Sofi Oksanen - Purge

“Remember, Zara. You’re not a Russian girl, you’re an Estonian girl. And you can buy some seeds at the market and send them to me! I want Estonian flowers on my windowsill!”

The back of the photograph read, “For Aliide, from her sister.” She had also written the name Aliide Truu on the card. No one had ever told Zara anything about Aliide Truu before.

“Who is Aliide Truu, Grandmother?”

“My sister. My little sister. Or she used to be. She may already be dead. You can inquire about her. Whether anyone knows her.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me that you had a sister?”

“Aliide got married and moved away early on. And then the war came. And we moved here. But you have to go and look at the house. Then you can tell me who lives there and what it looks like now. I’ve told you before what it was like.”

As her mother walked with her to the door on her last day at home, Zara put her suitcase down on the floor and asked her mother why she had never told her about her aunt.

This time, her mother answered her.

“I don’t have an aunt.”

When Aliide went into the pantry, Zara took the picture out of her pocket and waited. Aliide would have to respond to it somehow, say something, tell her something, anything at all. Something had to happen when Aliide saw the photograph. Zara’s heart was pounding. But when Aliide came back into the kitchen and Zara waved the photo in front of her and said with a gasp that it had fallen from between the cupboard and the wall, right through a hole in the wallpaper, there was nothing in Aliide’s expression to indicate that she knew who the girls in the photo were.

“What’s it a picture of?”

“It says, ‘For Aliide, from her sister.’”

“I don’t have a sister.”

She turned the radio up louder. They were just finishing up the last words of an open letter from a Communist and were moving on to other points of view. “Give it to me.”

Aliide’s commanding voice compelled Zara to give her the picture, and she snatched it quickly.

“What’s her name?” Zara asked.

Aliide turned the radio up even louder.

“What’s her name?” Zara said again.

“What?”

… Since there’s no milk to give to our children, and no candy, how can they grow up to be healthy? Should we teach them to eat nettles and dandelion greens? I pray with all my heart that our country can have…

“Women like that were called enemies of the state back then.”

… enough bread and something to put on it, too…

“What about your sister?”

“What about her? She was a thief and a traitor.”

Zara turned the radio down.

Aliide didn’t look at her. Zara could hear the indignation in her breath. Her earlobes were turning red.

“So, she was a bad person. How bad? What did she do?”

“She stole grain from the kolkhoz and was arrested.”

“She stole some grain?”

“She behaved the way predators behave. She stole from the people.”

“Why didn’t she steal something more valuable?”

Aliide turned the radio up again.

“Didn’t you ask her?”

“Ask her what?”

… Across the centuries, a slave’s mentality has been programmed into our genes, which only recognizes money and force, and so we shouldn’t wonder if…

“Ask her why she stole the grain.”

“Don’t you people in Vladivostok know what liquor is made from?”

“It sounds like the act of a hungry person to me.”

Aliide turned the radio all the way up.

… for the sake of domestic peace we should ask some great power to defend us. Germany, for example. Only a dictatorship could put an end to Estonia’s present corruption and get the economy in order…

“You must have never been hungry, Aliide, because you didn’t steal any grain.”

Aliide pretended to listen to the radio, hummed over it, and grabbed some garlic to peel. The garlic skins started falling on the photograph. There was a magazine under it, Nelli Teataja . The logo on the cover, a black silhouette of an old woman, was still visible. Zara pulled the radio plug out of the wall. The rattle of the refrigerator ate up the silence, the garlic rumbled into the bowl like boulders, the plug burned in Zara’s hand.

“Don’t you think it’s time you sat down and relaxed?” Aliide said.

“Where did she steal it from?”

“From the field. You can see it from this window. Why are you interested in the carryings-on of a thief?”

“But that field belonged to this house.”

“No, it belonged to the kolkhoz.”

“But before that.”

“Before that, this was a Fascist house.”

“Are you a Fascist, Aliide?”

“I’m a good Communist. Why don’t you sit down, dear? Where I come from, guests sit down when they are asked, or else they leave.”

“So, if you were never a Fascist, then when did you move here?”

“I was born here. Turn the radio back on.”

“I don’t understand. You mean that your sister stole from her own fields?”

“From the kolkhoz’s fields! Turn that radio back on, young lady. Where I come from, guests don’t behave like they own the place. Maybe where you come from you don’t know any other way to behave.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just got interested in your sister’s story. What happened to her?”

“She was taken away. Why are you interested in a thief’s story? Thieves’ stories only interest other thieves.”

“Where did they take her?”

“Wherever they take enemies of the people.”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean, then what?”

Aliide got up, shoved Zara out of the way with her stick, and plugged the radio back into the wall.

… A slave’s spirit longs for the whip, and once in a while a Russian prianiki cake…

“What happened after that?”

The photo was covered with garlic skins. The radio was so loud that the skins trembled.

“How is it that you’re here, Aliide, but your sister was taken away? Didn’t that put you under suspicion?”

Aliide made no sign that she had heard; she just yelled, “Put some more wood on the fire!”

“Was it because you had such a good background? You were such a good party member?”

The garlic skins danced off the edge of the table and drifted to the floor. Aliide got up to throw them on the fire. Zara turned the radio down and stood in front of it.

“Were you a good comrade, Aliide?”

“I was good, and so was my husband, Martin. He was a party organizer. From an old Estonian Communist family, not like those opportunists that came later. He had medals. Awards.”

The rapid-fire yelling over the sound of the radio made Zara pant, she pressed against her chest to get it to settle down, opened the buttons of her dress, and found it hard to recognize in this woman in front of her the same Aliide who had been jabbering away calmly a little while ago. This woman was cold and hard, and she wasn’t getting anything out of her.

“I think you should go to sleep now. There’s a lot to think about tomorrow-like what to do about your husband, if you still remember that problem.” Under the blankets in the front room, Zara was still gasping for breath. Aliide had recognized her grandmother.

Grandmother hadn’t been a thief or a Fascist. Or had she?

There was a slap of the flyswatter in the kitchen. -Paul-Eerik Rummo