FRAGMENTS

He started living in contradictory solitude, crowded with apparitions. He became the silent spectator of his own stories. He watched himself on brown film, visiting the myths of his life, dribbling from the walls, seeping from his pores. His narrations on perpetual lease.

In a secluded square, one upon a time in Vilnius, he came across an assortment of cracked pottery in an antiques shop. He walked into the dust and stood in front

of a plaster panel, showing Christ with soiled eyes and red lips. It was 17.15 and the train was scheduled to leave at 21.00.

That time you had done your utmost: you had levitated to the new star and grasped it. Then you lost height and tumbled, star and all, to hell.

Do not knock on this door. An emaciated, broken man lives here, discharged recently from a leprosarium. The story goes that he had infected the vestal virgin and now he’s locked in his own skeleton, in an isolation prescribed since his childhood, when he watched his paper flowers melt in the rain. Do not knock on this door, stranger: this is the house of dark chronicles, full of corners laden with stories of vexation, intrigue and fear.

It’s of no use to have my crypt adorned with marble and lanterns: your tenders would not alter my mortal sleep. My death would remain alert and conscious, sustained by my desolation, eternally.