Purge (17 page)

She recognized the smell of women on the street, the smell that said that something similar had happened to them. From every trembling hand, she could tell—there’s another one. From every flinch at the sound of a Russian soldier’s shout and every lurch at the tramp of boots. Her, too? Every one who couldn’t keep herself from crossing the street when militiamen or soldiers approached. Every one with a waistband on her dress that showed she was wearing several pairs of underwear. Every one who couldn’t look you in the eye. Did they say it to those women, too—did they tell them that every time you go to bed with your husband, you’ll remember me?

When she found herself in proximity with one of those women, she tried to stay as far away from her as she could. So no one would notice the similarities in their behavior. So they wouldn’t repeat each other’s gestures and double the power of their nervous presence. At village community events, Aliide avoided those women, because you never knew when one of those men might happen by, a man she would remember for all eternity. And maybe it would be the same man as the other woman’s. They wouldn’t be able to help staring in the same direction, the direction the man was coming from. And they wouldn’t be able to keep themselves from flinching at the same time, if they heard a familiar voice. They wouldn’t be able to raise their glass without spilling. They would be discovered. Someone would know. One of those men would remember that Aliide was one of those women who had been in the cellar at the town hall. She was one of them. And all the blurring of memory she had managed by marrying Martin Truu would be in vain. And maybe they would think that Martin didn’t know, and they would tell him. Martin would, of course, take it as a slander and be angry. And then what would happen? No, she couldn’t let that happen. No one must ever know.

When a situation like that arose, she would always think of something bad to say about those women, berate and bad-mouth them to differentiate herself from them.
Are you sure, Comrade Aliide?

They moved into a room together at the Roosipuu house. The Roosipuus didn’t openly make fun of Martin—they were afraid of him—but Aliide had to constantly be on the lookout for stumbling blocks and falling objects. The children put salt in her sugar bowl, pulled her clothes down from the clothesline, slipped worms into her flour bin, slathered their snot on the bin handles, and watched from beside their mothers’ spinning wheels as Aliide took a drink of salty tea or took hold of the handle, her expression never wavering even when she felt the dried snot on her fingers or recognized the sound of worms seething inside the bin. Aliide had no intention of giving them the pleasure of seeing her bothered one bit by their actions or their contempt or anything they did. She was Martin’s wife, and she was proud of it, and tried to remember that with every step, tried to put the same pride in her gait that Martin had, tried to go out the door in a way that made others yield, not her. But somehow it always missed the mark, and she had to wait, and the Roosipuus slammed the door in her face and she had to open it again. The Red soldiers who were bivouacked in the house had taught the Roosipuus how to say good morning and good day in Russian. They greeted Aliide with these freshly learned words.

There were always bits of onion between Martin’s teeth, and he had a hearty appetite. He had heavy muscles, loose skin hung from his arms, and the pores in his armpits were almost bigger than the ones on his forehead. His long armpit hair was yellowed with sweat and funguslike, in spite of its thickness, like rusted steel wool. A belly button like a cavern and balls that hung almost to his knees. It was hard to imagine that he had ever had a young man’s firm balls. The pores in his skin were full of oil with a smell that changed depending on what he had been eating. Or maybe Aliide was just imagining that. In any case, she tried to make food without onions. As time went by, she also did her best to look at Martin the way a woman looks at a man, to learn to be a wife, and gradually she started to be able to do it when she observed how he was listened to when he had something to say. Martin had fire and power in him. He got people to listen to him and believe in themselves almost as well as Stalin did. Martin’s words sliced like a sickle and struck like a hammer. His hand rose into the air when he spoke, squeezed into a fist, and shook in judgment of the Fascists, saboteurs, and bandits, and it was a big fist, a powerful thumb, a hand like the head of a bull, a hand that was good to shelter under. Martin’s earlobes were large and hanging; he knew how to wiggle them, but they still looked like they heard everything. And if they heard everything, news of any danger would stick to them, too. Martin would know about it ahead of time.

In the mornings, the smell of Martin’s armpits stuck to Aliide’s hair and skin, his smell was in her nose all day long. He liked to sleep in a tight embrace, with his little mushroom Aliide tucked tightly under his arm. It was good; it gave her a feeling of security. She slept better than she had in years, fell asleep easily and greedily like she was making up for all those years of sleepless nights, because she no longer feared that someone would come knocking on the door at night. Nobody could have pulled her out from under that arm. There wasn’t a more exemplary party organization in a single village in the whole country.

