Lost Birds

by Putrius, Birute

  “I see your mom had the same idea.” Irene smiled as she looked over at his mother.

  “She wanted to see her sister again.” He studied her face to see what had changed. Her eyes seemed more serious. She had always been so ready to laugh and have fun, but now she seemed quieter and more thoughtful. “It’s been a long time, Irene.”

  “It’s great to see you, Al.” Irene touched his arm briefly. “It’s been years.”

  Al couldn’t stop smiling. “Yeah, really great,” he repeated, drinking in her face.

  Irene’s smile had always warmed him. “Funny to finally see you here,” she said. “I couldn’t run into you on Michigan Avenue or something?” Irene stepped back to take a good look at him. He was wearing khakis and a blue oxford shirt, and his brown hair was shorter. “God, you look better than ever.”

  “Thanks, you always look great.” Irene was wearing a summer dress with a sweater over her shoulders. “How are you?”

  “How am I?” Irene laughed quietly. “Let’s see, you got a couple of months to listen to my sad litany?” She looked away, toward her dad. “Listen, do you think we could get away from our families for a cup of coffee or a beer? I’d love to talk. There’s a café over there.” She pointed to a yellow building across the street. They walked over to Mr. Matas, and Al met Irene’s five year old son, Nick, a bright-looking boy with blond hair. After clearing it with their families, they went off arm-in-arm to an old cellar that could have doubled as a bomb shelter. On the way, they passed another café and through the large windows Irene was surprised to see Felius the Poet toasting a group of men. Al laughed. “We’ll soon see the whole crowd from the Amber Tavern if we’re not careful. I bet half of Sixty-Ninth Street is here.”

  As they sat in a dark nook, they noticed that all the waitresses were gathered in the back watching a telenovela from Mexico called Los Ricos También Lloran, Even the Rich Cry Tears, which everyone in Lithuania simply called Mariana, after the heroine. It seemed as if all of Vilnius was having its first glimpse of capitalism, and they were addicted. Irene said she had seen shop girls and waitresses, and even bartenders, watching Mariana’s rags-to-riches story. It seemed campy to Al and Irene, who couldn’t get a waitress to pull herself away from the televised melodrama long enough to bring them some coffee. Finally, one of the young waitresses turned around, annoyed that they were bothering them. “Wait, we just found out Mariana’s pregnant.” Only after the program finished did Al finally get someone to hand him two coffees and he brought them to the table himself.

  Irene told him how she had been to Marquette Park before coming to Lithuania and how everyone had moved away but the poor old Lithuanians who couldn’t afford it. “Our old neighborhood is gone,” she said sadly. “Someday, we’ll tell our grandchildren that there was once a place called Marquette Park, where all the Lithuanians fled after the war.” She and Al talked about the neighborhood with the same nostalgia that their parents felt when talking about their lost homeland.

  Al was amazed at how easy it was to talk to Irene as they caught up on each other’s lives. She seemed to understand him effortlessly. He didn’t have to explain himself the way he did to the other girls he had dated. As he sat across from his old love, he realized that he had been waiting for this moment for years.

  “I’ve known you since I first came to America,” said Irene. “Remember our old storefront and those Gypsies?”

  Al nodded, laughing softly. “I used to think you were a scrawny nuisance.”

  Irene reminded him of the time he saved her from drowning in Miner’s Lake at summer camp. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, thanking him. “I’m alive today because of you.”

  Al didn’t say anything for a few moments, touched that she remembered that day.

  Irene stirred her coffee. “Al, I wrote you two letters last year. Why didn’t you answer them?”

  He shrugged and folded his napkin into smaller and smaller squares, not looking into her eyes. “I didn’t know what to say,” he said honestly, but something inside ached.

