‘Ridiculous,’ my father replied.
‘It’s true.’ Oskar hadn’t sipped the water. He stared down into it, as if looking for answers written in the mug. ‘It has already started.’
‘The war between Britain and Germany has nothing to do with us,’ my father said. ‘Stalin and Hitler have signed a pact of non-aggression. We read about it in Postimees last year.’
Papa had shown me the clipping, complete with a picture of Hitler’s agent, Molotov, signing the treaty while Stalin looked on, smiling. The treaty had stated, in simple terminology, that if either party went to war against a third power, the other party was required to remain neutral. Papa had explained to us quietly that it essentially absolved Russia of any responsibility if the Germans invaded other countries. It was Russia’s way of keeping out of the way, and giving Germany free rein to dominate Europe.
‘The pact will not hold,’ Oskar said.
Papa’s face darkened. ‘I don’t believe you.’ He waved a hand. ‘You know nothing about what’s happening out there. How can you? Where have you been, all this time, to know things like that? I assumed you fled to Finland, like so many others. I hoped you had. It would have been best for you. For us.’
Oskar’s fingers tightened around the cup. ‘No,’ he said, his jaw flexing. ‘That’s not what happened.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been living in the forest.’
Mama drew in a loud breath. ‘All alone?’
Oskar nodded. ‘At first, yes. I had no friends to help me. I couldn’t ask you.’ He shot me a quick, apologetic glance. ‘I couldn’t risk telling you I was still out there. I knew you would feel obliged to help me. The authorities would arrest you if they knew.’
My father grunted his approval. ‘At least you had the sense not to come here.’
‘Just so.’ Oskar swirled the water in the cup. ‘I made the best of it. I lived on mushrooms and berries. I slept under the stars. Eventually, more people fled into the forest. You remember what it was like, the first weeks of the occupation?’
Papa said nothing. Did he? Was he thinking of the information he had passed on to the Partorg? When they asked him to value the farms around us, my father had complied. At the time, he had told us he had no idea they would use the information to make arrests. Now I wasn’t so sure. My heart gave a sharp, painful tug.
Although the bodies of Imbi and Aime haunted my nightmares, those memories had partially dimmed. The invasion was different. Every day, there were reminders. People starving on the streets. Young women harassed by soldiers and men beaten for jumping to their defence. I remembered the rumble of tanks on the road nearby. The day after the invasion began, we had gone into Tartu to check on Aunt Juudit. Cattle cars were lined up in the station, and families were being herded inside, men separated from the women and children. I recognised some people from our village. Councillor Karro and his wife, along with their twin girls, all wearing woollen jackets though the sun blazed overhead. Elsa Hamit, who taught handicraft at the local tech. I watched my old school teacher, Josef Tavert, help his father, a frail, limping man, up into the railroad car beside him. When he finally succeeded in clambering up, he leaned heavily against Mr Tavert, wheezing. I wanted to call out but before I had a chance, the door was slammed shut.
We watched from a safe distance, standing in the car park of the station with a knot of other people. Those who were braver fought against the crowd until they reached the cattle cars, pushing notes to their families between the bars or parcels of food for the long journey ahead. When the Russian soldiers noticed, they started shouting. One man fired his weapon into the air, causing people to scatter away from the cattle car towards the safety of the car park. The women trapped inside the train drew their children closer, shielding them with their hands and bodies. The men separated in their cattle cars could do nothing but cry out, hoping to hear the voices of their families reassuring them they were safe.
Papa’s face had been unreadable as the chaos unfolded.
‘They take the educated ones first,’ an old woman had said beside my elbow. I knew she was right. My grandmother had predicted the same thing before she died. First the government would be replaced by a puppet one, she said. Then they would arrest and deport the people who were thinkers, those who could educate or warn others about the regime to come. With that class gone, they would turn to the workers and landowners; men like my father. Communist pamphlets had already been distributed, warning us about the kulaks. The kulaks had been the richest farmers in the village. They had kept all their wealth to themselves, while those below them starved. Now their goods would be distributed to those who needed it most. Although the propaganda was always carefully worded, it was not hard to see through it when life revealed so starkly that the truth was quite the opposite. Estonia and the other Baltic countries with their rich bounty of farmland and minerals would help pay the price for the spread of Communism across the world.
‘Where?’ I said. ‘Where will they take them?’
The woman had not answered. Perhaps she thought no answer was necessary. There was only one place those cattle cars were going: out east to the inhospitable Oblasts, to Siberia and the farthest reaches of the Soviet empire, frozen tundras where nothing survived. I knew, from what my grandmother had told me about Estonia’s years under the Tsar, that people did not come back from there.
I looked to Papa, waiting for him to move, to speak out. Instead, he seized my shoulder roughly and marched me back to the lorry where Mama and Jakob were waiting.
‘Did you see Professor Kärner?’ Jakob’s skin was grey, his mouth pinched. He’d refused to leave the safety of the vehicle and Papa would not have allowed him to, anyway. The only reason Papa had taken the risk of stopping at all was to see if any of his friends were among the deportees. Jakob was lucky he was only a poor student in his first year of university and so clearly not considered enough of a threat. He wiped his hand across his pale brow. ‘And the Jurvetsons? They were marched out of class this morning.’
The door of the lorry squeaked as Papa climbed in. I opened my mouth to reply but Papa silenced me with a glare. I watched the train recede in the rear mirror as Papa drove the lorry out of the carpark. A terrible weight sat heavily on my chest. I had seen Jakob’s math professor being herded towards the train and driven inside. The Jürvetson boys, blond twins who had been in Jakob’s school year and now studied with him at the university, had been separated and pushed into different cars. I’d seen the anguished expressions on their faces before the doors closed. They did everything together. I could not remember ever seeing them apart. Now they would be trapped alone, in the comfortless dark, without each other’s company. It seemed so cruel and spiteful but there was nothing they could do or say to resist. They were as helpless as the children whose cries squalled over the heads of the waiting crowd.
I would rather run than be caged, I decided then. If the Soviets came for us, I would convince my family to take our chances in the forest. I did not want to die in some unknown place, hearing Russian voices all about me.
I knew now that Oskar had felt the same.
He was still staring down into his mug of water. ‘So many people came to live in the forest that groups formed. People began to help each other, building shelters, finding food. Some of us, the bravest I suppose, or the stupidest, the ones with nothing left to lose, suggested we should take up arms. Some people had pistols they brought with them. Others stole rifles. That was when the Soviets sent in their first patrols.’ His hands curled around the cup. ‘Women. Infants. Young boys and girls. Nobody was spared. What crime did they commit? What offence would you assign them, Erich, knowing they had no choice except to submit to arrest and deportation or scrape a life together in the wilderness?’ His jaw tightened.