Purge (4 page)

The girl didn’t know how to read Estonian. She could speak but not read. That’s why she had flipped through the magazine so nervously and knocked over her glass—maybe on purpose, to keep Aliide from seeing that she was illiterate.

Aliide peeked through the crack in the door. The girl’s bruised body sprawled in the tub. The tangled hair at her temples stuck out like an extra, listening ear.

One day, a black Volga pulled up in front of Zara’s house. Zara was standing on the steps when the car stopped, the door of the Volga opened, and a foot clothed in a shiny stocking emerged and touched the ground. At first Zara was afraid—why was there a black Volga in front of their house?— but she forgot her fright when the sun hit Oksanka’s lower leg. The babushkas got quiet on the bench beside the house and stared at the shining metal of the car and the glistening leg. Zara had never seen anything like it; it was the color of skin; it didn’t look anything like a stocking. Maybe it wasn’t a stocking at all. But the light gleamed on the surface of the leg in such a way that there had to be something there—it wasn’t just a naked leg. It looked as if it had a halo, like the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, gilded with light at the edges. The leg ended in an ankle and a high-heeled shoe—and what a shoe! The heel was narrow in the middle, like a slender hourglass. She’d seen Madame de Pompadour wearing shoes like that in old art-history books, but the shoe that emerged from the car was taller and more delicate, with a slightly tapered toe. When the shoe was set down on the dusty road and the heel landed on a stone, she heard a tearing sound all the way from the porch. Then the rest of the woman got out of the car. Oksanka.

Two men in black leather coats with thick gold chains around their necks got out of the front of the car. They didn’t say anything, just stood beside the car staring at Oksanka. And there was plenty to stare at. She was beautiful. Zara hadn’t seen her old friend in a long time, not since she’d moved to Moscow to go to the university. She had received a few cards from her and then a letter that said that she was going to work in Germany. After that she hadn’t heard from her at all until this moment. The transformation was amazing. Oksanka’s lips glimmered like someone’s in a Western magazine, and she had on a light brown fox stole, not the color of fox but more like coffee and milk—or were there foxes that color?

Oksanka came toward the front door, and when she saw Zara she stopped and waved. Actually it looked more like she was scraping at the air with her red fingernails. Her fingers were slightly curled, as if she were ready to scratch. The babushkas turned to look at Zara. One of them pulled her scarf closer around her head. Another pulled her walking stick between her legs. A third took hold of her walking stick in both hands.

The horn of the Volga tooted.

Oksanka approached Zara. She came up the stairs smiling, the sun played against her clean, white teeth, and she reached out her taloned hands in an embrace. The fox stole touched Zara’s cheek. Its glass eyes looked at her, and she looked back. The look seemed familiar. She thought for a moment, then realized that her grandmother’s eyes sometimes looked like that.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Oksanka whispered. A sticky shine spilled over her lips and it looked like it was difficult to part them, as if she had to tear her mouth unglued whenever she opened it.

The wind fluttered a curl of Oksanka’s hair against her lips, she flicked it away, and the curl brushed her cheek and left a red streak there. There were similar streaks on her neck. It looked like she’d been hit with a switch. As Oksanka squeezed her hand, Zara felt her fingernails, little stabs into her skin.

“You need to go to the salon, honey,” Oksanka said with a laugh, rumpling her hair. “A new color and a decent style!”

Zara didn’t say anything.

“Oh yeah—I remember what the hairdressers are like here. Maybe it would be best if you didn’t let them touch your hair.” She laughed again. “Let’s have some tea.”

Zara took Oksanka inside. The communal kitchen went quiet as they walked through. The floor creaked, women came to the door to watch them. Zara’s down-at-the-heel slippers squeaked as she walked over the sand and sunflower seed shells. The women’s eyes made her back tingle.

She let Oksanka into the apartment and closed the door behind her. In the dim room, Oksanka shone like a shooting star. Her earrings flashed like cat’s eyes. Zara pulled the sleeves of her housecoat over the reddened backs of her hands.

