Diggers

by Viktors Duks

  On the way back to the road we were showered down by the rain again, and that put an end to our expedition. It did not, however, keep us from digging up a few well-preserved German army shells, as well as a piece of paper on which some had stuck a label from a German factory, dated 1944. I have it at home now.

  ***

  “Dad, why do boys have to wash their dicks every night?” This outstanding question came from my son.

  “A boy, like a soldier, always has to be ready, so that he can fight at any time.” I explained too much. I knew what the next question was going to be.

  “Fight who?”

  “Who?” I searched for the right answer. “Well … well, you know, when you get a bit older, you’ll understand. Get in the tub!”

  More than once I’ve found myself thinking that I should write down how it all began. Basically it’s clear. Something finds something else. Think of the old stone in the country that grows over with moss over the course of the years. That’s what happened with my diggers, too. I’ll start with myself, I guess.

  The time we call childhood had long since passed when I used a sharpened spear to poke around in large areas of what used to be front lines, and on the veranda of our house my cousin and I opened up a war museum. Then I found I had other interests, too. The period of my life started when I began to find out about women. A woman’s breasts, her rear end—this God-created miracle that messes us men’s minds and make them engage in heroics. Among other things, I came to understand why wars have been launched over women and why women have often ended war. In a word—this was a beginning to my school of life that was hard and complicated, but at the same time amazing and emotionally rich.

  As soon as I found out how a man is “affected” by the opposite sex and the benefits that this process can bring to society, I was drafted into the army. I won’t write separately about my army days—it’s a different story, and it would make a fine comedy. The army influenced me so much that for the next several years I wanted to hear nothing at all about war and the army.

  In the early 1990s, during the great changes that were happening, I wanted to learn more about what had happened to my grandmother’s two brothers. About the younger of these brothers it was said that the 19-year-old soldier who was drafted into the Latvian Legion drowned in the Baltic Sea, on his way from the Curland Cauldron to Germany. I started to search, and I proved the opposite. He fell in the battle for Curland in March of 1945. I also found out where he had been serving. There is no more detailed information about him.

  Around the same time I began to study the history of World War I, and I completed a screenplay. In late summer 1999, in the newspaper, I read an article that had with it a photograph of my now-colleague, Skvarceni. Thanks to the word Lucija that was engraved on a golden wedding ring, Skvarceni had found an old soldier’s wife. He had found the ring, in turn, when the Legionnaires were being reburied. I got to know Skvarceni.

  Around the same time, I saw on the TV news how the Communicator was trying to get two tanks out of a swamp. I felt sorry for myself for not being there. The Classicist didn’t think that way. He got in his car and drove right over there to meet the Communicator and to ask for his permission to touch a real battle tank. Around the same time, Mario was going on another one of his expeditions to various rural homesteads. Having heard about what was going on in the swamp, Mario, too, traveled to meet the Communicator, and that’s how they met.

  Everything from that point on happened in the way that it had to happen.

  I was suffering because of my conscience, and the reason was the sentence with which I began my journal. When all was said and done, I was the only one who knew the story about the buried soldiers, and I felt it my duty to solve this riddle. Skvarceni gave me Anatolijs’s telephone number. Before I called him, I rang up the Russian Embassy. I was told that the aforementioned person was completely normal and would not be using any skulls that were found to produce night lamps.

  We agreed to meet. I still cannot explain myself how this happened, but the Communicator, the Classicist and Anatolijs arrived from one side, and Skvarceni arrived from the other. I had found the men with whom, with interest, I could share my knowledge, and I learned just as much from their experience.

  Shit happens.

  The clock struck another hour of the night. My eyes were wandering across the names of people, arranged in countless rows. Born in 1918, fell in 1943. Born in 1923, fell in 1945. Born, fell, born, fell, born, lost. On and on, without end. At one farm Mario got to know an elderly woman who showed him the place under a rose bush where a Legionnaire had been buried. Soviet soldiers in March 1945 had captured the Legionnaire, tortured him in the basement of the house, and then dragged him outside and killed him. When the horrible stink of Russian tobacco smoke disappeared, the woman and her sister came out of their house and saw the Latvian who had been killed. The young girl look at his documents, and now, as an old lady, she could remember only two words—the young man’s surname, Auzins, and the fact that he had been drafted into the Legion from Riga.

  The ink of a pen had written six similar surnames on a white piece of paper. A date was listed alongside several of them, marking the day when a bullet or a piece of metal put an end to the life of the person who carried the name. In other cases there were only years. I spotted the name of a junior officer. In the column “Fell” I saw only the year, 1945, and the month—March. If it had been a rank-and-file soldier, I don’t think they would have tortured him, but that was not the case when they were dealing with an officer, who might have information. I might have found the right surname.

  And now what? Actually I have to write up the marketing plan for 2001.

  ***

  June 30, 2000

  I opened the trunk of my car and stood rooted to the spot—forest ants had set up an anthill in there, like illegal immigrants. Where on earth had they come from?

