The Dedalus Book of Lithuianian Literature E-Book

Almantas Samalavicius

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Dedalus Anthologies
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 430

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

100 hundred years of the best Lithuanian fiction from Dedalus

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Leseprobe

The Editor

Born in 1963, Almantas Samalavicius is a cultural historian, critic and essayist. The author of eleven books and seven collections of essays he is a professor at Vilnius University. He has served as president of PEN Lithuania and is currently its vice president.

His books, articles and essays have been widely translated. His most recent book to appear in English is Ideas and Structures: Essays in Architectural History (2011).

The Translators

Jura Avizienis has a Master’s degree in Lithuanian literature from the University of Illinois. Jura is a Fulbright Scholar (Lithuania, 2000), and has been teaching at Boston University since 2008. Her translations of contemporary Lithuanian literature appear regularly in The Vilnius Review.

Ausrine Byla is the granddaughter of Balys Sruoga. She has a Master’s degree in English from Arizona State University and is currently living in Vilnius, Lithuania, where she is working as a translator and language instructor.

Violeta Kelertas received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin Madison. She was Endowed Chair of Lithuanian Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago 1984–2008. She has translated and edited widely, mostly Soviet era Lithuanian prose fiction, focusing on Aesopian language, used to evade Soviet censorship. Currently under the auspices of the University of Washington Baltic program she is engaged in preparing a translation of the 19th C. feminist Lithuanian writer Zemaite.

Elizabeth Novickas has a Master’s degree in Lithuanian Language and Literature from the University of Illinois. She has worked as a bookbinder and fine printer in Urbana, Illinois; as a newspaper designer and cartographer in Springfield, Illinois; and as editorial system administrator at the Chicago Sun-Times. Besides translating Lithuanian into English, she is the editor of the journal Lituanus. In 2011 she won the St. Jerome Prize from the Association of Lithuanian Literary Translators.

Medeine Tribinevicius holds a MA in creative writing and an MA from the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. She is a writer, editor and curator, as well as a translator of Lithuanian literature and poetry.

Ada Mykote Valaitis is a writer, editor, and translator with a Masters degree in Literature from George Mason University. In 2007, Ada was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study and translate Lithuanian literature. She currently works as a Writer-Editor in the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation and lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Jayde Will has a master’s degree in Fenno-Ugric languages from the University of Tartu, and is currently an assistant at the Department of Translation and Interpretation Studies at Vilnius University. His poetry and prose translations of Lithuanian, Estonian and Russian authors have appeared in a number of anthologies, including the most recent Best European Fiction 2012 Anthology. He is currently working on a collection of selected poems by Estonian poet and prose writer Eeva Park. He resides in Vilnius.

Acknowledgement

The International Cultural Programme Centre extends its gratitude and appreciation to all the authors, translators and consultants who made a valued contribution to this project by devoting their time and energy. A very special thank you to the publisher Dedalus Books, Dr Almantas Samalavicius for his all contributions, and the language editor Medeine Tribinevicius.

Contents

Title

The Editor

The Translators

Acknowledgement

Introduction: Time Lost and Found – Almantas Samalavicius

The Cane – Jonas Biliunas

The Herring – Vincas Kreve

The Light of Your Face – Antanas Vaiciulaitis

The Red Slippers – Jurgis Savickis

Christmas Eve – Antanas Vienuolis

Forest of the Gods (two excerpts) – Balys Sruoga

No One’s to Blame – Romualdas Lankauskas

A Cry in the Full Moon – Juozas Aputis

The Earth is Always Alive – Icchokas Meras

Lady Stocka – Antanas Ramonas

Handless – Ricardas Gavelis

Year of the Lily of the Valley – Jurga Ivanauskaite

Tula (an excerpt) – Jurgis Kuncinas

When the Weapons are Silent – Herkus Kuncius

The Murmuring Wall (an excerpt) – Sigitas Parulskis

You Could Forgive Me – Jaroslavas Melnikas

Obituary – Giedra Radvilaviciute

Colour and Form – Birute Jonuskaite

Christmas with a Stranger – Danute Kalinauskaite

Copyright

Introduction: Time Lost and Found

Almantas Samalavicius

The great social changes that occurred in Lithuania in the 1990s were triggered by the collapse of the Soviet empire, which had colonised the Baltic nations and ideologically controlled the whole of central and eastern Europe for half a century. This, along with the onset of Gorbachev’s perestroika, hastened the events that led to the start of a second hard-won independence for Lithuania. For the first time my generation – born and raised in the Soviet era – had the opportunity to breathe in the life-giving and heady air of freedom. The current crop of twenty-year-olds, born in an already independent country, accept what for us was an intoxicating independence as something natural and ordinary. Though many Lithuanians had long dreamed of life in a free country, for my generation and our elders, it was most likely something that would occur and be experienced only once in a lifetime, and only under favourable historical circumstances.

Similarly, for most writers of the 20th century, freedom and independence were not self-evident truths, and nor was independence seen as guaranteed to last; it was only in the second decade of the 20th century that Lithuanians succeeded in shaking off the yoke of the tsarist Russian empire. This ancient and at times vast country, which at one point stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, bore this subjugation from the very end of the 18th century, when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – a union which was constantly undermined by external forces and internal disagreements – was weakened and collapsed. In the end, having lost its sovereignty, it was an easy prey for an expanding Russia. For nearly 150 years Lithuania was ruled by a foreign colonial regime that consciously and maliciously ravaged and ruined the country’s cultural and religious institutions, crippled collective historical memory and fiercely suppressed (but fortunately did not extinguish) even the merest manifestations of a desire for freedom.

