Gurcharan was excited to hear about my friendship with Vytautas and Žygintas and wanted to meet them. She offered to cook a meal for the four of us at her apartment, and we gratefully accepted. It was a frosty late autumnal evening when we arrived and it took several minutes of removing coats, hats, scarves and gloves before we entered the living-room. Gurcharan was already busy in the adjoining kitchen cooking several dishes simultaneously, the spicy aromas filling the room and whetting our appetites. Any lingering daylight was fading fast and replaced instead with the flickering, warm glow of candles crammed on various shelves and boxes. The table in the centre of the room had already been laid out with plates and cutlery and glasses that twinkled in the candlelight. Wine was poured for the guests and the food piled onto plates to hand around the table. There were numerous curries full of vegetables and meat and more than enough rice for everyone. Gurcharan was as talkative as ever and asked Vytautas and Žygintas all about themselves over supper. I listened as best I could between mouthfuls of the delicious homemade food, but mostly the conversation did not interest me and after I finished eating I picked up a book from a nearby shelf and began to read to myself. I was embarrassed when Gurcharan exclaimed that I was being very impolite; I hadn’t any idea that I was being rude. Just then, as Žygintas was finishing his meal, he stopped suddenly and shouted a word in Lithuanian, before repeating it in English for our benefit: ‘Mouse, you have a mouse!’ He pointed to the kitchen worktop where he had just seen it appear, jump and vanish before his eyes. Gurcharan smiled slightly and said simply: ‘Yes, I know.’ She had no problem living with a mouse, she explained to us, and had lived with one before, back at her home in the UK. As long as it did not get in the way, she saw no reason to worry about it. I had not ever had the chance to see a mouse at such close range, and was disappointed to have just missed it. The conversation continued as before and this time no one seemed to mind when I returned to my book and read to myself. At the end of the evening, Gurcharan went to give each of us a kiss as we left; I hesitated so she put her hand in mine instead and squeezed it tight. She was aware that I was different and told me she was proud of me because I was willing to take risks.
About a week later, I was in the kitchen of my apartment making sandwiches when I noticed a small smudge move on the tiled wall opposite. As I moved my head closer and looked again I saw that it was an insect that I had never seen before. The next day, at the centre, I asked Birut about it. ‘It’s tarakonas’ she said, then thought for several moments, searching for the English word, ‘a cockroach’. The insects are – I soon discovered – a common problem in many of Lithuania’s older buildings. My landlord, Jonas, was telephoned and was very apologetic and promised to treat the infestation. However, the whole block required treatment and, as my neighbours were all very elderly, this proved difficult to arrange quickly. In the meantime Jonas gave me a spray to use on any cockroaches that I saw. I did not mind them too much, though I found them distracting if I saw one while trying to listen to a conversation with someone or watch the television. When I told my parents of the problem in one of my regular phone reports home, they were very unhappy and I had to reassure them that my apartment was otherwise clean, that I was completely healthy and that the landlord was working promptly to deal with the problem. It was several weeks before Jonas was able to complete the treatment across the block and even then the cockroaches persisted, though only making the odd appearance from time to time.
Winter came inexorably over the months following my arrival in Lithuania, bringing heavy snowfall and bitterly cold weather throughout the country. Temperatures fell at night to as low as minus thirty degrees in Kaunas. My apartment was not a modern building; it was poorly insulated and very difficult to keep warm. I borrowed a radiator from one of the volunteer workers at the centre who had bought a new one and was happy to loan the spare to me. I put it in my living room while I watched the television or read in the evenings, and later I would carry it into the bedroom to help keep me warm and sleep comfortably. Jonas put draught excluder around the door and windows after Birut, to whom I had explained the problem with the constant cold, intervened on my behalf. Apart from the severity of the cold, I loved the wintry weather: the crunching sensation of treading through several inches of freshly laid snow on the way to work and the sight of bright, glistening white all around me. At night, I sometimes put on my coat and boots and walked the still streets while the snowflakes tumbled around my head. I would stop under a blazing street lamp and turn my face up towards the falling sky, stretch out my arms and spin round and round in circles.
In December, as Christmas approached, the women at the centre asked me what my plans were for the festive season. I realised that this would be my first Christmas away from my family and understood Christmas to be a special time to be shared with others. One of my coworkers at the centre, Audron, insisted that I come and spend the holiday with her and her family and I gratefully accepted. In Lithuania, Christmas Eve is much more important than Christmas Day and preparations for it take many hours. The house is cleaned and everyone must bathe and wear clean clothes before the evening meal. Audron and her husband collected me and drove me to their home in a large apartment block. As they climbed out of the car I noticed that her husband was extremely tall – more than two metres in height. He reminded me of the number nine.
