You must be happy, the mothers said, when we come to look at you.
– Paul-Eerik Rummo
Liide quit her job-the one where she went around tormenting people with fees and quotas. She wouldn’t tell me why. Maybe what I said sank in. When I said a job like that was nothing but working for monsters. Or maybe somebody gave her a drubbing. I know somebody once let the air out of her bike tires. She brought the bike into the barn and asked me to replace them, but I refused to do it. I told her to let some tool do her dirty work for her, somebody who was already a slave to this government. So Martin fixed them that evening.
When Liide told me she’d quit her job, her eyes were shining, like she expected me to thank her. I thought about spitting on her, but I just gave Pelmi a scratch. I know her tricks.
Then all of a sudden she wanted to know if I had met anyone I knew when I was in the woods.
I didn’t answer her.
She also wanted to know what it was like in the woods. And what it was like in Finland, and why I went there.
I didn’t answer.
She asked me these nosy questions for a long time. Like why couldn’t I stay with the Germans after I had joined up with them.
I didn’t answer.
I saw things there that you shouldn’t tell to a woman.
I went back in my room.
Liide doesn’t want to let me go to the woods. She won’t agree to it. I’m the only person she can talk to who doesn’t quote Communist wisdom to her, and everybody needs somebody they can talk plainly to. That’s why she doesn’t want to let me go.
The grain is growing in my fields, and I can’t even see it.
Where are my two girls, Linda and Ingel? I’m racked with worry.
Hans Pekk, son of Eerik, Estonian peasant
Aliide couldn’t understand how the photo of her and Ingel had appeared in Zara’s hand. The girl said something about wallpaper and cupboards, but Aliide didn’t remember having hidden anything under the wallpaper. She had destroyed all her photos, but had Ingel stashed some photos somewhere when she was still at home? That didn’t make any sense at all. Why would she have done that, hidden a photo of the two of them together? That was indeed a Young Farmers badge on her chest. But it was so small-no one but Ingel herself would have known it was there.
When Zara had gone to bed, Aliide washed her hands and went to tap at the walls and cupboards, poke at the wallpaper, dig in the cracks in the cabinet and behind the baseboards with a knife, but she didn’t find anything. There were just clattering dishes in the cupboard and liquor coupons piled in the bottle bin.
The girl was asleep, breathing evenly, the radio rasped about the elections, and in the photograph Ingel was eternally beautiful. Aliide remembered the day they had gone to have it taken, at the B. Veidenbaum Modern Photography Studio. Ingel had just turned eighteen. They had gone to the Dietrich coffeehouse, and Ingel drank Warsaw coffee and Aliide had hot chocolate. There were cream puffs that melted in your mouth and the scent of jasmine. Ingel had bought some puff pastries to take home, and Helene Dietrich had wrapped them in white paper with a wooden stick for a handle. That was their specialty-pretty wrapping that was easy to carry. The smell of cigarettes, the rustle of newspapers. That was back when they still used to do everything together.
Aliide adjusted a hairpin. Her hand came back damp- her forehead and scalp were wet with sweat.
The coals in the stove made the photo curl. Aliide shoved in a few pieces of wood, too.
Her ear itched. She rubbed it. A fly flew away.
The morning sun shone between the curtains into Zara’s eyes and woke her up. The door to the kitchen was open; Aliide was sitting there at the table looking at her. Something wasn’t right. Pasha? Were they looking for her on the radio? What was it? She sat up and said good morning.
“Talvi isn’t coming after all.”
“What?”
“She called and said she changed her mind.” Aliide put her hand up to her eyes and said again that Talvi wasn’t coming.
Zara didn’t know what to say. Her wonderful plans were crushed. Her hope wadded up like detritus and rubbed behind her eyeballs. Talvi wouldn’t be bringing a car here. The hands jerked across the face of the clock, and Pasha came closer, she could feel the flames licking at her heels, his binoculars on the back of her neck, his car humming down the highway, the gravel flying, but she didn’t move. The light moved outside, but she stayed where she was. She hadn’t learned anything more about Aliide or about what had happened in the past. She just sat there, weak and puny, without any answers. Raadio Kukku announced the time, the news began, soon it would end, the day would go by, and Talvi and her car weren’t coming, but Pasha was.
Zara went into the kitchen and noticed Aliide give a jerk. It looked like a sob, but she wasn’t making any sound, her hands were in her lap, and Zara saw that her eyes were dry.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Zara said quickly. “How disappointing for you.”
Aliide sighed, Zara sighed, put on a sympathetic expression, but at the same time set her thoughts in motion- there was no time for guessing. Could Aliide still help her? Did she still have any cards up her sleeve? If she did, Zara would have to be pleasant to her; she couldn’t allude to the picture or her grandmother-it made Aliide hostile. She didn’t see the photograph anywhere and didn’t dare ask about it. Or should she give up the whole idea of escaping and resign herself to waiting for whatever was coming?
Grandmother would have already received the pictures that Pasha sent, of course. He wouldn’t have waited around to do that. Maybe Sasha had got some, too. And maybe her mother, and who knows who else. Pasha might even have done more than that-was everyone at home all right? No, she shouldn’t think about that. She had to concentrate on making a new plan. Aliide leaned on her cane, although she was sitting, and said, “Talvi claims she’s too busy, but what does she have to keep her busy? She sits around being a housewife, like she always wanted to. What do you want to be?”
“A doctor.”
Aliide seemed surprised. Zara explained that the reason she went to the West was to get some money for school. She was hoping to come back as soon as she had saved enough, but then Pasha came along, and a lot of things went wrong. Aliide furrowed her brow and asked Zara to tell her something about Vladivostok. Zara was startled. Was this the time for everybody to reminisce? Aliide seemed to have forgotten that Zara had men chasing her. Maybe she didn’t want to show any emotion, or maybe she was wiser than Zara. Maybe there was nothing more to do but sit and chat. Maybe it was the most sensible thing to do-enjoy this moment, when she could finally reminisce about Vladivostok. Zara forced herself to sit down calmly at the table, to hold out her coffee cup when Aliide offered her some coffee substitute, and take a piece of sour-cream pie, Talvi’s favorite, apparently. Aliide had made it the night before.
“You must not have gotten any sleep.”
“What does an old person need with sleep?”
Maybe that accounted for Aliide’s faraway look. She stood next to the table with the percolator in her hand and didn’t seem to know where to put it. Aliide Truu looked lonely. Zara cleared her throat.
“Vladivostok.”
Aliide startled, put the percolator on the floor, and sat down in a chair.
“Tell me about it.”
Zara started by telling her about the statue with the flag in honor of those who fought on the Eastern front, the harbors, the way you could smell the Sea of Japan in the paneling, the wooden decorations on the houses, her mother’s girlfriend who made the world’s best Armenian delicacies: dolmas, pickles, fried eggplant that was so delicious, and shakarishee cookies so heavenly that when they touched the roof of your mouth they made the driving snow outside look like sugar for the whole day and into the next. They could knock the pitch out of a board! And they used to listen to Zara Doluhanova on the record player, singing Armenian folk songs in Armenian, and Puccini in Italian-all sorts of languages. Zara had been named after her. Her mother had just been crazy about Doluhanova’s voice; she was always looking for news of Doluhanova’s trips to the West, all the places she went, all the cities and countries. With such an amazing voice, she could go anywhere! For some reason, Doluhanova’s voice was the only thing that her mother got excited about. Zara got tired of not being able to talk when Doluhanova was singing, and preferred to go to her friend’s house and listen to her Mumi Troll cassette-Novaya luna aprelya-Ilya Lagutenko, the singer, was wonderful, and he had gone to the same school as Zara. Sometimes Zara’s grandmother had taken her to look at the ships on their way to Japan; it was the only place besides the botanical gardens that she was allowed to go, just to watch the ships, and the wind from the sea would strike her forehead as it pushed inland. It was nine thousand kilometers to Moscow by train, but they had never been there, although Zara would like to visit some day. And the summer. The Vladikki summer. All the Vladikki summers! One time someone figured out that if you put aluminum powder in your nail polish it would make your fingernails glitter, and pretty soon every girl in town had fingernails that shone like the summer sun.
Once she got started, Zara got carried away with her story. The words tasted good. She even missed Zara Doluhanova. And Mumi Troll.
Katia had wanted to hear about Vladivostok, too, but no matter how she tried, Zara hadn’t been able to tell her anything about the place. Only occasional images of Vladikki passed through her mind, and they were always the ones that came to mind when Katia talked, but she didn’t want to mention them to Katia-like how Grandmother had started drying hardtack around the time of Chernobyl, in case of war, and how after the accident they watched television and had no idea what was happening, and how people on television were dancing in the streets in Kiev. Chernobyl was a troubling subject, because that’s where Katia was from, and that’s why she wanted to marry a foreigner, and why she was interested in Vladivostok. She wanted to have children. If the right man came along, she planned to tell him she was from someplace else, not from Chernobyl. Zara thought it was a good idea, too. She would have liked to ask more-Katia didn’t glow in the dark, and she didn’t look any different than any other girl. Nevertheless, she had said that the less people talked about Chernobyl and the less they wrote about it and the less they knew about it the better. She was right. Even Zara didn’t want to hug Katia, not even when she cried about missing her family or after she’d had a bad customer. She preferred to comfort her by talking with her about something else, anything else but Vladikki. Thoughts of her hometown had seemed strangely wrong in that place. Like she wasn’t worthy of remembering her hometown. Like all her beautiful memories would be tainted if she let herself even think about them in that place, that situation-let alone talk about them. She had only touched the photograph hidden in her clothes once in a while, through the fabric, to make sure it was still there. Pasha didn’t know that Katia was from Chernobyl, of course, because he had picked her up near Kiev, but he had told her to say she was from Russia if any customer asked her, because no one was going to want to shove his dick into death.
