Sofi Oksanen - Purge

“I don’t need to. I’ve seen bodies before.”

“The girl seems very innocent, but after what she did to her lover… He was very attached to her, and the girl smothered him for no reason, put a pillow over his face while he was sleeping. You live alone here, don’t you, ma’am? You’ll be sleeping peacefully, having a sweet dream, and you’ll never wake from it. It could happen any night. When you least expect it, when you’re completely defenseless.”

Aliide’s hand fumbled under the hem of the oilcloth on the table. Her fingers crooked around the drawer handle ready to ease it open. She should have had the pistol ready on the chair. The horseradish burned white on the grater in front of her and covered up the smell of the Russian’s sweat. The man who called himself Popov leaned against the table and stared at her.

“All right. I’ll call you if she comes here.”

“We have reason to believe she will.”

“Why would she come here of all places?” “She’s a relative of yours, ma’am.”

“What stories you have!” Aliide laughed, and her laugh rippled across the rim of her coffee cup.

“The girl’s grandmother lives in Vladivostok. Her name is Ingel Pekk. Your sister. Most important, you should know that the girl speaks Estonian. She learned it from your sister.”

Ingel? Why was he talking about Ingel?

“I don’t have a sister.”

“According to our records you do.”

“I don’t know why you’ve come here making up stories, but I…”

“This woman, Zara Pekk, happens to have committed murder in this country, and she has no other contacts here as far as we know. Of course she’ll come here, to meet her long-lost relative. She’ll imagine you don’t know about the murder-there won’t be anything about it on the radio or in the papers-and she’ll come here.”

Pekk? The girl’s last name was Pekk?

“I don’t have a sister,” Aliide repeated. Her fingers relaxed, her hand flopped back into her lap. Ingel was alive. Pasha kicked over a chair. “Where is the girl?” “I haven’t seen any girl!”

The wind rustled the drying mint over the stove and stirred the marigolds lying on newspapers. The curtains fluttered. The man stroked his bald head and lowered his voice. “I’m sure you understand the seriousness of the crime this woman, Zara Pekk, has committed. Call us-for your own sake-when she comes here. Have a good day.” He paused at the door.

“Zara Pekk lived with her grandmother until she left to work in the West. She left her passport, wallet, and money at the murder scene. She needs someone to help her. You are her only option.” The powerlessness had knocked Zara to the floor.

The walls were panting, the floor gasped, the floorboards bulged with moisture. The wallpaper crackled. She felt the footsteps of a fly walking across her cheek. How could they see to fly in the dark?

Now Aliide knew.

They hadn’t heard anything from Ingel, so to keep Hans’s restlessness under control Aliide started to write letters in Ingel’s name. She couldn’t stand the questions he asked every day-had she heard anything about Ingel? had any letters come?-and the way he would speculate about what Ingel was doing at any given moment. Aliide knew her sister’s characteristic way of writing and telling stories, and it was easy to copy her handwriting. She wrote that she had found a reliable messenger and that they were allowed to get packages. Hans was delighted, and Aliide reported to him about all the things she’d managed to fit into the bulging packages to keep Ingel from any emergencies. Then Hans got the idea that he should send along greetings- something that would let Ingel know it was from him.

“Get a branch from the willow that grows by the church. We can put it in the package. The first time we met was under that willow tree.”

“Will Ingel remember something like that?” “Of course she will.”

Aliide fetched a branch from the nearest willow tree. “Will this do?”

“Is it from the church?”

“Yes.”

Hans pressed his face against the leaves.

“A wonderful smell!”

“Willows don’t have any smell.”

“Put a spruce branch in, too.”

He didn’t say why a spruce branch was so important.

And Aliide didn’t want to know.

“Has anyone else heard anything from Ingel?” Hans asked.

“Probably not.”

“Have you asked?”

“Are you crazy? I can’t run around the village asking about Ingel!”

“Ask someone you can trust. Maybe she’s written.” “I don’t know and I’m not going to ask!”

“No one will dare to tell you if you don’t ask. Because you’re married to that Commie pig. If you ask, they won’t think you’re…”

“Hans, try to understand. I will never mention Ingel’s name outside of this house. Never.”

Hans disappeared into the little room. He hadn’t shaved in weeks. Aliide started writing good news. What kind of good news could she write about?

First she wrote that Linda had started school and it was going well. She said there were a lot of other Estonians in her class. Hans smiled.

Then she wrote that they had found work as cooks, and so they always had food.

Hans sighed with relief.

Then Aliide wrote that because of their cooking work, it was easy to help others. That when people arrived at the kolkhoz, their lower lips would tremble when they heard what Ingel’s job was. That they would get tears in their eyes when they realized that she spent every day handling bread.

Hans’s eyebrows puckered up in distress.

That was a poor choice of words. It really emphasized a lack of food.

Next Aliide wrote that no one had a limited supply of bread. That the quotas had disappeared.

Hans was relieved. Hans was relieved for Ingel’s sake.

Aliide tried not to think about it. She lit a paperossi to get the smell of a strange man out of the kitchen before Martin came home.

The sound of the car receded. The door of the little room began to pound. The cupboard in front of it started to shake, the dishes on top of the cupboard rattled, the handle of Ingel’s coffee cup struck Aliide’s glass sugar bowl, and it shook, and the sugar, packed to the rim of the bowl, started trickling down. Aliide stood in front of the cupboard. The kicking had a young person’s energy and futility. Aliide flipped the radio on. The kicking intensified. She turned the radio up louder.

“Pasha is not with the police! And he isn’t my husband! Don’t believe anything he says! Let me out!”

Aliide scratched her throat. Her larynx felt loose, but other than that she wasn’t sure how she felt. Part of her had returned to that moment decades ago, in front of the kolkhoz office, when all the strength had flowed out of her legs and into the sand. Now there was only the cement kitchen floor under her. A frost spread from it into the soles of her feet, into her bones. It must have felt the same way in the camps at Archangel. Forty below zero, heavy fog over the water, dampness that seeped into your core, frozen eyelashes and lips, holding ponds full of logs like dead bodies, working in the ponds in water up to your waist, endless fog, endless cold, endlessness. Someone had been whispering about it at the market square. It wasn’t meant for her ears, but her ears had grown large and sensitive over the years, like an animal’s, and she had wanted to hear more. The speaker’s eyes, under a furrowed brow, were so dark that you couldn’t distinguish the pupil from the iris, and those eyes had stared at her, as if the person talking had realized that she could hear. It was in 1955, with the rehabilitation in full swing. She had hurried away, her heart pounding.