The rapid-fire yelling over the sound of the radio made Zara pant, she pressed against her chest to get it to settle down, opened the buttons of her dress, and found it hard to recognize in this woman in front of her the same Aliide who had been jabbering away calmly a little while ago. This woman was cold and hard, and she wasn’t getting anything out of her.
“I think you should go to sleep now. There’s a lot to think about tomorrow—like what to do about your husband, if you still remember that problem.” Under the blankets in the front room, Zara was still gasping for breath. Aliide had recognized her grandmother.
Grandmother hadn’t been a thief or a Fascist. Or had she?
There was a slap of the flyswatter in the kitchen. —Paul-Eerik Rummo
PART TWO
Seven million years
we heard the führer’s speeches, the same
seven million years
we saw the apple trees bloom
June 1949
Free Estonia!
I have Ingel’s cup here. I would have liked to have her pillow, too, but Liide wouldn’t give it to me. She made herself at home again; she’s trying to do her hair the same as Ingel’s. Maybe she’s just trying to cheer me up, but it looks ugly. But I can’t bad-mouth her, because she brings me food and everything. And if I get her mad, she won’t let me out of here. She doesn’t show her anger; she just won’t let me out or bring me any food. I went hungry for two days the last time. It was probably because I asked for Ingel’s nightgown. No more bread.
When she lets me out, I try to please her, chat pleasantly and make her laugh a little, praise her cooking—she likes that. Last week she made me a six-egg cake. I didn’t ask how she came by that many eggs, but she wanted to know if the cake wasn’t better than the ones Ingel makes. I didn’t answer. Now I’m trying to think of something nice to say. I sleep with my Walther and my knife beside me in here. I wonder what’s keeping England?
Hans Pekk, son of Eerik, Estonian peasant
1936–1939
Läänemaa, Estonia
Aliide Eats a Five-Petaled Lilac and Falls in Love
On Sundays after church Aliide and Ingel had a habit of walking to the graveyard to meet their friends and watch the boys, flirting as much as the bounds of decency permitted. In church they always sat near the grave of Princess Augusta of Koluvere, twirling their ankles and waiting to get out and display themselves at the graveyard, to show off their ankles, stylishly and expensively covered in black silk stockings, to step out prettily, looking their best, beautiful and ready to give eligible suitors the eye. Ingel had braided her hair and wrapped it in a crown on top of her head. Aliide had left her braids down on her neck, because she was younger. That morning she had talked about cutting her hair. She had seen such charmant electric permanent waves on the city girls—you could get one for two krooni—but Ingel had been horrified and said that she shouldn’t say anything about it where mother could hear.
The morning was especially gentle for some reason, and the lilacs especially intoxicating. Aliide had begun to feel like an adult, and as she pinched her cheeks in front of the mirror, she was quite sure that something wonderful would happen to her this summer—why else would she have found a lilac with five petals? That had to portend something, especially since she had dutifully eaten the flower.
When the congregation finally came murmuring out of the church, the girls could go on their walk under the spruce trees in the graveyard, ferns brushing against their legs, squirrels running along the limbs, the well creaking now and then. Farther off, crows were croaking; what did they foretell about suitors? Ingel hummed, “vaak vaak kellest kahest paar saab”—caw, caw, crow above, which of us will fall in love—the future shone down from the sky and life was good. The anticipation of years to come burned in their breasts, as it generally does for young girls.
The two sisters had just made one full circuit of the graveyard, sometimes whispering with each other and sometimes stopping to chat with friends, when Aliide’s silk dress got stuck on a curl of the iron fence surrounding a grave, and she bent over to pull it loose. That was when she saw a man near the German graves, next to the stone wall, saw the pussy willows, the sunshine and the mossy wall, the bright light, his bright laugh. He was laughing with someone; he bent over to tie his shoes and kept talking, turned his face toward his friends as he tied his shoelace and stood up as smoothly as he had bent down. Aliide forgot her dress and stood up before she had gotten her hem loose. The sound of tearing silk awakened her, and she pulled the fabric free, brushing the bits of rust off her hands. Thank goodness it was a small tear. Maybe no one would notice it. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. Aliide smoothed her hair with numb hands. Look. Aliide bit her lips to redden them. They could easily turn back, go past the stone wall. Look over here.