Zara tried to shake Katia out of her head. She didn’t want to tell Aliide about Katia. She should stick to Vladivostok. Her chatter had almost got Aliide smiling, and she urged Zara to have another piece of pie. Zara accepted it and felt brazen. She had simply forgotten how she had been used to asking Pasha’s permission for everything. She felt brazen because she had some more pie without Pasha’s permission. She felt brazen because she was telling stories to someone that she didn’t have Pasha’s permission to talk to. She was brazen because she wasn’t supposed to be here, in a place where she didn’t need to ask Pasha’s permission to take a pee. If her head started to ache, Aliide would probably offer her some medicine, without even asking. If she started her period, Aliide would give her something, make her a bath, bring her a hot water bottle, and she wouldn’t owe her anything. At any moment this unreality could disappear, and Zara could fall back to reality, customers, debts. At any moment Pasha and Lavrenti could pull into the yard-at any moment-and she wouldn’t be able to think about Vladikki anymore, and tarnish her memories of home with that world. But she could think about it now.
“You were happy there,” Aliide said. She sounded surprised.
“Of course.”
“What do you mean, of course?”
Aliide seemed delighted all of a sudden, as if she’d just thought of something entirely new.
“Well, that’s fantastic!” she said.
Zara cocked her head.
“Yes, it is. And it was fun being in the Pioneers.”
She had never been in the best row for the marching or anything like that, but it was nice to sit around the campfire and sing. And she was proud of her Pioneer badge. She loved the red background and she used to stroke Lenin’s shining gold forehead and his golden ears.
But when Zara talked about Vladivostok, Katia kept bubbling up in her mind. She could never tell Katia about Vladikki now. She was too late when it came to Katia, and Katia hadn’t asked for much. Zara had thought that the day would come when she would make Katia a Vladivostok girl, but that day never came. Should she risk telling Aliide these secrets, even if it might mean that Aliide wouldn’t help her get away from Pasha?
Pasha started the videocassette. The first thing to appear on the screen was a cock, red and erect, then the hanging, hairy stomach of a middle-aged man, then a young girl’s breasts. The man ordered her to squeeze her breasts, and the girl kneaded and massaged them, and the man began to fiddle with his dick. Another man came into the picture and wrenched the girl’s legs apart, spread her open, took out a disposable razor, and shaved off her hair.
Pasha sat down on the sofa, shifted into a comfortable position, and opened his fly.
“Come and watch this.”
Zara didn’t obey quickly enough, so Pasha came and dragged her in front of the screen, swore, and sat down on the sofa again, taking out his prick. The video played. Pasha jerked off. His leather coat creaked. Outside it was daytime. People were going to the store, buying bratwurst and sauerkraut, speaking German; there was a fly buzzing in the light fixture in the store.
“Watch!”
Pasha hit her on the back of the head and sat down beside her to make sure she was watching the video. He tore off her robe and ordered her onto all fours, with her rear end toward him and her face toward the screen.
“Spread your legs.”
She spread them.
“More.”
She obeyed.
Pasha jerked off behind her.
The potbellied man on the screen pushed his dick toward the girl. He was going to come in her face.
The girl had Zara’s face.
The girl’s face was covered with sperm. The other man put his dick inside the girl and started to groan. Pasha relaxed, and warm mucus ran down Zara’s thigh. Pasha zipped his pants and went to get a beer. The can hissed open. The sound of Pasha’s long gulps ricocheted around the nearly empty room. Zara was still on her hands and knees in front of the video. Her knees hurt.
“Turn around this way.”
Zara obeyed.
“Rub your pussy. Spread your legs right.”
Zara laid down on her back and rubbed Pasha’s sperm into her.
Pasha got out his camera and snapped photos.
“I’m sure you realize what will happen to these pictures and videos if you try any tricks.”
Zara stopped rubbing.
“I’ll send them to your babushka. And then I’ll send them to Sasha, and Sasha’s parents. We have their names and addresses.”
Had Oksanka told them about Sasha? Zara didn’t want to think about Sasha anymore. But he still came to mind, a voice that said her name, Zara-it sometimes woke her up. Sometimes it was the only reason she remembered being Zara and not Natasha. Especially on the edge of sleep, in that spongy land, drunk or otherwise drugged, she would suddenly feel Sasha wrapped around her, but she would shake the feeling off immediately. She was never going to have a home of her own with Sasha, and they would never drink champagne at each other’s graduation, so it was better not to think about those things; it was better to have a drink, pop a pill, beg Lavrenti for a snort and suck it up. And it was best not to think too much, it was easier that way. She just had to remember one thing: Even though Pasha had Zara’s face on the video, the video was not Zara’s story but Natasha’s; it would never be Zara’s story. Natasha’s story was on the video. Zara’s was someplace else.
When the girl started to talk about Vladivostok, her twitching eyebrow settled down, she forgot to rub at her earlobe, and a dimple leaped out on her cheek, disappeared, then came back again. Sunlight lit up the kitchen.
The girl had a pretty nose. The kind of nose that would have been a pleasure to see from the day she was born. Aliide tried to imagine Talvi in Zara’s place, sitting at the table chatting, twinkling, talking about her life, but she couldn’t. Since she had left home, Talvi had always been in a hurry to leave whenever she came to visit. If Aliide had been a different kind of mother, would Talvi have turned out differently? Maybe she wouldn’t scoff on the phone when Aliide asked if she’d planted a garden, saying that in Finland you can buy anything you need from the store. If Aliide had been different, would Talvi have come to help with the apple harvest, instead of just sending her some glossy photos of her new kitchen, her new living room, her new all-purpose appliance, and never pictures of herself? Maybe when Talvi was a young girl she wouldn’t have started to admire her friend’s aunt who lived in Sweden and had a car and sent the girls Burda magazine. Maybe she wouldn’t have started playing currency exchange and practicing disco dancing. Maybe she wouldn’t have wanted to leave. But the others wanted to leave, too, so maybe it wasn’t Aliide’s fault. But why had this surprisingly talkative girl from Vladivostok wanted to go to the West? She just wanted to earn some money. Maybe it was simply that Estonia was full of people who kept saying that they should have left for Finland or Sweden during the war, and the thing was repeated and passed on to the next generation with their lullabies. Or maybe Talvi had thought of wanting a foreign husband because her own parents’ marriage was a model for something she didn’t want for herself. This girl wanted to become a doctor and then go back home, but ever since she was a teenager Talvi had just wanted to go to the West and marry a man from the West. It started with her paper dolls-they drew clothes for them like the ones in Burda-and continued when she spent a whole summer scrubbing her Sangar jeans. She and her girlfriends rubbed them endlessly with a brick to make them look worn out like the jeans in the West. That same summer the neighbor boys played a game called “Going to Finland”-they built a raft and sailed it across the ditch, and then they came back again because they didn’t know what to do in Finland. Martin became more disillusioned every day. Aliide couldn’t share his disappointment, but when land restitution became the topic of the day, she had to admit that she felt disappointed in Talvi, because she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the application process, not if it involved paperwork. If Aliide had been a different kind of mother, would Talvi be here to help her with these things?
When the girl had come here yesterday, Aino had been over to talk about land issues yet again, and Aliide had repeated the same advice she’d given her who knows how many times. She and her brothers should do the paperwork together, even if her brothers were drunks. That way if something happened to any of them, there would still be someone to take care of things. Aino wanted to wait at least until the army pulled out of the country-she suspected that the Russians would come back in full force, and what would happen then, would they all be taken to the station and put in cattle cars? Aliide had to concede that the soldiers didn’t look like they were going anywhere; they just came to the village now and then to thieve, making off with cattle and emptying the shops of tobacco. It was handy, though, to be able to buy army gasoline from them.
Aliide’s eyes crinkled up; there was a tickle in her throat. This Russian girl sitting on her wobbly-legged chair was more interested in what went on in this kitchen than Aliide’s daughter was. Talvi never talked as beautifully about her childhood as this girl did. And Talvi had never asked her how to make marigold salve. This girl wanted to know what the ingredients were. This girl might be interested in all the tricks the Kreels had taught Aliide-which plants to pick in the morning and which during the new moon. If it were possible, she was sure this girl would go with her to gather Saint-John’s-wort and yarrow when the time came. Talvi would never do such a thing.
When Aliide arrived at the birthing hospital, the Russian women were yelling “Batyuška Lenin, pomogy mne!” And they were still yelling to Papa Lenin for more help when she left with Talvi, and when the crying infant arrived at home Martin thanked Lenin. Martin had been waiting a long time for a child, and he’d been disappointed more than once. He had become convinced that he would never father a child. Aliide hadn’t been sorry about it-she didn’t want to be anywhere near children anymore, and she wouldn’t have wanted to raise a child to carry on her family line, in this new world, to become this world’s new kind of person, but in the year that Stalin died, amid all the bewilderment that ensued when that great papa vanished, a child started to grow inside her. Martin had talked to the child even before it was born, but Aliide didn’t know how to talk to it after it had come into the world. She left the babbling to Martin and boiled liquor bottles to use for baby bottles, watched as an endless number of nipples turned dark in the kettle, and scalded darning needles to poke holes in the tops. Martin fed Talvi. He even came home on his lunch hour to take care of this important task. Sometimes Aliide tried, but nothing ever came of it-the child wouldn’t stop crying until Daddy was home. Aliide had other ways of taking care that her daughter had a peaceful childhood.
