The days of the plague

There is a creative and loving force inside most of us that guides us through life. 

These people don’t have this. For them it’s the opposite. 

(Mel Gibson)

In those Days I had to find a religion to measure my evil against. Evil has already gotten a strong tinge of cruelty. God was dead, Church was dead. The major part of us was so frail in front of such a fraud.
I used to write science-fiction novels. I stopped in those days. Reality was more interesting than science-fiction.

I couldn’t any more write a book. I did not know how to plot a story, any longer. I was quiet, too quiet. I was thrilled, too thrilled. I was in a quagmire. I was dying in it.
I was pervasive. I was everywhere. Was I alive? I thought so. I was not dead, ergo I was alive. That was the masterpiece of my life... A masterpiece of resonance.
I was going around on a new battlefield. A Purgatory which was worse than the Hell. But it was bliss in the end. It was bliss even though I didn't believe in Heaven.

What times were we living? Were those the times of a New Church, of a New Order? Were those times those of Satan? Everywhere I saw symbols of Satan. We were surrounded by Satan and Satanists. Where was the Pope? Where was the Protector of Christianity? God was dead, Church was dead, there was no Pope. In the Vaticano was now sitting a traitor, an apostate, an Antichrist.  A Satan emanation. A hologram.

Hell was empty all the devils were here. The children of darkness had decided to show their cards and an infernal deception would be revealed.
We were living in a regime, an ancient regime. It was clear. THEY have stopped lying THEY have started to show their real face, Their real goals. We were living in the middle of one of the biggest conspiracies that have ever been perpetrated on humanity…
they came from the Babylon times, THEy were called the Structure, THAT ruled the world.

It had started many centuries before Babylon, when aliens came from other planets and created a race of slaves. US.
But I could not say this. Censorship was watching us. As I watched her sleeping. We were sleeping animals. We slept the sleep they wanted us to sleep. They didn't want us awake. As I didn't want her awake. She was so perfectly beautiful while sleeping. We were so perfectly beautiful until we were a perfect example of domestication.

I now close my eyes and see how we were before the nightmare fell down on us. When the mornings sounded like mornings and the nights brought the rest we needed.
She has tried to resist more than me. She has tried to keep her days busy and me awake.
She has been stronger than me. I sought solace in her to resist. I cleared my fears using her resistance.

Did your husband call you?
No, why do you ask?
I dunno. It just came to my mind, right now.
What?
That he could have called you.
What a strange thought.
Are strange times.
Yes, they are.

Then we heard someone knocking on the door.
Your mother? I asked.
No. It's not her knock.

She got up and went to the door. The door opened.
I saw the yellow striped gilets of the policija, du policininkai
Ieškome rašytojo. They said.
Aš esu, I responded from the chair where I was sitting.
Tu irgi, Said the policeman to her.
I startled. I put down a copy of The Quiet American by Graham Greene, I was reading.
Dėl ko? I asked.
Nežinau. Answered one of them. Turite eiti su mumis.

Listen, this is very serious. The tyrėja spoke well English. I glanced at her. I noticed she had a copy of Valdovas (The Prince) on his desk. It was strange. A policeman was reading Machiavelli? I didn't dare ask why she was interested in such a book.

It's a pity that I cannot read in Italian. She interposed. She had caught my reaction.
Why do you read Il Principe? I asked lastly.
Does it say so, in Italian?
Yes, Il Principe, Valdovas.
How nice it sounds in Italian. What a beautiful language is your language! She said fervently.
Do you think?
Yes, I think so...by the way... was Alvaro. your friend? She shot abruptly.
Oh,...I see, I understand why I am here. Is this the reason?
It can be.
Not a friend, to be honest. A person, I met to chat with. Sometimes. That's all.
What were you talking about?
Life, God, politics...nonsense...
And you? O jūs?
Why do you ask her? Alvaro was possibly my friend, not hers.
Porą kartų su juo susitikau, bet jis nebuvo mano draugas.
When did you meet him last time? She addressed me, this time,
I dunno...difficult to say. Two months ago, maybe. Before all this absurdity started.
Which absurdity? She asked me vaguely.
The plague.
Is it an absurdity for you?
Of course.
So, you don't agree with the measures for the quarantine?
No.
Interesting.
O jūs?
Aš irgi. She replied.
Įdomu, labai įdomu. A perfect couple The tyrėja concluded.
We love each other, we understand each other. That's normal.
Supratau, I understand. Do you respect our quarantine?
Of course. I don't agree with it but I respect it. I am a guest in this land. I have never contested your laws, your rules, your politics. Your country welcomed me, it gave me a place where to live, I am grateful to Lithuania.
It sounds like you are a political refugee.
Sort of.
Sort of?
Yes. I felt forced to leave my country. I had to, finally.
Why?
Hard to explain...but I felt like I was apart from that country, It had become an incomprehensible place for me. The skyline had changed, it was unrecognizable. Extraneous bodies had penetrated the social tissue. A corrupted casta is ruling it. I grew up in a different country, and when I left my country it was not the place I hoped for when I was a boy.
And why did you come to Lithuania?
For love. And I watched her.
The tyrėja stopped. Right, she said. Of course...Do you know what Alvaro did?
Yes, I know. I read it. I was surprised.
Surprised?

