Rein Raud - The Death of the Perfect Sentence

That same buzz when you reach out your hand and you don’t know if it will break you. But at least you know that you’re alive.

Maarja liked walking in Kadriorg Park, popping into the museum, and then going to the Black Swan café for a cup of coffee and a teacake, which was superb there. The old dear at the museum ticket office let her in at the discount rate when she showed her art class student card, even if she wasn’t really supposed to, and all the old grannies who sat and guarded the pictures knew her face by now.

And so today wasn’t really very different to any other day… if it weren’t for that little package containing three rolls of film inside the large handbag which she had bought on her trip to Poland – because you couldn’t get ones like that in Estonia.

Oskar Meering’s large statue of Kalevipoeg was in the far corner of one of the rooms. Maarja approached it warily. The idea of leaving a secret package in a museum seemed completely crazy, but when she got closer to the sculpture she found herself admitting that there might be some sense to the plan. Kalevipoeg was wading through the waves of Lake Peipus carrying planks of wood on his back, and there was a sizable cavity between the rough water surface and his knees, which would only be visible to someone bowing down right next to the sign with the sculptor’s name on it, and only if they knew what they were looking for. Still. Maarja looked around. One of the grannies was sitting knitting a sock by the opposite wall, from where she could also see through the partition door and keep an eye on the neighbouring room. Kalevipoeg was actually outside her field of vision, and let’s be honest, it would have been difficult to steal that hefty sculpture without anyone noticing. Was there an alarm system? Come off it.

But for Maarja it seemed like her every movement resounded through the empty room like the crack of a whip, or a vase smashing into little pieces.

She opened her handbag: snap.

She looked for the package of film: rustle, rustle.

She kneeled down and her knees announced: crack.

And then she dropped the packet of film into the hollow behind Kalevipoeg’s knees, leaving the edge of it just visible.

Plunk.

Alex entered Viru Hotel at the back of the group and immediately noticed a tense atmosphere in the foyer. A big coach with number plates from the Russian Novgorod region was parked by the door, and a large group of girls dressed in short leather skirts and fishnet stockings were being helped on board with their luggage. The tour guide, a man in his late twenties who had scant experience but knew how to make polite conversation, was trying to object, but two older gentlemen with moustaches didn’t leave him much choice: the bus’s destination was not going to be the Pirita cloisters, but the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases on Raba Street, where the whole busload was being sent for a week of treatment. The previous evening the entire group had descended on the hotel bars and restaurants looking for new male friends amongst the foreign guests, and for a while it seemed like they were going to be quite successful, but unfortunately one of them tried to pick up a KGB agent planted at the hotel, and by morning he’d compiled a list of the whole group and passed it on to his boss. Not out of concern for the hotel’s reputation of course, but because he’d already recruited a dozen or so Tanyas and Svetas of his own as agents, and he got a fair amount of useful information from them; he also took a cut of the earnings from their main activities. He didn’t want any competition.

I didn’t make that story up, by the way.

Alex didn’t bother trying to work out what the argument was about, assuming this was just the typical scene when a tour group departs. He was given a room on the seventeenth floor, and he glanced out of the window overlooking the town a few times. The decision of Lenbumprom’s management – to organise the paper production in cooperation with the Estonian branch of the Soviet Forestry, Cellulose, Paper and Timber Ministry, rather than in the Leningrad region as originally planned – had at first seemed a little unwise, but now he was sure that it was perfectly sensible. He had a view of the old town which was out of this world, although even the most ordinary things, such as the sea, looked somehow different.

This was his first time in Estonia, and he already agreed with those who had told him it was a clean and orderly place with quite a high standard of living.

His final conversation with Tapani was still bothering him a little. The last time he’d been in Finland, Alex had called Tapani and thanked him for arranging the interview. He’d probably done so in the spirit of defiance, after the conversation with Vladimir Vladimirovich, to demonstrate, at least to himself, that he wasn’t going to be pushed about by some fisheyed guy; and he’d been a little bit tipsy as well. He’d travelled to Helsinki with Svyatoslav Grigoryevich and the trip wasn’t strictly speaking necessary, but Svyatoslav Grigoryevich’s son was doing graduate studies at the Institute of Technology and desperately needed one of those new personal computers which were impossible to get hold of in the Soviet Union. That only became clear later, because when it was announced that Alex was going on a work trip, Konstantin Zakharovich and Olga Anatolyevna were terribly put out, both being higher up than Alex in the food chain. Svyatoslav Grigoryevich had evidently set things straight with them later, since they stopped making faces at Alex. Svyatoslav Grigoryevich promised to buy a bottle of Ballantine’s for Konstantin Zaharovich, and for Olga Anatolyevna, Alex had to go to Stockmann supermarket’s cosmetics department clutching a piece of graph paper with a brand of perfume written on it. That suited Alex fine since Tapani had invited him for coffee at a place just across the road, behind the Swedish theatre, and he had no reason to decline. But the perfume took a little longer than expected. Despite Svyatoslav Grigoryevich’s assurances that the brand in question really did exist, Alex had to have a long discussion with the shop assistant about whether “Mazhi nar” meant Imaginaire or Magie Noire. In the end they decided in favour of the latter, and Olga Anatolyevna later confirmed that this was the right choice. Alex was therefore a little late and stressed out when he got to his meeting with Tapani. Svyatoslav Grigoryevich had gone to a shop at Annankatu with a man from Karelia Trade to locate the right computer (he ended up with a very good model, a whole twenty megabytes of hard drive and two disk drives, as he later boasted), and they’d brought it back to the hotel on Kaisaniemenkatu by taxi. Alex had had to wait there to help lug two large boxes up to the third floor, which was after all the main reason why he’d been invited to come. Anyway, Tapani turned out to be very talkative, and told Alex lots of funny stories about the kinds of things which happened in joint ventures, and Alex had made a mental note of them so as not to bring shame to his country if similar things happened to him. But then he realised that he had to hurry back to the hotel, since he and his boss still had one meeting to go to, so he made his apologies to Tapani. Ahaa, of course, Tapani had said, gesturing to the waiter – but before you go I have a small favour to ask. Naturally Alex stayed seated. Tapani continued – they tell me that you are going to Estonia to do some business with one of the ministries, I’ve got an acquaintance in Estonia, would you be able to bring me a small package from him? Nothing too big, it should fit into your jacket pocket. It may be that I don’t need your help at all, I’m asking just in case. You agree? That’s great, someone will get in touch with you when you arrive.