Garšva’s father would mope around the garden, lingering by the pear trees (the ones he had once ordered from Denmark), fingering the green fruit. The Bolsheviks had cut off his pension because he was a Knight of the Order of Gediminas, an honour that, as a distinguished Lithuanian government official, he had once been forced to purchase. Garšva’s father spoke little to Garšva. The fingering of the pears was a reduced version of that earlier meditation on the bank of the Nemunas, when his father had gazed at Pažaislis Monastery. Now Russian soldiers meditated there, bayonets thrust on to the ends of their rifles, shouting “Away!” to anyone who approached. His father didn’t touch his violin any more. It hung on the wall gathering dust, and the one time his father strummed a chord it must have echoed loudly in his heart because he grimaced as though he had tasted something bitter, and he strode out to the garden, his hand on his chest – an old-fashioned courtier bearing a declaration of love.
That calm summer evening Garšva was sitting in the glassed-in porch, writing. Acacia bushes grew just outside, a wooden fence separated the little world of the cottage from the quiet street. A lamp with a bell-shaped shade stood on a cross-legged table. A nightingale trilled in the evening calm.
Certain poets have mercilessly embellished this vigorous, syncopated decline, Garšva thought to himself. He remembered the old Lithuanian polyphonies his father had once hummed, so true in their lyric atonality. Then serfdom was imposed, and later, all the freed slaves could do was try to compete with their masters: by harmonising their songs and importing a brittle Olympus to the North.{49} Perkūnas, Pykuolis, Patrimpas, high priests and priestesses, imported southern gods and their servants quickly donned Lithuanian folk costumes.{50}
The nightingale’s ancient song. Jehovah had neglected this land, had focused all of his attention on Asia Minor.
The room had white plaster walls. An unpainted table stood by the window. Two chairs. A cheap felt hat with a soaked brim hung on a nail. Antanas Garšva noticed a heavy paperweight, with fake marble veins, on the table, next to a stained inkpot.
Triangular firs, Lithuanian temple spires, rose to the stars from impenetrable bogs. Gliding mists; dishevelled fairies; small, shabby kaukai; sprites whirring through the air; field and farm deities wrung from the earth. Abstract nature gods, perpetually changing shape.
trilled the nightingale. One had only to stand deep in the forest and watch the grass snakes hugging the ground, the toads contemplating the universe through their bulging eyes. One had only to meditate, suspending thought. Words were still magical formulae. As mysterious and meaningful as the formation of the mists. One had only to watch the sharp-tongued flames of the eternal fire: they lit up the firs – the towers – in the shrine of the great, immeasurable earth. To be born, to live, to die. To dissolve in the mists, to climb up on to high benches, to sometimes wander through familiar forests and marshes.{52}
And if sadness and fear should descend, one could whittle pieces of wood into half-human carvings and place them by the roadsides.{53} Sad fear sculpted into the long wrinkles, the shortened torsos, a final surrender to the earth. These wooden sculptures did not compete with nature. Personifications recognisable in the embraces of gnarled trunks, tangled roots, the movements of lakes and rivers. A sad fear protecting the living.
trilled the nightingale.
Honeycombs, rye ears, rue, tulips and lilies. Lazy, sweet-toothed bears. Pine resin – golden amber, Baltic foam slowly dissolving into the amber sand.
With the back of his hand, Garšva once more wiped the blood that continued to flow from his nose. He glanced at his hand, then at the inkpot. The inkpot was full of black ink. Simutis sighed deeply.
“You tossed it into the Nemunas? Zuika was right. It’s a good thing you’re an idiot. Only an idiot would go to the bus station that same morning.”
“I had two weeks,” Garšva replied, sniffling.
“In the veranda,” said Simutis.
The wicket gate swung open. Two men entered the veranda and stood before Garšva. Two greenish silhouettes outlined by the light of the table lamp. The world of the past sunk into non-existence. Antanas Garšva stood up, pressing his hands against the table.
“Hello, Comrade Garšva,” said the poet Zuika. During the years of independence he had written occasional poems. About war, about Vilnius, about national holidays. The poems contained plenty of exclamation marks and frequently repeated the word “Lithuania”. And he was still writing commissioned poems. About war, about Moscow, about Communist holidays. These poems were not that different. They contained plenty of exclamation marks and frequently repeated the word “Stalin”.
Zuika was a short man with a handsome face, a small head, hair of an ambiguous colour, and eyes red from insomnia or drink. He had plump, feminine hands, clean and manicured. He looked at them continuously. Garšva didn’t recognise the second man. Tall and broad-shouldered, with prominent cheekbones, a low forehead and a strong chin, he looked more like a factory foreman.
“Comrade Simutis. He spent four years in prison,” stated Zuika. A plump hand flew out and back, as though Zuika were a policeman directing traffic.
“Sit down,” said Garšva, seating himself. Zuika positioned himself on the bench, Simutis leaned against the veranda window frame and placed his right foot on the rustic white bench. His foot, in its hard, black shoe, was disproportionately long.
“Don’t be surprised that we have dropped in on you at night,” said Zuika in his smooth tenor voice. Garšva was confused. He barely knew Zuika, so the man’s familiar tone surprised him. Zuika snatched up the sheet of handwriting. Suddenly they were children. Garšva lunged for the sheet, but Zuika hid it behind his back. Simutis quickly sat down on the bench between Garšva and Zuika. The sheet reappeared and Zuika read it out loud, his lips quivering with sarcasm.
“A typical blend of decadence and bourgeois folklore,” said Zuika.
“It’s the first draft. Just the beginning of a poem,” replied Garšva, instantly realising that, for some reason, he was justifying himself. Then he spoke calmly, as though scanning his words.
“What right do you have to come here at night and check on me?”
“Calm down. The working people have the right to inspect. And Comrade Simutis here works for the glorious NKVD.”
The plump little hand repeated the policeman’s gesture. For a moment they were all silent. “I am not obliged to be afraid,” thought Garšva, and then spoke:
“If I remember correctly, a stanza in one of your poems went like this: