Tell me, Tūla, tell me,
because only you can answer these questions hanging like those clouds–only you,
because nature in the city is always a bit unreal–too grand or what?–and mute.
Not quite a decoration; not a model; not window-dressing; but not nature,
either. I told you. Watch, Tūla, I’m coming to your humble abode over the
uncovered Vilnelė bridge, under which the blackish-green water with its
barely lighter foam eternally boils, I’m coming to your windows, to your eyes,
which reflect nothing but the low sky and the Bernardine’s towers, I’m coming
to your tissues, to the clarity of your bones, to your primeval nerves, which,
when touched, tremble and sound: of the murmur of the wind, the tinkling of
water, the rustling of grass; and, bumped a bit harder, they stiffen, and the
sounds strengthen–I hear the squeal of a small, unexpectedly frightened animal;
the stubbornly explaining voice of a nocturnal bird; I hear the fluttering of
wings above my head and I see eyes–the mysterious eyes of a bird of twilight in
your face as white as a
sheet; your eyes, Tūla, the eyes of a bird and the eyes of a cloud; I come
in the moonlight, throwing a heavy shadow on the day that has passed, on the
day to come and the night of ours to come, on this city, which has sucked us
into its dark womb and spat us out together with the silt, the clay, all sorts
of shards and old tools, and old money, too, which has no power in either this
world or the next–did we really ever live there? And I throw a broken, twisted
shadow on the hill of Bekešas and his warrior Vadušas Panonietis,
where that menacing cloud full of storm dust goes on hanging...
Your abode, Tūla, hung with
faded pictures, where bread molds and flocks of gentle animals graze; it’s
crammed with boxes and books, art reproductions, all sorts of notes, clothes,
little boxes with voices and memories; a dwelling where the plumbing frequently
chokes, and hardened wine in the old goblets of the pictures subsides into
reddish crystals; I come to your barely open dry lips, beyond which yawns the
black space of the mouth–there where your words, the ones uttered slowly,
almost by the syllable, are hiding themselves–all of them are important to me
alone; speak, Tūla: they rise, after all, from the very depths, from all
of the places inside your flat, patient body, worn out by lethargy, suffering,
illnesses, and indifference...
Speak to me, Tūla, tell me and
remind me, whisper when I come in the middle of the night, the Old Town dogs
whining trustfully as I cut across the ghostly Olandų Street highway and
through the damp little yards of Filaretų Street, emerging like a ghost on
the Polocko straightway across from the Bernardine graveyard–all this
disagreeable little world is linked only to you, Tūla, and the
Bernardines, although they’ve been gone a long time now... who says they’re
gone? With my footsteps in the slushy snow seemingly drafting a topographic map
of this quarter, past the dog market, the pharmacy, the fish and shoe stores, I
descend to you, I descend and emerge on the icy shore of the Vilnelė, and
the entire old part of the city, lit up by moonlight, really does look like an
old city plan, meticulously drawn and colored by some sort of higher being... I’m
here now, here, while above Bekešas hill that broad cloud goes on hanging,
surely frozen already into a sole, hardened like a gray block of cement–it has
now, out of what was once pure drops of rain, turned into a prophet of
corporeal disaster; while I go to you, ignoring not just the cold, but the
despair, the late hour, the blind man with dark glasses standing by the
bridge’s railing; no longer seeing the bridge, I step into the foaming, raging
water and, slipping on the polished stones, I clamber up to your, Tūla’s,
shore, and it seems to me that a huge lilac bush gleams blue above my head,–I
pick them, and in each hand hold a lavender bouquet as fluffy as spotless white
clouds–intoxicating, curly, overflowing with life, dripping in silver
streams–and, swaying from exhaustion, I go in the white two-hinged door, on
which hangs a modest, worm-eaten, blue mail box, and now I am, Tūla, just
a few steps away from you, from your husky voice, your body’s fibers, your most
secret little corners...
Speak softly, breathe so I can
hardly hear it as I fly in through the air vent, opened just barely for the night, clasping
both enormous bouquets of lilac, as I now swoop under the vault–a soundless
bat–without a sound, without a rustle; all the words of love and despair
hermetically sealed within the skull of a tiny, flying, nocturnal beast, careful
not to startle the other spirits hiding within your crumpled soul, body, mind,
your most secret thoughts, your dignity, tears, your tiny breasts trembling
like a ripple in a stream, all of you, Tūla; I fly in, and with my tiny
feet clinging to slanting vault of your room I listen to you breathe, to the
hoarfrost melting on your alveoli, to the blood turning one more cycle of
circulation inside your sleepy body, to you, not realizing it yourself,
speaking to the bread molding in the picture, to the boxes full of memories; in
the moonlight I see your long bones, pelvic bones, the pearly skull under the
short hair; I see how a small, brightly shining bug walks over your stomach,
falls into the hollow of your belly button and can’t crawl out of it–that’s how
small it is...
My senses tremble, my nostrils
overstrained by the city, but I no longer have any spare exits, I have no spare
feelings, no spare parts in my imperfect little bat body; perhaps that’s why my
love is so short–so intoxicating and so simple–a love that can neither lose
anything any more, nor overcome anything; so, on the ceiling above your shallow
pallet, together with the lilacs, I watch over you, I see you, in your dreary
sleep, throw your arm aside, how you uncover the trembling realm of the heart,
and then, then, entirely unexpectedly, a bluish cluster of lilac with two green
leaves falls on your chest–I wave my little leathery wings, and now the lilac
falls like rain–in clusters, tufts, twigs: violet, greenish, hardened into
clots of blossoms, soft lilacs, you know, the kind that bloom and wilt in the
overgrown garden plots outside the city, where farmsteads used to stand–next to
the woods, on foundations that are already crumbling...
The lilac falls, spinning around in
the cold air, spreading blossoms over your hair, falling into your unwept
tears, sticking to your barely open mouth, winding in strands around your thin
neck, darkening on your belly, falling over your bed, the floor, the boxes with
dusty reproductions and memories, descending into the pitcher with water left
for the night, while other clusters, bouquets, blooms, failing to find a place
to settle, spin a bit longer, and then disintegrate into tiny stars, so much
like the fantastic creatures in the depths of the sea. And I dive into the
darkness and crash painfully into the window–that would never happen to a real
bat! I smile and curl my lip, while black blood oozes from the tiny mouse’s
snout. No one sees where it drips... And where is that? The black blood drips
on your bed, unwillingly soaks through the fabric, and now it’s dripping onto
the black porcelain tiles under your immortal pallet, Tūla, Tūla...
Lying on my back on the ashen
window sill, I see the cloud that had fallen on Bekešas hill suddenly
stirring and descending, whistling, at an impossible speed straight at the
house with a apse on the bank of the Vilnelė, straight at us, at you,
Tūla, at me...
| 
RU
