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Art by AngieMassei 💜
Lithuania was thoroughly familiar with Polish culture. He had some gaps in the past two centuries, but his love for literature helped him quickly catch up by reading Kraszewski, Sienkiewicz, and even all of The Witcher series. He traveled through the cities rebuilt after the wars, even lived in some of them, and still often visited them — if not to see his friend, then to attend music festivals. He had preferences in Polish music: he loved indie rock and believed Polish shoegaze is underrated. Lithuania was thoroughly familiar with Polish culture, which couldn't be said the other way around.
“You really confused Švenčionys and Švenčionėliai? Even though they both were part of your territory not that long ago?”
“I’m sorry,” Poland hid behind the pillow, apologizing. “Their names sound absolutely the same... in Polish. They’re literally Święciany and Nowe Święciany,” he said, dodging the other pillow thrown at his face.
“And how do you say in Polish: ‘I am an empire, I need more lands, and I don’t even care enough to remember their names’?”
“You don't need me to tell you,” Poland muttered, shamefully burying face in the bed.
The most humiliating part was that Lithuania really didn’t. His conversational Polish has gotten a little rusty from lack of practice over the years, but he still understood everything and could read almost without problems. Unlike Poland, who still hadn’t learned Lithuanian.
“All right,” Lithuania declared decisively, thrilled by the sudden idea had popped in his mind, “You’re having an exam in Lithuanian geography. Right now. You’re going to draw a map of the cities on me.”
Poland raised his head and looked at him from beneath his messy strands of hair.
“We already did something like this once, didn’t we? I got totally back at you by making you learn Polish tongue twisters while you were sucking me off,” he recalled, giggling as if he still thought it was the peak comedy.
“Yes, in the sixteenth century? Knowledge needs to be kept up to date. Take a black pen and write on my back,” he said, taking off his shirt and sprawling on the bed near his friend.
Poland immediately fell quiet. Several questions were racing in his mind, but he couldn’t put them together properly, so he just said:
“It won’t wash off.”
“It won’t wash off on the first time, it will on the second. No one except you will see it anyway.”
Lithuania's entire back, from shoulders to lumbar region, was covered with scars. The most noticeable ones were large, raised, and pink. They intersected with each other and spread like a spiderweb: Russia had beaten him mercilessly and chaotically. However, the majority of them were white, and some, as Poland had once noticed, faded and even vanished over time, giving hope that one day Lithuania would be able to undress at the beach.
It was a provocation. Poland had stroked his back thousands of times, kissed each mark hundreds of times, and dozens of times talked nonsense about how scars adorn a warrior, but Lithuania still expected his friend to refuse and never touch him again. Or at least to let him know that he found this idea strange and awkward.
However, Poland’s temporary confusion passed, and he took the pen from the table, returned to Lithuania and busily brushed the hair from his shoulders.
“Let’s start with Wilno.”
“Vilnius,” Lithuania sighed.
Poland took a few seconds to find the smoothest spot on the right side of his back before starting to carefully write the name of the capital. Lithuania felt his enthusiastic breath and closely followed every movement of the pen.
"Did you just write Vilnius with 'W'?"
"Isn't that right? I mean, I'm writing in English."
Lithuania didn't respond, wondering how many more linguistic and geopolitical discoveries would bring him the next hour.
Then came Kaunas, Klaipeda, and several other major cities, which Poland handled easily. Lithuania stopped paying attention to the pen and closed his eyes, enjoying the soft touch, fingers slipping across his back. Sometimes, the touches paused: in those areas the skin had thickened and lost sensitivity. Lithuania always loved when his back was touched, there was something intimate and subtly sexual about it, yet tender and trusting. And even years of life with Russia couldn't take it away from him, which he considered his own small victory.
The sudden voice broke the silence and snapped him out of trance:
"Professor, please don’t lower my grade for the shape of the map; it's coming out totally elongated. I know Jewie is closer to Trakai than Wilno."
