She asked, “Are you angry?”
“Lousy band,” I replied.
Later I walked her home. The notary’s son had disappeared earlier, with the Jewish girl from Jonava. It was a warm summer evening, we walked along the narrow sidewalk, stepping carefully so as not to fall into the ditch that ran along it. It was a very good sidewalk. Old, worn and slippery, requiring me to grip Jonė’s arm above the elbow. After all, she could have slipped, she could have fallen into the ditch.
And when we reached the notary’s house with its long, open veranda we stopped, not sure what to talk about.
“Nice veranda,” I commented.
“Sometimes, at night, I sit here, when I can’t sleep,” said Jonė.
“What do you think about?”
“I dream.”
“About what?”
We were sitting on a wicker bench on the veranda. Facing us stretched an empty field, watched over by the summer moon. Like faint candles, train lights occasionally flashed in the distance across the field. The twinkling lights and fog hanging over the marsh blended with the moonlight.
Jonė didn’t reply, and I knew what to do. I was only nineteen, but knew something about embraces. I even had a running list of girlfriends. Seamstresses, factory workers, prostitutes. All I had to do was reach over and touch Jonė’s hair. And, if she didn’t turn her head away, I would be entitled to her neck, her shoulders, her lips. Without moving my hand I asked again:
“What do you dream about?”
“Nothing. Anything. I just sit and look at the field. I like warm summer nights like this and often can’t sleep.”
She stirred.
“I’m going to go in,” she said.
“Wait a second. Can we see each other?” It just escaped from my lips.
“I don’t know. They keep an eye on me. I have to listen to them.”
And she told me about her penniless father, a security guard at the Kaunas Conservatory, about her mother, soaking in a laundry, about the great fortune of having been taken into the notary’s care. And she got up.
“Wait until Vytautas gets back,” I said. That was the name of the notary’s son.
“I’m afraid. He’ll make fun of me.”
And I didn’t turn towards her. I got up and squeezed her small, hard hand and gave a gallant bow, as my mother had taught me. Then I turned like a soldier, stopped suddenly, turned around, and clumsily bent over to kiss Jonė’s forehead. Then I jumped from the veranda on to the narrow sidewalk, so that the notary’s house would recede as quickly as possible, so that I wouldn’t appear confused or silly. At the corner of my own street I met the whistling notary’s son.
“How was the Jewish girl?” I asked quickly.
“Tomorrow, by the semaphore. Same deal.” We chuckled cynically.
The same full moon shone the next night. I sat in my room, looking through the window at the moon’s craters, from where I thought poetry would wing its way down. I had decided to study literature. I wanted to write a few good poems over the summer, so I would enter university with some talent. Books lay on the table. Verlaine, Baudelaire, Poe, A Thousand and One Nights. I held a pen in my hand. I was ready to receive a moon crater muse at any moment. She would blind, pierce, reward me. A blank sheet of paper awaited. My alarm clock ticked. There were no dogs barking, no people’s voices, the small town was asleep. I knew that inspiration doesn’t just suddenly jump into a poet’s soul. I observed the moon’s craters, listened to the alarm clock, waited. But the muse wasn’t inclined to visit me. I thought to myself, “If only a dog would bark, or some drunk swear out loud!” It was quiet. I got up and glanced at the mirror on the wall. “Now that’s what I call a poet’s face,” I decided. “My long hair, my dreamy eyes. Yes, my skin is quite tanned – I could be from Brazil. Maybe I should drink wine, smoke a pipe and swear? Do I even need inspiration?” And I calmly began to write.
A good hour later I had a finished poem. It’s hard to remember it accurately now. It was something about three or four hanged men swaying from bleak linden branches. A harsh wind blew. A girl with tousled braids sobbed, her arms around the most handsome hanging man’s legs. And the poet was terribly sorry, because the (two or three) others didn’t have any passionately sobbing girls. At the end of the poem the moon shone, reacting to this tragedy with macabre resignation.
I straightened up victoriously. I glanced in the mirror and grinned, “Now there’s a poet.” But then I realised that another upper tooth had cracked. Black holes were ruining my smile. “Craters everywhere,” I thought to myself. And then, as it had in Palanga, my pride wilted.{38 Palanga: Lithuanian seaside resort town on the Baltic Sea.} I reread the poem. I didn’t like it any more. “Craters, craters, craters everywhere,” I repeated through clenched teeth. The poets lying on this table are killing me with their perfect stanzas. And where am I supposed to find an olive tree to sit under, like Homer, making beautiful marble arrangements? I need to get out, go for a walk, that’s recommended for anxious types. And I crept quietly out the door.
But as soon as my shoes began rhythmically tapping the sidewalk, I remembered Jonė. I looked at my watch. Just after twelve. Yesterday Jonė said that she often sits on the veranda daydreaming. A counterbalance to the craters! Tonight I will reach out with my hand, I will kiss Jonė’s lips instead of her forehead, I will hold her tight. And no, I won’t take her to the semaphore! I can sit holding her tightly much longer than I can work on my poem about the hanged men.
The veranda was empty. As was the wicker bench. And, like yesterday, the field stood bare, guarded over by the summer moon. And at the other end of the field some train lights twinkled sparsely, like faint candles, the twinkling lights and the fog on the marsh blending with the moonlight.
I waited for two or three hours. Every faint rustling, distant and obscure sound, swooping bat, a silence that was like music, except that the notes were so high I couldn’t hear them – each of these moved me, and I wanted to weep, and tried to control myself. Jonė didn’t come out to dream. I went home and ripped up my poem.
The holidays were coming to an end, and I was still only walking Jonė back from the lake. We traipsed all over the marsh. I would hold her hand, but didn’t dare kiss her, didn’t have the nerve to ask why she didn’t go out on to the veranda. And I had loitered around the notary’s house for two weeks now. Each night was the same. The moon’s left side slowly melted away.
And then one afternoon, as were walking back to her house, Jonė smelling of water, it just slipped out.
“You’re a little liar.”
“Me?” she asked, surprised.
“Yes, you. You never go out on the veranda at night. I know – I’ve been going over to your house. You pretend to be serious, but you’re a little liar.”
Jonė laughed. Her teeth were uneven, but white and shiny. She laughed for a long time, and I got angry.
“You shouldn’t laugh about romance.” Jonė was walking next to me, with her tanned legs, her little cloth sneakers.
“I can’t sit on the veranda,” she said. “I’d have to go through their rooms, and they’d wake up. I only dream about the veranda.”