Seven million years
we heard the führer’s speeches, the same
seven million years
we saw the apple trees bloom
I have Ingel’s cup here. I would have liked to have her pillow, too, but Liide wouldn’t give it to me. She made herself at home again; she’s trying to do her hair the same as Ingel’s. Maybe she’s just trying to cheer me up, but it looks ugly. But I can’t bad-mouth her, because she brings me food and everything. And if I get her mad, she won’t let me out of here. She doesn’t show her anger; she just won’t let me out or bring me any food. I went hungry for two days the last time. It was probably because I asked for Ingel’s nightgown. No more bread.
When she lets me out, I try to please her, chat pleasantly and make her laugh a little, praise her cooking-she likes that. Last week she made me a six-egg cake. I didn’t ask how she came by that many eggs, but she wanted to know if the cake wasn’t better than the ones Ingel makes. I didn’t answer. Now I’m trying to think of something nice to say. I sleep with my Walther and my knife beside me in here. I wonder what’s keeping England?
Hans Pekk, son of Eerik, Estonian peasant
On Sundays after church Aliide and Ingel had a habit of walking to the graveyard to meet their friends and watch the boys, flirting as much as the bounds of decency permitted. In church they always sat near the grave of Princess Augusta of Koluvere, twirling their ankles and waiting to get out and display themselves at the graveyard, to show off their ankles, stylishly and expensively covered in black silk stockings, to step out prettily, looking their best, beautiful and ready to give eligible suitors the eye. Ingel had braided her hair and wrapped it in a crown on top of her head. Aliide had left her braids down on her neck, because she was younger. That morning she had talked about cutting her hair. She had seen such charmant electric permanent waves on the city girls-you could get one for two krooni-but Ingel had been horrified and said that she shouldn’t say anything about it where mother could hear.
The morning was especially gentle for some reason, and the lilacs especially intoxicating. Aliide had begun to feel like an adult, and as she pinched her cheeks in front of the mirror, she was quite sure that something wonderful would happen to her this summer-why else would she have found a lilac with five petals? That had to portend something, especially since she had dutifully eaten the flower.
When the congregation finally came murmuring out of the church, the girls could go on their walk under the spruce trees in the graveyard, ferns brushing against their legs, squirrels running along the limbs, the well creaking now and then. Farther off, crows were croaking; what did they foretell about suitors? Ingel hummed, “vaak vaak kellest kahest paar saab”-caw, caw, crow above, which of us will fall in love-the future shone down from the sky and life was good. The anticipation of years to come burned in their breasts, as it generally does for young girls.
The two sisters had just made one full circuit of the graveyard, sometimes whispering with each other and sometimes stopping to chat with friends, when Aliide’s silk dress got stuck on a curl of the iron fence surrounding a grave, and she bent over to pull it loose. That was when she saw a man near the German graves, next to the stone wall, saw the pussy willows, the sunshine and the mossy wall, the bright light, his bright laugh. He was laughing with someone; he bent over to tie his shoes and kept talking, turned his face toward his friends as he tied his shoelace and stood up as smoothly as he had bent down. Aliide forgot her dress and stood up before she had gotten her hem loose. The sound of tearing silk awakened her, and she pulled the fabric free, brushing the bits of rust off her hands. Thank goodness it was a small tear. Maybe no one would notice it. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. Aliide smoothed her hair with numb hands. Look. Aliide bit her lips to redden them. They could easily turn back, go past the stone wall. Look over here.
Look at me. The man ended his conversation and turned toward them. He turned toward them, and at that same moment Ingel turned to see what was keeping her sister, and just then the sun struck the crown of hair on her head and- No, no! Look at me!-Ingel straightened her neck the way she often did and when she did that she resembled a swan; she lifted her chin, and they saw each other, Ingel and the man. Aliide knew at once that he would never see her when she saw how he stopped speaking, how the pack of cigarettes he had taken out of his pocket stopped in midmotion, how he stopped in the middle of a word and stared at Ingel and how the top of the cigarette pack flashed like a knife in his hand. Ingel moved closer to Aliide, her gaze focused on him, the skin over her collarbone shining, an invitation rising up from the pit at the base of her throat. Without glancing at Aliide, she grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the stone wall where the man was standing motionless, and now even his friend had noticed that he wasn’t listening, that the hand that held the cigarettes was stopped high up, where his ribs began, and now his friend saw Ingel, pulling Aliide behind her, although Aliide resisted at every step, holding on to headstones, roots, whatever she could find. The heel of her shoe dug into the dirt again and again, but the earth betrayed her, the roots betrayed her, the spruce trees gave way, the grass slid under her, the stones rolled away under her feet, and a horsefly flew into her mouth, and she couldn’t cough it out because Ingel didn’t want to stop, they had to keep going, Ingel pulled and pulled and the path was clear and led straight to the stone wall, and Aliide saw the man’s blank expression, outside of time and space, and felt Ingel’s fevered steps and the tight grip on her fingers. Ingel’s pulse was pounding against Aliide’s hand as all of her familiar expressions flowed over her face and she left them behind and they slapped Aliide in the face in wet, salty tatters and stuck to her cheeks, some of them flying past like ghosts, already gone, and the dimple in her cheek as she laughed with Aliide that morning burst forth as it flew away. When they got to the wall, Aliide’s sister had become a stranger, a new Ingel who would no longer tell her secrets only to Aliide, who would no longer go to the park to drink seltzer with Aliide; she would be going with someone else. A new Ingel who had someone else, someone to hear her thoughts and laughter and all the things that Aliide would have wanted to hear. Someone with skin she wanted to smell, with body heat that she wanted to mix with her own. Someone who should have looked at Aliide, seen her, and frozen when he saw her; it should have been for her that his hand with the silver cigarette packet stopped in the air. But it had been Ingel who was cut away by the flash of that bright knife, cut out of Aliide’s life.
Aino, the neighbor, ran to where they were. She knew the man’s friend and introduced Ingel to them. The willow rustled. The man didn’t even look at Aliide to say hello. The three lions of Estonia on the cigarette pack were splashed with sunlight, laughing.
Ingel again. Always Ingel. Ingel always got everything she wanted, and she always would, because God never stopped mocking Aliide. It wasn’t enough that Ingel always remembered the little tricks that Mother taught her, washed the dishes in potato water to make them shine. It wasn’t enough that Ingel didn’t forget what she was told like Aliide, whose dishes were always still greasy after she washed them. No, Ingel knew how to do everything without even being taught. From the first time she milked the cows, Ingel’s bucket was filled to the rim with white froth, and Ingel’s footsteps in the field made the grain grow better than anyone else’s. But even that wasn’t enough. No, Ingel had to get a man, too, the man that Aliide had seen first. The only man that Aliide had ever wanted.
It would have been reasonable to let Aliide have at least something, to let her have just one man in her clumsy life; it would have been only right to just this once let her have what she wanted, since from the day she was born she had watched how Ingel’s milk hadn’t even needed to be strained, because everything she did was clean and perfect, and she won the Young Farmers milking competition easily. Aliide had seen how the rules didn’t apply to Ingel, how no animal hair fell in Ingel’s bucket, and she never got pimples. Her sweat smelled like violets and women’s troubles didn’t make her slim waist swell up. Mosquitos didn’t leave bites on her clear complexion and worms didn’t eat her cabbages. The jam Ingel made didn’t spoil and her sauerkraut didn’t go bad. The fruit of her hands was always blessed, her Young Farmers badge shone on her breast brighter than the rest, its four leaves never scratched, while her little sister lost her badges one after another and made her mother first shake her head and then give up shaking it, because her mother understood that it didn’t matter if she shook her head at Aliide or not; nothing helped.
It wasn’t enough that Ingel got Hans, the only man who had ever made Aliide’s heart stop-no, not even that was enough. After she met Hans, Ingel’s vaunted beauty and heavenly smile had to start to glow even more brightly, blindingly. Even on a rainy night, they lit up the whole yard, filled the shed until there was no air for Aliide, who would wake up at night gasping for breath, stumbling to open the door. And that wasn’t enough, either; Aliide’s trials grew, although she wouldn’t have thought it possible. They grew because Ingel couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself, she had to whisper about Hans constantly, Hans this and Hans that. And she would insist that Aliide look at him, his expressions, his gestures. Were they loving enough? Did he look at anyone else, or did he only have eyes for her? What did he mean when he said this or that? What did it mean when he gave her a cornflower? Did it mean love? Love for only her? And it did, it did mean love for only her! Hans followed her scent like a lovesick dog.
The murmuring and purring and cooing swept over the house so quickly that within a year a bottle of liquor showed up on the table for the proposal; then there were the wedding arrangements, and Ingel’s bridal chest fattened up like a pig, and her waving the things around and the quilting bees and the giggling girls and the evening dances, and then the new moon came, bringing good luck and health to the young couple. The wedding this and the wedding that and the happy couple to church and back. The people waiting, the little veil fluttering, and Aliide dancing in her black silk stockings and telling everyone how happy she was for her sister’s sake, now their little home would have a young man of the house! Hans’s white gloves shone, and although he danced one dance with Aliide, he looked right through her, at Ingel, turned his head to watch for the flash of her veil.
Hans and Ingel together in the field. Ingel running to meet him. Hans picking pieces of straw out of her hair. Hans grabbing his new bride around the waist and spinning her around in the yard. Ingel running behind the barn, Hans running after her, laughing chuckling giggling. From one day, week, year, to the next. Hans pulling off his shirt and Ingel’s hands flying to him, his skin, Ingel pouring water over his back, his toes curling with pleasure as she washed his hair. Whispers, murmurs, the quiet shush of the bedclothes at night. The rustle of the straw mattress and the squeak of the iron bedstead. Stirrings and giggles. Sighs. Moans pressed into the pillow and whimpers covered with a hand. The heat of sweat drifting through the wall to Aliide’s tortured bed. The silence, and then Hans opening the window onto the summer night, leaning on the window frame without a shirt and smoking a hand-rolled paperossi, his head shining in the dark. If Aliide went right up to her window, she could see him, his cigarette held in his veined, longfingered hand, the burning tip dropping into the bed of carnations.
Aliide went to see Maria Kreel at her croft. Granny Kreel’s evil eye and ability to stanch bleeding were famous as far back as when Aliide was born, and she didn’t doubt the woman’s abilities.
It made the visit awkward to have Granny Kreel see her situation; Aliide would have preferred not having her know anything about her torment, but she had no other place to turn to.
Maria Kreel was sitting on the bench in the yard with her cats. She said she had been expecting her.
“Do you know what it’s about, Miss Kreel?”
“A light-haired boy, young and handsome.”
Her toothless mouth swallowed a lump of bread.
Aliide placed a jar of honey on the steps. Bundles of herbs hung from the frame of the gate; a nearby crow stared at them. Aliide was afraid of it; as a child they’d been frightened by stories of people turned into crows. There had been a flock of cawing crows in Granny Kreel’s yard the first time she came there, too, when father had cut his foot with the ax. The old woman had ordered the others out of the room while she stayed there with him. The children didn’t enjoy being in the kitchen, anyway-there were strange smells there and Aliide’s nose got stuffed up. There was a large jar of maggots on the table for wounds.
The crow fluttered behind the bench and into the soughing trees, and the old woman nodded at it, as if in greeting. The sun beamed brightly but it felt chilly in the yard. The dark kitchen was visible through the open door. There was a pile of pillows in the entryway. Glowing white pillows. Their lace edges curled between the dark and the light. Death pillows. Granny Kreel collected them.
“Have you had anyone come to visit?”
“Always have visitors. Always a full house.”
Aliide moved farther from the door.
“Looks like we might have poor hay weather,” Granny Kreel continued, and popped another piece of bread in her mouth. “But that probably don’t interest you. Have you heard what the crows are saying, Aliide?”
Aliide was startled. The old lady laughed and said the crows had been quiet for several days. She was right; Aliide searched for more birds-there were plenty of them, but they weren’t making a sound. She heard the mewing of a cat from behind the house, blubbering, in heat, and the old woman called to it. The next moment the cat was there beside the old woman’s cane, rubbing against her, and she pushed the cat toward Aliide.
“Don’t know how she keeps it up,” the old woman said, squinting at Aliide through her watery eyelids, making her blush. “That’s just the way she is. On a day like this, the crows are quiet, but nothing will quiet a cat in heat.”
What did she mean, a day like this? Was the weather going to get bad? Would there be a bad harvest? Hunger? Or was she talking about Russia? Or Aliide’s life? Was something going to happen to Hans? The cat rubbed up against Aliide’s leg and she bent over to pet it. It pushed its rear end against the back of her hand and she pulled away. The old woman laughed. It was a gloomy laugh, knowing and muffled. Aliide’s hand tingled. Her whole body tingled as if there were blades of straw in the muscle trying to break out through her skin, and her haunted mind whispered to her that she just had to go to the Kreel place today, even though Hans was home alone with Ingel. Father was with Mother at the neighbors’, and she was here. When she got home Hans would smell twice as much a man and Ingel twice as much a woman, like they did whenever they were alone together for even a moment, and the thought only made the stinging under Aliide’s skin worse.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and Maria Kreel got up and went inside, closing the door behind her. Aliide didn’t know if it was time for her to leave or if she should wait, but then the old woman came right back out with a little brown glass bottle in her hands, wearing a grin that pulled the edges of her mouth inward. Aliide took the bottle. When she had closed the gate, the old woman whispered after her:
“That boy has a black mark on him.”
“Can I make it…”
“Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.” “So that he doesn’t see anyone but me?”
“Little girl, desperate dirt grows poor flowers.” Aliide left the farm at a run; her leather shoes flew with each long stride, and the bottle she’d got from the old lady warmed in her hands, though her fingers were cold and bloodless. Was there nothing that would stop the pounding pain in her chest?
Ingel was giggling in the yard, fetching water from the well, her braids undone and her cheeks red, wearing only her underdress.
Friedebert Tuglas’s Birdcherry Blossoms was waiting on Aliide’s bed. On Ingel’s bed, a man waited. Why was everything so wrong?
Aliide didn’t have time to test the effectiveness of Granny Kreel’s drink. It was meant to be mixed with coffee, but Ingel stopped drinking her coffee the next morning and ran outside to throw up. It had already happened, the thing the drink was supposed to prevent. Ingel was expecting a child.
When the Baltic Germans were invited into Germany in the fall of 1939, one of the sisters’ German classmates from school and confirmation classes came to say good-bye, and promised to return. She was just going to make a tour of a country that she’d never seen before, and then she would come back and tell them what Germany was really like. They waved good-bye and Aliide watched as Hans’s hands wrapped around Ingel’s waist and moved toward her rear end. Their murmurs could be heard all the way into the front yard-Aliide pressed her teeth into the palm of her hand. Images of Ingel’s swelling waist and Hans’s body wrapped around Ingel’s tortured her endlessly, day or night, asleep or awake; she couldn’t see or hear anything else. None of the three of them took any notice of the furrows that were appearing on older people’s brows, furrows that didn’t go away but rather deepened, or how the girls’ father examined the sunset, searched it every evening from the edge of the field, smoking his pipe and staring at the horizon in search of a sign, studying the leaves of the maple tree, sighing as he read the newspaper or listened to the radio, then returned to the sound of the birds.
In 1940, the baby was born-Linda-and Aliide’s head felt like it was about to explode. Hans carried his daughter around, happiness shone in Ingel’s eyes, tears in Aliide’s, and Father’s eyes disappeared under worried wrinkles as he started to hoard gasoline and exchange his paper money for silver and gold. Waiting lines appeared in the village, the first lines ever in the country, and the shops were out of sugar. Hans didn’t warm to Aliide, even though she succeeded three times in putting her blood in his food, once an entire month’s worth. She should try pee the next time. Maria Kreel said it sometimes worked better.
Hans started to have quiet, somber discussions with Father. Maybe they didn’t want to worry the women of the family, so they didn’t talk about the troubling signs when the women could hear, or maybe they did talk about it, but neither one of the sisters attached any significance to what they said. Father’s wrinkled brow didn’t worry them, because he was an old man, from the old world, afraid of war. The Free Estonia students didn’t worry about that sort of thing. They hadn’t committed any crimes-what harm could come to them? It was only after the Soviet squads had spread out around the country that they started to fear that their future might be in danger. As she rocked her baby, Ingel whispered to Aliide that Hans had started to hold her tighter, that he slept beside her holding her hand all night long, and his grip didn’t loosen even after he fell asleep, which she thought was strange; he squeezed her as if he were afraid she would disappear from his arms during the night. Aliide listened to Ingel’s worries, although every syllable was like a dagger thrust in her heart. At the same time, she felt that the thing which possessed her was loosening its grip a little, and something else was replacing it-fear for Hans.