"What?"
"Vilnius."
"What’s Jewie?"
"What do you mean? You had an Orthodox monastery there..."
"Vievis."
Poland cursed.
"Should I cross it out and rewrite?"
"No, just learn Lithuanian place names. And I’m going to fine you one złoty for every time you mispronounce Vilnius. In a month it will be enough for our joint vacation."
Working on the southern cities Poland moved to his lower back, ticking Lithuania and making him twitch. The process slowed down. Now, every time he wrote a city, they discussed when they had been there the last time and what they had done. They remembered battles, celebrations, how they spent their youth hunting with Belarus and Ukraine, and how Poland came to the Vilnius film festival in 2001, got drunk with the local filmmakers, and woke up in Nemenčinė.
"Liet?" Poland called again after a brief pause. Lithuania mumbled in response, thinking he would once again ask how to spell some word. But Poland unexpectedly changed the subject. "You and I, like, totally haven't been on good terms for the last couple of centuries, but I never stopped thinking about you, and stuff. No matter where I was or with whom, I always remembered you, and even in the shittiest moments I hoped things were a bit less shitty for you. I imagined you when I, like, closed my eyes. And I constantly waited for the day we would finally meet again."
Lithuania felt his insides tighten in discomfort. They had discussed this before, and every time after such conversations, he felt like the most unworthy person, because he had buried Poland in his mind and tried his best to forget him, being in Russia's embrace.
Meanwhile, Poland lay down beside him, rested his head on his back, pressing his cheek against it, and continued:
"So, you know, I turned, like, a thousand years old recently, and I've never loved anyone but you. Seriously, never. And I totally don't care if you didn't think about me all this time, because it doesn't matter. I love you, Liet, and I'm ready to say it again in another thousand years."
For a few seconds, Lithuania was silent, gathering his thoughts. He hated himself for his brevity, which, in his opinion, made him seem unfeeling. As much as Poland's talkativeness tired him, he often regretted that he couldn't express what accumulated inside of him in a continuous stream of words. But Poland knew him well enough to understand without explanation that Lithuania felt much more than he said.
"I love you too. And somehow, every day I realize I'm capable of loving you even better," he replied. "Get up, or you'll have Radviliškis imprinted on your face."
"Right, Radviliškis," Poland quickly rose, hurrying to add the new name.
After another half an hour and just three labeled cities, it was clear that Poland’s knowledge was exhausted.
"I guess that’s all," he set aside the pen, admitting defeat.
"You said it ten minutes ago, and then you remembered Utena."
"No, this time that’s really all. Listen, it would make a cool tattoo, think about it," he took a picture of the result and handed it to Lithuania for evaluation.
Despite the friend's efforts, the first thing Lithuania noticed when he looked at the photo was the scars. He rarely looked at his back and was used to the sensations but not to its appearance. However, as soon as he forced himself to focus on the map, the scars seemed to disappear, and Lithuania started to read. The names were in Lithuanian, Polish, English, Lithuanian-Polish, Lithuanian-English, and other mysterious languages used the Latin alphabet. The letters were crooked because of the disfigurements, and the words overlapped each other due to lack of space. However, Poland remembered the cities and their locations surprisingly well and didn’t even confuse Švenčionys and Švenčionėliai.
The south-east, taken over in the early 20th century, turned out almost perfectly, with only a few new cities missing. When Poland learned about Elektrėnai, he was horrified and said it sounded like a city from a Soviet-style post-apocalyptic fiction. The north was a bit worse, but still tolerable: Lithuania seriously started to think about making corrections and actually getting the tattoo.
"So, what's your favorite city?" he asked, finishing his comments and hoping for either some interesting arguments or at least for Poland to mispronounce Vilnius again so he could fine him the first złoty.
But Poland never did what was expected of him.
"Utena. Because I like your right shoulder blade," he replied, smiling, and kissed the spot with the name he had carefully written.