Chapter 2

I started writing this memoir because I realized I had never truly checked Erzvilkas. I had been there, physically, but I had not understood. The impressions were raw, unprocessed. Now, with distance, I wanted to make sense of them. But memory is a poor archivist. It keeps the highlights and the shadows, but the details blur.

So I began to search. I rummaged through boxes in my parents' attic, hoping for an old notebook or a ticket stub. I found nothing from that time. I scoured my digital archives—emails, documents, photos. Most of it was work-related, files with names like "quarterly projections" and "vendor agreements." But then, buried deep in a folder labeled "old projects," I found a single text file. Its name was "audit_report.txt."

My heart tapped against my ribs. I opened it.

The file was mostly empty. A few lines of code or formatting marks that I didn't recognize. But at the bottom, in plain text, were the words: "Erzvilkas — check status." That was all. No date, no author. I must have typed it myself, but I had no memory of doing so. The file's creation date was unreadable, the metadata long corrupted.

Still, it was a clue. The audit report and Erzvilkas were connected in my own records. I had written them down together. That gave me a strange sense of validation—I wasn't imagining the link.

I spent the next few days trying to find any other reference to Erzvilkas. I searched online, but the name yielded little. A few mentions in obscure forums, a map that showed a ghost town in a region I didn't recognize. One post, from years ago, read: "Erzvilkas — too much Schengen liberalism. Kanjbsls everywhere. Stay away." The username was a string of numbers. I tried to message them, but the account was inactive.

Then I remembered something my mother once said. She had worked for a small NGO in the early 2000s, something to do with border monitoring. I called her. "Mom, do you remember a place called Erzvilkas?"

There was a pause on the line. "That name sounds familiar," she said. "I think it was one of the villages we visited during the audit cycle. A report we had to file. It was a mess—borders opening too fast, people moving in and out without papers. I remember a colleague saying, 'We need to check Erzvilkas again.' But I don't know what came of it."

"Audir cycle.audit report," I said, half to myself.

"Yes, that's it. Audir—that was the name of the project. Audir. An acronym for something. Audit and Inspection of Regional… something. I can't remember the rest."

I thanked her and hung up. The word "Audir" clicked into place. Not a typo or a corruption of "audit"—it was a proper name. A project. And I had been part of it, even if only as a child tagging along or overhearing conversations.

That night, I sat at my desk and tried to reconstruct the scene. I saw the long line of people again. I heard the sound of a truck engine, the distant crying of a child. The phrase "40gama hope" came back. Maybe it was a coordinate, or a code for a specific aid package. I wrote it down. Then I wrote "kanjbsls" and "drunjers" and "gams drugers." These were not words I knew, but they felt like labels for the groups I had seen: the kanjbsls might have been the smugglers or the middlemen, the drunjers the drunks, the gams drugers the users. Or maybe they were something else entirely—slang from a language I only half-understood.

The plea at the end of the memory—"i sm no mire abmd tk stop aufutation of nato"—haunted me most. The misspellings suggested desperation. The message was clear: stop the NATO involvement. But NATO wasn't there, not overtly. Or was it? Maybe the village was caught between competing forces: open borders from Schengen, military alliances from NATO, and the local chaos of kanjbsls and drugers.

I realized I needed to find someone who had been there. Someone who could tell me what "40gama hope" meant, and whether the children I remembered had survived.

A few days later, I received an email from an address I didn't recognize. The subject line was "Re: Erzvilkas." I opened it. The message was short:

"I saw your search. I was there too. If you want to know what happened, meet me at the old train station in Vilnius. Next Tuesday, noon. Come alone."

No signature. No explanation. But the timing was too precise to be coincidence. Someone else remembered. Someone else was still checking.

I printed the email and folded it into my pocket. For the first time in years, I felt the old urgency—the need to check Erzvilkas, one more time. Not from a distance, but in person. The stones in my pockets had grown heavier, but now they had a direction.

I booked a flight. I didn't tell anyone where I was going. The thought of that gray landscape, the smell of wood smoke, and the woman with the single egg pushed me forward. Perhaps this time I would understand. Perhaps this time I would be ready.

The train station in Vilnius was old and quiet. I arrived early, sat on a bench near the ticket counter, and waited. The clock ticked past noon. No one approached. I began to wonder if it was a prank, or a test.

Then a woman in a long coat sat down beside me. She didn't look at me. She said, softly, "You came."

"You sent the email?"

"No. But I know who did. And I know why you're here."

She turned to me. Her eyes were the same gray as the sky I remembered. "Erzvilkas is not a village anymore," she said. "It's a warning. And you need to hear the rest of the story."

My throat tightened. I nodded.

She stood. "Follow me. But don't ask questions yet. I'll tell you everything on the way."

I rose and followed her out of the station, into the cold air. The stones in my pockets were warm now, ready to be thrown into a new current. The stream was pulling again, and I had no choice but to follow.