Next there is Karlsbad, a man, a bunch of cherries. Our family spent one summer at that Austrian resort before the First World War. My mother was dissolving her kidney stones in the mineral baths. I have only a vague memory of Karlsbad. My parents bought a lot of coloured postcards and, when showing them to me later, would tell me where we had been and what we had done. And it would seem to me that I could see a vaulted hall, women with pinched waists and enormous hats, blue lake water and little red boats and the cone-shaped, snowy mountains. Even these memories are like the conception of the amoeba or God. But the trip on the funicular is real and indisputable.
We were climbing upward. I was sitting in the cable car by the window. I remember the lace on my mother’s cuffs, my father’s pointy moustache, the crooked, backward-leaning fir trees. And the station and the wagon in front of us. A man was leaning out the window. The man’s face was red, and he was eating cherries of the same colour. I was looking at the cherries and the man was looking at me. Then, reaching out the window, he offered me two cherries and said something. The cherries gleamed in the sunlight. I took them. The cable cars separated. The man’s rattled downward, ours groaned on upward. Two sticky, round, red cherries, which it seemed a pity to eat, lay in my palm. I put them in my mouth and then took them out again.
“Eat them,” said my mother. I didn’t dare, and rolled them in my palms. The cherries were beautiful, so I wanted to look at them. The cherries were sweet, so I wanted to eat them.
I can’t remember the fate of those cherries. I remember my sticky fingers, the cherries softening, a vague resignation.
Then the waiting crashed in. I was eight years old. Our house stood at the edge of the small town, close to a marsh. Hummocks and crooked birches; a spruce forest on the horizon; the mournful cries of lapwings; the mist, which even the midsummer sun couldn’t dissolve. The mist hung over the quagmire, and the frogs, the lapwings and the grasses glimmered, as though reflected in hundred-year-old mirrors. Were you to see Cinderella amongst these pools of water, you wouldn’t be surprised. Cinderella – in her smoky rags, a basket in her hand, an expression that reveals she is searching for her prince, her red slippers muddy from the marsh.
My father had decided that he knew how to plaster walls. Of course, the rough plaster soon dried up, cracked and fell to the floor in geometric shapes. These uneven triangles, squares and rectangles were my favourite toys, which I used to build a castle for my own Cinderella. My parents, both high school teachers, would leave me in the locked, empty flat. I didn’t attend school and did my lessons at home. At the time I was weak and often got dizzy, so I wasn’t allowed to go outside on my own.
Waiting would soon arrive. It would stand next to me, like a concerned stepmother. Cold, strict, righteous, inflexible.
And here is a path. A pebbly path through the windless marsh. The wind never disturbs the crown of the spruce forest. I can see my foreshortened body in the marsh water. The hair falling to my shoulders. A golden chain around my neck. Cinderella walking next to me. I’m leading her to the unfinished castle which I built from my father’s rough plaster. In Cinderella’s basket – a single rose. Why? Roses don’t grow in marshes. There, past the spruce forest, another world, another sky. Fragrant, gentle, somnolent. Surrounded by thick walls, where armed guards stand ready to hurl their lances. But the lances will be lowered, the gates will open and Cinderella will lead me inside. And there needn’t be very much inside. Reddish painted floors; cracks; a crawling spider – a wise inhabitant of the unfinished castle. He knows why the rose is scented, why Cinderella’s gait makes the guards reverently lower their lances and kneel.
But… Waiting was standing right there. Suddenly I could see the room in which I was playing. The pieces of plaster arranged in a semicircle. The green painting on the wall, a gift from my father’s pupils. In copying a postcard the artist had made the mistake of erasing the circle that had been so carefully sketched with a No. 1 pencil around the setting sun. I could see the table legs, a twig wedged under one of them. I could see the hole in the sofa, the sawdust escaping from it. I could see my dirty nails. I picked my nose. I wanted to cry, to laugh. I was overwhelmed by waiting for my parents, who wouldn’t be home soon.
Then I would decide to fight. To chase away that anxious feeling of waiting. To frighten it. To destroy it. To make it laugh. And I would open the window, hear the lapwing cries and draw the menacing dampness into my lungs.
I was an Indian. Brave and ruthless. My hands clutched my enemies’ bloody scalps. Waiting was forced to clamber out the open window.
I was a knight. My double-edged sword would slice through the ceiling, shatter the light bulb, slash the sofa. Waiting would be hacked into pieces.
I was a cannibal. Huge cauldrons hissed, white men boiling in them. The room hummed from fire and the smoke. Waiting would be burnt up or choked.
I was a circus clown. I did somersaults, and fell flat on the ground. Laughed with a crazy voice. Waiting would have to cheer up.
And, eventually, I would get tired. Once again I was sitting by the scattered pieces of plaster. The spider and the castle guards have hidden in the cracks in the floor. Cinderella… is gone. There is no other world, no other sky, that is fragrant, gentle, sleepy. Waiting was still standing right there. A concerned stepmother. I would close the window. I didn’t want to listen to the lapwings, didn’t want to breathe the damp air. Once again I was staring at the table legs, the painting, the sawdust, the green lamp, the wispy clouds. An indistinct tune buzzed in my ear. Perhaps that was the birth of the sound that would become the word zoori!
I waited for my parents, my heart pounding. It gradually got darker. Sky and objects turned grey. I no longer resisted Waiting. I sat on the floor, picking my nose. I might have screamed if I had sensed that Waiting was no longer there. Sounds from the town bounced off the windowpanes. A locomotive hooted, truck wheels rattled, church bells peeled. My boyish heart pounded. Louder than the sounds of the waning evening.
My parents would arrive unexpectedly. That’s what happens, when you’re waiting so hard. At first they seemed to ignore me, were busy with their coats, the sentences they had brought in from the street, the lamp, dinner. Shoes fell to the floor and were replaced by slippers, kindling was split, the wood stove began to hiss, and as everything calmed down, I became lonely. Completely alone, as even Waiting had left. Where had it gone? Had it sneaked out through the door and sunk to the bottom of the marsh? Had it slipped in between the floorboards? Could it have curled up into the round sun in the student’s painting? And I was sad that I had lost my stepmother. And I couldn’t understand this contradiction. I had waited anxiously for my parents and was disappointed when they arrived. And I remained silent when my father noticed the scattered pieces of plaster and scolded me for being slovenly, and I was weak because I was lazy, didn’t respect my father’s work, and should be apprenticed to a shoemaker, as God often punishes people with such brats.
Cinderella with a basket in her hand, and in the basket a rose. I had to face arithmetic exercises and my stern father at the other end of the table. Another world? A dirty, awkward nakedness. Zoori, where is the melody? I can’t hear it. Will I ever hear it?
Later still, I saw the tree. I was sixteen. We were on a summer holiday in Palanga. Laughing, my friend Aldona tossed my bamboo cane into the narrow Ronžė river. She added that I am thinner than the stick and have teeth like an ichthyosaur.
That afternoon I was walking alone on the beach near some fishermen’s boats. They smelt of tar and fish. I stopped and dug into the sand with the tip of my shoe. The calm sea rippled nearby. Small waves separated me from the white glow. I wanted to leave the shore and walk into the sea. Like Christ. Just a few steps separated me from becoming a miracle. I knew that a miracle is reality turned into perfection. Like a leap into the air. I couldn’t jump higher than one metre sixty. Even on my best form, I couldn’t jump higher than one metre fifty-seven. I couldn’t walk on the sea; I could only drown in it or look at it, and I was afraid of drowning.