“I’m drawn to horrible people,” she says with inner fear. This is a favorite theme of hers (down Gedimino Boulevard, then to Tortorių Street, deeper and deeper into the bowels of Vilnius). “I’m fascinated by doomed men, the ones that smell of misfortune from a distance. .”
Now she’s a bodiless, extinct, paralyzed fairy of Vilnius: a pale shadow on the dark background of a wall, a dark shadow on the background of a bright wall. The charms of Lola’s body have vanished somewhere. I don’t even notice her breasts or the mysterious roundness of her belly; I listen more than I look. I like Lolita’s voice. In it I hear the quiet rustle of an inner fire; the fire there isn’t extinguished yet. Her voice is multifaceted: you can hear her girlish dreams and her desires in it, her favorite music, even her breasts and her long legs wrapped in fluids of beauty.
Now I’m walking beside her; I see her lips, I even see the words themselves — it’s a shame they fall on the sidewalk and roll into the dark portals; they should be collected and saved.
“I’m persecuted by people who are marked with the sign of misfortune,” she repeats seriously. “It sounds silly: marked with the sign of misfortune, like in a Russian ballad. . We no longer know how to say what we want to say, there are just strangers’ phrases in our heads. . Although, no, I know: if everyone were to speak their own language, we’d never understand one another. But it would be so beautiful!. . The sign of misfortune. . I look for that kind of person myself, that’s the worst. The other kind don’t interest me. . What is a man, Vytas?”
“A face and sexual organs. To distinguish them from others and to multiply!”
“Jesus and Mary,” she sighs, “You’re a silly, foul-mouthed person. A man is his eyes. Eyes are everything, even if you’re physically blind. And the invisible fiery brand on a person’s forehead.”
She suddenly stops. She frequently comes to a standstill this way, as if she had to hammer in a little stake here, to leave a sign. In just this spot. Here, where she spoke of eyes.
“And me?” I ask, because by now we have turned in the direction of the University and my turn to speak has come. “What’s written on my forehead? Or written on some other spot? What’s written there that’s so significant, that you fell for a dying old man? It isn’t by chance an Electra complex?”
“You’re a pig. And terribly spiteful,” she says, after a long, long silence (all the way to Stiklių Street). “You hate me. This always, always happens to me. .”
Suddenly she stops on the very corner, and leans against the wall; her face looks up, straight at me. Now she has a body: and eyes, turned in towards herself, and breasts (they furiously press up against me), and the curves of the thighs hidden under her clothing, and her flat goddess’s belly. She suddenly comes to life, her eyes blaze and her fingers angrily pick at the wall.
“And if I were to start needling at you too? We’d go on picking on one another? You’d get mad first. Men are very touchy.”
I follow from behind, hanging back a bit, and wait patiently, because she speaks of intimate things only in Didžiosios Street. (Now she’s in Gorky Street. What a sad, sad absurdity — what does some Gorky, a miserable kanukized servant, have in common with Vilnius?) It’s only in this street, descending downwards, that she talks about what matters most to her. (Climbing up she always asks me about the camp.) It’s probably still quite early, but Vilnius is empty. Vilnius gets emptier by the day — the emptier it gets, the worse the crush in the streets. A dead city, and above it hangs a fog of submissive, disgusting fear. Vilnius, which I love, Vilnius, which is I myself, buried under lava like Pompeii, under the seas like Atlantis. Lolita and I are shadows: the live Vilniutians, that throng of ants, that murky river, don’t wander the evening streets, don’t talk the way we do.
“I can’t stand dead ideas,” she suddenly says. “I can’t stand symbols and metaphors. . My mother was obsessed with the idea of innocence. The idea of consummate innocence. Do you know what innocence is?”
“This membrane in the vagina. Sometimes very difficult to tear.”
“Vytas, stop it,” she fumes. “You’re making fun of me. I won’t tell you anything. . Although as it happens, it was exactly with a membrane that everything started. .”
Agitated, she looks around as if she were searching for ears in the walls, then she cowers and whispers. Even her whisper plays its own music. She doesn’t hiss like others do; you’d think she was uttering secret curses — only genuine fairies know them.
“Whoever walks between these walls can’t be innocent. This damn city wouldn’t put up with innocence. . But no, I was talking about the past, about my mother. . At first my maidenly innocence really was what mattered most to her. You can’t imagine how much you can talk about that. How many days, evenings, nights. For years! Mother started when I was about six. I’d run around the yards, mostly with the boys. For some reason I wasn’t attracted to dolls; I liked hideaways, ruins and boys better. . She immediately started in giving me lectures about innocence. She wanted to explain what innocence is. Abstract innocence — that’s what mattered most to her. It was complete mysticism. . Later she switched to concrete maidenly innocence, as a separate example. She explained in excruciating detail all the methods whereby, in her opinion, it was possible to lose your innocence. All night long — so I would know what I had to avoid. Her imagination was nightmarish. But enough of that. . Of course, I didn’t understand anything, but an image of mystical innocence formed within me. A live innocence. . Practically a little beast. . It was so. . sticky, without any holes or openings, hairy, and really cold — so you wouldn’t want to touch it. My six- or seven-year-old brain was full of that cold, hairy innocence, can you imagine? I’d dream of it. And how did everything turn out?”
She stops again, as if she needs to concentrate to answer, and takes a deep breath of air, Vilnius’s gray air. It smells of decay. Every evening street of Vilnius looks like a narrow path through an invisible bog. If you were to go a couple of steps to the side you’d immediately feel the sweetish breath of the swamp, the smell of peaceful decay.
“Do you know how it all ended up? Quite naturally: I began to hate any kind of innocence. If I had only understood what my mother was explaining to me, I would have lost my maidenly innocence by all possible means. I’ll tell you about my mother’s fantastic invented methods later, all right?”
I can’t be all right: we’re approaching the Narutis, approaching the lonely portal that quietly chats with Saint John’s church. There’s no talking here; I have to go by calmly, without disturbing the old smells that have seeped into the walls. And Lolita understands me, understands without a word, by now she’s standing in my room by the window and stroking the curtain. But no — she’s lying on the couch with her legs curled up under her.
Now she’s lying on the couch completely naked, her head leaning on her left hand, with her soft-skinned legs curled up under her. A secret fire burns within her — I still don’t know if she won’t set me on fire too. I only know what I see and feel now. I feel Lolita’s warmth, and I see her herself: the large, firm breasts, the belly hidden in half-shadow, the folded, twisted legs. I understand why an artist took her for a wife: he wanted to have an ideal model at hand every day. You could draw her, exclusively, your entire life. Not just her portraits — you could paint a meadow or a room: on the canvas there really will be a meadow or a room, but actually you’d draw her all the same. You can delve into her, express her, even though at that moment your paintbrush will leave an image of the Last Judgment on the canvas, or a still life of space-rending green peaches, or symmetrical gray squares. That’s just what the ordinary sight will see, but the second, true sight will invariably discern Lolita there.