I would like to be stone, water, moon, star. With eyes and a sense of my surroundings. But it’s hard for me to become a cog in a machine, because I keep remembering Elena’s fist banging on my door. I didn’t let her in. I heard how she called my name and sobbed and fumed, and then slowly, pausing, went back down the stairs. And through the window I saw her walking in the street. Her face, as she glanced back up several times. And it’s hard, because I still want to write. Will Elena help me write? Extreme individualism? That ancient, egotistical exploitation of one’s neighbour? To be pleasured in bed and even get a few legends out of it? To orchestrate suffering and material for the sake of a decent poem?
Should I hire a servant?
He could follow me around, holding an umbrella over my head, and I would be able to observe and analyse the rain without getting wet. But I want to walk alone, bareheaded, and don’t need any help. Up ir down, up ir down.{30 ir: “and” in Lithuanian, often used here in the expression, “up ir down,” as it is in the original.} Old legends die hard. There’s truth in Sisyphus’s meaninglessness. When he falls, someone else will put their weight against the boulder.
“Nice weather today,” Garšva says to the grey gentleman who has decided to go for a walk along 34th. “You can have a good meal downstairs,” to the newlyweds who see only reflections of their embraces in each other’s eyes. “Oh yes, Rocky Marciano is sure to win,” to the former boxer who proudly touches his broken nose. “No, madam, I am not French,” to the girlish old lady.
And yet I can’t forget. All my problems dissolve because I can still feel Elena’s greyness. For renunciation was not dictated by boredom and fatigue.
Two people. Two stones, capable of speech and feeling.
“That is correct, sir. The chinchillas are on the eighteenth.”
They squat in their little wooden cages, staring ahead innocently and soiling the straw. They’re like shabby rabbits, those chinchillas. Why the hell would people skin them for fur coats?
Chapter 4
The sleek Studebaker raced along the tree-lined highway. Arched bridges flashed above their heads and the radio would fall silent for a moment, and then the singer would rage on again in metal-grinding tones. The engineer drove confidently. He slowed down just slightly at turns, the speedometer going back to seventy as the highway once again narrowed towards a patch of blue sky.
Elena sat with Garšva in the back seat. A small woman with a grey dress, greyish hair, grey eyes and the face of a Baldovinetti Madonna. The full lips, a detail the painter had added to accentuate her greyness. A cigarette smouldered between her thin fingers, an anachronism that matched the full lips. And she might have pulled her nylons on too quickly, because the right seam was twisted to the side. In front – the engineer’s broad back, a monumental shelter as comfortingly solid as a marble portico, set off Elena’s well-proportioned fragility. A plume of blue smoke rose from the cigarette, the grey eyes scanned Garšva with calm curiosity. The Studebaker careered down the grey highway through a current of green forest, the road a frozen canal, pieces of cloud slid across the blue sky, and the sun poked out unexpectedly, the layer of light powder on Elena’s face a reflection of the greyness enveloping the car.
“Do you like nature?” she asked, a banal way to break the extended silence, then threw the cigarette butt out the window, where it flew off like a lifeless moth, and old, immortal shades quivered in this mechanical little world. A minor nymph dipped her feet in a spring as a slender faun watched her, and grey filaments of smoke crept out the half-opened windows, airing out the smoky car interior.
“I love water,” said Garšva.
The highway curved as they passed by millionaire neighbourhoods. Past a Fred Astaire dance studio, puritanically trimmed parks, colonial-style villas, the odd Cadillac still in the drive, and the final flash of a red Shell sign.
“My wife doesn’t like nature. She’s still in love with Vilnius,” the engineer hurled over his shoulder, turning up the radio. Another pop song, a hoarse mezzo-soprano begged to be embraced and moaned with deliberate sexuality.
Garšva studied Elena’s hair and the sun disappeared once again, like a woman sitting in front of a child focused on his wooden blocks.
“I never lived in Vilnius. I know it only from frequent visits. But I remember one occurrence. A narrow street in the Jewish ghetto.{31 This refers to the traditional Jewish quarter of Vilnius in the heart of the Old Town, where Jewish life flourished from medieval times up to the Second World War. During the German occupation of Lithuania (June 1941 to January 1945), Nazi authorities established two ghettos in Vilnius: the Small Ghetto, which was located in the area referred to by Garšva and which was liquidated in 1941, and the Large Ghetto, which was liquidated in 1943.} 1939. It was strange, beneath an archway connecting the low buildings, I met this nun, she was young and frightened and lost, and asked me for directions, but I wasn’t sure myself. I suggested we look for the way together. We walked along, not sure what to talk about. It was summer, late morning, the low buildings looked empty. Along the way we met a street urchin but I couldn’t get anything out of him, even though I gave him a few coins, and my nun smiled. I don’t know how the two of us ended up somewhere near the Gates of Dawn.{32 Aušros Vartai (The Gates of Dawn) a sixteenth-century Vilnius city gate and popular Catholic and Orthodox site of devotion that contains a famous icon, the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of Mercy.} As we parted, the nun said ‘God bless you’ and blushed slightly. I don’t know why, but to me this searching captures the atmosphere of Vilnius. That city’s essence has always eluded me. I often got lost in Vilnius.”
“You should have asked the nun on a date – you might have discovered that essence,” added the engineer merrily. Elena’s lips quivered.
“I suspect she would have made the sign of the cross over me and that would have been the end of it,” replied Garšva.
“Did you see the sculptures of dead noblemen on the cornices? On Pylimo Street?” asked Elena without looking at Garšva.
“I have a vague memory. I think I’ve seen them.”
“They led you astray,” she said and smiled to herself, as though Garšva were not there. The engineer turned back suddenly.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing much. We were just remembering Pylimo Street.”
“Ah,” and the engineer turned his attention back to the wheel. The tragic melody of a lost body was replaced by the mezzo-soprano’s sexual moans. The forest’s leafy greenness vanished. The highway cut through marshland. Small marsh lakes dotted with fishing rowboats, wooden changing cabins on the shores, fields of reeds. A great canopy of grey sky hung over the marsh, not a single patch of blue, the light of the sun seeped through the clouds with leaden indifference and a conspiracy developed inside the car. The woman’s hands rested on her knees, the man’s on the vinyl seat cover. And the woman began to breathe faster, and the man could hear his heart beating. The spring water froze the soaking feet, and the faun had to close his eyes from the sun. Like statues nudged by ghosts, they shifted closer.
“If we’re now talking about spiritual matters, I would hazard to say that details illuminate an atmosphere,” said Garšva quietly, so that only Elena could hear.
“Could you tell me about the noblemen’s heads?”
“One day,” replied Elena softly.
“And there’s the Jones Beach tower!” shouted the engineer.