One evening Martin came home smelling of alcohol and started to wash the walls, stopping now and then to smoke a Priima and then going back to cleaning. On the radio they were ranting about the outlay of Socialist labor, who had exceeded the norms and where. Aliide was making juice from Kosmo currant jelly-squeezing the jelly into the pot from a tube and adding boiling water and citric acid. The water turned red, and Aliide gave the half-empty tube to the little girl, who sucked the jelly straight out of it.
“They’re coming back.”
Aliide knew immediately who he was talking about. “You’re not serious.”
But he was.
“They’ve started rehabilitating them.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Moscow’s going to let them come back. They’re talking about it in Tallinn.”
Aliide was about to blurt out that Nikita was crazy in his head, but she kept quiet, because she didn’t know yet what Martin thought of him, except that he looked like a workingman. Aliide thought he looked like a pig and his wife looked like a pig herder. Many people shared Aliide’s opinion, although she never expressed it out loud. But letting them come back? Just when life was beginning to settle into a routine, Nikita thought up the craziest possible idea. What was he thinking? Where did he imagine they would put them all?
“They can’t come back here. Do something.” “What?”
“I don’t know! Make it so they don’t come back here! So they don’t come back to Estonia at all. They can’t come back here!”
“Calm down! They’ve all signed article two-zero-six of the vow of silence.”
“What does that mean?”
“That they can’t talk about anything connected to their case. And I imagine they’ll have to sign another one to be let go. About their time in the camps.”
“So they can’t talk about these things at all?”
“Not unless they want to go straight back where they came from.”
The tense voice made Talvi cry. Martin picked her up in his arms and started to shush her. Aliide fumbled in the cupboard for the bottle of valerian. The floor felt soft.
“I’ll take care of it,” Martin said.
Aliide believed her husband, because he had always kept his word. And he kept his word this time, too.
They didn’t come back.
They stayed where they were.
Not that they would have been let back in this house. Nowhere near it. But no matter where they were in Estonia, Aliide wouldn’t have been able to…
She wanted to sleep through the night in peace. She wanted to go out after dark and ride her bicycle in the moonlight, walk across the fields after sunset, and get up in the morning without worrying about her and Talvi being burned alive in the house. She wanted to get water from the well and see the kolkhoz bus bringing Talvi home from school, and she wanted Talvi to be safe even when she wasn’t watching over her. She wanted to live her life without ever encountering them. Was that too much to ask? Surely she could have that, if only for her daughter’s sake?
When those who had been at the camps came back and settled into their new lives, she could pick them out from among the other people. She recognized their dark gaze, every one the same, young and old alike. She made way for them on the street, from a long way off, and she felt fear before she made way. Fear before she turned her head. Fear before she even had time to realize her recognition of the smell of the camps, the thought of the camps in their eyes. That thought of the camps was always there in their look.
Any one of them could have been Ingel. Or Linda. The thought made her chest tighten. Linda would be so big now that Aliide wouldn’t necessarily recognize her. And any one of them could have been someone who had been in the same camp with Ingel, someone from the same barracks, someone Ingel may have talked to, someone she could have told about her sister. Maybe Ingel had photos with her-Aliide couldn’t be sure. Maybe Ingel had shown photos of her sister to someone, and now that person was coming toward Aliide on the street, and maybe they would recognize her. Maybe they would know something about Aliide Truu’s evil deeds, because the story went around the camp. Maybe they would follow her and burn down her house that night. Or maybe they would just throw a rock at the back of her head on her way home. Maybe they would make it so she fell down on the road as she went across the fields. These things happen. Strange accidents, people run over without warning. Martin had said that they hadn’t been able to look at the newspapers in the camps-they didn’t know anything about anything-but every barracks had walls. And where there are walls, there are ears.
The ones who came back from the camps never complained; they never disagreed and never grumbled. It was unbearable. Aliide had a powerful urge to tear the furrows from their brows, the creases from their cheeks, to wad them up and throw them back. Back onto the train that crossed the border at Narva.
Martin got angry with Talvi only once during her childhood. She had come running home a couple of weeks before the new year. Aliide was home alone, so Talvi had to make do with her answer to a question-she didn’t have the patience to wait until her father came home.
“Mother! Mother, what’s Christmas?”
Aliide calmly continued stirring the gravy. “You’ll have to ask your father, sweetheart.” Talvi went into the foyer to wait for him, sat and leaned against the timber wall, kicking at the threshold.
When Martin came home, he flew into a rage. Not because of Christmas-no doubt he would have had a ready explanation for that. But he managed to get angry before the subject of Christmas came up, because the first thing Talvi wanted to know was what was the Liberation War that she read about in a book.
“What book?”
“This one.”
She handed it to him.
“Where did you get this?”
“Auntie gave it to me.”
“What auntie? Aliide!”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Aliide yelled from the kitchen.
“Well, Talvi?”
“Milvi’s mother. I was playing at their house.” Martin went out immediately. He didn’t even take his coat. He took Talvi with him to show him where Milvi lived.
Talvi ran home first, crying. Later that evening she came clumping up to her father’s side to make amends. Cigarette smoke wafted into the kitchen, and soon Talvi’s giggle could be heard. Aliide sat down beside the cooling potatoes. The chicken casserole was ready, and the gravy for dinner sat on the table turning to gel, a film forming on its surface, losing its shine. Martin’s socks waited on the chair to be darned; under the chair was a basket of wool waiting to be carded. Tomorrow at school, Talvi would tease the children whose families celebrated Christmas, that was certain. Tomorrow evening she would tell her father how she had thrown a snowball at the Priks boy and asked another boy something her father may at that very moment have been telling her to ask a child of such a family: “Has Jesus shown himself yet? Does your mom have the hots for him?” And her father would praise her, and she would chortle with pride and sulk at Aliide, because she would sense that Aliide’s praise lacked something, as it always did. It always lacked sincerity. Her daughter would be raised on Martin’s praise, on the stories Martin told, stories that never had anything Estonian in them. She would be raised on stories with nothing true in them. Aliide could never tell Talvi her own family’s stories, the stories she had learned from her granny, the ones she heard as she fell asleep on Christmas Eve. She couldn’t tell her any of the stories that she was raised on, she and her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother. She didn’t care to tell her own story, but the other stories, the ones she grew up with. What kind of person would a child become if she had no stories in common with her mother, no yarns, no jokes? How could you be a mother if there was no one to ask advice from, to ask what to do in a situation like this?
Talvi didn’t play with Milvi any more after that. Martin was proud of Talvi. He thought she was marvelous. She was particularly marvelous when she said she wanted to have Lenin’s baby when she grew up. And Martin wasn’t at all concerned that she couldn’t tell a plantain from a dewdrop or a fly agaric from a milk cap, although Aliide wouldn’t have thought that possible for a child who shared the same genes as her and Ingel.
While Martin took care of other aspects of child rearing, Aliide was responsible for everything that involved standing in line. As the years went by and Martin wasn’t summoned to Tallinn, the notion of his career potential diminished, and Aliide no longer expected him to get what they needed from the party-she stood in line to stand in line, arm in arm with Talvi, and thus taught her what a real Soviet woman’s life is like. She did avoid the meat line, because she had a friend, Siiri, at the butcher’s. When Siiri let her know that new stock had arrived, Aliide would weave her way through the overflowing trash bins to the back door of the shop, tugging Talvi behind her. She never did learn to walk slowly enough for the child, in spite of her best intentions, and always rushed along so the little girl had to run to keep up. Aliide knew she was behaving as if she wanted to get away from the child, but she couldn’t muster any guilt about it, and when she tried to look like a good mother she just felt more grotesque. It was better to focus on bragging to the other women about Martin’s fathering skills, completely blotting out her role as a mother in the process. Since Martin was a jewel of a father, they thought of Aliide as the luckiest of women.
Luckily the child grew and started to make her way behind her mother at a good clip through the swarm of flies behind the butcher’s. Sometimes the flies went up their noses or in their ears, and sometimes they found them in their hair later, or at least Aliide’s head itched so much that she was quite sure some of them had laid eggs in her scalp. The flies didn’t seem to bother Talvi-she didn’t even wave them away, she just let them strut along on her arms and legs, which disgusted Aliide. When they had left Siiri’s shop, Aliide would undo Talvi’s braids and shake out her hair. She knew it was silly, but she couldn’t help it.
On the day that Talvi had a dental exam at school, Aliide went to the back room at Siiri’s. Siiri was just washing the Semipalatinsk sausage in saltwater, a scrub brush in her hand. There was a pile of Tallinn and Moscow sausage waiting behind her. Their surfaces were crawling with maggots.
“Don’t worry. These are going to the front counter. A new load of fresh ones should arrive soon.”
When the load had come and gone, Aliide had piled up quite a haul in her bag: a couple of curled Polish sausages, a hunk of Krakova, and even some frankfurters. She was just presenting them to Martin when Talvi interrupted her shopping inventory with a surprising bit of news.
“Two big cavities.”
“What does that mean?” Aliide asked, startled at the sound of her own voice. It was like the whine of a dog that’s been struck. Talvi was already wrinkling her brow. The bundle of frankfurters had fallen on the table. Aliide pressed her hands against the oilcloth-they had started trembling again. She felt the knife marks in the waxy surface of the fabric, the bread crumbs and the dirt in the cracks. Something fell from the orange dome light: a fly’s filth falling from the surface of the lightbulb onto the back of her neck. The bottle of valerian was in the cupboard. Could she get it out and put a few drops in her glass without Martin noticing?
