I clearly remember his fear and its numerous forms. I saw it when I was still alive and smelled it as a dog; even thinking back on it, I can actually feel it, literally grasp it.
Fear is always growing in Vilnius; even the autumn dampness doesn’t cover its scent. I was always afraid myself. I’m afraid even now, as a dog: it’s terrifying that someone might kill me or injure me. In other world cities dogs aren’t so fearful. And what was I afraid of as a human? Fear in Vilnius is multifaceted. You fear the future most of all, because it doesn’t exist.
I never liked mathematics, but I was a topologist because that was the safest and most convenient thing to be. That’s the reason I always returned to wretched, despicable Vilnius. I was afraid that if I stayed abroad, I’d suddenly realize that I could have, that I should have, been something else entirely, but it was already too late. I was afraid to look about and see my true possibilities, the ones I’d lost. That’s why I kept coming back to Vilnius, where the only thing I could be was a mathematician. But in Vilnius an even more intense fear would overtake me: I feared irretrievably losing yet another of my possible futures. But I was afraid to leave Vilnius, because I would instantly come across a profusion of my own long-lost futures, droves of lost possibilities, abroad.
The other essential Vilniutian attribute is hatred. First of all, you hate yourself, because you are afraid. The worst of it is that love doesn’t compensate for that kind of hatred. You can’t love yourself, because there’s nothing to love yourself for. I couldn’t love myself for the fact that I was a professor and others weren’t. On the contrary — I hated myself, because I made a living by hanging onto a decent mathematician’s position, even though it contradicted my nature. By nature, being a terrorist suited muited me much better. By nature, Vytautas Vargalys was suited to become a prophet, to found and defend some new religion. But all he became was secretive.
I’m restless. I worry that I won’t find the den of Vilnius’s dragon. I hate the dragon of Vilnius. Hate of myself instantly turns into hate of Vilnius’s dragon, because he is the most to blame for everything.
Over there a numbed Vytautas Vargalys waits patiently next to the Russian Orthodox Church on Basanavičiaus Street, glancing about fearfully. His eyes are like a madman’s; a horrible fear wafts from him. Now he sees something I can’t perceive. His hands shake; even his protruding lower lip shakes like an old man’s. He cringes and suddenly takes off — I don’t know why, I don’t know where, I don’t know what for. He’s no longer a man; he’s the embodiment of fear. The dragon, the dragon alone, is to blame for this.
Over there Martynas Poška sits shut up in his apartment and pages through brittle sheets of paper. He tries to invent a humane world in an inhuman city. However — oh horror! — he tries to create it on sheets of paper alone. The living don’t concern him; he’s not trying to change anything. He didn’t even change his own son — the one that’s a knuckle-headed athlete, or Communist Youth leader, or a drug-addicted rapist, but that’s not what worries Martynas Poška. With a sarcastic smile, he assembles a paper world. He’s sorely deceiving himself. He convinces himself that his collection is immeasurably important, even though he knows it has no meaning.
Over there Lolita Banytė-Žilienė dresses to show off in town. This ritual can take an hour or two. She starts with her toes and finishes with the ends of her hair. For a long, long, time, she massages one little muscle in her thigh, driving the fat from it, even though there isn’t any there. She minces in front of the mirror naked, and then covers herself with layer after layer. The heavens could split, or the earth open up, and she would fuss over herself all the same, swaying her thighs, flourishing her chest, carefully choosing that day’s ideal mask. I perfectly understand Vytautas Vargalys’s spontaneous desire to rip off all her clothes, all of her covers, to tear even her divine body to bits — just from the desire to find something inside her.
And now here they all three come together. Vytautas Vargalys, as straight as a stone pillar; Lolita Banytė-Žilienė, shining with an oppressive beauty; and an unsmiling, crew-cut Martynas Poška. A little game of Vilnius Poker begins. It actually hurts to smell it. Only as a dog do you realize deceit isn’t people’s flaw. It’s their means of existence. It’s impossible to condemn them for it. What madman would scorn people because they eat or breathe? And deceit is even more vital to them than air. I know. After all, I was a human myself. I would sit down at the piano just so I could, for a brief moment, avoid pretense and openly play my despair, my spiritual impotence, and my hatred of myself; so that I could, for at least for a few minutes, be a terrorist who blows it all up.
So a little game of Vilnius Poker begins. The trio begins torturing one another. Martynas Poška lets ironic witticisms fly, even though he’s not at all happy or funny. Actually, he only envies Vytautas Vargalys his height, his looks, and even his intelligence. He reeks of envy. Most of all, he envies him Lolita Banytė-Žilienė. And it’s not just the scent of French perfume wafting from her — the smell of death wafts from her. She is as cold as Death. It isn’t blood flowing in her veins, but dilute nitrogen. She always wants to win. That’s why she pretends to be a victim who needs comforting and protection. A proud, practically unapproachable victim. That’s the kind that attracts men most. She irresistibly attracts Vytautas Vargalys, so he pretends he’s in love. But he smells only of fear. He doesn’t love anyone, because he’s horribly afraid of love itself. In love, he loses his vigilance, and Vytautas Vargalys is always tense and watchful.
That’s the way three particularly close people play.
It’s hard to understand people, even for us. They are born for a single, tiny second, in order to die after it rushes past. But even so, they do their utmost to make it as senseless as possible. They lie, pretend, deceive, get an instant of profit, and rejoice over trifles. They all ignore any responsibility to eternity. They don’t feel any responsibility. A human life is a competition of ingenious idiocies. Everyone desperately tries to exceed the others with the boundlessness of their stupidity. I was by no means a laggard in this contest myself. Sometimes a terrible nostalgia comes over me; I get the urge to get mixed up in a group of people and take up endless little stupidities again. Only a human being manages to act as if he were immortal. We thinking dogs cannot do this. We know too much about the world. That’s why we sometimes get an irresistible urge to turn into a human. You just need to decide, and return to the world as some insect, fly, or a tree, and then patiently wait, turning in the endless circle of change: sooner or later, you’ll turn back into a human. But once you’ve turned into one, you’ll no longer have the experience you gained in the afterlife. Those are the rules here.
Maybe that’s what I should do? I’m already tired of searching for the truth. No one knows it.
Believers say that God knows it. Even if I believed in God I wouldn’t take that for granted. The creator of the universe, the most powerful being in it, couldn’t be interested in a poker game dealt by piddling little people, or in some truth of theirs. He wouldn’t have either the time or the desire for it. He’d be worried about entirely different things: the collision of galaxies or the birth of stars. I’m certainly not anyone’s creator, nor am I particularly powerful, but individual people concern me less and less, even my former friends. Then why should God himself be concerned about them?
So, who knows the real truth?
I suppose no one does. It’s dangerous to positively assert anything about a human. A human is significantly larger than any proposition. Maybe it would be more appropriate to speak of them only in negatives? Lolita Banytė-Žilienė’s father was not a shoemaker. She was not bald, she wasn’t lame, she was never a boy. You could go on this way indefinitely. But there won’t be any real answers anyway, because only Nobody knows.