Antanas Sileika - Underground

What the Reds must have done to her after they took her to prison did not bear much thought, but he couldn’t help thinking about it. His one consolation was that they would not have tortured her if she was hurt badly. They would have tried to heal her first and only then begun to break her down again. And if they knew her as the killer at the engagement party in Marijampole, she could not have expected much mercy.

But maybe Flint had got her out in time.

One of the courtyard children cried out in pain. She had fallen and was sobbing as her friends tried to soothe her. He would have liked to have children sometime, to live in a time when children were possible.

Monika’s face was tear-stained, but she had calmed a little since the conversation had begun an hour ago. He started again.

“My duty is to my first wife. I have to go back to her. I made promises to others before I made promises to you.”

“Your first wife,” Monika said bitterly. “You’re making poetry out of my grief.”

Monika thought Lukas was referring to Lithuania as his first wife, making a metaphor, but he didn’t correct her. Lukas felt protective of Elena now, not wanting to talk about their lives together in the presence of another woman, not even this one. He was putting distance between them and already she was looking stranger and stranger to him, like someone from an accidental moment in his life.

Although he knew he had to make himself hard, Monika was still the woman who had come to him in the countryside in Bavaria, the one who had made life possible in the first confusing months in France. He loved her, but could not let this feeling dominate his thoughts. He had to drive her from his heart, but the necessity of the task did not make it any easier.

Lukas had not told Monika everything that Zoly had said, just that there was a new offer from the British for him to go into Lithuania and he was accepting it.

Monika reached for her glass and drank it down but did not refill it. “We’ve only begun our life together here,” she said. “We were on the way to building something. And now you want to throw it all away on some kind of adventure. You could have studied anything you wanted after you finished writing that book. Medicine, architecture. If the military appeals to you so much, you could have applied to French officers’ school.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t returning.” Elena might be dead after all. Zoly might be lying to get him back inside to help Lozorius.

“Don’t try to soften what you’re saying. What are the odds, really? You might get killed on the way in, or you might get killed while you’re there. You’ll almost certainly never make it out again. It’s not called the Iron Curtain for nothing.”

“It’s risky, all right, but not impossible. I made it out once before. I could be back in a year.”

“It’s like going to the land of the dead. Think what you’re giving up. Do you love me so little?”

“I love you so much.”

“This makes no sense at all. You’re just a soldier who’s finding it hard to adjust to civilian life. You need to give it a little more time. You’re bored now, sitting at a desk and writing that book, and worse, in the writing you’re thinking about the past all the time, reliving your old battles. But you wouldn’t have to sit at a desk all day if you didn’t want to. You could be something else—a builder, a farmer like your father—I don’t know, a pilot.” Lukas said nothing to this. “Help me. I’m looking for the words that will make you stay.”

“You won’t find them. You knew this day might come. What did you think the SDECE was training me for?”

“That was all over. You quit all that. This strange idea of duty is going to undo both of us. What about your duty to me?”

Lukas looked out of the window and reached over for his glass of wine, but stopped himself. He was going to refill Monika’s glass and looked to her to see if she wanted more wine, but she shook her head furiously.

“Tell me this,” Lukas said. “How is it that you and Anne went to hear me speak in Germany?”

“We had heard all about you. We were homesick and wanted to hear about Lithuania.”

“Yes, but no one else came from another country. We barely had people from other occupation zones of Germany, let alone France.”

“Where are you going with this? Why does it matter now?”

He would not let it go. “How did you get the right to go to Germany?” “Anne and I applied for a visa. I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“No one would ever have issued you a visa just like that, because you asked for it. Travel was restricted. Your uncle must have helped. Did he?”

“I suppose he did.”

“Or did he come up with the idea in the first place? Was he asking you to do a favour for him, for the SDECE? Were you supposed to lure me to France so they could make me an offer and keep me here?”

“Maybe it was something like that. But I had no idea I would fall in love with you. I’ve never been false to you.”

“When I walked away from you that morning in Germany, you followed me out into the countryside. You convinced me to come to Paris. I’m not saying you lied. I’m saying things got out of hand. You brought me out of Germany for your uncle and the French secret service, and when you discovered you liked me, you asked if you could keep me. Your uncle managed it all for you as a going-away gift before he left for America.”

“So what are you accusing me of? Loving you too much?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. You did what you believed was right. I’m doing the same thing.”

“But it’s not right to choose death. Think how miserable I’ll be as your widow. The Reds will kill you. Yes they will, don’t deny it, and it would be better for me to die rather than to lose you. Your absence will be a wound that never heals. Take pity on me and don’t make me a widow.”

“I can’t shrink away from this now. I could never live with myself. I’d die of shame.”

“Shame before whom?”

“Both the living and the dead. My heart tells me to go back.”

“Then your heart has no place for me.”

“It does have a place for you, but not the way things are now. We could make a life here. People have left their homes since the beginning of time, and some have made better lives for themselves. But I can’t stand the thought of being torn away from my country to be some kind of vagabond in the West. I feel worthless here. I don’t care how rich these countries are—they’ll never be mine. And I’ll never be respected here. I’ll be some kind of foreigner, a migrant, a hobo picking his way through the rich scrap heap of Western Europe or America. My dignity doesn’t allow it.”

She said nothing. Lukas stood and went to her, but she turned away from him. He nevertheless crouched beside her chair and caressed her hair and tried to wipe her cheeks.

“I won’t let anyone kill me so easily,” said Lukas. “I’ll be careful. But we live in certain times and the times shape us in certain ways. I have to be what my time tells me to be.”

“Why are you invoking fate? Think of all those people who did their duty during the war and died for their trouble. Nobody believes in duty anymore. People matter now.”

“There are many things people don’t believe in anymore, but that doesn’t make them any less true. No one escapes his time, whether he’s brave or a coward. No woman either.”

She refused to look at him. He knew he couldn’t console her, so he stood and walked to the window to watch the children playing in the courtyard.

“Zoly promised to stay in touch with you and to help you with money. If you can, wait for me, but only for a while. If you hear nothing for too long, make another life for yourself.”