‘And what did they do?’
‘Well, they turned up in the middle of the night and turned her house upside down, didn’t they, searching for more! Of course, they found nothing. Then they took her away, too.’
An indrawn gasp. ‘Where did they take her?’
‘Nobody knows. The children will have to work on the kolkhoz farm now. No more school for them.’
There was a pause as this depressing news sank in before the gossip resumed.
‘In Ülejõe, the Police Captain let some Russian prisoners out of jail,’ said Tuuli. ‘Gave them a pardon. They told my cousin the men had been “wrongfully imprisoned” by the old Estonian government. Now my cousin is afraid to walk down the street without her husband. When she complained, the militia laughed at her and told her she had better exercise harder in case she had to run and escape. Animals. I told her she must write to me weekly and let me know she is safe. I can’t bear to think of her and those children in their flat all vulnerable and alone the nights Karlos is away.’
More outraged muttering. I saw Etti lean forward in her chair and pat Tuuli on the arm in sympathy. Tuuli gave my cousin a sad smile but then lifted her shoulder as if to say, ‘What can be done?’
The answer, of course, was ‘nothing’.
It was not safe to speak the truth in the street. We each of us knew that what was said in the knitting circle must remain there, but we had also an unspoken contract that we would not keep secrets unless they were not ours to tell. It made the import of what I had come to say feel even heavier. How could I tell these women, who had so much invested in the knitting of shawls, that there was no longer an opportunity to knit, to tell stories and share the collective burden of our pain?
I could feel Etti’s eyes on me. My poor cousin knew the pain of overwhelming grief and the need to share it in some safe place. Eight months had passed since her husband’s death, but her face had not lost its gaunt, haunted expression. Sadness had suppressed her appetite, so she was even thinner than the rest of us, her arms thin ropes, devoid of muscle. I turned quickly away, busying myself with my own shawl, unlooping it from around my neck and hanging it on the old timber hallstand next to the door. I recognised a scrap of my grandmother’s knitting still hanging there; the final sampler she had ever made, a wolf’s paw print pattern identical to the one woven into my own lace. It always gave me a little jolt of sadness to see it, to remember her in this very room, her slippers whispering as she moved among the women, the rise and fall of her voice as she made suggestions of improvement or pointed out necessary corrections that would save the knitter the agony of having to unpick rows of yarn down the track. Although the other samplers she had made were carefully preserved, my grandmother had told us she wanted this one to remain visible in Aunt Juudit’s apartment, to be always in view to remind us that she was still around, still part of the group even if only in spirit.
‘There you are, Katarina Rebane.’ The most senior woman in our group, Helle, had set aside her knitting and shuffled forward, her elderly face creased into a smile. Helle was so old she resembled a little bird who had long ago lost all its feathers. Her scalp was visible through the fine wisps of her hair. A faded grey housecoat swam on her small frame. Each time I saw her, she seemed to have shrunk a little more. I held her hands while she pecked at my cheek. Her kiss was as light as the brush of a sparrow’s wings, but when I drew back I saw that her eyes were sparkling knowingly and when I squeezed her fingers gently she gripped me with such surprising strength I had to laugh.
‘Tere hommikust,’ she whispered in Estonian. Good morning. She was always formal despite having known me since I was just a scrap of a child playing about my grandmother’s ankles while snippets of gossip eddied overhead, punctuated by the rhythm of clicking needles. Helle and my grandmother had been close friends, united by their love of knitting and by their dreams that one day their handknitted Estonian shawls would be sold in department stores all over the world. It was not such a foolish dream; when the Crown Prince of Sweden visited Estonia in 1932, my grandmother and Helle had travelled to Haapsalu to present him with a shawl made in his honour. Its pinecone pattern, kroonprints as it came to be known, had been adapted from a well-known one found on an antique mitten on the island of Muhu. There had also, at one time, been interest from an American investor who had fallen in love with the Haapsalu shawls and planned to entice a group of master knitters to return with him to his department store in New York. Imagine, my grandmother had said with wonder in her voice, every American girl wearing an Estonian lace shawl! The outbreak of war in Europe had put an end to these plans. It was probably for the best; the trip to Haapsalu had taken Helle weeks to recover from. The journey to America, if she had tried to undertake it, might have finished her off altogether.
‘Väga hästi,’ I whispered in return. Very well. Then in Russian: ‘How did you go this month?’
Helle lifted her chin proudly. ‘Ten shawls.’
Some of the women around us looked up from their knitting, muttering in surprise. One woman, Leili Poska, made a disbelieving sound in her throat and set down the practice sampler in her lap. ‘Ten? I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true. I would have made more, if I’d been allotted more yarn.’ Helle stooped to lift the lidded basket at her feet onto the empty chair behind. Pulling back the lid, she lifted out a shawl. The other women crowded around as Helle shook out the lace. Gathered eagerly together, they looked like hungry birds cooing over a crumb, eyes shining brightly in pale faces above the grey threadbare dresses they had cinched around their waists. Each woman wore her own lacy shawl, which at least made the clothes seem less tattered than they ought. Material had been increasingly hard to find the past few years; first the war between Germany and Britain had proved restrictive, then there was the lack of clothing available in the Soviet stores. Those who were skilled at sewing, not just knitting, were able to refashion their dresses and skirts but there was a longing among us, especially the young ones, for something new, a nostalgia for the warm memories of St John’s Eve when our mothers would gift us with new clothes to celebrate midsummer. At least we could still have a new shawl even if we had to wear our old rags. It was a tiny comfort.
‘It’s a twig pattern, as Kati suggested,’ Helle said, tracing a bony finger along the pattern that zigzagged up the centre of the shawl. ‘I added some nupps for extra weight. See?’
She tossed the shawl’s frilly edge so the nupps were visible. Murmurs of envy rose up around us.
‘They are all of the same high quality,’ Helle said. She pulled the other shawls out and laid them on the chair. ‘Kati, you will check them.’
I hesitated. It was not necessary. Helle was a master knitter and her work was always polished. But it was my job to ensure that each shawl we sold was of an acceptable quality; that there were no loose ends or untidy seams. No reason for a buyer to bring it back or raise a complaint.
My grandmother had told me once that there must always be a leader, someone to take charge. Sometimes it’s a burden, sometimes a gift. Never take the responsibility for granted.
I gave the shawls a cursory glance, testing their weight and splaying them across my hand before folding them up again.
‘They are fine,’ I said. ‘More than fine. They are perfect.’
Helle shrugged her shoulders, as if she had expected nothing less, but a smile teased the corners of her mouth. Master lacework like this was the culmination of years of practice and dedication to the craft. There were not many other areas in which women could boast of such superiority in our world. ‘My grandson helped me wash and block them yesterday,’ she said. ‘He was not pleased when I reminded him of the knitting I made him do when he came to stay with me each winter as a boy. He told me I should keep my information to myself, if I did not want to find someone else to do my laundry work.’