80 Konradas Café: an interwar artists’ cafe on Laisvės alėja.
81 Versalis Hoteclass="underline" a posh interwar hotel and restaurant on Laisvės alėja.
82 Juozapota: a character in A Sad Story, a novella by Jonas Biliūnas (1879–1907).
83 Litas: the Lithuanian currency during the interwar period of independence
84 Panevežys: the fifth largest city in Lithuania.
85 Krupnikas: a spiced Lithuanian honey liqueur.
86 See note 104 re. “Soboras”.
87 A suburb of Kaunas on the left bank of the Nemunas, across from the city centre.
88 See note 34.
Chapter 13
“I trusted him. He’s strong. He’s successful. He bought a car, our savings are growing, he’s looking at a house in Jamaica. I can’t complain. He’s caring and uncomplicated.”
“And you’re free to dream of Vilnius?”
“Don’t make fun of me. You should know – I’m not afraid of work. I worked in a sewing factory for two years. I could start working tomorrow. You don’t believe me?”
“Forgive me. Your husband. Try to understand.”
“I do understand. I’ve been faithful to you these last two weeks.”
“You…”
“We don’t make love that often. But I think he’ll want me again soon.”
“And?”
“You decide.”
“You would leave him?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve saved up a bit. I’ll buy another sofa. This one is too narrow to sleep on. Come, I’ll be waiting.”
“If I want to go back to the sewing factory, they’ll take me. I was a good worker.”
In his blue housecoat Garšva looked tired and wan. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened, the corners of his lips drooped, he touched his face with trembling fingers. He sat in the armchair, a sheaf of papers held together with a rubber band lay on the table.
“You read my notes?”
Elena lay on the sofa. A grey, little woman under a blue-covered quilt.
“I found it painful. Don’t be angry – I’m not talking about the literary quality.”
She stopped talking.
“Grotesque?” asked Garšva.
“You’re anxious, so it’s grotesque.”
“And your noblemen’s heads?” interrupted Garšva bitingly.
“That’s why we met.”
“Two grotesques.”
“We need to be together. That’s not grotesque.”
“You’re not afraid of this…” asked Garšva, looking at the pack of papers.
“We need to be together. And I’ll help you.”
Garšva grabbed the bottle of White Horse.
“Don’t drink,” Elena asked.
“I’m afraid of death, so I drink. I’m afraid of death, so I write. I’m afraid of death, so I take pills. Everything is because of death. The poet Vaidilionis said that trees covered in toadstools are ironic. My life is ironic. Let’s say, for example, that an optimistic writer is sitting in his study. I imagine that his feet are pedicured, there’s a subtle scent of cologne, a pleasant atmosphere. You reach out your arm. An ivory paperweight. You reach out your arm. Chagall’s illustrations for Dead Souls. You reach out your arm. Plato and a Platonic god. And if it’s too dull, there’s a Renoir hanging on the wall. It’s heaven on earth. And so interesting how the Negro mask is used! And the lawn in the park is trimmed – perfection, harmony. My own atmosphere, I’m afraid, is nothing but passed gas, a cosy stench. I would be a grotesque if I tried to be a Plato. Maybe, if I got myself a job as a night watchman, I might be able to squeeze out some Faustian stories for little children. Isn’t suffering – no matter how lovely – grotesque? Van Gogh shot himself in a field, and his blossoming cherries are so lovely! Poe drank himself to death, and the cries of his raven are so lovely! Čiurlionis ran from the madhouse through the snow, and his sonata paintings are so exquisitely musical!{89 Čiurlionis: the early modernist Lithuanian painter and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911).} ‘Kill me, doctor, or you’re a murderer,’ begged Kafka. This Jew is indeed charming with his horrifying nightmares!”
“I’m sorry, you’re angry, and that…”
“I know, I’m contradicting myself. And I’m jealous. And illogical. You’re right. I mock. I admire. I drink, I love. Because I like to drink, love and mock. If I find a harmonious truth, I’ll have lost. And I’ll lose if I fail to find truth.”
Two red circles appeared on Garšva’s cheeks. He drank half a glass in one gulp. His whitened fingers squeezed the glass tight. Elena shifted. Garšva placed the glass on the table.
“You rest. I feel better when you’re lying here. Stay.”
“Don’t drink,” she repeated.
“Stay.”
It was damp outside. Cool. Thirty-eight white bathrobes hung on a line, Garšva counted them as he waited for Elena. The shutters of the adjacent house were closed, and rippling flames from the chimney of a distant foundry burst through the clouds.
“My jeweller is lazy. He didn’t tighten the carnelian ring. You and I didn’t visit the wagon in the square in Plaza. We’re émigrés, we need anachronisms. You need legends, I – unfinished poems.”
“What does your doctor say?”
“Nothing definitive.”
“When will you see him?”
“Tomorrow.”
Garšva suddenly moved to the sofa. He leaned his hands against Elena’s shoulders.
“You want to live with me? It would be good. I’ll stop drinking, I’ll smoke less. I’ll change my shift so we can be together in the evenings. Once in a while I’ll ask you to go out – to a movie or visit friends. I’ll write. I won’t mock you any more. It’ll be good for me to be with you. I would like to say a few words. Final words. For myself. I’d like to write a cycle of poems in which each letter is an irreplaceable ornament. I would work long and hard to find them. I feel good with you. Don’t think that I’m talking like this because I’m drunk. This is my obsession. A few lines etched into marble, that’s what I long for. The illusion of immortality? So be it. To die with a real illusion is the real thing. I will give thanks. To my father, my mother, the marshland, the semaphore, Jonė, my seizures, my critic, books, the soaking old woman, Ženia, Vaidilionis. All of them. If you think we can try, then let’s try. I may win. If you believe in me, then stay. If you need me too.”
“I love you,” said Elena. “I’ll speak to my husband today. And I’ll be here.”
“You don’t need to. I’ll ask him for the divorce myself.”
Time dissolved. Clenched fingers, final sacrifice, the sliding downwards, the reward of an animal cry.
And oblivion for one of the winners. For Antanas Garšva. His muscles loosened. All that was left in his dimming consciousness was the silhouette of a right arm. And he didn’t even feel himself slip off the sofa. He managed to grab his blue robe, his fingers clutching a silk edge.
Antanas Garšva lay on the flowered linoleum. His mouth was ajar, and a green foam leaked from it, ran down his cheek and dripped on to a spectacular flower. His pupils disappeared into his eyelids. His legs were curled under him, like a sleeping child’s. His fingers and toes were turning yellow. Elena grabbed and threw on her dress, ran to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of water. She tilted the bowl towards Garšva’s head.