Sofi Oksanen - Purge

“Burn my clothes.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. I didn’t tell them anything.”

“I know.”

“They’ll come for us again.”

“We should send Linda away.”

“Hans would start to suspect something, and he mustn’t suspect anything. We can’t tell him.”

“We mustn’t tell him anything,” Ingel repeated. “We should leave here.”

“Where would we go? And Hans…”

That autumn evening, they were making soap. Linda was playing with the chestnut birds and Ingel’s German brooch, polishing its blue rhinestones and trying to avoid getting out her primer, as usual. Jars of apple jam they had made the day before stood in stout array on the table, waiting to be taken into the pantry, and next to them a jug of apple juice wrung from the same batch was already bottled. It had been a good day, the first day since that night spent in the basement of the town hall that Aliide hadn’t thought about it immediately on waking-she had had a moment to look out at the flood of morning sunlight before she remembered. Although no one had come after them since the night Aliide had walked home alone, they still started at every knock at the door-but so did many other people in those days. On that morning, however, Aliide had felt a little seed of hope: Maybe they would leave them alone. Maybe they believed that they didn’t know anything. Maybe they would let them do their work in peace, make their jams and preserves, let them be.

Aino had come to visit, to sit at the table and chat. The barrel of meat she had intended to use for her own soap had been stolen, so she had been promised part of theirs. Her conversation felt good; talking with an outsider eased the otherwise overwhelmingly mute, desperate atmosphere in the kitchen. Aino’s ordinary talk was a gentle echo, and even her story of the fate of her hundred-kilo pig was comforting; the camaraderie in the kitchen gave every sentence a cozy feeling. Swine fever had taken her sow and she had to slaughter it immediately, drain the blood, and salt the meat. But the barrel had disappeared from her cellar while she was away visiting her mother.

“Can you imagine?” she said, shaking her head. “Now someone’s going to eat it! It was supposed to be for my soap!”

“It must have been someone who wasn’t from around here. Everybody in the village knows what your sow died from.”

“Thank goodness there was nothing else in that old cellar.”

The soap ingredients had been soaked and washed for several days, and that evening they were finally boiling in a great stew over a quiet fire, and Ingel was starting to add caustic soda. It was Ingel’s job because Aliide didn’t have the patience for it, and Ingel was good at making soap, just like she was good at all women’s work. Ingel’s cakes of soap were always the thickest and of the highest quality, plump and proud, but even that didn’t bother Aliide that evening, because it was the first day that felt even a little bit normal. In the morning the dye man had come peddling dyes that someone had secretly supplied him from the Orto factory-pure colors without fillers-people had heard about it in all the surrounding villages-and now the soap stew was frothy, Ingel was stirring it with a wooden ladle, Aino chatted, shaking her head as she talked about the kolkhoz collective farm-how was she going to manage quotas that were always going up? The sisters were worried about the same thing, but that evening Aliide decided not to fret about it too much-there was plenty of time to fret over quotas. The conversation was interrupted by a squeal from the other side of the table; the pin on Ingel’s brooch had pricked Linda’s finger. Ingel grabbed it and pinned it to the front of Linda’s sweater and told her not to play with it. Linda was left to sniffle in the corner of the kitchen, where she had escaped with her chestnut bird after Ingel’s warnings that the splashing lye could eat the flesh from her hands. The domestic bustle made Aliide smile, and she beckoned Linda to the window to watch Aino as she went out to do the evening milking. Aino would come back the next day. Then the soap would be ready to cut and Aino would bring some cakes home to dry. Aliide gave a long stretch. Soon she would go with Linda to the barn to feed the animals and Hans would be able to come out into the kitchen to put the heavy kettle on the floor to cool.

There were four men.

They didn’t knock-they walked in like they owned the place.

Ingel was just adding some caustic soda to the pot. Aliide denied knowing anything about Hans. Ingel poured the entire contents of the bottle into the pot.

The soap boiled over onto the stove.

She didn’t tell them where Hans was.

Linda didn’t say a word.

Smoke came up from the stove, a fire started, the pot continued to froth.

At the town hall, Linda was separated from them and taken somewhere else.

Two lights without shades hung from the basement ceiling.

There were two boys from their own village there, old man Leemet’s son and Armin Joffe, who had escaped to the Soviet Union before the Germans came. Neither boy looked in their direction.

The soldiers at the town hall were smoking mahorkka cigarettes and drinking liquor. Out of glasses. They wiped their noses on their sleeves, as was the Russian custom, although they spoke Estonian. They offered Aliide and Ingel a drink. They declined.

“We know that you know where Hans Pekk is,” one of the men said.

Someone had supposedly seen Hans in the woods. Someone who had been interrogated had claimed that he and Hans had been in the same group and the same hideout.

“You can get out of here and go home as soon as you tell us where Hans Pekk is.”

“You have such a charming daughter,” another one added.

Ingel said that Hans was dead. Killed in a murderrobbery in 1945.

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

Aliide said that Hans’s friend Hendrik Ristla had been a witness. Hans and Hendrik Ristla had been going down the road on a horse, and suddenly they had been laid hold of and Hans was killed, just like that. Ingel started to get nervous. Aliide could smell it, although she gave no outward sign. Ingel stood proud and straight. One man paced the whole time, behind them. Walked and walked, and another one was walking in the corridor. The sound of boots…

“What a pretty name, for a pretty little girl.”

Linda had just turned seven.

“We’ll be asking your daughter these same questions shortly.”

They were quiet. And then still another man came in. And the man who had been interrogating them said to the one who had arrived, “Go talk to the girl. Don’t waste any time. Unscrew the light from the ceiling. Careful you don’t burn yourself. No, bring the girl here instead. Then lower that lamp, that cord over there, so it reaches the table. Wait until we’ve put the girl on the table.”

The man had just been eating something, he was still chewing. Grease glistened on his hands and the corners of his mouth. Doors opened and closed, boots marched, leather jackets creaked. The table was moved. Linda was brought in. The buttons were gone from her blouse; she held it shut with her hand.

“Put her on the table.”

Linda was so quiet her eyes-

“Spread her legs. Hold her down.”

Ingel whimpered in the corner.

“Aliide Tamm, you can take care of this. Come over to the table.”

They didn’t say anything, they didn’t say anything.

“Make her hold the light.”

They didn’t say anything they didn’t say anything anything anything.