The Beginning of Eros
Translated from Lithuanian by Ada Valaitis
A young girl sees films
that the grown-ups are watching, they think,
that young girls understand
nothing – two people roll around,
his head between her
legs, what are they doing, asks
the girl, he’s biting her,
the grown-ups say, the following
evening she’s awake again,
the girl sees – one man
sits in a wheelchair,
another holds a gun to his
temple, two others
go to bed, again the same
noises that the young girl
sometimes hears at night
through the wall – those noises –
they frighten and lure.
On the third night, the girl
watches a film where a woman
in chains is beaten with a whip,
she whimpers, she says: harder,
as a warm stream of blood runs
down her lean thighs,
a man twirls the whip –
with a small, sharp hook
at the end, her mother and father
pant nearby, a hot
breathing reeking of beer
and something else,
the girl sees a tangle of bodies,
can’t tell an arm from a leg,
the young girl can’t fall asleep,
she listens and listens to the rhythm of creaking,
she dreams and dreams –
there’s a hairy beast between her legs,
like in the film
Beauty and the Beast,
the young girl wakes up drenched in sweat,
she no longer knows
what she should feel when
her father beats her bare buttocks
with a belt, it hurts, but maybe she should
whimper – “harder” –
like that woman in the film.
