{"id":972,"date":"2023-03-23T22:50:54","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T22:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/?page_id=972"},"modified":"2026-09-03T21:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T21:47:14","slug":"stories","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/?page_id=972","title":{"rendered":"Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-container uagb-block-42c58afa alignfull uagb-is-root-container\"><div class=\"uagb-container-inner-blocks-wrap\">\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center has-ast-global-color-5-color has-ffffff-background-color has-text-color has-background has-large-font-size\" style=\"font-style:normal;font-weight:700\">Stories<\/h1>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-table-of-contents uagb-toc__align-left uagb-toc__columns-1  uagb-block-e773a9c0      \"\n\t\t\t\t\tdata-scroll= \"1\"\n\t\t\t\t\tdata-offset= \"30\"\n\t\t\t\t\tstyle=\"\"\n\t\t\t\t>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"uagb-toc__wrap\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"uagb-toc__title\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTable Of Contents\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"uagb-toc__list-wrap \">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<ol class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#the-arrival\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">The Arrival<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#the-amulet\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">The Amulet<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#love-according-to-joseph\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">Love According To Joseph<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#the-collector\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">The Collector<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#the-winter-campaign\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">The Winter Campaign<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#the-slow-birth-of-nation\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">The Slow Birth of Nation<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#this-is-a-miracle\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">This Is a Miracle<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#chimera\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">Chimera<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#exit-only\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">Exit Only<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#kaolin\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">Kaolin<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#mr-mar\u017eenovi\u010dius\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">Mr. Mar\u017eenovi\u010dius<\/a><li class=\"uagb-toc__list\"><a href=\"#the-clan-of-the-centaur\" class=\"uagb-toc-link__trigger\">The Clan of the Centaur<\/a><\/ol>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Arrival<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>To Olga, my wife, who introduced me to tango<\/em><br><br>It came fast and wide as a rolling thunderstorm, an avalanche, a prairie fire, except there had been no clouds, no smoke, no warning. No weather report hinted at it. No satellite caught its formation. We went to sleep with ordinary silence in our ears and woke up to something else entirely.<br>Tango.<br>It was already in the kitchen before the coffee finished dripping. Hushed. Unassertive. Just present. The refrigerator hummed in a slow, deliberate comp\u00e1s. The pipes behind the wall clicked in syncopation. When he pressed the toaster lever down, it answered with a soft bandone\u00f3n sigh.<br>Elias stood there barefoot, holding a slice of bread, listening.<br>On the television every channel carried the same thing: no announcers, no explanation, only music. Astor Piazzolla, then Tango Saloon sliding into Tanghetto, dissolving into Gotan Project as if the stations had merged somewhere beyond transmission towers and fiber-optic cables. The crawl at the bottom of the screen read nothing but measures and rests. 2&#215;4. 2&#215;4. 2&#215;4.<br>He switched to the radio.<br>Tango.<br>He opened his phone. The notification chime was tango. The weather app pulsed in tango. Even the emergency alert test, scheduled for next month, arrived early, breathing out a sultry phrase instead of a warning tone.<br>Outside, a police car rolled past. Its siren did not wail; it phrased. A rising lament in minor key, then a decisive cadence as it turned the corner. Across the street, Mrs. Calder\u00f3n was already sweeping her steps in rhythm, hips shifting as though someone invisible had taken her into embrace.<br>By noon it was everywhere. Caf\u00e9s poured it through their speakers in thick streams. Airport terminals echoed with it, the moving walkways carrying travelers forward in patient, choreographed lines. In Detroit, they said, the rap stations had surrendered before breakfast. In Kentucky, bluegrass fiddlers found themselves bending their bows into unfamiliar turns. Chicago clubs locked their doors and reopened with different posters on the windows: Milonga Tonight.<br>Nobody could locate the source. There was no central broadcast, no emergency declaration. It simply occupied the air the way oxygen does, unseen, unarguable.<br>Elias tried to drink his beer at five as usual. The first can hissed open on beat. He waited for the bitterness to settle the way it always had, but the bass line from the apartment upstairs kept pressing into his ribs. A couple he had never seen before were practicing steps on the landing. The woman\u2019s heel struck the tile in crisp punctuation.<br>He finished one can. Opened a second. The rhythm slipped under his skin.<br>By the third he realized something was wrong. He had no ear for music. He had known this since childhood, when teachers clapped patterns and he missed every one. Songs blurred for him; melodies refused to stay. But this? This was different. He could not follow it, yet it followed him. The refrigerator throbbed in insistence. The plumbing tapped out a counterpoint. Even his own pulse seemed borrowed.<br>That night he forgot to close the refrigerator door.<br>In the morning the milk had gone sour, and the world had learned to walk in close embrace.<br><br>When Sofia Ibarra stepped onto the marble floor of First Continental at 8:43 a.m., the building was already breathing differently. Coordinated. The security guard by the glass doors nodded to her in time with something only half-acknowledged. His shoe tapped once against the metal detector stand. The fluorescent lights hummed above in a low, steady undercurrent. She felt it through the soles of her penny loafers before she consciously heard it. By the time she reached her teller window, the hold music on the customer service line had settled into a recognizable phrase. Tango. Not the thin, nostalgic kind her grandmother played on Sundays. This was layered, urban. A brushed beat beneath it. A bass line that walked and turned back on itself.<br>She logged into her terminal. The startup chime resolved in minor key.<br>Across the lobby, two customers stood too close to one another. Hovering at a distance that suggested choreography rather than coincidence. A man in a construction vest shifted his weight. A woman in a tailored navy suit mirrored him without realizing it.<br>At 9:02 the first anomaly arrived.<br>A middle-aged accountant with damp palms slid a stack of bills under her window.<br>\u201cCame out of the ATM like this,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought it was a prank.\u201d<br>Sofia pulled one free. The paper felt official: linen, textured, faintly starched. The portrait in the center was not Washington. Not any president she recognized. A severe man with a bandone\u00f3n rested in profile, gaze angled downward as if listening. The number in the corner was still ten. But beneath it, instead of serial numbers, there was notation. Small black stems and flags marching across the margin. 2&#215;4. She checked the watermark against the light. Legitimate.<br>\u201cIs it legal tender?\u201d the accountant asked.<br>The line behind him had grown. People were holding similar bills now. Fives. Twenties. One woman clutched a fifty with visible tremor.<br>Sofia scanned the barcode. The system accepted it without hesitation.<br>Amount: 50.00<br>Status: Valid<br>Series: Nuevo Comp\u00e1s<br>Nuevo Comp\u00e1s.<br>She felt something tighten pleasantly in her chest, between fear and excitement. Recognition, perhaps, that she was witnessing the beginning of something that would later be called inevitable.<br>At 9:17 corporate headquarters sent a message through the internal chat. \u201cAll redesigned currency is authorized. Continue transactions as normal. Further instruction to follow.\u201d<br>No explanation.<br>The construction worker at her window leaned closer.<br>\u201cYou hear it too, right?\u201d he asked.<br>\u201cHear what?\u201d<br>He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling.<br>She did hear it now. The ventilation system exhaled in pulses. The clicking of keyboards in the loan department had fallen into a strange coordination. Even the coin counter near the far wall spat change in crisp rhythmic bursts.<br>A woman in line began tapping her heel.<br>Sofia stamped the back of a deposit slip. The thud aligned perfectly with the bass line threading through the lobby speakers. She paused, then stamped again. The same alignment.<br>Behind her, the branch manager emerged from his office with unusual softness in his stride. He adjusted his tie as if preparing for a dance rather than a staff meeting.<br>\u201cEmbrace the transition,\u201d he said to no one in particular. \u201cClients will have questions. We project confidence.\u201d<br>By noon the older bills had nearly disappeared from circulation. Customers who tried to deposit them hesitated, looking down at Washington\u2019s face as if at an aging relative. A rumor passed through the line that tempo would determine value. Faster measures appreciating. Slower ones depreciating.<br>A college student attempted to withdraw only high-tempo notes.<br>\u201cWe don\u2019t sort by rhythm,\u201d Sofia said calmly.<br>\u201cNot yet,\u201d he replied.<br>Outside the windows, she saw a police cruiser glide past. Its siren rose in a melodic arc that curved and resolved before fading at the corner. Two elderly men sitting on folding chairs across the street watched the car pass without reacting.<br>Inside, the lobby had begun to sway. Not enough for cameras to detect, but the space between people shortened. Shoulders angled. Steps pivoted.<br>At 2:35 p.m., Sofia received a call from her mother.<br>\u201cTurn on the television,\u201d she said without greeting.<br>\u201cIt\u2019s on,\u201d Sofia replied. A muted screen above the waiting area showed only dancers moving across unfamiliar cityscapes\u2014Detroit warehouses, Kentucky fields, Chicago rooftops\u2014everywhere the same measured embrace.<br>\u201cIt\u2019s everywhere,\u201d her mother whispered.<br>Sofia looked down at the stack of Nuevo Comp\u00e1s bills in her drawer. She smoothed the edges into a perfect rectangle. The paper smelled faintly metallic, almost warm.<br>\u201cPeople seem happy,\u201d she said.<br>Across the lobby, a man reached across the counter and briefly took the teller\u2019s hand before releasing it, embarrassed but smiling. The fluorescent lights hummed steadily. Her penny loafers clicked once against marble.<br><br>Arturo Feld had been meaning to close the place for good. The lease was bleeding him. The parquet floor had warped in two corners where rain came through the roof. The sign outside\u2014<strong>Feld\u2019s Ballroom &amp; Social<\/strong>\u2014had lost three bulbs in the F and one in the L, so that at night it read <em>eld\u2019s Ba room &amp; Socia<\/em>. He had once hosted wedding receptions, quincea\u00f1eras, retirement dinners with rubber chicken and limp parsley. Lately, on Thursdays, a handful of widowers came to practice box steps under fluorescent fatigue.<br>He arrived that morning prepared to call the landlord. Instead, he stopped on the sidewalk. The music was coming from inside.<br>He stood very still, key in hand, listening through the door. Not tinny. Not from a radio. It felt structural, as though the beams themselves had learned to breathe. He unlocked the door slowly. The hall was empty. Sunlight came through the high windows in angled bands, catching dust in suspension. The old disco ball hung motionless above the center of the floor. Yet the air moved with phrasing: bandone\u00f3n threading through the rafters, bass sliding along the walls.<br>Arturo stepped inside. His shoe touched wood. The floor answered. He accepted it. He had been waiting for this moment for twenty years without knowing what it was.<br>He crossed to the sound system and switched it on. The speakers crackled once, then aligned seamlessly with what was already present. Gotan Project flowed out, rich and urban, layered with something ancestral beneath it. He laughed, once, sharply.<br>By eleven there were people outside. He had not advertised.<br>A young couple stood at the door, uncertain.<br>\u201cAre you open?\u201d the woman asked.<br>Arturo looked at his empty calendar, at the dusty folding chairs stacked against the wall, at the EXIT sign flickering faintly red.<br>\u201cYes,\u201d he said.<br>He did not charge admission at first. He simply let them in. They stood awkwardly at the edge of the floor, bodies remembering nothing. The music held steady. The man placed his hand at the small of the woman\u2019s back, too high. She corrected him without speaking. They shifted weight. Paused. Shifted again. By the third phrase they were moving. Not well. Not gracefully. But moving. More people arrived. A delivery driver still in uniform. Two college girls with gym bags. A man in a suit who removed his jacket and folded it carefully over a chair. They formed loose circles, then pairs, then something more deliberate.<br>Arturo found himself in the center, demonstrating a basic walk. Forward. Side. Close. He did not raise his voice; he did not need to. The room understood him.<br>\u201cClose embrace,\u201d he said. \u201cNot crushing. Listening.\u201d<br>Listening.<br>He felt suddenly that the entire country had been waiting to be told how to hold one another.<br>By afternoon the sidewalk filled. Cars parked along both curbs. Someone brought bottled water. Someone else turned the old neon sign fully on, replacing the missing bulbs with mismatched ones scavenged from a hardware store. The F glowed again.<br>A news van drove past slowly but did not stop. Why? The story was everywhere.<br>At four o\u2019clock, a man approached Arturo near the coat rack.<br>\u201cYou should charge,\u201d he said quietly. \u201cPeople will pay.\u201d<br>Arturo studied the room. Sweat had darkened collars. Laughter broke and dissolved into breath. A woman leaned her forehead briefly against a stranger\u2019s chest as if resting between storms.<br>\u201cYou think so?\u201d Arturo asked.<br>The man nodded. \u201cThis isn\u2019t nostalgia. This is necessity.\u201d<br>Arturo waited until the next song began\u2014Bajofondo now, electric undercurrent running beneath the melody\u2014and climbed onto a chair.<br>\u201cFive dollars,\u201d he announced. \u201cCash only. We keep the lights on.\u201d<br>No one protested. They lined up willingly at the folding table by the door. Some paid with ordinary bills. Others handed over the new ones, the redesigned currency with notation where serial numbers used to be.<br>Arturo held one up to the light. The portrait on it seemed to watch the dancers.<br>\u201cAppropriate,\u201d he murmured.<br>By evening the police cruiser rolled past with its new melodic siren, curving and resolving like a phrase seeking applause. Several couples pivoted instinctively, turning their steps to accommodate the sound as if it were simply another instrument entering the arrangement.<br>Arturo felt a heat behind his ribs that he had not known since his twenties. He locked the doors at midnight only because the bodies inside were exhausted. As he counted the day\u2019s cash, more than he had made in the previous three months combined, the music did not fade. It settled into the beams, into the floorboards, into the joints of the building. He pressed his palm flat against the parquet. For the first time in years, the hall did not feel like a business. It felt like a country beginning.<br><br>Caleb Dunn heard the bass before he heard the melody. It leaked through the cracked window of the rehearsal space he still rented with two former bandmates who had not shown up in days. The amp in the corner hummed along obediently, even unplugged. A brushed electronic beat threaded itself through the dust.<br>He stood in the center of the room, arms crossed.<br>\u201cDon\u2019t,\u201d he said aloud.<br>The speaker on his phone lit up with a track he hadn\u2019t selected. Gotan Project, sleek, urban, too clean. The bandone\u00f3n line bent with manufactured longing. It was seductive in a way that felt dishonest.<br>Caleb had played three chords for six years in Detroit basements that smelled like beer and radiator steam. He believed in distortion. In raw edges. In strings that cut the fingers.<br>This? This was polished.<br>He turned the phone face down.<br>The rhythm continued.<br>Down the street, people had already started moving differently. He\u2019d seen it from the bus that morning: two mechanics stepping around one another in perfect counterbalance; a woman at a crosswalk pivoting instead of turning. Nobody looked embarrassed.<br>That frightened him more than the music.<br>By noon, social feeds had renamed themselves. #NuevoCompas trended. Videos of couples dancing in grocery aisles racked up millions of views. Someone had already designed a minimalist logo: a black bandone\u00f3n split down the center like a national emblem.<br>Caleb opened a live stream from a downtown dance hall. The camera panned across a crowd moving in coordinated embrace. Soft lighting. Smiling faces. The caption read:<br><strong>RETURN TO AUTHENTICITY.<\/strong><br>\u201cAuthenticity,\u201d he muttered.<br>He knew the history well enough. He had read about the brothels of Buenos Aires, about dockworkers and immigrants stitching rhythm from displacement. Tango had been born rough. Improvised. Unstable. What he heard now was engineered.<br>At 2:14 p.m., he walked out onto the sidewalk with his acoustic guitar.<br>The police siren passed at the end of the block in a lyrical arc. Instead of flinching, pedestrians adjusted their steps, as though the cruiser were a metronome on wheels.<br>Caleb sat on the curb and began to play. Not tango as it streamed through speakers. He stripped it back. No electronic pulse. No bass synth. Just wood and string. A hesitant minor progression, then a sharper one. He let it drag, then snap forward.<br>Two teenagers stopped.<br>\u201cWhat is that?\u201d one asked.<br>\u201cBefore,\u201d Caleb replied.<br>They listened.<br>A woman paused with grocery bags cutting into her fingers. A delivery cyclist slowed. The sound was uneven, almost defiant. It did not slide smoothly into the air; it scraped against it. The electronic beat from a nearby caf\u00e9 bled into his measure. The two rhythms collided and misaligned. Caleb played louder. By the third phrase, five people had gathered. By the fourth, someone began recording.<br>\u201cThis is real tango,\u201d Caleb said, though he wasn\u2019t entirely certain what he meant. \u201cNot the processed kind.\u201d<br>\u201cProcessed?\u201d the teenager asked.<br>\u201cThey\u2019ve smoothed it out,\u201d he said. \u201cMade it safe.\u201d<br>Behind him, the caf\u00e9 speakers shifted seamlessly into Tanghetto, sleek again, layered again, irresistible. The small crowd\u2019s bodies twitched, caught between impulses. Caleb felt anger rise cleanly through him.<br>\u201cThis is Primitivo,\u201d he said. \u201cRaw. Acoustic. No machines.\u201d<br>He played harder. His fingers stung. The notes came out sharp, imperfect, human.<br>A man in a tailored coat approached from the caf\u00e9.<br>\u201cYou\u2019re off-beat,\u201d he said gently.<br>\u201cThere is no off-beat,\u201d Caleb shot back. \u201cThere\u2019s pulse.\u201d<br>The man smiled with unsettling calm.<br>\u201cPulse is exactly what they\u2019re giving us.\u201d<br>They held one another\u2019s gaze for a moment that felt rehearsed.<br>By evening, Caleb had created a page.<br><strong>TANGO PRIMITIVO<\/strong> <em>Unamplified. Uncorrupted. Unowned.<\/em><br>Within an hour, it had thousands of followers.<br>He posted a manifesto drafted on his phone:<br>\u201cTango is not a product. It is not a logo. It is not a government program. Strip it to bone and wood. Or lose it.\u201d<br>The comments split instantly. Applause. Mockery. Accusations that he was missing the point. A video clip circulated of him on the curb, jaw tight, guitar raw against his chest. The caption read:<br><strong>First Opposition.<\/strong><br>Caleb didn\u2019t see that part. He was back in the rehearsal space by then, listening as the building itself seemed to throb in polished synchronization. The bass outside aligned too perfectly with the lights overhead.<br>He strummed one last harsh chord. It dissolved into the air without resistance. He understood, dimly, that he was not fighting the music. He was fighting its smoothness. And smoothness, he suspected, could harden into law.<br><br>Ethel Harmon had lived on the same block for forty-two years. The house was small, white with peeling paint, with two folding chairs set neatly on the front porch. She arranged them every morning, backrests flush with the railing, seats level with the concrete, as if some unseen inspector might pass by and check her sense of order.<br>The first hints of tango arrived like a vibration in the soles of her shoes. At first, she thought it was the air conditioner rattling. Then the mailbox clanged in rhythm. Then the siren of a passing fire truck curved in pitch and phrasing, resolved, and left the block silent again. But it wasn\u2019t silent. Not entirely. It was just\u2026 unintelligible.<br>She could not hear the music the way the neighbors did. Couldn\u2019t distinguish rhythm from hum. Couldn\u2019t locate melody in the street\u2019s pulse.<br>People began walking differently outside her window. Their shoulders tilted, their steps timed, feet tapping or pivoting without realizing it. Couples in borrowed apartments leaned into each other mid-stride. Children skipped in measured cadence. Her old friends waved but smiled without saying anything. Something had shifted, and she could not catch it.<br>Ethel set her folding chairs on the sidewalk that afternoon, just as always. Two teenagers passed by, backs stiff, shoes clicking. Their heels struck the cracks in the pavement in perfect unison, as though the world had been carved into measures. One looked at her and laughed.<br>\u201cI don\u2019t get it,\u201d the other said.<br>She nodded, faintly embarrassed. \u201cNeither do I,\u201d she said.<br>By evening, the block had filled with subtle motion. Windows glowed with soft lights. A dog barked in minor key, or maybe it was her imagination. Someone\u2019s car door slammed on a phrase, someone else\u2019s bicycle chain whined in counterpoint.<br>She sat in her chair, hands folded in her lap. Her hearing had never been good, but now it felt irrelevant. It was not just music she could not follow. It was the world itself.<br>The neighbors were talking, laughing, stepping, spinning. She could see it all but could not enter it. She was folding chairs into herself, folding space and time around her.<br>Ethel sipped her lukewarm tea. The air vibrated faintly, insistently. She pressed a palm to her lap and realized she could feel the pulse through the wood of the chair. Just enough to remind her that everything was moving, and she was not.<br>A couple turned the corner in close embrace, brushing past the edge of her porch. The man\u2019s hand hovered near the woman\u2019s back, a polite tap in rhythm. She could feel it. The edge of it. The friction against ordinary life.<br>By nightfall, the block was quiet again, but not silent. Ethel sat alone in her folding chair, listening to a world that had no room for her.<br>She would simply wait. For something she did not understand. And maybe, she thought, it was waiting for her too.<br><br>Elias Novak woke to a ceiling he swore had shifted slightly overnight. The plaster cracks formed delicate arcs that pulsed in time with something he could not name. The refrigerator hummed beneath the counter, a slow, deliberate 2&#215;4. The milk smelled sharper than yesterday, tangy with insistence. He pinched the carton, then let it sit. It did not matter. The pulse existed in the air, in the walls, in the light that fractured through his blinds.<br>He pressed his palm against the windowsill. Outside, people were already moving differently. Mail carriers pivoted around one another in precise alignment, dog walkers adjusted their pace to some unheard measure, a cyclist\u2019s bell jangled in counterpoint to the distant siren. The city breathed in tango.<br>Elias had no ear for music, but he could feel it through every object he touched. His apartment became a chamber of constant phrasing: the tiles throbbed, the radiator sighed, the kettle hissed with syncopated intention. He walked barefoot, careful, tracing invisible lines of beat across the floor. Every step threatened to betray his inattention. He could not follow, yet it followed him.<br>By noon, he noticed the neighbors\u2019 blinds swaying. It was not the wind. The cadence carried through the street, into his life, leaving him simultaneously terrified and mesmerized. He sipped flat beer, tasted sour milk at the back of his throat, and wondered how long he could exist here without joining.<br><br>By Tuesday, First Continental had become something unrecognizable. The lobby no longer simply received money; it counted, measured, and guided rhythm. Every transaction whispered its own phrase, every customer unconsciously synchronized with the nearest teller.<br>Sofia stamped slips with mechanical precision, her heels clicking in near-perfect alignment with bass lines that seemed to originate from the air itself. She noticed small divergences &#8211; a man hesitating mid-step, a woman\u2019s purse dragging slightly behind her motion &#8211; and adjusted her stamp accordingly, like a conductor correcting a single flute in a symphony.<br>The new currency spread faster than the staff could process it. Nuevo Comp\u00e1s notes fluttered in hands, slipped under doors, dropped into purses and pockets. Each portrait &#8211; severe, bandone\u00f3n in profile &#8211; watched the lobby, as if judging adherence to rhythm. She realized people were no longer queuing; they were dancing without realizing it.<br>By mid-afternoon, the line outside twisted into arcs. Pedestrians flowing through the revolving doors followed measured turns, half-bow, half-step. A delivery boy adjusted his stride to the siren of the cruiser outside. Sofia felt a shiver of comprehension: the world had become a ballroom, and she, unwillingly, was the metronome.<br><br>Arturo\u2019s ballroom had reached a new state of chaos, ordered only by the pulse itself. The parquet had warped further; dust collected in corners, catching flecks of sunlight that seemed to dance. People arrived continuously. The hall no longer required announcements; bodies moved as if preprogrammed, eyes tracking each other for minute corrections.<br>He watched from the balcony as a trio of students spun too fast, a delivery driver nearly collided with a retired couple, yet every collision resolved before it happened. Arturo pressed his palm to the floorboards. The vibration answered him. He had been a teacher, a caretaker, an impresario. Now he was a participant in something larger than commerce, larger than dance.<br>By evening, he realized he had not turned on the lights intentionally; they had synchronized themselves with the pulse. Each flicker, each dim glow, matched the phrasing. The hall had become alive, responsive. Arturo laughed aloud, a brief release before exhaustion gripped him. He understood, in that moment, that this was no longer a ballroom. It was a country, and every person a citizen of measure.<br><br>By nightfall, the city hummed. Lights, doors, cars, air-conditioning units, all in measured alignment. The pulse had seeped through walls, under streets, into every building and human limb.<br>Elias had taken to sitting by the window, elbows resting on the sill, beer flat on the counter beside him, milk long since abandoned. He watched the street as though it were a stage, though it had become impossible to tell where the performance ended and life began.<br>Elias felt like an observer in a laboratory, only the experiment was infinite and unsolvable. He scribbled notes on scraps of paper: measurements, impressions, small absurdities. The cat slept on the radiator, its breathing somehow in sync. The kettle whistled, the pipes clacked, and he realized: he was not merely witnessing the tango. He was part of it whether he liked it or not.<br><br>By midweek, the bank had evolved. Customers no longer stood in line. They glided. Even the dullest transactions &#8211; the deposit of a check, the simple withdrawal of cash &#8211; became choreography. Sofia found herself anticipating the movements before they occurred, her heel taps guiding rhythm as much as stamp impressions.<br>A woman tried to deposit a fifty. She hesitated, unsure if the note would be accepted. Sofia smiled faintly, stamped in measured time, and the paper seemed to breathe relief. She noticed the way the teller behind her was adjusting a customer\u2019s weight subtly, helping him pivot in tiny increments so the line stayed flowing. Even the coin counter whirred in sync, metallic taps punctuating each bass line.<br>She wondered at the quiet absurdity of it. Banking had always been about numbers, forms, regulations. Now it was about alignment. Harmony. Presence. She realized with a slight thrill that she no longer counted money; she counted time, space, subtle human gestures. She was, in her way, conducting the pulse.<br>When the line thinned for a moment, she leaned back against the counter, feeling a soft hum in her spine. Outside, the siren of a police cruiser rose in an arc that resolved perfectly, as though seeking applause. The pedestrians on the street adjusted mid-stride, shoulders tilting in acknowledgement, then continued past without noticing her. Sofia pressed her hand to the smooth marble, sensing the imperceptible tremor, and smiled.<br><br>Arturo Feld had started noticing small changes that made the ballroom feel larger than walls and windows could contain. The people who arrived now did not merely imitate steps; they responded to one another in almost instinctive counters, catching misalignments and correcting them mid-turn. The hall had grown sentient, he thought, each floorboard a nerve, each beam a tendon.<br>He watched a couple hesitate. A small misstep. The man\u2019s arm brushed the woman\u2019s elbow. She corrected him imperceptibly. Arturo clapped once, softly. The room answered. The lights flickered in agreement. A bass note from the street aligned with a piano phrase above. He felt vertigo.<br>He found himself walking among them, demonstrating a pivot here, a subtle shift there, teaching without speaking. The dancers watched, listened, mirrored, corrected, absorbed. Arturo laughed, a deep, raw sound, and for a moment the hall seemed to pulse with him, as though it, too, were alive, and aware of its own creation.<br>By afternoon, the sidewalk outside was dense with observers and participants alike. People flowed from the street into the hall like tributaries into a river. Arturo counted receipts from the folding table near the door, Nuevo Comp\u00e1s notes stacked neatly, but the money felt secondary to the movement. This was not about business. It was about survival of something far older than profit: presence, rhythm, connection.<br><br>Caleb had moved to the park across the street from the main plaza. He slung his guitar over his shoulder and strummed raw chords, letting the sound scrape against the engineered smoothness of Gotan Project and Bajofondo emanating from nearby caf\u00e9s and windows.<br>People stopped. They shifted, caught between obedience and instinct. He played faster, slower, uneven, letting his fingers bleed into every note. Each chord was a tiny rebellion, a reminder that tango was not meant to be sanitized.<br>A couple of children approached, hesitant. One held a small toy drum, tapping a phrase that clashed violently with the caf\u00e9\u2019s speakers. Caleb nodded. \u201cYes. That\u2019s right. Make it messy. Make it human.\u201d<br>By dusk, a small crowd had gathered. They were not dancers in the hall sense. They were pedestrians, students, street vendors, people who understood only instinct. Caleb played louder. Imperfect. Raw. Unyielding.<br>A man in a suit leaned against a lamppost. \u201cYou\u2019re fighting the tide,\u201d he said.<br>\u201cI\u2019m reminding people what it was before the tide,\u201d Caleb replied.<br><br>Ethel had set her folding chairs closer to the curb, adjusted the angles, leveled the seats. She could not hear the music. Her ears betrayed her. But she could feel it in vibrations, in small shifts in light, in the air pressing against her skin. She noted with amusement that the rhythm invaded ordinary objects: the mailbox lid, the squeal of a bicycle chain, the neighbor\u2019s cat rubbing against a lamppost. The world had grown incomprehensible.<br><br>By night, the city had become a network of invisible measures. Sirens curved in minor keys. Streetlights pulsed subtly. Vehicles moved in arcs and turns that respected some universal tempo. Pedestrians adjusted their bodies with tiny corrections, almost unaware. Inside apartments, banks, ballrooms, parks, and streets, people felt it. Some obeyed, some resisted, some observed quietly.<br>Elias Novak leaned against his window, heart beating in borrowed rhythm, flat beer at his side. Sofia Ibarra stamped her last slips of the day, feeling the pulse through marble. Arturo Feld leaned into a pivot he did not consciously lead, letting the hall guide him. Caleb strummed his final chord into the street, raw and uneven. Ethel Harmon folded her chairs once more, solitary but attentive.<br>The Tango Republic was no longer a novelty. It was infrastructure. Society had begun to move with it. And no one, not yet, understood what it demanded.<br><br>It happened at 3:12 in the morning.<br>Elias was awake because he had begun sleeping in fragments, his body unable to surrender fully to a world that no longer rested. The refrigerator throbbed. The pipes clicked. Somewhere upstairs a couple practiced slow, deliberate pivots across tile.<br>And then\u2014<br>Nothing.<br>Not absence exactly. Subtraction. The bass line that had become the city\u2019s second bloodstream thinned, as if someone had drawn gauze across a speaker. The refrigerator still hummed, but without phrasing. The pipes ticked, but not in measure. The upstairs couple stopped mid-step. Elias sat upright in bed. He waited. The silence was not peaceful. It was unstable, like a glass placed too close to the edge of a table. He felt his own pulse, wild, arrhythmic, private.<br>For the first time since the Arrival, his heartbeat belonged only to him.<br>He swung his legs over the side of the mattress and stood carefully, as if noise might shatter something fragile. Outside, the streetlights burned steadily without the faint tremor they had developed. A car passed without melodic arc. Its engine was just an engine.<br>Then, far away, he heard it. Not polished. Not urban. Wood and string. A dragged tempo. An uneven accent.<br>Caleb.<br>Elias did not know his name, but he knew the difference. The sound moved through the dark like a splinter.<br>The city inhaled. And the bass returned. It slammed back into place. The refrigerator caught the beat mid-hum. The pipes resumed syncopation. Somewhere upstairs, a woman laughed in relief and resumed her step.<br>Elias stayed standing for a long time.<br>So it could falter, he thought. It could be interrupted.<br>He went to the kitchen and, without turning on the lights, opened a notebook.<br>He wrote: 3:12 a.m. Gap. Caused? Coincidence? Music not invincible.<br>His handwriting shook.<br><br>At the bank, the changes arrived as memos.