In the summer of 1938 I was living in a small village west of Vilnius, or Wilno as it was called then. The farm on which we lived lay on the edge of the village. Rolling pasture fell down from the house to a small river where we fished for trout. Across the river the forest started. The dark green leaves cloaked the rising hill and wound around the village protecting it, cutting it off. One road wandered through the forest’s depths, grey and dusty in the summer, and in the winter, rutted and dark and treacherous. Its meandering route cut south-east towards the Polish capital, whilst fifty kilometres to the north the road took you to the ancient capital of the Lithuanian people, to Vilnius.
June was hot. The sun rose early. It peaked the forest and seeped through the dirty windows of the small room, at the top of the house, in which I slept. It woke me and for some moments I lay without moving, feeling its fingers caress my face like a grandmother, with hands smooth and leathery with age.
‘Sunus,’ my mother called. ‘Son.’
I pulled back the sheets and stretched. Choosing some warm clothes, I hurried outside. The early morning was fresh and dew clung to the grass, glittering like strewn diamonds in the low sunlight. The sun, which had been so warm behind the glass in my room, was freshened by a nip in the air, left by the clear, cold night. The scent of the pine forest was pungent and lively. I breathed it in deeply. In the distance I could · hear the cattle. Setting off down the path to where the cows were tethered, my feet sprang on the wet grass and the dew quickly soaked my shoes. I hummed a melody I had heard on the wireless the evening before. It was a Polish tune. Since the war our village had found itself within Poland’s borders, though most of the village’s inhabitants were Lithuanian or Jews, with only a scattering of Poles.
The udders of the cows were full and they lowed irritably. I stroked the smooth warm flanks of Ramune and reassured her. The frothy milk splashed into the cold metal bucket. Having eased the udders of the cows, I wandered back up the path to the house, the bucket sloshing and steaming. The small meadow flowers had begun to open up to the sun and a heron poked around by the rivr. By the door of the house, on the brim of the hill, my grandmother, seeing me ambling up the path, stood and smiled her gap-toothed smile. As always she was dressed in black. Having lost her husband in the war, she had worn black ever since.
I lowered the bucket to the ground and rubbed the palm of my hand. Standing with my grandmother, I took in the morning scene with the delight of a boy who knows that soon he will leave it. It was all the world I had known. A peaceful world. Idyllic.
My father, though a farmer, was a cultured man. Before the war, during the Russian occupation, he read the underground papers and built up a library of illegally published Lithuanian books. The Polish occupation of the region had been a blow to him as a nationalist. But he was a businessman too, a realist, and though, still, he harboured hopes of a larger, united Lithuania, he threw his energy into his Polish farm and educated me, his son, as best he could in the hope of my becoming a doctor or a lawyer. I tried hard not to disappoint him. I worked stubbornly and gained entry into the university in Wilno.
My last months in the village were sweet with the nostalgia of expected departure. I worked on my father’s farm, enjoying feeling my strained muscles, hearing the sound of the birds and, in the afternoons, wandering in the dark silences of the ancient forests. In the evenings I went down to the river, where the young people from the village gathered, and sat fishing and talking, and singing as the moon rose above the forest.
After delivering the warm, fresh milk to my mother, I scooped out a cup for my breakfast. I sat at the scarred old table that stood in the kitchen and hurriedly ate some heavy brown bread and cheese. The day would be a fine one and I did not wish to lose a moment of it. I slipped out, once more, into the sunshine and headed for the dusty road where I had arranged to meet a couple of my school friends.
Jan, I saw, was there waiting, on the edge of the road, casting stones into the stagnant millpond. Seeing me, he raised his hand in greeting. I threw myself down onto the grass beside him and rolled onto my back to gaze up into the high blue sky. For a moment we lay there in silence.
‘Nah! And what are we going to do then?’ Jan asked, casting another stone into the pond. The stone made a thick plop as it broke the moribund surface. A bullfrog croaked, lustfully. There was barely a breeze to stir the tips of the tall trees further down the road and the early morning chill had evaporated. The sun was strong and the dust road quivered under its heat.
‘Mendle has some work going. He said to come over.’
‘Working for the Yid?’
‘What does it matter that he’s a Yid?’
‘Blyad!’ Jan swore in Russian. He spat into the grass contemptuously.
‘Ach!’ I muttered and turned over, irritated.
Old man Mendle had a farm on the edge of the village, a couple of miles from our own. He was a prosperous old man in his sixties. His son, Young Mendle as he was known, worked as a blacksmith. His shop was in the centre of the village but he still lived in his father’s large farmhouse with his own child. Young Mendle’s daughter was dark haired and thin and, to me, mysterious. Sitting in the corner of the village schoolroom, she stared out of the large, dusty windows, across the fields, to the forest. My gaze followed hers, losing itself in the darkness of the trees.
‘Christ killer,’ Jan said. He ran a hand through his short, blond, Polish hair.
When school finished Rachael tucked her books under her arm and wandered slowly down the dusty lane to the village. My way home took me past her father’s shop, where I would see her leaning up against the wooden door. Her father had a fierce, black beard that jutted out aggressively before him. He was a communist and agitated in the village. When my father first took me to the workshop with one of our horses, I cowered in the corner. The furnace cast hellish shadows around the room. Young Mendle stood in the centre of the workshop with a large mallet in his blackened hand, beard bristling. Sweat glistened on his furrowed forehead as he brought the mallet down with furious blows onto a shining horseshoe.
‘Young Mendle’s a good man,’ my father said on the way home. ‘He does a good job for a good price. Better than Polish shit.’
After leaving her father’s shop, Rachael cut across the fields. She liked to skirt the edge of the forest on her way home and I would follow her.
‘It has a power all of its own,’ she said one day, as we sat in the shadow of a birch tree. Our schoolbooks lay scattered on the thick green grass. I read to her from Baranauskas’ long, rambling poem, inspired by the deep primeval forests of Lithuania.
‘Sometimes the forest scares me,’ she said. ‘And sometimes it seems to be the safest of places.’
I nodded. Many times when I was with her I was not sure how to respond to her comments. I would nod, only, and gaze at her. Her hair was dark and played on her narrow shoulders. Her eyes always wore a far-away look.
‘Where’s Povilas?’ I asked Jan.
Jan nodded down the road. In the dip, where the wooden bridge crossed the brook, I saw Povilas. He walked slowly up the road to meet us, kicking the dust as he came. He flopped onto the grass, a lop-sided grin on his face.
‘How’s life?’ he asked in his heavily accented Polish. Jan spoke no Lithuanian.
Jan threw another stone into the millpond. I smiled, and shook Povilas’ hand.
‘What’s up with him?’ Povilas asked, inclining his head in the direction of Jan, who lay silent on his stomach. I shrugged.
‘Nothing is up with me,’ Jan said, turning over. His eyes flicked in my direction and I could see that he was angry. For a moment he seemed about to comment on something, but held back.
‘So what about going down to the beach?’ Povilas grinned. ‘Glorious day for a swim!’
‘Nah, and why not!’ Jan said. ‘Better than some suggestions I’ve heard today.’
Povilas raised his eyebrows and I could only shrug again. Jan got up and stretched. He kicked my leg. ‘You coming?’ he asked. I shook my head. I watched as they walked down the deep rutted road towards the river. Jan limped, his leg lame from polio.
When they had crossed the wooden bridge I got up myself and trudged towards Old Mendle’s farm.