Diggers (16 page)

The dream of every digger tempted us into the world of pine and fir. Bunkers that had been built deep behind the front lines drew us deeper and deeper into the green thicket. We found several lines of defense as we moved further from civilization. The first defense line—that is what we needed. Only if we found the place where two armies had met eye to eye would we have any chance of finding that which our hearts were yearning.

“I think that this is from the First World War…”

“I do, too.” The question, not understood yet, forced the Classicist to agree with me. We concluded that the boys had been fighting in bunkers in which their fathers had fought a few decades earlier. “Men who brought home the treasures that are between their legs after the war.” I should write that thought down.

According to the military tactics and strategies of the early part of the twentieth century, the men had turned the field into an underground fortress. There were bunkers at various levels and raised areas—perfectly geometric formations. The moss of the forest had dressed all of this construction in green, and the sharp corners of sand constructions were now rounded and smooth. I felt sorrowful that other people could not see this beauty.

Luck had turned her back on us. We couldn't find the place where the attack and the counterattack had come. We were convinced that we were in the place the documents had described, but where. I cannot find an answer to this question even three hours after I have stepped across the threshold of my home and sat down in front of my electronic document storage device.

The day turned into the afternoon, and the time had come to find our bearings. The autumn was promising to send darkness to this swampy forest in two hours' time, and we wanted to leave the historical museum.

The Classicist and I tried to leave several times, but each time we ended up where we had started. We had to admit that we were lost. We waded through a swamp, we found ourselves between two ditches with muddy water. The further we went, the narrower was the band of earth between the two channels. It looked like we would not find our way back. I saw a large log that had fallen across one of the ditches. We crossed the log, but I was not sure of our direction—it could be tempting us even deeper into our mess. Fortunately we found ourselves in the same place again, for the fourth time.

“The forest spirits are guiding us,” said the Classicist, picking up his phone. “I'll ask what you need to do to get rid of the spirits.” The digger realized that all efforts to get out of this place in a natural way had failed.

“We have to get out of this ring—we keep walking around and around. No matter which way we go, we end up back here.” In my subconscious I was already thinking about constructing a shelter for the night. We had to start building before night fell with its complete darkness.

“Mama! Mama, your son wants to come home! Can't you feel me? He's lost!” I cried, remembering the only person who always defended me at this time of seeming hopelessness. “Let's go that way.” I pointed to the last direction in which we had not yet gone—the one we felt to be the least promising. Our feet sank into the soft moss, and the total silence rang in our ears. In ten minutes we found an overgrown forest path. Each path goes somewhere, no matter how long it takes to get there. This prediction came to pass—in a little while we were on a wider path. We were happy to see the tracks that a tractor had left on the sandy road.

After my wonderful adventures in the forest, I have spent two days in monotonous harmony with the laws of civilization. Ten minutes ago I opened my eyes to hurry up and carry out the obligations which society has put on me. I am trying to describe this gross situation even though my eyes have not really opened up the gates of my dreams. Monday. Reality explains why I feel so bad.

I cannot force myself to start writing my paper for my Latvian language lessons. I sense that as soon as I open up a new Microsoft Word file, my jaws will clench and my throat will close up. Writing this damn paper for me was like forcing a Muslim to rewrite the Bible.

Monday turned out to be an excellent day, though. I guess it's time to describe the place where I work. I work at a large company that prints books, business cards, T-shirts, pens, cups, signs which say WC and are put on bathroom doors and everything else that could be called...hmm, I can't really think of the word. Never mind the details.

My day starts with the computer. I say hello to my e-mail. I look at all the stupid jokes my friends have sent, thinking about films and politely vulgar photographs. I forward things, and they move to the computer screens of my friends.

“What should we do with new client? We should give them a discount, they say that our prices are too high?”

“The price is too high? Do they sell their cars for nothing? Fuck them. No discounts,” I am hot while talking with my salesman.

“They could become our clients.”

“Clients? I'm not going to prostrate myself before them.” I remember the guy—what a cretin! A snob whose every word seemed to come from the Almighty. He “undressed” me, and I regressed from being a normal salesman to being a simple apprentice.

“Clients. Tell him to read Carnegie, some books on business ethics and then to fuck himself. You want me to tell him?”

“No, no. Don't do that.”

“Good morning.” The nice words passed through the telephone wires and into the ears of a very nice girl. “I have a problem with the Latvian language—let me tell you the books that I need—Latvian language textbooks for the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades.”

“Seriously? You're not kidding?” asked my future colleague, who was working at the National Library. Those are books that kids 11 and 12 use for their studies, but I can use them, too, to refresh my knowledge.

“Here's another poker for you, it's from hard metal and won't bend when you stick it into the ground.”

“It's great!” The middle-aged man who was our best craftsman brought up a one-meter sharpened poker with a sword-like handle from his basement workshops. “Thank you.”

“Call for you,” called my colleague. “Who is it?” I asked. “My wife?”

“Did you get my e-mail?” my bedmate snapped into my ear. “Take a look.” I looked at the blue screen, found the English word Subject and then the word Asshole. I had been long since promised myself that I would refuse any orders from my wife's company. It's a big auditing firm that seems to produce snob after snob. I could throw up thinking about them. The company had a very expressive and easily adjusted logo. In the new century, the company changed its logo, and I simply could not understand where the artist had gotten the colors that he used and what he had done to merge them together.

“Another call!”

“I'll call you back,” I say goodbye to the wife and pick up the new call.

“It's all copied. Come and get it,” said the girl from the library.

“I'm melting like a piece of ice when I'm with you,” I thought but did not say.

