From Russia with Lunch

by David Smiedt

  It’s nigh on impossible to walk Vilnius’ Old Town without being shadowed by a constellation of baroque spires. They peer into laneways, loom beside commons and peek over the walls of courtyards like parents chaperoning a first date. At the top of Pilies Street alone, three churches sit so close to one another that you could throw a rosary over the trio. The first is located in the Gates of Dawn, one of the five entrances to the city which existed after it was walled off at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Ausros Gate Chapel is undoubtedly Vilnius’ most beloved sanctuary. It was here in 1993 that Pope John Paul II joined hordes of pilgrims to pray before a golden portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Painted between 1620 and 1630 on oak planks in tempera, it sits in a raiment of gilded silver and dazzles beneath the reflections of thousands of SLR flashes a day.

  This spectacular enclave abuts the more restrained early baroque Church of St Theresa, which in turn rubs reverent shoulders with the Russian Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit, yet another baroque masterwork although this time taking the shape of a Latin cross and teeming with gilt-flecked rococo iconostases. What’s even more impressive is that these treasures are not sealed off behind glass or velvet ropes, but are rather a functioning element of a community that comprises four per cent of Lithuanians. Like Ruta, the majority of Lithuanians are Catholic – some 76 per cent – and this is proportionally reflected in the number of churches catering to this denomination. During the Soviet occupation, which lasted from 1944 to 1991, this plethora turned to pain as these churches were forcibly acquired by anti-religious Soviet authorities and turned into storehouses or ‘architectural monuments’ complete with statues of Lenin where the devout once prayed. One, the Church of St Casimir, an attractive baroque collage of domes and steeples, was even deemed the Museum of Atheism by the occupying authorities.

  ‘I was brought here on excursions as a schoolgirl,’ remembers Ruta. ‘Coming from a devout family, it was horrific to be shown instruments of torture from the Spanish inquisition – such as chairs with blades embedded in them – then told, “You see. This is what religion makes people do to each other”.’

  Trying clumsily to lighten the mood, I asked why, unlike the pristine white favoured by so many other European countries, Lithuanians often opt for painting their churches pink. ‘It’s just what we do,’ she replied with the same tone one might use to answer the question how did red wine get its name.

  Lest I be accused of disregarding my own faith in the face of this onslaught of gentile wonder, we did detour to check out Vilnius’ only synagogue. Not exactly a baroque master-work, it was built in 1903 by one D Rosenhaus – whom I’m betting was referred to by his mother as ‘my son the architect’. A domed statement of conservative modern Romanesque, it was painted a shade of uninspiring brown that seemed to have been decided by committee: ‘The ayes have it, the resolution is carried and the shul will now look as if it has been smeared with peanut butter.’ Atop a two-columned entrance stood two tablets bearing the Ten Commandments, yet the gate was firmly locked. According to a distant cousin on my father’s side who lives in Melbourne, this was also the case when he visited several years ago. At the time, the city’s two rabbis could not see eye to eye over the synagogue and resolved to shut it rather than compromise. Similarly barred, I was not able to discover whether a truce had been arranged and if the one per cent of Vilnians who were Jewish now had a formal house of prayer.

  When I told Ruta of this stalemate, she looked utterly confounded. ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘after almost half a century when worship was forbidden in holy places designed for that purpose, would people not put aside their differences and embrace the religious freedom that was denied to them?’

  Unable to account for the schismic streak in my heritage that has led to such situations from Miami to Minsk, I opted for the deflective: ‘If I could answer that I would be operating a multimillion dollar conflict resolution business in Jerusalem right now.’

  Ruta saw this for the glib response it was and suggested we proceed as time was getting away from us. Turning down one of the myriad spider-vein streets spearing off Pilies, we came to what is far and away the most gorgeous church I was to see in Vilnius. Built in 1495, the Church of St Anne is made of unadorned red bricks and features a pair of thin spires fronted by a dominant triangular one. Thirty-three different shapes of brick were used to decorate the façade, the tubular motifs of which appear to have been sculpted – as opposed to chiselled – with a butter knife. According to Ruta, this style went by the fabulous name of ‘flamboyant Gothic’.