Grandmother’s eyes didn’t move. She sat in her usual place, staring out the window. Her head looked black against the incoming light. Grandmother never left that one chair, she just looked out the window without speaking, day and night. Everyone had always been a little afraid of Grandmother, even Zara’s father, although he was drunk all the time. Then he had faded and died and Zara’s mother had moved with Zara back to Grandmother’s house. Grandmother had never liked him and always called him
tibla
— Russian trash. But Oksanka was used to Grandmother and clattered over to greet her immediately, took her hand, and chatted pleasantly with her. Grandmother may have even laughed. When Zara began to clear the table, Oksanka dug through her purse and found a chocolate bar that sparkled as much as she did and gave it to Grandmother. Zara put the heating coil in the kettle. Oksanka came up beside her and handed her a plastic bag.

“There are all kinds of little things in here.”

Zara hesitated. The bag looked heavy.

“Just take it. No, wait a minute,” Oksanka pulled a bottle from the bag. “This is gin. Has your grandmother ever had anything like gin? Maybe it would be a new experience for her.”

She grabbed some schnapps glasses from the shelf, filled them, and took a glass to Grandmother. Grandmother sniffed at the drink, grinned, laughed, and dashed the contents into her mouth. Zara followed suit. An acrid burning spread through her throat.

“Gin is what they make gin and tonics from. We make quite a lot of them for our customers.” Then she pretended to bustle about with a tray and put drinks on the table, and said in English, “Vould you like to have something else, sir? Another gin tonic, sir?
Noch einen
?” Her boisterousness was contagious. Zara made as if to tip her, nodded approvingly at the drink she offered, and giggled at her silliness, just like they used to do.

“I made you laugh,” Oksanka said, and sat down breathless after her antics. “We used to laugh a lot, remember?”

Zara nodded. The coil in the kettle started to form bubbles. Zara waited for the water to boil, took out the coil, got a tin of tea from the shelf, poured water into the pot over the tea leaves, and carried the cups to the table. Oksanka could have warned them that she was coming to visit. She could have sent a card or something. That way Zara would have had time to get something to offer her that would impress her, and she could have come to meet her wearing something other than a housecoat and an old pair of slippers.

Oksanka sat down at the table and adjusted her stole on the back of the chair so that the fox’s head was on her shoulder and the rest of the stole wrapped around the arm of the chair.

“These are real,” she said, tapping at her earrings with a fingernail. “Real diamonds. See how well I’m doin’ in the West, Zara? Didja notice my teeth?” She flashed a smile.

Only then did Zara realize that the fillings in Oksanka’s front teeth were no longer visible.

Zara remembered the Volgas—they always drove so fast and rushed up in front of you without any lights. Now Oksanka had one. And her own driver. And bodyguard. And golden earrings with big diamonds in them. White teeth.

As children, Oksanka and Zara had once almost been run over by a Volga. They were walking home from the movies and the road was deserted. Zara was turning an old eraser around and around in her pocket—hardened, grayed, the printed brand worn off the tip several days before. Then it came. They heard a noise, but they didn’t see the car when it came around the corner, ran straight at them, and then instantly disappeared. They had been only a finger away from being hit. When they got home, Zara had to file the nail of her index finger. It had broken off when the car hit the eraser—still in her pocket—as it went by, and another nail had bent backward and broken off at the skin. That one bled.

There was a family living in the same apartment commune whose daughter had been run over by a black Volga. The militia had thrown up its hands and snapped that there was nothing they could do. That’s just the way things were. A government car—what can you do? The family was sent home with a scolding, too.

Zara hadn’t intended to tell her mother, but she noticed the torn fingernail and the bloody fingertip, and she didn’t believe Zara’s explanation—she could see that Zara was lying. When Zara finally told her that a black Volga had hit them, her mother struck her. Then she wanted to know if the people in the car had seen them.

“I don’t think so. They were going so fast.” “They didn’t stop?”

“Of course not.”

“Don’t ever, ever, ever go near one of those cars. If you see one, run away. It doesn’t matter where. Run right home.”

