I rise somewhere high... Everything feels like a dream... The pounding, exhilarating music... Disposable beer cups raised in the air, splashing drink everywhere... The angry shout of a short girl with cuss words... A scene... Somewhere on the street, a guy who grew up in Russia is being kicked with boots... White shoelaces... Skinheads preparing for a football match like school kids: pencils, knives, notebooks, sticks... A crowd of teenagers dressed in black... Pants adorned with chains... A guttural voice screaming to the beat of a song... Night.
One can live in a rhythm where there is no sleep. Where there is no tolerance, no citizens of other countries, no yes or no, nothing at all except the first person.
I remember how my dad used to listen to rock in the garage. Back in those non-commercial years, when bands were more well-known than they are now, but there wasn’t such blind idolization, in those years when we could all gather in one place, and it didn’t matter where you were born or raised, what mattered was understanding. Because all nations had experienced all kinds of hell, and in the end, it wasn’t about nations, but about people.
And now I’m sitting in a yard next to other ravens drinking beer, listening to talk about how the Jews are sinking Lithuania’s economy, how the Russians are planning to take over our country for the third time, how the Chinese are going to buy up half of Vilnius. While my other side listens to the news, where they report that an exotic TV presenter—swear, I don’t remember from which country—living in Lithuania was beaten yesterday, and the attackers are accused of racism.
Kajus spits on the faculty stairs and remains silent. I see a fire in his eyes. A different kind of fire, not filled with hatred, a different fire than in the eyes of all the other skinheads. For a moment, he almost opens his mouth to say something, but then our eyes meet, and we both realize we’re wrong. Maybe there is no other truth.
We often watch films like Romper Stomper or American History XXX, and sometimes we remember the less brutal, maybe more commercial Green Street Hooligans. I remember in one of those films, they showed how skinheads told a foreigner to bite the curb and then kicked his head until all his teeth fell out. The football and skinhead culture always seemed both terrifying and, in a way, holding something good. Perhaps the good things were like Kajus, who always sat quietly on the stairs but would intervene at the right moment to prevent his comrades from going too far. Guys like Kajus weren’t really part of the nationalist culture but were more like an obstacle, a brake. Yet for the rest of humanity, that brake helped them live and survive. It helped them end up in a hospital instead of a coffin, in a hospital and not on the street, because one guy in the gang would always quietly—pretending to go for a pee, to the store, or to make an important phone call—dial emergency services and mumble the address.
What was good about that culture was that we all knew the colors of our national flag. We knew all the important dates and events in our country’s history by heart. We knew all our country’s presidents, starting with the first one. We knew the artists, musicians, and directors that brought fame to our country, and we believed in them.
It’s hard to say when that faith became distorted, and by how much, or even where it originally came from. Perhaps it’s the desire of an oppressed nation to exist, or maybe just a warped desire to act as if we haven’t achieved anything yet. Neither Kajus nor I could probably say how that immense love for being born in this particular geographical latitude turned into kicking foreigners.
I met Kajus, like everyone else, not unexpectedly, but without understanding who they were or where they came from. Kajus was the first. He was my connection to the external world created by the skinheads. He was also the person who helped me up when I slipped on what was probably the biggest hill in town. That’s how we met. That day, he helped me limp home, and we didn’t exchange anything at all. But a small town wouldn’t be a small town if we didn’t meet again. The second time I saw Kajus, I already thought he was in the company of friends. Most of them looked pretty stern, and only then did I notice Kajus’s boots, the chains on his pants, the t-shirt covered in satanic symbols. But at Mamontovas concert, when he caught my gaze and realized why I was standing further away, he came over himself, and his friends, the colors of his t-shirt, disappeared somewhere in the depths of the concert.
Time went by, and I slowly sank deeper into that culture of chains and beer bottles, into knowing all of Lithuania’s dates by heart. The strength of that culture was in knowing that we were all brothers and sisters, and that for every individual grievance, other brothers would make it right. The strength was in the security—we were never afraid to walk in the dark or down unlit roads. And even when conflicts flared up between us and representatives of other subcultures, our most gentle one—Almantas—was always the protector. All he ever needed to say was "stop," and everything would calm down. Because power was on our side.