“What does it mean? It means you’re going to see Comrade Boris!” Martin laughed. “Do you remember Uncle Boris, Talvi?”
Talvi nodded. There was a bit of fat on the corner of Martin’s mouth. He bit off some more. The bits of fat in the Krakova sausage gleamed. Had Martin’s eyes always bulged like that?
“Were they sure?” Aliide said. “The people who looked at your teeth? That you have two cavities? Maybe we don’t need to do anything about it.”
“No, I want to go to town.”
“You heard her.” Martin grinned.
“Your father will buy you some ice cream there,” Aliide added.
“What?” Martin said, surprised. “Talvi’s certainly a big enough girl now to take the bus by herself.”
Talvi started to jump up and down.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Now Aliide could think of nothing else, not one thing except that Martin must go with Talvi to the dentist. She would be safe with Martin. There was a buzzing in Aliide’s ears. She put the frankfurters and sausages in the refrigerator and started to put away the dishes with a clatter, at the same time secretly pouring the bottle of valerian into her glass. She chased it with water, and then some bread, so she wouldn’t have medicine on her breath.
“You could say hello to Boris while you’re there,” Aliide said. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Yes it would, but my work…”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Talvi yelled, interrupting him. “All right then. We’ll think of something. We’ll have a lovely trip to the dentist.”
Talvi’s eyes were so much like Linda’s. Martin’s face and Linda’s eyes.
The smell of chloroform floated from the door to meet her. In the waiting room, Aliide clung to a copy of Soviet Woman magazine, in which Lenin expressed the opinion that in a capitalist system, a woman was doubly oppressed-a slave to capital, regular work, and to housework. Aliide’s cheek was badly swollen; the cavity in her tooth was so deep that the nerve was visible. She should have taken care of it earlier, but who would want to sit in one of these barbersurgeons’ chairs? The real doctors had escaped to the West, the Jewish ones to the Soviet Union. Some of them had returned, but they were still scarce.
Aliide spelled out the words, tried to focus beyond the stabbing pain in her head. It is only in the Soviet Union and in people’s democracies that a woman works as a comrade, side by side with the men, in all fields, in agriculture and transportation as well as in teaching and the cultural professions, and takes an active part in political life and in running society. When Aliide’s turn came, she shifted her gaze from the magazine to the brown plastic floor mat and stared at it until she was in the chair, clinging to the armrests. The nurse was boiling needles and drill bits. She put them aside and came to give Aliide a shot, then went to prepare the filling material. The pot bubbled on the electric burner. Aliide closed her eyes, and the numbness spread all through her chin and cheeks.
The man’s hands smelled like onion, pickles, and sweat. Aliide had heard that the new dentist’s hand were so hairy it was a good thing you couldn’t feel anything; that way you didn’t mind his hairiness. And she’d heard it was best to shut your eyes so you couldn’t see the thick, black grove of hair. He wasn’t a real doctor at all, but during the war a German dentist who was a POW had tried to teach him what he could.
He started to pump the drill with his foot, it rasped and screeched, stabbed her ears, the crack of bone, and she tried not to think about the hairy hands. A fighter plane on maneuvers flew so low that the windows shook. Aliide opened her eyes.
It was the same man.
In that room.
The same hairy hands.
There in the basement of the town hall, where Aliide had vanished, where she just wanted to get out alive. But the only thing left alive was the shame.
When she left, she didn’t lift her eyes from the floor, the stairs, the street. An army truck rattled by at high speed and covered her with dust that stuck to her gums and her eyes and turned her burning skin to ash.
Through the open window of the culture house she could hear a choir practicing.
In my song and in my work.
Another truck went bumping past. Gravel flew at Aliide’s legs.
You are with me, great Stalin.
Martin met her at the front door and nodded toward the table. There was a can of cod liver there, a treat for his little mushroom, as soon as she was able to eat. Half an onion lay shriveled on the cutting board, left over from a sandwich. It stank, and so did the liver. Another, empty cod-liver can lay open next to the cutting board, the toothed edge of its tin lid grimacing. Aliide felt sick.
“I already ate, but I’ll make my mushroom a sandwich just as soon as she’s ready to eat. Were you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Are you mad at me now?”
“Not at all. I can’t feel anything. Numb. It just feels numb.”
The bit of tooth left in the socket rasped. Aliide stared at the half of Martin’s cod-liver sandwich still on the table and couldn’t say anything, although she knew that Martin was waiting for her to thank him for getting her the cod liver. If he had just left out the onion.
“Boris is a nice fellow.”
“Are you talking about the dentist?”
“Who else would I be talking about? I’m sure I’ve told you about Boris before.”
“Maybe you have. But you didn’t tell me he was a dentist.”
“He was just transferred there.”
“What did he do before?”
“The same kind of work, of course.”
“And you knew him then?”
“We did some work for the party together. I suppose he didn’t send me any greetings?”
“Why would he send you greetings through me?”
“Because he knows we’re married, of course.”
“Ah.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I should go do the milking.”
Aliide went straight to the bedroom and took off her rayon dress. It had looked terribly pretty that morning, with its red polka dots, but now it looked disgusting, because it was perhaps a little too pretty and fit too well at the bust. The flannel sweat guards under the arms were wet through. The lower half of her face was still missing and she couldn’t feel the hooks of her earrings hanging from her flesh. She put on her milking coat, tied a scarf around her head, and washed her hands.
In the barn, Aliide left the smell of onions behind. She leaned against the stone foundation. Her hands were red as she rubbed them with the scrub brush and cold water. She was tired. The land under her was tired-it swayed and pitched like the breast of someone near death. She heard the sounds of the animals behind her, they were waiting for her and she had to go to them, and she realized that she had been waiting, too. Waiting for someone, just like she had in that cellar, shrinking like a mouse in the corner, a fly on the lightbulb. And after she got out of the cellar she was waiting for someone. Someone who would do something to help or at least take away part of what had happened in that cellar. Stroke her hair and say that it wasn’t her fault. And say that it would never happen again. Promise that it would never happen again, no matter what.
And when she realized what she had been waiting for, she understood that that person would never come. No one would ever come to her and say those words, and mean them, and see to it that it never happened again. No one would ever come and do it for her, not even Martin, although he sincerely wanted what was best for her.
The cod liver in the kitchen dried up, turning dark around the edges of the sandwich. Martin poured himself a drink and waited for his wife to come back from the barn, poured another glass, and then another, wiped his mouth on his sleeve in the Russian manner, poured a fourth glass, didn’t touch the cod-liver sandwich-he was waiting for his wife-and the red star of the glorious future shone above him, the yellow light of a lamp, a happy family.
Aliide watched him through the window and couldn’t bring herself to go inside.
Zara took a breath. Now and then as she was talking about Vladivostok, she forgot the time and place, got excited like she used to once a long time ago. Aliide’s puttering at the stove brought her back to the present, and she saw that a glass had been thrust into her hand. The kefir culture had been washed and the milk exchanged for fresh. Zara was holding the old milk in her glass. She obediently took a drink, but it was so sour that her eyelids scrunched up, and when Aliide went out to the yard to wash the horseradish, she shoved the glass behind the dishes on the table. The familiar aroma of stewing tomatoes rose from the stovetop and Zara took a deep breath of it as she started to help Aliide slice more tomatoes. It felt nice. There was a cozy feeling in the kitchen-the steaming pots, the rows of jars cooling. Grandmother had always been in a good mood when she was canning, putting things up for the winter. It was the only housework she ever participated in-she would, in fact, take charge, only occasionally telling Zara’s mother to shred the cabbage-but now Zara sat at the table with Aliide Truu, who hated Grandmother. She should raise the subject again, not wait for a suitable moment that was never going to come. Aliide was absorbed in grating the horseradish.
“This is for winter relish. Three hundred grams, and the same amount of garlic, apple, and peppers. A kilo of tomatoes, salt, sugar, and vinegar. You just put it all in the jar, you don’t need to heat it. It preserves the vitamins.”
Zara’s hands moved nimbly as she sliced the tomatoes, but her tongue still wouldn’t loosen up. Aliide might be angry at her, too, if she knew who she was-she might refuse to help her, and then where would she go? How could she break the relaxed mood that her talk of Vladivostok had created? Grandmother and Aliide couldn’t have had their falling out over a few ears of grain-it wasn’t possible, no matter what Aliide said about it. What had really happened here?
Zara had been watching Aliide whenever she was looking the other way or absorbed in her housework-her fragility, the black around her fingernails, her calloused skin with faint blue veins under the tan. She had been searching for something familiar, but the woman puttering around the kitchen didn’t resemble the girl in the photo at all, much less her grandmother, so she concentrated her observations on the house. When Aliide didn’t have her eye on her, Zara touched the shears and the large, rusty key hanging on the wall. Was it the key to the shed? It had hung on the wall next to the stove when Grandmother was here. She found a wooden rake’s tooth on the lintel over the door-had Grandmother’s father made it? A washstand. A black coatrack with Aliide’s coat hanging from it. Was that the cabinet where Grandmother had kept her trousseau? Here was the stove she had warmed herself by, and there was a spinning wheel stashed behind the cabinet. Was it the spinning wheel that Grandmother had spun, kicking it with her foot? Here was Grandmother’s flywheel, here was her bobbin, treadle, and spindle.
