Ricardas Gavelis
For Grazina B.
Winter in that land lasted eight months. Four were left for the other seasons. But the river never froze completely. As if alive, its current had to breathe air and be able to see the world. It surrendered to no frost; it was invincible, as if it were the current of the lives of all the people who had been relocated to its banks. Tens, hundreds, thousands could perish. But there was no power that could destroy every single one of them.
A solitary raft of rough logs floated down the river. It made its way forward slowly, as if it were dead tired. Driven by the cold, wild animals stopped on the riverbank and followed it with fearful glances. But the raft did not care about them, it was looking for people. And still there were no people.
The raft was bare. Only by looking extremely carefully could you make out something pale and crooked on the middle log – perhaps a small frozen animal, a sign, or maybe just an unclear mirage, the reflection of the boundless snows.
***
The desire came on suddenly. It took over not only his soul but also his entire body like a disease that had secretly lurked inside for a long time and awaited its hour of triumph. Vytautas Handless thought about why it had happened just now. Perhaps his retirement was to blame, endless spare time and a sweet kind of vacuum that had enveloped his life in a few weeks. Both his daughters concerned themselves with the separate apartments they had longed for, and when he went to linger by Ona’s grave he could find nothing to say to her. He could not explain anything or describe the unquenchable desire that was oppressing him. Smoking by her grave, which was encircled by a chain, he awaited some sign – a ghostlike reply from Ona. But no sign came. The dead tend to be silent; they don’t speak even in dreams.
For eight years now he had been writing her a letter every week and reading it out loud every Saturday in the empty living room. He wrote about everything: the scent of the lilacs, the neighbour’s hook nose, the contours of the clouds, the St. Bernard that he had wanted all his life but had never had except in his imagination. He would tell Ona everything, though sometimes it occurred to him that he would write to her a good deal more in these letters than he would have admitted to her had she been alive. He would confess to her his sadness and frailty; had she been alive, he would never have revealed such things. Without any shyness he would tell her all his quirks and little peculiarities: that all his life he’d been desperately afraid of fish; that he read relatives’ letters only in the bathroom; that he swore by all that was holy that his childhood friend Martin’s soul had been reincarnated in the neighbour’s cat. He didn’t even hide the fact that he had been unfaithful to her twice. He almost came to believe that he could tell her absolutely everything in the letters.
But he never forgot that it wasn’t really so. He couldn’t find it in himself to write about what was perhaps the most important thing – that lost period of four years. He never spoke of it to her or to anyone else – not even when every year Alexis came on the fifth of March and the two of them would light a candle by the portraits drawn from memory. Even then he didn’t speak of it. Alexis, who worked at the theatre, would complain that it had been simpler at the old theatre, but who the hell could understand the caprices of current fashion. Vytautas Handless spoke of the shortage of parts, the outdated machinery and the hysterical director of the artel1*. One might say that they communicated in code, thinking and wanting to say something entirely different. They never spoke about the most important thing, the reason why they actually got together here; they never spoke, otherwise they would have been forced to remember that only the two of them had survived out of the entire twenty-six.
‘The message, the message is the most important thing,’ Bruno kept repeating with his eyes shut. ‘I’d make up the kind of message so the whole world would drop everything and come running to us. But I have nothing to write with and nothing to write it on.’
The men’s heads drooped to the ground, although they were light as feathers. All their faces looked the same, and their eyes were the same, revealing the effort to force out at least one idea.
And the clouds kept floating and floating in the same direction, as if showing them the way, if not to freedom then at least to life.
To speak would have meant to remember at once that which had been forgotten only with the greatest effort, that which had been exiled from the memory, chained and thrown into the deepest hole, perhaps the abyss. It would have forced them to see again that rambling, brown stump like a bull’s head that had gripped his hand with its teeth, the frost and the blizzard – or first the blizzard and then the frost – and the men repeatedly falling into the snow banks, their faces all the same, all equally ashen and expressionless, quite unlike the ones that Alexis had drawn with a blunt pencil, though once upon a time they had really looked like that: Valius, Zenka from Kaunas, the two foreigners, Francis, and all the others. They had stood in a circle around the thin, solitary candle on the table in his room. He and Alexis did not want to remember them, all the nameless and the faceless. They did not and could not dare to do so. In silence they would down a shot, then another, they would empty the ritual bottle neatly and a sighing Alexis would say, ‘I’m off to feed Elena’. (His wife hadn’t left her bed for several years now. Little Elena, one more forbidden memory: the womb frozen by the black snow, the hands that had made fabulous sausages. Elena, the ant with her legs pulled off.)
Alexis and his Elena disappeared and Ona did not reply or give any kind of sign. Vytautas’s daughters fought daily with their husbands before making up again. Sometimes they asked if their father needed anything and if he could use some help. What did he have need of? He was sturdy and not especially old, he could even help others including his daughters if the need should arise. Summer was at its peak, but Vytautas Handless liked Vilnius: the old, hot streets were dearer to him than the quiet solace of the lakes back home.