One day, Kajus brought Martynas to the skinhead hangout. He was a stern-faced guy, quite tall and at least a few years older than me. Outwardly quiet, he occasionally became a beast when talking about the importance of preserving our culture, the harm of globalization, when listening to talk about foreigners, or just watching a football match. At the time, I had just enrolled at Šiauliai University and hoped to devote as much time as possible to my studies. But from that day on, I found myself coming to the yard behind the faculty more and more often. It was probably the only yard in town that was never empty. Someone would always be there, drinking, smoking, meeting up, trading contraband cigarettes and a few litas, talking, fighting, sleeping after being thrown out of their homes... There was no age limit in that yard, but everyone always felt a sense of superiority. Thirteen-year-olds, barely avoiding being labeled as degenerates, would wander in after skipping school, and even Almantas would occasionally stop by.
I even grew fond of the music. That music, which they said incites aggression, the music that comes from the devil, yet somehow, it was the music that emphasized each person’s individual power. I felt powerful standing at concerts, listening to the deep tones of heavy music, washed down by the guttural voice of vocalists who didn’t know how to sing.
I didn’t even notice when so much time both stopped and flew by: when Kajus and I became good friends, when I bought my first pair of boots, started drooling over militaristic clothes, and how the connection between Martynas and me developed. But sometimes, the three of us would watch movies or have dinner, or drink, and I’d be overcome by such dizziness, such euphoria, that I didn’t even need to get intoxicated. For the first time, I found a family.
More than once, Martynas and I sobered up Kajus, more than once, Kajus and I sobered up Martynas, and more than once, I had the honor of watching their drunken antics, which stirred such a thrill inside me, it felt like my blood—my happiness—was coursing through my body, right to the tips of my fingers.
I woke up to loud banging on the door. Martynas woke up too. He got out of bed, grabbed the baseball bat propped against the nightstand, and headed for the door. I followed him.
You never know. It could’ve been the police, having identified Martynas from his antics at the football matches, it could’ve been some random guy upset with the skinheads, it could’ve been a lost child outside... And out of all of them, it had to be a beaten Kajus. He probably looked the most like a lost child. When Martynas opened the door, I clapped a hand over my mouth and froze next to the wall. There wasn’t a trace of the calm and strong Kajus—the Kajus I knew. There was only a beaten, assaulted town kid. A small, crushed person with the face of a guy two years younger than me. I swear I saw tears shining in his eyes. And even worse was that my reaction (I almost forgot to breathe) made him even more disheartened. And then he opened his mouth and, in a comical voice, mumbled:
“Listen, you drunks, quit your boozing and bring me inside instead of staring at me like I’m a dying Hitler.”
That evening, Martynas and I tried all sorts of "spells" while bandaging Kajus's hand, cleaning the blood from his wounds, and even helping him change (Kajus kept some of his clothes here, he was always welcome). I don’t even know whom those spells were more for: so that our friend wouldn’t feel the pain or so he would tell us who had “prettified” him so thoroughly that Saturday night, but neither of those goals was truly achieved. Kajus held up like a man and barely groaned the entire time we bandaged him, and once he got to the sofa and had a cup of tea, he fell asleep like a baby. The next person Martynas, for some reason, decided to take care of was me. Just like Kajus, I got a cup of tea and gentle, quiet reassurance, but my eyes couldn’t forget the gleam in our friend’s eyes for a long time. I knew this wasn’t a simple “I overdid it at the bar” situation because we all laughed about those—exceptions were only made for girls—it didn’t seem like “I got jumped a little,” either. So it had to be some third option, something that was hard to grasp without our friend’s explanation, something that wasn’t good. And so we entered a new period in our lives.
The sun had barely risen above the horizon when a car pulled up in front of our house. I was just scooping coffee out of a metal tin when the car stopped almost directly in front of the window. As I deeply pondered what Almantas was doing here, the spoon slipped from my hand, and coffee spilled onto the light kitchen tiles. I tiptoed to the door quietly, so my two most precious people wouldn’t wake up too early. Our bedroom was upstairs, but for some reason, opening the door before anyone had a chance to ring it felt like a vaguely explainable duty to me.
