Somewhere there was much light and transparent air. From the past, another town, another Kaunas came back to me. I spent a lot of time looking for a door hidden in a stucco wall. There were many small bumps on it. Too many. Yes, I was conscientious and spent a lot of time feeling the wall, looking for a button to press. But I didn’t find it and lost strength. I stood paralysed by the invisible door and all I could do was describe the monotonous bumps, the abstract, repetitive relief.
A dutiful camp resident, a naive old woman who liked prayers and order in her little world, had passed away. And she was laid out, stuffed into a coffin in a dyed dress, and transported in the rain, angry and wet. In the greyness of the Swabian fields, in the grotesque funeral procession, I was allowed to stop and look back. A harmless old woman pressed a little bump that only she knew, and the door opened. Expecting no gratitude, my totem stretched out an arm to show me the way, and I entered obediently, my marauding letters accompanying me.
I worked for a week. Vaidilionis didn’t bother me. We exchanged only essential phrases. Sometimes I felt his inquisitive gaze on my crown, my temples, my forehead. Nevertheless, Vaidilionis was tactful. I often jumped up and tried to walk around that wooden cage. Then Vaidilionis would leave, and I would be alone for two or three hours.
A week crept by, and the two of us were silently eating pea soup from tin cans. A sheaf of handwritten pages lay under my pillow.
“Salty soup,” Vaidilionis said unexpectedly. His coiffured hair fell on his forehead in a so-called “unruly mop” which he curled every morning with a wide-toothed comb. In his agrarian hands the aluminium teaspoon was a titan’s parody of a toy civilisation. An ascetic’s face? Today I saw a combination of will, popular adulation and constipation.
“Peas aren’t a good idea. They cause gas,” I replied.
“We’ll open the window. You’re not writing any more today?” Vaidilionis’s expression was pure. He used this expression on the stage, when reading his lyric poems.
“Your eyes are innocent today. Like that old woman’s, the one we buried.”
“You didn’t bury her.”
“That’s correct. I immortalised her. In myself.” I got up mechanically, pulled out the sheaf of papers and handed them to Vaidilionis.
“Read it. It’s a first draft.”
He read, and I observed his face. He pressed his lips together in stereotypical intensity. His coarse, straight eyelashes descended like jail bars. He must have already come across my hopeless trudging along the loamy road, the screeching of the trumpets, the muddy Chopin, the rain, and the peaceful, blackened old woman. And far away in the North, a series of Kaunas buildings walked by. The Soboras’s elephantine feet trampled the little houses of Šančiai as they scattered to the sides. The red-brick cathedral snorted like a locomotive. A lone island poked out near Pažaislis Monastery. My mother was standing on it. She held a dirty piece of cloth embroidered with little crosses in her hands as angels and archangels hovered over her. An army of angels above a lost Kaunas. At night the angels poured sparkles over the city, their glowing hands slipped into the lanterns on Laisvės alėja, their wings cast long shadows on the icy pavement. And the mute brass band marched on. Their trumpets polished by the moonlight shone, the band was led by the devil, who had sewn a black-dyed rope to his velvet trousers. And the band was followed by a swaying coffin carried by four lighthouse keepers, and the old woman in the coffin sat up and smiled. A full moon floated by, as did my mother, Chopin’s lace, the green Nemunas, the smiling old woman.
Vaidilionis was done. Not a single facial muscle quivered. His upper lip was still missing. He gave me back the sheaf of papers. I stuffed it under my blanket. I grabbed the empty cans.
“I’m going to go wash them,” I said.
Vaidilionis glanced at me. The jail bars rose.
“What are you planning to call – that?”
“What do you mean – that?”
“That question. If you like, the whole poem is only a question.”
I didn’t answer, just clanged the empty cans. Like the cymbals in the band my poem had conjured up.
“This is bad news. Much worse than in Kaunas, when you still controlled yourself. I wouldn’t want to argue that the lack of metre necessarily means a poet’s decline. But you juggle with imagery… in a meaningless manner. It’s a cleverness inspired by neurasthenia. You can dismiss my opinion, but this isn’t the time to be thinking about ourselves. We have to think about the nation. I don’t expect you to imitate anyone. Write about yourself. But remember – intellectual neurasthenia and decadence are one and the same thing.”
“You speak clearly. Periods, commas. It’s a pity I don’t do shorthand. If I did, I would have your words put up on a bulletin board,” I said, no longer clanging the cans.
“You’re trying to be ironic. Irony is part of your pathology. You saw trees covered with toadstools, which are ironic. But are they healthy?”
And Vaidilionis carefully stroked his special hairstyle. My arms hung down, and the cans hung down from my fingers like weights from a scale.
“We’ll find ourselves a judge.” I swung a can in the direction of Maironis’s photograph.
“Maybe him? Though I fear he would condemn you… for being an actor who recites for actors. You should be reciting your poems in Lithuania, in the forest.{94} Those men and women awaiting their deaths would listen to you. Your patriotism would be one more weapon for them. Here you are safe and receive a salary. It’s obscene.”
A spark flashed across Vaidilionis’s pure expression. He stood up.
“But still, I respect you. For your technique. ‘And the homeland will be free!’ Change a few letters. ‘And the homeland we won’t flee.’ Your technique is unrivalled. You know, you remind me of another poet. Zuika. Remember him? You’re both cynics. But, pardon me. You’re stupider. Soon you’ll be convinced you’re some kind of missionary.”
“Get out of the room! Get out this minute!” Vaidilionis shrieked. I launched the left can at the window. It broke the grimy glass and landed at the feet of an ex-general’s wife who happened to be walking by.
“The poe-ets are fie-ting!” shouted the ex-general’s wife in the yard.
Vaidilionis ran out the door. I broke out in convulsive, hysterical laughter.
There was the bed, covered with the green blanket, depressions showing where I had sat. And higher up, on the wall, hung Maironis. I walked to the washroom, waving a can. The hallway had filled with camp residents.
The doctors examined me thoroughly but found no signs of insanity. I was moved to another camp.
Antanas Garšva is smiling. Strange that these are the kinds of things that I recorded. I left out equally important ones. I killed a man, I wanted to kill myself, I was beaten, I survived, unconscious, in Aukštoji Panemunė, in a Kaunas hospital. All that has faded. But there are things I should remember. Those who walked beside me. I bathed my surroundings in the green of an El Greco Toledo landscape. I shortened the perspective. My Valley of Josaphat is the size of a room. My childhood, my youth are the size of a room. I was too negative about my past. I chose the same method as those who extract only elegiac sadness from theirs. I had fewer crystals, of course. But they still sparkled. I emphasised a particular attitude towards my own reality. And I was given more hours in which to find myself. Perhaps they were important, perhaps they are what I should focus on. Then I might be able to remember all that I missed. The Toledo landscape has bathed my unconscious. The crystals have been tossed into its darkest corner. I need to drag them back like keys stuck behind a cupboard. I have to stretch out on the floor, focus my entire being, and reach out my arm. Once I have the keys I’ll be able to unlock the cupboard. Now I was looking at the cupboard’s impenetrability, as though at mysterious curtains. I’ll take a look inside the cupboard and then, may all the gods help me, I will understand the curtains.