Underground

by Antanas Sileika

  Lukas looked at Elena, slightly embarrassed by this speech. She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him. “You lift my spirits too, when we’re together. Sometimes I think we should make ourselves some very fine false documents and then find a forgotten corner of this country and settle down to live.” She said it quickly, knowing he wouldn’t like the idea.

  “That would make me a deserter. If Flint or any of the others caught us, we’d be shot.”

  “I know it’s impossible. But on the other hand, the partisans of one district never really know what’s going on in the next one. If we moved over two provinces, we might be able to do it.”

  “To hide from the partisans and to hide from the Reds—we’d be double fugitives. What kind of life would that be?”

  “At least we wouldn’t be doomed.”

  “Doomed?”

  “You can sting the Reds all you want, but they won’t go back home because of you.”

  “Maybe not, but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing they didn’t go unpunished.”

  “That’s what I want too. When I think of my brother, and yours as well, I rage and rage, but feel impotent. Why are the Americans so selfish with their bomb? Why can’t they help us with it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A table and four chairs stood in the corner of the ruined cellar, trash left behind by other scavengers. The chairs looked wobbly and mean. Lukas set his basket upon the table.

  “What do you have there?” Elena asked.

  “Just some beets, but they’re cooked. Are you hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry. I have half a loaf of bread and some cold tea in a bottle.”

  “Then let’s sit down for a moment. How much time do we have before the others arrive?”

  “Maybe an hour, if everything goes well. Do you know what this is all about?”

  “I do, but let’s wait a bit first.”

  By the light from the air shaft, Lukas laid out his eight wrinkled beets on the table and watched as Elena removed a small loaf of dark rye from her briefcase as well as a stoppered half-litre bottle filled with sweet tea.

  “Please, have a seat,” said Lukas, as if he were a waiter in a fine restaurant.

  “Let me do this,” said Elena. “Do you have a knife?”

  Lukas passed her a small pocketknife with which she peeled four of the beets and cut them into quarters, the way a mother might quarter a small orange for her child. She cut two slices of bread for each of them. Even in the bad light, her fingers were bright red. She stuck one of the beet quarters and offered it to Lukas off the end of his knife. He took it and put it in his mouth. When he reached down for the second piece she offered him, his fingers were bright red too.

  “More than anything else, this is what I’m fighting them for,” said Lukas.

  “Beets?”

  He laughed. “No. Some kind of normal life. We shouldn’t be down in a basement like this, hiding away, just because we want to eat together.”

  Elena didn’t reply. She unstoppered the bottle of tea. “We don’t have any glasses,” she said.

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  She lifted the bottle and drank from it and then passed it to Lukas, who drank from it too.

  “Flint asked me to come here first,” said Lukas, “because he wanted us to have a chance to talk to one another for a while in private.”

  “He knows about us?”

  They had met only three times since the night they had first kissed, but each time they had managed to find a little time together.

  “Flint knows everything. We live very close to one another in the bunkers and not much stays secret for long.”

  “Have you talked to the others about me?”

  “How could I not?”

  “And what do men like Lakstingala advise in matters . . . like this?” She had almost said “matters of love” but was too shy to use those words.

  “Lakstingala is not exactly a romantic, but he has a good heart.”

  “So what is this thing that Flint wants us to talk about?”

  “You work in an office in Marijampole, a place where the Reds congregate.”

  “Yes, I know that. What about it?”

  “There are some terrible Russian Reds there and some converts from the Lithuanian side. These are very bad men, as you’ve told me. They’ve sent hundreds to the camps in the North. They’ve sent others to Cheka prisons and permitted the men and women to be tortured. They have tortured people themselves.”

  “Yes, yes. What about them?”

  “We intend to execute them.”

  “All right. Of course. I have no problem with that. But why are you telling me this? Do you need my permission? I can find out exactly where they live, if you like. I could look at their registration cards at work and tell you anything you want.”

  “We’d never get them all. They go about with guards during the day and they sleep in safe places at night. We need to lure them out.”

  “All right, so we’ll lure them out. How?”

  “You could invite them to a party.”

  “I could invite them? To what kind of party?”

  “I don’t know. A name day, maybe.”

  “My name day is the second of March, but the Reds don’t like name days much because they come off the Catholic calendar.”

  “We’ll think of something else. The details don’t matter yet. It’s just the principle. Could you do it?”

  “Be clearer on what you want.”

  “You would invite your colleagues and as many important Reds as would come to a party in your flat. Once they were there, we’d liquidate them.”

  She listened to him and did not reply, falling silent as the meaning of the words sank in. He’d used a euphemism unusual for him. How did one “liquidate” a human being? When she did not speak, Lukas carried on.

  “You wouldn’t have to do anything yourself, but I have to say it wouldn’t be pretty.”

  “And after it was over?”

  “You’d have to flee into the woods with us. Your legal life would be over. One unknown is whether they would come to the party if you invited them.”

  “If I can find some liquor, food and women, they will come. They are very simple men. Roll me a cigarette, please, as I try to understand this.”

  Lukas did as he was told, taking out his supplies. The tobacco was homegrown and rough, and glued papers were hard to find, so he twisted the ends of the paper to make a tight cigarette that would be hard to draw on. He gave it to Elena, who examined it. They both remembered the fine cylinders her brother had made for them the first time they met.

  “I thought you might have come early to this meeting because you missed me a little,” she said.

  “I miss you a great deal. I wish I could be with you always.”

  “But there is business that has to be done first.”

  “The two are intertwined. I didn’t choose the life I’m living now. You said to me that you wanted to leave your old life. You said they were getting suspicious of you at work. This would be your chance to strike back at them, to avenge your brother. And I’d be avenging mine.”

  “And afterward?”

  “We’d be together then. It wouldn’t be an easy life, but we’d have each other.”

  “There aren’t many women right in the underground.”

  “But there are some. Listen to me. I love you. I want to be with you every moment of the day and night.”

  She paused to let the words sink in. “I love you too, but is this the only way we have to be together?”

  “What else could we possibly do?”

  “I don’t know. And if I don’t agree?”

  “Then it’s just one plan among many, a plan we never carried out. That’s all,” said Lukas.

  “And the two of us?”

  “We see each other whenever we can.”

  “What about my plan?” asked Elena.

  “Your plan involved treason.”
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  “And yours involves murder. But if we do nothing, we continue to see each other like we have until now, every few weeks, as the situation presents itself.”

  “Yes. I can’t promise you anything better than that. I’m a soldier. We’re at war.”

  “How would you kill them?”

  “Flint and I thought about using poison, but it turns out poison is harder to get than we imagined.”

  “So?”

  “Flint says I’m the best shot he has. We would bring them into one place, feed them and get them drunk, and then I would shoot them while their guard was down. I understand you have a roommate. We could find a way to keep her away.”

  “She’s as bad as the others at work. She’s discovered the Komsomol.”

  “Then you could invite her, and as many women like her as you can think of.”

  Elena smoked the last of the cigarette and threw it down onto the earthen floor. Lukas stamped it out.

  “Your face is an open book,” said Elena. “Do you think you could mask it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’d have to be all cheerfulness on the surface and a fox beneath that.”

  “You’re speaking as if you’ve made your decision,” said Lukas.

  “I have, almost. But I need you to tell me what’s in your heart. You Lithuanian men are all silence when it comes to your feelings. I have heard that men in other countries are not so circumspect with their thoughts.”

  “Do you want me to say again that I love you?”

  “Yes, of course I want you to say that. The words are very sweet to my ears and I never tire of hearing them. We’re living in an ocean of lies and melancholy, and sometimes I think I can’t bear it anymore. I have to have hope of some kind. I’ll do this thing if you want me to, and I’ll do it for you because you love me, and only for that reason.”

  “I do love you.”

  She took his hands in hers and examined his fingers, now just as red as hers. She shook her head and laughed a little, and then pulled him forward, kissing across the table.

  EIGHT

  LATE SUMMER, 1946

  PETRAS was an alcoholic forger who had stumbled into Flint’s realm and now chafed under the restrictions of the teetotalling partisan leader.

  “No liquor, no work,” said Petras, crossing his arms and looking to his wife, who sat pale and trembling at the kitchen table of the American farmer. To the unease of the American, the partisans used his house more and more often for rendezvous. He wished he could send his children somewhere, but there was nowhere to send them. Thus he became the ambivalent host to partisan meetings and a post office for underground messages.

  The forger’s greasy black hair had several cowlicks at the ears and the crown, and his suit, tie and collar were both dirty and badly mended. Lukas wondered how such a man, such a couple, ever came to exist. The war gave birth to unlikely pairings: Petras was a country teacher on his way down whereas his wife had been a village slattern who was improving herself with him until the liquor took the upper hand.

  Flint stood over the couple at the long wooden table, with Lukas and the American by the door and Lakstingala outside, watching out for Reds.

  Petras and his wife were now itinerant forgers, who travelled from village to village creating false documents for payment of samagonas, the home-distilled liquor that every farmer made from whatever was at hand. Petras could re-create official-looking imprints of government stamps out of wood blocks, and his wife had a large collection of blank government forms and suitable paper, as well as the punch used to attach and seal photos to passports, travel documents and military exemptions.

  As far as Lukas could see, the man and his wife never ate, but never looked drunk either. Their skill was marvellous, but when they made their way into Flint’s realm, he forbade their travelling any farther and kept them under his control. A forger was useful, but a drunken one was dangerous. Sooner or later he would be caught by the Cheka and tell everything he had done for a glass of vodka. Flint kept him at various safe farmhouses and tried to wean him off alcohol. None of the partisans was permitted to drink, and Flint hated to make an exception for the forger.

  “The alcohol will kill you both,” said Flint. “I’m doing you a favour.”

