From Russia with Lunch (10 page)

There were still several exhibits I wanted to see, but homesickness and state-sanctioned murder tend to diminish one's enthusiasm, so I strolled the block. At one end of the park stood a cairn dedicated to the memory of those executed in the basement. There were bouquets of fresh flowers at its base.

In the rectangular masonry which stretches from the pavement to shoulder height and anchors the entire museum are carved the names of those who never made it out of the place. Generations of the same family name are etched alongside one another and many did not live to see their twenties. Although my direct antecedents had left Lithuania decades before these forced removals, a network of relatives on both my mother's and father's side remained. Statistically speaking, it is highly unlikely the Smiedts and Dibobises escaped the deportations and arrests. A trawl through official archives and the memory vaults of relatives on two continents yielded no evidence as to whether any had perished or persevered. When I discovered what awaited those who stood by their faith, principles or homes, I was glad for the lack of specifics.

By the end of the 1950s, armed resistance against the Soviets had been nullified and an underground press was making dangerous statements about independence. Over the subsequent decades, the regime would slip into insidious Orwellian mode and round up Lithuanians through broad sweeps and targeted campaigns. The official charge was ‘betrayal of the motherland' and as I wandered through the section of the museum dedicated to this state-sponsored invasion of privacy, something about the odious business began to take on a loathsome familiarity.

There will doubtless be scholars who can pick verifiable holes in the following statement, but once I saw one parallel between Soviet-era Lithuania and the apartheid-era South Africa of my childhood, others followed like odious sequels. For a start, the respective regimes displayed a similarly brutal intolerance to thoughts of equitable representation on the part of the subjugated majority. In both nations, many of those who protested in the name of freedom in their own lifetime were either removed to distant prison camps or ‘disappeared' while in custody.

What's more, because of the duration of these respective administrations – the Russians ruled Lithuania from 1944 to 1991, while the National Party oversaw South Africa from 1948 to 1994 – each had similar surveillance and repression methods at their disposal. Just as in South Africa, Lithuanian trains were bugged to ensure no dissenters would rouse their countrymen through impassioned speeches during rush hour. The home telephones of academics, artists and anyone who might have reason to be in contact with the west were routinely bugged, as were workplaces such as research institutes, schools and – go figure – fisheries. In 1971, 233,732 employees in these industries were surveilled. Can you imagining how riveting this must have been?

Fish gutter 1: Hey, Sergei, nice mullet.

Fish gutter 2: Do that joke one more time and I'll fillet you. Besides, I'm growing my layers out.

Every piece of international mail was checked for inappropriate content. Should this be discovered, the letters were either confiscated or forwarded to the recipient with the offending sentences blacked out as a warning that they were on the authorities' radar. According to KGB documents, 1988 saw agents report 30 occasions on which they had eavesdropped in cafés and restaurants, 130 such snoopings in hotels, 30 secret recordings, 15–20 trailings of suspicious persons and a similar number of episodes where they secretly rifled through a foreigner's possessions. Operatives in the field were schooled in the art of invisibility and could follow those deemed not quite kosher while blending into the background. A manual on display from 1960 even coached KGB staff on the finer points of becoming a street vendor, taxi driver, surveyor and mother with the most convincing of accessories, a live child. Meanwhile, copies of underground newspapers seized by the police were routinely scanned for fingerprints which could then be matched back to those on file. Just as in South Africa, the signals of foreign radio stations were banned with five jamming stations and sixty transmitters in operation 24/7.

The few international visitors who made it into Lithuania from the late 1950s onwards were given the surveillance equivalent of a colonoscopy. Permission to enter the country was only granted after they had successfully completed a 52-point questionnaire regarding the purpose of their visit. Initially, they were permitted to visit only Vilnius but later short trips to Druskininkai and Palanga were permitted. In addition to the fact that a tourist's every conversation in public was most likely overheard, their accommodation had more mics and cameras than the Big Brother house. In Vilnius, for example, when the one hotel which was permitted to house foreigners was recently refurbished, builders found the furniture, fixtures and fittings to be riddled with listening devices.

From 1987, as the world hailed Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika policies and Lithuanian dissidents could criticise the Soviets more openly, KGB operatives in the country were under direct orders to derail, impede and splinter the process of liberalisation. Unable to disperse rallies with the random force of years gone by, they set about infiltrating the burgeoning Sajudis movement which was agitating for independence and democracy. Aside from planting moles, many KGB agents also endeavoured to factionalise the Sajudis crews by increasing tension through rumours of collusion or suggesting the formation of new parties. The tactic failed but Soviet determination to rein in this burgeoning danger intensified.

