Sofi Oksanen - Purge

Right from the start Pasha had made it clear that Zara was in debt to him. She could leave as soon as she’d paid him back, but not before! And the only way she could pay him was by working for him-working efficiently, doing work that paid well.

Zara didn’t understand where the debt came from. Nevertheless, she started counting how much of the loan she had paid off, how much was still left, how many months, how many weeks, days, hours, how many mornings, how many nights, how many showers, blow jobs, customers. How many girls she saw. From how many countries. How many times she had to redden her lips and how many times Nina had to give her stitches. How many diseases she got, how many bruises. How many times her head was shoved in the toilet or how many times she was drowned in the sink with Pasha’s iron fist around the back of her neck. You can count time without the hands of a clock, and her calendar was always renewed, because every day she was fined for something. She danced badly even after a week of practice.

“That’s a hundred dollars,” Pasha said. “And a hundred for the video.”

“What video?”

“And a hundred for stupidity. Or did you think you could watch that video for free, girl? We brought them here to teach you to dance, baby. If we hadn’t, they could have been sold. Get it?”

She got it-she didn’t want any more fines. But she got them anyway-fines for learning slowly, for complaining about the customers, for having the wrong look on her face. The count started from the beginning again. How many days, how many mornings, how many blue eyes.

And of course she had to work to eat.

“My grandpa was in Perm in thirty-six. You didn’t get fed there if you didn’t work.”

Pasha would praise Zara and tell her that she was really paying down her debt nicely. She wanted to believe his notebook, with its dark blue, smelly plastic cover and Soviet seal. The meticulous, even columns of numbers made Pasha’s promises believable enough that it was quite easy to put your faith in them-if you wanted to, that is. And the only way to keep going was to put your faith in them. A person has to have faith in something in order to survive, and Zara decided to believe that Pasha’s notebook was her ticket out of there. Once it was done, she would be free, she would get a new passport, a new identity, a new story for herself. Some day all this would happen. Some day she would rebuild herself.

Pasha made the marks in his notebook with a German fountain pen that had a picture of a woman on it. Her clothes would come off when he tilted the pen, and come back on when he tilted it the other way. He thought it was such a marvelous invention that he set up a pen-importing business with a friend in Moscow. But then one of the girls got ahold of one of the pens and tried to gouge his eyes out, and in the fight the pen was broken. After that the girl-Ukrainian, perhaps-disappeared, and all the girls were fined, because harm had come to Pasha’s pen.

He didn’t find a new favorite until a Finnish customer made him a gift of a lotto pen. The Finn spoke a few words of Estonian, and an Estonian girl named Kadri had to translate for Pasha what the sommi was trying to say about the significance of the lotto in Finland.

“Very important. Lotto is to us as the future. In lotto, every man is equal. Everyone’s equal in the lottery and it’s Finnish and it’s a wonderful thing. It’s Finnish democracy at its best!”

The man laughed- Future!- and gave Pasha’s shoulder a shove and Pasha laughed and told Kadri to tell the sommi that it would be his favorite pen now.

“Ask him how much you can win.”

“ Kui palju siin võib võita? ”

“A million marks! Or several million! You can be a millionaire!”

Zara was about to say that there was a lotto in Russia, too-plenty of lotteries-but then she realized that to Pasha that wasn’t the same thing at all. He might win at the casino, and he made a lot of money off the girls-a lot more than an ordinary person could win in a lottery-but all of that was work, and Pasha complained about it all the time, constantly complained about how much work he had to do. In Finland anyone at all could become a millionaire; anyone could win a million without doing any work or inheriting it or anything. You couldn’t win a million marks in the Russian lotteries. Not just anyone could become a millionaire in Russia. You couldn’t even get into the casino if you didn’t have money or connections. Anyone who didn’t wouldn’t dare to try and get in. In Finland you could just lie around on the sofa in front of the television on a Saturday night and wait for the right number to come on the screen, and a million dollars would just fall into your lap.

“Think about it-even a chick like you could win a million!” Pasha laughed.

The idea was so amusing that Zara started laughing, too. They busted their sides laughing.

The customer had a spiked ring around his dick and something else, too. Zara couldn’t remember what it was. She just remembered that they tied one dildo on Katia and another one on her, and she was supposed to fuck Katia at the same time that Katia fucked her, and then Katia was supposed to hold Zara’s pussy open, and then the man started to push his cock in, and Zara didn’t remember anything after that.

In the morning she couldn’t sit up or walk; she just lay in her bunk smoking Prince cigarettes. She didn’t see Katia, but she couldn’t have asked Katia anything; it would have made Pasha angry. She could hear Lavrenti on the other side of the door telling Pasha that Zara was only going to do blow jobs today. Pasha disagreed. Then the door opened and Pasha came into her room and ordered her to take off her skirt and spread her legs. “Does that look like a healthy pussy to you?”

“What a damn mess. Tell Nina to come in here and give her some stitches.”

Nina came, stitched her up, gave her some pills, and left, taking her pearlescent pink lipstick smile with her. Lavrenti and Pasha sat in their spot on the other side of the door, and Lavrenti talked about sending flowers to his wife, Verochka. Their anniversary was coming up-twenty years-and they were going to Helsinki.

“Invite Verochka to come to Tallinn, too,” Pasha said. “We’re going to be there, anyway.”

Tallinn? Zara pressed her ear against the crack of the door. Did Pasha say they were going to Tallinn? When? Maybe she just thought she heard him say that. Maybe she misunderstood. No-that’s not the kind of thing a person misunderstands. They were talking about Tallinn, saying that both of them were going there, and they must be going soon, because they were talking about Lavrenti’s anniversary and a present for Verochka, and his anniversary wasn’t far off.

The lighted sign on the building across the street blossomed like wood sorrel, her cigarette lit up like a lantern, and everything was crystal clear. Zara felt her bra for the photograph in its hidden pocket.

When Lavrenti was alone for once, sitting outside the door, Zara knocked and called him by name. Lavrenti opened the door and stood on the threshold with his legs spread wide, a knife in one hand and a piece of wood in the other. “What do you want?”

“Lavruusha.”

People are more agreeable if you use their first name, so Zara used his, and she used the affectionate form for good measure.

“Lavruusha dorogoy, are you going to Tallinn?” “What business is it of yours?”