  When it comes to building sandcastles, there is one kid on every beach who becomes frustrated with the restrictions of bucket and spade. She uses shells to shape the sand then decorate the final product. Driftwood functions as a fine-edged scalpel and she perfects the slow art of drizzling clay onto the structure so that it piles upon itself like the minaret folds of icing on a cake. This church seemed to be the work of one such P-plate Gaudi. So entranced was Napoleon when he spent nineteen days in Vilnius preparing to march on Russia in 1812 that he made enquiries about transporting it home brick by brick to be reassembled.

  Being a Saturday, the church’s courtyard and adjacent garden were packed with various wedding parties all serenaded by a lone violinist working for tips. It was in this park – where couples were vowing undying love – that Ruta believes she too made one of the most important statements of her life. Aged fifteen, she told her parents she was going to a friend’s place and attended a rally here for Lithuanian independence in 1988. A year later she was part of a 650-kilometre human chain stretching from Vilnius to Tallinn in protest against the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. This was an insidious 1938 agreement between Hitler and Stalin to carve up Europe into portions to be controlled by their respective nations. Lithuania fell into the Soviet bloc, only to have Hitler renege on the agreement and storm the nation in World War II. The country then endured a six-year cycle of occupation and decimation that ended with iron-fisted Soviet control which would last almost half a century.

  By 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost PR campaign was beginning to market Russia to the world as draconian lite. This was a nation with less to hide and more to offer – headed by a charismatic statesman who by 2007 would be shilling Louis Vuitton luggage in Vanity Fair. With the globe now watching to see whether this Soviet regime could walk the talk, the Lithuanian Sajudis movement seized its opportunity to make a stand for independence. At no point in the previous four decades of occupation were the Russians more hamstrung by their own international policies. Responding with the rampant force and bloodshed used to quell previous uprisings would have revealed their friendly new face to be a blustery mask hiding the same old sneer of intolerance.

  Ruta was among the 300,000 pro-independence demonstrators who turned out on a bitterly cold January day in 1990 to let Gorbachev know they wanted their country back. Within two months, Seijumas candidates had received a parliamentary majority in the country’s first free elections since 1940. Despite a Soviet economic blockade that saw petrol and supplies in stores dwindle, the momentum seemed unstoppable. Autonomy seemed a fait accompli to everyone but the Russians. On 13 January 1990, Ruta (this time with her family) was among a crowd encircling the parliamentary buildings as Russian tanks and soldiers unsuccessfully attempted to take it by force. ‘Although it was dangerous, we believed in what we were doing,’ Ruta says. ‘It was a time of great joy, mixed with fear. We didn’t think that the Soviets would open fire on us but we couldn’t be sure.’

  Ruta was lucky but her fears became reality for another group of protesters nearby. Thwarted at the parliament, the infantry and mechanised forces then turned their gun-sights on the media by storming Vilnius’ television tower. In scenes reminiscent of Tiananmen Square, lone dissenters blocked the paths of armoured personnel carriers and looked down the barrels of tanks. Fourteen were shot and killed. Determined that such sacrifices would not be made in vain and galvanised by grow
ing international recognition of their plight, an increasing number of nations recognised an independent Lithuania. The first was Iceland on 12 February 1991. Sweden opened an embassy on 29 August and two days later Lithuania was acknowledged by the United States as a sovereign nation. The independence movement spawned in Lithuania had by then taken hold in Latvia and Estonia and all three were readmitted to the United Nations on 17 September 1991.

