Zara focused her gaze on Aliide’s coffee cup. If she really concentrated on some object, she could do a better job of answering anything she was asked. The yellowish porcelain had black cracks in it like a trace of spiderweb. The sides of the cup were translucent and reminded her of young skin, although the cup was old. It was shallow and daintily shaped. It had a refinement that belonged to a different world than the other kitchen things, a vanished world. Zara hadn’t seen any other dishes in the cupboard that could have belonged to the same set, although of course she didn’t know what all of Aliide’s dishes were like, only the ones that were on view. Aliide had drunk coffee, milk, and water out of it, only rinsing it between uses. It was obviously her favorite cup. Zara followed its cracks and waited for the next question.
Aliide pushed the bowl of tomatoes toward her.
“It was a good harvest this year.”
A fly was walking among the tomatoes.
Zara bent over the bowl.
Aliide swatted at the fly.
“They only lay their eggs on meat.”
Aliide’s interest was piqued. She tried to coax something out of the girl about this fascination with Finland, but she didn’t show any more curiosity about Talvi, or electronics. She just clinked her fork against her plate, her mouth diligently eating the ear, her coffee cup clattering, taking great gulps that you could hear over the sound of the radio, and now and then touching the stubble on her head. Her chest heaved. It was the car that got the girl worked up, not the new television or anything else. Maybe she really didn’t care about them, or maybe she was just devilishly clever. But could such a dishrag of a girl be a decoy? Or even a thief? Aliide could spot a thief. This girl didn’t have quick enough eyes. She carried herself like a dog that has to constantly look out for kids trying to step on its tail. Her expression was always going into hiding, her body always pulling itself into a huddle. Thieves were never like that, not even the ones who were beaten to teach them the trade. And the mention of gifts from Finland hadn’t brought any color to her cheeks or sparked any interest. The expression that Aliide had been expecting, that familiar gleam of greed, that quiver of awe in her voice, never came. Or did she want to steal the car?
Anyway, Aliide had tested her by leaving her alone in the kitchen and going outside, then peeking in the window, but the girl hadn’t dashed for her handbag or even glanced at the bills lying on the table, although Aliide had scattered them there on purpose, had picked one up as a topic of conversation later on, held up the bills and said, “Look at these, they’re almost two months old, kroon bills, we don’t have rubles anymore—can you imagine?” She had chattered for a long time about the currency reform day, the twentieth of June, and after that she had stuck the money in a corner of the cupboard, but the girl had taken no notice. While Aliide jabbered about the fall in the value of currency and how rubles had turned into toilet paper, there was a faraway look in the girl’s eyes, and she nodded politely now and then, snatching up a word into her consciousness and then letting it go without reacting. Later Aliide went to check and counted the bills when she wasn’t around. They hadn’t been touched. Aliide had also tried to drop hints about the handsomeness of her woods, but she hadn’t seen even the smallest bit of interest in the girl’s eyes.
Instead, when she was left alone she rubbed her arms and fell to examining the sugar bowl from the old Estonian days that was on the table, tracing its cracks and pattern with her finger and looking through it at the kitchen. No thief would be interested in a broken dish. Aliide had tried the same trick in the other room, leaving the girl there by herself while she went to fetch some water from the well. Before she went, she pushed one of the curtains away from the window just enough to be able to peek in from the yard and see what her guest was up to. She had been strolling around the room and went over to the wardrobe, but she didn’t open it, not even a drawer, she just stroked the outside of it, and even put her cheek up against its white paint, smelled the pinks on the table, smoothed out the embroidered poppies, lilies of the valley, and little wreaths embroidered along the black edge of the tablecloth, felt their green leaves and fixed her eye firmly on the fabric as if she wanted to learn to embroider herself. If she was a thief, she was the world’s worst.
Aliide had called Aino before the girl woke up and told her that she felt feverish and didn’t feel up to going to get her aid package today. She still had milk left—Aino could bring it over some other time. Aino had wanted to keep talking, about Kersti, who had seen a strange light on the road in the woods—it was a UFO, and Kersti had fainted and didn’t come to until an hour later, there in the road. She couldn’t remember if the UFO had taken her anywhere. Aliide interrupted Aino and said she felt very weak and should go lie down, and she almost slammed down the receiver in Aino’s ear. She had enough strangeness to contemplate in her own home. She had to get rid of this girl before Aino or someone else from the village came to visit. What in the world had possessed her to let the girl spend the night?
The girl ate noisily. Her cheeks glowed like the skin of a cinnamon apple. The thought of the car gleamed in her eyes, although it was clear she was trying to hide her excitement. She wasn’t a very good actor—she wouldn’t fool anyone that way. And what was she up to with that haircut? That sawed-off hairdo would attract a lot more attention than her old one.
Aliide went to the pantry to get some pickles. The marigold cream that she had made for Talvi was hardening in the cupboard in front of the selection of pickles she had canned. It was the only thing that Talvi would agree to take from here back to Finland. Her skin liked the cream and she hadn’t learned to make it herself. She never took any pickles with her, although she liked them when she was here. She could have fit any number of jars in the backseat, but when Aliide tried to sneak them into the car, Talvi took them out again. Did the girl who was poking around in the kitchen want to steal Talvi’s car, or just want to make an escape? Aliide wasn’t sure.
