There wasn’t much time. Pasha and Lavrenti would find her, she had no doubt of that. But here was Aliide Truu, and here was the house. Would the woman agree to help? Zara had to make her understand the situation quickly, but she didn’t know what to say. Her head rang empty, although the bread had cleared her thoughts. Mascara tickled her eyes, her stockings were wrecked, she smelled. It had been stupid to show her the bruises—now she thought that Zara was the kind of girl who brings misfortune on herself or asks to be beaten. A girl who had done something wrong. And what if the old woman was like the babushka that Katia had told her about, or like Oksanka, who did work for men like Pasha, sending girls to the city for men like him. There was no way of knowing. Somewhere in the back of her mind there was mocking laughter, and it was Pasha’s voice, and it reminded her that a girl as stupid as she was would never make it on her own. A stupid girl like her was only fit to have the stuttering, slovenliness, smelliness beat out of her— a girl that stupid deserved to be drowned in the sink, because she was hopelessly stupid and hopelessly ugly.
It was awkward the way Aliide Truu kept looking at her, leaning on her scythe, chattering about the closing of the kolkhoz commune, as if Zara were an old acquaintance who had stopped by to chat about nothing in particular.
“There aren’t a terrible lot of visitors around here anymore,” Aliide said, and started to tally up the houses whose young people had moved away. “Everybody left Kokka to build houses for the Finns, and all the children from Roosna left to start businesses in Tallinn. The Voorels’ boy got into politics and disappeared somewhere in Tallinn. Someone should call them and tell them that they passed a law that says you can’t just up and leave the countryside. How are we supposed to even get a roof fixed around here, if there aren’t any workmen? And is it any wonder that the men don’t stay, when there aren’t any women? And there aren’t any women, because there are no businessmen. And when all the women want is businessmen and foreigners, who’s going to want a working man? The West Kaluri fishing commune sent its own variety show to perform in Finland, in Hanko, their sister city, and it was a successful trip, the Finns were lining up for tickets. Then, when the group came home, the director gave an invitation to all the young men and pretty girls to come dance the cancan for the Finns— right in the newspaper. The cancan!”
Zara nodded—she strongly agreed—as she scratched the polish off of her fingernails. Yes, everyone was just running after dollars and Finnish markka, and yes, there used to be work for everyone, and yes, everyone was a thief nowadays, pretending to be a businessman. Zara started to feel cold, and the stiffness spread to her cheeks and tongue, which made her already-slow and hesitant speech still more difficult. Her damp clothes made her shiver. She didn’t dare to look directly at Aliide, she just glanced in her direction. What was she driving at? They chatted as if the situation were an utterly normal one. Her head wasn’t spinning quite so badly now. Zara pushed her hair behind her ears, as if to hear better, and lifted her chin. Her skin felt sticky, her voice felt stiff, her nose trembled, her armpits and groin were filthy, but she managed to laugh lightly nevertheless. She tried to reproduce the voice she had sometimes used a long time ago when she ran into an old acquaintance on the street or in a shop. A voice that felt far away and strange, completely unfitted to the body that it came from. It reminded her of a world she didn’t belong to, a home she could never return to.
Aliide swung the scythe northward and moved on to roof-tile thieves. You had to be on the lookout day and night just to keep a roof over your head. The Moisios had even had their stairs stolen, and the rails from the railroad tracks—the only material available was wood, because everything else had been stolen. And the rise in prices! Kersti Lillemäki said that prices like this were a sign of the end of the world.
And then, in the middle of this chitchat, came a surprising question:
“What about you? Do you have a job? What line of work are those clothes for?”
Zara panicked again. She realized that she needed an explanation for her ragged appearance, but what could it be? Why hadn’t she already thought of it? Her thoughts dashed away from her like long-legged animals, impossible to catch. Every species of lie deserted her, emptied her head, emptied her eyes and ears. She desperately wrestled a few words into a sentence, said she had been a waitress, and as she looked at her legs she remembered her Western clothes and added that she had been working in Canada. Aliide raised her eyebrows.
“So far away. Did you earn good money?”
