Perhaps I should never read in the morning what I wrote in the middle of the night; the morning and the night do not understand each other, or rather they misunderstand each other. But this morning I didn’t read only the last page from yesterday’ I read everything else I’ve written. There isn’t much content there, but it’s about myself and that’s the subject, since I wanted to write a novel about myself.
As for the cult of the coloured cap, here I would like to defend myself and my fellows much more passionately this morning than I did last night. In my opinion there’s no objection to be raised against me or the others. We haven’t done anything that wouldn’t have pleased ourselves, others or indeed the whole country; we have represented the country and people as they were. We didn’t have any support from rich farmers in their grey baronial pomp: that came from every starveling cottager, peasant and tenant, every tailor, cobbler and saddler, every shopkeeper, businessman and industrialist, and every prophet of truth, palm reader and card sharper; if you want, every lawyer, doctor and pastor, every engineer, factory owner and banker, and every man of the people, public figure and politician. They all felt lifted up by the ears when their daughters and sons, relatives and acquaintances, or even they themselves pushed that coloured cap on to their heads. So why do people try to sling rocks at us for helping to pull the whole country up by the ears? If anything, they should have accused us of not doing it energetically enough.
And I wanted to do it and be personally responsible. I would have set all the wheels in motion so that the old German Korporation would finally abandon its lofty isolation or be forced into liquidation. I would have made it clear that it was wrong to see us as belonging to an Estonian Korporation, which would have been change in name only. In spirit we were the same Korporation as before. We were dreaming of the same superior position as our predecessors. All of us, like every person of sense, wanted privileges and favours, we didn’t pay particular attention to the sciences and the arts, but we perceive them as having a practical purpose or being an amusing recreation. We didn’t want to feel responsible to the country or the people, as we were mainly thinking of ourselves. And if these words didn’t influence people, I would have said, What? Don’t you trust us? Are you demanding real evidence? All right, gentlemen, what are your demands? Will you be satisfied if, one fine day, we announce that everyone is a traitor to his country who doesn’t defend the corporations and their principles? Or do you want something more? That’s what I would have asked them if I had had the opportunity.
And yet I probably wouldn’t have asked such questions at the time I was only a student – I’m only asking them now. In those days I didn’t have this novel to write and – who knows – maybe it’s this novel that’s provoked the foregoing questions and ideas in me. Maybe! I say this because we’ve always had love, and it’s even more fickle of us to abandon our own fatherland, mother tongue, nation and mentality. So it’s downright odd to hear that some people are trying to prove that we’ve become sober-minded, businesslike and practical – even in matters of love. Is it really sobriety, adherence to the facts and practicality when, even today, people abandon their fatherland, mother tongue and nation for love? Quite the contrary: it’s romanticism, it’s self-denial and it’s heroism.
And we’re the only ones who can sort things out in our homeland, and not a single German or Russian. Is there anywhere in all the Baltic lands a single German or Russian who would have betrayed his fatherland, his mother tongue or nation for love? No, no, my dear ones, only we, the original inhabitants of the Baltic lands, are capable of that. Nobody has loved us in our homeland for a long time, we have only been subject to pushing and pulling, and so we have come to learn, in our own skin, how much a human being needs love. That’s why we’ve begun to love foreigners in a self-denying way. Such a love is characteristic of the slave; the landowner loves selfishly. Evidently we still feel like slaves in our own country. The great doctrine of love was once passed down through women and slaves; both our men and our women have loved like slaves. Great love creates in our homeland a countless number of fortresses belonging to foreign nations, which cannot be destroyed by cannon fire from the fatherland, because love can only be overcome by death or even greater love.
But I don’t think even death would be worthy of my love. At any rate, her second love, whose consequence was marriage, did not do anything to my love. I often have the feeling that the marriage would have been no hindrance to Erika’s return, and that her return could happen in the near future: why, how or when? I can’t answer that. Even this morning, when I came back from the shop with half a litre of milk, a rye bun and a hundred grams of ham, I sat down at the table, started eating and was about to put a sliver of ham on my bun with my finger, when I suddenly felt that Erika was sitting there with me, watching me eat, and I asked myself if I really should take the piece of ham from its wrapping where she could see me, and I decided that on no account could I do that. And I got up from the table, took the little plate, knife and fork, and tried to eat my wretched breakfast as if I were sitting with my beloved at a banquet table.
As I ate, my eyes fell on the coloured cap hanging on a little peg on the wall, and the question sprang to my lips: how could I not be ashamed, as I ate like some rubbish collector or ditch digger, picking at a herring or skinning a sprat with the nail of my index finger, and how my habits have changed at the mere thought of the woman who thought it better to leave me here? Why am I actually fighting for this cap and its traditions, if it doesn’t make me a whit better, neither when it’s on my head nor when it hangs on a peg in front of me? And why didn’t I put up a fight for the woman who makes me a new man at the very thought of her? Perhaps it was because winning over a woman involves “culture”, which I didn’t have, whereas winning a cap required nothing more than borrowed money and empty vanity? Or maybe winning a woman also means money and vanity, but in much larger amounts than I had at my disposal, or could hope for in the future? But love? My love and hers? Or was she not in love? Was I the only one? No, she was also in love; I felt it then and still feel it now, but with the difference that for me that love was the whole world, and for her it was merely a part of it. For my love I was prepared to forget everything else, but she would only love if everything else was left to her as well. That’s how it was with her, as if it were an empty and peripheral thing in our lives.
It began one and a half years ago. I was living in this same room, but not as I do now – rather a little more comfortably. My income was small, but it was assured and at least enabled me to lead quite a decent life, in that those with an assured income have no hindrance to getting a loan and paying it back. I would eat lunch with the family, and that bill was paid in full. When I lost my job, I was forced to give up those lunches too. This didn’t affect my love, because it had developed to the point where it could continue even without polite lunches.
My landlady was one of those rare women who still love children. For this reason she was regarded as slightly ridiculous or “funny”, as someone called her. Her love for children went so far that she tried to treat everyone like children. First of all, her husband, the children’s father, had to put up with this. Even I could not escape such treatment when I wanted to eat lunch here. Equally Miss Erika had to submit to it, but she was treated as a slightly older child who taught German and the piano to the younger ones. The landlady didn’t love adults because they weren’t obedient enough, especially in these times. So she wanted to ensure that her little family always came to her, like obedient little creatures scampering around her. If her husband pulled a face, she would explain: “What’s it to you? You don’t bring them into the world or raise them. You have to be brought up yourself, and kept in check. And as for hardship, don’t say a word about it! You’ve no problem in getting fed. Our little shack and the farm can raise more children than I can manage to bring into the world. It would be different if we had twins or triplets as some people do. But there are none in our family, and I don’t think you’ve any either, do you?”