Underground (16 page)

“And what about the battles we might fight? Don't you think Flint will be unwilling to have a couple fighting with him? We'll be a weak link.”

“Flint would let us fight together again. We've proved ourselves once. Now stop raising all these objections. What about me? Do you love me?”

“I do.”

“Then that should be enough.”

There was no way they could travel by train together, so they made their way overland toward the Jewish Pine Forest, skirting the villages and towns and staying as close to the woodlands as possible. Elena had given a rifle to Lukas, and they each carried a pair of grenades.

It felt good to have Elena at his side. She had been in the forest long enough to know how to carry herself. And whenever they settled down in a quiet spot at dawn, in a thicket of bushes or tall grasses, they made love again and again, delighting in the discovery of one another's bodies. Then he would watch over her as she slept first, studying her in the quietness of the morning, secure in the knowledge that she would do the same when he slept later.

They searched for a long time before they found a rowboat to carry them across the Nemunas River. Once safely across on the fourth morning of travel, they made their way into the Jewish Pine Forest.

Lukas scanned the town of Rumsiskes with his binoculars, making sure that no sunlight reflected off the lenses to give him away. The town looked peaceful enough at this distance, though there was a red flag on one of the buildings by the market square. The square was too quiet for this time of day. Something was up.

When he was a child, Lukas had gone to the square with his father on market days, to be treated to bagels or “sailor” candies with a picture of a sailor on the wrapper so attractive that he pinned it up on the wall in his room. When they'd return from the market he'd tell his mother about all the things he'd seen: the farmers selling eggs or piglets off their wagons, the horse market, and the fights between the men who spent their profits in the tavern.

Lukas scanned the square again with his binoculars.

“What do you see?” asked Elena.

“I can't make out much—just two men in the marketplace, leaning up against a wall. Drunks, I think.”

As they made their way through the sand dunes of the Jewish Pine Forest, Lukas recounted his childhood memories to Elena, about a fort in one tree, a goat caught with horns tangled in a thicket in another spot. It felt good to talk to her about his life before the time with the partisans. He wanted to remember himself in his childhood, a time not that long ago yet utterly remote, a time before the war, which had been going on for his entire adult life.

They made their way down to the perimeter of the forest. All was quiet on his father's farm and near the house. A single cow was chained in a field, slowly grazing in the range of its reach.

“This is the place you grew up?”

“Yes.”

Elena squeezed his hand. She felt very close to him now, filled with nostalgia for this place even though she had never seen it before.

For all they knew, a spy or a soldier might be watching the farm from some other vantage point. The strangeness of his situation came upon Lukas. He had never been away from home for so long, and for the first time he could see the world of his previous life laid out before him, etched all the more sharply because Elena was seeing it too. The house and fields were both familiar and unfamiliar, like a dreamscape. He half believed he could simply walk up the farm lane and re-enter his old life.

They had been underground long enough to know to practise caution, so they established themselves in a thick clump of bushes near the edge of the property and watched, first to make sure there were no Chekists or slayers around and finally in the hope that one of his family might come outside. To Lukas it seemed a little too peaceful; there should have been more movement around the house at this time of day. If the Reds had discovered his true identity, as they might have, they could be waiting for him. Lukas and Elena needed to watch the house until they could determine if the place was safe.

They waited a long time, watching the seas of grass shimmer in the wind, pitched one way and then another. The grass showed the wind currents, not only the general direction but the tiny swirls of microclimate as well, the sudden flattening in some places, the parting as if of a sea. Soon the grass would be cut down, but until then it was the measure of the day, an ongoing performance that left no lasting impression.

The shadows grew short as the morning advanced toward noon, and then lengthened again in a different direction in the afternoon.

“Who's that?” Elena asked when someone finally came outside.

“My sister, Angele.”

She had come out to the well. As far as Lukas could see, no one else was around.

“I want to get a little closer,” he said.

“I'll come with you.”

“No. I'll come back for you if it looks all right.”

He made his way toward Angele, his back bent low in the hayfield to keep his profile down, like a thief in his own home. When he was close enough to call Angele's name, he startled her. She dropped the bucket down the well and put her hand to her mouth.

“Come over here, by the hedge,” he hissed.

“Lukas? Is that you?”

“Are there any soldiers around?”

“Not anymore. They're gone now.”

He was going to go back for Elena, but something in Angele's voice made him wait. She came to him then, and stood with him on a patch of earth between the currant bushes and the apple trees where they were masked from any spying eyes. She threw her arms around his neck and covered his face repeatedly with kisses. Much as he enjoyed the moment, he finally pulled her away and held her at arm's length, laughing at her enthusiasm, and she burst into tears.

“Let's go inside,” he said.

“No, wait. You need to know something first.”

She had a hard time speaking through her tears, and Lukas was forced to wait, his unease growing with every moment.

“What are you crying about?” he asked.

“The slayers found Algis yesterday, right here. He'd been hiding all this time, not even with the partisans, just hiding in various places throughout the county. He'd beg for food or people would give it to him.”

“What happened?”

“He came to see us. He did that sometimes, appearing out of nowhere, like you just now. You frightened me, you know—I thought you might be him. Sometimes I'd look for him in the bunker under the hayfield, and he might be there or he might be gone. He'd come home to get food. He was hungry, thin and dirty. He'd just had a glass of milk by the kitchen table when the slayers appeared in the yard in a car and an open truck. There was no time to hide. Algis jumped through a window and ran. One of the slayers outside had a machine gun mounted on the truck and shot him.”

“Wounded? Killed?”