Look at me. The man ended his conversation and turned toward them. He turned toward them, and at that same moment Ingel turned to see what was keeping her sister, and just then the sun struck the crown of hair on her head and— No, no! Look at me!—Ingel straightened her neck the way she often did and when she did that she resembled a swan; she lifted her chin, and they saw each other, Ingel and the man. Aliide knew at once that he would never see her when she saw how he stopped speaking, how the pack of cigarettes he had taken out of his pocket stopped in midmotion, how he stopped in the middle of a word and stared at Ingel and how the top of the cigarette pack flashed like a knife in his hand. Ingel moved closer to Aliide, her gaze focused on him, the skin over her collarbone shining, an invitation rising up from the pit at the base of her throat. Without glancing at Aliide, she grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the stone wall where the man was standing motionless, and now even his friend had noticed that he wasn’t listening, that the hand that held the cigarettes was stopped high up, where his ribs began, and now his friend saw Ingel, pulling Aliide behind her, although Aliide resisted at every step, holding on to headstones, roots, whatever she could find. The heel of her shoe dug into the dirt again and again, but the earth betrayed her, the roots betrayed her, the spruce trees gave way, the grass slid under her, the stones rolled away under her feet, and a horsefly flew into her mouth, and she couldn’t cough it out because Ingel didn’t want to stop, they had to keep going, Ingel pulled and pulled and the path was clear and led straight to the stone wall, and Aliide saw the man’s blank expression, outside of time and space, and felt Ingel’s fevered steps and the tight grip on her fingers. Ingel’s pulse was pounding against Aliide’s hand as all of her familiar expressions flowed over her face and she left them behind and they slapped Aliide in the face in wet, salty tatters and stuck to her cheeks, some of them flying past like ghosts, already gone, and the dimple in her cheek as she laughed with Aliide that morning burst forth as it flew away. When they got to the wall, Aliide’s sister had become a stranger, a new Ingel who would no longer tell her secrets only to Aliide, who would no longer go to the park to drink seltzer with Aliide; she would be going with someone else. A new Ingel who had someone else, someone to hear her thoughts and laughter and all the things that Aliide would have wanted to hear. Someone with skin she wanted to smell, with body heat that she wanted to mix with her own. Someone who should have looked at Aliide, seen her, and frozen when he saw her; it should have been for her that his hand with the silver cigarette packet stopped in the air. But it had been Ingel who was cut away by the flash of that bright knife, cut out of Aliide’s life.
Aino, the neighbor, ran to where they were. She knew the man’s friend and introduced Ingel to them. The willow rustled. The man didn’t even look at Aliide to say hello. The three lions of Estonia on the cigarette pack were splashed with sunlight, laughing.
*** Ingel again. Always Ingel. Ingel always got everything she wanted, and she always would, because God never stopped mocking Aliide. It wasn’t enough that Ingel always remembered the little tricks that Mother taught her, washed the dishes in potato water to make them shine. It wasn’t enough that Ingel didn’t forge
t what she was told like Aliide, whose dishes were always still greasy after she washed them. No, Ingel knew how to do everything without even being taught. From the first time she milked the cows, Ingel’s bucket was filled to the rim with white froth, and Ingel’s footsteps in the field made the grain grow better than anyone else’s. But even that wasn’t enough. No, Ingel had to get a man, too, the man that Aliide had seen first. The only man that Aliide had ever wanted.
It would have been reasonable to let Aliide have at least something, to let her have just one man in her clumsy life; it would have been only right to just this once let her have what she wanted, since from the day she was born she had watched how Ingel’s milk hadn’t even needed to be strained, because everything she did was clean and perfect, and she won the Young Farmers milking competition easily. Aliide had seen how the rules didn’t apply to Ingel, how no animal hair fell in Ingel’s bucket, and she never got pimples. Her sweat smelled like violets and women’s troubles didn’t make her slim waist swell up. Mosquitos didn’t leave bites on her clear complexion and worms didn’t eat her cabbages. The jam Ingel made didn’t spoil and her sauerkraut didn’t go bad. The fruit of her hands was always blessed, her Young Farmers badge shone on her breast brighter than the rest, its four leaves never scratched, while her little sister lost her badges one after another and made her mother first shake her head and then give up shaking it, because her mother understood that it didn’t matter if she shook her head at Aliide or not; nothing helped.
It wasn’t enough that Ingel got Hans, the only man who had ever made Aliide’s heart stop—no, not even that was enough. After she met Hans, Ingel’s vaunted beauty and heavenly smile had to start to glow even more brightly, blindingly. Even on a rainy night, they lit up the whole yard, filled the shed until there was no air for Aliide, who would wake up at night gasping for breath, stumbling to open the door. And that wasn’t enough, either; Aliide’s trials grew, although she wouldn’t have thought it possible. They grew because Ingel couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself, she had to whisper about Hans constantly, Hans this and Hans that. And she would insist that Aliide look at him, his expressions, his gestures. Were they loving enough? Did he look at anyone else, or did he only have eyes for her? What did he mean when he said this or that? What did it mean when he gave her a cornflower? Did it mean love? Love for only her? And it did, it did mean love for only her! Hans followed her scent like a lovesick dog.
The murmuring and purring and cooing swept over the house so quickly that within a year a bottle of liquor showed up on the table for the proposal; then there were the wedding arrangements, and Ingel’s bridal chest fattened up like a pig, and her waving the things around and the quilting bees and the giggling girls and the evening dances, and then the new moon came, bringing good luck and health to the young couple. The wedding this and the wedding that and the happy couple to church and back. The people waiting, the little veil fluttering, and Aliide dancing in her black silk stockings and telling everyone how happy she was for her sister’s sake, now their little home would have a young man of the house! Hans’s white gloves shone, and although he danced one dance with Aliide, he looked right through her, at Ingel, turned his head to watch for the flash of her veil.
