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 little. 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.