When Zara went to get some empty jars from the pantry, she found a cask behind the milk cooler. She felt it. Smelled it. There was something dried on the rim. Sourdough starter? Was it the same starter that Grandmother made her bread from? Two and a half days, that’s what she had said. The dough had to sour for two and a half days in the back room, covered with a cloth, before it could be kneaded. The smell of bread would hang about the room as it ripened, and on the third day it was time to start kneading the dough. She kneaded it with a sweaty brow, twisting and pounding it, this dried-up dough, covered in dust, hardly used over the decades, the same starter that Grandmother’s young hands had kneaded when she was still happy, here with Grandfather. And you had to bring the baker some water now and then to rinse the dough from her hands. The bread oven was heated with birch wood, and later a piece of salt pork would be put in a bowl in the oven, and the fat would sizzle out of the meat into the bowl to brush on the fresh bread. And the flavor! And the smell! Rye from your own field! It all seemed amazing and sad and Zara felt like the cask was very near to her all of a sudden, as if she were touching her young grandmother’s hand. What had Grandmother’s hands been like when she was young? Had she put goose fat on them every night? Zara would have liked to explore the yard, too-she had offered to fetch Aliide some water from the well, but Aliide said that she’d better stay indoors. Aliide was right, but still Zara felt like going out in the yard. She wanted to walk around the house, see everything around it, smell the dirt and grass. She wanted to go and peek under the shed. Grandmother had been afraid of that spot when she was little-she had imagined that dead souls lived there, that they would pull her under the shed and she wouldn’t be able to get out again, and she would see them all come looking for her, searching, her mother in a panic, her father running, calling her name, and she wouldn’t be able to do anything because the dead souls pressed her mouth shut, souls that tasted like moldy grain. Zara wanted to see if Grandmother’s apple tree was still standing-it was a white transparent, an early golden apple next to the shed. Next to the white transparent there should be an onion apple tree; maybe she would recognize it, even though she’d never eaten onion apples. And she wanted to see the damson tree, and the plum tree on its stony ground, in the middle of the back field where there were snakes, which were scary, but there were also blackberries, so you always had to go there. And the cumin-did Aliide still grow it in the same place?
Right from the start Pasha had made it clear that Zara was in debt to him. She could leave as soon as she’d paid him back, but not before! And the only way she could pay him was by working for him-working efficiently, doing work that paid well.
Zara didn’t understand where the debt came from. Nevertheless, she started counting how much of the loan she had paid off, how much was still left, how many months, how many weeks, days, hours, how many mornings, how many nights, how many showers, blow jobs, customers. How many girls she saw. From how many countries. How many times she had to redden her lips and how many times Nina had to give her stitches. How many diseases she got, how many bruises. How many times her head was shoved in the toilet or how many times she was drowned in the sink with Pasha’s iron fist around the back of her neck. You can count time without the hands of a clock, and her calendar was always renewed, because every day she was fined for something. She danced badly even after a week of practice.
“That’s a hundred dollars,” Pasha said. “And a hundred for the video.”
“What video?”
“And a hundred for stupidity. Or did you think you could watch that video for free, girl? We brought them here to teach you to dance, baby. If we hadn’t, they could have been sold. Get it?”
She got it-she didn’t want any more fines. But she got them anyway-fines for learning slowly, for complaining about the customers, for having the wrong look on her face. The count started from the beginning again. How many days, how many mornings, how many blue eyes.
And of course she had to work to eat.
“My grandpa was in Perm in thirty-six. You didn’t get fed there if you didn’t work.”
Pasha would praise Zara and tell her that she was really paying down her debt nicely. She wanted to believe his notebook, with its dark blue, smelly plastic cover and Soviet seal. The meticulous, even columns of numbers made Pasha’s promises believable enough that it was quite easy to put your faith in them-if you wanted to, that is. And the only way to keep going was to put your faith in them. A person has to have faith in something in order to survive, and Zara decided to believe that Pasha’s notebook was her ticket out of there. Once it was done, she would be free, she would get a new passport, a new identity, a new story for herself. Some day all this would happen. Some day she would rebuild herself.
Pasha made the marks in his notebook with a German fountain pen that had a picture of a woman on it. Her clothes would come off when he tilted the pen, and come back on when he tilted it the other way. He thought it was such a marvelous invention that he set up a pen-importing business with a friend in Moscow. But then one of the girls got ahold of one of the pens and tried to gouge his eyes out, and in the fight the pen was broken. After that the girl-Ukrainian, perhaps-disappeared, and all the girls were fined, because harm had come to Pasha’s pen.
He didn’t find a new favorite until a Finnish customer made him a gift of a lotto pen. The Finn spoke a few words of Estonian, and an Estonian girl named Kadri had to translate for Pasha what the sommi was trying to say about the significance of the lotto in Finland.
“Very important. Lotto is to us as the future. In lotto, every man is equal. Everyone’s equal in the lottery and it’s Finnish and it’s a wonderful thing. It’s Finnish democracy at its best!”
The man laughed- Future!-and gave Pasha’s shoulder a shove and Pasha laughed and told Kadri to tell the sommi that it would be his favorite pen now.
“Ask him how much you can win.”
“Kui palju siin võib võita?”
“A million marks! Or several million! You can be a millionaire!”
Zara was about to say that there was a lotto in Russia, too-plenty of lotteries-but then she realized that to Pasha that wasn’t the same thing at all. He might win at the casino, and he made a lot of money off the girls-a lot more than an ordinary person could win in a lottery-but all of that was work, and Pasha complained about it all the time, constantly complained about how much work he had to do. In Finland anyone at all could become a millionaire; anyone could win a million without doing any work or inheriting it or anything. You couldn’t win a million marks in the Russian lotteries. Not just anyone could become a millionaire in Russia. You couldn’t even get into the casino if you didn’t have money or connections. Anyone who didn’t wouldn’t dare to try and get in. In Finland you could just lie around on the sofa in front of the television on a Saturday night and wait for the right number to come on the screen, and a million dollars would just fall into your lap.
“Think about it-even a chick like you could win a million!” Pasha laughed.
The idea was so amusing that Zara started laughing, too. They busted their sides laughing.
The customer had a spiked ring around his dick and something else, too. Zara couldn’t remember what it was. She just remembered that they tied one dildo on Katia and another one on her, and she was supposed to fuck Katia at the same time that Katia fucked her, and then Katia was supposed to hold Zara’s pussy open, and then the man started to push his cock in, and Zara didn’t remember anything after that.
In the morning she couldn’t sit up or walk; she just lay in her bunk smoking Prince cigarettes. She didn’t see Katia, but she couldn’t have asked Katia anything; it would have made Pasha angry. She could hear Lavrenti on the other side of the door telling Pasha that Zara was only going to do blow jobs today. Pasha disagreed. Then the door opened and Pasha came into her room and ordered her to take off her skirt and spread her legs. “Does that look like a healthy pussy to you?”
“What a damn mess. Tell Nina to come in here and give her some stitches.”
Nina came, stitched her up, gave her some pills, and left, taking her pearlescent pink lipstick smile with her. Lavrenti and Pasha sat in their spot on the other side of the door, and Lavrenti talked about sending flowers to his wife, Verochka. Their anniversary was coming up-twenty years-and they were going to Helsinki.
“Invite Verochka to come to Tallinn, too,” Pasha said. “We’re going to be there, anyway.”
Tallinn? Zara pressed her ear against the crack of the door. Did Pasha say they were going to Tallinn? When? Maybe she just thought she heard him say that. Maybe she misunderstood. No-that’s not the kind of thing a person misunderstands. They were talking about Tallinn, saying that both of them were going there, and they must be going soon, because they were talking about Lavrenti’s anniversary and a present for Verochka, and his anniversary wasn’t far off.
The lighted sign on the building across the street blossomed like wood sorrel, her cigarette lit up like a lantern, and everything was crystal clear. Zara felt her bra for the photograph in its hidden pocket.
When Lavrenti was alone for once, sitting outside the door, Zara knocked and called him by name. Lavrenti opened the door and stood on the threshold with his legs spread wide, a knife in one hand and a piece of wood in the other. “What do you want?”
“Lavruusha.”
People are more agreeable if you use their first name, so Zara used his, and she used the affectionate form for good measure.
“Lavruusha dorogoy, are you going to Tallinn?” “What business is it of yours?”
“I speak Estonian.”
Lavrenti didn’t say anything.
“Estonian’s a little like Finnish. And there will be a lot of Finnish customers there. And since Estonian is a bit like Finnish, I could handle the Estonian customers and the Russians and Germans, like I do here, plus the Finns.”
Lavrenti didn’t say anything.
“Lavruusha, the girls told me that tons of Finns go there. And there was a Finnish man that was here who said that the girls were better in Tallinn, and he preferred to go there. I spoke Estonian to him and he understood me.”
The old man had actually spoken a mixture of Finnish, German, and English, but Lavrenti couldn’t know that. He had stood by the window in nothing but his socks and a cocky attitude and said, “Girls in Tallinna are very hot. Natasha, girls in Tallinna. Girls in Russia are also very hot. But girls in Tallinna, Natashas in Tallinna. You should be in Tallinna. You are hot, too. Finnish men like hot Natashas in Tallinna. Come to Tallinna, Natasha.”
Lavrenti left without saying anything.
A few days later the door flew open. Pasha kicked Zara in the side.
“Come on, let’s go.”
Zara was curled up in a corner of the bed. Pasha pulled her by her leg onto the floor.
“Get dressed.”