From outside, beyond the window, we heard somebody yelling.
What's happening? I asked.
Today we arrested some people that were protesting in front of the Seima.
Really?
They adverse the lockdown...Sorry, I see that I am disappointing you.
What makes you believe that?
Your face. It looks like...They broke the law. What do you think? We are the police. What are we supposed to do?
What you did, I suppose.
Yes, That's what we have to do. Before, you said surprised. What do you mean with surprised?
What I mean with surprised? Try to imagine someone who, when he speaks, speaks as if he should speak in the face of God. Someone who is in constant dialogue with a truth that could be assimilated to a God. That was Alvaro. He seemed to lack of every form of imperious Self. But instead, it seems now that he was obsessed by his imperious Self...
Imperious Self?
It is psychic energy, harmful to the human being. It comes from the deep unconscious and goes back to consciousness and annihilates it. It does away with any ethical value that we believed right and just. It expresses itself in the form of violent, uncontrollable, and wild impulses and pushes us to think only of ourselves of our own pleasure. It can be the hell when you are not capable to harness it. And maybe Alvaro wasn't.

I see, that you are a writer. She laughed.
Do you laugh?
Yes, of course. You surprised me.
Is that a valid reason to laugh?... Let me insist on this point...ethical principles are like cover stories.
What do you mean?
They let see you the dog in front of you, they scare you about the potential damage that that dog can do to you if it jumps on you, but they don' let you see the tiger which is behind you. Or I should say inside you...they don't let see you the big beast which is inside you. Is it clear now?
Hhhhmmm....interesting.
I became suspicious. Strangely, the officer seemed to have no aversion towards me.

I looked cautiously at her, for she had touched my leg with her knee.
Don't trust this official. I read her look.

I knew that look, that light in her eyes. I knew the message. Don't trust! Trust me and not that woman. I am your truth.
I thought it was time to take her away from that place. But the face of the police officer seemed to say the contrary.
Was Alvaro a paedophile? Asked the police officer.
I dunno. I know what I read. When he spoke to me, I never realized that hypothesis as possible.
Big problem paedophilia, a globalised problem. It's everywhere. And wherever there is power there is paedophilia, it seems a perversion that hits mostly the ruling classes. Rich people and politicians.
Do you think? How do you know that?
I sighed.
Do you remember that movie, Three Days of the Condor?
...Not really. What's about?
A complicated story. Anyway, I will try to make it shorter. The CIA is after Condor to kill him. Condor is a bookish CIA analyst, code-named "Condor". He works at the American Literary Historical Society in New York City, which is a clandestine CIA office. But there is a game inside the Agency and one day CIA agents murder the Condor's colleagues in the office while Condor is out for lunch. CIA will try many times to kill him with every means but he predicts every CIA move and cannot be caught. Who the hell is Condor? What he did do in the Agency? Asks one of the Company. Condor reads, it is the answer.

Oh I see...that's why...you read.

I write books. I am one of the fewest writers who read books...I read tons of books.

I watched her. I realized she was suffering. I felt like in Graham Greene's book, The Quiet American. "I was ready to answer any question if could bring the interview quickly and ambiguously to an end, so that I might tell her later, in private, away from a policeman's eyes and the hard office chairs".

What do you want to know more? I said to the police officer.

Do you believe that he committed suicide while in prison?

Should I doubt? I have not any other evidence...