Hans and Ingel together in the field. Ingel running to meet him. Hans picking pieces of straw out of her hair. Hans grabbing his new bride around the waist and spinning her around in the yard. Ingel running behind the barn, Hans running after her, laughing chuckling giggling. From one day, week, year, to the next. Hans pulling off his shirt and Ingel’s hands flying to him, his skin, Ingel pouring water over his back, his toes curling with pleasure as she washed his hair. Whispers, murmurs, the quiet shush of the bedclothes at night. The rustle of the straw mattress and the squeak of the iron bedstead. Stirrings and giggles. Sighs. Moans pressed into the pillow and whimpers covered with a hand. The heat of sweat drifting through the wall to Aliide’s tortured bed. The silence, and then Hans opening the window onto the summer night, leaning on the window frame without a shirt and smoking a hand-rolled paperossi, his head shining in the dark. If Aliide went right up to her window, she could see him, his cigarette held in his veined, longfingered hand, the burning tip dropping into the bed of carnations.
1939
Läänemaa, Estonia
Granny Kreel’s Crows Go Silent
Aliide went to see Maria Kreel at her croft. Granny Kreel’s evil eye and ability to stanch bleeding were famous as far back as when Aliide was born, and she didn’t doubt the woman’s abilities.
It made the visit awkward to have Granny Kreel see her situation; Aliide would have preferred not having her know anything about her torment, but she had no other place to turn to.
Maria Kreel was sitting on the bench in the yard with her cats. She said she had been expecting her.
“Do you know what it’s about, Miss Kreel?”
“A light-haired boy, young and handsome.”
Her toothless mouth swallowed a lump of bread.
Aliide placed a jar of honey on the steps. Bundles of herbs hung from the frame of the gate; a nearby crow stared at them. Aliide was afraid of it; as a child they’d been frightened by stories of people turned into crows. There had been a flock of cawing crows in Granny Kreel’s yard the first time she came there, too, when father had cut his foot with the ax. The old woman had ordered the others out of the room while she stayed there with him. The children didn’t enjoy being in the kitchen, anyway—there were strange smells there and Aliide’s nose got stuffed up. There was a large jar of maggots on the table for wounds.
The crow fluttered behind the bench and into the soughing trees, and the old woman nodded at it, as if in greeting. The sun beamed brightly but it felt chilly in the yard. The dark kitchen was visible through the open door. There was a pile of pillows in the entryway. Glowing white pillows. Their lace edges curled between the dark and the light. Death pillows. Granny Kreel collected them.
“Have you had anyone come to visit?”
“Always have visitors. Always a full house.”
Aliide moved farther from the door.
“Looks like we might have poor hay weather,” Granny Kreel continued, and popped another piece of bread in her mouth. “But that probably don’t interest you. Have you heard what the crows are saying, Aliide?”
Aliide was startled. The old lady laughed and said the crows had been quiet for several days. She was right; Aliide searched for more birds—there were plenty of them, but they weren’t making a sound. She heard the mewing of a cat from behind the house, blubbering, in heat, and the old woman called to it. The next moment the cat was there beside the old woman’s cane, rubbing against her, and she pushed the cat toward Aliide.
“Don’t know how she keeps it up,” the old woman said, squinting at Aliide through her watery eyelids, making her blush. “That’s just the way she is. On a day like this, the crows are quiet, but nothing will quiet a cat in heat.”
What did she mean, a day like this? Was the weather going to get bad? Would there be a bad harvest? Hunger? Or was she talking about Russia? Or Aliide’s life? Was something going to happen to Hans? The cat rubbed up against Aliide’s leg and she bent over to pet it. It pushed its rear end against the back of her hand and she pulled away. The old woman laughed. It was a gloomy laugh, knowing and muffled. Aliide’s hand tingled. Her whole body tingled as if there were blades of straw in the muscle trying to break out through her skin, and her haunted mind whispered to her that she just had to go to the Kreel place today, even though Hans was home alone with Ingel. Father was with Mother at the neighbors’, and she was here. When she got home Hans would smell twice as much a man and Ingel twice as much a woman, like they did whenever they were alone together for even a moment, and the thought only made the stinging under Aliide’s skin worse.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and Maria Kreel got up and went inside, closing the door behind her. Aliide didn’t know if it was time for her to leave o
r if she should wait, but then the old woman came right back out with a little brown glass bottle in her hands, wearing a grin that pulled the edges of her mouth inward. Aliide took the bottle. When she had closed the gate, the old woman whispered after her:
“That boy has a black mark on him.”
“Can I make it...”
“Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.” “So that he doesn’t see anyone but me?”
“Little girl, desperate dirt grows poor flowers.” Aliide left the farm at a run; her leather shoes flew with each long stride, and the bottle she’d got from the old lady warmed in her hands, though her fingers were cold and bloodless. Was there nothing that would stop the pounding pain in her chest?
Ingel was giggling in the yard, fetching water from the well, her braids undone and her cheeks red, wearing only her underdress.
Friedebert Tuglas’s Birdcherry Blossoms was waiting on Aliide’s bed. On Ingel’s bed, a man waited. Why was everything so wrong?