“What? No!”
A person could easily think that, the girl said, since Aliide’s door had “tibla”—Ruskie—and “Magadan” written on it. Or maybe Aliide had been in Siberia?
“No!”
“Then why would they write ‘Magadan’ on your door?”
“How should I know! When has there ever been any sense in boys’ games?”
“Don’t you have a dog? Everyone else has one.”
In fact, Aliide had had a dog, Hiisu, but it died. And actually Aliide was sure that Hiisu had been poisoned—just like her chickens, all five of them—and then her sauna had burned down, but she didn’t tell the girl about this, or about how every now and then she heard Hiisu’s footsteps, or the clucking of her hens, and how it was impossible to remember that there was no one else to feed in the house except herself and the flies. She had never lived in a house with an empty barn. She just couldn’t get used to it. She wanted to turn the conversation back around to this Pasha, but she wasn’t likely to succeed, because the girl had so many questions, followed by exclamations of wonder. Wasn’t her daughter worried about her alone without a dog in the countryside?
“I don’t trouble her with trivial matters.”
“But . . .”
Aliide snapped up a bucket and went to get some water, the enamel clanking, the bucket swinging loudly. She tucked her head in a defiant position and went outside to show that there was nothing threatening waiting there, no extra pairs of eyes in the black walls of the night. And her back didn’t itch as she went out into the dark yard.
1991
Läänemaa, Estonian Soviet
Socialist Republic
After the Rocks Come the Songs
The first time the rain of rocks flew at Aliide’s window it was a clear, breathable night in May. Hiisu’s barking had already managed to wake her up, and she had sluggishly slapped her fear into a corner like a slippery-footed insect. She turned onto her side with her back to the fear, and the straw in her mattress rustled; she wasn’t going to take the trouble to get up because of a couple of rocks. When the second shower of stones came, she had already started to feel superior. Did they imagine they could scare her with a few rocks? Her. Of all people. Such childishness made her laugh. Didn’t they have any larger weapons than that to mess around with? The only thing that would get her out of bed at night was a tank coming through her fence. You never know, it could happen some day, not because of these hooligans, of course, but if a war broke out. She wouldn’t want that, not anymore, not now— she’d rather die first. She knew that many people had prepared for it and had gathered up all kinds of supplies at home: matches, salt, candles, batteries. And every second house had a kitchen full of dried bread. Aliide ought to make more of it, too, and get some batteries; she had only a few left. What if a war did break out and the Russians won? Which they no doubt would. If that happened, she wouldn’t have any worries, an old Red babushka like her. But still, no war; just let there be no more war.
Aliide lay awake listening to Hiisu’s growls, and when he calmed down a bit, she waited for the morning to come, to make some coffee. If they thought she was going to get up in the middle of the night because of them, they were dreaming. She wasn’t going anywhere, even if her barn was empty and she was alone in the house, not to Talvi’s house in Finland, not anywhere. This was her home, dearly paid for, and a little crowd of stone throwers wasn’t going to drive her out of it. She hadn’t left before and she wasn’t leaving now; she’d die first. They could burn down the whole house, and she would sit in her own chair in the kitchen and drink coffee sweetened with her own honey. She would even wave to them from the window and bring a big bowl of homemade cardamom buns to the gatepost and then go back inside as the roof thatch burst into flames. The faster it happened, the better. And suddenly she felt a springtime brook of expectation. Let them do it. Let them burn down the whole house. The lady of the house—the lady of the empty barn—wasn’t afraid of fire. She was ready to go, now was as good a time as any. Burn it all! Her mouth was dry with greed, she licked her lips, jumped out of bed, went to the window, opened it with a clatter, and yelled,“You belong in Siberia, too! It would be just right for you!”
***
After the first rocks came the songs. Rocks and songs. Or just rocks, or just songs. Then Hiisu was gone, then the chickens, and the sauna. The sleepless nights marched in a row past Aliide’s bed; the tired, stiff-necked days held out longer. The peace that had come in the last few decades was torn up into a pile of rug strips in a moment, and the mountain of rags had to be sorted through again, endured again. It’s time to straighten our backs again and throw off our own slavery ... The song came whispering through her window, into her bedroom. She lay in her bed and didn’t move. Her back was straight, unyielding on top of the straw. She stared at the wall-hanging, didn’t turn her head toward the window or pull the curtains closed. Let them holler, let them do what they liked, let the snot-nosed brats sing their hearts out, let them dance on her roof if they wanted, the tanks would be here soon enough and take out the little smart alecks.
