Lukas stood at the side of a house and cleaned the mud off his boots before he went into the town proper.
Bearing a sheaf of poems, Rimantas had come looking for Lukas a while earlier. He went to the bunker where Lukas lived and called out his name but didn’t hear any response. He listened by the lid and heard snoring, so he tapped lightly on the door and then opened it to see Lozorius stretched out on the lower bunk, sleeping. There was an empty bottle on the small table and the bunker smelled of liquor.
Rimantas knew who Lozorius was, remembered him from their school days. He knew a great deal more than people gave him credit for.
Rimantas opened his briefcase and set his poems down on the small table. He had intended to read them to Lukas; maybe Lozorius would like to hear them instead. Rimantas sat down on a chair, intending to wake him up gently, but he hesitated. If he felt the least threat, a man like Lozorius would start shooting as soon as he opened his eyes.
Rimantas had a hand grenade and a pistol in his briefcase beneath the place where his poems had lain. He closed the briefcase.
Rimantas sat for a while and studied Lozorius’s face. Like Lukas, Lozorius had been abroad and chose to return. What a fool. He should have stayed away while he could. Rimantas himself wished he had chosen to emigrate, but he was a poet and one could not pick up a new language so easily as to be able to write verses in it. What a shame that poetry was not valued very much under the present circumstances, when collectivization and industrialization were all the newspapers talked about.
Rimantas looked at the sleeping Lozorius, the man who had killed dozens of Chekists and slayers if the legends were true. He did not look all that powerful while he was asleep. He looked rather vulnerable.
But that was probably an illusion. Lozorius was a wild man, and the more Rimantas thought about his reputation, the less comfortable he felt sitting in the same bunker with the sleeping man. Maybe Lozorius was only feigning sleep. The more Rimantas thought these thoughts, the more nervous he became. He could not stay there.
Rimantas collected his poems, crept out of the bunker, closed the door and stepped in among the trees to consider his options. His heart was beating madly and he needed to calm down.
He was irritated by the situation he found himself in. These men, Lukas and likely Lozorius, were the only ones who might understand his poetry. They were exactly the kind of intellectual audience he wanted. Not Lakstingala, of course. He was a peasant through and through, sturdy but with practically no subconscious to speak of.
Things were not going according to plan. His instructions were to go with Lukas and Lakstingala to find out where Lozorius was hiding. The authorities wanted to take the radio as well as the three men. The second-best plan was to discover when Lozorius came to this bunker. Rimantas was to inform the authorities so all three could be taken. Now Lozorius was here, but Rimantas did not feel inclined to inform the authorities of anything. Something was up in Merkine. There was a suppressed buzz in the town.
The Cheka workers were of very low calibre. Most of them did not even have a high school education, and half of them were alcoholics. If Rimantas had had any ambition in that way, he could have made quite a career in the Cheka. But the Cheka men were idiots and, worse, boring, and he had no interest in spending his life with boring men and drunks. He had a higher calling. In a better world he would have been left alone to work on his poetry. In the Middle Ages he might have been a monk of some kind.
Rimantas wanted to write and to publish, but the authorities would not let him do that unless he paid for his sins. They knew all about him and his anti-Stalinist poetry during the German occupation. Therefore, he was doomed to work for them for a while. But he still might be redeemed, and he wanted to shake off his obligations as soon as possible.
Now that the Reds had been in power for six years, they were building their ideological infrastructure. There was a new children’s publishing house opening up soon. He could be the publisher there and still have time to do his own writing. He had imagined a more illustrious life for himself, something a little more bohemian. Rimantas hated the world he lived in. But what could he do?
He had intended to buy his freedom with Lukas, but they had not been content to take only Lukas. No, they wanted him and Lozorius together, and so gave Rimantas an impossible task. How was he to get both of them?
The odds were very poor, but perhaps he had stumbled upon a solution to all of his problems by finding the sleeping Lozorius. If he gave Lozorius to the Cheka, they would be grateful to him. He would have fulfilled his part of the bargain. And if he gave them Lozorius in a way that blew his own cover, he would be out of a job with the Cheka and permitted to get back to work on his writing. In a way, this plan saved Lukas; Rimantas would be doing him a favour.
Rimantas’s plan, such as it was, was risky. But everything was risky now. In a world of many bad options, he had to take the one that seemed the least bad. He looked inside his briefcase. The grenade and the pistol were at the bottom.
He studied the landscape thoroughly. No one seemed to be around, but one could never tell. Worst of all would be to be caught by Lakstingala and Lukas. Neither would show mercy.
Rimantas walked over to the bunker and listened. The snoring was still very loud. He looked about one more time, pulled the pin of the grenade, waited a few seconds, wrenched open the lid, and threw the grenade inside. Then he closed the lid again and ran, pistol in one hand, briefcase in the other.
The grenade seemed to take a very long time to explode, blowing the hatch off the bunker. Rimantas waited a little, looked around, and then saw to his horror that Lozorius was crawling out of the bunker.
