Antanas Sileika - Underground

After he had eaten and rested, Lukas walked up to the station with Lozorius, who seemed to have a torrent of words locked up in him that he could let flow at an astonishing rate. Lozorius described the history of the town, once Poland’s only window on the Baltic, the number of patients in the hospital and the incidence of tuberculosis, life in Poland and in Sweden, and half a dozen other subjects. Lukas was bemused by the man’s words, but relieved as well because he didn’t want to talk until they were in some private place.

When they were finally back in Lukas’s room, Lozorius put a half bottle of vodka on the table as well as some sausage and bread.

“Now I need you to tell me a few things about the West,” said Lukas. “That’s what I was sent out here for. First, when can we hope for the war to start?”

“What war?”

“The war between the Americans and the Soviets.”

Lozorius cut off two pieces of sausage, offered one to Lukas on the point of a knife and took the second piece himself. “There isn’t going to be any war, or if there is, it won’t be any time soon. Everybody out here has their own problems.”

“How is this possible?”

“The West is sleeping. It’s like some kind of madhouse, where everyone is going about his own business on the second floor while a fire is burning on the first floor. But you can’t reason with them. They think we’re the crazy ones. They think that nothing is going to happen. If you push them, they concede that it might, and if the Reds attacked, they would take all of Europe to the Pyrenees. But they won’t prepare for it, as if ignoring the problem will keep it from getting worse.”

Lozorius cut another piece of sausage, but Lukas turned it down. “The West has the atomic bomb.”

“And what do you think they’ll do with it? Blow up Moscow?”

“Why not?”

Lozorius laughed in the most frightening way possible. It made Lukas realize he was being ridiculous, yet his line of reasoning was shared by almost everyone he had left behind. It was depressing to know he and the others were so out of touch.

Lozorius poured each of them a shot of vodka. “The world looks different from this place. You’ll see. The first thing you have to learn is that everything important to you is unimportant here. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares. The ones who do know about you sold you to Stalin. Don’t feel bad. You might be able to get something out of them if you prod their consciences, but for the most part they don’t want to see you and they don’t want to hear you. Believe me, I have seen the future. In a decade there will be children who have never heard of the Baltic States, or if they have heard of them, they will mix them up with the Balkans. Already most people think the Ukrainians are the same as Russians, and as for Byelorussians, you might as well forget about them.

“And all of us out here in the West, all of us who came from those places, if we’re noticed at all, are supposed to be fascists and war criminals. Stalin told Truman that there were no Russian prisoners of war, only deserters. So our first problem is that we don’t exist and the second is that if we do, we’re murderers and traitors.”

“Traitors to what?”

“Traitors to the Soviet Union, your homeland and the ally of the Americans, though that last part is getting a little tired now.”

“How can we be traitors to an occupying army?”

“Everything you say is bourgeois rationalization, the intellectual machinations of fascists. The West made a deal with Stalin to defeat the Nazis, and the deal was the Reds can do anything they want. We annoy the West, Lukas. We irritate them and we look funny to them. Especially the intellectuals, who love the Reds better than they love the Americans. It will become clearer to you over time.” Lozorius poured them each a shot of vodka and toasted Lukas wordlessly. Lukas found he needed the alcohol. When he looked up at Lozorius, he saw that the man’s prominent ears turned red when he drank, a trait Lukas remembered from their student days.

“I don’t see how we can ever expect to free ourselves if there isn’t going to be a war between the Reds and the West,” said Lukas. “What about help with arms for the partisans so we can keep harassing the Reds? Will they at least supply us in our own fight?”

“You’re going to have to pique the interest of the spy agencies if you want to get anything at all.”

The words made Lukas uneasy.

“We’ll speak about that later. Tell me what it’s like in the country now,” said Lozorius.

Lukas began to talk about the new partisan tactic of limited engagements, and of the old dream of centralizing the partisan command structure. Even as he spoke, he could hear himself dramatizing the situation, making the organization seem stronger than it was. He felt as if he were describing his family to an outsider and wanted to cast it in the best light possible. He did say they would not last very long unless the West came through with some kind of support.

“I tell you, you won’t get any support unless you offer them something.”

“Like what?”

“Information. Red Army troop disposition, airfield locations, fuel dumps, the number of ships in port and where they’re from, train schedules, economic news, lists of names and command structures…”

“We don’t have any of that.”

“What did you bring?”

“A letter to the Pope from the partisan command. Photographs of dead bodies laid out in marketplaces. Rough numbers of deportees. There have been thousands sent away, tens of thousands. We have identity card samples and various other blanks—passports, police identification, as well as samples of stamps of all sorts.”

“That’s not bad. That’s a good start. I like the letter to the Pope, a nice touch. But then, the Pope doesn’t have any divisions, does he?”

An appeal to the Pope as the highest moral authority had seemed to make perfect sense in Lithuania, but now Lozorius made it sound naive. Lozorius saw Lukas’s discomfort and made him swallow another glass of vodka.

“So what exactly do you intend to do out here?” asked Lozorius.

“To represent the partisans to the Lithuanian government-in-exile, to get help, to raise funds.”

“I’m already doing all that. Too bad communications are so poor—they could have saved the lives of some good men if they hadn’t tried to get you out without checking with me. I could use your help here, of course.”

He let the moment hang in the air. Lukas sensed there was a control issue here. He didn’t care.

“That’s what I’m here for,” said Lukas. “To help.”

Lozorius nodded, accepting the concession.

It was late at night by the time Lozorius finally stood up to go. He left two fingers of vodka in the bottle.

Lukas was tired and this was the first good bed he had been offered in some time, but after Lozorius left he hesitated to lie down until he was sure he would fall asleep quickly. Otherwise, Elena would visit him in his mind. She wasn’t the only ghost—an entire trail of dead had somehow brought him to this comfortable cot in a Polish coastal town. He could not quite understand why they had died and he had lived.

He drank the last of the vodka, took off his shoes and lay down on the bed. But when he closed his eyes, sleep did not come for a long time. Elena was there, always there. First in his waking mind and then in his dreams, until he mercifully fell into unconsciousness.

In the four days that followed, Lukas was visited often by Lozorius as well as by a mute nun who brought him trays of food. Once he had eaten he felt restless, and so Lozorius took him for long walks by the winter sea.

They talked about how long the partisans could hold out. Of the importance of contacting the Ukrainians and other Baltics, the Estonians and Latvians. Of the Polish resistance. Of the terrible killers of Jews, collaborators who had tarred the reputations of their own countries in the West. All of this until the wind off the seas became too much and they returned to drink tea in Lukas’s room.