Underground

by Antanas Sileika

  UNDERGROUND

  A NOVEL

  UNDERGROUND

  Antanas Sileika

  THOMAS ALLEN PUBLISHERS

  TORONTO

  Copyright © 2011 Antanas Sileika

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Sileika, Antanas, 1953–

  Underground / Antanas Sileika.

  ISBN 978-0-88762-736-1

  I. Title.

  PS8587.I2656U53 2011 C813'.54 C2010-907342-8

  Editor: Janice Zawerbny

  Jacket design: Michel Vrána

  Jacket photo: Snaige Sileika

  Published by Thomas Allen Publishers,

  a division of Thomas Allen & Son Limited,

  390 Steelcase Road East

  Markham, Ontario L3R 1G2 Canada

  www.thomasallen.ca

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of

  The Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which

  last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the

  Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada

  through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

  1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11

  Printed and Bound in Canada by Transcontinental Printing

  Text Printed on a 100% PCW recycled stock.

  There was, I knew, blood beneath the verdure and tombs in the deep glades of oak and fir. The fields and forests and rivers had seen war and terror, elation and desperation; death and resurrection; Lithuanian kings and Teutonic knights, partisans and Jews; Nazi Gestapo and Stalinist NKVD. It is a haunted land where greatcoat buttons from six generations of fallen soldiers can be discovered lying amidst the woodland ferns.

  —SIMON SCHAMA, Landscape and Memory

  For the six generations

  Contents

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  PART TWO

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  PART THREE

  TWENTY

  TWENTY - ONE

  TWENTY - TWO

  TWENTY - THREE

  TWENTY - FOUR

  TWENTY - FIVE

  TWENTY - SIX

  TWENTY - SEVEN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART ONE

  ONE

  AN ILL-DEFINED BORDERLINE wavers somewhere around the middle of Europe; its precise location has not been stable over the decades. At present, on the far side of this boundary, the Eastern side, lies a zone where beer and hotels are cheaper than they are in the West, and so planeloads of young men travel there to drink, far from the eyes of wives and girlfriends. Indiscretions, transgressions and sometimes even crimes committed on the far side of this line don’t really count.

  Once, the line was a metaphor called the Iron Curtain, and before that it followed a jagged course along the borders of countries freed from the Hapsburg and Czarist empires. Like the mythical town of Brigadoon, these countries appeared for only a short time between the wars, before they disappeared from memory for fifty years in 1940.

  What followed was such a confusing war on that side of Europe! The war was much easier to understand in the West, where the forces of more or less good triumphed in May 1945. On the Eastern side, on the other hand, the messy side, the war sputtered on in pockets for another decade, fought by partisans who came out of their secret bunkers by night.

  When that fighting finally ended, sullen resistance went more deeply underground, to be nurtured in memory, as well as buried in hidden archives below the earth or left to moulder in the files of the secret police, called the Cheka, where no one was ever likely to look. Aboveground lay a series of police states.

  This place was somewhat quaint, yet so much more brutal than the West. It was a place where generations were mown down as soon as they were tall enough to meet the scythe. And yet many lives went on in their own way, even during the worst of the fighting.

  On a cold, snowy April evening in 1946, in the Lithuanian provincial capital of Marijampole, an engagement party was taking place on the second storey of a wooden house with four flats, a house not far from the exquisite train station, where railway cars of goods and captives rumbled by eastward with great frequency.

  When Lukas walked into the kitchen to get another bottle of vodka late that night, he found Elena with her back to him, leaning over the counter, her curly brown hair loose. He could see the tension in her shoulders, squared and stiff, as if braced for a blow. After a moment she turned and looked at him.

  Elena’s brown eyes were very large, a little moist from the cigarette smoke in the flat. She wore a dark grey wool suit, her work clothes, with a natural linen blouse beneath the jacket and an amber pendant on a silver chain.

  Behind her on the white ceramic counter lay two massive loaves of black bread, one of them almost finished, a large dish of herring and onions, the remains of a cooked goose, a ham and a string of sausages. Elena had worked hard to get her hands on so much food, rare in these postwar years, and the scent of it had helped to bring the seven distinguished guests.

  The accordionist in the next room was playing a jaunty dance version of “J’ai Deux Amours,” a tune that Elena remembered from before the war. Her mother and father had danced to the recording in their house, the French doors open to the garden. It had been an anniversary or a name day, she couldn’t remember which.

  It didn’t matter. Her mother was dead, her father gone, the house destroyed.

  Looking into her eyes, Lukas realized he should comfort Elena, but he was not feeling altogether calm at their engagement party either. He was sweating profusely. He was slim and fair and wore a threadbare two-piece suit with a jacket that was a little too long for him, as well as a sweater vest mended at the collar and a red tie and puff. On reflection, he realized these adornments were a little exaggerated, almost provocative, but there was no way to remove them once the guests had seen them.

  Lukas was unaccustomed to being inside a flat with so many people, unaccustomed to the niceties of conversation, of saying one thing and meaning another. He found it hard to keep his feelings buried, and the struggle was showing, but he needed above all to support Elena.

  Lukas glanced at the engagement ring on her hand. It was a very thin gold band with a tiny red stone, not much better than a high school girl’s first ring, but the best he could do. There wasn’t much jewellery around, and those who had it didn’t show it.

  Elena flinched as he put his hands around her neck and looked into her eyes.“We don’t have to go through with this if you can’t do it,” he said. “Nobody would blame you.”

  “Not even you?”

  “Especially not me.”

  “It’s been a very short engagement, after all,” said Elena.

  She was joking.
A good sign.“A whirlwind romance,” he agreed. He left his hands where they were, around her neck. He wanted to kiss her but felt awkward, didn’t know if that was permitted now.

  Lukas heard the kitchen door open and he pressed into Elena, his middle tight against hers as if they were making love. He kissed her, the pressure of her lips obliterating all other thoughts for a moment.

  “I wondered where you two were,” a voice said. “There’ll be plenty of time for kisses later. Get back in here.”

  Gedrius was the district chairman, the first to have arrived that evening and therefore the drunkest of them all. He’d taken off his jacket and loosened his tie, and his shirttails now hung out at the back. He had stained his shirt and talked much too much, but he was affable, almost lovable in his own way, or anyway, better than the rest. Gedrius and the others came from a different world, one of documents and rubber stamps, boardrooms and meetings, dust and sheaves of paper pinned together. Not like Lukas’s world at all.

  To fortify Lukas’s stomach against the drink, Elena had served him half a glass of cooking oil before the evening began. It had made him gag at the time, but now he was holding up better against the vodka than he had expected. Maybe too well. He couldn’t feel the alcohol at all.

  Elena shook out her curls and brushed her fingers through her hair, and then linked hands with Lukas. “Give us a moment and we’ll be right out.”

  “All right, but don’t delay too much. Everyone’s dying to spend a little time with you.”

  As Gedrius stepped back, Lukas could see briefly into the other room, where the two beds had been pushed aside to make a small dance floor beyond the dining table. The others were dancing in the dimly lit room: Elena’s roommate with the director of the Komsomol, and her sister, Stase, with the city chairman. Two candles lit the dining table because the electricity went off at ten each night. Vinskis kept wanting to talk to Gedrius about some internal passports stolen from the office where he worked, and he took the man by the arm as soon as he stepped out of the kitchen.

  “You’re a bundle of nerves too,” said Elena. “Call it off. We can cool down for a while and try this again later.”

  “I wish I could call it off, but I can’t. It’s too late. Did you see the look he gave me when he walked into the kitchen?”

  “I didn’t see anything. What are you talking about?”

  “Vinskis suspects me. He must have said something to Gedrius.”

  “Do you want to get out of here?”

  “Vinskis and Gedrius are by the door.”

  “Say you’re going to the toilet.”

  “They might not let me pass. Do you want to wait in here?”

  “No, I promised I’d help you. I’m going with you.” Her willingness made him feel warm toward her, but the emotion was brief. He had other things on his mind now.

  “Do you have your handbag?” asked Lukas.

  “Under the table.” Elena reached beneath the table and withdrew her bag. Inside the other room, the accordionist started up another tune. “Be careful of my sister.”

  Lukas nodded and reached into his pockets. He held the Walther PP in his right hand because it was heavier and had eight rounds. The lighter PPK with seven rounds was in his left. Elena had one in her handbag as well.

  When Elena opened the kitchen door for him, Lukas strode out with his arms extended and turned first to face Vinskis and Gedrius because they were standing and their own pistols would be easy to get to, whereas the men sitting at the table would need to rise first. Lukas fired at Vinskis, two shots to the neck, and the man’s head rolled onto his chest as he collapsed. Gedrius, for all his drunkenness, had his own pistol halfway out of his pocket when Lukas fired at him. The man went down.

  The accordionist stopped playing and stared at them, but Elena’s roommate was more cool-headed and leaned forward to blow out one of the candles. The other two men were rising from their chairs.

  Lukas fired with his left hand, but his shots went wild. Elena killed them for him. Her roommate opened her mouth to say something, but Lukas did not want to hear it. He fired once at her forehead and she went down too.

  “Let’s go,” said Elena.

  “Wait.”

  Lukas went toward Elena’s sister, Stase, who had fallen from her chair and pulled herself to a wall, where she stared at them with terrified eyes. Lukas crouched down to look her in the face.

  “I have to do this for your own good,” he said. Lukas had to act quickly before Elena intervened.

  Stase’s lower lip was trembling and her eyes were wild with fear. Lukas stepped back and took aim at her. If he was too close, he might leave powder burns. If he stood too far away, he might miss in either direction.