“Cut in two. It was terrible. Father came out and began to cry when he saw the body, and he didn't stop sobbing until early this morning. We can't talk to him. He doesn't see us. He just mutters and stares at nothing.”

“What happened to the body?”

“The slayers took it away. They put it in the marketplace with another one. It's terrible. They took off their shoes and socks and put bibles in their mouths and rosaries in their hands. Mother sopped up some of his blood with her shawl from the place where he fell. She says she's going to bury the shawl so at least he has a decent burial.”

“Who did this?”

“I told you, four slayers.”

“Did you know any of them?”

“Two are Rumsiskes men. The others were from somewhere else.”

“Tell me their names and where they live.”

“They were a father and son, but forget that now. You have to go in to see Mother and Father quickly. Maybe your face will help Father. Then you have to get away from here as fast as you can. It's not safe.”

“It's not safe anywhere. Calm down. Stop crying. Tell me how it's been since we left.”

“Terrible. They want more in grain than this farm produces. They're trying to kill us. Some of the farmers have been deported. Some are in prison. There's talk of collectivization. Father said he'd rather sweep the streets in Kaunas than be a serf, but you can't just leave your own farm. You need permission, and no one gives it, and there's nowhere to run away to.” She wiped her nose on her apron. “Do you have news of Vincentas?”

He shook his head. There was no use in telling her any more bad news. She looked at him searchingly.

“Don't tell Mother and Father that. Make something up. Anything.” Angele was holding his hands and staring into his eyes. Her face was etched with despair.

Lukas let go of her hands and cautiously entered the house. He was immediately overcome with the familiar smells of home— recently baked rye bread, boiled potatoes, smoked meat.

His father sat in a dark corner in the shadows, near the broken window through which Algis had leapt. The window was now patched with cardboard. His father's back was upright and his hands were crossed in his lap, making him look like a man waiting patiently for a train. He looked very old, with his thinning grey hair cropped close to his head. His mother was washing dishes, wearing an apron and a scarf over her hair. She was frightened when she first saw Lukas, and crossed herself to make sure he was not a vision.

“Mama,” he said, and her tears began to fall.

Markulis and his son worked their spades well, given that it was dark and they were wondering if the graves they were digging were for themselves. The boy, barely twenty, was silent and afraid. The father was nervously talkative, though no less frightened.

“It's pretty here, by the forest's edge. You couldn't have picked a better place.”

Lukas had asked them to dig three graves. The bodies of Algis and the other partisan were in a cart behind them. Two bodies. Three graves.

Elena stood beside Lukas. He had not brought her into his house after all.

“I hope your sister told you that it wasn't either one of us who fired the machine gun at your brother.”

Lukas knew that, but he didn't know the other two slayers, and the convenience of a father-and-son team had given him an advantage. Lukas had held a knife to the boy's throat as he explained to the father that he was to go to the market square that night, tell the guard he had been given instructions, and load the bodies up and bring them along.

Markulis had been a small landholder, ten acres and two children, both of whom worked as hired labour as soon as they were old enough to shepherd geese, and then pigs, and finally cows. Markulis hired himself out too. He had been an angry man, prone to getting into fights, perpetually frustrated by his poverty. Joining the slayers had given him a regular income and kept his son out of the draft. It was a dirty business, but he had helped slaughter pigs and spread manure, so he was used to dirty work.

And now this.

“I've known you since you were a boy,” said Markulis. “I remember you as a child on market days, chewing on bagels.”

“Did you remember Algis too?”

“He should have given himself up long ago. He let two amnesties pass. Armed resistance just brings down the wrath of the Reds. You have to play along with them in order to survive.”

“What about your country?”

“That's over now, and if you think it isn't, passive resistance is the thing.”

“That's not resistance at all.”

“You mean you're loyal to that bourgeois dictator who ruled before the Reds came?”

“There's more to a nation than the man who rules it.”

Markulis rested his spade for a moment. Lukas kept his distance. The safety on his rifle was off.

“There's no one but the Reds now. The czar ruled here for a hundred years. The Reds are going to rule here forever, and we'd better get used to it.”

“The Germans said they'd rule forever too, and look how long they lasted. You haven't even matched their record yet. What do you think is going to happen to you when the Reds fall?”

“They'll never fall. If I believed they would, I wouldn't be here.”

“Get back to work,” said Lukas. “I want to be done before dawn.”

Lukas had brought linen sheets from his mother's house. He had the Markulis father and son wrap each body, place it in a grave and cover it over. His brother's body caused some problems because it was in two pieces, but he tried not to dwell on that.

When they were done, he told them to stand beside the empty grave. The boy was crying now. His father put his arm over his shoulder.

“This is your grave,” said Lukas, “waiting for you if anything happens to my family or anyone else in this town. Now fill it in.” He took a deep breath. “And remember, it will be easier to dig out a second time.”

Markulis looked up with relief that changed to confusion as he first felt the bullet rip into his stomach and then heard the report of Elena's rifle. He looked to his son and saw the red stain spreading across his chest. The two slumped awkwardly at the side of the grave, not falling in. Neither was dead yet, each moaning in the tangle of arms and legs. Elena walked around closer to them and fired a bullet into the head of each.

“I was going to let them off with a warning,” said Lukas.

“If there's to be no amnesty for us, let there be no amnesty for them.”

“We kill only when we have to.”

“Think of your brother, cut in two. Think of my brother, and of your father's grief. I will forgive no one who strikes at my family.”

“I never knew you could be so cruel.”

“I
am
cruel. And you helped to make me this way.”

“But someone may have heard the shots.”

“Leave the bodies here, where they are. Let them take care of their own dead.”

NINE