At first Ervin couldn’t remember where he’d seen that chubby man with a moustache, but then the realisation hit him: it was one of those damned vultures from the demonstration.
“Well hello there, fellow countryman,” the man addressed him in perfect Estonian. “Slow down a bit, would you?”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Ervin replied, but he came to a standstill all the same.
“Come now,” the Estonian said, smiling. “Us guys are all from the same system, after all.”
“I’m not one of those…” Ervin tried to think of a suitably rude word, but the man reached his hand out towards him.
“My name is Vello,” he said. “I’m your new liaison.”
“Listen, I have no intention whatsoever of…”
“Shush, shush,” Vello said insistently. “You have no idea how long it has taken us to get someone like you planted into the Estonian community here. So it would be a real shame if we had to tell them what kind of character you really are.”
In Vello’s favour it had to be said that he wasn’t always watching what he was spending, unlike Ervin’s new acquaintances. Quite the reverse, he was always happy to buy the drinks. They met roughly once a week just to chat about this and that. Ervin told Vello what was happening at the Estonian club, and Vello told him the news from back home. Maybe he just wants to talk to an ordinary person in Estonian, Ervin thought, since the things I’m telling him, all that stuff about those poorly old folk, can’t possibly be of any interest to anyone. Vello wasn’t much of a drinker himself, but he always bought the drinks for Ervin, and he always came to their meetings with half a litre of Stolichnaya for Ervin to take home. They would normally meet somewhere in the back of beyond, in some working men’s pub or Chinese restaurant on the edge of town, but Vello would pay for Ervin’s taxi, on top of the money he gave him for the information, which was normally a couple of hundred krona a go. Ervin would always travel home by bus or metro of course – he wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere, and he had a pretty decent Walkman and all of Def Leppard’s albums on cassette. Anyway, now he had a reason to knock about the Estonian club.
Chapter 28
Raim was sometimes a little late. Like today, when he came straight from Li’s place. Their bodies were now perfectly in tune, and they made pure music whenever they met. When he had eventually looked at the clock, it was clear he wouldn’t even have time for a wash before leaving. He wouldn’t normally have minded carrying the scent of his woman around with him, but he was afraid that Maarja might suspect something.
Although it was none of her business of course. Let her be jealous if she wanted. Anyway, they were now bound by something which was in some ways much more important.
But it did sometimes seem that everything was a game for Maarja, which worried Raim a little.
“Oh, I take my picture album with me now,” Maarja explained. “And this fishing stool. I thought that if some tourist group suddenly came into the room then I could sit down and start drawing the statue in my book, until they went away. Anyway, there’s not normally many people there.”
“You should still be careful,” Raim said. It was true, she really had to be careful.
Chapter 29
Snap.
Rustle, rustle.
Crack.
Plunk.
Hmm.
The first thing which Alex noticed was her fingers. They must surely have been created to play the violin. The tiny spoon which they were holding looked like a foreign body, a heavy, artificial object which had planted itself there by force, but it still had no choice but to succumb, and so it danced gracefully on the plate with the cake crumbs, like a kung fu master in a Hong Kong film. This time Alex had decided to come through the park and go to the café a few steps from the tram stop to have a cup of tea and something to eat – he would get nothing on the boat, so he planned to buy some pastries to take with him too. He had the vague feeling that he’d seen that girl somewhere else before – perhaps it had been right here? – but last time his nerves had been so frayed that he’d needed two brandies to calm himself down. The girl glanced in his direction and seemed to recognise him too, but Alex just ordered a bowl of potato salad and a meat pie and went to sit at the opposite end of the room by the window.
Chapter 30
It was already late evening and Lidia Petrovna was still sitting in the archives, as she was recently wont to do. The task of sorting out the agent files had somehow fallen to her. There was a huge stack of them, and some of them were really dusty, but Lidia Petrovna was primarily interested in the ones which had been taken out recently. She was already quite adept at using the Minox EC, and when she positioned the two table lamps so that their beams intersected she had quite enough light to work by.
She looked at the time. Each film had fifty-six frames, she’d already filled two of them, and the third one should be full by the end of the day, but it probably wasn’t a good idea to stay too late, questions might be asked. First she had to take each file out of its folder to get a better view of it, put it on the table, take the picture, then put the file back in the folder, and then put the folder into the correct stack. On to the table, snap, back in the stack. Table, snap, stack. But what was that sound?
Lidia Petrovna slid the Minox EC up her jacket sleeve and turned round. Someone had definitely opened the door from the corridor, but fortunately there were two rows of shelves between her and the exit.
It must have been that dolt from the sixth department. She felt the Minox EC burning inside her sleeve, as if it were made from molten metal.
“Ah, good evening, Comrade Captain. I’m still sorting through these old files here, under orders from Fyodor Kuzmich.”
“Aha, yes, I was just walking past and I saw light coming through the gap in the door, I thought that Marfa Nikanorovna had left the lights on again.”
Two lamps, to be precise. Särg kept a very close eye on that woman.
Everything was more or less right.
Apart from that face.
Which was very pretty.
Although that was not all.
But Särg had other things to worry about now. He knew that he had to talk to Anton, but he kept putting it off, and he didn’t share his worries with Galina either. One time he even went into his son’s room when he was out, to have a look around. He picked up the papers on the table and opened one of the drawers, unable to believe what he was doing.
That’s what things had come to.
Chapter 31
No one would say this was love, because love is deeper, loftier, more far-reaching. No one would even say that this was passion, because passion is crazy, passion does not stop to ask: it just tears into little pieces everything in its path. That was how it was the first time, before words took over. But it wasn’t like that any more. Casual onlookers would say look, there goes a middle-aged woman with her toy boy, or, there’s a young man sowing his oats. But can either of those assumptions truly describe any relationship? There is always more to it than that, even though there are different ways of seeing these things. I would say: two people fallen from grace, entangled with one another but never to become one.
Lidia could clearly remember when nothing was yet lost. So what if her husband the pilot had disappeared off to Moldova with a hairy-legged stewardess, eventually to father a baby Moldovan. Whenever she saw herself in the mirror she knew she could get anyone she wanted, as long as her soul truly yearned for him. That memory stayed with her, although she’d never yearned enough for anyone to keep him close for long. Of course she had her visitors, and if one were to have a proper look in her cupboards, then the odd shirt, pair of underpants or worn-out toothbrush would be sure to turn up. But what now? Back then the school director had told her she should wear more modest dresses when teaching children who were at that tricky age. Both of them knew very well that Lidia Petrovna would never have entertained any improper thoughts. But now things were different. Permanently so. It turned out that her soul had longed for something else. She had just wanted to be yearned for herself, even if she knew that there would be a price to pay.