Читать книгу Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes - Rosie Pope Swale - Страница 15

Lithuania, January 2004

Girls with high cheekbones and hair dyed bright scarlet or green. Houses leaning sideways, after years of being buffeted by storms; firs bowed by ice, gales like moonstorms and people so full of life that young and old they seem to be dancing as they proceed along the hazardous icy pavements in the little towns. These are my first impressions of Lithuania.

Life beneath the razzmatazz seems hard. As in Poland, everybody here seems to have a passionate determination that they won’t get bowed down like the trees in the storms. I run along a road parallel to the highway to reach the first town Marijampole, 19km north of the Polish border. I continue on many small roads leading north, though more snowed in every day. On New Year’s Eve I’m invited in by a charming family who I meet at a little village store near Kazlu Ruda. They are Lena, who is Russian; Artur, a Lithuanian; Elzbieta and Ivan, their children; and Babai the cat. The apartment has no doors. I think they’re too busy to put them up as they both have three jobs. A teacher only earns the equivalent of US$30 a month. Lena looks like a ballet dancer. She’s tall, slim and very beautiful with long hair and seems to prance and whirl instead of just walking around. The most precious object in her apartment is the washing machine her husband bought after being away on a contracting job. There are presents and extra celebration, Lena explains, because Artur has just been paid for the first time for a year as his employer needed to keep his workers’ wages to stay in business.

Lena is imitated by her three-year-old daughter, who’s been given rollerblades and is trying out the prancing on her skates. She keeps falling over, but laughs and gets up again, going for longer every time. It’s happy chaos and much fun. The cat leaps out of the way as if wishing it had rollerskates too and is practising quick escapes in the small living room that doubles as a bedroom. Lena empties my pack, putting clothes, that still seem to have bits of the forest from several different countries in them, into the wash. The washing itself is like a fiesta. Then Lena grabs some salts she says are great for the feet and flings them into the bath, a rare boon. There’s no door here either. For modesty’s sake she hangs up a blanket and throws me some of her clothes to wear, so I can get mine off for the wash.

After that we eat and eat. I’m so glad I bought sausage, cakes and chocolates at the little village store, but it isn’t much compared to what they give me to feast on. We watch the New Year celebrations on Lithuanian TV. Artur says that despite the show of optimism on TV, getting work is tough now. It’s not easy to get a visa to travel in most of Europe, and also they’re now required to have a visa for Russia, which they used not to need. They are proud that Lithuania in 1991 was the first country to become independent among the former Soviet republics, after much bloodshed through the years, but they also feel hemmed in, in a new kind of way.

As midnight approaches, we head gaily out with all the others pouring from apartments blocks, to see in the New Year. Lots of singing, and fireworks blaze their path beneath the crescent moon.

There is a dangerous river beyond here. I’m grateful to a man from the next village who tells me the river Nemunas has no ferries in winter, but that the ice isn’t yet strong enough to walk across on. I’m saved a long stretch of retracing steps. I go instead via a little place called Geariliavi. It’s cold, but I take my mind off it by eating Lena’s pasties that she’s packed in profusion to keep me going.

I sink up to the waist in snow. It doesn’t get ploughed here. The wind’s howling and by evening the bivvi is frozen so hard rolled up in the pack that it’s all stuck together. I’m frightened that I can’t prise the opening apart enough to climb in it to get shelter. It’s painful and slow to break it open but I manage to get inside. It becomes an oddly shaped frozen igloo, smaller than ever as it has contracted and iced together. I have to take everything to bed with me, especially the shoes. It’s not enough to bring them inside the bivvi. They freeze so hard I can’t undo the laces and get my feet in.

I try bypassing Kaunas, as the main road through is full of lorries flinging snow and slush over me, but I get lost, eventually finding myself in the centre of the city after midnight, and carry on into the side-streets. Everything is dark and seems asleep. A hotel I pass looks expensive, its door locked for the night. I’m walking, not running—actually I’m creeping along very tired with head bowed, when I almost collide with a wheelchair that has fallen over.

A man is still in it. He’s crying but nobody has heard. He seems scared when he sees me. He can’t right the wheelchair as he has no legs. He just lies wrapped in rags, clutching the chair and trying to stay in it as he lies sideways on the snow. He’s trying to gather some coins that have spilt from a small cardboard collecting box. I’m not frightened of him; he’s the frightened one. He shrinks from me. He takes hold of my bright torch and shines it at me. I can only see his eyes, a small part of his face, as he has a large scarf, but his eyes are gentle. I definitely know that he’s not intending me harm; indeed he’s frightened I might attack or rob him. Then he suddenly smiles, even though his thin face and scraggy beard are still trembling with cold, or fear or emotion. He keeps looking at me as if I’m not real. It’s a massive struggle to push the wheelchair upright while he’s still in it. If he came out of it, neither of us would manage. He starts talking and I get out my dictionary. Certainly he doesn’t wish to go hospital, he tries to tell me, but he does have a place to go, or so it seems with the help of the phrasebook and signs he makes.

Down those awful empty dark streets I push him, as through the labyrinths of hell. It’s very hard to push small rusty wheels through the snow. I don’t know how he usually does it. Eventually, he points this way and that, and we come to a part of town where people are still out drinking and eating at a small cafe.

The café manageress, like someone from the movies, broad and glamorous in big shawls and necklaces, clasps my hands and thanks me for bringing him as he’s been lost. I soon understand that the man I’ve brought in is a war hero known as Vladimir who’s fallen on hard times. Vladimir is taken off to the washroom by friends to clean up after the fall. A crowd of girls looking pretty and warm, mostly dressed in silver miniskirts and practical thick leggings like dancers wear, throng around him, kissing him, saying things like, ‘Don’t be long. Your drink’s waiting for you.’ They laugh, telling me they love him. He’s their grandfather. I’m given a hot drink and sausage and soup. Some of the people stay around the cafe all night as they too have nowhere to go. The manager shows me a sofa in a side room where I can sleep. I want to sleep dreaming of all the faces, all the hollow-eyed office workers who’ve never got home, tramps, factory shift-workers and women who invite me to take their photos so I could send them a husband from England.

People with nothing want to help me in every way. I don’t need any help, but they do. So, it continues while I’m in Lithuania. I learn about the brave, tragic Lithuanian history, and understand for the first time that the run around the world is going to be more full of surprises and unforgettable sharp lessons than I’d ever thought; that most memorable of all will not be the dangers, the cold, the encounters with death that lie ahead, but the fact that it’s a living circle of testimony to community and humanity, and that there is a united world. The world of special so-called ordinary people.