So I continued to look at the sea. Sailboats glided on the horizon. Could I plant a mast with a faded canvas and sail away, gripping the wheel firmly? I breathed in the smell of tar and fish, and turned the sand with the tip of my shoe.
Suddenly, my whole being shivered in ecstasy. It seemed to me that I was stretching upward, that my head was higher that the pines on Swedes’ Hill. I could hold the sun in my hands, and… how silly to want only to walk on the sea! When one could uproot trees and throw them around, causing the inhabitants of Swedish ports to wonder why they were covered in pine needles. Or hang the chapel on Birutė’s Hill up in Heaven. I could fish out my bamboo stick, a Chaldean sorcerer’s wand, and sketch magical symbols in the air. Let the stars shine during the day, let the stars sing and worship me as the most powerful of all. Great miracles aren’t necessary. For I can contain limitless power and joy within myself!
I can’t remember everything I got up to on the seashore by the fishermen’s boats. I sang a toreador’s aria in a false baritone, my leg thrust proudly forward, the high “so” of my tremulous howl softened by the monotonous murmur of the sea.
I danced an improvised dance. It was a priestess’s prayer to Kastytis and Jūratė as they made love in their castle beneath the sea.{65} My long legs dug up the sand, I squatted down, grasping them, swaying my behind, showing the whites of my eyes.
I even gave a speech to the masses, the words mere symbols of something incredibly important.
“As you know… it is everything… let us stoke the fire, long live… raise and rise up… all… upward… I will show you the way to the magical light, I, I, …”
And I shook the hands of all those greeting me, smiled charmingly, and leapt up as the crowd raised me on their arms and carried me, shouting, “It is him! It is him! He is ours!”
And then another sensation joined ecstasy and irritatingly penetrated my body, and my magnificence faded, like the foam of the waves dissolves in the sand. As though my eyes had just been opened. Here is a fisherman’s boat. Further on, some blackened shells. Ahead – the grey sea. The skinny pines on Swedes’ Hill. The empty seashore disappears around a bend. I understood. I needed to piss. That’s what shattered my ecstasy. I leant against the edge of a boat. And felt relief from having held it in so long. And, just as the sand drank up my urine like foam from a wave, I heard a rustling. I turned my head. Damn! I’d forgotten to look in the direction of Birutė’s Hill. The woman was right there. Very tanned in a bright red bathing suit, an orange robe hanging off her shoulder. She had probably seen and heard my idiotic song, and dance, and speech, and how I now stood contorted by the boat.
The woman walked past me – a screaming blemish in a grey world. I burst into tears of shame and walked home on the sand. The magical world evaporated. What ridiculously long legs! And teeth like an ichthyosaur’s! And my own stench! What an idiot!
An empty pedestrian bridge lay ahead, like a corroded poker frozen in a puddle. The seaweed washed up by the Baltic reeked, and the rain began to pour, and the dwarf pines murmured. I walked along the streets of the resort. The gravel crackled, my nose was cold and my back itched. There’s the villa where Aldona is staying. The silliest girl in Palanga. Who cares if she has breasts and can wiggle her bum? I decided not to think about it any more.
That evening I lay in bed, looking through the window. It had stopped raining. I saw a tree and two stars. I had calmed down. My fingers wandered around the blanket.
Stars wandering around the blanket. Like two spiders. Both have five legs. The stars wander around on the dark blanket. Legs pressed together, flexible bones, the stars make love or war. A tree stood there, cut out of black tin. I felt it. My toes are cold. I turned towards the wall. The day’s fragments formed a lump in my throat. I shouldn’t have gazed so longingly at that useless girl. And why did I give her that lovely bamboo cane, like a prince bestowing a gift on Cinderella? Aldona is no Cinderella. Her father has an important job in the Finance Ministry, she’ll marry a Kurhauzas regular.{66}
An acute shame washed over me. I curled my toes. That scene on the beach! What impotent grandeur! The tree and the two stars stood out beyond the window.
An impenetrable tin mass. My room is tight. And I am a tiny wad about to be crushed by the encroaching walls. Medieval times are approaching. I’ve been locked up in a torture chamber whose walls will come together. They’ll crush me slowly, so as to prolong my writhing. The world was retreating, the tin walls closing in.
I leapt out of bed and ran to the window. Thank God – the tin mass was only a tree! I could see its individual leaves. And the many stars in the sky. The sea whispered faintly. I could hear my father snoring in the next room. I walked barefoot around the several square metres and the space felt as enormous as the entire universe. I felt young and strong.
Hey, I’m a good football player, I swim, and though my arms aren’t the strongest I’ve knocked out two enemies. I’m fast. They say that my poems aren’t bad, that they should be submitted to the high school students’ journal. Away with Medieval times! Away with Aldona and the mouldy Ronžė brook! It feels good to walk barefoot, at night. Tomorrow I’ll try diving from five metres. From three my dive is perfection, but tomorrow I know it’ll be even more perfect from five. A miracle will happen tomorrow. I lay down and quickly fell asleep.
The long break. From 8:30 to 9:15. Garšva and Stanley go together.
“Cafeteria?” asks Garšva.
“First, the basement,” replies Stanley.
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
“You’ll unlock your locker?”
“You’re so boring, Tony.”
The two of them wait for the “back” elevator. The starter here sways side to side, he had polio as a child.
“Ten years in the hotel,” says Stanley.
“That he’s been swaying there?”
“And he likes overtime. His wife works in the kitchen. Her lover is Puerto Rican. They avoid overtime.”
The paralysed starter gives them a friendly wink.
“You’ll get an elevator soon, guys.”
“He has a nice face,” notes Stanley.
“His wife’s is nice too,” he adds, watching the elevator arrows.
Some old chairs are stacked at the end of the corridor. Suddenly one chair falls down noisily because the lobby doors are opened wide. Two burly hotel detectives drag in an unconscious guest. He is old, his legs drag along the floor, his eyeballs have rolled up into his eyelids, the whites shining like matt lampshades. His mouth hangs open, saliva drips through his false teeth. A woman dressed in black, with a rosy, idiotic face, walks behind. Her shoes are scuffed, her white cuffs grimy, her old-fashioned hat has faded to brown. She holds a clear bag of walnuts in one hand, and three nuts in the other.
“They’re his,” she says.
“The tenth, quick,” says one of the detectives. The starter sways towards the control box and presses all the buttons.
“Take them, sir,” says the woman, offering the unconscious man the bag of nuts.
“I have a feeling the gentleman isn’t interested in nuts right now,” says Stanley politely.
“They’re his nuts. He was walking through the lobby, holding them in his hand. Then he collapsed. I picked up the bag and three nuts fell out. I picked them up,” explained the woman, holding the three nuts under Stanley’s nose.