Neither woman could avoid the truth any longer when they went to the small square in town and heard the Red Army orchestra playing Soviet marches. Hans wasn’t with them, because he no longer dared to come into town, and he didn’t want the girls to go, either. First he started sleeping in the little room behind the kitchen, then he spent his days there, too, and in the end he went into the woods and stayed there.
Incredulous laughter raced from one town to the next, from village to village. The catchphrases-We’re fighting for Stalin’s great cause and We will liquidate illiteracy-provoked endless amusement. They couldn’t possibly be serious! The biggest joke of all was the officers’ wives, prancing around in fringed nightgowns in the villages, at the dances, in the streets. And what about those Red Army soldiers, peeling boiled potatoes with their fingernails like they didn’t know how to use a knife? Who could take a bunch like them seriously? But then people started disappearing and the laughter turned bitter. When they started loading up women, men, and children for slaughter, the stories were repeated like prayers. Aliide and Ingel’s father was snatched from the main road to the village. Their mother just disappeared; the girls came home to find the house empty, and yelled like animals. The dog wouldn’t stop waiting for its master; it sat next to the porch and howled with longing until it died. No one dared to go about their business outside, the land groaned under a flood of sorrow, and someone was added to the family of the dead in every grave dug in Estonian soil. The tumult of the front moved over every part of the country, and every part of the country cried out for help to Jesus, Germany, and the old gods.
Aliide and Ingel started to sleep in the same bed, with an ax under their pillow-their turn would come soon. Aliide wanted to go into hiding, but the only thing they hid was Ingel’s old Dollar-brand bicycle, which had a picture of an American flag on it. Ingel said an Estonian woman never abandons her house or her animals, even if they walk in with their uniforms and guns, a whole battalion of them. She would show them what the pride of an Estonian woman meant all right. So one sister stayed up while the other one slept, the Bible and a picture of Jesus keeping watch on the night table, and on those long nights Aliide stared first into the red-hot night and then at Ingel’s head, shining white, and wondered if she should run away by herself. And she might have done it if Hans hadn’t given her a task before he left: Protect Ingel-you know how. Aliide couldn’t betray Hans’s trust, she had to be worthy of him. That’s why she started to follow the news of the war from Finland with sharp eyes and keen ears, like Hans used to do. Ingel, for her part, refused to read the papers-she relied on prayers and stanzas from Juhan Liiv: Fatherland! I am unhappy with you, and more unhappy without you!
“Why don’t we leave while we still can?” Aliide suggested cautiously.
“And go where? Linda is too little.”
“I’m not sure about Finland. Hans thinks Sweden would probably be better.”
“How do you know what Hans thinks?”
“Hans can follow us later.”
“I’m not leaving my home to go anywhere. The wind will change soon, the West will come to help us. I’m sure we can bear it until then. You have so little faith, Liide.”
Ingel was right. They did bear it, the country bore it, and the liberators arrived. The Germans marched into the country, chased the smoke from the burning houses out of the sky, made it blue again, made the earth turn black, the clouds white. Hans was able to come home, and when that bad dream had ended, another one began. The Communists blanched, and since all other means of transport were halted, they escaped on foot, at a run, and Hans bridled the horse and went swaggering around taking back the Young Farmers 4-H banners, the Sower’s trophies, and the bookkeeping and other papers that had been kept in town after the Reds came and the organization was banned. He came back from town with a big grin. Everything was fine there; the Germans were polite; it was a wonderful feeling; people were playing harmonicas. The sweet brisk clacking of the women’s wooden shoes. They had established the ERÜ, too-the Mutual Aid Society-to feed and support the families whose providers had been mobilized by the Red Army. Everything was going to work out all right! Everybody would come home, Father and Mother, everybody who had disappeared, and grain would grow in the fields like before, and Ingel would win all the 4-H vegetable prizes again, they would go to the fair in the fall, and when the girls were a little older they could join the Farm Women’s League. When their father got home, Hans would plan the layout of the fields with him. Hans was already a part of the tobacco and sugar beet campaign, and when that was under way there would be plenty of sugar beet syrup, and Ingel wouldn’t have to pout about having to calm her sweet tooth with saccharine-and neither would Aliide, Hans hastened to add. Ingel let out a honeyed laugh and started creating recipes for Estonia’s best sugar beet-syrup ginger cake, and she and Hans fell into the same purring, murmuring mist they had been in before the nightmare began, and Aliide found herself back in the same torture of love. All obstacles crumbled before Ingel’s glorious future. Even the clothing shortage couldn’t wilt Ingel’s wardrobe-so what if she had to repair the elastic in her garters with a coin wrapped in paper! Hans brought his sweetheart parachute silk to make a blouse, and Ingel dyed it cornflower blue, sewed herself a smart-looking shirt with it, decorated with glass buttons, put on her German glass brooch, and was prettier than ever. Hans brought Aliide a similar pin, slightly smaller, but still lovely, and for a moment Aliide’s tormented mood lightened-he had remembered her after all, if only for a moment. But who would even see her pin, with Ingel in her new blouse with its smart shoulder pads-my little soldier, Hans called her sweetly, so sweetly.
Aliide’s head ached. She suspected that she might have a brain tumor. The pain sometimes darkened her vision and altered her hearing until she heard only a buzz. While Hans and Ingel mooned about, she had to take care of Linda, and sometimes she secretly pinched her, sometimes poked her with a pin, and the child’s sobs gave her a secret satisfaction.
The sugar beets were large and white at harvest, and the Germans remained. The kitchen was full of beet sugar and Ingel ran the house with renewed energy. She filled the place of the former woman of the house with ease, even surpassed her. Everything went smoothly; it went without saying that she knew how to do everything; she just doled out advice to Aliide, who obediently washed the roots, and Ingel grated them. Aliide could help with the grating later-first she had to figure out the best method for the smaller beets. She tried the meat grinder but then went back to the grater and ordered Aliide to watch the syrup kettle on the stove so that it didn’t start to boil. Sometimes Ingel worked on other chores, sometimes she craned her neck to see the stove; she didn’t trust Aliide’s syrup-making skills; Aliide might let it get too hot, and then the syrup would have a strange flavor, and how could she serve syrup like that, everyone would think that she was the stupid one, that she had let it boil. No more than 80 degrees, ever! Ingel kept sniffing the air the whole time to catch any bitter smell that came from the stove-and whenever the smell started to go in what she felt was the wrong direction, she yelled at Aliide to fix it. Aliide couldn’t tell any difference in the strength or quality of the stench, but then she wasn’t Ingel. Of course she didn’t notice. Besides, the stench of Ingel’s sweetness had stuffed up her nostrils. All she could smell was Hans’s spit on Ingel’s lips, and it made Aliide’s own chapped lips throb with pain.
Day after day Aliide washed the beets, picked out the smaller roots, and cut out the black eyes. Ingel fretted over the grating and bustled around ordering Aliide to check the grated beets as they were soaking, change the water in the kettle, fetch more water from the well. Half an hour! It’s already been half an hour! The water needs to be poured over the new batch! At some point, Ingel got tired of grating and started to just chop the roots into small pieces. It’s been half an hour! Pour some fresh water over them! Aliide scratched away the skins, Ingel chopped, and sometimes they strained the brew under Ingel’s precise direction, all the while waiting for Mother and Father to come home. The beets were emptied of their sugar and water was boiled off the syrup over a proper fire, and all the while they were waiting. Skim the foam off the top! Skim it off! Otherwise it’ll be ruined! The rows of syrup jars grew, and all the while they waited. Sometimes Ingel shed a few tears into Hans’s collar.
The whole village was waiting for news from Narva- when would their men be returning home? Ingel made sugar beet soup, Hans smacked his lips and said that it really was quite good, and Ingel fussed around making sugar beet macaroni casserole and beet and berry juice, and they waited for Mother and Father. Ingel brought sugar beet custard to the table, and they waited, and Hans savored her sugar beet pancakes, nodded over her sugar beet cardamom buns, and busied himself making flowers and birds out of chestnuts for Linda. The sugary air of the kitchen disgusted Aliide. She envied the women of the village who had a husband they were waiting for, someone to learn to make sugar beet cardamom buns for-all she had to wait for were her parents-and her a grown girl. She would have liked to be waiting for Hans to return from somewhere far away, to sit at the table waiting for him to come to her, but she tried to brush the thought away because it was a shameful, thankless idea. The village women sighed and said that they were so lucky, with a man in the house, and Ingel was the luckiest of women, to which Aliide easily agreed, nodding, her lips tight and dry.
Ingel made up recipes endlessly-she even made sugar beet candies: milk, beet syrup, butter, nuts. Aliide was shooed away from the stove; simmering the milk and syrup properly was a precise task, then you add the nuts and butter, then simmer it again. She did have permission to sit at the table and keep an eye on Linda and the baking sheets that the mixture was poured onto. She had to watch because Ingel was worried about how she would get on with her own family and her own sugar beets later on if she didn’t get some practice. Her child-care skills could also use improvement. Aliide was about to ask, what family? But she kept quiet, and it felt like Ingel was afraid her little sister would end up hanging around in some corner of Ingel’s house until she was an old woman. She had started leaving the Päewalehti newspaper at Aliide’s place, “accidentally” opened to the personals. But Aliide didn’t want a gentleman who was seeking a lady under the age of twenty, or a gentleman who preferred less slim young ladies. She didn’t want anyone but Hans.
A line had formed long ago at Maria Kreel’s door as women ran to ask her about their men on the other side of the border. In the end she had to bolt her door, and she wouldn’t see Aliide, either, even though she’d been bringing her honey for years. A gypsy who read tarot cards appeared in the village, and the flock of people in the Kreels’ yard migrated to the gypsy’s place. Ingel and Aliide went there once and were told that their parents were already on their journey home. Hans grinned at them when they came bustling home with the news and said he trusted the Germans’ promises more than a fortune-teller’s. The Germans had vowed that everyone who had ended up on the other side of the border would be brought back. Ingel was embarrassed and fell to examining her recipe book. Aliide didn’t bother to say that she trusted the gypsies more than the Germans.
“I invited a few Germans over to play cards tonight. Ingel can serve them her delicious candy and you two can brush up on your German. What do you say?”
Aliide was surprised. Hans had never invited any Germans over before. Did Ingel want to find her a man that desperately? Ingel didn’t even like the Germans.
“They’re terribly homesick. They need some company. They’re young men.”
The last part he said to Aliide.
Aliide looked at Ingel.
Ingel smiled.
They played cards for a long time. The Germans had hung their jackets on the coatrack as soon as they walked in. Ingel smiled approvingly at that and offered them some sugar beet cardamom buns and rowanberry-sugar beet custard. The Germans sang German songs and entertained Aliide, although she didn’t understand everything they said. Pantomime and sign language helped; the soldiers were thrilled with the sisters’ grasp of German, however small. Ingel had withdrawn to soak the rye; in the breaks in the singing Aliide could hear her pouring milk over the grains. So you’ll remember that it always has to be skim milk, Ingel had said, teaching her how to make coffee substitute. The pan clattered into the oven, where there was still a toasty aroma of bread, and Aliide would have preferred to be with Ingel working rather than sitting at the table with the soldiers, although they were actually quite funny boys. They were coming again the next evening. Aliide was annoyed; Ingel was excited. Aliide didn’t want anyone but Hans, but Ingel insisted that Aliide be the one to serve the coffee at the next visit. First put small-and I mean small- pieces of sugar beet in water to simmer. Cook them twenty to thirty minutes, then put them through a sieve and add the substitute and the milk. Will you remember that? So I won’t have to explain it to you when the guests are here? You can show them that you know how to be a hostess. On their fifth visit the soldiers announced that they were being transferred to Tallinn. Aliide was relieved; Ingel looked anxious. Hans said consolingly that more Germans would be sure to come. Father and Mother would be coming home. Everything would be all right. Right before they left, one of the soldiers gave Aliide his address and asked her to write to him. Aliide promised to write, although she wasn’t going to. She could feel Ingel and Hans exchange a glance behind her.
Father and Mother were never heard from again.
Hans carved Ingel a pretty pair of wooden shoes, attached laces to them, and announced that he was going to follow the Germans.
The sisters’ nights turned sleepless.
One night Armin Joffe, with his child, his wife, and her parents, disappeared from the village. The rumor was that they had escaped to the Soviet Union for safety. They were Jews.
The Russians had already spread out across the country again when Hans knocked on the window of the back room one night. Aliide pulled out the ax, Ingel started to mutter Our Father, and Linda hid under the bed, but they realized who it was soon enough. Two long, two short. Hans had come home.
As Ingel dribbled tears of joy, Aliide thought about how they were going to hide him. Hans whispered that he had run away from the German ranks and made it across the gulf by passing as a Finn. Ingel sniffled that Hans could have tried to send them a letter of some kind, but Aliide was glad he hadn’t. The fewer of his activities put down on paper the better. His escape with the Finland boys could be wiped from memory immediately; it never happened-surely Ingel understood that? What about the little room behind the kitchen-could they use that as a hiding place again? That’s where Hans had been before, when the Russians came the first time. It was a good spot-windowless-so they hid him there, but after the very first night his restlessness started to grow and he started asking about the Forest Brothers. The inactivity struck at his manhood, and he wanted to at least help with the work around the household. It was haymaking time; there were other men in hiding who were in the fields wearing skirts as a disguise, but Ingel didn’t dare allow him to do it. No one must know that he had returned, and that was made clear to Linda, too.
A couple of days later their neighbor Aino, recently widowed and in the last stages of pregnancy, ran over the field holding her belly, collapsed next to Ingel’s rake, and told them that the Berg boys were on their way there; they had marched past her house resolutely, and the youngest one was waving the blue, black, and white flag. Ingel and Aliide left the haymaking right where it was and rushed home. The Berg boys were waiting in the yard, smoking paperossis. They greeted the women.
“Have you seen Hans?”
“Why do you ask?”
Ingel and Aliide stood side by side in front of the boys and gripped each other’s fingers.
“Hans hasn’t come home since he went wherever he went.”
“But he’ll be here before long.”
“We don’t know anything about that.”
The Berg boys told them to give Hans their greetings and tell him they were forming a group and he’d best seek them out. Ingel gave them some bread and three liters of milk and promised to pass along their message. But after the boys had disappeared behind the silver willows, Ingel whispered that they must never tell Hans. He would go running after them! Aliide ignored her sniveling and said that they could expect to hear the rattle of the secret police motorcycles directly, because this march was the most conspicuous activity imaginable; didn’t Ingel understand that? They acted quickly. When the clock next struck the hour, Hans was already hiding at the edge of the woods. Lipsi started to bark in the yard, and the sound of a motorcycle could be heard approaching. Aliide and Ingel stared at each other. Hans had made it to safety at the last moment, but what if they were sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of haymaking-it would look exactly like what it was. Like something had happened and now they were just sitting there waiting to feel a gun at the back of their heads. Back to the fields then. They went through the pantry to the cowshed, through the cowshed to the stable, and from the stable through the rustling leaves in the tobacco patch to the field, as the motorcycle swung into the yard, its sidecar bouncing. “We left the kettle on the stove,” Ingel panted. “They’ll know that someone has just left the house.” They hadn’t locked the front door; it would have seemed suspicious. The Chekists would be there any moment and hear the clatter of the eggs boiling on the stove for Hans’s lunch, and they would know that someone had left the kitchen in a hurry. The two women stood in the middle of the field, peering at the house from behind a pile of stones. The men in their leather coats stopped their motorcycles, went inside, stayed there for a moment, came out, looked around, and drove away. Ingel was surprised that they left so quickly and immediately started to regret letting Hans go off into the woods just like that. Maybe they could have got out of it by talking to the Chekists. If they had been at home, the men might have just popped into the kitchen and left again, and Hans could have stayed safe in the little room behind the kitchen. What a stupid girl. Aliide didn’t understand how Hans could have chosen a woman like her.
