One cold, cloudy, dreary November afternoon near the edge of a mild town of about 30 thousand people on the brink of being walloped by a violent snowstorm, in a fancy hotel restaurant, at the far end of a bar, there sat, gaunt and dry, with greasy hair, a middle aged man wearing a fancy leisure suit, well kept, but woefully out of style. He was the nomenclature man.

“Hugo’s” is what this place is called. Not my namesake, though I basically own it if you look down a long and sketchy paper trail. Hugo was this local folk hero, a myth, a supposed giant from centuries ago who had proposed to the love of his life. And to prove himself to this female giantess of his, he had put his great strength to work in a big field and dug it up with his bare hands to create our lake. He threw the dirt onto some of the adjacent hills and upon one of them, the widest and most beautiful one, he got married to his lady love. We have called it Marriage Hill to this day. And you can also see from atop it a little island in the middle of the lake in the shape of a heart.

It’s a nice place – this “Hugo’s”. Always just the right temperature in here, be it summer or winter. Good heat pumps. I didn’t pick out the décor since I know nothing about that stuff, but the folks who did chose this mix between a country style with wood carvings, hunting trophies, log furniture, and mixed it up with this dark modern texture on the walls and pillars, window frames and most of the bar area. It looks nice – plenty of brightness indoors –, and the darker shades just make you want to drink another beer. But what do I know, it looks nice to me. That’s why I eat here all the time.

Now me, I’m nobody, really. I don’t look like anybody special; I don’t act like I am either. My job is at the local municipality, but my title and position are so vague that even I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I enjoy a nice office, and a middle-aged secretary was assigned to me, but I don’t know what she does at work either, I hardly go there. I do know her name though. Adelina. A rare one even in this corner of the world. Professional life’s been like this for decades. Used to be plenty of my sort of worker around. But as the nation modernizes, dire cuts to administrative functions have to be made and old garbage kicked out. I’ve no idea why they keep me though. I don’t do anything, didn’t rub anyone’s shoulders to keep my useless non-job duties, and I definitely know that nobody would want to keep me around. I just got lucky, I guess. And if my luck runs out and I’m let go, I wouldn’t care about that either. I got plenty of dough to keep me afloat for a long time.

I have no proper education. I’d hardly call myself charming or good looking, or anything at all. Best I could say about myself is, though I may not always make a good first impression, my jolly, understanding manners and cheery, sympathetic demeanor can cut through anyone’s hardened heart. Give me time and I’ll make friends with anybody. So maybe I am a little charming. That’s not why I own “Hugo’s” though or why I can afford my meals at a fancy restaurant every day. All that is thanks to my dad. Every time I finish my meal at “Hugo’s,” I take out a cigarette and smoke it. And never have I not recalled my dear old dad. He was a heavy smoker himself.

Now my dad grew up dirt poor. The farthest back we could trace ourselves, which isn’t all that far, our family was poor farmers from nowhere special. My dad literally grew up in a crummy shack in the middle of a forest with no electricity, no running water, nothing but a dug-out well, an outhouse and a roof that still used to be made of thatch in my grandparents’ day. And the stories they told about tending pigs barefoot in deep mud, hunting adder snakes in the woods to feed those pigs, herding cows, digging through manure to fertilize the huge crop fields, all the grueling, back-breaking work in searing hot summer fields just to gather straw. And that was the good, peaceful stuff. The bad stuff was about roaming gangs of youths shooting at each other if not shooting at poor families for bogus, made-up nonsense. These weren’t some crazy outlaws mind you. These were the occupier-state-enforced “politically active youths.” The state and law themselves were even more frightening. They only got involved in raids, arrests, deportations and the occasional mass execution, all hush hush, of course. On a lighter note, there were also these random drunks wandering from nowhere to nowhere, some jolly and friendly with some anecdote about themselves, others barging in at night with a knife in hand, looking for a wild good time. And there was all manner of other strangeness and lunacy that’d be hard to begin to describe. So many stories from unbelievable times, it makes one grateful for how far we’ve come since.

(…to be continued…)

by Paulius Limantas

 

Transadaptation Volume 7 – Via Ellipsis – Continuation of Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted

January: An Unexpected Trip Down Memory Lane – Sarah-Leah Pimentel (South Africa)

February: Blow-up – Veronika Groke (Austria)

March: Futuros Murguistas – Alejandra Baccino Uberti (Uruguay)

April: The Nomenclature Man – Paulius Limantas (Lithuania)

May: Amanecerá y veremos – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)

June: Finding Light in Yerevan – Armine Asryan (Armenia)

July: The Last Judgement – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)

August: Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Worm? – Narantsogt (Natso) Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)

September: Second Steps – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)

October: New Normality – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)

November: Pandemic Love – Li Xiakun (China)

December: Beyond Comprehension – Rahaf Konbaz (Syria)

 

Background – Context

Transadaptation Volume 6: Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2025)

Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)

Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)

Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)

Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)

Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)

Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)

L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)

From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)

 

Emblems and stories on the international community

Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world

 

Credits

Center photo: Palanga, Lithuania – Shadows – Kotryna Juskaite (Unsplash)

Photos from top left corner clockwise: 1. Lithuania – Old and new – Kotryna Juskaite (Unsplash); 2. Lithuania – Going home – Kotryna Juskaite (Unsplash); 3. Vilnius, Lithuania – The street – Alex Vinogradov (Unsplash); 4. Kaunas, Lithuania – A summer evening – Egidijus Bielskis (Unsplash); 5. Lithuania – From above – Gantas Vaičiulėnas (Unsplash); 6. Panevėžys, Lithuania – The shack – Kotryna Juskaite (Unsplash); 7. Lithuania – The residential blocks – Kotryna Juskaite (Unsplash); 8. Lithuania – In the woods – Ugne Vasyliute (Unsplash)