Sofi Oksanen - Purge

It would have been reasonable to let Aliide have at least something, to let her have just one man in her clumsy life; it would have been only right to just this once let her have what she wanted, since from the day she was born she had watched how Ingel’s milk hadn’t even needed to be strained, because everything she did was clean and perfect, and she won the Young Farmers milking competition easily. Aliide had seen how the rules didn’t apply to Ingel, how no animal hair fell in Ingel’s bucket, and she never got pimples. Her sweat smelled like violets and women’s troubles didn’t make her slim waist swell up. Mosquitos didn’t leave bites on her clear complexion and worms didn’t eat her cabbages. The jam Ingel made didn’t spoil and her sauerkraut didn’t go bad. The fruit of her hands was always blessed, her Young Farmers badge shone on her breast brighter than the rest, its four leaves never scratched, while her little sister lost her badges one after another and made her mother first shake her head and then give up shaking it, because her mother understood that it didn’t matter if she shook her head at Aliide or not; nothing helped.

It wasn’t enough that Ingel got Hans, the only man who had ever made Aliide’s heart stop-no, not even that was enough. After she met Hans, Ingel’s vaunted beauty and heavenly smile had to start to glow even more brightly, blindingly. Even on a rainy night, they lit up the whole yard, filled the shed until there was no air for Aliide, who would wake up at night gasping for breath, stumbling to open the door. And that wasn’t enough, either; Aliide’s trials grew, although she wouldn’t have thought it possible. They grew because Ingel couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself, she had to whisper about Hans constantly, Hans this and Hans that. And she would insist that Aliide look at him, his expressions, his gestures. Were they loving enough? Did he look at anyone else, or did he only have eyes for her? What did he mean when he said this or that? What did it mean when he gave her a cornflower? Did it mean love? Love for only her? And it did, it did mean love for only her! Hans followed her scent like a lovesick dog.

The murmuring and purring and cooing swept over the house so quickly that within a year a bottle of liquor showed up on the table for the proposal; then there were the wedding arrangements, and Ingel’s bridal chest fattened up like a pig, and her waving the things around and the quilting bees and the giggling girls and the evening dances, and then the new moon came, bringing good luck and health to the young couple. The wedding this and the wedding that and the happy couple to church and back. The people waiting, the little veil fluttering, and Aliide dancing in her black silk stockings and telling everyone how happy she was for her sister’s sake, now their little home would have a young man of the house! Hans’s white gloves shone, and although he danced one dance with Aliide, he looked right through her, at Ingel, turned his head to watch for the flash of her veil.

Hans and Ingel together in the field. Ingel running to meet him. Hans picking pieces of straw out of her hair. Hans grabbing his new bride around the waist and spinning her around in the yard. Ingel running behind the barn, Hans running after her, laughing chuckling giggling. From one day, week, year, to the next. Hans pulling off his shirt and Ingel’s hands flying to him, his skin, Ingel pouring water over his back, his toes curling with pleasure as she washed his hair. Whispers, murmurs, the quiet shush of the bedclothes at night. The rustle of the straw mattress and the squeak of the iron bedstead. Stirrings and giggles. Sighs. Moans pressed into the pillow and whimpers covered with a hand. The heat of sweat drifting through the wall to Aliide’s tortured bed. The silence, and then Hans opening the window onto the summer night, leaning on the window frame without a shirt and smoking a hand-rolled paperossi, his head shining in the dark. If Aliide went right up to her window, she could see him, his cigarette held in his veined, longfingered hand, the burning tip dropping into the bed of carnations.

Aliide went to see Maria Kreel at her croft. Granny Kreel’s evil eye and ability to stanch bleeding were famous as far back as when Aliide was born, and she didn’t doubt the woman’s abilities.

It made the visit awkward to have Granny Kreel see her situation; Aliide would have preferred not having her know anything about her torment, but she had no other place to turn to.

Maria Kreel was sitting on the bench in the yard with her cats. She said she had been expecting her.

“Do you know what it’s about, Miss Kreel?”

“A light-haired boy, young and handsome.”

Her toothless mouth swallowed a lump of bread.

Aliide placed a jar of honey on the steps. Bundles of herbs hung from the frame of the gate; a nearby crow stared at them. Aliide was afraid of it; as a child they’d been frightened by stories of people turned into crows. There had been a flock of cawing crows in Granny Kreel’s yard the first time she came there, too, when father had cut his foot with the ax. The old woman had ordered the others out of the room while she stayed there with him. The children didn’t enjoy being in the kitchen, anyway-there were strange smells there and Aliide’s nose got stuffed up. There was a large jar of maggots on the table for wounds.

The crow fluttered behind the bench and into the soughing trees, and the old woman nodded at it, as if in greeting. The sun beamed brightly but it felt chilly in the yard. The dark kitchen was visible through the open door. There was a pile of pillows in the entryway. Glowing white pillows. Their lace edges curled between the dark and the light. Death pillows. Granny Kreel collected them.

“Have you had anyone come to visit?”

“Always have visitors. Always a full house.”

Aliide moved farther from the door.

“Looks like we might have poor hay weather,” Granny Kreel continued, and popped another piece of bread in her mouth. “But that probably don’t interest you. Have you heard what the crows are saying, Aliide?”

Aliide was startled. The old lady laughed and said the crows had been quiet for several days. She was right; Aliide searched for more birds-there were plenty of them, but they weren’t making a sound. She heard the mewing of a cat from behind the house, blubbering, in heat, and the old woman called to it. The next moment the cat was there beside the old woman’s cane, rubbing against her, and she pushed the cat toward Aliide.

“Don’t know how she keeps it up,” the old woman said, squinting at Aliide through her watery eyelids, making her blush. “That’s just the way she is. On a day like this, the crows are quiet, but nothing will quiet a cat in heat.”

What did she mean, a day like this? Was the weather going to get bad? Would there be a bad harvest? Hunger? Or was she talking about Russia? Or Aliide’s life? Was something going to happen to Hans? The cat rubbed up against Aliide’s leg and she bent over to pet it. It pushed its rear end against the back of her hand and she pulled away. The old woman laughed. It was a gloomy laugh, knowing and muffled. Aliide’s hand tingled. Her whole body tingled as if there were blades of straw in the muscle trying to break out through her skin, and her haunted mind whispered to her that she just had to go to the Kreel place today, even though Hans was home alone with Ingel. Father was with Mother at the neighbors’, and she was here. When she got home Hans would smell twice as much a man and Ingel twice as much a woman, like they did whenever they were alone together for even a moment, and the thought only made the stinging under Aliide’s skin worse.