“We have to get organized.”
“How?”
“Leave it to me.”
Ingel cried at night and Aliide stayed up thinking about their options. She couldn’t expect anything sensible from Ingel- she didn’t even notice the mold on the bread as she offered it to Linda, didn’t recognize familiar people. While Ingel hung the laundry to dry in the rain and murmured her prayers, Aliide was thinking. If Hans was going to survive, they would have to wash him clean of his activities with the civil guard, the Omakaitse self-defense league, and the Riigikogu, and the war in Finland. They couldn’t talk their way out of it, and escape was no longer possible.
Even Hans’s old confirmation classmate Theodor Kruus had cleared up his part in the anti-Soviet leaflets, but Aliide knew at what cost. Ingel didn’t know, and it was best that she didn’t.
The village militia liked to get young flesh and rosy cheeks into its jiggling belly. The younger the better. The greater the crimes of the parents, the younger the girl could be, or the more nights it would take to expiate the crime-one night, or one maidenhead, wasn’t enough. Theodor Kruus was let go because his lovely daughter redeemed him by going to the militia at night, taking off her dress and stockings, and kneeling before them. Theodor Kruus’s record as an agitator disappeared, the leaflets he wrote and his other anti-Soviet activities were placed under someone else’s name, and that someone else got ten years in the mines and five years of exile. Hans’s activities were punishable by death, or years in Siberia, at the very least.
Did Theodor know what his daughter had done? Maybe the militia told him. Aliide could easily imagine the booted militiamen with their legs spread wide, coming to whisper about it in Theodor’s ear.
Ingel wouldn’t be able to do it-all she could do was sniffle, with her nose against the rya rug on the wall. And Ingel wasn’t young enough for the militia anymore. Neither was Aliide. They only wanted girls who weren’t yet women. Besides, Aliide couldn’t do it-or could she? She lay awake till there were circles under her eyes, and there was no one she could ask what to do or how to do it.
After endless hours awake, Aliide thought of curtains. She had stared and stared at the black night, the moon, the moonlessness, the moon waxing and waning, and with it the passing of time. She had stayed awake and longed for her mother, whom she could have asked for advice, longed for her father, who would have known what to do, for anyone who would have known what to tell her. She wanted her sleep back, and Hans home, and the obtrusive moon away from her window. As she thought of these things, she realized that they had to make some curtains. Ingel took to the idea immediately. Hans could spend some time in the kitchen if they had curtains. It was so simple. So crazy. And the two sisters did seem crazy as Aliide beat out new fabric on the loom and Ingel decorated it with embroidery, even though they needed the thread for other things. Their foolishness was dismissed in the village with the explanation that the war had addled their brains, and that suited them fine. Aliide told Ingel to explain that she was throwing herself into her handiwork because concentrating on the needle and thread relieved her sadness and helped her to stop crying so much. On Aliide’s orders she also chatted in the village about a cousin in Tallinn who had told them that full-length curtains were the fashion in Paris and London. This cousin had shown them foreign fashion magazines, and there were no half curtains like there were in the countryside here-those were hopelessly old-fashioned! Aliide sometimes felt that when they explained their curtains, people looked at the sisters the way you look at someone you know is lying, but no one said anything-they let it be, acted like they believed, which made Aliide explain twice as hard how they should try to be as genteel as they could at a time like this, even be silly about it, that even if you did live in the country, you could still follow urban trends, even in times like these. Aliide proclaimed herself a woman of a new era who wanted curtains of a new era-the first full-length curtains in the village.
They got in the habit of closing the curtains almost every evening. Sometimes they didn’t do it, so that people walking by the yard could see that life went on as usual in the house, that they had nothing to hide.
The others started to put curtains on their windows, too, to ward off spies-half curtains, true, but they still prevented people from seeing what was happening inside. Many of them doubtless understood why Ingel and Aliide had chosen fulllength curtains, but those who did kept their mouths shut.
After opening and closing the drapes for a couple of months, the sisters decided that it would be best to keep Hans in the house all the time. They could dig a place out under the floor in the little room behind the kitchen, or they could build a room between the little room and the kitchen. Would that work? It was warm enough, close to them, and they would be able to let visitors into the rest of the house without worrying. The little room off the kitchen had always served as a storeroom and guest room-few people from the village had ever been in it, and the door was always kept closed. It didn’t even have a latch or a handle; just a hook. And who was going to remember what size it was originally? There was no window in the room, so it was always dim. It was time to summon Hans home from the woods-he was needed to help with building.
There were some boards in the stable; they carried them in unnoticed, through the drying barn and the food pantry. They worked on the wall only on the most windy or rainy days, when the weather would muffle the pounding of the hammer, and only when Linda was with Aliide or Ingel in the barn or someplace else, because a child’s mouth is a child’s mouth. They wouldn’t tell Linda what they were up to; she could be told stories about the ghost in that little room. When Hans had withdrawn into the secret room, he came into the kitchen or bath only when Linda was away or asleep. If she woke up in the night and came into the kitchen, they told her that Daddy had just come from the forest to visit.
First one board, then another; the safe room was coming along nicely. Ingel laughed, Aliide smiled, and there was a cheerful note in Hans’s humming. The molding from the old ceiling and baseboards was taken off and attached to the new wall. Sufficient ventilation was added; the ceiling had a pipe that drew air from the attic. Ingel found an old roll of the wallpaper that had been used in the little room, and when she had pasted it in place no one would have guessed that there was a good-sized room behind the wall. Hans put the cupboard that had been against the old wall up against the new one and concealed the new wallpaper so that its slightly lighter color and smoother texture wouldn’t be noticed. The door to the room was behind the cupboard. They put a bucket in the corner of the secret room, for when he needed it, but then they decided that they should put a hole in the floor so he could put the bucket under it with a lid on it. Or maybe they could make a hole in the wall that the little room shared with the barn. It could serve as a kind of latrine in case they had to be away from the house unexpectedly.
It was evening; Hans took a bath and ate heartily. Ingel packed his knapsack and told Linda that Daddy had to go away again now, but he would be back soon. Very soon. Linda started to cry and Hans consoled her. She had to be a brave girl now. So Daddy would be proud of his Estonian daughter.
All three of them went with him to the barn door and stood watching as he disappeared into the woods. The next night Hans came back and moved into the little room. A couple of days later, news of Hans Pekk’s gruesome end on the forest road spread through the village.
The first time Ingel and Aliide were taken into the town hall for questioning, the man who greeted them offered apologies if his underlings had behaved rudely when bringing the two of them in. “My dear comrades, they have no manners.”
Ingel was taken into one room, Aliide into another. The man opened the door for her, offered her a chair, and urged her to be seated.
“First I’ll just go over some of your paperwork. Then we can begin.”
He leafed through his papers. The clock ticked. Men went up and down the hallway. Aliide could feel their footsteps on the soles of her feet. The floor trembled. She concentrated on staring at the door frame. It seemed to move. The cracks between the tiles on the floor swayed like a spider’s legs. The hands of the clock bit off a new hour, and the man just kept flipping through his papers. Another hour began. The man glanced at Aliide and gave her a friendly smile. Then he got up, told her he was sorry but he had to attend to a certain matter and would be back in no time and then they could begin right away. He disappeared into the hallway. The third hour began. And the fourth. Aliide got up from her chair and went to the door. She tried the handle; the door opened. A man was standing outside the door; she closed it and went back to her chair. Linda had been playing at Aino’s when the men came for them. Aino must be wondering where they were.
The door opened.
“Now we can begin. Where were you going just now? Let’s clear that up first.”
“I was looking for the powder room.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Would you like to use the restroom now?”
“No, thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
Aliide nodded. The man lit a paperossi and started by asking if she could tell them the whereabouts of Hans Pekk. Aliide replied that Hans had died a long time ago. A murderrobbery. The man asked her this and that about Hans’s death, and then he said, “But all joking aside, are you sure, Comrade Aliide, that Hans Pekk wouldn’t tell us your location, if he were in your position?”
“Hans Pekk is dead.”
“Are you sure, Comrade Aliide, that your sister isn’t, at this very moment, telling us, for example, that the two of you have fabricated a story about Hans Pekk’s death, and that everything you are saying is a lie?”
“Hans Pekk is dead.”
“Comrade, your sister doesn’t want to be taken to court or to jail-I’m sure you’re aware of that?”
“My sister wouldn’t tell such lies.”
“Are you sure, Comrade Aliide?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure that Hans Pekk won’t tell us the names of the people who have assisted him in his crimes and deceptions? Are you sure that Hans Pekk won’t mention your name among them? I’m only thinking of what’s best for you, Comrade Aliide. I would be more than happy to believe that such a beautiful young woman wouldn’t have ended up in this kind of trouble if she hadn’t been deceived into giving assistance to a criminal. A criminal so skillful at deception that he had completely turned a young girl’s head. Comrade Aliide, be sensible. I beg you, save yourself.”
“Hans Pekk is dead.”
“Show us his body and we won’t have to discuss the matter any further! Comrade Aliide, you will have only yourself to blame if you get into trouble for the sake of this Hans Pekk. Or his wife. I’ve done all I can to ensure that a beauty like you can go on with her life as normal-there’s nothing more I can do. Help me, so that I can help you.”
The man took hold of her hand and squeezed it.
“I only want what’s best for you. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
Aliide wrenched her hand away.
“Hans Pekk is dead!”
“Perhaps that will be enough for today. We’ll meet again, Comrade Aliide.”
He opened the door for her and wished her a good night.
Ingel was waiting outside. They left together on foot, silent. It wasn’t until Aino’s house loomed into view that Ingel cleared her throat.
“What did they ask you?”
“They asked about Hans. I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Neither did I.”
“What else did they say? What did they ask you?”
“Nothing else.”
“Me either.”
“What should we tell Hans? And Aino?”
“We should say that they asked about something else. And that we didn’t give them any information about anybody.”
“What if Hendrik Ristla talks?”
“He won’t talk.”
“How can we be sure?”
“Hans said that Hendrik Ristla was the only person he trusted enough to help us with our story.”
“What if Linda talks?”
“Linda knows that her father really did die, not just for pretend.”
“But they’ll come to question us again.”
“We came out all right this time, didn’t we? We’ll come out all right next time.”
The swallows were already gone, but the cranes plowed through the air, their necks straight. Their cries fell on the fields and made Aliide’s head hurt. Unlike her, they could leave; they had the freedom to go wherever they wanted. She only had the freedom to go mushrooming. Her basket was full of saffron caps and milk caps. Ingel was waiting at home; she would be happy with the haul. Aliide would wash them, Ingel might let her blanch them but would look over her shoulder the whole time, and she would can them, demanding that Aliide pay attention, because she would never be able to run her own home if she didn’t know how to marinate mushrooms. She might know how to brine them, but the marinade took skill. And soon there would be several jars on the pantry shelf, Ingel’s handiwork, a couple jars less hunger this winter.
Aliide put her free hand over her ear. So many cranes! That cry! She felt the autumn through her leather shoes. Thirst scratched at her throat. And then suddenly there was a motorcycle and a man in a leather coat who pulled up next to her.
“Whatcha got in the basket?”
“Mushrooms. I’ve just been out picking them.” The man grabbed the basket, looked inside, and threw
it away. The mushrooms pattered onto the ground. Aliide stared at them; she didn’t dare look at the man. It was going to happen now. She had to remain calm. She couldn’t get nervous, couldn’t show the fear swishing inside her. Cold sweat ran down the backs of her knees into her shoes and numbness started to spread over her body, blood leaving her limbs. Maybe nothing was going to happen. Maybe she was afraid for no reason.
“Haven’t you been to see us before? With your sister. You’re the bandit’s wife’s sister.”
Aliide stared at the mushrooms. She could see the leather coat out of the corner of her eye. It squeaked when he moved. He chuckled, his ears red. His chrome-tanned boots shone, although the road was dusty and he wasn’t German. Should she run? Trust that he wouldn’t shoot her in the back? Or hope that he’d miss? But then he would go straight to her house and get Ingel and Linda and wait there for her to come home. And wasn’t running away always an admission of guilt?
At the town hall, the big-eared man reported that Aliide had been bringing food to the bandits. The light shone through his earlobes. He pushed Aliide to stand in the middle of the room, and then he left.
“I’m disappointed in you, Comrade Aliide.” It was the same voice as the first time. The same man.
Are you sure, Comrade Aliide? He stood up beside the desk, which was hidden in the darkness, looked at her, shook his head, and sighed deeply. He was very sad.
“I’ve given my all to help you. There’s nothing more I can do.”
He gestured to the men behind him and they came toward her. He himself left the room.
Aliide’s hands were tied behind her and a bag was put over her head. The men left the room. She couldn’t see anything through the fabric. Water was dripping onto the floor somewhere. She could smell the cellar through the bag. The door opened. Boots. Aliide’s shirt was ripped open, the buttons flew onto the floor, against the walls-glass German buttons -and then… she became a mouse, in a corner of the room, a fly on the light that flew away, a nail in the plywood wall, a rusty thumbtack, she was a rusty thumbtack in the wall. She was a fly and she was walking over a woman’s naked breast, the woman was in the middle of a room with a bag over her head, and she was walking over a fresh bruise, the blood forced up under the skin of the woman’s breast, a running welt that the fly traversed, across bruises that emanated from the swollen nipple like the continents on a globe. When the woman’s naked skin touched the stone floor, she didn’t move anymore. The woman with the bag over her head in the middle of the room was a stranger and Aliide was gone, her heart ran on little caterpillar feet into grooves nooks crannies, became one with the roots that grew in the soil under the room. Should we make soap out of this one? The woman in the middle of the room didn’t move, didn’t hear, Aliide had become a spot of spit on the leg of the table, a termite next to its hole, inside a round hole in a tree, an alder tree, an alder tree grown in the soil of Estonia that still felt the forest, still felt the water and the roots and the moles. She dove down far away, she was a mole pushing up a pile of dirt in the yard, in the yard where she could feel the rain and wind, wet dirt breathing and murmuring. The woman in the middle of the room had her head shoved in the slop bucket. Aliide was outside, out in the wet dirt, dirt in her nostrils, dirt in her hair, dirt in her ears, and the dogs ran over her, their paws pressing into the dirt, which breathed and moaned, and the rain melted into it and the ditches filled and the water crashed and slammed against its own course and somewhere there were chrome-tanned boots, somewhere there was a leather coat, somewhere the cold smell of liquor and Russian and Estonian mixing together and rotting and seething.
The woman in the middle of the room didn’t move. Although Aliide’s body struggled, although the dirt tried to keep her for itself and gently stroked her battered flesh, licked the blood from her lips, kissed the torn hair in her mouth, although the dirt gave its all, it wasn’t enough; she was brought back. A belt buckle jingled and the woman in the middle of the room stirred. A door slammed, a boot slammed, a drinking glass tinkled, a chair scraped across the floor, a light swayed from the ceiling, and she tried to get away-she was a fly on the light, clinging to the tungsten thread-but the belt snapped her back, such a wellperforated belt that you couldn’t hear it, more perforated than the leather flyswatter. She did try-she was a fly, she flew away, flew up to the ceiling, flew away from the light, see-through wings, a hundred eyes-but the woman on the stone floor wheezed and twitched. There was a bag over the woman’s head and the bag smelled like vomit and there was no hole in it for a fly to get in, the fly couldn’t find a way to get to the woman’s mouth, it could have tried to smother her, to get her to vomit again and suffocate. The bag smelled like urine; it was wet with urine; the vomit was older. The door slammed, boots slammed, above the boots there was a smack of lips, a clicking tongue, bread crumbs fell onto the floor like blocks of ice. The smacking sound stopped.
“She stinks. Take her away.”
She woke up in a ditch. It was night-what night was it? Had a day passed, or two, or had it just been one night? An owl hooted. Black clouds moved across a moonlit sky. Her hair was wet. She sat up, crawled up to the road. She had to get home. Her undershirt, her slip, her dress, and garters were all in place. No scarf. Stockings missing. She couldn’t go home without stockings, she simply couldn’t, because Ingel… Was Ingel even at home? Was Ingel all right? What about Linda? Aliide started to run, her legs wouldn’t hold her, she scrambled, crawled, climbed, staggered, lurched, limped, and stumbled, but always forward, every movement took her forward. Ingel must be at home; they had just wanted her this time; Ingel would be at home. But how would she explain to Ingel how it was that she had stockings on when she left and she didn’t have them when she came back? She could say she left her scarf in the village. There were puddles in the road; it had rained. Good. She would have taken off her wet scarf and forgotten it somewhere. But the stockings; she couldn’t go home without stockings. No respectable woman would go around without any stockings, not even in her own yard. The storage shed. There were stockings in the storage shed. She could get some stockings there. But the shed door was locked, and Ingel had the key. There was no way she could get into it. Unless someone had forgotten to lock the door.
