Jurga Ivanauskaite
The lilies of the valley withered
From the yellow northern wind.
A glowing red hull
Passed through the sky three times.
An old, blind seagull
Whispered his prayer to me –
Saulius recited while mincing down the road in graceful pantomime-trained steps. A whole host of the most unbelievable expressions wafted across the cold features of his handsome face. Saulius removed his glasses and his glance became extraordinarily sharp such that it seemed odd that when it fixed upon something, the object of his gaze was not rendered in two. Saulius was the ideological leader of our group. We worshipped him unconditionally and didn’t bother to question why we were so attracted to him. Fifteen-year-old Danas tramped along beside Saulius. He was the youngest among us and therefore had certain privileges. He was allowed to admire Jack Kerouac, while the rest of us delved into the apologetics of Zen Buddhism and Dostoevsky. Danas even gained the privilege of talking about what he would do if he became a millionaire or a rock star.
The only ‘Miss’ in our group, Vilija, walked with her eyes fixed on Saulius – no explanation is necessary – and for this reason she often tripped. Now, I kept my eyes fixed on Vilija. If you saw her you’d behave this way too. Of course, if you prefer Hollywood starlets or the women of Renoir or Kustodiev, you might think I’m crazy. Though it must be said that Vilija was great bait for drivers. When she stood in the middle of the road, her red garment, black hair and tiny glittering beads flapping, she looked like a plant cut out of a Max Ernst painting, and not one car would drive by without stopping. The rising and receding of the tide of her soul was visible in her face, her movements and her speech – they changed in a heartbeat and one could stare at them almost unblinkingly. By contrast, I was a terror to motorists. For some reason, my shaven head had acquired a sickly, grey hue and my old green riding breeches – I found them in my uncle’s attic – were always getting torn. Vilija had to mend them constantly.
No doubt you’ve already gathered that we were hitchhiking. The journey was a great success. We left Vilnius early in the previous morning, spent the night in the bus station in Daugavpils, and now, around noon, we were only ten or twenty kilometres from Pskov. Yes, we were headed for Pskov and Novgorod, the kingdom of the pealing bells and a million white Russian orthodox churches.
Saulius continued his recitation:
When that bird sang
The lily petals fluttered –
I concluded and bit my tongue:
And a horrifying ghost
Suddenly appeared –
‘Romas, you ridicule everything,’ muttered Vilija.
We, or rather Saulius, decided to walk the final ten kilometres. It was a wonderful time of year – the beginning of June, when the first thunder explodes from the clouds and pours mad greenery upon the ground. That greenery filled the space around us and entered the tips of our being.
The lilies of the valley withered
And the church bells tolled!
I didn’t interrupt the poetic mood of our group any more because there really were a great number of lilies of the valley around us. They grew along both sides of the road: the marble white blossoms gleamed, while the sturdy green leaves were almost invisible.
Vilija was the first to dive into the lilies of the valley, and she began to pull them out of the ground, willy-nilly. Danas followed, ever faithful to the traditions of the ‘flower children’. Saulius hesitated a bit (he was probably wondering how it all related to Zen aesthetics), but then he took off his shoes and waded in as though it were a well of milk. The lilies of the valley were perfect and the coolness wafting from them was so seductive that even I swam into the fragrant flora. We frolicked like ponies let out into the pasture.
Vilija let out a scream and dived into the very thick of the white flowers. It looked like bathing in champagne, I thought disdainfully. Nevertheless, when Saulius and Danas sat down among the lilies of the valley, I, of course, followed suit. The fragrance floated around us like a lost angel.
Saulius lay down and Vilija picked the flowers, placing them on his face. I watched as the blossoms moved on top of his quivering eyelids and expanding smile.
‘Why didn’t your wife come with us? She would have liked it here,’ said Vilija as she brushed the flowers from Saulius’s face and placed the palm of her hand on his forehead.
‘I think I’ve explained it many times. She’s working, writing her dissertation. And besides, just because she’s physically not here doesn’t mean that she is not here with us.’