Desire ambushed him, stung him like a snake biting a naked, unprotected leg. The poison dispersed throughout his body immediately, fogged up his brain and even disturbed his dreams. The poisonous desire pulsed in his heart together with his blood; maybe the blood itself became the desire, his heart, kidneys, liver and his entire body became it. The strange temptation to conquer himself burned like an icy fire. Vytautas Handless suddenly felt that he had not dared to admit to himself throughout his life who he really was – he had pretended to others and tried to fool himself. He had devastated an important part of his soul, without which he was not the real Vytautas Handless; he went on existing like some other person – someone with a different face, name and soul. The cock having crowed scarcely three times, he had denied himself, he himself was Jesus and the apostle Peter. He had to recover himself, return to himself at least before he died.
The thought struck him that perhaps Ona didn’t answer because he had kept his essence from her. He hadn’t told her about his hand, wandering the world, or perhaps the heavens. Now the hand was calling him.
His grandfather Raphael had once advised him: if you’re ever confused, cast a spell or better yet wait for a sign, but not from this crucified God. Wait instead for one from the oaks, from the altar place, from the current of the sacred river, from the cry of the sacred wolf; simply go on living, he’d say, don’t be afraid that you’ll miss seeing it or hearing it. No, when it appears – and it will appear – you’ll recognise it right away, it will speak to you in a loud voice and you’ll know everything. You won’t be able to deny understanding it – choose a holy place and wait. Vytautas Handless did just that, wandering the Vilnius streets (after all, Vilnius is also a dreary kind of temple), looking at the mouldings on the cornices of the old roofs, inhaling the odour of the city, which perspired gasoline, all the while secretly listening to the conversations of passers-by. He wasn’t in any hurry for he knew the fateful sign was looking for him and was searching with equal tenacity, and that inevitably they would run into each other.
He found the hardcover booklet in a passageway. He flipped through it before his quivering hand stuck it in his pocket. Suddenly he felt the urge to run away from himself, to hide in a gloomy forest, dig himself into the ground and burn the book because he already knew that this booklet was the sign. He knew this with certainty, just as that other time when he had picked up a ring of sausage from the damp ground between the barbed wire. It was a genuinely delicious Lithuanian sausage. Without any hesitation he had recognised the smell of home wrenching his soul. Then, as now, he cursed his abominable fate, feeling that any freedom of decision or choice had disappeared and that just as he had once been guided by fate in the form of a sweet-smelling sausage, now he was being led by a slightly damp booklet. It was leading him into the unknown, into perdition, or maybe even into non-existence. His fate was always decided by the strangest or most shockingly trivial things.
Winter in that land lasted eight months, but the river never froze completely even in the depths of winter. As if alive, its current had to breathe air and be able to see the world. It surrendered to no frost; it was invincible, like the common current of the lives of all the people who had been relocated to its banks. Tens, hundreds, thousands could perish, but there was no power that could destroy every single one of them.
They brought the twenty-six of them to an abandoned logging camp. There were supposed to have been twenty-five, but at the last minute the supervisor of the zone had shoved Vytautas Handless over by the others.
(‘Your odour gave you away, boy,’ he said in an almost matey manner. ‘You smelly thief, you.’
Handless was still aware of the bitter taste of garlic and rosemary, the scent of juniper smoke, the smell and taste of home, when the zone superintendent crept along the row like a dog sniffing each one of them. He had nothing doglike about him; rather, his appearance was that of a tired geography teacher. But he was approaching Handless like death, like Giltine, the mythological goddess of death. Instead of the scythe, he grasped a polished riding crop.)
The guards swore out loud, wading those few kilometres from the rusted-out tracks of the branch line. No one had cut timber here for several years. The file of men dragged along silently; only Alexis, when he first got off, muttered: ‘The sausage was mine. Elena is only in exile, she sent it to me. And as usual they filched it. Did it taste good?’
Here the snow didn’t crunch at all; people’s voices momentarily froze into ice and fell into the snow banks without a sound. Around them stood trees that one could only dream of; many of them were probably two centuries old. They were painfully beautiful but at the same time sombre, as though they existed in a frightening fairy tale with no happy ending. Looking at them you were overcome by the fear that nothing else existed in the universe, that these stern and soulless trees had overtaken the entire earth. (They have no soul, Bruno was to shout later. Oak has a soul, ash can have one, even aspen – but not these ghastly giants.) The men clambered over the snow banks, each with his own sign, his own angel overhead. Bruno was being followed by his gaunt Dzukish muse, Alexis by the image of his Elena, while above Vytautas Handless’s head floated only the spirit of fragrant Lithuanian sausage, shining like a halo.
Finally, the abandoned logging camp lay before them. Satisfied, the guards stamped their feet, shaking the snow from their boots as if they had arrived home. The camp was impossible to take in with one glance; in this country everything was inhuman, you would think that once upon a time giants had lived here. But the giants had long ago disappeared. Only the guards remained, and they kept stamping their feet, almost like they were testing the ground’s durability. But the ground here was harder than steel, a steel earth.
‘Tomorrow we’ll bring the rations,’ one said in a hoarse voice.
‘By tomorrow we’ll escape!’ snapped Zenka from Kaunas. He was the only one who felt good.
The guards didn’t bother replying or even to shrug their shoulders. In winter no man could move more than twenty or so kilometres in this country – not even on skis or being armed with a gun. Even seasoned hunters didn’t stray too far from their cabins. No one and nothing could escape from here including the animals and birds. The clouds that kept drifting and drifting in the same direction were the only possible exceptions.
