A Beast without a Mask

A beast by definition is something you should be afraid of. Something that lurks in the shadows and grinds its sharp teeth at the sight of your slender figure moving along the narrow streets of Kaunas old town… His long pale tongue more than able to circle your throat at least three times before the initial shock fades as you’re struggling to gurgle out a gasp. His rock-covered skin, smooth as the stones in the river Nemunas covered with moss and cold as the touch of January wind on your reddish cheeks… the reddish that would so instantly fade from your face, leaving it pale and white, sometimes ice-blue with fear, if you ever managed to see the snout of this beast. The snake-like teeth sticking out of a rectangular mouth and eyes… the eyes that are said to have seen so much and for so long that everything and everyone that now attracts their attention is simply regarded as a faded memory in the making of history… yes, what an absolutely dreadful beast it is. Cruel, deceptive, cold-blooded, and everything else you can imagine, without actually seeing it… as it happens, people tend to make assumptions when the only facts are those born in the depths of their gloomiest imagination. Such was Kaunas beast, an image that has been formed for centuries to come, a monster, as they said, that shifts form and moves as fast as the fish in Nemunas, a beast, a creature of the past that does not want to let go… little did they know, and much did people so ingeniously fear to find out, what the beast of Kaunas was really about…in the Spring of 2020, however, this mystic creature decided to show its true form…
The decision was no less awkward and usual than the situation itself. At the end of 2019, a horrific virus started spreading all around the World and it crossed Lithuanian borders in the next couple of months. On March 16th Kaunas went into a lockdown state and one by one people locked themselves with three different sets of keys and some even shut all windows. The city started resembling a dessert at midnight – still and mystical. Even the beast of Kaunas, which had always been hiding in the middle of wild-flower filled fields, in the deepest point of Nemunas or at the tops of the highest Lithuanian Oaks, began wondering what had happened. Kaunas is usually overfilled with teenage girls gossiping in near Žalgiris arena with cups of iced coffee in their nail-polished hands, youngsters gather in rollerblade or bicycle-lover groups, newlyweds smile in front of their relatives toasting to their future prosperity and happiness in the town hall… Now, however, the city went silent.
The beast decided to drag his scally tale and everything that’s attached to it, outside and take a look. He had his doubts, of course… The first time he came out of the water, where he used to have his permanent residence, was when he met a girl named Eglė and fell in love. Being a foreigner… foreign by all his nature…he was not accepted by Eglė’s parents and shamefully remembers his love story exploited in the pages of children literature… Žilvinas was how people called him then. The second time was even more shameful… He set up a small nest in the exact spot where rivers Nemunas and Neris meet…. he would emerge from the water and chirp and chatter love songs, for the girl he had once loved… not long after couples started coming to that enchanted river junction to listen to his heart-warming songs while promising each other true love. The beast could not take it – he moved again. And now, only now, he left his lurking-place for the first time in 230 years…
Everyone was in masks – they were all hiding their faces, just as the beast has done for so many centuries…and there was something wrong. ‘The air doesn’t smell right,’- he thought… ‘It’s sick.’ The beast could sense the virus taking both hope and health from the citizens of Kaunas… Thus, being pure at heart, he decided to help the people in his home city. Each morning he would roam the streets of Kaunas gathering virus-particles with his enormous jaws. It took him at least one and a half months to clean the air again…and as he did so, people started coming back…at first, one by one; then in smaller groups and finally the city was alive again. And nobody, absolutely nobody knew what the beast of Kaunas had done. How he thought that adversity that had struck the heart of Lithuania. Maybe nobody needs to know? Yet, the creature rests now… and, by my own definition, definitely not a beast to be feared of… a friend…the guardian of Kaunas.

Author: Monika Karpavičiūtė