No doubt I’ve forgotten to mention the most important thing! Saulius’s wife! When he was in the eleventh form Saulius read in some brochure that there were Buddhists in the Buryat ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic). He borrowed money from all of us just before exams began and travelled to see the holy mountain of Alhanai and the miraculous spring of Arshan. And then he returned – with a wife who was ten years older than him. But her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were real Buddhists! Her name was Cagansara, which meant ‘white moon’. She was beautiful, exotic, spirited, eccentric and temperamental but she wasn’t interested in Buddhism. We all thought Saulius had made a grave mistake. Her intellect was boundless: she was interested in semantics, politics, parapsychology and exobiology; she painted placards and wrote poems, songs and plays campaigning for peace. Saulius, who was completely apolitical, a child ‘angry with the world’, before our very eyes became a man within a few months. He championed love for humanity, pacifism and decried the events in South Africa and Ulster. He began playing political songs in our school band. He was thoroughly familiar with the situation in El Salvador and Kuwait. He chose journalism as a course of study, even though he had always dreamed of being a painter.
Everyone was stunned, but it’s not all that easy to remove the glorified Saulius from the altar! Instead, we concentrated our anger on Cagansara (she would sometimes pick up Saulius after class on her motorcycle). Nevertheless, the anger turned to fascination and Cagansara soon became an object of our veneration, just like Saulius. Now she’s writing her dissertation, shockingly titled ‘The Cultural Crisis and the Philosopher’s Total Responsibility’.
Saulius and Cagansara have lived together for four years and their love for each other is boundless. Two years ago they had a son whom they named Marcel, in honour of Proust.
‘You love each other so much, how can you stand to be apart?’ Vilija asked in a strangely artificial voice.
‘We’re together all the time… she, myself and Marcel,’ said Saulius, biting a lily of the valley. ‘It is not important that our exterior shells are not always next to one another. I feel that her love floats over, like gusts of warm air from some yellow distance and caresses me with long strokes frozen in time…’
‘But, judging from your wife’s accounts, the physical is not totally meaningless. I’ve heard her say that an absolute communion between two people is possible only in the physical realm,’ said Vilija. (Cagansara really did recount some very intimate details about herself and Saulius – and not always in a very dignified manner.)
‘Spiritual forces and soul games have very little meaning in your fantastic love story,’ Vilija continued. ‘Talk to Freud and he’ll tell you it’s nothing more than frustrated libido. Everything is much simpler than you’d like to believe.’
I looked at Vilija and saw a flash of fear cross her face. I knew that she realized that rather than getting closer to Saulius, she was drifting further away – burning her bridges and constructing barriers. I knew that she did not believe a word she was saying. I saw that she was beginning to tremble with terror when she saw Saulius’s eyes fill with shining sadness instead of anger, irony, or indifference, which were our usual defensive reactions. I understood her perfectly. I remember once when Saulius talked for a long time about the war in Vietnam. I sat and tried to seem disinterested in political matters – even the world at large – but my leg swinging nervously betrayed the fact that I would much rather hear of his and Cagansara’s nightly games. And then Saulius suddenly took out a photograph. It showed an American soldier holding an infant only a few months old by the feet and smashing him into the head of a huge, stone Buddha. Several bloodied little bodies lay close by and the mother was standing there stripped naked. I remember that I grabbed the photo with a disgusting greed and uttered a few revoltingly ironic words. I looked at Saulius and it was as though I was scalded with hot water. His handsome face held so much sadness and wonder, like a small boy who has suddenly realised that he will never find a magic wand and will never be able to fly.
And now, again, I felt something pulling at my tongue: ‘Vilija belongs to the Society of Lonely Maidens who Love Saulius. Those who have been lucky enough to spend a night with you tell of wondrous things…’
To avoid seeing the expression on Saulius’s face, I looked at Danas’s orange hair burning among the lilies of the valley.