She’d heard that the Finns didn’t put horseradish in their pickles, that was the difference.
She sat down at the table and offered the girl some slices of pickle with dill and sour cream, and jars of cucumber relish and sour pickles.
“I had an especially good harvest this year.”
***
Zara couldn’t decide what kind of pickles to take, so she reached for the sour pickles first, then the bowl of sour cream, and her hand shook, and the bowl fell to the floor. The crash made her jump out of her chair and her hands flew up over her ears. She was ruining everything again. The enamel bowl lay overturned next to the rag rug, streaks of cream across the gray cement floor. Luckily it wasn’t a glass bowl, so she hadn’t broken anything, at least. She might break something soon if she couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking. She had to get them under control and get Aliide to understand that she didn’t have much time. Aliide looked like she still wasn’t angry at Zara for making another mess; she just fetched a rag and started cleaning it up, shushing soothingly. No harm done. When it finally occurred to Zara to help her, her hands were still trembling.
“Zara dear, it’s just a bowl of pickles. Sit back down, now.”
Zara repeated that it was an accident, but Aliide didn’t seem interested and interrupted her apologies.
“Your husband must have money, then?”
Zara went back to her chair. She should just concentrate now on talking with Aliide nicely and not making any more messes in her home. Be a good girl, Zara. Don’t think, since you can’t think right now anyway. Just answer the questions. You can talk about the car later.
“Yes he does.”
“A lot?”
“A lot.”
“Why was such a rich man’s wife working as a waitress?”
Zara plucked at her earlobe. There was no earring there, just a faintly flushed hole. How should she answer Aliide’s question? She was stupid, slow to come up with anything, but if she didn’t say something Aliide would think she was hiding somethin
g very bad. Could she keep claiming to have worked as a waitress and still be convincing? Aliide was sizing her up and she was starting to get nervous again. There was no way she was going to handle this thing well. Maybe Pasha was right, she needed a good whipping. Maybe he was right when he said she was the kind of person who just didn’t know how to behave unless you took a stick to them. Maybe there really was something wrong with her—an inherent flaw. Maybe she really was good for nothing. And while she was thinking about how unsuccessful she’d been at behaving correctly, words started to fly out of her mouth before she could think clearly about what they meant. OK, she wasn’t a waitress! She pressed against the empty hole in her earlobe, her other hand going up to rub the pit at the base of her collarbone. Her head and mouth and she herself were separate; there was suddenly nothing connecting the three of them. The story just streamed out and she couldn’t order it back in. She told Aliide that they had been on vacation in Canada, at a five-star hotel, driving around all day in a black car. And she had her own fur for every day of the week, and separate evening furs and daytime furs, inside furs and outside furs.
“Oooh! That must have been thrilling.”
Zara wiped the edge of her mouth. She was ashamed, her face was burning. And she did what she always did when she was overcome with shame: She focused her gaze and her thoughts on something else. Aliide, the kitchen, and the pot of pigs’ ears disappeared. She stared at her hands. The froth left on her finger from where she had wiped her mouth looked like snake’s spit on a raspberry leaf. A spit bug. She focused on that, a little animal was always best when you had to move your mind away from your body. A spit bug larva hiding in a ball of spit, and the ball protects it from enemies and from drying out. Where had she heard that? In school? She remembered the soothing rustle of her school book. The smell of paper and glue. She listened to the rustling in her head for a moment, willing her thoughts toward a dry page from her schoolbook, and composed herself, left the spit bug behind and let the Vikerraadio program back into her ears, her mind back into Aliide’s kitchen, with its cracked floor, oilcloth, and aluminum spoons. A jar of vitamin C sitting on a corner of the table, safe Cyrillic letters and words, sugarcoated tablets, vitamin C, the government’s GOST category numbers, the familiar brown glass. She reached toward it and repeated in her mind the calming Russian words on the label, clicked open the lid— a familiar sound. As a child she had often secretly eaten the whole bottle, the tart, bright orange flavor rushing through her mouth, the smell of the pharmacy. They used to get them from the pharmacy. Her pulse was already normal when she turned to Aliide and apologized for getting excited and told her she wanted just to sound normal and ordinary. She didn’t want Aliide to think she was putting on airs.
Aliide laughed.
“The young lady doesn’t want to sound like a thief.”
“Maybe.”
“Or a Mafia man’s wife.”
“Maybe.”
Aliide didn’t say anything more about it or ask why Zara couldn’t go back to Russia or go home.
The clock ticked. The fire hummed in the stove. Zara’s tongue felt stiff. The cracks in the cement floor looked hazy, as if they were moving all the time, ever so slightly.
“So that’s it,” Aliide said finally, getting up from the table and swinging a flyswatter at the lamp, around which several two-winged creatures circled. Then she went to boil some jars in the kettle. “Come and help me. The liquor socks must have helped—you don’t look like you caught a chill, anyway. I’ll find a scarf for you in a minute, so you can cover that head.”
