From Russia with Lunch

by David Smiedt

  Closer into town, Siauliai is proof that a city’s vibrancy and allure need not rest on its architecture or pulchritude. Although the mile-long pedestrian boulevard that bisects the city is lined with drab concrete office blocks, there is a sense of optimism and energy about Siauliai. On Vilnius Avenue, the rattan furniture of cafés spills out from under awnings and into iris-shrinking sunshine. Fathers on their lunch breaks chomp down on hamburgers with their daughters who are making the most of school holidays by reapplying lip gloss between every bite. Office types in Tom Ford sunglasses curse and sanctify their PDAs to one another between lattes. It was a town on the move, and so far the new corporate regional headquarters and the stores which catered for their upwardly mobile employees were managing to strike a balance between flash and functional.

  Aside from its dynamism, what I loved most about Siauliai was its recurring sense of whimsy. There is space here, for example, for the biggest museum devoted to cats I’ve ever seen. It’s also the only museum devoted to cats I’ve ever seen. Nonetheless, amid the 4000 poems devoted to felines, stained-glass windows featuring the second best pet you could ever have (start writing your letters of indignation now) and trinkets ranging from the cute to the cutesy – moggy toilet seat cover with matching brush, anyone? – there is much quietly said about the bond between humans and animals. As well as how much the former value the gift of unconditional love the latter can impart in exchange for food, shelter and a scratch under the chin.

  Near a museum that rhapsodises bicycles to the same degree are two wonderful public statues that would probably be dismissed by classicists but are big enough on heart to have earned special affection from the locals. The first is the Reading Man. Cast in bronze and top-hatted, this portly gent has one hand tucked behind his back while the other is raised to his cheek in what could be construed as Dr Evil’s signature move. He is, in fact, holding a monocle to his eye as he reads an imaginary newspaper. Siauliai was at one stage a hotbed of journalism and the commemoration of this flurry of words appealed to the thesaurus dork, dweeb, pointdexter, nerd in me. Due to the angle of his fingers holding the monocle, dozens of Siauliai scallywags have dubbed – or should that be doobed? – him the Smoking Man. Many’s the morning when street cleaners find the bronzed patriarch cradling a half-smoked joint. The second sculpture which moved me to dumb grinning is entitled Grandfather and His Children. Located beside a bus stop it features a dozing patriarch stretched horizontally with his legs curled into his stomach. On these limbs sit a trio of grandchildren whose expressions hint at ‘I dare you to hold his nose closed’ mischief. He, meanwhile, seems neither bothered nor thrilled by being used as a sofa.

  Despite careening towards the future, Siauliai is best known for a monument to the past that lies 12 kilometres out of town. Off a nondescript road on a nondescript knoll lies what is perhaps Lithuania’s most potent symbol of nationhood and the abiding theological faith which has seen it endure. Officially titled Jurgaiciai Mound, this ersatz monument is better known as the Hill of Crosses and is probably the nation’s best known tourist destination, at least for those who come here wanting to get a sense of the country’s history as opposed to merely their own.

  As with most Lithuanian sites, no one can quite agree on a definitive version of its origins. According to various Livonian chronicles, here stood a wooden defensive fort built by the Lithuanians then destroyed by the Teutonic knights. Another view came courtesy of my guide book which, in an impressive flourish of generality suggested, ‘It may at one time have been a backdrop for pagan worship, though it is also possible that it was a holy place for early Lithuanian Christians. And it therefore could be the case that the first cross was planted there in the Middle Ages.’

  Supposition aside, the sharp money is on the notion that what has today evolved into the Lithuanian equivalent of the Statue of Liberty began as a sombre gesture of backroads remembrance. The first group of crosses were speared into the earth here in memory of the Lithuanian insurgents killed during the failed 1831 rebellion against tzarist rule. Thirty-two years later, the locals had another go at their Russian rulers and were dealt with in a similarly brutal manner. They were once more commemorated with crosses on the hill and archived photographs suggest that by the end of the nineteenth century there were around 130 adorning its crest.

