A broad stream splashed on to his nose and ran down his face to the floor. His consciousness and pupils gradually returned. The skin below one nipple quivered, the heart was beating. His fingers released the edge of his robe. With Elena’s help, Antanas Garšva got back on to the sofa. He wiped his wet face with one hand. Sweat poured out his pores, his body glistened like an oiled athlete’s.
“Shoes,” he said. “Van Gogh’s shoes. I saw them. It made me angry. Dirty shoes on a table. Give me a cigarette.”
“Wait a bit. Drink some water.”
Elena scooped up some water from the bowl, and Garšva took the glass.
“There’s a little box in my trouser pocket. Give it to me.”
He carefully opened the lid of the box and shook two celluloid bullets on to his palm, tossed them into his mouth and drank some water. Then he slipped on his robe and tied it at the waist. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face.
“How did I look when I was unconscious?”
“Don’t ask, it isn’t necessary.”
“How did I look when I was unconscious?”
“You were lying on the linoleum, your legs curled, clutching your robe.”
“That’ll have to do. Like a Venetian doge who poisoned himself by his lover’s bed. Or like a slain beast in a pool of blue blood. That’s how a romantic would resolve it. Leave me now. I’ll go to sleep.”
“What is your doctor’s phone number?”
“There’s no need to call him. It’s not the first time. When one of these attacks is over, I don’t need a doctor any more. I’ll sleep and I’ll be fine again.”
“You don’t want me to stay?”
“No. It’s a strange psychological reaction. I want to be alone. It helps. I’ll explain it all to you later. Forgive me.”
“I’ll come tomorrow. I’ll come with my things.”
“No, not tomorrow. I’ll call you. I might be at the doctor’s. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Elena put her coat on in silence and Garšva lit a cigarette. He got up without difficulty and kissed Elena, his lips warm with life.
“Be sure to call me tomorrow.”
“I will. Thank you, forgive me.”
“I love you,” said Elena. And she left.
Garšva poured some White Horse into his glass. He drank it. He glanced through the window. The thirty-eight bathrobes still hung there, the shutters were still closed, the glimmers of sunlight were still trying to break through the clouds.
“That was the first time. The first time that I fainted. What does it mean?”
“What!” he shouted. A warm sensation of calm slowly blanketed his brain.
“Why didn’t I tell her that I’ve spent time in a mental hospital? Why didn’t I write about it?”
It begins to get crowded at around ten o’clock. The young people’s dance on the eighteenth – young men and women from the curtain factory in Brooklyn will be whooping it up. The Masonic dinner finished a while ago. On time. Rosy old men and ladies in multicoloured paper hats – their Medieval heritage – travelled downward, bells tinkling atop their respectable heads. They blew into small cardboard tubes, making obscene red blobs poke out. Some of the men tried to drop lifelike rubber frogs or lizards into their ladies’ décolletés. And chuckled.
Now the young people are going up. They go up looking sad, holding on to each other. The colours of the paper hats are reincarnated in the girls’ dresses, earrings, fake flowers, their cheeks and eyebrows; in the young men’s ties, buckles, socks.
They go up in pairs, barely speaking, looking into each other’s eyes. They’ve been condemned to dance. They stare into each other’s eyes as though they were splitting up. An upside-down world. The people going down are having fun. This is a dolls’ party held in a funeral parlour.
Some are already drunk as they go up. They smoke cheap cigars and try to make conversation with the same words they use in the factory. Nylon curtains collect a lot of static, so when you hang them on the metal rods you can get shocks in your fingers. These yellow flowery curtains make you cough when you cut them, because of all the starch floating in the air. And it’s really fun with the plain white curtains, the scissors slice them real fast – and the day’s work flies by. Garšva learns all of this from the ones going up without girls.
“Right, Mac, it’s tough for you too.”
“I guess I have a good stomach.”
“Right, Mac, tomorrow it’ll be more curtains.”
“Too bad we just got the hall from ten o’clock.”
“Yes, the factory is celebrating its anniversary. We don’t pay, the bosses pay.”
“The new foreman is too picky. All the new ones are picky.”
How beautifully the curtains fluttered in Cocteau’s film! The long castle hallway, the open windows, the wind, and the white curtains. The same ones that make the day go quickly when you’re cutting them.
The young people from the curtain factory. A dolls’ party. The curtains – a symbol of insolubility. Someone stirred on the other side, and Polonius fell, having been stabbed. Curtains – a symbol of solubility. Othello grabbed the curtains one last time. I like curtains. They’re alive, like dolls. They’re eternal in their softness, just as dolls are in their fixed expressions. A subtle combination: dolls hanging from curtains. Let them flutter in the wind. Sad embracing couples. Two hearts pierced by one arrow. A Cupid with good aim walks through a green field, his legs are pink and his nails pearly.
“Right, Mac. Want a cigar? Here.”
An upside-down world. Why aren’t you Masons, and the Masons – you? A gangly young man, still pink from Cupid’s arrow, kisses his girlfriend’s neck. They’re pressed against the wall. The doll watches the numbers, mouth ajar, and Garšva waits for someone to squeeze her and for the girl to say “Ma-ma”.
Your floor. The eighteenth, eighteen-year-olds. Kiss while you dance; kiss on the velvet sofas, the ones in the hotel corridors, I won’t see it. And forget about the curtains. Ave Caesar, vivantes te salutant!{90 Ave Caesar, vivantes te salutant: “Hail Caesar, the living salute you, which is a play on “Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant”, which means, “Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you.”}
Strange. The sad couples have brought me hope. Every day, every hour enriches me. I chose a great job. I can even imagine that I picked it on purpose. I no longer have to trudge through the rain. The old woman, a dutiful camp resident, did her bit and lies blessed and rotting in her grave. And the poet Vaidilionis writes poems about a real vaidila he borrowed from the Romantics – one who never played nineteenth-century melodies on the kanklės at the times of the crusades.{91 Vaidila: a high priest in the Lithuanian pre-Christian religion; “Vadilionis” is an ironic play on this word. Kanklės: a Lithuanian string instrument of the zither family.} And he stuffs his stanzas with Jericho flutes. So that the wind orchestra, in which only the cornet comes close to actually playing, can play a funeral march.
Chapter 14
The smallish DP camp had been planted on a bare Bavarian field.{92} Four barracks nailed together by Russian prisoners of war. On the loamy ground. As we walked through the rain to pick up our food rations, clumps of earth stuck to our canvas shoes, impossible to wash off. Clothing was distributed to us – leftover Canadian forest-ranger uniforms. We ripped off the badges and guarded a few ratty shrubs, our anxiety, our hungry anger, our grotesque rations (which for some reason included an excess of toilet paper), our dark green hopes.
And we elected committees. And celebrated our national holidays. And excited speakers shouted: “We will return next year!” And we wept when a six-year-old girl recited a poem that repeatedly mentioned our country’s name. And in the evenings men sat by the barracks belting out songs, the verses repeating rhythmically until the last note faded. And I thought I saw a bright streak left by a shooting star, a freshly burnt meteor.