Zara nodded, trying to think of something more to say. When she nodded, her teeth started to chatter and closed like a trap. Her mouth was full of phlegm and dirty teeth, but not one sensible word. She wished the woman would stop questioning her. But Aliide wanted to know what Zara was doing here if she had such a good job in Canada.
Zara took a breath, said she had come with her husband on vacation to Tallinn. The sentence came out well. It followed the same rhythm as Aliide’s speech. She was already starting to get the hang of it. But what about her story? What would be an appropriate story for her? The beginning of the story she had just made up was struggling to get away, and Zara’s mind lunged after it and grabbed it by the paws. Stay here. Help me. Bit by bit, word by word, give me a story. A good story. Give me the kind of story that will make her let me stay here and not call someone to come and take me away.
“What about your husband? Was he in Canada, too?”
“Yes.”
“And the two of you are on vacation?”
“That’s right.”
“Where did you plan to go from here?”
Zara filled her lungs with air and succeeded in saying in one breath that she didn’t know. And that a lack of funds had made matters a little difficult. She shouldn’t have said that. Now, of course, Aliide would think she was after her wallet. The trap sprang open. Her story escaped. The good beginning slipped away. Now Aliide would never let her inside, and nothing would ever come of any of it. Zara tried to think of something, but all her thoughts were dashing away as soon as they were born. She had to tell her something—if not her story, then something else— anything. She searched for something to say about the molehills that stretched in a row from the end of the house, the tar-paper roofs of the bees’ nests peeking between apple trees heavy with fruit, the grindstone standing on the other side of the gate, the plantain weed under her feet. She searched for something to say like a hungry animal searching for prey, but everything slipped loose from the dull stubs of her teeth. Soon Aliide would notice her panic, and when that happened, Aliide would think, There’s something not right about this girl, and then it would all be over, everything ruined, Zara just as stupid as Pasha said she was, always ruining everything, a stupid girl, a hopeless idiot.
Zara glanced at Aliide, although she no longer had even her hair as a curtain between them. Aliide gave her body a once-over. Zara’s skin was filthy with mud and dirt. What she needed was some soap.
Aliide told the girl to sit down on a wobbly kitchen chair. She obeyed. Her gaze wandered and came to rest on the tin of salt left between the windowpanes over the winter, as if it were a great wonder to her.
“The salt absorbs moisture. So the windows don’t fog up in the cold.”
Aliide spoke slowly. She wasn’t sure if the girl’s mind was working at full power. Although she had recovered a little outside, she’d put her slipper in the door so warily, as though the floor were made of ice that wasn’t sure to hold her, and when she made it to the chair she was more withdrawn and huddled than she’d been in the yard. Aliide’s instincts told her not to let the girl inside, but she seemed to be in such a bad state that there was no other choice. The girl was startled again when she leaned back and the kitchen curtain brushed against her arm. The flinch made her lean forward again, and the chair swayed, and she had to fumble to keep her balance. Her slipper hissed against the floor. When the chair steadied, her foot stopped swinging and she grabbed the edge of the seat. She tucked her feet under her, then wrapped her arms around her sides and drooping shoulders.
“Lemme get you something dry to put on.”
Aliide left the door to the front room open and dug through the few housedresses and slips in the wardrobe. The girl didn’t move, she just perched on the chair chewing her lower lip. Her expression had sunk back into what it had been in the beginning. Aliide felt revulsion well up in her. The girl would leave soon, but not before they figured out where to send her and gave her a little medicine. They weren’t going to sit there waiting for another visitor—the girl’s husband or whoever it was that was after her. If she wasn’t thieves’ bait, then whose bait was she? The boys in the village? Would they do something that elaborate? And why? Just to torment her, or was there something else behind it? But the village boys definitely wouldn’t use a Russian girl— never.
When Aliide went back into the kitchen, the girl heaved her shoulders and head and turned toward her. Her eyes looked away. She wouldn’t accept the clothes, said she only wanted some pants.
“Pants? I don’t have any except for sweatpants, and they’d need to be washed, for sure.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I wear them to work outside.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“All right!”