‘Are they going to leave us alone?’ said Bruno in amazement. ‘It can’t be.’
‘In the Land of Miracles anything can happen. Anything!’ shot back Zenka.
For some reason everyone called that part of the country, the valley of that river, the Land of Miracles.
‘We’ll bring food tomorrow, food for the whole two weeks,’ boomed the guard, walking away.
He played with the hardcover booklet like a cat with a mouse, even though he understood perfectly well that it was the book which was playing with him, making him suffer, entrancing him like a boa constrictor hypnotises a rabbit petrified with fear. It burned his fingers, but as soon as he would fling it down, he’d pick it up again, open it, look over the face in the small photograph for the hundredth time. It reminded Vytautas Handless of Ona’s face: the wide lips, protruding cheekbones and the large, dark eyes. The woman in the photograph looked kind and tired; she was probably a champion milker, or perhaps a weaver. For some days he debated with incredible seriousness which would be more likely, as if this had any meaning at all. Only the document itself was important, the miserable little book whose owner gazed at Vytautas Handless with kind, sad eyes – Ona’s eyes – understanding and justifying him, allowing him to act as he saw fit. She offered her help without his asking. She didn’t begrudge him the booklet with hard covers, that respectful testimony, which gave its owner rights and privileges – after all, she was an ordinary woman, a milker or weaver. Maybe she wasn’t even aware of the privileges that he needed so much – needed briefly, not forever, just for the trip there and back for an ineluctable journey into the forbidden, dangerous past. He had to find his past and look it in the face. A man who has forgotten his past and renounced it is nothing but a wind-up doll.
He didn’t ask himself anymore why the desire existed – he only wanted to comprehend why it arose now of all times, earnestly believing that neither his retirement nor all the spare time it created had anything to do with it; after all, painful thoughts had always tortured him, taken away his breath and suffocated him, had howled in the deepest closed-off subterranean passages, knocking at the iron door. But he had never broken down the door, had never even attempted to break it down. Why now in particular? His life had finally settled down quite nicely: a job in an enormous artel with responsibilities of a sort; certificates of merit and a medal of seniority; and two beloved daughters as well as other relatives and friends. Nothing reminded him of that which he himself didn’t want to remember, if anything it helped to keep shut the subterranean door. Why now in particular? Why not right after Ona’s death? Why not some other day or week or minute of those thirty-five years?
Having thought it all over calmly, he decided that there was no reason for it, but he felt that the pressing desire would still win and had already won over him. It seemed like some other Vytautas Handless had occupied his soul, but a different one from the one who through all those years had lived, worked and strived harmoniously and correctly. The first version always knew how to force the world to be the way it was supposed to be. He could put his things and thoughts in their proper places, while this one, the new one, sowed confusion and ruin not only in himself but in the whole world. In his mind, the sun didn’t rise in the east and set in the west, odours changed to tastes, ideas to clouds, always drifting and drifting over the frozen earth. Suddenly the world lost its harmony, each item existed in isolation and it could mean whatever one wanted – now this, and in the blink of an eye, that. But what was worst was that this new Vytautas Handless could remember that which had been forgotten for eternity, that which perhaps had never even existed. The world fell apart and would not go together again. Vytautas Handless had felt this way only once in his lifetime – during the great council of the nineteen men who were all that was left of the original twenty-six. Once he caught himself talking to the hook-nosed neighbour’s cat, asking for his childhood friend Martin’s advice. He realised that the unquenchable desire had overcome him for good. He had to stop stalling on his commitment or go out of his mind.
‘It’s like a desert in my head. Camels are grazing, nibbling the sand.’
‘The raft won’t hold two. It won’t even hold one. It won’t hold anything.’
‘Did Elena’s sausage taste good? Did it?’
‘Men, the famine and cold have shocked our spirits. Our thoughts don’t belong to us anymore. Men, pull yourselves together, think of something very ordinary. Don’t do it, don’t do what you’ve decided to do. Come to your senses! How are you going to live afterwards, if you survive?’
‘It’s the voice of God! Whatever comes into everyone’s head at the same time is the voice of God!’
‘I have many heads. And they’re all so empty, so light. Men, listen, I have many heads. And each one of them talks in its own way.’
‘An idea of greatest lucidity. Of the greatest clarity. A mighty idea. Great lucidity. Great clarity. A great raft. The great message.’
‘Do you agree, Handless?’
‘Did Elena’s sausage taste good? Tell me, was it good?’
‘I’m a doctor. Everything is going to be okay, no pain. I have a medical degree.’
Carefully, Vytautas Handless tore the picture of the kind and tired woman off the document, having previously apologised to her out loud for his grandfather Raphael had always taught him that at least a tiny part of man’s soul was hidden in his image – it could hear, understand and sympathise. He kept repeating to himself that he was making the document for himself, wishing only to find himself. He wasn’t aiming to become another person or to steal anything from the woman he didn’t know. The honourable certificate was only a key, a magic phrase like ‘open, sesame’ – only in the cave that was perhaps about to open neither gold nor emeralds were waiting for him, but rather himself: gaunt and malnourished, thirty years younger, he himself in the shape of a dragon, his jaws open wide, greedy for victims, the last of twenty-six men. Vytautas Handless, the last of twenty-six men, holding in his hands the document with a woman’s last name, while in the pocket next to his chest was the picture of the real owner of the document, so similar to pictures of Ona.
