Purge (22 page)

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 friend 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.

Hearing about women who threw their husbands off like trash, Aliide was startled, and the startle spread into a shudder, and she started to look at the young men she met on the street with new eyes, looking for those among them who had returned and recognizing something in them that was familiar to her. She saw it in their gaze, a gaze that had a kind of shadow over it, and it made her want to put her hand on their cheeks, to touch them.

Martin Truu finally collapsed in the yard, while examining a silver birch leaf with a magnifying glass. When Aliide found her husband and turned his body over to face the sky, she saw the last expression he had on his face. It was the first time she had ever seen him surprised.

—Paul-Eerik Rummo

Liide quit her job—the one where she went around tormenting people with fees and quotas. She wouldn’t tell me why. Maybe what I said sank in. When I said a job like that was nothing but working for monsters. Or maybe somebody gave her a drubbing. I know somebody once let the air out of her bike tires. She brought the bike into the barn and asked me to replace them, but I refused to do it. I told her to let some tool do her dirty work for her, somebody who was already a slave to this government. So Martin fixed them that evening.

When Liide told me she’d quit her job, her eyes were shining, like she expected me to thank her. I thought about spitting on her, but I just gave Pelmi a scratch. I know her tricks.

Then all of a sudden she wanted to know if I had met anyone I knew when I was in the woods.

I didn’t answer her.

She also wanted to know what it was like in the woods. And what it was like in Finland, and why I went there.

I didn’t answer.

She asked me these nosy questions for a long time. Like why couldn’t I stay with the Germans after I had joined up with them.

I didn’t answer.

I saw things there that you shouldn’t tell to a woman.

I went back in my room.

Liide doesn’t want to let me go to the woods. She won’t agree to it. I’m the only person she can talk to who doesn’t quote Communist wisdom to her, and everybody needs somebody they can talk plainly to. That’s why she doesn’t want to let me go.

The grain is growing in my fields, and I can’t even see it.

Where are my two girls, Linda and Ingel? I’m racked with worry.

Hans Pekk, son of Eerik, Estonian peasant

Aliide couldn’t understand how the photo of her and Ingel had appeared in Zara’s hand. The girl said something about wallpaper and cupboards, but Aliide didn’t remember having hidden anything under the wallpaper. She had destroyed all her photos, but had Ingel stashed some photos somewhere when she was still at home? That didn’t make any sense at all. Why would she have done that, hidden a photo of the two of them together? That was indeed a Young Farmers badge on her chest. But it was so small—no one but Ingel herself would have known it was there.

When Zara had gone to bed, Aliide washed her hands and went to tap at the walls and cupboards, poke at the wallpaper, dig in the cracks in the cabinet and behind the baseboards with a knife, but she didn’t find anything. There were just clattering dishes in the cupboard and liquor coupons piled in the bottle bin.

The girl was asleep, breathing evenly, the radio rasped about the elections, and in the photograph Ingel was eternally beautiful. Aliide remembered the day they had gone to have it taken, at the B. Veidenbaum Modern Photography Studio. Ingel had just turned eighteen. They had gone to the Dietrich coffeehouse, and Ingel drank Warsaw coffee and Aliide had hot chocolate. There were cream puffs that melted in your mouth and the scent of jasmine. Ingel had bought some puff pastries to take home, and Helene Dietrich had wrapped them in white paper with a wooden stick for a handle. That was their specialty—pretty wrapping that was easy to carry. The smell of cigarettes, the rustle of newspapers. That was back when they still used to do everything together.

Aliide adjusted a hairpin. Her hand came back damp— her forehead and scalp were wet with sweat.

The coals in the stove made the photo curl. Aliide shoved in a few pieces of wood, too.

Her ear itched. She rubbed it. A fly flew away.

The morning sun shone between the curtains into Zara’s eyes and woke her up. The door to the kitchen was open; Aliide was sitting there at the table looking at her. Something wasn’t right. Pasha? Were they looking for her on the radio? What was it? She sat up and said good morning.

“Talvi isn’t coming after all.”

“What?”

“She called and said she changed her mind.” Aliide put her hand up to her eyes and said again that Talvi wasn’t coming.

Zara didn’t know what to say. Her wonderful plans were crushed. Her hope wadded up like detritus and rubbed behind her eyeballs. Talvi wouldn’t be bringing a car here. The hands jerked across the face of the clock, and Pasha came closer, she could feel the flames licking at her heels, his binoculars on the back of her neck, his car humming down the highway, the gravel flying, but she didn’t move. The light moved outside, but she stayed where she was. She hadn’t learned anything more about Aliide or about what had happened in the past. She just sat there, weak and puny, without any answers. Raadio Kukku announced the time, the news began, soon it would end, the day would go by, and Talvi and her car weren’t coming, but Pasha was.

Zara went into the kitchen and noticed Aliide give a jerk. It looked like a sob, but she wasn’t making any sound, her hands were in her lap, and Zara saw that her eyes were dry.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Zara said quickly. “How disappointing for you.”

Aliide sighed, Zara sighed, put on a sympathetic expression, but at the same time set her thoughts in motion— there was no time for guessing. Could Aliide still help her? Did she still have any cards up her sleeve? If she did, Zara would have to be pleasant to her; she couldn’t allude to the picture or her grandmother—it made Aliide hostile. She didn’t see the photograph anywhere and didn’t dare ask about it. Or should she give up the whole idea of escaping and resign herself to waiting for whatever was coming?

Grandmother would have already received the pictures that Pasha sent, of course. He wouldn’t have waited around to do that. Maybe Sasha had got some, too. And maybe her mother, and who knows who else. Pasha might even have done more than that—was everyone at home all right? No, she shouldn’t think about that. She had to concentrate on making a new plan. Aliide leaned on her cane, although she was sitting, and said, “Talvi claims she’s too busy, but what does she have to keep her busy? She sits around being a housewife, like she always wanted to. What do you want to be?”

“A doctor.”

Aliide seemed surprised. Zara explained that the reason she went to the West was to get some money for school. She was hoping to come back as soon as she had saved enough, but then Pasha came along, and a lot of things went wrong. Aliide furrowed her brow and asked Zara to tell her something about Vladivostok. Zara was startled. Was this the time for everybody to reminisce? Aliide seemed to have forgotten that Zara had men chasing her. Maybe she didn’t want to show any emotion, or maybe she was wiser than Zara. Maybe there was nothing more to do but sit and chat. Maybe it was the most sensible thing to do—enjoy this moment, when she could finally reminisce about Vladivostok. Zara forced herself to sit down calmly at the table, to hold out her coffee cup when Aliide offered her some coffee substitute, and take a piece of sour-cream pie, Talvi’s favorite, apparently. Aliide had made it the night before.