<br><strong>Subject<\/strong>: Tempo-Based Valuation Pilot Program. <strong>Effective Immediately<\/strong><br>Sofia read it twice. The message was written in calm corporate language, as though announcing a new checking account feature. Certain series of Nuevo Comp\u00e1s currency may fluctuate in value according to nationally recognized tempo standards. Staff are instructed to reassure clients that variation reflects vibrancy, not instability.<br>Vibrancy.<br>She glanced down at her drawer. The bills were no longer uniform. Some bore sharper notation, denser clusters of flags and stems. Others stretched languidly across the margin, slower measures, elongated rests.<br>A customer approached her window with visible agitation.<br>\u201cI deposited these yesterday,\u201d he said, placing a stack of mid-tempo twenties on the counter. \u201cThey\u2019re worth less today.\u201d<br>Sofia scanned them.<br>The system hesitated, a fraction of a second, but enough to feel.<br>Amount: 18.75 Status: Transitional<br>\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d the man said. \u201cThey were twenties.\u201d<br>\u201cThey still are,\u201d she replied gently. \u201cThey\u2019re just\u2026 evolving.\u201d<br>Even as she said it, she heard how absurd it sounded.<br>Behind him, the line moved in soft, choreographed increments. A woman shifted her weight to accommodate the space. A man in a suit angled his shoulder so that no one collided. No one argued loudly. No one shoved. The bass line in the lobby was warmer today. Deeper.<br>Sofia felt something new beneath her professionalism. Concern.<br>If tempo determined value, who determined tempo?<br>She stamped the deposit slip, but the thud no longer aligned perfectly. It lagged by a hair. The system corrected itself, adjusting her screen\u2019s refresh rate to compensate. The bank was adapting faster than she was.<br><br>The ballroom was full before noon. But something had changed. The dancers were better now. Too good, perhaps. Their pivots landed with machine precision. Their pauses held identical lengths. Even their improvisations seemed\u2026 standardized.<br>Arturo watched from the edge of the floor. He had always believed tango lived in the micro-hesitation: the breath before a step, the miscalculation that became intimacy. Now the room moved like a single organism.<br>A young instructor approached him.<br>\u201cWe\u2019ve been asked to submit our playlist,\u201d she said.<br>\u201cAsked by whom?\u201d<br>She hesitated. \u201cMunicipal Arts Council. They\u2019re creating a centralized rotation. For cohesion.\u201d<br>Cohesion.<br>Arturo looked at the speakers mounted in the corners of the hall. They had once crackled with personality. Now they delivered flawless, balanced sound.<br>\u201cAnd if we don\u2019t submit?\u201d he asked.<br>She did not answer directly.<br>\u201cThe grant applications are tied to compliance.\u201d<br>He nodded slowly.<br>That afternoon, he intentionally let a track run slightly long before transitioning. Just a few seconds of overlap. A human mistake. The dancers faltered. Just a little. A ripple passed through the floor. Several couples glanced upward instinctively, as if waiting for correction.<br>The correction came. The system\u2014not visible, not announced\u2014adjusted the tempo in real time, smoothing the seam.<br>Arturo felt it like a firm hand on his shoulder.<br><br>Caleb\u2019s page had grown beyond his control.<br>TANGO PRIMITIVO now had chapters in five cities. Videos streamed constantly: street corners, abandoned warehouses, back porches. Acoustic guitars. Violins with frayed bows. Bare feet on concrete.<br>He should have felt triumphant. Instead, he felt watched. Under his latest post &#8211; a grainy video of a trio playing in deliberate defiance of the national tempo &#8211; comments scrolled faster than he could read.<br>Keep it raw. They\u2019re monitoring deviations. Stay off the grid. This is how it starts.<br>He didn\u2019t know who \u201cthey\u201d were. That frightened him more than if he did.<br>He played again in the park, this time with others. No amps. No mics. Just wood and breath.<br>The first time their tempo drifted significantly off the polished pulse emanating from nearby buildings, something happened. Streetlights flickered. Not out. Just\u2026 uncertain. A low-frequency hum passed beneath their feet, like infrastructure recalibrating.<br>One of the violinists stopped mid-phrase.<br>\u201cYou felt that,\u201d she said.<br>Caleb nodded.<br>\u201cWe\u2019re pushing against something structural.\u201d<br>He played harder.<br>Across the street, a police cruiser slowed, silent. Observing.<br><br>Ethel Harmon noticed the falter too. She could not hear the gap at 3:12, but she felt the chair stop vibrating beneath her. It was subtle, like a train passing farther away than usual. She leaned forward. For one strange, suspended moment, the air was hers alone. Just still. Then it resumed.<br>The next morning, she placed both folding chairs side by side on the sidewalk as usual. But today, she did something new. She opened the second one fully. For weeks, she had kept it half-folded, an old habit from widowhood. No one to sit beside her. Now she opened it flat and square. She did not know why.<br>Mid-afternoon, a young woman paused in front of her house.<br>\u201cYou don\u2019t dance,\u201d the woman said gently.<br>\u201cI don\u2019t hear,\u201d Ethel replied.<br>The woman hesitated. Then she sat down.<br>They did not move or try to align with the pulse. They simply sat, shoulders nearly touching, while the block breathed around them. For the first time since the Arrival, Ethel did not feel excluded. She felt resistant. And resistance, she realized, did not always require motion. Sometimes it required stillness.<br><br>The first arrests were polite. No sirens singing, no dramatic sweep. Just conversations on sidewalks that ended with a hand placed lightly at the elbow. Caleb did not witness the first one. He heard about it through his page. A cellist in Cleveland. Played Primitivo in a parking garage. Claimed the reverb improved dissonance. Someone reported the tempo deviation. Officers arrived. Respectful. Calm. They asked her to adjust. She declined. They escorted her away with the courtesy reserved for people who do not yet understand policy. The charge was filed under Municipal Noise Compliance. The video circulated for hours before disappearing.<br>Caleb watched it three times before it vanished. What disturbed him was not the arrest, but how measured everyone remained. The officers\u2019 footsteps were in time. The cellist\u2019s resistance was almost graceful. The comments beneath the clip were divided cleanly between outrage and reassurance. She pushed too hard. There\u2019s a national standard now. You can\u2019t expect chaos forever.<br>Chaos.<br>He closed his laptop and looked around the rehearsal space. The room had begun to feel smaller, as if the walls were leaning in to listen.<br>He picked up his guitar but did not play. For the first time, he wondered if Primitivo was already predictable enough to be absorbed.<br><br>At First Continental, Sofia noticed the new language. It appeared first in small print beneath transaction summaries:<br><strong>Tempo Stabilization Fee: 0.25%<\/strong><br>Customers rarely questioned it. The deduction was minor. Almost elegant. But she watched the numbers. Slower measures depreciated more rapidly now. Faster ones were volatile but rewarded in bursts. A kind of financial choreography.<br>A man in his seventies approached her window with a trembling stack of older bills\u2014the early Nuevo Comp\u00e1s series, mid-tempo, balanced.<br>\u201cI kept these because they felt\u2026 moderate,\u201d he said. \u201cSafe.\u201d<br>She scanned them.<br>Amount: 14.10 (original value: 20.00)<br>He blinked at the screen.<br>\u201cThey\u2019ve slowed,\u201d she said carefully. \u201cThe market favors momentum.\u201d<br>He nodded as if she had explained weather. Behind him, two younger clients compared their notes like collectors, praising aggressive rhythms, laughing at the naivety of moderation. Sofia\u2019s screen flickered briefly. For less than a second, the system froze. The cursor stopped pulsing. The bass line in the ceiling dimmed. She felt it. A micro-gap. Then correction.<br>Her manager emerged from his office, tie perfectly aligned.<br>\u201cWe\u2019re transitioning to Central Tempo Authentication next week,\u201d he announced to the staff. \u201cManual discretion will be reduced.\u201d<br>Reduced.<br>Sofia pressed her palms flat against the marble counter. Manual discretion had been the last human residue in the building.<br><br>Arturo received the letter by courier. Paper. Heavy stock. Embossed seal.<br><strong>National Cultural Cohesion Initiative<\/strong><br>His ballroom had been identified as a \u201cHigh-Impact Rhythmic Node.\u201d He was invited to integrate the standardized national playlist. In exchange, he would receive structural funding, sound system upgrades, and official designation as a Heritage Venue. He read the letter twice. The dancers moved around him in perfect compliance. He had already felt the smoothing. The automatic correction when he allowed error. The subtle recalibration when improvisation went too far. Now it had a logo.<br>He walked to the center of the floor and deliberately stopped the music mid-phrase.<br>Gasps.<br>Bodies froze mid-pivot. A woman\u2019s heel hovered a fraction above the parquet. The silence lasted four seconds. Five. Six.<br>Then the sound system restarted itself. Simply resumed. Several dancers laughed nervously and continued as though the pause had been part of the arrangement.<br>Arturo stepped back. For the first time since reopening, he felt like a tenant in his own hall.<br><br>Ethel noticed the arrests not through news but through absence. The young woman who had sat beside her two days earlier did not return. The second folding chair remained open.<br>The block moved with increasing precision now. Even grocery bags swung in measured arcs. A city bus paused at the corner. Its doors opened and closed in rhythm. She pressed her palm against the armrest. The vibration was stronger than before. And more synchronized.<br>That afternoon, she did something radical. She turned both chairs to face the street at an angle. A small disruption of geometry. Neighbors passed and adjusted unconsciously, correcting their steps to avoid misalignment. But the chairs remained crooked. It pleased her more than she expected.<br><br>Elias began mapping. Mentally. He tracked the silences. The micro-falters. The arrests disguised as compliance. He noted when tempo valuation shifted. When Arturo\u2019s hall smoothed too perfectly. When Caleb\u2019s live streams glitched mid-measure.<br>He did not dance. He did not resist publicly. He observed.<br>One evening, he turned off every device in his apartment. No television. No phone. No refrigerator \u2014 he unplugged it and let the hum die. The pipes quieted. The building above continued faintly.<br>He sat in the center of his living room and counted his own pulse. It was irregular. Human. He closed his eyes. And for nearly twelve seconds, he felt no external rhythm at all. The silence felt not like absence, but like possibility.<br>Then, slowly, gently, the bass seeped back in\u2014not from his appliances, not from speakers\u2014but from the street below. From the grid. From something larger than wiring. He opened his eyes. The milk in the kitchen was sour again. He had forgotten to close the door earlier that morning.<br>He did not clean it up. He let the smell linger. Proof of decay. Proof of entropy. Proof that not everything aligned.<br><br>The call did not come from Caleb.<br>That was important later.<br>It began as a thread on a private forum used by Primitivo chapters. No branding. No manifesto. Just a proposal:<br>What if we all stop at the same time?<br>Not play louder. Not play harder. Not disrupt tempo. Stop.<br>The idea unsettled them more than amplification ever had.<br>Silence was not rebellion. Silence was vacancy. Dangerous.<br>Caleb stared at the screen long after reading it. His instinct had always been to counter rhythm with rhythm. Wood against wire. Imperfection against polish.<br>But what if the Republic required resistance to be audible?<br>What if silence was the only thing it could not correct?<br>He typed only one line:<br>Midnight. Local time. All cities.<br>He did not sign his name.<br><br>At First Continental, Sofia noticed the new screensaver. The computers no longer idled to a blank display. They pulsed gently with the national emblem \u2014 the split bandone\u00f3n. Central Tempo Authentication had gone fully live that morning. Her terminal no longer hesitated or lagged. It predicted.<br>When a customer slid a bill under the window, the value recalculated before the scanner touched it. The system anticipated tempo fluctuations based on national mood metrics.<br>\u201cEfficiency is stability,\u201d her manager had said.<br>At 4:17 p.m., Sof\u00eda processed a deposit from a small arts nonprofit.<br>The man at her window was thin, carefully dressed, his jacket sleeves slightly too short. He placed the stack of bills down with both hands, aligning them neatly before sliding them toward her. At first glance, they looked like the other Nuevo Comp\u00e1s notes she had handled all day. But when she lifted them, she saw the difference. The notation along the margins was slower. Not just aesthetically, but structurally. The black stems were elongated, the rests drawn out, the measures wider. The visual spacing suggested a tempo closer to a funeral procession than to the brisk, modern cadence that had become standard since morning.<br>She fed the first bill into the scanner. A message appeared:<br><strong>Tempo Divergence: 12% Below National Baseline<br>Review Required \u2014 Potential Devaluation<\/strong><br>A red border formed around the transaction window, pulsing faintly.<br>She glanced at the client. He stood very still, hands folded lightly in front of him, watching her with quiet attention. Simply present.<br>The software guidelines, issued earlier that day from headquarters, had explained the new adjustment model. Currency tempo now influenced liquidity priority. Notes that deviated significantly from the national rhythmic average could be flagged as economically unstable. Slower measures were being interpreted as low-velocity circulation risk. In other words: money that moved too slowly might not move at all.<br>She flipped through the stack again. All of them carried the same elongated phrasing. Unhurried. Almost stubbornly so.<br>Behind the man, the lobby moved in subtle synchronization. Two women shifted their weight in mirrored arcs. The security guard\u2019s heel tapped softly against the marble, precise and polite. Even the hum of the ventilation system seemed brisker than the bills in her hand.<br>The screen waited.<br><strong>Manual Override Required \u2014 Branch Authorization Recommended<\/strong><br>Her finger hovered over the authorization field.<br>For a moment she imagined what declining the deposit would mean. The nonprofit would need to exchange the notes at a loss. The slow tempo would be penalized. Cultural centers did not survive penalties easily. She placed her thumb along the edge of the bills. They felt warm, as if held longer than necessary.<br>Three seconds passed. Then she selected:<br><strong>Authorize \u2014 Local Discretion<\/strong><br>The red border blinked once. Paused. Then disappeared.<br><strong>Amount: 500.00 Status: Accepted<\/strong><br>The transaction completed with a soft confirmation tone, brisk, efficient, almost cheerful.<br>The man did not smile. He inclined his head once, a gesture that felt less like gratitude and more like acknowledgment, as if she had participated in something that extended beyond the bank, beyond currency.<br>When he stepped away, Sof\u00eda noticed that her manager\u2019s office door remained closed, but as she closed the transaction window, she felt a faint shift in the system\u2019s responsiveness. A subtle recalibration, as if her choice had been logged not merely as an exception, but as a data point.<br>The rhythm of the lobby resumed around her, yet she understood something had changed.<br>The system had noticed.<br><br>Arturo had been asked to host the Regional Cohesion Gala. Officials would attend. Cultural ambassadors. Influencers with immaculate posture. He agreed. He was not sure why. Perhaps he wanted to see how far the smoothing had gone.<br>By evening, the hall glowed with restored lighting and polished brass. The parquet shone. The speakers delivered flawless calibration. Couples moved like trained currents. Arturo stood at the edge of the floor, tuxedo collar stiff against his neck. At 11:59 p.m., he walked to the sound booth. The young and attentive technician nodded at him.<br>\u201cBeautiful turnout,\u201d the technician said.<br>\u201cYes,\u201d Arturo replied.<br>Midnight approached. The bass deepened, preparing for a synchronized national crescendo \u2014 a coordinated swell broadcast across cities.<br>Arturo placed his hand lightly over the master control. He did not look at the technician.<br>At midnight exactly, the music rose\u2026<br>\u2026and he cut it.<br>Total silence. The dancers froze mid-embrace. The technician gasped. For one long second, nothing moved.<br>Then something astonishing happened. The speakers did not restart. The automatic correction did not engage. The hall remained silent.<br>Across the city, across the country, in rehearsal spaces, on sidewalks, in parks, Primitivo players lowered their bows and stilled their hands. Caleb sat on the curb, guitar resting flat across his thighs. He did not strum. In Cleveland, in Austin, in Portland \u2014 nothing. The national crescendo collapsed into vacuum.<br>Sofia felt it at her teller station. The ceiling hum stopped. The coin counter froze mid-rattle. The split bandone\u00f3n screensaver flickered and went dark. The entire lobby stood suspended in unstructured space. Ethel felt her chair stop vibrating. Not diminish. Stop.<br>Cars idled at intersections without melodic arc. A police cruiser rolled through a red light without siren or phrase. For the first time since the Arrival, the country heard itself. Not music. Breathing. Uncoordinated footsteps. A cough. The scrape of a chair leg against tile.<br>In Arturo\u2019s hall, someone laughed nervously. Another person exhaled too loudly. A woman withdrew her hand from her partner\u2019s back, unsure where to place it without instruction.<br>The silence stretched. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty.<br>In his apartment, Elias stood in the center of the room and felt his pulse hammer wildly against his ribs. It was not graceful. It was not shared. It was his.<br>He began to cry. The quiet release of someone who had been held in perfect measure too long.<br>At thirty-seven seconds, the lights across the city dimmed. Lowered. A hum rose from somewhere beneath pavement, beneath wiring, beneath architecture.<br>The bass returned as infrastructure. Streetlights pulsed once. Twice. The police cruiser\u2019s siren emitted a flat tone, neither rising nor resolving. Then the beat reassembled. Not smoothly. Not beautifully. Forcefully.<br>The speakers in Arturo\u2019s hall restarted at a higher volume than before. The dancers jolted as if corrected by gravity.<br>In the bank, Sofia\u2019s terminal rebooted automatically.<br><strong>Manual Overrides Disabled<\/strong><br>In the park, Caleb\u2019s guitar string vibrated without being touched.<br>Ethel\u2019s folding chairs trembled.<br>And the rhythm that came back was no longer inviting.<br>It was directive.<br><br>The music returned louder, but not better. That was the first thing Elias noticed. The bass resumed its authority. The pipes found their syncopation. The refrigerator reclaimed its measured hum. Yet something inside the phrasing had tightened. The pauses were shorter. The crescendos slightly compressed. As if the system had learned efficiency. As if it had learned fear.<br>Elias sat at his kitchen table with the sour milk still in the open carton. The smell had deepened into something almost sweet, like overripe fruit. He did not clean it. He wanted one thing in the apartment that did not harmonize.<br>He pressed his palm flat on the wood and listened. The pulse moved through the table now. Through the chair legs. Through his own bones.<br>Forty-one seconds, he thought. He had counted. Forty-one seconds in which the world belonged to no one. He wondered whether everyone else had counted too.<br>At the bank, the lobby felt subtly different. No announcements had been made about the midnight interruption. No acknowledgment of the gap. The news stations replayed footage of the \u201cHistoric Unifying Crescendo\u201d as though it had occurred flawlessly.<br>But people moved with a fraction more caution. The closeness between bodies was less automatic now. A slight hesitation before embrace. A brief glance upward, as if checking that the beat remained intact.<br>Sofia processed transactions with renewed smoothness. Manual overrides were indeed disabled. The red border no longer appeared; tempo divergence simply recalibrated instantly, invisibly. She felt something close inside her. Possibility narrowing.<br>At lunch, she stepped outside without her phone. She stood on the sidewalk and did not adjust her weight to the bass line. At first it felt like stepping against a current in shallow water. Awkward, but manageable. Then her body began correcting itself unconsciously. Her hips aligned. Her heel tapped once. She stilled it deliberately. A passerby glanced at her, puzzled.<br>She realized something then: resistance would not look like rebellion anymore. It would look like awkwardness. And awkwardness was lonely.<br><br>Arturo did not sleep the night after the Break. The silence in the hall \u2014 those forty-one seconds \u2014 replayed in him with impossible clarity. He remembered the dancers\u2019 eyes. Without music, they had looked at one another directly. Just looked.<br>The next evening, attendance was higher than ever. Officials congratulated him on the \u201cresilience of national rhythm.\u201d Funding was expedited. His sound system was upgraded again. The dancers were immaculate. Too immaculate.<br>He began noticing something unsettling: when a couple made a mistake now, they corrected it instantly, before the misstep could bloom into intimacy. Improvisation had become error. He tried something small. During a slower piece, still compliant, still approved, he dimmed the lights more than necessary. Just enough to soften the room. The system brightened them automatically. He laughed softly. Just\u2026 understanding.<br>The hall no longer belonged to him.<br>But the memory of the silence did.<br><br>Caleb\u2019s page did not mention the Break directly. It didn\u2019t need to. Everyone who had participated knew. Everyone who had felt it knew.<br>The followers grew more quickly after midnight than before. Not because of victory \u2014 there had been none \u2014 but because something had been revealed. The Republic was not invincible.<br>It was vigilant.<br>Caleb tried to play the next day and found his fingers slower than usual. The music he produced felt\u2026 unnecessary. He walked through the city without his guitar. He observed couples moving in perfect phrasing, police sirens resolving gracefully, street vendors aligning their gestures to invisible measures. It was beautiful. He hated that it was beautiful. He sat on a bench and closed his eyes. The bass pressed gently against his ribs. He let his breathing fall into it. Just to see. For a moment \u2014 a dangerous moment \u2014 it felt good.<br>Relief flooded him. The exhaustion of resistance lifted. He understood why so many had surrendered without protest. Harmony is easier than friction. He opened his eyes abruptly and stood. But the knowledge stayed.<br><br>Ethel noticed something else entirely. The silence had frightened her neighbors. Not because they loved the music, but because they had forgotten how to stand without it. After midnight, the block was quieter than usual. Conversations were shorter. Laughter was careful. The young mother across the street practiced stepping in her kitchen even when no one was watching.<br>Ethel turned her chairs back to their ordinary alignment. She understood something new. People did not need force to comply. They needed rhythm. She closed her eyes in the afternoon sun and tried to remember what the world had sounded like before the Arrival.<br>Car engines. Distant arguments. Wind without phrasing. Memory resisted her. The music had not erased the past. It had overwritten it.<br><br>Elias began keeping two columns in his notebook.<br><strong>With Rhythm<\/strong><br>Efficiency<br>Closeness<br>Predictability<br>Grace<br><strong>Without Rhythm (41 sec.)<\/strong><br>Fear<br>Breath<br>Eye contact<br>Self<br>He stared at the second column longer. He realized something slow and unsettling:<br>The Republic had not taken anything from people that they were not already eager to give.<br><em>Coordination over uncertainty.<br>Embrace over solitude.<br>Tempo over hesitation.<\/em><br>He closed the notebook. The milk in the kitchen had begun to harden along the rim of the carton. A faint crust forming. Decay was slow. But it did not require permission.<br><br>The city continued. No tanks, no mass arrests, no speeches. Just refinement.<br>The music no longer asked, it assumed. And within that assumption, something subtle began to happen. People\u2019s private pulses \u2014 once erratic, once stubborn \u2014 started aligning even when the speakers were off. Hearts learned the measure. Feet adjusted in dreams. Breathing synchronized in sleep.<br>The existential shift was not that the Tango Republic controlled the air. It was that the air had become internal. The question now is quieter, and more dangerous:<br>If the rhythm moves inside the body, what remains to resist?<br>Elias Novak stood in his kitchen holding the carton of milk like an artifact recovered from a failed civilization. The refrigerator hummed behind him, steady, indifferent. Morning light came in through the thin blinds and striped the counter in pale gold. The milk had been opened yesterday. He remembered clearly. He had poured it into coffee. He had watched the white bloom spread into brown. It had been ordinary milk then. Acceptable milk. Civilized milk.<br>Now it smelled faintly wrong. Not spoiled in any dramatic way, no visible curdling, no rebellion of texture. Just an almost imperceptible sourness, like breath held too long. He brought it closer to his nose again. Yes. Something had shifted.<br>He looked at the expiration date. Two weeks away. Two weeks. He checked the fridge temperature display. Perfectly normal. He stood very still.<br>It was not the first small betrayal of the week. The shower water had taken too long to warm. His right shoe had felt slightly tighter than usual. A neighbor he passed every morning had not recognized him. These were tolerable anomalies. Minor statistical noise.<br>But the milk\u2026 Milk was simple. Milk was binary. Milk was good or milk was bad. He poured a little into a glass. It looked correct. He lifted the glass to the light. The surface trembled slightly in his hand. He did not think his hand was shaking. He had not been aware of trembling. He tasted it.<br>There it was. Not sour exactly. Not yet. But leaning. As if milk could lean toward another state and hesitate at the threshold.<br>He swallowed carefully.<br>The world did not end. But something in him recoiled, not from the taste, but from the ambiguity. He sat down at the kitchen table with the glass in front of him. He stared at it as if it might declare its allegiance.<br>He remembered being a child, his mother sniffing milk and saying, \u201cIt\u2019s fine,\u201d with absolute authority. Milk had obeyed her. Reality had obeyed her. There had been no negotiation.<br>He took another sip. The taste had not improved. It had not worsened either. It existed in suspension. Like everything lately. He realized that what frightened him was not spoilage but indecision.<br>He stood abruptly, went to the sink, and poured the milk down the drain. The white spiral vanished into metal darkness. He rinsed the glass. He rinsed it longer than necessary. When he returned the carton to the refrigerator, he hesitated. Throw it away. No, wait. What if it was fine? What if he was the one miscalibrated?<br>He imagined Sofia at the bank, tapping her pen in careful rhythm. Arturo counting steps in a silent hall. Caleb pressing his ear to a guitar string, listening for distortion. Ethel sitting in her backyard where nothing pulsed. They would not know what to do with this milk either.<br>He laughed softly.<br>That was new. The laughter came without permission. It felt less like humor and more like recognition. The milk had not changed. He had. Or perhaps the world had shifted one degree off true, and he was the only one standing near a level surface.<br>He took the carton out again. He smelled it once more. Still leaning. He closed his eyes and imagined a life in which nothing leaned. In which objects stayed loyal to their categories. In which expiration dates meant something solid and fixed. He could not picture it.<br>He poured himself another small glass. He drank it slowly. If it was going to turn, he would turn with it.<br>He stood in the quiet kitchen afterward and waited for nausea, for revelation, for transformation. Nothing came.<br>The refrigerator hummed. Outside, somewhere in the distance, a pulse\u2014faint, almost imperceptible\u2014moved through the air. Or perhaps it was only the echo of blood in his ears.<br>He did not know anymore. He washed the glass again. This time, he left the carton on the counter.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Amulet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My dwelling is tiny. It is made of horse mane, separate hairs braided into a minuscule square, a little bag with a thread at one corner that keeps it hanging from Fernando\u2019s rearview mirror. As a spirit, I need no room in the physical world, so the charm is a palace to me: monstrous in scale, yet cozy all the same.<br>I enjoy spending time with Fernando and his monologues, addressed to me, or to what he believes I am. Years ago, he bought the amulet in Santa Ana de Guadalupe, Jalisco. He thinks I am a relic of Santo Toribio Romo, overseeing safe passage. He is mistaken. I have no way to correct him, and it hardly matters.<br>Every morning Fernando steps out of his house, more shack than home, opens the car door, eases into the driver\u2019s seat, then bends forward to kiss me. Gratitude, reverence. I cannot feel the kiss itself, but intention carries weight, and Fernando is a good, honest man. I appreciate that.<br>If anyone in his household happens to see this small ritual, they smile indulgently. The younger ones, especially, consider themselves modern, less superstitious, better informed. I have no business judging. I am not here for belief. I am here to protect.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"480\" class=\"wp-image-1100\" style=\"width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet01.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet01.jpg 1402w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet01-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet01-1024x819.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet01-768x615.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br>The taxi does not truly belong to Fernando. It is old, sun-bleached, borrowed from a cousin of a cousin who never asks questions. At dawn, when the town still smells of damp earth and yesterday\u2019s beer, Fernando wipes the dashboard with the hem of his shirt and turns the key.<br>The engine always hesitates before catching. He likes that moment, the breath held between silence and motion. It feels honest.<br>The town is small enough that he could drive it with his eyes half-closed. A bakery that opens before it should. A pharmacy with a saint taped crookedly to the window. A plaza where pigeons gather. People nod when they see Fernando. Some smile. Some stare a little too long. He keeps his eyes on the road.<br><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"480\" class=\"wp-image-1102\" style=\"width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet02.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet02.jpg 1402w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet02-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet02-1024x819.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet02-768x615.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br>Fernando is a good driver. Most days I can rest. Occasionally he drifts, and I nudge the wheel just enough to skirt a pothole, a rusty nail, a dog asleep in hot dust.<br>His first passenger raises her hand without looking. She slides into the back seat with a basket of laundry and the faint scent of fabric softener.<br>\u201cAl mercado,\u201d she says.<br>Fernando nods and pulls away.<br>She watches him in the mirror. Everyone does, sooner or later. He pretends not to notice. His hands rest lightly on the wheel, careful, as if the car might bruise.<br>\u201cYou\u2019re not from here,\u201d she says after a while.<br>\u201cNo.\u201d<br>\u201cWhere then?\u201d<br>He considers the question the way one considers a road flooded with rain: whether to go around or straight through.<br>\u201cSouth.\u201d<br>She smiles, satisfied, as if the word alone carries a story she can finish herself. Silence returns, broken only by the tires and the distant cry of a rooster who has lost track of time.<br>At a stoplight no one obeys, she leans forward. \u201cYou drive nights too, don\u2019t you?\u201d<br>\u201cYes.\u201d<br>\u201cAlone?\u201d<br>The word drops like a stone into water. Fernando keeps his voice even. \u201cAlways.\u201d<br>The light turns green. He drives on.<br>At the market she pays him and hesitates, her hand lingering a moment too long as she passes the bills through the window. She does not touch him. No one ever does. She smiles, hopeful, unsure, then disappears into the crowd of vendors and hanging fruit.<br>Fernando watches until he loses her.<br>He pulls over beneath a jacaranda tree and shuts off the engine. Purple petals cling to the windshield like bruises. Quiet presses in, thick and intimate.<br>In the glove compartment, beneath registration papers and a cracked pair of sunglasses, lies a folded photograph. He never looks at it in daylight. Still, he sees it clearly: two figures, too close, laughing at something outside the frame. One of them trusted him completely.<br><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"480\" class=\"wp-image-1103\" style=\"width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet03.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet03.jpg 1402w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet03-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet03-1024x819.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet03-768x615.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br>Fernando closes his eyes.<br>In the darkened glass, a man stares back, handsome, calm, untouched by the town\u2019s heat and hunger. A man no one suspects of anything at all.<br>The engine ticks as it cools, like a clock counting something down.<br>Fernando is handsome in a way that unsettles people. Not the sharp, modern kind meant for billboards, but something older, like a face from a cracked retablo, a Christ darkened by centuries of candle smoke. Long features, sorrowful eyes, hair falling the way painters imagine holiness falling. Beauty softened by suffering, sanctified by it.<br>On Sundays, he unhooks the amulet and slips me into his pocket as if protection works better there. The air around him changes.<br>Women look at him the way one looks at something forbidden but luminous. Young girls forget their eyes. Old women forget their rosaries. Even those who buried husbands and desire together feel something stir, gentle, ashamed, unavoidable. Their glances touch him where hands never would, resting briefly at his mouth, his chest, as if to check that his heart is truly there.<br>Fernando tries to make himself small.<br>At first he stands near the back of the church, hoping shadow will dull him. He bows his head. He folds his hands. But during the sermon, instead of the altar, the women turn. One by one. Then together. Necks crane. Bodies twist in the pews. Faith itself seems to swivel toward the rear of the nave.<br>The Word of God goes unheard.<br>After a few Sundays, and a few confessions heavy with silence, Father Domingo asks Fernando, gently, to stand near the front. No explanation is needed. Fernando obeys, face warm with embarrassment, as if punished for something he never chose.<br>From then on, at least, the women can look straight ahead.