  It wasn’t until half a century later that the Hill of Crosses grew to the point that it became a proclamation of defiance. In the late 1950s, the families and friends of those who had perished in the bitter Gulags began erecting crucifixes here to mourn their loss. With the number who never came home multiplied by the individuals who felt compelled to lament their personal losses, the Hill of Crosses soon became a statement of two concepts – religious faith and not-quite-dormant nationalism – that ran counter to Soviet ideology. Bulldozers were called in, and by 1961 the wooden crosses had been burned Klu Klux Klan style while the metal ones were melted down for use in more ideologically sound constructions.

  Having an inkling that the pugnacious Lithuanians wouldn’t walk away from this stoush, they also sealed off all the roads to the hill and had the site patrolled not only by the army but the secret police too. Who were both mystified and narky when the sun would routinely rise on several nefarious crucifixes that hadn’t been there the day before. While the Russians publicly discussed plans to flood the area or contaminate it with nuclear waste, the numbers of crosses swelled. Three times the hill was razed and on every occasion, the locals whipped up a new and improved version.

  With the fall of the Soviet Union, the number of crosses multiplied exponentially. Lithuanians, émigrés and the faithful from abroad make pilgrimages here to pay homage to the souls of the specific departed or to the general glories of a higher power. The result is crosses that range from three centimetres to three metres in height. Some, like the looming figure of Christ at the base of the hill, which was donated by Pope John Paul II when he visited in 1993, are intricately wrought works of plaintive art while others are mere wooden or metal right angles. These in turn form vertical and horizontal platforms from which hundreds more crosses and amber rosaries are hung, sometimes in such hallowed multitudes that all but the shape of the supporting structure is lost altogether. A network of boardwalks laced through this forest of piety, which all but obliterated one’s perception of depth. So thick were the crosses that I felt it was possible to plunge an arm into their midst up to the elbow and still not strike the original tribute to which they were affixed. Bead-festooned Madonnas also abounded as did wooden sculptures of Christ. One featured a seated saviour who was festooned with such a phalanx of crucifixes that his mournful expression suggested he may have started off standing. Although he is titled ‘The Man of Sorrows’, I christened him, ‘Our Father of the Undiagnosed Hernia’.

  Even though there were around fifty visitors exploring the site, most stuck to a central corridor and a sense of isolation could be found by peeling off onto one of the many paths that radiated from it. Even the gentlest of breezes transformed the dangling crosses and rosary beads into a tintinnabulation of poignant insistence somewhere between a dirge and a lullaby.

  What was most moving among this Escheresque mass of religious iconography were the specific and personal details. A weathered photo of a smiling teen who died not long after it was taken. A favourite scrunchie entwined with a locket. An identity card from a German firm featuring a man grinning a ‘first day on the dream job’ grin. A pendant emblazoned with a marijuana leaf. In this most public of arenas, dominated by imposing statues of empathy from Christian communities around the world, it was these private nods to the dead that ground like knuckle on bone. The names of neither the deceased nor the remembering were recorded. Both parties knew what was what and that’s all that mattered. From grand crosses fashioned in papal-approved workshops to those haphazardly constructed from twigs and hair elastics, there was room for them all on this hill. As there was for Buddhist prayer flags and a Star of David donated by the Israe
li government. In celebrating religious freedom, it had somehow distilled the idea into something more universal. I had never planted a cross of remembrance before and I doubt I ever will again.

  Emotionally encumbered after the Hill of Crosses, I drove west to Panevezys. On the way, the Samogitian forests thinned into fields of canola drizzled with petite terracotta flowers. It was all grey nomad pretty, especially since some of the birch trees had begun to blush scarlet at autumn’s first premature advances. The charms of this landscape were inversely proportional to the city which eventually sprang from it. Choked by a seemingly relentless tourniquet of high-rise concrete apartment blocks, Panevezys has all the charm you would expect from a mid-level manufacturing centre for television tubes, compressors and electric cables. Not to mention copious amounts of beer, which would be required to numb the depressing reality of making television tubes, compressors and electric cables. Panevezys had the feel of a nursing home on the brink of receivership whose management had decided to leave up the Christmas decorations all year round in an effort to cheer up the residents. To whit, the constant loop of can-can music being piped through speakers around the CBD.