  When the waitress finally brought the bill over, Al took his wallet out and fumbled through it, looking for Lithuanian currency. As he pulled out a litas, a tattered photo fell out of his wallet. He tried to snatch it away quickly before Irene saw it, but it was too late. She stopped him and took it, examining it for a moment. It was so worn and stained that all that was left was her faded nineteen-year-old face, hair long and straight, eyes black with liner, staring straight into the camera with a sideways smile that hinted at amusement, but with warm eyes, obviously in love with the photographer. “I remember when you took this photo on my birthday.” She smiled sadly and tried to straighten the creases. “Looks like it’s been through hell.”

  Al shook his head, embarrassed that she had seen this relic. “I carried it all through the war.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He raked his hand through his hair, wondering how much to say. “I was too raw then.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Irene bit her lip. “You came back from Vietnam so angry, so quiet, and I thought that you no longer cared for me. It crushed me. I didn’t want to be hurt.”

  Al shook his head and laughed softly. “You didn’t want to be hurt.” Al took a deep breath and ordered a brandy, asking her if she wanted one. She nodded. “Yeah, I was angry when I came back from Nam. You would have been too if you’d been there. You know, I still dream about it. I don’t know how I got out alive but when I came back lame, I felt like an old man.” He shook his head. “I’d seen too much.” The waitress brought over the drinks. “Here’s to love and war,” he said and drank his down in one gulp.

  “God,” said Irene sipping her brandy, “why didn’t we talk?”

  “I couldn’t.” Al shook his head. “Maybe I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?” She touched his arm and he looked up.

  Al swallowed hard. “Afraid to find out we had each changed too much to make a go of it.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “Afraid to feel what I’m feeling right now,” he heard himself say.

  Irene took his hand. “Tell me.”

  “No, I don’t want to be disappointed.” He looked down at her hands.

  “You won’t be. I promise you.” Her face looked so sweet as she spoke, more like the girl he remembered in grammar school, before the sixties catapulted them all into chaos.

  As her words trailed off, Al realized how much he wanted her. When he looked up and saw the look in her eyes, he awkwardly leaned over the table and kissed her. “Well, I have to say this once and for all. The truth is that I still care for you, Irene, I always have.” Al looked at her, letting the words settle in.

  A solitary tear rolled slowly down her cheek. “I feel the same way about you, Al.”

  Before they parted, Irene stopped at a kiosk that was selling amber souvenirs. She had spotted an amber heart, and she bought it for Al. “See that dark streak running through it? Flawed like me.” Irene smiled sadly. “Keep it and think of me until I see you in Chicago. I’m spending the whole summer there.” Irene pressed the heart into his hand and kissed him softly. Al held her hand, afraid to let it go again, afraid that if he let it slip out of his, he would lose her once more.

  She smiled and pulled away. “I’m not running away this time,” she whispered as she walked away. Al watched her until she disappeared into the crowded street. “Thank you,” he said quietly to the soft twilight. Holding the amber heart tightly in his hand, he walked away with the limp he’d brought back from the war.

  The following day, Al’s mother was eager to see her ancestral home and her village. Linas had borrowed a small former Soviet military minibus. It was old, and it rattled and sputtered, but it had room for all of them, even his seven-year-old daughter, Simona. Violeta warned her sister that so much had changed, and that she might not recognize her home, but Regina laughed at
the idea.

  “The villages are gone,” warned her sister. “And the farms were bulldozed by the Soviets.”

  “Our land is still there, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ll feel at home,” said Regina. “Our birch woods are still there, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, of course,” smiled Violeta, but she looked uncertain. “But first I want you to meet someone you once knew.”

  They drove to Kretinga, to the red brick church where Regina had been baptized and married. Regina wanted the priest to bless a cross she hoped to take to the Hill of Crosses. She walked into the dimly lit church that smelled of incense. Light filtered in through stained-glass windows and red votive candles flickered in ascending rows. Regina looked around and realized that the church was missing its statues. Only one broken statue of Mary stood in an alcove. Soon Violeta came in with a wizened old man with bright eyes and a stooped back. It was Father Jonaitis, who explained that this church, like so many, had been used as a warehouse during the Soviet era.

