrible to remember, I so wished them ill, a hundred times I did — to Tedis, and Gediminas, particularly Gediminas; he was so great and so out of reach with those mathematical articles of his, his concert piano, and the letters Sartre wrote him; he was a giant, and I was an ant, but Vasilis, seeing me off, said: that dagger is miraculous, it’s meant for you too, if you feel the dragon of evil rising up inside you, remember the dagger. I remembered it too, when I felt that wretched envy I would stab myself in the left thigh, even now there’s a bunch of little scars on it — I wasn’t fooling, stabbing my left thigh, really: you envy Lolka her outfits, take this! Take this! You envy Gražkė her trip to Paris — take this! And this! You envy Gedka his ability to feel at home everywhere — take this! Take that! I spilled a lot of blood before I overcame my envy, before I became what I am: the humble earth that knows its eternal purpose. I fell in love with Gediminas first; he liked to be consoled like a fragile little missy, but he was a real man when he had to face some serious business, work or war. But I fell in love with him just because of his fragility and shyness; I’d comfort him with tears in my eyes, he’d be clinging to the piano, banging its black lacquered surface with his fist in despair. All his life he wanted to learn how to play in some special way, all his life he tried to create special mathematics; he’d work at night, and in the mornings he’d rip up the written pages, nothing was enough for him, being the youngest professor in Lithuania meant nothing to him, he was seeking something beyond reach, that’s why he was unhappy: Gedka was a demigod, but he thought he was a failure, that was the most beautiful thing about him. He really loved this ruined square across from City Hall, true, the monument to Kapsukas didn’t perch here yet then; Gedka would sit here, smoke, and think up his fantastic stories about everything under the sun; he was always longing for something, some other life, as if a mysterious city stood somewhere, his real city: Gedka’s family would live there, his children, his real friends and companions, and there was no way he could get there, he felt he had lost all of that forever. Once he even let it slip that he longed for death, the kingdom of death as the house of his birth, perhaps he sensed what was already waiting for him in that canyon in Tian Shan? Tedis really did sense it, a week before he died in that fire he suddenly turned pale and glum, sculpted nothing but wolves; his studio was stuffed to the gills with all kinds of wolves, there almost wasn’t room left for anything else, just my portraits hanging on the walls: me with dark hair and blonde hair, me without breasts or without a head; sometimes I think that Lolka set fire to him, wretched Lolka, stepping over corpses until she became a corpse herself, tyrannizing the best men in Vilnius — I hate her full lips, her shameless gaze, her long, too thin legs. Going through that many men, she hated them all, feared them too; that was why she didn’t give herself to anyone — she’d take them all herself, she said, even making love she always tried to stay on top; she didn’t give anything to anyone, she just took, plundered, pillaged. I am the earth, and she was a leech, but I was friends with her all the same — and who can say why?