Rein Raud - The Death of the Perfect Sentence

On the whole he was disappointed with Stockholm. For the first few days it had been fun to walk round the old town and look into the shops on Drottninggatan, but all their prices were extortionate. There was no point in going into any of the bars. At first the journalists had shown an interest in him, and he even managed to cobble together some pocket money from the interviews, but they soon disappeared; after all he didn’t have anything earth-shatteringly new to say any more. He could always drop by the Estonian House, and they would always be happy to see him, but there wasn’t really much point. He was surprised how quickly he got used to the sight of the blue, black and white flag of Estonian independence flying there freely. But it was still a handsome sight, to be sure. He picked up the exile jargon pretty quickly, and found it easy to get talking to people. Lots of books which were banned back home were freely available in the library, but he’d always been more of a man of action, as he told the old grannies. And there was sod all to do there.

On one occasion he foolishly took one of the bottles of vodka he’d brought from Estonia to a party, which caused everyone to liven up, and they poured it out into shot glasses, which made for a promising start to the evening. But unfortunately a start was all it was; once it was finished most of them had to make do with tea, while a few of them, including Ervin, drank that light Swedish beer which back in Estonia wouldn’t have been deemed fit for watering plants.

Another thing: there was little to talk to girls about other than politics. One time he went for a walk round town with one of them and a fancy limousine drove past full of shrieking, scantily clad girls. They were strewing bits of paper on to the street with the word TABOO and a picture of a wineglass and a telephone number on them. When he asked his companion what they were, she blushed and explained that it was a club – a sex club. Sweden was a free country, and freedom had its price of course. Ervin realised it wasn’t a good idea to pursue the subject any further. He wouldn’t have ventured into a club like that on his own, and it was likely to cost a fair bit.

As luck would have it the Bergshamra metro stop was just outside the central ticket zone. So there wasn’t much sense going into town if he didn’t have anything worthwhile to do there.

There wasn’t much on television either. Eventually Ervin gritted his teeth, bought himself some sports gear, and started going running in the park. Just for something to do.

That was where they got him.

At first Ervin couldn’t remember where he’d seen that chubby man with a moustache, but then the realisation hit him: it was one of those damned vultures from the demonstration.

“Well hello there, fellow countryman,” the man addressed him in perfect Estonian. “Slow down a bit, would you?”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Ervin replied, but he came to a standstill all the same.

“Come now,” the Estonian said, smiling. “Us guys are all from the same system, after all.”

“I’m not one of those…” Ervin tried to think of a suitably rude word, but the man reached his hand out towards him.

“My name is Vello,” he said. “I’m your new liaison.”

“Listen, I have no intention whatsoever of…”

“Shush, shush,” Vello said insistently. “You have no idea how long it has taken us to get someone like you planted into the Estonian community here. So it would be a real shame if we had to tell them what kind of character you really are.”

In Vello’s favour it had to be said that he wasn’t always watching what he was spending, unlike Ervin’s new acquaintances. Quite the reverse, he was always happy to buy the drinks. They met roughly once a week just to chat about this and that. Ervin told Vello what was happening at the Estonian club, and Vello told him the news from back home. Maybe he just wants to talk to an ordinary person in Estonian, Ervin thought, since the things I’m telling him, all that stuff about those poorly old folk, can’t possibly be of any interest to anyone. Vello wasn’t much of a drinker himself, but he always bought the drinks for Ervin, and he always came to their meetings with half a litre of Stolichnaya for Ervin to take home. They would normally meet somewhere in the back of beyond, in some working men’s pub or Chinese restaurant on the edge of town, but Vello would pay for Ervin’s taxi, on top of the money he gave him for the information, which was normally a couple of hundred krona a go. Ervin would always travel home by bus or metro of course – he wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere, and he had a pretty decent Walkman and all of Def Leppard’s albums on cassette. Anyway, now he had a reason to knock about the Estonian club.

Raim was sometimes a little late. Like today, when he came straight from Li’s place. Their bodies were now perfectly in tune, and they made pure music whenever they met. When he had eventually looked at the clock, it was clear he wouldn’t even have time for a wash before leaving. He wouldn’t normally have minded carrying the scent of his woman around with him, but he was afraid that Maarja might suspect something.

Although it was none of her business of course. Let her be jealous if she wanted. Anyway, they were now bound by something which was in some ways much more important.

But it did sometimes seem that everything was a game for Maarja, which worried Raim a little.

“Oh, I take my picture album with me now,” Maarja explained. “And this fishing stool. I thought that if some tourist group suddenly came into the room then I could sit down and start drawing the statue in my book, until they went away. Anyway, there’s not normally many people there.”

“You should still be careful,” Raim said. It was true, she really had to be careful.

Snap.

Rustle, rustle.

Crack.

Plunk.

Hmm.

The first thing which Alex noticed was her fingers. They must surely have been created to play the violin. The tiny spoon which they were holding looked like a foreign body, a heavy, artificial object which had planted itself there by force, but it still had no choice but to succumb, and so it danced gracefully on the plate with the cake crumbs, like a kung fu master in a Hong Kong film. This time Alex had decided to come through the park and go to the café a few steps from the tram stop to have a cup of tea and something to eat – he would get nothing on the boat, so he planned to buy some pastries to take with him too. He had the vague feeling that he’d seen that girl somewhere else before – perhaps it had been right here? – but last time his nerves had been so frayed that he’d needed two brandies to calm himself down. The girl glanced in his direction and seemed to recognise him too, but Alex just ordered a bowl of potato salad and a meat pie and went to sit at the opposite end of the room by the window.

It was already late evening and Lidia Petrovna was still sitting in the archives, as she was recently wont to do. The task of sorting out the agent files had somehow fallen to her. There was a huge stack of them, and some of them were really dusty, but Lidia Petrovna was primarily interested in the ones which had been taken out recently. She was already quite adept at using the Minox EC, and when she positioned the two table lamps so that their beams intersected she had quite enough light to work by.

She looked at the time. Each film had fifty-six frames, she’d already filled two of them, and the third one should be full by the end of the day, but it probably wasn’t a good idea to stay too late, questions might be asked. First she had to take each file out of its folder to get a better view of it, put it on the table, take the picture, then put the file back in the folder, and then put the folder into the correct stack. On to the table, snap, back in the stack. Table, snap, stack. But what was that sound?