Aliide aimed her flashlight at the sewing machine again. Singer, above all the rest. She remembered the ads from a world ago in Taluperenaine magazine very well. Under the cabinet top there was a box full of junk, sewing machine oil and little brushes, broken needles and bits of ribbon. She got down on her knees and looked at the underside of the cabinet top. The nails there were smaller than on the rest of the cabinet. She pushed the machine over and went carefully down the ladder, got an ax from the kitchen, and tottered back up the ladder to the attic. The ax made short work of the sewing machine.
She found a little bag in the middle of one of the piles. Martin’s old tobacco pouch. It had old gold coins and gold teeth in it. A gold watch, with Theodor Kruus’s name engraved on it. Her sister Ingel’s brooch, which had disappeared that night in the basement of town hall.
Aliide sat down on the floor.
Martin hadn’t been there. Not Martin.
Although Aliide’s head had been covered and she hadn’t really been able to see anything, she still remembered every sound, every smell, every man’s footsteps from that basement. None of them belonged to Martin. That’s why she had accepted him.
So how did Martin come to have Ingel’s brooch?
The next day Aliide took the bicycle down the road into the woods. When she was far enough away, she left the bike by the side of the road, walked out toward the swamp, and threw in the pouch, in a great arch.
1992
Läänemaa, Estonia
Pasha’s Car Is Getting Closer and Closer
Zara rinsed the last raspberries of the year, picked out the worms, threw out the ones that were completely wormeaten, trimmed the half-eaten ones, and tipped the cleaned berries into a bowl. At the same time she tried to figure out a way to ask Aliide about the rocks hitting the window, the “tibla” written on the door. At first Zara had been startled, thinking that it referred to her, but even her stumbling intellect told her that Pasha and Lavrenti wouldn’t take up that kind of game. It was intended for Aliide, but why would someone harass an old woman that way? How did Aliide manage to remain calm at a time like that? She was puttering away at the stove like nothing had happened, even humming, nodding approvingly at Zara’s bowl of berries now and then, and shoving a ladleful of foam skimmed from the boiling pot of jam into Zara’s hand. It seemed Talvi had always begged to be the first to have some. Zara started to empty the ladle obediently. The sweetness of the foam made her teeth twinge. Worms moved around on top of the discarded berries and made the bowl’s enameled flowers come alive. Aliide was unnaturally calm. She sat down on a stool next to the stove to watch the soup, her walking stick leaning against the wall. The swatter rested in her arms, and she used it now and then to slap at the occasional fly. Her galoshes gleamed even in the dark of the kitchen. The sweet scent that rose from the cooking pots mixed with the drying celery and the smell of sweat brought on by the heat of the kitchen. It muddled Zara’s brain. The scarf, which was drooping onto her neck, smelled like Aliide. It was difficult to breathe. New questions kept coming up, even though she hadn’t yet got any answers to her first ones. How did Aliide Truu live in this house? What did the rocks that hit the window mean? Would Talvi get here before Pasha did? Zara fidgeted impatiently. The roof of her mouth was sticky. Aliide hadn’t had much to say since she gave her explanation for the scrawlings on the door and the rain of stones, and it was torture. How could Zara get her babbling about her troubles again? Aliide had been angry when they talked about the rise in prices—maybe she should ask her about that. Was it a safe subject? The price of eggs nowadays, or soup bones? Or sugar? Aliide had muttered that she should start growing sugar beets again, the way things are now. But what could Zara ask her about it? Over the past year she had forgotten all the normal ways of being with people— how to get to know a person, how to have a conversation— and she couldn’t think of a segue to break the silence. Besides, time was running out and Aliide’s imperturbability scared her. What if Aliide was crazy? Maybe the stones and windows didn’t mean anything for Zara’s purposes; maybe she should just concentrate on doing something—and quickly. The raspberry seeds wedged between her teeth and wrenched at their roots. She could taste blood in them. The clock ticked metallically, the fire burned one stick of wood after another, the baskets of berries emptied, Aliide skimmed the foam and the worms that rose to the top with lunatic precision, and Pasha came closer. Every single minute he was getting closer. His car wouldn’t break down, and it wouldn’t run out of gas, and it wouldn’t be stolen—those kinds of things, delays that mere mortals experienced, didn’t happen to Pasha, because the problems of ordinary people didn’t touch him, and because Pasha always got his way. You couldn’t depend on Pasha having bad luck. He didn’t have bad luck. He had money luck, the only good kind, and he was getting inexorably closer.
