Displacing Forces

I am in northeast Lithuania, midsummer 2006. A single dusty road cuts the landscape of shimmering lakes and forested hills between the hamlets of Tamuliškis and Stelmužė. Despite calming, serene countryside and a few interesting landmarks—among them one of the world’s oldest oak trees—few strangers come to Stelmužė. Commercial traffic between St. Petersburg and Warsaw (and beyond) flows through Utėna, home of a large brewery. The gorgeous lakes surrounding Zarasai, a town of more than 8,000, attract vacationers, but few come from any great distance.

I had no intention of coming to Stelmužė myself and may never have made the trip if not for Rūta, my chauffeur and good friend. She has known me since I first came to Lithuania in 1992—I lived with her family in 1996 while working (illegally) in Vilnius. Over the years I’ve visited the major cities, two sea resorts and several national parks; people at random parties in student dorms and cafe courtyards have whisked me off to beachside kebab dinners and a forest rave. Yet I have never visited Stelmužė, the hamlet where my paternal great-grandfather acquired a manor not long after World War I. Rūta had said I should be ashamed. Gėda! Kaip tau, rašytojau, nesmalsu? Where was my writerly curiosity?

But curiosity is just one impulse to manage when visiting these ancestral lands.

In 1992 I visited Kapliai, a tiny place where my maternal grandfather had spent his childhood. I put my hand in the creek, the Obelis, where he had learned to fish, and I stood on the rickety floor of the two-room house where he performed chores. The village was home to only one surviving relative: my great-uncle Vladas, a sad and very obviously ill alcoholic. He lived in the most abject poverty that I, a young American of nineteen, had seen at that point in my life.

The house smelled of ash, musty and sweaty clothing. A single-paned window overlooked a field of wildflowers and grass. Here stood a battered table and two salvaged chairs. Flies had settled on a slab of cream-white bacon left on a plate with half a tomato and slices of dark rye. Pushed to the table’s corner was a bluish jar smeared with greasy fingerprints—without smelling it, I could not know if it contained samagonas (Lithuanian moonshine) or water. My great uncle struggled to move from one end of the room to the next, and his dirty, callused hands were at once twisted by arthritis and swollen from booze. His cheeks and neck were also puffed, the skin patchy, corners of his mouth white and dry. We shared an awkward silence after I told him (for a third time) that I was his nephew’s grandson. “Hm,” he nodded, wobbling closer to the table.

“I would really like to see the rest of the land.”

He gestured with an open palm for me to sit. “Čia,” he said, Here. Then he trained his eyes on a humpbacked woman, her head covered with a grayish-green scarf. She was standing at the stove across the room and preparing old bread for frying, cutting it into cubes. Uncle Vladas mumbled something and she glanced at me exactly once. How could I politely ask who she was? Would it be insulting to cut the bread for her?

I could think of few conversation topics. Once Vladas had learned that his nephew was healthy, doing well in his American retirement, he sighed and sat at the beaten table to stare at me. His breath slowed and he seemed to veer into daydreams, his small eyes blinking only rarely. I presented gifts: large packages of Walgreen’s ibuprofen, multivitamins, and a thicker envelope of žaliukai (slang for US dollars, literally greenies). The entire visit, including a walk about the land—a modest vegetable patch, some fruit trees, the small barn slanted sideways—lasted less than 15 minutes.

Even so, it left a lasting impression, one I discussed with Rūta many times. I am the child of WWII displaced persons. My elders taught me several...