Martin was happy when he saw how sleeping beside him at night made Aliide, whose jumpiness had at first been a wonder to him, more beautiful. Having him close to her, Aliide’s jitters diminished a little during the day, her timorous gaze became more calm, her bloodshot, sleepless eyes cleared, and all of this made Martin a happy man. This happy man also arranged a job for his wife as an inspector, whose task, among other things, was to collect payments and issue payment notices in person. The work was easy, but it was awkward—the Roosipuus weren’t the only ones who started slamming doors when they saw Aliide’s bike approaching their house. But Martin promised to get her a more pleasant job when his career had advanced.

But that smell. Aliide tried at first to breathe through her nose all day. In the end, she got used to it.

Ingel had said that Aliide was starting to smell like a Russian. Like the people who appeared at the railway station and sat themselves down with their bundles. The trains kept bringing more of them and they disappeared into the mouths of the new factories.

Martin hadn’t told Aliide why he wanted her to come to the town hall that evening, so the trip there was hard for her.
Are you sure, Comrade Aliide?
The man’s voice came and went in her head, and she wasn’t sure of anything except that she had to hold on to Martin. Groping for her cigarettes at her front gate, she realized her cigarette case was empty and went back in the house, even though it was bad luck. She tried to refill the case and failed; they crumpled up, her hands shook, she started to cry, her shirt was wet with sweat, she was getting a chill, such a nasty chill. She succeeded in driving away a hiccup, succeeded in jamming a few cigarettes into the case, and stumbled out of the gate. The Roosipuus’ brat threw a rock at her and ran into the shrubbery; giggles could be heard coming from the bushes. Aliide didn’t turn her head. Luckily the other Roosipuus were working, no one had seen her flailing or the sweat on her upper lip except for the kid, but even the Roosipuus’ kitchen was more inviting than the town hall, and when she was on the main road she turned around twice, came back, headed toward town hall again, continued forward, and spat three times over her shoulder when a black cat crossed the road.
Are you sure, Comrade Aliide?
When she was halfway there, she lit a cigarette, smoked it where she stood, was startled by some birds, and continued on her way, biting her itchy palms. Scratching them just made them bloody, so she tried to tame the itch by gnawing at the places on her hands where her skin crawled.
Are you sure, Comrade Aliide?
Before she got to the town hall, she smoked another cigarette, her teeth chattered, she was cold, she had to keep going forward, her tongue cracked with dryness, forward to the courtyard of the town hall. The place was swarming with people. A car backfired. Aliide gave a start, her knees turned to water, and she squatted down, pretended to clean the dirt from her hem. Her galoshes, from Estonian times, were covered in mud. She rinsed them in a puddle and shoved her shaking hands into her pockets, but her fingers held tight to the payment notices for childless couples. She pulled her hands out of her pockets. Earlier in the day, she had come to the door of two childless families and three families with too few children, but none of them would let her inside. Men bustled back and forth at the lower door of the town hall carrying in bags of sand—the bags already covered one window halfway up. From the mutterings of passersby it became clear enough that a bandit attack was expected.

The building was full of people, although it was after seven o’clock. The ceaseless tapping of a typewriter echoed from somewhere in the building. Hurried, fervent footsteps came and went. Black leather coattails hummed by in her peripheral vision. Doors opened and closed. Storms of drunken laughter. A young girl’s giggle. A slightly older woman taking off her overshoes in the corridor, cute, decorative little high-heeled shoes emerging from her galoshes. The woman shook her head to straighten her curls, her earrings glinting in the dim light like a sword pulled from its scabbard.

Are you sure, Comrade Aliide?

The corridor smelled like metal.

Someone shouted, “Lenin, Lenin, and once again Lenin!”

The cracks in the pale-colored walls were hazy, as if they were moving. The smell of liquor met her coldly at the door to Martin’s office. Cigarette smoke darkened the room so that she couldn’t see clearly. “Sit down.”

Aliide located Martin by his voice, standing in a corner of the room. He was wiping his hands on a towel as if he had just washed them. Aliide sat in the chair he offered her, sweat squelched under her arms, and she rubbed her upper lip with the dry palm of her hand. As Martin came up beside her and bent to kiss her forehead, his hand took hold of her breast and squeezed it lightly. The wool fabric of his coat scraped against her ear. A damp place was left on her forehead. “There’s something my little mushroom should see.”

Aliide wiped her upper lip again and wrapped her ankles around the chair legs.