<br><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"483\" class=\"wp-image-1104\" style=\"width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet04.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet04.jpg 1398w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet04-300x241.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet04-1024x824.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet04-768x618.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br>Given his face, people assume there must be someone waiting for him somewhere. A lover. A secret. A loss. They cannot imagine such beauty returning each night to an empty room.<br>But there is no one.<br>For most of his recent years, Fernando has been a refugee, hungry, angry, always moving. A man shaped by the violence of being born in the wrong place, among concrete and gunfire, where boys learn early how to run and how to endure. Love was a luxury there. Tenderness a liability. Survival required hardness, not beauty.<br>The town sees the face of a saint. Fernando carries the life of a fugitive.<br>Between the two stretches a silence no amount of desire can cross.<br>Luc\u00eda begins as a pattern.<br>Fernando notices her the way he notices things that matter to survival: exits, mirrors, the sound of footsteps behind him. Always the same corner, just past the pharmacy with the peeling saint. Always after dusk, when the town softens and the streets forget themselves.<br>\u201cSame place,\u201d she says.<br>He nods.<br>The place never changes. A narrow street where mango trees bruise the pavement. A house set back from the road, its gate never fully closed. She steps out quickly, without looking around, as if arrival itself must be managed.<br><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"480\" class=\"wp-image-1105\" style=\"width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet05.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet05.jpg 1402w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet05-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet05-1024x819.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet05-768x615.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br>At first they speak only when necessary. Fernando is fluent in silence. Luc\u00eda accepts it. She does not try to earn his words or fill the car with explanations. It makes him uneasy. Most people need reassurance. She seems to need only vigilance.<br>One night, as she pays, a motorcycle passes too close, its engine cracking the quiet. Luc\u00eda stiffens, not dramatically, but completely. Fernando sees it in the mirror: shoulders lifting, breath caught high.<br>The bike disappears. She exhales.<br>\u201cYou don\u2019t like motorcycles,\u201d he says, surprised to hear himself speak.<br>She meets his eyes in the mirror for a second too long. \u201cI don\u2019t like not seeing who\u2019s on them.\u201d<br>After that, Fernando notices things.<br>She rides more often at night. She sits directly behind him when she is tired, by the window when the streets feel wrong. At certain intersections, her hand tightens on her bag. Passing a bar where men lean out laughing too loudly, she murmurs, \u201cNot this way,\u201d though it is longer.<br>Fernando obeys without asking why.<br>One evening, she asks his name.<br>\u201cFernando.\u201d<br>\u201cI\u2019m Luc\u00eda.\u201d<br>No last names are offered.<br>Sometimes she makes small, precise observations, casual in tone, not in meaning.<br>\u201cThat car\u2019s been parked there all week.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s not from here.\u201d \u201cThey don\u2019t ask questions anymore. That\u2019s worse.\u201d<br>Fernando never asks who <em>they<\/em> are.<br>Once, much later, a man stands on her corner instead of her. He pretends to wait for a ride, but his eyes scan the street too carefully. Fernando slows, then drives past. In the mirror, the man watches the taxi disappear. Not angry. Interested.<br>Luc\u00eda does not ride for three nights.<br>Fernando tells himself it means nothing. Patterns break. Routes change. Still, he finds himself slowing near her street, checking the mirror. When she finally raises her hand again, composed as ever, relief strikes him with the force of recognition.<br>\u201cYou\u2019re late,\u201d he says before he can stop himself.<br>Luc\u00eda smiles faintly. \u201cSo are you.\u201d<br>The pattern resumes. Something else travels with them now, shared, unspoken. The knowledge that whatever shaped them did not stay where it belonged. That some pasts ignore borders.<br>Sooner or later, someone will recognize them.<br>It is already dark when Luc\u00eda gets into the taxi.<br>Fernando knows something is wrong because she closes the door too carefully, as if sound itself might betray her. She sits directly behind him. Rain clings to her clothes, though it has not rained in town.<br>\u201cSame place?\u201d he asks.<br>\u201cYes. But not fast.\u201d<br>He nods and pulls into the street.<br>The road is nearly empty. Shops have closed early, shutters pulled down like eyelids. Fernando drives with both hands on the wheel. In the mirror, Luc\u00eda\u2019s face is pale, mouth drawn tight.<br><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"480\" class=\"wp-image-1108\" style=\"width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet06.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet06.jpg 1402w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet06-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet06-1024x819.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Amulet06-768x615.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br>\u201cYou don\u2019t have to talk,\u201d she says suddenly. \u201cI know you don\u2019t like it.\u201d<br>The words land gently.<br>\u201cI don\u2019t mind,\u201d he says.<br>\u201cI saw someone today,\u201d Luc\u00eda continues. \u201cSomeone I shouldn\u2019t have. He didn\u2019t speak. He looked at me like a door he finally remembered how to open.\u201d<br>Fernando turns onto a side street without signaling.<br>\u201cDo you think,\u201d she asks, \u201cthat what we survive eventually collects interest?\u201d<br>\u201cYes.\u201d<br>She exhales, long and shaking.<br>They drive on, bound by the same tension, the same knowledge that danger announces itself not with sirens but with recognition.<br>At a red light, Fernando catches her eyes in the mirror. She is watching his hands.<br>\u201cThey shake,\u201d she says.<br>\u201cThey always do.\u201d<br>The light changes. He does not move.<br>\u201cYou know what it\u2019s like,\u201d Luc\u00eda says. \u201cTo live waiting for something that may never happen but shapes every decision anyway.\u201d<br>\u201cYes.\u201d<br>The word opens a door too wide.<br>\u201cI thought if I never said it out loud, it would lose power,\u201d she says softly. \u201cIt didn\u2019t.\u201d<br>Fernando pulls beneath a broken streetlamp and shuts off the engine. The light flickers, bathing the car in uneven gold.<br>\u201cYou should get home,\u201d he says.<br>Luc\u00eda leans forward, forearms resting on the back of his seat. Not touching him.<br>\u201cI don\u2019t need fixing,\u201d she says. \u201cI just needed someone who wouldn\u2019t pretend not to understand.\u201d<br>Fernando breathes slowly.<br>\u201cI understand.\u201d<br>For the rest of the ride they do not speak. Something has shifted, irreversible, like a fault line admitting itself.<br>When the taxi stops, Luc\u00eda hesitates.<br>\u201cThank you, Fernando,\u201d she says, using his name carefully.<br>He watches her walk away. Only then does he realize his hands have stopped shaking.<br>The engine ticks as it cools.<br>Fernando sits longer than necessary, aware that for the first time in years he has let someone see him without flinching.<br>I know then that the rhythm of his life has changed.<br>Love does that. It alters the math.<br>Fernando drives differently after that night. Not worse, never careless, but softer. He hums sometimes. When Luc\u00eda rides with him, he checks the mirror more often, not for danger, but for her face.<br>That is new. That is dangerous.<br>I allow small things.<br>A tire blows one afternoon on the road to the cemetery, loud as a gunshot. Fernando wrestles the wheel, but I tilt the car just enough, guide rubber away from bone and ditch. He climbs out shaking, laughing once in disbelief. That night, he kisses me harder.<br>Another time, a truck runs a red light. Fernando freezes, just a fraction too long. I nudge him forward, then back. Metal screams past where his door had been a heartbeat earlier<br>.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"480\" class=\"wp-image-1111\" style=\"width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Amulet07-e1788466115165.png\" alt=\"\"><br>Luc\u00eda crosses herself when he tells her.<br>\u201cYour saint is working overtime,\u201d she says. Saints protect life.<br>I protect endings.<br>Fernando mistakes my care for benevolence. Humans always do. They believe love means preservation. I am not interested in length, only completion. I do not interfere with fate. I escort it.<br>The signs accumulate, though Fernando ignores them.<br>A man asks him once, casually, where he is from, really from. Fernando answers \u201csouth\u201d and feels cold behind his eyes. The man smiles too quickly and pays with new bills that smell of nothing.<br>Another night, a car follows them for three blocks. Luc\u00eda notices. Fernando turns where he never turns. The car vanishes.<br>I do not intervene.<br>That is recognition testing its teeth.<br>Fernando begins leaving me in his pocket more often. He rubs the square of horse mane when he waits for Luc\u00eda, when he parks too long, when his thoughts drift back to El Salvador and the face he tries not to remember.<br>He speaks to me.<br>\u201cJust a little more peace.\u201d \u201cJust enough time.\u201d<br>Time is not something I give.<br>Luc\u00eda suggests a day trip once, somewhere farther, somewhere with water. Fernando agrees too quickly, then spends the night awake, staring at the ceiling.<br>Travel stretches threads.<br>In the days that follow, I spare him suffering. I turn aside sickness, delay, inconvenience. Pain without consequence bores me.<br>But I stop correcting his instincts.<br>When he chooses the longer road, I let him. When he drives at night instead of morning, I let him. When he lingers, when he stays, I let him.<br>Because now he is no longer merely surviving.<br>Now he is living toward something.<br>And that is when death begins to pay attention.<br>Fernando will learn my name.<br>Not yet. Not when it could change anything.<br>Only when his hands let go of the wheel, when fear finally loosens, when he understands that what guarded him was never meant to keep him here.<br>I am patient.<br>My name is Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Santa Muerte.<br>And I am already waiting.<br><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\" class=\"wp-image-1114\" style=\"width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Amulet08.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Amulet08.png 1254w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Amulet08-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Amulet08-1024x1024.png 1024w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Amulet08-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Amulet08-768x768.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Love According To Joseph<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">A street musician virtually dying on the littered concrete of Wenceslas square in front of a small crowd, committing suicide with the help of elaborate chords he is trying hard to force out of his instrument, a Fender Stratocaster solid body, ripping strings off the neck to produce the pitches he deems correct, and he, Josef, standing on that corner, pissing into his own shoes, not being able to hold it, or to do anything about it, knowing he's in trouble again. A girl next to him glancing at his trousers, saying, \u201cAre you all right?\u201d, willing to help. \u201cYes, dear, I'm fine, the music does this thing to me. Always.<br>That's how I tell the good music from bad.\u201d The girl, distrustful, piercing him with her eyes, thinking either he's joking or he's a freak, and querying, \u201cYou a freak, ain't you?\u201d<br>\"Guess I am,\" staring at his trousers, smiling to the girl now, trying to be slightly playful. \"If a man can't hold his urine when he hears a good tune, he must be a freak of some kind, what you say?\u201d<br>She might be a freak herself. Why not? A man nearby urinates in public, and she tries to interview him. Unless she's a nurse or a doctor, which is not likely based on her looks. Jesus Christ, what a girl she is! A tall and slender assembly, the type that wears blue jeans cut-offs barely covering her ass mounted atop of a pair of long splendid legs (its September after all, still hot indeed, and Prague is such a carnal city, nobody cares), a headset on her neck, her hair smelling of grass slightly if you get close enough, the face enigmatic with a touch of dreaminess in it, the mysterious face of lethal enchantress, skin so fresh and pearly it looked backlit, and facial traits so accurate and perfect it was hard to believe they resulted from the genetic windfall, the m\u00e9lange of DNA. Who wouldn\u2019t go nuts?<br>\"You say music does this to you?\" she is puzzled, a trace of interest in her voice.<br>There you are, he thinks, trying to imagine a more unusual way to meet a girl: on the street, with his wet trousers sticking to his thighs, the smell of fresh urine reaching his nostrils now.<br>\"Yes, dear, that's my problem, I\u2019ve always had it. Music picks me up I lose control of myself. Just like the booze, indeed, I'm not kidding you.\u201d<br>The street performer was packing his instruments by now, the crowd getting thinner, people walking away, the warm summer dusk falling down. The girl steps closer to Josef, intrigued; he steps back, wanting to keep a safe distance, feeling embarrassed about that sweetish smell.<br>\"Poor boy,\" she said. \"Loving music and not being able to go to concerts... Must be terrible?\u201d<br>\"In a way it is.\u201d<br>\"Must be kind of a negative reflex,\u201d she said. Actually, walking him home now, quite naturally, Josef couldn't believe that. \u201cHow old are you? Let me guess. Forty?\u201d<br>\"Not yet. Still some time to go.\" Never imagined could profit from this pissing. Eager to change the subject, except the girl was firmly hooked onto it and wouldn't let it die.<br>\"You poor creature.\u201d<br>\"See, I got these speakers installed into my bathroom. In fact, I got speakers all over the house. It isn't much of a problem if you take some precautions. But sometimes I go out and walk into it like today. On the other hand, take bars... I pick up a quiet place and get nailed by some asshole bartender playing one of those Cole Porter things, that type. Oldies but goodies, you know some bartenders like. All Through The Night or Too Darn Hot.\u201d<br>\"Is that right? Do you frequent bars?\" She's interested now, the range of her interests broadening. \"See, I hang out pretty often myself and I was thinking your face is familiar to me from somewhere, that\u2019s why I asked.\"<br>Josef is racing his mind trying to remember if he's ever seen the girl before. Definitely not. So, she's a social type, single? What is she after in those bars? Is she a drinker who likes getting laid with smashed patrons? Doesn't fit that picture too, the nice face and that body of hers. Too nice for mercy fucking. A lady of the night?<br>\"You can\u2019t walk the streets all wet like this. Why don't you drop over to my place and wash your things and then we try ironing them?\" she said. \"I live right there. What do you think?\u2019 <br>\"Oh, that would be just fine,\" he said to the girl. Just fine. Take a leak at the right place and you are all set.<br>They both walked up the stairs to her apartment. It was a significant moment. Upon entering the room, Josef was instantly overwhelmed by its smell: an obscene and pungent perfume, a diabolical odor emanating from walls and furniture, a bouquet he had never smelled yet somehow knew all his life. It has confused Josef\u2019s mind. He would compare it to witchcraft or to a drug of some kind except, expert in neither, he wasn\u2019t capable of offering a decent explanation. All he knew was that the aroma got stuck in his nostrils and wouldn\u2019t go away next day or next week, he would wake up at night and it would be there, inside of him, and he knew it wasn\u2019t just an illusion, for one night when he woke up in a similar manner there was his wife\u2019s face above his, her nose close to his, sniffing the odor his nostrils emitted.<br>Most likely the whole bunch of circumstances had played the trick: the heat of September, the attractiveness of the girl, the way she reacted to Josef\u2019s embarrassment, and especially the way she liked to listen to Josef who could depict things in a very charming way if only you liked the subject itself. Even in Prague, people rarely lend an ear to butchers no matter how inspired the latter are.<br>Josef wasn\u2019t a loquacious person, but that evening at the girl\u2019s place, dumbfounded by the mysterious odor, he could not shut up his mouth. Wrapped in a silk bathrobe the girl gave him, waiting for his trunks and trousers to dry up, a beer in his hand, Josef asked her about the mixture of hair tonic, civet and ambergris floating in her room. She couldn\u2019t answer it, but he noticed that the question wasn\u2019t completely new to her. Someone had asked it before. Maybe many times. For she just smiled and shook her head as if it was her secret.<br>That evening Josef told the girl that meat also has its aromas that depend on various factors, from kind to maturity, along with refined palettes of marbling, texture, firmness, and color. Take a youthful beef carcass, the split spinous processes of the vertebrae are soft, red, porous, and tipped with large amounts of flocculent, pearly white cartilage.<br>\u201cJesus Christ!\u201d she said.<br>Texture of lean referring to the prominence of muscle bundles. And what about color, that physical phenomenon of light or visual perception associated with the various wavelengths in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, a sensation experienced by virtuosos, a perception that varies from pale pink to the extremely dark, resulting from myoglobin concentration, or in case of fat, free from a greasy or oily appearance, from white to creamy white? The veal--dry, grayish pink in color, and firm in structure... Or the pork... There is something definitely sexy about the butt of a 100 kg gilt, her muscle lean and rose, exudation perfect, top grade. That\u2019s the way it has to be, sexy. That\u2019s how you distinguish between the ugly and the beautiful, the ill-favored and the blessed, polarization of life, movement to and fro: from the alkaline rigor of muscle, from the closed structure of proteins scattering little incident light, to the opposite extreme of pale, soft, exudative muscle, in which the proteins are denaturated and the structure is open. Life and happiness.<br>The same with music. Good music is sexy. Isn\u2019t it a derivative of an intuitive esoteric knowledge, a feeling perhaps, a forgotten instinct longing to surface? The insight that a meat\u2019s tenderness is influenced by either the contractile state of the muscle or by the amount of crosslinking in the collagen, the physiological conditions and the amount of postmortem shortening that will occur. The temperature at which the carcass is held, the excision, which relieves stress on the muscle, the proportion of connective tissue... The understanding of the inevitable: that circulation stops, that absence of oxygen encourages the breakdown of the carbohydrate glycogen into glucose, which is in turn reduced to lactic acid. Rigor mortis, critical pH drop, nothingness.<br>\u201cI see,\u201d the girl said ironing his trousers, her voice trembling a bit.<br>\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d Josef asked.<br>She bent over, reached for his bottle and took a gulp.<br>\u201cNothing,\u201d she replied. \u201cNothing. You are a poet.\u201d<br>\u201cNo, I am a butcher.\u201d<br>\u201cOh,\u201d she almost choked up but managed to gulp down and got the fit of the giggles, split with laughter.<br>\u201cAre you all right?\u201d<br>\u201cA butcher,\u201d she said guffawing. \u201cA butcher! Oh my god! A butcher\u2026 That's wonderful! I\u2019m okay, I\u2019m fine. I just can\u2019t fucking believe it, that\u2019s all. I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m really sorry. See, I don\u2019t know you and for a moment\u2026 the way you speak about those things\u2026 just for a moment I thought you are a maniac going to slash my throat or something.\u201d<br>Not much else happened there that night. If there had been something in the air - a thrill, a possibility, an unspoken promise, magnetism - it was irreversibly gone by now, replaced by plain, safe, sober reality.<br>Somewhat humiliated, Josef put on his trousers, thanked the girl and left. She didn\u2019t try to stop him or invite him to visit her again. It even looked as if in the last minutes she suddenly lost her interest in him and wanted him to leave as soon as possible. On the threshold, when Josef hesitated for a second, she slightly pushed him forward and closed the door. Did she despise him for his trade or merely had an insight of what was coming, if such is possible?<br>Whatever chemistry between the two of them took place in the girl\u2019s room that night are angles unreachable to dilettantes, to the dumb and simple, without the maestro\u2019s ability to see the thin invisible line where the Frenched chop ends and the English begins. For the girl\u2019s burst of laughter was precisely the spark that ignited passion and desire. Very much like a dash of salt that brings into being the sapor of sausage.<br>Next day, when his apprentice, a dumb round-faced kid who thought that a ponytail and an earring made him look cool, forgot to sharpen the knives, Josef, for the first time ever, didn\u2019t slap him on the head. Without saying a word, he just pulled the knives out of their stand and spent an hour or so whetting them himself, honed them with care, oil stoned, checked the cutting edge on his thumbnail, and whetted again until they were just right. And when the boy came up with an apology, Josef only gave him a half-smile and said nothing, which made the guy sick with fear.<br>The love was so scorching, so damn hot, it would burn holes in the heart\u2019s muscle and make water evaporate from the blood which, in turn, clogged the Josef\u2019s veins so badly they had to bring him to a hospital and amputate minor parts of his limbs. To survive his love, Josef gulped aspirin, vast amounts of it, for acetylsalicylic acid liquefies blood and restores the oxygen supply to brain cells. With his cells more or less taken care of, he was able to harness himself and not do the terrible and lunatic things he was irresistibly tempted to perform at the moments when his arteries became slow rivulets of the burning slush. That\u2019s pretty close to the most official version. The doctors have insisted the man knew the trouble he had placed himself in.<br>Some say he didn\u2019t know that love had smitten him. He was too uncultured, they say, he never went to concerts, never enjoyed delicate wine and fine music, he had no idea of fancy food beyond several primitive meat dishes, how could he possibly tell a great love from an ordinary fever?<br>The third group agreed that he was in love and knew it but they all subscribed to the theory that the whole aspirin story was a plot invented by the man himself in order to trick his wife into thinking he\u2019s really had pyrexia and was concerned about it rather than the woman, the half-naked woman in the photograph hidden under the cash register.<br>What photograph? He didn\u2019t have a camera the first night he met the girl. Neither he stole it from her apartment. Then where could he get a photo from?<br>All right. He waited for two days and, when the urge to see the girl became unbearable, he went to her apartment again. She wasn\u2019t there, however. Nobody opened the door. He waited a couple of days more before going back to her place, praying she would be there. No luck. He talked to her neighbors, but nobody knew anything about the girl: when she came or left, where she worked, whether she had any friends or relatives, etc. He made a habit of visiting the place every day and knocking on the door. But the apartment was dead all the same, though a time or two Joseph had an impression someone might be inside. He could swear he heard quiet steps and breathing behind the door but then how could he be so sure? There were moments Josef thought that he had dreamed up the whole thing or that he had mistaken the address. He rejected those doubts, for the scent was there, distinct, unmistakable.<br>What was driving him, he didn\u2019t know. He had no plans, no ideas what could possibly happen next if he saw the girl. He left everything for the context of the moment, hoping that the play of circumstances would give him a hint what to say and how to act when the right time comes.<br>One night on his way home from the tiring daily quest, on a deserted street, a shadow broke away from the wall of a building and approached him. A still young but unattractive woman, a real dog, who said: \u201cHey lover!\u201d The weather was foul, raining all day. Josef just shook his head without slowing down and wanted to pass by but the wench, mistaking his fatigue for inebriety, wasn\u2019t easy to get rid off. After some wrestling, seeing he wasn\u2019t the right guy, the woman finally gave up, angrily hit Josef on the head with an umbrella and let him go, but later that night, when Josef was already asleep, his wife, turned distrustful by the tangy odor emanating from his nostrils, ransacked the pockets of his trench coat to find a glossy flier, one of those the Tenderloin uses to promote itself. Pictured on the flier was a scantily clad blonde who apparently could be had for money at the establishment. Josef\u2019s wife placed the flier on the bed next to her husband\u2019s face, took her pillow and went to sleep on the sofa in the living room. She cried and sobbed all night and was still asleep when Josef left with the flier safely in his pocket where the hooker had slipped it in last night.<br>Now he knew who the object of his desire was but that didn\u2019t make it a bit easier to him. No more quiet life, those peaceful afternoons, when Josef would leisurely clean his knives and cleavers, sort the leftovers of his merchandise after a busy day, separate pieces that can last till tomorrow from those with a touch of salmonella on them, still quality meat if you wash it thoroughly and sprinkle with vinegar and cook today but worthless tomorrow. It would end up in a trash container in the backyard, the fat green flies Josef hates so much already waiting outside. Moments<br>of genuine harmony before his life was screwed up beyond recognition.<br>All the regular customers, who bought their beef steaks and calf liver at Josef\u2019s shop right off Wenceslas square could have failed to notice his falling into such a disastrous affection if not for the secondary result of aspirin overdose that caused blood to ooze from his nose, down his apron and into the white old-fashioned enameled-tin containers steaming with freshly minced meat.<br>It\u2019s not that people resolutely disapproved such a fusion, at Josef\u2019s prices it was still a bargain and most of the buyers simply couldn\u2019t afford being too picky, but it was a clear indication something was going wrong with the man. And, indeed, an elderly woman whispered once to her husband, \u201cMy God, he is in love, don\u2019t you see it? He is out of his mind, poor boy.\u201d<br>The woman\u2019s statement puzzled the entire line, for what was being played out was the farthest cry from a mating call of any sort. Nobody knew that the aspirin, the excess of it, caused the sudden hemorrhage in their butcher. They simply stood there, twelve ordinary men and women, a bit tired, grayish skin, not completely discontented, but seasoned enough not to have many illusions, no more invidiousness, no rivalry, no more sleepless sobbing nights, none of that anymore, and--bang!--there comes, in a kind of flash, an instant overwhelming recognition that there is no way they will undergo such a passion ourselves. Ever.<br>And they succumb. In a sudden public celebration of this bizarre Eucharist, in an urgent drive to absorb at least a drop of the divine and potent force that caused our butcher to shed his own blood, they embrace the incredible. Without even realizing it, they form a sect, a confessional group united by their butcher\u2019s distress, and in an ancient cannibalistic act of worship they all take minced meet that day, the product of -- who could have predicted? -- feeling made flesh.<br>In a week or two, all Prague knew about Josef\u2019s love. Appropriate graffiti appeared here and there on the city\u2019s walls, depicting in wild barbaric colors things that nobody was willing to speak about openly. It\u2019s very unusual to regress to pictograms in a city where practically everything is allowed. On one occasion, on a subway train, a small girl asked her father what he would like to take with him to the moon if only permitted to select one thing. I don\u2019t know, the father said, what about you? Christmas, she said, and you? Well, he said, maybe the shower? Or should I take my bicycle?, he still wasn\u2019t sure. And then it dawned on him, everybody could see that because the same thing was on everybody\u2019s mind, his eyes turned watery, he opened his mouth replete with bad teeth but at the very last second controlled himself and, to the great relief of the fellow passengers, left silence to hang in the air instead, an invisible shroud covering the invisible vacuum gap that already opened to take in his nude, shameless words.<br>To qualify for a genuine love story, it has to be star-crossed and futureless. If it ends with both lovers united in matrimony and living happy as pigs in muck, it\u2019s a civil record, not a love story. Josef\u2019s tale has very little bliss in it. It reached its climax on the day when Josef opened the register, grabbed all the cash it contained and threw it into the pockets of his white, bloodstained apron. He thrust two of his heavy-duty knives under his belt and left the shop, looking grim and desperate. None of the patrons complained: they have been waiting all too long for the act two.<br>In his ensanguined clothing, armed with two grisly blades, all in lather from running, Josef didn\u2019t look like ordinary customer when he entered the louche establishment.<br>The security didn\u2019t brave to interfere. Both teratoid and ridiculous at once, with one of the knives in his hand, he stopped in the middle of the lounge, breathing heavily, a string of saliva hanging from his mouth, a fat vein throbbing on his chin, pure menace, a bomb. The scent of lavender water and the plush interior \u2013 the rosy light, flesh-pink walls and pork-colored furniture upholstery \u2013 acted as an instant tranquilizer, though. Josef turned to the white-faced madam with false eyelashes - a rickety China doll who stood there petrified, holding a telephone handset, ready to call the police - and gestured to put it back. She did. What was there to happen next?<br>And next was Astor Piazzolla, a virtuoso on the bandonion, the Quintetto Nuevo Tango whose sensual and titillating sound cascaded from the speakers built in the walls, a steamy mixture of milonga and habanera, voluptuous, licentious rhythms that made Josef to drop his knife and stand there in a spreading pool of his own urine wondering what it was exactly that brought him to this place. What had he been thinking before he grabbed his knives and stormed out of the shop? A heroic effort to free a princess from a dragon\u2019s lair? A desperate attempt to put an end to his own torment? There was no dragon\u2019s lair, only the lewd pork colored upholstery and canned salsa music pouring from above. Whatever had started as an act of courageous, though theatrical determination, was ending in disgrace now: pissing into his own shoes, not being able to hold it, or to do anything about it, knowing he's in trouble once more.<br>And there she is again; tall and slender, she dashes through a bead curtain, scantily clad, her perfect body the color of fresh lamb chops, too much lipstick and face powder, holding her vanity case in one hand, both smiling and teary-eyed, she sashays toward her man, grabs his arm and escorts him out of the place, without looking back or saying anything to the madam, who stands there still shaking slightly and who has seen many frenzied departures in her rather long life but never like this one, accompanied by spicy tango music, the cavalier wetting his pants all the way to the exit.<br>If life were subject to the same rules that govern the Italian operas this love story could end here, because - at least from the perspective of the city - all subsequent events are trivial.<br>Josef left his wife and moved to live with his conquest who turned out to be different from what Josef had expected.<br>First two or three weeks the young woman was soft as butter and caring, but soon she changed into a garden-variety bitch on every account. Sure, she still had a perfect magnetic body, but her character\u2026 oh, man!<br>All that summer, in a mini skirt showing her long legs up to the roots, she would hang around in Josef\u2019s shop doing nothing useful, having everybody\u2019s eyes on her and obviously enjoying it. Before long the clientele has turned all male, shoppers coming frequently and choosing their wares studiously. There was always a long line. It was good for business but made Josef nervous. His amenity was gone, he became tough or rowdy fellow just like all other butchers around the town. His cutlets and steaks were of uneven thickness and differed in size noticeably, the oxtail has splinters of bone on it, the tripe and chitterlings weren\u2019t washed clean, and the forcemeat had too much lard.<br>To Josef\u2019s discomfiture, the girl was openly narrating her problems to the customers: how boring it was to live a life like hers and how bad were the doctors treating her hemorrhoids. She knew enough about hemorrhoids to write a book and she was ready to share that esoteric knowledge with anyone. Were it not her fresh and innocent appearance, the listeners would be less attentive, perhaps. However, the lips, the eyes, and her nose somehow made those problems almost unique.<br>On top of all that, one day, Josef entered the backroom for a supply of trotters and found the girl standing in front of his punk apprentice who was sitting on a footstool, both his hands on her thighs, caressing them passionately.<br>One fine morning soon, when Josef opened his shop and the usual customers came, the girl wasn\u2019t there. Asked about her, Josef said she was home sick, her hemorrhoids giving her hard time. By the afternoon, the line was only half the usual size, the buyers getting their stuff quickly and not coming for more that day. The girl didn\u2019t show up next day or the day after. Actually, she never came back and Josef switched to saying she has left him, simply packed her things and disappeared. By the way, quite logically, his apprentice was also nowhere in sight.<br>As days passed by, Josef started to regain a great deal of his old customers and his earlier personality. He became sweet and considerate, his chops were perfect and the tripe so clean you could swear he used some bleach to wash it.<br>Of course, there were rumors, some of them very nasty.<br>One of the gossips, for instance, entertained abominable suspicions as to why during the weeks immediately after the girl and the apprentice had disappeared the wienerwurst of a distinguished quality was in such an abundance at Josef\u2019s shop. But who takes such a slur seriously?<br>No one knows whether those rumors have ever reached Josef\u2019s ears but he didn\u2019t seem to care. His only interest was meat, as usual.<br>According to Josef, meat is not trivial, it always embodies something of an end, a goal. The dead vertebrate isn\u2019t a gory victim of a primitive carnivorous instinct, a part of the Food Web, set of interconnected food chains by which energy and materials circulate. For an adept such as Josef, the body of a freshly slaughtered animal is both a wonderful creation per se and a short stop on the evolving transition toward an even more perfect state of matter -- wholesale and retail cuts, arm and blade roasts, steaks, shoulders and necks, ribs and crowns, loin chops and sirloins, standing rumps and shank halfs, brisket pieces and rolled rumps, and--the apogee\u2014sausage.