Zara was astonished. So many words out of her mother’s mouth at one time. That didn’t happen very often. She didn’t mind about being hit—but the flash in her mother’s eyes. It was very bright. There was an expression on her mother’s face—a big expression. Normally her mother’s face didn’t have any expression at all.

Her mother sat up that whole night at the kitchen table, staring straight in front of her. And after that evening she would peek out between the curtains as if she expected a black Volga to be in front of the house, watching, idling quietly. Later on she would get up during the night, look at Zara, who pretended to be asleep, go to the window and peek out, then go back to bed and lie there stiffly until she fell asleep—if she fell asleep. Sometimes she would stand and peer out from behind the curtain until morning.

One time Zara got out of bed, came up behind her mother, and tugged at the hem of her flannel nightgown. “No one is coming,” she said.

Her mother didn’t answer, she just pulled Zara’s hand loose from her nightgown.

“Lenin will protect us, Mom. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Her mother was quiet, turned to look at Zara for a long time and a little past her, as was her habit. As if there were another Zara behind Zara’s back, and her mother was directing her gaze at that other Zara. The darkness dragged on, and the clock made a cracking sound. The soles of their feet had sunk into the worn wooden floorboards, seeping into their hollows, their skin stuck down with a glue that let go only when her mother picked her up and tucked her back under the blanket. And they hadn’t said a word.

Zara had also heard stories about Commissioner Berija and the secret police. And the black cars that used to go out looking for young girls, trolling the streets at night, following them and pulling up next to them. The girls were never heard from again. A black Volga was always a black Volga.

And now Oksanka—a movie star from someplace far away—had emerged from a black Volga and waved to her with her long, unbroken, red fingernails, scratched the air and smiled broadly and graciously like a blue blood disembarking from an ocean liner.

“Is that your Volga?” Zara asked.

“My car’s in Germany,” Oksanka said, laughing.

“You have your own car, then?”

“Of course! Everybody in the West has their own car.”

Oksanka crossed her legs daintily. Zara tucked her legs under her chair. The flannel lining of her slippers was damp like it always was, just like the dull pink lining of Oksanka’s slippers had once been, when she used to wear the exact same kind, and they had filled out their student journals together at this same table, their fingers stained black.

“Cars don’t interest me,” Zara said.

“But you can go wherever you want in a car! Think about that!”

Zara thought about the fact that her mother would be home any minute and see a black Volga in front of the house.

Grandmother hadn’t seen the car because she was sitting in her usual spot and you couldn’t see the street from that window. She wasn’t really interested in the life of the street like the babushkas who sat along the wall. The sky was enough for her.

*** When Zara walked her back to the Volga, Oksanka said that her parents’ roof didn’t leak anymore. She had fixed it.

“You paid for it?”

“In dollars.”

Before she got into the car, Oksanka gave Zara a longish booklet.

“This is about the hotel where I’m working.”

Zara turned it over in her hands. The thick paper was shiny; there was a woman smiling on it with teeth that shone an unreal white.

“It’s a brochure.”

“A brochure?”

“There are so many hotels that they have to have these. Here are some more. I haven’t been to these places, but they take Russians, too. I can arrange a passport for you, if you like.”

The men waiting for Oksanka started the car as she climbed into the backseat.

“There are stockings just like these in that plastic bag,” Oksanka called out, showing her legs, poking one of them out of the car door. “Feel them.”

Zara reached out and stroked Oksanka’s leg.

“Unbelievable, aren’t they?” Oksanka laughed. “I’ll come back again tomorrow. We can talk some more then.”

The girl’s black-and-blue legs showed under the linen towel. The stockings had hidden them, but now her arms and legs were bare, goosefleshed and still damp from the bath. There was a scar across her chest that disappeared into the towel. Aliide was repulsed. Standing clean in the kitchen door, the girl looked younger; her skin was like the flesh of a freshly sliced cinnamon apple. Water dripped from her hair onto the floor. Her just-washed smell spread through the front room and made Aliide crave a sauna—but her sauna had burned down years ago. She avoided looking at the girl, examined the insulating pipe along the wall—which seemed to still be in working order—rapped on a green pipe, and brushed away the spiderwebs with her cane.