Sofi Oksanen - Purge

A line had formed long ago at Maria Kreel’s door as women ran to ask her about their men on the other side of the border. In the end she had to bolt her door, and she wouldn’t see Aliide, either, even though she’d been bringing her honey for years. A gypsy who read tarot cards appeared in the village, and the flock of people in the Kreels’ yard migrated to the gypsy’s place. Ingel and Aliide went there once and were told that their parents were already on their journey home. Hans grinned at them when they came bustling home with the news and said he trusted the Germans’ promises more than a fortune-teller’s. The Germans had vowed that everyone who had ended up on the other side of the border would be brought back. Ingel was embarrassed and fell to examining her recipe book. Aliide didn’t bother to say that she trusted the gypsies more than the Germans.

“I invited a few Germans over to play cards tonight. Ingel can serve them her delicious candy and you two can brush up on your German. What do you say?”

Aliide was surprised. Hans had never invited any Germans over before. Did Ingel want to find her a man that desperately? Ingel didn’t even like the Germans.

“They’re terribly homesick. They need some company. They’re young men.”

The last part he said to Aliide.

Aliide looked at Ingel.

Ingel smiled.

They played cards for a long time. The Germans had hung their jackets on the coatrack as soon as they walked in. Ingel smiled approvingly at that and offered them some sugar beet cardamom buns and rowanberry-sugar beet custard. The Germans sang German songs and entertained Aliide, although she didn’t understand everything they said. Pantomime and sign language helped; the soldiers were thrilled with the sisters’ grasp of German, however small. Ingel had withdrawn to soak the rye; in the breaks in the singing Aliide could hear her pouring milk over the grains. So you’ll remember that it always has to be skim milk, Ingel had said, teaching her how to make coffee substitute. The pan clattered into the oven, where there was still a toasty aroma of bread, and Aliide would have preferred to be with Ingel working rather than sitting at the table with the soldiers, although they were actually quite funny boys. They were coming again the next evening. Aliide was annoyed; Ingel was excited. Aliide didn’t want anyone but Hans, but Ingel insisted that Aliide be the one to serve the coffee at the next visit. First put small-and I mean small- pieces of sugar beet in water to simmer. Cook them twenty to thirty minutes, then put them through a sieve and add the substitute and the milk. Will you remember that? So I won’t have to explain it to you when the guests are here? You can show them that you know how to be a hostess. On their fifth visit the soldiers announced that they were being transferred to Tallinn. Aliide was relieved; Ingel looked anxious. Hans said consolingly that more Germans would be sure to come. Father and Mother would be coming home. Everything would be all right. Right before they left, one of the soldiers gave Aliide his address and asked her to write to him. Aliide promised to write, although she wasn’t going to. She could feel Ingel and Hans exchange a glance behind her.

Father and Mother were never heard from again.

Hans carved Ingel a pretty pair of wooden shoes, attached laces to them, and announced that he was going to follow the Germans.

The sisters’ nights turned sleepless.

One night Armin Joffe, with his child, his wife, and her parents, disappeared from the village. The rumor was that they had escaped to the Soviet Union for safety. They were Jews.

The Russians had already spread out across the country again when Hans knocked on the window of the back room one night. Aliide pulled out the ax, Ingel started to mutter Our Father, and Linda hid under the bed, but they realized who it was soon enough. Two long, two short. Hans had come home.

As Ingel dribbled tears of joy, Aliide thought about how they were going to hide him. Hans whispered that he had run away from the German ranks and made it across the gulf by passing as a Finn. Ingel sniffled that Hans could have tried to send them a letter of some kind, but Aliide was glad he hadn’t. The fewer of his activities put down on paper the better. His escape with the Finland boys could be wiped from memory immediately; it never happened-surely Ingel understood that? What about the little room behind the kitchen-could they use that as a hiding place again? That’s where Hans had been before, when the Russians came the first time. It was a good spot-windowless-so they hid him there, but after the very first night his restlessness started to grow and he started asking about the Forest Brothers. The inactivity struck at his manhood, and he wanted to at least help with the work around the household. It was haymaking time; there were other men in hiding who were in the fields wearing skirts as a disguise, but Ingel didn’t dare allow him to do it. No one must know that he had returned, and that was made clear to Linda, too.

A couple of days later their neighbor Aino, recently widowed and in the last stages of pregnancy, ran over the field holding her belly, collapsed next to Ingel’s rake, and told them that the Berg boys were on their way there; they had marched past her house resolutely, and the youngest one was waving the blue, black, and white flag. Ingel and Aliide left the haymaking right where it was and rushed home. The Berg boys were waiting in the yard, smoking paperossis . They greeted the women.

“Have you seen Hans?”

“Why do you ask?”

Ingel and Aliide stood side by side in front of the boys and gripped each other’s fingers.

“Hans hasn’t come home since he went wherever he went.”

“But he’ll be here before long.”

“We don’t know anything about that.”

The Berg boys told them to give Hans their greetings and tell him they were forming a group and he’d best seek them out. Ingel gave them some bread and three liters of milk and promised to pass along their message. But after the boys had disappeared behind the silver willows, Ingel whispered that they must never tell Hans. He would go running after them! Aliide ignored her sniveling and said that they could expect to hear the rattle of the secret police motorcycles directly, because this march was the most conspicuous activity imaginable; didn’t Ingel understand that? They acted quickly. When the clock next struck the hour, Hans was already hiding at the edge of the woods. Lipsi started to bark in the yard, and the sound of a motorcycle could be heard approaching. Aliide and Ingel stared at each other. Hans had made it to safety at the last moment, but what if they were sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of haymaking-it would look exactly like what it was. Like something had happened and now they were just sitting there waiting to feel a gun at the back of their heads. Back to the fields then. They went through the pantry to the cowshed, through the cowshed to the stable, and from the stable through the rustling leaves in the tobacco patch to the field, as the motorcycle swung into the yard, its sidecar bouncing. “We left the kettle on the stove,” Ingel panted. “They’ll know that someone has just left the house.” They hadn’t locked the front door; it would have seemed suspicious. The Chekists would be there any moment and hear the clatter of the eggs boiling on the stove for Hans’s lunch, and they would know that someone had left the kitchen in a hurry. The two women stood in the middle of the field, peering at the house from behind a pile of stones. The men in their leather coats stopped their motorcycles, went inside, stayed there for a moment, came out, looked around, and drove away. Ingel was surprised that they left so quickly and immediately started to regret letting Hans go off into the woods just like that. Maybe they could have got out of it by talking to the Chekists. If they had been at home, the men might have just popped into the kitchen and left again, and Hans could have stayed safe in the little room behind the kitchen. What a stupid girl. Aliide didn’t understand how Hans could have chosen a woman like her.