Mari Saat - The Saviour of Lasnamäe

It was no better between the buildings. The blocks were tall; the wind whistled nervously as it gathered momentum, assaulted you, broke cover from the wall of the building and faded again as if building up its momentum anew – or as if having doubts… Just like Dmitri Dmitrievich himself – he still wasn’t fully sure whether he’d done the right thing by calling Natalya Filippovna, and now he was actually on the way… But there was no other way for him to see Natalya Filippovna again because she’d found a new job, a proper job, and had told Vova categorically that she would not be helping them out any more even though Vova’s wife would have liked a couple more weeks to convalesce, perhaps even longer… But Dmitri Dmitrievich could not so much as countenance Vova’s wife any more, or any woman other than Natalya Filippovna for that matter; he’d even dreamt he’d slept with Natalya a couple of times and woken up relieved, happy, only to sink back immediately into deep despair… Could this turn out any better though? Would it be better if he explained just the pictures in the book?

Hurrying towards him almost at a run on the long empty street were two men, more accurately two young men, two boys huddling from the cold: one short and thin, the other tall and heavyset; when they were almost in front of him they suddenly dodged sideways – one as if he wanted to pass him on the right, the other on the left. In his left hand he held the briefcase containing the book. Hold on to the briefcase – he managed to think and gripped the handle firmly in his fist. The thin one tried to tear the briefcase from him; the tall one shoved him brusquely so that he lost his balance and fell, head first to the ground because he was clenching the handle of the briefcase in one hand and holding the case itself under his other arm…

“You bastard! You shit!” said the boys and kicked him in the head, the back… He thought he’d be able to overcome them if he only let go of the briefcase, but he mustn’t because it contained the book and without the book he’d have no reason to go to Natalya Filippovna’s… Thinking that thought he began to sink as if into soft cotton. He felt the boys turning him over, rummaging through his breast pockets. “Just like doctors do…” he thought, perceiving even through thick clothes how wonderful, clever, human hands were, all the things they could do… He could feel how he was distending, stretching out in every direction, swelling into a great blain that held everything within it, the whole of this world… It was the very feeling he had always yearned for – that he could embrace the earth, encompass its lovely blue globe, as lovely as Natalya Filippovna?

Sofia hurried home – over the snowy wasteland. She could have stayed on the bus until the next stop – although the bus would have taken her on round the curve, it would still have brought her back more quickly than she could have managed on foot – but she wanted to walk, and she wanted specifically to cross the broad snowy field that both enticed and horrified her. Especially now, in the dark, when only the moon lit the snow-trampled path. Cold, pallid light as if everything was not real, just a dream… And the moon itself was no smooth shining disc, it bulged as if a shadow had been cast on it, as if Zhanna’s rat were holding it in the sky with its little paws… As soon as she remembered the rat though she felt a grip tightening round her throat, as if she were guilty of something. Why did she always feel guilty? As she did when Rael’s grandma talked about the earth people worry themselves to death about… Or when the papers reported that the Estonians would die out because of falling numbers… She had once asked Rael’s grandma why people should worry about a small nation like the Estonians, if the whole world was going to perdition and turning into deserts… And she’d had the feeling that Grandma had looked at her reprovingly.

She might have been wrong though, because Grandma had replied, “Well, my dear, I’m an old lady but see, my children are still looking after me, they haven’t bundled me off, even Rael comes to visit – but what’s the point of it? Is there even a point?” This answer made the topic so intricate that it seemed to have flummoxed even Grandma.

So perhaps the Estonians should look after themselves in the same way that Rael’s dad was looking after his mum? As if they were looking after a little old lady who would live her allotted span?

The nursery rhyme began to go round and round in her head; it had dug its way in there for some reason and just kept going round and round – as if the person who had come up with it was Sofia herself, although not her true self, but a different, spiteful version of herself that seemed to tease and mock her with the rhyme, in time with her steps…

“The Battle of Paju,” she repeated back, over and over again, “the Battle of Paju…” slowly and convincingly, because this moonlit field, dotted with the odd shrub, was just like a battlefield after the battle: empty, silent, desolate – perhaps there was the odd frozen corpse buried somewhere under the snow…

Over the field, along the snow-trampled path, two dark shapes were running towards her: men, one large and one small; they stood by the leafless willow shrubs and began to do something to a box or briefcase that the larger one was holding. Sofia thought the smart thing to do would be to turn back or away – who knows what they might decide to get up to and there didn’t appear to be another living soul on the field – in this cold everyone preferred to go by bus, not trek across the field… But somehow it felt inappropriate to turn round and leg it – not that she would have been ashamed to reveal her fear, but it felt ugly to suspect someone when there perhaps were no grounds to do so… As she walked, she looked straight ahead and not towards them at all, and she moved very quickly as if she hadn’t even noticed them…

It was impossible to pass them like that though – the path took a dog-leg around the shrubs and they were busy right there behind the shrubs, muttering angrily, “There’s nothing, nothing at all…” One of them kicked the briefcase away and it landed just in front of Sofia. Sofia stopped and raised her gaze – it was Venya and Tolik.

“What are you two doing here?” she asked, cheering up for a moment because she knew them, even though they were Tolik and Venya.

“Ha!” said Venya, and as if in relief, “rubbish… you see…” and fell perplexedly quiet.

But Tolik, small and thin, approached her slowly as if prowling, slightly stooped, panting, with wide-open eyes that glowed strangely but coldly.

“Listen, we need money, right now! You’ve got money!”

Sofia took a small purse out of her belt bag. Her hand was shaking. “How does he know I’ve got money?” was the thought that flashed across her mind – her only banknote was a large five-hundred-kroon one that Rael had given her that evening, a whole month’s money! But that wasn’t important right now because she sensed that this money was a matter of life and death – not for her, but for the boys. She sensed that something very dreadful might have happened to them, and might still, if she did not hand over the money; she would have given more if she’d had it…

“Good girl,” said Tolik slightly more calmly, slightly less uptight, “look have this, take this book for it!”

And he offered Sofia a thick book.

Now suddenly Sofia was gripped by a frantic fear and broke into a run, crying with the book under her arm; her fear was completely irrational because the boys were hurrying away in the exact opposite direction.