The land, the fatherland, this land is sacred, where now we can be free. The song, our victory song, let it ring out, and soon a free Estonia we shall see!
Some years ago—was it 1988?—a crowd of young people had made its way through the village singing “Estonian, be proud and good, like your grandfathers before you, you’ll be free.” The voice of a boy in puberty had crowed, “Estonian I am and Estonian I’ll stay, for Estonian is what I was made to be,” and the others had laughed, and a long-haired boy had tossed his head proudly. Aliide was just coming out of the store, she could still hear the clack of the abacus beads, the door hinges creaking like a growling stomach, and she had just stopped to tie her scarf on tighter, putting her bag of bread down on the ground. When she heard the first lines of the song, she withdrew back into a corner of the shop, let them pass by, and looked after them. She had felt such a powerful irritation that she had forgotten the bread and left it sitting in the corner of the shop, and hadn’t noticed until she was halfway home. How dare they? How could they be so insolent? What in the world were they thinking? Or was it just envy that made her scowl and tremble, her heart pounding?
The voice outside the window was young, a little like her brother-in-law Hans’s voice used to sound back in the days of the Estonian Republic, when she had first met him. Before his songs were all sung. Before his spritely, straight, twometer frame was bent, when his bones hadn’t been made to fold—but they would be, his chubby cheeks would become sunken and his beautiful singing silenced. Let the snot-nosed brats sing! She was happy to listen. And think about Hans, beautiful Hans. She smiled in the darkness. Hans had been in a choir, too. Oh, how beautifully he had sung! When he worked in the fields in the summer days, on his way home his song would come ahead of him and make the silver willows along the road ring with sheer joy and the trunks of the apple trees hum in rhythm. Her sister, Ingel, had been terribly proud of her husband! And she was also proud that Hans had been chosen to do his service in the parliamentary guard. Only good athletes and fairly tall men were accepted into it. And Hans had been beaming with pride—an ordinary country boy, chosen to defend the Riigikogu!
1991
Läänemaa, Estonia
Aliide Finds Ingel’s Brooch and Is Horrified
Martin’s old friend Voldemar came to visit several months after independence was declared. Hiisu started to bark well before he arrived. Aliide went out to the yard, Hiisu ran to the road, and between the gray fence posts she could see a man, just as gray and thin, leading his bicycle toward her house. Stolen gold from long ago gleamed in his sunken mouth. Wrinkles had pulled his cheeks inside his skull, as if his face were drawn closed with a string. Volli had always been in the front, always wanted to be first in everything. She well remembered him barging to the front of some kind of line with his big belly and sturdy jaw, puffing out his veteran’s chest. Anger had welled up in the
hollow eyes of the people who had been in line since the wee hours of the morning, and it reached for Volli’s feet. It never caught up with his boots, even though the line was very long, because his legs weren’t weak then, they were strong and fat, and in a moment he had stepped over the threshold of one shop or another and left a wake of thick anger behind him. After he and his companions left, nothing but scraps remained on the counter. The times when Aliide happened to be standing in line when Volli cut to the front, she would disappear into her own mass so he wouldn’t notice her and say hello, so no one in the line would know that she knew the man. She didn’t want the hollow eyes of the people in line to turn and look in her direction; if he said hello to her she would have been thrust out of the line, she would have gotten an elbow in the side—but they never could have hit Volli’s well-fed sides.
Now Aliide greeted him cheerfully and offered him some coffee substitute, and they chatted about this and that. Then he said that he might have to go to court.
Her alarm was so bright that she couldn’t see for a moment.
“They’ve made up all kinds of lies about me,” he said. “It may be that they’ll even want to ask you some questions, Aliide.”
He was serious. It should have all been over and done with. Why were they coming to harass old people?
