Underground

by Antanas Sileika

Lukas showed the miniature camera and a letter he had posted to himself just before leaving Stockholm. The postmark seemed to convince Karpis.

  “And what about you?” Lukas asked. “How do I know you’re a partisan?”

  “You might recognize me, for one thing. I was the mayor of Panevezys before the war.”

  “Not my part of the country.”

  “I’m the brother of the late president’s wife.”

  Lukas looked him over. The late president had installed many of his wife’s relatives in the government. Poor former mayor. He would have lived the life of striped pants and municipal receptions until the war—a soft life. How did men like that survive now?

  “Bring me up to date with the situation in the country,” said Lukas.

  “We don’t carry out many missions anymore. We’re hard up for food and we’re out of touch with most of the other partisan groups. We just try to survive now. We haven’t actually fired on anyone in months. We’re down to collecting information and printing up newspapers whenever we can find the ink and the paper.”

  “It sounds bad.”

  “It is. What did you come here for? If I had a way out, I’d take it and never come back.”

  Lukas glanced at Rudis. The man was looking more unhappy than ever, if that was possible. He had even let some of his precious curls slip out from under his cap.

  “If you want, we can help you a little,” said Karpis. “My men and I can escort you to the frontier of the next partisan district. It’s true we’ve lost touch with them, but we might be able to use some of the old contacts.”

  “How many men can you spare?”

  “There are three of you, right?” asked Karpis.

  “That’s right.”

  “Then I could send along four or five escorts. We’re short of manpower—I’ll come along too.”

  “Are you sure you want to go yourself?” Lukas asked.

  “Don’t worry. I look old, but I’m tough.”

  They agreed to confirm their plans the next day. Then it would take a couple more days to gather up the men, who were scattered in pairs in small bunkers, getting ready to settle in for the winter.

  After Karpis left, Shimkus came out of the woods and Lukas told him what Karpis had said. Rudis corrected him twice on details, and Lukas told him to shut up. Rudis sulked.

  “There’s something I don’t like about Karpis,” said Lukas.

  “What’s that?”

  “His long leather coat. It’s the kind of thing you might wear in the city to cover a revolver in your pocket, but out in the country it doesn’t make sense. It would get caught on branches, or all bunched up when you were crawling into a bunker.”

  “Maybe he just uses it for special occasions,” said Shimkus, smiling at his own joke.

  “What did you think?” Lukas asked Rudis, trying to mollify him.

  “I don’t see why he’d lie to us. I think the greater danger comes from the farmer.”

  They radioed Stockholm again to say they had made contact with a partisan code-named Karpis. Unsure of his own intuition about Karpis, Lukas asked for instructions. Six hours later the reply came in, terse, the exasperation clear even in the brevity of the message: Follow the plan. Use partisan contact to gain access to Lozorius.

  Karpis did not return the next day as planned, but all plans were contingent. They changed the placement of their camp and permitted themselves a small fire, which Rudis tended, breaking sticks into shorter and shorter pieces until they could not be made any smaller. Lukas cleaned his gun, sensing Shimkus’s eyes on him.

  Lukas tried to be calm and methodical for the sake of the two men, but it was hard to keep up appearances. One was too nervous and the other was undisciplined. In his other partisan bands he had relied on the men with him, but these men did not fill him with confidence. And he could not forget Karpis’s long coat.

  “We could just go across country on our own,” said Lukas.

  “Why would we want to do that?” asked Shimkus. Rudis just looked at him, his eyes giving away his alarm. Lukas did not press the matter.

  That night Lukas offered to take second watch. When Shimkus woke him at one in the morning, he put the strap of the rifle across his shoulder and walked out beyond the perimeter of firelight. He waited there a half-hour until he was sure Shimkus was asleep, and then he came in closer, lifted his knapsack and carried it a little farther away where no one would hear him rustling through it. He unpacked whatever he considered too heavy, leaving the radio and most of his ammunition. He dabbed the soles of his boots with lamp oil. He checked the map in the campfire light, took a compass bearing and walked to the edge of the forest before cutting across country on his own.

  When Karpis appeared the next day, he came with five other men dressed in short woollen jackets with turtlenecks underneath and woollen caps on their heads. They carried a variety of sidearms and two types of light automatic rifles—the kind with the banana clip below the barrel and the kind with the round pan above. None of these weapons was of much use because they found Shimkus covering Rudis, who was sitting on the ground, his jacket pulled behind his back pinning his arms, and his hands tied at the wrists for good measure. His hat was askew and his pretty hair spilled down one side of his head. He had a bump on his forehead and was bleeding from it, the blood running down over his eye.

  “Thank God you’ve arrived,” said Shimkus.

  “Where’s the other one?” Karpis asked.

  “He took off in the night without any warning.”

  “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  “I would have, but he didn’t give me a chance. This one wanted to follow after him this morning, but we don’t even know what direction he headed in, and he left the radio behind. This one is the radio operator. We can use him.”

  Karpis swore. “It would have been better to stick with the other one. He’s the big fish. Then we would have taken both of them.”

  Moscow was going to be unhappy about this, and unhappy Moscow put pressure to bear on Vilnius, and they would put pressure on him.

