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Wild beaches, there isn’t a soul – it’s too far to come here for the summer vacationers. Just cliffs, with springs running through them, merging into little crystalline waterfalls, the rivers of which go to the sea, meeting with one another, parting, once again meeting – water and sand graffiti; after looking closer, it’s not graffiti anymore but sheets of graphic art, blinded by the sun’s light and developed in black and white. They are cropped by the rising and falling of the seagulls’ screams.
My knees bend. I don’t notice how I lie down. The sky isn’t swirling anymore – only the clouds are sailing by. Faster than the ships that I just saw along the horizon and those, smaller than matchboxes, that appeared to be standing in place.
I’ll never have a safer home.
A home, the roof of which is the sky, and while inhabiting it, you need nothing, just to sail along like the clouds – quietly, calmly, sometimes coming closer to other clouds, merging with them, detaching from them; to just sail like them, painting the Garden of Eden, Sumerian cuneiform, the Gate of Dawn, whatever you want – cities dreamed to be built but have not been, never-ending journeys around the world, romantic rendezvous – they are illusions. But that is only the vision of this sunny day. Perhaps nothing will remain of it tomorrow – the clouds are unattainable, only seeming to obey the wind, though gravity does catch them in the end.
It often rains in Normandy.
My clothing slips off on its own accord: I feel the sea with my fingers, feet, ankles, barely swirling – the waves aren’t breaking today. The water slowly envelops my body, as if I am sinking into a well with walls into infinity – where is this feeling from which I am returning? I am returning to a place I never was, and if I had, then it was long ago, before I was born.
Finally, I am swimming.
I break away from the shore – I fear the depths, but today no longer. Seeming neither near, nor far, nor high, nor low, my legs are no longer afraid that they won’t reach the bottom, while the clearing made possible by my hands closes right back up. Not a sign that you were there. I am swimming slowly. The sea smothers speed – regardless of how much you swim, you will still remain where you were in its infiniteness. All that is left of the body is the eye’s vitreous humor drinking in the sun’s light, a glance pointed towards the shore, and a realization: it will shatter at once.
And it shatters.
Now an overarm stroke – faster, as fast as possible, but the shore is like the horizon, becoming distant, regardless of how close you get to it. But I will still catch it – my elbow shoots out, my arm straightens, as if I wanted to catch what is uncatchable, a stroke, my left arm – another stroke, over and over, and finally the sand. I don’t have to hurry anymore. My backpack is right here – a bit more, and the flood would have taken it. I gather my clothes and, hugging my bag, I run towards the cliffs. It is my dog; how could I have left my dog here? I sit it down on the rocks – the flood won’t reach it here.
For a moment, the faces of those men flash in my memory, the crooked smile of one of them, the suspicious scar on the cheek of another. I feel a hand squeezing my wrist, but their faces and the platform at the station disappear right away, as if a wave had washed over the shore – wasn’t that why I came here, so, having forgotten everything, I’d dive into the sea? Having bared myself as much as the cliffs had bared themselves before me, as much as the sand had bared itself before me, as much as the sea had bared itself before me – as much as I bare myself, I will never be as naked as they. That is a game of the imagination; cliffs, sand, and the sea are always naked – what can they hide from others and from themselves? And who am I that could ask them to listen and hear me out?
I am diving.
After coming up, I swim.
“If you didn’t do anything bad, you can take communion without confession.”
I hear the priest saying this while on my back, my arms spread out on each side in a cross on the water. When I, still a child, was in front of the confessional, I couldn’t come up with what sins I needed to confess.
Only after wading out, I come to the realization that the sea is reclaiming the shore faster than I thought – the strip of sand between it and the cliffs is already much narrower. I can’t understand how many kilometers and how much time it took to get here. I don’t know how close the water is getting to the cliffs – if it comes right up to them, how will I get home? The sea, the sand, and the cliffs live according to their own rhythm – the sea goes according to the moon – they are naked and silent, they won’t tell you anything.
I look around.
On one side I make out the silhouettes of three or four people, and on the other side, it seems there’s one, but without my glasses I can’t understand whether they are approaching or becoming more distant.
After throwing open my backpack, I rummage around its little pockets. I dig around between my towel, swimming trunks that I took just in case, and a book thrown in for who knows what as if I had planned on reading, a sandwich and a bottle of water, something else, and finally everything is spread out on the sand. In the pockets of my shorts are only cigarettes and a lighter. Bending over, I look closely around – maybe I dropped my glasses somewhere? I go a bit further – as if the wind could have blown them farther. But there’s no wind, which is why the crests of the waves aren’t crashing today.
The crests are only crashing within me today.
Until I realize: the sea will have taken them. Perhaps I put them in an outer pocket that wasn’t buttoned up – I ran right after jumping out of the water that had risen up, trying to save my dog, and then they fell out. Now there, where I was running, the water is claiming the sand.
Three or four people recede, a man approaches; after quickly getting dressed and having thrown my things into my backpack, I walk in his direction.
This translation was funded by the Lithuanian Culture Institute