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Collector<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">My observations of the world have led me to believe our sympathy for others is frequently based on selfish motives. Although I cannot be sure, there is a chance that, with a few exceptions it is always the case. Imagine this scenario: It\u2019s Someone\u2019s funeral. A rainy autumn day, asters wilting in the cold wind, the casket, the open pit in the ground, darkly-clad shivering people, mournful mood in the air. You are standing behind somebody\u2019s back, a bit to the side because you don\u2019t belong to the family and came here only to show your respects to the deceased, whom you had known only but slightly, and therefore you are able to perceive everything rather impartially. You see the casket being lowered into the pit, you hear somber music. What else? The cry of the widow: \u201cOh, how can I live without him?! He is mine! He is my sweetheart!\u201d<br>Along these lines. Do you see it? \u201cI, mine, my\u2026\u201d Nobody really cares about the expired and how uncomfortable it might to be lifeless to him, having lost everything. No. It\u2019s only, \u201cI can\u2019t live without him,\u201d \u201cwe won\u2019t survive without him,\u201d etc. Can you see my point here? All those tears are just an indication of selfishness, nothing else.<br>If you thoroughly examine your own feelings it won\u2019t be hard to reach the conclusion that we are all similar and thus you are like me. Then you will understand why I can\u2019t stand sick people, even the closest to me. I feel a heavy burden of responsibility for their survival, like I must somehow help them but can\u2019t, and that drives me crazy. It\u2019s an extremely uncomfortable emotional state to me and I would like to avoid it.<br>Back in the sixties a person very close to me fell ill, and my luck (or the lack of it) led me to take care of him \u2014 feed, wash, dress and undress, etc. \u2014 for he had no one but me. Being a reasonable man and knowing my views on nursing, he didn\u2019t demand my fulltime presence and attention to his calamity. Nevertheless, I still had to be around to help him if necessity arose, and, out of the killing boredom, I read newspapers. Usually, I don\u2019t care about the rubbish the papers like to print, but the whole house contained nothing else but technical books, which I couldn\u2019t understand anyway and wouldn\u2019t have tried to entertain myself by attempting to.<br>One morning, after breakfast, I was browsing newspaper personals. Among various ads that let me know of the availability of a black poodle, motorcycle parts, some furniture, strollers, garage doors, and more, there was one that I didn\u2019t notice at first but later came back to, for it looked like there had been some error. The ad said: \u201cCollection for sale. Sunsets.\u201d The address and the best time to contact the seller were printed below. At first I thought \u201cSunsets\u201d belonged to the address line, but after reading more attentively I realized it wasn\u2019t a part of the address. But then there was the obvious lack of information. What sort of collection? What did sunsets have to do with it? Was it a photographic collection? Paintings? Movies? Rather a strange ad. Later, I couldn\u2019t explain even to myself why I tore the ad from the newspaper and put it in my pocket. Automatically. Not unlike when people pick up and save something they absolutely don\u2019t need: a pebble of an unusual shape, a clamshell from the sand, a feather.<br>A few months passed. My friend fully recovered, and I was living my usual life again. In late fall, accidentally (I would say \u2018by chance\u2019. Although used colloquially the way you have, in writing \u2018accidentally\u2019 is reserved for events that occur involuntarily or beyond our control. I would even say \u2018I chanced to find myself\u2019 but your writing voice is more direct so use \u2018by chance\u2019) I found myself in the area that was mentioned in the newspaper ad. Sure enough, I didn\u2019t need any collection and wasn\u2019t looking for one. It\u2019s only my curiosity that made me look at the place from the ad.<br>The house was there, a wooden structure on a stone base. It must have been quite old, for there was grass growing in the concrete cracks. Also, there was a truck in the driveway, surrounded by trash: old magazine covers, pieces of paper, shapeless rags, wire coat-hangers. Four men in gray overalls trying to move an old-fashioned wooden chest through the door were taking directions from a younger, a blond man in an unbuttoned raincoat, its skirt flapping in the wind. The blond man was smiling and joking with the movers. It took a minute or so for him to notice me standing there. He walked up and said, \u201cYou are a friend of his, right?\u201d Actually, he didn\u2019t say \u201chis\u201d, he used a name, but I missed it and didn\u2019t feel like asking him to repeat the question. It just wasn\u2019t important, as I didn\u2019t know anyone there anyway. The blond man, however, was still there waiting for my answer. It was a little awkward for a moment, but then I remembered about the newspaper ad in my pocket and showed it to him. This seemed to make things clear to him. \u201cOh, I see. You are one of those,\u201d he said. \u201cWell, not really,\u201d I said, as I had no idea who \u2018those\u2019 were, but he decided not to pay attention to my objection and continued like I was one of those after all: \u201cHe is gone. I guess he felt he was about to pass when he placed the ad. I am his son. The property is going on sale. We are cleaning it up.\u201d He took my arm: \u201cLet\u2019s go inside. I\u2019ll show you where they are. All the closets were full of them, so we moved everything into one room. He himself kept everything very orderly, but it\u2019s a mess now. I thought it was all trash and nobody wanted it, was going to throw it away. You can have it all. To me, it\u2019s still junk, useless. You know, to make it even easier, we\u2019ll load them into the truck alongside the furniture and drop it off at your place. It will be faster this way. How about that?\u201d<br>Without breaking the chatter, he was walking me through empty rooms with yellowish stained wallpaper. It smelled of cinnamon and wet spider webs. Clear traces on the floors where furniture had been standing for very long time. At one door, he stopped: \u201cHere they are.\u201d<br>I had not had any expectations, but perhaps had inadvertently assumed it would be a collection of some kind, while there was none. Just a pile of various containers: mostly coffee cans, but also cartons from other foodstuffs, perfume boxes, brown vitamin bottles, plastic cups with lids, glass jars wrapped in dark paper, you name it. Some had handwritten labels attached to them with glue or a rubber band, others only had traces of glue \u2014 evidence of some labels in the past. The man repeated, \u201cHere they are.\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \u201cThe sunsets,\u201d he said and kicked a can. By the sound it made while rolling across the room, there was nothing inside.<br>He looked at my face, which must have showed disappointment. \u201cMy father constantly complained about packaging, the lack of it. All the neighbors knew and brought him cans as soon as they were empty. A good number of them here, aren\u2019t there? You know, at first, he started out collecting sunrises but later switched to sunsets. He got interested quite late in life and didn\u2019t have time for both. As he grew older, it became harder for him to wake up for sunrises, especially in summer when sun rises very early. Sunsets were more convenient. Sunrises, you can have them too if you like, they are in the basement, pretty much no labels\u2026 It would be much easier for me if you took everything.\u201d<br>I declined, though. It was already going to be a burden. My place was rather small and this amount of junk would make it unlivable. Until I threw all of it away, that is. The blond was trying to make his problem mine, but he didn\u2019t push when I said, \u201cSorry, sunrises are beyond my area of interest.\u201d \u201cOK,\u201d he said, \u201cno problem.\u201d<br>With the movers gone, alone in my apartment, facing the pile of junk, I started swearing aloud at my own stupidity. I took a can, shook it, but there was no sound inside and I threw it back on the pile. Now I chose a can with a label that said \u201c1946, Spring\u201d and some coordinates beneath, latitude and longitude. For a split-second, it seemed to me that it made a tiny high-pitched sound, but when I jiggled it again I could hear nothing. Just an empty can. I saw myself in the mirror on the wall, with a can at my ear, the look of an idiot.<br>In the kitchen, I found a knife and opened the can. For lack of right word, I would say I was petrified, but in fact it was more than that, much more. Silver light filled the room. Things \u2014 furniture, cans, books, everything \u2014 disappeared. All I was seeing was a side of the sky with the sun very low on the horizon. A strange foreign place, bathed by bright red and shimmering light. Like reflections of fire on silver dishes. A few clouds of ivory porcelain hung in front of the blue backdrop, and a disk of sun the color of raspberries. The sky wasn\u2019t evenly blue. At the top it was green like the fresh grass in spring, at the bottom like a ripe pear, with the golden hue spreading upwards in a glowing fan. The air was clear like gin in a glass, but you could feel a hint of fatigue there, a slight weariness.<br>It was a true sunset. It lasted a very short time, only a few minutes, until the sun set completely. I closed the can and put it back on the pile. I felt lightheaded.<br>It took about half an hour for the vertigo to go away. I started examining the labels. They only had the year, the season, and location on them, nothing else. I found a few containers from before World War II, three or four from the war years; however, most of them were from the last twenty years. I tidied the cans, more or less, stacking them against the wall, and went for a walk. I needed to think things over with a clear head.<br>It took me a month to go through all cans. More than ten a day, it was very exhausting, physically impossible. I would get vertigo, lose my orientation in space and time, and all awareness of who I was. So ten was the limit I never crossed. Much later, I established a rule for myself to never open more than three on the same day. But at the time, I was obsessed like somebody who almost died in the desert from thirst and now can\u2019t stop gulping water down as if it were about to run out. I couldn\u2019t understand how I had never paid any attention to sunsets, but also how that man, the collector, managed to get so close to me. Now, I knew him no less than myself. Sure, he was dead and buried, nevertheless there was a strong link, like a golden wire, between us. Perhaps stronger than any connection I had to anyone during my lifetime. My opinion about him was based on his selection of keeper sunsets: their colors, their lines, and moods. Some of his sunsets left me untouched, some I just liked, but others were magic, so flawless and powerful. They were like open windows into his soul. It had never occurred to me that it was possible to judge someone by sunsets that he or she had either liked or disliked. Without knowing any details, I was able to feel that man\u2019s solitude like my, to be aware of his pain and the anxieties from which he himself was free now. Sometimes, it was necessary to watch a sunset a few times to perceive what he worried about at the time. There were no casual sunsets; all were significant, only you had to find their meaning. With time, I made my selection of about twenty that I never tired of watching, and every time I would discover more and more meaning in them. I would watch the rest only occasionally, if I needed additional guidance to fully appreciate the main ones.<br>The whole world acquired new, incredible breadth and depth for me. One day, I went to the house where it all started, hoping to find the sunrises, too. The door stayed locked for too long\u2013evidence the house was still unoccupied and that I might succeed. However, finally the door opened slightly, and I saw the suspicious face of an old wrinkled woman. I pretended to be a friend of the deceased and asked her which cemetery he was buried in, but she didn\u2019t know. Nor did she know about the son\u2019s whereabouts. Before all hope was gone, I mentioned sunrises. She was startled: \u201cSunrises! What sunrises?\u201d<br>\u201cIn cans,\u201d I explained. \u201cThey should have been in the basement.\u201d<br>Well, not very surprisingly, she muttered \u201cmadman\u201d and shut the door. While walking away, I could still hear the woman rambling inside, \u201cthey poisoned my cat\u2026 but that wasn\u2019t enough\u2026 I need to call the police\u2026 I will definitely sue\u2026\u201d That was the last time I saw the house. The cemetery warden wasn\u2019t cooperative either. Too many people die, it\u2019s not possible to memorize all of them, he would occasionally remember the casket, but not who was inside.<br>As time went on, a feeling emerged that I should have something of my own, personal, intimate. The fancy soon turned nagging and, before I consciously committed to it, I started hoarding empty cans and tight boxes. I chose lakes, as I always found them somehow appealing. I took a weeklong vacation and hit the road. After three gloomy days, the fourth was quite agreeable, and by evening I was ready. I have to admit, my anxiety and fear of failure were enormous. True enough, my first attempts were not very fortunate, albeit it didn\u2019t take long to figure out my mistake. It\u2019s not enough to watch the sun setting, you have to live it. You need to concentrate all your essence, thoughts and feelings \u2014 love, passion, desire, sorrow \u2014 into one thing, the sunset. It is difficult, though. Not every sunset is capable of lifting your inner being to such levels. Another impediment: you can experience only one sunset a day. You will not see it ever again. You only have one shot and you either hit or miss forever.<br>All that happened fifteen years ago. Today, I am able to say I accomplished it. For a great many days, I have been adding to my own collection, tirelessly hunting for sunsets on every occasion that befalls me. The selection\u2013weeding out weaker sunsets and keeping the better ones\u2013takes a lot of time and effort, but it has been worth it: my set is beautiful, neat, and tight. In a way, I have become a virtuoso at it. I only need a split-second to discern the merit of a sunset, and whether it will be suitable for my collection or not.<br>I\u2019ve been retired for two years now. Understandably, my last sunset is not that far away. I will see it, but won\u2019t be able to add it to my collection. I travel a lot these days. In some places, locals know me by name, and children offer their help in carrying my cans around. Nobody knows why I come, although it\u2019s possible one day I will explain to them the purpose of my visits, tell them all I know about sunsets and this world. It\u2019s becoming harder and harder for me to walk long distances with the load on my back. I haven\u2019t decided yet what will happen to my collection at the end. One option is to sell it while I have time, though I could just give it away as a gift, eventually. Thus, don\u2019t be surprised if you see an ad in a newspaper:<br>\u201cA collection for sale. Sunsets.\u201d<br>That will be me.<br><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Winter Campaign<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Published in ABSINTHE (New European Writing) magazine #4, 2005\n\nI lived in a giant tilting pinball machine among plungers, kick-out holes, bells, gongs, the steady rattle of nickels and dimes, all day long. I was a marble slung into this arena at dawn, nudged, pelted onto ramps, zipping down, scurrying around, spinning, stopping for a brief span, and dashing for the exit again by night. No real life of my own: no purpose, no control, no fancy, no aims, no pleasure. No sense. No friends, no enemies anymore. Alone. Dead in a way; time stood still.\nBut I lacked nothing, I was content. I wasted my days driving a cab in Manhattan; at night I played a flageolet in midtown subway stations, taking a breath whenever a train thundered by.\nI never crossed the river. Even if someone offered a double rate to drive him to New Jersey, I would decline. I couldn\u2019t. I was scared, filled with fear of the corruption I might see there. I never wrote or called my mother either. For shame, not for dismay. However tiny my part might have been in the downfall of New Jersey, it was there and it made me sick to think about it.\nI listened to the radio when I was alone in my cab, otherwise I chatted with the passengers. They all thought I was crazy. I didn\u2019t mind. Sometimes they would even tell me I was a crackpot. I didn\u2019t mind.\nNone believed my story. Sometimes I showed them the scars inflicted by the finch during the battle for Atlantic City but it didn\u2019t seem to bolster my credibility in their eyes. That I could not change. Not for the lack of trying, though. I frequented libraries, seeking for evidence of what had befallen my comrades \u2014and also to verify my version \u2014but all in vain. No reports in the newspapers, no records in the books. Not a single reference to any war in New Jersey, not a hint of what had befallen my army. Their ability to conceal things, the very magnitude of the conspiracy inspired awe.\n\nI was seventeen when the war broke out just after Christmas. I remember breakfasting in our cozy kitchen when my brother turned up the radio to hear the announcement. We were struck, especially mother who went ashen: her single, mundane dream \u2014time with the family that can be preserved eternally and consumed in minute, tantalizing bites \u2014had shattered.\nThe war had been anticipated for so long that nobody believed it would ever commence. It\u2019s like death: you only take it seriously if it\u2019s scheduled for tomorrow. Otherwise, who cares . . . Particularly when you are seventeen.\nMy brother and I grabbed our instruments and animals and ran to the town square as we had been taught during numerous drills. In no time we were marching south through a deep blanket of snow to join the good people from Newark and Trenton.\nAll together we formed an impressive regiment, several thousand strong. Mostly violins, but we also had units of trumpets, horns, bassoons, flutes, and even some basses. We knew that somewhere beyond the skyline there were other New Jersey troops moving in the crisp white snow: shining clarinets and trombones, violas and oboes, and maybe even some percussion back-up if we were lucky.\nOur array, a bit chaotic at first, gained cohesion along the way. As we marched on and grew in mass, augmented by the battalions we met and merged with, our army became more structured and martial. My brother and I were separated and reassigned to opposite flanks: I went to the first violins and he to the second, according to our military rank and training. We would have liked to have been closer to each other during the battle, but at the time neither of us was too concerned about it. Young and hot-blooded, we were thrilled by the events and eager to fight. Sentiments could wait.\nWe spent that night in the fields, in tents. Farmers came and brought blankets and food for us and our baboons and marmosets. We ate quickly and bedded down but, exhaustion notwithstanding, I couldn\u2019t fall asleep for at least an hour awash with thoughts of what awaited me in the near future. Will we win? Will we lose? How will the result change my life and that of my kinfolk? I had no answers, though, no illumination. My earnest probing couldn\u2019t pierce time, my superficial knowledge of current events did not help either. I only knew who the enemy was\u2014New York and Chicago\u2014but not what he wanted. Or what we wanted from him, for that matter. Must have been something important if we abhorred and wanted to exterminate one another. Our slogan was \u201cLiberty and prosperity.\u201d Did they aim to take these from us? I wanted to discuss it with someone but was too ashamed to ask my fellows. On the other hand, they were all asleep now, an inappropriate time for conversation. Embracing my Callithrix friend, I yawned and drifted off.\nNext day at dawn we promptly folded our tents, took our places in the units and marched off. After a couple of hours, however, our pace eased and in another hour we were ordered to halt. No explanation was offered, and there were no visible signs either of the enemy or of traps he may have set. As a first violin, I was in the very front line and had an unobstructed view. But all I could see was a monotonous winter landscape with bare shivering trees and crows in the vitreous sky.\nIt was cold that morning and soon it became unbearable to stand there doing nothing. We broke lines and started playing with the monkeys or punching each other to keep the blood circulating. We were like small careless children having fun on a sunny winter day. It was the last time that I heard myself laughing.\nFinally, around noon our commanders who took instructions from their commanders called us to order. Rumor spread that the enemy was but half a mile away and closing swiftly. The news was both chilling and sobering. Now I really wanted to see my brother before it all started but it was impossible. We were at least a mile apart from one other, separated by hundreds of men. Men of the same fate who also had brothers or fathers somewhere in this swarm and wished they could see and hug them, perhaps for the last time. The latter thought gave me an idea; I grabbed my neighbors\u2019 hands and shook them amicably as if they were my kinsmen. That was the right thing to do, for other soldiers who noticed my action emulated me. This affectionate outburst of camaraderie spread well beyond our unit, wavelike it cascaded outwardly and, I had few doubts about it, reached my brother.\nAnd then \u2014hell. Our scouts were incompetent or something else, I don\u2019t know the exact cause, but we overlooked the enemy\u2019s approach. One moment a boring frosty unwrinkled plane lay before us, the next moment the landscape was squirming with barbarians \u2014hordes of brute bagpipers \u2014so many of them that if my training had not led me to plug my ears almost automatically, I would have died instantly.\nWe were lucky to be trained so well, for the bagpipers\u2019 vanguard caused us almost no damage. I stuck my violin under my chin, squeezed the fingerboard, placed the bow on the strings, and took a quick glance at our lieutenant who was waiting for a command. We counterattacked with G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung, a wise choice, both a powerful merciless blow and a message that no prisoners will be taken. We edged forward pounding and pounding the adversary with strong waves of chords, yet at first they stood firmly and there wasn\u2019t much we could do. My earplugs prevented me from hearing what they played but it must have been something lethal, for one of my comrades, whose hand I had shaken, lost one of his plugs and I could clearly see blood spurting from his unprotected ear, his eyes, nose, and mouth. He fell on the snow but I could not help him, for I had to keep moving and playing, and playing, and playing to protect my home, my mother, my town, and the whole of New Jersey from these savages.\nMy comrade\u2019s death had shaken me to the very core. I had always known the war was no joke but this was the first time in my life that I witnessed a person\u2019s death so close and it was dreadful. I longed for revenge, couldn\u2019t help myself. I craved to kill and went amok. Without waiting for a command, reckless of the potential consequences of such noncompliance, I let my monkey loose, watched him run up to the nearest enemy soldier, jump onto his shoulders and pull the plugs from his ears. I leaped forward, played the highest note I could squeeze from my instrument without disrupting the strain played by my army, and observed the man dropping his pipes in a sudden attack of pain. Playing fiercely, I stood over him and watched him lying on the ground hemorrhaging, trying to cover his head with his hands, his life ebbing out nevertheless. It wasn\u2019t a noble sight, though. I will never forget the uncouth plowman\u2019s face and his imbecile eyes, full of fear and sorrow. However, at the time it gave me the gratification I sought and it was great. I realized that until then I had been frightened. Henceforth I was confident of triumph.\nWhen I emerged from my frenzy and looked around, I saw the field alive with monkeys doing what my marmoset had done a minute ago: jumping on lubberly bagpipers, tearing out their earplugs to make them susceptible to the barrage of the G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung. This brought about an instant shift in the balance. Barbarians were dying in scores now. Others, aware of their inability to resist our trained animals, tossed away their instruments and ran for their lives bereft of all dignity. Seeing this we switched to Mozart and chased the defeated with Symphony No. 23 in D major until night fell. Victory, the total victory of the first battle, was ours.\nIt wasn\u2019t the end of the war though. For me it was only the beginning. For my brother it was over. After the battle I went to the sector of the second violins to see my brother but couldn\u2019t find him. No one knew where he was and everyone seemed too tired to talk to me. Eventually I found a lieutenant who told me that one of the bagpipers managed to wrestle my brother down and unplug his ears. That night I did not sleep, clutching my monkey in my arms, listening to its snore. My mind was numb; there was no room for any particular thought. Desolation . . .\nWe moved south, almost effortlessly defeating the enemy\u2019s numerous small guerilla groups with impromptu mazurkas, shooting hemidemisemiquavers of Schoenberg at their stray patrolmen. Our advance was measured and took several weeks, but we lost few troops and the whole campaign looked really scherzo until we reached Atlantic City, which we had to recapture. By that time I had been awarded the rank of private first class for my bravery: during a skirmish my violin broke and instinctively I grabbed the flute of a fallen comrade and played away, hunting the enemy with rapid bursts of Debussy\u2019s sinfoniettas until all had fallen. I wasn\u2019t trained for woodwind instruments. I had practiced on them on my own, mostly from curiosity. I was fortunate to have done so. I promised myself to test other instruments, and by the time we got to Atlantic City I could play most of them. Kettledrums and trombones were an exception, but if the war were to continue I was pretty sure I could handle those, too. Accordingly I awaited future promotions and expected to return home at least a second lieutenant, if fortune were not to turn its back on me. This wasn\u2019t in the stars.\nThe battle for Atlantic City was furious, cruel, and continued for three days and nights. A terrible, terrible experience, an inferno. We finally won but the losses were massive: almost a third of our troops and half of the monkeys. We spent two days burying the dead and three weeks recovering from wounds and exhaustion and mending our instruments.\nWe closed on the enemy as a squall playing Richard Strauss\u2019 Death and Transfiguration, but had to switch to a more potent weapon, Stravinsky\u2019s The Rite of Spring, in the middle of the battle, as Strauss had no effect on the adversary. It was an uphill battle. The enemy was well prepared, his positions impenetrable. Huge barricades and lines of barbed wire prevented us from deploying our monkeys so we had to apply different tactics and rely on our own martial skills. We pounded the foe with mighty waves of consonances, hammered and hammered them. But the damage was insignificant. They stood firm, and we were only able to advance when an order came to play Bart\u00f3k\u2019s Concerto for Orchestra whose dissonant harmonies assaulted the adversary like a hurricane and sowed confusion behind the barricades.\nHowever, soon we were hard pressed, for the enemy, convinced of our determination, let fly swarms of small birds\u2014Fringillidae. We absolutely didn\u2019t expect anything like that \u2014the use of trained animals was our idea \u2014 and we were bewildered. Like a tremendous cloud of hailstorm, these nasty buntings swooped down from the sky puncturing our earplugs, piercing our eyes, lacerating our skin, virtually tearing us apart. Screaming we dropped our instruments and tried to protect ourselves, covering our heads with our hands, but the vicious finches were not easily discouraged, they stabbed and slashed with their sharp beaks. There was no escape. Those whose plugs were perforated died, others lost their eyes, and almost all were bleeding. Our monkeys suffered as much. Many of them were blinded or forced to flee their masters. We succumbed to panic and began to abandon the field. But surprisingly our failing became our strength, for the birds, all of a sudden, changed their small minds, lost interest, disengaged, and flew back to their home lines. They now attacked their proprietors with the same fierceness and thrashed them until night came. We seized the opportunity, quickly regrouped, composed ourselves, and stormed the enemy with full force playing Pietro Mascagni\u2019s Cavalleria Rusticana. After sunset the birds disappeared and we launched an assault on the barricades. Once we breached the fortifications our monkeys did their part. After that there were few surprises, just the laborious, tiresome task of street combat. I won\u2019t describe the details. It\u2019s worth mentioning, though, that for such low-level warfare we used lighter weapons, like Paderewski\u2019s Minuet in G, that were more than adequate to fight small squads hidden in driveways and passages, and Paganini\u2019s Caprices for violin solo, especially handy for hunting single enemy servicemen.\nNow that the state of New Jersey was clean and clear, we should had terminated the campaign and returned home. We didn\u2019t do that, however. For one thing, resplendent in victory, we thought no one in the world could defeat us. We had crushed the enemy but were perfectly aware that eventually new insurrections would burst forth as long as our archenemy remained capable of instigating such revolts. The two principal hornet nests were New York and Chicago, corrupt dens of libertines, drug hawkers, and vicious bands that assaulted honest citizens, chasing them down the streets playing that awful thing they call jazz. Sleaze, decay, and corruption spread from those two places. We felt that it was the best time to finish them off, once and for all. It was our sacred duty.\nAs soon as we recuperated, we marched back north to Cherry Hill and Willingboro, greeted as conquerors everywhere. The people of small towns cared enough to travel from the boondocks to line the major roads we traversed, paying us, their guardians, respect and admiration. Farmers donated food and beer, ordinary townsmen shook our hands and made speeches, young women bestowed us with flower bouquets and kisses full of affection and, often, latent lust. We were honored similarly in Trenton with a magnificent celebration, comprising cheering, flag waving, and terrific salvos of fireworks, glorious in the midnight-blue abyss of the starless winter sky.\nThe regal treatment we received in Long Branch, Perth-Amboy, Elizabeth, and Newark slowed down our advance inordinately. It took almost three weeks to reach the state border in Jersey City. On a sunless, gloomy daybreak we stood on the waterfront in Liberty State Park, the towers of Manhattan grim minarets in the distance.\nWe used both the Holland tunnel and the Port Authority Trans-Hudson rapid transit system to cross the river and enter SoHo. No defenders were to be seen as if they all had escaped in awe of our approach. That could hardly be true, however. The city was too colossal to be devoid of all its dwellers, too deranged to be abandoned in an orderly fashion.\nCautiously we moved down the Spring and Houston streets, then 6th and the 7th playing Roy Harris but ready to switch to Bruckner\u2019s Requiem at the first sign of danger. The tension was incredible: we were in the dragon\u2019s lair, the very font of transgression, and had no inkling of what might happen the next moment.\nNothing was happening, though. There was no traffic, no people on the streets of the city that boasts that it never sleeps. Obviously, the enemy was ignoring our march, intending to entice us to pursue them in an insane exercise of hide-and-seek so that we would be exhausted and transformed into easy prey.\nIt was frightfully cold in the streets, in those narrow chasms with steep brick walls. So cold in fact that we had to play something vigorous to keep ourselves from freezing to the bone. We stroked up Handel\u2019s effervescent Water Music and played it for a while. Only then some windows opened and groggy, heavy-eyed women and hostile unshaved men emerged, some just gawking down at us, others yelling something, surely words of insult, if their grimaces were a fair guide. Our earplugs prevented us from hearing them.\nAn elderly woman tossed down several coins, a quarter hit the pavement near me and circled for a while, then fell on its side and came to rest right in front of me. Instinctively I made a sudden stop causing someone to run into me from behind. My violin slipped from my frozen fingers and crashed to the ground. Another shove made me step on the instrument turning it into a jumble of string and splinters. I tripped over the debris, lost my balance and fell prostrate. My comrades did their best to avoid stepping on me but it wasn\u2019t easy. An army squeezed by the concrete walls from both sides is as evasive as a steamroller: someone\u2019s heel crushed the fingers of my right hand, a kick to my temple left me unconscious for a short second. It must have knocked the plugs out of my ears too, for when I came to my senses, the first thing to reach my brain wasn\u2019t the feeling of paralysis or the view of the rear guard of my party, fading out into the distance, but a swirl of sound, tones ricocheting off the walls, the pavement, lamp posts, and blasting my unprotected ears. The music didn\u2019t put me away instantly like it had killed my brother. It was too distant and didn\u2019t have sufficient force to inflict great destruction. It crippled me, however. The chords mauled my head, pierced the ears, and scorched my brain. I lay there knowing it was over for me: the war, the triumphs, the kisses of lovely maidens, promotions, returning home a corporal, the honors \u2014all gone. All gone. Forever.\n\nBut I didn\u2019t die, however.\nOn nights when I couldn\u2019t sleep, I would roam the streets scrutinizing every face in vain expectation of finding a familiar one. On one such occasion I wandered to the site of my derailment and experienced a sort of vision there. As if in a trance, it seemed that, once again, I could hear the last cadences of my regiment marching-off and see the backs of my fellows, fading in the distance.\nWhile I stood there, working through that nightmare, trying to shake it off, an aged car pulled up, the driver rolled down the window, stared into my eyes, shouted and roared with diabolical laughter, \u201cI know you. You are one of those bastard monkey fuckers from New Jersey,\u201d and drove off.\nHow wonderful it was to feel that warped reality crack and shatter, the old and the true reassert itself. How rewarding it was after all those years of seclusion, of life in a quarantine, to see a portal open, to sense fresh hope being born and promptly filling the absurd void, to have the ability to judge return and take its rightful place in my soul.\n\nMy life has changed. I am back in business. Not just driving passengers around but thinking: reviewing my past, watching and listening, accumulating and sorting facts, devising new strategies, new weapons. I don\u2019t chat with my customers anymore, I have no time for that.\nOne day soon I shall cross the river into New Jersey, mobilize a new army, and start another campaign. Take notice! This time we shall come as a hurricane, a tsunami, a merciless, relentless force, that will assault not only your ears but all your senses simultaneously, possess and wreck them, while replacing your superficial hell with our perfect inferno.