In 1989, one General E Eisaws – a man of thin lips and an expression that betrayed a perpetual war with his own colon – noted that the KGB had ‘failed to change the operative situation by checklist methods'. He then sent agents on a tailored military training course aimed at suppressing mass uprisings. Rapid response teams were established throughout the country, as were interrogation units, and by the early 1990s six thousand KGB agents were stationed in Lithuania. Their precise strike rate and methods of eking information from the unwilling are unknown as thousands of pages were found to have been ripped out of KGB files before they left.

What is certain, however, is that they selected their marks from photographs taken at rallies. These occupy an entire wall in the museum and dozens of participants are circled with the ominous words ‘must be identified'. Some hold loudhailers and speak with the passion of those who have chosen to forsake their safety for their ideals. Others applaud with smiles that are an awkward combination of apprehension and defiance. A few stand sombre-faced with their arms by their sides, fearful of the ramifications of their mere presence. Several seem to have been charged with protecting the speaker and huddle around him scanning the crowd for triggers and the roofs for snipers.

As with revolutionaries the world over, appearance was not a high priority and they proclaimed their mantras in rough jeans, wild hair and op shop jackets. The museum's explanatory pamphlet suggested that these were Lithuania's bona fide heroes.

Tramping to the exit of Parkas Grutas past bronze-cast odes to Soviet hard men with B-movie cheekbones and made-to-measure military finery, I couldn't have agreed more.

5

The second city

The chief rabbi of Jerusalem is visiting the pope at the Vatican when he spots a golden telephone on the pontiff's desk. ‘Excuse me, your holiness,' he says, ‘but I've never seen a telephone like that before. What is it for?'

‘That,' replies the pope, ‘is my direct line to God.'

‘That's incredible,' says the rabbi. ‘Do you mind if I make a call?'

‘Not at all,' smiles the pope.

A few minutes later, the rabbi hangs up then says, ‘Wow, that was amazing. What do I owe you for the call?'

‘Five dollars will be fine,' says the pope.

The rabbi happily hands over the money and a few months later finds himself entertaining the pope in his Jerusalem office. The pope laughs and says, ‘I see you also got one of those gold phones. Is it too a line to God?'

‘Of course,' says the rabbi. ‘Would you like to make a call?'

The pope does so and hanging up after a few minutes decides to emulate the rabbi's manners by asking if he can pay for the call.

‘Fifty cents will be fine' replies the rabbi.

The pope counters with, ‘My dear Rabbi, I must confess to feeling a little embarrassed. I charged you five dollars to telephone God from my office and you are only charging me fifty cents'

‘Relax,' says the rabbi. ‘From here it's a local call.'

From Grutas Park and Druskininkai, the road to Kaunas takes you due north through Alytus. Sweeps of pines rush the highway, often seeming to interlock above you, then retreat several hundred metres beyond fallow fields and maize crops. Mostly, however, it's grassy paddocks flecked with petite daises and ambivalent cattle. Amid these stand wooden farmhouses the colour of strong mustard, their sharp A-frame lines stiff against the forests swaying like teenage pop fans during a ballad. Farmers in gumboots and weathered faces trundle along on arthritic bicycles. The spires of distant village churches peek over hillocks uninviting and glad you're passing by. A part of me is chuffed that Lithuania hasn't yet decided to pimp its historic villages to the euro. Let alone embarked on a flagrantly irresponsible campaign to add the letter ‘e' to the end of words apparently lacking in antiquated charm. Another would kill for some drive-through.

The fields, bright with lilac and cream wildflowers, eventually give way to the industrial outskirts of Kaunas. As do I. While I consider myself a randomly courteous driver at home, abroad and on the wrong side of the road in a country where the screeching of brakes forms the urban soundtrack, I become obsequiousness on four wheels. Anyone who displays the merest hint of desire to cross my path – learner drivers, ladies with limps and imaginary companions, bicycles – immediately receives right of way.

Like pretty much every other Lithuanian settlement, the origin of Kaunas can be found in a cracking legend of love, lust, loss and alliteration. According to folk beliefs, the city was named for the offspring of two star-crossed lovers whose families made the Montagues and Capulets look like the Bradys and Waltons. We start with a hottie named Mida. Pure of spirit and body, she not only broke the heart of many a potential suitor but was deemed worthy enough to do work experience tending the holy fire on the nearby hills of Aleksotas. Enter Daugerutis, a pagan Justin Timberlake with a nightingale voice and his own line of smart-casual separates. Rolling out that most dependable of fairytale villains, storytellers then describe how Mida's wicked stepmother revealed the lovers' transgression. Daugerutis was sentenced to be burnt in the sacred fire that Mida herself tended. Oh the irony! The stereotypes keep on comin' with a kindly priest named Auskaras who took pity on Mida and hid her lover before he was rendered medium-rare. Caught up in the commotion, Mida neglected her fire-tending duties, the flame went out and both lovers were sentenced to act as kindling.