Suddenly it struck him as incredibly funny that he was setting off on the most important feat of his life under the cover of a woman’s name. He choked with laughter until the tears came, tears that turned into the most real bitter tears, although Vytautas Handless didn’t understand for whom he was crying – whether it was for himself, the woman, Ona or for the future journey. He only knew that no one would notice the woman’s name; from previous times he knew that there, far beyond the Urals, in the former Land of Miracles, no one recognises or remembers Lithuanian first names or even last names.
The snowstorm stopped raging just as suddenly as it had started roaring. And all at once an eerie frost set in. Not one of the twenty-six men could remember such a frost. The storm released its fury for two or three days. No one could say how many nights of terror there had been in the shaking shed. Several of the men became totally confused.
The frost pressed down relentlessly for several days. It seemed that even the air would soon turn to ice and start to crack. The entire world froze: only the river and the twenty-six shabby men did not surrender. They kept the fire going day and night, as only a few matches remained. In that land fire and life often had the same meaning. The men mostly kept silent. Only Bruno constantly muttered, repeating that they were little male vestal virgins and would survive if they threw just the tiniest piece of oak into the fire. But oak had not grown here since time immemorial. Bruno kept getting up to search for the holy wood, and the men would hold him down sullenly but without anger.
The last leftovers of the January rations were running out. Some of them went out into the forest and returned with bark and pine cones, and tried to bite into them. Others shovelled snow, kept the fire going outside and attempted to dig out some miraculous roots. But the frozen ground here was stronger than human patience. At least twice a day volunteer scouts would wade out to look for the train tracks without any luck. There were no tracks; they had disappeared forever together with the guards and their dogs. All that was left were waist-high banks of snow and the ethereal frost, which caused the trunks of live trees to crack. Then there was the river; as if alive its current had to breathe air and view the world. It refused to surrender even to this eerie frost; it was invincible, like the common current of the lives of all the people who had been relocated on its banks. Ten could die, all twenty-six, thousands of others could. But there was no power that could make every single one of them disappear.
They came up with idea of building rafts, but the ghostly tree giants did not wish them well. The axes and saws fractured and crumbled like glass. Though the men constantly returned to the fire of the shelter and patiently heated the helpless iron, the steel of the trees was more durable. Even the most patient ones, sacrificing almost all the axes, produced only a small raft; it wouldn’t have carried even the lightest of them.
Toward the middle of the second week the men started to rave. One of them, screaming at the top of his lungs, would constantly rush out of the shed into the unknown. Some of them never returned. Those who retained at least a little common sense were still able to comprehend that one should not leave the fire. No one knew in which direction to go or where to seek help. They had only one good axe. Only a few matches remained, and the men were secretly afraid that even those might not light. They chewed on pieces of their clothing, bark and woodchips. A few had collapsed into a heap in the far corner of the shed and were raving deliriously, as if they were communicating in a secret language or were singing ghostly chorales. Francis knocked out Vaclov’s remaining teeth when all he had done was mention that someone was bound to come looking for them – after all, they were human beings. Valius held up the most steadfastly. If it hadn’t been for him, the men would long ago have waded out into the unknown in the direction of an indifferent death. Valius wouldn’t say anything, he’d only glance at those who’d gotten up with his fathomless eyes, which were sculpted into the shabby face of a saint, and the men would suddenly become hesitant. But there were some that even he could not restrain, and they were increasing in number. The men’s conversation had long since lost its meaning. One of them claimed to be flying, another told the same story about a fox hunt over and over again, and a third was possessed by naked women. This couldn’t go on. Something had to be done.
Somehow they had to send a message to the world of men, they all realised this. The only route was the river. The only messenger was the meagre raft, which would probably get caught in the first bend of the river. The men argued and raved. They couldn’t write anything; uselessly they tried to engrave something on the wood of the raft. They had to think of a sign that anyone would comprehend at a glance. The men decided to call a Great Council. This idea, which had struck Bruno, united them all for a moment. Even the delirious bunch fell quite and crept closer to the fire. Chewing on chips, bark and the ends of their felt boots, they all tried to think of something with their frozen brains.
Only the two foreigners remained immune from the encroaching madness. They didn’t go searching for the spur tracks, they didn’t run over the snow banks screaming, and they did not succumb to delirium. They scrupulously washed their hands and faces, and even their feet, five times a day. They always faced the same corner of the shed and intently began to murmur a prayer. They were the very happiest. They didn’t care about the great message, the raft, food, probably not even about life. They were the happiest.
Only after he had gone there, after he had descended into hell and climbed out of it again, only after he had written and sent out the first letter did he understand what it was he had hoped for all along and secretly awaited. He did not expect to find anything there that had been there before, then he could turn around and go back with an unburdened heart, paste the photograph of the tired weaver or milker back into place and settle accounts properly with himself. He tried to do everything he could and even more, but fate itself erased the evil nightmare from the surface of the earth.