Zara got up and started dressing quickly-she had to be quick, had to be quick when she was told to do something. Pasha left the room, yelled something, a girl shrieked, Zara didn’t recognize the voice, she heard Pasha strike her, the girl shrieked louder, Pasha struck her again, and she got quiet. Zara put on an extra blouse, felt to make sure the photo was still in her bra, shoved a scarf and a skirt in her coat pocket and filled her breast pocket with cigarettes, poppers, and painkillers-they didn’t always give them to her, even when she needed them. She put her makeup in another pocket and some sugar cubes in a third, because they didn’t always remember to give her food, either. And she brought her Pioneer badge. She had carried it with her in Vladikki because she was so proud to get it, and it had traveled with her through all the nights and all the customers. Pasha had seen her with it once, grabbed it from her, laughed and tossed it back.
“I guess you can keep it.”
Then he laughed some more.
“But first you have to thank me.”
Zara undressed and thanked him.
Pasha had left the door open. The new girls were huddled like cattle as Lavrenti prodded them into the yard. A truck was waiting there. There was a sob among the herd. The wind was strong, even in the courtyard-it whistled along Zara’s body, a delightful wind, and she breathed in the wind and the exhaust. She hadn’t been outside since she was first brought here.
Lavrenti waved to her and told her to get in the Ford that sat waiting behind the truck.
“We’re going to Tallinn.”
Zara smiled at him and jumped in the car. She caught a glimpse of the expression on Lavrenti’s face. He was surprised. Zara had never smiled at him before.
This time she was allowed to go without handcuffs. They knew she wasn’t going to go anywhere.
There were lines at every border crossing. Pasha would run his eye over them, disgusted, get out to smooth out the situation, then come back to the car where Lavrenti and Zara were waiting and step on the gas, and the car would brush past the line and over the border and they’d be on their way. Through Warsaw and Kuznica to Grodno and Vilnius and Daugavpils, always at top speed. Zara sat with her nose against the window. Estonia was getting closer; there were pine trees everywhere, dairies, factories, telephone poles and bus stops, fields, and apple orchards with cows grazing in them. They made little stops sometimes, and Lavrenti would remember to get food for Zara from some little stand. They drove from Daugavpils to Sigulda. They had to stop in Sigulda because Lavrenti wanted to send a postcard and take a picture to send to Verochka. Her girlfriends had been there years ago and brought back walking sticks as souvenirs, with Sigulda burned into them for decoration. Verochka had been pregnant at the time and couldn’t go with them, but they told her that the sanatoriums there were charming. And the Gauja River Valley! Lavrenti asked the way and told Pasha to take a detour to the end of the Gauja River cable railway.
They stopped the car far away from the ticket window, under the trees.
“Let the girl come with us.”
Zara gave a start and glanced at Pasha.
“Are you nuts? Get going! And don’t take too long!” “She’s not going to try anything.”
“Go!”
Lavrenti shrugged his shoulders at Zara as if to say maybe next time and went to the ticket window. Zara watched his retreating back and gulped in the smell of Latvia. There were white ice-cream wrappers on the ground. She could feel the children’s vacations and families’ shared moments, the bosoms of the party leaders’ wives’, the Pioneers’ zeal, and Soviet athletes’ sweat all lingering there. Lavrenti had said that his son had come here to train, the way the pride of the Soviet Union always did. Was his son a runner? Zara should start paying more attention to what Lavrenti said. It might be useful. She should get Lavrenti to trust her-he might make her his favorite.
Pasha stayed with Zara in the car, drumming the steering wheel with his fingers-whap whap whap. The three onion domes tattooed on his middle finger jumped. The year 1970 rippled with the rhythm, a faded blue number on each finger. A birthday? Zara didn’t ask. Now and then Pasha dug in his ear with a finger. His earlobes were so small that he actually didn’t have any. Zara glanced at the road. She wouldn’t be able to run that far.
“The boys from Perm are expecting us in Tallinn!” Whap whap whap.
Pasha was nervous.
“What the hell is taking him so long?”
Whap whap whap.
Pasha got out two warm bottles of beer, opened one, and gave it to Zara, who emptied it greedily. She felt an itch for the road outside the window, but Estonia was close now. Pasha jumped out of the car, left the door open, and lit a Marlboro. Their sweat dried in the breeze. A family walked by, the child singing, “Turaida pils,” a Latvian murmur, “frizetava,” the woman fluffed her dry-looking hair, the man nodded his head, “partikas veikals,” the woman nodded, “cukurs,” her voice rose, “piens, maize, apelsinu sula,” the man’s voice became angry, the woman’s eyes fell on Zara, who lowered her gaze instantly and pressed herself against the back of the seat, the woman’s gaze slid away without registering her, “es nesprotu,” the pressed pleats of her skirt fluttered softly, “siers, degvins,” her toes reached through the straps of her high-heeled sandals and touched the ground, they passed by, her broad hips swung away, and eau de cologne drifted from them to the car. An ordinary family, disappearing into the railway. And Zara still sat in the car, which smelled of gasoline. No, she couldn’t have yelled, couldn’t have done anything.
The road was deserted. The sun shone on the bushes. A motorcycle with a sidecar bumbled past; then the burning road was empty again. Zara fumbled in her bra for a Valium. If she took off running, would they shoot her in broad daylight or catch her some other way? They would catch her, of course. A girl riding a too-large bicycle came into view. She had on sandals and kneesocks, and there was a plastic basket on one side of her handlebars and a toy milk can on the other. Zara stared at the girl. She glanced at Zara and smiled. Zara shut her eyes. There was an insect crawling on her forehead. She couldn’t bring herself to brush it away. The car door banged open. She opened her eyes. Lavrenti. The trip continued. Pasha drove. Lavrenti took out a bottle of vodka and a loaf of bread, which he scarfed down between swigs from the bottle, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. A gulp of vodka, the sleeve, gulp, sleeve, gulp, sleeve.
“I went all the way to Turaida.”
“Where?”
“Turaida. You can see it from the embankment there.” “What embankment?”
“Where the cable car leaves from. Beautiful view. You can see to the other side of the valley from there. There’s a manor house and the Turaida castle.”
Pasha turned up the music.
“I went there by taxi. The manor house was a sanatorium -I took a taxi from there to Turaida.”
“What? Is that what took so long?”
“The taxi driver told me about the Turaida rose.”
Pasha hit the gas. Lavrenti’s voice trembled from vodka and emotion. Pasha turned the music up louder, probably so he wouldn’t be able to hear Lavrenti, who was leaning against Zara’s shoulder. The liquor on his breath smelled cold, but the voice that came pushing out of it was heavy with melancholy and longing, and suddenly Zara was ashamed of having recognized that in his voice. It wasn’t a person’s voice, it was her enemy’s voice.
“There was a grave there-the grave of the rose of Turaida. The grave of the faithful lover. A wedding couple was just leaving, and they left roses there. The bride had a white gown… They brought red carnations, too.”
Lavrenti’s voice broke. He offered the vodka bottle and Zara took a swig. Lavrenti dug the bread out from somewhere and offered her some. Zara broke off a piece. He had softened toward her. People pay less attention when they’ve softened. She might be able to slip out of Lavrenti’s hands. But if she tried to escape now, she would have to go somewhere else, not where Pasha and Lavrenti were going. And she couldn’t get there any other way.
Pasha laughed. “Does the rose of Turaida have blue eyes? Does she make the world’s best sashliki?”
Lavrenti’s bottle hit Pasha on the forehead. The car swerved suddenly to the edge of the ditch and then across to the other side of the road and back again.
“You maniac!”
Pasha got the car back under control, and the trip continued, with Pasha ranting about his plans for Tallinn.
“And casinos like they have in Vegas. You just have to be fast, you have to be the first-Tallinn lotto, Tallinn casinos. Anything’s possible!”
Lavrenti drank his vodka, chewed his bread, offered some to Zara, and the bass from the stereo shook the car more than the potholes in the road. Pasha went on and on about his own Wild West-that’s what Tallinn was to him.
“You idiots don’t understand.”
Lavrenti puckered his brow.
“Pasha’s heart misses Russia,” he said.
“What? You’re crazy!”
Pasha smacked Lavrenti, then Lavrenti smacked Pasha, and the car was headed into the ditch again, and Zara tried to hide on the floor. The car swerved and wove, the woods flew by, black pines, Zara was afraid, there was a slurp of liquor-soaked spit, the smell of Pasha’s leather coat, the fake leather seats of the Ford, the pine tree air freshener, the car rocking, the squabbling continuing until it leveled off and Zara let herself drift into a doze. She woke up as Pasha pulled into the yard of a business associate. Pasha spent the evening visiting with his associate; Lavrenti ordered Zara to come with him to his room and got on top of her, repeating Verochka’s name.
That night, Zara carefully removed Lavrenti’s hand from her breast, crept out of bed, and leaned against the window latch. It looked like it would be easy to open. The road visible between the curtains was a thick, enticing tongue. In Tallinn, she might be in the same old locked room again. Things were going to have to change someday.
The next day they came to Valmiera, and Lavrenti bought her some prianiki cakes, and they drove from Valmiera to Valga. Pasha and Lavrenti didn’t talk any more than was absolutely necessary. Estonia was coming closer. The road itched and beckoned, but Estonia was already near. And she wouldn’t run away. Of course not. She couldn’t.
When they came to the border at Valga, Pasha dug a crumpled map out of his pocket. Lavrenti snatched it away from him. “Don’t go through the checkpoint. Go around it.”
The car rattled over the country road, past the wooden pillar that represented the border, and they were in Estonia. Lavrenti’s hand lay on Zara’s thigh, and suddenly she had a powerful urge to curl up in his arms and go to sleep. Her debt was so great that she had lost the ability to count it. Someday.
