Sofi Oksanen - Purge

The silence and the humming grew, and then, suddenly, Hans grabbed his knapsack from the hook.

“I have to go after them.”

“Don’t be crazy.”

“Of course I have to!”

He tugged open the lower kitchen cupboard to get some provisions, but it was nearly empty. He strode into the food pantry.

“They took the food with them.”

“Hans, maybe the soldiers stole it. Maybe they’ve just been taken to the town hall for questioning. You remember, Hans, it happened before. Maybe they’ll be home soon.”

Hans rushed into the front room and opened the wardrobe.

“All their winter clothes, all the warm things are gone. At least Ingel took the gold with her.”

“The gold?”

“It was sewed into her fur coat.”

“Hans, they’ll come back soon.”

But he was already leaving. Aliide ran after him, grabbed him by the arm. He tried to shake her off. The sleeve of his shirt was torn, a chair fell over, the table was overturned. She wouldn’t let Hans go-never, ever. She held on with all her might, wrapped around his leg, and wouldn’t let go even when he grabbed her by the hair and pulled. She wasn’t going to let go; she would tire him out first. And finally, when they lay sweating on the floor, panting and weary on the cold floor, Aliide almost laughed. Even now, even in this situation, Hans hadn’t struck her. He might have; she expected him to, expected him to pick up the bottle on the table and hit her on the head with it or whack her with the shovel, but he didn’t. That’s how good Hans was, how much he cared about her, even at a time like that. She could never have better proof than that.

There was no one as good as Hans, Aliide’s beautiful Hans, the most beautiful one of all.

“Why, Liide?”

“They don’t need a reason.”

“I need a reason!”

He looked at her expectantly. Aliide had hoped that he would have been resigned to what had happened. Everyone knew that they didn’t need any special reason, much less any evidence for their arbitrary, completely imaginary accusations.

“Didn’t you hear anything? They must have said something when they came here.”

THEY . The word swelled up large in Aliide’s mouth. As a child she used to get a demerit for saying certain words out loud, like God, hell, thunder, death . Once she had tried it in secret, reciting them one after the other. A couple of days later, one of the chickens died.

“I couldn’t hear everything. There was a lot of shouting and banging. I tried to get the door open, to ambush them with my Walther, but it wouldn’t open, and then they were all gone. It happened so quickly and I was stuck in that room. Lipsi barked so much…”

His voice crumbled.

“Maybe it was because of…” The words stuck in Aliide’s throat. Her head turned to the side, as if of its own accord, and she thought about that dead chicken. “Maybe it was because she was your widow. And Linda was your daughter. Enemies of the state, I mean.”

It was cold in the kitchen. Aliide’s teeth chattered. She wiped her chin. Her hand came away red; her split lip had bled.

“Because of me, you mean. My fault.”

“Hans, Ingel put wedges under the feet of the cupboard. She wanted you to stay in hiding.”

“Get me a drink.”

“I’ll make a better hiding place for you.”

“Why do I need a better one?”

“It’s not good to be in the same place too long.”

“Are you suggesting that Ingel will talk? My Ingel?”

“Of course not!”

She dug in her pocket and pulled out a flask of homebrewed liquor.

Hans didn’t even ask about Lipsi.

“Go milk the cows,” he said wearily.

Aliide pricked up her ears. Maybe it was an innocent request, and the cows did have to be milked, but she couldn’t leave him alone here in the kitchen, not like this. He might run to the town hall.

A couple of weeks after Ingel and Linda were taken away, Martin, Aliide, and the dog moved into the house. It was a shimmering morning, the moving truck rocked back and forth, and Aliide had done everything possible the whole morning to make sure that nothing would go wrong, careful in her every movement to be sure that she didn’t miss anything, mess anything up. She woke up and put her right foot on the floor first, stepped over the threshold and through the front door with her right foot, opened doors with her right hand, hurrying to open them before Martin’s left hand spoiled their luck. And as soon as they got to the house, she rushed to be the first to take hold of the gate with her right hand, and the door, and to step into the house with her right foot. Everything went well. The first person the truck met on the road was a man. That was a good sign. If it had been a woman she would have seen her from far off and insisted that Martin stop the truck. She would have disappeared into the brush, told him that her stomach hurt, waited for the woman to pass, but although that would have avoided bad luck for her personally, the truck still would have met a woman first, and so would Martin. And what if the second person they met was a woman? She would have asked Martin to stop and run into the bushes again, and he would have started to worry about her. She couldn’t tell Martin about bearers of good luck or about the evil eye- he would have just laughed at his wife for listening to too many old wives’ tales. They had each other, Lenin, and Stalin. But luckily the whole trip went well. Her toes curled with anticipation and her hair shone with joy. Hans! She had saved herself and Hans! They were safe, and they were together!

Aliide shot a glance at herself in the front-room mirror as Martin unloaded the wagon, and perhaps she flirted a little with her own bubbly reflection. Oh, how she would have liked to have Martin away for the night, working, anywhere, so she could have let Hans out of the attic and sat with him all night long. But Martin wasn’t going anywhere, he wanted to spend their first night in their new home with his wife, his comrade, his beloved-with her-although she did try asking if he wouldn’t miss the company of men and made it clear that she wouldn’t be angry if he put other duties before her, but he just laughed at such nonsense. The party could get along fine without him for one night, but his wife couldn’t!

Ingel’s smell still filled the house; the windows still had her fingerprints on them, or Linda’s-they must have been Linda’s, they were so low on the glass. Linda’s chestnut bird was on the floor under the window, standing in a hollow knot in the wooden floorboard, its tail feathers spread out. There was nothing to suggest a hasty departure or panicked packing: the cabinets weren’t left open, the cupboards weren’t ransacked. The only straggler was the cupboard door that Hans had opened. Aliide closed it.

Ingel had left everything in good order, neatly taken her own dresses and Linda’s from the white wardrobe and closed the door properly, even though it was hard to close- you always had to push it hard but at the same time slowly, or else it would come open again on its own. Ingel had closed it as if she hadn’t been in a hurry at all. The dresser was emptied of socks and underwear, but the tablecloth that covered it was straight, as were the rugs on the floor, if you didn’t count the one that had got crumpled up when Aliide tried to keep Hans from leaving. She hadn’t noticed it before-she’d been building the room in the attic and hadn’t come downstairs; she always climbed straight up to the attic, didn’t dawdle in the kitchen or make anything hot for Hans to eat. Hans would have liked to come out and help with the building, but Aliide overrode his objections. His state of mind seemed so unstable that she thought it was better that he stay in the old room, crying and drinking the liquor she brought him.