Aliide focused her mind on stockings all the way home -not Ingel, not Linda, not anything that had happened. She recited different kinds of stockings out loud: silk stockings, cotton stockings, dark brown stockings, black stockings, pink stockings, gray stockings, wool stockings, sausage stockings-the shed loomed in front of her, dawn broke- children’s stockings-she had circled around the pasture to the back of the house-embroidered stockings, factory stockings, stockings worth two kilos of butter, stockings worth three jars of honey, two days’ pay. She and Ingel had done two or three days’ work at other people’s houses and each of them got a pair of silk stockings, black silk stockings with woolen toes. The silver willows rustled on the road home, the house peeked out between the birch trees in the yard, the lights were on inside, Ingel was home! Undyed wool stockings, Kapron stockings-she got to the shed, tried the door. Locked. She would have to go inside without any stockings, stay away from the light, sit down at the table immediately and pull her legs under it. Maybe no one would notice. She wished she had a mirror. She felt her cheeks, smoothed her hair, touched her head, but it felt sticky-silk stockings, cotton stockings, wool stockings, Kapron stockings. When she got to the well she drew a bucket of water, washed her hands, rubbed them with a stone, since there wasn’t any brush-brown stockings, black stockings, gray stockings, undyed stockings, embroidered stockings. She should go inside now. Could she do it? Could she lift her foot over the threshold, could she talk to them? Hopefully Ingel would still be sleepy and wouldn’t be able to talk about anything. Linda might still be asleep; it was so early.
She forced her body into the yard, watching herself from behind-how she walked, how her foot rose, her hand grabbed the door handle, how she called out “I’m home.” The door opened. Ingel came in. Hans was in the secret room, luckily. Aliide sighed. Ingel stared. Aliide raised her hand to tell Ingel not to say anything. Ingel’s eyes fell and rested on her stockingless legs, and Aliide turned her head away, bent to scratch Lipsi. Linda ran into the kitchen from the back room and stopped when she saw the edges of Ingel’s mouth, pulled deep and downward. Ingel told Linda to wash up. Linda didn’t move.
“You better mind me!”
Linda obeyed.
The enamel tub clanged, water splashed, Aliide still stood in the same place; she stank. Had Linda gotten a glimpse of her naked legs? She pulled away from her body again, enough to push herself to bed, and came back to it only when she could feel the familiar straw mattress under her side. Ingel came to the door and said that she would run a bath for her when Linda had left for school.
“Burn my clothes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. I didn’t tell them anything.”
“I know.”
“They’ll come for us again.”
“We should send Linda away.”
“Hans would start to suspect something, and he mustn’t suspect anything. We can’t tell him.”
“We mustn’t tell him anything,” Ingel repeated. “We should leave here.”
“Where would we go? And Hans…”
That autumn evening, they were making soap. Linda was playing with the chestnut birds and Ingel’s German brooch, polishing its blue rhinestones and trying to avoid getting out her primer, as usual. Jars of apple jam they had made the day before stood in stout array on the table, waiting to be taken into the pantry, and next to them a jug of apple juice wrung from the same batch was already bottled. It had been a good day, the first day since that night spent in the basement of the town hall that Aliide hadn’t thought about it immediately on waking-she had had a moment to look out at the flood of morning sunlight before she remembered. Although no one had come after them since the night Aliide had walked home alone, they still started at every knock at the door-but so did many other people in those days. On that morning, however, Aliide had felt a little seed of hope: Maybe they would leave them alone. Maybe they believed that they didn’t know anything. Maybe they would let them do their work in peace, make their jams and preserves, let them be.
Aino had come to visit, to sit at the table and chat. The barrel of meat she had intended to use for her own soap had been stolen, so she had been promised part of theirs. Her conversation felt good; talking with an outsider eased the otherwise overwhelmingly mute, desperate atmosphere in the kitchen. Aino’s ordinary talk was a gentle echo, and even her story of the fate of her hundred-kilo pig was comforting; the camaraderie in the kitchen gave every sentence a cozy feeling. Swine fever had taken her sow and she had to slaughter it immediately, drain the blood, and salt the meat. But the barrel had disappeared from her cellar while she was away visiting her mother.
“Can you imagine?” she said, shaking her head. “Now someone’s going to eat it! It was supposed to be for my soap!”
“It must have been someone who wasn’t from around here. Everybody in the village knows what your sow died from.”
“Thank goodness there was nothing else in that old cellar.”
The soap ingredients had been soaked and washed for several days, and that evening they were finally boiling in a great stew over a quiet fire, and Ingel was starting to add caustic soda. It was Ingel’s job because Aliide didn’t have the patience for it, and Ingel was good at making soap, just like she was good at all women’s work. Ingel’s cakes of soap were always the thickest and of the highest quality, plump and proud, but even that didn’t bother Aliide that evening, because it was the first day that felt even a little bit normal. In the morning the dye man had come peddling dyes that someone had secretly supplied him from the Orto factory-pure colors without fillers-people had heard about it in all the surrounding villages-and now the soap stew was frothy, Ingel was stirring it with a wooden ladle, Aino chatted, shaking her head as she talked about the kolkhoz collective farm-how was she going to manage quotas that were always going up? The sisters were worried about the same thing, but that evening Aliide decided not to fret about it too much-there was plenty of time to fret over quotas. The conversation was interrupted by a squeal from the other side of the table; the pin on Ingel’s brooch had pricked Linda’s finger. Ingel grabbed it and pinned it to the front of Linda’s sweater and told her not to play with it. Linda was left to sniffle in the corner of the kitchen, where she had escaped with her chestnut bird after Ingel’s warnings that the splashing lye could eat the flesh from her hands. The domestic bustle made Aliide smile, and she beckoned Linda to the window to watch Aino as she went out to do the evening milking. Aino would come back the next day. Then the soap would be ready to cut and Aino would bring some cakes home to dry. Aliide gave a long stretch. Soon she would go with Linda to the barn to feed the animals and Hans would be able to come out into the kitchen to put the heavy kettle on the floor to cool.
There were four men.
They didn’t knock-they walked in like they owned the place.
Ingel was just adding some caustic soda to the pot. Aliide denied knowing anything about Hans. Ingel poured the entire contents of the bottle into the pot.
The soap boiled over onto the stove.
She didn’t tell them where Hans was.
Linda didn’t say a word.
Smoke came up from the stove, a fire started, the pot continued to froth.
At the town hall, Linda was separated from them and taken somewhere else.
Two lights without shades hung from the basement ceiling.
There were two boys from their own village there, old man Leemet’s son and Armin Joffe, who had escaped to the Soviet Union before the Germans came. Neither boy looked in their direction.
The soldiers at the town hall were smoking mahorkka cigarettes and drinking liquor. Out of glasses. They wiped their noses on their sleeves, as was the Russian custom, although they spoke Estonian. They offered Aliide and Ingel a drink. They declined.
“We know that you know where Hans Pekk is,” one of the men said.
Someone had supposedly seen Hans in the woods. Someone who had been interrogated had claimed that he and Hans had been in the same group and the same hideout.
“You can get out of here and go home as soon as you tell us where Hans Pekk is.”
“You have such a charming daughter,” another one added.
Ingel said that Hans was dead. Killed in a murderrobbery in 1945.
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
Aliide said that Hans’s friend Hendrik Ristla had been a witness. Hans and Hendrik Ristla had been going down the road on a horse, and suddenly they had been laid hold of and Hans was killed, just like that. Ingel started to get nervous. Aliide could smell it, although she gave no outward sign. Ingel stood proud and straight. One man paced the whole time, behind them. Walked and walked, and another one was walking in the corridor. The sound of boots…
“What a pretty name, for a pretty little girl.”
Linda had just turned seven.
“We’ll be asking your daughter these same questions shortly.”
They were quiet. And then still another man came in. And the man who had been interrogating them said to the one who had arrived, “Go talk to the girl. Don’t waste any time. Unscrew the light from the ceiling. Careful you don’t burn yourself. No, bring the girl here instead. Then lower that lamp, that cord over there, so it reaches the table. Wait until we’ve put the girl on the table.”
The man had just been eating something, he was still chewing. Grease glistened on his hands and the corners of his mouth. Doors opened and closed, boots marched, leather jackets creaked. The table was moved. Linda was brought in. The buttons were gone from her blouse; she held it shut with her hand.
“Put her on the table.”
Linda was so quiet her eyes-
“Spread her legs. Hold her down.”
Ingel whimpered in the corner.
“Aliide Tamm, you can take care of this. Come over to the table.”
They didn’t say anything, they didn’t say anything.
“Make her hold the light.”
They didn’t say anything they didn’t say anything anything anything.
“Hold the light, bitch!”
Aliide chose Martin before he knew anything about her. She saw him at the dairy by chance. She had just come swinging down the steps after admiring the cotton wool displayed on the wall of the dairy office to show how pure their milk was. The others’ had been yellower, but their milk left the cotton just as white as always. It was really Ingel’s doing, she took the most care of the cows, but what did it matter? This was Aliide’s house, so they were her cows, too. She had puffed up her chest and it was still puffed up as she left the office and walked down the steps, when she heard a voice, an unfamiliar man’s voice. It was a hearty, decisive voice, very different from the voices of other men in the village, already frail with age or weakened from drinking from morning till night-because what else was there left for a man of their country to do but drink? Aliide went toward the road and tried to find the man that the voice had come from, and she found him. He was marching like a leader toward the dairy, and three or four men were following him, and Aliide saw how the tails of his coat thrust out like they were going to take off into the wind and how the others turned toward him when they spoke, but he didn’t turn to them when he answered, he just looked straight ahead, his brow raised, looking toward the future. And then Aliide knew that he was the man to rescue her, to safeguard her life. Martin. Martin Truu. Aliide tasted the name carefully as it was whispered around the village. It tasted good. Aliide Truu tasted even better; it melted fresh on her tongue like the first snow. Aliide easily guessed where she could find Martin Truu, or rather where Martin would find her-in the Red corner on the second floor of the manor house that had been made into a cultural center.
Aliide started staking him out, from between the busts of Lenin. She examined the books with their red covers in the shadow of the enormous red flag, and now and then as she read she would stare thoughtfully into the fireplace, its unacceptable ornamentation defaced. The ghosts of Baltic German manor ladies creaked under her feet, moist yawns darkened the wallpaper, and sometimes when she was there alone, the window squeaked like someone was trying to open it, the frame squeaked and a current of air blew toward her, although the window remained closed. She didn’t let it disturb her in spite of the fact that she still felt like she was in another person’s home, in the wrong place, in a gentleman’s house. It was a little like the feeling in the Russian church, which had been made into a grain warehouse. She had expected God to strike her with lightning when she was there, because she hadn’t risen up to oppose the men who had made grain bins out of the icons, and Aliide had tried to remember that it wasn’t her church; she couldn’t be expected to do anything about it. What could she have done? Now she just had to keep repeating to herself that the manor house belonged to the people now, for the use of the people, the ones who made it through all this, anyway. So she gazed dreamily at the smiling bust of Lenin, his head leaning on his hand, went up occasionally to examine the chart of quotas, and then went back to diligently leafing through Five Corners and Estonian Communists. Once, she dropped the book on the floor and had to pick it up from under the table and she noticed names carved into the bottom of the tabletop: Agnes, and a heart, and William. A knot in the wood where a branch had been stared out at her from the center of the heart. 1938. There was no one here named Agnes or William. The handsome rosewood table was stolen from somewhere, its embellishments had been cut away. Had Agnes and William got away, were they living happily, in love, somewhere in the West? Aliide pushed herself back upright and quickly memorized “The Tractor Song”:
Hurry, iron tractor! Hurry comrade! The field is boundless as a sea before us You and I travel across a vast land… Field and forest echo with our victory song.
It wasn’t enough to know it by heart. She should know it so well that she believed it. So that it sounded like a heartfelt creed. Could she do it? She had to. She thought about the teachings of Marx and Lenin-but wouldn’t it be better to let Martin teach her? The tractor driver’s song was simple enough. She shouldn’t let Martin think she was too clever.
Someone saw her in the Red corner and told Ingel. Ingel told Hans, and Hans didn’t speak to Aliide for a week. But Aliide didn’t care. What did Hans know about her life? What did Hans know about what it was like on the stone floor of the basement of town hall with the greatcoats’ urine trickling down your back? She did care a little, though, about his opinion, maybe even more than a little, but she needed someone, someone like Martin, and Martin started letting his eyes wander to the studious girl in the Red corner. One day Martin gave a talk, and Aliide went up to him, waited for the crowd to disperse, and said: “Teach me.”
She had rinsed her hair with vinegar the day before, it shone in the dimness, and she tried to give her eyes the unseeing expression of a newborn calf, helpless and unfocused, so that a desire to teach her would awaken in him immediately, and he would realize that she was fertile ground for what he had to say.
Martin Truu fell for the dewy calf eyes. He fell quite lightly. He came upon her, and he laid his great mentor’s hand on the small of her back, and he smelled.
As Aliide stepped out of the civil registration office, her steps were lighter than when she went in, and her back was straighter, because her hand rested on Martin’s arm now, and Martin was her husband, her legally wedded husband, and she was his legally wedded wife, Aliide Truu. What a lovely name! Although she received a certain guarantee of security by marrying Martin, there was another important thing she gained from the union. She became just like any other normal woman. Normal women get married and have children. She was one of them.
If she had remained unmarried, everyone would have thought that there was something wrong with her. They would have thought it even though there were very few men available. The Reds would have wondered if she had a lover in the forest. The others would have come to their own conclusions about why she didn’t suit anyone. Was there some reason that she was less of a woman, a woman who wasn’t suitable for a man or couldn’t handle being with a man? Some reason that she had been passed over? Someone might have made up a reason. The main thing was that once she married a man like Martin, no one could suggest that something had happened during her interrogation. No one would believe that a woman could go through something like that and then marry a Communist. No one would dare to talk about her-say, that one’s up for anything. Somebody ought to have a go at her. No one would dare, because she was Martin Truu’s wife, she was a respectable woman. And that was important-that no one would ever know.
She recognized the smell of women on the street, the smell that said that something similar had happened to them. From every trembling hand, she could tell-there’s another one. From every flinch at the sound of a Russian soldier’s shout and every lurch at the tramp of boots. Her, too? Every one who couldn’t keep herself from crossing the street when militiamen or soldiers approached. Every one with a waistband on her dress that showed she was wearing several pairs of underwear. Every one who couldn’t look you in the eye. Did they say it to those women, too-did they tell them that every time you go to bed with your husband, you’ll remember me?
When she found herself in proximity with one of those women, she tried to stay as far away from her as she could. So no one would notice the similarities in their behavior. So they wouldn’t repeat each other’s gestures and double the power of their nervous presence. At village community events, Aliide avoided those women, because you never knew when one of those men might happen by, a man she would remember for all eternity. And maybe it would be the same man as the other woman’s. They wouldn’t be able to help staring in the same direction, the direction the man was coming from. And they wouldn’t be able to keep themselves from flinching at the same time, if they heard a familiar voice. They wouldn’t be able to raise their glass without spilling. They would be discovered. Someone would know. One of those men would remember that Aliide was one of those women who had been in the cellar at the town hall. She was one of them. And all the blurring of memory she had managed by marrying Martin Truu would be in vain. And maybe they would think that Martin didn’t know, and they would tell him. Martin would, of course, take it as a slander and be angry. And then what would happen? No, she couldn’t let that happen. No one must ever know.
When a situation like that arose, she would always think of something bad to say about those women, berate and bad-mouth them to differentiate herself from them. Are you sure, Comrade Aliide?
