The Last Girl Page 4

  At twelve I heard the toll of the cathedral bell. I glanced at my watch, which was spot on. I gazed up and down the street but there was no sign of her. I wondered whether she had thought better of her strange request for my help. The idea that she might have forgotten all about our lunch was passing through my head when she stepped out of the bookshop close by and, seeing me, waved. I waved back, my heart lifting like a nervous schoolboy’s.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed.

  Her face, I noticed, was flushed. She smiled broadly and touched my arm in a friendly manner.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was browsing in the bookshop.’

  ‘You found a book?’ I asked.

  She slipped a book from its wrapping and showed me. It was Conrad.

  ‘You’ve read it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘You know, I find it hard to get beyond the fact that it was a book by a Pole writing in his third language being read by me translated into yet another language.’

  ‘But isn’t that fascinating,’ she said. ‘To feel that you have to dig through all those layers of language to get to the heart of what it is about?’ She had taken my arm gently and we walked up Gedimino to the crossing.

  ‘Some things are better left buried,’ I said, thinking of the paper that I had left in my typewriter with the one line typed across the top of it.

  ‘Do you think so?’ she said, her face alive, vivacious.

  She slipped Conrad into the bag that she had slung over her shoulder. We waited for the cars to pass and then crossed the cobbled street. On the other side we turned up Jogailos Street.

  ‘Do you really think that things should be left buried?’ she asked again when I did not answer her.

  ‘Why should we keep on exhuming things once they are dead?’ I said. ‘After all, we’re not dogs that we need to keep on digging up bones.’ I did not like the turn that the conversation had taken and wished I had not initiated it.

  She was vigorous and animated when she looked at me. She reminded me of the students that I had at the university, lively in their desire for knowledge, before experience had taught them that it was better to bury than to dig up.

  ‘Just because we dig things up doesn’t mean that we are dogs,’ she said. ‘After all archaeologists dig things up. How would we understand our pasts if we did not dig things up?’

  We understand and that is why we are so keen to bury, I thought, but I did not answer. Instead I rather crudely changed the subject. ‘I thought that we could go to Lokys,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘I’m not really dressed for it.’

  I looked at her. She was wearing a black dress that reached down below her knees. Over the top of this she wore a rather plain jacket with its collar turned up. Around her neck she had tied an orange scarf carelessly. Her hair was swept back and held behind her head with a large clip.

  ‘You look perfect,’ I said, without a trace of flattery. She smiled and blushed a little, perhaps detecting how much I felt those words.

  We made our way back into the ghetto by the narrow lanes, winding, crammed with parked cars. She did not seem to be in a hurry and I did not want to hurry her. The sun broke through the grey clouds and illuminated the spire of St John’s Church, giving us a taste of brilliance in the dark shadows of the back streets. We chatted about Vilnius as we walked, commenting on the face-lift the city was enjoying. She was positive, not missing at all the dark crumbling buildings, or the spiked ribs of the fallen-in roofs of the houses. She approved of the modern shops and the new plaster and the bright colours that had transformed our city. I did not broach the subject that had got us together. She did not mention the help she had asked for either.

  Lokys was quiet. One other couple were sat at a table, leaning close to each other. I pulled out a chair for Jolanta and she sat down. We scanned the menu in silence. After a few moments she tossed the menu aside and said, ‘I’ll just have a salad.’

  ‘You’re not hungry? ‘ I asked.

  ‘Just watching my figure,’ she said.

  When the waiter arrived I ordered her salad and cepelinai for myself. I ordered a bottle of wine too.

  The waiter took the menus. Her young face was turned aside, she was casting her eyes about the room. Her fingers were on the table in front of her. They did not tap, just rested gracefully on the polished wood.

  After a few moments of silence she turned her eyes on me.

  I felt a thrill run up my spine. Nervously I cleared my throat.

  ‘You said you wanted my help.’

  She paused for a moment and then nodded.

