Antanas Sileika - Underground

At first she had enjoyed the thought that her brother fought against these people in the forest. After his death, her loathing of the functionaries grew so much that she knew she wouldn’t be able to disguise it much longer.

Elena had very large brown eyes and was aware that men found her eyes attractive, but she usually masked them with unnecessary glasses when she was at work. In any case, she did not normally look up very much, because her workplace was full of wolves that could tear her apart. Even Antanas Snieckus, the chairman of the Lithuanian Communist Party and a hard-core Stalinist if ever there was one, the man who had deported his own brother to Siberia in 1940, the man whose own mother fled Lithuania in 1944 before he returned with the Reds—even he had paused to look at Elena’s eyes during an official visit.

Now she was sorry she had not taken the opportunity to kill him.

Elena’s gentleness and simplicity were fading, and she was transforming into something different, hardening around the lips. She kept her shoulders square and wore a working woman’s business suit and carried a leather satchel, altogether like a secretary on her way to work.

The partisan newspaper that Elena was supposed to pick up was three days late due to a lack of ink for the rotary printer, and the parliament of partisans was four days late because the bog partisans had had to make it through two separate swarmings of Chekists.

The parliament gathered in a forest meadow with a few trees inside the clearing, and in the shade of one of these Lukas was running off the last of the newspapers and laying them out in the sun to dry. He worked with the radio on a stump beside him, listening to the BBC, much of which he could now understand after a winter and spring of study with the American farmer. Nearby on the grass sat Ignacas in a jacket with a ripped collar and only one button. He had a switch in his hand and was idly whipping it back and forth in the air to keep off the flies. The BBC announcer said something in a voice slightly more inflected than the usual monotone.

“What did he say now?” asked Ignacas.

“Nothing much.”

“But what nothing in particular?”

“They were announcing the scores of the British football games.”

Ignacas sighed, partially in resignation and partially in envy. There were no football games in this part of Europe, not even high school against high school. The football coach might have been deported to Siberia, a child’s parents might have fled to the West, and countless others had simply disappeared. Ignacas wished he could disappear as well.

He was hopelessly inept and never sent out on missions. He was not a good writer, dithering over his sentences too much to be of any use on the partisan newspaper. Worst of all, he was perpetually hungry and had been reprimanded once for stealing food from the stores. One more such incident and he might get court-martialled, which could lead to only two possible results: a further reprimand or execution by firing squad. And yet he considered himself a patriot.

Lukas pitied Ignacas and helped him when he could, but the man had become mournful unless he was eating, and Lukas could listen to only so much misery without having it weigh him down.

Ignacas looked about them to make sure no one was within earshot. “There are a few more days to go until the amnesty runs out,” he said.

The Reds had declared an amnesty after the war ended in Germany, and many partisans had taken up the offer. Some of the bands forbade it, but Flint let his men make their own decisions. The only rules were that they leave behind any good weapons they might have and take poor ones, and that they not betray their old comrades. The first part was easy, but not the second. How was one to placate a new master without betraying a former one? Lukas asked him this very question.

“Here’s my plan,” said Ignacas. “I’ll wait until this parliament is over and then I’ll slip away. When I turn myself in, I’ll do it in some village, where it will take a while for them to work their way up to the proper authorities. Then I’ll bring them here as a sign of my sincerity. But all of you will be gone, you see? I’ll have betrayed nothing.”

“The Reds aren’t stupid. Do you think they’ll believe that?”

“I’m a good liar.”

“Even under torture?”

“They wouldn’t torture me, would they?”

“They do sometimes.”

“But not ones who give themselves up. I don’t think they do. But even if they did rough me up a little, by the time I told them anything, all of you would have moved on.”

“Except yourself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know they never keep their promises. You know your father owned too much land. You’re an enemy to them by category—anything you say won’t change that.”

“I can’t think like that. I need to believe in something, and I need to believe they’re at least partially sincere. They’re building a new world, but they’re still fighting a war with people like us. They’ll become gentler over time.”

“You’re sounding more and more Red with every sentence. Maybe you do belong with them.”

“Oh, come on, don’t turn on me like that. You knew me back in school. You knew what I was like then. But let’s face it—I’m useless as a partisan. I wasn’t meant for this kind of life. It’ll kill me in the long run.”

“If they don’t kill you first.”

“I never realized you were such a hard-liner.”

“I’m not. I’m just cornered. I know I have to fight because I have no other choice.”

“You do have a choice, and so do I. Why should our generation be sentenced to death? What did we do? We need to find some way to live, some way to go on.”

“Taking amnesty won’t do it.”

“Maybe not for you, but what about me? Would you hold it against me?”

“Each of us has to do what he must.”

“But will you tell Flint about my plans?”

“What you just told me isn’t a plan, it’s an idea. And I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

Ignacas nodded, seemed about to speak again, but decided against it and turned to waddle away. He was no longer a fat man, but he still carried himself as if he were. No matter how much he gave in to them, the Reds would find he stank of “bourgeois.”

Elena made her way past a small group of older partisans by a smokeless fire where Flint was speaking with the leaders of the other bands. They fell silent as she passed. Farther on, a trio of young men sprawled on the grass, two cleaning their rifles and a third writing a letter. They tried to engage her in banter, but she did not have time to talk. She was looking for the latest newspaper and sought out Lukas among his newspapers laid out on the grass.

Absorbed with his work, Lukas did not look up from the press he had been cleaning. He had his sleeves rolled up and wore an apron to protect his clothes from the ink. Sensing someone nearby, he began to speak without glancing up. “I didn’t have enough alcohol to thin the ink properly. It’s still sticky, and I’m hoping the sun will dry it out. It would be a waste to let the newspapers smudge after all this work.”

Lukas’s hair was long, curling over his ears. Like the other partisans, he was a little feral, but he wasn’t coarse. He looked swift and comfortable, though there was trouble on his face. When he finally did look up at her, the trouble evaporated and his beautiful mouth broke into a smile.

“It’s you,” he said.

They had not seen each other since early spring, just before the seizure of the town of Merkine.

“I was afraid you might not come anymore,” said Lukas, “after you lost your brother. I’m very sorry about that, but I’m glad to see you here. I lost my brother that day too.”