Antanas Sileika - Underground

At the end of the fourth day, Lozorius told him to be ready to leave the next morning. “Write a letter to go back into Lithuania. We’ll drop it with the Dombrowskis.”

“The Dombrowskis asked me not to go there. They said they were being watched.”

“Bakers are nervous types. I’ll do the drop-off on the way to the harbour.”

The following morning, they boarded the train and rode back to Gdynia. Lukas was to wait on a street corner as Lozorius took his letter to the Dombrowskis, but from the distant corner Lukas could see that the door of the shop was locked.

“What does it mean?” Lukas asked when Lozorius returned.

“Who knows? It’s odd to close a shop on a Tuesday, though. I’m going to drop this off at the post office.” He left Lukas at a tea shop and then returned half an hour later and they headed out into the port.

“How is this ‘leaving the country’ done?” Lukas asked.

Lozorius laughed. “Simple. Just watch me.”

It was a windy day, and although the harbour had not frozen in, there were lumps of ice in the eddies around the piers and slick spots on the quays where an unwary walker could slide under the chain at the edge and into the sea. The pier Lozorius took him out upon was empty of people, but there were two ships tied up a hundred yards apart. Lozorius led Lukas up to the second one.

“This is it,” he said.

“You know someone on board?”

“No, but it’s a Swedish ship and it will be going back there eventually. We’ll just set up under a tarp and wait until we get there.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

The drop down to the ship was over three metres, and Lozorius went first so Lukas could drop his backpack down to him. After they had scouted around to make sure no one was looking, they made their way under a tarpaulin on the deck that covered odd pieces of heavy machinery.

“Now we wait,” said Lozorius. “I hope you remembered to put on your long underwear.”

SWEDEN

FEBRUARY 1948

THE LARGE twin-funnelled ferry upon which they had stowed away sailed from Gdynia in Poland to Trelleborg in Sweden, hauling rail cars and trucks. The winter wind seemed to find every gap between the tarp and the deck, and the rocking of the ship made Lukas sick. Lozorius did not seem to be affected, or he didn’t show it. The journey lasted only twelve hours but it felt much longer, and Lukas could barely straighten out his legs for their numbness when it came time to disembark.

The guard at the gangway in Sweden seemed unsurprised when two half-frozen men with large knapsacks appeared at the bottom of the gangplank. Lozorius addressed him in Swedish and the guard escorted them to a small, self-contained room at the customs shed onshore and locked the door behind them.

The whole process had seemed very relaxed, but Lukas did not like being locked up.

“Don’t worry,” said Lozorius. “These are all formalities.”

“In the old days you didn’t like being locked up either.”

“You’re in a new place and you have to adapt to it. The dangers out here are not the same as they were back home.” Lozorius smoked cigarettes and looked out of the window as they waited.

Lukas studied the man across the room from him, draped comfortably across a bench as if between trains in a railway station. Lukas had not known him well when they were students, and it seemed odd that this slight and unpretentious man should have developed such a reputation among the partisans. Maybe it was his very ease in unfamiliar circumstances that gave him his standing. Lozorius knew he was being looked at, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He even seemed to enjoy it.

A policeman came and Lozorius surrendered a revolver he had in an inside pocket of his coat. The policeman set the revolver on a desk and wrote out a receipt for it. A woman appeared with two tin cups of sweet tea and a ten-pack of cigarettes, and then locked them in again.

“What a country,” said Lukas, looking at the burning end of the cigarette. Even the paper seemed fine, almost too fine to burn up. Everything back home was coarse in comparison.

Another policeman came and took Lozorius away for a while.

Lukas had felt comfortable enough in Poland—it was a neighbouring and familiar country—but Sweden was completely unnerving. He was in a foreign country where the rules were utterly unknown to him. The calm proceedings to deal with stowaways seemed odd and a little intimidating, as if he had stumbled into a country of lords and ladies where his peasant background would make him seem uncouth. He was accustomed to watchfulness and danger, yet even when there was no danger the habit of vigilance would not leave him. He felt restless and uneasy. Some part of him wished he could withdraw to the underground again.

Lukas looked out upon the port from the very small window. There was not much to see; a series of carts on steel wheels blocked his view. Sweden was a good country, he hoped, but he really didn’t know.

Two hours later, the door was unlocked and the tea lady took him through the blustering winter wind to a long black car with a driver, where Lozorius was waiting in the back seat. When Lukas got in, he found a boxed lunch with sandwiches and a Thermos of tea as well as a small bottle of aquavit on the seat between them. It was a right-hand-drive car, the first that Lukas had ever seen.

“How did you manage this?” Lukas asked as the driver put the car in gear and drove away.

“They know me here. We’re in for a long drive to Stockholm. Have something to eat and then try to get some sleep. We’ll be driving through the night.”

Not for the first time that day, Lukas wondered how he ever would have managed without Lozorius.

Lukas intended to stay awake, but once he had eaten, it became dark, the fantastically early night of the northern latitude. Then he drank some aquavit and fell asleep with the taste of caraway on his lips. It was a flavour very common in this part of Europe, one that reminded him of home.

Lukas spent the next eight days in an empty warehouse on the waterfront of Stockholm, writing reports about the political, economic and social conditions in Lithuania. Lozorius would take the papers he had written and disappear for hours, sometimes overnight, and then return with questions or requests for rewrites.

“Why is this taking so long?” Lukas asked.

“You arrived from terra incognita . They need to figure out the place you come from and what kind of animal you are and if they can trust you.”

“Couldn’t you just vouch for me?”

“It’s not so simple. They never trust anyone completely. And people change. The man you knew a year ago might be a different man today.”

“I haven’t changed. I’m still the son of a farmer.”

“Don’t pretend to be simpler than you are. You’re the one who took part in the seizure of Merkine. The one who shot down a whole tableful of dinner guests. The one who evaded capture for two years while others were dying or being taken prisoner, and then crossed the border successfully. You’re almost too good to be true.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just that you’re quite a prize. You even make me look good. I was getting a little stale for them.”

“Stale?”

“I’ve been here for a long time now. I haven’t had much new news since Lithuania’s been closed up tight. Just the odd letter was coming out before you appeared, and I couldn’t find a way back in. You’ve given me a new lease on life.”

The warehouse where Lukas lived was at least a hundred years old, all weathered red brick. He had a bed and a table in a corner of the vastness of the space. When he turned the light off, the interior was as dark as any bunker. He felt the vertiginous emptiness of the warehouse, whereas in the bunkers he had felt the oppressive closeness of the earth.