Purge (28 page)

She crawled in between the boxes.

She could barely even see herself in the light from the streetlamps. Then the lamps were gone, too. A fog was beginning to settle in. An empty GAI inspector’s booth flitted by. Little white sticks zipped by on the side of the road. Several BMWs whizzed past in a hail of macadam with their music pounding, but there wasn’t any traffic. The driver stopped once in the middle of desolate-looking countryside and hopped out. Zara peered out at the view. She could dimly make out the word
Peoleo
in the darkness. The driver came back belching and the trip continued.

Now and then the truck’s headlights brushed over rickety signs, but Zara couldn’t make out what they said. She pulled aside the tarp lining the truck bed far enough to peek out and see that there were no side mirrors, so she ventured to poke her head all the way out. The truck might be on its way anywhere. To Russia, maybe. It would be smartest to jump out if the truck was getting farther from Tallinn. The driver would probably stop somewhere to pee or get something to drink. And then what? She should look for a different ride. She could hitchhike. Cars headed away from Tallinn probably wouldn’t go straight back, and any car leaving Tallinn would at least be out of Pasha’s reach for a little while. Or was she being too optimistic? Pasha had ears everywhere, and Zara would be quite easy to identify. What if she succeeded in finding a car, but it was on its way out of Estonia? . . . But, if it was, it would have to cross the border at some point, and by the time it it did Pasha would have some sharp-eyed henchman there, on the lookout, asking questions. So it would be better to find a car going where she wanted to go, with a driver who was the kind of person that Pasha would never be able to find. What kind of person would that be? And who would give her a ride on a dark road in the middle of the night? No respectable person would even be out at that time of night, only thieves and businessmen like Pasha. Zara felt the secret pocket in her bra. The photo was still there—the photo and the name of the house and the village.

The truck slowed down. The driver stopped, hopped out, and headed for the bushes. Zara climbed down from the back of the truck and dashed across the road into the shelter of the trees. The driver returned and continued on his way. When his headlights had disappeared, the darkness was unbroken. The forest rustled. The grass was alive. An owl hooted. Zara moved closer to the road.

Morning would break soon. The only cars that had passed were a couple of Audis with their stereos blaring. Someone threw a beer bottle out of the window of one of them, and it landed near Zara. She wouldn’t get in a Western car—they all belonged to them. How far was she from Tallinn now? She had lost her sense of time while she was in the back of the truck. The cool damp stiffened her limbs, and she rubbed her arms and legs, wiggled her toes, and circled her ankles one at a time. She got cold sitting down and tired standing up. She had to get inside somewhere before it got light, get away from civilization. It would be best to get to where she was going before morning—to the village, her grandmother’s village. She had to rein in her panic and try to maintain the same calm that had spread over her as she sat among the boxes in the back of the truck, huddled there knowing that even if the truck didn’t go to Grandmother’s village she would still get there.

She heard a car from far off; it approached more slowly than the Western cars. Only one headlight was working, and although Zara couldn’t see the car or the driver, she was in the road before she had time to think and took up a position in the middle of the highway. The dim headlight lit up her grubby legs. Zara didn’t yield; she was sure that the approaching Zhiguli would accelerate past her if she wasn’t standing in front of it. The driver poked his head out of the window. An old man. A cigarette burned at the end of a holder hanging from the side of his mouth.

“Sir, can you give me a ride to town?” Zara asked. The Estonian words were stiff. The man didn’t answer, and Zara became anxious, said that she had had a fight with her husband, and he had thrown her out of the car, and that’s why she was here in the middle of nowhere. Her husband was not a good man, she was sure he wouldn’t come back for her, and she didn’t even want him to come, because he was a bad man.

The car’s driver took his cigarette holder out of his mouth, pulled out the butt, and threw it in the road. He said he was on his way to Risti and reached over to open the passenger door. Zara felt a soaring inside. The man put a new cigarette in his holder. Zara put her arm across her chest and held her legs tight together. The car pulled out. Now and then she was able to read snatches of the words on the signs: Turba, Ellamaa.