We drank coffee, talked about how Kajus had ended up here, shared different impressions—I’ll admit, I hadn’t seen Almantas in about a month—and we peacefully waited for the two warriors to wake up. Kajus was the first to come down. He looked rather funny in a shirt and boxers, so I couldn’t help but smile, and Almantas did the same. The long-unseen guest and I made him breakfast and coffee so Kajus could rest and regain the strength he had lost on the streets the night before. An hour or so passed, and then Almantas took Kajus with him for a "ride"; they got into the car, and Kajus, giving me his calm and confident look, disappeared from view along with the driver. I couldn’t explain why, but for a moment, it seemed to me that Kajus was being taken into oblivion. I didn’t notice when Martynas came up from behind and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and together, we watched the car disappear. But they came back. He brought Kajus home, waved to us from the window, and drove off on his own way. Our friend, or perhaps it would be better to say our brother, knocked on the door.
The sky... The clouds... The birds... How limited, how childlike the acceptance of the universe… Through dawn, through darkness, streetlights, random passersby who had nothing to do with anything… Through, finally, a cup of coffee on the balcony. We’re all addicts. We all admire something, and sometimes we get so caught up in that admiration that nothing else remains around us, not even ourselves, because we don’t behave that way. Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here and now. What I’m doing in the place where it all started, where I first heard a voice inside me say something so quietly that I couldn’t hear it, but I could feel it. I could feel my firmly and humanly clenched fists, my body, in which, it seemed, God himself was running through the contours, leaving goosebumps instead of footprints. From that moment on, something in me or in the entire world flipped, twisted, bent into a angle that could no longer reflect the sunlight.
It had been about a week since Kajus had been staying with us, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get anything out of him about what had left wounds and bruises on his body that Saturday night. And the scariest thing was thinking that the issue might not even be his body at all...
Kajus wandered around anxiously. In that state, he still managed to calm me down, and, looking me in the eyes, he’d say that everything would be alright. Almantas visited us practically once a week by then, and sometimes Kajus would go out to meet him, as I noticed. No one was allowed into their conversations—this had to be something that concerned only Kajus and Almantas, or, in the end, only Kajus.
At night, when I lay in bed, I started seeing every unevenness on the ceiling; sometimes it seemed like I could even see through the ceiling. I’d toss and turn, feeling either too hot or too cold, and my thoughts kept drifting toward the room where Kajus slept. I felt like my anxiety was slowly growing along with his, or maybe I sensed that something was waiting. During those weeks, I had only stopped by the skinhead hangout maybe once. By the end of the workweek, I was practically sleeping on my books and notebooks in the lecture halls.
I’d nap during the day, which made it even harder to fall asleep at night. Another week passed that way. We were all, even I, so focused on trying to find out what was haunting Kajus that sleeping on books or on the sofa in the middle of the weekend went unnoticed. And I didn’t notice it myself until it was too late.
Adomas was one of the more frequent visitors to the hangout, so his disappearance from behind the faculty seemed like a mysterious puzzle to me, one that had to be solved in order to survive. It would be a bit ironic to say that Adomas was hot-tempered, because most of us were hot-tempered. So, he was just a part of everything going on around us. As were we.
Once, after lectures, I was passing by the skinhead hangout purely by chance, simply trying to shorten my route. I felt like I could barely drag my feet and dreamed of bed—if not of sleep, then at least of lying down—sleep had already become something hardly attainable, something I dreamed about each night, but it was getting harder and harder to reach it, it was drifting further away, and my tired eyes no longer had the strength to look at either the ceiling or the divinely sleeping Martynas, or Kajus, either—and I didn’t expect to meet anyone in the yard at all. But while people plan, gods laugh.
The moment I looked toward the yard, I felt Almantas rage, for the first time seeing his eyes burn with such sharp determination and anger. He looked so much like a wild, uncontrollable beast that I froze at the entrance to the yard. Almantas was holding Adomas’s jacket, along with all of Adomas, painfully pressed against the wall. I flinched—everything shattered. I felt that something had broken into more than one piece, and the shards began to scratch one another. The hangout began to scratch itself apart.