As the storms of the First World War raged, all of the regional representatives in Lithuania gathered in Vilnius for a conference. It was there that the Lithuanian people announced their decision to reclaim their independence. On 16 February 1918, the Council of Lithuania proclaimed the historic Act of Independence of Lithuania and quickly took action to consolidate independence. This event was a natural outcome of the formation of a national consciousness that started at the beginning of the 19th century – a process later described by Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish poet of Lithuanian origin and Nobel Prize laureate, as bordering on the miraculous.

The same could also be said about the incredible, phoenix-like reconstruction of the Lithuanian language, which formed the basis of the intellectual programme of the 19th century national liberation movement. It had been pushed out of public life and into the cultural fringes by the Russian colonial regime and its use had been entirely forbidden in public, in print and in schools after the second of two uprisings in the 19th century. But through great and often brave efforts spanning just a few decades, the Lithuanian language had been reborn.

Throughout the decades that the ban was in effect, the life of the Lithuanian language was maintained by way of books, mostly of religious content, which had been smuggled in from Prussia. However, even this could not effectively stop the degradation of the language. Many of the works published in Lithuanian in the 19th century clearly reflected that foreign vernacularisms and words had been imported into, and were undermining, the Lithuanian language. Elements of the Russian and Polish languages relentlessly penetrated into the structure and vocabulary of written Lithuanian, turning an archaic language into a combination of native and foreign tongues that quickly lost its characteristic identity and life. After the colonial regime brought into effect the ban on the Lithuanian language in 1864 that would last another forty years, the written word continued to grow sickly and wither, becoming a caricature of its former self. Fortunately, the national newspaper Ausra (Dawn), which was established in the 1890s, and later Varpas (The Bell) took up the mission to revive the Lithuanian language, strengthen national consciousness and rebuild historical memory in order to strengthen the foundations of Lithuanian identity. In a relatively short period of time, both periodicals played extremely meaningful and unexpectedly successful roles in the achievement of these goals. Even after the newspapers ceased publication, the work towards establishing an independent state and a shared sense of nationhood did not stop. It was taken up by other periodicals which continued to foster the seedlings of modern Lithuanian consciousness and identity. It would later become clear that this work was indispensable to the restoration of the lost institutional foundations of Lithuanian statehood.

It is therefore unsurprising that the themes of history and national identity have often been reflected by Lithuanian prose and poetry. It is probably also not difficult to understand why, for a nation deprived of its independence on several occasions, untangling these problems is so important. After nearly two centuries of Russian subjugation that witnessed the erosion of national traditions and identity, the inter-war period of independence only lasted a little over two decades. It was marked by a rapid, even feverish, period of creation of culture and cultural institutions but was followed by the occupation by the Soviet Union in 1940, which resulted in a new fifty-year period of colonisation. All of this left significant marks on the collective memory of Lithuanian society, culture and the body politic. The lasting mentality and institutional legacy, though sometimes bemoaned, are still felt in Lithuanian culture today.

In the 1940s the hopes held by some of the country’s leftist intellectuals – that the composite nature of the Soviet Union would protect the most essential elements of Lithuanian society and provide an element of cultural autonomy – were dashed. The onset of the first Soviet occupation brought with it mass deportations of citizens to Siberian gulags. Although the deportations targeted representatives of the intellectual class, the ensuing suffering was not inflicted solely on adults but also on children, even infants – a fact which graphically demonstrated the true face of the communist regime and the real aspirations of the occupiers. This experience also encouraged a second significant loss of Lithuanian intellectuals when a large number of writers and other artists moved to the West at the end of the Second World War. Following the movement of the front lines, they understood that if they remained in their homeland, they would be condemned – if not to death, then to prison, exile and other forms of repression. Their suspicions were soon confirmed. The post-war communist regime proved to be particularly brutal and the returning Soviet government initiated a fresh wave of deportations. Writers whose pasts, works or views raised even the slightest suspicion or doubt were questioned, tried, deported to gulags and condemned to a long exile. Those who had managed to avoid repression – typically as a result of their social origins, the expression of an outlook more acceptable to the Soviet state or a chameleon-like ability to adapt – were left with two options: either sing the praises of Stalinism or remain silent for decades on end. However, just keeping quiet was a dangerous option. A silent (non-writing) writer could be accused of harbouring a conscious desire not to glorify Joseph Stalin, not to support the ideology of the Communist Party and not to enact its requests. That mindset was a prelude to new types of persecution. As a result, the first decade after the end of the Second World War was the most difficult for the survival of Lithuanian literature. Some writers retreated underground or joined anti-Soviet fighters in the forests and lived in bunkers where they wrote poems in their notebooks that rarely reached the wider masses. For most of these writers, their fates ended tragically. In 1953, when the armed anti-Soviet resistance was finally quelled, the occupying regime made short work of free speech.

