Sofi Oksanen: Purge

“Hungry? Are you hungry?”

The girl looked like she hadn’t understood the question or like she had never been asked such a thing.

“Wait here,” Aliide commanded, and went inside again, closing the door behind her. She soon returned with black bread and a dish of butter. She had hesitated about the butter for a moment but had decided to bring it with her. She shouldn’t be so stingy that she couldn’t spare a little dab for the girl. A very good decoy, indeed, to take in someone like Aliide, who had seen it all, and so easily. The compulsive ache in Aliide’s hand spread to her shoulder. She held on to the butter plate too tightly, to restrain her desire to strike.

The mud-stained map was no longer on the grass. The girl must have put it in her pocket.

The first slice of bread disappeared into the girl’s mouth whole. It wasn’t until the third that she had the patience to put butter on it, and even then she did it in a panic, shoving a heap of it into the middle of the slice, then folding it in half and pressing it together to spread the butter in between, and taking a bite. A crow cawed on the gate, dogs barked in the village, but the girl was so focused on the bread that the sounds didn’t make her flinch like they had before. Aliide’s galoshes were shining like good polished boots. The dew was rising over her feet from the damp grass.

“Well, what now? What about your husband? Is he after you?” Aliide asked, watching her closely as she ate. It was genuine hunger. But that fear. Was it only her husband she was afraid of?

“He is after me. My husband is.”

“Why don’t you call your mother, have her come and get you? Or let her know where you are?”

The girl shook her head.

“Well, call some friend, then. Or some other family member.”

She shook her head again, more violently than before.

“Then call someone who won’t tell your husband where you are.”

More shakes of the head. Her dirty hair flew away from her face. She combed it back in place and looked more clearheaded than crazy, in spite of her incessant cringing. There was no glimmer of insanity in her eyes, although she peered obliquely from under her brow all the time.

“I can’t take you anywhere. Even if I had a car, there’s no gas here. There’s a bus from the village once a day, but it’s not reliable.”

The girl assured her she would be leaving soon.

“Where will you go? Back to your husband?”

“No!”

“Then where?”

The girl poked her slipper at the stones in the flower bed in front of the bench. Her chin was nearly on her breast.

“Zara.”

Aliide was taken aback. It was an introduction.

“Aliide Truu.”

The girl stopped poking at the stone. She had grabbed hold of the edge of the bench after she’d eaten, and now she loosened her grip. Her head rose a little.

“Nice to meet you.”

Aliide. Aliide Truu. Zara’s hands let go of the bench. Aliide Truu was alive and standing in front of her. Aliide Truu lived in this house. The situation felt as strange as the language in Zara’s mouth. She dimly remembered how she had managed to find the right road and the silver willows on the road, but she couldn’t remember if she had realized that she had found it, or whether she had stood in front of the door during the night, not knowing what to do, or decided that she would wait until the morning, so she wouldn’t frighten anyone by coming as a stranger during the night, or whether she had tried to go into the stable to sleep, or looked in the kitchen window, not daring to knock on the door, or if she had even thought of knocking on the door, or thought of anything. When she tried to remember, she felt a stabbing in her head, so she concentrated on the present moment. She didn’t have any plan ready for how to behave when she got here, much less for when she met the woman she was looking for here in the yard, Aliide Truu. She hadn’t had time to think that far. Now she just had to try to make her way forward, to calm her feeling of panic, although it was waiting to break out and grab her at any moment-she had to stop thinking about Pasha and Lavrenti, she had to dare to be in the present moment, meeting Aliide Truu. She had to pull herself together. She had to be brave. To remember how to behave with other people, to think up an attitude toward the woman standing in front of her. The woman’s face was made of small wrinkles and delicate bones, but there was no expression in it. Her earlobes were elongated, and stones embedded in gold hung from them on hooks. They reflected red. Her irises seemed gray or blue gray, her eyes watery, but Zara hardly dared to look higher than her nose. Aliide was smaller than she had expected, downright skinny. The aroma of garlic wafted from her on the wind.

There wasn’t much time. Pasha and Lavrenti would find her, she had no doubt of that. But here was Aliide Truu, and here was the house. Would the woman agree to help? Zara had to make her understand the situation quickly, but she didn’t know what to say. Her head rang empty, although the bread had cleared her thoughts. Mascara tickled her eyes, her stockings were wrecked, she smelled. It had been stupid to show her the bruises-now she thought that Zara was the kind of girl who brings misfortune on herself or asks to be beaten. A girl who had done something wrong. And what if the old woman was like the babushka that Katia had told her about, or like Oksanka, who did work for men like Pasha, sending girls to the city for men like him. There was no way of knowing. Somewhere in the back of her mind there was mocking laughter, and it was Pasha’s voice, and it reminded her that a girl as stupid as she was would never make it on her own. A stupid girl like her was only fit to have the stuttering, slovenliness, smelliness beat out of her- a girl that stupid deserved to be drowned in the sink, because she was hopelessly stupid and hopelessly ugly.

It was awkward the way Aliide Truu kept looking at her, leaning on her scythe, chattering about the closing of the kolkhoz commune, as if Zara were an old acquaintance who had stopped by to chat about nothing in particular.

“There aren’t a terrible lot of visitors around here anymore,” Aliide said, and started to tally up the houses whose young people had moved away. “Everybody left Kokka to build houses for the Finns, and all the children from Roosna left to start businesses in Tallinn. The Voorels’ boy got into politics and disappeared somewhere in Tallinn. Someone should call them and tell them that they passed a law that says you can’t just up and leave the countryside. How are we supposed to even get a roof fixed around here, if there aren’t any workmen? And is it any wonder that the men don’t stay, when there aren’t any women? And there aren’t any women, because there are no businessmen. And when all the women want is businessmen and foreigners, who’s going to want a working man? The West Kaluri fishing commune sent its own variety show to perform in Finland, in Hanko, their sister city, and it was a successful trip, the Finns were lining up for tickets. Then, when the group came home, the director gave an invitation to all the young men and pretty girls to come dance the cancan for the Finns- right in the newspaper. The cancan!”

Zara nodded-she strongly agreed-as she scratched the polish off of her fingernails. Yes, everyone was just running after dollars and Finnish markka, and yes, there used to be work for everyone, and yes, everyone was a thief nowadays, pretending to be a businessman. Zara started to feel cold, and the stiffness spread to her cheeks and tongue, which made her already-slow and hesitant speech still more difficult. Her damp clothes made her shiver. She didn’t dare to look directly at Aliide, she just glanced in her direction. What was she driving at? They chatted as if the situation were an utterly normal one. Her head wasn’t spinning quite so badly now. Zara pushed her hair behind her ears, as if to hear better, and lifted her chin. Her skin felt sticky, her voice felt stiff, her nose trembled, her armpits and groin were filthy, but she managed to laugh lightly nevertheless. She tried to reproduce the voice she had sometimes used a long time ago when she ran into an old acquaintance on the street or in a shop. A voice that felt far away and strange, completely unfitted to the body that it came from. It reminded her of a world she didn’t belong to, a home she could never return to.