\n\nI am all determination now. I blast dead marches and don\u2019t pause for a breath when a train storms by.\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Slow Birth of Nation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">We were innocent like birds and our virgin life was insipid and uniform, with the exception of two seasons heavy with a prospect of change. Every spring around March the melting snow filled up the otherwise dry river gully with a powerful flux. The fuscous stream carried trunks and limbs of the fallen trees, stumps, shrubs, and lumps of turf. It was both busy and fascinating period, especially for children. Men armed with grapples dragged trees to the shore where these were left to dry before chopping them up into firewood and carting home. Branches and twigs covered with wisps of soggy grass, as well as muddy tangled roots contained cryptic hollows, weird and wonderful cavities laden with secrets: dead animals and, once in a while, even a human stiff. Corpses were to be quickly buried before they fall apart and start spreading disease, but first they had to be thoroughly inspected, their pockets searched for money and other treasure. Most of the times this yielded nothing, but once in a while a deceased would have a dudeen in his pocket, a clasp knife, a brass cigarette case, or \u2013 best of all \u2013 a silver timepiece. Women usually brought nothing. They are poor folks up there in the mountains and they don\u2019t waste much on their women. No jewelry, not even wedding rings. Thus the only trophy in such cases was some luck that a woman drowned not too long ago and that she was young and pretty to make you suffer. It is implicit that pain purifies your soul. The only case in the community\u2019s memory when a woman found in the river was somehow beneficial to her finder was the woman herself. She came back to life and, being buried in a shallow grave, managed to break out of her coffin and dig her way to the surface. Pale as a ghost, naked, shivering, she scared shit out of the whole parish wandering from house to house and begging for help. Nobody answered her calls, no one opened the door, except for the man who dragged her out of water. He recognized her face and let her in. As he had no family of his own, soon he married her. She was a real slogger and gave him five children, all good workers too. They have built a big house and never knew hunger. Thus the man had been rewarded for his deeds, but in the eyes of the community neither the woman nor her children have ever been totally free of some stigma: first, she\u2019s never learned to speak our language fluently and, second, she\u2019s always been considered to be a walking corpse, if only a bit of it. To make sure it never happens again, now coffins are made strong and grave pits dug deep.\nEvery fall, around September, strangers came loaded with goods and news. There were two types of them. Gypsies, riding wagons, they buy things we produce over summer months: sheep wool and goat cheese, rawhides and wild honey. They pay little but they are the only our supply of money so we don\u2019t mind a great deal. Besides they don\u2019t look like they are making fortunes by cheating us. The fact is they look inferior, even dirtier and poorer than us, and that is pacifying.\nAnother type of trader, though not that dissimilar, were Jews. They came riding carts loaded with merchandise: fabrics, threads, buttons, needles, axes, knives, medicines, candies for children, you name it. Things we cannot live without and things we can but prefer not to. Money we got from Gypsies didn\u2019t stay in our pouches long, it quickly went to Jews.\nNow and then, strangers would bring random pieces of the puzzling civilization that stretches out there, beyond the small world of ours. Those were expensive things that most of us couldn\u2019t afford: sewing machines that make stitches so neat it\u2019s hard to believe, rifles you can load with several rounds at once, presses that turn your cheese-making into an amusement, magnets that make searching for lost needles so easy, magnifying glasses that help you to start a fire by directing a ray of light onto dry moss, and other marvelous items. Sometimes strangers brought wooden boxes they called photographic cameras and took pictures of us and sold them to us to frame them and embellish our dwellings. Occasionally they carried photographs that depicted naked whores, their beavers shaved off, their breasts \u2013 jugs of milk, and their skin so pale you could nearly see through. There was no way to resist those, every man in the village had one or two hidden someplace in house, you could look at them for hours dreaming up the wildest things. Even the pastor had several of them in the back of his Good Book. During the mass, when all of a sudden he went silent for a long while, we would know he had opened the wrong page.\nAnother item in demand were pictures of rather ordinary people they had visited and photographed elsewhere and we could have them for a small price. Someone would perhaps wonder why would we want to possess those? It\u2019s because people in these pictures weren\u2019t like us. Nothing close. They were handsome clean-shaven men and lovely women wearing bonnets, smiles on their faces, not a rotten tooth in their mouths, their hair cut neatly and combed, their garments so light you could never plow a field or kill an animal without messing them up at once. Their hands grasping goblets of wine or long cigarette holders weren\u2019t made for labor. With fingers so long and delicate you could never lift a fork of manure. How did they survive? That was a mystery to us. One theory held they were so different from us they didn\u2019t eat at all and, consequently, didn\u2019t have to drudge. Though it\u2019s hard to be certain of it, by looking at them you wouldn\u2019t want to think those women ever take a shit or even have an excretory opening. When we asked our visitors about it, they answered, \u201cOh, sure they do. Just that they wipe their heinies clean with paper afterwards.\u201d Either a lie or one more baffling mystery.\nThough the sun shines, autumns are cold in our mountainous area. In the evening, we would sit tight to each other and drink methanol-rich plum brandy that clouds our minds but provides with extreme warmth. That was the time strangers would start talking. First tossing the news \u2013 and almost everything is the news to us \u2013 cautiously on the table, dice alike, then, when the sense of the neighbor\u2019s elbow grew stronger, spilling them like beans.\nMost innocent stories, like personal impressions of the villages travelers had visited, go first. But towards the end of the evening, the thick scary stuff would be let lose, and that\u2019s how, over time, we learned of things that changed our lives forever.\nAmong the amazing things the strangers have told us about was that there is a sea out there and that our birds come from the shores of it and that the sea isn\u2019t that far away from us, only about a hundred of kilometers or so.\nNow, I have to make a step aside here, for there are a couple of things I have to shed light on first. One being the notion of distance. I clearly remember the night they told us about the sea, for it turned into bone-crushing brawl. Gypsies said it was one hundred kilometers, Jews insisted it\u2019s less, about eighty or something, and ourselves we were lost completely, because what\u2019s a kilometer? Jews accused us of being too backwoods, we didn\u2019t like that. Sure thing we aren\u2019t too worldly, but we aren\u2019t complete bumpkins either. The way you measure your distance doesn\u2019t necessarily make you a total rube. Or does it? So we had an argument about it and the strangers lost. But that\u2019s not important.\nWhat was important, however, was the sea and the birds. Every autumn, the wind blowing from the south would bring exhausted gulls to our country and that\u2019s how people here got some idea about the land somewhere beyond their world, far-off and dreamlike. I remember us, pupils of the school, glued to windows, gazing at the strange drowsy fowls on the piazza. We would feed them with corn bread crumbs but usually they were too exhausted to swallow. They would fancy nothing from us, neither food nor drink, they would just stand there still, gathering strength, and then, by night, they would be gone, flown away.\nNot all of them, though. Some of the birds, the feeblest ones, would be left behind to our mercy. Over time, it has become a routine. We would wait until the birds die, then the governess would dissect them to show us their innards. And there they had a helluva fascinating things: remnants of fish, tiny clams, minute crabs, kelp, and other bits and pieces. \u2018These are water birds,\u2019 our teacher would say. \u2018They must had flown a lengthy way till they reached us.\u2019 And even though the governess went nuts after the chapter on the third law of thermodynamics and ultimately hanged herself, which automatically canceled out a large amount of her good judgment, we always felt that there is something like a sea wherever it may be, but that to reach it one would require wings and maybe even die as the birds did. Therefore we let the matter drop and never touched it again. We simply crawled through our lives realizing that certain things might be existent but, on account of the price, we have never considered them real enough and worth having one\u2019s heart set on. And here come Gypsies and Jews and try to mess up everything\u2026\nBut then they did it nevertheless. The tidbits brought by strangers had planted a seed of longing in our hearts and, as it progressed, there was not a day when we wouldn\u2019t think of the sea being thus near, only a hundred kilometers or so, whatever that meant. We would milk our goats or skin the sheep, and abruptly halt with the tingling sensation that it\u2019s achievable. Only one hundred kilometers, whatever it is\u2026 It\u2019s damn measurable, and if it\u2019s measurable, somehow it looks feasible.\nOne day, unable to stand it anymore, we assembled, about thirty of us, all men, and walked down the mountains. It took four long hours on a bus stuffed with dirty farmers, their unshaven faces the tint of earth that makes you envision a graveyard, smoking rank cigarettes and carrying live hens in their haversacks. Good people, actually, all Christians who lose their control and go mad only when their rotten teeth start aching, they asked us all kinds of questions and shared wine from their flasks. Towards the end of the journey we all got loaded and slept like badgers\u2026\nWhat we saw upon the arrival, when we dropped off the rattling bus, our heads sore, was a country, or a world, with no name yet, melancholic and puzzlingly genteel, all shining with sun. We sat on the dusty pasture near the road and watched it for a while. The trees seemed impatient in the late afternoon breeze. Ripe fruits, the numbing scent of eucalyptuses, minutes so ridiculously alike that they appeared to be just one continuous span, voices that sound a bit too rowdy in the balmy afternoon, the drowsy hum of flies, and the delicate smell of shit.\nThoughts \u00ad irrelevant, aimless, brief, leading nowhere, rolling on and on, wave alike. Silly, too.\nAfter a while, when the first impression wore out, we stood and made for to the sea shore. We didn\u2019t have to ask for directions. We were guided by nose, the salty stench stuck to the nostrils, all too familiar to us: the birds that came to our village reeked likewise.\nThe brine was vast. A monstrous mirror scintillating in the rays of the sun, reflecting the flimsy white cloudlets and gulls in the blue, it was grand indeed, albeit not quite what we had anticipated. It lacked any drama. Motionless, it laid there sleeping, too apathetic for our taste. In contrast to the vibrant tension of our mountains, the sea was dispassionate, uncaring. We were pissed off. Sick with disappointment. So many expectations, so much nerves for so little amusement in the end.\nOn the other hand, it wasn\u2019t only the lack of entertainment that irritated us. Our pride suffered, too. Not used to such far off skylines, we saw the world was huge, way larger than we had thought. In the face of this vast apathy, we felt minute and insignificant. We could be here or there all the same, we could rot in our villages in the mountains and nobody in this world would mind. Our mountains were alive with direct response to our presence there. We would say something loud and the words would come back as an echo or even cause an avalanche. There was no echo here. As if we were suddenly mute. It did hurt.\nSo we watched it for a while and discussed it a bit while walking along the deserted beach towards a lighthouse we saw in the distance. We couldn\u2019t agree whether we should go home now that we\u2019ve seen it or hang around for a few hours. It seemed as if our group was about to split but then something happened that made us stick together.\nHalfway to the lighthouse we reached a boardwalk. When we climbed up the wooden steps, we discovered something that took our breath away and soon would be another source of discontent. We found ourselves in the thick of quite a crowd and it was utterly astonishing, for they were all the people from the photographs that decorated our walls. Dressed in whites, they were strolling around and chatting under chestnut trees. Women carried umbrellas, men with sticks in their hands, some had small dogs on leashes, families with children, miniature copies of their parents. Stunned, we stood there gazing at them, thinking it couldn\u2019t be true, all this polished and smiling race lived only a few hours away from our world and we didn\u2019t know it. Impressed, we almost forgot the sea and forgave it for the spasm it caused. But, much like their sea, these people here also took no notice of us chatting only among themselves as if we were too small to see or behind a wall of some kind.\nIt wasn\u2019t the end of humiliation, though, for soon after we heard a brass band playing somewhere behind the trees. And what a music it was! Earthy, mind-blowing, strange, both provocative and nasty, it made us blush and swelter like in those adolescent times when we would get caught red-handed at screwing sheep.\nOne should have seen us dashing off into the park where there was a wooden platform with an orchestra at its side, playing tunes so hot and spicy they instantly made your mouth dry and your stomach ulcerous. Most of the crowd, though clearly took pleasure in the music, did it in their own urbane way either pretending they didn\u2019t hear what was in its core, or lacking the ear to grab hold of it. Couples were leaping about excitedly, bobbing up and down, but without the genuine thrill.\nOn us the music acted as kerosene on an exhausted flame. Right away, we jumped onto the platform, each grabbed a girl and went twirling, dancing insanely as the music commanded. But certainly that wasn\u2019t the right thing to do, for the lasses were all too scared and dancing with them was more like throwing around sacks of potatoes. Furthermore, their fathers recovered from the first shock and got in the way. Enraged, shouting something in a language we didn\u2019t understand, shaking their swagger sticks, they moved onto the dancing floor and jerked their daughters away from us. Having them safely behind their backs, they set upon us and pushed us first off the platform and then out of the park.\nOutraged, we were standing there wondering what to do, whether to arm ourselves somehow and attack them now or to come back later. While we were at it, two smiling ladies approached us. In black net gauntlets, holding white parasols, they sniffed the air around us and said something it their tongue. Seeing our confusion, they switched to another language that wasn\u2019t ours but close enough to understand. They said they liked the odor we emitted: old good mutton and onions, it jogged their memories about their own homes in the mountains, not in our mountains but similar mountains elsewhere, and that they saw us dancing and if we really wanted to dance they would show us a place, way better than the one in the park with the potty people just pretending they are dancing. They led us into a house up the street where we were greeted with smiles by many beautiful women dressed in slips, nightgowns, baby dolls, silk camisoles, corselettes, and net stockings. However, we were in for a disappointment here, too, for all the smiling was gone as soon as they realized we were poor chaps without much money to spend. In no time, we were herded out and left on our own again, feeling maltreated, disgruntled by all the shoving around.\nHungry by now, we walked up to a cheap joint and ate some bread and fish, which we are not used to. It ended up pretty funny, as I recall it now, because the cooks didn\u2019t remove fish\u2019s eyes and they were looking back at us with such an objection that in fact eating that fish turned out to be fighting it, and the fish won, and most of us threw up troubling the waiters very much and adding up to the general repulsion we were causing here.\nLate in the evening we walked back to the shore to take the last look at the sea before leaving. And then this thing happened.\nThe tide was low, and the sea went all the way back revealing a multitude of thingamajigs. The view of the naked sea bottom, stripped off water, disgusted us even more than the fish\u2019s gaze just a while ago. Not prepared for observation it was shameful. More obscene than the flesh we saw at the bawdyhouse because there it was meant that way and here it was an indiscretion befalling in front of us. On the boardwalk, nobody \u2013 matrons with parasols, mustached cavaliers with sticks, dancers from the park, bare naked whores and their pimps \u2013 just no one gave a thought to it\u2026\nTired from the day\u2019s events and the rattling bus that brought us back to the familiar crossroad, we walked up the steep hillside: through the wormwood bushes, under the vast star-spangled sky. Silent, we were breathing the fresh mountain air without a trace of salty fetidness.\nAltered came we back. The same yet not the same. Not so callow anymore. The world outside might be vast to contain the sea, but for us there was little room in it. We were trespassers there, unwelcome guests, fucking outcasts who are better to be kept an eye upon. And we didn\u2019t like it. Not at all. On the other hand, it was a good, sobering feeling that cleared our minds up and brought back the sense of balance in our souls. More than ever before, we were one now.\nNext day we threw away most of the artifacts we had collected from Gypsies and Jews over the years, the evidences of the once puzzling civilization that stretches out there, beyond the small world of ours. We burned the stills that depicted naked whores, their breasts \u2013 jugs of milk. They were no better than our sheep. Laughing we turned into ashes the handsome clean-shaven men and their lovely women wearing bonnets, smiles on their faces, not a rotten tooth in their mouths. No more were we curious about their ability to consume food and shit afterwards. They were shit\u2026\nThat autumn, when the wind blowing from the south brought the giant white seabirds to the square in front of the church, we didn\u2019t feed them with corn bread crumbs. Instead, the men with clubs showed up and slew the birds down. By night they all were gone\u2026\nGulls\u2019 meat, when roasted, isn\u2019t that bad, just harder to chew. But it wasn\u2019t our hunger or the scarcity of food that made us to do it. We wanted no trespassers here, no fucking strangers, be they birds or humans. That\u2019s why\u2026\nNow we are waiting for the spring to come\u2026\nStanding in a circle, holding hands and smiling Macedonian.\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">This Is a Miracle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">REFLECTIONS ON BELONGING 20 November 2019\n\nImagine how the universe comes into being, apparently out of nothing. The first particle pops out of nowhere followed by a huge stream of particles that start interacting with each other instantly, the fields appear, and first atoms get born according to physical laws that had never existed before. The atoms clump together led by that same logic, chemical reactions start, molecules emerge, all in colossal quantities, with incredible energy and speed. Pure magic.\nI was in the first grade when I discovered our little town had a library. Out of necessity. I was very avid reader from the age of four. My grandma, who was almost illiterate herself, showed me the letters and how they add together to form words. It was like a puzzle at first. You would say a word and try to dissect it into sounds it's made of and then you locate the alphabet letters that match those sounds and (very clumsily) write them down before you forgot. And then when you read the letters you just wrote you got the oral word back in the air. Somehow, it looked like a very rewarding pastime for me, I could do it again and again. After a brief period of time, I was slowly reading simple children books with illustrations, then reading faster and faster, quicker than it would take to pronounce words aloud, I stopped reading separate characters, now I was reading the entire words, getting them imprinted into the brain as hieroglyphs. I loved listening to stories my grandma and other people were telling. Learning to read opened the tremendous basket of them, an endless river. I became an addict.\nMy parents had some books at home, like a hundred or so, and they were buying books for me at the rate of maybe two per month but, as a reader, I was faster and soon it became clear the river of stories wasn't endless. At grandma's house, I found a bunch of prewar books, I have no idea where they had come from, they were new books, and nobody opened them before me. I knew it because they were uncut and you had to read them with a knife in hand. Their leaves were still joined together at the fold. So I was reading those books with a sharp kitchen knife in hand, fascinating books, Jack London, Jules Verne, Karl May. Nevertheless, this bunch came to an end, too.\nWhat I loved about books was that when you got to reading you just disappeared into the worlds their authors created. You were inside there, unconscious of your body left here turning the pages for you. It was like night dreams when you were fully immersed into action there and didn't remember that, in fact, you were in your bed sleeping. I love movies, too, but when you see a movie once, the next time, if you watch it, you already know what's going to happen, and the thrill is gone. There are a few exceptions, though, I have a few movies that I can watch again and again, like Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, or The Deer Hunter, but these are rare exceptions. With books, no matter how many times you read them, they still are portals into other worlds, every time.\nI would read and reread my books, any books I managed to get hold of, for many times. The humongous story that came in four volumes, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, I read seven or eight times. This aspect of books, the ability to reread them and still enjoy, helped to alleviate my cravings but it wasn't a solution. I needed to find a more stable source of books but at such young age my possibilities were quite limited.\nAs a kid, I wasn't very picky reader. I read pretty much everything that came my way. All sorts of fairy tales, but especially One Thousand and One Nights and Wilhelm Hauff's fairy tales, adventures, American Old West novels, animal stories like Bambi, a Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten, pirate stories, science fiction, fantasy, dramatic and tragic novels, even ancient Greek and Roman translations provided they were not in the form of poetry or theater play. I have tried many times reading the Iliad and the Odyssey and always failed, the form keeps me conscious at all times and doesn't allow to fully submerge in the content. At the most early age, when I was just learning how to read, for this particular reason I skipped all rhymed children books.\nI was reading from the moment I woke up in the morning, a book was always near bed. I was reading during meals, during breakfast and lunch, my grandma Isabella wasn't strict about that. If it was sunny outside, I would go out and play with kids or go fishing, or just run with the dogs, and I really enjoyed that, but if it was raining or too cold I would be equally enjoying it, for then I could just stay inside and read my books. At night, reading was a bit complicated because there was no electricity at the time and it was rather dark in the rooms. We had kerosene lamps everywhere - above the kitchen table, some hanging on the walls - but the kerosene cost money so only one lamp was lit, depending on your location, and the light was very dim. Sure it didn't stop me from reading but it was a bid of a struggle and my grandma wouldn't approve it. In her opinion, reading in such a dim light was ruining your eyesight. Eventually, when the time came to me to wear eyeglasses, to her it was a proof she had been right. Who knows?\nThe library was located on the second floor of a two stories building. The first floor was occupied by the post office and the militia, it's how police was called in Soviet times. Militia consisted of one heavyset deputy, who was drunk most of the time. He had a pistol and sometimes, when his delirious brain generated criminal chimeras, he would start shooting rounds. Naturally, people were scared and tried to avoid him. The post office consisted of two employees, a woman behind the counter who could help you to make a phone call or to send a telegram, and a skinny man who would ride a bicycle with a bag full of letters. He lived across the road from my grandma's house with his wife and two kids, a girl older than I and a boy who was my age. In those times, there was a custom to serve a shot of vodka to anyone who helped you with something, a handyman who fixed the latch on your door, a neighbor who brought back your stray chicken, and, of course, the mailman who delivered you an important letter. Thus, on numerous days, you could see the mailman sleeping in the gutter in the middle of the day, his bag open, envelopes and small parcels strewn around in the dusty grass.\nShort of the drunken militia deputy who could shoot you on the way to the library, there was another creepy obstacle I had to overcome. When the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, a massive armed resistance commenced. Young patriotic men, but also some women, grabbed whatever weapons they could get and took to the woods in droves to fight the invaders. My mother has told me every single boy from her class at school had gone (to never come back.) The Soviet response was fierce. Russian troops aided by local collaborators (the mailman, our neighbor, was one of them), raided remote villages and farms where the resistance fighters might be given support. Sometimes they would catch the armed men and kill them, other times they couldn't find any culprits and kill innocent to show off, to scare, or just out of drunken rage.\nIn those times, the photography was a cumbersome business. The camera was a rather big and heavy stationary box not suited to carry around, especially during the cold winter months when there are no roads just snow and ice. Thus, to document their killings and report to their superiors, the soldiers would bring their victims from those distant farms and lay down in the spacious yard of the library building. Then they would stick young fir trees around the dead bodies, as if those were laying in the woods where they found their death, and send somebody for my grandfather half a mile away.\nMy grandfather Kazimieras was a photographer, perhaps the photographer as there was nobody else doing it in a wide area. In normal times, he was busy taking photos of farmers, their wives and their offspring who came to the market and the church on Sundays. But in those early years of foreign occupation his business was pretty much dead and photographing dead bodies among the fake trees was what's left out of it. He wasn't asked to do it, he was ordered. He wasn't paid for it either. Soon, when the stream of dead bodies stopped and there was nothing left to take photos of, my grandpa was sent for ten years to Siberia, to a labor camp in Vorkuta, supposedly for telling people jokes about comrade Stalin. However, grandma Isabela insisted he just knew too much, an inconvenient witness to those local men who had chosen collaboration. My grandma's attic was full with boxes of glass negatives and prints of those atrocities, gory images of dead people piled among firs. Every time I had to cross that yard to get to the library or the post office, the images of bloodied disfigured men vividly came to my memory as if ghosts of the past were waiting for me there. For some strange reason, as far as I remember, the yard, unlike any other space in town, stayed grey and dusty. Not a flower there or a single blade of grass. Lifeless.\nOnce I crossed the yard, safely passed the militia deputy's room, and climbed the stairs to the second floor, I was safe among shelves full of books. The librarian, a bored elderly woman, would allow me to choose five books every time I came and take them home with me. Folks were mostly farmers and workers in Sered\u017eius. They had no interest in books, neither had their children. Sure, there were a few educated people - a pharmacist, a doctor, and several school teachers - but during those years I never met anyone of them at the library. Not once. It seems I was the only visitor and it's not clear why the library even existed with no demand but those were the times of Communist rule so there must have been some decree from above. Universal education had been one of Lenin's main legacies, fortunately for me.\nAs time went, I was exhausting the library. The most interesting books, fiction, were consumed first, then went popular mechanics, popular physics, biology, math and similar. The books I was reading became less and less captivating. Works of history, especially Communist party history, written in dull language, memoirs, guides, manuals, self-help, journalism, academic books, I was still reading them however, out of thirst for reading, but by my eleventh birthday I was done with the entire library nevertheless. The last book I read from that library was a treatise written by Aristotle called On the Soul. I will remember that book all my life. It was totally impenetrable for my very young brain, it was a torture, and I couldn't understand pretty much anything. I was rereading chapters in hope the understanding will come somehow but it didn't. I took a heroic effort to continue nevertheless, very slow, but the words didn't make any sense the way they were interconnected. I didn't stop reading it because it was the last book in the library and I didn't have anything else to read. In the end, I gave up finally and read Three Musketeers for the nth time.\nDuring that second part of the library, in spite of mundaneness, I learned a lot. At a certain point, under the influence of various books on biology, I decided I want to be a biologist when I grow up. At the same time I was fascinated about how the cosmic bodies moved and I even filled a notebook with drawings of various orbits. On the front page of the notebook, I wrote the title in all capital letters: TO OTHER PLANETS! I dreamed about space travel and was seriously into jet propulsion. The universe was amazing, the way it worked, all parts of it, the largest and the tiniest, was magic. At night, laying in my bed, I would try to imagine how vast the universe is, endless. That it had no boundaries was very hard to comprehend. I would send my soul onto a flight, with the speed of light and even faster, out there in space and try to reach the end of the universe. I never succeeded. It was a sure-proof method to fall asleep fast.\nTo this day, I find it the most astonishing that atoms and molecules interact via chemical bonds to form new chemical compounds, that the inanimate elements, minerals, can intricately join together to become organic matter and that, through even greater complexity, the matter can reach the point it contemplates and reflects upon itself. And it was the contribution of a little obscure library in a tiny town in Lithuania that opened my eyes and enabled to see this.\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chimera<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">I'm talking.\n\nI'm an ant. Dust. A nothing little speck of dirt at your feet. I am a weak creature, the lowest of the low, and I dare to speak. I beg you! Don't push me aside. Don't shoo me away. Listen to what your slave will tell you.\n\nI\u2019m fainthearted by nature and I've suffered my whole life because of this. My weakness is visible to all. My mother couldn't stand me. I haven't met anyone who could restrain themselves from aggressively teasing me. I haven\u2019t met a single dog who hasn\u2019t barked at me. Even the birds try to peck out my eyes.\n\nI could never find a place for myself. There was nowhere I could settle because people would hit me and throw me out by my hair. They showed me to their children and taught them how to hate me. They were healthy and strong, and I was humpbacked and mangy, reeking of wet feathers. How could I argue with them? I walked from village to village, from town to town, taking the most desolate roads so I would not meet anyone. Winter and summer I hurried, running here and there to the places where no one recognized me.\n\nAnd so what? You can't shake off your shadow.\n\nPatience, Master, patience! I won't speak for long.\n\nBattered and humiliated I would lie at night and listen to the flow of water underground. I'd think: Why? Why is this my fate? I understood that I was necessary to people. Otherwise, they would not pay me any mind, would leave me alone. The world needs equilibrium. My weakness, my unhappiness balanced out their strong will and good fortune. This is the way the world is organized; this is how it is built. It's not up to me to change it. The more people degrade me the better they look to themselves. The more unhappy I am, the bigger the distance between my misfortune and their good fortune, the happier they will seem to themselves. This is how the world works. But why me? Why not someone else? \n\nI never had anyone to complain to, to speak to. At night I'd fall asleep alone in the silky rustling rain. I was envious of the birds, flying high in the sky into the west, and then, later on, to the north.\n\nAnd now, Master, having gathered all my weak will, I have created a vision. A chimera. I summoned into existence a woman. I modelled her head from my dreams. Formed her golden breasts from my longing. I turned her narrow waist from my reveries. I created her arms and legs in the most pleasing proportions. I put lightning in her eyes. I borrowed her movement from the wind. I dressed her in the most beautiful clothing, bejeweled her neck with precious stones. I thought I'm not so weak after all, if I can create a beauty that will make me the envy of everyone. I thought I'll no longer be alone. I lived with her, understanding she was a chimera, a vision. I didn't fool myself into thinking she was the daughter of a father and mother. I was satisfied with what I could have.\n\nMaster, people hit me, they teased me, but it was easier to bear when I had someone to offer me consolation. Only it didn't last for long. She was ashamed of me. She avoided meeting my gaze and trembled when I touched her. One day, some people shouted to her: \"Hey you! Come here! Live with us! Leave that gloomy thing.\" And she heard their cry and didn't hear my cry. She went to them without a second thought, and I saw her laughing when the first stone was thrown.\n\nMy weakness is so vast that my own creation betrayed me. My own vision turned away from me. What was left for me to do? Simply die. I tied a noose, but I didn't have the courage to put it around my neck. I whetted a knife, but I didn't dare to use it. I found poisonous plants, but I lacked the will to pick them. I am too much of a weakling.\n\nPatience, Master, patience!\n\nI went into the desert and lived alone. But even that kind of life was bitter, I didn't want it anymore. Day after day the cancer of my memories ate at my soul and poured poison into my heart. I could not forget my weakness.