He has ceased to exist.
He's a part of the Soviet, was always meant to be.
That is, like an unruly child, he's resisted for such a long time. (But it wasn't good for him.)
But he's finally seen the light. He's a good boy.
Good boy, good boy- he's the dog at the end of the leash, but that dog knows what is right, what should be. He follows in his master's footsteps, uncomplaining and unquestioning. After all, he's too stupid to be able to think for himself- he needs guidance (and a bit more). He will always need it to keep him on the correct path.
The dog knows what to do when hunting becomes scarce; he looks to the man for help, and he is fed. All that is required on the part of the dog are a few behavioral adjustments- it's more than a fair exchange. The man approves, and the dog- the dog approves; it is grateful- it sees the necessity in such an action.
An animal is nothing without a man to tame it and use it. Productivity, they call it.
Toris is that proverbial dog. He is worked like a dog, begs like a dog, and pleads for more in canine cowardice. His blood is impure, his thoughts are incorrect and naÏve, but despite it, despite it....he is still loved, in that cold, painful love that is strictly Ivan's.
He is the favorite. (cruel, cruel word.)
Russia's love, Russia's favor-- it only brings him more pain in the end.
He is the one most incapitated, the one most picked upon to set a good example. He'd taken them all away- his eyes sting at the thought. They are his soul, his children; who will be there to cry for them?
His cabinet is filled with Ivan's people- the sound of their voices cause a dull ache at the base of his brain.
Toris will be a good Soviet member, he will be the cover that the world will see, he will represent the Baltics' 'willing capitulation'.
He hates himself for bearing this role with a smile, with agreeing to Ivan's every whim- but he has no choice.
That's what they have been telling him, these voices in his head.
You've been liberated, haven't you? Besides, isn't it better to be together under the Soviet? This is your new happiness, this is your new future.
He runs the polishing cloth over the statuettes in Ivan's foyer- they're all different shapes, different sizes- some are carved out of wood so old and worn that the cuts and nicks have faded to mere depressions. Yet, for all their disparity, they still stand austerely before him, their sightless eyes turned accusingly towards him. He is the judged one, always, before the unmoved and the unmovable.
He remembers the older ones, knows them from their shared history: the busts of three Ivans in a circle, an old Mongol carving of a plainsman, a crudely cut woodblock of Anna of Byzantine, Vladimir of Kiev, Oleg... assorted gems scattered over a dusty mink spread. Amber.
The objects gradually become more recent; Toris polishes the smock of the Venerable Sergius of Radonezh, silently noticing the jagged stub protruding from its hand; pauses in silence at Alexei and his doomed family; picks up the broken fragments of a few unlucky Mensheviks; barely bothers with the thin film of grime on Lenin's face.
And at the very end of the line, cut from finely-veined marble, is none other than Stalin. He walks up to it slowly and meditatively, and although it's only for a moment, they warily eye each other through an eternity's worth of silence.
For a moment, he puts out a hand as if to touch it, but at the last moment, he lets his hand drop.
No matter how he tries to look at it, their freedom is not his freedom. Theirs is only the mere imitation of freedom, a cheap copy. He sees no freedom in the Soviet-issued newspapers, in the newly implemented radio station from Moscow, in the books and poems by the so-called famous Lithuanian writers, in the closing of his churches.
Toris only sees the green and yellow being swallowed up by the red.
Does he believe what they feed him?
He can only swallow, not trusting himself to speak. "Yes." It's the only reply to Ivan's casual questions. In those moments, he can only bring himself to gaze into the darkness over Ivan's shoulder.
It's the only word that rolls more easily off his tongue; the others are tempered with uncertainty, with fear. Even so, Ivan's reactions are so fickle, so unpredictable that he's had to refute his words more than once. Really, Toris can no longer judge the difference between truth and lies; this inability leaves an empty feeling in his chest. He will say what he wants him to say- gladly! Gladly! (just no more.)
His pride left with the last of them- Smetonas, Merkys...
Blinking back sudden tears, he closes the glass doors hurriedly, not sparing the cabinet a second glance.
It's easier to hate, infinitely easier.
In every fairy-tale, everyone wants a villain and a hero. Everyone wants someone to love, someone to hate. But life isn't a fairy-tale; things are never so clear-cut. He doesn't know what he feels towards Ivan- what he feels is neither hate or love or even indifference, but something else. It's something that had a long time to define itself, but it still manages to elude him. All he can say is that sometimes, when he's awkwardly standing in the threshold of Ivan's room, the other nation's back to him in the forever-dying light, he sees and understands more than he wishes he did.
How could he hate someone who was himself so broken, so divided?
Toris steps out into the creaking hallway, the starkly pale walls doing little to dispel the heavy, gloomy atmosphere. It smells like paint-thinner here; like freshly-whitewashed wood, like too-new soil over impromptu graves. This wall has been done and redone many times; even so, there are darkened squares that show through the wash. Memories were made to be forgotten; in this perfect new world of theirs, everything that had been wrong has been set to rights- isn't it lovely?
We're all in this together- we will be happy happy happy happy happy....
Yet, despite what they all say, there is something that feels so fundamentally wrong,
so..
so...
so...
he cannot describe it in the shape of his bruises, in his empty thoughts, in the tape-recording of his words, nor even in terms of hard fact. They do not belong to him.
But somewhere out there, in the midst of broken bodies and frozen fields, he can feel it.
Maybe, just maybe, he can dare to reach out, grab, take that incriminating sensation into his mind.
Raw emotions do not need to be analyzed.
Who is he, really?
He swipes the fabric across the mirror with a vengeance, partially obscuring his own image in the glass.
Perhaps...even here, even now...Lietuva?