  ‘Yes.’ She paused again and stared at me intently. ‘You said that you were a writer.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. I used to be. I find it hard now. The words don’t seem to come any more. They have deserted me.’ I smiled. ‘I assume you haven’t read my writing? You wouldn’t have. It was quite popular once. Not enough to live off, but then who can write for a living in Lithuanian.’

  ‘What did you write?’

  ‘Historical fiction, mainly. The Last Pagans. The Iron Wolf? No?‘

  She shook her head, looking apologetic. She bent down and rummaged in the bag she had been carrying. For a moment I thought she was going to dig out the Conrad again. But she didn’t. She pulled out a thick sheaf of papers and laid them carefully on the table. I looked at the paper questioningly. She smoothed the top sheet down and nudged them into order. She hesitated before speaking.

  As she was about to speak the waiter emerged with the bottle of wine and she was forced to wait. He upturned two glasses on our table and proceeded to uncork the bottle. Carefully he poured a small amount of wine into my glass, taking care not to spill it, and waited for me to taste it. I nodded at him impatiently. He poured the two glasses with equal care, pedantically making sure they were level. Putting the bottle on the table he straightened up.

  ‘Would there be anything else?’

  I shook my head, irritated. ‘No,’ I said quite unpleasantly.

  As he left Jolanta giggled. ‘You shouldn’t be impatient,’ she said. ‘He was trying very hard.’ She took a sip of wine and then slowly pushed the papers towards me. I took them up and turned over the sheets. At the top of the second page I read ‘Chapter One’. I looked at her inquisitively.

  ‘It’s my husband’s, he’s a writer,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Your husband is a writer?’

  ‘Well, my husband is a student. He has almost finished his doctorate. But he has been working on this novel.’

  I turned the pages slowly, casting my eyes across the lines. I was bemused. I had not imagined what help she had wanted from me, but still, this surprised me.

  ‘Oh, don’t read it now,’ she said, leaning over the table slightly and placing her fingers onto the top of my hand. I let them rest there. She did not take them away. When I looked up she was smiling nervously. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get you to read it now,’ she explained.

  ‘But you would like me to read it?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘When you told me you were a writer, I got so excited,’ she said. ‘Kestutis hasn’t shown it to anybody. He was working on it for over two years. Every night he would be sat up late in our room. I thought that he would drive me mad, typing away on an old typewriter, tap, tap, tap, all through the night.’

  ‘Kestutis?’ I interrupted her.

  ‘My husband,’ she said. ‘He was obsessed. He wouldn’t listen to me. He just sat there with a small light on, typing. But now he’s finished he seems to have completely lost interest. He is a little ill, sometimes. I told him he should get it published, it might help, but he won’t listen. He put it in a drawer. He won’t speak about it. He says that it’s no good.’

  ‘Have you read it?’ I asked.

  She nodded again. ‘When he was at the university I took it out and read it. I don’t know.’ She shook her head and pressed a pa
lm to her forehead. ‘To me it’s really good,’ she said after a pause. ‘But he won’t listen. He says I don’t know anything about what’s good and what isn’t. Perhaps…’ She hesitated. ‘Perhaps if you could take some time to look over it?’ She left the question hanging in the air.

  The waiter re-emerged from behind the heavy wooden door carrying our dinners. I waited for him to serve us painfully correctly. Jolanta looked away from me, across the room at the other diners. She seemed tense. The muscles in her face were taut. I realised then that it had taken some courage for her to speak to me. That it was for this purpose that she had agreed to lunch with me. I softly stroked the page that rested on the top of the pile and smiled, remembering the feel of her delicate fingers on the back of my hand.

  ‘Well, certainly I can read it,’ I said. ‘If you think that my comments will be of any value.’

  ‘Well, you are a writer, you know what is good writing, what is publishable and what isn’t?’ she said.

