Deportations.
A war of independence – not the Civil War.
Mass murder in Tartu’s prisons.
And of course the Gulag.
Now try saying something without lying for a change. Or just fuck off.
Chapter 20
Maarja and Raim were on the third floor of the Pegasus café. It was nice and quiet here during the day, just the odd hung-over poet coming up the stairs to check if there was anyone he knew, but there wasn’t. On a hot day like this it would have made more sense to be outside, Maarja thought. Looking out of the large windows towards the other side of the street, at the mounds outside Niguliste church, she could see ten or so smallish groups who had taken a seat, each with a plastic bag of goodies. But it was definitely more private here inside, that was true.
Maarja had been unsure until the very last moment whether she would return to the picket. She couldn’t even say why she had put money into the collection jar. Naturally she wanted the same things as everyone else: she’d taken part in the unofficial singing nights and signed up for the Estonian Citizens’ Committee long ago, and during the congress of the Popular Front she had sat with her parents, glued to the radio from morning to evening. But she had yet to decide for herself whether it was a good thing that there were so many of those activists groups. On the one hand it could mean that one of them was bound to get lucky. But it could also mean that they would blow so much hot air fighting amongst themselves that the important things would simply be forgotten. So it was a little strange to find herself sitting there drinking cheap red wine with this guy who didn’t have any doubts of that kind.
Otherwise, though, he was quite all right, even very much so. And he radiated some kind of power, some sort of certainty, so you were sure right away that you could rely on him, that he knew how things were. Not that Maarja found him attractive as such: despite all their inner confidence those blond, broad-shouldered types were a bit ordinary – not stupid or anything, ordinary in the right way, just like straight-talking and clean water. Transparent, yes, that was the right word. Not that he didn’t have any secrets, everyone had them, just that those secrets were somehow clear.
It is true that it’s impossible to live without clean water, but clean water is not enough on its own.
In any case it was pretty cool to be drinking wine with him. Anyway the other girls were either at work, in the countryside, or elsewhere.
“May you live in interesting times”
In 1936, shortly before Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen departed on a diplomatic mission to China, one of his friends told him about a Chinese curse he had once heard: “May you live in interesting times!” Or at least that is what Knatchbull-Hugessen claims in his memoires. There are some other British authors who appear to have known of such an expression too. The Chinese, however, do not. The closest thing in meaning which they have is the following: “It is better to live as a dog in peaceful times than as a human in a world of confusion.”
And what about it?
Just like anyone else, I have done things in my life which I am not proud of, and even one or two things which I regret. But I have no reason to be anything other than happy that I have lived in the period when I have, and that I have been able to experience one world changing into another. So what if this has stirred hungers in me which have damaged me? I am willing to pay that price, if only for the perspective it gave me, which is something I do not encounter in people who have lived under only one political order.
You have to find someone who no one could ever, ever, link with you and your group, Valev had said. But in whom you can place absolute trust. That means less risk for that person, and more importantly, less risk for our cause. If it’s a schoolmate, relative, work brigade member, and they end up getting caught for some reason, then even if they keep their lips sealed you will have the security services at your door in half an hour flat.
It’s easy for him to talk, Raim thought, but just try telling this girl that she now has to go and put everything on the line in the name of Estonian independence.
“What’s up?” Maarja asked, and she laughed her ringing laugh. “You’ve got an expression on your face like you’re about to make me a marriage proposal.”
“So you get them often then?” Raim asked, and he laughed too.
“Well at least a couple of times a week,” Maarja replied trying to keep a straight face, but not succeeding particularly well.
Chapter 21
When Alex got to work in the morning Konstantin Zakharovich gave him a slightly odd look before informing him that Gennady Vassilyevich was waiting for him in his office. Which meant he had to go and see him right away. Gennady Vassilyevich started by inquiring, with contrived joviality, how Alex was, and then told him that he would have to drop by the city administration, since the mayor’s foreign affairs advisor, one Vladimir Vladimirovich, apparently wanted to see him.
Even after I put the final full stop in the draft of this story, it took me a long time to shake the moods which it evoked in me. It was hard to think of anything else. The story itself has changed quite a lot in the meantime, but the most important details have stayed the same. And I still feel that I am somehow trapped inside it. Although I am simultaneously unburdened of the parts of myself which I left there, and I feel that I can now write what I want – or even nothing at all.
The first time I saw it was in a dream. Or at least, part of it, Maarja and Alex’s story, which we will get to soon. It was just like a film, in fact it really was a film which I was watching while I slept. But it took place in Poland. The café where they met was right inside the art museum there, not like the café in Kadriorg. But the museum was just like our one. I still remember the chinking of Maarja’s spoon against the plate as she ate her cake. So some memories never fade. It was summer in my dream and in real life, the sun was scorching hot and I could hear the gentle murmur of the sea.
Without fully realising why, Alex sensed that this couldn’t mean anything good, since good news would normally just land on your desk in the course of other business, for no apparent reason. Good news was not something which you as an individual, specifically you, whoever you happened to be, would have earned, and where your role would have to be specifically emphasised. No, good news just happened by chance, since the reasons why the system might suddenly smile upon you would be random and unknowable, and had to remain that way. Bad news was something altogether different. It could involve you having to personally account for some misfortune which you had no way at all of preventing. Like, for example, when the father of one of Alex’s classmates oversaw the building of a children’s home which then burnt down, and this happened to be the same children’s home which the second secretary of the Communist Party’s regional office had personally opened on TV. It burnt down because the building brigade foreman had used up all the insulation materials which met the required fire safety standards to build a country cottage for his direct superior, the deputy director of the trust. But the system reacted swiftly and mercilessly against the father of Alex’s classmate, because it was his signature which was on the documentation signing off the building for use, there for everyone to see. Rights and responsibilities are not in fact equally balanced. You can easily end up being responsible without having any rights at all.
In other words, if Vladimir Vladimirovich wanted to see Alex personally, it couldn’t mean good news. In the world of good news, Alex simply did not exist for Vladimir Vladimirovich.