It seemed that this scene had three participants: at the same time, I saw Kajus sitting calmly on the wall further away, with a cigarette in his mouth. He looked like a deity of masculine elegance, a leader, a creator. Then the three of them, such different personalities, formed a circle of threats and wounds, anxiety and insomnia, and my legs began to tremble, followed by the rest of my body. I felt myself sinking, my back pressed against the cold faculty wall, the rough material of it pressing through my shirt, chaos overtaking my eyes, and quietly moaning, I rested my head against the wall. My back was enveloped by something that felt like boiling, hot air, unevenly distributed on my skin and gradually cooling, making me feel colder and colder. I shivered. I don't know how much time passed. My body began to tremble again, my eyes alternately opening wide and then squinting, leaving a narrow slit to look into nowhere.
Soon, I heard my name, spoken in Almanto's voice, which was not immediately recognizable, and also heard him shouting "Kajus!" I remember being lifted and pulled tightly into his embrace—then my body calmed down. Everything became so unimportant that time and space were lost, and I didn't immediately realize that I was in the car, or who was sitting next to me at that moment... By the time we got home, my body had partially sobered up. I was still trembling, and—how embarrassed I was—my eyes were still shining. The chaos had transformed into another form of anxiety, which melancholically watched the setting sun outside the window, while one of them was giving me some medicine, and wrapped in a blanket, my body gradually calmed along with my soul. What had happened became completely irrelevant, and I finally returned to the present, very rationally understanding that this strange attack had overwhelmed me due to, simply, numerous sleepless nights and tension. And I was terribly unwilling to know that Martynas would come back and, seeing Kajus and Almanto next to my helpless self, would start questioning and reproaching me for not resting, so the three of us sat at the same table and, out of true love for our brothers and sisters, agreed that this would stay between us. As, by the way, would Adomas’s hot-tempered gaze. Everything stayed between us.
Martynas returned late. I had already recovered somewhat, and no one needed to hold me in their arms to stop me from trembling. Almanto kissed my forehead and left. I ate the dinner Kajus had prepared for the three of us, which, by the way, was really well made, especially for a kid who had rarely cooked anything special in his life, and we all gathered again in one place, now each hiding something from the others.
Among the various accessories we found with the Lithuanian flag, one of the most interesting items was the shoe laces. We saw many socks, but somehow that seemed absurd. Commercialization made from the outside. Wearing the flag under the soles. Sweating into it. Ridiculous.
We called those who wore boots with the UK flag "antifa," which literally translated means anti-fascist. There were many such "antifa" in our city. They usually drank in the yard, not far from the main city streets or near another faculty. We, at least without the largest group of skinheads, would not go through their yard (though the faculty where they drank sometimes turned into a meeting place for skinheads), and punks did not step into the "skin yard."
But there were times when two different "sides" would clash. And those who clashed were not only skinheads and punks. There were more people against punks, as well as against skinheads. There were wandering gangs of track-suited city boys, so everyone belonging to either side tried to choose places where no one else wandered. Therefore, we had the city divided, at least certain parts of it. We could pass through places "belonging" to others, but we could not carry our viewpoint through them. If you passed through the punks' yard, you had to be silent, because you were not in your own element, as there were more of them than you alone. And the most interesting thing was that walking through the punks' yard, you had to remain silent, even though they, the respected anti-fascists, should not be bothering you, as they saw the meaning in peace. Punks were just some kind of backward hippie type, with greater intolerance towards humanity. And in general, we, in the skinhead community, when considering the significance of subcultures, decided that we had never seen a real punk. According to most images, it should be an old, tattered man vomiting in a dumpster. And we had never seen such a person. Instead, we had seen a real skinhead—Almantas. A person who did nothing unless necessary. And we were grateful to him that our activity was not some chaotic system. We had rules.
