Rein Raud - The Death of the Perfect Sentence

Mushrooms are older than humanity, he would say to himself, and somehow he felt that just recognising that fact could justify all manner of things in a person’s life.

He didn’t like living in Estonia. He wouldn’t have had anything against watching a thriller which took place there, and he would tell his childhood friends from Volgograd that he liked the fact that everything was clean and orderly, but he knew he wasn’t even kidding himself. He just couldn’t understand the things he saw going on around him. He couldn’t understand those houses or those streets or those people who walked down them. In fact it would be right to say that Fyodor Kuzmich understood Estonians about as well as Estonians understood mushrooms. Because if Estonians had the faintest idea about mushrooms then he wouldn’t have been able to find such huge quantities in all their variety there in the forest near Laitse. In the same way that Estonians had a vague idea that some mushrooms could be tasty, even very tasty, while others were poisonous, so Fyodor Kuzmich believed that some Estonians were more or less loyal to the Soviet state, while the rest of them kept their fingers crossed for Finland when they played the Soviet Union at hockey, and did not accept the official reason for the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan. And who knew, there might even be ones like that amongst his own subordinates. Which made the situation even more complicated, since they certainly didn’t dare say anything controversial to his face. But if they weren’t working with the requisite belief and commitment, then clearly they were nothing more than scum. Anyway, he didn’t know how to tell one from the other. For example, he would never have believed that the quiet nerd Särg was such a model communist that he was prepared to snoop on his own son. But nor could he believe that a model communist family was capable of producing a son who needed to be snooped on. Fyodor Kuzmich did not trust anyone whose behaviour was anything less than completely predictable. The years had taught him that things are not always as simple as they seem, and that it is often wiser to rely on a cynical careerist than an enthusiastic idealist, but that didn’t essentially change anything. He could not countenance other people doing things which he did not approve of in his soul. By soul he of course did not mean the same thing that a priest might talk about in church, but something completely different… probably. But he preferred not to take that thought any further.

“Bring it on, Comrade Major,” he said to Vinkel.

“Yes sir,” said Vinkel, sitting down and putting the file on the table. “I can report that the enemy agent within our ranks has been identified and neutralised.”

For some reason this did not provoke any reaction in Fyodor Kuzmich, which surprised Vinkel. Colonel Kuzmich even seemed strangely apathetic. Now that the KGB was picking up the reins of power he had every reason to be happy, didn’t he? The military convoys were just about to arrive in Tallinn, after all.

“Well I never,” said Fyodor Kuzmich eventually, as if reacting to something inconsequential. “Was it an Estonian?”

“Not at all, Comrade Colonel. It was Gromova, Lidia Petrovna, the typist.”

For some reason that seemed to make Fyodor Kuzmich even sadder. So you couldn’t even trust your own lot these days.

“Well, Hardi Augustovich, you’re an intelligent person, you must know yourself that the game’s up for us now,” he said.

“Why’s that, Comrade Colonel? This was just a one-off event, these days there is only good news coming from Moscow,” Vinkel said in surprise. “At long last there will be an end to all this nonsense.”

Fyodor Kuzmich shook his head.

“They’re not up to the task. They’re just digging their own graves, nothing more.”

He had seen Yanaev’s face and trembling hands on the television; that was no way for someone to look if he wanted to lead a successful coup. A rioting crowd is like a pack of dogs: if you show any sign of fear then the nearest mutt will have its teeth in your shins before you know it.

“I’m going back home to Russia,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll find something for me to do there. What about you?”

“Where is there for me to go?” Vinkel said, shrugging his shoulders.

“That’s exactly it,” Fyodor said, taking a bottle of brandy and two glasses from his cupboard. “That’s what we’ve got to think about now.”

Maarja liked the Harju coffee shop. They made really nice pastries there (I can vouch for that myself). And now this coffee shop was going to be the first stop in the journey which was just about to start, a journey which would be packed with pleasant surprises, and would go by the name of a new life. She had with her a small suitcase made from blue and red checked material with nothing too heavy inside it, just a few drawings and a couple of notebooks, her middle school graduation certificate just in case, one warm jumper, a toothbrush, and of course her teddy bear Pontu. Raim had told her not to take too much with her, just the most important things. She had her large handbag slung over her shoulder, with her passport containing the freshly issued Finnish visa nice and safe inside the zipped-up internal pocket.

All the bad things would be left behind.

She knew that she had to hurry, but she knew just as well that she would not be able to walk down this street again for some time, if ever again. So she wanted to take as much with her as possible: the grey arch of the doorway to her left; the typically high second floor windows with the sound of the piano coming through them; the famous fishmonger’s a little way off, where the walls were adorned with those magnificent large paintings by Jüri Arrak – possibly the only fishmonger’s in the world to be decorated that way. And of course the people as well: the old granny hobbling towards the shop with her net bag full of empty milk bottles; the young bearded father with lank hair and square-rimmed glasses, pushing a pram across the cobblestones towards her; a middle-aged man whose coat was clearly too long for the weather; two Russian girls standing on the corner examining a map of town. She preserved all of them in her mind, and they all became part of her. And part of her new life.

But that new life was in danger of ending even before it had begun.

It couldn’t be. But yes it could.

Maarja glanced upwards for a moment. As if she wanted to make sure that the coast was clear.

But no, it was not.

There was a man sitting at the table by the window, an unforgettable man who was forgotten, or nearly forgotten by now: a Russian man, that special man. One of their men. Looking in the opposite direction, towards Old Market Street, as if he were waiting for someone. Maarja realised that it must be her that Alex was waiting for, that he was expecting her to come from the direction of her house, through the Baltic railway station, past the Schnelli Park ponds, then the puppet theatre and the Pearl coffee shop, across Town Hall Square, round the town hall building, from whichever side, so that eventually she would arrive at Old Market Street and appear from that direction, and he would spot her from a distance.

That could only mean one thing. Maarja turned pale and reached to the wall for support. They’d been betrayed, and now the situation was even worse than they feared.

“Excuse me, are you feeling unwell?” the old granny asked.

“Unwell?” the gloomy middle-aged man snapped back. “She’s dead drunk, got no shame at all, in broad daylight as well!”

But Maarja saw something else: suddenly the old woman pulls a revolver from inside her coat and waves it at the two Russian girls, who throw the map on to the ground and adopt combat positions… The young father pulls a machine gun out of the blue pram… The gloomy middle-aged man sneers and pulls his coat wide open to reveal a mace… They are all ready, just waiting for Alex to raise his hand, and now he is already raising it, the signal will come any moment. By now Maarja has dropped her case and has started running as fast as she can back the way she came, certain that someone will shoot her in the back, or that another agent will emerge from the grey doorway and stick his leg out in front of her. The sky is purple, the people’s faces are green, and the cobblestones are glinting orange with dots of coal black.