Antanas Sileika - Underground

The shadows grew short as the morning advanced toward noon, and then lengthened again in a different direction in the afternoon.

“Who’s that?” Elena asked when someone finally came outside.

“My sister, Angele.”

She had come out to the well. As far as Lukas could see, no one else was around.

“I want to get a little closer,” he said.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No. I’ll come back for you if it looks all right.”

He made his way toward Angele, his back bent low in the hayfield to keep his profile down, like a thief in his own home. When he was close enough to call Angele’s name, he startled her. She dropped the bucket down the well and put her hand to her mouth.

“Come over here, by the hedge,” he hissed.

“Lukas? Is that you?”

“Are there any soldiers around?”

“Not anymore. They’re gone now.”

He was going to go back for Elena, but something in Angele’s voice made him wait. She came to him then, and stood with him on a patch of earth between the currant bushes and the apple trees where they were masked from any spying eyes. She threw her arms around his neck and covered his face repeatedly with kisses. Much as he enjoyed the moment, he finally pulled her away and held her at arm’s length, laughing at her enthusiasm, and she burst into tears.

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

“No, wait. You need to know something first.”

She had a hard time speaking through her tears, and Lukas was forced to wait, his unease growing with every moment.

“What are you crying about?” he asked.

“The slayers found Algis yesterday, right here. He’d been hiding all this time, not even with the partisans, just hiding in various places throughout the county. He’d beg for food or people would give it to him.”

“What happened?”

“He came to see us. He did that sometimes, appearing out of nowhere, like you just now. You frightened me, you know—I thought you might be him. Sometimes I’d look for him in the bunker under the hayfield, and he might be there or he might be gone. He’d come home to get food. He was hungry, thin and dirty. He’d just had a glass of milk by the kitchen table when the slayers appeared in the yard in a car and an open truck. There was no time to hide. Algis jumped through a window and ran. One of the slayers outside had a machine gun mounted on the truck and shot him.”

“Wounded? Killed?”

“Cut in two. It was terrible. Father came out and began to cry when he saw the body, and he didn’t stop sobbing until early this morning. We can’t talk to him. He doesn’t see us. He just mutters and stares at nothing.”

“What happened to the body?”

“The slayers took it away. They put it in the marketplace with another one. It’s terrible. They took off their shoes and socks and put bibles in their mouths and rosaries in their hands. Mother sopped up some of his blood with her shawl from the place where he fell. She says she’s going to bury the shawl so at least he has a decent burial.”

“Who did this?”

“I told you, four slayers.”

“Did you know any of them?”

“Two are Rumsiskes men. The others were from somewhere else.”

“Tell me their names and where they live.”

“They were a father and son, but forget that now. You have to go in to see Mother and Father quickly. Maybe your face will help Father. Then you have to get away from here as fast as you can. It’s not safe.”

“It’s not safe anywhere. Calm down. Stop crying. Tell me how it’s been since we left.”

“Terrible. They want more in grain than this farm produces. They’re trying to kill us. Some of the farmers have been deported. Some are in prison. There’s talk of collectivization. Father said he’d rather sweep the streets in Kaunas than be a serf, but you can’t just leave your own farm. You need permission, and no one gives it, and there’s nowhere to run away to.” She wiped her nose on her apron. “Do you have news of Vincentas?”

He shook his head. There was no use in telling her any more bad news. She looked at him searchingly.

“Don’t tell Mother and Father that. Make something up. Anything.” Angele was holding his hands and staring into his eyes. Her face was etched with despair.

Lukas let go of her hands and cautiously entered the house. He was immediately overcome with the familiar smells of home— recently baked rye bread, boiled potatoes, smoked meat.

His father sat in a dark corner in the shadows, near the broken window through which Algis had leapt. The window was now patched with cardboard. His father’s back was upright and his hands were crossed in his lap, making him look like a man waiting patiently for a train. He looked very old, with his thinning grey hair cropped close to his head. His mother was washing dishes, wearing an apron and a scarf over her hair. She was frightened when she first saw Lukas, and crossed herself to make sure he was not a vision.

“Mama,” he said, and her tears began to fall.

Markulis and his son worked their spades well, given that it was dark and they were wondering if the graves they were digging were for themselves. The boy, barely twenty, was silent and afraid. The father was nervously talkative, though no less frightened.

“It’s pretty here, by the forest’s edge. You couldn’t have picked a better place.”

Lukas had asked them to dig three graves. The bodies of Algis and the other partisan were in a cart behind them. Two bodies. Three graves.

Elena stood beside Lukas. He had not brought her into his house after all.

“I hope your sister told you that it wasn’t either one of us who fired the machine gun at your brother.”

Lukas knew that, but he didn’t know the other two slayers, and the convenience of a father-and-son team had given him an advantage. Lukas had held a knife to the boy’s throat as he explained to the father that he was to go to the market square that night, tell the guard he had been given instructions, and load the bodies up and bring them along.

Markulis had been a small landholder, ten acres and two children, both of whom worked as hired labour as soon as they were old enough to shepherd geese, and then pigs, and finally cows. Markulis hired himself out too. He had been an angry man, prone to getting into fights, perpetually frustrated by his poverty. Joining the slayers had given him a regular income and kept his son out of the draft. It was a dirty business, but he had helped slaughter pigs and spread manure, so he was used to dirty work.

And now this.

“I’ve known you since you were a boy,” said Markulis. “I remember you as a child on market days, chewing on bagels.”

“Did you remember Algis too?”

“He should have given himself up long ago. He let two amnesties pass. Armed resistance just brings down the wrath of the Reds. You have to play along with them in order to survive.”

“What about your country?”

“That’s over now, and if you think it isn’t, passive resistance is the thing.”

“That’s not resistance at all.”

“You mean you’re loyal to that bourgeois dictator who ruled before the Reds came?”

“There’s more to a nation than the man who rules it.”

Markulis rested his spade for a moment. Lukas kept his distance. The safety on his rifle was off.

“There’s no one but the Reds now. The czar ruled here for a hundred years. The Reds are going to rule here forever, and we’d better get used to it.”

“The Germans said they’d rule forever too, and look how long they lasted. You haven’t even matched their record yet. What do you think is going to happen to you when the Reds fall?”

“They’ll never fall. If I believed they would, I wouldn’t be here.”