  ‘It was a privilege to be a Lithuanian at that time,’ says Ruta. ‘Strangers were kind to one another and there was a sense of hope that my generation had never known.’ Her voice trails away and a look that’s a distant relative of regret fills her eyes. ‘Still,’ she smiles, ‘we were naive. We equated independence with prosperity. For the first time, we had to pay for things that had always been free – electricity, water, schools. For some Lithuanians, especially the older ones, this was a difficult thing to adapt to. Freedom literally came at a price. Even today, my husband still sometimes grumbles that certain elements of life were better under the Soviet system. I disagree. I would rather be free and have to manage a budget.’

  Our last stop for the day took us across a black metal bridge that spanned the sun-splotched and burbling River Vilnia, from which the city took its name. On the bridge railings were dozens of padlocks inscribed with lovers’ names. According to local legend, a threesome with Yale at this very spot would secure your bond forever.

  At the end of the bridge stood a pole bearing a declaration of independence and the words ‘Republic of Uzupis’. An artists’ enclave flatteringly likened to Montmartre, this bohemian quarter views itself as an entirely separate state to the rest of Vilnius and declared its sovereign nature in 1998. In so doing the painters, sculptors and vagabonds who inhabit this tumbledown warren of nineteenth century cottages exhibited a steely stubbornness embedded in the Lithuanian psyche. Unwilling to have their character defined by those who surround them, the Uzupis citizenry turned their homes into canvases.

  Unified to some degree by Modigliani’s schematics, Lichtenstein’s palette and Dali’s mischief, this riverside gallery is complemented by a series of delicate silver sculptures suspended over the river like hovering hummingbirds. Other installations dip wiry tentacles into the stream where the current tickles them into gentle revolutions. Uzupis is watched over by its own silver angel who stands on a three-metre column in the republic’s main square and seemingly blows a horn in celebration of the louche goings-on beneath her. While she was being crafted, the pillar was occupied by a two-metre-high plaster egg painted in Limoges cyan with a floral motif. It sat upon a nest of twigs and signalled the imminent hatching of something beautiful. Critics have complained that the Uzupis’ romantic character is being steadily eroded by the influx of bars, cafés, restaurants and IT professionals who will spend up big to live pseudorough, but I couldn’t get enough of the place.

  Reluctantly heading back towards the Old Town, another of Vilnius’ treasures lay at my feet. Unlike many other European capitals whose cobbles are unremarkably uniform, several of Vilnius’ streets are paved with a mineral mishmash. Some stones are rectangular and others rhomboid with a few trapeziums thrown in like geometry terms I never thought would come in handy. They also vary in colour from slate grey through to burnt terracotta and fawn. This apparent haphazardry is in fact part of an ingenious plan on the part of city administrators. As the epicentre of a fourteenth century empire that once stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, Vilnius had visitors and riches aplenty, but a crucial shortage of the accessible rock required to lay roads. It was thus decided that visitors to the city would pay an entry toll of one paving stone each.

  Passing 13,000 more churches on my way towards Pilies Street, I began wondering about the service industries that cater to the needs of their staff and facilities. Where does a priest looking a bit frayed around the dog collar go for a replacement? I found my answer amid a string of tanning salons, lingerie outlets and footwear emporiums selling the kind of snakeskin numbers most often favoured by low-ranking henchmen in Steven Seagal movies. The store catered to everything a father, priest, minister or nun could want. The life-sized crucifixes that form the centrepieces of many church altars lay stacked four deep and seven across against one wall like a modern art installation of questionable taste. Habits hung neatly on racks with a pile of wimples immaculately folded beside them. Stacks of grey business shirts – long- and short-sleeved – were displayed beside an array of bejewelled ceremonial robes in ruby and emerald velvet. Cher’s costume designer would have done his mind. I’m guessing it’s a he.

  Correctly surmising me for a tyre-kicker, the harried shopkeeper watched and waited for my fascination to dim. Which it didn’t, until I had played out several of the conversational scenarios that might have unfolded.

  Harried shopkeeper: Can I help you?

  Monk: Do you sell cassocks?

  Harried shopkeeper: Of course. What were you looking for?

  Monk: I’d like to spend the next decade in a summer-weight wool. Something that can take me from confession to communion. Something that says I’m devoted but still have a sense of fun – so maybe latte as opposed to the traditional chocolate. I mean that’s sooo Reformation!