“We were all just following orders. We were good people. And now all of a sudden we’re bad. I don’t understand that.” He hung his head and started to berate Yeltsin and the young ingrates and their well-constructed nation. “Now you have to scrape for everything, and that’s supposed to be a good thing, huh?”
Aliide shut her ears to his complaining. Something to be arranged again, new plans to make—always something new, even though she didn’t have it in her, not anymore.
Volli got ready to leave. Aliide studied him. His hands were shaking, he had to hold his coffee cup in both hands, and she saw fear in those hands—not in his ashen expression, not in his crumpled face, only in his hands. Or maybe behind his mouth, too, the corners of his mouth that he was wiping with a handkerchief all the time, dabbing at them with his bony, trembling fingers. It made her shudder. He was weak now, and it filled her with vexation and a desire to kick him, wallop his back and sides with a stick—or maybe with a sandbag—till there was nothing left of him. Till his guts were like soup. That would be a method familiar to Volli. Just like an old girlfriend—kiss this! A vision flashed in her mind: Volli doddering and trembling on the ground, shielding his head, whimpering and begging for mercy. What a delicious sight. A wet splotch would spread in his pants and the sandbag would fly up again and again and hammer his hateful, weak body thoroughly, bruising his watery eyes, splintering his porous bones. But the best part would be that splotch in his pants and the howl, like an animal howl, before he died.
The vision made her breathless, and she sighed. Volli sighed, too, and said, “This is what we’ve come to.”
She promised to come and testify on his behalf if he ended up in court. Although of course she wouldn’t.
She closed the gate behind him as he pedaled off, glancing after him.
Others would come after Volli to discuss the same thing. There was no doubt about it. They thought of her as an ally, and they would insist on taking her with them. She could almost already hear how she ought to make a statement, talk to the papers, since she had always been good at talking, and women are always more likely to be believed in these situations—that’s what they would say, and they would drag the memory of Martin into it and say that Aliide had been part of building this country, and their reputations would be dragged through the mud so shamefully, and so would the memory of all the soldiers and veterans who came before us! There was no telling whose memory and reputation they would drag into it, and then they would rant about how the Soviet Union would never have allowed the heroes of the fatherland to end up using macaroni coupons.
Aliide wasn’t ever going to go anywhere or say anything about these things. Let them threaten her however they liked, she wasn’t going.
She found it hard to believe that there would be any very bold moves, because too many people had dirty flour in their bags, and people with filthy fingers are hardly enthusiastic about digging up the past. Besides, you could always find someone to defend you if a fanatical public worked itself up into a riot. They would have been called saboteurs, in the past, and put in jail to think for a while about the consequences of their actions. Stupid young people, what did they expect to achieve by rummaging around like this? Those who poke around in the past will get a stick in the eye. A beam would be better, though.
When Volli was out of sight, Aliide went inside and opened a drawer in the bureau. She took out some papers and started to sort them. Then she opened another drawer. And another. She went through every drawer, went to the washstand, the bundle in the bottom drawer, remembered the secret drawer in the kitchen table, too, and went through it. The radio cabinet. The shelf on the big looking glass. The unused suitcases. The straggly wallpaper, under which she had sometimes slipped something. The candy tins, blooming with rust. The piles of yellowed newspapers, dead flies dropping from between them. Did Martin have any other stashes?
She wiped away the spiderwebs that clung to her hair. She hadn’t found anything incriminating, just a lot of trash seeping out of every corner. The party papers and awards went in the fire, so did Talvi’s Young Pioneer badge. And the pile of the Abiks Agitator, which Martin had read every month with burning eyes: In 1960, for every ten thousand inhabitants in England there were only nine doctors, in the United States only twelve, but in the Estonian Soviet Republic there were twentytwo! In the Soviet Republic of Georgia, thirty-two! Before the war, there were no kindergartens in Albania, but now there are three hundred! We demand a happy life for all the children of the world! And what brigadiers we have!
