U.Radzevičiūtė’s “Fishes and dragons”: for those looking for light in the dark | Culture

Acquaintance with the works of the famous Lithuanian writer should be started in a completely different way. After all, just a few months ago Undinė’s brand new novel “Dangerous Words” was presented, and it’s been more than 10 years since “Fishes and Dragons”. But the careless reader has the privilege of choosing books based on recommendations and covers. The cover of “Fishes and Dragons” – as well as international awards and numerous translations of the novel into foreign languages ​​- promises a colorful read.

The first pages, and… poignant, funny, but also unsettling. Chinese dialogues, outlines of Chinese landscapes, Chinese emptiness. What is this exile for? There is no need to pretend: a Lithuanian with a limited horizon does not care much regarding cultural misunderstandings between the West and China or the change of the Ming and Qing dynasties in the Forbidden City. However, the author of the novel justifies that “the Chinese are like butterflies: you might not watch it, but it is very interesting.” Is it still worth watching?

Suddenly, there’s a crack, and the plot jumps from the Far East, where the Jesuit wanderer Castiglione can’t “open the sky to the Chinese with a brush”, to the apartment. A completely non-exotic, rather post-Soviet apartment. Here you can hear three generations of women talking regarding life through carbon monoxide. Again, sharp, biting, hopelessly funny at times, and much more my own. From now on, you will have to jump like this – China, flat, China, flat. And hope that these two lines will somehow connect. Only those connections are few at first glance, except for the growing suspicion that both here, in the apartment, and there, in the East, are far from heaven for people.

We had to hear complaints that the author had inserted two different novels into the book, only one of which lives up to expectations (only there is disagreement as to which one). But are plot distances a problem? What if distance is the key to this book? Between civilizations. Heaven and earth. Youth and old age. Between oriental exotic fantasies and how things really turn out. You also feel the inevitable distance between what you manage to understand in the text and what remains hidden from you. Therefore, you read on, sometimes you smile, but at the same time you feel that someone is smiling even more cunningly behind your back. Or maybe they laugh – like the Jesuit Castiglione, who in fifty years in China did not learn the secret of the Chinese, God, or woman.

What to do when there are only distances in life and disappointments around every corner? You can smoke, the star of the novel, Grandmother Amigorena, would remind you. You can still eat chocolate – a universally recognized antidepressant. In addition, you can spar with words – so that everyone around hurts and remembers better because of it. The most important themes of life – self-realization, creativity, human communion and love – are quartered in the dialogues of the novel’s characters like criminals in ancient China. The brightest ideals and illusions are covered with the blackness of sarcasm, without shedding a single tear at the funeral. And of the highest human emotions, only small dots remain on the board of sins filled by the monk. “And why does it always seem like life is just a backdrop for more interesting stories?” The main character of the book asks. It’s a pity that in that background she manages to discover this and that only following losing even more.

Is disbelief in happy endings the honest position of “Pisces and Dragons”? What then to do with those beings who, even “standing in the shaft and looking into the darkness”, do not rest and long for the light?

“What are you looking for in the dark? asked Miki.

Lights! – answered Grandmother Amigorena.

You need to look for light in the darkness, – thought Shasha.”

Apparently, the author of the book would also like light. She even mentions that there are stairs up. Only she hesitates whether those stairs lead to “heaven as heaven”, or to “the sky like a hole.” Or maybe it doesn’t lead anywhere at all, just “hangs in the air”? After reading Fish and Dragons, you are left with two choices: dare to climb up and check it out…or learn to be fully Chinese. Because “the Chinese can also live on land. Europeans, in their opinion, differ from the Chinese in that they agree to “live in the air”. And in the sky, according to most Chinese, no one lives.”