It was a hot summer afternoon. The birds were silent, except for a skylark whose chirping rose into the clear sky. The reapers had already returned from the fields. I was standing next to my flock, in the shadow of a wild apple tree. The sheep were huddled together in a heap with their heads down, the lambs cuddled up close to them. Periodically, they would all stir at once as if frightened by each other’s dreams, and their thick locks would tremble. The air was shimmering and growing hotter. At the edge of the property many footprints had formed a trodden path.

From the time I was ten, I knew I might have to incinerate my father. His brown hair fell below his ears, and his mustache often seemed green to me, blades of grass turning his flesh into soft soil. He came from the old country, one of those jagged, sparse masses now erased from most maps. According to him it smelled of tulips, and the night sky would reach down and touch every rooftop, straw evaporating into clouds of glistening dust. When he was twelve he fell in love with a girl named Audra. She was a child of sand, he would say, glowing amber grains molding to the seasons and emotions around her. They loved the touch of glass, and would often steal window panes, bringing them out to the fields of wild strawberries.

If you were to ask anyone from our village, they would tell you my grandfather invented red. My family came from Vilkaviškis, a community in Southwest Lithuania that rests along the banks of the Šeimena River. There, we were a lot of things. We were church-going Catholics, sugar beet farmers and prominent nudists. No one remembers exactly how this attraction to nudity developed. But by shedding our clothes a great deal of freedom and entrepreneurship emerged. Soon, according to either my Aunt Gamata or Uncle Herkus, the family began pursuing a number of labor-intensive jobs, including carpentry. Yes, I seem to recall being nine or ten, standing barefoot on the moist grass of a meadow.

Rasputin composed many operas during his lifetime, but it was his final one that truly stood out. Until recently the faith healer’s numerous librettos sat forgotten, lying dust-drenched in the dank cellar of a former Soviet strip club. All of this changed though after a chance encounter I had with the material. At the time I was living in Russia and practically a vagrant, having lost almost everything in a rather nasty divorce.