Read Online Underground by Antanas Sileika - Free Book Online

war?”
    â€œWe fire at one another.”
    â€œBut no one declared war between the Lithuanians and the Reds, did they?”
    â€œNo, because it’s to the Reds’ advantage not to. They call us bandits.”
    â€œAnd how is a bandit to act ethically?”
    â€œBut we’re not bandits. I’ve just said to you, we’re at war.”
    â€œI’m not sure I could ever kill anyone.”
    â€œWith any luck, you won’t have to. But I hope that if somebody is threatening me or one of the others, you’ll defend us.”
    â€œI’ll try.”
    Lukas became slightly exasperated with his brother. “Think of the world we live in. Think of what we’ve seen already—our people killed by the retreating Reds in ’41, the Jews cut down, soldiers shot to pieces, children blown up under artillery fire. You’re talking as if you’ve never seen violence.”
    â€œI’ve never had to carry arms before. I’m really a pacifist, you know.”
    â€œThe Reds will thank you for not defending yourself. Then they’ll shoot you dead or haul you away to Siberia.”
    â€œBut I don’t think I could ever shoot anyone.”
    â€œSo you won’t be covering my back?”
    Vincentas ignored the question.
    Lukas stopped trying to type. He turned to his brother, intending to give Vincentas a good talking-to, the kind their father used to give the boy when he was philosophizing too much on the farm. But Lukas held back. His brother was hugging himself for warmth even though the wood stove made the underground room quite comfortable. Lukas would have to speak to Flint about getting Vincentas out of the partisans. Perhaps there was some distant village where he could live semi-legally as a clerk.
    On a Sunday night in February, when the air was so cold the trees seemed to cry out in pain, Flint called the brothers up from their bunker. Outside, they found Ungurys and Lakstingala, both of them swaddled thickly against the cold and wearing knapsacks and carrying their weapons. Flint’s pipe was unlit, but his breath streamed like smoke in the air.
    â€œAll right, you two,” he said, “you’ve been sitting around too long. You’re going to get fat this way. Besides, it’s time for your baptism.”
    â€œBaptism?” Vincentas asked.
    â€œBy fire. Don’t worry—nothing too exciting. Two of my best men will be with you.”
    â€œLet’s get moving,” said Ungurys through the scarf over his mouth. “If we stand still, we’ll freeze to the spot.”
    Vincentas and Lukas went with the other two and made their way to the market village an hour and a half away.
    Lukas was glad to be going out, to be doing something besides listening to the radio and typing up news, if only to stretch his muscles. The mission was like a night game of the kind he used to play with the other farm children, but instead of a staff he carried a rifle strapped to his back; instead of a pocketknife, a long blade in his boot; instead of a flashlight, a grenade at his side. Still, it felt a little like a game. The men carried proclamations as well as other materials in knapsacks on their backs. The four walked across frozen streams and woods until they came to a spot along the main road out of the town, about a kilometre from the centre.
    While Ungurys and Lakstingala kept watch from a hill alongside the road, Vincentas and Lukas nailed proclamations to each of three telegraph poles. They were posters depicting Stalin as a ghoul, consuming the country. Above each proclamation they nailed a warning sign forbidding passersby to remove the posters. At the third pole, the one farthest away from the town, Ungurys and Lakstingala took over, first wiring the poster to a device behind the pole and then setting up a primitive picket fence topped with barbed wire.
    â€œWhat’s that all about?” Vincentas asked.
    â€œYou do your job,