She straightened. Lifting one hand to shield her eyes against the sharp sun, she peered up at his window. He drew back into the shadows. Better to keep a distance, he thought. Better not to encourage. And settling back at his table, he resumed his studies.
One particularly intense day in Vilnius Hospital, he had wanted relief from the clinical whiteness, the grey linoleum, the long hallways echoing with footsteps running in crisis. Wishing a few moments respite from sickness and death, he went to the art gallery. He wanted to see the red lips of courtesans, the plump limbs of cherubs, the coy turn of an angel’s head. He’d wanted life and beauty, to sense the impetus behind the brush. And there, he had caught sight of her.
Lidia.
She came in with a crowd of fellow students, carried upon conviviality. Shining with sociability, she had caught sight of him. She had turned towards a young man in a blazer and striped wool scarf. Who is that? Vytas would learn that she had asked the fellow student. And listening head bent, she kept casting Vytas shy glances.
His eyes followed her graceful movement among friends. Turning to smile at him, her dark chignon shifting atop her head, she was relaxed and easy. How I wish I could be like that, he thought. How I wish I could meet someone like that. And at that moment she fixed him with a look, a beam of light upon which he could walk.
Almost without knowing it, he began travelling towards her. Reaching her in resumed conversation with friends, he paused at her back. She quivered and turned towards him. I am Lidia, she said, her voice shimmering like summer heat. And he knew he had reached a place he would never leave.
She was studying at the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts. Watched over by loving parents, encircled by lively interest, she had become the woman who now took his hand. Warmth filled his body. He closed his eyes in rapture. They left together, her with a sparkling wave to her friends, him in the happy daze of being captured.
She would go to the river to paint, striding to the water’s edge. Following her through the tall grasses, he would carry her easel and paints. Hands on hips, she would take in the air. Then she would work. And settling himself down on the ground, watching her effortless movement between life and art, he felt the blissful trust of being forgotten.
Every Sunday morning Vytas and his parents went to church. Waiting at the streetcar stop, his mother in a flared, threequarter length cream-coloured coat, his father in the brown tweed jacket and tan sweater vest, they would watch the Dundas car approach. It would whoosh to a heavy halt. The doors would clatter open. And grasping the slippery metal pole and pulling themselves up, they would settle on the red leather seats.
The streetcar would cross Bloor, curving left at the top of Roncesvalles. Rising at the bridge at Sorauren, it would lift them over factories, lands and railway lines lying beneath. They would pass Lansdowne, Dufferin, Dovercourt, and Ossington, looking down streets at homes that held lives they could not imagine. They would reach Trinity Bellwoods Park, the long stretch of green a relief after the concrete. And arriving at Gore Vale Avenue and the church, they would alight amongst their people.
The church was crowded, often standing room only. Coming for comfort, community and warmth, exiles prayed that one day their country would be free. Their hope was fervent. Their belief was cast iron. And organizing, building and remembering, they kept their homeland alive in their hearts.
Vytas knelt, praying for Lidia. As Father Geras passed from confession booth to altar, his robes swishing, Vytas prayed for Lidia to be alive. As the priest raised his arms in benediction, wide white sleeves sliding back, Vytas prayed that she was with people she loved. When he genuflected to the sharp ringing of altar bells, Vytas prayed that she be kept safe. He prayed to see her again. If God was capable of miracles, Vytas was capable of faith.
After mass, the congregation spilled onto the church steps for news and gossip. They rejoiced over a recent letter from Lithuania, crowing at censors too stupid to catch the clever allusions written into the lines. Amid triumph and tears, they showed around a miraculously-arrived brother. With collective gravity, they sighed that times were bad. Then uplifted by sunshine, prayers and hope, they set off for Lithuania House and lunch.
They ambled along Dundas in amiable companionship. Talking of jobs, homes and politics, they walked the three stoplights to Ossington. They would never spend money on streetcar tickets for such a short distance. They had crossed Europe on foot and still had two good legs. And saying their friendly farewells at the door, they would go upstairs to the second floor for a Sunday meal or return home for lunches of their own.
One Sunday, Vytas saw an old man making his way through the crowd on the church steps. Approaching one person after another, placing his hand on an arm, his manner was humble and deferential. He was looking for someone. A woman turned and pointed out Vytas. And feeling the man’s gaze land upon him, Vytas’ thoughts raced towards the relief of knowledge while scrabbling away from its terror.
The man stopped before him. He was not old, just encrusted with suffering, a pebbly surface that could not be scrubbed off. His eyes held the vastness of the ocean he had just crossed. And drawing Vytas aside, taking him into the park and the private shade of trees, he delivered his news.
He had come upon them in winter. Shipped eastwards by truck then northwards by rail, they had been set down on foot in the snow. Men rode alongside, high on horseback, their greatcoats spread over the horses’ rumps. They drove the marchers on. They left the fallen face-down in the snow. It was a death march into Siberian winter.
Lidia and her parents trudged forward, their faces wrapped in rags that had once been their clothing, the tatters flapping wildly in the wind. Their fingers and lips were black from frostbite. Each night they huddled together to sleep, certain they would die. Each morning they woke, their hair stuck to ice. They starved but they did not yet die.
He had tried to convince them to escape with him, their chances no worse than the certainty of a death march. The parents urged their daughter to go. She had shaken her head with a sad smile. No, she would not forsake her parents. Drawing even closer, they became one body edging towards death.
The night of his departure, she gave him a message.
If you find Vytas, tell him that I love him. Tell him that he is always with me. Tell him not to mourn me for too long. Tell him not to forget me. Tell him to love again.
For four years, the old man carried the carefully-guarded words, repeated faithfully night after night before sleep. Discharging his holy mission, he set them down before Vytas like stones. Vytas stooped to pick them up. They pulsed with life in in his palms. And as the last of her love passed into him, a great roar pushed the world aside.
He looked up into the oak tree, his heart aching so that he thought he would die. Squinting against the sharp light jabbing through the leaves, he followed the branches skyward. He wanted to climb into those strong limbs. He wanted to live in their embrace. And closing his eyes, he longed to disappear into forest sunshine forever.
Vytas fell into a pit so dark and deep that Juze began to fear he might not recover. Not in their days of running, not even at the train station when they had pulled him away from the window had he been so despondent. There had been only survival. There had been hope. Now he slept in snatches, ate little and worked not all.
“Work, Vyteli, you must work,” she urged. “If not for yourself, then for her. Especially for her. So that it will not have been in vain.”