One time Kajus brought a young girl to the skinhead yard. She looked about four years younger than Kajus himself, had a divine, divine smile, and an earring on the side below her lip. Her hair was naturally brown, straight, and long, longer than waist length.
Martynas and I exchanged glances and I thought that this soul was still too young to be corrupted. But Kajus had a different opinion, and I did not understand why, because Kajus and I knew perfectly well that we were a brake on the subculture, that deep inside we screamed and opposed the idea that other countries were not beautiful. He was somewhat tipsy, the girl was sober. She introduced herself. We learned that her name was Elė. Fortunately, or perhaps the greatest misfortune, there were few people in our skinhead yard at that time. It was me, Martynas, a few of Adomas’s friends... And although no one would have opposed Kajus—his decision was to introduce this charming girl to his friends, and consequently, inevitably—to his enemies.
The girl, named Elė, was obsessed with flags. But not maniacally, vainly. She found them beautiful, and we all saw that. And on the other hand, we did not think that just because of her flag obsession she should be among us. Nor because at her age, under such influence, she had not yet degraded, drank and smoked moderately, and her eyes sparkled when she talked about Lithuania.
But when she spoke, something would seal our mouths, and we could not contradict her. Somehow, in some way, she brought with her an intellect twice as great as one would expect at her age. And I could not understand what someone with such deep thinking was doing in our company. Recently, I tried to figure out the reason for her presence here too. It was probably the people. Their jokes, their faces, their interactions... The fact that they had a narrow-minded view on the one thing—Lithuania—did not mean that they had nothing else.
Time passed, and Elė gradually became one of us. We saw how she began to dedicate a significant portion of her time to Kajus, how she became increasingly interested in Lithuanian history, and how what was in it became more and more real to her. In a sense, she was an example for us, but deep down we knew that either she, or we, or all of us, never truly belonged here. Occasionally, deep down, hearing a too sharp word made us question its correctness; somewhere deep inside, our souls yearned for equality, and that cry was silenced by patriotic metal. The cry of our souls was subdued by what our minds lived for: interaction, alcohol, loud, aggressive music, driven from the very essence of man. But at that time, it was only friends, only music... Just a few people who we thought were together, with a "common circle of friends." There was nothing wrong with that, and we convinced ourselves of it.
If there is something that loves you, there is something that will hate you. Elė’s brown hair, Elė’s earring, her age—whatever it was, it had to turn someone against her, and it was amusing. Yet, it was real. A few months after Elė joined our ranks and casually shared a peace cigarette with us, she probably felt that she was balancing on the edge of some conflict with some of us. On the other hand, I don’t know if it was truly ours. I remember once when Elė came back from a meeting with some girls, without the flag on her shoulder, and although she spoke about it with no one except Kajus—and even then reluctantly—stories spread from other people about how she ended up on the roof with four fierce creatures, hardly to be called girls, and had to choose between tearing off the flag or facing what they might do with a knife. She tore off the flag and left. She came home, took her jacket, and spent about an hour sewing, fixing it back in place, but fixing it in such a way that you couldn’t remove it without taking off the entire sleeve. That incident was almost a conflict of factions. The young hyenas began to issue more threats towards the girl, which, according to them, was partly because she tore off the flag. The skinheads split into two groups. However, Elė knew Almantas, Elė had made a deal with Almantas, and essentially, Elė practically loved Almantas, and he, without her asking, was her refuge. She didn’t need to say anything, and it took about half a year before all the threats subsided, but it was done the way Almantas “advised” the girls to handle it. However, everything changed. It changes with each event. Both Kajus and Elė, even when protected by Almantas and some of us, could not be fully defended. Somewhere deep, at the very foundations, something broke, shifted, changed, and none of us talked about it. Kajus and I increasingly caught each other’s eyes when foreigners spoke on unpleasant topics, sometimes he even went off to smoke elsewhere... And I began to feel that I was falling apart. I felt that only those people, only their traits kept me here. I felt that I was starting to disagree with what they were saying. And I began to feel a huge fear that I wouldn’t be able to protect and maintain this feeling inside me.
