Antanas Sileika - Underground

They had not taken kindly to Lukas’s withdrawal in January 1949, threatening him, insisting that he would be expelled from the country. But since Monika was permitted to live in France and she and Lukas had been married the previous fall, the authorities had no grounds for expulsion. True, Lukas’s residency paperwork was laborious, but it was hard to tell if this was due merely to bureaucracy or to the active mischief of his vindictive SDECE handlers.

Lukas was free of them now, but he was barely employed and did not know what to do with the rest of his life. For the time being he scratched away at his memoirs.

He walked up to the rue St-Antoine, where the street was filling with children let out from school and women buying their supplies for dinner. He walked on the sidewalk, between the fruit and vegetable carts on the street and the food stalls of the shops, as women shouted out encouragement to buy their goods. He did not like to be out in crowds like this, where he could not keep track of who was behind him.

And yet what did he have to be afraid of here, in Paris? The French would not kill him. The Soviets might have tried something like that right after the war, if he had been operating somewhere like Berlin or Vienna, but they would do nothing here. He was too small a fish. They might not even know he existed. And yet his old partisan sixth sense told him to be wary.

Lukas stopped to buy beets. Fresh beets in late summer were a gift and he felt a need for borscht, the food of his homeland. Paris had everything, they said, and that was somewhat true, but it still was not home. That place needed to be evoked in other ways.

Lukas felt disconnected, adrift in life. The English had wanted him so badly, but he had turned them down. Now he was a little sorry he had. He had turned down the French as well. With the émigré government in America, he felt like an anachronism, someone who stayed on in school after all the others had left.

Paris could never be home for simple reasons. It did not have sour cream, for one, which was slightly annoying because it was an essential ingredient of proper borscht. France had crème fraîche but it tasted different. Lukas would need to buy unpasteurized cream and sour it himself, but that would take overnight and would not be ready in time for this evening’s dinner. It didn’t matter. He could make a large pot of borscht today, enough for two days, and eat it properly on the second day.

Aside from his memoir writing, he was unemployed and just scraping by. They could not afford much cheese or meat, but there were certain cuts the French did not value, in particular spare ribs, and so they were cheap and he could boil them in the soup.

Baguettes were delicious propositions, but sometimes Lukas missed the taste of the bread of his homeland, so he cut across the rue St-Antoine and went up the side streets where there were some Jewish shops that carried dark rye bread. Borscht and baguette would have been unthinkable. Finally, on the way back to his street, he stopped to buy a litre of everyday wine, a vin gris that Monika liked.

Back at the apartment, Lukas opened the bottle and poured his first glass as he put the beets on to boil. An hour later he poured off the hot red water, watching carefully to make sure he did not drip it on his shirt, and then peeled the beets, slipping their skins off, and grated them. He put the grated beets into the pot, ran cold water over his fingertips to lighten the stubborn stains, and then cut the slab of ribs into pairs and immersed them in the pot, adding chopped carrots and onions as well. He waited until the pot came to a boil, took the bottle of wine and a glass, and went to sit by the courtyard window to watch the children play down below before their parents called them in for dinner.

Two girls and a boy played quietly down there, either so terrorized by the concierge that they did not shout and run, or so much products of generation upon generation of Parisian children that they took their confinement in stride. Even in the parks the children barely seemed to run about. They were like prematurely old men, standing with arms crossed as they talked to one another.

After an hour, Lukas went to check on his borscht, found it to his liking, and turned off the pot and set it aside and peeled potatoes and put them on the burner. He set the small table and brought over the wine bottle, then saw that only a glass remained in it. He finished that glass, turned the potatoes down to simmer, and went back outside to the wine merchant to get another bottle.

He met Monika coming down the street from her classes at the institute, a satchel in one hand. Her hair was pinned back, the way she kept it during the day for her studies, exposing her face, which was light gold in the late afternoon sunlight. She had slightly thick lips, soft lips, which turned up in a smile as soon as she saw him. She waved with her free hand.

He embraced her as soon as he was close enough, and when he was about to withdraw she used her free hand to hold the back of his head and prolong the kiss.

“That’s very affectionate,” he said.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day.” It was like this sometimes, either one or the other overcome with need and on the prowl.

“The potatoes are simmering on the stove. Keep an eye on them and I’ll be right back. I’m just going to get another bottle of wine.”

“I can’t drink tonight anyway, I need to study. Why don’t you come back with me now and we’ll have a little fun before dinner?”

“What a good offer,” said Lukas. “But let me pick up the wine in case you change your mind.”

“Aren’t we a little early in our marriage for wine to take priority?”

He was slightly irritated and about to say something, but when he looked at her he realized she was right. He kissed her on the neck, drew her free arm through his and walked back to the apartment, listening to what she said about her day while thinking that he should look for a job soon. It was not good to put so much time into the preparation of dinner.

He had just closed the door behind him when he turned to see that she had set down her bag, hung up her jacket, and was pulling the pins out of her hair. “You look like you’re in a rush,” he said.

“I’m hungry for you.”

He reached around her waist, pulled her close to kiss her and then undid the clasp at the back of her skirt as well as the button below it. Her skirt dropped to the floor and she began to laugh.

“You said you were in a hurry,” said Lukas.

“But I thought we might make it to the bedroom first.”

“No time for that, madame . Hands up.” She raised her hands and he took her sweater and peeled it up from the bottom and then threw it behind her, over her head.

Someone knocked at the door.

Monika’s face lit up with mock panic and she smothered a laugh, and then began to gather up her discarded clothing.

“Who is it?” Lukas asked through the door.

“It’s Anne.”

“I’ll be right there.” He waited a moment until Monika was out of the hall and then opened the door. Anne was standing outside with a large jar in the crook of one elbow and her briefcase in her other hand. She wore eyeglasses now and looked very serious as a result. She kissed him on each cheek. “It’s bad luck to greet someone across a threshold.”

“Only in Lithuania,” said Anne. “And since we’re in Paris, we don’t have to worry.”

“What have you got in your hand?”

“Mother pickled some cucumbers and sent me over with them.”

“Will you stay for dinner? It’s almost ready.”

“I think I will. I might stay here to study after that. Mother has piano students all evening and I want to get in a little reading before classes begin next week.”