Therefore he was surprised to feel his mood shifting as he waited for Monika in the Alliance café. She was only in class for two hours, but quickly the shadows in the corridor began to grow long. As his mood thickened, he could no longer read. He tried to write, but there was something about the shadows that made him gloomy. This happened sometimes, more frequently than he liked to admit. The memories rose in him and troubled him.
It crossed his mind that since he never saw the body, maybe Vincentas had just been wounded and captured after all. They would have tortured him if he survived, maybe even shot him after they had squeezed whatever they could get from him. On the other hand Vincentas might have been deported to Siberia and still be alive there. Which would be the worse fate, to be alive in Siberia or dead? Probably alive, because one died alone, whereas if one survived, he took others to their deaths with his information.
Lukas heard laughter from the courtyard outside the café, from young people talking. He envied them their lightheartedness. He could not seem to regain his own lightheartedness, the contentedness of an hour ago. Where had it gone?
And so he brooded for the two hours she was in her class. When she came out, she looked at him and saw immediately that something was wrong.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I wonder if you know how hard things can be for me sometimes.”
“I think I know.” She studied him carefully. He did not ordinarily speak like this.
“And yet my suffering has brought me to you, for which I’m grateful.”
He didn’t go on, but she could tell there was more to say, so she waited. The corridor had emptied of students and the guardian would be skulking nearby somewhere, waiting to lock up and go home.
“But if it was my fate to be brought to you, why did so many have to die to get me here?”
It was an impossible question. Europe was full of people who could ask that same question, but they must not ask it; they were in danger of getting lost among the ghosts if they did.
SEVENTEEN
PARIS
SEPTEMBER 1949
THE RUE DES LIONS ST-PAUL was an exceptionally quiet street in the Marais district of Paris, not far from where Lukas had first spoken to the émigré community almost a year and a half earlier. Between the passage of schoolchildren eastward in the morning and westward in the afternoon, no more than a dozen pedestrians passed below Lukas’s second-storey study. When they did come, he could tell by the clicking of their heels on the narrow sidewalk.
Since the street window faced north, it did not receive much light anyway, and so, having finished his work for the day, Lukas pulled shut the shutters and locked them. The only other windows in the apartment faced the courtyard, where children were sometimes permitted to play if they did not get too loud and irritating to the concierge. The concierge or her husband was almost always at the window in the passageway downstairs.
A little under a year before, Lukas and Monika had been married just around the corner, in the massive Église St-Paul–St-Louis. They had been lucky to get this apartment, a place once rented by Monika’s uncle but vacated when he moved to America at the beginning of 1949. The entire émigré government-in-exile had moved to America, and as many DP camp residents as could were flying away to the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and even New Zealand. Like birds restless for migration, once the first ones took flight, the rest of the flock followed.
But not all. Lukas and Monika were still in Paris with no plans to go anywhere else, at least for now. Monika had to finish her studies and Lukas was not quite ready to abandon Europe.
A sense of unease had come over him once the weather became fine the previous spring, and it grew all that summer. The world was changing again, but it was hard to tell how it would all turn out. The Reds won in China and Mao Zedong came to power. The Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb, helped by Red spies in America who had shown them how to do it. Nobody talked anymore about what good allies the Soviets had been during the war. Maybe the climate for the Lithuanian partisans was getting better, but now that Lukas had been gone for close to two years it was hard to know what their situation might be. World events seemed farther away now. Like anyone else, Lukas thought of his day-to-day life. He had no cause for unease, unless he was unaccustomed to so much stability and happiness. He had put on weight and his clothing was too tight.
Over the past half decade Lukas had never lived in one place for any length of time, and now that he had been living in the apartment for eight months he felt strangely vulnerable, as if he were back at war and his tranquility in the apartment were a trap. Anyone who looked for him would find a sitting target rather than a moving one. Yet who would be looking for him now that he was a private citizen?
Monika was a full-time student in nursing, very busy. The émigré government had asked Lukas to write a book about the partisans, was paying him a little to do it, and he was working away slowly on that, writing for at least the fourth time the story of what he had done after the war. Since he worked at home, he was the one who went out to buy food for dinner after the stores reopened in the late afternoon, and he was the one to clean the place because he was there anyway and Monika was always studying.
This day, Lukas took his shopping basket, stepped out and went down the steps and out into the courtyard and then onto the street, as usual.
If anyone worried him, it should have been the French. Before moving to America, Monika’s uncle had come to explain that the government was filled with Reds and the SDECE was therefore insecure, even dangerous. Sharing information with them was as good as betraying his comrades back in Lithuania. Thus the man who got Lukas into the French secret service in the first place now convinced him to get out. It was an abrupt turn. Dizzying.
They had not taken kindly to Lukas’s withdrawal in January 1949, threatening him, insisting that he would be expelled from the country. But since Monika was permitted to live in France and she and Lukas had been married the previous fall, the authorities had no grounds for expulsion. True, Lukas’s residency paperwork was laborious, but it was hard to tell if this was due merely to bureaucracy or to the active mischief of his vindictive SDECE handlers.