Days passed, we smoked more, drank more, and out of the three of us who probably shouldn’t even be here, only Elė was the one who, despite feeling uncertain about standing with the skinheads, still stood by the idea of nationalism, still cast her voting ticket for what gradually made me a paranoid person. It seemed that some were starting to balance on the edge, it seemed that it would not be calm for long where we were. That it could not last forever. And it happened.
"Calm down, you need to calm down, you need to calm down, or you won’t be able to calm her down. Should I come over?" I asked Kajus on the phone, brushing my hair from my forehead to the back of my head, "Kajus, should I come over?"—there was silence again on the line, "Kajus..."
I took a deep breath and exhaled, walking from one kitchen wall to the other and back.
"Kajus..."
"I... Can you...?"
***
Kajus wasn’t a person of weak nerves; on the contrary, he was a truly strong individual. And there had probably never been a time when he worried needlessly. So, something was definitely wrong. Elė sat quietly in an old armchair of Kajus’s, gazing almost vacantly out the window, occasionally closing her eyes and taking deeper breaths. Her hair was somewhat disheveled, her makeup slightly smudged, and occasionally a tear would trail down her cheek.
Her cheek was practically covered in blood. After cleaning it, I finally realized where the wound was, marking her face and likely remaining for the rest of her life. Elė didn’t speak. Kajus only mentioned that everything was fine.
“Elė. Elė, does anything hurt?” I asked, crouching beside her.
“Elė...” I gently brushed a strand of hair away from her face. Then I took her hands in mine, stood up, and slowly pulled her towards me. She stood up, paused briefly, then obediently followed me. I led her to the shower and asked her to undress, persuading her that she needed to get under the shower. I began undressing her myself; Elė made no objection. She quietly stepped into the bath as I removed her jeans, and I turned on the lukewarm water to flow over her body. Her body was almost blue...
Her left arm was pricked with several small needle-like punctures on the inner side of the elbow, while her right arm was burnt with extinguished cigarette butts. Her abdomen was almost covered in bruises; it seemed like, even if she didn’t show it, every part of her body ached. After washing away the small bloodstains from her bruised body, I wrapped her in a towel, embraced her, and pulled her close, holding her tightly and gently stroking her perfect hair, now saturated with the scent of shampoo and dripping with water. I took a deep breath, dressed her, and led her back to her previous spot. With a slightly trembling hand, I took out my phone and began frantically dialing Almanto’s number, making at least a couple of mistakes with each attempt. But then, someone knocked on the door. And the guest was named Almantas. As soon as he saw me, he gave me a strong hug, nodded to Kajus, and, almost as if in a formal meeting between a victim and an advocate, asked to be left alone with Elė.
***
As the sun set somewhere, dawn rose somewhere else. Our sun had successfully set—it slowly disappeared, painting the sky with the red of its cheeks, fading away with the quiet evening notes, like a small child humming calm melodies. The problem with our sun was that it never rose again. It began its journey from night to morning, and before it even reached the horizon, it got stuck somewhere on the road, soon to be bound by chains and darkness.
That night, stones shattered their window panes while they, having already woken after the first impact, hid behind the bed. In the morning, they gathered all the valuable items left behind and went out for a walk, while it was still light and safe. Since neither of them was a wealthy tycoon, and neither Martynas nor I had such undeniable authority that would make us immune to danger if we took them in, the young ones were taken in by Almantas, who quietly investigated who was responsible for the recent incidents. This was already the third “incident” in the past six months, and it wasn’t a good sign.