‘I know very well that you are not what you pretend to be. Your ideas are the same as mine. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to survive,’ Saulius said suddenly. ‘Remember Kant’s categorical imperative? A person does good deeds because he is essentially good and noble-minded, independent of motive or circumstance. You waste so much energy on fits of anger and sarcasm when you could live in goodness and love. I see how your faces twitch nervously with indifference when I say that all men are equal socially and spiritually – talent, intellect, thought patterns notwithstanding. The world’s greatest art is to love people. The need for precedence and the desire to demonstrate your superiority are signs of spiritual poverty.’
‘But, listen,’ interrupted Danas, ‘remember Kerouac? Or punks? They were mistreated in life and protested against urbanism with their anger,’ and then he blushed having uttered such a ‘daring’ notion.
‘Anger and disappointment – this is not a form of protest but rather reverse conformism. Life gives us rain and sunshine equally. There are things that are eternally sacred, which fill even the most miserable souls with goodness and harmony. Japanese art, the music of Bach, the paintings of Chagall, even these lilies of the valley,’ Saulius said and stood up. Then he quietly added: ‘Of course, there are other things – war, oppression, inequality, but enough of this, you’re already sick of my sermonising.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ remarked Vilija, also rising to her feet, ‘when everything is going so well for you. You have a woman who loves you, whom you love too, you have a wonderful child. Everyone loves you, so it’s easy for you to love everyone. And me? I love you and that is all I exist for. If you disappeared suddenly I would suffocate. I would explode as though in a vacuum. Everything that I do, I do for you: walk, sleep, eat, read, draw, think, interest myself in world events, try to be good to others. But I know that you only love her, and I can’t ask that you show some interest in me. If I fell to my knees before you as before God, bathed your dusty bare feet with my tears, if I dried them with my hair, if I immolated myself in your presence, if I carved your name upon my face, you would still love her and not me and you would be absolutely right!’ Vilija suddenly knelt down and embraced his legs. Saulius straightened up like a bow-string, then bent down, lifted her up and kissed her. Danas and I stood crushing the lilies of the valley in our fists and stared like idiots. Finally I said:
‘Oh, Vilija, Vilija what would the great Shakyamuni Buddha say to you! In your speech you repeated the personal pronouns ‘I’, ‘mine’, ‘me’ many times!’
‘You still love only her,’ said Vilija.
‘I love everyone,’ replied Saulius, putting on his glasses.
‘Yes, of course. You love all humanity. Perhaps you’re the incarnation of Buddha? I have placed all of my love at your altar, there is nothing left for anyone else. You say that the idea of goodness is eternal; I say that the forces of destruction are eternal. Forces, not ideas. And war. Everyone wants peace, but war prevails. It’s an elemental force. You and your wife dedicate your lives to the fight for peace, but that is like the shaman’s effort to forestall a hurricane or an earthquake. Some rock star donates the proceeds of a concert to the starving children in Bangladesh, but that’s like trying to ladle out the sea with a spoon. You say you love all of humanity, yet you are unable to help a single person, even me.’
‘According to Santayana, an entire ocean of goodness cannot wash away the suffering of one individual,’ I said, lighting a cigarette. (You’ve probably noticed that I am completely crazy?)
Saulius continued: ‘When the desire to destroy is overcome, suffering ceases. And you have needlessly constrained yourself with such a love. I think that if you love a person, you love the whole world within him, all people. I don’t know if true love can elicit anger and despair, even if it is unrequited. If love renders you a stranger to the world, if it dissociates you from your fellow man, then you do not love me, even if your love is attached to me. You love something within yourself, not me. It’s not the object of love that is important, but love’s special qualities. If I love someone, I love all of humanity within him, living things, and myself as well. You must join yourself with the outside world so that you can feel it as your twin. Rather than indulging your torments, you must close your eyes and learn to hear the eloquent peals of silence. Dissolve within the moment, absorb the gravity of the universe without reflection just as the moon does not decide whether to reflect itself in the lake or not…’
Saulius stopped and listened. A strange, bewildering music wafted over from a nearby dwelling.
