“Why do I talk about it? I don’t know. . Sometimes it seems to me that she was a genuine Lithuanian, a Lithuanian of Lithuanians — with that idea of hers, of innocence. It’s like a national illness, you know? She tried to be innocent in absolutely everything. It was practically a religious aspiration, an unrealistic yearning. Her slogan should have been: ‘Never take a step!’ And: ‘If someone comes close to you, don’t wait, don’t stand in place — run as fast as you can!’ She wanted to be innocent in absolutely everything. . Not God’s fiancée, no, no, not that at all. . I’d say she didn’t want to surrender to the world, or something. If it were at all possible not to do something new, something unknown, something she hadn’t experienced yet — she wouldn’t do it. Understand?. . If she had never been somewhere, she avoided going there. She tried her best to never go beyond the borders of the smells, events, and ceremonies she had already experienced; anything new could injure her mystical innocence. . Don’t touch that flower, she would say, don’t show it to me!. . Don’t tell me about the sea, never, ever, tell me about the sea! We got into a horrible row the first time I secretly ran off to the sea!. . Never mind the sea, she had never tasted lemons! A lemon could injure her innocence, you know?”
“So, it’s always about your mother. And you?”
Lolita moves her legs uneasily, rubs her cheek with a finger; bars of light slink over her chest, briefly light up her navel and the lower part of her belly, the thick, curled-up hair. Her mother intimidates me. I don’t want to hear another word about her mother. She was my age. Someone my age, obsessed with a pathological idea of innocence.
Lolita suddenly sits up, bends her somewhat spread legs and leans on her knees with her elbows, her hands hanging down, her fingers almost reaching her ankles. The halo of thick hair glows with an angry fire around her head. Her body, unusually coarse, almost vulgar, looks at me rapaciously; the plainly visible dark sexual opening irritates me. It’s only like that for a few moments. The lamp is ashamed and hides behind her back; now her face, her entire front, is in shadow, and her voice is much calmer.
“Don’t make fun of my mother. Her world was bigger than ours. Just think how much she invented about those things she never experienced, the things she denied herself. . I envy that ideal world of hers. . Imagine it — you invent a lemon yourself. With all the details, with a bunch of non-existent characteristics. . Come on now, a real lemon compared to an ideal like that — nothing more than a fog, a banal yellow fruit, while yours. . She was a theoretician, an aesthete; I went for practice and experimentation. She pounded that abstract idea of innocence into me so thoroughly that to this day I’m dying to lose my innocence in every possible sense, to try out everything immediately, to run looking who knows where, and to constantly look, to look for something never seen, never experienced, never known. . And I like just exactly the kind of men I can’t understand, the kind I don’t know what to expect from. . Understand?”
“And I’m that kind?”
“You understand. .” she blurts out, and continues down the street. “You understand everything perfectly well. You’re intelligent. Besides, you have your secret, and I don’t know what it is. . And I don’t want to know. . If I were to know, then at least I could predict what you’ll do, how you’ll behave. . And I don’t want that. . I want to experience everything myself, understand?”
She gets more and more furious; her voice angrily cuts the air of Pilies Street into pieces, and then flings them in my face. It is slowly getting lighter, or it hasn’t gotten dark yet. By now we have almost gone the entire street to the end. By now she has almost gotten all of it out — earlier, now, later.
“What did you ask me to begin with?” she says sadly. “Why am I telling you this drivel?”
“You were explaining why you’re attracted to horrible people.”
“Oh. . Because I can see only two signs in a person’s face — either unhappiness, or peace. The kind of peace that means stupidity, clean business, bacon, money, very soft furniture, fear of authority, endlessly just and moral behavior, shiny shoes that are never dirty, perfectly even dentures, a precise daily schedule, peaceful sleep. .”
In an instant the mood changes; suddenly Lolita is quiet, and without her voice something inexplicable is going on in the dimness. I’m walking down a street of Old Town, a woman walks beside me, but I have absolutely no idea who she is — I know her name, a few of her real or invented stories, but does that really mean I know her? A completely strange, dangerous woman is walking next to me and probably wants something from me — at this moment or in general. She probably wants to use me, like all women do, or perhaps even to deceive me cruelly. An extremely graceful woman — I can’t get enough of her walk, her legs gliding as smoothly as in a dream. She’s very young; it’s not clear what she wants from me, this fairy of Vilnius. At any moment she could look at me with a magic glance and turn me into a stone, or a submissive slave. I feel I am in her power. She controls me with magical powers, or at least she could control me: if she were to look at me with her entrancing eyes I would obey, I would carry out any order. But she doesn’t look — maybe she thinks it’s still early, maybe she’s saving her authority for the critical moment. You have to guard against her; you shouldn’t admire her.
There’s practically no fog left; I see the streets, the square and the most important thing — the hill and Gediminas Castle. Here the Iron Wolf howled in Grand Duke Gediminas’s dream and promised the castle a great future. Now Vilnius itself is a dream city, a ghost city. Among the faceless figures walking the streets, the good dead of Vilnius (the old ones and the entirely new ones from the post-war period, the last Lithuanian aurochs) look much livelier. It’s not clear which is a dream — the ancient city or the Vilnius of today. Only the ancient castle in the new city is unavoidably reaclass="underline" a lonely tower, emerging from the overgrown slopes of the hill — the phallic symbol of Vilnius. It betrays all secrets. The symbolic phallus of Vilnius: short, stumpy and powerless. An organ of pseudo-powers that hasn’t been able to get aroused in a long time. A red three-story tower, a phallic NOTHING, shamelessly shown to everyone, Vilnius’s image of powerlessness. The great symbol of a castrated city, of castrated Lithuania, stuck onto every postcard, into every photo album, every tourist brochure. A perverted, shameless symboclass="underline" its impotence should be hidden, not acknowledged, or it should at least pretend it’s still capable of a thing or two. But the city has long since lost everything — even its self-respect. Only lies, absurdity, and fear remain.
For some reason I’m sitting in the break room again, someone’s tossed me into a room with peeling plaster and set women around me. Besides myself, there’s only one man here — Martynas Poška, our library’s sad little chatterbox, a weird variety of crew-cut deity, a pathetic searcher for justice, and a collector of absurdities. At one time I even thought he was walking at least in parallel on The Way; I was shocked by his thin, long face, his eyes brimming with horror, his spineless whispers: “They don’t need it. . it was done intentionally. . a Satanic system. .” But you scarcely start to think Martynas could be one of your own, when he brushes his hand across his face, suddenly changing it for another, and again I see the sneering crew-cut Martynas, the library’s sad little chatterbox. Someone like that can’t walk The Way, thank God, he can’t be Their spy, either: in whatever company, he’s the one that talks the most. And I always listen. I don’t disdain any conversation, any company. He who knows The Way doesn’t have the right to disdain people who have been kanuked; he knows all too well that his great discoveries and advantages are just a matter of fate, and only his mistakes are truly earned. You cannot condemn those around you; the desire to demean others is inspired by Them. Everyone should be viewed with secret hope, and their words examined for expression of a strong spirit. Almost no one is completely kanuked.