“You think he’d be the first one? We’ve had partisans that were bad to begin with or went bad later, and others became cowards like this one. We had field courts when there was still an organization, and I took part in a couple of executions.”
“I’ve been in dangerous spots before,” said Lozorius, “but something has broken in me. You can’t blame me for that.”
“I don’t blame a horse for breaking its leg. And the cure is the same,” said Lakstingala.
“Stop it,” said Lukas, and Lakstingala closed his mouth and hunkered down. “Lakstingala, come outside with me. Lozorius, you stay here.”
They walked out a distance to the nearest copse.
“The man makes me furious,” said Lakstingala. “He knew what the dangers were when he came back here. Now he’s lured you in for no good reason and he’s put all of us at risk.”
“There’s still the matter of my wife, though.”
Lakstingala nodded. “That’s true, but you’ll do her no good. Leave her alone. If she’s living with false papers, she’s built some kind of structure for herself, but it will be very fragile. If you go looking for her, you could destroy all that.”
“But I haven’t come here to ruin her life—I’ve come here to save her and get her out again. She should be dead. For all I know she was dead, but she’s risen from it somehow. You don’t look indifferently at that kind of miracle. I’ll get her out somehow.”
“What you say will be hard enough for two. Do you want to risk it with Lozorius?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to leave him behind. He has a bad look to him.”
“I’ll execute him. He’s a traitor, in a way, for endangering you.”
“Don’t be so hard. We all have to find a way to survive, even you.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Why not? You worry about me.”
“Honestly, you have to stop talking like that. If sentimentality is what you lived off in the West, I’m glad I’m not going there.”
Lukas smiled but hid it from him. “Would you come with me if I went looking for Elena in Merkine?”
“I’d lead you to the edge of town. In the meantime, let’s take this one back where he came from—or rather, let me do it.”
“Go easy. When I knew him before, he wasn’t like this.”
When they stepped back into the bunker, they found that Lozorius had finished the blackcurrant liqueur in each of their glasses. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I thought you might shoot me when you returned.” He looked at them sheepishly.
It seemed for a moment as if the furious Lakstingala might do just that, but he got over it. Lukas and Lakstingala both went part of the way back with Lozorius, but Lukas left them to return to his bunker. He invited Lozorius to visit whenever he felt the pressure grow too great. The man needed bucking up.
Upon his return to his bunker, Lukas saw the three glasses still on the table. He put his finger into the bottom of one and tasted the tip of it.
He heard a noise outside. He reached for his assault rifle and put a hand grenade in his pocket as well.
“It’s just me,” a familiar voice called.
“Rimantas, what are you doing here?”
“You’re supposed to call me Poe. I’m sorry, but I just wrote a new poem and I knew you’d want to hear it.”
Lukas should have been angry, but he could never stay that way with Rimantas. The man was too outrageously amusing for his breaches of security to be taken seriously.
TWENTY-FIVE
LAKSTINGALA AND LUKAS surveyed the town of Merkine from the same position where they had stood when they first attacked the town, five years earlier. The woods were behind them and a hundred metres of field before them, and beyond that the backs of the wooden houses on the edge of town. Then, there had been half a dozen men in their unit and dozens more in other positions. Of these men, only Lukas and Lakstingala were still alive. It was hard to look at the town without a sense of bitterness for all that had happened since they had been there, for the futility of all the deaths that had left the sleepy town unchanged.
Merkine had two and a half thousand inhabitants by 1950, not so few that a stranger would be remarked upon but not so many that Lukas would go unnoticed. He needed to wait until evening in order to enter the town.
“I’ll stay here for a while after you go in,” said Lakstingala. “If you’re in trouble, try to make it this way and I can cover you from the forest if you need to run across the bare field.”
“The earth is still wet. If I have to run across the bare field, I’ll be a dead man. Once I disappear from your view into the town, go back and make yourself safe. And if I don’t come back, don’t go looking for me.”
“All right.”
Lukas studied the house on the other side of the field. He had once shot a sniper who was inside that window.
“If anything happens to me,” he said, “do what you can for Elena.”
“All right.”
Lukas looked at Lakstingala, but the partisan would not meet his eyes. “Not that I expect to outlive you, but did you want to tell me anything about your wife in case something happens to you?” asked Lukas.
“I think I’d rather you didn’t know anything about her at all.”
“There’s a chance we could all make it out together. I could take Lozorius and Elena, and you could take your wife. Five of us might be able to do it.”
“It’s not just my wife. We have a daughter, and I wouldn’t want to leave her behind. Besides, there are still a few partisans around, and I’m the oldest one among them. They make jokes about me all the time, and it would be bad for morale if I suddenly disappeared. I think I’m not going anywhere, unless it’s northeast, and I’ll put that off as long as I can.”
It was hard to separate this time, and they lingered by the edge of the forest.
“There’s one more thing. I wouldn’t mind getting word out to the West whether I make it or not,” said Lukas. “I’ve written a letter. Do you think you could try to get it out if anything happens to me?”
“I thought Lozorius said the British and the Swedes were infiltrated.”
“That may be so, but it’s not them I’m worried about. There are people who helped me out there—I had a whole other life…”
Lakstingala held up his hand. “I don’t want to know. Do you have the letter?”
“Yes.”
“Hand it over.”
Lakstingala did not even look at the address. Lukas glanced up at the evening sky. It was still a little too early to go into the town, but he couldn’t wait.
“Do you think this country will ever be free?” Lukas asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. One thing is sure: we won’t live to see it.” He said it so readily that he must have said it before and it must have been what the other partisans believed.
“One more thing,” said Lukas.
“Are you never going to leave?”
“About Lozorius.”
“What about him?”
“If something happens to me, he’ll lose his last hope for getting out of the country.”
“My heart is bleeding.”
“Why are you so hard on him?”
“He’s too dramatic for me. He played the hero—a kind of Robin Hood. The pose was too good not to be false.”
“Didn’t you once call me Robin Hood as well?”
“You’re different. I watched you grow up with the partisans. I tell you, when we went out on that first mission, you were pitiful. But later, what you did with Elena at that engagement party, that was astonishing.”
“I’m not so sure I’m proud of that anymore. We killed so many, and what good did it do us?”