The night before, Lavrenti had promised that once Pasha got his casino business going, Zara could work at the casino and earn many times more than what she did now. She could pay it all off. Someday.
It was an accident, really.
She had made a few good videos in Tallinn. Or at least good enough that Lavrenti played them for himself when Pasha was out. Lavrenti said that Zara had eyes just like Verochka’s, just as blue. Pasha suspected that he was sweet on Zara and teased him about it. Lavrenti blushed. Pasha nearly died laughing.
A few of the videos were so good that Pasha showed them to his boss. The boss got excited about Zara. He wanted to meet her.
The boss was wearing two enormous signet rings and Kouros cologne. He apparently hadn’t washed his genitals for several days, because there were white clumps in his pubic hair.
The heels of Zara’s shoes were wrapped in gold and tied with a gold bow on the back. Their sharp pointed tips pinched her toes. Silver butterflies peeked out of her stockings at the ankles.
The boss put on the video and told her to do what was on the screen.
“I suppose you know you’re a slut?”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
“I’m a slut and I’ll never change. I’ve always been a slut and I always will be.”
“And where is this slut’s home?”
“Vladivostok.”
“What?”
“Vladivostok.”
“You said it wrong. This is your home. Here with your master and your master’s cock. A slut has no other home, and she never will. Say it.”
“Because I am a slut, my home is here, with my master’s cock.”
“Good. You almost got it right. Now say the whole thing.”
“I’ll never have any other home.”
“Why is this slut still dressed?”
She heard a snap. Maybe it came from outside. Or inside. The boss didn’t notice anything. A little snap, like the sound of a mouse’s back breaking, or a fish bone. It sounded a bit like the gristly crunch of a pig’s ear between your teeth. She started to undress. Her plucked, goose-bumped thighs shivered. Her German panties dropped to the floor; their delicate elastic lace fell in a heap like an empty balloon.
It was easy. She didn’t even have time to think about it. She didn’t have time to think about anything. The belt was just around his neck all of a sudden, and she was pulling on it with all her strength.
It was the easiest fuck ever.
She wasn’t sure if he was dead, so she picked up a pillow and held it over his face for ten minutes. She watched the familiar heavy ticking of time on the gold face of the clock. They had clocks like that in Vladikki. They must be made in Leningrad. The man didn’t move once. Not bad for a beginner. Very well done. Maybe she had a natural talent. The idea made her laugh. Ten minutes was enough time to think of all kinds of things-she had been slow at learning to read, and she had never been able to keep up during morning calisthenics, never had the posture that the teacher demanded, her Pioneer salute was never as snappy as the others’, and her school uniform was always bedraggled for some reason, even though she was constantly straightening it. She had never been good at anything right from the start, except for now. She looked at her own body reflected in the dark window, her own torso on top of the fat man, pressing the pillow, squashed with sleep, over the man’s face. She had been made to look at her own body so much that it was strange to her. Maybe a strange body worked better than your own body in some situations. Maybe that’s why it had gone so well. Or maybe it was just that she had become one of them, the kind of person that this man was.
She went to the bathroom and washed her hands. She put on her bra and underwear and stockings, tugged her dress back on, checked that the photo was still hidden in her bra and made sure the sedatives were still there, and went to the door to listen. She could hear the boss’s men playing cards, the video still running, nothing to suggest that they had noticed anything. They would see and hear everything before long-the boss had microphones and cameras. But they didn’t have permission to look when he had women with him.
She drank another glass of champagne from a Czech crystal glass and realized as she looked at the crystal flowers -they looked like cornflowers-that there had been glasses all around her all this time, tons of them-she could have swiped one of them quite a few days ago and slit her throat. She could have left much earlier, if she had really wanted to. Had she wanted to stay? Had she actually wanted to whore and sniff poppers? Had Pasha just directed her to the profession that suited her? Had she just been imagining that she wanted to leave, that everything was awful? Had she really liked it? Did she have a whore’s heart, a whore’s nature? Maybe it was a mistake to struggle against her whore’s fate-but it was no use thinking about it now.
She took a few packs of cigarettes and some matches and searched the boss’s pockets, but she didn’t find any money and there wasn’t time to make a more thorough search.
The apartment was on the top floor. She went down the shaky fire escape to the roof and from there to the other stairway to avoid the men with crew cuts who guarded the door. A smell of pee and a dark stairway downward. She stumbled on the chipped stone steps, thudded onto the landing and through the door, which was covered with artificial leather, its stuffing softening the sound. She could hear a child laughing inside and saying, “Babushka, Babushka.” When she reached the bottom she ran into a cat and a row of beat-up mailboxes. The outer door creaked and screeched. There was a well-waxed black car in front of it, shiny even in the darkness. A man sat inside it smoking, his leather coat shone dimly through the glass, and Russian disco music pounded. She didn’t look at the car as she went by, as if that could keep him from noticing her. But maybe it did, because the man just kept bobbing his head, absorbed in the music.
She stopped when she got to the end of the block. She felt clear. She was in tolerable condition if you didn’t count her ripped dress, the runs in her stockings, or the fact that she had no shoes. A woman racing down the street with no shoes might stick in a person’s mind, and she didn’t want to attract any attention. But she had to run. She couldn’t dawdle. A few broken yellow streetlights, a few people on their way home. The darkness hid their faces. The area was completely strange to her-maybe she had been here to see a customer, maybe not. The concrete looked the same everywhere. She ended up next to a main road. There was a bridge going over it. A bus went booming by with its accordion section shimmying, but even its headlights were so dim that no one would have taken note of her-and even if they had noticed, would anyone be interested, before Pasha had even started to ask questions, before fear and money made people remember things that they really didn’t remember? But you could always find somebody who would remember right. There’s no darkness so dark that someone can’t see in it.
The bus was followed by a Moskvitch sedan with one headlight out; then a Zhiguli clattered by, nothing but noise.
A bus stop emerged from the darkness so quickly that she didn’t have time to go around it or change directions, so she careened straight through the crowd waiting there, through the young mothers with their short skirts and white stockings, their delicate aroma a mixture of innocence and abortion, the girls’ red fingernails clawing at the darkness, at the future, in that familiar way. The flock scattered in bewilderment when she rushed in among them, the grannies with their dangling earrings, their withered earlobes swinging, and before the young men had time to put their arms around the girls protectively she was already out of the crowd, past the man drunk on eau de cologne, leaving behind the rustle of plastic bags, sailboats of happiness docked beside the girls, ready to carry them into their wonderful futures.
She went back in among the apartment houses. She couldn’t get on a lighted bus in her stocking feet. Someone might remember a breathless, shoeless woman. Someone would tell. She ran past the apartments, past the windows barred with beams of Stalin’s sunlight, past the barred balconies, the deserted, potholed streets, the jutting rebar and overflowing trash bins, the dumpling packets thrown on the ground, the shops. She stepped on a half-empty carton of kefir, kept running, ran past an old woman carrying onions in a net bag, past a children’s climbing cage and a sandbox that smelled like cats, past girls nestled like trash against the concrete with their heroin-battered skin and crusted mascara, past little boys and tubes of glue, the snuffle of snot and glue mixed together. She collided with a kiosk that was open and laughing, and stopped. Packs of cigarettes peaked out from the kiosk window, the flock of customers in front of the window were joking with the vendor. She changed direction-they hadn’t seen her yet-turned back, looked for a different route, left the flock of crew cuts behind her, standing with their legs thrust out, their buffalo necks, and ran past the murmur, the damp gasping that came from between the cement apartment blocks, away from the colossal high-rises, away from the cockroach slum, the scrape of needles, till she came to a large road. Where to now? Sweat ran down her neck, she could feel the Seppälä tag in her dress like a wet pillow through the thin fabric, the darkness roared around her, her sweat turned cold. Somewhere in Tallinn was a place called Taksopark, she remembered hearing about it, it was open day and night, that’s where the taxis went-but so what? What good did that do her? The first thing a taxi driver would do is ask questions. And she didn’t know how to drive a car, let alone steal one. Was there something else? A gas station, the kind where trucks stop? They had someplace to go, and she had someplace to go, some way that no one would notice, and quickly. Then suddenly there was a truck parked in front of her beside the road. It was running and there was no one in the cab-a dark green truck that blended into the landscape. She climbed into the truck bed, barely managed it. A moment later the driver came out of the bushes, his belt buckle clinked as he fastened it, and he climbed in and pulled onto the road.
She crawled in between the boxes.
She could barely even see herself in the light from the streetlamps. Then the lamps were gone, too. A fog was beginning to settle in. An empty GAI inspector’s booth flitted by. Little white sticks zipped by on the side of the road. Several BMWs whizzed past in a hail of macadam with their music pounding, but there wasn’t any traffic. The driver stopped once in the middle of desolate-looking countryside and hopped out. Zara peered out at the view. She could dimly make out the word Peoleo in the darkness. The driver came back belching and the trip continued.