Soviet censors used every means at their disposal to control literary content and form. Any deviation from socialist realist norms was severely punished. Many of the works written in the post-war period were in reality the fruit of forced ‘collaboration’ between authors and censors. In certain cases writers were forced to rewrite their novels or short stories several times in accordance with suggestions made by censors, especially in those instances when the writer’s family or loved ones were imprisoned in Siberian gulags. In exchange for this literary collaboration, the writers were offered the promise that the suffering of their incarcerated loved ones would be lessened or shortened. It was in this way that the work of the inter-war writer Antanas Vienuolis was compromised: his son was serving time in a Soviet gulag. He wrote a second version of his socialist-realist novel Puodziunkiemis under the strict supervision of a Communist Party ‘co-author’, paying careful attention to the ‘editing’ provided.

Some writers became victims of both physical and intellectual oppression. The talented writer Kazys Boruta, whose excellent novel Baltaragis’ Windmill (Baltaragio malunas) was widely acclaimed and has been translated into English, was imprisoned in independent Lithuania for his membership of the outlawed socialist-revolutionary party; in the post-war period he was incarcerated by the Soviet regime for defending his position on national independence. Poet, dramatist, critic and professor at Vilnius University, Balys Sruoga was incarcerated along with other Lithuanian intellectuals at the Stutthof concentration camp by the Nazis. He died before the publication of Forest of the Gods (Dievu miskas), a memoir of his time in the Nazi camps. A book which critics later hailed as staggering and ironic, it was banned by the censors and languished for decades in a publishing-house drawer.

Censorship greatly affected the literary climate, spreading mediocrity and opportunism whilst studiously assisting in consolidating the socialist-realist literary canon. Conditions changed somewhat after Nikita Khrushchev’s famous speech at the 20th Soviet Party Congress in 1956. Encouraged by the new, apparently more moderate tone emanating from Moscow, Lithuanian writers became bolder in liberating themselves from the clutches of the compulsory canon and searched for new literary forms as well as more diverse creative motifs. An interest in literary techniques such as impressionism, interior monologue and increasingly individualised styles of expression began to appear in Lithuanian prose. At the same time growing attention was being paid to themes that had earlier been forbidden such as forced collectivisation as well as sudden and massive urbanisation, while there was also rising interest in drama depicting post-war existence. Lithuanian filmmakers also attempted to crack open this latter genre and a fine example of this trend came in the form of art film No One Wanted to Die (Niekas nenorejo mirti), by the renowned director Vytautas Zalakevicius. Unfortunately, the ‘thaw’ in the Soviet regime’s stance towards any kind of independent thought was short-lived, shattering the naïve illusions held by writers and other intellectuals that it was going to be possible to create ‘socialism with a human face’ in the Soviet bloc.

One might expect that there might be a search within literary forms for ways to express one’s true feelings and ideas in a society where free speech is restricted and repressed. However, unlike in other central and eastern European countries where fierce censorship created stronger preconditions for the blossoming of self-publishing (samizdat), nothing of the sort occurred in Lithuania. Although banned periodicals and regularly issued self-published editions did appear in the country such as the multi-volume Chronicle of the Catholic Church (Kataliku Baznycios kronika), most publications of this type reached only a very small circle of readers.

Furthermore, the heavy repressions enacted in the first post-war decade and the suppression of the anti-Soviet armed resistance had considerable long-term effects on the collective memory. Many writers, creators and intellectuals imagined their role in the legal public sphere as one of being devoted to fostering and protecting Lithuanian culture, particularly language, while at the same time safeguarding its continuation. However, this type of thinking had controversial consequences on the development of Lithuanian culture and literature. A communist nomenclature rapidly formed in all spheres of cultural production. The Communist Party elite began to wield significant influence on creative development, retaining an iron grip on these institutions and blocking the way into the public world for braver, more original thinking authors and nonconformist literature. Even after more than two decades have passed since the end of the Soviet period, the question of collaboration and conformism still remains relevant because post-war habits of thinking and behaviour rooted in official culture continue to be felt today. They are also evident in the evaluation of literary development of the past few decades and in the bestowal of the most prestigious prizes for cultural creators based on criteria that developed in the late Soviet era and remain alive today.

The only writers to be unaffected by the array of controls over literary forms were those who chose exodus at the end of the Second World War. After spending some time in German displaced persons camps, they eventually travelled west, often ending up in the US. For quite some time, these prose writers and poets living in emigration, a few of whom had managed to become well known in independent Lithuania and were even regarded as having written classics, rallied together in a strong group. They established Lithuanian literary presses, literary journal editorial boards and other institutions of literary life. Some of these writers, having seen with their own eyes the process of Sovietisation in 1940 in Lithuania and upon finding themselves on the other side of the Atlantic, conveyed their experiences in literary form, with Vincas Ramonas telling his story in the 1947 novel Crosses (Kryziai). Writers Algirdas Landsbergis and Marius Katiliskis used other aesthetic means to describe the themes of exodus, and the existential dimensions of exile were strongly and dramatically revealed in one of the most famous novels by a Lithuanian émigré: The White Shroud (Balta drobule, 1958) by Antanas Skema. In this novel the narrator seeks to speak with an eternally silent God “whose presence reveals itself only in the suffering and total destruction of man”, as the well-known critic of émigré literature, Rimvydas Silbajoris, observed when commenting on this work.

For most of the works created by emigré writers, the path back to Lithuania was difficult. A large part of their readership was in Lithuania and these works could only find domestic readers through illegal means. As a consequence, their impact on the literary consciousness forming in Soviet Lithuania was unavoidably limited. Works by emigré authors, for example, were not included in the literary programme at secondary schools or universities, and so an entire generation of readers only became acquainted with this part of Lithuanian literature after 1990. Eventually the production of émigré literature slowed, although the last few decades have witnessed the emergence of several prominent English-speaking Lithuanian writers in the United States and Canada.