  “And how do you expect us to work?” asked Petras. “Look at my wife. She’s trembling so much it would be a waste of paper to have her touch anything. And I’m not much better.”

  “These are petty, personal problems,” said Flint. “We’re at war.”

  “If you have a sliver under your fingernail, it hurts whether you’re at war or not. If you’re starving, you can’t fight.”

  “Alcohol is not food.”

  “It is to us. You’re starving us to death. Every animal has its own needs. The fox wants flesh and the crow wants grain. Only the pig will eat anything, and we’re not pigs.”

  Flint hated to forgo his principles. His principles had brought him into the forest. His principles had kept him there for two years while dozens of his best men died in battle, or were taken prisoner, or blew themselves up to avoid capture.

  “One small glass each,” said Flint, tapping his pipe on the table to underline his concession.

  “One large glass before and one large glass after,” said Petras, and so their haggling began, resulting, after much bickering, in medium glasses before and after the job.

  Flint put his pipe in his mouth and lit it. He looked at Lukas through the pipe smoke with a hint of accusation. So much trouble just to get the forger to make a top-quality pass for Lukas’s personal trip. Although Flint had promised the trip to Lukas, he was not happy about it.

  Flint was grudging about giving leaves to his men. Partisans went off on private business and never came back. They stopped for a drink at a former neighbour’s house and drank themselves into a stupor, and then wandered the streets until a group of slayers took them down. They went to attend family weddings and exposed themselves to the whole neighbourhood, and were followed back to their bunkers by spies. Time wore the men down, and some betrayed their former comrades for the promise of a soft bed.

  But Lukas was something of a special case, and for him Flint was prepared to make an exception. Like Lozorius in the past, Lukas had developed a reputation. He shot dead a roomful of Reds in Marijampole with the help of his fiancée. He was good for the morale of the people, whose only real news came through whispers and the underground newspapers, and whose news was almost invariably bad. A man with a reputation could be given a little leeway.

  And finally there was the matter of Lukas’s growing signs of distraction. He had fallen irredeemably in love with Elena, from whom he had been separated to keep each of them safe. Flint had managed to keep them apart for four months, hoping Lukas’s feelings would cool, but his ardour hadn’t cooled at all.

  On the night of the engagement party the previous April, Flint was waiting for them with the sleigh as planned.

  “How many dead?” he asked as soon as they stepped into the sleigh and the driver cracked the whip at the pair of horses.

  “Five dead and one wounded.”

  “You let him get away?”

  “The accordionist.”

  “You should have killed him too. Now the Chekists will be on our tails very fast.”

  Elena and Lukas had melted into one another under the woollen blankets, but they came alive again when the sleigh met another one a few kilometres away at a crossroads.

  “Lukas, into the other sleigh,” Flint had ordered.

  Elena shot up. “Where are you taking him?”

  “I’m separating you for your own good. The pair of you will be a prize the Reds hunt hard.”

  “I want to go with him,” said Elena.

  “You’ll do as I say.”

  “No. You made a promise. I did this to help you and to be with Lukas. You’re breaking your side of the bargain. Do that and I quit you right now.”

  “You cannot quit the partisan
s. There is no quitting once you’re in.”

  “Then shoot me dead right here. I refuse to be separated.”

  “Lukas,” said Flint, “tell her I’m right.”

  “I won’t do any such thing. You promised.”

  “Yes, I did. But not to let you stay together right away. We need to disperse for a little while.”

  “How long?” asked Elena.

  “A few weeks at most. Now, come on.”

  “Wait,” said Elena. She took Lukas by the hands. “Do you promise to come back for me?”

  “I will. As soon as I can.”

  “Don’t die. Be very careful not to get yourself killed or captured, if only for my sake. You owe me that.”

  He kissed her, and then stepped into the other sleigh and sped down a branching road.

  It had taken longer than a few weeks, but now he was going for her.

  After drinking their glasses of samagonas, Petras and his wife regained their colour and set to business, laying out their stamps, inks, pens and papers. Lukas went out to join Lakstingala on sentry duty, finding him seated near the barn with his back against a haystack. Like a sailor, Lakstingala wore his stocking cap in all weather, even the summer heat. He was a comforting man to sit beside because, although he was compact, he seemed to contain great strength, a reserve of potential energy that he could harness if he needed to.

  “The smell of hay always reminds me of harvests and afternoon naps. It makes me sleepy,” said Lukas, settling in beside Lakstingala. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll drop off?”

  “I never fall asleep on sentry duty,” said Lakstingala. “If I did, I would have been dead long before this.”

  They each knew many dead, in addition to Vincentas and Ungurys. Almost a dozen men had fallen that day in Merkine, and twice as many in the year afterward. New men came to join them, but Flint, Lakstingala and Lukas were among the veterans, men you could be sure of, not only because of their experience but also because of their luck. Caution and skill were important for survival, but so was luck. Why did some fall in a firefight and not others? At any moment the three dice of skill, caution and fate were tumbling; a partisan could control two of the variables, but not the third.