Sofi Oksanen - Purge

Aliide wasn’t ever going to go anywhere or say anything about these things. Let them threaten her however they liked, she wasn’t going.

She found it hard to believe that there would be any very bold moves, because too many people had dirty flour in their bags, and people with filthy fingers are hardly enthusiastic about digging up the past. Besides, you could always find someone to defend you if a fanatical public worked itself up into a riot. They would have been called saboteurs, in the past, and put in jail to think for a while about the consequences of their actions. Stupid young people, what did they expect to achieve by rummaging around like this? Those who poke around in the past will get a stick in the eye. A beam would be better, though.

When Volli was out of sight, Aliide went inside and opened a drawer in the bureau. She took out some papers and started to sort them. Then she opened another drawer. And another. She went through every drawer, went to the washstand, the bundle in the bottom drawer, remembered the secret drawer in the kitchen table, too, and went through it. The radio cabinet. The shelf on the big looking glass. The unused suitcases. The straggly wallpaper, under which she had sometimes slipped something. The candy tins, blooming with rust. The piles of yellowed newspapers, dead flies dropping from between them. Did Martin have any other stashes?

She wiped away the spiderwebs that clung to her hair. She hadn’t found anything incriminating, just a lot of trash seeping out of every corner. The party papers and awards went in the fire, so did Talvi’s Young Pioneer badge. And the pile of the Abiks Agitator , which Martin had read every month with burning eyes: In 1960, for every ten thousand inhabitants in England there were only nine doctors, in the United States only twelve, but in the Estonian Soviet Republic there were twentytwo! In the Soviet Republic of Georgia, thirty-two! Before the war, there were no kindergartens in Albania, but now there are three hundred! We demand a happy life for all the children of the world! And what brigadiers we have!

Looking at the annual volume, with “EKP KK Propaganda and Agitation Association” printed under the title, Aliide could hear Martin’s voice trembling with fervor. A Socialist society provides the best prerequisites for the advancement of science, the advancement of economics, the conquering of space for progress! She shook her head, but Martin’s voice wouldn’t leave it. The capitalist world won’t be able to keep up with the stormlike progress of our people’s standard of living! The capitalist world will be left standing-and fall! And an unending stream of numbers: how much steel had been produced in the previous year, how much it exceeded the norm, how the annual goal had been achieved in one month-forward, always forward -still more, more, more-greater victories, greater profits -victory, victory, victory! Martin never said maybe. He was incapable of doubt, because he didn’t let his words admit the possibility. He spoke only truths.

There was so much wastepaper that Aliide had to wait for the first batch to burn before she could load more into the stove. The old paper made her skin smutty. She washed her hands all the way to the elbows, but they got filthy again immediately when she picked up the next magazine. The endless annals of the Estonian Communists. And then all of the books that had been ordered: Ideological Experiences Stumping in Viljand by K. Raaven, An Analysis of Livestock Production on Collective Farms by R. Hagelberg, A Young Communist’s Questions About Growth by Nadezda Krupskaya. The pile, glazed over with lost optimism, grew in front of her. She could have burned them all gradually, used the books for kindling, but it felt important to get rid of them all right away. It would have been smarter to look for the kinds of things that could have been used against her. Martin had always been the kind of person who knew how to watch his own back, so she was sure to find something. But the pile of trash in front of the stove annoyed her too much.

After she got going, burning books for several days, she fetched the ladder from the stable and managed to lug it over to the end of the house, though it weighed her down and dragged her arms toward the ground. Hiisu bolted after a low-flying air force plane-he’d never gotten used to them, always trying to catch them, many times a day, barking at the top of his lungs. He vanished behind the fence and Aliide pushed the ladder up against the wall of the house. She hadn’t been to that side of the loft in years, so there would be plenty of mess, corners full of embarrassing phrases and theses that had to be suppressed.

An attic smell. Spiderwebs drifting against her, and a strange taste of longing. She retied her scarf under her chin and stepped forward. She left the door open and let her eyes adjust to the darkness, peering between the tops of the piles. Where should she start? The section of the attic over the end of the house was full of every possible object: spinning wheels, shuttles, shoemaker’s lasts, old potato baskets, a loom, bicycles, toys, skis, ski poles, window frames, a treadle sewing machine-a Singer that Martin had insisted on carrying up here, even though Aliide had wanted to keep it downstairs because it worked well. The women in the village had held on to their Singers, and anyone who did get a new machine chose a treadle model, because what if something happened and there was no electricity? Martin didn’t often become visibly angry and didn’t argue with his wife about household matters, but the Singer had gone, and Martin had replaced it with an electric model, a Russian Tshaika. Aliide had let it pass, reckoning that he just hated goods from Estonian times and wanted to set an example and show how they trusted Russian appliances. But the Singer was the only thing from Estonian times that he wanted to get rid of. Why the Singer, and why only it? Pick me, my lips have never been kissed, Pick me, I am a maiden true, pure, and able, Pick me, I have a Singer sewing machine, Pick me, I have a Ping-Pong table. Who was it who had sung that? Nobody around here, anyway. The young voices in Aliide’s head mixed with Martin’s snorts from years ago as he lugged the Singer up the ladder to the attic. Where had she heard that song? It was in Tallinn, when she was visiting her cousin. Why had she gone there? Was she there to see a dentist? That was the only possible reason. Her cousin had taken her to town, and she had passed a student group that was singing, “ Take me, I have a Singer sewing machine .” And the students had laughed so lightly. They had their whole lives ahead of them, the future leading them forward at full steam, the girls with their short skirts and high, shiny boots. Chiffon scarves rippling in their hair and around their necks. Her cousin had lamented the shortness of the skirts goodnaturedly, but she was wearing a chiffon scarf just like theirs on her head. They were all the rage, those chiffon scarves. The expressions on the young people’s faces had been full of possibility. Her future was already over. The song kept ringing in her ears all day. No, all week. It mixed with the milk that sprayed into her pail, the muddy bottoms of her galoshes, her steps as she walked across the field of the kolkhoz collective farm and saw Martin’s excitement at how the collective was thriving, his excitement about the future, which had rolled over Aliide’s heart like a heavy cart, as sturdy as a lug nut, like the muscles of Stakhanov, the heroic miner, inescapable, inexorable.

Aliide aimed her flashlight at the sewing machine again. Singer, above all the rest. She remembered the ads from a world ago in Taluperenaine magazine very well. Under the cabinet top there was a box full of junk, sewing machine oil and little brushes, broken needles and bits of ribbon. She got down on her knees and looked at the underside of the cabinet top. The nails there were smaller than on the rest of the cabinet. She pushed the machine over and went carefully down the ladder, got an ax from the kitchen, and tottered back up the ladder to the attic. The ax made short work of the sewing machine.