  ***

  July 1, 2000

  My director was celebrating his name day. I came to the party two hours in advance and asked him for a crowbar to use in prying apart the German soldier’s pot. When I was done, I found that the pot contained forest ants and a spoon. What a valuable discovery! I declared war on the ants.

  ***

  July 2, 2000

  Sunday. As usual, normal people can sleep until they’re tired of sleeping, but at 4:00 AM I turn to the woman beside me, run my hand across her body a few times, pat her bottom, kiss one of the cheeks of her butt and crawl out of bed. An hour later I am in my car, thinking about my wife’s shape, displayed to my eyes because her nightgown had ridden up during the night. I was driving to the Classicist’s house. You may not believe me, but it’s a fact that I fell in love with my wife right around that age when a kid starts to understand the difference between HIM and HER. She was my neighbor, and it was winter. It was the way romances like this usually begin. I stood aside and watched other five-year-olds messing around with my girl. Then I drew up my courage, picked up some snow in my little hands, went up to her and asked her to make me a snowball. The little princess looked at me with irony in her eyes and said, “What—I’m supposed to be making snowballs for everyone?” My parents thought that I did not know anything about love, and we moved to a different place, although they kept the old apartment, just in case.

  We met again when I was 17 and she was 18. I was living in my parents’ old apartment. Everyone around me was a fool, I was sick of my teachers, poets were idiots, artists were parasites, writers were all gay. I was the only smart one. Now I laugh at myself, writing these lines—”Viktors, how low you have fallen! Where have all your convictions disappeared to?” My life had arrived at a crossroads. One road promised me merry company, various kinds of girls, alcohol and drugs. The second—well, there wasn’t really a second road, was there? Nevertheless, when I looked at Ija the girlfriend I had then, I sometimes thought otherwise. Although some jerk had knocked out one of her teeth, she was generally speaking a beautiful woman
. Or, to put it precisely, she would have been a beautiful woman if she had not been taking tablets by the ton, smoking, drinking and giving her flesh to every man who passed by. I found myself thinking—if all pretty girls are like my Ija, where would I find one with whom I could live until my old age? I kept up this line of thought until a certain evening. A friend of mine did not have a girlfriend to take some event, and, trying to help, I called my old neighbor. Of course, she did not show up. A week later I called her again and told her that if she did not come outside, I would stand under her window all night. It was winter. The next day I was sick, but I got what I wanted. I stood outside for two hours before the most wonderful person on this planet emerged from the dark of the yard. “Sorry, friend,” my brain told me. “She is not for you.” In five minutes I had talked her into coming upstairs to warm up and drink some champagne. When I opened the door to my apartment, I was pleasantly surprised—my Ija was already in my friend’s arms. Thank you, God!

  Stop! That’s not what this journal is about.

  Today we are going to see Mario. The digger has been in Kurzeme since yesterday.

  The weather? For the time being it’s not raining, but conditions are right for the forest to be wet, the grass to be wet and us to be wet.

  Mario was waiting for us on the road, and when we met him our eyes—mine, the Classicist’s and the Communicator’s—sparkled. “The old man told me that when the Germans fled, they left behind boxes of weapons. In order to avoid problems, the old man dug everything into the ground in the forest, by a young aspen. He did not really remember the specific place. There were also two German tank drivers who were racing. One of the tanks sank into a swamp, and the old man knows the specific place.” We were beaming.

  We drove along with Mario, and I scanned the forest from which any minute now we would be bringing out piles of antiques. I imagined how I found restore the weapons, clean them. I guess I dreamed a bit too much. The result was terrible. We found three large aspen trees. We dug up nails, shards of metal, an exploded charge—but no weapons. We cut down thorny branches of raspberry bush and nettle, we tramped across the grass—we found no weapons. I remained alone, the others went to look at some bunkers. I tried to concentrate, I tried to be the old man. I yelled “Abracadabra!” and “Open Sesame!” but nothing happened. I could have shit myself, and that wouldn’t have helped either.

  At that moment the Classicist called me up on my mobile phone: “You wanna come see the box that we’re digging up?” They were 50 meters from me, and he wanted me to see them lift out the box and open it. Progress!

  The Classicist and Communicator were digging around in a field. There was lots of clay, and I saw a very rusted brown metal box. My first thought was quite pessimistic. We had dug up many boxes, but most of them had been empty.

  “It’s not empty, there’s something in there,” the Communicator reported happily.

  Mario whistled for us from the yard of his farm, looking for us. I whistled back, and then yelled through the forest for Mario to bring his video camera. The Communicator and Classicist finally wrested the box out of the ground. The Communicator took a small shovel and a knife and went to work. When the box had been cleaned somewhat of the rust, I turned on the video camera. It is nice to know now that I was ready to catch the moment when the cover was lifted. A beautiful scene opened up to our eyes—in the box there were 12 beautiful, well-oiled PAK artillery shells. Oh, I was sorry that they were explosive—we would have to disarm them before they could be put in our collections. I was ready to be patient, though. We had two boxes already!

  ***

  July 24, 2000

  Even if I have not written a line during all of this time, that does not mean that I have been lazy for even a moment.