Fate had no desire to help him; it was probably sitting comfortably in a soft, easy chair with its knees crossed, carelessly watching to see what Handless would do and how he would behave. Now, when everything was over and done with, he could remember it, even though it was with shyness, always convincing himself that nothing terrible had happened, everything was simple; it hadn’t shocked him and wasn’t driving him crazy. The hangover also helped – it had been a long time since Vytautas Handless had had occasion to drink pure alcohol.
He wrote the first letter just after he arrived in the familiar town, which had turned into a noisy city over the years. Bulldozers buzzed around and construction crews in lorries sang songs at the top of their lungs. The weather was beautiful; he was constantly taking off his coat and carrying it over his arm, always fearful that he’d lose his money and papers. It seemed to him that everyone he met was looking at him suspiciously, but soon he realised that no one was paying him any attention, that he wasn’t in anyone’s way, he was simply unnecessary. All the stares said: what did you come all the way here for, what are you looking for, wake up before it’s too late.
But it was already too late. He said as much in the first letter, still naively rejoicing that the city was so big, noisy and completely different from the muddy town with wooden sidewalks that had remained in his memory. Everything had changed here. Vytautas Handless carefully copied out his address on the envelope; at that time he didn’t think then that there would be many such letters, letters to Ona. Being so far from home, from the chain enclosure of her grave, he suddenly felt that she was still alive. It was thanks to her that he had survived thirty years ago and he’d survive now too, for his Penelope had repulsed the young men and was waiting for his return from the wide and sombre banks of the river.
A solitary raft of rough logs was floating down the river; it was making its way forward slowly, as if dead tired. Driven by the cold, animals stopped on the riverbank and followed it with fearful glances. But the raft did not care about them. It was searching for people who could receive the message. But still there were no people.
He climbed into the bus while whistling fitfully and looked out of the window at the skeletons of factories and power stations, having no doubts that he was performing only a formality. A bad premonition stirred under his heart only after he saw the swamp where they used to dump piles of sawdust back in those days. Even now the stench it gave off was exactly the same. It was even harder to see the barbed wire fence.
It was hard to go inside and step into the living past, to open the zone superintendent’s office door before putting on the mask and making a proper face – one which was both solid and ingratiating, conspiratorial but insistent. Hardest of all was to speak out – up to that second it was still possible to retreat, to flee, to pretend to be lost. The zone superintendent looked at him with his piercing gaze for an infinitely long time, took him apart bone by bone and investigated each one separately, squeezed them, smelled them even; he spent even more time squeezing and looking over the document. To Vytautas Handless it seemed that he would never get out of there; that any moment now he’d be put behind the barbed wire fence for falsification of documents. But finally the superintendent slowly and unwillingly got up from his chair, came around the table and gave him his hand. From that second on everything would succeed. He understood that he was victorious, that he’d calculated everything correctly and that the current of destiny had caught him and would carry him forward like the frozen river had carried the mute raft of rough logs.
Vytautas Handless’s insolence knew no bounds, but he had calculated correctly: everyone here was seeing the certificate of a Supreme Soviet deputy for the first time. It acted like a magic password and right away the secret door opened slightly. The zone superintendent immediately fell to pieces. He was afraid of only one thing: did this not, perhaps, reek of some dangerous inspection. But Vytautas Handless didn’t allow him to collect himself. He had learned his part well and had rehearsed it in front of the mirror a hundred times, even though now he was doing everything differently. He had intended to speak matter-of-factly, but he poured out an entire monologue about old age, the desire to retrace the paths of his youth and said that he had worked here once (it was, after all, true). He related an enormous level of detail, bombarded the chairman with questions, made idle jokes, asked that his visit not be made public, pulled out the grain alcohol and cognac as well as the snack he had brought – the host’s eyes lit up – and kept calling the superintendent ‘my good colleague’. Afterwards everything that took place felt like a dream in which nightmarish landscapes are more real than real ones, monsters are more alive than the most alive of men, and meaningless words have much more meaning than all the wisdom of humanity. But it was far from being a dream. It finally dawned on him that he was caught in a horrible trap. Everything here looked different than it had in the old days, but this had absolutely no meaning. Vytautas Handless visualised the old barracks and paths. He saw the hill that had now been levelled, the holes had been filled, he recognised every tree that had been felled long ago, he smelled the old odour that had dispersed heaven knows when – the odour of injustice and despair that could not be covered up, which had enmeshed the zone more tightly than barbed wire. And the people now looked quite different: gloomy, staring creatures and insolent kids wandered around, but he didn’t see them at all. While he was watching the kids, their faces kept changing and they became completely different. They became the faces of others, familiar and unfamiliar.
‘What’re you in for?’
‘For the cause,’ said Valius. ‘It’s okay, good times will come for me, too.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Handless. ‘For nothing. It was a mistake.’
‘They accused me of aiding the guerrillas,’ said Francis. ‘How are you not going to help them? Did they ask my permission when they showed up at night?’
‘Me, I’m in to make up the quota,’ said Zenka from Kaunas, grinning as usual. ‘This good-for-nothing guy, a mate of mine from school days, shows up. He says go, take off to the countryside and hide – your turn’s up according to the quota. You can hide out in the countryside; they’ll take someone else in your place. But by the time I got my stuff together, they nabbed me there and then.’