Aliide went to look for the Marat pants hanging from the coatrack in the entryway, at the same time straightening her own underwear. She was wearing two pairs, as usual, as she had every day since that night at town hall. She had also tried men’s breeches sometimes. They had briefly made her feel safer. More protected. But women didn’t wear long pants back then. Later on, women appeared in pants even in the village, but by that time she was so used to two pairs of underwear that she didn’t hanker after long pants. But why would a girl in a Western dress want a pair of Maratbrand sweatpants?
“These were made after Marat got those Japanese knitting machines,” Aliide said, and laughed, coming back into the kitchen. After a tiny pause, the girl let out a giggle. It was a brief giggle, and she swallowed it immediately, the way people do when they don’t get the joke but they don’t dare or don’t want to admit it, so they laugh along. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke to her. Maybe she was so young that she didn’t remember what Marat knits were like before the new machines. Or maybe Aliide was right in guessing that the girl wasn’t Estonian at all.
“We’ll wash and mend your dress later.”
“No!”
“Why not? It’s an expensive dress.”
The girl snatched the pants from Aliide, peeled off her stockings, pulled on the Marats, tore off her dress, slipped on Aliide’s housedress in its place, and before Aliide could stop her, threw her dress and stockings into the stove. The map fluttered onto the rug. The girl snapped it up and threw it into the fire with the clothes.
“Zara, there’s nothing to worry about.”
The girl stood in front of the stove as if to shelter the burning clothes. The housedress was buttoned crooked.
“How about a bath? I’ll put some water on to warm,” Aliide said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
Aliide came toward the stove slowly. The girl didn’t move. Her panicked eyes flickered. Aliide poured the kettle full, took hold of the girl’s hand and led her to the chair, set a hot glass of tea on the table in front of her, and went back to the stove. The girl turned to watch her movements.
“Let them burn,” Aliide said.
The girls eyebrow was no longer twitching. She started to scratch at her nail polish, concentrating on each finger one by one. Did it calm her down? Aliide fetched a bowl of tomatoes from the pantry and put it on the table, glanced at the loaded mousetrap beside the pile of cucumbers, and inspected her recipe book and the jars of mixed vegetables she’d left on the counter to cool.
“I’m about to can tomatoes. And the raspberries from yesterday. Shall we see what’s on the radio?”
The girl grabbed a magazine and rustled it loudly against the oilcloth. The glass of tea spilled over the magazine, the girl was frightened, and she jumped away from the table, stared at the glass and at Aliide in turn, and started to rapidly apologize for the mess, but messed up the words, then nervously tried to clean it up, looking for a cloth, then wiping the floor, the glass, and the legs of the table, and patting the already-ragged kitchen mat dry.
“It’s all right.”
The girl’s panic didn’t subside, and Aliide had to calm her down again—it’s all right, there’s nothing to worry about, just calm down, it’s just a glass of tea, let it be, why don’t you fetch the washtub from the back room, there should be enough warm water now. The girl dashed off quickly, still looking apologetic, brought the zinc tub clattering into the kitchen, and rushed between the stove and the tub carrying hot water and then cold water to add to it. She kept her gaze toward the floor; her cheeks were red, her movements conciliatory and smooth. Aliide watched her at work. An unusually well-trained girl. Good training like that took a hefty dose of fear. Aliide felt sorry for her, and as she handed her a linen towel decorated with Lihula patterns, she held the girl’s hands in her own for a moment. The girl flinched again; her fingers curled up and she pulled her hand away, but Aliide wouldn’t let her go. She felt like petting the girl’s hair, but she seemed too averse to being touched, so Aliide just repeated that there was nothing to worry about. She should just calmly get in the bath, then put on some dry clothes, and have something to drink. Maybe a glass of cold, strong sugar water. How about if she mixed some up right now?
The girl’s fingers straightened. Her fright started to ease, her body settled. Aliide carefully loosened the girl’s hand from her own and mixed up some soothing sugar water. The girl drank it, the glass trembled, a swirling storm of sugar crystals. Aliide encouraged her to get into the bath, but she wouldn’t budge until Aliide agreed to wait in the front room. She left the door ajar and heard the water splashing, and now and then a small, childlike sigh.