None of us—myself, Kajus, Martynas, Elė, and even Almantas himself—felt safe anymore. The threat loomed in the air, always close by. I didn’t notice when it became the norm for me to look over my shoulder almost paranoically as I walked home from the university after the first snowfall began and it started to get dark early. I began choosing only the brightest streets, and later, I found myself borrowing Martynas’s car more often on the days I had late classes. Martynas saw that I was slowly becoming a wreck, and although he wasn’t afraid for himself, he gradually became my companion in fear. He understood me; he knew it wasn’t something without reason, that I was afraid and that I should be afraid. But we never talked about it. Kajus and Elė rarely visited the skinhead yard; they would only stop by to warn me, Martynas, and Almantas that the skinhead yard was empty, and we would anxiously smoke our peace cigarettes, washing down our dreadful premonitions with cans of beer. In general, Elė almost never stepped outside without Kajus—he would accompany her to school and, like a father, bring her back, sometimes replaced by Almantas. Kajus seemed to be busy devising plans to solve some problems at home during that time. We met rarely, so sometimes I would just call him, but our conversations ended almost as quickly as they started. “How are you holding up?” he would ask, and I would say that everything was fine. He would almost always have to go somewhere or do something, and I felt like I was losing Kajus. In the country I loved, the country I adored, the country that had no greater beauty, I felt like I was losing everything this country could offer me. And I kept offering, I kept offering to it. Every evening, gazing anxiously out the window, I would beg for the freedom to walk the streets I cherished. I would ask for the chance to embrace Kajus, from whom I was as dependent as I was on air. I would plead for Elė to smile again, for God to grant her an amnesty so that she could be free from fear. But everything wasn’t as my evening prayers had written in the black sky. We were awaited by the sky—a black sky, a sooty sky—from which we would have to scrub all the soot that we had initially chosen to take on ourselves.
***
I hadn’t even noticed. It felt like just moments ago I had tumbled down the snowy hill and met Kajus. It felt like just moments ago we had shared our first cup of tea, had started to bond closely, had felt like siblings. And years had passed since then. Since we could no longer be erased from each other’s lives, since I met Martynas and fell in love with his friendliness and strong masculine personality. And now, another January snow was falling, snow that was not the January snow marked by red in our minds, the attack against Elė and Kajus, the psychological terror for all of us. And we survived it. Like the sick, we endured most of the year, with only Martynas and Almantas visiting the skinhead yard, and that probably only to avoid being blamed. Kajus and Elė had eventually found a modest apartment on the other side of town and had moved there discreetly. Both of them gradually began to smile again and would occasionally grace our guest sofa once a month. They were different people now. They smiled again, but I knew they had aged, I knew they had aged a lot. I knew we were all old beyond our years and that we had no chance of rejuvenation. We could only endure and pass through it, or simply keep it to ourselves, never speaking of it. And since we never spoke of it anyway, I don’t know what choice each of us made. Perhaps we never talked about it again because we feared that it would only take one word for the ghosts of the past to return. Perhaps it was simply a period of our lives we wanted to erase. But there was no way to erase what remained unresolved.
I tossed and turned in bed almost all day. February 16th. A day when people like me should avoid stepping out of the house, just to be safe. A day when nothing much could be accomplished. It was a cloudy day, adorned with a dreary drizzle falling onto the hideously melting snow. In the evening, I got up from the white sheets, washed up, and prepared a meal—fitting for such a holiday—lavish and divinely delicious. Martynas was at work. It happens. I kept glancing out the window, hoping for something. Perhaps my home felt so unpleasantly empty, perhaps I wanted to say “hello” to someone, and finally, as darkness fell and the night enveloped our souls, I received visitors. Almantas knocked rhythmically at the door, and I opened it. He stood firmly on his feet but reeked almost especially strongly. Almantas was not someone who usually lost control with alcohol or cigarettes, but… and then I realized. I realized something had happened. My hands began to shake, and Almantas looked at me with a sympathetic gaze as my composure crumbled.
“Kajus…” I looked at Almantas questioningly.
“Kajus… where is Kajus?! Where is Kajus?!” I began to repeat almost hysterically, and Almantas just stared at me and shook his head, tears welling up in his wise, light-colored eyes, moving closer. Eventually, he hugged me tightly, and his body began to tremble slightly, while a cool tear fell onto my hair.
“Oh God,” I whispered, sobbing, “Oh God…”
I began to slowly sink to the ground, and he fell with me, not letting go. The February 16th drizzle had brought its toll. February 16th was a day I would never forget. The hands of Martynas, pressing against my forehead and neck, trying to calm me, the amount of alcohol they both consumed that evening, and I will never forget how they left and I, sobbing, rushed to my suitcase, packed what was essential—including many various medicines—and in Martynas’s car, I headed towards Elė’s house. I found her alone, still unaware of what had happened that evening. I told her to pack her things, and although she sensed that something was wrong, like a veteran guiding a dog, I led her, medicated, to the train station.