Lukas was free of them now, but he was barely employed and did not know what to do with the rest of his life. For the time being he scratched away at his memoirs.
He walked up to the rue St-Antoine, where the street was filling with children let out from school and women buying their supplies for dinner. He walked on the sidewalk, between the fruit and vegetable carts on the street and the food stalls of the shops, as women shouted out encouragement to buy their goods. He did not like to be out in crowds like this, where he could not keep track of who was behind him.
And yet what did he have to be afraid of here, in Paris? The French would not kill him. The Soviets might have tried something like that right after the war, if he had been operating somewhere like Berlin or Vienna, but they would do nothing here. He was too small a fish. They might not even know he existed. And yet his old partisan sixth sense told him to be wary.
Lukas stopped to buy beets. Fresh beets in late summer were a gift and he felt a need for borscht, the food of his homeland. Paris had everything, they said, and that was somewhat true, but it still was not home. That place needed to be evoked in other ways.
Lukas felt disconnected, adrift in life. The English had wanted him so badly, but he had turned them down. Now he was a little sorry he had. He had turned down the French as well. With the émigré government in America, he felt like an anachronism, someone who stayed on in school after all the others had left.
Paris could never be home for simple reasons. It did not have sour cream, for one, which was slightly annoying because it was an essential ingredient of proper borscht. France had crème fraîche but it tasted different. Lukas would need to buy unpasteurized cream and sour it himself, but that would take overnight and would not be ready in time for this evening’s dinner. It didn’t matter. He co
uld make a large pot of borscht today, enough for two days, and eat it properly on the second day.
Aside from his memoir writing, he was unemployed and just scraping by. They could not afford much cheese or meat, but there were certain cuts the French did not value, in particular spare ribs, and so they were cheap and he could boil them in the soup.
Baguettes were delicious propositions, but sometimes Lukas missed the taste of the bread of his homeland, so he cut across the rue St-Antoine and went up the side streets where there were some Jewish shops that carried dark rye bread. Borscht and baguette would have been unthinkable. Finally, on the way back to his street, he stopped to buy a litre of everyday wine, a vin gris that Monika liked.
Back at the apartment, Lukas opened the bottle and poured his first glass as he put the beets on to boil. An hour later he poured off the hot red water, watching carefully to make sure he did not drip it on his shirt, and then peeled the beets, slipping their skins off, and grated them. He put the grated beets into the pot, ran cold water over his fingertips to lighten the stubborn stains, and then cut the slab of ribs into pairs and immersed them in the pot, adding chopped carrots and onions as well. He waited until the pot came to a boil, took the bottle of wine and a glass, and went to sit by the courtyard window to watch the children play down below before their parents called them in for dinner.
Two girls and a boy played quietly down there, either so terrorized by the concierge that they did not shout and run, or so much products of generation upon generation of Parisian children that they took their confinement in stride. Even in the parks the children barely seemed to run about. They were like prematurely old men, standing with arms crossed as they talked to one another.
After an hour, Lukas went to check on his borscht, found it to his liking, and turned off the pot and set it aside and peeled potatoes and put them on the burner. He set the small table and brought over the wine bottle, then saw that only a glass remained in it. He finished that glass, turned the potatoes down to simmer, and went back outside to the wine merchant to get another bottle.
He met Monika coming down the street from her classes at the institute, a satchel in one hand. Her hair was pinned back, the way she kept it during the day for her studies, exposing her face, which was light gold in the late afternoon sunlight. She had slightly thick lips, soft lips, which turned up in a smile as soon as she saw him. She waved with her free hand.
He embraced her as soon as he was close enough, and when he was about to withdraw she used her free hand to hold the back of his head and prolong the kiss.
“That’s very affectionate,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day.” It was like this sometimes, either one or the other overcome with need and on the prowl.
“The potatoes are simmering on the stove. Keep an eye on them and I’ll be right back. I’m just going to get another bottle of wine.”
“I can’t drink tonight anyway, I need to study. Why don’t you come back with me now and we’ll have a little fun before dinner?”
“What a good offer,” said Lukas. “But let me pick up the wine in case you change your mind.”
“Aren’t we a little early in our marriage for wine to take priority?”
He was slightly irritated and about to say something, but when he looked at her he realized she was right. He kissed her on the neck, drew her free arm through his and walked back to the apartment, listening to what she said about her day while thinking that he should look for a job soon. It was not good to put so much time into the preparation of dinner.
He had just closed the door behind him when he turned to see that she had set down her bag, hung up her jacket, and was pulling the pins out of her hair. “You look like you’re in a rush,” he said.
“I’m hungry for you.”
He reached around her waist, pulled her close to kiss her and then undid the clasp at the back of her skirt as well as the button below it. Her skirt dropped to the floor and she began to laugh.