  “You see the Communists finally gave me back my church, but they kept the statues. My only consolation is that those other statues are gone as well.” The old priest looked around and saw that no one knew what he was talking about. “You know—the Lenins and Stalins are gone from the town squares, eh?” He wheezed a laugh.

  Father Jonaitis had married Regina and Jurgis so many years ago. They talked warmly of times long gone, two remnants with more friends under the earth than walking on top of it. The old priest took a liking to Al and wanted to hear all about Chicago.

  “Do you live near Al Capone?” the priest asked as they walked into the churchyard.

  “No, he’s long dead.” Al laughed.

  The priest nodded solemnly, on intimate terms with death.

  Finally, they drove to the birch woods where Regina’s village had been. When Linas stopped the minibus, Regina thought he must be mistaken, but her sister insisted that this was where they had been born and raised, even though when they looked around, there was nothing but an empty meadow. The gently rolling countryside stretched out before them and in the distance birch woods stood with white trunks gleaming in the sun, and beyond, a dark fir forest patiently waited. Regina told them how she had thought about her home so often while working in Chicago. It was what had sustained her in those long and hard years. She’d thought about it so often that it was more real than this empty meadow of wildflowers and weeds. Regina argued with her sister that this couldn’t possibly be the place.

  She walked the road back and forth as if trying to conjure up what was no longer there. From behind came a small voice. “Where’s my house?” asked Magda suddenly, as if awakening from a long sleep. She was pointing to the empty field.

  “Magda, you remember our house?” asked Regina.

  “Where’s the bathhouse?” Magda began pointing to familiar places, walking the outlines of what she remembered. “The well was here.” Magda was agitated.

  “Everything’s gone,” said Violeta, putting her arm around her niece.

  “Bombs?” asked Magda, trying to understand why everything was gone.

  “No, not bombs.” Violeta patiently explained that their house had been burned by the Lithuanian Forest Brothers after Regina’s family fled. It was in protest against the Russian family who moved in. The Soviets were mixing populations as part of a plan for Russification of the Baltics. The Lithuanian partisans burned such houses rather than let the Russians make themselves at home. “After a while, the Russians were afraid to move to Lithuania,” she said proudly. “That’s why so much of Lithuania is still Lithuanian, while poor Latvia and Estonia have so many Russians.”

  Al wondered if that was true or something they said to themselves to feel better.

  “Mama, the stork nest,” said Magda, pointing to the three oak trees that her grandfather had planted by the crossroads. Regina stared at this familiar landmark, and it finally allowed her to get her bearings. The oaks were almost a hundred years old, with massive trunks and a wide canopy. “Oaks can live for five hundred years,” said Regina. “Long after our sorrows are forgotten, the land remains.”

  Regina walked the perimeter of her land, quietly crying and shaking her head, talking to her husband as if he were still alive, reminding him of his plans to return to Lithuania. Then life would begin again. Then they would take a free breath and be happy again. But he’d died too soon, and now she missed him so terribly. This land that held all of her memories now looked innocent, unused, with no history to tell, overgrown with weeds. Two small white butterflies chased one another through the Queen Anne’s lace and purple clover. When she saw a few surviving rye stalks mixed with the weeds, she picked a stalk and saw the golden head was almost ripe for harvest. The land, the pond, and the oak trees were the same—only she had changed.

  Now she could see where it had all been, where the cottage had stood. They had added a fine large room filled with windows, where the whole village used to gather in the winter for meetings, plays, and dances. Those had been good years, with everything paid for, even the new threshing machine. Money had been saved for the lean years. She looked around for the well, but it must have been covered over. The orchard was gone, with its apple and cherry trees. Regina walked to the edge of the property and down the slope. At the bottom, she could see two storks poking their long beaks into the marshy grasses, looking for frogs. The first sign of spring had always been the croaking of frogs. The second sign of spring had been the return of the storks. She watched as the pair of storks spread their wide wings, pushing back their long thin legs as they flew back to their nest. She remembered her father telling of storks pushing their babies out of the nest during a year of famine or war, and how they spent their winters on the Nile River, but came back to their same nests in Lithuania year after year. They were considered good luck. “They came back every year, but we couldn’t,” she whispered.