Inside, I met Audron’s son and mother. Everyone was smiling and seemed happy to meet me. The corridor into the living room was long, dark and narrow, but as I walked slowly along it the gloom ebbed away until I was met suddenly by a rush of bright, swimming light and colour. A long table in the middle of the room was covered with a smooth linen cloth with fine hay spread underneath it. I was told that this was to remind us that Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger filled with hay. There were twelve different dishes on the table, all meatless (the number represents the twelve apostles). They included salted herring, fish, winter vegetable salad, boiled potatoes, sauerkraut, bread, cranberry pudding and poppy seed milk. Before eating, Audron’s husband took a plate of Christmas wafers and gave one to each person around the table, including myself. He then offered his wafer to Audron, who broke off a piece and offered her wafer in turn to him. This continued until each person had broken off a piece of each other’s wafer. There was no particular order in which each dish had to be eaten, but I was told that it was customary to at least sample each food. Each symbolised something important for the year ahead: the bread, for example, represented sustenance for the coming months, the potatoes humility. My favourite was the poppy seed milk – aguonu pienas in Lithuanian – served with small, round balls of dough. The milk is prepared by grinding the scalded poppy seeds and mixing them with water, sugar or honey, and nuts. During the meal, Audron explained to me some of the traditional Lithuanian beliefs surrounding Christmas. For example, it is believed that at midnight on Christmas all the water in the streams, rivers, lakes and wells changes to wine, though only for an instant. Another belief is that at midnight animals can speak, though people are discouraged from trying to listen to them. The following day, 25 December, the family took me to a park filled with snow and we walked and talked together by a huge, frozen lake. It had been a Christmas to remember.
One of the most rewarding experiences for me of living in Lithuania was learning the Lithuanian language. When I first told the women at the centre that I wanted to learn to speak Lithuanian they were puzzled: Why did I want to learn such a small and difficult language? It was certainly true that many Lithuanians spoke enough English for me not to have to learn Lithuanian. In fact, none of the other British volunteers, nor Neil the US Peace Corps volunteer, could say more than a few words. It was considered very strange for a foreigner to even want to attempt to learn Lithuanian. Nonetheless, it was the language I heard spoken around me every day and I knew that I would feel more comfortable, more at home, in Lithuania if I could speak with my friends and students and fellow workers at the centre in their own language.
Birut was more than happy to teach me. She was very proud of her language and enjoyed discussing and speaking it with me. I wrote words down as I learned them to help me visualise and remember them and studied children’s books that Birut’s daughters had read when they were younger. Birut also taught me a popular Lithuanian nursery rhyme:
Mano batai buvo du
Vienas dingo, nerandu.
Aš su vienu batuku
Niekur eiti negaliu!
Which means: ‘I had two shoes, one is missing, I cannot find it. With one little shoe, I cannot go anywhere!’
Within a few days of beginning to learn the language, with Birut’s help I was able to build my own sentences, much to her initial surprise, and within a few weeks I was able to converse comfortably with native speakers. It helped a lot that I always asked my colleagues at the centre to speak with me in Lithuanian as much as possible. Everyone I spoke to complimented me on my ability to speak good Lithuanian, including one of my elderly neighbours who was especially amazed that a young Englishman could converse with her in her own language. It was also a benefit on one occasion when I was invited out with the other volunteers for a meal in a restaurant. The waiter did not understand English, much to the volunteers’ annoyance, so I translated the order into Lithuanian for him. I did not mind occasionally having to act as an interpreter for the other volunteers, because I found the experience very interesting and another opportunity for me to practise my language skills.
I was even once mistaken for a native Lithuanian. Walking home one day from the centre, a man wanting directions approached me, persisting even when I kept replying in Lithuanian that I did not know the place he was asking directions for. Eventually I stopped and said: ‘Atsiprašau, bet tikrai nežinau. Aš nesu Lietuvis. Esu iš Anglijos.’ (‘Excuse me, but I really do not know. I am not Lithuanian. I am from England.’) His eyes widened and then he apologised and walked away.
By the spring, I had settled firmly into my life in Lithuania. I had gradually developed routines that gave me a sense of calm and security and that helped me cope with change. Early each morning, just before dawn, I woke and pulled on some loose, warm clothes and went for a long walk through the streets to a local park filled with oak trees. The trees were tall, as though reaching up into the sky, and helped make me feel safe as I walked the identical, well-trodden route around them at the start of each day. After returning to my apartment to shower and get dressed for work, I walked up the long, steep road to the centre and sat and drank coffee while the women gossiped together about personal things that did not interest me. Neil had suffered for some months since Christmas with an increasingly painful back, which numerous trips to doctors had not helped. He eventually had to return to the US for treatment. I took over his classes to fill the gap, which meant that I taught English mornings and afternoons most days of the week. There had been other changes too – Birut’s husband had fallen very ill and she had had to stop attending classes to spend time looking after him. At lunchtime I often stayed at the centre and ate sandwiches I had prepared the night before, though occasionally I ate at a local café with Žygintas whose workplace was near the centre. After work I bought frozen fish fingers, bread, cheese and other essentials before walking back home to prepare and eat supper, read and watch television before bed. I didn’t mind being on my own more often, though I missed Birut and hoped I would see her again before long.