If this were a telemovie, it would be about now that ‘Eternal Flame' by the Bangles would overlay the lovers' farewell. But wait, Auskaras steps in once more and hides the pair in a convenient cave beneath the fire. It was here they had a son named Kaunas who would found the city which now stands across the river from the Aleksotas Hills. Leave it to the carbon-daters to rain on such liturgical parades. Arche-ologists have found evidence of settlement dating from 1030 AD while an Arab geographer mentioned the hamlet of Kanigu in 1140.

In the fourteenth century, the city bounced between German and Lithuanian hands like a rent boy at Mardi Gras before the combined armies of Lithuania and Poland spanked the Teutonic Order into final submission at the battle of Zalgiris in 1410. Because the Nemunas River was navigable from Kaunas to the sea, the town prospered as a trading crossroads and port. It all went horribly wrong in 1665 when the entire place was burned. Things then traversed downhill from bad to disastrous during the Napoleonic wars after fighting, disease and fires saw the population drop from 28,000 to three hundred. Industrialisation enabled the city's fortunes to rise once more towards the end of the nineteenth century but Tzar Alexander's decision to make Kaunas the strongest point of the Russian Empire's western border virtually drew the word ‘target' on Kaunas.

Although the Germans duly obliged in 1915, the locals had gotten used to rebuilding. Only this time around, they were ushering in a period of pride, peace and prosperity unlike any the city had ever known. When Russia fell to the Germans in 1918, Lithuanian independence was declared. Poland was not impressed and two years later seized Vilnius plus a sliver of the country's west. It was thus that Kaunas was declared capital of Lithuania for a period of self-sufficiency that would run until 1939 and only be restored in 1991, with Vilnius as the capital.

I arrived in town at sunset and after dumping my bags at a hotel set out to find dinner. As with other Lithuanian cities, the nouveau riche bad boys of Kaunas had splashed out on Harley-Davidsons and literally gone the whole hog with outfits and accessories that perfectly matched their rides. From their helmeted heads to their leather-booted toes, every colour, logo and chevron complemented the motif of their toys. Any menace they were intending to convey was thus instantly undone because, let's face it, no one can look tough in a puce and lemon ensemble.

Just as was the case in Vilnius, the locals made extensive use of their public spaces. Elderly couples and animated mid-lifers promenaded along Laisves Aleja – the charmless pebblecrete pedestrian mall that bisects the Old Town. I'm sure it looked much better in the artist's impression but the lines of cracked planter boxes cancelled out the beauty of the bottle-green trees that grew from them. Ditto the fluorescent street lamps that bleached the entire scene in anaemia. Still, pockets of people managed to attach the electrodes of vitality to the nipples of dreariness. Chief among them were the flower sellers. Most often grandmas in faded
babushkas
, layered cardigans and capacious skirts, they emerge on Lithuanian city streets after lunch and stay till dusk. Freshly picked and ensconced in plastic buckets, pale blue primulas are bound to mauve aster and afro dahlias. The arrangements are invariably simple, often fragrant and meet a sustained need.

The importance played by flowers in Lithuania cannot be overstated. Where many cultures see a bottle of wine as the standard reciprocal gift for a dinner invitation, a fistful of petals is the Baltic norm. So much so that there are strict rules which govern their assembly. Odd numbers of blooms are de rigueur as those divisible by two are reserved only for mournful occasions. Spared the poncy affectations practised by inner city florists in apparently more hip countries – where exorbitant conglomerations of radishes, lemons and grass are favoured over blossoms – here flowers become a statement of simple beauty. Five Australian dollars buy you a bouquet that might be used to seduce a lover or apologise to one, depending on where you are in the relationship.

In addition to the peony peddlers, clutches of teens were seemingly occupied in a competition to see who could slouch into a state of perfect horizontalness on a park bench while still keeping artfully scuffed Nikes planted on the ground. Others were embroiled in a contest between their spinal columns and the pavement played out on skateboards and BMX bikes. Still more practised the post-pubescent art of being simultaneously disinterested and disruptive. Oh my God, did the word ‘disruptive' just leak from the keyboard? As I get older it seems that every day I find myself one step closer to that stage when I will be using ‘punks' as a general term of derision as opposed to a description of those who adhered to the anarchic British music movement of the 1980s.