1991
Berlin, Germany
Zara Puts on a Red Leather Skirt and Learns Some Manners
A light shone through the keyhole. Zara awoke on a mattress next to the door. Pus had drained from her inflamed earlobe; she could smell it. She groped for the beer bottle on the floor. The mouth of the bottle was sticky, and the beer made her throat feel the same way, go from dry to sticky and rough. Her feet touched the door frame. Pasha and Lavrenti were sitting on the other side of the door. The nicotine-yellowed tatters in the wallpaper moved in rhythm with Pasha’s cold breath, but there was nothing alarming in that. Or was there? Zara listened. She could hear the men’s voices through the thin wall; they seemed to be having fun. Would they be feeling pleasant enough to let her take a shower today? Their good mood could change to the opposite at any moment, and Zara would just have to do her best with her customers. The first one would be here soon. Otherwise the two of them wouldn’t be at their stations. One more minute where she was, then she would have to get ready, so Pasha wouldn’t have anything to complain about. Lavrenti never complained, he just did his job and let Pasha do the scolding. Zara poked at the wood that peeped out from under the chipped paint of the baseboard. The wood was so soft that her finger sank into it. Was the floor under the mattress wood or cement? There was vinyl flooring, but what was under it? If it was made of the same wood, it could give way at any moment. And Zara would go, too, disappear into the wreckage. It would be wonderful.
She could hear Lavrenti’s knife whittling away chips of wood again. He always whittled when he was keeping watch. He carved all kinds of things, especially exercise equipment for the girls.
She had to get up. She couldn’t lie around, although she would have liked to. The colored lights from the building opposite splashed the room with red. Cars hummed by, and now and then a honk would break the hum. There were so many cars, so many different kinds. She smoked a Prince cigarette, the kind advertised on big placards she had seen through the car window on the way here. She had been handcuffed to the car door at the time. Pasha and Lavrenti turned the car radio up to a shout. She hadn’t known that a car could go so fast. Pasha’s fingers had tapped on the steering wheel whenever he had to stop. His tattooed fingers bounced on the wheel. Pasha decided Zara wasn’t going to tempt anyone in front of the gas station, even though there were as many trucks and men as you could want. She had stood there beside the autobahn half the night in the red leather skirt he’d given her, and no one had wanted her. Pasha and Lavrenti had watched from far away in the car, and then Pasha suddenly came and pulled her hair and wrenched open her lipstick and rubbed it all over her face. Then he pushed her into the car and said to Lavrenti, “Look at this clown,” and Lavrenti laughed, saying, “She’ll learn. They all do.” In the car, Pasha had taken off his shirt and lifted his shoulders like he was adjusting his tattooed epaulets. Lavrenti grinned and saluted him. At the hotel, Pasha had ordered Zara to wash her face, pushed her head in the water as the washbasin filled up, and held it there until she passed out.
Now Pasha was talking to Lavrenti about his big plan again. He had a future. That’s why he thought about life so much. The two men went around and around through the same routine, from one day to the next and one night to the next, from one customer to the next. Pasha was saying that, for the first time, everything he had dreamed of was possible—making the money was child’s play. Soon he would have his own tattoo parlor! And then a tattoo magazine! In the West there were magazines that were just pictures of tattoos, all kinds of colorful tattoos, the kind Pasha was going to make.
Everybody laughed at Pasha’s plans. Who would want a tattoo parlor when you could have hotels, restaurants, oil companies, railroads, entire countries, millions, billions. Anything at all was possible, anything you could imagine. But Pasha didn’t care a fig, he just patted his tattooed epaulets, which were just like his father’s. His father had been in Perm in 1936, and his epaulets had read, “NKVD” – the acronym of the state police. The joke was that it stood for Ništó Krepše Vorovskoy Druzbyt—“Nothing stronger than friendship among thieves.” Lavrenti smiled at Pasha’s dreams, too—he may have thought that Pasha was a little crazy. Lavrenti said he himself was already an old man. He had twenty-five years in the KGB behind him, and he would have liked his life to continue as it had before all this nonsense with Yeltsin and Gorbachev. He didn’t want anything except that his childre
n got everything they needed, that’s all. Maybe that’s why Lavrenti wanted to work with Pasha—he and Pasha were the only ones who were prepared to content themselves with less than other people. It’s true Pasha wanted a casino, a country, and a billion, but those things didn’t get him worked up the way the tattoo parlor did.
Pasha practiced for his tattoo parlor on the girls who were out of circulation. Like Katia. He had shouted that she was going to be the best of all, and he was pleased with the tattoo he had put on her chest of a big-busted woman taking a devil in her mouth. He said he wanted lots of practice, though the needle supposedly sat in his hand as comfortably as his gun, so Katia’s arm got another picture of a devil tapped into it—with a big, hairy cock.
“As big as mine!” Pasha had laughed.
Katia disappeared after that.
Zara opened the bottle of poppers and sniffed. If Pasha started practicing on her, she’d know that her time was up. “A tattoo shop would be symbolic to everyone—God, my mother in Russia, the saints, everybody!”