In the summer, work at the centre reduced to a trickle as the students went away for long, coastal holidays with their families. Žygintas’s family, like many Lithuanians, had a summerhouse in the countryside and invited me to come and visit him. He gave me instructions for a bus that travelled close by the house and said that he would pick me up and drive me the rest of the way once I had reached the agreed meeting point. The bus was old and shaky and very quickly the route took me out of the towns and into long, muddy roads surrounded only by trees and fields. Žygintas had given me a name to lookout for but I could not see it anywhere and was too nervous to ask anyone, so I sat and waited and hoped. Eventually the bus reached a stop next to a series of wooden buildings, the first I had seen for half an hour, so I summoned all my courage and stood and explained in Lithuanian that I was lost. The three other passengers just stared at me so I climbed off the bus and counted to myself because I was shaking and did not know what to do. Then the driver came over to me and without saying a word pointed to a timetable. The name Žygintas had given me was not on there. I looked at my watch; I was an hour late for my meeting with him. I walked into the first building and explained the situation in Lithuanian to a woman standing behind a counter. She shook her head and did not say anything. I tried again, repeating myself in Lithuanian but she again shook her head. Then, out of desperation, I tried English. ‘Do you have a telephone?’ I asked. On the word ‘telephone’ she suddenly nodded and pointed to a black telephone in the corner. I ran over to it and dialled Žygintas’s number. ‘Where are you?’ he asked and I gave him the name that I saw on the timetable outside. ‘How did you get there?’ he asked and then, ‘wait there, I’ll come and collect you.’ Half an hour later his car came and we drove to the summerhouse. On the way, Žygintas explained that I had found myself in one of the parts of Lithuania’s countryside inhabited by Russian speakers who do not understand Lithuanian. The delay meant my visit to the house was abbreviated, but I met Žygintas’s family and was just in time for a barbecue, followed by a swim in the nearby river.
Birut, too, wanted me to come over and spend some time at her family’s summerhouse. She took me to meet her sister who was a poet. Over cups of coffee she recited some of her poems to us and afterwards we walked together along a lake of clear, blue water. The sky was cloudless and the sun shone brightly, its light sparkling on the water’s surface like solar flotsam. As the day went on, Birut asked me to come with her to a point close by where we could sit and watch the sunset. This was our first meeting in several weeks and our last, too, because my volunteer contract had expired and it was time for me to return home. Birut told me that our friendship had meant a great deal to her, particularly through what had often been difficult times for her. She felt that I had grown a lot in the time that she had known me. I knew it too and had felt for some time that it was not only my day-to-day life that had changed with the decision to come and live in Lithuania; I myself had changed and had been somehow renewed. As we sat in silence together, looking out towards the sinking summer sun, our hearts were not heavy because we knew that even as one adventure was ending, another was about to begin.
8
Falling in Love
It’s never easy to say goodbye, particularly to a country that has become a home away from home, as Lithuania had for me over the past year. It was July, the height of summer, as I walked up the avenue to the centre for the last time. Inside, Liuda and the other volunteers had gathered in the classroom to see me off. I thanked each of them in Lithuanian for their help and kindness towards me. Liuda presented me with an illustrated leather-bound diary as a farewell gift and told me that she hoped I would fill it with new ideas and future adventures. A part of me was sad to be leaving, but I knew inside that I had achieved everything – personally as well as professionally – that I could in Lithuania, and that it was time to move on.
The flight home to London felt as though it might never end. I passed some of the time by reading and rereading a letter sent a week before by my parents. Shortly after I had left for Lithuania, my father had received news of a large, newly-built house available to rent in the local area. It was actually two houses that had been knocked into one, with six bedrooms and two bathrooms. The property was a godsend to my family, who moved there not long afterwards. It was to this new address that I was now returning and the letter included a photo of the house and directions to it.
A familiar face, my friend Rehan, was waiting for me at the airport. We had stayed in touch by postcard throughout my time overseas, but even so it was good to se
e him in person after all this time. As he had done for me years before, Rehan acted as my guide through the labyrinthine Underground. While we sat together on the train, he listened patiently to my anecdotes about my time in the city of Kaunas and asked to see my photos of the different places and people I had seen and met. A little while later, he stood up quickly and told me that we were approaching my stop. There was just enough time to gather up my bags and thank him for his company. No sooner had I stepped off the platform and turned round than the train had pulled away, its outline rapidly disappearing into the darkness of a tunnel.
The street outside was completely foreign to me. I walked for a long time before realising that I was stuck: the road’s name I’d arrived at wasn’t the same as the one in my parents’ letter. Perhaps I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Nervously, I asked a passer-by for help. ‘Walk straight on and go right at the next turn,’ he said. As I passed the correct road name it suddenly occurred to me how strange it was that I had just had to ask where my own family’s street was.
The family were delighted to see me and we spent many happy hours catching up. Some of my brothers and sisters said that I had a slight accent, which was perhaps not surprising as I had been away for so long and had spoken more Lithuanian than English in that time. My mother showed me around the house and my new room, which was situated at the back, away from the road, and was the quietest of all the rooms. It was small, especially after all the space I’d had in Lithuania, though there was still enough space besides a bed for a table and chair and a small television set. I liked the newness of my room; it represented a tangible sense that my return to the UK was a step forward in my life and not back to my past. This was a fresh start.
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant Page 13
