Lauren Chater - Lace Weaver

I wanted to sink into my chair, but I continued to stand. My father had more to say. I could see him measuring the words carefully in his head, thinking of how best to frame them. His pipe was clutched in one hand, the embers turning to ash.

Whatever was coming, it was something he knew I wouldn’t want to hear.

‘Kati, the Partorg’s men were here earlier.’

I forced myself to remain standing. ‘What did they want?’

My father scratched at his whiskers. ‘I’m afraid there will be no wool for shawls this winter.’

I stared at him. ‘No wool?’

‘I’m sorry. The Partorg has increased our wool quota for the coming year. The only way we can meet it is to give up the fleece we use for your yarn.’

I blinked. ‘No wool,’ I repeated. I waited for the words to bring relief with them. Nobody was injured. Instead, an empty, hollow feeling opened up inside me.

No more wool meant no more shawls.

‘There must be a mistake.’ I glanced across at my mother, willing her to smile, to slap my father on the arm the way she had done earlier in that brief shining moment of camaraderie. But my mother’s face was pinched.

‘No mistake,’ Papa said. ‘I wrote the figures down myself.’ He reached into his pocket and drew out the small book in which he kept all the details of our farm. The tools, the position of the apple trees, the demarcations that divided our land. He had bought the book last year, when the Soviets first seized power.

‘We will not resist,’ Papa had warned us. ‘We will be model Soviets.’

Now the pages of that little book were black with soil and well thumbed, the green cover creased. My father flicked it open in the middle, holding the pages out for me to see.

I did not lean forward to confirm my loss. I couldn’t.

‘What about the reserve?’ I said, thinking fast, calculating how much wool was needed for one row of stitches, how much yarn could be stretched to piece together a shawl. ‘We still have the bales left over from last year.’

My father was shaking his head. ‘They already suspect us.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘They are questioning the sale of your shawls at the flea market. Claiming that what I’ve been handing over is too little.’

‘Ridiculous. We earned that money!’ It was hard for me to keep the righteous anger from my voice. Although there was a flea market in almost every village, and they were quite often raided, the Russians had not yet banned the sale of handicrafts, which were considered worthless, therefore less of a threat than foodstuffs and clothing, goods which were controlled and distributed by state-sanctioned factories. The Partorg had allowed us to continue operating our little market stall once a month provided most of the profits were handed over along with Papa’s quota of apples for the month. What we made was hardly enough to cover the cost of the wool. It certainly did not cover the time I spent dreaming up designs and the effort we all made to knit the shawls, but money had never been our motivation. When I stood at the stall, my head held high, and watched the Russian professors stop to admire the neat stitches in my shawls, I imagined a tiny bit of power kindling in my chest. When I took their roubles and placed them in the jar below the table, a warm feeling spread through my hand, knowing that we were, in a small way, defying the Russian government’s attempts to stamp out our past. I always smiled as I passed over the neatly-wrapped shawl and sent out a little wish as I watched the buyer’s departing back, hoping that the shawl would be cherished and admired, perhaps passed down through the family so that its link to Estonia was forever strengthened.

‘I know, Kati.’ My father sounded weary. ‘I know you did. And I was willing to overlook it. But they know us and they know the farm. Every last bit of it, every last blade of grass.’ He frowned at the little book. ‘Perhaps I should not have been so hasty in writing it all down.’

My mother patted his arm. ‘You are the reason we are still here, Erich. Without you, the farm would not have survived. We would not have survived. Kati understands, don’t you?’ She flicked a warning look at me. ‘They are just shawls. Just bits of cloth. Shawls are a luxury these days. Nobody can afford to buy them anyway – or sell them, it seems.’

I stared at her, but my mother shifted her gaze, still patting my father’s shoulder in a comforting manner. A slow burning heat spread across my skin. Just bits of cloth?

My grandmother had been right. Mama had never loved knitting the way we did. She was born of a generation where freedom cost dearly; her own father and brothers were killed trying to drive out the Red Army and the Baltic Germans during the War of Independence. We were but a tiny country, a stone cast between the Gulf of Finland and the vast landmass of Russia. Even with the aid of our Baltic neighbours, the Latvians and Lithuanians, we did not have enough people to defend our borders from attack. We’d been lucky to defeat the Red Army back in 1920 and, although many would not say so, it was likely that such a victory would never have taken place if the rest of Europe had not been preoccupied with their own struggles. At the mercy now of the great Soviet powers, how could Estonia hope to remain free? All we had was ourselves, our history, our stories of the land. Papa had told us when the Soviets arrived that our survival depended on our compliance. He could remember a time when resistance was met with the end of a bayonet. Better to sign away some of your rights than to lose your life, he had said. Better to stay and try to make it work than to flee to unknown shores, leaving behind your family and your friends, everything you had worked so hard to gain.

I tried to imagine what my life would be like without shawl-making. Sometimes it seemed as if shawl-making was all I had left. It was my lineage, my passion. It anchored me not only to the knitting circle but to my grandmother. Widely acknowledged as a master knitter, she had started the circle when she moved from Haapsalu, gathering women first to our little croft and when that became too small, convincing Aunt Juudit to host the group at her apartment in Tartu. I’d been accompanying her to their gatherings since I was five years old and had successfully knitted my first lace shawl; a miniature version of the pasqueflower design for Maimu, my doll. With endless patience, my grandmother had teased out the latent talents of her friends, restoring confidence when required or providing challenges whenever the knitter seemed ready to move on to a more difficult stitch. Since her passing, I had done my best to live up to the legacy she left behind. I missed her most when I had a question about how she achieved a particular effect in one of her prized lace shawls. How she was able to keep the tension in her yarn as she sewed on the lace nupps, the small lacy bobbles that told a buyer that a shawl had been sewn by hand. How she could join two pieces of lace as if they had always been one.

If she had not passed away, she would still be organising the production and sale of the shawls for the knitting circle. Instead, she had appointed me to distribute the yarn for carding and spinning, to assign the various designs to each woman depending on what I thought would sell.

Although it had not been easy to step into her shoes, I knew she would not wish the circle disbanded. How could we give up knitting now, at this crucial point in Estonia’s history, when the Soviets wanted to wipe our culture clean as if it never was? Even the usual forms of communications were forbidden now. Radios had been confiscated, typewriters banned. With no way to contact the outside world, the Soviets imagined we had no choice but to comply, that we would forget the glorious freedom of expressing ourselves. I could almost hear her voice, creaky with age, whispering encouragement into my ears. Every shawl we make will be laced with defiance. Every stitch will carry a message out into the world.