“Why are you on your way to Risti?” the man asked. Zara got confused and made something up, said she was on her way to her parents’ house. The man didn’t ask any more questions, but Zara added that her husband wouldn’t come to her parents’ house, and she didn’t want to see him. The man reached with his right hand to pick up a bag sitting next to the gear shift and handed it to Zara. She took it from him. The familiar flavor of Arahiiz chocolate and the crunch of peanuts.

“You might have had to wait all night for a ride there,”

the man said. He had been to his sick daughter’s house for a visit and ended up taking her to the hospital during the night. He had to get home in time for the morning milking. “Whose daughter are you?”

“The Rüütels’.”

“Rüütels? Where from?”

Zara was terrified. How should she answer? The old

man apparently knew everyone around those parts, and if Zara made something up, he would start talking around the village about some tart with a Russian accent who had showed up talking nonsense. Zara sobbed. The man handed her a worn-out handkerchief before the tears had even started, and he didn’t ask any more questions.

“Maybe it would be best if you came to my house first. Your parents will be worried about you if you come home in that state, at this time of night.”

The man drove to his house in Risti. Zara got out of the Zhiguli holding a map she had swiped from the car tightly under her arm. She could have asked the man if he knew Aliide Truu but she was afraid to bring up the subject. The man would remember her questions, which might eventually lead them to Aliide Truu and thus to Zara. When they got inside he poured her a glass of milk, put some bread and children’s sausages on the table, and told her to go to sleep when she had eaten.

“When I’ve finished the morning milking, I’ll drive you home. It’ll only be a few hours.”

He left her some sheepskins and withdrew from the room. When he had begun to snore, Zara got up, groped her way to the refrigerator, and took down a flashlight that she had noticed on top of it as she sliced her sausage. The flashlight worked. She spread the map on the kitchen floor. Risti wasn’t far from where she was going. It was a ways to Koluvere, but it was doable. The clock on the refrigerator showed 3
AM
. She found a large pair of men’s rubber boots and a small pair of women’s slippers by the front door. She shoved the slippers on her feet. Was there a coat around? Where did he keep his outside clothes? She heard noises from the inner room—she had to get going. She opened the kitchen window—she didn’t have a key to the front door— and climbed out. She still felt a strange taste in her mouth. Her jaw had frozen for a moment when she took her first bite of the bread, and the man had laughed and said she must be one of those people who doesn’t like cumin. His grandchildren didn’t like it, either. He offered her a different kind of bread, but she wanted the one with the cumin. He would be getting up soon and would see that the tart had stolen his map and his flashlight and, to top it off, the slippers. Zara felt wicked.