  “Where’s Magda?” asked Violeta, looking around.

  “I thought she was over there,” said Al, pointing to the wooded area. He called Magda’s name several times, but she didn’t answer. He ran over to the birch trees calling, but still no answer. His mother stopped for a moment, strangely reminded of the morning the Soviet Army was coming near. She had been preparing to leave when Magda had disappeared. She had looked for her daughter everywhere and then had found her in the bathhouse.

  Regina turned to Violeta. “Is the bathhouse still there?”

  “Has she gone to the pond?” asked Violeta.

  Regina saw the remnant of the old path to the village bathhouse by the pond, and she pushed her way through the tangle of bushes. Al walked behind her, getting slapped by branches, trying to shield his aunt, who walked behind him.

  “Why would she go there?” Violeta was winded from the effort.

  “I don’t know,” Al said.

  “Hurry up,” urged Regina, panting and pushing her way down the familiar path. She finally saw the pond, overgrown with cattails on one end. There were still a few wooden posts where a small pier had once stood, but there was no sign of Magda. The small, weathered wooden bathhouse still stood, leaning over to one side. It would have fallen but for some birch trees holding it up. Al yelled for Magda and at last heard her answer. Relieved, he ran inside to find her digging a hole with a stick, scratching the packed earth.

  “Magda, what are you doing?” asked Al.

  “Digging,” she answered resolutely.

  “Why are you digging?” he asked.

  “Papa gave it to me.”

  “Forget it, the ground is too hard. You’ll never dig a hole in that packed dirt with your stick.” Al tried to lift her.

  “No,” she grunted and jerked away.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “My box.”

  “You think you’ll find something after so many years?” Regina came over and took her daughter by the elb
ow. “Magda, get up. You’re getting dirty like some potato digger.”

  “No.” Magda forcefully yanked her arm away.

  “Magda, for God’s sake, get up. Don’t act like a child.”

  Magda whimpered but kept on digging.

  “I’ll help you,” said Simona, pushing her blond braids with large red bows to her back.

  “Let her be,” said Violeta, taking her sister’s arm. “What’s the harm? Linas will help her too.” Linas agreed and found a couple of sticks so that he and his young daughter could help Magda dig. They scratched and scratched but found nothing. After a while, Al found another stick and joined in. He had never seen Magda so determined. She was usually so quiet and docile.

  The bathhouse was warm and dark, with some weathered benches piled in one corner. Violeta brought over one of the benches and spread a handkerchief on it so she and her sister could sit down. “When Regina and I were little, the whole village used this sauna. We would beat our skin with birch branches until it tingled.”

  “Those were golden days,” said Regina.

  “Maybe you and I could find a way to live here again?” asked Violeta, sighing. “Two old widows remembering our youth.”

  Regina smiled and shrugged, liking the idea.

  The digging continued. “There’s nothing here,” Al said at last, throwing his stick away. He looked at the cobwebs and the dust, a broken lantern, and a child’s canvas shoe abandoned in a corner.

  Magda had given up on the first hole and had made several others. She was covered in dirt like some ancient crone, but she wouldn’t stop digging. And then, to everyone’s surprise, she hit something with a thud. Al and Linas laughed in amazement. Simona jumped up and down in glee. “I knew it,” she said.

  Violeta stood up and clasped her hands together. “I was praying she’d find something.”

  Regina stood to look over their shoulders as all four dug with renewed vigor until they removed a rusted tin box that advertised chocolates. Magda wiped it off as best she could with her hand but couldn’t open it. Al tried but couldn’t open it either, so Linas used his penknife to pry the rusty top off. Inside was a doll-sized china tea set in a delicate blue-and-white Dutch design, still carefully wrapped in a rotting linen towel.