They moved into a room together at the Roosipuu house. The Roosipuus didn’t openly make fun of Martin-they were afraid of him-but Aliide had to constantly be on the lookout for stumbling blocks and falling objects. The children put salt in her sugar bowl, pulled her clothes down from the clothesline, slipped worms into her flour bin, slathered their snot on the bin handles, and watched from beside their mothers’ spinning wheels as Aliide took a drink of salty tea or took hold of the handle, her expression never wavering even when she felt the dried snot on her fingers or recognized the sound of worms seething inside the bin. Aliide had no intention of giving them the pleasure of seeing her bothered one bit by their actions or their contempt or anything they did. She was Martin’s wife, and she was proud of it, and tried to remember that with every step, tried to put the same pride in her gait that Martin had, tried to go out the door in a way that made others yield, not her. But somehow it always missed the mark, and she had to wait, and the Roosipuus slammed the door in her face and she had to open it again. The Red soldiers who were bivouacked in the house had taught the Roosipuus how to say good morning and good day in Russian. They greeted Aliide with these freshly learned words.
There were always bits of onion between Martin’s teeth, and he had a hearty appetite. He had heavy muscles, loose skin hung from his arms, and the pores in his armpits were almost bigger than the ones on his forehead. His long armpit hair was yellowed with sweat and funguslike, in spite of its thickness, like rusted steel wool. A belly button like a cavern and balls that hung almost to his knees. It was hard to imagine that he had ever had a young man’s firm balls. The pores in his skin were full of oil with a smell that changed depending on what he had been eating. Or maybe Aliide was just imagining that. In any case, she tried to make food without onions. As time went by, she also did her best to look at Martin the way a woman looks at a man, to learn to be a wife, and gradually she started to be able to do it when she observed how he was listened to when he had something to say. Martin had fire and power in him. He got people to listen to him and believe in themselves almost as well as Stalin did. Martin’s words sliced like a sickle and struck like a hammer. His hand rose into the air when he spoke, squeezed into a fist, and shook in judgment of the Fascists, saboteurs, and bandits, and it was a big fist, a powerful thumb, a hand like the head of a bull, a hand that was good to shelter under. Martin’s earlobes were large and hanging; he knew how to wiggle them, but they still looked like they heard everything. And if they heard everything, news of any danger would stick to them, too. Martin would know about it ahead of time.
In the mornings, the smell of Martin’s armpits stuck to Aliide’s hair and skin, his smell was in her nose all day long. He liked to sleep in a tight embrace, with his little mushroom Aliide tucked tightly under his arm. It was good; it gave her a feeling of security. She slept better than she had in years, fell asleep easily and greedily like she was making up for all those years of sleepless nights, because she no longer feared that someone would come knocking on the door at night. Nobody could have pulled her out from under that arm. There wasn’t a more exemplary party organization in a single village in the whole country.
Martin was happy when he saw how sleeping beside him at night made Aliide, whose jumpiness had at first been a wonder to him, more beautiful. Having him close to her, Aliide’s jitters diminished a little during the day, her timorous gaze became more calm, her bloodshot, sleepless eyes cleared, and all of this made Martin a happy man. This happy man also arranged a job for his wife as an inspector, whose task, among other things, was to collect payments and issue payment notices in person. The work was easy, but it was awkward-the Roosipuus weren’t the only ones who started slamming doors when they saw Aliide’s bike approaching their house. But Martin promised to get her a more pleasant job when his career had advanced.
But that smell. Aliide tried at first to breathe through her nose all day. In the end, she got used to it.
Ingel had said that Aliide was starting to smell like a Russian. Like the people who appeared at the railway station and sat themselves down with their bundles. The trains kept bringing more of them and they disappeared into the mouths of the new factories.
Martin hadn’t told Aliide why he wanted her to come to the town hall that evening, so the trip there was hard for her. Are you sure, Comrade Aliide? The man’s voice came and went in her head, and she wasn’t sure of anything except that she had to hold on to Martin. Groping for her cigarettes at her front gate, she realized her cigarette case was empty and went back in the house, even though it was bad luck. She tried to refill the case and failed; they crumpled up, her hands shook, she started to cry, her shirt was wet with sweat, she was getting a chill, such a nasty chill. She succeeded in driving away a hiccup, succeeded in jamming a few cigarettes into the case, and stumbled out of the gate. The Roosipuus’ brat threw a rock at her and ran into the shrubbery; giggles could be heard coming from the bushes. Aliide didn’t turn her head. Luckily the other Roosipuus were working, no one had seen her flailing or the sweat on her upper lip except for the kid, but even the Roosipuus’ kitchen was more inviting than the town hall, and when she was on the main road she turned around twice, came back, headed toward town hall again, continued forward, and spat three times over her shoulder when a black cat crossed the road. Are you sure, Comrade Aliide? When she was halfway there, she lit a cigarette, smoked it where she stood, was startled by some birds, and continued on her way, biting her itchy palms. Scratching them just made them bloody, so she tried to tame the itch by gnawing at the places on her hands where her skin crawled. Are you sure, Comrade Aliide? Before she got to the town hall, she smoked another cigarette, her teeth chattered, she was cold, she had to keep going forward, her tongue cracked with dryness, forward to the courtyard of the town hall. The place was swarming with people. A car backfired. Aliide gave a start, her knees turned to water, and she squatted down, pretended to clean the dirt from her hem. Her galoshes, from Estonian times, were covered in mud. She rinsed them in a puddle and shoved her shaking hands into her pockets, but her fingers held tight to the payment notices for childless couples. She pulled her hands out of her pockets. Earlier in the day, she had come to the door of two childless families and three families with too few children, but none of them would let her inside. Men bustled back and forth at the lower door of the town hall carrying in bags of sand-the bags already covered one window halfway up. From the mutterings of passersby it became clear enough that a bandit attack was expected.
The building was full of people, although it was after seven o’clock. The ceaseless tapping of a typewriter echoed from somewhere in the building. Hurried, fervent footsteps came and went. Black leather coattails hummed by in her peripheral vision. Doors opened and closed. Storms of drunken laughter. A young girl’s giggle. A slightly older woman taking off her overshoes in the corridor, cute, decorative little high-heeled shoes emerging from her galoshes. The woman shook her head to straighten her curls, her earrings glinting in the dim light like a sword pulled from its scabbard.
Are you sure, Comrade Aliide?
The corridor smelled like metal.
Someone shouted, “Lenin, Lenin, and once again Lenin!”
The cracks in the pale-colored walls were hazy, as if they were moving. The smell of liquor met her coldly at the door to Martin’s office. Cigarette smoke darkened the room so that she couldn’t see clearly. “Sit down.”
Aliide located Martin by his voice, standing in a corner of the room. He was wiping his hands on a towel as if he had just washed them. Aliide sat in the chair he offered her, sweat squelched under her arms, and she rubbed her upper lip with the dry palm of her hand. As Martin came up beside her and bent to kiss her forehead, his hand took hold of her breast and squeezed it lightly. The wool fabric of his coat scraped against her ear. A damp place was left on her forehead. “There’s something my little mushroom should see.”
Aliide wiped her upper lip again and wrapped her ankles around the chair legs.
Martin let go of her breast, pulled his breath away from her ear, and fetched some papers from the table. He handed one of them to Aliide-her hands were reluctant under its weight. She stared straight ahead. Martin was standing beside her. The paper dropped into her lap, and her thighs started to burn under it, although the continuing chill had made her skin numb and turned her fingertips white. Martin’s breath moved through the room like a breeze. Aliide’s mouth filled with spit, but she didn’t dare swallow. Swallowing would betray her nervousness.
“Look at it.”
Aliide let her gaze settle on the paper.
It was a list. There were names on the list.
“Read through them.”
He didn’t stop watching her.
She started to arrange the letters into words.
She found Ingel’s and Linda’s names in the first row.
Her eyes halted. Martin noticed it.
“They’re leaving.”
“When?”
“The date’s at the top of the page.”
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because I don’t keep any secrets from my little mushroom.”
Martin’s mouth spread into a smile; his eyes shone brightly. He lifted his hand to her neck and caressed it.
“What a beautiful neck my little mushroom has, slender and graceful.”
When Aliide left the town hall, she stopped to say hello to a man smoking in the doorway. He said it was a peculiar spring. “Awfully early. Don’t you think?”
Aliide nodded and slinked away to smoke her own cigarette behind a tree, so she herself wouldn’t seem to be peculiar, smoking in public. A peculiar spring. Peculiar springs and peculiar winters were always frightening. Nineteen forty-one was a peculiar winter, terribly cold. Also 1939 and 1940. Peculiar years, peculiar seasons. There was a buzzing in her head. So here it was again. A peculiar season. A repetition of the peculiar years. Her father had been right- peculiar seasons bode peculiar events. She should have known. Aliide tried to clear her head by shaking it. This was no time for the old folks’ stories, because they didn’t say anything about how to behave when a peculiar season came along. Just pack your bags and prepare for the worst.
It was clear that Martin wanted to test her, test her trustworthiness. If Ingel and Linda escaped now or if they weren’t at home on the night in question, Martin would know who was responsible. The ache in Aliide’s teeth intensified and moved to her jaws.
Ingel and Linda were going to be taken away. Not Aliide. And not Hans. She had to think clearly, think clearly about Hans. She would have to demand that Martin arrange for them to move into Ingel’s house after she had been taken away; no other house would do for Aliide. Not a finer one or a larger one or a smaller one-no other house would do. Aliide would have to be on fire for the next few days, blooming, making Martin dizzy on their mattress at night, so that he would do everything he could to arrange to get that house for them. And the animals should stay with the house! She didn’t want anyone else’s animals. Maasi was her cow! If she found the barn empty, Martin would set his men after the thieves and send them all to Siberia! She marveled at the fury that blazed up the moment she thought of someone else touching her animals. Because they were hers now -Ingel was just milking the cows for a little while longer. They ought to take one cow over to the barn at the collective farm, so they could stay within the quota. But Martin could arrange to get it back later. Anyway, no one would come to count the animals in a party organizer’s barn.
But in the beginning Aliide didn’t want to think about the most essential question: How would Hans stay hidden with Martin sleeping under the same roof? Hans wasn’t a snorer, but what if he started snoring? Or sneezed in the middle of the night? What if he had a cough? Hans knew how to be quiet when guests were visiting, it’s true, but what about when Martin was actually living in the same house? Talking about Great-Grandma haunting the place wouldn’t work on Martin. Aliide pressed her hands to her forehead and cheeks. How long had she been standing there? She started moving her feet toward home. She tasted blood in her mouth. She had bitten her cheek. The attic. She had to get Hans into the attic. Or a cellar. She would have to build a cellar under the pantry or the little spare room. Or was the attic better? The attic extended from the house over the barn and the stable, and above the barn and stable it was full of hay, the bales packed so tightly that it would be impossible to investigate. If a closet were built there, no one would ever notice it. It could be built behind the hay bales. Above the barn. Since Aliide would be feeding the cows, she could be in the barn all the time to drop the hay from the trapdoor to the cows below. Martin would probably never even set foot in the barn-he didn’t know how to milk, and he didn’t like chickens, either, because they had almost pecked his eye out when he was a child, and a cow had trod on his foot and crushed it. No wonder Martin had decided to become an agitator-he never would have managed with the animals. Anyway, the animals would make noise. Hans could sneeze and cough all he wanted. And the rafters above the barn were thicker, too; there were thirty centimeters of sand between the planks. No one would hear anything.
As soon as Ingel and Linda had been taken away she would build a room-she could do it by herself. There were boards ready in the attic scrap heap. Then just put the hay in front of it. She could use bales that were easy to move but wouldn’t attract anyone’s notice-even if someone went all the way up to the attic.
When Aliide went to visit Ingel, sometimes she watched her closely and at other times couldn’t bring herself to even glance in her direction. After that first night in the town hall, Aliide had made an effort to avoid her gaze, just as her sister had avoided Aliide’s gaze, but after seeing the list Aliide felt a compulsion to go to Ingel’s house just to look at her. She sometimes crept up on her as she was working-she had an urge to stare at Ingel the way you stare at something fading, something that will never be seen again. She did it in secret, when Ingel was checking on the animals, bringing clover to the cows that were coming into milk, focused on her work.
The same applied to Linda. After the night at the town hall, Linda had become almost mute. She said only yes and no, only when she was asked, and she didn’t say that much to strangers. Ingel had had to explain it to people in the village by saying that Linda had nearly been trampled by a bolting horse and had been so frightened that she had stopped speaking. She said she was sure it would pass eventually. When they were in the kitchen, Ingel chatted and laughed so that Hans wouldn’t notice Linda’s silence.
Once, Aliide caught Linda stabbing at her own hand with a fork. The girl had a look about her that was absent and at the same time focused, her tight braids pulled back at the temples, and she didn’t notice Aliide. She aimed at the middle of her palm and struck. Her gaze was locked, her expression unmoving, as she pointed the fork at her hand, her mouth simply open, soundless.
For a single, fleeting moment, a voice inside Aliide urged Linda to strike again, strike harder, strike with all her strength, but as soon as the thought reached her consciousness, it was silenced by shock. You shouldn’t think those things, evil things. People who had evil thoughts were evil themselves. She ought to go to Linda, take her in her arms and pet her, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to touch that creature, and she was disgusted; she detested her own body and Linda’s body and the thin, waxy coating that had appeared on her skin. And Linda stabbed with the fork, and raised her hand, and stabbed again, and Aliide watched, and the palm of Linda’s hand turned red. Aliide’s hands curled into fists. Lipsi barked in the yard. The bark propelled Aliide into the kitchen. Linda, glassy-eyed, didn’t move; she held on to the fork but didn’t stab again. Aliide took the fork from her, Ingel came inside, and Linda ran out. “What happened to her?”
“Nothing.”
Ingel didn’t ask any more questions, she just said it was a peculiar spring.
“We’ll be going to the fields in nothing but a sweater soon.”
The day approached. Two weeks… thirteen days… twelve… eleven… ten nights… nine… eight… seven evenings. In a week they would be gone. The house wouldn’t be Ingel’s anymore. Ingel wouldn’t wash these dishes anymore or feed these chickens. She wouldn’t make chicken feed in this kitchen or dye yarn. She wouldn’t brown the sauce for Hans or wash Linda’s hair in birch ashes and water. She wouldn’t sleep in these beds anymore. Aliide would sleep in them.
Aliide could hear herself constantly panting. She panted unceasingly, pulling oxygen in through her mouth, because her nostrils weren’t powerful enough to pull the air in. What if one of the people who decide these things changed their mind? But why would they? Or what if someone else got wind of it and warned Ingel? Who might do that? Who would want to help Ingel? No one. Why was she so restless? What was troubling her? Everything was already decided. She could relax. All she had to do was wait, wait one more week, and then move in.
In the evenings, Martin would whisper that soon they would move into their new home, and his hand would rest on her neck, his lips on her breasts, as they lay side by side in the little room with the Roosipuu children making noise, strangers banging around, and time rolled inexorably onward -six days, five nights, the hands of the clock turning like millstones, grinding fifteen past Christmases to dust-the candles on the Christmas tree and the Christmas crowns from hollowed eggshells, the birthday cakes, the hymns Ingel had sung in the choir, and the nursery rhymes she had belted out since she was a child and then taught to Linda, a clever cat with cunning eyes, sat on a stump in the woods. There was dust in Aliide’s eyes, the whites were crisscrossed with veins like ice, and she wouldn’t ever have to sit at the same table with Ingel and Linda again. There would never again be a morning like the morning they came home together from the town hall, walked for kilometers, just after dawn, the morning air fresh and quiet. A kilometer before they reached home, Ingel had stopped Linda by tugging on her arm and started to rebraid her hair. She combed Linda’s hair with her fingers, smoothed it, and started braiding it tightly. They stood in the middle of the village road, the sun had risen and a door slammed somewhere, Ingel braided Linda’s hair, and Aliide waited, hunkered down, pressing her hands against the road, feeling the little bits of limestone, not looking at the others, and suddenly her throat tightened with a terrible thirst, and she strode over to the ditch, scooped water into her mouth, tasted dirt, scooped up more water. Ingel and Linda had started walking again, holding hands, their backs receding. Aliide followed behind them, gazing toward them, looking at their backs, staring at them until they reached their own front door. At the door Ingel turned around and said, “Clean your face.”