“You can’t kill me!” Lozorius shouted. “I swore that nobody could kill me!”
Whether the grenade had rolled under a table or gone into a corner or been deflected, Rimantas did not know. All he knew was the dreadfulness of a dead man rising to chase him. Rimantas had never been so frightened in his life. He fired off a few ineffectual shots from his pistol and began to flee across the fields. But the earth was muddy and the going impossibly slow. The faster he tried to run, the faster the mud adhered to his shoes. He heard Lozorius fire behind him and fell to the earth, trembling with terror, afraid he might have been shot.
Lozorius had awoken to the explosion, ears ringing, brain rattling, with a pain all down his left side where wood splinters had driven into his skin. But through the smoke and confusion and the ringing in his ears, he could see the square of light of the blown-out doorway. Freedom lay where the light was, so he took his pistol and charged out, firing.
Once outside, Lozorius had stood there, dazed. He shouted that he could not be killed, and then heard a few shots. He could not see properly—blood was running in his left eye—but there was a figure in the field, a figure that fell to the earth when he fired at it.
But where there had been one figure, soon there would be many. The Chekists did not go out alone. Lozorius looked to his left arm, all bloody through his shirt sleeve. He stood swaying, and considered his position for a moment, and decided it was hopeless. He felt a surge of relief.
“No one can kill me!” he roared. “No one but me!”
He put the pistol in his mouth and fired.
Lakstingala heard the explosion and the firing in the distance, but he was hampered by the wet fields and his need for stealth, as well as the darkening sky. He made his way as close as he dared and hid in a ditch. After a time a number of cars pulled up and slayers stepped out. A very tall man came to them. The man was finding it hard to make progress because his boots were encumbered with mud. He carried a briefcase in one hand.
TWENTY - SIX
IN THE FADING LIGHT, Lukas began to walk into the town of Merkine, to the house where Elena was living. Hardly anything seemed to move in the streets except for a dog at some distance, a hungry creature that slunk around the corner of a building.
The church bell rang at nine o’clock, causing him to jump a littl
e. This must be the only town in the whole Soviet Union where the church bells were still permitted to ring. Somewhere a Red official would pay for this oversight when an inspector general came to town and discovered this bourgeois remnant.
In the dimness, Lukas thought of the machine gunner who had been up in the bell tower, and of the partisan who had fallen at the very crossroads Lukas was walking past. He went on. The brick house that they had blown up with the panzerfaust had been rebuilt, although he could not see the details in the twilight. Everything the partisans did in the town had been erased, as if they had done nothing at all.
A small Russian Orthodox church with a tiny onion dome stood in a square, a remnant of the czarist times, but boarded up now. He had no memory of such a church in the town. How was this possible? He had studied the place before the attack and kept watch on it during the fight, but if anyone had asked him, he would have said there was no such thing there.
They had gathered the bodies of their fallen comrades in the town square, but the body of his brother, Vincentas, was never found. That body must have been buried close by, and so Lukas felt as if his brother’s spirit hovered somewhere in the night, looking over him.
At the high school, once a Jewish school but now used by others, the light in the principal’s flat was burning. She was a very young principal, one who had graduated from this same high school herself not all that long ago. She had been the first to join the Komsomol, and was almost killed in those days for daring to do it. She had done better than any of her classmates, some of whom were shipped to the camps before they graduated. The others who still lived in the town were not in the least friendly with her, but she did not mind. They respected her position and that was enough.
Although Merkine was a small town, it was very old and it had once been a provincial capital, so it had a few houses that would not have been out of place in any old town. It was in this quarter that Lukas found the steps down to the half cellar, and knocked lightly four times on a door and then repeated the knock.
It was getting dark now; light came from a lamp on a distant street corner.
“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice asked from inside.
“An old friend,” he replied, as he had been told to.
She unlocked the door and opened it and he stepped inside.
She wore a head scarf to hide something wrong around her ear and down to her cheek on the left side of her face. There were two teardrop-sized scars on her left cheek, and her left hand was sheathed in a cotton glove with an empty finger. She took two steps back, and he could see she limped. She looked at him noncommittally, waiting for him to declare himself so she could begin to parse out who he was: a partisan or a Chekist, a slayer or a smiter, or one of the many types of men who worked for any of a variety of conflicting interests.
“Don’t you know me?” he asked.
“My eyesight is not very good.”
“Listen to the sound of my voice.”
“You do sound a little familiar, but it’s a voice I haven’t heard for a very long time.”
“Elena,” he said. “It’s me, Lukas.”
She turned away at the sound of her name. “Many people show up here. They confuse me with other people and they tell all kinds of stories, trying to turn the head of a poor invalid. I don’t know why they should be so interested in someone like me. I was in a terrible accident and I’m afraid I don’t remember very much from before that time. If you can leave a ruble or two on the table I’ll be grateful, but if you want to ask me anything, I’m afraid there’s nothing I know.”
This was what remained of the woman who had joked with him, the woman who had bucked up his courage the night he had to kill those people in Marijampole.
