Antanas Garšva finds himself in a spacious sunken area of the lobby lined on two sides by elevators. Six to the left and six to the right. To the left – the locals. They go up to only the tenth floor, stopping at each one in between, and then return. To the right – the expresses. They stop once at the tenth floor and then at each one after that, up to the final, eighteenth, floor. The hotel elevators are automatic, manufactured by Westinghouse. Signalling machines mounted on the walls flash with green and red lights that track the movements of the elevators. Like at intersections. This area of the lobby is bordered by the window of the flower shop. Beyond the polished glass – roses, gladioli, rhododendron, carnations, azaleas, and white- and red-veined hothouse leaves, an anatomical atlas woven of human blood and nerves.
By the window of the flower shop, the starter is waiting for a new shift of elevator operators. A tall, bilious, blue-uniformed Irishman, he is short-tempered and swift, and prone to sudden, inexplicable bouts of anger. He collects the cards and assigns the elevators.
“Number nine, Tony,” he says, handing out a pair of white gloves. Above the elevator door – numbers and arrows. Antanas Garšva waits for his friend to descend. The arrow shows twelve, stop, down, no stop at eleven. Number nine will soon shoot down to the lobby. I have put on my surgical gloves. My grandmother’s ring, from the time of the rebellion, is hidden. Dear madam, you are strange, I no longer care about Elena. I am a dreamer, just like my father. I am a Lithuanian kaukas in the biggest hotel in New York. Forty elevator operators alone. Number nine has flown down. The door opens. Seven passengers stream out. The short Italian says, “Today one drunken idiot stuffed a dollar into my hand. You’ve got your red. Goodbye, Tony.”
Garšva enters the polished box. The pen, as the elevator operators call it.
Chapter 2
My father loved to play the violin. Though he had no formal training, he played with talent. He performed the Wieniawski variations furiously, but I doubt he could have handled Bayer. He would drop whole rows of notes, replacing them with brilliant improvisation. Like all amateurs, he had a tendency to stretch, emotionalise and accelerate. His attitude was that of the quintessential violinist: a thin and agile body, nervous and elegant hands, a sharp profile with a long, hooked nose. Good God, how he flew around the room! Each pose was worthy of art photography. Later, I would recognise my father in Walt Disney films, in different cartoon characters. When I first started reading serious books, I saw the image of the “genius” in my father’s violin gymnastics. Listening to his infernal playing, I would feel tears of beauty well up, a longing to die in the name of the ecstasy exploding inside me.
It would happen in the evening. We had a fancy oil lamp with a green glass shade. In the evenings the lamp glowed, softening the shabby walls and furniture, making them look splendid and cosy.
As my mother embroidered and I played with my hands, my father would turn his eyes away from us and then, seemingly by chance, graze the surface of the violin hanging on the wall above our heads. He waited to be asked. The clocks ticked – our family loved clocks. The glowing wall clock, the twin bell alarm clock, my father’s silver watch on the table, my mother’s hanging from her neck like an enlarged medallion. We would listen to the clocks’ introductory accompaniment. I would clench my fingers. My mother’s stitching would slow down, the last petal of a tea rose would not be threaded into the tablecloth. The accompaniment ticked on for too long, as though the listeners had not yet settled in their seats, as though someone had coughed. My father was now tapping the surface of the violin nervously. How clearly we could hear the clocks! Flat stones falling into water, the sowing of fir needles, a pin digging into unpolished metal, the short, rhythmic steps of motherly love. And my mother would utter a few words, and my fingers would continue their squirrely gymnastics – as my father’s melted into the violin’s lacquered surface.
“What do you think?”
“About what?” my father would ask.
“I’m thinking about Wieniawski. Does his music really lack…”
“Are you trying to say – it doesn’t have depth? Yes, that’s true. But it is valuable for its tonal beauty. It is virtuoso, and I like virtuosity in violin music. For example…”
The violin was in his hands. I never managed to see it being taken down. As though it had autonomously removed itself from the wall and jumped into my father’s hands.
“For example, this fragment from Concerto Number 2. In D minor. The very last moment. The gypsy variations. They’re gems.”
And my father would begin to hurl those gems around. The first to fall were tiny and unpolished, the pizzicati. These my father would throw from a seated position. Then came the turn of the larger, more polished stones. My father was now standing, and it seemed to me that he had not unfurled himself, but rather that the springs of the chair had hurled him into the centre of the room. Gems flew around in the green light, variation upon variation, while I bent my head down and curled up to avoid being injured by those musical gems. But nevertheless, the occasional sharpedged stone would hit me in the spine and I would feel the thrill of a cold shiver. My father was very wealthy – he had more gems than a Nepalese maharaja. And he flew with them around the green room. And he contorted and raged. I couldn’t understand why Wieniawski lacked depth. Gypsy variations? As far as I knew, gypsies were a deep people. They sat or danced by bonfires at night, they thrust knives into their enemies’ bodies, and were good at stealing other people’s horses. They were brave and dirty. Their women had a particular way of swaying from the waist, they read cards, and one wanted to embrace them to hear the jingling of the medallions hanging from their necks. Now my father was a gypsy, the green lamp a bonfire, my mother a gypsy queen, and I…
Black hair and black hair. A red sash, a bent waist. Glances meet, sparks like fireworks. I’ve always thought of Lermontov’s Tamara as such a gypsy. How could a demon wear a red sash – he should be as black as insomniac fear in bed at night, and dancing doesn’t suit him, but he can stand by the fire if the gypsy Tamara’s medallions are jingling.
My father would end his variations on a long, fading note. It’s possible that he got tired. Both he and his violin. I could clearly see the thinning varnish, the impressions from his fingers. The violin was old, it had to be hung carefully back on the wall, and the chair wouldn’t slip under him on its own, so my father would collapse, the room having absorbed his musical enthusiasm. My mother could now return to her tea rose petal, I to my hands, my father to his thoughts. The conservatory… He had been poor – he was able to train as a teacher, but the Conservatory… the unfinished Wieniawski variations, wrinkles on the violin and on his face – two friends who joyfully throw their arms around each other and soon again part ways, two friends evading sadness. The green light inspires him to be exceptional, but that exceptionality lasts only a few minutes, and then all that’s left is a cosy, bourgeois green lamp and a teacher’s long evening. Notebooks, errors, problems – if there are so many kilometres from station A to station B, how many kilometres are there to station C? How far is it to station C where a conservatory stands, its magnificence confirmed by its marble columns?