Impossible.
As the words left my mouth, I felt the weight of them crush me like a giant fist laid on my heart. This was the new truth, I realised, a reality I had not wanted to imagine, preferring to think that Oskar would want me in the way that I had once wanted him. When I had entertained ideas back then of marriage, perhaps even of children, my parents had always been in the background, able to offer guidance, to counsel us when challenges arose or when we quarrelled, as we inevitably would. Every couple did. My parents’ presence was something I had taken for granted, just as I assumed Oskar’s mother would always be around, ready to sweeten our lives with her concoctions and ease any misunderstandings with her belly laugh. I had imagined my mother, her back bent from years of apple picking, sitting in the orchard with her grandchildren, showing them how to count out the pips.
Now all that was gone. Oskar and I were alone in our pain. More than alone. We were facing a future fraught with uncertainty. Love had no place in such a world.
It was only by being apart that we could hope to survive.
The moth was still dancing, but slower now, as if the light had drained it of energy. It circled in slow, lazy loops around the slippery wax.
When I looked up, Hilja was watching me, her chin thrust forward. Something about my face must have satisfied her, because she relaxed back against the wall again, bending her knees and drawing her legs up to her chest. Her trousers rode up, revealing the space between her shins and her boots. The skin there was puckered with dozens of round scars.
‘Cigarette burns,’ she said, following my gaze. ‘They’re all over my body.’
She smiled, showing crooked teeth. ‘And the others wonder why I don’t smoke.’ She held out the back of her hands for me to see. They too were covered in shiny brown spots, crowded together over the surface of her skin like the mottled pattern on a leopard’s fur.
Although I wanted to turn away, I forced myself to look at them; to acknowledge her suffering.
‘I felt nothing after a while.’ Hilja folded her scarred hands over her knees. ‘Nothing. They kept burning me. They wanted to know where the others were hiding. But I stopped screaming. That’s when they brought Luksa’s body in. I didn’t realise they had caught him already. His body was ruined. Torn apart by bullets. Decomposing. They told me… to make love to it.’
Another woman’s voice might have broken. Hilja’s did not change.
She picked at a scab on her hand, peeling away the crust and flicking it into the darkness beyond the candlelight.
‘Sometimes it’s better.’ She looked at me evenly and it was only now, with the light shining directly on her, that I realised the creases in her face were not age lines but small scars, made lightly with an instrument like a scalpel. A sharp blade that would leave only the barest marks. The hand that had made them had been tender, like a lover’s caress, but every stroke had ensured that she would appear wizened forever, her youth nothing but a distant memory. ‘It’s better not to love at all. You don’t know the things you will do. The things they can make you do.’ She touched her face gently, running her fingers over the creases. Then she sniffed and leaned forward, batting the moth from the candle with the back of her hand. It whirled away, confused, into the dark. ‘When the others arrive,’ she said, ‘if they make it this far, that is, you will need to think of nothing but running. The camp is a little way from here; we’ll need to move as quickly as we’re able. Patrols may come. They know we will try to get as many people into the deeper woods as possible. You must prepare yourself.’
‘What if there are children? Old people, like Oskar said.’
Hilja blinked. ‘Help them. Of course.’
‘But if they can’t run…’
‘Do what you can.’
‘What if they fall or get left behind?’
Hilja gave the slightest shake of her head. ‘Just keep moving. Not everyone makes it, Kati.’ For the first time I saw an expression of pity in her eyes. It made her ravaged face seem young again. ‘Not everyone survives.’
Birch Pattern
Lydia
‘You will be transported to Tartu station. From there, you will begin your journey to your new home. You have been granted an allowance of one suitcase each. Anyone who resists will be arrested.’
The soldier’s voice boomed in the street. Despite the cacophony of noise, his words were clear, ringing out over the heads of the people being steered into police wagons and shoved into the back of trucks. Timber crates lay heaped and broken on the footpath, cleared out so the trucks could accommodate as many bodies as possible. All the soldiers had lists. As each person came forward, they were to give their name to be checked off and then bundled into the wagon where their families were already waiting.
Ahead of me, I saw Etti freeze, her shoulders lifting as if someone had shone a spotlight on her face. But the soldier closest to her had already turned away, distracted by a question from his colleague. We hurried past him, Olga holding fast to my arm as if I might be swept away on the river of people being ferried towards the police wagons. In turn, I reached out to hold onto Etti, anxious not to lose her in the crowd. My fingers knotted in the weave of her shawl; we moved slowly until the deportees peeled away and it was just the three of us, making our way towards a courtyard surrounded by apartment blocks.
When we reached the courtyard, Etti groaned, coming suddenly to a halt, both hands pressed flat against her belly. My grip on the shawl slackened.
‘What’s the matter?’ Olga said. Her face glittered in the light from the streetlamp. She lifted an arm, swiping at her face with her sleeve.
Etti was bent double, her breathing ragged. I wound my arm around her shoulders. ‘Etti, do you need to rest?’
She shook her head. Her mouth was pinched, her face screwed up in pain. She let out a long exhalation of breath. ‘There’s no time. It’s just ahead.’ She jerked her head towards a doorway harboured on either side by boxed geraniums. The noise of the streets – the clop of horse hooves, the grind of wheels – seemed muffled here. Nobody wailed with fear or shouted instructions. The sounds were muted, as if the blank walls and darkened windows of the townhouses clustered around the courtyard had absorbed them. Or as if there were nobody left inside.
Olga’s face appeared beside me, knotted with worry. ‘Perhaps you could wait here,’ she said to Etti. ‘Lydia and I can go.’
‘No.’ Shaking her head, Etti tried to push herself to her feet. Swaying, she let out a sharp gasp.
‘Lida, you take that side,’ Olga said, slipping shoulder beneath Etti’s arm. ‘Come now. Quickly!’ I obeyed, helping to heave Etti to her feet. Together, we half-dragged her across the courtyard, her breath coming in short gasps. When we reached the doorway, she seemed to rally, shaking us off to stagger inside unassisted.
Although the stairwell inside was dim, lit only by a single bulb, I could smell the dust that clogged the carpet, the tobacco that had soaked into the wallpaper from years of tenancy. Together we struggled up the stairs, Etti stopping every few steps to lean against the wall, panting.
At last, we reached the landing. ‘In here.’ Etti reached past me, gripping the handle of a door painted a faded blue. I heard her gasp. Bracing myself, I followed her inside.
The apartment was full of women. At least, that was how it seemed. Their pale faces stood out in the glow of an oil lamp on a sideboard. Their shadows stretched behind them, making dark impressions against the wallpaper. They huddled in the centre of the room as if knitted together by an invisible thread. The puddle of light thrown out by the lamp created a wide circle around them. At the edges were shards of gleaming china, pieces of glittering crystal that lay in a heap like jagged jigsaw bits.