“How did it happen?”
“An ambush of some kind. Maybe the border patrol expected them.”
“So some of them got away?”
“We’re not sure. Someone might have been taken prisoner. But the point is this: if one was taken prisoner and he talks, there will be a description of you sent around to the police stations. There’s some chance we’re going to be watched, if we aren’t being watched already. Whatever the case, you can’t come back here.”
“I won’t put you in any danger,” Lukas said, and stood up and reached for his bag.
“Don’t be so dramatic. Sit down. Where would you go, anyway?”
“I have to get out to Sweden. I have a contact there.”
“Yes, I know. His name is Lozorius, and you’re in luck. He’s not far away, though not in Gdynia. He got tired waiting to see if you made it here without getting killed.”
“Lozorius is alive?”
“He’s had a few close calls, but he’s lucky. Sometimes the dead rise again.”
“But usually they don’t,” said Sofia.
Her face clouded. There was something bothering her. Dombrowski put his hand on her shoulder and Lukas wondered about the two of them. They were speaking Polish because Dombrowski had no Lithuanian; his wife was the Lithuanian one. How had he come to act as a letter box for the Lithuanian partisans? As a favour to his wife, but for what?
“How do I find Lozorius?”
“I’ll tell you, but keep this in mind: you must not come back here, no matter what trouble you might find yourself in. For all we know, the Polish secret police are sniffing around already.”
The modest city of Puck was a fishing port up the coast. Lukas was to ask for Lozorius at the kitchen door of a convent that housed a tuberculosis hospital just outside town. A sour old doorman in a torn cap barred the door, but the man was swept away by another, younger man who threw his arms around Lukas and embraced him as if they were brothers.
“Thank God you made it!” Lozorius said, and kissed him, an old-fashioned gesture more common among their parents than their own generation.
Lukas had had no such welcome for some time, one reserved for close friends or family, and he was overwhelmed by it and gratified. Lozorius was a demigod, the man who had moved a printing press across Kaunas while the rest of them were quivering in fear of deportation.
Lukas looked at the doorman, who watched them warily. Lozorius followed his gaze.
“Forget about the old man. He can’t do you any harm. Nobody knows who you are in this town, and nobody cares. You’re free here. Get used to it. Besides, none of them understands Lithuanian.”
Lozorius was not a big man, but he had the energy of a host at a country wedding, all good humour, and this exuberance made him seem larger than he was. His ears still stuck out from his head and the hair was receding at the part, making his skull seem very large. Lukas thought of a gambler on a winning streak; cockiness and well-being came off him like a glow, brightening Lukas in its light.
Lozorius had not aged much since Lukas had last seen him on the streets of Kaunas in 1944, but he looked fuller, more substantial, and certainly well fed. His skin had a healthy sheen to it even by comparison with the Poles, who looked better than the Lithuanians.
“I’m glad to find you alive. You’ve become some kind of legend,” said Lukas.
“Legend? For what?”
“You’re famous, our man in the West, but everybody thought you were dead because no news of you has come in for some time.”
Lozorius laughed. “They can’t kill me. I sent letters in, but the lines must have broken down somewhere. Did you bring things out for me too?”
“Yes, I have them in my bag, checked at the train station.”
“We’ll get them later. Let’s find you a room and something to eat and then we’ll have time to talk.”
In a whirl of activity, often assisted by distracted nuns who seemed to want to indulge him, Lozorius found Lukas a room in the hospital on the third floor, where Lukas could see the people coming in and out of the front door. It was a simple nun’s room, with a narrow cot and a table with two chairs, but it was warm and dry, the best room Lukas had stayed in for weeks.
After he had eaten and rested, Lukas walked up to the station with Lozorius, who seemed to have a torrent of words locked up in him that he could let flow at an astonishing rate. Lozorius described the history of the town, once Poland’s only window on the Baltic, the number of patients in the hospital and the incidence of tuberculosis, life in Poland and in Sweden, and half a dozen other subjects. Lukas was bemused by the man’s words, but relieved as well because he didn’t want to talk until they were in some private place.
When they were finally back in Lukas’s room, Lozorius put a half bottle of vodka on the table as well as some sausage and bread.
“Now I need you to tell me a few things about the West,” said Lukas. “That’s what I was sent out here for. First, when can we hope for the war to start?”
“What war?”
“The war between the Americans and the Soviets.”
Lozorius cut off two pieces of sausage, offered one to Lukas on the point of a knife and took the second piece himself. “There isn’t going to be any war, or if there is, it won’t be any time soon. Everybody out here has their own problems.”
“How is this possible?”
“The West is sleeping. It’s like some kind of madhouse, where everyone is going about his own business on the second floor while a fire is burning on the first floor. But you can’t reason with them. They think we’re the crazy ones. They think that nothing is going to happen. If you push them, they concede that it might, and if the Reds attacked, they would take all of Europe to the Pyrenees. But they won’t prepare for it, as if ignoring the problem will keep it from getting worse.”
Lozorius cut another piece of sausage, but Lukas turned it down. “The West has the atomic bomb.”
“And what do you think they’ll do with it? Blow up Moscow?”