Aliide raised her hands to her cheeks and wiped them; at first she couldn’t feel her cheeks or her hands, and then she realized that the lower half of her face was covered with snot and her neck was wet. She wiped her nose, chin, and neck with her sleeve, purged her face. Ingel opened the door and they stepped into the familiar kitchen, where they felt like strangers.
Ingel starting making pancakes.
Linda brought a jar of raspberry jam to the table. The dark raspberries looked clotted with blood. Aliide shoved Lipsi outside; they went to the table and put pancakes on their plates. Linda got honey on hers, and they passed around the jam, their plates shone like the whites of eyes, their knives slashed, their forks clattered, and they ate their pancakes with rubber lips, glass eyes shiny and dry, waxed cloth skin dry and smooth.
Five days left. Aliide woke up with a clever cat with cunning eyes playing in her head. It was Ingel’s voice. She sat up on the edge of the bed-the song didn’t go away, the sound didn’t disappear. Aliide was sure they would come back.
She wrenched her flannel nightgown over her head- with a pipe in his mouth and a cane in his hand-got into her rumpled underwear and stockings, dress on, coat, scarf in her hand, and ran out through the kitchen, grabbed the handlebars of her bicycle, threw it down, went across the fields, the fastest route to the town hall, where Martin had gone earlier that morning. She poked at her hair on the way, didn’t stop, adjusted the scarf on her head, and ran, her overshoes flapping, her coat fluttering behind her. She ran over the spring fields and across the road and strode straight across the tinkling ditch that ran along the road, Ingel’s voice in her ears-and those of them who couldn’t read, they all got pulled by the hair-singing over the numb land, and the first migrating birds flying in rhythm with Ingel’s singing, pushing Aliide forward, running the whole way, past the thrusting pussy willows, with a formation of birds in front of her, and she didn’t stop until she found Martin talking with a man in a dark leather coat. Martin’s eyes quieted Ingel’s voice. He told the men that they could continue their discussion later and took Aliide by the elbow, ordering her to calm down.
“What’s happened?”
“They’ll come back.”
Martin took out his pocket flask, uncorked it, and thrust
it toward her-she gulped and coughed. He pulled her aside, examined her as she held tight to the flask, took it out of her hands, and lifted it to her lips again.
“Have you been talking to anyone?”
“No.”
“You told them.”
“No!”
“Then what is it?”
“They’ll come back!”
“Stalin won’t let something like that happen.” Martin pulled Aliide into the shelter of his coat, and her legs stopped twitching from her running.
“And I won’t let them come back to frighten my little mushroom.”
Aliide walked to Ingel’s house, stopped under the silver willow on the path into the yard, heard dogs and sparrows, the murmur of a peculiar, early spring, and drew the moistness of the soil inside her. How could she leave such a place? Never, she couldn’t do that. This soil was her soil, this was where she came from and where she would stay, she would never leave here, she would never give it up, not this. Not Hans and not this. Had she really wanted to escape when she had the chance? Did she really stay because she had promised Hans she would take care of Ingel?
She kicked at the shoulder of the road. The edge gave way. Her edge.
She went away from the fence that surrounded the yard; the bare branches of her home birches hung down. Linda was in the yard, playing and singing:
Linda saw her. Aliide stopped. The song broke off. Linda’s eyes stared her down-big, cold, bog eyes. Aliide went back to the village road.
Afraid of a mouse, afraid of a rat.
In the evening Martin wouldn’t tell her his plans; he just said that tomorrow everything would be taken care of. Three days left. Martin ordered Aliide to remain calm. She couldn’t sleep.
A black grouse started gurgling and courting before the sun came up.
The trip to the town hall still felt like walking along the blade of an ax. As Aliide pulled on the handle of the door, she suddenly remembered how she had once frozen her tongue to metal. She didn’t remember the exact situation, just the feeling of her tongue in that icy sharpness. Maybe it was an ax. She didn’t remember how she had got free or what had happened, but she felt the same feeling in her tongue now when she stepped inside, straight into Martin’s waiting arms, and was handed a pen and a piece of paper. She understood immediately. She had to sign her own name to a testimony so strong that no return would be possible, ever again.
She smelled cold liquor, and Martin’s herringbone coat swarmed in her vision. A dog barked somewhere, a crow cawed outside the window, a spider walked up the edge of the table leg. Martin smashed it and rubbed it into the floorboards.
Aliide Truu signed the document.
Martin patted her once or twice.
He had to stay there to take care of the rest of the business. Aliide went home alone, although he had said that she could wait there for him to finish his work. She didn’t want to, but she didn’t want to go home, either-to walk across the Roosipuus’ yard, walk into the Roosipuus’ kitchen, where the conversation would break off as soon as she opened the door. They would toss a few words of Russian at her, and although the meaning would be polite, they would sound mocking. The boy would stick out his tongue from behind the cupboard, and her tea tin would hiss with the salt that they had thrown in it.
She stopped at the side of the road and looked at the peaceful landscape. Ingel would be going to do the evening milking soon. Hans might be reading the paper in his tiny room. Aliide’s hands didn’t tremble. A sudden, shameful joy spread through her chest. She was alive. She survived. Her name wasn’t on the lists. No one could bear false witness against her, not against Martin’s wife, but she could send the Roosipuus to where Estonian soil was just a faraway memory. Aliide felt her footsteps lengthen, her feet hitting the ground with strength, and she waltzed up to the Roosipuus’ house, almost knocked the mama down, went past her, and slammed the door in her face. She made herself some tea from the Roosipuus’ tin, took some sugar from the Roosipuus’ sugar bowl, and broke off half of their bread to bring with her into her room. On the threshold she turned around and told them that she was going to give them some friendly advice, because she was a gentle person and wanted only what was best for all her comrades. If they were wise, they would take down the picture of Jesus from the bedroom wall. Comrade Stalin wouldn’t like it if the workers of the new world repaid his good work with that sort of thing on their walls. The next day the print of the Son of God had disappeared.
Four days. Then just three. Both days Aliide had said she was coming over to Ingel’s house, but she hadn’t gone.
A clever cat with cunning eyes sat on a stump in the woods.
A pipe in his mouth and a cane in his hand…
Two days. Three nights.
A wind blew from where the little birds were perched in the bare birch trees. There was a buzzing in Aliide’s head as though she hadn’t slept for ten nights straight. When she came to the front door, she shut her eyes and strode ahead blind, groped for the handle, knocked down the saw that was hanging on the wall, went inside, and opened her eyes in the darkness.
The cupboard in front of Hans’s little room was still there.
It was only then that her heart began to race, her dry lower lip split, blood spurted into her mouth, her sweaty fingers slipped against the side of the cupboard, and she heard sounds now and then that belonged in the kitchen: Ingel’s footsteps, Linda’s cough, the clatter of a cup, Lipsi’s paws on the floor. The cupboard didn’t want to move; she had to push against it with her shoulder and hip, and it creaked, a complaint that echoed loudly through the empty house. Aliide stopped to listen. The silence crackled. The noises she had imagined in the kitchen were immediately silenced when she stopped moving. You could already see signs on the floorboards that the cupboard was always being moved. That ought to be covered up. There was something under the legs of the cupboard. Aliide bent over to look. Wedges. Two wedges. To keep it from swaying. When had Ingel put them there? Aliide removed them. The cupboard moved smoothly away from the wall.
“Hans, it’s me.”
Aliide tried to pull open the door of the chamber, but her sweaty hand slipped when she reached for the little hole they’d made to hold on to.
“Hans, can you hear me?”
There was no sound.
“Hans, help me. Push on the door. I can’t open it.”
Aliide knocked on the door, then pounded on it with her fists.
“Hans! Say something!”
A rooster crowed somewhere far off. Aliide startled, panicked, pummeled the door. She felt a pain in her knuckles that reached all the way to the soles of her feet. The wall swayed, but the silence persisted. Finally she went to the kitchen for a knife, shoved it into the crack of the door, and got hold of the edge of the trim. She yanked open the door. Hans was huddled in a corner of the cell, motionless, his head on his knees. It wasn’t until Aliide touched him that he raised his head. Only when she had asked him three times to come out did he stagger into the kitchen. And only when she asked what had happened did he speak.
“They took them away.”
That silence. The kind you don’t hear in a house in the countryside in the middle of the day. Nothing but the scratch of a mouse in the corner. They stood in the middle of the kitchen and there was a hum inside them and their breath rasped in the silence and Aliide had to sit down and put her own head on her knees, because she couldn’t bear to look at Hans’s face, covered with a night of weeping.
The silence and the humming grew, and then, suddenly, Hans grabbed his knapsack from the hook.
“I have to go after them.”
“Don’t be crazy.”
“Of course I have to!”
He tugged open the lower kitchen cupboard to get some provisions, but it was nearly empty. He strode into the food pantry.
“They took the food with them.”
“Hans, maybe the soldiers stole it. Maybe they’ve just been taken to the town hall for questioning. You remember, Hans, it happened before. Maybe they’ll be home soon.”
Hans rushed into the front room and opened the wardrobe.
“All their winter clothes, all the warm things are gone. At least Ingel took the gold with her.”
“The gold?”
“It was sewed into her fur coat.”
“Hans, they’ll come back soon.”
But he was already leaving. Aliide ran after him, grabbed him by the arm. He tried to shake her off. The sleeve of his shirt was torn, a chair fell over, the table was overturned. She wouldn’t let Hans go-never, ever. She held on with all her might, wrapped around his leg, and wouldn’t let go even when he grabbed her by the hair and pulled. She wasn’t going to let go; she would tire him out first. And finally, when they lay sweating on the floor, panting and weary on the cold floor, Aliide almost laughed. Even now, even in this situation, Hans hadn’t struck her. He might have; she expected him to, expected him to pick up the bottle on the table and hit her on the head with it or whack her with the shovel, but he didn’t. That’s how good Hans was, how much he cared about her, even at a time like that. She could never have better proof than that.
There was no one as good as Hans, Aliide’s beautiful Hans, the most beautiful one of all.
“Why, Liide?”
“They don’t need a reason.”
“I need a reason!”
He looked at her expectantly. Aliide had hoped that he would have been resigned to what had happened. Everyone knew that they didn’t need any special reason, much less any evidence for their arbitrary, completely imaginary accusations.
“Didn’t you hear anything? They must have said something when they came here.”
THEY. The word swelled up large in Aliide’s mouth. As a child she used to get a demerit for saying certain words out loud, like God, hell, thunder, death. Once she had tried it in secret, reciting them one after the other. A couple of days later, one of the chickens died.
“I couldn’t hear everything. There was a lot of shouting and banging. I tried to get the door open, to ambush them with my Walther, but it wouldn’t open, and then they were all gone. It happened so quickly and I was stuck in that room. Lipsi barked so much…”
His voice crumbled.
“Maybe it was because of…” The words stuck in Aliide’s throat. Her head turned to the side, as if of its own accord, and she thought about that dead chicken. “Maybe it was because she was your widow. And Linda was your daughter. Enemies of the state, I mean.”
It was cold in the kitchen. Aliide’s teeth chattered. She wiped her chin. Her hand came away red; her split lip had bled.
“Because of me, you mean. My fault.”
“Hans, Ingel put wedges under the feet of the cupboard. She wanted you to stay in hiding.”
“Get me a drink.”
“I’ll make a better hiding place for you.”
“Why do I need a better one?”
“It’s not good to be in the same place too long.”
“Are you suggesting that Ingel will talk? My Ingel?”
“Of course not!”
She dug in her pocket and pulled out a flask of homebrewed liquor.
Hans didn’t even ask about Lipsi.
“Go milk the cows,” he said wearily.
Aliide pricked up her ears. Maybe it was an innocent request, and the cows did have to be milked, but she couldn’t leave him alone here in the kitchen, not like this. He might run to the town hall.
A couple of weeks after Ingel and Linda were taken away, Martin, Aliide, and the dog moved into the house. It was a shimmering morning, the moving truck rocked back and forth, and Aliide had done everything possible the whole morning to make sure that nothing would go wrong, careful in her every movement to be sure that she didn’t miss anything, mess anything up. She woke up and put her right foot on the floor first, stepped over the threshold and through the front door with her right foot, opened doors with her right hand, hurrying to open them before Martin’s left hand spoiled their luck. And as soon as they got to the house, she rushed to be the first to take hold of the gate with her right hand, and the door, and to step into the house with her right foot. Everything went well. The first person the truck met on the road was a man. That was a good sign. If it had been a woman she would have seen her from far off and insisted that Martin stop the truck. She would have disappeared into the brush, told him that her stomach hurt, waited for the woman to pass, but although that would have avoided bad luck for her personally, the truck still would have met a woman first, and so would Martin. And what if the second person they met was a woman? She would have asked Martin to stop and run into the bushes again, and he would have started to worry about her. She couldn’t tell Martin about bearers of good luck or about the evil eye- he would have just laughed at his wife for listening to too many old wives’ tales. They had each other, Lenin, and Stalin. But luckily the whole trip went well. Her toes curled with anticipation and her hair shone with joy. Hans! She had saved herself and Hans! They were safe, and they were together!
Aliide shot a glance at herself in the front-room mirror as Martin unloaded the wagon, and perhaps she flirted a little with her own bubbly reflection. Oh, how she would have liked to have Martin away for the night, working, anywhere, so she could have let Hans out of the attic and sat with him all night long. But Martin wasn’t going anywhere, he wanted to spend their first night in their new home with his wife, his comrade, his beloved-with her-although she did try asking if he wouldn’t miss the company of men and made it clear that she wouldn’t be angry if he put other duties before her, but he just laughed at such nonsense. The party could get along fine without him for one night, but his wife couldn’t!
Ingel’s smell still filled the house; the windows still had her fingerprints on them, or Linda’s-they must have been Linda’s, they were so low on the glass. Linda’s chestnut bird was on the floor under the window, standing in a hollow knot in the wooden floorboard, its tail feathers spread out. There was nothing to suggest a hasty departure or panicked packing: the cabinets weren’t left open, the cupboards weren’t ransacked. The only straggler was the cupboard door that Hans had opened. Aliide closed it.
Ingel had left everything in good order, neatly taken her own dresses and Linda’s from the white wardrobe and closed the door properly, even though it was hard to close- you always had to push it hard but at the same time slowly, or else it would come open again on its own. Ingel had closed it as if she hadn’t been in a hurry at all. The dresser was emptied of socks and underwear, but the tablecloth that covered it was straight, as were the rugs on the floor, if you didn’t count the one that had got crumpled up when Aliide tried to keep Hans from leaving. She hadn’t noticed it before-she’d been building the room in the attic and hadn’t come downstairs; she always climbed straight up to the attic, didn’t dawdle in the kitchen or make anything hot for Hans to eat. Hans would have liked to come out and help with the building, but Aliide overrode his objections. His state of mind seemed so unstable that she thought it was better that he stay in the old room, crying and drinking the liquor she brought him.
It was then that Aliide understood that the only disorder in the house was what remained of her struggle with Hans, from that first time when she came there after Ingel and Linda were taken away. There was no sign that the Chekists had looked for weapons, and the food pantry was clean. Maybe Martin had told them to leave this house in order, that he and his wife were moving into it. Would they have listened to him? Probably not-the Chekists didn’t have to listen to anyone. The only trace of their visit was on the floor. There was dried mud from the men’s boots on the floor in every room. She cleaned away the mud before she started arranging their belongings. She would check the yard later-Lipsi must have been shot and left there.
Aliide picked up a dress and put it in the wardrobe- with her right hand-and her good spirits returned, even if she hadn’t got Martin away for the night. She put her brush on the table under the mirror, next to Ingel’s. Putting her own things in their places made the house feel like she and Hans shared the place. Our home. Aliide would sit there, at the kitchen table, and Hans would sit across from her, and they would be almost like man and wife. She would cook for him and warm his bathwater and offer him a towel when he was shaving. She would do all the things that Ingel used to do for him, all the wifely duties in the house. She would be almost like a wife. Hans would see that she was a better baker and could knit better socks and cook more delicious things. Hans would finally have a chance to see how pretty she was, how sweet she could be, now that Ingel wasn’t tossing her braids in his direction all the time. He would have to talk to her now instead of Ingel. He would have to see her. And above all he would finally have to see that Aliide had her own special qualities, her wonderful knowledge of the secrets of plants and healing. She had always been better at this than Ingel, but who would notice it? It was more important for a proper Estonian farm wife to have a basic knowledge of dough and milking. Who was going to notice that Ingel might flavor her cucumbers with horseradish, but Aliide could use the same root to cure a stomachache? Well, Hans would know it now! Aliide bit her lip. You can’t show off those tricks-pride was the end of every cure, and humility was its beginning, and silence was its power.
