Sofi Oksanen - Purge

She found Lipsi’s body on the garden path. There were already maggots in his eyes.

Aliide had imagined that after she took Ingel’s place, she wouldn’t have to torture herself anymore with thoughts of how Hans and Ingel made a home together while she spent night after night with Martin. That she wouldn’t have to torment herself with imagining Ingel treading her spinning wheel and Hans beside her doing his woodwork while Aliide was at the Roosipuus’ trying to keep Martin entertained.

But the torment simply took on a new garb in the new house, and she thought about Hans constantly. Was he awake yet, or was he still asleep? Was he reading the paper, the new one that she had brought him? Or did he read the old ones that he had wanted to have with him in the loft room? There weren’t very many places left that still had newspapers from Estonian times. Or was he reading a book? It was hard to find the books he was interested in. He even wanted a Bible with him-the family Bible. And a good thing, too, or it would have ended up as kindling.

Martin and Aliide’s evenings in the new house continued as they had before-Martin looked at the paper, cleaned under his fingernails with his pocketknife, and once in a while read parts of the news aloud, adding his own comments. They should have better wages in the countryside! Yes they should, Aliide said with a nod, they certainly should. Kolkhoz villages! Workdays on Sundays in the summer! Absolutely, she said, and nodded, but she was thinking about Hans a couple of meters above them, and chewing on charcoal to make her teeth as white as Ingel’s used to be. Send young party builders to the countryside! Yes, definitely, she was in complete agreement; all the able-bodied people had taken off for the cities.

“Aliide, I’m so proud of you. You’re not hankering to get away from the countryside.”

She nodded. Yes, yes.

“Or does my little mushroom want to go to Tallinn? All my old friends are there and men from these parts would be very useful in the city.”

Aliide shook her head. What was he talking about? She couldn’t leave here.

“I just want to be sure that my little mushroom is content.”

“I like it here!”

Martin took her in his arms and spun her around the kitchen.

“I couldn’t have better proof that my darling wants to help build this country. There’s basic work to do here, isn’t there? I intend to propose that the kolkhoz buy a new truck. And we could bring people to the town hall to watch films about the achievements of our great fatherland, and for night classes, too, of course. It builds communal spirit. What do you think about that?”

He spun Aliide back to her chair and rattled on excitedly about his plans. Aliide nodded at the right moments, picked up some timothy grass that had fallen from Hans’s shirt onto the table, and shoved it in her pocket. He wasn’t hinting that he had been offered a position in Tallinn, was he? If he had been, he probably would have just said so directly. Aliide took hold of the carding combs again. They rasped, the fire crackled, and she examined her husband out of the corner of her eye, but he was just his usual steamy self. She was worrying about nothing. Martin had just imagined that his wife might have a yearning to go to Tallinn. And she would have, if it weren’t for Hans. Her collection rounds on her bicycle took her away too much, although she didn’t even have to do them every day. Still, she tramped home every workday with her nerves on edge-had someone been to search the house while she was away? But no one would dare to break into a party man’s house. They just wouldn’t. Martin could arrange it so she shared her job with someone else. He would understand very well if his wife wanted to take better care of their house and garden.

Meanwhile, the gold that had been carried to Siberia was turning into new teeth for new mouths, golden smiles that nearly outshone the sun, casting a great shadow, and in that shadow an immense number of averted eyes and shrinking expressions bred and multiplied. You met them in the market squares, in the roads and fields, an endless current, their pupils tarnished and gray, the whites of their eyes red. When the last of the farms was roped into the kolkhozy, plain talk vanished between the lines, and sometimes Aliide thought that Hans must have absorbed this atmosphere through the walls of the house. That Hans was following those same habits of silence as other people, the habit of avoiding looking at one another, like Aliide did. Maybe he had caught it from Aliide. Maybe Hans had caught the same thing from her that she had caught from outside the house.

The only difference was that unlike the others with averted eyes Hans still spoke as plainly as ever. He believed in all the same things that he had before. But his body changed as the outside world changed, even though he was never actually in contact with it.

“Why doesn’t your mother ever go to the movies? Our mom said she never goes.” The child’s clear voice echoed in the yard of the kolkhoz office. Jaan, the son of the first woman tractor operator on the commune, stared at the son of the chicken keeper, who started to break into a sweat. Aliide was about to intervene, to say that not everyone has to enjoy movies, but at the last moment she thought it best to hold her tongue. Martin’s wife simply couldn’t say such a thing, not about these movies. She had a new job, too, a good one, half days, light bookkeeping at the kolkhoz office.

The chicken keeper’s son examined the bits of sand on the toes of his shoes.

“Is your mother a Fascist?”

Jaan was on a roll-he kicked gravel at the other boy.

Aliide turned her head and moved a little farther off. She had given the movie men a tour of the office. Martin would be bringing some people in the new truck. Apparently he had put birch trees in the corners of the truck bed. The truck looked good this way and protected the passengers from the wind at the same time-he had been beaming about it when he left for work that morning. There was going to be a showing that evening-first the Survey of Soviet Estonia would be presenting Stalingrad’s Lucky Days, and then there would be a showing of The Battle of Stalingrad for the umpteenth time. Or was it The Light of the Kolkhoz ?

The projectionist was showing the projector to the kids. They rode their bikes around the truck like a whirligig, their eager eyes locked on the machine. One of them said he wanted to be a movie man when he grew up, and drive the truck and see all the movies. The bookkeeper was arranging the benches inside; the windows of the auditorium were covered in army blankets. Tomorrow at the school there would be a free showing: A Hero’s Tale: A True Story. Jaan’s mother slumped to her place in her overalls, wiped her brow, and said something about the women’s tractor brigade. They were an Estonian family who had come from Russia. But they had preserved their language-so many of those people were just like Russians. They didn’t have even a small bundle of possessions with them when they came to the kolkhoz, but now the mother’s mouth shone gold and Jaan was hunting Fascists. They had made the front room of the house they were assigned to into a sheep fold. When Aliide went to visit them there, the sheep were tied to the legs of a piano that had been left in the house. A beautiful German piano.

The girls had showed up plenty early to wait for the movie men to arrive. There was a sixteen-year-old milkmaid there who was well known to the man who fixed the projector, and he went over to entertain her and insisted that she stay after the film for the dance. He would turn on the gramophone and get the pretty girls to dance until they wore their legs out. Chirp chirp, the milkmaid tried to giggle prettily, but the sound didn’t fit with her country cheeks, red as a flag- chirp chirp . Aliide was annoyed by the girl’s eager, hopeful look, directed at the movie man in his billed hat, smoking his paperossi . He tugged at his suspenders, whistled movie songs, and basked in the girl’s limelight as if he were some kind of movie star. The hot summer day carried the smell of sweat from under the girl’s breasts. Aliide wanted to go over and slap the stupid thing, tell her that the movie man had his fun with the milkmaids in every village, with every sixteen-year-old, and each one of them with the same look full of greed for the future, the same frill around their necklines and the same tempting cleavage, just as tempting every time, in every village. Slap, little girl. Slap, do you understand that? Aliide leaned against the car and saw the movie man out of the corner of her eye, surreptitiously stroking the girl’s plump arm, and although Aliide knew what the milkmaid didn’t know-that the boy told the same story to all the young possessors of breasts- she still felt envious of the girl for being able to believe in the future, even for a moment, a future where she and the movie man would dance together and watch movies and maybe someday she would make dinner for him in their own little home. No matter how small the possibility of a future for the milkmaid and the movie man was, it was greater than the possibilities for Aliide and Hans. Good God-any couple, no matter how unlikely, had a better chance than they did.