The Soviet period in Lithuania nurtured its own literary leaders who, regardless of certain controversies, played a meaningful role in the formation of Lithuanian historical consciousness and national identity. When discussing Lithuanian literature of the Soviet period, it is impossible to ignore the poet and dramatist Justinas Marcinkevicius and his historical trilogy Mindaugas (1968), Mazvydas (1977), and Cathedral (Katedra, 1971). These plays strengthened the foundations of national identity and pride despite the hostile environment created by Soviet ideology and cultural colonisation. As a writer recognised by the regime and awarded the most important literary prizes, he had a huge impact on several generations of readers and became an object of adoration for a large part of the public. Many Lithuanian authors explored the processes of destruction affecting traditional village structures and communities, describing the incremental loss of the traditional ways of life and examining the consequences of collectivisation. In the 1990s these literary themes were woven into Romualdas Granauskas’ literary opus. Granauskas presents an epitaph for the village epoch in Lithuanian culture, his realism tinged with more than a hint of sadness. His short story Life under the Maples (Gyvenimas po klevu), which was later made into a popular television film, showed the ideologies and political processes of the Soviet period irrevocably damaging the Lithuanian village. Characters in the village who are repositories of traditional wisdom end up disappearing, while the newly developing homo sovieticus is shown losing his cultural memory.

As a result of rubbing up against the ideology and censorship of the Soviet regime, authors in the Soviet period perfected the Aesopian manner of speaking. This was the case not only for poets, who were used to juggling complex metaphors, but also for prose writers of that era who found individualistic ways of expressing encoded meanings in their texts. Some wrote about madness, split consciousness, and the development of dualism, while others skilfully wove ambiguous post-war episodes or historical dates important to Lithuanians into their stories. For example, in one of his stories Romualdas Lankauskas describes the dealings his character has with Satan: he is being pressured to accept huge material gains in exchange for altering the ending of the book he is writing. The reader, knowing how to read between the lines, no doubt understood that to use such a metaphor was to speak about the relationship between the writer and the KGB. Censorship stifled freedom of speech, but it also played a role in stimulating writers to perfect their artistic voice, to arm themselves with inventive modes of expression that would not be noticed by censors, and to create multiple meanings, the nuances of which were only revealed in the process of encoding and decoding.

An important characteristic of late Soviet-era literature was the marked increase of women writers in a literary domain traditionally belonging to men, and along with them new themes pushed their way into the literary sphere. Women writers paid more attention to relationships, revealed the dominance of male philosophies and stereotypes, and wrote about the fate of women and other Soviet-era realities with a more subtle hand that sparkled with new colour. It is reflected in this anthology by the work of contemporary women writers such as Birute Jonuskaite and Giedra Radvilaviciute.

In 1989, as the national reform movement, known as Sajudis in the West, was actively expressing its opinions – though no one had yet publicly dared to declare independence and most of the participants were still talking about supporting Gorbachev’s ‘reforms’ – Ricardas Gavelis’ novel Vilnius Poker (Vilniaus pokeris) appeared. It was destined to become the most significant late Soviet-era work of Lithuanian literature, crossing aesthetic and psychological thresholds as well as becoming a paradigm for post-modern discussion. The novel, which was written over nearly a decade and sections of which were hidden in the homes of the author’s most trusted friends, examines the nature and mechanisms of power and coercion. Gavelis writes about what he called eternal conspirators against humanity, who are found in various forms throughout all periods of history from the time of Plato onwards. The novel, which sought to solve the mysteries of power and mind control, also revealed a new type of human – homo lithuanicus – who, in his wretchedness, cowardice and duplicity, surpasses his older spiritual brother, homo sovieticus. In this gloomy, post-modern text, full of sexual coercion, moral perversions and images of violence, the author attempted to answer the question: what happened to this nation which had lost its dignity, and spiritual orientation, one which safeguarded only empty symbols of past greatness that had lost their essence? Gavelis was also the first Lithuanian novelist who, quite early on, openly discussed the experiences of Lithuanians in the Siberian gulags, specifically in his story Handless (Berankis). Vilnius Poker broke all the literary sales records set in the previous decade; when the novel was released, nearly 100,000 copies were printed at lightning speed. A comparable print-run has only been seen since with the publication of a poetry collection by the well-known, previously banned émigré poet, Bernardas Brazdzionis, and was released to mark his triumphant return to Lithuania on the eve of independence.

The final years of the Soviet Union are often referred to as a period of ‘stagnation’. It was during this time that I, having become a literary critic, encountered a strange and especially paradoxical situation: though the intellectual atmosphere of the time was gloomy and grim, with no prospect of changes to freedom of expression in sight, the regime’s facade was manifesting signs of weakness. At that time I had published several critical reviews of the literary press and the literary situation in Lithuania, and I was scolded and accused of ‘slandering Soviet Lithuanian literature’ at the official annual meetings of the Writers’ Union (ironically, an organization I was invited to join just a few years later). However, unlike the bravest critics of previous generations who in earlier decades, after similar public condemnations, had lost their right to publish for a few years or sometimes more, no one even tried to block my career. An obvious lack of vigilance in censorship was also apparent in the fact that in 1988, the popular weekly Literature and Art (Literatura ir menas) quoted insights from Encounter magazine, which was widely known to be a Western, anti-Soviet magazine. The regime had wasted away from the inside and, as demonstrated by the bloody events of January 1991 in Vilnius, was desperately relying on its military strength. Its days were numbered.