  Karpis hated this kind of work. One more prize like Lukas and they might have let him retire, but now he would have to keep this up, risking his neck again and again when he wished he could just sit by the fire once the cold winds blew in.

  TWENTY - ONE

  LITHUANIAN SOVIET

  SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

  DECEMBER 1949

  FIRST THE CEMETARY in the Jewish Pine Forest had been rendered unneeded when most of the Jews were slaughtered in 1941, and now, eight years later, the cemetery was rendered derelict by the absence of their progeny. A stone-and-board fence had surrounded the old cemetery. The fence was a wreck, the boards gone and the graves inside overgrown and untended. The brick gatehouse was burnt out, the roof gone and the windows empty of both glass and frames. There was a small chalked X by the gatehouse entranceway where double doors had once stood. Checking to make sure no one saw him, Lukas took the piece of chalk he had carried from Sweden and put a circle beside the X.

  He found a copse of trees and tall grasses and hid his pack, and then carefully made his way to a vantage point where he could see the village of Rumsiskes. From a distance it looked completely unchanged. If he suspended his knowledge for a moment he could imagine going into town to visit the market and some of the Jewish shops. He knew the illusion required distance, and he had no desire actually to descend into the town.

  Then he made his way to the other side of the hill to look for the family farm, but could not find it. Unsettled by its absence, he thought he was confused, and checked his bearings again. He went back into the forest and recognized the dune where he had played as a child. Many things were pretty much unchanged, though the trees were taller and the light fell through them in a different way, making them strange. When he went back to look for the farmhouse, it still did not appear. The house, the outbuildings, the fruit trees and the currant bushes were all gone. Even the fences had been torn up. In thei
r place lay plowed land, the furrows crooked in places.

  If ever there was a time when he felt his days were as grass, this was it. A wind had descended on the land and all those he had known were gone, and many of their works as well. Unnerved for the first time since his return, Lukas went back to the place where he had stowed his gear and waited through the night.

  In the morning, he set himself up in the scrub undergrowth where he could watch the burnt-out gatehouse to the cemetery. A pair of boys came through that day, young vandals who knocked down a couple more headstones. They depressed him, but he could not go out and chastise them. Two more days passed until a shepherd came by, looked over the gatehouse and walked on. He did not have a flock with him but did carry a stick. Lukas shadowed him for a while, and when the man sat down with his back to a tree, still within the Jewish Pine Forest and still at a distance from any houses, Lukas approached him where he sat with his cloak thrown over his head against the cold.

  “Did you hear a nightingale?” Lukas asked.

  Lakstingala lifted the cloak off his face. “Where?”

  “In the copse of trees across from the gatehouse.”

  Lakstingala looked at him hard, and then rose and threw his arms around Lukas and embraced him tightly. Lukas could feel the rifle under the cloak as well as Lakstingala’s thin body.

  “I’m glad my letter reached you and I’m pleased to find you alive,” said Lukas. For the first time since he had arrived in Lithuania, he was in the company of a man he could trust. But if he had not known it was Lakstingala, he wouldn’t have been able to recognize him from a distance. He had always been a small, tough man, but he seemed to have shrunk. Although it was only early winter, his face was pale, his eyes watery.

  “I’m the last of the old partisans in our group,” said Lakstingala.

  “Flint is dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me how.”

  “I don’t know much. He loaned me to another group of partisans and I barely saw him anymore. They say they took him by ambush last spring when he was out gathering wild strawberries. He didn’t even have any weapons and he was dressed as a civilian. The Cheka troops were lying on the forest floor under the ferns, and they rose up and started to fire without any warning. Two others were killed and he was badly wounded, but taken alive.

  “They brought in a couple of local farmers to identify him, but the farmers said he was just some berry picker and the Chekists became worried that they’d shot the wrong men. Flint died without saying anything and they buried him nearby, not far from the base where you and I first met. But one of the slayers must have mentioned that he had a French calendar, and the Cheka knew Flint spoke French. The Chekists figured it out. They dug up the body, identified him and then threw the body back out in the Merkine market square.”

  “The town we held for a day.”

  “Right. They have an idea of symmetry. His wife came to claim the body, and she and her children were sent to Irkutsk.”

  Lukas had not even known Flint had a wife or children. He was saddened to hear of his leader’s death. “And what about you, my friend? How did you survive so long?”

  Lukas looked deeply for the man who had taken him out on his first mission five years earlier, but could not see him. On the other hand, the young man whom Lakstingala had taken out was not there any longer either.

  “I was lucky. I broke my leg not long after you left. I stepped in a posthole at night and snapped the bone just above my ankle. It took a very long time to knit properly. Death probably came looking for me then out in the fields, but I was lying in bed and couldn’t be found. Death’s been looking for me ever since.”

  “It’ll find us all in good time.”

  Lakstingala looked past Lukas, ever vigilant, watching for movement in the forest. “I don’t suppose you’re bringing good news in from the West, are you?” he asked.

  “No. They’ve finally become interested in us, but no one is going to fight a war for us.”

  “Then why did you come back? You could have saved yourself.”

  “I came back for Elena.”