Now and then the truck’s headlights brushed over rickety signs, but Zara couldn’t make out what they said. She pulled aside the tarp lining the truck bed far enough to peek out and see that there were no side mirrors, so she ventured to poke her head all the way out. The truck might be on its way anywhere. To Russia, maybe. It would be smartest to jump out if the truck was getting farther from Tallinn. The driver would probably stop somewhere to pee or get something to drink. And then what? She should look for a different ride. She could hitchhike. Cars headed away from Tallinn probably wouldn’t go straight back, and any car leaving Tallinn would at least be out of Pasha’s reach for a little while. Or was she being too optimistic? Pasha had ears everywhere, and Zara would be quite easy to identify. What if she succeeded in finding a car, but it was on its way out of Estonia?… But, if it was, it would have to cross the border at some point, and by the time it it did Pasha would have some sharp-eyed henchman there, on the lookout, asking questions. So it would be better to find a car going where she wanted to go, with a driver who was the kind of person that Pasha would never be able to find. What kind of person would that be? And who would give her a ride on a dark road in the middle of the night? No respectable person would even be out at that time of night, only thieves and businessmen like Pasha. Zara felt the secret pocket in her bra. The photo was still there-the photo and the name of the house and the village.
The truck slowed down. The driver stopped, hopped out, and headed for the bushes. Zara climbed down from the back of the truck and dashed across the road into the shelter of the trees. The driver returned and continued on his way. When his headlights had disappeared, the darkness was unbroken. The forest rustled. The grass was alive. An owl hooted. Zara moved closer to the road.
Morning would break soon. The only cars that had passed were a couple of Audis with their stereos blaring. Someone threw a beer bottle out of the window of one of them, and it landed near Zara. She wouldn’t get in a Western car-they all belonged to them. How far was she from Tallinn now? She had lost her sense of time while she was in the back of the truck. The cool damp stiffened her limbs, and she rubbed her arms and legs, wiggled her toes, and circled her ankles one at a time. She got cold sitting down and tired standing up. She had to get inside somewhere before it got light, get away from civilization. It would be best to get to where she was going before morning-to the village, her grandmother’s village. She had to rein in her panic and try to maintain the same calm that had spread over her as she sat among the boxes in the back of the truck, huddled there knowing that even if the truck didn’t go to Grandmother’s village she would still get there.
She heard a car from far off; it approached more slowly than the Western cars. Only one headlight was working, and although Zara couldn’t see the car or the driver, she was in the road before she had time to think and took up a position in the middle of the highway. The dim headlight lit up her grubby legs. Zara didn’t yield; she was sure that the approaching Zhiguli would accelerate past her if she wasn’t standing in front of it. The driver poked his head out of the window. An old man. A cigarette burned at the end of a holder hanging from the side of his mouth.
“Sir, can you give me a ride to town?” Zara asked. The Estonian words were stiff. The man didn’t answer, and Zara became anxious, said that she had had a fight with her husband, and he had thrown her out of the car, and that’s why she was here in the middle of nowhere. Her husband was not a good man, she was sure he wouldn’t come back for her, and she didn’t even want him to come, because he was a bad man.
The car’s driver took his cigarette holder out of his mouth, pulled out the butt, and threw it in the road. He said he was on his way to Risti and reached over to open the passenger door. Zara felt a soaring inside. The man put a new cigarette in his holder. Zara put her arm across her chest and held her legs tight together. The car pulled out. Now and then she was able to read snatches of the words on the signs: Turba, Ellamaa.
“Why are you on your way to Risti?” the man asked. Zara got confused and made something up, said she was on her way to her parents’ house. The man didn’t ask any more questions, but Zara added that her husband wouldn’t come to her parents’ house, and she didn’t want to see him. The man reached with his right hand to pick up a bag sitting next to the gear shift and handed it to Zara. She took it from him. The familiar flavor of Arahiiz chocolate and the crunch of peanuts.
“You might have had to wait all night for a ride there,”
the man said. He had been to his sick daughter’s house for a visit and ended up taking her to the hospital during the night. He had to get home in time for the morning milking. “Whose daughter are you?”
“The Rüütels’.”
“Rüütels? Where from?”
Zara was terrified. How should she answer? The old man apparently knew everyone around those parts, and if Zara made something up, he would start talking around the village about some tart with a Russian accent who had showed up talking nonsense. Zara sobbed. The man handed her a worn-out handkerchief before the tears had even started, and he didn’t ask any more questions.
“Maybe it would be best if you came to my house first. Your parents will be worried about you if you come home in that state, at this time of night.”
The man drove to his house in Risti. Zara got out of the Zhiguli holding a map she had swiped from the car tightly under her arm. She could have asked the man if he knew Aliide Truu but she was afraid to bring up the subject. The man would remember her questions, which might eventually lead them to Aliide Truu and thus to Zara. When they got inside he poured her a glass of milk, put some bread and children’s sausages on the table, and told her to go to sleep when she had eaten.
“When I’ve finished the morning milking, I’ll drive you home. It’ll only be a few hours.”
He left her some sheepskins and withdrew from the room. When he had begun to snore, Zara got up, groped her way to the refrigerator, and took down a flashlight that she had noticed on top of it as she sliced her sausage. The flashlight worked. She spread the map on the kitchen floor. Risti wasn’t far from where she was going. It was a ways to Koluvere, but it was doable. The clock on the refrigerator showed 3 AM. She found a large pair of men’s rubber boots and a small pair of women’s slippers by the front door. She shoved the slippers on her feet. Was there a coat around? Where did he keep his outside clothes? She heard noises from the inner room-she had to get going. She opened the kitchen window-she didn’t have a key to the front door- and climbed out. She still felt a strange taste in her mouth. Her jaw had frozen for a moment when she took her first bite of the bread, and the man had laughed and said she must be one of those people who doesn’t like cumin. His grandchildren didn’t like it, either. He offered her a different kind of bread, but she wanted the one with the cumin. He would be getting up soon and would see that the tart had stolen his map and his flashlight and, to top it off, the slippers. Zara felt wicked.
The map was unclear, but Zara found the Risti railway station easily. From there she headed for a road that she thought would take her to Koluvere. At first she ran; she wanted to get away from the nearby houses as quickly as possible, although their windows were still dark. Dogs barked from house to house, and the noise followed her until she reached the Koluvere road. She slowed down to save her strength until she reached her destination, but she still felt a fire under her feet. Guessing by the map, it was about a ten-kilometer trip. She stopped now and then to smoke a cigarette. She had swiped a new pack of cigarettes from the old man. A drawing of an old man smiled at her from the cigarette package. He seemed to be wearing a top hat, but she couldn’t quite make it out in the dark. The forest breathed and coughed around her, her sweat cooled and then warmed again, and every time she stopped she felt the dead princess of Koluvere breathing down her neck. Augusta was her name. Grandmother had told Zara about Princess Augusta, who left from Risti to go to Koluvere Castle, her eyes swollen shut with crying, and then killed herself. It was always colder in the chamber where she died than in the other rooms, and Augusta’s tears trickled down the walls. Black clouds were swimming across the sky like warships, and the moonlight was blinding. The damp went through Zara’s slippers; now and then she imagined that she heard a car and dashed into the woods. She doused one slipper in the ditch, burrs scratched at her skin. There were no junctions in the road, it stretched ahead unbroken, but her thoughts broke apart and reassembled themselves, brightened, then darkened again. She tried to smell the swamp in the air. There should be a swamp somewhere nearby. What were Estonian swamps like? Would she be able to find the right house? Who would be living in it? Did the house even exist anymore? If it didn’t, what was she going to do? Grandmother had told her that when Augusta died a lot of rumors were started. Maybe it wasn’t really suicide. Maybe she was murdered. A doctor had said that she died of a hereditary hemorrhagic disease, but no one believed that because before she died, terrible screams could be heard from the castle, the peasants were petrified with fear, and the cows dried up and the chickens stopped laying eggs for a week. Zara sped up. The soles of her feet hurt, and her lungs were ready to burst. Some said that the czarina had been jealous of the beautiful princess and sent her here as a prisoner. Others thought that she was brought for her own safety, to protect her from an insane husband. In any case, she had died a prisoner, screaming in her misfortune. The map had already slipped Zara’s mind, although it was simple and she had tried to memorize it. Maybe it was so simple that there was nothing about it to remember, but anyway she’d lost it. Why hadn’t anyone helped the princess? Why hadn’t someone helped her get out of the castle, if everyone heard her weeping? Help me, Augusta, help me find my way. Help me, Augusta-it drummed in Zara’s head, and the faces of Augusta, Aliide, and Grandmother mixed together in her mind to make one face, and she didn’t dare to look to the right or the left because the trees in the forest were moving, their limbs were reaching toward her. Did Augusta want Zara to go with her into the swamp, to follow her wherever she was wandering? The first morning mist started to cling to Zara’s cheeks- she should be running, going faster, she had to get there before morning or everyone in the village would see her. She would have to think of some story to tell the person who lived in Grandmother’s house now. And then she would look for Aliide Truu. Maybe someone who lived in the house could help her. She had to think of a story to tell Aliide, too, but the only story that she could keep in her head in its entirety was the story of Augusta, the crazy, weeping princess. Maybe Zara was crazy, too, because who else but a crazy person would be running down an unknown road toward a house that she had only heard of, a house whose existence she couldn’t be sure of? A swath of field. A house. She ran past it. Another house. A village. A dog. Barking, from one house to the next. Houses, sheds, barns, and potholes beat their own rhythm with her pulse in the backs of her eyes. Now and then she tried to walk in the ditch, but she kept getting tangled up in barbed wire and blackberry bushes, so she tugged herself free and went back to the road, the damp smell of limestone, puddles, and potholes. She tried to run faster than the dogs were barking. The morning mist pressed against her skin, the fog pressed against her eyes, the night pulled back its drapery, and the boundaries of the unreal village breathed around her. The road to the house would end at a cluster of silver willow trees. An unusually large stand of silver willow trees. And there was a big block of stone where the road began. Would Zara’s story begin at the gate of that house, a new story, her own story?