Underground by Antanas Sileika Page B

accent was vastly different from that of the BBC announcer. The American’s wife served them chicory coffee, black bread and butter, but her hospitality was grudging. She loved her children more than she loved her country, and if the partisans left tracks in the snow, the Cheka would ask questions.
    Even in winter, the partisans carried printed sheaves out to the villages and towns to pass on to the couriers. The men posted handbills in prominent places and ripped down Red proclamations. The couriers’ houses were also letterboxes through which personal messages could sometimes be sent. Lukas wrote to his parents to let them know he and his brother were alive and well.
    Lukas was used to hard work from his farm childhood, but he had never had to live out of doors for a long time. Even though he and Vincentas were privileged to work and live in a bunker that was heated by night, his fingertips never really warmed up and he hit the keys of the typewriter awkwardly.
    There was so much to write about the progress of the war farther west, to exhort the people not to collaborate with the Reds, to forbid the young men from joining the slayers.
    Slayers . Lukas found the Reds went straight to the point with their vocabulary. The word came from the Russian Istrebitel . It described Lithuanians who joined the Cheka as auxiliaries to hunt down “bandits” such as Lukas and Vincentas. In return, the slayers did not have to go into the army. Lukas could understand that a desperate man might become a slayer, but this understanding came without any sympathy. In order to preserve himself, the slayer had to hunt down his own people. Some of the slayers tried to play both sides of the game by acting incompetently, but their Red masters soon caught on to this. An incompetent could always be sent to the front. Ever the humane soul, Vincentas tried to moderate Lukas’s hatred of slayers, but without much success.
    Vincentas held prayer meetings because he was not ordained and could not say Mass. He listened to the confidences of troubled men, but he could not listen to confession, nor offer absolution. Those who were troubled or religious found their way to him and he offered them some comfort, even if his own comfort was in short supply. Like their friend Ignacas, Vincentas could not easily bear the cold. He was thin and developed a cough.
    â€œPut another couple of sticks in the stove,” said Lukas when he heard his brother’s chest heave yet again as they were working in the bunker one night.
    Lukas was typing up the stencil by oil lamp, and Vincentas was waiting to crank out the next issue of their “newspaper.” It was a flattering term for a mimeographed sheet.
    â€œLukas,” said Vincentas, “are you busy?”
    Lukas glanced over at his brother. They were only a metre apart and both sitting at the small table where Lukas squinted at the stencil and typed slowly in order not to make any mistakes.
    â€œI’m typing.”
    â€œHave you ever thought about what it’s like to act ethically in war?”
    â€œNot really,” said Lukas. He spoke slowly between hitting the keys.
    â€œWe discussed it in the seminary during the time the Germans occupied the country. We discussed how the normal rules of behaviour were lifted during war.”
    â€œYes,” said Lukas, slightly impatiently. “People kill people in war.”
    â€œBut not without cause. Even during a war, there is a system of values.” This was exactly the sort of talk that Vincentas was known for. He used to wonder about all sorts of abstract notions even as a boy on the farm. He had wanted to know if birds had afterlives, if it was immoral to eat meat, even on non-fast days, if women, since they were not permitted to be priests, had fully formed souls.
    â€œI think there is a system of values, yes,” said Lukas, listening with half an ear. “Even during a war.”
    â€œSo are we at