Zara’s eye didn’t latch on to anything in the house, no old photographs, no books or inscriptions. She had to think of something else. The photo was there in her pocket.
Aliide went to get some jar lids from the pantry, and
Zara decided to act.
1991
Berlin, Germany
The Photograph That Zara’s Grandmother Gave Her
In the photograph, two young girls are standing side by side and staring at the camera but not daring to smile. Their dresses fall over their hips slightly askew. The hem of one of them is higher on the right than on the left. It may have been ripped. The other one is standing up straighter, and she has a high bust and a slim waist. She’s placed one foot assertively ahead of the other so that its slender form, cloaked in a black stocking, would show well in the picture. There is some kind of badge on the breast of her dress, a four-leafed clover. It wasn’t clearly visible in the photo, but Zara knew that it was a badge from a rural youth organization, because her grandmother had told her about it. And as Zara looked at the photo now she saw something that she hadn’t understood before. There was something very innocent in the girls’ faces, and that innocence shone out at her from their round cheeks in a way that embarrassed her. Maybe she hadn’t noticed it before because she herself had worn the same expression, the same innocence, but now that she had lost it, she could recognize it in their faces. The expression of someone unacquainted with reality. The expression of a time when the future still existed and anything was possible.
Her grandmother had given her the photo before she left for Germany. In case anything happened to her while Zara was away. All kinds of things can happen to old people, and if anything did happen, the photo would already have a head start; it would save Zara the time it took to come and get it. Zara had tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t give the idea up. Zara’s mother thought that anything old was trash, so she wouldn’t save any old pictures. Zara had nodded—she knew that side of her mother —and taken the photo and kept it, even when it was practically impossible, and she would keep it from now on; even if everything else she owned was lost and the shirt on her back belonged to Pasha, she would keep that picture, even if there was nothing in her body that she could call her own, if all her bodily functions depended on Pasha’s permission, even if she couldn’t go to the toilet without Pasha’s permission, or use a tampon or a wad of cotton or anything, because Pasha thought they were too expensive.
In addition to the photograph, her grandmother had given her a card with the address of the place where she was born written on the back, the name of the village and the house. Oak House. In case, on her great world travels, Zara should find herself in Estonia. The idea had surprised her, but it seemed self-evident to her grandmother.
“Germany’s right next to Estonia! Go and see it, now that you have a chance to do it so easily.”
Her grandmother’s eyes had lit up when she told her she was going to work in Germany. Her mother hadn’t been enthusiastic. She was never enthusiastic about anything, but she particularly didn’t like these plans; she thought the West was a dangerous place. The high pay didn’t change her op
inion. Her grandmother didn’t care about the money, either, instead insisting that she use the money to visit Estonia.
“Remember, Zara. You’re not a Russian girl, you’re an Estonian girl. And you can buy some seeds at the market and send them to me! I want Estonian flowers on my windowsill!”
The back of the photograph read, “For Aliide, from her sister.” She had also written the name Aliide Truu on the card. No one had ever told Zara anything about Aliide Truu before.
“Who is Aliide Truu, Grandmother?”
“My sister. My little sister. Or she used to be. She may already be dead. You can inquire about her. Whether anyone knows her.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that you had a sister?”
“Aliide got married and moved away early on. And then the war came. And we moved here. But you have to go and look at the house. Then you can tell me who lives there and what it looks like now. I’ve told you before what it was like.”
As her mother walked with her to the door on her last day at home, Zara put her suitcase down on the floor and asked her mother why she had never told her about her aunt.
This time, her mother answered her.
“I don’t have an aunt.”
1992
Läänemaa, Estonia
Thieves’ Tales Only Interest Other Thieves
When Aliide went into the pantry, Zara took the picture out of her pocket and waited. Aliide would have to respond to it somehow, say something, tell her something, anything at all. Something had to happen when Aliide saw the photograph. Zara’s heart was pounding. But when Aliide came back into the kitchen and Zara waved the photo in front of her and said with a gasp that it had fallen from between the cupboard and the wall, right through a hole in the wallpaper, there was nothing in Aliide’s expression to indicate that she knew who the girls in the photo were.