Looking at the annual volume, with “EKP KK Propaganda and Agitation Association” printed under the title, Aliide could hear Martin’s voice trembling with fervor. A Socialist society provides the best prerequisites for the advancement of science, the advancement of economics, the conquering of space for progress! She shook her head, but Martin’s voice wouldn’t leave it. The capitalist world won’t be able to keep up with the stormlike progress of our people’s standard of living! The capitalist world will be left standing—and fall! And an unending stream of numbers: how much steel had been produced in the previous year, how much it exceeded the norm, how the annual goal had been achieved in one month—forward, always forward —still more, more, more—greater victories, greater profits —victory, victory, victory! Martin never said maybe. He was incapable of doubt, because he didn’t let his words admit the possibility. He spoke only truths.
There was so much wastepaper that Aliide had to wait for the first batch to burn before she could load more into the stove. The old paper made her skin smutty. She washed her hands all the way to the elbows, but they got filthy again immediately when she picked up the next magazine. The endless annals of the Estonian Communists. And then all of the books that had been ordered: Ideological Experiences Stumping in Viljand by K. Raaven, An Analysis of Livestock Production on Collective Farms by R. Hagelberg, A Young Communist’s Questions About Growth by Nadezda Krupskaya. The pile, glazed over with lost optimism, grew in front of her. She could have burned them all gradually, used the books for kindling, but it felt important to get rid of them all right away. It would have been smarter to look for the kinds of things that could have been used against her. Martin had always been the kind of person who knew how to watch his own back, so she was sure to find something. But the pile of trash in front of the stove annoyed her too much.
After she got going, burning books for several days, she fetched the ladder from the stable and managed to lug it over to the end of the house, though it weighed her down and dragged her arms toward the ground. Hiisu bolted after a low-flying air force plane—he’d never gotten used to them, always trying to catch them, many times a day, barki
ng at the top of his lungs. He vanished behind the fence and Aliide pushed the ladder up against the wall of the house. She hadn’t been to that side of the loft in years, so there would be plenty of mess, corners full of embarrassing phrases and theses that had to be suppressed.
An attic smell. Spiderwebs drifting against her, and a strange taste of longing. She retied her scarf under her chin and stepped forward. She left the door open and let her eyes adjust to the darkness, peering between the tops of the piles. Where should she start? The section of the attic over the end of the house was full of every possible object: spinning wheels, shuttles, shoemaker’s lasts, old potato baskets, a loom, bicycles, toys, skis, ski poles, window frames, a treadle sewing machine—a Singer that Martin had insisted on carrying up here, even though Aliide had wanted to keep it downstairs because it worked well. The women in the village had held on to their Singers, and anyone who did get a new machine chose a treadle model, because what if something happened and there was no electricity? Martin didn’t often become visibly angry and didn’t argue with his wife about household matters, but the Singer had gone, and Martin had replaced it with an electric model, a Russian Tshaika. Aliide had let it pass, reckoning that he just hated goods from Estonian times and wanted to set an example and show how they trusted Russian appliances. But the Singer was the only thing from Estonian times that he wanted to get rid of. Why the Singer, and why only it? Pick me, my lips have never been kissed, Pick me, I am a maiden true, pure, and able, Pick me, I have a Singer sewing machine, Pick me, I have a Ping-Pong table. Who was it who had sung that? Nobody around here, anyway. The young voices in Aliide’s head mixed with Martin’s snorts from years ago as he lugged the Singer up the ladder to the attic. Where had she heard that song? It was in Tallinn, when she was visiting her cousin. Why had she gone there? Was she there to see a dentist? That was the only possible reason. Her cousin had taken her to town, and she had passed a student group that was singing, “Take me, I have a Singer sewing machine.” And the students had laughed so lightly. They had their whole lives ahead of them, the future leading them forward at full steam, the girls with their short skirts and high, shiny boots. Chiffon scarves rippling in their hair and around their necks. Her cousin had lamented the shortness of the skirts goodnaturedly, but she was wearing a chiffon scarf just like theirs on her head. They were all the rage, those chiffon scarves. The expressions on the young people’s faces had been full of possibility. Her future was already over. The song kept ringing in her ears all day. No, all week. It mixed with the milk that sprayed into her pail, the muddy bottoms of her galoshes, her steps as she walked across the field of the kolkhoz collective farm and saw Martin’s excitement at how the collective was thriving, his excitement about the future, which had rolled over Aliide’s heart like a heavy cart, as sturdy as a lug nut, like the muscles of Stakhanov, the heroic miner, inescapable, inexorable.