  She was looking at me beseechingly. I gazed into her eyes. Yes, this was what I had wanted. Ever since I had caught a glimpse of those eyes in the church I had been filled with the desire to see them turned on me as they had been before, so many years before. I had to pick up from that moment and carry on. I had to make the long journey back across the years, to find that moment and twist the course of our histories. I would not turn my back on those eyes once more. I would no longer feel them pleading to my back as they had done for the last five decades. I took her hand between my own and smiled.

  ‘Of course I will look at it. I will see if this husband of yours is a genius or not. Whether we have here another Donelaitis, another Shakespeare. And I will tell you truthfully what I think. That is the least I can do. More than that,’ I continued, ‘I don’t have that many contacts left in the publishing world, but there are still one or two. I’m not entirely forgotten,’ I laughed. ‘And I promise you that if I think it is worth while I will try my best to get it published. No, don’t thank me,’ I said, holding up my hand. ‘It really is the least that I can do.’

  The tension had disappeared from her face. She smiled at me, relieved.

  ‘You must think it very odd a stranger coming to you with a request such as this,’ she said.

  ‘On the contrary,’ I said. ‘It feels quite natural. In fact you do not feel a bit like a stranger to me. It feels like I have known you for fifty years.’

  She laughed brightly. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘No,’ I said then, ruefully. ‘How old are you? Can an old man ask that question without it seeming ungallant?’

  ‘Twenty-four,’ she said.

  I nodded my head. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps we should eat?’

  When she left I found a small café in the ghetto and drank glass after glass of vodka. I opened the manuscript she had given me, spreading the pages carefully across the surface of the table. My eyes flicked across the lines of text, but they jumped from word to word unable to take in the sense. And then a phrase caught me. The passage was about a young man serving in the Soviet army in Afghanistan. I read. ‘Morality: In some other world – some other landscape – that word might yet resonate with meaning. But here there is only the need to survive. I hold your letter as though it will anchor me, but outside I can hear the crackle of flames and the sound of crying and know that I am lost.’

  At that moment somebody stumbled against me, grabbing drunkenly at my sleeve as he slipped to the floor. I gathered the papers together and put them into a plastic bag; it was not the time to read it. I filled my glass and gazed out through the window into the darkness. His words echoed softly at the back of my mind. I drank quickly, refilling my glass as soon as it was drained. I fumbled over my cigarettes.

  After the Great Patriotic War I had turned from poetry to write my first novel, struggling to bridge with narrative the fissure that had opened in our lives. I nudged the manuscript in its blue sheath. There was something haunting about the few phrases I had read, they traced their fingers through the silted backwaters of my mind, loosening earth. A light mist arose from the ground, clouding my eyes. A spasm of fear pinched my heart. I drank quickly, muffling the dull ache in my chest.

  As I attempted to pull out a cigarette, the packet dropped to the floor, scattering its contents. I bent to collect them and lost my balance. The young waiter caught me. He lifted me carefully back into my seat.

  ‘Bring me another bottle,’ I said. He shook his head and refused to serve me more. He told me I had had enough. He was polite about it. I told him that I would tell him when I had had enough. Though he remained polite, I became belligerent.

  I staggered home to my apartment. Grigalaviciene banged on the wall. I could hear her shouting shame on me. I took out the bottle of cranberry spirits and poured a large glass. I downed the first glass too quickly, so I poured a second. Her eyes danced in front of mine. Her large, dark eyes, like ripe figs, like almonds, like black cherries hanging from the tree about to burst from their skins.

  Rachael, I shouted. Rachael, Rachael, Rachael. I opened the window and bellowed her name out into the night. I bellowed, hoping my voice would carry across the square, across the tops of the trees to Eliyahu, my friend Elijah, stony silent in his place at the top of Zydu Street. Rachael. Who else could I call that name to? Who else could I talk to but him?

  I decided then to go and speak to him. But I was not able to get to the front door. I crumpled on the thin carpet. The empty bottle of spirits smashed on the wooden floor over the carpet’s edge. I lay on the floor and listened to Grigalaviciene banging and cursing me. It was not till I awoke the following morning, stiff and ill, that I realised I had left the manuscript at the café the night before.