  Hundreds of times I had heard my friends and acquaintances talk about the beautiful nature of Latvia—the sandy caves, the old castles, the little dream cottage somewhere far away from the big city, relaxation by a lake or river. All of that fell under the heading Travel Latvia! I guess I’ll start with the Saturday and Sunday when the Classicist and I decided to travel Latvia with our families. I think that the Classicist’s wife thought that this was a normal process, but my better half did not. Apparently we have lived together long enough for her to see things in me that my mouth does not speak. The only thing I told her that we would be driving a long way, that we would live alongside the cleanest lake in Latvia (I did not mention that there were two military airplanes in the lake), that we would be camping, that the Classicist would make barbecue, and that on the way we would look at some historical buildings. I didn’t say anything about digging.

  Off we went. Some people go to look at rivers, mountains and lakes, while we showed our wives what a World War I cement bunker looks like. Actually, I was looking at one of them myself for the first time. The bunkers were far form the road, among densely packed trees. This was a place where nettles reached to your armpits, where your feet caught under roots. I doubt whether anything of the sort has been preserved elsewhere in Europe. We looked at two completely different bunkers. One was at the place where Germany had ended its “victory march” to Russia. This is the place where the army choked, and after that the soldiers cared just as little about the war as did the czar’s soldiers on the opposite shore of the river. After we looked at the bunker we drove a bit further—people had told me about other underground fortifications.

  “I am not going any further,” my wife announced and opened a women’s magazine. On the second approach access to the objects was simpler—they were on the edge of a field. The second set of bunkers, as far as I could see, had been meant for warehousing—warehousing of munitions, to be precise. Why? There were no firing apertures in the bunker, but they were very appropriate for fortifications.

  Toward the evening we got very close to the border between Russia and Lithuania. My friend Alvils greeted us. We had a wonderful evening and night. Our cottages were on the shore of a large lake. The flames from our campfire chased away the blackness of the night. The Classicist threaded pieces of meat on spits, and our laughter brought a quiet corner of Latvia back to life. Alvils fired up his outdoor sauna for us, and my son burned his hand a bit on the sauna’s oven. We went to bed very late at night.

  A week later I drove to Kuldiga by myself. A Latvian Legionnaire had written to me and said that he would like to present me with his memories. He was a very sincere little old man, and when I left, I promised that I would help to carry him to his place of eternal rest when the time came. He and his wife had no children, and his relatives were all long gone. He laughed that he had already written his obituary and that there would be only one wreath—from his wife. I thought about his words all the way back home: “I was on the front lines. There was no law to protect me there, I could kill—the more I killed, the more I would be praised. I could also be killed, and nobody would be punished for that. Nobody would care.”

  ***

  August 3, 2000

  What a rotten day—constant rain, and I’m at work. What could we worse?

  I work, Skvarceni works, and now the Classicist is working, too. Let him work. God stand with him and help him to carry out the ideas that his colleague’s brains have come up with. I know that he is thinking about his work more than some other times, but he is also mulling over our plans. How can that be? It’s possible, I’ve seen it in myself. We waste a lot of time. All you have to do is arrange your ideas and your obligations. Never postpone your work for tomorrow with the idea that there is also the day after tomorrow. I know that this is very difficult to do sometimes, occasionally you simply have to force yourself to do things that you really don’t want to do. Remember one smart thing—nobody is going to bring your heart’s desire to you on a plate. Nobody.

  We’re waiting for the moment when the Businessman is “starving.” Then he’ll be ready to dig up the pyramids of Egypt, if need be. The Classicist is a good businessman. Recently he was talking about the death of the factory
he used to head—a factory that employed 2,000 people. It was a big, state-owned factory, and it was privatized. “For the three months that I was president there, I did many things. I paid wages to the workers, I completed all of the orders that were on file, and that was it. People came from the bank, there were bureaucrats from the state. One bastard bureaucrat later told a friend of mine that he had been offered so much that he could not refuse—a bribe for his signature on a document. If I had known that in advance, I would have acted differently.” I know the Classicist. He was not at fault for what had happened at the factory, but I could sense that he was taking it personally nonetheless.

  Yesterday I called the Communicator. I found out once again that he is and always will be the Communicator. Somewhere from near the sea he had brought back the helmets of two Soviet soldiers. He had gotten to know some of the local diggers and found out that our competitors were following along in our footsteps. Competitors, competitors—people in it for the money, cretinous people who could think of nothing other than finding something and then selling it.

  The police are the “friends” of the diggers. The Communicator told me that in Liepaja the police had cleaned out their homes, taken along not only rusty weapons, but also things that neither shoot nor explode—helmets, gas masks, and on and on. The boys didn’t even have to write an explanation for the police. Things like this happen all the time—the police are assholes, complete jackasses. And then there was the story of one man. Like I said, Indiana Jones could learn a lot from us, but we, in turn, could learn a lot from this man. I don’t know much about him right now, but if this man had gone looking for General Kolchak’s gold in Russia, if he had wandered around Siberia for three months—well, in that case we should be writing a book about him, not about ourselves.