Zoly smiled ruefully. “You’re bored to tears, Lukas. This isn’t the life for you.”
It was a kind of insult, but a relief as well. Lukas took the shot of Calvados in his hand and finished it. He regretted his weakness when he looked up and saw Zoly’s faint smile. “You’ve travelled to Paris to tell me how I should live?”
“Coming into this place for nightcaps every evening? You may not be an alcoholic yet, but you will be soon enough at this rate. You can’t even afford these drinks. You’d be better off drinking at home alone after Monika goes to sleep.”
Her name on his lips sounded a little dirty. “Have you come to make me an offer?”
“I have.”
“What is it?”
“Let’s go for a walk. I’m uncomfortable talking in this place.”
“What for? You made a spectacle of yourself in the window. If anyone was looking for you, they could have seen you easily enough.”
“Yes. I wanted the French to see me if they were watching, but I’m not so eager for them to hear me. The Americans either, if they’re bothering, which I doubt. Maybe even the Soviets are here. This whole crowd could be made up of spies, for all we know. You can finish your beer before we go out, if you like.”
Lukas stood up to go without touching his glass, but he regretted the beer he was leaving behind and then was embarrassed by the regret. They walked out. It was a cool night but the streets were somewhat full. They walked in the direction of the Bastille.
“Do you have any news?” Lukas asked.
“Odds and ends. More important, we finally have some interested parties. The Russian bomb and the Chinese Communists have excited the Americans to look for traitors among themselves. There are plenty enough of those, but they’ll never find them all. The British are better off because of their class system. The upper classes are all playing for the same team and they’ll never betray it. We have a very good relationship with the Americans, actually. We do many things together.”
“What about the partisans in Lithuania? Is there a central command structure now? Have the British provided arms and radio contact?”
“You want to know an awful lot for a man who’s no longer in the game. I can say some things are very bad, but there’s always hope they’ll get better.”
Lukas was exasperated. “All right, then, you don’t have to tell me anything except for this. Why are you wasting my time? If you want something, tell me what it is.”
“We were just wondering if you’d like to make a return visit for us.”
“To Lithuania?”
“Obviously.”
“What for?”
“There are a couple of pieces of equipment that have broken down. We need someone to bring in replacements.”
“The last time around you wanted me to assist Lozorius. Now you just want a courier.”
“More than a courier. Someone we can trust.”
“There must be others besides me who could do this.”
“There are. We have young volunteers, but no one who is known inside Lithuania. Besides, there’s another reason.”
“What’s that?”
“Lozorius asked for you by name.”
“He’s still in Lithuania?”
“Yes.”
They had come to the end of the rue St-Antoine where it met the vast traffic circle at the Bastille, a major hub that gathered up the cars and redistributed them.
It was oddly heartening to know that Lozorius had asked for him by name, but Lukas fought down the satisfaction of it. Charismatic types were appealing but could not really be trusted. They put you in danger. Unfortunately, knowing this did not diminish their appeal.
“Have you ever seen the column at the centre of this square?” Zoly asked.
“Not up close.”
“Let’s take a look.”
Lukas followed Zoly through the thin night traffic out to the column, which did not look like much at all in the dark. Zoly stopped to talk there.
“Well?” he asked. “Do you think you would consider going in again?”
“For Lozorius’s sake?”
“For the sakes of your colleagues. Say, Flint?”
“Do you know if he’s still alive?”
“I don’t know that he’s dead.” Zoly was watching the people who were standing around the column, mostly boulevardier types looking for action on the street.
“I do feel a sense of loyalty to them.”
“So you should. You took an oath to follow orders.”
“But I also took an oath before my wife. Who’s to say which oath is more important?”
“The one that came first.”
“You’re talking like a lawyer. I did what I could. I tried hard to get back on my own terms in the first year. Now my life has moved on.”
“Lucky you. And what do you intend to do with this glorious freedom of yours? You studied to be a teacher back in Lithuania, and in literature. Lithuanian literature! Don’t make me laugh. The only type more useless than you out here is a Lithuanian lawyer. There is no life for you unless you join the army or get a factory job. I can’t see you in either one, somehow. Besides, what’s more important than your country?”
“I don’t need to establish my patriotic credentials with anyone, least of all you. I was in Lithuania during all three occupations and I lived underground in bunkers for months at a time. I’ve killed more men than most soldiers, and many times I’ve come close to being killed myself. And meanwhile, what are you? A former diplomat. One of the grey men who takes a paycheque from the British and a pat on the head from the Swedes and tells himself he’s doing it for his country.”
A gang of five singing youths with arms over one another’s shoulders walked up to the column. Zoly touched Lukas on the elbow. They walked on. He didn’t seem to be upset by what Lukas had said. They strolled up the boulevard Beaumarchais.