\n\nAnd then, gathering the shards of my despicable will I started to create one more vision. A chimera. I called it forth from the ether, invited a man from the emptiness. I gave him superhuman strength and agility. I modelled his heart from my nightmares. I forged shining armor from my despair. I armed him with my swords of pain, the sharpest in the world. I put into his eyes the darkness of all sleepless nights. I taught him nothing but the art of killing. Now I live with him and wait for him to betray me, for him to take my life, for him to do that which my weakness prevents me from doing.\n\nMaster, that man is you!\n\nVilnius Review, Translated by Medein\u0117 Tribinevi\u010dius\nhttps:\/\/vilniusreview.com\/fiction\/447-saulius-tomas-kondrotas\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Exit Only<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">When he came to California, for a short while he stayed with people whom he barely knew. He started looking for a job and a place to live but wasn't successful in either and within two weeks his hosting family was showing signs of weariness. He didn\u2019t know what to do. Without a job he couldn\u2019t afford an apartment, and nobody would lease one to him. At some point he applied for work at Rose Caf\u00e9 in Venice but, being honest and new to this country, he listed on the application all six languages he spoke. Or maybe he was unconsciously hoping his knowledge of languages will make him more attractive as a waiter able to communicate with international clientele in their native tongues. He was turned down right away, they didn\u2019t even say \u201cWe\u2019ll call you\u201d like they always do to get rid of people they don\u2019t really like that much but aren\u2019t daring enough to tell them so. This time around they didn\u2019t want him to have even a hint of illusion that he could possibly get a job here. Some people look with admiration at those who, in their lives, have covered long distances to reach places they deem desirable, but none of the admirers was at the Rose on that particular day to offer a kind support. The manager, who's never flown an airplane and only took his two kids to the Sea World in San Diego nine years ago and even liked to brag it was the longest trip in his entire life, was repulsed by those who had courage to cross oceans by any means of transportation. Perhaps, the manager was a bit afraid of him. Perhaps, the idea that tables will be bussed, and dishes will be washed by someone who possibly knows the meaning of the third law of thermodynamics appeared threatening. The problem is you don\u2019t know the confines of literate people and what they are capable of. You hope there are limits in them but how do you assess the integrity of someone who speaks several languages? The instant you think you understood their intentions they would switch to Czech or Arabic in their mind and escape you. Isn\u2019t it creepy? They might spit into a plate of soup when nobody is watching. Or ejaculate onto poached eggs\u2026 \u201dor oysters,\u201d he said reading manager\u2019s thoughts. \u201cOysters?\u201d When the whole wickedness of a multilingual mind has finally dawned on him, the manager was looking at him in disbelieve, shocked that people could be so deviant. \u201cWe don\u2019t carry oysters in this establishment,\u201d the manager said coldly. \u201cYou better go now, Sir. Goodbye.\u201d He gave the manager a menacing smile, then turned away and walked toward the door that bore a frightening caution: Exit Only! The exact meaning of such doorways escaped him. Isn\u2019t any door both exit and entrance? Exit one place, or state, and enter another? Through a door you exit the house and enter the outside world, or vice versa. So, when you grab your keys from the mantelpiece and walk toward the door with an intention to leave, that door is an exit from your residence. It\u2019s \u201cexit only\u201d by itself; you can\u2019t be exiting your dwelling and entering it at once, it is not usual in the Newtonian world. There is no need to indicate that with a special sign. The location of your body and the vector of its advancement provide the definition to the opening in the wall. It is equally true that the second you step outside and close the door behind, it becomes for you an \u201centrance only\u201d to your apartment. Thus, generally, depending on which side of the door you are at the given moment, it is both an exit from your place and an entrance to the outside world. So, when you see a door furnished with a warning Exit Only, does it suppose you will only leave the premises (or your current state) but won\u2019t enter another? And where will you be then, if this is the case? Sure enough, you won\u2019t be here because you will be gone through the door. But since it is Exit Only it\u2019s not an entrance to anything else, so you won\u2019t be there because there is no \"there\". Will you be nowhere? Is that what nowhere means? Will you be dead, or you just vanish without really dying? The latter is more likely because death presumes a corpse, or parts of the body, laying somewhere, or, for that matter, floating if there is no gravity, but, again, there is no \"there\" in this case. Either way, instead of placing a pictogram of a running man, wouldn\u2019t it be more appropriate to mark such passages with the skull and crossbones as a warning of danger like they put on electrical transformers and barrels with poisonous substances? Because although people won\u2019t be entirely dead, they will be recognized as such for tax purposes, they won\u2019t pay their bills, they won\u2019t come back home to their families and their pet animals tonight or perhaps anytime soon, if ever at all, because they happen to be nowhere wondering if there is at least a theoretical chance to get out of nowhere and arriving to the single unpleasant, but perfectly logical, conclusion that it\u2019s not possible since it would defy the definition of nowhere, for any sort of gateway would turn nowhere into here and render the sign Exit Only meaningless. There is also an issue with the direction to which the Exit Only door opens. Some people, for whatever intent (maybe they think it\u2019s a good prank), might want to fake the real Exit Only and attach the warning to a regular door. There is no universal rule that would give us a hundred percent proof under all circumstances but at least sometimes it\u2019s possible to know if the door is authentic or phony before we decide to step through it. The genuine Exit Only door can only be opened by pulling it. If such a door could be opened by a push it would itself penetrate the nowhere and could never be closed again, in fact it would disappear leaving the passage open to exit but after that there would be no door. Therefore, it\u2019s practical to remember that if you push the door and it gives way, at least a little bit, there is no danger, the door is false. Unfortunately, there is no way to know in advance what will happen if the door calls for a pull. The first time he walked through such a door happened back in his home country when he was fourteen and couldn\u2019t imagine he would ever live in Los Angeles. He was a bit awkward teenager living with his grandmother in a small town on a riverbank. One night he dreamt a specific location at the curve of the river where he and his friends used to fish. In reality there was nothing there, just a meadow and some ivy scrub, but in the dream he saw a house and a young attractive woman inside, he still remembers her beautiful slim body and face, and he had a wonderful feeling that the house belonged to him, and the woman was his. He never had sex with the woman in that dream; she just was there, not doing much of anything, mostly being around, clad in a bikini because it was summertime and hot inside the house. Through the windows he could see kids across the river busy catching small fish, and he even was able to recognize himself among those kids, just much younger than when he was in the house with the woman. In the dream, he spent all day inside the house. The woman prepared all the meals, they ate at a table in the uncommonly spacious living room, talking very little, not even looking at each other that much. If occasionally their eyes met, the woman would turn her head away and look elsewhere, not at him. He had a feeling they have lived in the house for much longer than he could remember right then. After lunch they went to the bedroom and took a nap, laying close to each other but without any affection. He remembered tiny rash on woman\u2019s forehead. He remembered sniffing the fuzzy brown skin on her shoulder and expecting, for some reason, an emanation of apple scent; there was no odor at all, though. He also remembered trying to kiss the woman, but she just turned her face away without saying \u201cNo\u201d or something, so he only placed his arm across woman\u2019s chest and dozed off. When they woke up, they had some tea and later a dinner at the same table in the living room. He didn\u2019t remember what they ate, neither for lunch nor for dinner. When the night came, they went to the bedroom again. He fell asleep almost instantly. At the same moment he woke up in his bedroom in his grandmother\u2019s house. It was morning here; he stood up and went on with his day as usual. He didn\u2019t think about his dream, didn\u2019t remember it that day at all. He liked dreaming, every night he had interesting vivid dreams, like movies only better, because, unlike in the movies, you were a part of the action, and this particular dream was uneventful and rather boring. Nevertheless, the dream stayed in his memory for decades while he has completely forgotten other, much more electrifying, ones. Because when the evening came and he washed his face in the river and brushed his teeth and went to bed, he woke up in the same house with the striking woman, and it was another day there, and they spent it in the same way as the day before, and when he woke up next morning in the grandma\u2019s house, he didn\u2019t really know which life was true, this or that, for this life was what he was dreaming when he slept in the house with the woman, and that life was just a dream when he was sleeping here. He was confused. As a teenager, he wasn\u2019t to talk about it with his grandmother and he wasn\u2019t sure his pals would understand him either, so he kept this for himself. He was still disturbed when he woke up on the other side and tried to talk about it with the young woman, but she only shook her head. Either she didn\u2019t believe him, or she didn\u2019t know the answer, it was all the same to him and he let the subject drop. It went like this for five nights and every day, no matter on which side of the dream he was, he hated it more and more. On both sides, he tried not to fall asleep, to stay awake all night and avoid dreaming at all but at some point, he would nod off nevertheless and the loop would repeat itself. He was afraid it would continue like this forever and felt compelled to make a conscious choice which world he would call real or else he will be trapped in-between for good and in due course lose his mind. The life in grandmother\u2019s house was much more fascinating than the dull life with the woman. The woman was attractive, no doubt about it, but she never said anything remarkable, and they never did anything thrilling. They didn\u2019t crack jokes, didn\u2019t tease each other or fight, or even speak much for that matter, didn\u2019t giggle, didn\u2019t play games, didn\u2019t swim or fish in the river, didn\u2019t have dogs, didn\u2019t even cry out of pain or sadness. There was no pain in the house with the woman. He was only a teenager with a limited range of emotional experiences but intuitively he felt that, having to select, the side with intrinsic pain is more desirable to keep. So, he started looking for a way out of the house with the woman. On his fifth day there, he discovered a door in the back of the house that bore a sign Exit Only. He pulled the door and stepped outside. Next thing he knew he woke up in the middle of night in his bedroom at his grandmother\u2019s. It was totally dark and very quiet. He felt a bit sorrow about the woman in the house upon the river bend and guilty for leaving her there alone. Somehow, he knew that he will never return to that house or ever see the woman. Soon he fell asleep again and had one of his usual rich movie-like dreams where he was chased by a hundred feet tall spider in a colossal football stadium. For many years that followed this episode, he was thinking the dream was a premonition and the time will come when a house will be built at the river bend, and he will meet the woman from the dream and live in the house. But it never happened. He\u2019s never met a woman similar to the one in the dream. Subconsciously, he was looking for her all his life, trying to identify her features in the face of every woman he met on the street or elsewhere in public places. Apparently, she never made it to this side, never opened the door in the back of her house. He wondered how she was doing. The last time he checked, the place at the river bend was a potato field. But that was long ago, twenty or so years, before he left the country altogether.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Kaolin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">For Kristina G.,\na story about another Kristina.\nOnly the names are the same.\n\nWe imagine the people who lived at the turn of the last century as naive. This idea has been suggested in old films where the people walk around making strange movements, leap comically, and waddle about. It would be a mistake to laugh and imagine this was how they really behaved. In actuality the thoughts, feelings and experiences of those people were not lesser than our own. We should not forget this. We should not put such faith in silent films.\n\nThe exact dates of the events to be relayed shortly is no longer known. It seems they happened before the First World War. So it seems.\n\nBack then the homestead was already at least a hundred years old \u2013 if you were to guess by the trees growing so plentifully around it, encompassing the house in a huge shadow year-round, just like the shade of a forest. The maples, birches, oaks, and larches, nearly a meter in diameter, were all very old, the latter dropping their small cones all over, coating the ground and the roof. The individual who first settled in that place must have loved trees very much if they planted so many of them, breaking from the Lithuanian custom of allocating the largest plots to the gardens. However, they would not have lived to see the day when, awakening in the early morning, they could listen to the larch cones descending from on high, clattering on the roof and against the window panes. It would be several lifetimes before finally a woman was born and grew up who had the good fortune of being able to listen to the falling of the larch cones. Every morning, especially in the autumn when the mornings were cloudy and warm, upon waking she would also listen to a murder of crows cawing.\n\nAutumn. Amongst those tall shady trees in small cloudlets spread the smell of rotting leaves and mycelium, something akin to the sharp odors of a grocery shop. Also, those tall shady trees captured spider webs in small cloudlets, with draining from the morning dew, like small silver dirigibles or multicolored discarded bat skins. And those spider webs, collecting falling leaves and larch needles, actually were cast off skins. They were dead spider webs, dead because not a single one of them had housed a spider for a very long time. Autumn.\n\nKristina has already lived alone for several years in this hundred-year-old homestead. If anyone were asked to briefly, but accurately, describe her, one phrase would suffice: \"a woman in eternal mourning\". You should not understand this phrase to mean she was designated to mourn for all of eternity. No, she was granted only as much life to live as anyone else. But there have always been such women, pale faced and full of misunderstood and incomprehensible heartache, a kind of weariness (the face of a wearied person can be right in front of you but at the same time very far away from you), a weak radiance, like people whose faces lit up when dedicated to an unnecessary mission (and this fact was understood not only by others). Those women were always quiet, even their clothes were quiet, always dressed in black from head to toe, a bouquet of eternal asters in their hands rustling quietly, incomprehensibly. Time does not touch those women. Time comes and, right in front of them, takes someone here, another one there, carries them off. And those women remain to mourn. That is their mission, it seems. Only to mourn. To mourn. To mourn. Time is for other people. They watch its harsh passing with limpid fish eyes. The ritual of mourning is remarkably slow. It is not governed by the logic of common life. Sad, mourning, young women quite unconsciously become withered, mourning old women. Their bloodless skin grows waxen, their eyes even more deadened. Only the mourning clothes and the asters remain the same. A tribe of mourners. A joyless, passionless tribe.\n\nHaving lost all the people close to her, Kristina lived alone, and not only in the literal sense. All the people in her memory fused together and the faces and bodies of the living joined with those of the dead, becoming one indistinct silhouette. Unlike other people, she could no longer find a way out of this solitude; she couldn't speak to the people in her mind, she couldn\u2019t laugh alongside them at funny things, recite long, monotonous monologues of her own experiences. At night, she slept and dreamt nothing. She understood herself as merely a plant, a wilting flower. Only wilting.\n\nIf Kristina would have needed, like most people normally, to tell someone that something had happened after one event or another \u2013 \u201cit happened after a big storm\", for example \u2013 she would not have been able to do so. There was no storm raging around her. All her days were the same. And if there had been a storm it is unlikely she would have even noticed it or, moreover, remembered it. Not unless it was the only storm of her life. She didn't have any of the usual milestones by which she could orient time; you see, these milestones are always based on an event that came before, or one that came later. These events need to be committed to memory. Absolutely. And during this time Kristina's days were all the same.\n\nShe would wake up the same way. Upon opening her eyes, for the first few seconds of awaking all the things around her appeared remarkably large, enormous. Then they would retreat, go back to their actual size. All of this happened in complete silence. Afterwards, for maybe a half-hour, Kristina would lie with her eyes wide open, her hopeless attempts at remembering who and where she was reverberating on her face. Every morning she was surprised by the cawing of crows and then afterwards the short, rhythmic sound, \"tap, tap, tap\" (the falling of the larch cones). Slowly, slowly she would comprehend that she is Kristina. She would remember the hundred-year-old homestead, the huge trees, the spider webs, and her mourning \u2013 her entire essence. Those few minutes were the only time in the whole day when she smiled. A smile full of wonder.\n\nOn this particular day, her awakening efforts were disrupted by the fact that in the duskiness of the room she saw the outline of a person's body in the doorway. On all the other mornings there was nothing there. This morning, there stood a man striking a strange Watusi tribe warrior pose, and behind him, through the trees, the edge of the distant rising sun. Kristina could not figure out why this man was standing there, in the doorway. He should not be standing there. And she smiled, and her face likely appeared full of amazement because the visitor also began to smile. Finally coming to her senses Kristina shivered and her smile disappeared just like any other morning, and the door gently closed and the person disappeared.\n\nAt this point it's may be useful to skip ahead.\n\nAt the hour when the narrow afternoon rays of sun penetrate through the tree branches, the trunks, and through the window, striking the wall of the back room, they illuminate a photograph in a narrow carved frame. A wedding photograph, somewhat yellowed. Depicting a man and a woman. The man dressed in a black jacket, a white shirt, with a playful bowtie under his chin. The woman in white wedding garb. The man stands a bit to the side, his head bowed a little, and gazes at the woman with unspeakable longing. He's strong, that man, and his dried-out face looks determined, the narrow wrinkles around his eyes bearing witness to his love of laughing; even when photographed on his wedding day he cannot manage to neatly comb his hair. The kind of man who'd visit a woman in her dreams, stand before her with his hand outstretched, saying: \"Come, let's go!\" and that woman, trembling like a newspaper in an old man's hand, reaches out her hand and then awakens, walks around stunned for the whole day, insisting it's due to the sun or the change of weather, and then lying down in the evening is unkind to her husband \u2013 so ordinary and tired-out \u2013 believing that she will dream another dream, but all in vain. This is the kind of man who is in the photograph looking at the woman in her wedding garb. The woman's face is oval, somewhat flustered, her lips just barely smiling, her skin pale, possessing the only defect which, sadly, disfigures any beauty. She was\u2026 pockmarked. And the unknown photographer could not conceal this. The sun's rays even highlighted the woman's imperfections. It was a picture of Kristina and her husband Peter. What connected those two people? Why did this man, so nearly perfect, gaze at his bride with such desire? Why?\n\nThere are other photographs on the wall as well. Examining them you'll see the man's longing was not fleeting. Two photographs are very important. In one, the man and woman hold a newborn, swaddled in so much cloth you cannot see the child at all. The man is looking at both the mother and the baby with a happy smile. The joy in his face outweighs all other emotions, and in this photograph he appears almost foolish. Because when a person is so captivated by someone they forget, they look like they are sleeping: the lower lip droops, the mouth opens a little, a barely discernible smile appears, and the eyes get an expression as though the person is not there at all. This infatuation, as you can see from the other photographs, does not disappear in the ensuing twenty years. A picture of an even more gaunt and grey-haired man surrounded by children of all ages gazes longingly at an ugly, aged woman \u2013 his wife.\n\nAlright, time to come back to the present.\n\nAll day long, Kristina wondered, was he or was he not an apparition? The visitor's silhouette had deeply etched itself in her consciousness. She was already inclined to believe that thieves had come in the night, but after looking over everything carefully she realized she was not missing anything, and since the man's figure in the morning light had not been very clear, she busied herself ascribing him to those other faceless silhouettes held in her memory. What difference did it make whom she mourned? And even if he was only a ghost, arising from the depths of her own unconscious, that day was stuck in her memory. And in it was born the weak shadow of a feeling that she had never before experienced. Not fully understanding, she made peace with the memory, as though something she experienced in a dream could happen in real life. Maybe not to her, but to someone. And that was new, like a small azure flower in the bottomless grey of indifference. Kristina didn't wonder if she wanted any of this to be real or not. This thought didn't even cross her mind. She only felt something feminine inside herself. However, the shade of the larch and conker tree compelled her unwittingly to forget everything.\n\nBut Kristina was mistaken. The man she thought she'd dreamt up was alive and real. He was an ordinary hobo with green eyes, wandering the roads and fields without any aims in life. That morning he had come to the homestead encircled in trees believing that an early-waking housewife would offer him a cup of milk.\n\nLooking around and not seeing a living soul he opened the door.\n\nNow, as he waded away from the homestead through the wet autumn meadow, Peter remembered the vision he had seen and was unable to calm the gentle tremor he felt in his body, as though invisible fingers were worrying a row of rosary beads. Opening the door, he had seen a wide bed covered in white linens, and in those linens a slender woman whose face, against the background of her dark hair, shone with a clear, liquid light melting into the half-light of the room. The woman had looked right at him and smiled, just barely parting her lips. Peter had never seen anything more beautiful or sacred in his life. He was terrified by that beauty. He hastily closed the door and ran away, secretly awaiting the shot in his back as he didn't believe there could be no one there other than her. Those kinds of women were never alone. That is what he thought.\n\nNot paying any attention to where he was going, he reached the next farm where he joined a collective group digging potatoes. That night, he lay down in the hay with the other helpers who had come from afar, and he asked if any of them had seen the homestead in the trees and if anyone knew who the woman was that lived there and who her husband was. The man lying closest to him raised up on an elbow and suspiciously inquired:\n\n\"Tell me, brother, are you planning to rob the place?\"\n\n \"No,\" Peter answered, surprised.\n\nThose men could not understand how anyone without bad intentions could be interested in Kristina. Peter explained everything but they did not believe him and it was only afterwards that it came to mind to some of them that everything was to be blamed on the half-light, which must have prevented Peter from seeing clearly. That must be it, they reasoned, and ridiculed Peter and advised him to go and see her in the daylight. But it made no difference, Peter would have gone back no matter what to have a glimpse of that woman one more time, even from a distance. He would have loitered around that homestead like a dog chased out of its home.\n\nKristina saw him standing in the grass, about twenty paces away. She also stopped and watched how he leaned against a tree. She saw the man look away and cover his face with his hands. She understood then that she was not dreaming, and for the first time in her life thought about her appearance, about her face. She remembered she had such an ugly one, so ugly that the man had not been able to bear looking at her. Why did he come back here? She turned around and quickly strode away.\n\nWhen, several hours later, she needed to go back to that same place, the man was still there. He sat under a tree and looked at her without averting his gaze. Then he stood up and shyly came closer. Kristina paused. What was he after?\n\n \"Maybe you need some help with something?\" he asked, \"Maybe I can chop some firewood or something?\"\n\n\"No,\" Kristina answered, \"No, I don't' need anything.\" The man's face and eyes implored her quietly.\n\n\"Maybe you want some milk to drink,\" she offered. \"Come inside, I'll think about your offer.\"\n\nHe's hungry, she thought. He's hungry, that's why he came.\n\nPeter did not dare raise his eyes while he ate. It was the same miraculous woman. It wasn\u2019t a trick.\n\n\"For God\u2019s sake,\" said Peter quietly, \"I'm going to be in the area for a while, I\u2019ll come back in a day or so. Maybe you'll find me a task to do?\"\n\nHe could not sit any longer. He carefully set the cup on the table and hurried outside. Kristina watched as he grew distant and then disappeared beyond the trees. Then, maybe for the first time in her life, she cried while feeling sorry for herself and not someone else. She heard how her tears splattered against the feather pillow and felt the waves of heartbreak in her chest, one breaking after the other over many small dams. Inside her there waited a woman no one had yet loved. She just needed a man to look at her once.\n\nBut Kristina was mistaken. She was loved. When Peter came back the next day he was determined to overcome, even just for a short while, his fettering shyness. He did not believe this woman could love him, but in a corner of his heart, before leaving this land forever, he wanted her to have a memory of him even just a little bit different from everyone else.\n\nSitting down on the door-step he gave Kristina a penetrating look and began telling her about his wanderings. It was hard to describe what Kristina felt in that moment. The fact was that no one had ever spoken to her this way. Nobody said anything just to her. How much more does a woman need to awaken? Everything was new and unexpected. Slowly in her a shyness began to spread, blooming like the queen of the night.\n\nPeter saw the change but he didn't understand what it meant. He told her about the time that he had once been a member of a sect of dancing brothers, somewhere in the Volga region.\n\n\"Did you know that they believe a person dancing comes closer to God, and this is why they dance. It's their prayer.\"\n\nAnd then he rose from the doorway and showed her how they danced. Kristina watched him spell bounded, she watched as he danced and danced, his face beaming. She understood that his soul had lifted from the ground and was straining higher and higher but what she didn't understand was that in that moment she was what Peter was reaching for. His soul was straining towards her. She watched him, bewitched: his strained face, his dancing figure. He kept dancing, and no longer knowing what was happening, he came close to her and put his hands on her shoulders. Then he felt a strange thing, it was as though someone was pulling on his suspenders with all their might. He knew he was not wearing suspenders, but something pulled him backwards and he had to overcome the force, not understanding how he kept moving forward. He only saw the woman's eyes, transfixed on him, and he raised his hands and then lowered them again, feeling her shoulders under his palms.\n\nSuddenly, he disappeared from Kristina's view. Everything disappeared. She felt as if she were sinking into a thick, white nebula. A white quagmire was pulling her deep inside. A white silt of love. She didn't understand it but she felt that if it were fired it would turn into porcelain. White kaolin clay.\n\nBut why? What happened to that man that he remained in that homestead amongst the larches forever? Why was it that even twenty years later bottomless desire still shone in his eyes and he still felt that pull?\n\nThe fault really does lie in the half-light. Only in such light could he see the woman the way he saw her his whole life. For you see, that man always saw things the way they appeared to him the very first time.\n\nVilnius Review, Translated by Medein\u0117 Tribinevi\u010dius\nhttps:\/\/vilniusreview.com\/fiction\/447-saulius-tomas-kondrotas\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mr. Mar\u017eenovi\u010dius<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Grandfather was a stout man with large bulging eyes, an ever-red face and brown whiskers that were always poking into his mouth. He walked like a knight, legs bowed wide, with his hands shoved in his pockets, which always jingled full of things. Grandmother would warn him not to get caught hiding any coins from her. She forbade him, saying that he could ask for a bottle of beer or a glass of wine from her if he wanted one, that it was impossible for her to keep a home when anyone living there was holding money she didn't know anything about.\n\n\"Show me,\" she'd say. \"Turn out your pockets.\"\n\nBecause of his bulging eyes one would easily think that Grandfather always looked surprised, and this was why, even though he'd shake his head and tell her he didn't have any coins, Grandmother would not believe him. She'd make him hold his hands out to the sides and would empty out his pockets herself. Having unpacked everything onto the table, she'd look through it all. There would be buttons, nails, little screws, and all sorts of other objects, even sometimes a shard of colored glass.\n\nGrandmother would carefully examine all the things but never found what she was looking for. Grandfather would look on guiltily and then would watch as all those little objects were angrily swept into the rubbish bin. And then, not even a day later, he'd be walking around jingling again. Eventually, Grandmother forbade him from keeping his hands in his pockets and he walked around waving them about, but the minute he detoured into the garden or somewhere else a bit further away from home, his hands would find their way back into his pockets once again.\n\nThey called Grandfather Mr. Mar\u017eenovi\u010dius because he was born in Poland. Of course if he'd lived in a city where, according to him, no one kept a garden and everyone travelled by tram he'd have been simply called Mar\u017eenovi\u010dius. But because he was the only resident of Rasnalis born in Poland they called him \"Mr.\"\n\nGrandfather was born in 1902 in Sulechow, western Poland. When the Germans occupied Sulechow in 1939 he was devastated, but he was already grieving this loss in 1920.\n\nGrandfather spent the first three or four years of his life like all small children. He ate, he napped in the afternoons, he broke his toys, he whined and laughed, he learned how to say \u201cmama\u201d, \u201cpapa\u201d, \u201ctable\u201d, \u201cnose\u201d, and when he was left alone in the dark he was terrified, afraid to make a peep, and wet the bed. When he got a little older he played with the other kids in the street and down by the river, but by the time children were required to start attending school he had become increasingly quiet and sullen. His parents worried about what was happening to him, but that did little good. It became clear he was losing his memory. Not all of it, but some of it. For example, he could remember the first seven years of his childhood brilliantly, but when his parents wanted him to learn music they were disappointed because he'd immediately forget everything he'd been taught. He could do arithmetic just fine, but would always forget other random things, like that he was supposed to go down to the river to swim or to visit the sausage dog show. It was as though someone encouraged him to only remember what was absolutely necessary and to completely forget the things that, under duress, it was possible to live without. But as you know, the latter is what makes the world go round. His parents, most likely out of curiosity, would assign him many tasks and he'd do all of them very well, but he seemed to forget the other joys or curiosities of life completely, without any chance of remembering them.\n\nOne time when my grandfather was twelve years old he was working at the workbench (at that time his parents had decided to teach him a trade), and out of the blue he regained part of his lost memory. Or maybe all of it. At first it was uncomfortable because all the images that appeared were foreign to him. Grandfather thought the visions, which had come over him as he was using a plane on a length of board, were just a reverie. But in fact they were the truest of his memories.\n\nGrandfather remembered a scene when the master carpenter who was teaching him had stopped by the workshop to examine his work. The master wanted to light his pipe but his hand trembled and he singed his whiskers. To Grandfather Andreas, standing at the workbench, this seemed to be happening at that very moment. Then several minutes later the master came into the workshop and leaned against a pile of boxes by the wall; he lit a match, wanting to light his pipe. His hand trembled and the master singed one side of his whiskers. Grandfather became scared and started to cry. And no one could understand why the boy, who was always so quiet, was crying for no reason.\n\nThese kinds of things began to happen more often. Grandfather would \u201cremember\u201d events that were going to happen five or more years in the future. The further into the future the event, the more faded the \u201cmemories\u201d were. But he knew all the details of events that would happen the next day or in a week's time. For example, it was clear to him that he was going to be married on a bright day in August 1932, but what was less clear was who his wife was and where the two of them would live. He knew that when he turned twenty he would travel to Rasnalis, to Lithuania, and that his wife would be from that place. But at the same time he could also accurately predict that in a few seconds he will cut his finger or have a drink of water. This caused a lot of misunderstandings, so Grandfather did not dare to say anything to anyone. Truth be told, sometimes his mother could not understand how he knew something before she did. This is how it was the day when Andreas began to weep and immediately someone arrived with the news that his father had suddenly died. But his mother calmed herself, attributing it to intuition.