Sofi Oksanen: Purge

She let Oksanka into the apartment and closed the door behind her. In the dim room, Oksanka shone like a shooting star. Her earrings flashed like cat’s eyes. Zara pulled the sleeves of her housecoat over the reddened backs of her hands.

Grandmother’s eyes didn’t move. She sat in her usual place, staring out the window. Her head looked black against the incoming light. Grandmother never left that one chair, she just looked out the window without speaking, day and night. Everyone had always been a little afraid of Grandmother, even Zara’s father, although he was drunk all the time. Then he had faded and died and Zara’s mother had moved with Zara back to Grandmother’s house. Grandmother had never liked him and always called him tibla - Russian trash. But Oksanka was used to Grandmother and clattered over to greet her immediately, took her hand, and chatted pleasantly with her. Grandmother may have even laughed. When Zara began to clear the table, Oksanka dug through her purse and found a chocolate bar that sparkled as much as she did and gave it to Grandmother. Zara put the heating coil in the kettle. Oksanka came up beside her and handed her a plastic bag.

“There are all kinds of little things in here.”

Zara hesitated. The bag looked heavy.

“Just take it. No, wait a minute,” Oksanka pulled a bottle from the bag. “This is gin. Has your grandmother ever had anything like gin? Maybe it would be a new experience for her.”

She grabbed some schnapps glasses from the shelf, filled them, and took a glass to Grandmother. Grandmother sniffed at the drink, grinned, laughed, and dashed the contents into her mouth. Zara followed suit. An acrid burning spread through her throat.

“Gin is what they make gin and tonics from. We make quite a lot of them for our customers.” Then she pretended to bustle about with a tray and put drinks on the table, and said in English, “Vould you like to have something else, sir? Another gin tonic, sir? Noch einen ?” Her boisterousness was contagious. Zara made as if to tip her, nodded approvingly at the drink she offered, and giggled at her silliness, just like they used to do.

“I made you laugh,” Oksanka said, and sat down breathless after her antics. “We used to laugh a lot, remember?”

Zara nodded. The coil in the kettle started to form bubbles. Zara waited for the water to boil, took out the coil, got a tin of tea from the shelf, poured water into the pot over the tea leaves, and carried the cups to the table. Oksanka could have warned them that she was coming to visit. She could have sent a card or something. That way Zara would have had time to get something to offer her that would impress her, and she could have come to meet her wearing something other than a housecoat and an old pair of slippers.

Oksanka sat down at the table and adjusted her stole on the back of the chair so that the fox’s head was on her shoulder and the rest of the stole wrapped around the arm of the chair.

“These are real,” she said, tapping at her earrings with a fingernail. “Real diamonds. See how well I’m doin’ in the West, Zara? Didja notice my teeth?” She flashed a smile.

Only then did Zara realize that the fillings in Oksanka’s front teeth were no longer visible.

Zara remembered the Volgas-they always drove so fast and rushed up in front of you without any lights. Now Oksanka had one. And her own driver. And bodyguard. And golden earrings with big diamonds in them. White teeth.

As children, Oksanka and Zara had once almost been run over by a Volga. They were walking home from the movies and the road was deserted. Zara was turning an old eraser around and around in her pocket-hardened, grayed, the printed brand worn off the tip several days before. Then it came. They heard a noise, but they didn’t see the car when it came around the corner, ran straight at them, and then instantly disappeared. They had been only a finger away from being hit. When they got home, Zara had to file the nail of her index finger. It had broken off when the car hit the eraser-still in her pocket-as it went by, and another nail had bent backward and broken off at the skin. That one bled.

There was a family living in the same apartment commune whose daughter had been run over by a black Volga. The militia had thrown up its hands and snapped that there was nothing they could do. That’s just the way things were. A government car-what can you do? The family was sent home with a scolding, too.

Zara hadn’t intended to tell her mother, but she noticed the torn fingernail and the bloody fingertip, and she didn’t believe Zara’s explanation-she could see that Zara was lying. When Zara finally told her that a black Volga had hit them, her mother struck her. Then she wanted to know if the people in the car had seen them.

“I don’t think so. They were going so fast.” “They didn’t stop?”

“Of course not.”

“Don’t ever, ever, ever go near one of those cars. If you see one, run away. It doesn’t matter where. Run right home.”

Zara was astonished. So many words out of her mother’s mouth at one time. That didn’t happen very often. She didn’t mind about being hit-but the flash in her mother’s eyes. It was very bright. There was an expression on her mother’s face-a big expression. Normally her mother’s face didn’t have any expression at all.

Her mother sat up that whole night at the kitchen table, staring straight in front of her. And after that evening she would peek out between the curtains as if she expected a black Volga to be in front of the house, watching, idling quietly. Later on she would get up during the night, look at Zara, who pretended to be asleep, go to the window and peek out, then go back to bed and lie there stiffly until she fell asleep-if she fell asleep. Sometimes she would stand and peer out from behind the curtain until morning.

One time Zara got out of bed, came up behind her mother, and tugged at the hem of her flannel nightgown. “No one is coming,” she said.

Her mother didn’t answer, she just pulled Zara’s hand loose from her nightgown.

“Lenin will protect us, Mom. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Her mother was quiet, turned to look at Zara for a long time and a little past her, as was her habit. As if there were another Zara behind Zara’s back, and her mother was directing her gaze at that other Zara. The darkness dragged on, and the clock made a cracking sound. The soles of their feet had sunk into the worn wooden floorboards, seeping into their hollows, their skin stuck down with a glue that let go only when her mother picked her up and tucked her back under the blanket. And they hadn’t said a word.

Zara had also heard stories about Commissioner Berija and the secret police. And the black cars that used to go out looking for young girls, trolling the streets at night, following them and pulling up next to them. The girls were never heard from again. A black Volga was always a black Volga.

And now Oksanka-a movie star from someplace far away-had emerged from a black Volga and waved to her with her long, unbroken, red fingernails, scratched the air and smiled broadly and graciously like a blue blood disembarking from an ocean liner.

“Is that your Volga?” Zara asked.

“My car’s in Germany,” Oksanka said, laughing.

“You have your own car, then?”

“Of course! Everybody in the West has their own car.”

Oksanka crossed her legs daintily. Zara tucked her legs under her chair. The flannel lining of her slippers was damp like it always was, just like the dull pink lining of Oksanka’s slippers had once been, when she used to wear the exact same kind, and they had filled out their student journals together at this same table, their fingers stained black.