“I don’t suppose money would interest you, would it?” asked Zoly. “Not that there’s all that much, but I know Monika isn’t working while she’s in school. If you went away, she could use something to help pay the bills.”
“If I went away, she certainly could use money. But that’s not the point, is it? Since I’m not going away, the question is academic.”
“Anyway, she’s a resourceful woman. Did you ever wonder how Monika came to see you speak?”
“You mean back in Germany, the first time we met?”
“Yes, I do. There were no other people there from France. There were no visitors from Italy. There were no people from any country but Germany, hardly anyone from another occupation zone. How do you think she ever got the travel documents to visit the camp in the first place?”
“She said she wanted to hear me speak.”
“And I don’t blame her. You were a very big star, the partisan hero. You made Lozorius a little jealous, you know. I think that’s why he went back into Lithuania so quickly. He didn’t really want you outshining him.”
“And that’s why you insisted that I report to him if I went back in then, right? To discourage me?”
“Oh yes. He had a need to be in charge. He must be in trouble if he’s asked for you now.”
“What kind of trouble could he be in?”
“I can’t really go into much detail until you commit.”
“But it doesn’t sound like I’m going to do that, does it?”
The street became seedier as the boulevard Beaumarchais changed to the boulevard du Temple and they drew closer to the Place de la République. Prostitutes called out to them from the other side of the street.
“There is one bit of information that Lozorius passed on that I think you should have, no matter what you choose to do.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s about your wife.”
“What about her?”
“Your first wife.”
“Yes?”
“Elena is alive.”
It took Lukas a few moments to understand what Zo
ly had said.
“Alive? Alive where?”
“Not in Siberia. Elena is in Lithuania. She was very badly wounded and put in a prison hospital.”
“Is she in prison, then?”
“Flint broke her out. She’s in Lithuania, and she’s free, but she’s in hiding.”
Lukas stopped and looked at Zoly. They were almost at the Place de la République.
“When did you find out about this?”
“A couple of weeks ago, but I couldn’t get here any sooner.”
Lukas slapped Zoly across the face, so hard that his gold-rimmed eyeglasses and the cigarette he was about to raise to his lips went flying. After a moment’s shock Zoly tried to say something, but Lukas slapped him again. He was going to do it a third time but Zoly raised his hands to protect himself, and Lukas took him by the lapels and pushed him back against a tree and then pulled him down to the earth.
“Tell me everything you know.”
“That’s about all of it.”
“Who told this to you?”
“Lozorius.”
“How did he get word out?”
“It was in his last radio transmission.”
“What else did he say?”
“Just that he needed you and that your wife was still alive. He said the set was damaged by water. It wouldn’t work properly.”
“Any more transmissions?”
“Two garbled ones.”
“Is it really him?”
“The radio operator on this end says it’s him. He can tell. Each person develops his own style on the telegraph key and Lozorius has his. It can’t be copied.”
“Has he been captured and turned? Is it a trap?”
“We don’t know.”
“So it could be a lie.”
“Anything is possible. We don’t know.”
Lukas slapped him again.
“Why are you hitting me now? What was that for?”
“For lying to me.”
“Do you hit everyone who lies to you?” Zoly asked. He rose when Lukas released him and retrieved his eyeglasses, and once they were back on, a little crooked, he looked for the cigarette that had been knocked from his hand. He picked it up from the sidewalk, reached into his breast pocket for a box of matches and lit it. He looked up at Lukas. “It might be time to reconsider the various vows you’ve taken.”
N INETEEN
THEY SAT IN CHAIRS across from one another, a half-empty bottle of wine between them, but Lukas’s glass was untouched. The window to the courtyard was open and he could hear the children murmuring outside in the cobblestoned yard. What did children that age have to talk about so intensely and so quietly?
Secrets, probably, and confidences. From the very beginning one veiled and unveiled truths, and reality changed accordingly.
Lukas wanted the wine in the glass on the table before him, but he was resisting it. Already the luxury of wine seemed to belong to another world, a kind of dream world he had been living in until Zoly reappeared.
Lukas thought about things he had not thought about for a long time. Whether Flint and Lakstingala were still alive. Whether there was any news of his parents. Above all, how it was possible that Elena was still alive when Flint had seen her body lying on the earth outside the bunker.
What the Reds must have done to her after they took her to prison did not bear much thought, but he couldn’t help thinking about it. His one consolation was that they would not have tortured her if she was hurt badly. They would have tried to heal her first and only then begun to break her down again. And if they knew her as the killer at the engagement party in Marijampole, she could not have expected much mercy.
But maybe Flint had got her out in time.
One of the courtyard children cried out in pain. She had fallen and was sobbing as her friends tried to soothe her. He would have liked to have children sometime, to live in a time when children were possible.
Monika’s face was tear-stained, but she had calmed a little since the conversation had begun an hour ago. He started again.
“My duty is to my first wife. I have to go back to her. I made promises to others before I made promises to you.”