  Chapter 9

  When I woke I could not move. I lay in my bed shivering beneath the sheets, my head thumping, nauseous. Through the scattered thoughts that blew around in my head like scraps of newspaper in a derelict house, one fact assailed me with horrible clarity, the missing manuscript. When was it that I had let go of it? Where? My mind could not put together any logical sequence of events; it could only blow around that monument, the loss.

  I watched the hours drag by on the clock by my bed. I counted them off, hoping that as they crawled on I would feel better, that the shaking would pass, the nausea would go, the thumping in my skull would soften. The sunlight rose and moved across the faded wallpaper. My neighbours stirred. The lorry came for the rubbish, its horn howling, sending my head beneath the sheets. Dusk came, resolved into darkness. I dozed, dreaming continually. Wild chaotic dreams that made my pulse race. Finally night settled onto the city once more. I managed some sleep, but by four I was awake again.

  I dragged myself from my bed and sat in an easy chair close to the window to continue my watch. So it is with the old and lonely, we sit and watch ourselves through the night in our times of sickness. When light came at last, I shuffled into the small kitchen in my bathrobe and managed to eat a small slice of bread and cheese. The cheese was old and hard, and, on examination, mould was beginning to fur the bread crust. The food strengthened me a little, but still I was not fit to go out. I slumped once more into the chair by the window and stared out at the tops of the trees and the sky.

  At eight o’clock there was a short rap on the door. I looked up. Irrationally I immediately supposed it was her. My heart thumped wildly. I sat petrified in my chair. After a few seconds the rapping was repeated. It could not have been her, she did not have my address. I shuffled over to the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ I shouted. My voice sounded strange to my ears, it had been so many hours since I had last heard it.

  ‘It’s me,’ a voice replied. Grigalaviciene. I fumbled with the lock thankfully. She looked in at me through the doorway.

  ‘You’re still alive?’ she said, looking like she had sniffed something foul.

  ‘As you can see,’ I said, quite jovially, attempting to indicate with a sweep of my hand how vigorous I still was. My hand hit t
he open door, bruising my knuckle.

  Grigalaviciene pushed into the apartment, propelling me with her hand against the wall. I did not. stop her. She nosed around like a suspicious dog.

  ‘We were wondering,’ she said caustically. ‘What with all the fuss you were causing the other night.’

  I did not answer. I closed the door and, cradling my knuckles in the palm of my other hand, followed her into the apartment. She picked up my waste bin, which was overflowing.

  ‘You missed the rubbish van,’ she reprimanded.

  ‘I wasn’t feeling too well,’ I said.

  ‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ she satd without a smile.

  Grigalaviciene was probably younger than me. She did not like me to think this though. She was perhaps seventy, but it was hard to place her, she could have been anything from sixty to eighty-five. She had lived in these apartments at least as long as I had. She was not married. Maybe she had been once, but that had been a long time ago. I studied her wrinkled, sour face. Her lips were puckered up, giving her the expression of continual prudish distaste. She was wearing a pink housecoat.

  ‘When you didn’t appear yesterday we thought you’d really gone and done it,’ she said. She had made her way to the kitchen and put a small pan of water onto the stove. ‘I was just saying to old Adamkiene, it looks like Daumantas really has overdone it this time. Did you hear him? she says to me. How could I not hear him? I said, shouting like that for everybody to hear. I don’t know.’ She shook her head. When the water boiled she spooned two generous heaps of Russian tea into a couple of cups and poured on the water. I stood in the doorway of the small kitchen watching her, a little amused, though her voice was not helping my headache.

  ‘Here,’ she said, turning with the steaming cup. ‘Drink this. I bet you haven’t any shopping in, have you?’ She pulled open the cupboard doors and tutted over the crumbs and empty shelves.

  ‘What do I want shopping for?’ I said, taking the cup.

  ‘You don’t need to eat?’ she spat at me.

  ‘I buy what I need for the day. What’s the point in getting more?’ I wandered back to the front room and let myself down into my chair.