The room where they were standing had a low ceiling and a narrow window up by the sidewalk outside. Even now they were still underground, half buried. The room had a table, two chairs and a cot. There was a door to another room.
“Elena, we were married in a church by moonlight. We drank French brandy on our honeymoon. I’ve come to take you away from this place. I’ve come to take you to America.”
Even at this, she kept away from him and laughed. “You must be thinking of someone else. Why would you want to take me to America? It’s dangerous there, with gangsters. I’m much better off where I am. But if you want, you can go yourself. First, though, let me make you a cup of tea.”
“I don’t need tea. I want to talk to you.”
“Tea will help us talk.”
She put a kettle on a gas ring, set out a pot and heaped in two spoonfuls of tea, put out a bowl of sugar and two cups.
“You have both sugar and real tea,” he said.
“I’m very lucky. I also have a radio. Let me turn it on. There is often music from Warsaw at this hour.”
She turned on the radio and indeed a foxtrot was playing. When the water boiled, she put a little in the small teapot to make esensia, a very strong, concentrated tea. She let this brew for a couple of minutes and then added hot water to the cups and topped them up with esensia.
“Please sit down,” she said.
He did as she asked and she passed him a cup. Then she sat down across from him, took her cup in both hands and leaned forward.
“Why did you come back?” she whispered.
“Who is listening?”
“I don’t know. I can’t be sure. But I’m fairly certain I’m being watched, and maybe I’m being listened to as well. You haven’t answered my question.”
“I came back for you.”
“Why?”
“I never would have left you if I’d known you were alive.”
“You’re a fool to do this. If you’d loved me, you would have stayed away and saved yourself.”
“I’m going to get you out of here. I’ve fought my way across the border before—we can do it again. There are others who will help me.”
“Or lose their lives trying.”
“Yes, that’s right. All of us are ready to lose our lives, but we don’t give them up cheaply.” He made to reach for her hand, but she pulled it back.
“Don’t appear too familiar with me. Someone may be watching.” He felt her foot against the side of his leg under the table. This was all the touch she could give him.
“Couldn’t I hold your hand under the table?”
“They might see it.”
He longed to touch her, but he could not. She looked down at the table, avoiding his eyes, ashamed, he guessed, by her looks. He didn’t care.
“Did they take you?” Lukas asked. “Did they hurt you?”
“You can see the scars well enough, but Flint got me out before I’d healed so much that they could begin to torture me. But how long can I last in hiding? Look at me. I’m disfigured, and the authorities know it—my wounds were thoroughly described on my hospital chart. This little paradise won’t last.”
“All the more reason to come with me. We’ve escaped before. Maybe we can do it again.”
“It’s no good. It’s over.”
“Don’t give up hope. I can help you.”
“You can, but not in the way you think. They’re outside, waiting for you.”
“Now? Are you sure?”
“I don’t know anything for sure. There’s been a strange atmosphere in this town over the last few days. More cars pass through than usual. They may have found me already, or they may have found you and followed you here. And if neither is true, it will be soon.”
“Why didn’t you run?”
“I couldn’t. They have me where they want me.”
“This talk is all confusing. Why won’t you go with me?”
“Wait here.”
She rose and went into the other room but did not illuminate a lamp there. Lukas heard the wail of a child being awoken. She came back with a very small boy on her hip, not much more than a toddler, a cranky child with curly brown hair very much like hers. She no sooner sat down than the boy snuggled into her shoulder and
fell back to sleep.
A hand seized his throat. “He’s ours?”
She nodded.
“How is that possible?”
“Small miracles happen. Not often, but sometimes they do.”
He wished he could see the child a little better, but he was so tightly tucked into his mother’s side that Lukas did not want to tear him away.
“If you had stayed away,” said Elena, “you might have been able to do him some good. One day maybe they will permit people to send packages from America. But what good are you to him here and now?”
“I didn’t know.”
“No. There’ll be no fighting our way out of this place, and there’ll be no flight to America. Everything has changed now.”
Everything had changed. She was right. He looked at the boy and was overcome with the wonder of him.
Elena let him look at the boy a long time.
“Is there anything I can do for you both?” asked Lukas.
“There is something. But it’s very terrible. I’m afraid to ask it.”
“What?”
“If you go outside and they are there, and if they try to seize you, let them take you alive.”
Lukas had not touched his tea. He looked at the cup and drank it all down. He considered what she said. If he did as she asked, they would torture him and might make him tell what he knew. He was not sure he could withstand torture.
“What good would it do?”
“They will have their prize. You are it. I’m not so foolish as to think I’ll get off. But if I’m lucky they’ll give me ten years for collusion if you don’t tell them about me, our past.”
What she asked was very hard. To give himself up to torture would be bad enough; to try to hold something back under torture would make the pain go on longer.
“What’s the boy’s name?” Lukas asked.
“Jonas. I wanted a simple name, with no history, no subtexts. I couldn’t call him after you.”
“No.”
Lukas looked at the child. He had never had quite this experience before, the sense of being able to look for a long time and feeling unflagging delight.
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