Antanas Sileika - Underground

Merkine had two and a half thousand inhabitants by 1950, not so few that a stranger would be remarked upon but not so many that Lukas would go unnoticed. He needed to wait until evening in order to enter the town.

“I’ll stay here for a while after you go in,” said Lakstingala. “If you’re in trouble, try to make it this way and I can cover you from the forest if you need to run across the bare field.”

“The earth is still wet. If I have to run across the bare field, I’ll be a dead man. Once I disappear from your view into the town, go back and make yourself safe. And if I don’t come back, don’t go looking for me.”

“All right.”

Lukas studied the house on the other side of the field. He had once shot a sniper who was inside that window.

“If anything happens to me,” he said, “do what you can for Elena.”

“All right.”

Lukas looked at Lakstingala, but the partisan would not meet his eyes. “Not that I expect to outlive you, but did you want to tell me anything about your wife in case something happens to you ?” asked Lukas.

“I think I’d rather you didn’t know anything about her at all.”

“There’s a chance we could all make it out together. I could take Lozorius and Elena, and you could take your wife. Five of us might be able to do it.”

“It’s not just my wife. We have a daughter, and I wouldn’t want to leave her behind. Besides, there are still a few partisans around, and I’m the oldest one among them. They make jokes about me all the time, and it would be bad for morale if I suddenly disappeared. I think I’m not going anywhere, unless it’s northeast, and I’ll put that off as long as I can.”

It was hard to separate this time, and they lingered by the edge of the forest.

“There’s one more thing. I wouldn’t mind getting word out to the West whether I make it or not,” said Lukas. “I’ve written a letter. Do you think you could try to get it out if anything happens to me?”

“I thought Lozorius said the British and the Swedes were infiltrated.”

“That may be so, but it’s not them I’m worried about. There are people who helped me out there—I had a whole other life…”

Lakstingala held up his hand. “I don’t want to know. Do you have the letter?”

“Yes.”

“Hand it over.”

Lakstingala did not even look at the address. Lukas glanced up at the evening sky. It was still a little too early to go into the town, but he couldn’t wait.

“Do you think this country will ever be free?” Lukas asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know. One thing is sure: we won’t live to see it.” He said it so readily that he must have said it before and it must have been what the other partisans believed.

“One more thing,” said Lukas.

“Are you never going to leave?”

“About Lozorius.”

“What about him?”

“If something happens to me, he’ll lose his last hope for getting out of the country.”

“My heart is bleeding.”

“Why are you so hard on him?”

“He’s too dramatic for me. He played the hero—a kind of Robin Hood. The pose was too good not to be false.”

“Didn’t you once call me Robin Hood as well?”

“You’re different. I watched you grow up with the partisans. I tell you, when we went out on that first mission, you were pitiful. But later, what you did with Elena at that engagement party, that was astonishing.”

“I’m not so sure I’m proud of that anymore. We killed so many, and what good did it do us?”

“It stung the bastards a bit. But as for your regret, that’s what makes you different from Lozorius. Don’t worry about him. If something happens to you, I’ll change his diaper for him. Anyway, listen, I’m sick of this ‘end of days’ talk. I have another bottle of liquor waiting for us on the table back at the bunker—homebrew, but not too bad. Go find Elena now. See how things are. Then, when you come back, we’ll drink and talk it all through.”

There was nothing more to say. They embraced. Lukas had an assault rifle under his long coat, a revolver in one pocket and a hand grenade in the other. It was still too bright, but he had to leave now. He picked his way carefully across the wet field to the edge of town, stood beside a house and waved to Lakstingala, who waved back and then stepped into the forest and disappeared.

Lukas stood at the side of a house and cleaned the mud off his boots before he went into the town proper.

Bearing a sheaf of poems, Rimantas had come looking for Lukas a while earlier. He went to the bunker where Lukas lived and called out his name but didn’t hear any response. He listened by the lid and heard snoring, so he tapped lightly on the door and then opened it to see Lozorius stretched out on the lower bunk, sleeping. There was an empty bottle on the small table and the bunker smelled of liquor.

Rimantas knew who Lozorius was, remembered him from their school days. He knew a great deal more than people gave him credit for.

Rimantas opened his briefcase and set his poems down on the small table. He had intended to read them to Lukas; maybe Lozorius would like to hear them instead. Rimantas sat down on a chair, intending to wake him up gently, but he hesitated. If he felt the least threat, a man like Lozorius would start shooting as soon as he opened his eyes.

Rimantas had a hand grenade and a pistol in his briefcase beneath the place where his poems had lain. He closed the briefcase.

Rimantas sat for a while and studied Lozorius’s face. Like Lukas, Lozorius had been abroad and chose to return. What a fool. He should have stayed away while he could. Rimantas himself wished he had chosen to emigrate, but he was a poet and one could not pick up a new language so easily as to be able to write verses in it. What a shame that poetry was not valued very much under the present circumstances, when collectivization and industrialization were all the newspapers talked about.

Rimantas looked at the sleeping Lozorius, the man who had killed dozens of Chekists and slayers if the legends were true. He did not look all that powerful while he was asleep. He looked rather vulnerable.

But that was probably an illusion. Lozorius was a wild man, and the more Rimantas thought about his reputation, the less comfortable he felt sitting in the same bunker with the sleeping man. Maybe Lozorius was only feigning sleep. The more Rimantas thought these thoughts, the more nervous he became. He could not stay there.

Rimantas collected his poems, crept out of the bunker, closed the door and stepped in among the trees to consider his options. His heart was beating madly and he needed to calm down.

He was irritated by the situation he found himself in. These men, Lukas and likely Lozorius, were the only ones who might understand his poetry. They were exactly the kind of intellectual audience he wanted. Not Lakstingala, of course. He was a peasant through and through, sturdy but with practically no subconscious to speak of.

Things were not going according to plan. His instructions were to go with Lukas and Lakstingala to find out where Lozorius was hiding. The authorities wanted to take the radio as well as the three men. The second-best plan was to discover when Lozorius came to this bunker. Rimantas was to inform the authorities so all three could be taken. Now Lozorius was here, but Rimantas did not feel inclined to inform the authorities of anything. Something was up in Merkine. There was a suppressed buzz in the town.

The Cheka workers were of very low calibre. Most of them did not even have a high school education, and half of them were alcoholics. If Rimantas had had any ambition in that way, he could have made quite a career in the Cheka. But the Cheka men were idiots and, worse, boring, and he had no interest in spending his life with boring men and drunks. He had a higher calling. In a better world he would have been left alone to work on his poetry. In the Middle Ages he might have been a monk of some kind.