But then Martin interrupted her thoughts and tugged her backward, against his hips, and whispered in his little mushroom’s ear, said he was proud of his wife, prouder than he had ever been, and he put his hands on her waist, spun her around the room, and then he fell onto the bed and said, “Now this is a man’s bed! The man of the house! I wonder what all a man could do in a bed like this?”
That night, Aliide woke to a noise like the call of a curlew. Martin was snoring beside her. His armpit smelled. The curlew call was Hans crying. Martin didn’t wake up. Aliide lay in the dark and stared at the striped German pattern of the wall-hanging. Mama had made it. It was embroidered by her hands. How much gold had Ingel taken with her? Enough to buy her freedom? Hardly-as the oldest daughter, her parents gave her maybe ten rubles worth of gold, if that much. Maybe she could use it for enough bread to stay alive.
The next morning Aliide put Ingel’s brush in the bottom drawer of the bureau, the drawer with the broken handle that had to be opened with a knife. She touched the brush only with her left hand.
She found Ingel’s wedding blanket in the drawer. It had a church, and a house as plump as a mushroom, and a husband and wife stitched into the red background. Aliide tore off the six-pointed stars with a pair of scissors, tore the rickrack from around the edge of that map of happiness with her fingers, and the man and wife disappeared from the picture, just like that, the cow just shreds of yarn, the cross on the church nothing but fluff! Aliide was there, too-a lamb, her namesake, was embroidered on it. Ingel had shown off the fruits of her skill and thought Aliide would be pleased, but she hadn’t been thrilled to see her namesake on Ingel’s wedding blanket, and Ingel could tell, and she had run away behind the house crying. Aliide had to go after her and comfort her and say it was a lovely lamb, a beautiful idea, and even though most people didn’t make wedding blankets anymore, Ingel did, and it was lovely. So what if other people thought it was old-fashioned-Aliide didn’t think so. She had rocked Ingel in her arms, and Ingel had calmed down, and she didn’t give up her wedding blanket; she busied herself with it every evening. Mama had a wedding blanket, and there was no wife as happy as Mama. Aliide couldn’t deny that, could she? Aliide couldn’t, but now she was ripping out bits of yarn from the lamb, and from the spruce tree, and soon there was no more map of happiness, just a red background, good wool, from the real lamb, which belonged to her now. Martin peeked in the door, saw Aliide on her knees in a pile of yarn with the scissors in her hand, a knife beside her, her nostrils glowing red and her eyes bright. He didn’t say anything and left the room. Aliide’s steaming breath fogged up the room and spread through the keyhole and filled the house.
Martin went to work; she could hear the door close. She watched him from the window until he was on the main road, then drank some cold water from the big tank and splashed her face, calmed her hot breath. This was her house now, her kitchen. The swallow that nested in the barn would bring luck to her now, and it had permission to bring good luck, real luck, all the magic of toasts that were never made for her marriage, glasses raised under the three lions of the Estonian coat of arms. They could bring such luck, and they were sure to bring it, because these lucky birds did what was right. She was rescuing this house, rescuing her parents’ house from the Russian boots, and rescuing the man of the house. Not Ingel, but him. The land might be lost, but the house remained. Strangers might take the grain from the fields, but the man of the house and Aliide, the new woman of the house, remained. Not everything was lost.
Aliide put the remains of the wedding blanket away in the wardrobe and threw the frayed yarn in the stove, but she saved a pile of it to put in the smoke. Maybe it would have been enough to just burn it, but better safe than sorry, and everyone said that smoking was better than burning. The clothes or a piece of the clothes of the object of unrequited love was always smoked-somebody or other had been smoking things in this village for centuries. There had even been a German countess in the manor house who had been seen smoking the shirt of a reluctant lover, but Aliide couldn’t remember how it was done, how the shirt was put in the smoke-was it hung up to dry in the oven or hung above the midsummer fire? She should have listened more closely to the old people’s stories when she was younger so she wouldn’t have to guess what kind of smoke would work and what kind wouldn’t. She could ask Maria Kreel, of course, but then she would know what Aliide was doing, and it was important to do it without telling anyone. There was something else that you did with the spell, too, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Maybe part of the spell would be enough to do the trick. Aliide stuffed the bundle of yarn into her apron pocket and sat quietly for a moment listening to the house-her house-and felt the trembling of the floor under her feet. Soon she would see Hans, finally sit at the table with him, just the two of them.
She fixed her hair, pinched her cheeks, brushed her teeth with charcoal, and rinsed them for a long time. It was a trick of Ingel’s-that’s why her teeth were always so white. Aliide hadn’t wanted to imitate Ingel too much before, so she had always done without the charcoal. But things were different now. She closed the kitchen drapes and closed the door to the front room, so that no one could see through those windows into the kitchen. Pelmi was running around in the yard. He would bark if someone came to the house- he would bark well before anyone came into the yard. By that time Hans would have easily made it back to the room in the attic. Pelmi was trained to be snappy, which was a good thing.
Aliide wanted to give the kitchen a homey feeling; she set the table for Hans’s breakfast and brought the dried flowers from the front room. They created a nice mood, a mood of love, and acts of love. Last of all she took off her earrings and hid them in the box in the front room. They were a gift from Martin that would only remind Hans of what was detestable to him. When she had everything arranged, she went through the pantry to the barn, opened the trapdoor to the attic, climbed up, and moved the hay bales from in front of the secret room. The new wall was perfect. She knocked and opened the door. Hans crept forward. He didn’t look at her; he just had a long stretch.
“Breakfast is ready. Martin has gone to work.” “What if he comes home in the middle of the day?” “He won’t. He never does.”
Hans followed her to the kitchen. She pushed a chair toward him and poured a cup of hot coffee, but he didn’t sit down. First he had to say, “It smells like Ivan in here.”
Before Aliide had time to answer, Hans spit three times on the coat that hung on the back of Martin’s chair. Then he started sniffing around the kitchen for the other things Martin had left-his plate, knife, fork-then he stopped in front of the sink, poked at a wet bit of soap that Martin had left on the edge of the washbasin, flicked at the block of shaving alum, with its fresh drops of blood turning brown. He splashed the ladle in the soapy, still-warm water in the slop bucket, threw the alum into it, and was about to toss in the shaving brush and razor, too. Aliide flung herself at him and grabbed his arm.
“Don’t.”
His arm was still raised.
“Be good.”
Aliide pried the brush from his fingers, put it back in its place, and the razor.
“Martin’s shaving things are still in the trunk. I’ll un
pack today and get them out, and his shaving mirror, too. Please be pleasant and sit down and eat.”
“Is there any news of Ingel?”
“I opened up a bottle of dewberry juice.”
“Did he sleep on Ingel’s pillow?”
Hans yanked the door open before Aliide could stop him, strode over to the bed, and grabbed Ingel’s pillow. “Get out of there, Hans. Someone might see you through the window.”
But Hans sat down on the floor and squeezed Ingel’s pillow in his arms, twisted it around and pressed his face against it, and she could hear from the kitchen how he wanted to get inside it, inside of Ingel’s scent. “I want Ingel’s cup in my room, too.”
His voice was muffled by the pillow.
“You can’t hoard all of Ingel’s stuff in that room!”
“Why not?”
“You just can’t! Be sensible. Is the pillow enough? I’ll hide the cup in the back of the cupboard. Martin won’t be digging around in there. Will that be good enough?” Hans came into the kitchen, sat at the table, put the pillow on the chair beside him, and poured more of Aliide’s horseradish tonic than was medicinally necessary into a glass. There was straw from the hayloft in his hair. She felt her fingers twitch with a desire to pick up the brush, touch Hans’s hair. Then Hans suddenly announced that he wanted to go into the woods. Where the other Estonian men were. Where he belonged.
“What are you talking about?” Aliide couldn’t believe her ears. Apparently the oath was still binding. The oath! The oath of the Estonian army? Why talk about an oath to a country that doesn’t exist anymore? There he sat, at her table, twirling his spoon in her honey, and the only reason he could still twirl it like that was because of Aliide. Let the other dreamers wander around the woods, with the authorities after them, hungry, in clothes stiff with dirt, cold with the horror of that final bullet. Instead here he was, a gentleman, twirling his spoon in a dish of honey!
Hans said that he couldn’t bear the smell of Martin in his house.
“Has sitting in that room addled your brains? Have you thought at all about what would have happened if someone else had come to live here? Have you seen what’s happened to other people’s houses? Would you rather have the Russians here? Would you rather have the floor of your home covered with sunflower seeds so it sounds like you’re treading on beetles? And how do you propose to get to your precious forest? This house is under surveillance, too. Oh, yes it is, yes it is. We’re so close to the woods that the NKVD is convinced the Forest Brothers come here to get food.” Hans stopped playing with the honey, took the pillow and the bottle of tonic under his arm, and got up to go back to the attic.
“You don’t have to go back yet. Martin isn’t coming home.”
Hans didn’t listen, he just kicked his own beer barrel next to the door of the little room behind the kitchen. It fell over, the oak clattered against the threshold, and Hans disappeared through the pantry into the barn and up into the attic. Aliide wrenched the barrel back upright and followed him. She felt like saying that Hans had never had a better friend than she was, but she just whispered, “Hans, don’t do something stupid and spoil everything.”
Aliide sneezed. There was something in her nose. She blew her nose into her handkerchief, and a little piece of red
yarn came out. Ingel’s wedding blanket. Then she realized that she still hadn’t looked into Hans’s eyes even once, even though she’d dreamed of it for years, even though she’d watched for years how Hans and Ingel had flowed into each other in the middle of their work, his eyelashes wet with longing and his desire throbbing in the veins under his eyes. Aliide had dreamed of how it would feel to experience something like that, to look into Hans’s eyes with no risk of Ingel noticing her little sister looking at her husband with that look, and what it would feel like if Hans returned that look. Now that it was possible, he hadn’t done it. Now, when Aliide needed that look to make her bold, to make her pure again, to give her strength, he hadn’t made any effort at all. Now there was a bit of fluff from Ingel’s wedding blanket tickling her nose, and Linda’s chestnut bird stared mutely from a corner of the cupboard; Hans thought of Ingel constantly, just as before, and didn’t see Aliide as his rescuer. He just kept harping about how he was sure that England would come to save them, everything would be all right, America would come, Truman would come, England would come, rescue would come on a white horse, and Estonia’s flag would be whiter than white.
“Roosevelt will come!”
“Roosevelt’s dead.”
“The West won’t forget about us!”
“They already did. They won, and they forgot.”
“You have so little faith.”
Aliide didn’t deny it. One day Hans would understand that his rescuer was not on the other side of the ocean but right here, right in front of him, ready to do whatever was necessary, to keep going, endlessly, all for just one look. But even though Aliide was the only person in his life now, Hans still wouldn’t look at her. One day that would have to change. It must change. Because Hans was what made everything matter. It was only through Hans that Aliide really existed. The walls creaked, the fire popped in the stove, the curtains pulled over the glass eyes of the house fluttered, and Aliide forced her own expectations underground. Commanded them to stay down, waiting for the right moment. She had been too eager, too impatient. You couldn’t rush these things. A house built in haste won’t stand. Patience, Liide, patience. Swallow your disappointment, wipe away the silly idea that love will bloom as soon as the cat’s away. Don’t be stupid. Just get on your bicycle and run your daily errands and come back and milk the cows – everything will be fine. She swung her heart the other way and realized how childish the fantasies she’d been spinning over the past few days were. Of course Hans needed time. Too much had happened in too short a time, of course his mind was elsewhere. Hans wasn’t an ungrateful person, and Aliide could wait for kind words. But her eyes still filled with tears like a spoiled child and the ashes of her anger filled her mouth. Ingel’s breakfasts had always been repaid with warm kisses and amorous verse. How long would Aliide have to wait for just one little thank-you?
She found Lipsi’s body on the garden path. There were already maggots in his eyes.
Aliide had imagined that after she took Ingel’s place, she wouldn’t have to torture herself anymore with thoughts of how Hans and Ingel made a home together while she spent night after night with Martin. That she wouldn’t have to torment herself with imagining Ingel treading her spinning wheel and Hans beside her doing his woodwork while Aliide was at the Roosipuus’ trying to keep Martin entertained.
But the torment simply took on a new garb in the new house, and she thought about Hans constantly. Was he awake yet, or was he still asleep? Was he reading the paper, the new one that she had brought him? Or did he read the old ones that he had wanted to have with him in the loft room? There weren’t very many places left that still had newspapers from Estonian times. Or was he reading a book? It was hard to find the books he was interested in. He even wanted a Bible with him-the family Bible. And a good thing, too, or it would have ended up as kindling.
Martin and Aliide’s evenings in the new house continued as they had before-Martin looked at the paper, cleaned under his fingernails with his pocketknife, and once in a while read parts of the news aloud, adding his own comments. They should have better wages in the countryside! Yes they should, Aliide said with a nod, they certainly should. Kolkhoz villages! Workdays on Sundays in the summer! Absolutely, she said, and nodded, but she was thinking about Hans a couple of meters above them, and chewing on charcoal to make her teeth as white as Ingel’s used to be. Send young party builders to the countryside! Yes, definitely, she was in complete agreement; all the able-bodied people had taken off for the cities.
“Aliide, I’m so proud of you. You’re not hankering to get away from the countryside.”
She nodded. Yes, yes.
“Or does my little mushroom want to go to Tallinn? All my old friends are there and men from these parts would be very useful in the city.”
Aliide shook her head. What was he talking about? She couldn’t leave here.
“I just want to be sure that my little mushroom is content.”
“I like it here!”
Martin took her in his arms and spun her around the kitchen.
“I couldn’t have better proof that my darling wants to help build this country. There’s basic work to do here, isn’t there? I intend to propose that the kolkhoz buy a new truck. And we could bring people to the town hall to watch films about the achievements of our great fatherland, and for night classes, too, of course. It builds communal spirit. What do you think about that?”
He spun Aliide back to her chair and rattled on excitedly about his plans. Aliide nodded at the right moments, picked up some timothy grass that had fallen from Hans’s shirt onto the table, and shoved it in her pocket. He wasn’t hinting that he had been offered a position in Tallinn, was he? If he had been, he probably would have just said so directly. Aliide took hold of the carding combs again. They rasped, the fire crackled, and she examined her husband out of the corner of her eye, but he was just his usual steamy self. She was worrying about nothing. Martin had just imagined that his wife might have a yearning to go to Tallinn. And she would have, if it weren’t for Hans. Her collection rounds on her bicycle took her away too much, although she didn’t even have to do them every day. Still, she tramped home every workday with her nerves on edge-had someone been to search the house while she was away? But no one would dare to break into a party man’s house. They just wouldn’t. Martin could arrange it so she shared her job with someone else. He would understand very well if his wife wanted to take better care of their house and garden.
Meanwhile, the gold that had been carried to Siberia was turning into new teeth for new mouths, golden smiles that nearly outshone the sun, casting a great shadow, and in that shadow an immense number of averted eyes and shrinking expressions bred and multiplied. You met them in the market squares, in the roads and fields, an endless current, their pupils tarnished and gray, the whites of their eyes red. When the last of the farms was roped into the kolkhozy, plain talk vanished between the lines, and sometimes Aliide thought that Hans must have absorbed this atmosphere through the walls of the house. That Hans was following those same habits of silence as other people, the habit of avoiding looking at one another, like Aliide did. Maybe he had caught it from Aliide. Maybe Hans had caught the same thing from her that she had caught from outside the house.
The only difference was that unlike the others with averted eyes Hans still spoke as plainly as ever. He believed in all the same things that he had before. But his body changed as the outside world changed, even though he was never actually in contact with it.
“Why doesn’t your mother ever go to the movies? Our mom said she never goes.” The child’s clear voice echoed in the yard of the kolkhoz office. Jaan, the son of the first woman tractor operator on the commune, stared at the son of the chicken keeper, who started to break into a sweat. Aliide was about to intervene, to say that not everyone has to enjoy movies, but at the last moment she thought it best to hold her tongue. Martin’s wife simply couldn’t say such a thing, not about these movies. She had a new job, too, a good one, half days, light bookkeeping at the kolkhoz office.
