From Russia with Lunch (18 page)

Well, at least he was straight up on the first part. Swinging the vessel through 360 degrees he motored to Gotland, an island speck off the coast of Sweden. Going ashore with a Lithuanian crewman, Pleskys declared he was seeking asylum. His mate was having none of it and promptly returned to the barge which was escorted back to Soviet waters. Pleskys, meanwhile, was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death in absentia. Eventually migrating to the United States where he was hidden by the CIA, Pleskys spent much of the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for KGB operatives.

Another of those to sail this channel was my greatgrandfather Solomon Hershl Smiedt who, around 1892, aged nineteen or so, undertook the four-month voyage to South Africa from Memel (Klaipeda). While the Memel side of the waterway has changed radically since that time, the spit side has not. This allowed me to gaze out on the same view he did while pondering the unfathomable bravery it took to give up his past and his family for the gamble of a better future. Considering the furthest from home he'd ever been was probably Sovetsk, there was no doubting Solly's valour.

In a country of bewitching landscapes, the Curonian Spit takes the coven. Essentially a sandbar stretching 98 kilometres, it is a geological spring chicken having come into existence a mere 5000 years ago. As with practically everything else in Lithuania – ‘See that dunny over there? It was created by Bowelitas, god of flatulence, after the pagan celebration of fibre and yoghurt' – it has an accompanying legend. It involves Neringa, a female, if not feminine, version of Hercules, who created the place after gathering up sand in her apron and depositing it in an arc to protect local fisherfolk from the Baltic. Sweet.

The spit was actually the result of sand drifts which originated in the nearby Samland peninsula following glacial withdrawal. A highly unreliable method of contraception. Initially, the drifts formed a gritty archipelago but were subsequently bound together by the wind into a desert of shifting dunes. Grasses and trees eventually took hold in what is known as the Lindsay Lohan phenomenon of partial stabilisation. Regarding woods as sacred places, the pagan fishermen who initially inhabited the spit felled little timber.

The loggers who plundered the place in the Middle Ages did not feel the same way. Cue the shifting of mammoth sand dunes, which swallowed villages whole. During the Seven Years War, which raged from 1756 to you do the maths, the Curonian Spit was subjected to the geographical equivalent of a Brazilian wax. So extensive was the deforestation that an international conference was held in Danzig in 1768 to save the spit. A mission that was accomplished through extensive planting of trees, shrubs and grasses.

The spit's history is as shifting as its sands. In the wake of the Balts – Curonians in the north and Prussians in the south – the Teutonic knights claimed the territory for Jesus and Germany. Where it remained until 1918, when the northern half was deemed an international protectorate which was eventually handed to Lithuania in 1923. The spit was split until 1939, when the Germans re-established total dominance. Following World War II, the Russians moved in and it was only in 1990, when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, that Lithuania was given its due. Today, an international frontier runs through the centre of the spit. The southern half of it lies in the Russian province of Kaliningradskaja Oblast while the remainder is Lithuanian. It's the latter which got the chunkier end of the spit, as it's at its maximum breadth (3800 metres) just north of Nida and briefest (400 metres) near the Russian village of Lesnoye.

Tourism is the spit's mainstay and no sooner have you disembarked from the ferry than you are confronted with posters of meaty girls proffering meaty snacks at nearby restaurants. Ditto a trio of dolphins who call the Lithuanian Sea Museum home and are depicted with slightly malicious grins and speech bubbles saying ‘we're waiting'. Following a path inland, I was soon surrounded by one of the coniferous copses that account for 70 per cent of the spit's 9774-hectare land mass. Such thickets have always had a Brothers Grimm backdrop feel for me. Not sinister as such but divorced from cold rationalism. In other words, hobbit and unicorn friendly.

Neither were required to make this spot magical. Because many of the dwarf pines, firs, spruce and alder trees were planted at the same time as part of a process of reforestation, they bear a uniform cylindrical grace. However, as the pioneering greenies who oversaw the project were mindful of trying to re-create naturally formed forests, they eschewed the idea of neat rows. With sinuous blocks of midday sun piercing the meagre canopy, the aquiline trunks took on distinct horizontal bands, starting with choc-mint from the needle flokati to eye level and blending sharply into cinnamon and olive up top. Every tree bore the same stria-tions and it was like walking through a Rothko painting. A scented one at that, as the groundcover of honeysuckle, guelder-roses and elder imbued the air with a combination of potpourri and what I assume a supermodel's bedroom might smell like.