“Why not?”
Lozorius laughed in the most frightening way possible. It made Lukas realize he was being ridiculous, yet his line of reasoning was shared by almost everyone he had left behind. It was depressing to know he and the others were so out of touch.
Lozorius poured each of them a shot of vodka. “The world looks different from this place. You’ll see. The first thing you have to learn is that everything important to you is unimportant here. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares. The ones who do know about you sold you to Stalin. Don’t feel bad. You might be able to get something out of them if you prod their consciences, but for the most part they don’t want to see you and they don’t want to hear you. Believe me, I have seen the future. In a decade there will be children who have never heard of the Baltic States, or if they have heard of them, they will mix them up with the Balkans. Already most people think the Ukrainians are the same as Russians, and as for Byelorussians, you might as well forget about them.
“And all of us out here in the West, all of us who came from those places, if we’re noticed at all, are supposed to be fascists and war criminals. Stalin told Truman that there were no Russian prisoners of war, only deserters. So our first problem is that we don’t exist and the second is that if we do, we’re murderers and traitors.”
“Traitors to what?”
“Traitors to the Soviet Union, your homeland and the ally of the Americans, though that last part is getting a little tired now.”
“How can we be traitors to an occupying army?”
“Everything you say is bourgeois rationalization, the intellectual machinations of fascists. The West made a deal with Stalin to defeat the Nazis, and the deal was the Reds can do anything they want. We annoy the West, Lukas. We irritate them and we look funny to them. Especially the intellectuals, who love the Reds better than they love the Americans. It will become clearer to you over time.” Lozorius poured them each a shot of vodka and toasted Lukas wordlessly. Lukas found
he needed the alcohol. When he looked up at Lozorius, he saw that the man’s prominent ears turned red when he drank, a trait Lukas remembered from their student days.
“I don’t see how we can ever expect to free ourselves if there isn’t going to be a war between the Reds and the West,” said Lukas. “What about help with arms for the partisans so we can keep harassing the Reds? Will they at least supply us in our own fight?”
“You’re going to have to pique the interest of the spy agencies if you want to get anything at all.”
The words made Lukas uneasy.
“We’ll speak about that later. Tell me what it’s like in the country now,” said Lozorius.
Lukas began to talk about the new partisan tactic of limited engagements, and of the old dream of centralizing the partisan command structure. Even as he spoke, he could hear himself dramatizing the situation, making the organization seem stronger than it was. He felt as if he were describing his family to an outsider and wanted to cast it in the best light possible. He did say they would not last very long unless the West came through with some kind of support.
“I tell you, you won’t get any support unless you offer them something.”
“Like what?”
“Information. Red Army troop disposition, airfield locations, fuel dumps, the number of ships in port and where they’re from, train schedules, economic news, lists of names and command structures . . .”
“We don’t have any of that.”
“What did you bring?”
“A letter to the Pope from the partisan command. Photographs of dead bodies laid out in marketplaces. Rough numbers of deportees. There have been thousands sent away, tens of thousands. We have identity card samples and various other blanks—passports, police identification, as well as samples of stamps of all sorts.”
“That’s not bad. That’s a good start. I like the letter to the Pope, a nice touch. But then, the Pope doesn’t have any divisions, does he?”
An appeal to the Pope as the highest moral authority had seemed to make perfect sense in Lithuania, but now Lozorius made it sound naive. Lozorius saw Lukas’s discomfort and made him swallow another glass of vodka.
“So what exactly do you intend to do out here?” asked Lozorius.
“To represent the partisans to the Lithuanian government-in-exile, to get help, to raise funds.”
“I’m already doing all that. Too bad communications are so poor—they could have saved the lives of some good men if they hadn’t tried to get you out without checking with me. I could use your help here, of course.”
He let the moment hang in the air. Lukas sensed there was a control issue here. He didn’t care.
“That’s what I’m here for,” said Lukas. “To help.”
Lozorius nodded, accepting the concession.
It was late at night by the time Lozorius finally stood up to go. He left two fingers of vodka in the bottle.
Lukas was tired and this was the first good bed he had been offered in some time, but after Lozorius left he hesitated to lie down until he was sure he would fall asleep quickly. Otherwise, Elena would visit him in his mind. She wasn’t the only ghost—an entire trail of dead had somehow brought him to this comfortable cot in a Polish coastal town. He could not quite understand why they had died and he had lived.
He drank the last of the vodka, took off his shoes and lay down on the bed. But when he closed his eyes, sleep did not come for a long time. Elena was there, always there. First in his waking mind and then in his dreams, until he mercifully fell into unconsciousness.
In the four days that followed, Lukas was visited often by Lozorius as well as by a mute nun who brought him trays of food. Once he had eaten he felt restless, and so Lozorius took him for long walks by the winter sea.
They talked about how long the partisans could hold out. Of the importance of contacting the Ukrainians and other Baltics, the Estonians and Latvians. Of the Polish resistance. Of the terrible killers of Jews, collaborators who had tarred the reputations of their own countries in the West. All of this until the wind off the seas became too much and they returned to drink tea in Lukas’s room.
