“You’re seriously crazy,” said Ženia, sadly.
“Get out,” said Garšva calmly.
“You ate my bacon and eggs, and now you tell me to get out!” growled Ženia.
“There’s a gold-plated cigarette case in my room. Take it and get out,” Garšva said even more quietly.
The full moon floated away from the chimney. A heavenly Picasso had shattered the naive harmony. Cool air was forcing its way in through the open window. Garšva closed it shut. He wanted to say “Get out” one more time, but the calm that had wrapped itself around him was stronger. Garšva smiled, like the childish moon hanging over Artillery Park.
“I’m going to write a good poem,” he said gently.
“I’m starting to understand transcendence. The mist. The mist off the town marsh. The misty polyphonies. The mist in my head. Real mist. Mist gives birth to the word, it’s a phonetic mist… and what do you think, Ženia? I’ll use the marshes, I’ll use the pensive Christ, I’ll use lo eglelo, I’ll use – what else should I use? Eh, Ženia?”{62}
“Crazy idiot,” whispered Ženia.
“What else should I use, what else should I grab? Eh, Ženia?”
“Why don’t you grab your…,” she snapped and went inside. Garšva went out. He forgot about the full moon, which had glided over his house. The chimney of the barracks lock-up rose up straight, like a regular chimney. Garšva broke off an acacia branch.
Ženia stayed. She installed a wood stove in the veranda and hung army blankets on the windows. Two more girls moved into Garšva’s house: fair-haired, cheerful, buxom. It was a model bordello. Drunken songs echoed. The Germans were happy to drive to the countryside. Garšva’s literary colleagues ended up on the gravel road when they tried to liberate him. Ženia would bring her clients into the veranda and explain, in her broken German:
“He is a famous Lithuanian poet. The Bolsheviks tortured him horribly. They hit him on the head with a hammer, slowly, until he turned into an idiot. But he isn’t dangerous. He even writes. He is grateful to the German army… for the liberation.”{63}
The clients would scrutinise the smiling Garšva and offer him cognac. Garšva would drink, say “Ich danke Ihnen recht schoen” and shake their hands.{64} Then he would explain that Ženia and the German army had rescued him from squalor and that he was perfectly happy because he was free to meditate on transcendence. He would write an important book. It would contain a cycle of poems celebrating the glorious German army and its brilliant leader. He was a follower of the greatest mystic – Friedrich Nietzsche.
The customers agreed that Garšva was an intelligent madman and paid Ženia a higher fee, or brought impressive packages of food. “We are not Ivans – we are cultured people,” they would say.
The bordello was shut down unexpectedly. One of the girls stole a sergeant major’s gold watch. Ženia and the girls were thrown into prison, and Garšva’s colleagues had him admitted to hospital.
Garšva remembered distinctly the clear winter morning on which he fully regained consciousness. He woke up and glanced at the floor. It was scattered with green leaves. Garšva looked out the window. Thick snow blanketed the roofs. And beyond, white-capped Kaunas Cathedral. Garšva understood that he was in a hospital room. It was long, narrow, brown-walled. A metal bed, a little table, and a window – covered in a grate. Garšva threw off the blanket and sat up in the bed. He stroked his striped pyjamas. Then he picked up a leaf from the floor. It was made of paper. On the table lay thin wires with bits of green paper wound into them. Imitating tree branches. Garšva found the bell and pressed it. A nurse entered the room, a tall, older woman with the face of a nun.
“Good morning,” said Garšva.
“Good morning, Mr Garšva.”
Garšva was still holding a paper leaf.
The nurse was observing him searchingly.
“What does this mean?”
“It’s your favourite occupation.”
“I’ve been picking leaves from these wires?”
“A lot of the time. Occasionally, you wrote.”
“Can I take a look?”
The nurse opened the drawer of the little table and pulled out several pages of close handwriting. Garšva took them. He read, and the nurse stood watching him. He read out loud:
“Was I like this… for a long time?”
“Quite a while. Several months.”
“Could I speak to the doctor?”
“Right away.”
The nurse left. Garšva got up. A pocket mirror flashed in the open drawer. Garšva looked at himself. His hair had been shorn. A long winding scar ran down from the top of his head. Garšva saw a grey face, a few days’ stubble, unfamiliar lines around his mouth, a sagging chin. A doctor entered the room. A round, angelic face, slicked back hair, attractive in his clean coat.
“How are you feeling, my dear colleague?”
“I’m… not a doctor,” said Garšva, and placed the papers and mirror in the drawer.
“But I… am a poet. You have inspired me. You’ve been reciting folk songs. I return to the manor and meet an old woman carrying two bright candles,” recited the doctor, like a high-spirited police chief acting in the play The Murderer’s Son.
“How do you feel?” he asked, now more seriously.
Garšva swept his hand across his pyjamas.
“There’s a veranda, yes, the veranda of a summer cottage, a full moon, this girl, a German soldier with a bottle and… I think I’m saying something about Nietzsche.”
Garšva laughed suddenly. Then continued, apologetically.
“Oh, forgive me, doctor. A delayed reaction. You addressed me as your colleague. I understand, I had lost my senses. And how are you feeling?”
“I like you today,” the doctor exclaimed cheerfully. “But call me Doctor Ignas. That’s what everyone here calls me.”
A month later Garšva was released. And when the Bolsheviks returned to Lithuania, he fled to Germany.
The elevator goes up, the elevator goes down. Not all of his memories return. A partial amnesia remains. The polyphonies and the nightingale have travelled to the depths of his unconscious. The spring snow has melted. No more footprints in the steaming earth. But a new craving to retrieve the damp fragrance of the acacias, the nightingale, the ancient signs. I am like a scientist who has lost his formulae. And I don’t want to write a popular pamphlet. I must start again. Wait for a winter consciousness, for snow.
I want to go back to that evening in Aukštoji Panemunė, to the veranda. I need geometric mercy. Mysticism. Judgment.
We gather in the Valley of Josaphat. I arrive in a blue bus. It’s good that it’s blue. That’s a sign of hope. The driver won’t answer my questions, but I don’t mind, it’s best not to speak to bus drivers. I’m not being shown the passing sights. The windows of the bus are opaque. And the driver is blocked off by black fabric. Finally, we stop. I get off. The bus drives away.
The Valley of Josaphat is paved in cement and enclosed by a stone wall. It is the size of a room. A gate opens in the wall and three judges enter the valley. They are wearing judges’ robes, their parchment faces set off by white wing collars. The middle one opens a thick book and begins.
“Your name?”
“Antanas Garšva.”
“Profession?”
“Poet and unsuccessful earthling.”
“Your worldview?”
“Unarticulated.”
“What was the worldview you were born into?”
“Formally, the believers’ one, but…”