\n\nBut Grandfather could only \u201cremember\u201d up until around the year 1952. The closer it got to that year, the more faded the memories became and Grandfather didn't know what was going to happen afterwards. He couldn't \"remember\" anything. So he decided that was when he was going to die.\n\nHe told this to his wife Agnes. She didn't believe him. It was then that he explained to her where he got all the news from, but she insisted he was lying. Though she did sense something.\n\nAbout a year before his imagined death, Grandfather's memory began to fade and Grandmother finally believed his stories. She bought Grandfather a black suit and ordered him a casket. All the villagers gaped, wondering why she was doing this\u2014the man was still alive. Grandmother didn\u2019t want to talk about it and Grandfather had gone completely silent.\n\n\u201cMr. Mar\u017eenkovski, are you feeling unwell?\u201d asked the pharmacist one day when he was passing by. \u201cWhy have you not seen the doctor? Come see me sometime.\u201d\n\nBut Grandfather had forgotten that he knew the pharmacist and only started at him foolishly with his bulging eyes.\n\n\u201cMr. Mar\u017eenovi\u010dius!\u201d The pharmacist winced when he heard the sound of Grandmother's cold voice behind him and quickly left.\n\nIn the fall of 1951 all Grandfather did was sit on a bench by the house and stare at one spot. He could longer even remember who he was.\n\nOne day Grandmother was feeding the chickens and heard a strange sound from inside. It was as though someone had pulled a cork from a bottle. She spread the last crumbs and hurried inside. Later, Grandmother would say that she was as amazed as when, at the turn of the century, she saw her first airplane droning above the trees. Grandfather was sitting on the bed drinking from the neck of a bottle of vodka. One bottle was already empty. Having finished drinking, Grandfather looked at his wife, turned his back and fell asleep. He slept until he remembered every single tiny detail of all his fifty years and Grandmother thought that now he'd be like a normal person.\n\nBut Grandfather explained:\n\n\"No, my dear, now I have to experience everything I've forgotten for so long.\"\n\nAnd if only he'd started from adolescence, sighed Grandmother Agnes. But of course not. You see that youthful force he had not used earlier had lain dormant inside and now governed him. Sometimes, in the evenings, Grandfather would tell his wife that he felt the weight of his years, but he could not escape his memories. He remembered his childhood and all the years past with more clarity than the present and this was why he was powerless to behave in a way suitable to a man of his years.\n\nGrandfather, along with my future mother and other children, would spend long afternoons catching butterflies and flying kites. Given the choice he'd have done no work at all, but Grandmother forced him to. Later, according to Grandmother, he even experienced something like first love. Grandfather denied it but Grandmother Agnes told us that he used to blush like a cherry when greeting one particular twelve-year-old girl. Mother would absolutely refuse to talk about this with us but we heard that one day Grandfather was escorted home from an outing where he was found dancing with strong young girls while someone played the harmonica. At that time he was already over fifty. And when my brother and I grew up a little we accidentally found out that Grandfather was caught in the hay with a twenty-year-old woman. For a long time he tried to justify it, but everyone who saw them agreed that he was without his braces.\n\nStill, Mr. Mar\u017eenovi\u010dius was a man of strong nerves because later on he fell in love with his own wife again and even regretted that he could not marry her a second time. And now already for many years the casket, purchased way back when, has been used to water the animals.\n\nVilnius Review, Translated by Medein\u0117 Tribinevi\u010dius\nhttps:\/\/vilniusreview.com\/fiction\/447-saulius-tomas-kondrotas\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Clan of the Centaur<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Translated by Tadas Klimas\/Published in Lituanus magazine Volume 34, No. 2 Summer 1988\n\nSomething lies within us that causes us to draw in and creep about like a thief in the darkness of the night, or like a man who, dizzy with wine, greatly offends his master and then apprehensively awaits the morning to see how it all will end. From whence has it come? This sentiment is not characteristic solely of me. I remember how Kukovaitis, my father, would suddenly start awake from his seemingly peaceful noontime siesta and would dart his gaze about as if looking for some foe lying in ambush. I did not know why he used to do this. I thought perhaps he was really concerned for his life. But only when I reached a mature age did I realize the enemy forcing us to twitch awake and stare about resides within our very selves. But even further, I have now seen several times how my young son, \u0160ventaragis, while playing, or practicing archery, or deep in thought, will suddenly start. His pupils will narrow and his muscles will tighten like those of a lynx before a leap. All of us \u2014 including my father, and myself, and \u0160ventaragis, are healthy and strong men, who should grab life by the horns and throw it on its side, who should make life kneel to us, who should make of life a useful tool to achieve our purposes with. But we have a certain indolence, a certain indecision of action and thought that makes us resemble a hand with its fingers outspread, through which life pours like sundried sand.\nInstead of ourselves ruling life, we allow ourselves to be ruled by it. We all of the time are waiting for something. However, judging from the way we act during this waiting, this something must be \u2014 disaster.\nIt seems to me someone of our family once made a mistake, and the results of this mistake have continued to persecute us. I even believe I know what kind of error it was. In a word, it seems to me the cause of our weakness must be searched for in the past.\nVar\u0161as told me the tale.\nVar\u0161as lay half sitting on bear hides amongst a multitude of figures of men and animals carved from elm and juniper wood and smeared with grease mixed with ash. Many who have seen these figurines believe them to be tiny idols which he reveres and to which he prays silently when alone. But Var\u0161as has explained to me that these are representations of those men and beasts whose lives he has taken over the course of his own unusually long existence. Still, I believe Var\u0161as only told half the truth: his own life, in this way incarnating itself in so many different representations, has through the course of time become itself a holy thing to him. I think Var\u0161as has deified his own life to such an extent that his real life appears to him not to be his own, but that of everyone. Listening on windy nights to the sounds of the forest, earth, air, and houses, Var\u0161as imagines he has lived so long only because the lives of those he has killed have devolved to him.\nIt may be I am wrong, and the wooden figures are merely carved pieces of wood Var\u0161as keeps to decorate his room, like a former hunter who decorates his home with the horns of elk and bison he has shot.\n\u201cTell me, Var\u0161as,\u201d I say to him, \u201cWhy have you decorated your room with those you have destroyed and not with those you have created?\u201d\nHis white lips part just the thinnest amount into a smile. The ends of his fingers, thin with age, tremble.\n\u201cYou\u2019ll find out when you reach my age, Utenis.\u201d\nVar\u0161as\u2019 voice is gentle and pleasant, and, after he speaks, the air in the room vibrates for a time. Var\u0161as is dodging the question. But his answer is not really important to me.\nWhat is paramount is Var\u0161as understands life. That is what I want to ask him about.\nVar\u0161as is my servant who does not serve. No, that is not quite correct. He performs no chores and brings me no flagons of water to drink. He does not prepare my bed and does not bring to it Princess Visgal\u0117. He is too old for these things. But he serves us in other ways. Along the difficult road to awareness Var\u0161as is our sole support. Var\u0161as extends us a hand when we become tangled up in our thoughts, when we no longer know what to do, when we cannot think of how to punish the guilty, when, in sum, we want to know who, indeed, it is we are.\nVar\u0161as knows how to write letters. He served my father Kukovaitis. While yet a boy he served my grandfather \u017divinbudas. He has to know the answers to many questions that leave me no peace. He who knows how to write letters knows such secrets as people carry to their graves without having disclosed them to a living soul. There is no reason Var\u0161as should hide anything from me.\nHe takes a strip of dried venison and begins to suck upon it, at the same time chewing it with his pale, soft gums. A small pile of dried meat lies before him on the table. Sucking on the meat, Var\u0161as\u2019 eyes darken with pleasure, but their gaze is still riveted on me. It seems Var\u0161as\u2019 glance holds it against me, that I am not as old.\nThe door is wide open. Outside the sun shines and wind blows. The north wind makes the trees dance and shake along with the bushes, the grass, and the few white clouds in the sky. The pure light of the sun is indifferent towards the earth. It is cold. I wrap myself tighter in my cloak, thinking of how best to explain to Var\u0161as what it is I would like from him. Here, in the half-light Var\u0161as\u2019 body seems light and transparent. At any moment Var\u0161as could melt away like ice.\n\u201cVar\u0161as,\u201d I say, \u201cI want you to explain something to me.\u201d\nHe says nothing, merely gazing at the raging wind outside and at the swallows shooting across the fields. I could swear he knows the question I have come to ask him.\n\u201cHow is it, Var\u0161as, that we, living almost at the very center of our country, always feel as if we were at the ends of the earth? As if something were guarding us from the whole world, just like a gardener guards his vegetables.\u201d\nVar\u0161as shakes his head, not answering.\n\u201cNo, Var\u0161as,\u201d I say, \u201cYou know the answer. I command you. Give us the answer we are waiting for.\u201d\n\u201cYou can order me or not, just as you please. At my age that signifies nothing.\u201d\n\u201cAnswer me, Var\u0161as.\u201d My tone suddenly loses its sharpness.\nVar\u0161as shakes his head, not answering.\n\u201cNo, Var\u0161as,\u201d I say, \u201cYou know the answer. I command you. Give us the answer we are waiting for.\u201d\n\u201cYou can order me or not, just as you please. At my age that signifies nothing.\u201d\n\u201cAnswer me, Var\u0161as.\u201d My tone suddenly loses its sharpness.\n\u201cPeople are happy when they are able to live quietly and without worry. It would be hard to imagine a life more peaceful than yours and your son\u2019s and your intimates\u2019. You are fortunate. The whole world of people boils and bubbles like a kettle of fat meat. It brims with danger, for people are predatory. You have no fear of such dangers, for no one has an eye to your domains or your life.\u201d\n\u201cVar\u0161as, whatever I do, I always feel eyes fixed on me. I turn around swiftly, as unexpectedly as possible, but I see no one watching me. But, even so, there is someone watching me. They watched my father like that, and they are watching \u0160ventaragis. We are all awaiting an attack. What is going on, Var\u0161as? You know the answer.\u201d\n\u201cI know,\u201d quietly says Var\u0161as. \u201cI know.\u201d\nA swallow flies into the room, circles around our heads, squawks, and flies outside again. There are many of those birds in this area, but right now I am excited and the swallow\u2019s flight into the room seems to me to be a sign with which to shut Var\u0161as\u2019 mouth, to stop him from saying anything. A half sigh, half moan forces itself from me. My emotions are stretched to the limit. But Var\u0161as does not see any of that. Now he, having fixed his eyes on one point, is searching for words with which to begin to speak.\nSo, like I say, Var\u0161as told me the tale.\n\u201cThe Centaur is to blame for everything,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd Ju\u010das, Jeremferden\u2019s servant. That was long ago.\u201d\nVar\u0161as\u2019 voice waxes stronger and then weaker, as if he were singing a long, slow hymn.\n\u201cBut even longer ago, Mandazig\u2019s son Attila appeared. He, who, for his cruel nature, was named the Scourge of God. He murdered his three brothers \u2014 Achiar, Rocha, and Bledon \u2014 and the princess of a far land with eleven thousands of her handmaids who had sinned against no one. He liked thick, flowing blood. He enjoyed the color red, and his nostrils trembled like a wolf\u2019s at the pungent scent of warm blood. Having murdered his brothers, Attila reigned by himself in Hungary. With five hundred men of his clan, also thirsty for blood, he went, to Italy, and everything living ran from him to hide in the cracks of the earth. Marcus Antonius Palemon, the son of the king of Pontus, became afraid of the word spreading about Attila and, with four clans of patricians, took flight in ships. After many long wanderings in oceans and seas, they reached the river Nemunas and sailed upstream, looking for a place where they could stop and live without fear, for they were ever haunted with a vision of Attila breathing down their necks. Sailing up the Nemunas, they came to the river Dubysa, turning up which they found high hills on either side, and, beyond those hills, wide meadows and luxuriant oak forests, full of game \u2014 bison, aurochs, elk, stag, deer, lynx, marten, fox, squirrel, ermine, and all sorts of others while the river teemed with unusual fish, and not only those which bred locally, but also many which came in from the sea, as the mouth of the Nemunas was not far.\nNear these rivers, the Nemunas and the Dubysa, and near the sea, they settled and multiplied. They called that land \u017demaitija.\nThe four clans of patricians who arrived here together were these: the totems of the Centaur, the Pillars, the Bear, and the Rose. Their leaders were Dausprung, Prospero Cezarine, Julian, and Hector. Palemon had three sons of whom only one, K\u016bnas, had descendants: Kernius and Gimbutas. These also had a son apiece. To Kernius was born \u017divinbudas, and to Gimbutas, Mantvila. And when \u017divinbudas had as many years as now does your son \u0160ventaragis, Prince Kernius took me from Bis\u0117nai at the age of eleven to serve him and his son \u017divinbudas.\n\u201cNo, Var\u0161as,\u201d I say to him, \u201cMy grandfather\u2019s name was not Kernius. You yourself said the Centaurs descended from Dausprung. You made a mistake, Var\u0161as. That was so long ago.\u201d\n\u201cAttend me softly, prince. I have not erred. Your grandfather in truth was the brother of Mantvila, Gimbutas son. And you would to this day be the prince of the Palemons, if not for Ju\u010das, may he not be reborn to a new life.\u201d\nVar\u0161as becomes silent, gathering his thoughts about the most important things, while I sit completely still and feel my face growing warm.\n\u201cJu\u010das was first seen by Sudvajus, Horsemaster for Prince Kernius, as Ju\u010das, having swum the river, waded out from it and dried his clothes on the sun heated sand of the riverfront. Ju\u010das was a massive man. About thirty five years of age, strong as a beast and with eyes of an indescribable color, eyes which pierced everything to and through. If of four jugs only one held milk, Ju\u010das would reach right for that one, without even having lifted the cover to see what was inside. Ju\u010das had one tremendous singularity: on his whole massive body, there was not a single hair. Not on his head, nor on his neck, nor under his arms, nor below his belly, like other men. He did not even have eyebrows, and his eyelids were without lashes. Ju\u010das\u2019 sun reddened skull was just exactly like the egg of a thrush. This all appeared very unusual, and we all would have wondered greatly at it, but Ju\u010das bore himself as if not we should wonder at him, but that instead Ju\u010das should wonder more at us. I would not, however, say that Ju\u010das was haughty. For he could have presented himself as being a free man, and no one would have doubted it. But all the same he introduced himself as being a servant.\n\u201cI am Ju\u010das, the servant of Jeremferdenas.\u201d Such were his first words, spoken to the prince. \u201cJeremferdenas sends his greetings.\u201d\nThe prince and his intimates did not know what to say in answer. No one had ever heard of Jeremferdenas.\n\u201cWhat do you want of us, Ju\u010das? Who is Jeremferdenas?\u201d\n\u201cMy lord Jeremferdenas did not charge me to speak of him. He commanded me to bring you news that will sadden you. But Jeremferdenas does not wish you ill. Send for your brother, prince, and then I will impart to you what I have been charged with. And now let them show me where I can rest. For forty days and nights I have marched without sleep. I am fatigued.\u201d\nJu\u010das\u2019 speech had been simple, without adornment, but impressive nonetheless. Immediately upon laying down on his bedding, Ju\u010das fell asleep and did not rise until Prince Gimbutas rode in from Kaunas and the steel shod hooves of his horse sounded in the courtyard. Ju\u010das had slept for four full days, not waking to eat, nor even having moved. I had brought food to him several times, but had always found him in the same position. It was also astonishing that Ju\u010das slept with eyes wide open. When I would walk about in his room, the pupils of Ju\u010das\u2019 eyes would follow my movements. But he himself truly slept. His breathing was regular, his body relaxed, the tip of his tongue hung out of his mouth, and from the corner of his mouth a trickle of saliva had run and dried.\nHaving come to the guest hall, Ju\u010das bowed to both the princes and sat before them. We all waited for what he would say.\n\u201cJeremferdenas sends his greetings to the house of Palemon,\u201d Ju\u010das began, \u201cAnd informs you, through his servant Ju\u010das, that the House of Palemon is fated to perish in its twelfth generation.\u201d\nI saw Prince Gimbutas\u2019 face grow pale and his hand squeeze the handle of his dagger, but Ju\u010das did not even flinch.\n\u201cThe men of the House of Palemon will kill each other or will simply pass away without heirs. Jeremferdenas, for whom there are no secrets in this land, has seen how the last of the Palemons dies with a flagon of wine in his hand. This my master has commanded me to say to you.\u201d\nJu\u010das became silent, and all those who were there looked from one to the other in great confusion, angry or afraid. The first to recover from his astonishment was Prince Gimbutas.\n\u201cHe is a trickster. Bind him.\u201d\nBut Prince Kernius stopped the servants.\n\u201cWhat house will arise after us?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cThe Clan of the Centaur,\u201d without cavil answered Ju\u010das.\n\u201cAnd after them?\u201d\n\u201cI do not know,\u201d said Ju\u010das. \u201cBut Jeremferdenas certainly knows.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is this Jeremferdenas?\u201d growled Prince Gimbutas. \u201cShow me his dominions. I will kill him.\u201d\n\u201cJeremferdenas cannot be killed,\u201d calmly replied Ju\u010das. It seemed he was immune to all passion, so well was he controlled. \u201cYou should not concern yourselves with him. At this time you should look to yourselves.\u201d\n\u201cIf what you say is true, it hardly seems there is anything to be done,\u201d remarked Prince Kernius.\n\u201cBut yet there is,\u201d answered Ju\u010das. \u201cOne branch of your clan must become Centaur.\u201d\nHis words could have had just one meaning. In the region of Ukmerg\u0117 there lived the sole descendant of Dausprungas. He would be condemned the moment one of the two princes sitting in the hall would agree to take the totem of the Centaur for his own.\nFor some time, silence reigned in the hall. Again, Gimbutas was the first to interrupt it.\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe a single word this beardless trickster has said.\u201d\nHe jumped up and stomped the ground from anger.\n\u201cOur house is eternal. No one can doubt that without fearing for their lives. I will slay the Centaur, and he will no longer threaten us, the Palemons, neither now, nor ever in the future. This l, Gimbutas, do swear.\u201d\n\u201cAfter the Palemons will come the Centaur,\u201d repeated Ju\u010das, the servant of Jeremferdenas.\nPrince Kernius kept his gaze fixed on Ju\u010das\u2019 eyes. Prince Gimbutas trembled when he heard his brother say:\n\u201cI agree. Yes, I believe you, foreigner. My son \u017divinbudas will become the Centaur.\u201d\nPrince Gimbutas, clenching his fists, exited the hall with his escort. We soon heard them riding away.\n\u201cFrom now you will have simply to wait,\u201d said Ju\u010das. \u201cYou will do nothing more as you watch how, one after the other, your relatives will die. Your lives will be long and slow, but your relations\u2019 lives will be short, fiery, and without peace. Every step they take will bring them closer to the abyss, and every step of your own will bring you closer to that greatness which is fated for you.\u201d\n\u201cI agree,\u201d breathlessly repeated Kernius.\n\u201cBut this is not all,\u201d Ju\u010das said, rising and approaching Kernius to bend and whisper at his ear, so softly we could barely hear him. \u201cThis is not yet all. For the lives and honor of your clan you will have to pay.\u201d\nPrince Kernius started, then leaned back and ran his gaze over Ju\u010das from head to foot.\n\u201cNo, not to me,\u201d Ju\u010das almost smiled. \u201cNeither Jeremferdenas or I need anything from you, you need have no dread of that. But, you realize, this is a matter of cheating the gods.\nYou are deceiving them, not wanting to accept the fate which has been ascribed to you from there,\u201d he said, pointing up above. \u201cThat is a transgression, and transgressors are punished, are they not?\u201d\n\u201cWhat type of punishment can we expect? Has Jeremferdenas not seen this?\u201d\n\u201cNo, he does not know this. But I myself greatly dislike the Centaur. Half man, half animal.\u201d\n\u201cBut that is just a totem,\u201d weakly answered the prince.\n\u201cTrue,\u201d confirmed Ju\u010das. \u201cBut so much is clear: this is the only way the House of Palemon can survive.\u201d\n\u201cBut perhaps \u2026\u201d Now the prince was beginning to feel uncertain. \u201cWill we not be forced to pay too high a price for this?\u201d he said, turning to us, as if seeking our support.\n\u201cFather,\u201d said \u017divinbudas. \u201cI assent to being the Centaur.\u201d Ju\u010das came to his full height and, for the first time during the days he spent with us, he laughed, showing strong, white teeth. Without uttering a further word, he departed from the hall. After four or five days he, still without uttering a word, disappeared, never to be seen again.\nVar\u0161as became silent and fixed his gaze upon something behind me. I turned around. In the doorway stood \u0160ventaragis, my son. His face showed he had heard Var\u0161as\u2019 tale. In the beginning anger overcame me and I was about to throw something at him. But Var\u0161as restrained me with a glance. Well, then, all to the better. Sooner or later \u0160ventaragis would have to learn everything. He undoubtedly would eventually mature to those questions, just as I had.\n\u201cHow much longer do we have to wait, Var\u0161as?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cNot long, lord,\u201d answered Var\u0161as. \u201cYou are the fourth generation after Prince Kernius. But from Gimbutas there have been already nine. Like Ju\u010das said, they hurry to live and to die. Mantvila, Gimbutas\u2019 son, begot two sons: Vykintas and Erdvila. Vykintas died without heirs. Erdvila begot Mingaila. Mingaila begot two sons: Skirmantas and Ginvilas. Ginvilas begot Borisas, Borisas \u2014 Rogvolodas, Rogvolodas \u2014 Gl?bas, who died without heirs. Skirmantas begot Prisimantas, Liubartas, and Treniota. The first two died without progeny. Treniota begot Algimantas, Algimantas \u2014 his son Ringaudas. Ringaudas begot two sons: Mindaugas and Dausprungas. The latter begot Tautvilas, who died having left no one. Mindaugas begot Vai\u0161vilkas, Repeikis, Girstutis, and Ruklys. Of those four only Vai\u0161vilkas remains, the ruler of Lithuania. He has no sons, no authority among the princes and nobility, has no virtue, and is completely given up to drunkenness. After him it is \u0160ventaragis, your turn, if Ju\u010das told the truth.\u201d\n\u201cLeave us now, \u0160ventaragis,\u201d I said, and he left looking so serious and thoughtful that it touched my heart.\n\u201cAre you happy with what you have learned?\u201d asked Var\u0161as when we were alone.\n\u201cI can say this, Var\u0161as. I do not understand why that feeling of waiting which afflicts me is so much like a feeling of awaiting disaster. Should it not be the reverse?\u201d\n\u201cYou have become used to waiting without knowing for what. A person\u2019s life is arranged similarly to the four seasons. Joy\u2019s analog would be summer. The remaining seasons are cold, foul, wet, and grim. So much for man\u2019s dismal emotions,\u201d replied Var\u0161as, and I perceived he knew nothing more and could be of no further help to me.\nAgain, he took a piece of dried meat and began to gum it. The face of old age is repulsive, I reflected, as I left him and strode back into the day, which was brimful of sun and cold wind. Nearly four months of the usual waiting had passed since that day until that happened, which, it appears, had to happen, and which has changed my view of the world and of the nature of man in its essence. Not even Var\u0161as could give me any advice. He just sat, all enwrapped in ermine furs, looking with watery eyes at the reflections on the walls cast by the fire, and kept repeating:\n\u201cJu\u010das is the one who did all this. I know: Ju\u010das is to blame for it all.\u201d\nBut in truth Ju\u010das, who must long ago have become dust, was innocent of this charge. Nevertheless, Var\u0161as could not give up and show he was incapable of giving some answer. What would his long life have been worth if it had become clear there were things he was powerless to understand? I did not gainsay Var\u0161as, but it pained me to witness his pain and his own tormenting of his defenseless, impotent memory.\nWhen the first snow came, when animals first begin to leave clear tracks that enable day long pursuit, we held a wonderful, large hunt. Having invited guests from the neighboring areas, we planned to enjoy this diversion to the limit. The beasts were fat, having foraged through the cool summer and the long, warm fall. The fresh, squeaking snow reinvigorated their senses, like the touching of a newly closed wound, and they were yet quick and strong. How all of this \u2014 the crunching of the snow, the warm smell of the horses, the rough jests of the men, the fever of the hunt, the baying of the hounds, the sweat on the face from the effort of the riding and the throwing of the spear, the cup of yet hot, sweet blood from the neck of a freshly slain beast that caresses the parched palate and causes a feeling of unsurpassed satiety \u2014 how all of this renews a man\u2019s soul and forces the heart to beat at a faster rate!\nHaving broken all four spears I had taken with me, I, instead of sending a servant, turned my charger around and, heated by the passions of the hunt, galloped towards home. My falcon\u2019s name is Nestanas. Var\u0161as raised him for me, and he always accompanied me on the hunt. Nestanas, unlike other falcons, did not need to have his eyes hooded while being brought to the place of the hunt or returned from there. As I would ride out, I would command that Nestanas be released, and he would continually circle in the sky, high overhead, my silent companion. When the urge struck him, he would descend from the sky to rest upon my shoulder. But this occurred relatively rarely. Most often, I would lift my eyes skyward to see him, with his wings widely outspread, gliding high above in the sky.\nThe winter before last, while in the hunt, I had fallen from my mount and had injured my knee. I laid half the day in the already deep snow, unable to rise and remount my horse.\nThe cold began slowly to seep into my body, and I began to think I would die, but then they finally found me. The lodestar of their search had been Nestanas, patiently and loyally circling in the air over that area where misfortune had struck me. Anyone, wanting to know which side of the forest I might be on, needed only glance at the sky to gratify his wish.\nI had spurred my mount and headed homeward, when suddenly I felt someone grip my shoulder strongly. It was Nestanas, my falcon. His sharp talons pierced my clothing and painfully bit into my skin. I shook myself, wanting to throw off the bird and force him to fly. Nestanas eased his grip somewhat, but did not arise into the air. At another time I would have understood that Nestanas wanted, in his own language, to tell me something, to communicate something to me, to affect my actions in some way. But at that time, like I said, I was excited and paid no more attention to the falcon. Nonetheless, when I think of it now, it might have been much better if he had continued to fly high overhead. Perhaps then everyone would have known where I was, and it would have been possible to avoid that which was to occur.\nJumping from my mount in the courtyard, I ran inside and hurried to my sleeping rooms, where I kept my spears, so that they would always be ready to hand if needed. Bal\u010diuk\u0117, my wife\u2019s Princess Visgal\u0117\u2019s, servant, upon seeing me became afraid and dropped an urn filled with ashes. But I paid no attention to this. With several strides I ran into the room and grabbed up a spear. I turned around wanting to speed back to the hunt. And then I witnessed a sight which I absolutely had not expected. In our wide bed, amongst longwooled blankets, were lying two people: a man and a woman. Not wishing this and knowing nothing, as the God is my witness, I came upon them in that moment, when the passion of love and propagation had plunged them into oblivion. The white face of the woman, with eyes closed and hair spilling over the pillow, was that of my wife, Visgal\u0117 \u2014 and I had never seen her more beautiful. Who the man was I could not yet tell at that first glance.\nMy hand acted faster than thought. Giving off a short cry, as I was accustomed to doing in the hunt, as if to lend the arm additional strength, I drew back and let fly the spear with all my might. The well-made spear pierced the man to and through, for when he groaned and collapsed and then fell to the side, I could see that the point of the spear, coming out the far side, had left a small wound on Visgal\u0117\u2019s breast.\nNow I recognized the man. It was Lisica, one of our servants, a youngster of twenty years, whose glance and mouth for some unknown reason had always been full of derision. Because of that expression, he had always appeared wiser than in truth he was. I am convinced death found him before he had recovered from the intoxication of lovemaking, and that he had had no chance to return from the void. Blood coursed from his wound like water over ice when it is newly broken through. It poured out over Visgal\u0117\u2019s stomach and thighs. She opened her eyes and stared at me, but she still did not see me. I thought she would begin to shriek and scream like all women. But when her gaze fixed on her lover and returned to me, I heard nothing. She did not move, did not even pull up the cover to hide her nakedness. Nevertheless, her eyes keenly followed me when I took into my hands another spear.\n\u201cYou will follow him,\u201d I heard myself saying.\nIt was then she opened her lips to speak.\n\u201cWe would not be born, if there were no other existence to wait for.\u201d\nMy face twisted, but in my heart I hesitated. Visgal\u0117 was an intelligent woman, very intelligent, and I have not to the present day ceased to wonder what impelled her into such a perilous path of secret love. I perceived, however, that her words were too wise for the occasion and were, therefore, false. Yes, there was uncertainty in her voice. As if she were assaying with a staff whether an abyss was to open up before her in that spot where she purposed to step. I never have understood women. They are too foreign. They live among us, and yet apart: like cats, who never attach themselves to a person. I never troubled myself overmuch with this, but even my mother, who loved me a great deal, was alien to me. Women are strange even just for their contention that they understand us, their sons, husbands, and brothers.\n\u201cWhy did you do this?\u201d I asked.\n\u201cDon\u2019t think this is the first time. I have been doing it all along.\u201d\nOnly now did she begin to recover. She began to shake and ceased holding herself in. She virtually went mad with anger. I stood there with a spear in my hand and a falcon on my shoulder and listened to her insulting words. The more impassioned she became, the calmer I grew. She spoke with pale lips.\n\u201cNothing ever mattered to you other than that damned fate of yours. What kind of a man are you? Other men walk firmly upon the earth. They eat, drink, hunt, war, and do not forget to give their due to women. They are hale and do not concern themselves with nothings. What of it if you are taller and stronger than others if you only stare off into shadows, murmur nothings beneath your breath, and walk about as if in a dream. I even envied the maids that the man servants at least occasionally would lean them up against the wall in a dark corner. You never really needed me, and if you did, it was just to breed another demented half prince like you. The Centaur! Just think. Half man, half horse. A full horse would be better. Don\u2019t you know everyone makes fun of your totem\u2019s other half \u2014 that it\u2019s no horse but a mare!\u201d\nI shook when she mentioned \u0160ventaragis. All the rest of her jabbering was nothing and I knew it. Even she, if not for her anger, probably would not have spoken in this way. Nevertheless, I was greatly displeased by her belittling of \u0160ventaragis. I trembled and raised the lance. The dark glistening eyes of Visgal\u0117 grew large.\n\u201cNo!\u201d she screamed. \u201cNo! You can\u2019t kill me! You won\u2019t dare!\u201d\nI answered nothing but merely brought back my spear, as if about to use it.\n\u201cI am the princess!\u201d She was shrieking now. \u201cI am your wife, do you hear? Don\u2019t you dare! I will call the servants. Yah! Help! No, Utenis, you won\u2019t dare.\u201d\nShe turned over onto her stomach and tried to crawl to me. Tears flowed down her cheeks, and her screams became hisses.\n\u201cYou won\u2019t dare, you won\u2019t dare. You can\u2019t kill me, Utenis. You can\u2019t.\u201d\n\u201cI can,\u201d I said. \u201cYou very well know I can. You know even more: that I am going to. And no one in the whole world will stop me.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d Visgal\u0117 whispered, crawling closer. \u201cNo, no.\u201d\nI drew back my lance, but then she lifted her head to me and that which I saw withheld my hand. Her dark and moist eyes became round and yellow like two translucent stones.