I saw Oskar hesitate. The snow began to fall more heavily, clouding at our feet in banks of ice.
‘Fetch it,’ he said. ‘Quickly.’
Jaan left at a run, and we watched in dismay as snow began to carpet the ground. But he returned only minutes later, sliding to a halt in front of us, the sled a dark shape against the pale snow. The dogs strained at their leashes, eager to be gone, excited by the prospect of exercise at this late hour. Their breath plumed white and the noise of their panting was deafening.
Oskar helped Lydia and Etti to climb in, then Lydia, and then he reached for me.
I slid into my seat, feeling the cold of the timber rising through my skirt. The sled was larger than the one my father had owned, with more seats. It was a transport sled, used to move people up and down between the parishes, not a commercial one like my father’s with room for crates.
Jaan urged the dogs forward. The sled slid backwards, tipping a moment as the dogs tried to gain purchase. Then we rolled forward, bumping across the ground, the air filled with panting breath and the scrape of the sled on the ground below.
As a flurry of flakes blotted the sky, I watched the landscape move past, thinking of the many times Jakob and I had sledded as children, the squeals of joy, the wonder of moving seamlessly across the snow as if it were water. The memory dimmed.
Every memory would be like that now. I would have to live them all over, each one, remembering that Jakob was no longer here to share them with me.
‘We’re nearly there.’ Jaan pointed to a small outcrop of trees and sand: the shoreline. The dogs surged forward, strings of saliva flying through the air behind them.
‘Stop!’ A voice rang out. Shots exploded from the dark.
Jaan jerked the reins. The dogs squealed and whined and the sled crashed to a halt, grounded in the snow. Bullets thwacked into the timber.
I heard Etti grunt beside me, saw her head topple forward, blood bubbling from two gaping holes in the back of her neck. I thrust out my hands as Leelo slid from her lifeless grasp. My throat seized.
‘Run!’ Oskar’s hand yanked me fiercely into the snow. I heard his breath in my ears. I grasped Leelo to my chest, trying not to slip. My boots sank into the ground. I struggled, pulled them free.
A boat’s engine roared to life. I tore towards it, a storm of sound swirling around me. Gunfire, shouts. A gasp tore from my throat as my legs hit the icy water. My skirts dragged me down, instantly waterlogged.
I saw Lydia’s face above me, her hands reaching.
‘Take Leelo!’ I screamed.
The baby’s weight was gone from my arms, and now there was only the tug at my feet, the press of water, sucking me in, pulling me down.
Give in.
I could. It wouldn’t be hard. Snow scattered across my vision. My legs were frozen, all feeling lost. I felt the currents pull, one last tug, as gentle as a shawl unspooling. Pick one thread apart and the rest will come undone.
The water closed over my head. It filled my ears.
Then strong hands were grasping me under my arms. Oskar. In the water with me. He pulled me to the surface, and I kicked viciously against the current. The propeller buzzed, as angry as a wasp trapped inside a jar. Then I heard Oskar shout. His arms lifted me up and he pushed me into the boat.
My head slammed on the cold metal of the seat. I heard gunshots explode in the water nearby and I sat up. The world was spinning. I tried to see Oskar, feel him climbing in beside me, but the black waters were empty. All was darkness and ice. I screamed his name. Lydia’s hands worked fast, stripping the waterlogged clothes from my body. I felt a blanket press around my legs. For a moment there was stillness. Just the buzzing of the boat. Then we were moving, shifting, flying through the dark.
I raised my head, my vision still spinning. The sky was a bowl of stars and arcing light. Gunfire crackled. In the blur of snow, I saw the shoreline recede.
I would later say that it was a trick of the light. Perhaps one of the dogs not slaughtered by bullets had limped to the shore, wanting to die in the water’s cold embrace. But the shape I saw was not limping.
She stood proudly, her muzzle turned towards us, the long lines of her body glinting in the starlight. Her pelt was thick and full again, her eyes the same bright yellow they had been when we first met. My wolf. I tried to speak, to tell her to take care of Jakob and Etti, Mama and Papa. All the lost souls who would remain there together until we could one day find the courage to return. Until Estonia was free.
But my voice was frozen, trapped like icicles in my throat.
All I could do was call to her in the way I had used to, when words were not necessary, when knowing that she was there, that she understood, was all I had needed to force myself to go on.
Hüvastijätt. Farewell.
Epilogue
Kati
New York, 1953
‘The Central Committee of the Communist party, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR announce with deep grief to the party and all workers that on 5 March at 9.50 pm Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, died after a serious illness. The heart of the collaborator and follower of the genius of Lenin’s work, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist party and of the Soviet people, stopped beating…’
‘Turn it off.’
Lydia’s voice behind me makes me jump. My fingers spin the radio dial. The reporter’s words disappear, swallowed by static. The ensuing silence enhances the bubbling of the leivasupp on the stove, the rippling of piano music from down the hall. Cars grind up and down Richmond Avenue, the sound of their motors swelling and receding as they nose closer to their destinations. Our little apartment always seems so quiet, but the everyday sounds offer comfort. They drown out the tidal roar of the past.
I lay down my ladle and turn to discover she is close behind me. Her shopping basket lies forgotten on the kitchen bench, a folded towel concealing the hidden contents. Her hair is short, slashed to just below her ears and dyed blonde. She wears a knitted jumper of crimson red in a boatneck style that reveals the delicate bones in her neck and throat and a long hand-sewn skirt that brushes the edges of her ankles. I have seen men turn to watch her as she passes by, their eyes drawn to the smooth arch of her neck. But she pays them no attention. If they ask, she holds up her hand to show them the band curled around her ring finger – the one we bought at a pawn shop the year we arrived – or points to the child always racing ahead, the boy with the mop of unruly brown curls.
A few silver bangles circle her wrist; presents from a well-off client she helped secure passage into America. With her language skills, it was easy for her to translate all the interviewer’s questions and go back and forth between Russian and English. When she reaches out now towards the radio, the bangles strike against each other. The sound reminds me of bells. Her fingers pause on the dial, hesitant, unsure.
I wait, unwilling to push her. I can feel the past pulling at us, tugging. A force as powerful as the tide.
At last, she moves her hand away, curling her fingers up in her palm. ‘He was never really my father,’ she says. ‘Not in the ways that matter.’ She turns her back on the radio and goes back to her basket. Only the slightest tension in her shoulders gives her away.
As I watch her lay out the things – a carton of milk, a packet of biscuits, a loaf of dense bread to serve with the apple stew bubbling on the stove – I feel my own breath slow, my muscles ease.