Vytautas Handless finally figured out why there had to be two of him, who needed the second Vytautas Handless who was doing everything differently. Now that the other one was cracking jokes and looking around with an eager eye, he was acting the way he himself, the real Vytautas Handless, never could have managed to act. He certainly could never have pretended to be his own warder here once, to have sent himself out through the snow banks to work, to have left himself and twenty-five other men to slowly go out of their minds in that terrible and frightening winter. He made the zone superintendent laugh and made fun of the prisoners, and then courageously drank the undiluted alcohol and invented even more details. He allowed the real Vytautas Handless time to recollect everything leisurely, let him cry quietly and honour the men with a minute of silence, an endless minute of silence, while the other one carried on and drank and almost fell down the steps before being brought back to the hotel in the zone superintendent’s car. But at one point he couldn’t take it, he suddenly grabbed his host by the shoulders and roared: ‘give me back my hand, return my hand!’ But no one caught the gist of his words, thank God, no one understood. And later he spoke to the bare hotel room walls, to the stars, hidden by the clouds, to the ghosts who had gathered in his room. He wrote the second letter, then the third and the fourth, perhaps even the thousandth, or perhaps none at all. He tried to write on behalf of all twenty-five men, tried to carry within himself twenty-six souls. He heard the men’s voices, saw their faces, felt himself to be all of them at once, but this feeling could not be described in any letter.
The Great Council lasted until evening, without reaching any decision. They had the puny raft and the single axe. They could stick the axe into the middle log and send it off downstream. Would this be a sign?
With their brains frozen, the men’s thoughts turned to ice and had to be thawed out. The men bent their heads closer to the fire, scarcely able to bear the heat, but the ideas didn’t want to come.
The men continually glanced at Valius, but all they saw in his eyes was helplessness and torment. They looked at Bruno, begging, but he only raved on, first more quietly, then more loudly, murmuring his own and others’ confused utterances. Vaclov was incessantly counting his broken teeth; he raked them in the palm of his hand like bits of gravel. Francis for some reason got the urge to take off his clothes and run around naked. Alexis was patiently chewing on Elena’s sausage, one long lost in someone else’s stomach. It was the Council of the Great Silence. The silence of each of them joined with the general silence, and the latter flowed into the silence of the indifferent century-old trees, the blinding snow and the clouds floating across the heavens. It was a council without debates or suggestions. No one could find a sign that all people would understand at once. Perhaps such a sign announcing that they were here, slowly dying in body and soul, did not exist. Before he began to rave, Bruno had suggested that one of them turn into a dwarf so that the raft could support him. Finally Valius spoke and said that in such cold even a dwarf would turn into a piece of ice within the hour.
No one was aware of when and how the great idea dawned. No one knew who was the first to utter the words out loud. Suddenly it seemed to the men that each of them had long harboured this thought. They burst into words, each one talking louder that the other; they didn’t even need to vote. Only Valius tried in vain to make his voice heard over the din of the others. No one was listening to him, they all kept glancing at Handless. He had to be the one to agree. They all waited for him to speak, although there could be only one reply.
‘I agree,’ Handless finally said, ‘I agreed long ago. It’s my destiny. My grandfather warned me a long time ago.’
‘Come to your senses, you madman!’ Valius was the only one to exclaim.
The two foreigners, having understood not a word of the entire Council, sadly nodded their heads and started to wash their hands with snow. It was already midnight, the hour of the final prayer.
The stump had been hurting for a long time; it had already started hurting in Vilnius as soon as the miserable, insane desire had overtaken him. An oppressive, sick feeling troubled his heart too, and periodically everything would get confused. It seemed to Vytautas Handless that his tortured heart was beating somewhere beyond the confines of his body in place of his lost hand. It seemed that he wanted to recover not so much his hand as the heart he had lost. He didn’t blame the men then or later – he never thought about the horrible council at all, and most amazing though it was to him, he didn’t even dream about it. His nightmares were quite different.
But now the awful council appeared, welling up from the depths. He was sitting once more in the shaky shed and by the fire, and he couldn’t run away anywhere because beyond the thin board walls there was the eerie frost and there was no road that would lead him to people. Vytautas Handless wandered around the buzzing, reeking city. He saw the dirty streets, the holes in the foundations, people’s pale faces, but at the same time he was there, at the council. He heard every word, saw everyone’s eyes. Periodically he would stop, lean helplessly against a tree or a wall, concerned passers-by would inquire if he felt all right, and he’d just nod his head. How could he explain to them that just now, right by this tree, he heard Francis’s voice and saw the distorted face of Zenka from Kaunas, that he already knew what his decision would be and was trying to concentrate, summon at least one clear idea? But there was only one idea: if the enemy takes away your hand, this at least is understandable; if your own people tear it off – it means the end of the world has come. He was just waiting for the angel of perdition to trumpet and for the book with the seven seals to be brought.
Vytautas Handless could long since have gone home. It wasn’t easy to get out of there, but with the miserable falsified document he could have brought a ticket at any time, without even waiting in line. It had been a week since he had gone anywhere, but every day he would write a letter and post it. Only the dead could read letters like those without feeling fear.
