Antanas Sileika - Underground

Karpis hated this kind of work. One more prize like Lukas and they might have let him retire, but now he would have to keep this up, risking his neck again and again when he wished he could just sit by the fire once the cold winds blew in.

LITHUANIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

DECEMBER 1949

FIRST THE CEMETARY in the Jewish Pine Forest had been rendered unneeded when most of the Jews were slaughtered in 1941, and now, eight years later, the cemetery was rendered derelict by the absence of their progeny. A stone-and-board fence had surrounded the old cemetery. The fence was a wreck, the boards gone and the graves inside overgrown and untended. The brick gatehouse was burnt out, the roof gone and the windows empty of both glass and frames. There was a small chalked X by the gatehouse entranceway where double doors had once stood. Checking to make sure no one saw him, Lukas took the piece of chalk he had carried from Sweden and put a circle beside the X.

He found a copse of trees and tall grasses and hid his pack, and then carefully made his way to a vantage point where he could see the village of Rumsiskes. From a distance it looked completely unchanged. If he suspended his knowledge for a moment he could imagine going into town to visit the market and some of the Jewish shops. He knew the illusion required distance, and he had no desire actually to descend into the town.

Then he made his way to the other side of the hill to look for the family farm, but could not find it. Unsettled by its absence, he thought he was confused, and checked his bearings again. He went back into the forest and recognized the dune where he had played as a child. Many things were pretty much unchanged, though the trees were taller and the light fell through them in a different way, making them strange. When he went back to look for the farmhouse, it still did not appear. The house, the outbuildings, the fruit trees and the currant bushes were all gone. Even the fences had been torn up. In their place lay plowed land, the furrows crooked in places.

If ever there was a time when he felt his days were as grass, this was it. A wind had descended on the land and all those he had known were gone, and many of their works as well. Unnerved for the first time since his return, Lukas went back to the place where he had stowed his gear and waited through the night.

In the morning, he set himself up in the scrub undergrowth where he could watch the burnt-out gatehouse to the cemetery. A pair of boys came through that day, young vandals who knocked down a couple more headstones. They depressed him, but he could not go out and chastise them. Two more days passed until a shepherd came by, looked over the gatehouse and walked on. He did not have a flock with him but did carry a stick. Lukas shadowed him for a while, and when the man sat down with his back to a tree, still within the Jewish Pine Forest and still at a distance from any houses, Lukas approached him where he sat with his cloak thrown over his head against the cold.

“Did you hear a nightingale?” Lukas asked.

Lakstingala lifted the cloak off his face. “Where?”

“In the copse of trees across from the gatehouse.”

Lakstingala looked at him hard, and then rose and threw his arms around Lukas and embraced him tightly. Lukas could feel the rifle under the cloak as well as Lakstingala’s thin body.

“I’m glad my letter reached you and I’m pleased to find you alive,” said Lukas. For the first time since he had arrived in Lithuania, he was in the company of a man he could trust. But if he had not known it was Lakstingala, he wouldn’t have been able to recognize him from a distance. He had always been a small, tough man, but he seemed to have shrunk. Although it was only early winter, his face was pale, his eyes watery.

“I’m the last of the old partisans in our group,” said Lakstingala.

“Flint is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how.”

“I don’t know much. He loaned me to another group of partisans and I barely saw him anymore. They say they took him by ambush last spring when he was out gathering wild strawberries. He didn’t even have any weapons and he was dressed as a civilian. The Cheka troops were lying on the forest floor under the ferns, and they rose up and started to fire without any warning. Two others were killed and he was badly wounded, but taken alive.

“They brought in a couple of local farmers to identify him, but the farmers said he was just some berry picker and the Chekists became worried that they’d shot the wrong men. Flint died without saying anything and they buried him nearby, not far from the base where you and I first met. But one of the slayers must have mentioned that he had a French calendar, and the Cheka knew Flint spoke French. The Chekists figured it out. They dug up the body, identified him and then threw the body back out in the Merkine market square.”

“The town we held for a day.”

“Right. They have an idea of symmetry. His wife came to claim the body, and she and her children were sent to Irkutsk.”

Lukas had not even known Flint had a wife or children. He was saddened to hear of his leader’s death. “And what about you, my friend? How did you survive so long?”

Lukas looked deeply for the man who had taken him out on his first mission five years earlier, but could not see him. On the other hand, the young man whom Lakstingala had taken out was not there any longer either.

“I was lucky. I broke my leg not long after you left. I stepped in a posthole at night and snapped the bone just above my ankle. It took a very long time to knit properly. Death probably came looking for me then out in the fields, but I was lying in bed and couldn’t be found. Death’s been looking for me ever since.”

“It’ll find us all in good time.”

Lakstingala looked past Lukas, ever vigilant, watching for movement in the forest. “I don’t suppose you’re bringing good news in from the West, are you?” he asked.

“No. They’ve finally become interested in us, but no one is going to fight a war for us.”

“Then why did you come back? You could have saved yourself.”

“I came back for Elena.”

Lakstingala shook his head. “What makes you think she came back to life?”

Lukas told him about Lozorius and his message and the help from the British. Lakstingala had not seen Lozorius for years and did not know where he was, but he might be able to find him. As for Elena, he was less sure.

“The story stinks,” said Lakstingala. “For one thing, Flint never told me about it while he was alive. For another, I’ve heard of people I thought were alive being dead, but not the other way around. Not anymore. And anyway, what good did you think you’d do Elena if you did find her alive? If it’s true, you’ll open old wounds. By now she thinks you’re dead or she knows you got out and hopes to receive a Red Cross package someday. And if she’s not dead, she might be in Siberia.”

“Why are you so angry?”

“Because it irritates me that you’re throwing your life away. Most partisans are like men with cancer—we’re doomed. But you had a chance to escape.”

“Didn’t we all swear to follow orders? Didn’t we all swear to fight until the end?”

“Of course we did, but we’ve reached the end. We reached it some time ago. So many lives destroyed and now you have to throw yours away too.”

“I have no intention of throwing my life away. I intend to find Elena and to take her out of here.”

“How? Through Poland? All the Lithuanians who lived on that side have been moved away from the border. The Polish partisans have been wiped out and we don’t get any help from there anymore. The first Pole who sees you will turn you in or shoot you.”