The spongy loam had almost insulated the chase from sound, saving for the odd gust occasionally wheezing through the trees like an emphysema patient playing a harmonica. Growing up in South Africa and having been blessed with the right melanin count to afford holidays, I spent many glorious days in game parks. In so doing and away from urban sensory overload, you become attuned to the flickers in your peripheral vision and monochromatic distinctions when a russet-flanked animal glides past some similarly shaded foliage. To my bountiful gratitude, this trait snapped into gear and in a kinetic split second swivelled me sideways. The spit is home to hares, pine marten, foxes, badgers, squirrels, beavers, mink and wild boar with fuck-off tusks and matching dispositions. It is also the domain of red deer – one of which was making up its mind about me not 15 metres away.

One of my favourite scenes in one of my favourite films is that in
Stand By Me
when protagonist Gordie LaChance finds himself alone by a roadside. From the brush steps a buck and as they make eye contact, fear and suspicion recede to a communion of sorts. It lasts no more than five seconds – as did my encounter – but how often do you get to enact, utterly by chance, a cinematic moment that makes you smile every time you think of it? Those readers who have seen the film will understand why I made my way towards the white noise of a distant surf break singing the ‘Lollipop' song. Those who haven't should.

The forest abruptly ceded to a series of gale-smashed dunes crested by whippy grass and linked through a series of rotting boardwalks. Living in Australia, one is spoiled for choice when it comes to pristine beaches swathed in a temperate iridescent swell. The Curonian Spit's seaward strand was none of that and less. A roiling taupe chop and turned to grey beyond grimy breakers, the shoreline stretched into the distance until it was swallowed by its own haze. Foreboding in the extreme, it seemed to have resolved not to waste its energy on salt tang but gave away free exfoliations to any part of your flesh that remained exposed to the wall of wind. It also carried an austere desolation that might appeal to reclusive Irish playwrights when the Ring of Kerry becomes too sociable. Still, it had its own pared-back bliss. Cormorants and grey herons patrolled the coarse sand while black-headed gulls resembling masked Mexican wrestlers wheeled above the break for ling sashimi.

This was not the kind of beach where passions were consummated or troths plighted. Rather, it was where the heartbroken trudged in search of answers to infidelity and recovered from bolts from the blue. As such, I found it immensely appealing in a maudlin, Tom Waits kind of way. Neither postcard pretty nor fractionally welcoming, it has been the site of one of Lithuania's most fierce environmental battles in recent times. Giant Russian petrol producer Lukoil has long had its eye on the evocatively named D6 Oilfield, which sits 22.5 kilometres from the Curonian Spit. In response, the Green Movement in both Russia and Lithuania has pointed out the catastrophic consequences of oil leakage to the spit. Although Putin and co wrote off these concerns as unfounded, the Lithuanians were not so sure. The oilfield is little more than four kilometres from the boundary of their territorial waters and the prevailing northward currents paint a big old bull's-eye on the local coastline should a leak ever occur. Despite petitions to the international community, the D6 platform was opened in 2005.

Why should the global authorities have done something – anything? In 2000, the entire Curonian Spit took its place on UNESCO's World Heritage Listing. It did so under cultural criteria ‘V': ‘an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture [ … ], or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change'. Did I mention that 20 per cent of the spit is covered by the highest moving sand dunes in Europe? These average 35 metres but can get up to 60 of lilting splendour. Imagine these ringed by slimy dead birds and an unctuous valance and you'll begin to gain some idea of what an oil spill will do to the place.

In the meantime, however, the spit lives up to its UNESCO billing and nowhere is this more apparent than in the villages arranged along its lagoon side. These are bedecked with traditional wooden fishermen's houses which are most often painted in fresh teals or rustic rusts. Although they are freestanding, many of these are in fact dual dwellings, each with its own front door and two or four rooms inside. This tradition allowed adult offspring to establish their own households yet still live beside their parents. I asked a local guide if they ever had interconnecting doors and he laughed so much he needed to mop up phlegm afterwards. I live to give.