We went back to the road carrying bunches of lilies of the valley. The music played on. My blue-hued bald head thought that this might be a funeral march. And indeed, soon after this thought a funeral procession turned onto the street from a side road. We mingled with a group of people dressed in black. They blocked the entire road, holding up cars that rudely and impatiently blew their horns. The deceased was lying in an open casket. I was taken by a strange curiosity. It was hard to believe that the dead man could not see the springtime fields and the sky arraying themselves for the last time before his closed eyes. Vilija boldly stepped up to the coffin and placed a bouquet of lilies of the valley on the dead man’s chest. I saw how her hand trembled and her glance froze upon the face of the deceased. A woman near the coffin grabbed the lilies of the valley and threw them to the ground.
‘No, no, darling, only not lilies1,’ she said in Russian.
Vilija jumped back and grabbed Saulius’s arm. I clearly saw that she was very scared.
And then strange things began to happen. I was loitering some distance from the group, not mingling with the black-clad crowd when a girl, maybe sixteen years old, approached me and took my bouquet of lilies of the valley.
‘No need for lilies2,’ she said in Russian, dragging her clenched hand up the stalks of the flowers. Only bare stems were left in one hand and the other held the tiny white blossoms.
‘No need, just listen to the bells ringing3,’ she said in Russian and walked away, dropping the small white bells on the ground.
I looked at Saulius and Danas. Their flowers had also been taken and tossed on the ground, crushed.
We held back from the procession as it turned into a cemetery by the forest.
Again, we sat down near the road among the lilies of the valley.
‘Strange customs – just like in the times of Rublyov,’ said Saulius. ‘Why were they so troubled by the lilies of the valley?’
‘I don’t suppose you would be really happy,’ I said, ‘if brutes like us threw bunches of wild flowers gathered from the roadside on the remains of your kin?’
‘Clearly. This is a rural area. What do they know? They haven’t even heard of beatniks, hippies, Kerouac, and the avant-garde,’ you’ve probably gathered that this was Danas speaking.
‘They weren’t angry, and they didn’t yell at us. They just politely took the flowers from our hands,’ Saulius muttered and lit a cigarette.
Vilija was quiet, then lit her cigarette off Saulius’s cherry.
‘Saulius,’ she said very quietly, ‘I got very close to the dead man. His entire face, his neck and his hands, were covered with tiny, tiny wounds, as if he were pricked all over with a needle.’
We didn’t find this at all strange. There are many types of diseases.
We reached the city in the evening. I remembered Saulius once saying, ‘If you ever travel to Pskov you should time your arrival so that you first enter the city in the evening, when a viscous dusk begins to conceal the sunlight. Innumerable white orthodox churches, enveloped in the pealing of bells and the calls of black birds, swaying gently, twinkling with copper-topped cupolas, suddenly rise toward the heavens. And just as unexpectedly as they rise, they fall down upon the low hills without disturbing the grass. It happens within a blink of the eye. You may not even notice it, but just feel a gust of damp wind rising, as if from a giant cellar.’
We wandered the city for several hours, from one Russian orthodox church to another. We bought copper bells and thin scented candles. Vilija and Saulius stopped to kiss every five minutes. Later it became as though Saulius was enclosed in a case made of mirrored glass. We saw him, but he didn’t see us.
We headed toward the suburbs looking for a place to stay. We didn’t want to sleep in a station again. Besides, we missed normal people (there were after all none to be found among us). The people were wonderful in this country!
We had barely left the centre of town when the lilies of the valley appeared again. They glowed white in the twilight, as though someone had splashed kefir in the fields. The air was full of a refreshing fragrance. We were tired and silent. Danas said that we were all very dear, as though we had stepped out of the pages of Dharma Bums or Satori in Paris. I was trying to imagine what my little sister Rasa was doing at the moment (she was the same age as Marcel). Vilija walked while staring at Saulius, her lips moving.
On the outskirts of town, we came upon some small wooden houses. We opened a gate and walked into one of the yards. There, as in all the other yards, a campfire was burning. The yard was smothered with harvested lilies of the valley. A man holding a scythe stood by the fire. A small boy with a red woollen hat was throwing the lilies of the valley into it. There was a cat lying by the fire, and I moved closer to stroke its back. As I bent down, I saw that he was covered with tiny wounds, as though someone had pricked him with a needle or a nail.
