Kati
September 1941
The sound of jackboots rang out on the cobblestones. Soldiers marched in uniform precision, their faces solemn, although some smiled fleetingly at the people lined up along the pavement. The people in the crowd shouted, smiling ecstatically, waving their hands and the Estonian flags they had fashioned themselves or brought out from boxes hidden in attics or basements. Women and children threw flowers; posies of cornflowers or ‘bachelor’s button’, twists of green ivy woven around gleaming buttercups. A stream of cars clogged Tartu’s main street, a shining procession of vehicles as black as hearses and moving just as slowly, navigating through the throngs of people, inching towards Tartu’s Town Hall.
A warm breeze shook the boughs of the linden trees dotting the pavement and sent a shower of white blooms raining down on the heads of the crowds below. Some of the children tried to catch the whirling blossoms in their hands, voices shrill with delight. Watching them, I recalled my grandmother’s stories about the sacred linden trees, her descriptions of the women who danced in the wild linden groves, praying for fertility and domestic peace.
The street was a picture of joy. A scene that should have filled me with happiness, blotting out the horror of the past months and the oppression of the past years. The people of Tartu welcoming their saviours. Instead, a cold dread crept into my bones. Every time I saw a Nazi swastika flash past, I was reminded of the Soviet sickle and star. Every time I heard someone shout Hitler’s name, I thought about Stalin; how people like my father had been forced to acquiesce to his demands, believing that we would be better off surrendering than fighting for our freedom. Where had it got us? What good had it done?
I turned away, reaching up to massage my temples, hoping that anyone watching would imagine I suffered from migraine. It was half-true. I could feel the pressure mounting already, building behind my eyes, a wall of solid buzzing pain like the swarm of bees before a honeypot.
‘A good turnout.’
I glanced sideways. Lydia stood beside me, hands thrust into the pockets of her skirt; one of Etti’s, the pattern of lilacs faded from once-vivid purple to a dull grey. Although she had done her best to tie her hair with a black ribbon, bits of it had escaped, springing around her shoulders in twisted coils.
‘People are glad to see the back of the Russians.’ I kept my voice neutral, but all the same her face changed. Guilt suffused her features.
‘I’m glad too,’ she said, quietly, looking over to where Etti stood a short distance away with some of the other women from the knitting circle. Helle was rocking Leelo in her arms. The baby was asleep, exhausted by the day’s excitement and the impact of a lingering cold she had battled all week. Now two months old, she had started to change, her lost newborn gaze replaced by one of keen interest in everything around her. Her blue eyes watched everything, following us as we prepared supper or knitted in the evenings as we dimmed the lamps.
All the women wore their shawls, either tied around their shoulders or over their hair. Helle and Leili’s faces were solemn; I knew they were thinking of Aunt Juudit. Only Viktoria was smiling, one arm linked through my cousin’s. Etti herself looked tired. Her hair was dull, her skin pale from so much time spent indoors. The nights of feeding wore her out, even with Lydia and myself helping, bringing the baby to her. Leelo’s cot stayed in Lydia’s room most nights, too, so that Etti could catch some sleep without waking every hour to check that Leelo was all right.
At least we had the ladies of the knitting circle to support us.
There had been tears and much embracing when we returned from the camp to Aunt Juudit’s apartment. Helle especially had been glad to see us and and to learn that Etti had survived the dangers of childbirth. But only Helle and Leili had escaped deportation, taking refuge in Aunt Juudit’s apartment, too afraid to risk even contacting their families. Very slowly, we had rebuilt our lives from what remained. The women of the knitting circle had slowly accepted Lydia as one of their own. They had given her a shawl to wear which had been knitted by Aunt Juudit. Peacock Tails. The circle met once a week now in Helle’s apartment and Lydia was always invited to join us. There had not been much left to salvage from Aunt Juudit’s after the Russians smashed everything. Only the larger furniture – beds and wardrobes – had been spared. I’d already begun to teach Lydia how to knit properly and I had mended her mother’s shawl, piecing it back together with some spare yarn Helle had saved.
A roar of sound made me glance back at the procession. A group of brown-clad men approached, their rifles shining; the Estonian Home Guard. I spotted Jakob among them and lifted my hand. His brown eyes crinkled, but his gaze went past me. With a wrench, I knew I was not the one he sought. I stepped away, giving him an unobstructed view. I did not have to look to know that he was wearing the same smile he wore every time Lydia came near, or that she was returning it.
When I looked back, his curly head was bobbing away. Lydia pressed her hands together, staring after him. When she caught my eye a corner of her mouth lifted and colour rose to her cheeks. She turned to stare back at the apartment block that loomed across the courtyard behind us. The windows of Aunt Juudit’s apartment were shuttered closed.
A frown wrinkled Lydia’s forehead. ‘It feels wrong to be out here. All this…’ She gestured around. ‘All this celebration. After everything that happened.’
‘I know.’
The silence that stretched between us was filled with the happy chatter of voices, Estonian and German. But Lydia’s eyes were troubled.
I hugged myself, realising with a jolt that my own fingers met almost around my middle. I could feel the spokes of my ribs beneath my hands. I tried to remember what I’d eaten last. Thin, watery grain. An overripe apple that turned to mush on my tongue. The departing Russians had taken with them whatever they could carry. What little remained had been seized by the Germans and, in fairness, by the Estonian Home Guard and the Forest Brothers, who had needed energy to defeat the remnants of the Soviet Army. Any day, the Germans would depart, though. Then the fields would be returned to us, the kolkhoz collective farms broken up. This knowledge was bittersweet.
Our own farm was gone. It was now nothing more than a burned-out husk, surrounded by blackened fields. My heart still ached as I recalled the way Jakob had staggered as we emerged from the forest the night after the Russians left. The way his mouth had worked as he struggled to keep control of his emotions. We had later learned that Stalin had given instructions for everything of value to be torched. Nothing was to be left for the Germans – or for us. On the 9th of July, the retreating Russians had blown up the old stone bridge over the river Emajõgi. They had blown up St. Mary’s Church and the market where we’d once sold our shawls.
In a way, we were lucky. We had not been inside our farmhouse when the Russians destroyed it. In Kautla, a small township in Central Estonia, a battalion of retreating Russian soldiers had herded at least thirty people into their farmhouses and set them ablaze. The scene afterwards had been distressing to everyone, even the hardened members of the Erna reconnaissance group, a clutch of Finnish soldiers who had sworn to help liberate Estonia from the Soviets’ grasp. It was the Erna group who had brought the news to Oskar after clashing with the Russian battalions. At night, when visions of flames distorted my sleep, I heard the cries of those men and women begging for their lives. My eyes stung with petrol fumes. My skin blistered, the flesh melting away until only charcoal bones remained. I often woke tangled in damp sheets, my throat choked with imaginary smoke.