  Lakstingala shook his head. “What makes you think she came back to life?”

  Lukas told him about Lozorius and his message and the help from the British. Lakstingala had not seen Lozorius for years and did not know where he was, but he might be able to find him. As for Elena, he was less sure.

  “The story stinks,” said Lakstingala. “For one thing, Flint never told me about it while he was alive. For another, I’ve heard of people I thought were alive being dead, but not the other way around. Not anymore. And anyway, what good did you think you’d do Elena if you did find her alive? If it’s true, you’ll open old wounds. By now she thinks you’re dead or she knows you got out and hopes to receive a Red Cross package someday. And if she’s not dead, she might be in Siberia.”

  “Why are you so angry?”

  “Because it irritates me that you’re throwing your life away. Most partisans are like men with cancer—we’re doomed. But you had a chance to escape.”

  “Didn’t we all swear to follow orders? Didn’t we all swear to fight until the end?”

  “Of course we did, but we’ve reached the end. We reached it some time ago. So many lives destroyed and now you have to throw yours away too.”

  “I have no intention of throwing my life away. I intend to find Elena and to take her out of here.”

  “How? Through Poland? All the Lithuanians who lived on that side have been moved away from the border. The Polish partisans have been wiped out and we don’t get any help from there anymore. The first Pole who sees you will turn you in or shoot you.”

  “I can get out the way I came, by boat.”

  “Maybe. I can’t say if that’s possible or not.”

  “If worse comes to worst, I can get false papers and live legally.”

  “How easy do you think that would be? If it were possible, a lot of others would have done the same thing.”

  “Lakstingala, my friend, your song is as bad-tempered as ever. I have every intention of finding Lozorius to determine if my wife is alive. You can help me if you like or you can go back to your bunker and stew all winter long.”

  “Oh, I’m coming along. I have a soft spot for love stories. But don’t expect any sympathy from me if it’s all a lie.”

  TWENTY - TWO

  THE WEATHER turned against them as Lukas and Lakstingala made their way south to search for Lozorius. It snowed by night and rained by day, and all across the country the roads and paths were full of Cheka cars and Cheka troops, as well as slayer units swarming like bees.

  “Is it always like this?” asked Lukas when they had hidden among thin winter bushes yet again for a couple of hours while water dripped down their collars.

  “Not usually quite this bad. They must know you’re here and they’re turning the country upside down.”

  “I’m hundreds of kilometres away from where we landed.”

  “Maybe your friends were caught. Maybe Lozorius gave you away somehow. You’re a bit of a legend and word of you must have got out.”

  “Legend? I’d rather be invisible.”

  “Well, a legend helps to raise the morale of the people, but it also raises the bounty on your head.”

  The danger passed, and they came out from behind the bushes to walk through the rain, in one way better than the snow because they left no tracks, but in another way worse because the mud adhered to their boots and they had to stop every fifteen minutes to scrape it off.

  Partisans had become like wolves whose pelts brought income to bounty hunters in a hungry country.

  “Has the number of collaborators risen so high?” Lukas asked.

  They were standing among the cows in a barn by night, hoping to borrow a little heat before moving on.

  “Collaborators,” said Lakstingala ruefully. “What a funny word. We don’t use it anymore. You only call someone a collaborator if you’ve defeated him. I
f the Germans had won, there wouldn’t have been any German collaborators either—the very idea would have seemed odd. Now the Reds are winning, so there can be no Red collaborators. Anyway, as time goes by, more and more of our people have to find a way to survive.”

  “I never thought you’d have sympathy for traitors.”

  “I don’t, but I need to understand them if I hope to live on. When you were last here it was so much simpler. In those days they simply tried to kill partisans, but now they try to capture us and turn us and send us back to smite our former friends.”

  “Smite? That’s an unusual word. It sounds medieval.”

  “Coined by the Cheka. They call the turned partisans ‘smiters.’”

  Lukas laughed. “Yet another way of getting us.”

  “Partisans are the last free people, and it gives me some satisfaction to know we can still irritate the Reds even if we can’t defeat them. But every day we have to be more and more wary. They’ve become subtle in getting co-operation from the farmers. We don’t eat with the farmers much anymore, not unless we know them very well.”

  “Why not?”

  “Another one of the new tricks they brought in after you left the country. The Cheka handed out sleeping potions to farmers and told them it was their responsibility to trap us. If partisans came asking for food, the farmers were supposed to put the sleeping potion in it. Some of our people just disappeared that year because the farmers were afraid to make the potion too weak, so they made it too strong. Nineteen forty-eight was the year of sleep, and some of our partisans haven’t woken up to this day.”

  “What farmer would do that?”

  “You’d be surprised. One day I went out with a partisan called Anupras to get milk from a certain farmer. We needed to keep shifting around so we weren’t asking the same people for food all the time. We were being careful, so I waited for him in the forest when he went to the farmhouse, but he was taking a long time. I went looking and finally found him, wandering along the path, falling down and getting up and then falling again. He’d lost his firearm. I could tell by his eyes that he was drugged, and pretty soon he passed right out. We were on our own, and knowing the Cheka wouldn’t be far behind I dragged him off the path as far as I could.