“If I understand you to some degree, then… it will fly out. And when the little boy is let in to see his dying mother, he’ll be sad about the blue fly, because it flew off.”
Elena’s words had a new, brittle tone.
“Thank you for the gift,” said Garšva. Elena glanced at him quizzically, and there was fear in her eyes.
“I wasn’t mistaken. I knew I needed your help. That time, in the car, you decided that the nun and I got lost because of the dead noblemen’s heads. I understood intuitively: you will solve the problem of the boy in the closed room.”
“I’m just a former high school teacher. And I love Vilnius,” said Elena. She carefully extinguished her cigarette with the heel of her shoe, and Garšva noticed that her right stocking was on crookedly again today. He noticed that her face powder had been applied unevenly, that her eyebrows had been extended too thickly, her lips painted more brightly, so that Elena was no longer the little grey woman she had been the day before yesterday at Jones Beach. A moment ago there had been fear in her greyish eyes, and Garšva knew this look. From the mirror he used to look at when the invisible hands started choking him.
“I know. Memories mean old age. Oh no, I am thirty-two years old. I meant old age figuratively. And I’m angry. Some ladies I know talk a lot about the past. They remember fashions, faces, dish sets, maids. But I remember the noblemen’s heads, the statues on the roof of the Cathedral, the stone wall by Rasų Cemetery, the columns of the Vilnius University courtyard… I am just like my acquaintances.”{47 Elena is referring to well-known Vilnius landmarks.}
She fell silent, she contemplated the skyscraper towers. Garšva shifted, and she said, “I can guess what you’re going to suggest. I read your poems and articles. I tried to retrace your steps. Yes, I saw Modigliani’s reclining woman in a tiny gallery. The magical yellowishness, the Byzantine sadness, as you wrote. You quoted Cocteau, a fresco related to the ones in the temples at Luxor. At the Museum of Modern Art I looked at your Soutine, the congealed blood in the folds of a young Jewish boy’s clothing. At the Metropolitan I tried to see the ornamental purity of the Persian miniatures. And in the Museum of Natural History I found a copy of a round head, an ancient meteor that had fallen in the desert, just as you wrote. I won’t go to look at them any more.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t go to look at them any more,” Elena repeated.
Garšva shifted.
“You want to run off again?” asked Elena, and Garšva stuffed his hands into his pockets.
“Not at all. I just feel a little excited. You are a reader who remembers entire sentences. And you say that you won’t go back to look at them any more.”
Elena laughed. For the first time Garšva had a good look at her teeth. Fine, even, bluish. With good quality fillings. He once again heard a brittle tone in her laugh.
“How old are you?”
“Forty-one.”
“How childish you are! I imagined an ironic character. And you get excited like a high school student.”
“Put your hands on your purse,” said Garšva coldly. “If I’m excited and stuffed my hands into my pockets, so that I wouldn’t clutch the bench, then you should not crumple your skirt. You would do better to crumple the leather of your purse.”
A faint blush broke through the layer of powder, fingers trembled and froze clutching skirt folds. Sharp shoe heels bore into the gravel. Leg muscles, and the ones around the lips, tightened. This went on for a few seconds and then Elena’s body gradually relaxed, and she leaned back like a worker on a break.
“Forgive me. I’m a poet, but I can also be terribly prosaic,” Garšva said softly.
Elena did not reply. Two fat pigeons were strolling along the path, lazily swaying their stomachs like pregnant women. A black-haired boy flew by like a madman on a red bicycle. A silver sweetie wrapper sparkled annoyingly on the ground.
“Tell me about your Vilnius,” said Garšva. Elena’s eyelashes were wet. She was still leaning back against the bench, the remnants of a meagre smile playing on her closed lips.
“You’re mistaken. I wasn’t disappointed by your poems and articles. That’s my own fault. They make me feel my past more strongly. When I looked at your artists and took in your images, I saw my own Vilnius more clearly, and it was painful. I had thought that my memories would comfort me until my death. Your writing forces one to suffer. It’s like pouring boiling oil on a wound.”
“You are my second reader.”
“Who is the first?”
“I myself.”
Elena stood up, and the fat pigeons weren’t startled. They turned their little heads, and their tiny beadlike eyes went brown.
“I’m going home,” said Elena.
“You haven’t told me about them,” said Garšva, still seated. Elena was smoothing out the folds of her plaid skirt.
“I’m going home. I have to pick up a few things, prepare dinner.”
“You haven’t told me about them,” said Garšva, now standing. One of the pigeons staggered off, the other continued to look around with its little bead eyes.
“You stay here. I’ll go back alone.”
Elena bent her head. A fold in her neck revealed a brown mole that looked like a pigeon’s eye.
“Forgive me. I can’t stay any longer. Maybe, some day, some other time.”
Garšva noticed that Elena’s eyelashes were even wetter. He took her hand and she didn’t pull it back.
“Tomorrow?” whispered Garšva.
The pigeons flew off.
The deaf bouncing of a ball against the cement wall echoed from the playgrounds, the sun turned, the little silver wrapper no longer sparkled, the narrow ladder on the cistern shone, and Elena asked, “Is it necessary?”
Garšva looked at her now dryer eyes and his answer corresponded with the echo of a ball. “Yes, it’s necessary.”
“At what time?”
“I start work tomorrow at four thirty in the afternoon. If ten o’clock works for you…”
“I’ll be here at ten,” said Elena, and Garšva let go of her hand.
“Don’t walk with me. I want to go back alone. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
“I knew you would come,” Elena said unexpectedly. And walked off. With small, hurried steps. The plaid skirt rustled as it moved away. And Garšva watched the grey hair and the white blouse. Until Elena turned on to Bedford Avenue.
Antanas Garšva lets off a small group of aged boxers. They’re riding from floor to floor, glasses of whisky in their hands, visiting each other’s identical rooms. They laugh too hard, and with clenched fists imitate the blows they gave and received years ago. On his way out, a stocky man with the narrowest forehead and flattened ears gives Garšva a little punch in the shoulder. Garšva sways with his whole body and touches the stocky man’s chest with his fist. The little group laughs. “Go for it, boy! Give it to him. He was kissing the ground in the second round.” And one of them presses a quarter into Garšva’s hand. They go off down the corridor, swaying side to side, still feeling young and strong from the whisky. Garšva closes the elevator door.
Chapter 8
During the first Bolshevik occupation, Antanas Garšva wasn’t able to publish his poems or articles in any of the Soviet newspapers or magazines.{48} His work was called reactionary and formalist. Garšva and his father lived in the summer cottage at Aukštoji Panemunė. It was a small cottage. Four rooms, a kitchen, a glassed-in porch. A surveyor and his wife rented two of the rooms; quiet people who played chess in their spare time.