He was shipped off to Afghanistan, to fight the mujahideen. He was sent to the brig-solitary confinement in a pitch-black cistern buried in the ground-and then to a mental hospital, where doctors could not find evidence that his affection for his native republic had anything to do with madness. There was a uniform inspection, and Bareikis was found to be wearing an undershirt on which he’d painted the Lithuanian flag. After two months, a Soviet general paid his unit a visit. In 1985, as an art-school student in Vilnius, he’d been drafted into the Soviet Army. After a while, Koenig suggested that they try snorting the vodka instead, which can be rough on the nasal passages but in this instance had the desired effect of fostering an atmosphere conducive to the telling of life stories.īareikis, who was twenty-nine, had a good one. They had dinner and then began drinking vodka. One night, another Lithuanian stopped in, an artist named Aidas Bareikis. He’d come to New York from Munich a few months earlier, in part to avoid military service in Germany.
Of the many moments that may have moved Leo Koenig to become an art dealer, the one he’d choose, if he had to choose one, is an encounter he had eight years ago, when he was twenty and living with three roommates-two Lithuanians and a German-in an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
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