\nThose eyes met my gaze without any emotion. I will never forget this. Somewhere I had seen eyes like unto those before, but at that time I could not recall where. I closed my eyes, and then it became clear. Such are the eyes of a viper. The short time I had my eyes closed was enough for me not to see the most important thing. When I looked again upon my wife, Visgal\u0117, I no longer beheld the princess. In front of me on four crooked legs stood a large, man sized lizard, with protruding yellow eyes, a scaled hide, and a red maw, full of sharp teeth. Its throat pulsed. I froze, and the lizard stepped towards me. I drew away backwards and again brought back the lance. The lizard hissed and jumped towards the wall. I turned, intending to run out, and in the doorway I saw Var\u0161as. He held me back with a gesture and pointed to Lisica, lying in the middle of the room. I gripped the end of the lance, lifted the run through body and, so carrying it, walked out. Var\u0161as slammed the door shut and barred it. When I turned to him, wanting to ask what, in his opinion, should be done next, I perceived that his whole body \u2014 his legs, thin as arrows, and his arms, carved with black, pulsating, finger width veins, like snakes, and his decrepit throat with its sharp Adam\u2019s apple, and his large head with its closed eyes \u2014 was trembling and twitching. Having thrown down the lance with its speared corpse, I grasped the shoulders of the servant.\n\u201cVar\u0161as,\u201d I said. \u201cCalm yourself. Don\u2019t be afraid, Var\u0161as.\u201d He continued to tremble like a frostbitten boy. I don\u2019t quite remember what I myself was feeling. As if nothing.\nI wanted to take care of everything before the end of the hunt. I had a good half day\u2019s time.\nWe buried Lisica, chopping a hole in the frozen earth a league from the house. The biggest worry was the lizard. In the beginning I could not bring myself to think about it, that I would have to unbar the door of my sleeping chamber and go inside. But the reptile could not remain in the house. That we well understood, both I and Var\u0161as.\n\u201cI would help you, but I am now too old and would just get in the way.\u201d\nI heard sounds of the hunt carried by the wind, cries free and jubilant, the sharp baying of the hounds. Even when you go up against a bear with a knife, you are certain you will prevail. Otherwise you would not go. But now I was face to face with a phenomenon I could not comprehend, something completely alien. Therefore I did not even feel my strengths and options. As if I were suspended in the air, unable to gain purchase against the earth. Tears came into my eyes when I thought of how happy I had been just several hours ago. I wanted to still be in the hunt, I wanted that nothing should have happened.\n\u201cTake a strong and sharp spear.\u201d said Var\u0161as. \u201cNo matter how sharp his teeth are, he will not withstand a weapon. Or perhaps it would be better to make a small hole in the roof and shoot through the hole with a bow until it dies?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d I shook my head. \u201cI cannot.\u201d\nBecause Var\u0161as did not understand, I explained:\n\u201cI cannot go in and kill it in cold blood. One way or the other, that is Visgal\u0117.\u201d It was hard for me to say these words. The abominable, dumb beast in no way comported with the image of my beautiful, intelligent wife which continued to stand before my eyes. Still, the words I had spoken were true.\n\u201cBut at first you wanted to take her life. Now, when she has lost her shape it will be easier for you to do so.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot,\u201d I repeated. \u201cDo not try to persuade me, Var\u0161as. I will not be able to convince myself. Before, my sinews acted without reference to my head. Now my head is once again in charge.\u201d\n\u201cThen everything is somewhat more complicated,\u201d Var\u0161as said, deep in thought. \u201cI no longer know how to help you. I will go be by myself for a time and consider.\u201d\nI did not want to be left alone. I had no dark corner with figurines amongst which I could recover my balance. So I asked him:\n\u201cStay here, Var\u0161as. Right now I need you very much.\u201d\nHe agreed without a word.\nIn a short time we came to several conclusions. I had a cellar dug into a hill. It was a large, cold room with a door made of thick logs, split down the middle. If someone of us died during the summer, we would put their body in there, and it would not spoil for twenty or more days until the burial was prepared for in the appropriate manner. We decided to put the reptile in that cellar. The hardest problem was how to lead him from the house to the hill. But we found a solution.\nTaking a rope as thick as a wrist, we made nooses in both ends. At the door we tied a horse and fixed one end of the rope to it. (Other than Bal\u010diuk\u0117, there had remained in the house about ten people. I ordered them all to gather in one chamber, and, when all were inside, I locked them in for a time. I did not want what I wished to do in secret to be compromised by the household servants. The thus imprisoned did not even show much displeasure: apparently, I looked very wroth and, of course, they could clearly see my clothes, covered with Lisica\u2019s blood.)\nAnd so, calmer now we were certain of not being discovered, we continued our design. Var\u0161as carried my lance. He held it with both hands, firmly clenched, but even so he was hard put to retain his hold: his weakened fingers kept opening. His face from the strain was flushed with some kind of old, dark, yet somehow grey, reddening. The wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and mouth vibrated. The widely stepping feet barely upheld his body, weighed down by his burden. But Var\u0161as bore it heroically. What impelled him? Devotion? Habit? Self-respect? Stubbornness? The conviction that without him I would fail? I do not know. I carried the noose. I shot the bolt open and abruptly jerked the door open. My heart pounded, expecting an attack. But the reptile did not attack. It lay in the same place where we had last seen it, stretched out in its full length, with its head lying on the floor. One of its eyes, yellow, cold, and sparkling, regarded us without moving.\nIt had to be made to move: as long as the lizard\u2019s head stayed on the ground, it could not be ensnared in the noose. I took the spear from Var\u0161as and stepped closer, suddenly calm and no longer worried, as if I had been catching such creatures all my life. Women transformed into lizards. I made no unnecessary or clumsy moves. Holding out the lance, I tapped the animal with the sharp end in the neck: even with a spear it was unpleasant to come near it. It lifted its head and angrily opened its maw. In that instant I threw the noose. It was not even necessary to make the horse, standing outside, move in order to tighten the rope, so swiftly did the lizard jump to the other side of the chamber and toss about until the noose was tight and it began to choke. Our fears proved unwarranted, for it did not act like a human being, but like any animal. Instead of having jumped to our side so that the rope would loosen, it panicked and tried to run from us, in this way itself helping us achieve our goal.\nVar\u0161as was now just as calm as I.\n\u201cAlong with her body, God took away her mind,\u201d he said. \u201cPoor thing.\u201d\nA lump arose in my throat, but I swallowed it down.\n\u201cTake the horse towards the hill, Var\u0161as,\u201d I commanded him. \u201cI will walk alongside with the spear and make sure nothing happens.\u201d\nSoon the sturdy doors of the hill cellar swung shut in order to trustily safeguard the strange creature. Var\u0161as was breathing hard but smiling. I heard in the distance the voices of the returning hunters and hurried to release the servants and domestics.\nIn the evening, forcing myself to smile and urging the revelers to make merry, I felt sorrow and longing. Like never before I longed for my beautiful Visgal\u0117, beloved wife. I would have given anything to find her at my side. Seeing that the men had grown intoxicated, I rose and left the hall unnoticed. Snow fell silently in large clumps. A dog yelped from choking on a bone or from an injury to his side sustained in the hunt. Other hounds, having left him alone, with eager, damp snouts milled about among the guests or ate cooked meat, of which there was an abundance. For a time I listened to the lone dog\u2019s whimpers, then, wading through the snow, I went to visit Var\u0161as. He was sitting near the fire, watching the flame with glistening eyes. He did not turn at my entrance.\n\u201cJu\u010das is to blame for everything, the servant of Jeremferdenas . . . Not a single hair on his whole body \u2026\u201d\nI had thought to find solace with Var\u0161as. Alas. I returned to the night and snow, which immediately covered my shoulders, hair, and beard. It melted when it fell upon my heated face. My body was full of never experienced feelings, as if I stood at the boundary of a completely other existence. Visgal\u0117 . . . How I needed her now! Feelings flowed in my heart, my chest. Hard and chill like an icy fluid. I had never experienced anything like it. I stood with eyes closed under the naked sky. I longed for the past. The dog continued to whimper. It snowed.\nAfter a time I realized I was no longer alone. Someone other than myself had come outside. Deep in thought, I had not noticed. I saw a dark shadow several steps away. I could not tell if he could see me or not. Nevertheless, I could not stand there any longer, almost totally covered in snow. I shook myself to lose at least some of the snow and walked toward him. The man, shorter than myself, was standing with his back to me, with his head thrown back and turned upward to the heavens. The snow crunched under my feet, and he turned around slowly, as if displeased that someone was disturbing his interesting and important work.\n\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d I asked.\n\u201cI knew you were here,\u201d he answered. \u201cI saw you leaving the hall.\u201d\n\u201cWhat could you have need of from me at such a time, \u0160ventaragis?\u201d for, in truth, it was my son.\nHe did not reply at once, but remained silent. I was uneasy, fearful he would inquire of that upon which I wished to remain silent. The cold began to grip me. The night would be truly frigid. \u0160ventaragis, it seemed, did not feel the cold. He again leaned back his head and, with his mouth wide open, tried to catch the falling snowflakes. He looked like an idiot.\n\u201cWell? Say something, \u0160ventaragis.\u201d\nHe turned around, and from the light in his eyes I could tell he was intoxicated. He had had too much wine. From that time, when I had allowed him to participate in the hunts, \u0160ventaragis had also participated in the banquets. Sometimes he would drink. I did not like that, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Even though of tender years, he was a person who perfectly understood his limitations and would not even dream of attempting something he could not achieve. That is a rare quality. Even those come into their years of mature discretion tend to overrate themselves and their capacities.\n\u201cSince returning from the hunt, I have not seen my mother. Where is she?\u201d\nBut I had been expecting that.\n\u201cShe is at her sister\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cWithout saying goodbye to me \u2026\u201d\n\u201cShe was in a hurry.\u201d I thought such an answer would satisfy him, but I was wrong.\n\u201cWho escorted her?\u201d Even intoxicated, \u0160ventaragis did not lose the clarity of his mind.\n\u201cLisica.\u201d\n\u201cLisica?\u201d I could feel in his voice great anger and bitterness.\n\u201cLisica?\u201d he repeated and was about to add something, but bit his tongue and remained silent.\nI then comprehended he knew about poor Visgal\u0117\u2019s relationship with the servant. It angered me that even my son knew more than I. Suddenly \u0160ventaragis lifted up his head, and in his look I could see suspicion.\n\u201cAre you certain mother truly went to her sister\u2019s?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\nI had answered too quickly and too strongly. \u0160ventaragis at once understood I knew everything. Everything he, for who knew how long, had hidden from me.\nI then comprehended he knew about poor Visgal\u0117\u2019s relationship with the servant. It angered me that even my son knew more than I. Suddenly \u0160ventaragis lifted up his head, and in his look I could see suspicion.\n\u201cAre you certain mother truly went to her sister\u2019s?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\nI had answered too quickly and too strongly. \u0160ventaragis at once understood I knew everything. Everything he, for who knew how long, had hidden from me.\n\u201cWhy did she act like this?\u201d His voice was at once both disappointed and insultingly sharp.\n\u201cIt is improper to judge one\u2019s parents.\u201d\nHe squeezed the handle of his knife.\n\u201cI\u2019ll kill Lisica. I\u2019ll catch him and do him in. I\u2019ll find him no matter what!\u201d\n\u201cThat is no longer necessary.\u201d\nHe gave me a sober look. He understood.\n\u201cAnd mother? You said he escorted her.\u201d\n\u201cAlmost \u2026\u201d\n\u201cWhat happened to her? Where is she?\u201d\n\u201cShe is not here.\u201d The cold\u2019s grip was ever chiller, but my back was wet from sweat: I was not bearing this inquisition easily.\n\u201cYou killed her?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe you.\u201d\n\u201cI swear to you,\u201d I said, feeling some relief in telling the truth.\n\u201cI thank you,\u201d said \u0160ventaragis. \u201cIt would have been very unpleasant for me if you had soiled yourself with my mother\u2019s blood.\u201d\nAlthough I was not wanting to speak, he raised his hand to ask my silence.\n\u201cLet\u2019s speak no more of this.\u201d\nSuddenly I felt as I had felt many a time before, that someone was watching over my shoulder. \u0160ventaragis also gave a start. When after a time he went back inside, I turned around. Directly behind me stood the hill with the cellar.\nI can now swear with certainty that time disappears for that person whose senses are multiplied a thousand times and then are made a thousand times stronger. I began to understand those wise men who abuse themselves with fasting and thirst in the dead of the forest so as to perceive the world as it really is, as it really is in itself, so as to experience the holy joy of touching with the tips of one\u2019s fingers that quintessential reality which has no top, nor bottom, nor beginning, nor end. I had not reached the levels of the masters, but I now could understand them. Having no other way to awaken their soul, they scourge their flesh.\nVar\u0161as was in any case smarter than I. If not for him, I would have died that winter. He fed me with concoctions of bees\u2019 honey, heated syrup, and milk. Made me drink of many different herbs. Ordered me to swallow spiders\u2019 webs folded into spheres the size of peas. And only because of him was I able to continue to be able to draw breath and to make some sense of the reality lofting me skyward (although in the deep, dark winter nights, full of delirium, I called it a reality casting me down). If not for Var\u0161as, who himself was just barely hanging on because in truth he was already standing near the border of oblivion, I would have died one of those winter mornings while snowflakes were quietly falling and never would have realized that I was dead. But Var\u0161as did not abandon me, and when snow began to melt from the rooftops, I became aware one day that I lay in my chambers, enwrapped in furs, among which I saw Var\u0161as\u2019 white ermine.\nDuring that time while I was elsewhere I learned much, although not everything. Most importantly, I forgave Visgal\u0117 her transgression. Now her form ceased to be important to me. No room was left in my consciousness for a reptile. I thought of my wife as of a woman, such as she once had been. I swore to myself I would not lose her. In my thinking I felt no repulsion toward that awful, unhappy creature her body had become.\nI heard footsteps, and into my chambers ran Bal\u010diuk\u0117, carrying two steaming clay pots. Meeting my gaze, she stopped. I smiled.\n\u201cHow wonderful! How wonderful you have recovered, my prince!\u201d\n\u201cWas I ill?\u201d I asked.\nThe girl became confused, not knowing whether she could tell me all. After a moment she drew up her courage and said:\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve never seen anyone be sick like that. People were saying . . . But Var\u0161as said this was an illness and that you definitely would recover. How wonderful!\u201d\nThrough the window sunshine was slanting in, lighting up Bal\u010diuk\u0117\u2019s face from one side and enhancing the beauty of her features. I felt how a light tremor ran down my spine, as if a breeze had blown by.\n\u201cCome closer, Bal\u010diuk\u0117,\u201d I said.\nShe put her pots on the floor and approached trembling. At one moment I almost forgot myself and came near to saying, \u201cVisgal\u0117.\u201d It seemed to me everything that had happened from the day I had rushed home with Nestanas on my shoulder to get some spears was just a dream. But upon opening my eyes I saw Bal\u010diuk\u0117\u2019s smooth eyelids, and the illusion vanished.\nWhen everything was done and we rested for a time, I questioned Bal\u010diuk\u0117 as to whether there had been any changes in my absence. Nothing had happened at home, but in the world \u2014 much. Prince Levas during a banquet had killed King Vai\u0161vilkas with a knife: Vai\u0161vilkas, the last of the Palemons. I was shocked. What is this, coincidence, or the fulfillment of old prophesies? I wanted to get more detailed information. I turned to the girl:\n\u201cGet dressed and call Var\u0161as to me. I want to see and speak with him.\u201d\nShe obeyed. Swiftly she threw on her dress and was on her way out when she remembered why she had come in. She placed near my bed vessels of food, which smelled of mint, thyme, and meat, and then hurried off to find Var\u0161as.\n\u201cGlory be to the Creator of the world,\u201d said Var\u0161as. He stood leaning on a thin rod of birch \u2014 which was enough to uphold that shadow of a body \u2014 and his eyes shone with joy, for it could well be said he had caused me to be born anew. At that moment he was father and mother to me. He approached and kissed my forehead.\nBal\u010diuk\u0117 had told the truth. Vai\u0161vilkas was dead. But she had not known all. The princes had deliberated and decided \u0160ventaragis was the best candidate for the throne. They had sent a messenger to ask for my consent, but not able to obtain that, \u0160ventaragis, having counselled with Var\u0161as, made his decision independently. He ordered the messenger to report his consent to rule the country. There remained only his coronation ceremonies, which were to occur in several months. Ju\u010das had not lied. I was the father of the ruler of Lithuania.\n\u201cYou are not happy, prince,\u201d said Var\u0161as.\n\u201cI am happy,\u201d I answered, \u201cBut I would be even happier if Visgal\u0117, my princess, would be able to share my happiness.\u201d\n\u201cAlas,\u201d spoke Var\u0161as with his head bowed low.\n\u201cHow is she?\u201d I asked weakly: I could not remember or speak of her without sorrow. \u201cHow is she?\u201d I repeated.\n\u201cMore probably a \u2018he.\u2019 Although it is hard to tell anything about that lizard\u2019s gender.\u201d\n\u201cHow is she,\u201d I repeated.\nVar\u0161as took my meaning and from then on also spoke of \u2014 her.\n\u201cAll winter I fed her and cleaned the cellar as well as I was able. I did not know what food would be suitable. Now I can say raw meat is best for her. At the beginning she would not eat anything . . . she would take nothing and would stare at the door as if wanting to escape. But now everything is well.\u201d\n\u201cCould a miracle happen?\u201d\n\u201cI do not know. My heart tells me it has already occurred, and you will never again witness her in the shape of a woman.\u201d\nI was myself convinced of that, though I did still retain some hope.\n\u201cWere you not afraid, Var\u0161as? You are not so able.\u201d\n\u201cWhen you . . . took ill, after a month I bought a tamed bear. She was afraid of the bear.\u201d\nFor some time we both remained silent. Then I spoke.\n\u201cHave you not changed your opinion, Var\u0161as?\u201d\n\u201cNo. I still believe this to be retribution for a deception committed long ago. It is possible Ju\u010das knew even then, but did not say.\u201d\nI believed him easily, somehow of itself, as if in my head there had long been prepared a place for such a thought. One might even say I took some ease from it.\n\u201cThere is no guarantee such a misfortune might not yet afflicts someone else as well. I do not believe it could happen to \u0160ventaragis, but perhaps to someone else of the household. We all must be wary.\u201d\nI remained silent, gazing at that spot where the sun had so recently illuminated Bal\u010diuk\u0117. I wanted her anew.\n\u201cThank you, Var\u0161as,\u201d I said. \u201cNow I will begin to look after things myself.\u201d\nI never would have thought there would come to be a time in my life when a beast would become the most important being to me in the whole world. But this came to be. Two persons, who had been close to me all the time and even in a certain sense a part of me, slowly but surely began to draw away from me. The first of them, Var\u0161as, who given up so much strength and effort in nursing and caring for me during the entire season of winter, grew weak. If he had not already been so ancient, the best words to describe his complete decrepitude would have been \u201cold age.\u201d After the snow had melted, Var\u0161as no longer went out from his peaceful room. He no longer had the strength. Although I did everything I knew how, it was clear Var\u0161as would not see another winter. He just lay in a permanent twilight, became calm and at peace with everything, barely able to move his hands, while his eyes faded and faded until finally they completely lost their color, only just barely shining like two amethysts. To communicate with him was almost impossible.\nIn order to hear what he was saying \u2014 more accurately, to hear what he was trying to say with his numb, withered mouth \u2014 one had to put one\u2019s ear to his lips. But even when he did hear, he did not always understand. Various times, past and present, grew so muddled in his mind that, having bent my ear to listen, I once received a promise from him that he would be a good boy and would never again wet his bed. In this way, gradually, a little at a time, I lost Var\u0161as.\nThe other person whose nearness I missed, but did not have the courage to demand, was \u0160ventaragis. He avoided me. When I would approach, he would remove himself at the first opportunity. I do not know what motivated him to act in this manner. He probably did not believe my oath that I had not killed Visgal\u0117, his mother, and, his first flush of agitation having passed, he had begun to grieve and to long for her. I did not want to make, nor indeed could I have made, any explanation to him which would have restored his faith in me, so I believe he considered me the killer of his mother. He restricted himself to only those relations between us which were unavoidable. Var\u0161as had told me that during the entire winter \u0160ventaragis had not once entered the chambers in which I lay. It may be I was wrong and \u0160ventaragis had simply needed to be by himself and to collect himself. He had to make ready from inside to become the sovereign. I would have given anything to have been able to see inside my son\u2019s heart. But that, of course, no one could give me.\nUnder these circumstances I became friends with an animal. That was Kutlubugas, the bear purchased by Var\u0161as. Removed from the woods and from others like himself, he, it seems, also needed a creature with whom he could associate. During the first days after having taken him over from Var\u0161as, I had kept and led him by a chain, because the bear seemed short-tempered and likely to attack me. But I soon saw his irritability was more likely a facade, or, more accurately, that which I held to be irritability was his habitual attitude, demonstrating he is not slumberous, but is alert. When he would be full of meat and become lazy, he would stop growling, and would become sluggish and indifferent, as long as no one would bother him. Having discovered these features in him, I removed the chain, for Kutlubugas always perfectly walked at one\u2019s side, never trying to run or otherwise make any opposition. But I shortly had to replace the chain, because, having attached himself to me, the bear felt enmity towards the rest of the household. It required but a more harshly spoken word or a quicker motion to cause Kutlubugas, growling and with wide open jaws, to rise up on his hind legs, ready to attack. No one in the household could stand the bear, just as Kutlubugas disliked them. He had given his entire beastly soul up to me. Wherever I went or rode, I would take him along. Being left alone in the house, he would bellow and tear at the doors with his claws, driving great fear into the servants. The horses at first were afraid of the bear, but they soon grew accustomed to him and would greet him from afar with their neighing. Sometimes, having awakened in the night and not being able to fall again to sleep, I would listen to the chirping of the crickets in the dark, gently running my hand through Kutlubugas\u2019 fur and speaking with him: I would speak all sorts of nothings, as if a mother to her child or a man in love to his girl, or I might tell him of my life. The bear would growl contentedly, and then I would begin to question him regarding all sorts of matters, saying to him, \u201cWhat do you think about that, Kutlubugas?\u201d Kutlubugas did not grow fond of Bal\u010diuk\u0117, and I ceased to invite her: women no longer had any attraction for me. I would awaken in the early morning, when Kutlubugas, murmuring and sighing, would lick my feet. Then I would arise and take up some meat that had been laid aside the evening before, and would walk to the cellar hill.\nYes, I would visit her every day.\nEven having decided not to view her as a lizard, at first it was difficult. The unventilated cellar was full of some sort of strong, oppressive odor. I never found her asleep. The glassy gaze of yellow eyes would always meet me. I felt some sort of distress in my conscience. Although she was virtually in terror of Kutlubugas, I did not dare to enter without the bear. And the bear was entirely indifferent to her. I would throw the meat down on the stone floor and would immediately make my exit. She would not touch the meat in my presence. She would simply stare at me unceasingly all the while I was there. I tried to spend as little time there as possible. That duty depressed me.\nWith time, I slowly began to grow used to it. Already in a month I caught myself thinking that her eyes show she still has awareness. I would try to communicate with her, asking, when I would come in, \u201cHow are you, Visgal\u0117?\u201d But I never received any response. Not a word, not a gesture. But nevertheless my feeling did not weaken, although it was never reinforced. I was probably wrong, and my wish to see in her traces of humanity rendered me blind to my error. I became accustomed to speak with her in the same way I would chatter with the bear in the night. Even though the talk would be all one sided, having poured out my worries, apprehensions, and problems, having told her of what I was happy or of what I dreamt, I would feel better. A person after all must have someone to speak with. I came to understand that only after I began to converse with animals.\nSometimes from the depths of my memories would arise some memory from the beginning of my life with Visgal\u0117, from youth, or from childhood, and I, telling the story, would cry. But she, on her part, would make no response whatever to my remembrances or my tears. Kutlubugas would sometimes lick my tears away. He liked them for the salt.\nMore and more often I would think about the past. The further removed, the more real it became, and the more important for me. I loved the past\u2019s Visgal\u0117 as if in the present.\nWith my whole heart I hated those, of whom I had sometimes felt unfavorably or whom I had belittled. Very close to me became my mother, whom in childhood I had poorly understood? I felt a deep respect for my father, whom I had formerly been afraid of. But Visgal\u0117 took up most of my thoughts. My memory reawakened even such details of our life which I had never noticed, or had noticed and immediately forgotten. As if before me I saw her as a shy maiden with upright breasts, disrobed for the nuptial bed? I saw her white, even teeth as she laughed at \u0160ventaragis crawling on the furs? I reached out my hand, wanting to touch her, as she danced the sacred dance for \u0160ventaragis to grow strong and hale. But the hand gripped only air, the eyes perceived, after a time, the wall or the table, and that, which had seemed to be laughter, was only the squeals of the young servant girls. Longing would grip my heart, and I would promise to think no more of this and to cease tormenting myself, but I would not hold true to my promise. Nor, in reality, was this in my power. Without noticing it, I would drift away into the past, realizing it only upon my return. In small stages I began to understand Var\u0161as: what meaning his dried and sootblackened figurines had held. I do not know how long this process of understanding would have taken until complete. But nothing is permanent. We must be wary, says Var\u0161as.\nSomething more must yet occur. And it did.\nOne morning I woke while it was yet dark, and although I had slept but little, I was in very good spirits, better than I had felt for some time. I rejoiced, without myself knowing why.\nI felt young and strong: I even tried to wrestle with Kutlubugas. Then, cheerful and excited, I fixed the chain to the bear and, taking some meat, went out to the hill. It may well have been such a night as lends energy to everyone (on such nights the best, strongest, and smartest children are conceived), because this time even she was not lying in the depths of the cellar, by the wall, but stood in the middle of the floor with her head up, as if listening to sounds coming from afar.\nMy head was a bit light from the strange joy, and, it appears, that was enough to give birth to an unwise thought. For the first time in many days I felt an urge to give delight to her. I fancied letting her out for a bit into freedom, so she could breathe fresh air and look, with eyes disused to the light, towards the heavens, which she had not seen for so long a time. I went out, leaving the door open, and tied the bear to a tree. I myself stood nearby, watching what would happen. After a time her unwieldy body crawled out from the dark of the cellar and froze in the doorway. For some time she stood motionless, breathing in the pure air through her round nostrils, and then she moved. If necessary, I thought, with Kutlubugas\u2019 help I would easily return her to the cellar. I felt good for having released her for this space.\nSuddenly the bear bellowed. I turned around, but I was able to glimpse only the silhouette of a rider and hear the frenzied galloping of his mount. \u0160ventaragis, with his thighs gripping the sides of the horse, with arm thrown back and spear ready to fly, was racing right at her.\n\u201cNo!\u201d I screamed, but was too late.\nThe blade of the spear pierced the side of the reptile and tore out a hunk of flesh. The lizard curled up from the blow like a crescent moon, and from its throat escape a weird, gasping sound. \u0160ventaragis forced the horse backwards, tore out the spear, and began to draw back for another attack. Quicker than I could myself believe, I ran up and, grasping the haft of the spear, pulled it towards me. He swayed and fell off the saddle. Immediately he let go of the spear, jumped up, and drew his sword. I drew backward, with one eye on Kutlubugas, who was throwing himself forward against the chain (\u201cLet him only not break loose!\u201d), and the other on the young face, twisted with rage, full of terrible sorrow. \u0160ventaragis drew back with his shortsword and struck \u2014 I felt a piercing agony in my stomach.\n\u201cTake that,\u201d he snarled. \u201cTake that. For mother. You\u2019ll not fool me anymore.\u201d\nI could hear his teeth grind, as if they were crushing stone.\n\u201c\u0160ventaragis!\u201d I did not understand, it never occurred to me I was seriously injured. \u201cCalm yourself. I am your father. Your mother \u2014\u201d\nHe again drew back his sword and again struck, spitting out, \u201cTake that.\u201d\nTwo more times I felt steel cut me to the quick: flames sprouted up in my body. I grasped my belly with my hands, and only then saw there was nothing there to hold together: I had no stomach. In its place was only a sticky mess of meat, pieces of cloth, and blood. My legs bent, and I crumbled to the ground. I saw how \u0160ventaragis wiped his sword on the lower part of his robe, slipped it back in its sheath, turned around and jumped back onto his mount. I wanted to scream something out to him, but I could not. Not only because I was too weak. My entire body was gripped by a cramp. Fear. An indescribable, animal like terror stole over me when I understood I was dying. I had never been so afraid. Nothing was left of me, but only fear. My body was that of terror. Everything, all my senses, all the pain, all merged together into one thing \u2014 fear. The orbs of my eyes hardened, my skin ripped and tore into a thousand shreds. I lifted my head and looked at \u0160ventaragis galloping away into the distance. What I then perceived was the final blow.\nSomething was different with the world. No, not with the world, but with me. I was different. \/ had changed into a lizard.\nI was fated to die as a lizard. Suddenly my mind was clear. I understood everything completely. We were both wrong, both Var\u0161as and I. Ju\u010das was not at fault, as were neither the totem of the Centaur, fate, or the gods. Only just fear itself had transformed us into awful reptiles, animals, my wife Visgal\u0117 and myself. Nothing other than it, this feeling, incongruent with man\u2019s birthright, but nevertheless overwhelming him, was the cause of all the evil that had happened to us. The fear of oblivion, of no longer being able to play with one\u2019s feelings and sensations, of losing everything. If we had given ourselves over in this way to happiness, we would simply have melted away into the thin air. But we were afraid. We were possessed by terror for our lives. Fear made us be like this. Is it necessary to die to learn this? My poor dear Visgal\u0117, my poor dear intelligent girl. How terribly she must have been afraid of me then . . .\nI tried to rise on all four feet and crawl, but blood poured from me in waves. I was unable to move. I felt how something pressed itself to me. I turned my head and saw her. A lizard, such as myself, with a gaping wound in her side, crawled to me and laid down beside me, so that there was no space between us. A damp tongue licked my neck. We, Prince Utenis and his wife Visgal\u0117, of the Clan of the Centaur. We, two people, man and wife, having experienced emotions of surpassing strength. We, two reptiles with amber colored eyes, died on dewladen grass as the sun rose on a summer morning. That, which had separated us, now served to bring us together. Be happy, my son.\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stories The Arrival To Olga, my wife, who introduced me to tango It came fast and wide as a rolling thunderstorm, an avalanche, a prairie fire, except there had been no clouds, no smoke, no warning. No weather report hinted at it. No satellite caught its formation. We went to sleep with ordinary silence in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"no-sidebar","site-content-layout":"plain-container","ast-site-content-layout":"normal-width-container","site-content-style":"unboxed","site-sidebar-style":"unboxed","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"disabled","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"enabled","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-972","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"stk","author_link":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Stories The Arrival To Olga, my wife, who introduced me to tango It came fast and wide as a rolling thunderstorm, an avalanche, a prairie fire, except there had been no clouds, no smoke, no warning. No weather report hinted at it. No satellite caught its formation. We went to sleep with ordinary silence in&hellip;","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120,"href":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/972\/revisions\/1120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kondrotas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}