A woman came out of the house carrying an armful of lilies of the valley. We asked if she had any rooms available. She welcomed us, served us tea and potatoes, and showed us to an empty room. It was completely empty save a few lily of the valley leaves on the floor. We heard the voice of a football commentator – someone was watching television in the other room. The mistress of the house gave us several blankets, although we had some of our own. We were pleased, especially Danas, and we lay down on the floor.
‘If you sense anything strange, call us. Good night, everybody4.’ the woman said in Russian as she smiled at us and left the room.
‘Such mysticism, my dear friends,’ I said. ‘If anyone sees a vampire looming over him tonight, shout and scream. The mistress of this house is Prince Dracula incarnate. He’s watching television right now, but at night, my dear friends, at night…’
‘At night an orange abyss will open up beneath us and we’ll fall, birds will scream and before our eyes we’ll see the span of our lives from the present to the day life began,’ said Saulius.
Vilija opened the window and hung our copper bells on the latch.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t open it,’ said Danas, looking around anxiously. He had spread his blanket out in the farthest corner of the room.
I spread out a huge plastic sheet, as though I were planning to sleep in the middle of a swamp. We lay down and this time for some reason we did not play our usual game: to say whatever comes to mind. You know, fantastic chains of verbal reactions arise out of the subconscious. You should try it yourselves sometime before falling asleep. I have long imagined recording such a session. But this time, everyone was quiet because Saulius was quiet. He once said that he didn’t want us to communicate with words alone. He never spoke about his spiritual victories.
I awoke during the night with a strange sensation: as though someone was pricking my hand, which was lying on the floor, with needles. The air was full of the fragrance of lilies of the valley and a barely audible tinkling. I thought that the scent was wafting in from outside and that our copper bells were ringing. However, the tinkling was not a copper one and the scent was both around and within me.
Suddenly a sharp pain pierced my right hand. I opened my eyes and lifted my head. I was surrounded by nothing but lilies of the valley. Again, I felt a pain in my right palm. I looked and was horrified to see two seedlings rising from my hand. Shocked, I jumped to my feet – my friends were bursting with lilies of the valley. It was as though they were nailed to the floor by delicate, tinkling stems; they couldn’t move.
A mild pain stabbed at my bare feet like mosquito bites. I began screaming wildly.
The mistress of the house ran into the room.
‘Oh, this is the year, the year of the lilies5,’ she wailed in Russian before rushing to my friends and pulling up the lilies of the valley from their dead bodies.
I could barely tear my feet off the floor – they were already in bloom with lilies – as I ran toward the window. Something like a strong whirlwind struck me, or maybe it was a whirlwind of emptiness. I drew back suddenly and knocked the glass out with my elbow. As I turned around, I could see that the lilies of the valley on Saulius’s body were swaying gently. Cagansara?
I jumped out of the window and ran.
I’ve already mentioned that we were bound by words alone. And the year of the Lilies of the Valley separated us entirely.
Do you want me to defend myself?
Here!
Wait a minute, someone is knocking at the door.
It’s Cagansara and Marcel, both with bunches of lilies of the valley in hand…
Translated by Ada Valaitis From Jurga Ivanauskaite, Pakalnuciu Metai, Vilnius: Vaga (1985).
Jurga Ivanauskaite (1961–2006) was a prose writer, essayist and dramatist. While she was still a student of drawing at the Vilnius Academy of Arts she published the cult short-story collection The Year of the Lily of the Valley’s (Pakalnuciu metai, 1985). It was thanks to this impressive debut that she became one of the most popular authors among younger readers. Her later novels, The Witch and the Rain (Ragana ir lietus, 1993), The Magic of Agnes (Agnijos magija, 1995) and Gone With the Dreams (Sapnu nubloksti, 2000), established a new narrative in Lithuanian literature, one full of song, independent women characters and a feminist worldview. Eastern themes also permeate her work.
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