This anthology attempts, admittedly fragmentally and without laying claim to any panoramic vision, to convey the more essential developments in Lithuanian literature over the last few centuries, a period that was closely connected to the evolution of statehood – its creation and loss – and the quest for freedom and independence. In the last century Lithuanian prose was dominated by themes related to agrarian life, bearing witness to the social and cultural developments taking place on the colonised edges of Europe. Many prominent writers of the past century observed, reflected on and wrote about the fate of traditional village culture in a modernising society (this view is exceptionally rendered in the work of one of the most prominent modern Lithuanian writers, Vincas Kreve). They responded sensitively to the historical calamities that tormented the country – both of the world wars, the Holocaust, the Soviet occupation, the gulags and exile as well as the Sovietisation of the nation’s identity and the controversies created in a late-forming urban culture. Under these circumstances, many writers, even into the present day, have used their work to examine both the distant and the not-so-distant past because it is connected not only with individual existential experience but also with questions about the future of society. Clearly, literature has many different objectives; it should not and cannot be reduced merely to elementary social commentary. However, keeping in mind the copious complicated historical changes that are a part of Lithuania’s cultural development, one can see that it is entirely natural that writers often seek answers to the questions that eternally plague literary creators: Who are we? Where did we come from? And where are we going? It is my hope that the works published in this anthology will help make comprehensible the value and meaning behind these questions.

Translated by Medeine Tribinevicius     

The Cane

(As told to me by my good friend)

Jonas Biliunas

Today the farmstead of my birth stands on a hill in the barren, sandy, windswept lands not far from the Sventoji River. Forests can be found only far to the north of the land, and only tiny pine saplings dot the east and the west. As I recall, not that long ago the entire farmstead was buried in deep, rich forest. Beyond these forests and stretching amongst scattered quagmires to the very banks of the Sventoji were the splendid pastures, shaded by oak trees, belonging to the people. The fields are no less splendid today, but the forests that once girdled them are long gone. They disappeared like the fairy tales we forget as we grow up, but which continue to inhabit our memory like distant, seductive images.

Those beautiful forests were the property of ‘our lord’.

Don’t laugh at me for saying ‘our lord’. I, too, could never understand why my father called that lord ‘our lord’ even though he lived far away from us – two miles away. Later I understood that he collected a tithe from my parents and that’s why my father, according to tradition, called him that. He must have had good reason to call him thus because for years the lord exploited the people of our farmstead, claiming rights to their pastures and forests. A forester had been assigned to guard the forests; he lived adjacent to our farmstead at the very edge of the forest in large, dilapidated quarters. The forester took pleasure in reporting on us to the lord, and my father, who lived closest, was often called upon to hear out the lord’s grumblings.

There’s one incident I will never forget…

One day the lord came to our farmstead to hunt; a large party of guests accompanied him and they took many deer, rabbits and birds. Their large bounty of game was laid out on the road near the forester’s cottage. Uninvited, we young parasites swarmed in from all sides, picking our noses and gaping at the game and the gentry. The gentlemen were seated in their carriages, preparing to travel home. My father, who’d been working his harrows near the pile of wood, was also on his way to have a look. As he walked over, he overheard the forester lodging a complaint to the lord about the villagers’ use of the pastures. Frightened, he hid behind the barn.

‘Get me one of the peasants!’ the lord bellowed from his carriage.

The forester told him that my father was nearby.

Hearing that he was the object of discussion and aware that there was no way for him to extricate himself, my father emerged from behind the barn. A hundred steps away he removed his hat and bowed deeply. Frightened and miserable, he rushed over to kiss the lord’s hand. The lord, with a voice not his own, began screeching at my father, threatening to send him and the entire village to beg in the street. With pale lips and a palpitating heart I witnessed this scene, noting the forester’s face beaming with satisfaction. Some of the guests watched with pity, and others with disdain. After he concluded his rant, and paying no heed to my father’s excuses, the lord whipped his horses and rattled off.

Father, hatless, stood for a few moments. Then he called me over. Agitated and trembling, he instructed: ‘Run over to the river to see whether it’s true that the shepherd is grazing his livestock on the lord’s lands.’

I rushed over with my friends and found the animals grazing ever so peacefully in their own fields, while the shepherds taunted the village dunce. I returned home and described everything to my father. Shaking his head he sat in silence.

But my mother, hearing that the shepherds were innocent, said accusingly: ‘Didn’t I tell you? Like master, like servant. Any reason to stab you in the back.’

‘Don’t be angry, mother. Our lord is a good man,’ father said, laughing softly and sadly as he often did.

‘Enough is enough,’ mother snapped. ‘Have you forgotten how he exploits the people? Have you forgotten the cane?’

I must admit that although she never said a bad word against the lords, my mother had no warm feelings for them. She often remembered the old days, telling us about events from the distant past, her voice sorrowful as she described the suffering of the serfs under their masters. As usual, father tried to apologise for the lords to mother, but he did this so timidly and then laughed so sadly that his voice betrayed resignation, not truth and conviction. But father’s apologies for the lords sometimes annoyed mother and that’s when she would remind him: ‘Enough already, father. Have you forgotten the cane?’