I hoped that you could give us more information. It seems that you can't.
Yes, I can't.
And I was still repeating that while leaving the police building and finally breathing fresh air.
Put on the mask, they will fine you. She said to me. I don't want to see that face any more. She added.
We took along Gedimino Prospektas towards the Cathedral.
The sun was illuminating our faces and we breathed hope again.

But that avenue was without dignity. It stank of death, and rotting acceptance, of a dying civilization. Our conscience of human beings was taken away and hushed up by a new sense of inhumanity.

But that avenue was without dignity. It stank of death and rotting acceptance, of dying civilization. Our conscience of human beings was taken away and hushed up by a new sense of inhumanity. 
But she appeared immune to all that, as one can be immune to a virus. She floated in the new reality like she had floated in the past one. 
Do you mind stopping here? I need an espresso. I asked. We had gotten the traffic lights where Lukiškių aikštė ends. There was a small bar, a sort of garden shed bar with outdoor tables, where to buy good coffee. I thought that we could sit there and take off our masks, drink coffee and for a while delude ourselves in the sunlight. Like before.
People here are getting tired. They began to sue the government. Some opposition politicians finally begin to speak out. She shot plainly.
I think you need, you all, you need to support these politicians. The interests of ordinary people like you and me can meet for a while their interests and vice-versa. You can walk together for a while. If they feel supported by people if they see consensus grow around them they can dare more. I insisted.
People were passing by. Old people, young boys, beautiful girls, mothers with their little children. Workers... We were sitting down in that corner of the square and we felt as alive as possible when the day that you feel the world is falling apart has come.
Silly, I smiled.
You laugh?
Yes.
Why?
I can no longer distinguish between reality and lies.
Tikrai?
Taip. Mūsų pasaulis miręs. I said. But I was grasped by the heavy thought of somebody who has altered the whole course of his life.
I had a great sadness that day on earth. I felt censored and displaced.

We were not far from the Lukiškių Kalėijimas and I thought of Alvaro. I started imagining that bestial impulse. It had certainly been bestial. Unstoppable. Impossible to bridle.
There is a side of the human being which is a pure beast. A man knows that side only when the fury fulfils the moment which is impossible to escape. And he knows it only after the act has been released, only after the act is out of him.
The same moment he spots the reason for the act, he realizes that the act has removed the reason.
That act has come from a side completely unknown, a bestial side. A side he had never experienced before.
I imagined it like a burst of an explosion, an overflood of evil and alien energy, which possessed him, like a fit, a seizure of daemons.
I started wondering if he had any chance to be excused for his violence.
Why was I asking myself that? Wasn't immoral to find a way to justify rape?
I had no idea. Maybe a man's grief is brother to anyone's grief.
It had to be this the reason... 
In this sense he and the victim were alike.
Paradoxically, I was creating empathy towards the executioner rather than the victim.
But was he at least aware of his crime? Most of the insane acts are said to have been committed consciously.
I believe, that only after ejaculation he experienced the depth of the abyss. In the very moment of that devilish seizure, he was unconscious.

When he caught the girl by her full, hard and fleshy buttocks he finally felt the pleasure of the beast inside satisfied by that embrace, he had desired for so long, For many days, weeks, and many months. He forgot everything about the world, he was absurdly lost at the centre of that iron grip, et vertatur in belvam.
He was 58 and she was 13. She had the body of a woman and the mind of a child. He possessed a woman but insulted and sullied a kid. Forever.
The day of atonement for his crime he knew would come. And it was bought to him by circumstances. The arrest, the sentence, the prison ... a life transfigured by a moment of uncontrolled madness, whose origin laid in two overly full and hard buttocks of a little girl who was already a woman.

And his life ended hanging from the bars of the cell, dangling from a belt stolen somewhere in the prison infirmary.
There are secrets which can’t be told. Secrets you don’t even permit yourself to be revealed to yourself. Now and then the conscience of a man can be trapped in a burden of heavy craziness. And it becomes unspeakable, the unrestrained power and the reason for that folly. 
The death of Alvaro in prison, in the Lukiškių Kalėijimas, had been so unexpected.
The last days of his life I thought he had time to rethink about that flame igniting his tragedy, like a long needle between his legs.
He had been kept in a dungeon in the underground. It was a clear message that his existence had to be cancelled from the visible world. And he knew that it was true.