The map was unclear, but Zara found the Risti railway station easily. From there she headed for a road that she thought would take her to Koluvere. At first she ran; she wanted to get away from the nearby houses as quickly as possible, although their windows were still dark. Dogs barked from house to house, and the noise followed her until she reached the Koluvere road. She slowed down to save her strength until she reached her destination, but she still felt a fire under her feet. Guessing by the map, it was about a ten-kilometer trip. She stopped now and then to smoke a cigarette. She had swiped a new pack of cigarettes from the old man. A drawing of an old man smiled at her from the cigarette package. He seemed to be wearing a top hat, but she couldn’t quite make it out in the dark. The forest breathed and coughed around her, her sweat cooled and then warmed again, and every time she stopped she felt the dead princess of Koluvere breathing down her neck. Augusta was her name. Grandmother had told Zara about Princess Augusta, who left from Risti to go to Koluvere Castle, her eyes swollen shut with crying, and then killed herself. It was always colder in the chamber where she died than in the other rooms, and Augusta’s tears trickled down the walls. Black clouds were swimming across the sky like warships, and the moonlight was blinding. The damp went through Zara’s slippers; now and then she imagined that she heard a car and dashed into the woods. She doused one slipper in the ditch, burrs scratched at her skin. There were no junctions in the road, it stretched ahead unbroken, but her thoughts broke apart and reassembled themselves, brightened, then darkened again. She tried to smell the swamp in the air. There should be a swamp somewhere nearby. What were Estonian swamps like? Would she be able to find the right house? Who would be living in it? Did the house even exist anymore? If it didn’t, what was she going to do? Grandmother had told her that when Augusta died a lot of rumors were started. Maybe it wasn’t really suicide. Maybe she was murdered. A doctor had said that she died of a hereditary hemorrhagic disease, but no one believed that because before she died, terrible screams could be heard from the castle, the peasants were petrified with fear, and the cows dried up and the chickens stopped laying eggs for a week. Zara sped up. The soles of her feet hurt, and her lungs were ready to burst. Some said that the czarina had been jealous of the beautiful princess and sent her here as a prisoner. Others thought that she was brought for her own safety, to protect her from an insane husband. In any case, she had died a prisoner, screaming in her misfortune. The map had already slipped Zara’s mind, although it was simple and she had tried to memorize it. Maybe it was so simple that there was nothing about it to remember, but anyway she’d lost it. Why hadn’t anyone helped the princess? Why hadn’t someone helped her get out of the castle, if everyone heard her weeping? Help me, Augusta, help me find my way. Help me, Augusta—it drummed in Zara’s head, and the faces of Augusta, Aliide, and Grandmother mixed together in her mind to make one face, and she didn’t dare to look to the right or the left because the trees in the forest were moving, their limbs were reaching toward her. Did Augusta want Zara to go with her into the swamp, to follow her wherever she was wandering? The first morning mist started to cling to Zara’s cheeks— she should be running, going faster, she had to get there before morning or everyone in the village would see her. She would have to think of some story to tell the person who lived in Grandmother’s house now. And then she would look for Aliide Truu. Maybe someone who lived in the house could help her. She had to think of a story to tell Aliide, too, but the only story that she could keep in her head in its entirety was the story of Augusta, the crazy, weeping princess. Maybe Zara was crazy, too, because who else but a crazy person would be running down an unknown road toward a house that she had only heard of, a house whose existence she couldn’t be sure of? A swath of field. A house. She ran past it. Another house. A village. A dog. Barking, from one house to the next. Houses, sheds, barns, and potholes beat their own rhythm with her pulse in the backs of her eyes. Now and then she tried to walk in the ditch, but she kept getting tangled up in barbed wire and blackberry bushes, so she tugged herself free and went back to the road, the damp smell of limestone, puddles, and potholes. She tried to run faster than the dogs were barking. The morning mist pressed against her skin, the fog pressed against her eyes, the night pulled back its drapery, and the boundaries of the unreal village breathed around her. The road to the house would end at a cluster of silver willow trees. An unusually large stand of silver willow trees. And there was a big block of stone where the road began. Would Zara’s story begin at the gate of that house, a new story, her own story?

—Paul-Eerik Rummo

I’m reading through Ingel’s letters again. I miss my girls. I feel a bit of relief knowing that things are going so well for them way out there. They’ve sent tons of letters. The last time people were sent to Siberia, they only sent one or two letters a year, and the news wasn’t good.

I should be cutting some wood for barrels. Now would be the right time to do it—the moon will start waxing soon and then it’ll be too late. When am I going to get the barrels made for the new house? When can I sing again? My throat will forget how to do it before long.

I can feel the full moon, and I can’t sleep. I should tell Liide it’s a good time to cut firewood. Wood cut on the full moon dries well. But that husband she’s got doesn’t understand these things—he doesn’t know any more about farmwork than Liide does about handwork. There was a hole in one of the socks Ingel made for me, and Liide stitched it up. Now it’s completely unwearable.

If only I had some of Ingel’s dewberry juice. Truman should have come by now. I feel like kicking the wall, but I can’t.