  Harried shopkeeper: Will you please leave. I am closing.

  Actually, the last sentence was real and addressed to me. Slightly footsore but amped on the novelty of my surroundings, I made my way past the neoclassical presidential palace with its expansive walled garden and on to an institution that rivals even the churches as the Old Town’s most dominant player. Vilnius University was established by Jesuits in 1570. Having had a Gothic childhood, a brief flirtation with Renaissance architecture in its adolescence and maturing into a baroque beauty, it today comprises thirty fine teaching and administrative hubs. Beginning its life as a centre only for theological and philosophical studies, the Jesuits withdrew from the university as the secular sciences challenged their spiritual belief. Subsequent professors expanded the curriculum to the point where it now caters to 22,000 students across twelve faculties from languages to medicine.

  As an inky twilight didn’t so much descend as plummet onto the thirteen courtyards that link the campus, I made my way back to Pilies Street, the lower extremes of which seem almost entirely given over to market stalls flogging the poorly executed kitsch that Eastern Europe seems to specialise in. Among the lowlights was a Harry Potter-themed babushka set in which Voldemort was ensconced in the boy wizard, Harry was housed in Dumbledore, and Harry’s ginger-nut chum got to hide away of a night-time in JK Rowling’s prepubescent sorceress Hermione.

  On the way back to my hotel, I was passed by a group of shaky tourists on a Segway – a motorised walker gadget – excursion through the Old Town. Amid another cluster of holy houses, I came upon the shiny Lithuanian headquarters of global advertising agency McCann-Erickson, above whose lintel was the swishy slogan ‘the truth well told’. In the Old Town consumerism had long replaced communism, and the fire of acquisition was being stoked by foreigners who had perfected the art. Globalisation was coming but before it marched an army of British buck’s nights with money to burn and the mantra that what happens in Vilnius stays in Vilnius.

  2

  A night on the Old Town

  It’s birthday time at the old folks’ home and Hymie’s friends pool their money to get him a hooker to celebrate turning eighty. She knocks on Grandpa’s door. When he opens it, she says: ‘I’m here to give you super sex.’

  He thinks for a minute then replies, ‘I’ll have the soup.’

  Mark, a 29-year-old marketing executive from Mackay, was betrayed by his vowels. Seated at a table beside me at breakfast, he and twelve mates had caught a £1 red-eye from London the night before in celebration of the fact that he would be getting married in a fortnight. Still dozy from lack of sleep, most sought lucidity via caffeine while Mark and I traded the curt nods Australians exchange abroad. He broke the ice over plates of stiff cold cuts and wan tomato that were p
resented to us simultaneously. One ‘struth’ and a ‘fuck me’ later, we were establishing Antipodean conversational links spanning the gamut from rugby league to rugby league.

  Like many English-based grooms-to-be, Mark had chosen Vilnius for his stag do on account of the relative weakness of the lita against the pound (three to one), its proximity to London (under three hours by plane) and the fact that many local businesses catered to the whims of the drunk, the aroused and the far from home. As is the case in neighbouring Latvia and Czechoslovakia. Mark then took me – a stranger he had known for all of ten minutes – aback by asking if I’d like to come along that evening to join the party. ‘It would be nice to have another Aussie in amongst these Poms,’ he said, rather more loudly than was necessary. Only to be drowned out by good-natured jeers from his lads and a host of hasty introductions.

  I forgot their names immediately. They did likewise and we called each other ‘mate’ from then on. Which was just as well as there was one condition associated with my chronicling the debauchery ahead: no one was to be identified. In exchange for experiencing a slice of Lithuania I doubt I would have chomped on solo, a solemn promise of anonymity had to be made. With not so much hairs of the dog but the whole pooch being lined up on the bar – it was 10am – I arranged to meet with Mark and the boys that evening, then set off to explore the city, glazed with stone-washed autumn sunlight.