He felt that he had to explain that which could not be explained. He convinced himself that he wasn’t going home because he was waiting for Ona’s answer. But in reality he was detained only by the pain in his heart, the heart beating beyond the confines of his body, in place of the lost hand. He couldn’t return without having found the hand – which meant his heart. On the evenings of his letter writing his grandfather visited him, smoked his curved Prussian pipe, and nodded his head sadly.
‘My child,’ he would say in a mournful voice, ‘that’s our family emblem. You can’t change it, it’s been that way for centuries. Even our family name is that way. My hand was torn off by a shell, your father’s chopped off by the Bermondtists. I’ve said many times: prepare yourself ahead of time, child, say good-bye to it. It belongs to you only temporarily.’
‘If we send his hand off, anyone will recognise this kind of sign. You understand, if Handless really becomes handless, the secret will of the gods will be fulfilled. You understand? The gods themselves call for it.’
By the middle of the second week he had made up his mind. Now he gave up hope of finding anyone there in the deserted logging camp from those times. If he tried with all his might, he could visualise a vast area of stumps, piles of trunks and the rotten shed. He could make out the gigantic stump that looked like a bull’s head and could feel the hand hopelessly pressing the handle of the last axe. Grandfather sat beside him in the shaking four-wheel drive and for the last time tried to talk him out of it. However, Vytautas Handless knew that he would go there in spite of everything – indeed, he had already gone. It was an accomplished fact, even though it was hidden in the future. The future, the current of time didn’t mean anything anymore. He knew well what was to follow. He could relate everything in the greatest detail to anyone ahead of time and then take them to the logging camp so that they would see that in reality everything would be just as he said.
It is only when he gets out of the vehicle that he will suddenly have the urge to turn back, but his muscles will not obey him. Finally, he’ll comprehend that he can’t leave his hand, his heart, to the will of destiny because at the same time he will be leaving the twenty-six souls imprisoned here. He’ll be taken aback because the spot will be exactly the same as it had once been, even the remains of their fire will be untouched. Without anger he’ll kick at the rotten skeleton of the shelter, with a firm step he’ll walk over to the stump that looked like the gigantic head of a bull – now it is looming quite close to the shed, but then they spent a good half hour crawling to it – and he’ll fix his eyes on it. The stump will glance at him, and he will glare back. They will battle it out in the clash of stares; they will contend for a long time, oblivious of time, or perhaps, turning the clock back some thirty years. They’ll try to crush one other because this will be the most important thing in life. He wasn’t afraid at all. He knew he would win just as he had won back then. He knew that he was invincible and had always been so, especially now, when he has twenty-six souls. He was invincible like the river’s current, like the sunlight, like Ona’s eternal patience waiting for him. He knew that in the end the stump would surrender and shake its death rattle when he put his right hand, the good hand, on it, resolutely and firmly.
Four of them went out into the freezing weather. The doctor was carrying some bandages, torn up from filthy underwear soaked with sweat. Formerly he was called Andreas, but for several days now he had ordered them to call him by some other name. Sometimes he would secretly admit to having several heads. Zenka from Kaunas and Alexis went with them. Zenka said he’d seen everything there was to see in life and therefore he had to see this too. Besides, once upon a time he had worked as an orderly. Alexis came along just in case. If Handless should happen to faint, he promised to carry him back in his arms like a baby. Alexis knew well that now he was the strongest of them all – while the others had been starving, he had kept eating Elena’s nonexistent sausage. They hurried along so that the axe, which they had heated in the fire, wouldn’t get cold and crumble. They thought that they were going along at a good pace in an orderly fashion, though in reality they were only crawling waywardly and staggering at their own pace and direction, like gigantic snails, groaning every now and then. The doctor wouldn’t stop repeating out loud that this kind of frost kills off all germs. Zenka from Kaunas kept telling the same anecdote, to which no one was listening.
They went behind a small hill so that they couldn’t see the dilapidated shed, which was enveloped in puffs of steam. Handless wanted it this way. He was silent even when he had approached the large stump, which resembled a bull’s head. He only pointed to it with his hand. He flourished the axe three times, but each time he didn’t chop. Zenka from Kaunas muttered that the axe would freeze and offered to hold down the hand stretched out on the stump so that Handless wouldn’t pull it back involuntarily.
‘I’m not going to wait for others to take it away from me, Grandpa,’ said Handless to the empty space. ‘I’m going to do it myself.’
The axe bounced back from the stump without a sound. Alexis caught Handless, who was falling, while Zenka from Kaunas grabbed the axe and slipped it inside his coat. The doctor finally shut up, quickly holding the bleeding limb tight and bandaging it. Separated from the body, the hand moved its fingers as if in surprise, then fell on its side and froze. There was almost no blood dripping from it.
The linden trees in Vilnius had finished blooming. The pavement gave off an almost imperceptible unhealthy steam. He fetched the letters, which a woman in the neighbourhood had collected, and counted them diligently, even though he could not remember how many he had sent. His home seemed totally alien to him. He didn’t go to visit his daughters and he only went to the store and back for some fresh potatoes and to fill his refrigerator full of canned meat and eggs. He locked himself in, opening the door to no one and ignoring telephone calls.