Martin let go of her breast, pulled his breath away from her ear, and fetched some papers from the table. He handed one of them to Aliide—her hands were reluctant under its weight. She stared straight ahead. Martin was standing beside her. The paper dropped into her lap, and her thighs started to burn under it, although the continuing chill had made her skin numb and turned her fingertips white. Martin’s breath moved through the room like a breeze. Aliide’s mouth filled with spit, but she didn’t dare swallow. Swallowing would betray her nervousness.

“Look at it.”

Aliide let her gaze settle on the paper.

It was a list. There were names on the list.

“Read through them.”

He didn’t stop watching her.

She started to arrange the letters into words.

She found Ingel’s and Linda’s names in the first row.

Her eyes halted. Martin noticed it.

“They’re leaving.”

“When?”

“The date’s at the top of the page.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Because I don’t keep any secrets from my little mushroom.”

Martin’s mouth spread into a smile; his eyes shone brightly. He lifted his hand to her neck and caressed it.

“What a beautiful neck my little mushroom has, slender and graceful.”

When Aliide left the town hall, she stopped to say hello to a man smoking in the doorway. He said it was a peculiar spring. “Awfully early. Don’t you think?”

Aliide nodded and slinked away to smoke her own cigarette behind a tree, so she herself wouldn’t seem to be peculiar, smoking in public. A peculiar spring. Peculiar springs and peculiar winters were always frightening. Nineteen forty-one was a peculiar winter, terribly cold. Also 1939 and 1940. Peculiar years, peculiar seasons. There was a buzzing in her head. So here it was again. A peculiar season. A repetition of the peculiar years. Her father had been right— peculiar seasons bode peculiar events. She should have known. Aliide tried to clear her head by shaking it. This was no time for the old folks’ stories, because they didn’t say anything about how to behave when a peculiar season came along. Just pack your bags and prepare for the worst.

It was clear that Martin wanted to test her, test her trustworthiness. If Ingel and Linda escaped now or if they weren’t at home on the night in question, Martin would know who was responsible. The ache in Aliide’s teeth intensified and moved to her jaws.

Ingel and Linda were going to be taken away. Not Aliide. And not Hans. She had to think clearly, think clearly about Hans. She would have to demand that Martin arrange for them to move into Ingel’s house after she had been taken away; no other house would do for Aliide. Not a finer one or a larger one or a smaller one—no other house would do. Aliide would have to be on fire for the next few days, blooming, making Martin dizzy on their mattress at night, so that he would do everything he could to arrange to get that house for them. And the animals should stay with the house! She didn’t want anyone else’s animals. Maasi was her cow! If she found the barn empty, Martin would set his men after the thieves and send them all to Siberia! She marveled at the fury that blazed up the moment she thought of someone else touching her animals. Because they were hers now —Ingel was just milking the cows for a little while longer. They ought to take one cow over to the barn at the collective farm, so they could stay within the quota. But Martin could arrange to get it back later. Anyway, no one would come to count the animals in a party organizer’s barn.

But in the beginning Aliide didn’t want to think about the most essential question: How would Hans stay hidden with Martin sleeping under the same roof? Hans wasn’t a snorer, but what if he started snoring? Or sneezed in the middle of the night? What if he had a cough? Hans knew how to be quiet when guests were visiting, it’s true, but what about when Martin was actually living in the same house? Talking about Great-Grandma haunting the place wouldn’t work on Martin. Aliide pressed her hands to her forehead and cheeks. How long had she been standing there? She started moving her feet toward home. She tasted blood in her mouth. She had bitten her cheek. The attic. She had to get Hans into the attic. Or a cellar. She would have to build a cellar under the pantry or the little spare room. Or was the attic better? The attic extended from the house over the barn and the stable, and above the barn and stable it was full of hay, the bales packed so tightly that it would be impossible to investigate. If a closet were built there, no one would ever notice it. It could be built behind the hay bales. Above the barn. Since Aliide would be feeding the cows, she could be in the barn all the time to drop the hay from the trapdoor to the cows below. Martin would probably never even set foot in the barn—he didn’t know how to milk, and he didn’t like chickens, either, because they had almost pecked his eye out when he was a child, and a cow had trod on his foot and crushed it. No wonder Martin had decided to become an agitator—he never would have managed with the animals. Anyway, the animals would make noise. Hans could sneeze and cough all he wanted. And the rafters above the barn were thicker, too; there were thirty centimeters of sand between the planks. No one would hear anything.