The chicken keeper’s son examined the bits of sand on the toes of his shoes.
“Is your mother a Fascist?”
Jaan was on a roll-he kicked gravel at the other boy.
Aliide turned her head and moved a little farther off. She had given the movie men a tour of the office. Martin would be bringing some people in the new truck. Apparently he had put birch trees in the corners of the truck bed. The truck looked good this way and protected the passengers from the wind at the same time-he had been beaming about it when he left for work that morning. There was going to be a showing that evening-first the Survey of Soviet Estonia would be presenting Stalingrad’s Lucky Days, and then there would be a showing of The Battle of Stalingrad for the umpteenth time. Or was it The Light of the Kolkhoz?
The projectionist was showing the projector to the kids. They rode their bikes around the truck like a whirligig, their eager eyes locked on the machine. One of them said he wanted to be a movie man when he grew up, and drive the truck and see all the movies. The bookkeeper was arranging the benches inside; the windows of the auditorium were covered in army blankets. Tomorrow at the school there would be a free showing: A Hero’s Tale: A True Story. Jaan’s mother slumped to her place in her overalls, wiped her brow, and said something about the women’s tractor brigade. They were an Estonian family who had come from Russia. But they had preserved their language-so many of those people were just like Russians. They didn’t have even a small bundle of possessions with them when they came to the kolkhoz, but now the mother’s mouth shone gold and Jaan was hunting Fascists. They had made the front room of the house they were assigned to into a sheep fold. When Aliide went to visit them there, the sheep were tied to the legs of a piano that had been left in the house. A beautiful German piano.
The girls had showed up plenty early to wait for the movie men to arrive. There was a sixteen-year-old milkmaid there who was well known to the man who fixed the projector, and he went over to entertain her and insisted that she stay after the film for the dance. He would turn on the gramophone and get the pretty girls to dance until they wore their legs out. Chirp chirp, the milkmaid tried to giggle prettily, but the sound didn’t fit with her country cheeks, red as a flag-chirp chirp. Aliide was annoyed by the girl’s eager, hopeful look, directed at the movie man in his billed hat, smoking his paperossi. He tugged at his suspenders, whistled movie songs, and basked in the girl’s limelight as if he were some kind of movie star. The hot summer day carried the smell of sweat from under the girl’s breasts. Aliide wanted to go over and slap the stupid thing, tell her that the movie man had his fun with the milkmaids in every village, with every sixteen-year-old, and each one of them with the same look full of greed for the future, the same frill around their necklines and the same tempting cleavage, just as tempting every time, in every village. Slap, little girl. Slap, do you understand that? Aliide leaned against the car and saw the movie man out of the corner of her eye, surreptitiously stroking the girl’s plump arm, and although Aliide knew what the milkmaid didn’t know-that the boy told the same story to all the young possessors of breasts- she still felt envious of the girl for being able to believe in the future, even for a moment, a future where she and the movie man would dance together and watch movies and maybe someday she would make dinner for him in their own little home. No matter how small the possibility of a future for the milkmaid and the movie man was, it was greater than the possibilities for Aliide and Hans. Good God-any couple, no matter how unlikely, had a better chance than they did.
The chicken keeper’s son ran past. Jaan took off after him. A cloud of dust flew up and Aliide sneezed. Then she heard familiar steps, a familiar rhythm. A greeting rang out like a trombone, and she didn’t need to raise her head, she knew that voice, it was the voice of the man who had come to get Linda from the neighboring room in the basement of town hall.
“Welcome to your new job,” came the shout from the office. “This is our new head bookkeeper.”
Aliide had to sit down. The strength ran out of her legs and into the dust. The projectionist noticed her faintness and put down the electric motor he was holding, the mechanic continued to entertain the milkmaid, and the projectionist led Aliide to a bench, bent over her, and asked what was wrong. The fly of his moleskin pants hung in front of her nose, his curious, teasing gaze above it. Aliide told him that she was dizzy from the heat, that it happened sometimes. He went to get her some water. She rested her head on her knees, her hands, crossed over her knees, trembled, and her legs began to shake with them. The chrome-tanned boots passed by an arm’s length away from her, kicking up dust for her to breathe. She held her arms tightly around her legs and pressed her thighs against the bench to stop the shaking. Her lungs were dry with dust, her internal moisture flowed as sweat from under her arms onto the bench, and a little moan escaped her as she tried to get some oxygen, but all she got was dust, particles that swirled dry inside her lungs. The projectionist came back with a glass of water. Aliide’s hand splashed half the water from the glass, and he had to hold it for her while she drank. He shouted to someone that there was nothing to worry about; she was just faint from the heat. Aliide tried to nod, although her skin was so hot that she felt it itching, pulling her into a heap, and the little birds in the trees chirped and ripped pieces out of the blue sky with their little beaks, rip, gulp, rip, spit, with their little round black eyes, and every dusty breath she took made them jump.
The movie men drove her home in the truck. The milkmaid came along-supposedly the boys needed someone to show them the way back to the office. The milkmaid’s sweat was concentrated in the suffocating interior of the truck and the hem of her milking coat stuck to Aliide’s leg. The girl was unable to stop laughing in her excitement, the chirp chirp occasionally turning bolder, and at those times her head would swing right into Aliide’s, their ears nearly touching. The milkmaid had hair growing in her ears. Balls of earwax had stuck to the hairs. They moved in the wind as the girl lamented what had happened to Theodor Kruus’s daughter- hanged herself-a young girl-how could she do such a thing? Maybe she just missed her parents. They came to a rather bad end, difficult people, although the daughter was really very nice, and she hadn’t been taken away. She would never have believed that such a nice girl could have parents like that. Chirp.
When the truck had disappeared down the main road, Aliide felt the pressure on her chest lighten a little, and she leaned against the stone foundation of the barn. There was milking to do; she would manage. After that she would think about what she should do. A curlew gave a lonely cry, and the edge of the forest seemed to be watching her. She went to get her milking coat, threw it on, washed her hands, and stumbled into the barn. She should concentrate on everyday things, like the rustle of the straw, the compassionate eyes of the animals caressing her, the good feel of the pail in her hand, ah, such smooth wood. She buried the bottoms of her feet in the litter; Maasi’s tail swung back and forth. Aliide scratched her between her horns. Maybe the man hadn’t recognized her. She had put down her head so quickly. And there had been so many people interrogated, continuously-none of those men would remember all of their names and faces. It was good to be in the barn. The gaze of the animals didn’t have to be avoided, and her hands never trembled when she was with them; she never made Maasi nervous with shaking hands, and she could whisper in Maasi’s ear, anything she wanted. Maasi’s tongue would never speak the language of people. The sturdy juniper legs of the milking stool supported her, the cow snorted into the meal bucket, zing zing, the milk sprayed into the pail, zing zing, life went on, the animals needed her. She couldn’t get discouraged. She had to think of a solution.
Outside the barn, her lungs tightened again, and she couldn’t sleep that night. What if the man recognized her? Her wheezing breath sounded like a mouse in a trap. Martin woke up. She told him to go to sleep, but no, he stayed up, watching as her lungs struggled for oxygen. The night crept by. Aliide couldn’t get any air; she had a chrome-tanned boot resting on her chest and she couldn’t get it off.
She didn’t dare fall asleep because she feared she would talk in her sleep, yell, rave, be exposed somehow, in her suffocating dreams, just like she had in that basement when they pushed her head in the slop bucket. What if the man had heard her name at the office and remembered that? But no, she was Aliide Truu now, she wasn’t Aliide Tamm anymore.
In the morning, Martin looked concerned and lingered at the door for a long time. He didn’t want to leave her alone. Aliide shooed him away, grinned, said that the kolkhoz radio project needed him more than she did-how would the people be informed about the atomic bomb if there was no radio? She wasn’t going to take ill here at home, there was nothing to worry about. When she’d gotten Martin on his way, she tore the strained smile off her face, washed her hands, doused her face in the washbasin, and staggered into the barn. She would have liked to leave off milking for the whole day, but she didn’t, she just dumped the bucket into the refrigeration tank with a splash, not even filtering it- she simply forgot. She wasn’t up to bringing the milk to the dairy or going to the kolkhoz office to work. She went into the front room, drank half a bottle of tonic, and spent the morning sobbing. Then she made herself a bath and washed her hair, warmed the water even though the weather was so hot that she normally wouldn’t have made a fire in the stove at all. Her pores gasped, her breath wheezed. That man would remember her eventually. She couldn’t work at the office anymore. She would get crazy papers, anything- Martin could help her. The man didn’t know Martin, did he? Flies buzzed and she slapped at them with the flyswatter. Sweat poured over her like a spring. She knocked flies off the lamp, the chair, the beer barrel, the scissors, the washtub, and the saw that hung on the wall.
She couldn’t go back there, ever.
Hans wouldn’t get anything hot to eat that day. She found flies’ eggs under the meat dish in the pantry.
A note from the medical committee exempted Aliide from having to do even light work for a year. After the year was over, the exemption could be renewed as the situation demanded.
Once she had the asthma papers, the air returned to Aliide’s lungs at full capacity; intoxicating oxygen and the aroma of peonies and fresh grass, even the faint scent of sauna chamomile, hummed in her breast. The shrill chirp of the little birds didn’t hurt her ears, and neither did the caw of the crows by the dung heap. She puttered around in the yard until she could see the stars and she remembered the way she had sometimes felt years before, remembered what lightness felt like. If only she could always feel that way. Pelmi sat with his dish by the barn door, waiting for the dregs of the milk and the froth. The weather was improving. Pelmi’s milk always went sour in bad weather.
As the 1986 May Day parade approached, Aliide was sure that Martin’s leg wouldn’t withstand such doings, but Martin disagreed and took part in the festival enthusiastically- with Aliide on his arm. Lenin fluttered handsomely against the red fabric, his gaze toward the future, and Martin had the same steadfast, forward-looking expression. A fine mood floated among the flags and the people, and the air was heavy with blossoms and beating drums.
Talvi called from Finland the next day.
“Mom, stay in the house.”
“What? Why? What’s happened?”
“Do you have any iodine?”
“No.”
“A nuclear reactor exploded in Ukraine.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Yes, it did. There are high radiation readings in Finland and Sweden. Chernobyl. Of course they haven’t told you anything about it there.”
“No.”
“Keep Dad inside and get some iodine. Don’t tell him
about it. He wouldn’t believe you, anyway. Don’t eat any berries or mushrooms. And don’t pick any.”
“There aren’t any yet.”
“I mean it, Mom. Don’t pick them in the fall, then. Stay inside for a couple of days. The worst fallout will be over by then. They’re not letting people take their cows out in Finland-so they won’t eat contaminated grass. They might not be able to go out for the rest of the summer. We’ve closed the damper on the stove, too.”
The call was cut off.
Aliide put down the receiver. Talvi had sounded shaken, which wasn’t like her. Her voice was usually flat. It had turned flat after she moved to Finland to live with her husband. And she didn’t call very often. She called very rarely, which was understandable, since you had to make a reservation to call, and you couldn’t always get one, and if you did you had to wait for hours at a time to get a decent connection. Besides, it was sickening knowing that they listened in on the calls.
Martin called from the living room, “Who was it?”
“Talvi.”
“What was she calling about?”
“Nothing much. The call was cut off.”
Aliide went to look at the news. There was nothing about Chernobyl, although the explosion had happened several days before. Martin didn’t seem to have any more interest in Talvi’s call. Or if he did, he didn’t show it. Things had gone badly between Martin and Talvi since she left the country. Martin had plans for his daughter, his wonderful little Pioneer, for a fine career in the party. He could never accept her running off to the West.
The next day was when the stock arrived at the shop in the village. Aliide rode her bicycle down to stand in line, but she also stopped at the pharmacy for some iodine, which a lot of other people were buying, too. So it was true. When she got back home, Martin had heard about it from a friend.
“More lies. Western propaganda.”
Aliide got out the bottle of iodine and was about to pour some into Martin’s food, but then decided to let it be.
On the ninth of May the men of the kolkhoz started being called up by the war commission. Just a drill, they said. Four truck drivers were sent from Spring Victory. Then the doctor and the firemen. Still nothing official was said about Chernobyl. All sorts of rumors were going around, and some said that political prisoners were being sent to Chernobyl. Aliide was afraid.
“They’re calling up quite a few people,” Martin said. He didn’t say anything more, but he stopped grumbling about Western Fascist propaganda.
The older people were sure that the call-up was a precursor to war. The Priks boy broke his own foot-he likely jumped off the roof so he could get a doctor’s note exempting him from the draft. And he wasn’t the only one who did something like that. For everyone who was exempted, someone else was sent in his place.
Even Aliide wasn’t sure that all of this didn’t mean a war was starting. Had the spring been peculiar in any way? And the winter? Spring had been a little early, anyway-should she have guessed something from that? When she was sorting the seed potatoes, should she have taken note of the fact that the soil was drier than usual for that time of year? That the snow had melted a little early? That the spring rain was just a drizzle and she was wearing just a short-sleeved blouse? Should she have sensed that something was wrong? Why hadn’t she noticed anything? Had she just gotten so old that her nose had let her down?
One day she noticed Martin plucking a leaf from a tree and examining it, turning it over, tearing it, smelling his hand, smelling the leaf, then going to check the compost, skimming pollen from the rain barrel and looking at it. “You can’t see it, Martin.”
He gave a start as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
“What are you ranting about?”
“They’re keeping the cows indoors in Finland.”
“That’s crazy.”
All the cement disappeared from Estonia, because it was needed in Ukraine, and more food came into Estonia from Ukraine and Belarus than ever before. Talvi forbade her mother from buying it. Aliide said, yes, yes. But what else was she going to buy? Pure Estonian food was needed in Moscow, and Estonia got the food that Moscow didn’t happen to want.
Later Aliide heard the stories of fields covered in dolomite and trains filled with evacuees, children crying, soldiers driving families from their homes, and strange flakes, strangely glittering, that filled their yards, and children trying to catch them as they fell, and little girls wanting to wear them in their hair for decoration, but then the flakes disappeared, and so did the children’s hair. One day the Priks woman grabbed Aliide by the arm at the market and whispered to her. Thank God her son had broken his leg. Thank God he knew to do that. She said that her son’s friends, the ones who ended up in the draft, had told her about what had happened there. And they weren’t happy about the higher pay they got in Chernobyl, and fear radiated from them. They had seen people swell up until they were unrecognizable. People mourning the loss of their homes, farmers returning to secretly work their fields in the forbidden zone. Houses that were left empty and were robbed and the goods sold at the market square: televisions, tape recorders, and radios spread all over the country; motorcycles and Crimean shearling coats, too. They had killed the dogs and cats and filled endless graves with them. The stench of rotten meat, houses, trees, and land buried, layers of earth stripped away, onions, heads of cabbage, and shrubbery buried in pits. People asked them if it was the end of the world, or a war, or what? And who were they fighting against, and who was going to win? Old ladies endlessly crossing themselves. Endless drinking of vodka and home brew.
Most of all, the Priks woman stressed what one boy had told the people who were leaving: Never tell anyone that you were at Chernobyl, because every girl will give you the boot if she hears that. Never tell anyone, because no one will want to have children with you. Mrs. Priks said that her son had a friend whose wife had left him and taken the children with her, because she didn’t want him touching the children and contaminating them. She’d also heard about another one of the Chernobyl men left by his wife when she started having nightmares. She dreamed about three-headed calves being born one after another, cats with scales instead of fur, legless pigs. She couldn’t bear the dreams anymore and couldn’t bear being near her husband, so she’d left for someplace healthier.
Hearing about women who threw their husbands off like trash, Aliide was startled, and the startle spread into a shudder, and she started to look at the young men she met on the street with new eyes, looking for those among them who had returned and recognizing something in them that was familiar to her. She saw it in their gaze, a gaze that had a kind of shadow over it, and it made her want to put her hand on their cheeks, to touch them.
Martin Truu finally collapsed in the yard, while examining a silver birch leaf with a magnifying glass. When Aliide found her husband and turned his body over to face the sky, she saw the last expression he had on his face. It was the first time she had ever seen him surprised.