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.
&nb
sp; 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.
1980s
Läänemaa, Estonian Soviet
Socialist Republic
Diagnosis
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 fri
end 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.