  Dumping the car near the bus terminus at which it seemed dour locals were queuing to get the hell out of town, I made my way to the local tourist office where the frost-tipped lass on duty responded to my request for a room as if I’d asked her to dress up like a nurse and take my temperature three ways. Having grumpily ascertained that I wanted to stay close to the town centre, she directed me across a pedestrian mall that was as unprepossessing as it was windswept to the Hotel Panevezys. Look up ‘concrete cancer’ in the dictionary and you’d most likely be presented with a picture of this establishment.

  Despite meagre sunshine outside, the majority of the heavy velvet blinds in the cavernous lobby were drawn. Wheeling my suitcase over the remains of a parquetry floor, I sidestepped the carcase of a lounge suite covered in cracked linoleum and made my way towards the reception desk. Which was deserted. Taking a little too much pleasure in slamming my palm onto the bell, I was subsequently baptised by the dull grey wash of a fluorescent light being turned on in a distant back room. The woman who eventually emerged from it had a bouffant that wouldn’t quit, bingo wings a-go-go and an expression permanently set to fulminate. I doubted she had ever enjoyed a gruntled minute.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, smiling out of fear. ‘I believe the tourist office called and reserved a room for me.’

  ‘How long?’ she asked.

  When I find myself in socially uncomfortable situations, my instinct is to make with the funnies and hopefully break some of the ice. My response – ‘That’s a rather personal question’ – only served to further freeze her upper slopes and after adding a 30 per cent smartarse tax to the room rate quoted by the equally frosty tourist office, she tossed a key attached to a bakelite wedge in my direction. Clattering off the counter and onto the floor, it echoed through the lobby.

  Now I am generally not one for conspiracy theories, but bugger me if that might not have been the signal for some hunchbacked lackey to start icing up the bath in which I would find myself sans a kidney the next morning. Can I add that our entire conversation was also conducted with a menthol cigarette dangling from her extravagantly lacquered lips. By the close of this discussion, she was beyond words and when I asked directions to the lift she merely sucked on her bottom lip, thus causing the tip of the smoke to rise in the direction she couldn’t be bothered pointing to.

  The lift, meanwhile, was one of those arthritic trundlers which lurched from floor to floor with a death rattle that would have had Norman Bates plumping for a Holiday Inn. The musty corridors were lined with carpet in a rigor mortis purple and I found myself walking to my room a little more briskly than I intended. Once inside, I was presented with a cubicle dominated by a single bed, a large window which was rapidly being filled by storm clouds and a succession of surfaces which bore peeling testament to the laminator’s art. The shower was no more than a shower-head attached to the wall beside the toilet. And yes, out of sheer boredom I multitasked.

  With fat splats of rain now head-butting the windows, I was temporarily confined to this dreary box. Hoping television was to be my salvation, I flicked on the set only to encounter a grainy image strikingly similar to the one outside the window. As thunder caused the panes to tremble in their frames, the howling started. To one side of my room, a woman began sobbing incessantly, each clap bringing with it more anguish. As if on cue, when she paused for breath a lonely and frightened dog a few doors down made its presence known. In a touch that would have made Stephen King get the hell out, the lights then flickered. Quietly confident that my girlie squeal had been drowned out by the haunted hound, the lamenting lady and the squally storm, I bolted down the passage and out of the lobby with only alliteration for company. In the deserted and sodden pedestrian mall, can-can music still played and in the distance an amber-lit café beckoned. Huddled under a canopy out the front were half a dozen teenagers trying to smoke their way out of an extended lifetime in Panevezys. Inside, it felt like I had arrived late to a wake.

  Only one of the dozen tables was occupied. In this case by two women – one of whom was delivering the universal ‘you’re too good for him’ speech while the other sniffled daintily into a handkerchief. The scene was presided over by a teenage waiter I imagined was the kind of boy whose pockets were filled with disgusting discoveries. At least that’s what the crescents of dirt under his fingernails implied. He also seemed chronically shy, a trait which was rather at odds with his job choice and multiplied when it became apparent we would have a language barrier to surmount.

