Another five minutes and I’ll go, decided Alex, otherwise I will miss the boat. There could be all sorts of reasons why that woman didn’t turn up; let’s hope she hasn’t been arrested.
Chapter 48
Long, warm underwear, woollies, soap. Her toothbrush got left behind in her suitcase, and she doesn’t have a spare.
They are in a heap on the bed and Maarja is sitting next to them, watching the door.
Because very soon someone wearing heavy boots is going to come through it.
She can’t hear what’s happening outside the room.
The hubbub which had suddenly ceased a couple of days earlier is slowly returning to the yard outside. A man in a vest has come out and is prising open the door of the shed. What does he want from there on this warm late-August day? We don’t know. Helmi is hanging up the washing to dry. “Hey, Annika, have you heard?” someone yells out of the window. “About what?” comes the reply. Something about Yeltsin. There is music playing somewhere, someone must have guests round. Robert takes the rubbish out. “Hey, Robi, come and see what’s up with this door,” the man in the vest calls out. “The same thing that’s always up with it,” Robert says, going to investigate.
Maarja knows nothing about all that. She is watching the door of her room.
The pain in Raim’s father’s temples becomes unbearable at exactly the moment when the phone rings. Why does it always have to ring with the same intolerable bone-rattling jangle? And say what you like but whisky can give you one hell of a hangover. He and Raim drank a whole bottle of it yesterday, but he still couldn’t understand what the appeal was. You were supposed to slowly savour it in some special way, not just down shots, which is generally the most sensible way to consume spirits. But they didn’t keep any vodka in their house, that was more of a Russian thing, although they made an exception at weddings and funerals of course. Raim’s father wasn’t much of a drinker. Nor was Raim, judging by the look of him now, sitting there at the other end of the table, evidently in the same crapulent state as his father. It was good to talk to him, even if he didn’t tend to share his problems much, which was understandable – he was a young guy after all. So that’s it, then. It’s all over. At that point Raim’s father didn’t know that at any moment his wife would appear at the dining room door and tell him to switch on the television. Swan Lake is over for now, there are people out on the streets in Moscow, Yeltsin is their leader, Pugo has shot himself, and here in Estonia the Supreme Soviet and Estonian committees are meeting on Toompea hill. All of this nonsense is over, over.
Maarja knows nothing about all that. She is watching the door of her room.
Fyodor Kuzmich was trying to keep his cool. He’d just finished a long phone call with Moscow, or to be precise, most of the talk came from the other end, he just listened and said, “Yes sir” now and again, but his television was on at the same time, and he was watching a direct broadcast of Yeltsin’s speech. It was all very clear, even with the volume turned right down. He was experienced enough to draw the right conclusions – nothing which was happening surprised him. Vinkel was standing in the doorway watching television while Fyodor Kuzmich spoke on the telephone. Damn, now it’s all going down the pan. Fyodor Kuzmich put the telephone down and beckoned him to come closer: they still had so much to do, and only a matter of a few hours in which to do it.
Maarja knows nothing about all that. She is watching the door of her room.
And me, what am I doing on that day? I step out of my front door and the people I pass on the street all have the same look in their eyes: they want to hug everyone they see. Although it does remain just a look – we are talking about Estonia, after all.
But it’s a free Estonia now, that’s true.
Ten Years Later
There’s a young mother standing in front of the Konsum store on Narva Street. She has one child in a pram and another standing by her side, and her open coat reveals that a third is on its way. A man who is slightly over thirty, his face incongruously tanned, approaches from Viru Hotel at a brisk pace, and nearly walks straight past her.
“Oh,” he says in English with a barely noticeable accent. “I almost didn’t recognise you,”
The young mother looks at him in momentary amazement and then bursts out laughing, with that same ringing laughter which the years have done nothing to dull.
“Alex! It’s you! Can it really be? What brings you here?”
“I’m at a conference,” he says. “I live in England now, Oxford.” He tells Maarja how he followed his aunt’s advice and managed to get a place to do a doctorate at Oxford University, following which they kept him on to work in a research group dealing with transition economies. “And how are things going with you?”
“Quietly,” Maarja says with a smile. “We’ve got our own company now: we import fluffy toys. I design the advertising. But I still paint now and then,” she adds hurriedly, “or when I can, as you can see I don’t have much time for that now…”
At that moment a fit young man with a healthy, ordinary kind of face comes out of the shop carrying two large bags, and quickly walks up to Maarja. No denying it, it would be hard to find a more decent Estonian lad.
“Let me introduce you,” Maarja says, “this is Kristjan, my husband.”
“Very nice to meet you,” Alex says, reaching out his hand, “I’m Alex.”
“An old friend,” Maarja adds, just in case.
And now is probably the time to bid them farewell. As we walk away we just manage to hear Kristjan invite Alex to visit them at the summer cottage in Türi which Maarja’s grandmother left her, and Alex promises he will, if he ever makes it back to Estonia. The wind carries their words away and whisks up the leaves from the ground, together with a few brightly coloured leaflets, as there happen to be elections on, and on that same pavement just behind Maarja and Alex there are two large banners, facing each other off. On one side is the Social Justice alliance, with Valev standing in the front row flanked by other members (let’s put him there, why not?), on the other side is the right-of-centre Prosperity bloc, whose figurehead is unsurprisingly, Aare Murakas although there is a row of sensible-looking people standing behind him as well. Wait – it can’t be… can it… surely our eyes must be deceiving us, no they’re not… yes, we really do know one of them from the old days. If we haven’t realised yet, it’s Murakas’s trusted advisor and the bloc’s candidate for interior minister, Hardi Vinkel.
But since you ask, I’ll say one more thing: only a fool would throw away a beautiful apple from his own garden just because it has a few maggot holes in it. Only a fool prefers things which are shiny and never rot. After all, it’s always the tastiest of apples that the maggots go for. And you can bet your life on it, the maggots’ll know these things.
Copyright
© Rein Raud 2017
First published in June 2017 by Vagabond Voices Publishing Ltd., Glasgow, Scotland.
ISBN 978-1-908251-70-1
The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.
Cover design by Mark Mechan
Typeset by Park Productions
The publisher acknowledges subsidy towards this translation from the Estonian Cultural Endowment
The publisher acknowledges subsidy towards this publication from Creative Scotland