“So you won today?” she asked probingly.
“I won,” I replied.
“Do you want me?” Ženia asked further. I didn’t reply.
“I think that first of all you need a drink,” Ženia decided.
“You’re right. Wait here. I’ll run into the store. Tonight we’ll drink red krupnikas.{85}
“I like you. And not just for the red krupnikas, as you know,” said Ženia frankly.
“You’re unpretentious, and you don’t swear when you’re drunk. You’ll be my first today. I’ll make you happy, honey.”
I fished in my pocket and pulled out a two-litas coin.
“Take it, in case I forget. I’ve owed you for two weeks. Thanks.”
Ženia tossed the coin into her purse.
“No problem, honey. I’ll always lend you some if you need it.”
She spoke these words in a warm, familiar way, and I ran my fingers through her fluffy hair.
I was back on Laisvės alėja. The strange new feeling had passed. I went into a grocery store and purchased vodka, krupnikas, cigarettes, sprats, ham, butter, bread and chocolate.
I remember that night. The fragrant linden trees, my light steps, Ženia’s hand which I clasped like a fiancée’s, the slim museum tower, the sky, the moon, the stars, my neighbourhood Žaliakalnis, and the key with which I unlocked the door. I made love to Ženia, and that night I loved Ženia fleetingly. This contradiction didn’t bother me. I had moved to another room and was lying to Jonė: I told her I was living with a respectable family and couldn’t invite her over. We would make love in the countryside or my friend’s room. I deceived Jonė because I was young, strong and confident. I was alive. I was sincerely happy. It wasn’t the ecstasy I had experienced in Palanga – that had been diluted with a heavy dose of acting. This was youth. And tonight – in the company of the hustler Ženia.
I woke at ten the next morning. Ženia had left. She was good about leaving in time. A blend of odours hung in the room: alcohol, leftover food, exhaled breath. I stretched my limbs in bed. The slight pungency of copulation. I jumped up and opened the window. The sweet smell of the linden trees floated through the room and washed away the night. I grabbed a chair and pulled myself up. My wrists were shaking slightly. “Everything’s fine,” I thought to myself. I tidied up, shaved, bathed, put on a light grey suit and went out into the street.
I have trouble recalling the final steps. I once again sensed that the world was shifting. First I was overwhelmed by details: the dirty handle of the funicular car, the woman seated facing me, something in the corner of her mouth – a breadcrumb, here a single linden blossomed alone among thousands, a bus trundling along with a piece of newspaper stuck to one of its tires, and that man used black polish on yellow shoes. And it felt strange that I had locked my room, that the key was in my pocket, that I had got into and out of the funicular. And that those several minutes were no more than the sudden burst of a passing instant.
I was standing on Laisvės alėja by the window of the Maistas grocery store.
Zoori! Give me zoori! My wallet is full, I’m nicely dressed, shop girls smile at stylish young men like me. It’s a beautiful day. I’ll buy myself a book. I’ll crack it open in the park and then continue to get to know it in my room. Today’s lectures are in the afternoon, and I don’t need to play pool tonight. I’ll go to the cinema with Jonė. A few more steps to the bookstore. It’s right there.
Zoori! Is this the world – is this what they call the Earth? This polished glass? These houses, trees, the Soboras, the policemen, the people, are they all real?{86}
I let out a muted cry. The short sound escaped and passers-by might have thought that a young man was belching after a big night. I clenched my fists, my teeth. I could feel my facial muscles twitching. I wanted to raise my arms and scream from the bottom of my lungs. To break back into the old world.
But I was leaning against the Maistas storefront. I could see my face in the glass. Its vague contours, greyish colour, mechanical twitching. Is this what it was like a million years ago? The sea murmurs, giant turtles crawl, my sharp nails scratch at the damp sand. An awareness of what death will be like: death is only a door to an even more horrifying world. Where there is no more body, only nightmares created on Earth live there.
Zoori! Zoori, rescue me! I almost ran along Laisvės alėja, passing pedestrians, shoving them without apology. Zoori, zoori, the word penetrated me. Fine metal arrows whizzed in my ears. They chased me. Go, go. Details flew past me, important as in a dream. A girl’s blue eyes, a stuffed briefcase. Both the eyes and the briefcase frightened me. As though I had seen ghosts I would be forced to live with forever.
The psychiatrist was the most famous one in Kaunas. I sat before him in a leather armchair. I was questioned, tapped, poked. I awaited his verdict. The psychiatrist’s Jewish face exuded a mysterious foreignness. He twirled his pen and had yet to write out a prescription. This pause was filled with sounds from beyond the window: car horns, pedestrians shouting, a factory whistle travelling all the way from Aleksotas.{87} “The overture,” I thought to myself. I shifted in the armchair.
“Do you still feel unwell?”
“Something keeps squeezing my throat, then releasing it.”
“It will soon pass. The medication has not yet taken full effect.”
The psychiatrist tapped his pen on the table.
“I imagine you would like to hear my diagnosis?”
“Yes.”
“It is not as terrible as you imagine. We are no longer in Ibsen’s times, and something you have inherited needn’t destroy you. Of course, you will have to live moderately, I must emphasise that, but I do not believe that you will lose your mind or die. You are a neurasthenic.”
“Will I recover?”
The pen rested quietly in his fingers.
“It’s difficult to say. I’m not a practitioner of rose-coloured diagnostics. But we’ll try. What you’ve told me leads me to speak openly. Your disease is not yet fully understood. You know, the nervous system – these are labyrinths in which we are still quite lost.”
He mumbled something in Latin that I didn’t understand. Then he said, “You die and are risen again from the dead.”
The psychiatrist grinned, probably pleased with his clever description of the disease.
“A passing nightmare,” he added. And began to write out the prescription. The music from beyond the window continued to play. The now quiet whistle from the factory in Aleksotas still buzzed in my ears. Two men stopped outside the window.
“You’re wrong – Banaitis is no good.”
“I don’t believe it. Yesterday he…”
The psychiatrist closed the window and I missed the rest of the conversation. I put two banknotes on the table.
“I want to get married,” I blurted out.
“I would not advise it. You’ll be a burden on your wife. If you need a woman…” and he grinned, like before.
“I understand, Professor. Thank you and goodbye.”
“Come back in a month. Goodbye.”
I went back out on to the street. I held the verdict in my hand. A white prescription. I studied the words. Some kind of bromide. The injection was working. I felt sleepily calm. Objects and people no longer frightened me. At the drugstore I received a red-capped bottle. I had lunch at the fancy Metropolis restaurant. And, when I returned home, I slept the kind of sleep that is free of dreams.