  Shortly after he ferried out a stack of caramel pancakes to the restaurant’s only other customers, I motioned him over to my table, pointed at their food, gestured at my table and even went so far as to pat my stomach. He responded with the smile of sympathy-tinged obligation reserved for all crappy charades then disappeared into the kitchen. He then reappeared preceded by a chef in stained checked pants and an expression which suggested I had been referred to as ‘a troublemaker’.

  ‘What you eat?’ she said.

  I once again pointed to the dessert being enjoyed by my fellow diners.

  ‘You want this?’

  ‘Yes, please. The caramel pancakes.’

  ‘Is fruit.’

  ‘Oh, I thought they were caramel.’

  ‘Is fruit. What’s the matter? You don’t like fruit?’

  ‘Of course I like fruit. I just like caramel more.’

  ‘No caramel. Is fruit.’

  A plate of fruit pancakes later, I squelched across the mall and within minutes was locking the door of my hotel room. Then stacking a chair against it for reasons I still can’t quite explain. The beseeching chorus that had driven me away earlier in the evening had now dulled to sporadic whimpers, although I was unsure if they were canine or human in origin.

  Things weren’t much better the next morning and after stifling the dry retch elicited by the congealed breakfast buffet, I hunched spittle-flecked and caffeine-deprived towards my car. I was done with Panevezys. Done with having smiles unreturned. Done with drivers who regard your road courtesy as their right. Done with miserable fuckers who walk away when you try to pat their dogs. Done with this city that felt like it was stuck in a Nick Cave song.

  What is remarkable about Panevezys is the war that was fought on its doorstep, a war that few outside Lithuania have heard of and one which commenced at the end of World War II. Just in case enough Lithuanian blood had not been shed in the shadow of Hitler’s madness, the locals got nine more years of hostilities. ‘A historian in the future who opens the pages of our nation’s life will be most surprised by two things. First he will surprised by the horror of the current [referring to the initial period of Soviet rule] slavery, the unprecedented cruelty and terribly sophisticated system of communist slavery, which seems to be able to stop the breathing of a free man and make him a complete slave, not
only physically but spiritually,’ wrote poet Bronius Krivickas, who was to die in a partisan battle with Russian forces in 1952. ‘However, the future historian will be even more surprised that a nation under such a yoke of slavery did not fall but managed to struggle hard and long. And the historian will ask from where did tens of thousands of partisans, who chose death instead of horrible slavery, draw such toughness? And from where did the enslaved, who chose martyrdom instead of betrayal, draw their strength?’

  Under the cover of the forests around Panevezys and many other regions, Lithuanian partisans engaged in one of Europe’s most protracted guerilla wars. Working in tandem with the Soviet forces under Nazi occupation, the partisans were dumbfounded when their former allies attempted to brutally subjugate them. In the name of democracy and independence, 22,000 Lithuanian fighters lost their lives between 1944 and 1953. Known as the Forest Brothers, some enlisted to avoid conscription into the Red Army while others feared deportation. Most chose to spend years sleeping in clammy forest bunkers the size of cupboards out of principle. Outgunned and outmanned, the Lithuanian resistance knew that victory was impossible. Rather, it merely sought to delay a complete Soviet takeover until the western nations implemented the Atlantic Charter of 1941, which affirmed ‘the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they live’. This was not to be. Roosevelt and Churchill’s grand plan was negated by the Yalta Summit of 1945 where the pair gifted the Baltics to Stalin. As far as the western powers were concerned, Lithuania was none of their business.

  The bitter partisans – whose number included a crosssection from farmhands to university professors – vacillated between acts of calculated mischief such as destroying ballot boxes at farcical Soviet elections to briefly occupying entire towns before fleeing into the forests in the face of reinforcements. The 30,000 partisans were supported by a network of sympathisers three to four times that size. It included thousands of young women – some barely out of their teens – who acted as information runners between battalions. In some instances partisan forces held off Soviet forces which outnumbered them ten to one. They gave as good as they got, but their inferior weaponry and size eventually told, with 10,000 being slain in the first year of hostilities. The lucky ones were left on battlefields while the corpses of others were propped up in town squares as a warning to would-be allies.