Diggers (15 page)

***

When it happened is not important. The key is WHERE it happened. Skvarceni reached me in the middle of the week.

“I found the KGB guy—we're going out on Saturday!”

“Skvarceni called the KGB guy, we should go.” I was explaining this to the Classicist, and his eyes began to sparkle like the balls of a cat that has just licked them.

I spent the entire week in a state of pleasant excitement. Of course I did not go to the university.

Let me move into the future now, six hours ahead, to be specific, and tell you that we didn't find anything in that place.

When we drove home late at night, the Classicist and I analyzed everything that we had learned and concluded that there had to be something there after all. All of the legends and stories about the place resembled something like a Picasso painting—there is a drawing of sorts there, but the sense of the picture is difficult to explain.

The KGB guy had read a Soviet scout's report in which the scout had described his observations. During the war he had stood on a hill and seen how five German trucks drove up to an old windmill. Men began to unload large boxes from the trucks. The KGB guy told us that the boxes had been hidden. Where? If we knew that, I would be writing something else now. The windmill is 300 years old and is located at a place where a German community had once lived. During the war, the windmill was used as a field hospital and as a military headquarters for the Germans. The mill is in the center of Latvia in geographic terms, removed from populated places but with easy access by road. These were important things to us, and they, along with the testimony of the KGB guy, led us to a variety of logical considerations.

Let us look at the testimony we got from the owners of the nearby farm. When they had bought the farm, a neighboring Gypsy woman had told them that only courageous people could live on the land. Asked why she said that, the old woman shook her head and changed the subject. Even on occasions when the owners treated the Gypsy woman to some stronger drink and thought that this would loosen her tongue, they learned nothing more about the things that had supposedly been hidden on their property.

“If the windmill is so old,” I said, “then back then when farmers used to barter for the flour that was ground with pigs, hens and eggs, there had to be major cellars in which the things were stored. They built big cellars back then.”

Nothing around the windmill suggested the presence of a cellar, however, and if it had collapsed or been destroyed, then we would have seen either a depression in the earth or a pile of large and small stones concentrated in a small territory. We agreed that the cellar was still “alive,” but God only knew where it could be found.

So why did the Gypsy woman keep quiet about these things, even in our time? It is possible that the Germans had so frightened her back then that she had put a block on some part of her mind. Perhaps over the course of the years the secret had become rusty, like an old gun. What did the old Gypsy woman have to fear? Put yourself in her shoes and listen to this warning that I have thought up: “You stay here and guard this place, but don't even think of going in there. There are mines in there. If you tell anyone, you will be killed. Who will do it? Others who live around here and know who you are.” Perhaps that is foolishness, but if I heard such threats made against me, you can believe me when I say that I would think long and hard before I went into that room. I would be thinking about my ass. What is more, if the things that are in the cellar are things like documents—and there is good reason to believe that this is what they were—the woman had no use for them. If there had been weapons, the question would have been the same—what would she have done with them? I cannot say that about myself, of course. I have imagined the cellar hundreds of times—boxes and boxes, neatly arranged and filled with something that I do not know about. That's it. I'm not writing any more about this. If we get the right equipment we'll find the things, if not, let is remain for our sons to do. What could the Germans have hidden there anyway? Certainly not the fabled Amber Room, right? Ha, ha, ha!

***

Monday is a day which not very many people love. We drink our morning coffee during a meeting at work, with people talking about what they did over the weekend. One guy talked about a new girlfriend, another one talked about how nice it was to spend some time at a new nightclub. Someone else went to a concert. When it was my turn, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I dug.”

The echoes of the trip were terrible. One of us came down with a terrible case of salmonella. Skvarceni felt that the bacon rolls he had brought were to blame. I thought the same about ground beef that I had fed to the Classicist. When I got up the courage to call the patient and ask how he was feeling, the man's voice sounded as if he had vomited out all of his joy at life. “I can't do anything, I feel terrible. It's like there's a rock band in my stomach.”

“I prepared a present for you, and I'll bring it to you, OK?” I tried to cheer him up. It was a pole that was sharpened at one end and had a handle on the other, approximately one meter long.

We were quiet for the remaining part of October. The Classicist and I dug around a bit, but nothing worth mentioning happened. The Patient underwent him rehabilitation, and I'm afraid I cannot say the same for my studies. Communications studies depressed me. I had to submit a concept for an annual paper. God forbid that I should choose another subject like the political movement of women. Women! Believe me, I completely support your movement, but why the hell do you have to burn your bras? After that paper I couldn't have a normal conversation with women any more. I was afraid to let a woman pass through the door before me, I was afraid of even smiling at this miracle of God. Over the last several days my life has been like that old Liza Minelli song: “The morning comes, I think about you, I drink my coffee and think about you, I talk to my friends, but I think about you.”

By the way—I guess I'm talking about friends.

“Boys, I need materials.” We were in the Classicist's car, and I interrupted my colleagues with this statement. “I need propaganda materials that were fed to the Latvians between 1939 and 1946—both Russian and German.”

“Why the hell do you need something like that?” the Classicist asked.

“I decided what I'll write about. I want to bring together the nice and the useful. I have to write an annual paper.” I was so happy about this outstanding solution that soon enough I could join in the conversation of my battle mates.

“What kind of a book is this? It's about tanks,” said the Communicator, having found a thin brochure in the Classicist's car.

“It's my son's coloring book.”

“How's he doing in school?” I asked.

“I think he's going to be sick of it soon. They make him draw trees and bunny rabbits and kitty cats.”

We arrived at the agreed location, and Mario dove into the car.

“Let's go down to the bar, I'm hungry.” Mario was starving.

This was a tradition for us—a second breakfast, some coffee, new legends and stories, information from the police and legends about diggers which do not differ at all from the fables which hunters and fishermen tell.

