And then my father wrote dramas. They were brutal, bloody and spectacular. He distinguished positive and negative characters by nationality. Lithuanians were honest, Poles – traitors, Russians – sadists. And the themes? The dissemination of banned Lithuanian books, an innocent girl’s rape and tragic drowning in the Nemunas, gold prospecting in the Siberian taiga, and with it a rich accompaniment of folk songs, as though the hero’s pure feelings were being poured into irregular antique pots.{20 Banned books: books in the Lithuanian language and Latin alphabet were banned by tsarist authorities from 1865 to 1904. Nemunas: the Nemunas (Neman) River flows through the centre of Lithuania.} In a small town whose once lively and noisy train station had been forgotten by the government, in the trade school building among tables, sled runners and benches smelling of resin, my father staged these dramas himself, dragging his adolescent students on to a wobbly stage that swayed on wooden trestles in the former second-class waiting room. Like the rest of the audience, I was stunned by the scenographic effects my father achieved with his naturalistic staging. Actors would scythe real rye (industrious pupils had stacked it into wooden blocks) and a special machine blew fluff representing snow, which would stick to the wool clothing of the people sitting in the front row (the front row contained the town dignitaries: the priest, the notary, the police chief, the deep-voiced midwife). The heroine of the work, sullied to the point of pregnancy by a Polish gentleman, would drown herself in a hole in the floor (the Nemunas), while a boy crouching there would hold up a bottle of seltzer so that water could spray from the drowned girl’s body. When the curtain was drawn back open, my victorious father would blow symbolic kisses in response to the audience’s aesthetic tears. He could hear the midwife’s piteous bass: “What a backward era!” An intonation that would introduce a note of humanity to the proceedings.
My father was an excellent public speaker. During ceremonies people would crowd around the linden trees and stone altar by the station. Flags fluttered, the trumpets in the firemen’s orchestra sparkled, the drunken drummer belched, the town’s worthies turned out in their blue and grey suits and their their facial muscles flexed with concern – an artificial convulsion to express the solemnity and grandeur of the moment. And plenty of the spectators were gratefuclass="underline" women eager to cry and children desperate for a show, something so rare in the town. Smoke rose from the monument. To make sure that the fire caught, the stationmaster had stuffed old newspapers under the kindling, and singed scraps flew over the assembled heads. The ladies wore hats in the Kaunas style, with multi-coloured, shimmering feathers, so that they looked like domesticated birds waiting for their feed. And my father’s brain contained granaries of that kind of feed, so easily digested that it could bring tears to the eye, a slackening of the lower jaw, applause, envy for the last speaker and his family, and such a loud and unanimous “hurray” that the sound of its “ay” would penetrate the open windows of the train station restaurant and ping against a row of vodka shot glasses. My father’s slim figure stood erect in its pre-war frock coat, like an obelisk staked into the ground. As in his dramas, the theme of his speech was the negative traits of Russians and Poles. His speech was structured like a Wieniawski gypsy variation. Here too he would use his introductory pizzicato, as though he were unprepared, as though he was just now searching for his words – and this search would sink into the listeners’ souls, and the pizzicato would echo within their souls, and they would feel that the speaker had amassed within himself much great and meaningful content. The firemen’s painstakingly polished trumpets, the nickel on the bicycles, the sand freshly scattered between the railway tracks, they all sparkled, as did the men’s freshly shaven chins, the old women’s dampening eyes and the silk lapels on my father’s frock coat. His voice rose.
Trotsky and his accomplices were dining on the second floor of a hotel in Taganrog, throwing plates on to the street. The hungry crowd below caught the plates as though they were manna from heaven and licked them on the spot, their blue tongues quivering.
When they had Vilnius, the Poles would lure Lithuanian patriots into special interrogation rooms and pour water down their noses, and the patriots’ stomachs would blow up like orchestra drums.{21 Between the wars Vilnius was part of Poland 1920 to 1939, and Kaunas was the capital of Lithuania.}
My father would raise his arms. He shook his fists menacingly, his frock coat sleeves slicing through the air. He hurled lightning bolt glances. His vocal cords would tire. And then silence would descend. My ashen father would again stiffen, like a freshly painted obelisk on which the painter had missed two spots. His cheeks glowed with two red circles of excitement. The crowd roared, the ladies cried, the men’s lips narrowed, the children’s mouths gaped wide, some of them would even forget to wipe their runny noses. Round bluish clouds rolled towards the town of Žiežmariai. Members of the firemen’s orchestra were already moistening their parched tongues, and the eyes of the black-whiskered conductor glanced at the sheet music. The poor drummer, stunned and exhausted, belched dwindling chords. He looked at his drum with horror, as though it were his own stomach. My father’s knees slowly relaxed. The obelisk slumped, as though it had been sculpted of snow and coal, and was melting under a rain of emotion, or a fierce spring sun. My father knelt in the square by the station, by the smouldering altar, mystical fairy-tale smoke floated by his face, his arms spread wide.
“We ruled from sea to sea,” he would assert.{22 In the fifteenth century, at the height of its power, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.} “To sea” – these words would inflate and gently float away. My father would get up suddenly and walk briskly through the scattering crowd. A mad fray would crash against his back – children threw hats, trumpets rattled the beer glasses in the station restaurant, clouds rolled. My father walked like Icarus, as though he were about to ascend into the heavens and fly through the round clouds rolling towards Žiežmariai. At that time I still believed in my father – the flyer – and would not have been surprised had he actually started to fly, his long legs clearing the red-brick chimneys of the train station.
My father was a charming liar, while he lived with my mother. Later he would redirect his eloquence to a German-language teacher, and I no longer heard his heroic stories.
He studied in Tbilisi, at the Pedagogical Institute. He had no money, had survived on grapes and cheese. But he was elegant and did his best to wear well-cut clothes. Once, in the city gardens, during the evening promenade, the Georgian princess Chavchavadze ordered the driver of her open landau, drawn by four white-maned horses, to stop. My father was leaning against a blooming acacia tree, smoking a long, expensive cigarette. It was love at first sight. My father stepped into the landau without a word. The invitation was issued by Princess Chavchavadze’s coal-black eyes, Princess Chavchavadze’s rose-red lips, Princess Chavchavadze’s hands, white as the snow atop Mount Kazbek. It was a re-enactment of the story of virtuous Joseph and Lady Potiphar. My father was proud and uncooperative, and I can’t possibly understand why. He would not go to the princess’s hut, he declined the shashlik she offered, he refused to drink the red wine that had been buried so far underground in sheepskin bags, or to kiss even her smallest finger. He stepped out of the landau and went off down a narrow path between sharp-peaked cliffs. Below the road was a deep canyon. Princess Chavchavadze ordered her driver to return alone with the horses. When they disappeared around the turn, she leapt down into the roaring, foaming Terek River. Her body was never found. The swift waves of the Terek carried it to the Black or the Caspian Sea, I can’t remember which one. Love died barely having been born, while my father continued to stand around in the city gardens during the evening promenade, leaning against an acacia tree. Promenaders pointed him out, beautiful women turned away timidly, and though some glanced at him admiringly from a distance, he was as immovable as that rock against which Prometheus was once chained.