I ate in a time warp. The steakhouse was one of those ‘live music nightly' joints with pretensions to grandeur it couldn't quite fulfil. It had been decorated in a style I christened visually impaired lottery winner. The walls were daubed in salmon, chandeliers Imelda Marcos would have declared garish hung from the off-yellow ceiling and the banquettes were ensconced in flecked black marble. What better to set off chocolate velour pelmets festooned with tassels and blinds of gold silk? Still, the restaurant was doing a brisk trade with a procession of steaks tougher than Charles Bronson being ferried from the kitchen. And all the while the music flowed.

The evening's entertainment was provided by what I assumed was a couple who played the piano. She had bifocals, perfect posture and the metallic russet hair shade favoured by Lithuanian women of a certain age. All of which lent her an air of second-hand aristocracy. He, however, was a symphony in burgundy trousers, a white linen shirt and the kind of extravagantly chequered sports jacket worn by the lesser James Bonds. Together, they appeared to be a cross between ageing swingers and exiled royalty. Yet the melodies which flowed from their hands were sublime. She was all technique with notes crisper than unripened apples and a penchant for minor keys. The prince of polyester was master of the flourish with dextrous fingers that stroked and tickled notes from the keys. From Porter to Prokofiev, each song had a lugubrious magnificence which I interpreted – with no justification whatsoever – to be a reflection of the state of their relationship.

What made them so intriguing was the fact that they played concurrently. It was as if he had received the top third of the keyboard in a nasty divorce settlement. From time to time, this man would also up and leave in mid-song, only to return when a harmony was required. After which he would once again return to his paper at the bar. Did I mention that he only used one hand and it was still up to his partner to turn the sheet music? I could have stayed all night to watch what was tantamount to a scored Ibsen play, but I had a date with the devil first thing next morning.

Lithuanians think of Kaunas as the more staid and cerebral of its cities – Maggie Gyllenhaal to Vilnius' Jake. While it's true that there are no tawdry strip clubs, marauding buck's nights and way fewer raucous bars, there seems to be an ingrained fondness for the bizarre here that Vilnius either never had or lost in the rush to broadband modernity. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the Devil Museum. Located a couple of blocks north of Laisves Aleja on a street lined with fat oaks and drab concrete apartment blocks is one of only two museums in the world dedicated to the Dark Lord. Opened in 1966, it houses the demonic collection of artist Antanas Zmuidzinavicius – or AZ to his mates, which I so would have been.

Where hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians covertly practised their faith under the communist regime, AZ amassed his own statement of defiance in the form of 2000 devils. Not sure what the correct collective term might be here, but I'm thinking a Microsoft. Despite the fact that Christianity plays a dominant role in Lithuanian life and culture, the country's pagan roots still seem embedded in the national psyche to some degree. This is in part due to the work of painters like AZ who had little time for the binary good/evil divisions of Judaeo-Christian ideology and instead sought to remind locals of the devil's more complex characteristics.

As far as local folklore is concerned, the big D was no mere demon. Rather, he was a respected guardian of the dead, fertility and the animal world. In ministerial terms, three pretty big portfolios. Shapeshifting between horse, pig and ram manifestations, he was responsible for the wellbeing and growth of flocks. His additional roles were that of seducer, rebel, punisher and progenitor of satire. And as per the country favourite ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia' – another breakaway Soviet republic – he also played one mean fiddle. So vicious was his talent that strings of other musicians' instruments were said to snap at the first note played by the Devil.

Apparently Lucifer was God's brother and, as with many siblings, there was a degree of competitiveness. When you're always in the shadow of the Almighty, I can understand why you might have a chip on your bony shoulder. The crisis point arose during a metaphysical version of
Idol,
in which Lucifer pitted his choir of angels against that of his brother. Lucifer's team lost out by a halo. He declared war and God evicted him from heaven without returning his bond. Apparently, he and his choristers fell for three days and nights before landing in Hades. Ever since, the pair have had problems, with Lucifer constantly sabotaging his brother's plans and royally screwing up any task he's given. When God asked for birds, for example, he got bats.

The museum only has enough space to exhibit seven hundred of the devils at any one time but even truncated, the collection is riveting. So feted was AZ's obsession that donations made their surreptitious way into communist Lithuania from across the globe. Several priests even contributed. One of the finer attractions is a bone china coffee set comprising sixty pieces. Each is rimmed with gold and features the most delicate handpainted semblances of the Devil engaged in tasks ranging from fornication to fornication. For someone with cloven hoofs, he's remarkably limber. Just as striking is a display of Japanese clay devil masks. Cross a psychotic Sumo wrestler with a manga kabuki diva in the throes of PMS and you'll begin to get the picture. There was also a mahogany cane wrought with the creatures from hell – lizards, snakes and toads – whose top was formed by the head of Lucifer. Who was either in a fit of rage or passing a kidney stone.