“Mario, when are you going to show us your collection?” I asked, thinking of weapons. “You know everything about us.”

“I buried that stuff deep underground,” our acquaintance smirked.

“You probably sprinkle weapon grease on your flowerbeds,” the Classicist said, chewing on some pastry.

“The Russian embassy, by the way, looked at our cassette and said that we had done an impressive job with those bones. They liked it a lot,” the Communicator changed the subject.

“What did you give them? Everything?” Mario smiled.

“Forget it,” the Classicist growled. “I censored the damn tape, erasing all of your stupid talk about the soup that you were going to cook with the bones from that boot. I also took out the way in which you sucked on your toothbrush so perfectly, as well as everything about our hotel.”

Mario said nothing, but his smile brought back our adventures at the Hilton. It wasn't a bad couple of days.

Our further path led us down country roads, and after driving around and around we unwillingly drove into the yard of a peculiar farmer. I was here for the first time, but everyone else knew the farm and its people.

“What's new?” Mario started the conversation. “Haven't you found anything interesting that we could get?”

The Classicist was staring at two Soviet military helmets that were on the ground. I could tell that tears were forming in his eyes. The metal helmets were filled with a semi-rotted mixture which, mixed with rainwater, created a gross porridge.

“There's a sword, but it's from World War I. Do you need that?” The “interesting” farmer was offering us his wares. We walked into a half-collapsed barn.

“Could I buy those helmets from you,” the Classicist asked the farmer's wife.

“These? No.”

“Why not?” the Classicist insisted.

“We're going to nail poles to them and use them to scoop shit out of the outhouse pit.”

The Classicist was stunned and turned to me. “You old fat cow, what kind of shit have you got in that pit?” he whispered. Then, more loudly, “Listen, I'll bring you two brand new buckets in place of those helmets, OK?”

“Why is this sword so short?” Mario piped up, turning the sword around in his hands.

“We broke off the end—it was easier to chop branches with it.”

What more could I say about this? A sword from the era of the Russian czar, with the Russian seal on the handle and depictions of a cross in a form which we had not seen before. To put it rudely, the damn thing had been castrated. These people had destroyed a valuable museum piece. They had thrown away the wheels of the most popular Russian machine gun, Maxim, and they had lost a machine gun from an airplane. While others were dealing with the situation, I took a look at a pile of firewood that was nearby. There I saw something I had needed for a long time—an iron box for bullets from Soviet times. I opened it easily and then closed it back up and left it where it was. The box was full of a grease that is used to oil up the wheels of wagons.

Finally it all ended well. We bought what we needed and left.

“Which part of their body where they thinking of when they broke that sword?” the Classicist grumbled.

“The main thing is not to show your enthusiasm about things in cases like this—then they screw up the price to the point where millionaires would get upset.”

“One idiot after another,” I said. “They should all be shot.” And what if—my God!—the professor refused to approve the topic for my paper?

The automobile stopped alongside a crater in which, according to information at our disposal, a tank was resting. I marked the place on the map. We would wait for the winter, when the water would freeze.

***

This is the day when my country celebrates its birthday.

The dark of an autumn evening covered Riga's streets and people. Everyone was hurrying toward the Old City to see the president address the people, but Dita, Robert and I were driving in the opposite direction. I had received a card from the president on Independence Day, and so I didn't need to celebrate any more. Actually, the card was sent to me by the president's chancellery, because it is one of my clients. The Writer also got a card. The signature was artificial, but I didn't care—I felt honored. What's more, I had no desire to spend any part of this evening outside of the warmth of my own home.

“Daddy, how was it?” the question sounded from the back seat.

“Daddy got lost in the woods today.”

“Like Snow White?”

“Like a total idiot,” I thought but did not say the words. “Like several Snow Whites, my son.”

“Were you alone?”

The major holiday for commerce was approaching—I mean Christmas, of course. I knew what I would give the Classicist as a Christmas present—a compass.

In early October 1944, the German army moved across a swamp to take up defensive positions.

My car rolled off the highway and onto a sand road. The Classicist was sitting next to me and looking at a map. “Straight ahead, left, right!” My car followed all of the commands. Like a tank, it moved easily through deep and muddy ruts on the road, and then, like a crocodile, it crawled out of the muck. The idyllic silence of the forest was damaged by the noise from the engine. I should have taken a picture of the surprise in the eyes of the hunter who had not expected our arrival. He had been sitting there for several hours, waiting for an animal to shoot, and he had been listening to the footsteps of animals in the silence that surrounded him. And there we were.

“Hi,” I addressed the man through the open window. “We're a bit lost. How do we get out of here?”

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and I wanted to fire back: “What the hell are you doing here?”

We did not get angry at each other. After all, we were all looking for the romantic aspects of being a man. The spheres of influence have to be divided up somehow, after all. In a magazine once I read an article a woman journalist had written about the romance of men. I wanted to get up from the toilet and yell, “What the heck do you understand about men and their romance? Can you enter the soul of a hunter and feel any part of the feeling that you get when an animal's footsteps are heard in the forest? When the animal appears in front of your gun, and all that you have to do is pull the trigger and the animal will fall down? Or that the hunter then lowers his gun, because alongside the moose there is a little moose child? If the adult is killed, the young will die, and if the young dies, then the romance of the hunter will die, too.” I personally feel sorry for the animals that get killed. What could the woman journalist understand of men who, after the first chords of flirtation, sit right down at the piano to play an energetic melody? In a moment of memory, I hear two women talking behind me: “He's the dream of every woman.” In a place where the stench of whisky drowns out the scent of any woman, there is music. No. It's not a professional pianist, it's just a man—a man who knows what to do to ensure that the wonderful being in front of him is ready, nay—HAPPY to show him the lace that she put on under her dress before the party.