At the end of the fourth day, Lozorius told him to be ready to leave the next morning. “Write a letter to go back into Lithuania. We’ll drop it with the Dombrowskis.”
“The Dombrowskis asked me not to go there. They said they were being watched.”
“Bakers are nervous types. I’ll do the drop-off on the way to the harbour.”
The following morning, they boarded the train and rode back to Gdynia. Lukas was to wait on a street corner as Lozorius took his letter to the Dombrowskis, but from the distant corner Lukas could see that the door of the shop was locked.
“What does it mean?” Lukas asked when Lozorius returned.
“Who knows? It’s odd to close a shop on a Tuesday, though. I’m going to drop this off at the post office.” He left Lukas at a tea shop and then returned half an hour later and they headed out into the port.
“How is this ‘leaving the country’ done?” Lukas asked.
Lozorius laughed. “Simple. Just watch me.”
It was a windy day, and although the harbour had not frozen in, there were lumps of ice in the eddies around the piers and slick spots on the quays where an unwary walker could slide under the chain at the edge and into the sea. The pier Lozorius took him out upon was empty of people, but there were two ships tied up a hundred yards apart. Lozorius led Lukas up to the second one.
“This is it,” he said.
“You know someone on board?”
“No, but it’s a Swedish ship and it will be going back there eventually. We’ll just set up under a tarp and wait until we get there.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
The drop down to the ship was over three metres, and Lozorius went first so Lukas could drop his backpack down to him. After they had scouted around to make sure no one was looking, they made their way under a tarpaulin on the deck that covered odd pieces of heavy machinery.
“Now we wait,” said Lozorius. “I hope you remembered to put on your long underwear.”
TWELVE
SWEDEN
FEBRUARY 1948
THE LARGE twin-funnelled ferry upon which they had stowed away sailed from Gdynia in Poland to Trelleborg in Sweden, hauling rail cars and trucks. The winter wind seemed to find every gap between the tarp and the deck, and the rocking of the ship made Lukas sick. Lozorius did not seem to be affected, or he didn’t show it. The journey lasted only twelve hours but it felt much longer, and Lukas could barely straighten out his legs for their numbness when it came time to disembark.
The guard at the gangway in Sweden seemed unsurprised when two half-frozen men with large knapsacks appeared at the bottom of the gangplank. Lozorius addressed him in Swedish and the guard escorted them to a small, self-contained room at the customs shed onshore and locked the door behind them.
The whole process had seemed very relaxed, but Lukas did not like being locked up.
“Don’t worry,” said Lozorius. “These are all formalities.”
“In the old days you didn’t like being locked up either.”
“You’re in a new place and you have to adapt to it. The dangers out here are not the same as they were back home.” Lozorius smoked cigarettes and looked out of the window as they waited.
Lukas studied the man across the room from him, draped comfortably across a bench as if between trains in a railway station. Lukas had not known him well when they were students, and it seemed odd that this slight and unpretentious man should have developed such a reputation among the partisans. Maybe it was his very ease in unfamiliar circumstances that gave him his standing. Lozorius knew he was being looked at, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He even seemed to enjoy it.
A policeman came and Lozorius surrendered a revolver he had in an inside pocket of his coat. The policeman set the revolver on a desk and wrote out a receipt fo
r it. A woman appeared with two tin cups of sweet tea and a ten-pack of cigarettes, and then locked them in again.
“What a country,” said Lukas, looking at the burning end of the cigarette. Even the paper seemed fine, almost too fine to burn up. Everything back home was coarse in comparison.
Another policeman came and took Lozorius away for a while.
Lukas had felt comfortable enough in Poland—it was a neighbouring and familiar country—but Sweden was completely unnerving. He was in a foreign country where the rules were utterly unknown to him. The calm proceedings to deal with stowaways seemed odd and a little intimidating, as if he had stumbled into a country of lords and ladies where his peasant background would make him seem uncouth. He was accustomed to watchfulness and danger, yet even when there was no danger the habit of vigilance would not leave him. He felt restless and uneasy. Some part of him wished he could withdraw to the underground again.
Lukas looked out upon the port from the very small window. There was not much to see; a series of carts on steel wheels blocked his view. Sweden was a good country, he hoped, but he really didn’t know.
Two hours later, the door was unlocked and the tea lady took him through the blustering winter wind to a long black car with a driver, where Lozorius was waiting in the back seat. When Lukas got in, he found a boxed lunch with sandwiches and a Thermos of tea as well as a small bottle of aquavit on the seat between them. It was a right-hand-drive car, the first that Lukas had ever seen.
“How did you manage this?” Lukas asked as the driver put the car in gear and drove away.
“They know me here. We’re in for a long drive to Stockholm. Have something to eat and then try to get some sleep. We’ll be driving through the night.”
Not for the first time that day, Lukas wondered how he ever would have managed without Lozorius.
Lukas intended to stay awake, but once he had eaten, it became dark, the fantastically early night of the northern latitude. Then he drank some aquavit and fell asleep with the taste of caraway on his lips. It was a flavour very common in this part of Europe, one that reminded him of home.
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