Father would not respond to this; he would only laugh sadly and, picking up the Book, he would read aloud to us about the life of Christ. For a long time I had no idea which cane mother was referring to and why father would always laugh so sadly whenever he defended the lords. But finally one day he took it upon himself to tell us the story.

Along with the forester, there was a man, one Dumbrauckas, who lived with him in the same quarters. He was a tall man, old, completely grey and alone, with no family. He had never been married but he was father to an adult son; that son lived somewhere deep in Russia and he visited his father infrequently. They said that once upon a time Dumbrauckas had been very wealthy but that he had lost all his wealth and property in a game of cards. How much of this was true, it’s hard to say. Only this is known: in my father’s memory he had become overseer under our lord.

After serfdom was abolished, Dumbrauckas lost his position and thus inexplicably came to live on our homestead with the forester. He lived there for many years, rarely venturing outside, spending all his time inside his room. He would either pace the room or sit at his little table at the window. As small children, seeing from a distance his grey head in the window, always in the same spot, we imagined some strange, incomprehensible and not necessarily benevolent creature, and we were afraid to get too close. Perhaps Dumbrauckas might have even died in that nest of his at the forester’s if it hadn’t been for unusual circumstances.

It must be said that our lord’s power and wealth were on the decline. The lovely forests surrounding our homestead had been bought up by Jews. The people had cut down the forest, transported the logs to the Sventoji and floated them down the river. All that remained were clearings littered with stray branches. On a hot summer’s day some fool from our village, while carting hay along the scarred lands, suddenly felt the urge to smoke. As he lit his pipe, the dry branches went up in flames. In an instant a fire was raging and the clearings were crackling… The entire homestead would have been destroyed if the villagers hadn’t banded together with pitchforks and rakes. After two hours all that lay alongside the homestead was a wide expanse of flat land, blackened and smelling of charred wood. The village later bought up this land from the lord for a trifle.

In this way, the lord’s power ended along with the forests. The village no longer needed to fear his threats. The forester was now expendable. Appropriately, the house he lived in collapsed. Water poured in through the roof, the winds whistled through the walls. And one fine day the forester disappeared without a trace. Dumbrauckas had to move somewhere as well. I don’t know if it was his idea or my parents’ suggestion, but Dumbrauckas moved into the living room of our house. He brought with him his little table, a few books, and his cow. Nothing else.

And as before, Dumbrauckas spent his time pacing the expanse of the living room, or sitting at his table by the window. He lived with us for two years and – in my opinion, very unexpectedly – became my teacher. He placed the largest Polish book possible into my hands, stood next to me and ordered me to read. He would stand there all day, and all day I would read. And so it went all summer and all winter long. I had great difficulty with the Polish language: I lisped and there were many words I could not pronounce. But my teacher was ruthless. He obliged me to exercise my tongue in all sorts of directions, to repeat the same word up to a hundred times – I would break out in a sweat and my eyes would flood with tears as a result. I would see Dumbrauckas’s fingers quivering – that’s how badly he wanted to box my ears or punch me in the nose. I got to know those hands quite well! They were the hands of an overseer – hard as steel. But when I heard he was leaving us – no one knew why – I became sad; I pitied him. That was in the autumn. An unfamiliar ‘gentleman’ arrived and drove him away.

As Dumbrauckas said his goodbyes, he left me his desk, and because my father was an old man, he left him his old applewood cane.

‘For you Joseph, I leave my cane as a keepsake,’ said Dumbrauckas to my father.

‘Thank you, sir,’ answered my father, visibly moved. ‘I wonder if we shall ever meet again?’

My father held the cane for a long time after Dumbrauckas left. As he turned it in his hands, he smiled sadly.

Then he raised his eyes and asked us unexpectedly:

‘Do you children know what this cane reminds me of?’

We all looked up.

‘It was long ago,’ my father began in an emotional voice. ‘Long, long ago. Your mother and I were still young, most of you were not yet here on this earth – only Michael had been born. We were afflicted by many great misfortunes that year. Bread was scarce and the fields and pastures were dry. And we worked not just for our own benefit, but also for the lord’s. We had to walk two miles to get to work – all the way to Burbiskis. I drove the oxen to Burbiskis one autumn to plough the fallow land. I couldn’t take much with me: I packed some bread and salt for myself and a few handfuls of old chaff for the oxen. We had nothing else. And I had to work for three days. As I was ploughing I ran out of feed for the oxen. I had no way to get more. There was nowhere for the oxen to graze – it was forbidden. My oxen were exhausted. They were barely dragging their feet. And one more day of ploughing remained! I stopped the oxen for lunch, sat down at the edge of the field and ate the dried bread and salt that I had pulled out of my basket. My oxen watched longingly as I ate. I felt so sorry for them that I had to stop eating. Nothing but crumbs remained in my basket. I fed them to the oxen and looked around: a few feet away I spied several piles of recently raked clover belonging to the lord.

‘And a terrible thought came into my head. Yes, as it might sometimes happen to you young people today. I work for the lord, so why can’t I feed the lord’s oxen some of his own grass?