“Elė,” I told her, “You have to choose. It’s your life or your staying here.”
It was difficult for her; oh, she was still a child, a small child just pulled from a sandbox and already having lost so much. A child just dragged from a school bench by a hurricane. A person with so much ahead, and it would be a very long time before she would see it all again.
At Almantas’s house, I left a note with my new number, and we boarded the train. As we moved away from the place where all our childhood memories were left behind, Martynas and Almantas, with half of their world, marched side by side to defend their memories, their and our memories, in very unjust ways. As we sped through this rusted country on train tracks, counting minutes until dawn, they counted seconds until the darkest night possible. We scrubbed the soot from our personal skies, embracing each other, as Elė, exhausted and having cried herself out, fell asleep on my shoulder. The night ticked quietly into our heads, and after the night came the morning. It came. It was with us.
***
I look into the mirror and do not see myself.
"On the evening of February 16th, a young man dressed in black was brutally stabbed with a knife. The assailant has not yet been found," read the newspaper. And I thought that they would never find him. And I knew why.
They were all so entangled in shared filth that arresting one would mean arresting them all, with each being pinned with an outrageous number of violations. Even if not, betraying such a person would mean not living. And we had to choose.
For some time now, Elė and I have been living in Denmark. We both have interesting jobs; when necessary, we smile. Deep inside us, there is a wound about which we, like as per Lithuanian customs, do not speak, as if we are still afraid. Maybe that's the way it is?
And somehow it takes losing a person for the sky to hammer into your head, "man, you are not where you need to be." Somehow, those years of considerations, glances, understandings about the limitations of subcultures, they remained meaningless until there was no one left to discuss them with.
Almantas never called. Almantas is the only person who I believe would want to leave his "post," but neither I nor he were sure if it was even possible. And I didn’t know if he was still alive after that night.
It takes time and space to understand some things. Every February 16th we commemorated mourning, and every year it paradoxically seemed more and more that "for the Homeland" we lost a fellow countryman (although there were rumors that Kajus's life faded away due to some discovered blood impurities), a person who was our brother and to whom we were sisters. And every year more grievances weighed on our shoulders, competing with the joy we began to experience living without fear. And eventually, new doors opened for us.
It turns out that loving your culture doesn’t mean hating other cultures. It turns out that admiring the country where you were born doesn’t mean denying that all other countries are beautiful. It turns out that people are just people. It turns out that a Lithuanian spitting on every corner of a building doesn’t look any better here just because he is Lithuanian.
When and what happened, when did love turn into arrogance, pride, intolerance, and a tone of pain inflicted on someone? When did all this happen, was it a long time ago? Were we truly so blind? And the saddest thing is that awakening doesn’t mean opening others eyes. I am only responsible for myself. I cannot force people influenced by ideologies to see these doors. They will continue to "love" their country, they will continue to "take interest" (more like be forced to take interest) in what happens there, from basketball championships to weather forecasts. They will continue to "support" foreigners and strive to ensure they leave with a "good" impression of our country.
I miss Kajus. I didn’t even say goodbye to him. Everywhere, from the tips of my hair to the soles of my shoes, there is an almost intangible pain. A pain that I no longer feel because I have reached the maximum.
Oh God, how unique we all are! How important it is to feel like a citizen of your country, how important it is to barricade yourself from the world with a huge barbed wire fence, how important it is to shut yourself off and never stick a foot out of just one of those many wonderful places. How important it is to be proud of your national language, which for each country is nothing but a tool of governance. And what would happen if everyone spoke the same language? Everyone...
“I raise my hands and pray again and again Help me and tell me why So much fear, pain, and anger within us They destroy tomorrow, make it ugly”
“My hands risen high, I pray again and again
Help me and uncover reasons why
There’s so much fear, pain and anger within us
They destroy tomorrow, they make it hideous”
- “Soul Brothers”
2012
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