“What’s it a picture of?”
“It says, ‘For Aliide, from her sister.’”
“I don’t have a sister.”
She turned the radio up louder. They were just finishing up the last words of an open letter from a Communist and were moving on to other points of view. “Give it to me.”
Aliide’s commanding voice compelled Zara to give her the picture, and she snatched it quickly.
“What’s her name?” Zara asked.
Aliide turned the radio up even louder.
“What’s her name?” Zara said again.
“What?”
. . . Since there’s no milk to give to our children, and no candy, how can they grow up to be healthy? Should we teach them to eat nettles and dandelion greens? I pray with all my heart that our country can have . . .
“Women like that were called enemies of the state back then.”
. . . enough bread and something to put on it, too . . .
“What about your sister?”
“What about her? She was a thief and a traitor.”
Zara turned the radio down.
Aliide didn’t look at her. Zara could hear the indignation in her breath. Her earlobes were turning red.
“So, she was a bad person. How bad? What did she do?”
“She stole grain from the kolkhoz and was arrested.”
“She stole some grain?”
“She behaved the way predators behave. She stole from the people.”
“Why didn’t she steal something more valuable?”
Aliide turned the radio up again.
“Didn’t you ask her?”
“Ask her what?”
. . . Across the centuries, a slave’s mentality has been programmed into our genes, which only recognizes money and force, and so we shouldn’t wonder if . . .
“Ask her why she stole the grain.”
“Don’t you people in Vladivostok know what liquor is made from?”
“It sounds like the act of a hungry person to me.”
Aliide turned the radio all the way up.
. . . for the sake of domestic peace we should ask some great power to defend us. Germany, for example. Only a dictatorship could put an end to Estonia’s present corruption and get the economy in order . . .
“You must have never been hungry, Aliide, because you didn’t steal any grain.”
Aliide pretended to listen to the radio, hummed over it, and grabbed some garlic to peel. The garlic skins started falling on the photograph. There was a magazine under it, Nelli Teataja. The logo on the cover, a black silhouette of an old woman, was still visible. Zara pulled the radio plug out of the wall. The rattle of the refrigerator ate up the silence, the garlic rumbled into the bowl like boulders, the plug burned in Zara’s hand.
“Don’t you think it’s time you sat down and relaxed?” Aliide said.
“Where did she steal it from?”
“From the field. You can see it from this window. Why are you interested in the carryings-on of a thief?”
“But that field belonged to this house.”
“No, it belonged to the kolkhoz.”
“But before that.”
“Before that, this was a Fascist house.”
“Are you a Fascist, Aliide?”
“I’m a good Communist. Why don’t you sit down, dear? Where I come from, guests sit down when they are asked, or else they leave.”
“So, if you were never a Fascist, then when did you move here?”
“I was born here. Turn the radio back on.”
“I don’t understand. You mean that your sister stole from her own fields?”
“From the kolkhoz’s fields! Turn that radio back on, young lady. Where I come from, guests don’t behave like they own the place. Maybe where you come from you don’t know any other way to behave.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just got interested in your sister’s story. What happened to her?”
“She was taken away. Why are you interested in a thief’s story? Thieves’ stories only interest other thieves.”
“Where did they take her?”
“Wherever they take enemies of the people.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean, then what?”
Aliide got up, shoved Zara out of the way with her stick, and plugged the radio back into the wall.
. . . A slave’s spirit longs for the whip, and once in a while a Russian prianiki cake . . .
“What happened after that?”
The photo was covered with garlic skins. The radio was so loud that the skins trembled.
“How is it that you’re here, Aliide, but your sister was taken away? Didn’t that put you under suspicion?”
Aliide made no sign that she had heard; she just yelled, “Put some more wood on the fire!”
“Was it because you had such a good background? You were such a good party member?”
The garlic skins danced off the edge of the table and drifted to the floor. Aliide got up to throw them on the fire. Zara turned the radio down and stood in front of it.
“Were you a good comrade, Aliide?”
“I was good, and so was my husband, Martin. He was a party organizer. From an old Estonian Communist family, not like those opportunists that came later. He had medals. Awards.”