‘I got up, went over to the pile and took a small handful of clover. I brought this over to the oxen and fed them by hand. The oxen happily devoured it. Watching them made me feel better. But then I suddenly felt someone strike my back, oh so painfully, with a hard object. I staggered and collapsed. My oxen jumped and almost ran off with the plough. Dazed, I raised my eyes: standing on top of me was Dumbrauckas with a cane in his hand. ‘‘You dog! Thief! Thief!’’ yelled Dumbrauckas, who walloped me in the back with his stick.

‘Seeing that I wasn’t moving, he helped me up from the ground with his arm, then he kicked me, knocking me down yet again. As I came around, I opened my eyes and saw my oxen standing nearby, their heads turned to watch me. Half-dead, I staggered home and lay in bed for three weeks.’

My father was silent. We sat in our places, stock-still. No one uttered a word. Only my sister, with tears in her eyes, asked: ‘Father, was this the same Dumbrauckas who lived at our house?’

‘The same one,’ answered father. ‘But you mustn’t be angry with him. During the uprisings the Cossacks beat him so badly that for three months he lay soaking in his own blood…’

‘Do you know, children, which cane he used to beat me?’ asked father, now smiling. ‘This one!’

We all shuddered, our eyes wide. Father raised his hand and showed us the cane, the one Dumbrauckas had left him as a keepsake.

My oldest brother approached father and grabbed the cane from his hands. He turned it again and again, as if considering something in his mind, then he threw it onto the lumber pile, saying with a barely audible voice. ‘Let’s burn it, father!’

‘No, no, children,’ answered father pleasantly. ‘Let this cane remain amongst you. When you look at it, remember that even your parents had once been punished. As you remember, don’t be angry that your mother and I sometimes hit you with a switch. We did it for your own good…. Perhaps our lord beat us for our own good?’

‘Enough, father, enough,’ mother ended the conversation. ‘It might be this very cane that caused your illness. This is not how we teach our children.’

Father smiled sadly, and taking up his book, he settled down to read.

As far as I know, my brothers still have the cane. It remains on the shelf in the granary. And nobody touches it.

April 25, 1906    

First published in Jonas Biliunas, Lazda; Ubagas; Sveciai; Brisiaus galas, Vilnius: Lietuvos ukininkas (1906).

Translated by Jura Avizienis from Jonas Biliunas, Liudna pasaka: kurybos rinktine, Vilnius: Baltos lankos (1995).

Jonas Biliunas (1879–1907) was a prose writer, poet and publicist. Over his short life, he remained faithful to his left-wing worldview and explored working class life in his literary works. His creative legacy reveals a solidarity with the oppressed and their tragic fate. In his short stories and short novels he emphasises moral self-determination, guilt and feelings of responsibility.

The Herring

Vincas Kreve

I

It was the middle of Lent, turning to spring. The days were warm and sunny; the snow was melting and the hilltops were losing their snow cover. Rivulets coursed through the valleys, roads and furrowed fields; with a roar they told the story of spring, announcing it was just around the corner.

‘Ladies, do you have any herring, chickens or eggs?’ Kuslius asked, rapping on the window one day.

He was an old Jew with a long, bushy, red beard that went right up to his eyes. His hair was all grey, his beard only partly so, but this half-greyness couldn’t hide the hair colour of his birth. He was shortsighted and couldn’t even see what was under his feet. That’s why he used his cane to feel his way like a blind man; he was especially careful when carrying eggs.

‘Why don’t you get yourself some eyeglasses?’ the people asked him on many occasions.

‘Eyeglasses? Where would I get money for eyeglasses?’ he’d say with a heavy sigh.

The village children must have caused him much suffering. Their favourite prank was to stick something under Kuslius’s feet to trip him. How funny to see him fall to his knees! But Kuslius would anticipate their tricks and was on guard whenever he saw the children playing or the farm hands nearby.

‘Why are you so unkind to an old man?’ he would ask reproachfully, using his cane to push aside the stick or the stone that had been intended to trip him. ‘Would you be happy if I fell and killed myself?’

But he never held a grudge; perhaps his heart had grown accustomed to this kind of ridicule.

Whether it was winter or summer, he dressed always the same, and would walk among the farmsteads carrying his basket and his bag – a veritable store on his shoulders. There wasn’t a farmstead he wouldn’t visit.

Now he was standing at Gerdvilius’s window, listening with his ear pressed against the glass to hear what the women were saying.

‘Do you have boar’s liver?’ teased the shepherd. He was seated on a bench outside the window whilst making a fishing net. But Kuslius, used to hearing such jibes, didn’t take his words to heart. He waited a moment. When he didn’t get a response, he knocked on the window a second time.

‘Do you need soap, needles, matches or herring?’

‘Come in, come in. We’ll see.’ Mrs. Gerdvilius invited him into the cottage after conferring with her daughter-in-law, who was leaning over the cradle nursing her child.

As Kuslius made his way through the yard to the porch, the shepherd dashed over to the oven, pulled out the thickest stick from under it and placed it in the doorway.

‘Remove that stick! Remove that stick!’ Mrs. Gerdvilius scolded. ‘Do you want to get an old man killed? You shameless boy!’

‘He doesn’t matter – he hasn’t been baptised!’ jeered the shepherd and sat down by the window. ‘These pranks are nothing compared to what we used to do to him when I worked in Silakiemis.’

Monica, Gerdvilius’s daughter, a girl of about fifteen, leaned her bundle of flax against the wall and, jumping up quickly – Kuslius was already walking into the porch – she grabbed the stick and threw it into the fire.

