Sofi Oksanen - Purge

The potbellied man on the screen pushed his dick toward the girl. He was going to come in her face.

The girl had Zara’s face.

The girl’s face was covered with sperm. The other man put his dick inside the girl and started to groan. Pasha relaxed, and warm mucus ran down Zara’s thigh. Pasha zipped his pants and went to get a beer. The can hissed open. The sound of Pasha’s long gulps ricocheted around the nearly empty room. Zara was still on her hands and knees in front of the video. Her knees hurt.

“Turn around this way.”

Zara obeyed.

“Rub your pussy. Spread your legs right.”

Zara laid down on her back and rubbed Pasha’s sperm into her.

Pasha got out his camera and snapped photos.

“I’m sure you realize what will happen to these pictures and videos if you try any tricks.”

Zara stopped rubbing.

“I’ll send them to your babushka. And then I’ll send them to Sasha, and Sasha’s parents. We have their names and addresses.”

Had Oksanka told them about Sasha? Zara didn’t want to think about Sasha anymore. But he still came to mind, a voice that said her name, Zara-it sometimes woke her up. Sometimes it was the only reason she remembered being Zara and not Natasha. Especially on the edge of sleep, in that spongy land, drunk or otherwise drugged, she would suddenly feel Sasha wrapped around her, but she would shake the feeling off immediately. She was never going to have a home of her own with Sasha, and they would never drink champagne at each other’s graduation, so it was better not to think about those things; it was better to have a drink, pop a pill, beg Lavrenti for a snort and suck it up. And it was best not to think too much, it was easier that way. She just had to remember one thing: Even though Pasha had Zara’s face on the video, the video was not Zara’s story but Natasha’s; it would never be Zara’s story. Natasha’s story was on the video. Zara’s was someplace else.

When the girl started to talk about Vladivostok, her twitching eyebrow settled down, she forgot to rub at her earlobe, and a dimple leaped out on her cheek, disappeared, then came back again. Sunlight lit up the kitchen.

The girl had a pretty nose. The kind of nose that would have been a pleasure to see from the day she was born. Aliide tried to imagine Talvi in Zara’s place, sitting at the table chatting, twinkling, talking about her life, but she couldn’t. Since she had left home, Talvi had always been in a hurry to leave whenever she came to visit. If Aliide had been a different kind of mother, would Talvi have turned out differently? Maybe she wouldn’t scoff on the phone when Aliide asked if she’d planted a garden, saying that in Finland you can buy anything you need from the store. If Aliide had been different, would Talvi have come to help with the apple harvest, instead of just sending her some glossy photos of her new kitchen, her new living room, her new all-purpose appliance, and never pictures of herself? Maybe when Talvi was a young girl she wouldn’t have started to admire her friend’s aunt who lived in Sweden and had a car and sent the girls Burda magazine. Maybe she wouldn’t have started playing currency exchange and practicing disco dancing. Maybe she wouldn’t have wanted to leave. But the others wanted to leave, too, so maybe it wasn’t Aliide’s fault. But why had this surprisingly talkative girl from Vladivostok wanted to go to the West? She just wanted to earn some money. Maybe it was simply that Estonia was full of people who kept saying that they should have left for Finland or Sweden during the war, and the thing was repeated and passed on to the next generation with their lullabies. Or maybe Talvi had thought of wanting a foreign husband because her own parents’ marriage was a model for something she didn’t want for herself. This girl wanted to become a doctor and then go back home, but ever since she was a teenager Talvi had just wanted to go to the West and marry a man from the West. It started with her paper dolls-they drew clothes for them like the ones in Burda -and continued when she spent a whole summer scrubbing her Sangar jeans. She and her girlfriends rubbed them endlessly with a brick to make them look worn out like the jeans in the West. That same summer the neighbor boys played a game called “Going to Finland”-they built a raft and sailed it across the ditch, and then they came back again because they didn’t know what to do in Finland. Martin became more disillusioned every day. Aliide couldn’t share his disappointment, but when land restitution became the topic of the day, she had to admit that she felt disappointed in Talvi, because she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the application process, not if it involved paperwork. If Aliide had been a different kind of mother, would Talvi be here to help her with these things?

When the girl had come here yesterday, Aino had been over to talk about land issues yet again, and Aliide had repeated the same advice she’d given her who knows how many times. She and her brothers should do the paperwork together, even if her brothers were drunks. That way if something happened to any of them, there would still be someone to take care of things. Aino wanted to wait at least until the army pulled out of the country-she suspected that the Russians would come back in full force, and what would happen then, would they all be taken to the station and put in cattle cars? Aliide had to concede that the soldiers didn’t look like they were going anywhere; they just came to the village now and then to thieve, making off with cattle and emptying the shops of tobacco. It was handy, though, to be able to buy army gasoline from them.

Aliide’s eyes crinkled up; there was a tickle in her throat. This Russian girl sitting on her wobbly-legged chair was more interested in what went on in this kitchen than Aliide’s daughter was. Talvi never talked as beautifully about her childhood as this girl did. And Talvi had never asked her how to make marigold salve. This girl wanted to know what the ingredients were. This girl might be interested in all the tricks the Kreels had taught Aliide-which plants to pick in the morning and which during the new moon. If it were possible, she was sure this girl would go with her to gather Saint-John’s-wort and yarrow when the time came. Talvi would never do such a thing.

When Aliide arrived at the birthing hospital, the Russian women were yelling “ Batyuška Lenin, pomogy mne! ” And they were still yelling to Papa Lenin for more help when she left with Talvi, and when the crying infant arrived at home Martin thanked Lenin. Martin had been waiting a long time for a child, and he’d been disappointed more than once. He had become convinced that he would never father a child. Aliide hadn’t been sorry about it-she didn’t want to be anywhere near children anymore, and she wouldn’t have wanted to raise a child to carry on her family line, in this new world, to become this world’s new kind of person, but in the year that Stalin died, amid all the bewilderment that ensued when that great papa vanished, a child started to grow inside her. Martin had talked to the child even before it was born, but Aliide didn’t know how to talk to it after it had come into the world. She left the babbling to Martin and boiled liquor bottles to use for baby bottles, watched as an endless number of nipples turned dark in the kettle, and scalded darning needles to poke holes in the tops. Martin fed Talvi. He even came home on his lunch hour to take care of this important task. Sometimes Aliide tried, but nothing ever came of it-the child wouldn’t stop crying until Daddy was home. Aliide had other ways of taking care that her daughter had a peaceful childhood.