On the other hand, The Plague or The Stranger brazenly intrude into Their inviolable domain. The portrayal of the plague is strongly reminiscent of an allegory of Their system, while Meursault is one of the most influential portraits of a kanuked being. There’s no sense delving into Camus’s actual activities — the most significant things won’t be found in the tangle of his biography. But his death is worth pondering. Perhaps at first Camus was an obedient (let’s say an inadvertent) servant of Theirs, and later he saw through things. Maybe he was cleverly feigning all the time, secretly damaging Them. We can only speculate. One way or another, he slowly began behaving in an unacceptable manner; maybe he even did things to Them that we are forbidden to talk about (even to think about them is dangerous). Retribution was quick. The fatalistic death, the lost manuscripts — all of that’s in an all-too-familiar style. Gediminas’s letters also disappeared without a trace.
Camus’s precedent was the first I wrote into the great list of Their victims.
The fact that you won’t find straightforward information about Them in books ultimately proves They exist. It would be easy to fight with a concrete societal or political organization that everyone knows or has at least come across. An identified enemy is almost a conquered enemy. Everyone would have risen up against Them a long time ago; They would have been destroyed at some point. Unfortunately, Their race exists and works harmoniously. This proves that they’re hidden, undiscovered, uninvestigated. But whether They want to or not, they leave traces behind. All of Their victims are indelible footprints. Let’s take the story of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. Anyone who’s seen Polanski’s films will understand that he should have shut his trap (or more precisely — broken his film camera). Both his vampires and Rosemary’s Baby slowly, but unavoidably, lead to Their lair. True, Satan Manson (his leaders!) miscalculated something, Polanski was left unharmed, his wife died (or maybe that was just exactly Their patho-logical plan). However, the time will come yet when some barb-eyed Circe of the Hollywood villas will do him in. It’s silly to talk about a shortage of footprints. There are plenty of prints — it’s even horrifying how many there are, those most often bloody footprints of Theirs.
Sometimes it’s almost suspicious how far individual researchers manage to get. I’m not even talking about Kafka. There’s another one who particularly astounded me. He’s from Buenos Aires, by the name of Ernesto Sabato. I was simply horrified when I read his book. I couldn’t believe my eyes: Sabato openly described some of Their methods — although it’s true, he didn’t mention anything at all about Their goals. In addition, he persistently associated them with the powers of hell. That aroused my suspicions. Strangest of all, he wrote about the blind, and they, after all, don’t have a gaze. At first I just couldn’t understand this inversion. It sufficed to scrutinize two words — AKLAS and AKYLAS: AK(Y)LAS, the words for blind and sharp-sighted. Perhaps the particularly archaic Lithuanian language has preserved even more secret connections, connections which They have managed to eliminate from other languages?
However, this discovery didn’t solve the problem of Ernesto Sabato, and it didn’t dispel my suspicions. It wasn’t plausible that an Argentinean would know Lithuanian. Unfortunately, I’ll never travel to Argentina, I’ll never speak to him nor track him down. However, his picture fell into my hands in the nick of time.
A man with a pudgy little face and small eyes looked out of the photograph, a man who looked sufficiently satisfied with himself. Not at all like a man condemned to death, a man who knows the secrets of The Way. Besides, he’s too well-known, at least in Argentina. Argentina — where a good number of Hitler’s toadies hid! All of these facts opened my eyes. Sabato’s book is merely a clever attempt to turn the search in an erroneous direction. They set quite a few traps like that. I was saved by my native language and vigilance. They didn’t succeed in fooling me.
I don’t know why it’s the Lithuanian language in particular. I don’t know why it’s in Lithuania in particular that They so openly show themselves, or disguise themselves so poorly. I don’t know why it’s Vilnius in particular that’s so important. All of that is still a mystery to me.
They overshot, if they think that I’ll study only the books in my own library. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the University’s manuscript sections. There I came across a manuscript, a transcript of a pre-war dissertation, that shocked me.
During the time of Zygimantas Augustus (the second half of the 16th century), a Basilisk appeared in Vilnius that killed people with its gaze. It was the horrible metamorphosis of a bird; it killed people with the power of its eyes, or sometimes with a deep breath. It hid in the mysterious Didžiosios Street district and had been discovered, but later disappeared. It was possible to temporarily defend yourself from its powers with dry tree leaves — they absorbed the strength of its gaze.
In the dissertation, this unique information was described as if merely in passing, as one of many legends of Vilnius — with the author’s (a woman’s!) perfectly understandable caution. After I read this, I didn’t sleep for several nights. I frantically looked for information about the Vilnius Basilisk — unfortunately, in vain.
Yet one more very important observation: students at Vilnius University used to organize ceremonies celebrating victory over the Basilisk, but later they were forbidden and forgotten.
How much more invaluable information from the past is still hidden in manuscripts!
She talks and talks; she’s been quiet for too long. Even now she’s silent the entire workday and doesn’t even glance at me, while I fume, irritated by blond-fluffed Stefa buzzing around me. At one time I used her in some of my inquiries. Lolita avoids her; she avoids them all, but after work, left alone with me, she bursts out. We spend entire evenings walking around Vilnius; I haven’t roamed through the city this much in a long time. Lola constantly scatters words, sentences, and difficult tirades about. In the narrow little streets, in the grim gateways, next to the old houses, the words she’s spoken pile up in heaps. They are distinctive: smaller or larger, arranged tidily or thrown about any which way. They pretend to be rocks, tree leaves swept together, or even trash.
She talks incessantly.
“Vytas,” is how it most often starts, “Vytas, do you want me to tell you about. .”
A typical woman’s question. How can I say what I want? But the worst of it is that I do enjoy it when she talks. I enjoy listening to her like music. She improvises as she speaks, returning to the same place (in the story and in the city) a hundred times, or turning in circles, or wandering aimlessly. She starts to talk about her village, about her grandparents, and I know we’ll shortly turn up in Gediminas Square. Mentioning her husband, we’re surely cutting across Vokiečių Street (now it’s Muziejaus). Her jazz of words and routes has become part of me; we’re not just walking through Vilnius, but through my internal streets too.