Vytautas Handless had to think. He had to get used to himself, a quite different Vytautas Handless, a man who had dared to open the forbidden door, to descend into hell and return, a man who had gotten the urge to experience for a second time that which it is possible to endure only once, a man who was carrying twenty-six souls. He found it strange that he wanted to eat and drink, and later urinated and defecated. He found it strange that he fell asleep and dreamed of himself without a hand. Throughout his life, he had dreamed of himself having both hands. Hopelessly, he tried to get a sense of whether his victory really was such, and if so, over whom it came. His mind was of no use now, it had long ago forbidden him to leave Vilnius. It could explain neither the incomprehensible desire, nor the journey, nor the return. Vytautas Handless couldn’t understand what forced him on the ill-fated journey and what he expected to find or experience. Yes, twenty-five men mournfully invited him, the last of their group, but he didn’t have to go – it wouldn’t have been a betrayal. He could feel nothing with his heart; all the feelings he had experienced during those two weeks didn’t belong to him, they were someone else’s. Yes, he had won the battle, he could calmly recall any moment of those days, the memories long imprisoned had broken free, but they had no power over him. The stretch of life that had been torn from him once upon a time had been put in its place. Everything was in place, but Vytautas Handless himself had disappeared somewhere, he didn’t exist and had to be found, or perhaps created anew.
For four days he read his letters – the letters of that other Vytautas Handless – and forced his way through the tangle of words, wanting to understand, at least a little, the other Vytautas Handless, the one who had never broken away from that freezing land, who had remained there for all time, who sat on the banks of the river that didn’t freeze solid as he waited for the log raft to appear with the sign, who kept hoping that his hand would come slowly floating back on the black waters. He read and kept asking the paper out loud why all that he had experienced and forgotten had to be experienced one more time. Was it because a man can’t live without a memory? But how can he go on living now that he has become the living memory of twenty-six men?
On the fifth morning he placed the letters in a neat pile and tied them with a ribbon. The day dawned bright and clear, the near-deserted city hummed quietly, several times the phone rang irritably. Vytautas Handless put some water on to make tea and carefully ate his breakfast. He wasn’t terribly hungry, but the tea seemed excellent. Shutting himself in the bathroom, he rinsed his mouth and returned to the kitchen because he had forgotten the matches. The phone rang endlessly and obstinately – this was the last sound that Vytautas Handless was to hear.
If his soul had been able to see into his home and his dead body from the outside, a few days later it would have seen how the neighbour with the fat lips sidled in, together with the men who had broken down the door, and curiously, showing no disgust, looked over the blue, bloated face, the black tongue hanging out, the greasy, shiny rope, scarcely to be made out on the swollen neck, the bathroom full of ashes from burnt paper. With sincere sorrow she said: ‘Well look at that! And I would have bet anything that Vaciukas from number forty-six would go first.’
The men who had broken down the door prudently flipped through the document with the woman’s name and the picture of Vytautas Handless pasted in and asked the neighbour if recently he had started acting a little strange. For instance, had he shown any desire to turn into someone else, or had he commented that life was better in the world of the dead? The woman proudly shook her head and said that Vytautas Handless had been the calmest and most sober of all her neighbours and had never talked any nonsense. He had cared for nothing, she added, except for his daughters and the cat of the man next door.
Winter in that land lasted eight months. Four were left for the other seasons.
The frost overcame everything – that which was alive and that which was inanimate. Only the river never froze completely. Its current was invincible, like the common current of the lives of all the people who had been relocated on its banks. Tens, hundreds, thousands could perish. But there was no power that could destroy every single one of them.
A solitary little raft of rough logs floated down the river. It was empty. Only by looking extremely carefully could you make out something pale and crooked on its middle log. A man’s hand had been attached to the icy bark with a rusty nail. It was white all the way through, not even the contours of the veins could be seen through the dull skin. This hand was the sign that every man had to understand.
The raft made its way forward slowly, yet obstinately. And still there were no people.
1987
First published in Come into my time: Lithuania in prose fiction, 1970-90, Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press (1992).
Translated by Violeta Kelertas from Ricardas Gavelis, Nubaustieji, Vilnius: Vaga (1987).
Ricardas Gavelis (1950–2002) studied theoretical physics at Vilnius University and worked for several years as a researcher before becoming a full time writer. In his trilogy of Vilnius novels, Vilnius Poker (Vilniaus pokeris, 1989), Vilnius Jazz (Vilniaus dziazas, 1993), and The Last Generation of People on Earth (Paskutine zemes zmoniu karta, 1995), he delved into the core of totalitarian coercion and the perversions engendered by social change. He is the founder of Lithuanian post-modernism, having created complicated and multi-layered narratives that did not shy away from themes such as illness, exile, murder and sexual coercion. In his work he uses images of sexual coercion to help lay bare the elements of power and the desire to manage and control impulses. He uses irony to recreate the ideas that were fashionable in the first decade after the fall of Communism as part of his focus on the ‘birth of the elite’ and the suffering experienced during that time.
1* Artel is a general term for various co-operative associations that existed in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union between the 1860s and through the 1950s. Historically, artels were semi-formal associations for various enterprises including fishing, mining, logging, commerce and manual labour; the term is also used to refer to associations of thieves and beggars.