A Christmas carol starts to play quietly somewhere, and then it gets louder. Some of my colleagues get up from their desks and sing along. It's my mobile phone, actually, and it's the song that is played when one of the diggers calls.

“Wait, I'll be right back,” I throw down one receiver and pick up another.

“You'll shit yourself, man,” the Classicist said. “Andrejs called. He has a hunter who found six German soldiers in the forest, all in a row, each a full set. (A set is when the bones of a soldier have not been scattered, and the remains of their clothing and weapons allow them to be identified.) It's possible that after the battle the boys were arranged for burial and then forgotten, or maybe the Russians chased the Germans out. I don't know, but we have to go out there.”

“Oh, shit!” I grabbed my head and stared at my computer.

“What is it?” my colleague looked at me.

“What's shit?” the Classicist asked at the other end of the line.

“That wasn't meant for you,” I told him. “I'll call you later.” I put down the phone and slapped myself. “I messed up the e-mail addresses and sent a rude film to a client—a woman, no less. I just met her yesterday. Shit! What would be your reaction?”

She hadn't even opened her mouth when the computer beeped to ask me whether I want to look at a new e-mail. I pushed “Yes.”

“Very nice,” I read. “I was warned that you have a good sense of humor, but I'm no slouch. Take a look. Give me a call.”

It was not a film, but there were a few very erotic photographs.

“Hmmm,” I thought, going to drink my morning coffee at last.

The morning program was not yet over when I heard something new that nearly knocked me over. The documentary film studio called to warn me that in two days they would be releasing a film about the diggers. I was at the studio ten minutes later. “What did you make a movie about?”

“What do you mean, what did we make a movie about? It's about you!”

“It's not about the diggers, it's about me. Fuck! Why not the Communicator or the Classicist?”

“We needed a central figure. We chose you.”

I had nothing more to say. “Can you change it?”

“It's been finished.”

I can't bring my own films back to life, but they're already making movies about me! Shit!

***

November 26, 2000

The Lawyer announced himself a while ago. He had gone out to look at a piece of land on which he was planning to build a house and got to know the owner of the land. It was an old man who mentioned some burial grounds, adding that he was the only one who knew that between the corner of his house and the road there were the graves of three German soldiers.

We have gone all over Latvia, we have sought and found, we have dug and dug up. Who would think that in front of my very eyes, five kilometers from my house, there could be soldiers who were not registered anywhere.

There were two of us this time—me and my assistant. He doesn't have a nickname, because his nickname changes all the time.

“Robert!” I called from the kitchen. “What?” I heard my boy's voice amid the noises of a cartoon. “What are you today?”

“Action Man!” he responded right away.

My six-year-old assistant, Action Man, and I bounced down a rocky road to a farm that had the interesting name of Boots. We greeted the owner and went to the place where the “boys” were supposed to be. There was a little hillock at the side of the road. “This is approximately where the graves were,” the owner said. My first impression was not quite clear. I could never have thought that someone would be buried on the side of a hill like this. The owner showed a very precise location, and there was nothing else to do but get to work. I stuck my meter-long poker into the ground. While I was doing that, Action Man was holding the shovel. His nose was running in streams, and that was nothing important when compared to the overall feeling of the situation. My little guy is a good assistant. The cold wind was freezing his little fingers, and his cheeks were burning red, but he did not complain at all.

When I had stuck the poker into the ground a dozen times, I was beginning to get used to the density of the ground. At one place it seemed to me that the poker slid into the ground like a knife through butter—softly and with not much effort. I felt around the ground. Yes, there was something there. A different noise when hit by the poker—a clean and clear click. “Action Man! The shovel!” For a moment we had to debate over who would get the honor of the first dig.

The earth was not yet frozen and yielded easily. I felt that I was on the right path. After three more attacks I found the blackened leg bone of a human. This was the place. I was becoming a professional. I remembered something that the Classicist and the Communicator had told me about Russians after a trip to Russia. They use pokers like we do to determine very precisely whether they have touched stone, metal or bone. This time I erred only twice. Now the official bureaucratic apparatus of the diggers would come into play, and the “boys” would be found a new home.

***

The Classicist got an e-mail from diggers in Poland. The Classicist was away on business, so I started to correspond with these new friends. One day one of the Polish diggers—the Catholic, let's call him—was at his computer, and I was at mine, and we sent each other a string of exciting letters, in which we gradually revealed our secrets. I asked whether he had any weapons, and he told me that such collections were prohibited by law in Poland. “Don't fuck with me,” was the tone of my next letter. “You're a digger like me. You'll bring everything home, including a rotten old gun barrel.” “OK,” he wrote right back. “I have...”—and then there was a very impressive list of trophies. We continued our conversation the next day. “I have to write a paper for the university, but I spent the whole day yesterday reading your book,” the Catholic wrote. “Thanks for the invitation, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to help you lift out the Messerschmidt, because I'm planning to go to America next year to brush up on my English.” I wished him luck.

***

December 19, 2000

They say that when the cannons are firing, the muses are silent. There was no need for me to be in my office—I had done everything that I had to do, and I had done it a month ago. Everyone was thinking only about Christmas and the events that surround it. My salesmen were whining about orders that had not been completed, and my lazy clients were ready to order Christmas cards and presents so that on December 21 they could remind their own clients that their companies respected them and would like to work with them in the new century, too. Life in my company had become impossible, and so I decided to take one more day of the vacation that I had not taken before.

We drove out to see the Forest Guy and the Legend. We left the capital city with a great delay, and two hours later we drove up to the Forest Guy's farm.