Rein Raud - The Death of the Perfect Sentence

Lidia Petrovna slid the Minox EC up her jacket sleeve and turned round. Someone had definitely opened the door from the corridor, but fortunately there were two rows of shelves between her and the exit.

It must have been that dolt from the sixth department. She felt the Minox EC burning inside her sleeve, as if it were made from molten metal.

“Ah, good evening, Comrade Captain. I’m still sorting through these old files here, under orders from Fyodor Kuzmich.”

“Aha, yes, I was just walking past and I saw light coming through the gap in the door, I thought that Marfa Nikanorovna had left the lights on again.”

Two lamps, to be precise. Särg kept a very close eye on that woman.

Everything was more or less right.

Apart from that face.

Which was very pretty.

Although that was not all.

But Särg had other things to worry about now. He knew that he had to talk to Anton, but he kept putting it off, and he didn’t share his worries with Galina either. One time he even went into his son’s room when he was out, to have a look around. He picked up the papers on the table and opened one of the drawers, unable to believe what he was doing.

That’s what things had come to.

No one would say this was love, because love is deeper, loftier, more far-reaching. No one would even say that this was passion, because passion is crazy, passion does not stop to ask: it just tears into little pieces everything in its path. That was how it was the first time, before words took over. But it wasn’t like that any more. Casual onlookers would say look, there goes a middle-aged woman with her toy boy, or, there’s a young man sowing his oats. But can either of those assumptions truly describe any relationship? There is always more to it than that, even though there are different ways of seeing these things. I would say: two people fallen from grace, entangled with one another but never to become one.

Lidia could clearly remember when nothing was yet lost. So what if her husband the pilot had disappeared off to Moldova with a hairy-legged stewardess, eventually to father a baby Moldovan. Whenever she saw herself in the mirror she knew she could get anyone she wanted, as long as her soul truly yearned for him. That memory stayed with her, although she’d never yearned enough for anyone to keep him close for long. Of course she had her visitors, and if one were to have a proper look in her cupboards, then the odd shirt, pair of underpants or worn-out toothbrush would be sure to turn up. But what now? Back then the school director had told her she should wear more modest dresses when teaching children who were at that tricky age. Both of them knew very well that Lidia Petrovna would never have entertained any improper thoughts. But now things were different. Permanently so. It turned out that her soul had longed for something else. She had just wanted to be yearned for herself, even if she knew that there would be a price to pay.

Raim could clearly remember when his whole life was still ahead of him. When he was at school he’d gone to acting club and found he was pretty good at it. If he’d been born a decade or so earlier he would have been beckoned by a lucrative career playing the brutish SS officer in one of those countless Soviet war films with more or less identical plotlines. But since he could not be born until his parents had decided they did not want to live out their long conjugal life alone, that option was not viable, nor was the prospect of studying to become a solicitor or doctor – in other words, making a career for himself as his parents would have wished. There had been a fleeting moment when he weighed up going in the opposite direction – Komsomol, international youth camps, romantic evenings by the campfire and Czech girls with names like Libuše. But he wasn’t ready to betray his ideals. And he didn’t particularly care what his parents thought. What was he supposed to make of two people who had been so ready to make compromises for the sake of an easy life? Exactly.

Lidia Petrovna is sitting in the kitchen in her dressing gown, smoking. Over the years she’d developed the ability to see herself from one remove, to make an accurate and sometimes harsh appraisal of herself, although that never caused her to change her behaviour, it didn’t help her avoid constantly stepping into the same traps. And now it had happened again: she found herself waiting for those visits with her flesh, but not with her soul. After that first crazy afternoon (she’d eventually put the flowers in the vase and cut the cake into slices), she took a long time getting herself ready for their next meeting. She carefully chose the clothes to wear, the snacks to serve, the background music. She knew that they would never go to the opera, or a concert, or for a walk in the park. That was all right. It wasn’t the most important thing. But now, when she didn’t even apply cream to her face, or perfume her body in the places where she longed to be kissed? She took a cold, sober look at herself and concluded that this was a woman who had let herself go. Eventually her flesh would grow soft too, and the routine would finish off anything that was left.

Raim leans against the door frame, looking at her and thinking: how did I ever manage without her?

“I have to go now,” he says, because he really does have to.

“It’s not a good idea for it to be the same person every time,” Indrek had told Raim. “You really should spread the risk. You might have such a pro tailing you that you don’t even notice.”

Raim had just got the latest consignment of films from Li and was supposed to go and meet Maarja to pass them on.

That had been an hour ago. Now Indrek was pacing up and down in front of the Kosmos cinema. He’d already thought up a reason why he and Maarja should go and see the jointly produced Soviet-Polish film Witch’s Lair, about a space expedition to establish contact with wild tribes on a planet where evolution had gone off course, and work out where the concrete roads and sharp tools had come from. Indrek had decided that the film was just right after reading in the periodical Screen that it tackled sensitive topical issues using the medium of science fiction and allegory. Besides it was much safer to hand over the package in a darkened cinema. The main thing was that Maarja wouldn’t turn out to be some prude waiting for her prince. Then they could go to Aigar’s place – he’d gone to the countryside and left his keys with Indrek. They could light some candles and listen to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, and see how things went. Hopefully she’s not having her period.

And there she was. Not alone, as Indrek had hoped, but with a friend, the one with the long plait of dark hair, who was standing to one side and waiting for her.

“Raim couldn’t come,” Indrek said, quickly glancing left and right before taking the films out of his jacket pocket.

“Ah,” said Maarja, putting the films into her bag. “Pass on my best wishes then.”

They looked straight at each other for a moment.

“Bye then,” Indrek said sullenly before going into the Kosmos cinema. Even if nothing had come of his other plans, it was still worth going to see the film.

“Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?” the young man asked in Russian.

Maarja looked up. He actually had no reason to ask, as there was no one else apart from a couple of middle-aged lovers sitting by the window there on the second floor of the Black Swan, and there were plenty of other places available. But Maarja remembered this young man well: one time he’d been coming up the stairs just as she was leaving, another time he’d walked past her at the tram stop, and one time, or maybe even twice, she’d seen him drinking a cup of coffee and maybe a brandy by the counter here.