“Your first wife,” Monika said bitterly. “You’re making poetry out of my grief.”
Monika thought Lukas was referring to Lithuania as his first wife, making a metaphor, but he didn’t correct her. Lukas felt protective of Elena now, not wanting to talk about their lives together in the presence of another woman, not even this one. He was putting distance between them and already she was looking stranger and stranger to him, like someone from an accidental moment in his life.
Although he knew he had to make himself hard, Monika was still the woman who had come to him in the countryside in Bavaria, the one who had made life possible in the first confusing months in France. He loved her, but could not let this feeling dominate his thoughts. He had to drive her from his heart, but the necessity of the task did not make it any easier.
Lukas had not told Monika everything that Zoly had said, just that there was a new offer from the British for him to go into Lithuania and he was accepting it.
Monika reached for her glass and drank it down but did not refill it. “We’ve only begun our life together here,” she said. “We were on the way to building something. And now you want to throw it all away on some kind of adventure. You could have studied anything you wanted after you finished writing that book. Medicine, architecture. If the military appeals to you so much, you could have applied to French officers’ school.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t returning.” Elena might be dead after all. Zoly might be lying to get him back inside to help Lozorius.
“Don’t try to soften what you’re saying. What are the odds, really? You might get killed on the way in, or you might get killed while you’re there. You’ll almost certainly never make it out again. It’s not called the Iron Curtain for nothing.”
“It’s risky, all right, but not impossible. I made it out once before. I could be back in a year.”
“It’s like going to the land of the dead. Think what you’re giving up. Do you love me so little?”
“I love you so much.”
“This makes no sense at all. You’re just a soldier who’s finding it hard to adjust to civilian life. You need to give it a little more time. You’re bored now, sitting at a desk and writing that book, and worse, in the writing you’re thinking about the past all the time, reliving your old battles. But you wouldn’t have to sit at a desk all day if you didn’t want to. You could be something else—a builder, a farmer like your father—I don’t know, a pilot.” Lukas said nothing to this. “Help me. I’m looking for the words that will make you stay.”
“You won’t find them. You knew this day might come. What did you think the SDECE was training me for?”
“That was all over. You quit all that. This strange idea of duty is going to undo both of us. What about your duty to me?”
Lukas looked out of the window and reached over for his glass of wine, but stopped himself. He was going to refill Monika’s glass and looked to her to see if she wanted more wine, but she shook her head furiously.
“Tell me this,” Lukas said. “How is it that you and Anne went to hear me speak in Germany?”
“We had heard all about you. We were homesick and wanted to hear about Lithuania.”
“Yes, but no one else came from another country. We barely had people from other occupation zones of Germany, let alone France.”
“Where are you going with this? Why does it matter now?”
He would not let it go. “How did you get the right to go to Germany?” “Anne and I applied for a visa. I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“No one would ever have issued you a visa just like that, because you asked for it. Travel was restricted. Your uncle must have helped. Did he?”
“I suppose he did.”
“Or did he come up with the idea in the first place? Was he askin
g you to do a favour for him, for the SDECE? Were you supposed to lure me to France so they could make me an offer and keep me here?”
“Maybe it was something like that. But I had no idea I would fall in love with you. I’ve never been false to you.”
“When I walked away from you that morning in Germany, you followed me out into the countryside. You convinced me to come to Paris. I’m not saying you lied. I’m saying things got out of hand. You brought me out of Germany for your uncle and the French secret service, and when you discovered you liked me, you asked if you could keep me. Your uncle managed it all for you as a going-away gift before he left for America.”
“So what are you accusing me of? Loving you too much?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. You did what you believed was right. I’m doing the same thing.”
“But it’s not right to choose death. Think how miserable I’ll be as your widow. The Reds will kill you. Yes they will, don’t deny it, and it would be better for me to die rather than to lose you. Your absence will be a wound that never heals. Take pity on me and don’t make me a widow.”
“I can’t shrink away from this now. I could never live with myself. I’d die of shame.”
“Shame before whom?”
“Both the living and the dead. My heart tells me to go back.”
“Then your heart has no place for me.”
“It does have a place for you, but not the way things are now. We could make a life here. People have left their homes since the beginning of time, and some have made better lives for themselves. But I can’t stand the thought of being torn away from my country to be some kind of vagabond in the West. I feel worthless here. I don’t care how rich these countries are—they’ll never be mine. And I’ll never be respected here. I’ll be some kind of foreigner, a migrant, a hobo picking his way through the rich scrap heap of Western Europe or America. My dignity doesn’t allow it.”
She said nothing. Lukas stood and went to her, but she turned away from him. He nevertheless crouched beside her chair and caressed her hair and tried to wipe her cheeks.
“I won’t let anyone kill me so easily,” said Lukas. “I’ll be careful. But we live in certain times and the times shape us in certain ways. I have to be what my time tells me to be.”
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