“You said you were in a hurry,” said Lukas.
“But I thought we might make it to the bedroom first.”
“No time for that, madame. Hands up.” She raised her hands and he took her sweater and peeled it up from the bottom and then threw it behind her, over her head.
Someone knocked at the door.
Monika’s face lit up with mock panic and she smothered a laugh, and then began to gather up her discarded clothing.
“Who is it?” Lukas asked through the door.
“It’s Anne.”
“I’ll be right there.” He waited a moment until Monika was out of the hall and then opened the door. Anne was standing outside with a large jar in the crook of one elbow and her briefcase in her other hand. She wore eyeglasses now and looked very serious as a result. She kissed him on each cheek. “It’s bad luck to greet someone across a threshold.”
“Only in Lithuania,” said Anne. “And since we’re in Paris, we don’t have to worry.”
“What have you got in your hand?”
“Mother pickled some cucumbers and sent me over with them.”
“Will you stay for dinner? It’s almost ready.”
“I think I will. I might stay here to study after that. Mother has piano students all evening and I want to get in a little reading before classes begin next week.”
“You’re always welcome here,” said Lukas, his heart sinking a little.
Monika came back in and the sisters kissed, and then they all went into the kitchen to eat. Anne tried yet again to convince Monika to give up her studies in nursing in favour of medicine, but Monika declined. Nursing was faster. She wanted to get on with her life.
After they had eaten, to Lukas’s embarrassment, Monika told Anne to go for a walk for half an hour, which Anne agreed to do if they spotted her the money for a cup of coffee in a café. The sisters were practical and unashamed about their sexual needs, while Lukas still felt a little like the overmodest country boy.
He was washing dishes when Anne came back, and the sisters set up on opposite sides of the table to do their work. They were a serious pair, barely talking to one another. Lukas left the wet dishes to air-dry on the counter and took a book to the living room. The evening passed quietly, and when it grew late he and Monika walked Anne back to her mother’s apartment. The evening was getting cool as they returned. Lukas asked Monika if she would like to go for a drink before going to bed, but she was tired and they didn’t really have the money to drink in cafés. She encouraged him to go ahead. He walked her back to their place and then returned to the rue St-Antoine for a drink.
He went into a workers’ café just off the main street. It was full of men in blue smocks, some of whom worked odd hours for the city and some of whom had been drinking here since they finished work a few hours ago. Their wives would not be too happy to see them when they finally came in. The place was thick with smoke and talk in various languages; many of the workers were Polish or Italian. Lukas ordered a glass of beer and a shot of Calvados, the cheapest of the liquors, and then drank both down quickly and ordered another beer. It was only after he felt the welcome rush of relaxation that he turned around with his back to the bar in order to look across the tables and onto the street beyond the windows.
Zoly was sitting at a table by the window with a glass of wine in front of him, his arms crossed as he watched Lukas. Zoly was in a suit and tie, and his hat was on a chair beside him. He was smoking a cigarette—ever the man of the world, even here, in a working-class bar.
EIGHTEEN
HE FELT oddly vindicated by the sight of Zoly. Lukas’s unease, the prickly sensation at the back of his neck, had been warranted. He finished his glass of beer because the waiter would not permit him to take it to a table, where he would be expected to order again at a higher price. He then walked across the short distance and pulled out the chair across from Zoly and sat down.
“Surprised?” Zoly asked.
“I’ve smelt you around f
or the last little while, like a piece of dog turd deep within the treads of my boots.”
“Your rough language is true to your country roots, I see,” said Zoly. He called over the waiter and ordered another Calvados and beer for Lukas. He butted one cigarette, took another from the pack, but seemed in no hurry to light it, first studying the street outside.
Lukas could feel the alcohol as he had intended to, to help bring on sleep. He enjoyed the slight intoxication and would have liked to drink the Calvados in front of him, but he didn’t touch it, and when Zoly finally did light his next cigarette and proposed a toast, Lukas just sipped at his beer.
“Let’s catch up,” said Zoly. “I’m a little insulted that you didn’t invite me to your wedding.”
“It wasn’t much of a party—just family and a few close friends.”
“Belated congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“And how is the life of the bourgeois gentilhomme agreeing with you?”
“The married part of my life is quite wonderful, but I’m underemployed. I’m finishing off a book about the partisans for the government-in-exile, but there isn’t much money in that. It’s not easy to find work in France.”
“I imagine not, but you always seemed a little above making a living, if I might say so. You brushed us off, and the French as well, I understand, as if you didn’t need to earn your way through life. You must have been saving yourself for your wife.”
“For the Americans, actually.”
“But they never came to call.”
“I’m not at liberty to say.” There wasn’t much point in being evasive, but Lukas did it out of pride. If Zoly knew he had been with the French and left them, he knew just as well that Lukas was not working for the Americans.
Underground Page 20