  Stase shut her eyes as Lukas fired, and then she yelped with pain and the blood came down her arm. Lukas turned quickly to face Elena before she could shoot him, which she might do if she misunderstood. “Stase has to be wounded or the Chekists will say she was part of this all along,” said Lukas.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I couldn’t. It was too dangerous.”

  Elena’s face was flushed. The room was filled with blood, splatters up on the wall, pools on the floor among the wreckage of bodies and overturned chairs.

  Elena dropped her hand with the pistol in it and crouched down beside Stase.“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. When the Chekists come, you can honestly say you didn’t know anything. They’ll let you go.”

  “You’ve turned into a monster. I don’t even know who you are.”

  There was no time. As Elena stood up, the accordionist, wounded in the throat by a ricochet, struggled up from his chair and charged out the door with the accordion still on his shoulders. The instrument squawked like a frightened animal all the way down the staircase. The Komsomol director began to stir from where he had fallen beneath the table, tried to rise, and Lukas fired another shot into him.

  The neighbours would soon overcome their terror and go to the militia. Lukas and Elena put on their coats, closed the door behind them, and walked down the steps and out onto the street. It was snowing. There was a sleigh for them a few blocks away, near the train station.

  The streets were empty and profoundly silent. If a militiaman passed by, he would be sure to ask them for their documents just for something to do. Elena tried to pick up her pace, but Lukas held her back slightly so they would not seem to be rushing.

  “We did it!” he whispered.“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “It was so easy to kill those two hateful men, but so strange. What must you think of me now?” asked Elena.

  “I love you even more.”

  “I feel light-headed, good in a way, yet it was unbearable. I’ll never be the same.”

  “No, you won’t. I wasn’t like this either. But we have to strike back, even if it means hardening our hearts.”

  Elena would need to do that. Her heart was beating wildly at the moment, so hard that she was afraid it would burst in her chest. She was holding Lukas’s arm and now she gripped it more tightly.

  Lukas enjoyed the pressure of her hand on his arm. They so rarely had the opportunity to touch one another. He had killed many others before this, but never at such close quarters, and never after talking and eating together. It was all horrible, yet the killing had brought Elena to him again.

  TWO

  LITHUANIA

  SUMMER 1944

  THE JEWISH PINE FOREST in the county of Rumsiskes did not have many pine trees left. What trees there were stood in twos and threes on the ancient sand dune, which had been mostly taken over by tufts of giant grasses, many taller than a man and so tough that even goats would not eat them. The sand dune drank up whatever liquid was poured onto it, from the urine of boys, to the tears of heartbroken girls, to the blood from battle-inflicted wounds. But where these liquids disappeared to was anyone’s guess; the dune was dry as bones.

  The nearby village of Rumsiskes consisted of a fe
w hundred houses strung along several streets, with farm fields running right up to the back doors. Death came by this way very often, fording the river Nemunas to kill again and again. It came with the Teutonic Knights in 1381, with the Swedes in the Northern Seven Years’ War of 1563, with the Russians in the Great Northern War of 1700, and with Napoleon’s army in 1812. Then came a long period of uneasy servitude to the czars until independence in 1918. Death had visited again in recent times, as the town traded hands between the Reds and the Germans.

  If there were few pines in the Jewish Pine Forest, there were still fewer Jews. Killed shortly after the German “liberation” by the Nazis and their local helpers, the Jews were buried in a mass grave by the Kaunas road.

  In the summer of 1944, it was unclear how long the Germans would hold back yet another assault from the Red Army on the other side of the Nemunas River. If the current chief of police lingered in Rumsiskes too long, the Reds would blame him for collaboration with the Nazis. The police chief before him lay dead in his grave; the locals had accused him of collaboration with the Reds the first time they came, in 1940. The police chief before that, during the independence period, had been beaten and sent off to die in Siberia. The Reds had accused him of collaboration with the independent government.

  The town lay in a bend of the river, a very old route for the exportation of lumber or the transit of armies. There were several barrow hills in the county as well, and the ruins of a hill fort, of which nothing remained but the cellar. Thus the hill had a sunken top, like a volcano, where some of the locals had hidden during the current artillery barrage from the Red Army, having fled up the hill like their ancestors from centuries past. One night the cellar suffered a direct hit, and the hilltop blazed like a true volcano, with wounded adults and burning children rushing and tumbling down from the top as far as the places where they died, frozen in their descent like lava that had solidified after an eruption.

  The Petronis family farm bordered the sand dune, on the side opposite the town of Rumsiskes, and although crops would grow grudgingly on their property, the earth was not particularly fertile, so the farmer and his wife encouraged their three sons to study and make other lives for themselves. The farm itself could be the dowry of their sister, the youngest. But all their plans were muddled by the war. None of the boys, not even Lukas, the eldest, had finished his studies. He was a lithe optimist who refused to be discouraged by this setback, although it was trying at times to be home again, where his parents expected so much of him and his younger brothers occasionally resented his care. The second son, Vincentas, had also been sent back from the seminary for his own safety, to wait out the passing of the front.