Vilnius Poker

by Ričardas Gavelis

I stood in a dead-end corridor; doors leaned on both sides. I opened the nearest one on the right, beyond it ranged rooms crammed full of broken furniture. A vague presentiment told me there was a constant twilight here both day and night—as if that broken furniture devoured the light during the day and vomited it back out during the night. Standing there, my legs slowly sank into the rotten floorboards. It seemed something alive was holding me by the ankles. That corridor didn’t want to let go of me. For the first time it occurred to me that perhaps there was no way out of here. I rushed into a low gallery, ran out into yet another corridor, threw open all the doors in turn. It was the same everywhere: rooms stuffed full of broken furniture. That furniture looked like slaughtered people. An occasional door was locked, but I had neither the desire nor the strength to break them down. All I felt was the primitive fear of an animal trapped by pursuers. I tore up and down staircases and jumped over balcony rails onto the pavement of deep little courtyards. By now I heard the voices of the unseen pursuers surrounding me. I plunged through a creaking door and unexpectedly stumbled into someone’s living quarters. There were beds along the walls and an idiotic little carpet with swans hung on the wall. I was particularly reassured by a night pot with a handle set alongside a child’s bed. That was surely an object of this world. The awakened children’s dirty little faces stared at...