Built to face the lagoon, these homes are high on modesty and low on decoration. However, the initials of the original occupant and the date of construction are invariably carved into a mantel. There are also gables at each end featuring intricately carved horses and birds so stylised that one needs to ask what they are. These were intended to ward off evil spirits while the weathervanes atop most homes provided a more tangible warning against the potentially malicious weather that could befall seafarers. Some homes also featured timber smokehouses that billowed an incense of fresh perch and poplar mist.

The settlement of Joudkrante was once an amber boom town of such riches that it was dubbed the Prussian California. Between 1860 and 1900, the Stantien and Becker Company employed 600 workers here, operated a fleet of 230 vessels (22 of which were dredgers) and collected 2.5 million tons of raw amber. Its primary attraction today is the Witches' Hill, which is located on the back of a sand dune which was previously known as Blonde Eva before being planted with trees. Between 1979 and 1981, the hill was festooned with hundreds of wooden sculptures and carvings which drew on Lithuania's abundant catalogue of mythology. Many of the more substantial pieces – such as St George protecting a demure princess from a clearly pissed-off dragon – rest on plinths constructed from five-metre-high tree trunks. Other demonic nutjobs leer at you from eye-level. It's all wonderfully ghoulish and just creepy enough for you to laugh a little harder than is necessary. I particularly liked the bench which took the form of a hungry gnome's fork and the children's slide which resembled a witch's tongue.

After a calf-searing clamber among the Dead Dunes, a ten-kilometre-long undulation, I arrived at the spit's most populous town, Nida. Long a favourite with German tourists whose forefathers lived on the spit or followed in the artistic footsteps of novelist Thomas Mann and Expressionist group Die Brücke, Nida has cornered the Lithuanian market on quaint. Radiating from a harbour with separate sections for pleasure craft and commercial fishing vessels, the village is large enough to accommodate a dozen restaurants and a similar number of guesthouses, but small enough for locals to still give you the once-over. After the absence of churches in Klaipeda, I found Nida's duet of spires strangely reassuring (that distant thumping sound is my ancestors spinning in their graves).

Although the Baltic Sea, on the far side of the spit, has a second-cup-from-the-one-teabag hue to it, the lagoon is a slate blue from whose shore runs a braiding of red-tiled holiday homes. While the population of Nida stands at around 2000, some 50,000 visitors cross the channel each year to mainline its unbounded tranquillity. So prepossessing is the place that out of the entire Soviet Union, which in 1991 covered in excess of 22 million square kilometres, the Communist Party elite singled out Nida as their exclusive getaway. Entry was controlled with the kind of zeal that would make your average upmarket nightclub doorbitch seem as threatening as a Wiggle. The industrial honchos were also offered holidays here and seemed to wholeheartedly agree with the government's philosophy that this was too pristine an enclave to sully with factories and other such developments.

Seeking a room for the night at the local tourist office, I was made an offer I couldn't refuse. ‘How would you like to sleep in the same room as Brezhnev?' asked the young woman on duty with the clear panache that can only come from practice and potential commission. Endeavouring to match her enthusiasm, I replied with,
‘Da,
comrade,
da.'
I gather such tactless scenarios had not been part of her roleplay training and after she made the reservation, she looked me dead in the eye and said in the softest of voices, ‘Our people suffered greatly under Soviet Union,' before retreating to a back office to leave me alone with my shame. Cultural insensitivity: 1; David: 0.

The Ruta turned out to be a three-storey barn the roof and first floor of which had been given over to accommodation while the entry level was glassed-in and decorated in a style I termed ‘garage sale eclectic'. Antique redwood couches upholstered in silk sat beside beige perspex blocks which straddled the middle ground between side table and stool. The proprietors also seemed to have secured several tins of mismatched yellow paint at bargain prices as the lobby was a discordant blend of melted butter and cheese left out too long. My reputation had obviously preceded me as the receptionist greeted me with a snide, ‘So, you're the Brezhnev room,' before throwing a key onto the desk and an ‘Up the stairs and first left' over her shoulder. I have no way of verifying whether or not the Soviet hardman actually took a break from the demands of the proletariat in this chamber. What I did know was that I didn't want to stick around in this chipboard sarcophagus whose design aesthetic seemed to stem from the transient demands of the witness protection program.