‘You wicked boy! I’ll give you such a beating. Then you’ll know!’ she berated the shepherd, before returning to her place by the flax.

‘You don’t dare. Are you aching to become Kuslius’s daughter-in-law? Is that why you’re standing up for him?’ The shepherd taunted her.

‘Beast! Gloating like a dog with two tails.’

‘Whatever were you doing there in Silakiemis – there will be none of that here,’ Mrs. Gerdvilius scolded him as well. ‘Only scamps make fun of old men. Don’t laugh. You’ll be old yourself one day. It’s a sin against God to make fun of old age. God won’t let you live to see your own golden years.’

‘It’s hardly a sin against God to laugh at a Jew,’ Marcela, the hired servant, chimed in. ‘After all, they tortured our Lord and put him to death.’

And now Kuslius, sighing, walked heavily across the threshold. He seemed exhausted.

‘Blessed be the Lord,’ he said, not taking off his cap.

‘Forever and ever, amen,’ answered only Mrs. Gerdvilius.

Having come inside, Kuslius moved closer to the window. He removed the pack that contained his merchandise from his shoulders and placed it all on the table. He put the egg basket under the bench after checking the spot with his cane. He placed the bucket of herring at his side on the bench, pulling off the ragged cover to reveal the fish.

‘Come, take some herring,’ he invited the women, placing the smallest ones at the top of the bucket. ‘How many do you need? Two? Three?’

Mrs. Gerdvilius stepped away from the stove, smoothed her dress, and went over to the bench. She stuck her hand in the bucket and chose the herring that looked best to her.

‘My, oh my, you’ve taken the very best ones. Who will buy the little ones?’ Kuslius murmured.

‘Come now. They’ll take the little ones, if that’s all there is.’

Mrs. Gerdvilius chose five herring and placed them on the bench.

‘How many eggs do you want for these herring?’ she asked Kuslius.

Kuslius picked up the herring and examined them, turning them, lifting them up and down, weighing them in his hands.

‘How many eggs? Eggs are cheap these days, and you took the choice herring. Look, they’re as plump and juicy as chickens. He showed the herring to Mrs. Gerdvilius.

‘Don’t shove them in my face. I’m not blind. I can see. These herring are as thin as rails.’

‘These are good rails! I never ate better ones in my whole life. Fine. Give me fifteen. Agreed?’

‘Not a chance, you infidel! You expect me to pay that much for these rails! Take your herring. Keep them.’

She picked up the herring from the bench and threw them back in the bucket; then she turned and went back to the stove where she had left her spindle board on a small bench.

‘Well, how much will you give me? Tell me how much.’ Kuslius yelled as he pulled out the very same herring from the bucket and put them back on the bench.

Mrs. Gerdvilius wiped her hands on her apron and sat down at her spinning wheel.

‘If you’ll take eight,’ she offered to Kuslius, ‘then I’ll do it.’

‘Eight eggs for these five herring?’ Kuslius was astounded. ‘Would my worst enemy have it so good! I paid more for them myself. How about fourteen?’

‘No. Take nine if you want. Not a penny more.’

Bringing her spindle board upright, she pulled it close to her, lubricated it with a bit of spit on her hands and began spinning as if she had forgotten the herring.

‘How about a baker’s dozen?’ Kuslius asked. ‘That’s the best I can do. On my life, that’s the best,’ Kuslius swore, but he did not put the herring back into the bucket.

‘Ten is my last offer. Not a single egg more.’

‘If only the herring were quality herring,’ said her daughter-in-law, coming to her defence. She had finished nursing her baby and swaddled him. Walking to her spinning wheel, she glanced at the herring on the bench. ‘Tiny, skimpy, like roaches.’

‘On my life, I swear that they cost me more than what you’re offering.’

Kuslius put the herring back in the bucket, threw his portable store over his shoulders, attached the basket with eggs to the corner of the bag and, sighing heavily, he made his way towards the door.

‘How about twelve?’ he asked, stopping in the doorway.

‘Ten, I said. No more. Don’t waste my time haggling. I’m not a child.’

‘I can’t do it. God knows, I can’t.’

‘If you can’t do it, then don’t,’ the daughter-in-law blurted.

Out in the yard Kuslius went over to the window and asked one last time:

‘Missus, how about eleven?’

‘And still he bothers me. I said ten.’

Kuslius stood thinking for a moment: should he go home or go back? But how could he not go back – there would be profit either way: five or six cents, maybe even ten.

Kuslius went back to the cottage, returned his wares to the same spot and unpacked the herring.

‘All right, bring me your eggs and take the herring,’ he shouted, placing them on the bench.

Mrs. Gerdvilius, resting the spindle board against the wall, took a bowl for the herring down from the shelf.

‘Which herring are you giving me? Do you take me for a fool? I will not take such herring!’ Mrs. Gerdvilius was angry, sorting through the herring on the bench. These much smaller ones had been chosen by Kuslius.

‘Which herring do you want?’ Kuslius shouted. ‘This is best herring I’ve seen in my life.’

‘Take them, take them, I don’t need herring like that.’ She pushed them back into his hands. ‘Just look! He gave me the worst ones!’

‘For ten eggs you want the finest herring,’ Kuslius grumbled and switched two of the herring for better ones. ‘These are better ones. Take them and bring me my eggs.’

Mrs. Gerdvilius sat by her spinning wheel, refusing to look at the herring.